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Category Archives: Common Core

Badass Teachers Association versus Corporate War on Public Education

15 Dec

Marla Kilfoyle is the General Manager of an education activist group called The Badass Teachers Association.

The Badass Teachers Association has broken new ground because they are the first of their kind. They started as a Facebook group of teachers angry with federal education policy. In a year and a half, they grew into a strong and powerful national presence both on and off social media. BadassTA is now 53,000 strong on Facebook, 15,000 strong on twitter, and has a strong presence in fighting the privatization of our public school system around the nation.

BadassTA uses social media to expose the false narrative of the wealthy oligarchs, for instance, the Koch Brothers and Eli Broad. BadassTA trended on twitter for 2 days straight with their #Evaluatethat campaign, and they were recently featured in Time Magazine for their rebuttal to the Time cover showing teachers as rotten apples.

The Badass Teachers Association was created to give voice to every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality through education.

Badass teachers refuse to accept assessments, tests and evaluations created and imposed by corporate driven entities (funded mainly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that have contempt for authentic teaching and learning. They refuse to accept the fact that non educators are allowed to make education policies that hurt our children, communities, and public schools. Badass teachers insist on equality, social justice, and equity in education and society. They will be meeting in Washington DC this summer, July 23-26 for their BAT Congress where they plan to lobby the U.S. Congress for children and public education. They are truth tellers and are united in their cause.

NOTE FROM BLOG HOST

The corporate funded and driven public education—FAKE—reform movement in the United States does not respect teachers, pay them what they deserve or intend to train them properly. All anyone has to do is look at Teach for America (TFA) to see what I mean. A TFA recruit has five weeks of summer training and little or no classroom experience with little or no follow up support when they take over a classroom, often from a highly trained and experienced teacher who was paid more and lost their job. More than two-thirds of TFA recruits leave teaching in 2 – 4 years and never return to education as a teacher. Of the one-third that remain, all but 3% transfer to higher preforming schools in wealthier communities that do not teach high numbers of challenging to teach at-risk children who live in poverty. TFA is an element of the corporate public education fake reform movement that was designed to break the teachers’ unions.

If you need more convincing, I suggest you examine closely the Bill Gates funded and driven Common Core Standardized Testing agenda that will rank and yank teachers—in addition to closing public schools and turning our children over to corporate Charters that often lie and deceive through corporate funded propaganda to lure children away from public schools—Did you know that several Stanford studies have reported that about 75% of private sector Charter schools perform worse or the same as the public schools they replaced, and a Stanford professor, who supports market based reforms, says this reform movement does not work in education?

Instead of ranking teachers, firing them and closing public schools, the United States must offer proper training and support for teachers who want and/or need help. Ask yourself this question: Once the public schools are gone, will we ever get them back from profit-hungry corporations and billionaire oligarchs like the labor union hating Walmart Walton family and Koch brothers? Do you want democratically elected school boards in public schools to be in charge of your child’s education or a billionaire/CEO, for instance Bill Gates, who sends his children to the same expensive private school he attended as a child, a school that doesn’t give endless Common Core standardized tests?


Anthony Cody, author of The Educator and the Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges the Gates Foundation

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

Honorable Mention in Biography/Autobiography at 2014 Southern California Book Festival

Crazy-is-Normal-a-classroom-expose-200x300

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

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Posted by on December 15, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, Lloyd Lofthouse, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, propaganda and lies, propoganda, Public School, Standardized Testing, Teaching, teaching children who live in poverty

 

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The Lack of Common Sense in the Common Core—rank and yank punishment—Agenda

28 Nov

Its Black Friday and time to look closer at the corporate war against public education that’s supported by the neo-liberal Common Core agenda out of the Obama White House.

The Common Core agenda mandates that all high school graduates must be college and career ready by 17/18 years old. This means every high school graduate must read at an intermediate or advanced literacy level by high school graduation.

Any school that doesn’t achieve 100% success with every child—no matter what—is considered a failure according to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race to the Top, Common Core agenda.

