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Cynthia Liu is CEO/Founder of a civic tech company, K-12 News Network, that provides grassroots education news and an online organizing platform to public school communities.
Cynthia Liu
Blog Post List
September 21, 2013
Dear President Obama, You must read Professor Diane Ravitch's latest book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools . You won't like it. No one likes reading about their failures. And that's exactly WHY you should read it. Your legacy is at stake. You risk having Race to the Top known as Race to the Bank due to the enormous payday tech companies, "edupreneurs," and charter chain operators stand to pocket from taxpayer money that instead should go to educating the nation's children. The official flickr photostream of the White House,...
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September 21, 2013
Dear President Obama, You must read Professor Diane Ravitch's latest book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools . You won't like it. No one likes reading about their failures. And that's exactly WHY you should read it. Your legacy is at stake. You risk having Race to the Top known as Race to the Bank due to the enormous payday tech companies, "edupreneurs," and charter chain operators stand to pocket from taxpayer money that instead should go to educating the nation's children. The official flickr photostream of the White House,...
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January 12, 2013
On December 30, 2012, President Obama said he doubted arming school police with guns will prevent future school shootings , but then January 11, 2013's EdWeek hints that he may yield to local law enforcement officers and communities if it has "bipartisan" support. While President Barack Obama said recently that he would be skeptical that more guns would be an answer to school safety , his administration is considering paying to add police officers to secure public schools, in part because it may be an area of agreement among lawmakers of all stripes. SIGN THE K12NN PETITION TO DROP THIS VERY...
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November 27, 2012
Late night calls are the worst. Mine came all the way from Shanghai, China, where my parents live part of the year. My dad's voice was faint, halting. He told me quickly that my mom had fallen and broken her leg and he was with her in the hospital right now. She would need surgery. Could I leave Los Angeles and go to Shanghai within the week? My parents, both retired, were in basic good health but before leaving for Shanghai, my mom had had persistent nerve pain in her left hip and also back pain. She was also slightly overweight, and learned in the course of trying to find a treatment for...
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November 15, 2012
My home state is California, and we just successfully survived our own state version of the "fiscal cliff" when it comes to education. Here, they were called the "trigger cuts." If Proposition 30 -- essentially part of the June 30, 2012 budget passed by the legislature that needed the people's thumbs up at the ballot box -- hadn't gotten that thumb's up, K-14 education would've seen $6 billion in "trigger cuts" starting in January, 2013. In our state alone. It was a nailbiter. I advised everyone to hedge their bets with a Yes on 30-38-39 vote (as did State Superintendent of Instruction Tom...
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August 1, 2012
It's almost too good to believe, but it's true! And all the better because we fought hard for it -- first through the Affordable Care Act's passage, and then when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops objected to free coverage of contraceptives through women's employer-provided health insurance. We stared the religious right down and we won. Ultimately, the department of Health and Human Services stood their ground (and we MADE SURE they did). And contraceptives, along with a lot of really important health screens, like for HPV, or sexually transmitted diseases, or treatment of injuries...
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April 26, 2012
We did it! We let Procter & Gamble know that their continued support of ALEC was unacceptable. And they dropped ALEC. As the main lobbyist source of the "kill at will" gun law that murdered Trayvon Martin, and proponent of voter ID laws that would disproportionately suppress women's voting rights, ALEC supports toxic laws that are anti-American and anti-woman, and puts profits before American families. Sign the petition! Johnson & Johnson, Drop Your Unhealthy Support for ALEC Now we're turning our attention to Procter & Gamble's main competitor: Johnson & Johnson. Already in...
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April 22, 2012
This story originally appeared in the LA Moms Blog . Yes, I’m the resident Sugar Nazi at my school, the parent who complained when a Halloween celebration involved kindergarteners nibbling powdered sugar donuts tied with string off a clothesline using only their mouths. I’m a wet blanket, I’m here to rain on your parade. I’m the parent who marvels at the affluent Chinese immigrant parents at the weekend Chinese school in the community next door who haven’t gotten the memo yet about the high fructose corn syrup in the snacks they persist in bringing every week. (These performance-oriented,...
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December 22, 2011
A truly clueless if well-intentioned column by Gene Marks titled “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” in Forbes magazine is getting righteously ripped from journalists all around the web . They’re correctly pointing out how bereft Marks’ column is of history, research, practical awareness, racial sensitivity, or the sheer realities of hunger or even homelessness that low-income children face. Marks seems to suggest that kids from impoverished backgrounds – all too many of whom are African American – can simply access computers and lift themselves up by their digital bootstraps to use free websites...
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March 4, 2011
Press your Senators to oppose HR 1 and keep funding for Head Start, IDEA (special ed funding), STEM education, and women's and children's health care paid for and in the budget. Click on our K12NN/POPVOX.com action and make your voice heard before March 18, 2011!
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January 20, 2011
Education reform: I fervently believe women who are in the schools every day--as parent volunteers, and as teachers--have a great deal to tell policymakers what works and what doesn't. What we need is a pointilist approach: steady application of dots of information about how schools are working--or not working--that add up to a big picture. We need it from parents, students, and educators themselves.
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