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Category Archives: politics

Veteran Medical Care through VA Neglected by Obama Administration and Congress

13 May

What would the U.S. do without its volunteer army? What would happen to corporate profits if Americans refused to join and fight the wars that profit the few while many die and are wounded? To understand what I mean, I suggest you read this post on my Soulful Veteran Blog @ http://thesoulfulveteran.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/i-was-never-a-pow-but-what-about-the-next-american-war/

Think about those questions as you read the May 20, 2014 update of the scandal at the VA, and then ask this question: What would the United States do if its public school teachers—all 3.3 million—refused to teach until they were allowed to do their jobs without fake education reformers from Washington DC interfering in the process of educating our youth? I’m talking about Arne Duncan and billionaire plutocrats like BIll Gates and the Walton family who seem to own the White House and Congress? It seems that the U.S. can’t afford to treat the active military and its veterans the way they treat the nation’s public school teachers.

I urge both NEA and AFT (the two major teacher unions) to call a national walk-out day for all public school teachers across the nation to grab the country’s attention and demand change at the Department of Education by first getting rid of Arne Duncan and ending the Common Core testing as a way to evaluate teachers and close public schools. If the American Legion is willing to stand up and fight for America’s military veterans (and I’m one of them and my medical provider is the VA), then the two teacher unions must stand up and fight for America’s teachers! Pick a school day and every public school teacher in the country calls in sick because they are sick and tired of being treated like trash.

UPDATE May 20, 2014

The top official for veterans’ health care resigned Friday, as the Obama administration and Congress begin to respond to a growing political firestorm over allegations of treatment delays and falsified records at veterans’ hospitals nationwide. The House has scheduled a vote for Wednesday on legislation that would give Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki greater authority to fire or demote senior executives and administrators at the agency and its 152 medical Centers. (You may read the rest of this report @ Military.com http://www.military.com/veterans-report/steps-taken-to-address-va-firestorm?ESRC=vr.nl)

Original Post from May 13

What’s going on? First the public schools and now the VA!

First: Under President Clinton and a Congress dominated by a GOP majority, the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 that was meant to protect the United States from another Great Depression was repealed in 1999 leading to the Great Recession of 2007-08 under President G. W. Bush, the 2nd worse global financial disaster since the Great Depression.

Second: President G. W. Bush—with approval from a GOP dominated Congress—enacts the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act and the U.S. Government declares war on its own Public Schools under the false claims that the public schools are failing when they aren’t.

Third: President Obama, with overwhelming approval from Congress enacts Race to the Top in 2009 along with the Common Core Standards as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act escalating the White House’s war on Public Education to Machiavellian levels.

Fourth: In early April 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court—dominated by a conservative majority—wipes out the overall limit on what a wealthy donor can give to political parties and federal candidates during an election cycle with the McCutcheon decision. This ruling reinforced the unwritten iron law that now prevails in American politics: Pay to Play

Fifth: A very real threat to Net Neutrality. Network neutrality is basically the principle that Internet access providers—[including] companies like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast—shouldn’t discriminate in how they handle traffic on the Internet. And without this neutrality, the Internet also becomes “Pay to Play” or vanish into obscurity.

Sixth: Now medical care through the Veterans Administration (VA)! Since the late 1990s under President Bill Clinton, the VA became an efficient model medical care system, and President Obama can’t reform something that works so what’s the best way to change that? The answer: make sure it needs reforming by introducing corruption through the VA’s top leaders.

The Obama Administration and the Congress seem hell bent to privatize government. The public schools are in the middle of an all-out war with the federal government to turn education over to private sector Charter schools that are riddled with corruption and mostly worse than the public schools. It also seems that the VA is under attack as services and support has been eroding under the Obama White House and Congress.

Does this mean the VA has also been targeted to be privatized just like the public schools, prison systems, and even the military? After all, if the VA failed to provide adequate services, then the White House will have an excuse to demand reforms and that usually means privatization.