When public schools don’t meet this impossible goal that no other country on the earth has ever achieved with children, teachers must be ranked and yanked (fired) by using CCSS standardized tests, and public schools labeled failures must be closed and replaced with corporate Charters that must turn a profit—no matter what—or go out of business.

But, what does it take to become an economist or an electrician? Let’s find out.

According to bls.gov, in 2013, 26-percent of the 143.9 million jobs [37.4 million] did not require a high school diploma or its equivalent; 40-percent [57.56 million] only required a high school degree; 6% [8.6 million] required a post-secondary non-degree award (I think that is some form of specific job training that may lead to a certificate – for instance, a plumber, mechanic, etc.); 4% required an Associate degree—about 2 years of college [5.7 million]; 18% required a BA degree [25.9 million], 2% a Master’s degree [2.87 million], and 3% [4.3 million] a doctoral or professional degree.

In addition, according to The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, in 2003, 123-million adults in the United States read at a level that indicates they were college ready—but less than 39-million jobs required that level of literacy compared to almost 104-million jobs that didn’t.


Common Core is mentioned at 7:17 – 8:24

I know someone who earned a PhD in economics, and then he became an electrician just like his HS graduate father—he was perfectly happy doing electrical work for a living instead of economics. The only reason he earned that PhD in economics was because that’s what his father wanted for his son. The father thought it would lead to a better paying, more secure job—he was wrong!

How many jobs are there for people who have a PhD in economics compared to an electrician?

According to BLS.gov, there are almost 600,000 electricians in the United States earning the median of about $50k annually with almost 115,000 job openings between 2012-22 (that’s 11,500 new jobs annually).

Although most electricians learn through an apprenticeship, some start out by attending a technical school. Most states require electricians to be licensed. What does it cost to become an electrician? A certificate or associate’s degree costs about $1,000 to $11,000.

Now, let’s look at the job market for an economist—entry level is a Master’s degree in economics, and there are less than 17,000 jobs in this field in the United States with only 2,300 openings predicted to be available between 2012-22 (that’s 230 annually).  The median pay for these jobs is more than $92k annually—great if you can get one of these jobs.

What does it take? Most economists need a master’s degree or Ph.D. However, some entry-level jobs—primarily in the federal government—are available for workers with a bachelor’s degree.

What does it cost to earn a PhD? According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a typical doctoral program takes five full-time years to complete, bringing the total cost to roughly $123,500-$181,500, depending on whether attendance is at a public or private school (nces.ed.gov).

NOW, what do you think about President Obama’s Common Core agenda that mandates every 17/18 year old must be college and career ready right out of high school, and that public school teachers and the public schools MUST be punished by termination if every child doesn’t achieve that impossible CCSS goal?

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on November 28, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, government, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing

 

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Catching Corporate Reformers Spying on Our Children and the Big Lies They Spin

23 Nov

Another example of how the corporate supported education reformers will cherry-pick data, spy on children long after they graduate from high school, and DELIBERATELY LIE to achieve their agenda to destroy the public schools, and this is just in one state, New York—-it’s happening in every state!.

Read “Big Brother and His Holding Company- John King and The New York State Education Department: Manipulating Student Information to Drive Agendas” @ Staying Strong in School.

http://stayingstronginschool.blogspot.com/2014/11/big-brother-and-his-holding-company.html


Corporate controlled, Common Core supporter and public education reformer State Education Commissioner John King is verbally spanked in a PTA presentation in New York State.

 
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Posted by on November 23, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing

 

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The corporate face of profit-driven terrorism against the Public Schools comes dressed in a $40k Brioni suit

22 Nov

If the damage to public education in the United States caused by the profit-driven, corporate supported war on the public schools were added up in dollars and damaged lives, how much would that equal?

And if we were to compare that amount to the cost of the wars in the Middle East in the West’s fight against Islamic fundamentalist extremist terrorism with Al Qaeda and ISIS, how would that compare?

