The Robber Barons of Public Education and the Wolves of Sesame Street are launching a major voucher battle in Congress through Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee; Luke Messier (R) of Indiana and Tim Scott (R) of South Carolina. If these bills are successful in the US Congress, 63 percent of federal education funds would flow into private schools owned/supported by corporate CEO’s like the Walton Family, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock and a few other billionaires.
The titles of the bills (wolves wearing sheep skin) disguise their real purposes: For instance, the Scholarship for Kids Act and the CHOICE Act.
Yes! Magazine, A UTNE Media Awards 2013 Winner, recently ran an expose, The Myth Behind Public School Failure, revealing the almost fifty-year plot that started with President Reagan’s policies that kicked off a privately funded, public relations campaign that would be the envy of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong—to demonize public education; scapegoat teachers and destroy the teachers unions (the one collective voice representing more than four million teachers that has the money to fight back)—the primary goal has nothing to do with teaching our kids. It has everything to do with turning over America’s democratically run public schools; our government and tax payer money to corporations whose only interest is profit and power.
Make no mistake, ever since President Reagan, there has been a systemic campaign in the United States funded by a handful of billionaires and corporations to privatize as much of our government as possible until what’s left is a puppet Congress and President—if successful, the Constitution and Bill of Rights would be worth less than used toilet paper.
Contact your local Congressmen and State Senators through USA.gov and demand that they vote no on these bills. E-mail them, call them, or send snail-mail letters.
Do you really want someone like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock, the Koch brothers, Hedge fund managers on Wall Street, or the Walton family in charge of your child’s education where parents have no say?
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Conservatives are the loudest critics of public education, so let’s see if their governance lives up to their claims by looking at the ten best and worst public schools by state.
Education Week issues annual state report cards based on six areas of educational policy and performance on a 100 point scale. The score for the final grade will be in parenthesis behind each state. (edweek.org)
The ten states with the worst public schools:
Nevada (65.7), New Mexico (66.6), Mississippi (68.9), Louisiana (69.9), Arizona (70.2), West Virginia (71.6), Arkansas (71.8), Alabama (72), Oklahoma (72.2), California (72.4), and South Carolina (72.6).
Six of the states with the worst public schools are controlled by the Republican Party (GOP):
Two—West Virginia and California—were controlled by Democrats.
Political control of New Mexico is split between a GOP governor and the Democratic controlled State Senate (28D – 14R) and House (37D – 33R).
Arkansas has a Democratic governor while the State Senate (21R – 14D) and the House (51R – 48D) is controlled by the GOP.
Next, the 10 states with the best public schools:
Massachusetts (91.4), New Jersey (88.2), New Hampshire (88), Connecticut (87.5), Minnesota (87.3), North Dakota (86.9), Vermont (86.4), Maryland (85.9), Virginia (84.8), and Iowa (84.2).
Virginia’s governor and lieutenant governor are Democrats, the state Senate is split evenly and the state House is controlled by more than 2 to 1 by Republicans.
In New Hampshire, the state Senate is controlled by the GOP by a slim margin (13 R to 11D) but the governor is a Democrat and the state House is controlled by the Democrats by a (221D [55%] to 179R [45%])
New Jersey has a GOP governor, Chris Christie (who’s a declared critic and enemy of public schools and is doing all he can to turn New Jersey’s successful public schools over to private sector profiteers and robber barons—the wolves of Sesame Street) but the Democrats control both the state Senate (24D to 15R) and General Assembly (24D to 16R). Note that four of the previous governors were Democrats and the state has voted for Democratic presidents for the last twenty-two years. Christi is a popular governor who won 60% of the vote in November 2013. The Democratic challenger had 38% of the vote.
Six of the best states for public education are controlled by the Democratic party: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Maryland.
Two states: North Dakota (clearly controlled by GOP for 119 of the last 125 years) and Iowa (where the Democrats have a slight majority in the State Senate—26D – 24R) is controlled by the GOP, but Iowa was controlled by the Democrats from 2006 to 2011 and the state went with Barack Obama in the last two presidential elections.