The American Legion.org reports: “At a May 5 press conference in Indianapolis, American Legion National Commander Daniel M. Dellinger called for the resignation of Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki (appointed by President Obama in 2009), as well as Robert Petzel (appointed in 2010) and Allison Hickey (appointed in 2011), VA’s undersecretaries for health and benefits, respectively. It was a decision the Legion arrived at gradually, after years of support. …

“Dellinger noted two of the most recent revelations that finally convinced him that top VA leadership in Washington needed to change: allegations that the Phoenix VA medical center kept a secret list of patients waiting months for medical care, which was linked by CNN to preventable deaths of about 40 veterans; and findings by a VA investigation that workers at the VA clinic in Fort Collins, Colo., had been instructed on how to falsify appointment records. …

“The American Legion expects when such errors and lapses are discovered, that they are dealt with swiftly and that the responsible parties are held accountable,” Dellinger said. “This has not happened at the Department of Veterans Affairs. There needs to be a change, and that change needs to occur at the top.”

The American Legion may demand changes within the VA but the problem originates from the White House and a neo-liberal president and his administration, who have clearly signaled that they are allied with neo-conservatives in the Republican Party with a common goal to privatize most if not all of government services.

Once the VA, the public schools, the military and the prisons are turned over to private sector, for profit corporations, does that mean the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be meaningless. After all, what the Founding Fathers wrote in 1776 was meant to protect all U.S. citizens from their own elected government and not private sector corporations (that didn’t exist in the 18th century) run by billionaire oligarchs and CEO autocrats.

For instance, the 1st Amendment freedom of speech protections only protects Americans from their elected federal and state governments. The 2nd Amendment’s right to own and bear arms also protects America’s citizens only from our elected governments—the feds and the states can’t legally take away a citizen’s right to own firearms.

But what happens when there is only a puppet government owned by the wealthiest 1% of Americans and all federal and state services have been turned over to, for instance, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, the Koch brothers, the (Wall-Mart) Walton family, and Hedge Fund billionaire’s on Wall Street?

Imagine what will happen if the IRS is turned over to Microsoft or Rupert Murdock’s Media Corp; if the U.S. Forest Service is privatized and turned over to the Koch brothers, and if President Obama is successful in doing away with Internet Neutrality.

Also Recommended:

President Obama’s Failure of Leadership

Who crowned Bill Gates the Emperor of Education?

Education Bloggers Network Supporting the Public Schools

The compulsory Common Core standards and the facts behind the Controversy

The challenge of teaching At-Risk Kids reveals why Charter schools are abandoning them

The successful history of—and the threat to—Public Education in the United States

_______________________

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

His 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 May 13, 2014 in American Public Schools, government, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies

 

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Mother Crusader discovers who’s behind the agenda to profit off Newark, New Jersey’s children?

07 May

UPDATE: May 13, 2014

In a major setback for the Chris Christie administration, City Councilman Ras Baraka was elected Mayor of Newark tonight with 54% of the vote. School closings were a major issue in the election.

Over on Blogspot.com, Mother Crusader (click link to read her full post) discovers that billionaires are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the mayor’s race in Newark, New Jersey to defeat Ras Baraka, because these fake education reformers want to continue to shut down public schools and profit from taxes meant to teach our children.

Mother Crusader says, “Never intended to become a parent advocate until I watched the great schools in my little town come under attack. The more I learned about what was happening the more I read. The more I read the more I saw how what is happening here is tied to towns across not only New Jersey, but the country. And now I’m in the thick of it, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.”

Mother Crusader reveals: “The Newark mayoral race is heating up with less than a week to go, and there has been plenty of discussion about an influx of cash to the Jeffries campaign and questions as to where the money is coming from.

The group has raised more than $1.3 million. Its donors include several financial executives and an $850,000 donation from Education Reform Now, a politically active education reform organization, according to its election filing report.

Newark First has spent almost $425,000 on the election, the report says.

Click Mother Crusader to discover what her investigative reporting has revealed about this corrupt attempt to steal an election from Ras Baraka.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2014 in American Public Schools, Education, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Teaching

 

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Education Bloggers Network Supporting the Public Schools

06 May
  • Dr. James Arnold is a product of public education. A native of Sunflower County MS, he graduated from Provine HS in Jackson MS in 1970, Ole Miss in 1974 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education, Ole Miss again with a Masters in Music in 1977 and the University of Alabama in 1993 with an Ed. D in Secondary Education. He served Lamar County AL as band director grades 6-12 from 1974–1991 and moved to Columbus GA as Director of Bands at Columbus HS in 1991. After the CHS band grew from 27 members to 225 in 1995, he was named Assistant Principal at Shaw HS, Principal at Shaw in 2001 and Superintendent of Pelham City Schools in 2010. He is a published author, has written 7 children’s books and contributes regularly to the Atlanta Journal and Washington Post on educational matters.