Once we have those numbers boiled down to solid figures with dollar signs, we then have the evidence that provides proof that the corporate war on public education is an act of terror close to or equal to the world war on Islamic terrorism.

Both wars—the one against the public schools and the one against Islamic terrorists—destroy lives and damage the economy, but corporations always win and profit. It doesn’t matter if the corporation supplies the tests for the Common Core agenda that ranks and yanks teachers and closes public schools or makes bombs and drones, because someone loses or profits.

When those passenger jets hit the World Trade Center in September 2001, The New York Times reported that the losses caused by 9/11 were about $3.3 Trillion, but someone profited from that attack—the corporations that rebuilt the World Trade Center and the corporations that make the weapons and bombs used in the ongoing war on terror. The money spent to fight the war against terror doesn’t vanish down a rabbit hole.

For instance, Halliburton made a killing on the Iraq War. In the end, how is this different from The war on teachers and children?

If you want to know some of the faces behind the  corporate economic war of terror on public education, it’s easy—follow the money.

“Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—working in sync, command the field.” Dissent Magazine.org

And if you want to follow money’s bloody trail to discover more faces dressed in expensive suits who are funding the terrorist war against the public schools, I strongly suggest reading “A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education” by Mercedes K. Schenider

Billions are being spent annually to fund the war on the U.S. public schools. Does this mean the billionaires in expensive suits who are funding this war against our children and public school teachers think of these innocents as terrorists to be targeted and destroyed?

The equation is simple—terrorists often target innocent people. it doesn’t matter if the terrorist comes dressed in a suit or they are dressed in black with a mask hiding their face while wearing a keffiyeh on their head before they behead an innocent victim.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

Crazy-is-Normal-a-classroom-expose-200x300

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on November 22, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing

 

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The truth about so-called Social Promotion in the U.S. Public schools

21 Nov

The term social promotion has been misused by the corporate supported, fake, public-education reform movement to fool as many people as possible—the same as they have misused the meaning of teacher tenure.

There is no such thing as social promotion in most if not all of the U.S. public schools that leads to an automatic high school (HS) graduation by age 17/18. To think that social promotion in the public schools moves children along as if they were parts on an assembly line is as foolish as thinking that public school teachers have total job protection through tenure and cannot lose their jobs for any reason—of course teachers can be fired. All a school district has to do is prove that the claims of incompetence are true through due process, and due process cases in court against teachers take place annually across America in every state and some are successful.

Social promotion does not mean the student will earn a HS degree, and the system that appears to move children along as if they were on an assembly line was not created by teachers—it was created by legislation and/or public pressure through political correctness such as the parent self-esteem movement that swept the nation for several decades and is still a formidable force.  Parents who don’t want their child’s self-esteem to suffer will fight to keep the child moving along with their peers.

But, social promotion doesn’t always mean the child, who falls behind in reading and/or math, is neglected and ignored as they move along from grade to grade.

Most if not all public schools have interventions as long as they have the funding to support those interventions.

The law makes education mandatory from age 5/6 to 17/18, but it doesn’t—until Bill Gates and Obama’s Common Core State Standards interfered with the process—control what the schools can do to re-mediate a child who is falling behind.

For instance, in the district where I taught for thirty years, children who fell behind in reading were assigned to reading labs in lieu of electives. If the child continued to fall behind, they might be assigned to two sections of a reading lab.  The reading labs usually had 20-25 students with a teacher and an adult assistant.  Children who were reading close to, on, or above grade level would not be scheduled into a reading lab. Reading specialists and reading labs may be found in most elementary, middle and high schools as long as the money is there to fund these resources.

The district where I taught also offered after school tutoring—for the children who needed it most—and parents and students were counseled and advised to attend, but after mandatory school hours, attending the tutoring, night classes or summer school classes was voluntary and many of these children, who needed this remedial help the most, didn’t take advantage of what was offered, and that was usually due to lack of parent support.