In conclusion, the GOP’s score is 6 of the worst state and 2 of the best, compared to Democrats with 6 of the best and 2 of the worst. This indicates that the GOP’s policies regarding public education earned a 25% Fail compared to a 75% C for the Democrats.
In addition—if you think this one issue isn’t enough—this isn’t the only comparison where the GOP’s political agendas seem to fail when compared to the Democrats.
In another post—Conservative Red versus Liberal Blue–a new way to see politics in America—published August 22, 2012, the GOP governed 15 of the 20 states with the most obesity; 8 of the top 10 states listed as the most racist; 7 of the 8 most politically corrupt states; 7 of the 10 most violent states; only 2 of the top 10 least violent states, and 2 of the 10 smartest states.
In fact, GOP presidents from Eisenhower (1953 – 1963) to G. W. Bush (2001 – 2008) added almost $11 Trillion to the national debt compared to $256.5 Billion for Democratic Presidents—not counting Obama because he’s still in office and inherited two wars from President G. W. Bush, and the biggest financial disaster and increase in unemployment since the Great Depression.
Knowing what you know now, who party do you trust to run the states and America and why?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
In a republic and/or democracy where eligible adults vote, the majority of voters decides who wins seats in Congress, and when elected—representing the people—Congress votes on bills/laws; the majority wins.
This is how it works in Congress. This is even how it works in the Electoral College during presidential elections—the presidential candidate who wins the majority of votes in the Electoral College becomes president. It doesn’t matter who wins the popular vote.
For instance, when President G. W. Bush was 1st elected, everyone didn’t vote for him. In the 2000 presidential election Bush had 271 electoral votes to Al Gore’s 266; more than 51 million Americans voted for Gore but their candidate lost and those voters had to live with President Bush for four years—the man they didn’t vote for.
Then in 2004, Bush won the White House a second time with 286 electoral votes to John Kerry’s 251; more than 59 million Americans voted for Kerry; they didn’t get the president they wanted.
That’s the way a democracy works, but that’s not what’s happening in the United States today when it comes to public school reform.
Teachers Union Exposed, an anti-teacher website, thinks it’s wrong that the two teacher unions should pay for lobbyists to represent the majority of their union members in Washington D.C. Their reason: a minority of teachers don’t agree with political activity of the two unions.
Teachers Union Exposed claims “Unions don’t reflect members’ politics. … Over the last 20 years, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has given more than $28 million in campaign contributions; the National Education Association (NEA) has given almost $31 million.”
Teachers Union Exposed (I wonder who is behind this Website) points out that looking at polling data from the 2003 National Education Study, only 51 percent of teachers who are also union members identify as Democrats. The rest identify as Republicans (25 percent) or Independents (24 percent)” … and the “Harris Interactive poll from 2003 showed that 83 percent of Republican teacher union members felt that the union was more liberal than they were.”
How many Republican teachers are there? The NEA has 3.2 million members and the AFT 1.5 million. Do the math and that means 970 thousand (20.6%) of the 4.7 million teachers felt the union was more liberal than they were.
Big deal! How many Americans felt that President G. W. Bush was more conservative than they were? The same question could be asked about President Obama: how many Americans feel that he isn’t as conservative as they are?
It’s an established fact that in a democracy elected leaders can’t please everyone. But what happens when someone who isn’t elected spends money to influence the government and elections?
I’m talking about corporate oligarchs. Throughout history, oligarchies have been tyrannical (relying on public obedience and/or oppression to exist) or relatively benign, and corporations are run by CEOs who are not democratically elected.
For instance, Diane Ravitch posted Researchers Reveal Funding Network for Washington Charter Law and exposed the undue influence of oligarchs in an election. Ravitch says, “a small number of very wealthy individuals and organizations bought a policy of their choosing. This subverts democracy. It subverts the principle of one man, one vote. These are not reformers. They are plutocrats who use their vast wealth to buy what they want.”
The Ravitch post is long but worth reading. To keep it short, the plutocrats Ravitch writes about spent more than $35 million on one campaign in Washington State to support a YES vote on proposition 1240 in 2012—legislation that would benefit private sector charter schools paid for by taxpayers. Voters in Washington state had defeated similar propositions three times in the past, but the oligarchs refused to give up.
For a comparison, the leaders of the democratically run teacher unions spent $59 million over twenty years representing the majority of their members—who elected them to run the unions—in Washington D.C. That breaks down to $2.95 million annually, but the oligarchs spent more than $35 million for one proposition in one state.
Therefore, why is it okay for these alleged tyrants to spend fortunes to influence and manipulate voters but if the democratically elected labor unions that represents millions of teachers do it with a lot less money, it’s wrong?
In fact, one of the oligarchs, Bill Gates, has spent about $200 million to turn public schools over to corporations—private sector schools the taxpayers support.
That means one day the13,600 public school districts in the United States with more than 90,000 school teaching over 50 million children run by democratically elected school boards might vanish and America’s children would be turned over to billionaire oligarchs who run/own corporations. To discover how much Gates and his billionaire oligarch partners stand to gain from privatization of the public schools, click Big data and schools: Education nirvana or privacy nightmare?
In her post Ravitch listed about 20 oligarchs who donated money directly—or through nonprofit foundations the oligarchs financially support—to insure proposition 1240 passed and it did by a slim margin of 50.69% to 49.31%.
Who do you really think represents the interests of most Americans and their children: 4.7 million teachers—willing to die to protect children—who elect their union leaders, or 20 (alleged tyrants) billionaire oligarchs—protected by private security?
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winningRunning with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
On her Blog, Diane Ravitch reports: “According to Duncan, our kids are dumb. Their parents spoil them. The kids don’t work hard enough. Furthermore, our culture stinks: No one takes education seriously, except Duncan, of course.”
How does Arne Duncan—with President Obama’s obvious support—want to fix this problem?
The answer: close the public schools and turn America’s children over to CEOs and corporations cutting parents out of the k – 12 education process. For instance, the Walton family of Wal-Mart infamy. Do you really want Wal-Mart teaching your kids?
Ravitch says Duncan was a basketball player, and we know that Obama loves this game. We now know that Duncan and President Obama have several things in common: For instance, they are both from Chicago (the University of Chicago was the birthplace of neo-conservatism in the United States and both Duncan and President Obama attended this university); President Obama is 52 and Duncan is 49; they both enjoy basketball and want to destroy America’s democratically run public school districts—all 13,600 of them (a goal of the neoconservative movement in the US: See Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools by Tara M. Stamm)
“President Obama chose Arne Duncan, who, previous to becoming CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, had little experience in education. Together they have promoted policies that are the antithesis of his campaign promises. Rather than supporting teachers as professionals, he has attacked teachers as the central problem, and along with Duncan, applauded the mass firing of teachers in Falls River, Rhode Island.” (Zezima, 2010, Buffalo State.edu, digital commons)
Arne Duncan should learn a few facts, and I volunteer to be his teacher. Send him to my house, and I will tutor him as only a former U.S. Marine can; I have a multiple-subject life credential and successfully taught in the public schools 1975 – 2005.
If Mr. Duncan accepts my offer, I won’t let him go home until he proves that he’s learned what I’ll teach him.
For instance, he will learn that the public schools have done and are still doing their job, and I will do this by mostly focusing on American adults 18 and over.
After all, more than 92% of Americans attend or attended public schools.
The U.S. Census reported that in 2010 there were 308,746,538 Americans and 234,565,071 were 18 and over. Eighteen is the legal age of an adult. For the rest of this post, I’ll use 234.6 million to represent all adults in the U.S.
Reading Worldwide.com says, “62% of all adults (145.452 million) in the United States own a public library ticket, no matter if they use it for borrowing poems, cookery books, or DVDs, consult legal references or use the public computer for filing online job applications. This figure was issued by the American Library Association (ALA) located in Chicago.”
