History is spattered with the salivary bloviations of powerful people excoriating the activists who want things to change.
Baker Kurrus
Baker Kurrus is an attorney and business consultant in Little Rock. He served as superintendent of the Little Rock School District in 2015-2016.
Posted inArkansas Blog
LEARNS, lies and the Arkansas Legislature
Either they haven’t read the amendment, or they are deliberately trying to deceive the public. You decide.
Posted inArkansas Blog
Here’s why we need the Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment
Level the playing field. If the Legislature won’t do it, we have to do it.
Posted inArkansas Blog
Solution Tree may not be improving Arkansas schools, but it is raking in the cash
If the state will pay tens of millions of dollars to an Indiana book company for an education program that shows no positive results, I have a better idea: Magical Thinking Caps.
Posted inArkansas Blog
The voucher funding rip-off
Former Little Rock School District superintend Baker Kurrus argues that the funding for vouchers, woven into the state’s complicated system for funding K-12 schools, violates the state constitution and moves us backward on thorny issues of equity that the state has been trying to address for decades.
Posted inArkansas Blog
The way out of the food desert
Until we face the fact that healthy, vibrant neighborhoods are the wellspring of good schools, full-service grocery stores, cell phone stores, auto service centers, restaurants and all the rest, we are accommodating our failures, rather than solving our problems.
Posted inArkansas Blog
Economic progress in Arkansas, last place and losing ground
Is all this fuss about book banning, school vouchers and monuments to the unborn just a distraction so we don’t notice Arkansas is at the bottom of the economic heap and going nowhere?
Posted inArkansas Blog
For Arkansas charter schools, the grades are in — and they’re nothing special
Poverty is the strongest indicator of student achievement. Charter schools didn’t change that, and vouchers won’t, either.
Posted inArkansas Blog
Disappearing towns: The LEARNS Act and the myth of schools as community panacea
The governor, legislature and Department of Education are elected, appointed and hired to take on the tough jobs. With Arkansas LEARNS and school vouchers, they have chosen the easy way out.
Posted inNews
Chartered territory: Failings of a two-tiered education system
With “school choice,” private enterprise is doing what private enterprise always does: Companies seek out the low-cost, high-reward customers.