  • Arthur H. Camins is the Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) at the Stevens Institute of Technology where he leads the Center’s curriculum, professional development and research work. He writes about issues related to education policy and STEM education.
  • Gerri Songer’s blog We Are More offers information intended to support teachers, public schools, and public education in America. Gerri is the Education Chair of the District 214 Education Association and she has 23-years’ experience working with both special education and general education students at the secondary level.
  • Paul Thomas hosts The Becoming Radical. He taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education where he’s an Associate Professor of Education at Furman University, Greenville, SC. He’s also the author of several books that may be found through his Amazon author’s page @ P. L. Thomas.
  • Russ Walsh hosts Russ on Reading where he discusses sound literacy instruction, support for teachers and defends public education.

  • Ralph Ratto is an elementary school teacher just trying to do the right thing. He hosts Opine I will.
  • Dave Greene is a former High School Social Studies teacher and coach in The Bronx, Greenburgh, NY and Scarsdale, NY. He has been an adjunct for Fordham University, mentoring Teach For Americans in the Bronx. He is a staff member of WISE Services, an advisor to the Foundation For Male Studies, a HS football coach, and is the treasurer of Save Our Schools March. Dave is also the author of Doing the Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks, and hosts DCGEducator: Doing the Right Thing.
  • Ken Bernstein posts at the Daily Kos and says that only a quarter of what he publishes there is on education.
  • Marie Corfield is a mother, artist, teacher, education activist, former NJ State Legislature candidate—that teacher in that Chris Christie You Tube video (below)—writes about education, poverty, politics, women’s issues, social justice and lives in a world gone strange.

Lovell recommends Tom Newkirk’s Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones: Six Literary Principles Worth Fighting For and his 2013 Postscript: Speaking Back to the Common Core

  • Susan DuFresne and Katie Lapham co-author the Blog Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates. Their mission is to create a dialogue with Bill and Melinda Gates in order to achieve a democratic influence on public education through the voices of education researchers, professors of education,administrators, school board members,  professional teachers, parents, students, and community members.


This is a film about the impact of poverty and corporate education reform on children.


Apple is giving 5 week trained TFA’s a free iPad, not to professional teachers with BA, MA, or National Board Cert Teachers.


How does Finland teach their children? Through Trust!

Stu Bloom wants to look closely at what’s happening in our schools and try to determine why it’s the politicians who are determining the curriculum and teaching methods. He wants to figure out why teachers have become the enemy to so many Americans and what he can do to rectify that misconception. He wants to help re-make the public schools in the US into places where children learn and teachers teach and discover the joy of that interaction. Stu wants to figure out ways to make readers and thinkers out of students … and he wants to find ways to help them let go of the pain of failure and learn to enjoy learning.

_______________________

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!”

 
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Posted by on May 6, 2014 in American Public Schools, Education, Lloyd Lofthouse, politics, Public School, Teaching

 

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Who Crowned Bill Gates the Emperor of Education?

01 May

Over on Mercedes Schneider’s Blog, she tackles and criticizes Bill Gates view of the Common Core State Standards.

“Bill defines standards as a ‘list of what kids are supposed to know’ at each grade level.”

But Mercedes, Bill Gates is correct in his thinking—for computer programs stored on hard drives—not children. After all, in his Microsoft world where he’s the Emperor, if he pays programmers to write a computer program, the finished product better work or else, right? And the Emperor did pay more than $2 billion to create the Common Core standards and convince the states to accept them.

Bill Gates must honestly think that teachers are incompetent when the same process doesn’t work between teachers (the Emperor must see teachers as programmers) and children (as programmed computer hard drives) who don’t know the standards on the Common Core curriculum program that Gates paid for.

I wonder if Emperor Gates knows that a child’s brain doesn’t work like a computer program on a hard drive, because children don’t all live in the same environment with equal and supportive parents. In fact, teachers don’t teach the same way and every child’s DNA is different along with how they learn.

