The teachers and staff in one of Chicago’s largest charter school networks overwhelmingly voted to join the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS), an AFT affiliate. The more than 400 educators work at the 13 schools, with about 6,500 students, that are operated by the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO).

This is an excerpt from “Public Schools, Private Agenda: Parent Revolution,” by Gary Cohn of Frying Pan News.

At  first glance, it is one of the nation’s hottest new education-reform movements, a seemingly populist crusade to empower poor parents and fix failing public schools. But a closer examination reveals that the “parent-trigger” movement is being heavily financed by the conservative Walton Family Foundation, one of the nation’s largest and most strident anti-union organizations, a Frying Pan News investigation has shown.

Aug. 28 marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. To commemorate the historic 1963 march, the AFL-CIO, in partnership with Union Plus, announced today a new Dreams of Jobs and Freedom Scholarship program.    

The scholarships will provide $5,000 each to at least 50 talented high school seniors—including those from union families—to help pay for the costs of higher education.

The AFT and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been working on finding a better way to evaluate and develop teachers, using research to determine the best ways to train teachers and ensure that students get the best educational experience possible. 

Although the AFT and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation don’t always agree on everything, they share the firm belief that students have a right to effective instruction and that teachers want to do their very best. 

The National Labor College (NLC) is now accredited to offer an Associate of Arts degree. An Associate of Arts degree is the first two years of college and will provide students with the foundation to succeed in NLC's bachelor's degree programs or at any other four-year college or university.

Applications for the Associate of Arts degree for the fall semester, beginning Sept. 3, 2013, will be available shortly. If you would like to be immediately notified when the applications are available, sign up here.

Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, was arrested Thursday for blocking access to a school closure hearing in Philadelphia. AFT spokesman Marcus Mrowka told The Huffington Post that Weingarten was arrested with 18 other community activists for blocking the entrance to the meeting. Weingarten said afterward she knew her actions would lead to arrest, but it was a last-resort attempt to stop the Philadelphia School Reform Commission from closing some of the city's public schools, which she argues would detrimentally affect students, particularly African American and Latino students.

By a better than 2-to-1 margin, the teachers, counselors and social workers at César Chávez Academy, the largest charter school in Detroit, voted Thursday to join the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Michigan ACTS), an affiliate of AFT Michigan.

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC's) long history of influencing state legislators—sometimes even writing legislation for them—to pass laws and promote policies that advance a corporate profit agenda, and at times an extreme conservative agenda, is well documented.

Now a new report shows another group—led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush—is following the ALEC blueprint in pushing state education policy backed by for-profit education corporations.

New York City school children with special physical, emotional and mental needs could be bused to school with general education students under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to cut student transportation costs, according to the New York Daily News.

In his second inaugural speech, President Obama stated, "We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher."