UA professor favors Sanders’ platform
A professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville has endorsed an education blueprint championed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Sanders’ Democratic presidential campaign announced last week.
Ted Swedenburg, a professor of anthropology, is one of more than 100 leaders voicing support for the “Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education,” a 10-point proposal that Sanders unveiled on the 65th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Thurgood Marshall argued the Brown case before the U.S. Supreme Court, later serving as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, solicitor general and U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Among other things, Sanders’ plan calls for federally funded busing to encourage integration and more vigorous enforcement of desegregation orders.
In addition, it would ban for-profit charter schools, guarantee teachers a starting salary of at least $60,000 per year and increase federal funding for education.
It also calls for the federal government to provide “yearround, free universal school meals; breakfast, lunch and snacks …”
The measure has drawn scores of educators, including Diane Ravitch, a New York University research professor and a former U.S. assistant secretary of education.
“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,” she said.
Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, said Sanders’ “vitally important” plan will “invest in public schools and provide real accountability over private alternatives.”
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