For the Gates’ list of Common Core Standards to work, every child would have to grow up in a similar common environment with parents who love reading, start reading to and with their child by at least age three and support teachers every step of the way from pre-school to graduation; from high school and beyond. Every child would also have to have an equally efficient short and long term memory (the same hard drive), and there could not be any learning disabilities to get in the way. This common environment would also include the same nutritious, brain food diet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with no sugary sodas—only safe-to-drink water.

No parent could be abusive in any way—a drug addict, an alcoholic, a chronic gambler, illiterate and every family would have to earn a livable wage—meaning no poverty.

In addition, every parent would have to attend parent conferences with their children’s teachers and keep an eye on grades so if any grade fell below a C, the parent would call the same day and schedule an appointment with the teacher to find out why it happened and what they could do to fix the problem since failing grades are usually caused by children who—for instance—don’t pay attention, hate to read, don’t work in class, have lousy diets, don’t get enough sleep, watch too much TV, play too many video games, don’t cooperate, cause disruptions in class, don’t ask questions or seldom if ever read outside of class or do homework.


Learn from a 15-Year-Old how dangerous Emperor Bill Gates really is!

Emperor Gates, unlike a computer programmer, the greatest teacher can’t update a child’s memory with a patch to make sure the child learns your list of Common Core standards—that is if the child learned and remembered what the teacher taught in the first place.

For the Gates’ “Common Core list” to work, every child would have to arrive at school equally eager and willing to learn what teachers teach, and every parent would have to consider Amy Chua, the author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” as a role model and not an abusive, tiger parent—and that ain’t going to happen in the United States.

I have a question for Emperor Gates:

Since when did the electorate agree that you should use your great wealth to decide how this country should educate the 49 million+ children who attend public schools while ignoring the 7.4+ million who attend private schools?

I want to ask President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan the same question. I thought the Constitution—the law of the land—written by the Founding Fathers of the United States made this sort of thing a crime.

In conclusion: It seems that every week—this has been going on for years—a new update arrives from Microsoft to patch something wrong with Microsoft’s operating system. Considering these constant flaws that keep appearing in programs written by Microsoft programmers, Emperor Bill Gates should be the last person to advise the Obama White House how fix the unbroken public schools that really only need him and the other fake education reformers to butt out. The best people to patch anything in the public schools are teachers supported by everyone else, because that’s they were trained for, and that’s what Finland does.

_______________________

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!”

 
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Posted by on May 1, 2014 in child abuse, Education, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing, Teaching

 

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The Truth Behind “Waiting for Superman” and the myth of Teacher Tenure

22 Apr

FIRST:

Watch the trailer for the longer documentary that sets the record straight. Then if you want to learn more, please watch the full length version (scroll down to find it).

 

SECOND:

Then there’s “Fact-checking Waiting for Superman” that appeared at the Huffington Post.

Fact-checking Waiting for ‘Superman’: Documentary or Urban Myth?

“We simply cannot trust the corporate oligarchy currently making policies for our schools to create a fair evaluation system, including those who backed Waiting for ‘Superman‘, given their proclivity to misuse and distort data, as shown by the inaccurate figures cited in the film.”

“Rather than a documentary, perhaps the movie (Waiting for Superman) should be re-categorized, with an appropriate disclaimer, as an urban myth.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson/factchecking-waiting-for-_b_802900.html

THIRD:

Full length version of “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman”

 

FOURTH: Recently I had a debate with an individual, an acquaintance, who believed the schools were broken and the only way to fix them was to take away all teacher legal, due process rights so any teacher could be fired without due process. That way, the schools would be able to remove so-called incompetent teachers without the burden of proof.

That’s why I suggest you also read: The Myth of Teacher Tenure published by The Washington Post

“School districts consistently win the vast majority of the court decisions concerning the involuntary cessation of a teacher’s employment based on incompetency. In a comprehensive canvassing of court decisions based on teacher evaluation for competency, I found that the defendant districts prevailed in more than a 3-to-1 ratio, and that there was no significant difference between the outcomes for nontenured as compared to tenured teachers.”

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/the-myth-of-teacher-tenure.html

_______________________

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

His 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 April 22, 2014 in American Public Schools, Education, government, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Teaching

 

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What happens to women’s rights if the public schools are abolished?