For children with special needs, there was also special education classes with teachers who were trained specialists certificated in that area, and individualized instruction was offered for each of these students. The special education teachers worked with the mainstream classroom teachers in other subjects to create individualized plans that would focus on improving the areas where these children needed the most help.

For most of the years I taught, I also taught summer school to children who needed to make up classes they had failed or to improve their reading skills.  Summer school was not mandatory, and for that reason, on the first day of summer school, my class loads would start out with 50 – 60 students, but by the end of the first week, that number would be cut in half as students decided to leave and not return. By the end of summer school, it was common to have less than twenty students and closer to ten in a class.

Social promotion does not equal an automatic HS graduation. Students must still pass the required classes, earn the required number of credits/units and, in about half of the states including California where I taught, pass a competency exam that indicates the student has the minimum skills in English, math and maybe science to qualify for HS graduation. In California, students who failed all or a portion of the competency exam as early as tenth grade would be encouraged to enroll in summer school classes designed to help the student to catch up and pass the competency exam before on-time graduation at age 17/18.

If students, for instance, failed 9th grade English, they would still move on to 10th grade English the next year, but counselors would advise the students to catch up in the summer by taking the 9th grade English class a second or third time, or to take night classes at the local community college to make up any failed classes that were required for HS graduation.

Every year at the high school where I taught for the last 16 years of my 30 year teaching career, there were always seniors who reached the 12th grade deficient in units, and it was up to them to retake the classes they had failed before graduation in June.  Those who did not were told they could finish high school late by taking classes at the local community college.

This explains why the on-time HS graduation rate is about 80%, but by age twenty-five, 90% of Americans have earned a HS degree or its equivalent. And the 10% (about 24 million) of adult Americans that never earned a HS degree or its equivalent, well, it was their choice not to take advantage of every effort that was offered to them every step of the way.

In the United States, it is mandatory that a child stay in school to age 18 (it’s possible to drop out at 16 with permission), but, for a number of reasons, it would be wrong to keep a child in grade school until they turned 18 just because they were reading below grade level and made little or no effort to catch up.  I’m sure most parents wouldn’t want their six-year old in the same classroom sitting next to a hormonal raging sixteen year old, who, for whatever reason, just didn’t qualify to move on according to some test.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

Crazy-is-Normal-a-classroom-expose-200x300

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on November 21, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, family values, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing

 

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The Pre-Election, Next-Door Homestead – Marshall Tuck versus Tom Torlakson – Debate

10 Nov

Close to the run up to the November 4, 2014 elections, Tuck was leading in the polls for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in California by a small margin—enough to look ominous considering the platform he was running on that would lead to the further destruction of California’s public schools in favor of private-sector, for profit—anyway you look at it—corporate Charters that mostly perform worse or the same as the public schools they replace.

I belong to Nextdoor.com in my community. Nextdoor is a social networking service for neighborhoods in the United States. It allows users to connect with people who live in their neighborhood.

The community debate I became embroiled in started when another member left a long rambling comment—long on claims and without  supporting data—calling on everyone in our neighborhood to vote for Marshall Tuck, because the public schools were failing our children.

When I checked this neighbor out, I discovered he was a Venture Capitalist, and  during our debate he mentioned he knew Marshall Tuck, who, according to the Venture Capitalist, is a great guy who will save our children from horrible and incompetent public schools teachers.

Instead of sharing the entire debate—that ran long and rambled with the Venture Capitalist repeating his claims and offering no data to support them—I will share only the last two  comments here.

The Venture Capitalist said, “whether it is Tuck or not (and it will be, either for this office, or another statewide office within 10 years), the changes all of us with young kids want to see, will be implemented.”

My reply and last comment: When you say “all of us”, who are you talking about—after all, there are 316-million Americans and about 240-million are old enough to vote and make up their own minds? Do you claim to speak for those 240-million Americans?

As for your (earlier) claim that it is a flawed ploy that “wealthy oligarchs are funding the war on public education”, the evidence is there for anyone to read, and I already mentioned the book and provided the link earlier in this debate. How did you get a copy of Schneider’s book and read it so fast and then decide there is nothing valid to support the premise and evidence she presents?

Here’s the book again—all anyone has to do, who has an open mind, is follow the money to the source to see the obvious, because Mercedes Schneider has already done the investigative reporting and followed the money to its source, but if you think she’s wrong, then go ahead and prove her wrong. (Note: I never heard back from the Venture Capitalist who lives in my neighborhood).

“A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education” by Mercedes K. Schenider

Anyone interested to discover more about Schneider, here’s the link to her about page on her blog:

http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/about/

In addition, Mercedes has written posts about all or most of the major players who are funding the corporate war on public education. She doesn’t just spout opinions. She provides the evidence (the data) to support what she says.

In addition, maybe anyone reading this thread—other than a Venture Capitalist—would be interested in what The Washington Post had to say about Bill Gates, and how he is the money man behind the implementation of the Common Core agenda to rank and yank teachers then close public schools turning our children over to corporate Charters that profit off taxpayers at our children’s expense.

How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution

Answer Sheet: Gates Foundation pours millions into Common Core in 2014

Then there is this quote from one of the Koch brothers, who admits what they are doing that was published in The New Yorker Magazine.

‘Charles Koch seems to have approached both business and politics with the deliberation of an engineer. “To bring about social change,” he told Doherty, requires “a strategy” that is “vertically and horizontally integrated,” spanning “from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action.” The project, he admitted, was extremely ambitious. “We have a radical philosophy,” he said.’

Or this one: ““Broad school bully?”

“Today, the 79-year-old Broad (it rhymes with “road”), who lives in Los Angeles, is spending a good chunk of his fortune on education reform – steadfast in his belief that applying the same data-driven, free-market principles that made him so wealthy can also make U.S. schools great again. … Critics insist that the unseen hand of the Broad Foundation played a role on this winter’s dramatic move to close 23 public schools across Philadelphia – noting that the foundation in 2009 published an 83-page School Closure Guide, now no longer on its website, for large urban districts.”

Did you know that there are only 442 billionaires in the United States, but the United States has a population of 316 million people, in a country that is supposed to be a democracy where the people also have a right to what they think as individuals?

Does anyone want to know what the people think about the public schools?

The answer to that question may be found in the September and October 2014 PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools:

  1. 64% of Americans have trust and confidence in teachers compared to 35% who do not.
  2. 61% of Americans are against using student test results to evaluate teachers compared to 38% who favor using VAM.
  3. 77% of Americans felt it was important to help teachers improve their ability to teach
  4. Only 24% of Americans felt that performing well on a standardized test such as ACT or SAT would help students get good jobs while 86% felt learning skills like dependability, persistence and teamwork was more important.
  5. When asked what grade respondents would give the public schools in their own community, 12% gave their schools an A, 38% a B and 31% a C. Only 6% failed their community’s schools.
  6. When asked who should have the greatest influence on what public school teach, 56% said school boards and 28% state governments.
  7. 63% oppose vouchers

In addition to the debate, in conclusion, Tom Torlakson won the election by a wider margin—52% to 48%—than the lead Tuck had in the polls running-up to the election. The margin of difference came down to about 180,000 votes.

Torlakson—early in his adult working life—was a teacher who taught in the public schools for several years before he was first elected to the California State Legislature in 1996. Then in 2011, he was elected as the 27th State Superintendent of Public Instruction of California.

Tuck never taught a day in his life, and he has a history of being part of the corporate Charter school reform movement that is closing public schools and turning our children over to corporations that do not answer to the voter and/or the public.

The race between these two Democrats became a proxy war between two differing views on education overhaul. Mr. Torlakson relied on heavy support from teachers unions, while Mr. Tuck depended on a few independent supporters who Mercedes K. Schenider has linked to the corporate war on the public schools in the United States. In total, about $30 million was spent on this race this year, more than three times the amount spent for the last race in 2010, and Tuck, who lost, raised about $3 more than Torlakson.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on November 10, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, Parenting, politics, Public School

 

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It is a fact that the United States already met the Common Core’s stated goals before the Common Core was written or implemented

05 Nov

The Common Core goals are clearly stated: “The standards … are designed to ensure students are prepared for today’s entry-level careers, freshman-level college courses, and workforce training programs.”

According to bls.gov, in 2013, 26-percent of the 143.9 million jobs [37.4 million] did not require a high school diploma or its equivalent; 40-percent [57.56 million] only required a high school degree; 6% [8.6 million] required a post-secondary non-degree award (I think that is some form of specific job training that may lead to a certificate – for instance, a plumber, mechanic, etc.); 4% required an Associate degree—about 2 years of college [5.7 million]; 18% requied a BA degree [25.9 million], 2% a Master’s degree [2.87 million], and 3% [4.3 million] a doctoral or professional degree—I think a professional degree includes public school teachers.

For 2013, the U.S. Census Beurau reported education attainment in the United States for age 25 and over. Keep in mind that the Census refers to the entire adult population age 25 and over and not just those who have jobs.

  • High school graduates 88.15% (meaning 11.8% of the adult population does not have a high school degree.)
  • Some college 58.33%
  • Associate’s and or Bachelor’s degree 41.5%
  • Bachelor’s degree 31.66%
  • Master’s and/or Doctorate and/or professional degree 11.57%
  • Doctorate and/or professional degree 3.16%
  • Doctorate 1.67%.

The population of the U.S. is about 316 million, but 32.4% are under the age of 25, and 14.6% are 65+. That leaves almost 168 million Americans ages 25 to 64.


A MUST SEE VIDEO!!!!
Highly recommended to get you thinking.

In conclusion:

  • 26% of the jobs do not require a high school degree, but only 11.8% of the adults who dropped out of high school are qualified for these jobs. More than half are overqualified.
  • 40% of the jobs require a high school degree, but more than 88% of Americans have a high school degree—more than double the jobs that require this much education.
  • For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to combine everyone with a college degree—associate degree, BA, masters, professional and doctorate—and only 27% of the jobs in America require one of these college degrees, but 53% of the adult population might be qualified for these jobs—more than twice the number required.

This means a large sector of the American work force is highly over educated and working in jobs that don’t require the education they earned, because those jobs do not exist.

In addition, if there are shortages of skilled workers in some fields, how can that be blamed on the public schools, teachers and teachers’ unions. After all, Americans pride themselves on the freedom of choice regarding their lifestyles, and our children and adults make academic choices as they age. For whatever reason, these choices lead to dropping out of high school or staying in school to graduate and/or go on to earn an associate, BA, professional or doctorate degree. If an individual majors in the wrong field, do we blame k – 12 teachers for that, too?

>>>>> Feel free to share this post on Social Media, as long as you link to this original post. In fact, you may copy and paste the following Tweet to your Twitter page. If you do, I think you in advance.

It is a fact that the U,S, already met the Common Core’s stated goals
Before the Common Core …
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_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

Crazy-is-Normal-a-classroom-expose-200x300

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
2 Comments

Posted by on November 5, 2014 in American Public Schools, child poverty in the US, Common Core, Education, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School

 

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The Eventual Cost to taxpayers if the Public Schools are replaced with for-profit Charters

26 Oct

On Diane Ravitch’s Blog, a regular called Teaching Economist (TE) left a comment, and asked: “Do you think that the well-known private schools like Dalton, the Lab Schools, Phillips Exeter, etc. are run ‘like a business’?”

Answer: Yes, TE, Dalton, the Lab Schools, and Phillips Exeter are run like businesses just like Stanford and Harvard and they cost about the same.

Dalton’s—in New York State—annual tuition for day students is currently $41,350, and Business Insider reported that Dalton as one of the 28 most expensive private high schools in America.