Bookweb.org reported that approximately 62 million Americans are avid readers (age 18 and over). That’s 26% of adults.
In 2003, 29% of adults read at the basic prose level (68 million); 44% at an Intermediate prose level (103.2 million) and 13% at the proficient level (30.5 million).
Only 14% of American adults read below basic (32.8 million). If those numbers are similar to 2013, that means those adults are functionally illiterate, leaving 201.8 million adults reading at basic or higher.
If you think—like Arne Duncan and President Obama—that the majority of parents and public schools in the United States aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing (parenting and teaching), here are a few mind blowing facts:
There are more than 80,000 book publishers in the United States that generate revenues of $23.7 to $28.5 billion, and in 2001, for instance, consumers purchased 1.6 billion books—this does not count used book sales. In 2004, Americans bought 150 million old books. In addition, 90% of the 15,000 public libraries in the US spend more than $444 million on books annually (parapublishing.com).
In fact, 80% of Americans 16 and older say they read at least for pleasure; … [only] a fifth of Americans (18%) said they had not read a book in the past year (pew internet.org—the general reading habits of Americans).
Paid newspaper circulation for 1,387 newspapers in 2010 was about 43 – 45 million; (State of the Media.org); in 2012, there were 7,390 print magazines with a combined paid and verified average circulation per issue of more than 312.4 million subscribers (statista.com).
This means that the majority of adults had supportive parents when they were children and as children they learned what the public school teachers taught them.
Regardless of the parenting methods used, it’s obvious that a majority of American parents are doing a much better job of parenting than Mr. Duncan and President Obama think. But how do we discover who the parents and children are who are not succeeding and the reasons.
In a nationwide study of American kindergarten children, 36% of parents in the lowest-income quintile read to their children on a daily basis, compared with 62% of parents from the highest-income quintile (Coley, 2002).
Children from low-SES environments acquire language skills more slowly, exhibit delayed letter recognition and phonological awareness, and are at risk for reading difficulties (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
Students from low-SES schools entered high school 3.3 grade levels behind students from higher SES schools. In addition, students from the low-SES groups learned less over 4 years than children from higher SES groups, graduating 4.3 grade levels behind those of higher SES groups (Palardy, 2008).
In 2007, the high school dropout rate among persons 16- 24 years old was highest in low-income families (16.7%) as compared to high-income families (3.2%) [National Center for Education Statistics, 2008].
Children from lower SES households are about twice as likely as those from high-SES households to display learning-related behavior problems. A mother’s SES was also related to her child’s inattention, disinterest, and lack of cooperation in school (Morgan et al., 2009).
“Many factors were found to predict at-risk status that were independent of the student’s sex, race-ethnicity, and socioeconomic background.
Controlling for basic demographic characteristics, the following groups of students were found to be more likely to have poor basic skills in the eighth grade and to have dropped out between the 8th and the 10th grades:
Students from single-parent families,
students who were overage for their peer group, or students who had frequently changed schools;
eighth-grade students whose parents were not actively involved in the student’s school, students whose parents never talked to them about school-related matters, or students whose parents held low expectations for their child’s future educational attainment;
students who repeated an earlier grade, students who had histories of poor grades in mathematics and English, or students who did little homework;
eighth-graders who often came to school unprepared for classwork, students who frequently cut class, or students who were otherwise frequently tardy or absent from school;
eighth-graders who teachers thought were passive, frequently disruptive, inattentive, or students who teachers thought were underachievers; and students from urban schools or from schools with large minority populations.” (nces.ed.gov)
There’s an old Chinese Proverb that says, “Teachers open the door, but you (the student) must enter by yourself.”
