Bob Shepherd, polymath, wrote this:

During the Clinton presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s staff used this phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In current discussions about education, the phrase should be, “It’s poverty, stupid.”

Jan Resseger demonstrates how precisely Ohio’s school grades measure poverty, not school quality. 

She begins:

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a stunning analysis, by the newspaper’s data analyst Rich Exner, of the school district grades awarded by the state of Ohio on the state report cards released last week.  The new report cards are based on data from the 2018-2019 school year.  I encourage you to follow the link to look at Exner’s series of bar graphs, which, like this one, present a series of almost perfect downward staircases, with “A” grades for school districts in communities with high median income and “F” grades for the school districts in Ohio’s poorest communities.

The correlation of academic achievement with family…

Tom Ultican, a former teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, is diligently analyzing the tentacles of the Corporate Reform Movement, which he calls the Destroy Oublic Education Movement.

Relay Graduate School: a Slick “MarketWorld” Education Fraud

In this post, he scrutinizes the Relay “Graduate School of Education,” a program run by the charter industry to give master’s degrees to charter teachers who have mastered the arcane arts of no-excuses discipline and test-score raising.

You must read the entire post. It is carefully documented and chilling. He names the key players, the funders, and gives powerful insight  the emptiness of the program.

He begins:

Relay Graduate School of Education is a private stand alone graduate school created and led by people with meager academic credentials. Founded by leaders from the charter school industry, it is lavishly financed by billionaires. Contending that traditional university based teacher education has failed; Relay prescribes deregulation…

The definition of insanity: funding an experimental education program, discovering that it failed, then funding it some more and expecting different results.

Another definition of insanity: funding a voucher program that depresses student achievement, then demanding more voucher funds so more students can fall behind.

Why fund failure?

Despite Poor Academic Results Groups Sue to Grow Private School Voucher Program A few weeks ago a pro-school privatization organization, Institute for Justice, announced a lawsuit against the State of Nevada over the impact of AB 458 to private school vouchers recipients, scholarship granting organizations and businesses receiving tax incentives. Though pro-voucher advocates are framing the suit as “saving vouchers,” in reality, the voucher program did not lose funding. The controversy over some students losing their scholarships is actually the result of a single scholarship granting organization interpreting a law passed this legislative session (AB 458) differently than all other scholarship organizations…

I have read “Harold and the Purple Crayon” for many decades. First to my children, then to my grandchildren.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post re-imagines the iconic children’s book brilliantly. The best commentary I have read in a long time on our national nightmare.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-and-the-black-sharpie/2019/09/06/44202240-d0b9-11e9-b29b-a528dc82154a_story.html

He wrote:

With profuse apologies to the late Crockett Johnson, author of “Harold and the Purple Crayon.”

One evening, after thinking it over for some time, Donald decided he wanted to be president.

He drew a picture that made his hands look very big.

He drew another picture that made dark people look scary and another that made the president into a mean Muslim from Africa.

He made a picture of a swamp with frightening alligators, a picture of terrible monsters in Chicago and a picture of dangerous animals from Central America.

Still, Donald did not win most of the votes. So he drew…

Quinn Strassel, a drama teacher at Ann Arbor Community High School has written a music about Betsy DeVos, the arch-for of America’s public schools. The Michigan media took note.

Strassel recruited Diane Hill, his former Ypsilanti High School drama teacher, to take on the role of Betsy DeVos, while he played husband Dick DeVos and brother Erik Prince.

The cast also included some of Strassel’s former students and fellow school teachers and staff.

As the fictitious storyline in the play goes, DeVos makes an appearance at a Grand Rapids charter school, “Future Business Leaders of Tomorrow Academy,” and enlists the help of six students of color in putting on a musical. She promises to personally give them $200,000 to renovate the school theater if they do a good job.

As the musical progresses, things go wrong and DeVos upsets and frightens the children. Guns enter the picture, one student is…

The original rationale for charter schools was that they would be innovative, would be accountable, and would have lessons to share with public schools. We now know that the only innovation associated with charter schools is the adoption of stern discipline, reminiscent of schools a century or more ago.

We now know that charter lobbies fight any accountability.

They no longer see themselves as collaborators but as competitors. If they have anything to share, they are not doing it.

Their biggest innovations are diverting resources from the public schools and choosing the students they want. As a sector, the charter industry has produced a plethora of frauds and scandals, which is what you would expect to happen when entrepreneurs get government money without supervision, oversight or accountability.

Charter advocates claimed they would “save poor kids from failing schools,” but in most states the poor kids are better off staying in…