Category Archives: Uncategorized
Tom Ultican: CREDO Charter School Claims Demolished
Outside of court, thanks to the 1st Amendment, everyone is free to lie all they want, and the extreme right and the billionaires that fund that fascist movement take advantage of that all the time. This is another example.
What you read in the pull quote below is ALL LIES, with the facts used to support those lies manipulated, cherry-picked and the source material hidden.
“With the new CREDO study, Education Week’s Libby Stanford said that “charters have drastically improved, producing better reading and math scores than traditional public schools.’’ Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal declared charter schools are now “blowing away their traditional school competition.” Burris retorted with “despite the headlines, the only thing ‘blown away’ is the truth.”
Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, wrote a devastating critique of the latest CREDO charter school study, based on the analysis by the Network for Public Education.
He wrote:
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) just released another pro-charter school study, “CREDO also acknowledges the Walton Family Foundation and The City Fund for supporting this research.” It is not a study submitted for peer review and is so opaque that real scholars find the methodology and data sets difficult to understand. Carol Burris and her public school defenders at the Network for Public Education (NPE) have provided an in-depth critical review.
With the new CREDO study, Education Week’s Libby Stanford said that “charters have drastically improved, producing better reading and math scores than traditional public schools.’’ Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal declared charter schools are now “
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Tom Ultican: Chartered to Indoctrinate
Real public schools are supposed (if the teachers are allowed to do their job) to teach children to grow up as individuals that are lifelong learners and avid readers — that think for themselves.
But publicly funded, private sector charter/voucher schools that are imbued with the ideas of right-wing Christian nationalism (mostly MAGA) do NOT teach children to think critically, do NOT teach children to think for themselves, do NOT teach children to challenge what they are told or taught by asking questions.
These right-wing fundamentalist MAGA schools program children from the start to all think alike, to grow up as one more brick in the wall of MAGA extremism.
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas likes to say that he supports vouchers because he wants “education, not indoctrination.” This is hilarious because most vouchers are used for religious schools, whose purpose is indoctrination. They certainly do not teach students to think critically, as that might refute their mission.
Tom Ultican read the recent report by the Network for Public Education about the growth of faith-infused charter schools. The report is called “A Sharp Right Turn.” If you want your child to learn critical thinking, these schools would be the wrong choice. Critical thinking means that you are encouraged to question what you are taught.
Ultican writes:
Carol Burris and team at Network for Public Education (NPE) just published, “A Sharp Turn Right” (STR). NPE President Diane Ravitch noted there are several problems associated with charter schools’ profiteering, high closure rates, no accountability…
“This new report, A Sharp Turn…
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Peter Greene: Indiana “Moms for Liberty” Quote Hitler: Not a Good Start
Republican Moms for Liberty should be MOMs for FASCISM.
These alleged mothers are following in Hitler’s footsteps.
They are accusing our democracy’s more than three million public school teachers spread across 50 states,
[Discover the political leaning of our countries teachers — 5% are very liberal; 4% are very conservative: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/survey-educators-political-leanings-who-they-voted-for-where-they-stand-on-key-issues/2017/12 ],
teachers working in more than 10,000 public school districts spread across the United States,
each state with its own public education system mostly funded by local state taxes/revenues,
each district with democratically elected, local school boards …
These fascist loving alleged moms that lie when they say they are Moms for Liberty, claim those teachers are programing our children to grow up and become fascists.
Who are the real fascists that want to take away our teachers freedom to teach while censoring books so all parents can’t decide what their children can read?
Peter Greene writes about the debut of the Indiana faction of “Moms for Liberty,” which issued a statement quoting Adolph Hitler: “He alone who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future”
Over the next 24 hours, they kept rephrasing their statement over and over, to make clear that they weren’t actually endorsing Hitler or taking inspiration from his quote. After a few contortions, they sort of clarified what they meant, I think. Your local public school is controlled by the government, so your local public school is a manifestation of Nazism.