Mr. Duncan, if you and/or President Obama don’t understand what this ancient Chinese proverb means maybe what we told our daughter when she was seven will help: “It doesn’t matter if your teachers are incompetent, boring or incredible and amazing, it’s your responsibility to learn”, and our daughter earned straight A’s in the public schools from 3rd to 12th grade graduating with a 4.65 GPA. She will earn her bachelor’s degree from Stanford June 14, 2014.
When she needed help, public school teachers were always available and she often took advantage of that help.
Mr. Duncan and President Obama are you wolves pretending to be sheep—are you closet neoconservatives with a goal to destroy public education in the United States? If the answer is yes, then teaching you the facts in this post will be a waste of time because you already have your agenda.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Taylor Dupuy writing for Monster.com listed five jobs that are likely to leave people disappointed. Number three on the list was Secondary School Teachers—my job for twenty-seven of the thirty years I was in the classroom.
Regret also means: anguish; annoyance; bitterness; disappointment; discomfort, dissatisfaction; etc. All emotions I felt one or more times during my thirty years in the classroom.
Dupuy says: “would-be teachers often don’t fully understand what the job involves until after they have started.”
Teachers starting out—often naïve idealists who think they’re going to make a big difference—have no idea of the paperwork required of an educator “as well as the unending parent interventions and the reluctance of students to do the work. [They don’t] realize the politics of working in a secondary school system.”
The challenges teachers face is daunting: “The education profession is often marred by a lack of resources, dwindling support, and modest salaries … teachers must simultaneously parent and counsel all while navigating the stressful terrain often found in the bureaucracy of school districts.”
This risky environment may also explain why teachers have a high risk of PTSD. “The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder estimates 7.8 percent of Americans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives, with women twice as likely as men to have PTSD.”
Due to the reality of what happens in the public school classroom, teachers are at a higher risk of PTSD. Joel Hood (Chicago Tribune/MCT) reported: “teachers may be more susceptible than most, … particularly those in tough, urban schools where violence is commonplace … (and) many teachers who suffer from PTSD see their careers significantly altered.”
How many teachers might suffer from PTSD? Teresa McIntyre, a psychology research professor at the University of Houston says, “Teachers don’t have one or two traumatic events; it’s a chronic daily stress that accumulates over days and months and years. It’s pretty equivalent in other high-risk occupations.”
In a pilot study conducted of 50 teachers in four Houston-area middle schools, Ms. McIntyre found as many as one in three teachers in the Houston district were “significantly stressed,” with symptoms ranging from concentration problems, fatigue and sleep problems.
If one in three teachers have PTSD symptoms, that means 33% compared to the national average of 7.8%. How does this compare to combat veterans? The findings from the NVVR Study (National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study) commissioned by the government in the 1980s initially found that for “Vietnam theater veterans” 15% of men had PTSD at the time of the study and 30% of men had PTSD at some point in their life … [and] at least 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have PTSD and/or Depression. (Veterans and PTSD)
A National Survey of Violence Against Teachers reported: “Teacher victimization was examined across all teachers surveyed (see Table 1). Results indicate that approximately half (50.9%; n = 2,410) of all teachers surveyed reported at least one form of victimization within the current or previous year. Nearly half of all teachers experienced at least one harassment offense, followed by over one-third experiencing property offenses, and over one-quarter reporting physical attacks. Moreover, 1 in 5 teachers reported being victimized at least once within all three offense domains.”
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
On December 4, 2013, a New York Times headline shouted: “Shanghai Students Again Top Global Test”, and once again, America’s vocal critics of the U.S. Public Schools called for more reform.
Not so fast. In fact, maybe not at all.
In China, the first nine years of education is compulsory starting before age 7. Primary school takes the first six of those nine years; then there’s middle school for grades 7, 8, and 9.
Fifteen is the age of students who take the international PISA test—and in China [so-called] compulsory education ends at the age of fifteen and students who decide to stay in school have a choice between a vocational or academic senior high school track. That’s where the choice ends because in China the senior high schools pick students based on merit.
To explain how this works, the CCP has acknowledged a “9-6-3 rule”. This means that nine of ten children began primary school between the ages of 6 and 7; six complete the first five years and three graduate from sixth grade with good performance.
