RSS

Category Archives: propaganda and lies

Why the public school in the United States are NOT FAILING!

06 Dec
  • There are NO bad schools unless we are talking about schools that are falling apart, because they are starving for funds to repair and update the infrastructure

Americans believe a lack of financial support is the biggest problem currently facing public schools, according to the 44th annual Phil Delta Kappa International/Gallup poll of public attitudes toward public schools released Wednesday, but they also say that balancing the federal budget is more important than improving the quality of education. – Governing.com

  • There are NO FAILING schools except when VAM is used to measure them and VAM has been proven to be misleading and does NOT work.

As is the case in every profession that requires complex practice and judgments, precision and perfection in the evaluation of teachers will never be possible. Evaluators may find it useful to take student test score information into account in their evaluations of teachers, provided such information is embedded in a more comprehensive approach. What is now necessary is a comprehensive system that gives teachers the guidance and feedback, supportive leadership, and working conditions to improve their performance, and that permits schools to remove persistently ineffective teachers without distorting the entire instructional program by imposing a flawed system of standardized quantification of teacher quality. – Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers from the Economic Policy Institute

  • There is poverty and very little is being done to deal with it

The negative effects of poverty on all levels of school success have been widely demonstrated and accepted; the critical question for us as a caring society is, can these effects be prevented or reversed? A variety of data are relevant to this question, and recent research gives us reason to be both positive and proactive. The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children, U.S. National Library of Medicine

  • Some families are dysfunctional

Communities and schools are currently facing unprecedented levels of unmet mental health needs, and children with emotional or behavioral challenges are less likely to learn while at school. Dysfunctional Family Structures and Aggression in Children: A Case for School-Based, Systemic Approaches With Violent Students

  • Most public school teachers work 60+ hours a week teaching, correcting, planning, prepping and calling parents

Annual teaching hours by education level, 2010 among OECD nations. The U.S. ranked 3rd place for most hours worked by teachers behind Argentina in 1st place and Chile for 2nd place. – Figure 4.7

The average number of teaching hours in public primary schools is 782 hours per year in OECD countries but ranges from fewer than 600 hours in Greece and Poland to over 1,000 hours in Chile and the United States. … Teaching time is defined as the number of hours per year that a full-time teacher teaches a group or class of students. … Working time refers to the normal working hours of a full-time teacher and includes time directly associated with teaching as well as the hours devoted to teaching-related activities, such as preparing lessons, counselling students, correcting assignments and tests, and meeting with parents and other staff. Data are from the 2011 OECD-INES Survey on Teachers and the Curriculum and refer to the 2009-10. How much time do teachers spend teaching? OECD

  • Just because a teacher teaches, that doesn’t mean a child will make the effort to learn and the parent or parents will support the learning process so learning takes place

Researchers have evidence for the positive effects of parent involvement on children, families, and school when schools and parents continuously support and encourage the children’s learning and development. The Benefits of Parent Involvement: What Research Has to Say

  • There is an overwhelming avalanche of evidence that there are MANY crooks and liars in the corporate supported public education reform movement using VAM scores to drive their goals toward more wealth and profit that has nothing to do with the learning of the most at risk and difficult to teach children, the children who cause the low VAM scores in the first place.

There’s been a flood of local news stories in recent months about FBI raids on charter schools all over the country.  FBI Tracks Charter Schools

In Ohio, “$1.4 billion has been spent since 2005 through school year 2012-2013 on charter schools that have never gotten any higher grade than an F or a D,” Collins said. NBC4 Investigates: Taxpayers Left Holding Bill for Charter Schools

A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest; engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory tidbits. Charter School Scandals

  • In conclusion, the case for public school success in the United States:

The average high school graduation rate, ages 24 – 65, for all OECD countries—including the United States—is 75%.

The high school graduation rate for the United States, by itself, ages 24 – 65, is 90%

The 4-year+ average graduation rate among all OECD countries—including the United States—is 37.7%.

The 4-year+ college graduation rate in the United States is 42%—the 4th highest in the world, but the U.S. has about 3 college graduates for every job that requires a college degree.

Among major English speaking countries, the United States is ranked 2nd for functional literacy.

