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Korogocho, Education, and the Bursary Campaign

Raising the ACORN flag in the office

Nairobi The ACORN Kenya community organizers, Sammy Ndirangu and David Musungu, met Judy Duncan, head organizer of ACORN Canada, Drummond Pike formerly of Tides and now colleague at Paladin Partners, and me just outside of the Korogocho mega-slum at 350,000 people, the 2nd largest in Nairobi after [...]

Education is Not Reducing Poverty

New Orleans Anytime there’s an article with a headline that claims there is “hope for the world’s poorest” and the author is someone as sturdy as New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, my fingers are crossed and my eyes are flying.   In this case he was touting a new book and argument by a British [...]

Michelle’s Fitness Program and No School Lunches?

New Orleans Michelle Obama is doing a great high-profile job around children’s fitness and obesity.  These are health issues that are critical in the community and deserve full support.

But, how do we reconcile the fact that at the same time we’re reading about her initiatives here, we are also reading about children being dunned, [...]

DREAM On!

New Orleans The California Supreme Court yesterday became one of the few bright spots in the dark tunnel that immigrants are facing for any kind of justice or resolution given the political storm clouds hovering everywhere.  The Californians ruled that it would be discriminatory to deny California residents scholarship support from state institutions because [...]

The $100,000 Plus Head Start Teacher?

New Orleans I admit a hot headline on the front page of the New York Times about paying kindergarten teachers $320,000 per year absolutely caught my eye!

The back story was straightforward.  A huge study under Project Star in Tennessee tracked 12,000 children in that state.  The study was trying to determine whether or not [...]

Voucher Abuse and Charter School Hijacking in New Orleans

New Orleans The fight to get anyone to hold the charter school explosion to any accountability at all anywhere in the country is mainly a struggle to get anyone’s attention, since for the most part they could be getting away with murder and no one would know given the huge decentralization and the total lack of [...]