By the time a student reaches senior high school—grades 10, 11, and 12—most enrollment is in the cities and not in rural China. Most rural Chinese don’t value education as much as urban Chinese do. And many of the migrant urban workers from rural China still have some family back in the village where they often leave their younger children. And many migrant workers, when they retire from factory work, return to the village and the family home.
The United States, by comparison, keeps most kids in school until the end of high school at age 17/18. About 75% graduate on time and another 15% earn their high school diploma or equivalent GED by age 24—all on an academic track because there is no vocational public schools k to 12 in the U.S.
In addition, in China there is the Zhongkao, the Senior High School Entrance Examination, held annually to distinguish the top students who then are admitted to the highest performing senior high schools. This means that if the highest rated high school in Shanghai has 1,000 openings for 10th graders, the students who earn the top 1,000 scores on the Zhongkao get in and then the second highest rated high school takes the next batch of kids until the lowest rated senior high school in Shanghai gets the kids with the bottom scores on the Zhongkao.
Maybe actual numbers will help clarify what this means:
In 2010, 121 million children attended China’s primary schools with 78.4 million in junior and senior secondary schools. The total is 199.4 million kids.
According to World Education News & Reviews: “In 2010, senior high schools [in China] accommodated 46.8 million students (23.4% of the 199.5 million). But about 52 percent or only 40.8 million were enrolled in general senior high school, and 48 percent of those students were attending vocational senior high schools.”
That leaves 21.2 million enrolled in the senior high school academic track designed to prep kids for college—that’s 10.6% of the total. Then consider that Shanghai’s public schools are considered the best in China. This means that the fifteen-year-old students who take the international PISA in China are the elite of the elite attending China’s best public schools.
For a fair comparison—not what we’ll hear from the critics of public education in the United States—the Economic Policy Institute reports: “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. … But U.S. students from advantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in the top-scoring countries [Canada, Finland, South Korea, France, Germany and the U.K.]” and “U.S. students from disadvantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in the three similar post-industrial countries.”
In fact, “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. … and—on average—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.”
_______________________
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
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!”
I don’t disagree with evidence from studies that offer theories that even slow learners with lower IQ’s may achieve success in life but it’s arguable that the lower the IQ, the tougher the odds are of a child achieving their dreams as an adult later in life depending on what those dreams are—after all, few end up becoming President of the United States—and for instance: billionaires, millionaires, rocket scientists, super models, Academy Award winning actors, Grammy winners, or win gold medals at the Olympics.
While a high IQ is not a ticket to success and wealth, the evidence suggests that it helps. It’s also arguable that a person with a high IQ who also has high social intelligence (SQ/SI) stands a much better chance at success and a better quality of life than someone with a low IQ and high SQ/SI. Other factors that lead to the success of a child achieving their dreams later as an adult are motivation, discipline, perseverance, the ability to learn from failure, and evidence suggests that writing detailed goals and reading those goals daily also helps. There’s also emotional intelligence that some think is important. (examiner.com)
My biggest sin to the politically correct camp of self-esteem was to dare to mention the difference in average IQ’s between racial groups. The word one commenter used was racism. However, the fact remains that there is a difference in average IQ’s between racial groups.
Princeton.edu says, “The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of intelligence testing in the early 20th century, particularly in the United States.” Forgive me if I don’t post that IQ comparison here. If interested, Google it.
Be warned, if you dare to step on this politically correct sacred ground that has been anointed by the holy water of the self-esteem movement, tread carefully.
However, it is arguable that IQ does play an important role in success and it’s not racist to say so. Instead of looking at IQ by race, we may also compare average IQ by country with the highest average IQ found in Asia where the top five are located: Hong Kong #1; South Korea #2; Japan #3; Taiwan #4, and Singapore #5. Those who argue that IQ tests are flawed because they were created by Caucasians in Europe/the United States, take note of the top five.
