More than 100 national education leaders are publicly backing 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan to reform the American school system, his campaign announced Tuesday.

Unveiled in May, the Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education calls for “a transformative investment in our children, our teachers, and our schools, and a fundamental re-thinking of the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system.”

“No president or presidential candidate has offered a proposal so bold and sweeping, which directly addresses the fiscal starving of American public education at the same time that the federal government got into the business of regulating, mandating, and controlling the nation’s schools and classrooms,” declared Diane Ravitch, former U.S. assistant secretary of education and research professor at New York University.

Sanders aims to address “the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for students in our K-12 schools,” according to his campaign.

“Bernie’s strong and ethical education platform is exactly what I’ve hoped for,” Jonathan Kozol, a National Book Award recipient and activist for public schools and racial equality, said Tuesday. “His courageous and unqualified support for racial integration of our public schools sets him apart from the timid and equivocating centrists who have put unprincipled consensus ahead of social justice in the primary campaigns.”

The White House hopeful’s public education proposal has 10 key goals:

  1. Combating Racial Discrimination and School Segregation
  2. End the Unaccountable Profit-Motive of Charter Schools
  3. Equitable Funding for Public Schools
  4. Strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
  5. Give Teachers a Much-Deserved Raise and Empower them to Teach
  6. Expand After-School/Summer Education Programs
  7. Universal School Meals
  8. Community Schools
  9. School Infrastructure
  10. Make Schools a Safe and Inclusive Place for All

Part of Sanders’ education plan includes banning new for-profit charter schools. As Common Dreams reported earlier this year, he was the first candidate in the Democratic primary race to take that position.

“Ninety percent of parents in this country send their kids to public schools, and they want those public schools to be a top priority,” Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and another backer of Sanders’ plan, said Tuesday. “That’s why Sen. Sanders’ plan to invest in public schools and provide real accountability over private alternatives is vitally important.”

Weingarten, Ravitch, and Kozol were joined by dozens of other education leaders, union organizers, school reform groups, and college professors who endorsed Sanders’ platform—as students and educators across the country kick off a new school year.

Other supporters of the plan included Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT; Abdul El-Sayed, former executive director of the Detroit Health Department; Adolph Reed Jr., professor emeritus of political science the the University of Pennsylvania; Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University.

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.

Donate
Donate
Leave A Reply

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

Institute for Social and Cultural Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit.

Our EIN# is #22-2959506. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

We do not accept funding from advertising or corporate sponsors.  We rely on donors like you to do our work.

ZNetwork: Left News, Analysis, Vision & Strategy

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

THE WIND CRIES FREEDOM

The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution.

Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society. These are not the polished memoirs of politicians: they are the unfiltered accounts of people who organized in neighborhoods, hospitals, universities, stadiums, courthouses, and places of worship, and kept a shared vision alive through cynicism and exhaustion.

The result is speculative political fiction that reads like history: messy, human, and quietly hopeful in the way that only real experience and long thought can produce.

Get your copy and peruse more features on the book’s website below.

“Read it, argue with it, but don’t look away. The future it recalls is one we must still fight to deserve.”

Yanis Varoufakis

“The most unusual and intriguing combination of prophecy, manifesto, and movement building manual that I have ever encountered.”

Bill Fletcher Junior

“This work fills a huge gap in our social movement literature.”

Cynthia Peters

This is your article this month.

We’re glad you keep coming back. If Z’s work has informed, challenged, or inspired you, that’s no accident: there are no paywalls, no ads, and no billionaire owners here, and there never will be. Independent media survives because readers choose to support it.

Billionaires fund their own media. We fund ours. Help us reach 1,000 sustaining donors:

Number of donors689
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Already a sustainer? Click here and we won’t ask again. Thank you!

Your reading count is stored only in your browser and is never sent to us.

Sound is muted by default.  Tap 🔊 for the full experience

CRITICAL ACTION

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work.

If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

Independent media is not disappearing because the ideas are weak.

It is disappearing because platforms reward speed, outrage, and algorithmic visibility over thoughtful analysis.

More than 100,000 people read Z every month, free of paywalls, ads, and billionaire owners. It takes fewer than 1 in 100 of them to fund all of it: 1,000 donors who keep Z independent, for everyone, and build what comes next.

Number of donors689
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Subscribe

Join the Z Community – receive event invites, announcements, a Weekly Digest, and opportunities to engage.

Exit mobile version