  1. In the United Kingdom, the child poverty rate is 17% and the adult functional literacy rate is 80%
  2. In the United States, the child poverty rate is 22%, and the adult functional literacy rate is 65%
  3. In New Zealand, the child poverty rate is 22%, and the adult functional literacy rate is 55%
  4. In Australia, the child poverty rate is 10.9%, and the adult functional literacy rate is 53.6%
  5. In Canada, the child poverty rate is 14.3%, and the adult functional literacy rate is 51.5%

_______________________

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!”

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on December 6, 2014 in American Public Schools, child poverty in the US, family values, Parenting, politics, propaganda and lies, teaching children who live in poverty

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

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!”

 
5 Comments

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

 

Tags: , , , ,

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.

 
3 Comments

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

 

Tags: , , , , ,

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!”

 
Leave a comment

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

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

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!”

 
1 Comment

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

 

Tags: , , ,

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 …
via

_______________________

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

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Discover what the media doesn’t report about the U.S. public schools

02 Nov

Warning! If you have high blood pressure or anger issues, don’t read this!

There is a vast difference between teaching and learning. A Teacher can teach a great lesson and the students who participate and pay attention will learn, while the students who don’t pay attention and participate don’t learn.

Do we shoot the teacher because of those children who did not cooperate and did not pay attention?  And when we test 100% of the students to judge teachers and discover what they learned, there is no way to know what students cooperated with the teacher.

The reason why children who live in poverty do poorly in every country on the PISA, for instance, is because it is in this socioeconomic group where we find the most students who do not participate and cooperate with what a teacher struggles to teach them.

And this hold true in every country where the PISA tests 15-year old students. There is no exception. In fact, in January 2013, a study out of Stanford that broke down the PISA results by socioeconomic level proves this FACT. The same study was validated by the Economic Policy Institute. Here are a few key points from that study that emphasize this FACT that is being totally ignored by the corporate supported fake education reformers and the media they own and/or control, as they chase tax dollars and don’t give a fart about what children learn.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

This revealing study out of Stanford has been out there for almost two years, but Arne Duncan and his master, Bill Gates—and the rest of the pack of vampires leading the charge to destroy the democratically run public schools haven’t hesitated in their relentless assault to dismantle the public schools and replace them with corporate Charters that several other Stanford studies reported are mostly worse or equal to the public schools they are replacing, and these Stanford studies were funded by the Gates foundation, so Bill Gates can’t be ignorant of the facts. Gates has to know what he is doing is perpetrating and supporting a fraud against the Citizens of the United States, and that is a federal crime that comes with a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and a $10-million dollar fine.

Who is guilty without a doubt of this fraud? For sure, Bill Gates and Arne Duncan are aware that they are contributing to this fraud. Maybe Obama is just another ignorant fool, because it might be difficult to prove he’s read or heard of the results of the Stanford studies and even the Sandia report of 1990 that proved, without a doubt, that President Reagan’s A Nation at Risk was also misleading and where this fraud started.

Here’s a summary of what the Sandia Report discovered about A Nation at Risk, a fraud that has been supported by every President starting with Reagan.

“A Nation at Risk” (1983) – What the report claimed

  • American students are never first and frequently last academically compared to students in other industrialized nations.
  • American student achievement declined dramatically after Russia launched Sputnik, and hit bottom in the early 1980s.
  • SAT scores fell markedly between 1960 and 1980.
  • Student achievement levels in science were declining steadily.
  • Business and the military were spending millions on remedial education for new hires and recruits.

The Sandia Report (1990) – What was actually happening

  • Between 1975 and 1988, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup.
  • Between 1977 and 1988, math proficiency among seventeen-year-olds improved slightly for whites, notably for minorities.
  • Between 1971 and 1988, reading skills among all student subgroups held steady or improved.
  • Between 1977 and 1988, in science, the number of seventeen-year-olds at or above basic competency levels stayed the same or improved slightly.
  • Between 1970 and 1988, the number of twenty-two-year-old Americans with bachelor degrees increased every year; the United States led all developed nations in 1988.

If this makes you angry, then Tweet it repeatidly, and share it with all of your social networking connections. Here’s a Tweet you are free to copy and paste.