The United States is ranked #19 [tied with Hungry, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, France, Mongolia, and Norway] with an average IQ of 98 and Finland is #25 with an average IQ of 97.
The ten countries with the lowest average IQ are all in Africa. Equatorial Guinea is the lowest with an average of 59. (Statistic Brain.com and Nation Master.com)
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Now that you have a better idea of what’s going on—with facts instead of just opinions—you may want to know who some of the players are behind the privatization movement for public education in the United States.
For instance: the Koch brothers (combined net worth $72 Billion); the Walton Family (combined net worth $103 Billion), the Bill and Melinda Gates ($72 Billion); Bloomberg ($31 Billion); William Ackman, who made his wealth from hedge funds ($1.2 Billion), and Rupert Murdock ($13.4 billion) etc.
The money behind the critics of public education comes from the families and individuals listed in the previous paragraph in addition to other wealthy Americans, who have spent millions of their own money to influence voters and elected representatives regarding the privatization of public education at the state and national level.
The voices of teachers and parents must be louder than the money of billionaires!
On the other side of this issue, millions of teachers have democratically elected union leaders to speak for them, but the billionaires have done all they can—for more than thirty years—to make the teachers’ unions look bad—unions that are funded by monthly member dues.
Teachers Union Exposed.com—evidently a critic of public education—reported that over the last 20 years, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has given more than $28 million in campaign contributions [on average, $1.4 million annually]; the National Education Association (NEA) has given almost $31 million [$1.55 million annually].
But Teachers Union Exposed.com doesn’t bother to mention how much the billionaires are spending to privatize public education in the United States. To read about one billionaire’s impact on higher education, I suggest reading “The Gates Effect”.
Bill Gates has spent $5 billion in his attempt to reform public education in the US. The Wall Street Journal says, “The Gates Foundation met the same resistance that other sizeable philanthropic efforts have encountered while trying to transform dysfunctional urban school systems run by powerful labor unions and a top-down government monopoly provider.”
Do you know who owns the Wall Street Journal? Rupert Murdock (who, according to Mother Jones.com, wants to teach your kids (for a profit of course). This may explain why The Wall Street Journal claims that urban public schools are dysfunctional without any valid proof that this is true.
Do you really want Bill Gates—the man behind Microsoft and its endless software updates fixing what should have been fixed long ago—in charge of deciding how our kids learn, or having a multinational corporation [News Corp, the 2nd largest media corporation in the world] in charge of assessing kids’ reading skills?
Another example: Koch Brothers Exposed.com reported that the Koch brothers have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations. In 2008, the three main Koch family foundations contributed to 34 political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct.
What about a few of the other billionaires?
In 2010 (not the last twenty years), the Walton family contributed almost $5 million and Bloomberg contributed almost $3 million (outspending the teacher unions by a large margin). (Seattle Post Globe.org)
In other words, what Teachers Union Exposed.com says is that if teacher unions spend some of the money that comes from millions of teachers to defend the interests of the teachers and the public schools—that are not failing—that’s wrong, but it’s okay for billionaires to attack the public schools; claim whatever they want and spend whatever they want.
Without the unions more than 3 million teachers would have no voice and we’d only hear what a few billionaires want us to believe—that our public schools are broken when the facts say this is far from the truth. There are other studies but every study, pro or con, has critics who point out flaws.
In fact, there is no definitive proof that the public schools are broken and there have been no studies to identify how many teachers are incompetent or burned out. What we have are critics of public education—mostly private-sector billionaires—who pay PR people to cherry pick facts while spending millions spreading lies and misinformation while promoting unproven programs and theories.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
If only 17% of the Charter schools performed better than the public schools, what does that mean?
It means that 901 Charter schools outperformed, on average, 98,800 public schools—but at the same time 1,967 Charter schools performed worse than the average public school.
And if 83% of the public schools performed the same or better than Charter schools that means 82,004 public schools did not fail in teaching America’s children.