17 Apr

The title of this post was a question I wanted to ask four authors on a panel at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival held at USC, but when I walked to the mike, I did an information dump about the fake Ed reformers war on public education instead; mentioned Diane Ravitch, her book and her blog; was challenged by the moderator, but was saved by an ESL teacher in the audience I didn’t know and still don’t.

This all happened on Saturday, April 12, after my wife and I arrived at USC’s campus after walking three miles from the downtown Los Angeles hotel where we were staying. It’s amazing how much the glitz and modern polish of downtown Los Angeles changes in a few miles. It almost felt as if we were leaving the concrete and glass Garden of Eden for a desert of fast food littered with car dealerships.

My wife was scheduled to be on a panel at 3:30, “Memoir: The Places that Makes Us” in a lecture hall located in the Andrus Gerontology Center. But three hours earlier, we went to another panel called “Nonfiction: The Evolution of Feminism” from 12:30 to 1:30 held in USC’s Taper Hall.

Robin Abcarian, an LA Times columnist, was the moderator with Nancy L. Cohen, M.G. Lord, and Myra MacPherson making up the panel of feminist authors.

Nancy L. Cohen is the author of “Delirium, the Politics of Sex in America”.

M. G. Lord is the author of “The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice”.


Lord’s segment starts at 28:00 if you don’t want to watch the entire video.

Myra MacPherson is the author of “The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age”.

When we sat down shortly before the moderated conversation between the panelists started, I wasn’t planning on asking any questions. Then during the conversation, Myra MacPherson mentioned the Koch brothers funding the far-right conservative efforts that are rolling back some of the gains the equal rights movement for women achieved during the 20th century.

When I heard that, I sat straighter because these billionaires were also involved in the war against the public schools in the US. If the billionaires won, the democratically run public schools that have been around for more than a hundred years would be closed and the almost $700 billion in annual taxes that support those schools and more than four million school teachers would be turned over to CEO’s and corporations; democratically elected school boards would be abolished, parents would have no say, and these corporate-run schools paid for by the taxpayers would operate without government oversight. The transparent democratically run public schools would be flushed down the sewer of history and the opaque corporate schools would replace them—corporations run by Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg along with several Hedge Fund billionaires—who are in it only for the money—among other vultures. And parents would have no say what these corporate run schools taught their children; no control over how their children would be treated or how the tax dollars were spent.

When I was standing in front of that mike talking about the war on the public schools, the moderator, Robin Abcarian, interrupted me—which was right because I was off topic—a woman sitting in the crowded lecture hall behind me leaped up and shouted, “It has everything to do with it!”

Abcarian then invited the ESL teacher to the mike and I was thankful to sit down and shut up so I could cool off. It turned out that the woman who saved me teaches in a Los Angeles Unified elementary school, and when she reached the mike she made a connection between what was happening to the public schools and the roll back on women’s rights in the US.

Later—after returning home—I discovered that “in recent years, the number of public schools segregating their students by sex has ballooned, despite mounting evidence that single-sex programs don’t improve academic performance and instead perpetuate sex stereotypes.” (aclu.org)

I still don’t have an answer to my question: What happens to women’s rights if the public schools are abolished?

What I found really interesting was the fact that there wasn’t one panel at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival about the war being waged against the public schools by the fake education reformers even though there have been several books out recently on the subject loaded with facts proving that the public schools aren’t failing and don’t need drastic reforming.

What we are hearing in the traditional media is what the fake education reformers want us to hear. Why isn’t the media reporting on this controversy? Why is the resistance against the fake education reformers mostly being ignored?

_______________________

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

His 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 April 17, 2014 in American Public Schools, Lloyd Lofthouse, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School

 

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The compulsory Common Core Standards and the facts behind the Controversy

10 Apr

“Our children are not apples, they are people.” Remember these words. You will hear them again if you watch the first video in this post.

If you think Obamacare was a mistake and a travesty, you will be doubly shocked if you take the time to watch these videos and learn about the Common Core Standards and how they are going to devastate the jobs of more than four million public school teachers, destroy public education in the United States and damage a lot of our children.

Obama’s Race to the Top and Common Core Standards mandate that every child in America must be 100% college ready by age 17/18, and if they aren’t, someone has to pay the price. Teachers will be fired by the thousands, public school closed and children will be devastated. In fact, it has already started in some states and cities.

Do you think that every child can be college ready by age 17/18?  Before you answer that question, here are a few facts from the five countries that ranked highest in the international PISA test.