 Discover what the media doesn’t report about the U.S. public schools

_______________________

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!”

 
4 Comments

Posted by on November 2, 2014 in American Public Schools, child abuse, child poverty in the US, PISA, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Sandia Report, Standardized Testing, Teaching, teaching children who live in poverty

 

Tags: , , , , ,

What are you going to lose, New York, if you let Governor Cuomo have his way with the Public Schools, and who will gain?

01 Nov

What’s interesting about Cuomo’s use of the word monopoly, when he recently described the public schools in New York State, is that it will be the for-profit, corporate Charter schools he supports that will become the real monopoly when there are no public schools left to compete with.

In fact, Cuomo may help elevate a corporate Charter school CEO in New York City to be one of the top-ten highest paid CEO’s in the United States.

A monopoly, by definition, is an industry that controls everything about the products it produces and sells—there is no competition. In comparison, there are 697 public school districts in New York State and each one is run by a democratically elected school board that answers to the public, and public school districts must be transparent about everything that that they do or else.

How about the corporate Charters that Governor Cuomo has been paid to love?

According to NYSED.gov, “As of the 2014-15 school year, New York has 248 operating charter schools serving approximately 92,132 students.”

And here’s a list of the Charter schools in New York State. If you look at the list carefully, you will discover that several of these Charter schools belong to growth corporations. For instance: Achievement First (9); Icahn (7); KIPP (6); New Visions (8), and Success Academy (24).

These Charters are private-sector corporations managed by CEO’s, regardless of the title they give themselves. Most, if not all of these CEO’s, pay themselves very well from the taxes that flow their way, and they run organizations that are all but opaque—meaning, it is difficult to discover what they are actually doing with the tax payers money they get, and the truth about student outcomes is often distorted and misleading—and they don’t have to answer to the voters or the public about anything they do.

If you want a perfect example of how one of these corporate, profit-driven CEO’s operates, look no further than Eva Moskowitz (a former media celebrity and  non-educator), who pays herself more than a half-million dollars annually (more than the President of the United States who represents 316 million Americans, and the Chancellor of New York City’s public schools that teache1.1-million students), and Moskowitz uses hundreds of thousands of tax dollars that once went to teaching children in the public schools to run a well-oiled PR campaign to recruit more students and shut down more public schools, while the public schools are, by law, not allowed to use tax money for the same purpose.

Moskowitz runs the corporate, for profit Success Academy Charters, and her site says that private-sector corporation now operates 32 schools serving 9,000 students.

And Moskowtiz pays herself more than $500-thousand annually to serve 9,000 students while the Chancellor of New York City’s public schools annual salary is $212,614.

If we break that down by student, Moskowitz pays herself almost $56 for each student she recruits/serves.  I find it interesting that she uses the word “serves” instead of “teaches”, don’t you?  Who is she going to serve these children to—the vultures on Wall Street, who profit off her Charters?

What does it cost the tax payers to pay the salary of the Chancellor of the New York City public schools?

The answer: $5.17 a student, while Moskowitz payers herself more than 1,083-percent more per student.

How much will Moskowtiz earn if her so-called Success Academies (which are actually failures when you strip away the lies and look at the real numbers that she does all she can to hide) taught all of New York City’s children?

Moskowitz’s salary, with help from Governor Cuomo, who wants to fire public school teachers and close public schools, could eventually swell to more than $61-million annually.

When that day comes, if Cuomo has his way, Moskowitz will join the ranks of the 100 Highest Paid CEOs in the United States. In fact, she will rank #8 on that list and the tax payers of New York City will be paying the bill for her salary while the education of their children will be drastically curtailed and shortchanged, and the tax payers won’t be able to do anything about it, because there will be no democratically elected public school boards and no transparent public schools left.

  • To learn more about Eva Moskowitz and her relentless and ruthless goal to take over teaching all 1.1 million children in New York City, I suggest you read what Mercedes Schneider has to say on her Blog.

Cuomo Reelection an Obvious Moskowitz Opportunity

_______________________

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 1, 2014 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Teaching

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

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

 

Tags: , , , ,

← Older posts
Newer posts →