Where’s the Common Core test prep? When does Dalton give their students bubble tests to evaluate the teachers? This is what a student gets for more than $41,000 annually.

For the Lab Schools in Washington DC, 2014-2015 tuition was: Elementary – $39,600; Intermediate – $39,600; Junior High – $40,350, and High School – $41,995.

For the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, the tuition and mandatory fees are: Boarding – $47,790, and Day – $36,800.

Now that we have the private school tuition, let’s compare that with what the taxpayer pays for the k – 12 public schools in those states.

Current spending per pupil in New York State in 2011 was $19,076; in New Hampshire it was $13,224, and in the District of Columbia (D.C.) it was $18,475.

Wow, if we are going to switch over to for-profit Charters that are run like Dalton, the Lab Schools, and Phillips Exeter, then the taxes that support the public schools will have to go up dramatically like a rocket on the way to Mars.

For instance, in New York State, taxes that support k – 12 education will have to go up about 117% or $22,274 per student so the for-profit Charter schools will make the shareholders happy as they count their increased wealth.

What about New Hampshire? What will the tax payer have to pay to support the new wave of for-profit Charter schools in that state? For just the day students, there will eventually be an increase in state taxes of 128% or $16,904 per student.

Then we have Washington DC’s Lab Schools high school tuition of $41,995.  To support the profit for that business, k -12 education taxes in D.C. will have to go up more than 127% or an additional $23,520 per student.

Remember, in the corporate world profits are god and once the public school competition is gone, do you really think those corporations aren’t going to want more money from the tax payers?

In fact, we already have the answer, because for-profit Charter schools in New York, Washington D.C., and North Carolina are already suing their states for more money.

Let’s crunch some numbers to discover how much this might eventually cost the U.S. taxpayers.

In 2010-11, k – 12 public school expenditures for the United States averaged $11,153 per student. The average for schools like Dalton, the Lab Schools, and Phillips Exeter is about $40 thousand per student—an increase of 359% over the cost of running the public schools. This adds up to a total of about $2.3 Trillion in annual taxes to support the for-profit Charter school industry instead of the bargain price of $632 billion currently being spent annually to support the public schools.

One last question: Where will the at-risk kids go—those children who live in poverty and are the most difficult to teach—when they are kicked out, because that’s what is already happening in many of the for-profit Charter schools?

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
1 Comment

Posted by on October 26, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Standardized Testing, teaching children who live in poverty

 

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The facts about Common Core and why it must be stopped

22 Oct

Originally published at Examiner.com on October 21, 2014 9:00 PM MST

What is Common Core? Common Core is a set of uniform national curriculum standards for K-12 developed by DC based organizations under the auspices of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). These standards are disguised to many uninformed as standards that will help our children become better prepared for college. The Standards cover mathematics and English language arts (although they also claim to cover “literacy” in other subjects such as science, history/social studies, and technical subjects). Common Core is a special interest takeover of education that replaces local control with national standards, treating every child as though they are the same and learn the same. We all know that this is not the case. We must do something to stop this takeover, but we first have to educate ourselves before we can educate others.

Below is one of several videos created by Stop Common Core, American Principles Project and the Concerned Women of America in Georgia on the Common Core State Standards. Watch Jane Robbins give a broad explanation of the problems with Common Core and then watch the other videos.  Just click on the link to the original piece.

Continued at:

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-facts-about-common-core-and-why-it-must-be-stopped

A suggestion: Copy and paste the following tweet into your Twitter page, if you have one.

Facts about Common Core & why it must be stopped
From Concerned Women of America in Georgia
http://exm.nr/1tLbCsg

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
1 Comment

Posted by on October 22, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, Lloyd Lofthouse, NCLB, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing

 

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Two Politically Correct Scams Supported by Corporate Owned Media that Threaten Democracy in America

16 Oct

The actual U.S. place in the international ranking of all OECD countries from the International PISA test was 6th in reading and 13th in math—not 14th in reading and 25th in math as reported. The 2012, PISA tested about 85,000 students in 44 countries placing the U.S. in the top 13.6% for reading and 29% for math. Thirty-eight countries ranked lower in reading and 31 in math.