Shanghai-China: The National Interest.org says, “By 2020 the Chinese government expects, perhaps unrealistically, to have a total of 195 million college graduates in the labor force.” That’s 15% of China’s total population of 1.351 billion, and they have six years left to reach that goal.

Singapore: The total population is 5.3 million; 66.6% have high school diplomas, but only 47% have college degrees.

Hong Kong-China: the total population is 7.155 million and there’s room for twenty thousand college students annually.  At that rate, it would take more than 355 years to send all those people to college.

Taiwan: Total population of 23.24 million; and 39% of that whole in 2009 had college educations.

The China Post.com says, “Taiwan’s high education population also stands lower than Canada’s 49 percent, the United States’ 41 percent and New Zealand’s 40 percent, while being higher than Germany’s 26 percent, Britain’s 37 percent, France’s 30 percent, Switzerland’s 35 percent, Norway’s 37 percent, and Sweden’s 33 percent.”

South Korea: 50 million; more than 60 percent of Koreans age 25 to 34 have college educations, but The Washington Post.com reports “Korean officials are alarmed that many graduates are not finding jobs (more than 40 percent in the past year).”

Remember this prediction? If President Obama’s Common Core standards are implemented across America as designed, he will go down in history as the most hated, worst and most dangerous president the United States has ever had.

What does Glenn Beck say?—and he’s too far right for my tastes but on this issue I agree with him for the first time.

_______________________

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

His 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 April 10, 2014 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Standardized Testing

 

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A successful history of—and the threat to—Public Education in the United States

06 Apr

I’m sure you’ve heard for years—even decades—that the public schools are failing; that teachers are lazy, incompetent and their labor unions are responsible for this so-called failure.

The solution: fire the teachers, close the public schools and get rid of the labor unions. Then turn education over to private sector corporations run by CEOs who only answer to their wealthiest stock holders. For instance, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock and a flock of Hedge Fund billionaires.

Let’s see what you think after we go back to 1779 and walk through 235 years of history to the present. It won’t take long—a few facts and a conclusion.

  • We’ll start with Thomas Jefferson in 1779, because he thought the US should have two education systems: one for the wealthy and one for everyone else.  As Jefferson said, we’ll “rake a few geniuses from the rubbish.”
  • The first public high school opened in Boston in 1820, and by the 1830s in the southern slave states laws were passed making it illegal to teach slaves to read.
  • In 1851, Massachusetts was the first state to pass a compulsory education law.


This video shows how the public schools started in the US, but the Prussian method of teaching kids shown in this video will change—watch 2nd video.

  • In 1870, 2% of the US population graduated from high school.
  • In 1896, the Southern States pass laws requiring racial segregation in the public schools. They can’t stop blacks and other minorities from attending public schools so they make sure these children attend separate schools and have less funding.
  • By 1900, the high school graduation rate reaches 6.4% and 6.2% of whites were illiterate compared to 44.5% of blacks and other minorities.
  • By 1918, all states have passed school attendance legislation, although until the 1930s, many were unsuccessful in enforcing their compulsory schooling laws. However, as the population increased, and as the demand for well-trained labor grew, the bureaucratic machinery for enforcement was created.
  • In 1938, for the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law.
  • By 1940, the graduation rate reaches 50.8% and only 2% of whites are illiterate compared to 11.5% of blacks and other minorities.
  • In 1945, at the end of World War 2, the G.I. Bill of Rights gives thousands of working class men college scholarships for the first time in U.S. history. In fact, I went to college on the Vietnam G.I. Bill.
  • By 1954, The Supreme Court unanimously agrees in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that segregated schools are “inherently unequal” and must be abolished. Forty years later, segregation is back and getting worse.
  • In 1955, Milton Friedman, the father of neo-liberal economics, envisions a school voucher system to slowly privatize public schools. His followers have never given up.


During the 1970s and 80s, public education evolves from the regimented Prussian model to focus on critical thinking and problem solving skills. But this will be reversed when President G. W. Bush enacts his “No Child Left Behind Act” and then under President Obama’s “Race to the Top” the process will speed up.

