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12/04/2004: "Speaking the Truth"
It is very, very rare that an educational reporter quotes an activist who actually knows a great deal about schools. In today's Times, Noreen Connell of the EPP makes a series of telling points:
1. "If you have a teachers' contract and reduce very few class sizes, you have gone through that $1.4 billion."
2. "I am worried about dissipating that amount of money on little things and not doing the big things. We never had the money to reduce class size. We never had the money to reduce overcrowding. We never had the money to make teacher pay competitive with the rest of the region. I am afraid that they will fritter around on this little initiative and that little initiative and won't really solve the problems."
Absofrickinglutely. Instead of fundamentally altering the structures of education- class size, building organization, real salary increases- districts tend to create new programs that create flashy press conferences and affect little real change.