THIS DAY IN HISTORY April 25, 1846: U.S. Mexico War Begins

First Federal Republic of Mexico in 1824. Source: Public domain.

April 25 marks the official beginning of the U.S.-Mexico War in 1846. Rethinking Schools editor Bill Bigelow explains the importance of teaching outside the textbook about the war:

Today’s border with Mexico is the product of invasion and war. Grasping some of the motives for that war and some of its immediate effects begins to provide students the kind of historical context that is crucial for thinking intelligently about the line that separates the United States and Mexico. It also gives students insights into the justifications for and costs of war today.

Read more below and find a free downloadable classroom lesson to#teachoutsidetextbook.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/us-mexico-war

Lack of Oversight of Federal Charter Schools Program Cheats Taxpayers, Students, Families, and Local Public Schools

janresseger

The impact of federal investment in the Charter Schools Program has been in the news this month thanks to the Network for Public Education’s stunning new report, Asleep at the Wheel, which exposes the number of schools across the states that received millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program but never opened or, after opening, subsequently shut down.  The Network for Public Education (NPE) documents the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars out of the total $4 billion that has been spent on the Charter Schools Program (CSP), which has been operated with an outrageous absence of oversight. A third of the schools whose startup or expansion was seeded by the CSP are currently not in operation.

Last week the Network for Public Education expanded its coverage of abuses in the Charter Schools Program by breaking down the numbers to show how much…

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