  • In 1979, 0.4% of whites are illiterate compared to 1.6% of blacks and other minorities.
  • After Ronald Reagan is elected president in 1980, his secretary of education William Bennett began an all-out war on teachers, teachers unions and public school districts. He calls democratically elected school boards and school districts “the blob”. Reagan also vetoed the Fairness Doctrine that for thirty-eight years required the media to offer the public an honest balanced reporting of important issues, and soon after the Fairness Doctrine was abolished conservative talk radio exploded across the country using cherry-picked facts to present biased opinions without balanced reporting.
  • In 1990, the high school dropout rate is 12 percent.
  • In 2007, 80.7% of Asians graduate from high school; 76.6% of Whites; 55.5% Hispanic/Latino; 53.7% of Black and 50.7% of American Indians.
  • In 2011, neoliberal President Obama with support from Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock (and other billionaires that include the Walton family and the Koch brothers) implement Common Core standards that leads to testing in 2014 that is designed to fail teachers and schools so the public schools may be legally labeled failures, closed, all teachers fired, and then corporations will take over teaching our children—taking all power away from parents and the democratic process, and these new private schools supported by the taxpayer will not be accountable to the people.
  • By 2011, the high school drop our rate has fallen to 7%—an improvement of 5% since 1990.
  • In 2012, for the first time in US history, a third of the nation’s 25 to 29 year olds have earned at least a bachelor’s degree, and by age 24, 90% of Americans have earned a high school degree or its equivalent.
  • In the fall of 2013, a record 21.8 million students were expected to attend American colleges and universities, an increase of about 6.5 million since fall of 2000.

But even with all this success, in recent years, the Walton family has spent more than $1 billion toward efforts to “infuse competitive pressure into America’s K-12 education system.” Never mind that this money is mostly in states where no Walton family members live or have children in school. In addition, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bill Gates has spent $5 billion in his attempt to destroy public education with the same goal—the Walton’s and the other billionaires have—to fire public school teachers and close public schools.

In conclusion, the Common Core standards teach students what to think, not how to think. The Common Core is a return to the Prussian method of teaching children (see the 1st video) and there will be a double standard in education. There will be the underfunded public schools that end up teaching the most difficult, at risk children, as Jefferson said, “the rubbish”, and the private sector corporate schools will take students who are all on their way to college.

The billionaires listed in the first paragraph are pushing hard to achieve Jefferson’s vision.  For instance, Bill Gates has spent billions selling the lie of Common Core testing to Americans while other billionaires are pushing hard to close the transparent, democratically run public schools that are accountable to everyone and replace them with an elite, opaque private schools system that doesn’t answer to anyone but a CEO—all paid for by taxpayers.

Timeline for Crony Capitalist's War Against Public Education

Answer this question: Now that you know the brief but successful history of public education and the threats against it, tell me how the public schools are failing and prove it with more than an opinion.

_______________________

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

Crazy is Normal FREE Promotion July 2016

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!”

 
33 Comments

Posted by on April 6, 2014 in American Public Schools, Education, government, NCLB, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School

 

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The influence the average teacher has on a child’s education

22 Mar

Friday night our daughter came home from Stanford for the start of the spring break, and we ended up talking about what’s going on in the war between the Fake Ed Reformers and public education.

During our talk, it was obvious that someone or more than one person at Stanford got to her with the fake reformers message that incompetent teachers are the reason kids are not succeeding in school.

After sleeping on our conversation, I sent this e-mail to her.

There have been reputable, unbiased long term studies that have examined the impact an individual teacher has on a child’s education.  These studies prove without a doubt that the fake reformers—and that list includes Bill Gates—is wrong to burden teachers with 100% of the responsibility and blame for the fake reformer manufactured crises.

Bill Gates and the other Fake Ed Reformers are ignoring these studies when they blame and punish all four million+ teachers with their Draconian theories and junk science.

For instance, in 1966, there was a groundbreaking government study—the Coleman Report—that identified that the schools were only responsible for ‘one-third’ of a child’s achievement in school. “Two-thirds” came from outside factors—mostly the home environment and parental influence. The Coleman Report is still—today—the definitive study that explains variable factors that influence a child’s education.