This post is about the two scams that have led to the era of corporate supported, public education reform in the United States. The first scam was a report called “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, during the Reagan era. Because of this report, teachers, teachers’ unions and the democratic public schools have been painted as failures, and the corporate owned media turned “A Nation at Risk” into front page news with endless, never-ending chatter that focuses on the so-called failing public schools and lazy, incompetent teachers. This has gone on for more than thirty years.

The truth first appeared in 1990, when the Scandia Report was released revealing that “A Nation at Risk” was a misleading fraud. The corporate owned media ignored the results of the Scandia Report, and continued to attack public school teachers and teachers’ unions.

Eric.ed.gov offers its Straight Talk about America’s Public Schools: Dispelling the Myths. Hot Topics Series. Chapter 1 contains the entire text of the 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk”; a summary of the results of the 1990 “Scandia Report”, which contradicted many of the previous report’s allegations; and an article by Daniel Tanner, which describes how the Scandia Report was commissioned and why it was later suppressed by the federal government.

The second scam has to do with the OECD’s international PISA tests. The corporate owned media, using only the overall average comparisons of countries, has reported repeatedly and widely how poorly the U.S. public schools compare to the other OECD countries, but the average ranking used to condemn America’s public education system, teachers and teachers’ unions is criminally misleading.

The Economic Policy Institute, similar to the Scandia Report, studied the PISA scores and published an in-depth revealing report. What follows the video are a few key points from The EPI.org report that reveals that the PISA results have been manipulated by the corporate-owned media misleading many Americans to think that the democratic public schools in the United States are failing and must be reformed and turned over to corporations to teach our children, that will, of course, eventually profit off the almost annual $1 trillion in taxes that supports the public schools.


This video is filled with false claims and lies but also the truth. I suggest that you read the rest of this post carefully before watching the video.

  1. Because in every country, students at the bottom of the social class distribution perform worse than students higher in that distribution, U.S. average performance appears to be relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from the bottom of the social class distribution.
  2. A sampling error in the U.S. administration of the most recent international (PISA) test resulted in students from the most disadvantaged schools being over-represented in the overall U.S. test-taker sample. This error further depressed the reported average U.S. test score.
  3. If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries.
  4. A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics, substantially higher).
  5. This re-estimate would also improve the U.S. place in the international ranking of all OECD countries, bringing the U.S. average score to sixth in reading and 13th in math. Conventional ranking reports based on PISA, which make no adjustments for social class composition or for sampling errors, and which rank countries irrespective of whether score differences are large enough to be meaningful, report that the U.S. average score is 14th in reading and 25th in math.
  6. Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.
  7. U.S. students from disadvantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in the three similar post-industrial countries than advantaged U.S. students perform relative to their social class peers. But U.S. students from advantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in the top-scoring countries of Finland and Canada than disadvantaged U.S. students perform relative to their social class peers.
  8. On average, and for almost every social class group, U.S. students do relatively better in reading than in math, compared to students in both the top-scoring and the similar post-industrial countries.

In conclusion, what these two scams tell me is that everything that came after “A Nation at Risk” is based on misinformation at best and possibly fraud, meaning that No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and the Common Core States Standards with Bill Gates rank and yank agenda to fire teachers and close public schools is all based on lies and misinformation.

The only risk that the United States faces today is from the corporate owned media and the corporate funded fake education reform movement. Yes, we can improve our public schools, but we don’t need to reform and destroy them to achieve that.

Please Tweet this post and/or share it on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and as many other social network sites as possible.  In fact, also copy and paste it into an e-mail and send it to everyone you know.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
3 Comments

Posted by on October 16, 2014 in American Public Schools, Common Core, Education, media, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Standardized Testing

 

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