AFT Proposes Additional Title I/NCLB Funds for Schools With Students Displaced by Katrina --

The Advocate came out on Sunday, if you have not checked it out yet, do it.

Press release, WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 /U.S. Newswire/

Here is another press release. This one offers, I believe, a better approach than funding more charter schools. I cannot tell you how it makes my blood boil to think that these neo-cons will use anything including the suffering of millions of people to advance their agenda of privatizing public education! I have not had much use for AFT over the years but this is at least a start.

..Public school districts and nonpublic schools that have students displaced from the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast would receive additional funding using a model established 40 years ago and still in place today in the No Child Left Behind Act, under a solution proposed today by the American Federation of Teachers. The proposal would allow legislators to avoid an ideological battle that the administration's private school voucher plan would provoke and allow funds to go immediately to the children and schools that need them..."This would provide needed accountability for public funds while also providing assistance, something a private school voucher plan would not do," AFT President Edward J. McElroy said.

All displaced students from the affected Gulf areas would benefit and be considered eligible under the AFT proposal because they would be placed in a "high need" status. The local education agencies would provide a certified count of the displaced students enrolled in area public and nonpublic schools. States would be responsible for overseeing the process of counting and certifying local efforts.

An idea that actually thinks about the kids! How novel!