To have a better understanding of what the studies revealed it may help to know the numbers for Elementary and Secondary Education in the United States.
In 2010–11, there were about 13,600 different public school districts with over 98,800 public schools—including about 5,300 charter schools. In fall 2013, about 50.1 million students attended public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 35.3 million were in prekindergarten through 8th grade and 14.8 million were in grades 9 through 12.
Today, the public schools employ about 3.3 million full-time-equivalent (FTE) teachers.
In the private sector there are about 30,900 private schools offering kindergarten or higher grades, and an additional 5.2 million students attended these private schools, and a projected 400,000 FTE teachers worked in this education sector. (nces.ed.gov)
Note: The public school districts are nonprofit and are run by democratically elected school boards that are usually made up of concerned parents whose children attend or attended the schools in the same district. Common sense says that these parents, who are in charge, have a vested interest that the schools do the best job possible under the circumstances. Public schools must hire qualified and trained teachers.
A public charter school is a publicly funded school that is typically governed by a group or organization under a legislative contract or charter with the state or jurisdiction. The charter exempts the school from selected state or local rules and regulations. In return for funding and autonomy, the charter school must meet the accountability standards articulated in its charter.
Private sector schools are not run by democratically elected school boards. If these schools are religious, they are run by the religions that own them. If the schools are secular, they are run by the CEO of a corporation or business that is profit based and the CEO answers to no one but the richest stock holders and investors. The only way a CEO usually loses his job is to die, retire or lose money. If the private schools are operated as a non-profit, the manager is usually paid several-hundred-thousand dollars annually and the costs are higher than public schools. Private schools may hire anyone to teach.
You may be surprised to learn that the charter school concept originated with educators who started in the classroom as teachers. Starting in 1974, Albert Shanker (1928 – 1997) and then Ray Budde (1923 – 2005) had the idea for charter schools and helped launch this concept as a way to meet the needs of the most difficult to teach students. Charter schools were not meant to be an option for every student. The concept was an alternative designed to deal with children who were at risk and difficult to teach.
Albert Shanker, who started out as a substitute teacher; then went on to teach math in East Harlem for eight years, became the president of the United Federation of Teachers in 1964. Ray Budde started as a 7th grade English teacher. (Education Evolving.org)
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
The public schools in the United States are often compared to the public schools of other nations but what about comparing them to the charter and private sector schools in the United States?
The forces that want to turn U.S. public education over to the private sector—while obviously fooling many and robbing working middle class Americans to pay the rich—have worked hard for decades to paint the public schools and millions of dedicated, hard-working teachers as failures, but those claims are far from the truth—a truth that is difficult to prove.
The reason for this is because state and federal governments do not monitor the charter or private schools as they do the public schools. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top focus on the public schools and ignore the others. For more information on private sector schools not being judged the same as the public schools, I suggest reading Comparing Private and Public School Test Scores from GreatSchools.org.
What’s at stake—more than one trillion annual tax payer dollars that funds public education nationwide. That means every ten years, those tax-payer dollars add up to more than $10 trillion. This money is one of the main reasons for the corporate attack on public schools.
To discover how the charter schools compare to the public schools, Stanford—a private sector university that is one of the top ranked universities in the world—conducted an in-depth study in 2009.
The study found that, on average, charter schools performed about the same or worse than traditional public schools. The Stanford study said that 46% of Charter schools were the same; 37% were worse [which means many public schools were better], but only 17% of the Charter schools were better.
The goal of the study was to examine differences in mean National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and mathematics scores between public and private schools when selected characteristics of students and/or schools were taken into account.
Among the student characteristics considered were gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, and identification as an English language learner. Among the school characteristics considered were school size and location, and composition of the student body and of the teaching staff.
For Catholic and Lutheran schools—for both reading and mathematics—the results were again similar to those based on all private schools.
For Conservative Christian schools, the average adjusted school mean in reading was not significantly different from that of public schools.
In mathematics, the average adjusted school mean for Conservative Christian schools was significantly lower than that of public schools.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 