Added Note not in the e-mail: Some of the studies done as part of a re-analysis of Coleman’s data at Harvard reached similar conclusions, suggesting that the best way to improve academic achievement was neither to integrate students nor to offer compensatory programs but, rather, to raise overall family income. … This conclusion became more and more established over time, but policies at the state and federal level nonetheless continued to focus primarily on narrow school-based reforms. (NYSEDgov)

In addition, I wrote: A more recent study focused on how much of an influence teachers have on the results of standardized tests.  This study was called The Reliability and Validity of Inferences About Teachers Based on Student Test Scores by Edward H. Haertel of Stanford University. This paper was presented at The National Press Club, Washington D.C. on March 22, 2013.

Scroll down to page five, Figure 1: How Much Variance in Student Test Score Gains is Due to Variation Among Teachers?

Haertel says, “Teachers appear to be the most critical within-school influence on student learning, but out-of-school factors have been shown to matter even more. One recent study put the influence of out of school factors at 60% of the variance in student test scores, and the influence of teachers at around 9%.”

I went on: Let’s take that one pull quote of Haertel’s Stanford study and factor in the influence of a single teacher in a child’s education K – 12.  It is arguable that a child will have as many as 50 or more teachers in those thirteen years.  If we were to divide that 9% up among 50 teachers, that means—on average—each teacher’s influence on the results of a child’s education is 0.18%. 

If two of those teachers were incompetent, they are responsible for 0.36%.  However, the parents of the average child are responsible for two-thirds or 60% of the influence on a child’s education.

Yet, the Fake Ed Reformers—including Bill Gates—are putting all the responsibility of a child’s education on teachers and punishing every teacher and child with their Draconian methods of reforming education in the United states while ignoring all other factors.

If we were to compute the odds that Bill Gates and his billionaire allies are right and all of those studies for decades are wrong, the odds would be less than 1% that they are right and more than 99% that they are wrong. Are you willing to gamble with those odds?

And Bill Gates has spent about $2.3 Billion dollars promoting his agenda for the Common Core and the testing regime that will benefit Apple Computers and Pearson Publishing, for instance, with billions in profits. How is Bill Gates doing this: by spreading his money from the Gates Foundation far and wide to buy as much political support as possible—even corrupting the presidents of the teacher unions, Congress and the White House. One of the Hedge Fund billionaires even bribed PBS with $3.6 million to produce a report that was favorable to the fake reformers. When that news broke, PBS gave the money back to this Hedge Fund billionaire, but the report had already aired so it was too late to undo the damage to the public’s perception of this issue.

And the Fake Ed Reformers have been blaming teachers for so-called failures in public education (with no valid study to prove this crisis actually exists) for more than thirty years spending billions on PR and false ads. The Walton family started back in the 1970s with the voucher movement, and the Waltons have never stopped their bombardment of public education. They will do anything; say anything to achieve their agenda to privatize education in the United States taking it out of the hands of parents and the 13,600 democratically elected school boards that run the public schools.

To learn more, I suggest you read Diane Ravitch’s “Reign of Error“.  Another book to read by David C. Berliner, Gene V Glass, Associates is “50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education“.

_______________________

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!”

 
2 Comments

Posted by on March 22, 2014 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, government, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing, Teaching

 

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If we are going to change the schools, we are going to change America

07 Mar

Rise Above the Mark is a documentary that focuses on the damage being caused by the “corporate takeover” of America’s public schools.

The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations. (http://riseabovethemark.com/about)

Who do you want in charge of how America changes its schools?

President Obama (D)

President G. W. Bush (R)

Bill Gates (billionaire)

Andrew Cuomo  (D)

Chris Christie (R)

The Koch brothers (billionaires)

The Walton Family (the wealthiest family on the planet)

Michael Bloomberg (billionaire)

Eli Broad (billionaire)

Rupert Murdock (billionaire)

Hedge Fund CEOs on Wall Street

The Republican Party

The Democratic Party

Or public school teachers (more than four million working for democratically elected school boards in 13,600 public school districts in America) teaching more than 50 million children. A third of public school teachers are registered republicans, half are registered Democrats and the rest are registered as independent voters. And if you’ve heard bad things about the two major teacher unions, consider this: AFT and NEA are both democratic organizations with elected representative and leaders at the local, state and national levels.  The millions who belong to these two labor unions are all college educated middle class Americans. You won’t find many politicians or billionaires teaching our children as a career.

Make a choice, because if you do nothing, someone else will choose for you.

_______________________

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

His 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 March 7, 2014 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, government, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, Parenting, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Standardized Testing

 

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