This would be funny if it weren’t so stupid.
Ninety percent of Americans went to public schools. Are we assume then that ninety percent of Americans are fascists? Are all of us public school graduates controlled by the evil U.S. government? By Biden? Trump? Obama? Bush 1 or 2? Clinton? Reagan?
Did we get controlled when we were in school…
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Washington Post: Home Schoolers Who Sent Their Children to Public School
Aaron and his wife were both homeschooled by strict fundamentalist Christians who did not spare the rod. Then they became parents, and changed their minds.
“People who think the public schools are indoctrinating don’t know what indoctrination is. We were indoctrinated,” Aaron says. “It’s not even comparable.”
This is a very moving story about a young couple who were raised by very strict parents and home-schooled. Their parents taught them that public schools were evil. They also taught them the importance of obedience and corporal punishment. But the parents did not want to inflict corporal punishment on their babies. When they began to question the cardinal principle of “spanking” their children, using the rod for discipline, they started questioning other articles of their faith. Read on. This link should give you free access to the Washington Post for this story.
In a wonderful example of long-form journalism, Peter Jamison writes:
ROUND HILL, Va. — They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional…
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Tienken and Borst: Please Get Rid of Standardized Testing! It Doesn’t Work!
For Profit Corporations and the management of nonprofit organizations are adding to their wealth by getting state and federal governments to force our public school children to take more standardized tests than any other democratic country.
“Studies over the last 35 years have demonstrated that results from standardized tests are highly subjective and not entirely indicative of what is happening in the classroom. Findings from decades of scientific research suggest that standardized tests are blunt instruments, whose results can be predicted at the school and district levels by using family and community demographic data found in the U.S. Census.”
What does that previous paragraph mean when translated so most if not all readers will understand it?
In every developed country in the world, not just the United States, the children of the wealthy and/or educated do better on standardized tests than the children of the poor and/or undereducated. The poorer and less educated a family is, the lower those standardized scores tend to be.
Which country has best education system for children?
” Finland, which has the best schooling system globally, offers students free education and free meals from primary to high-school level. In Denmark, there are no educational dues until the students turn 16 years of age.”
Finland also doesn’t force its teachers to conduct standardized tests and its k-12 students to take those tests.
Christopher Tienken and Julia Larrea Borst wrote this article for NJ.com, where it is behind a paywall. It was reposted by the Network for Public Education blog:
In a guest editorial at NJ.com, Tienken, an associate professor at Seton Hall University, and Borst, executive director of Save Our Schools New Jersey, explain why it’s time to put an end to the big high stakes standardized test.
They wrote:
A veritable industrial-testing complex has been set up across the country that siphons educational resources from public schools to large corporations. The United States mandates more standardized tests of academic achievement than any other democratic country in the G20 group of nations. So, what have we learned from all of this testing?
Studies over the last 35 years have demonstrated that results from standardized tests are highly subjective and not entirely indicative of what is happening in the classroom. Findings from…
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Josh Cowen: Texas Doesn’t Need Vouchers. Neither Does Any Other State.
School vouchers steal money from needy public schools, money that ends up going to often below-average private schools desperate for money so they don’t go out of business. Then, often, too many of those voucher students learn the hard way they gave up a good public school for a lousy private one and leave, returning to often better public schools in one to two years.
When students leave an inferior, cost-cutting, profit-generating voucher school, what’s left of that voucher money does not follow them, putting a bigger financial burden on OUR non-profit public schools.
More proof that today’s Republican Party, hijacked by Traitor Trump’s supporters, is nothing but a mindless, mean Wrecking Ball.
Josh Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He has been involved in research on vouchers for two decades. He wrote the following article for The Houston Chronicle.
Every state has versions of Texas’ Snapshot Day: the time early in the school year when districts submit pupil counts to their state education agency. How many students go to school in each district determines how much money districts receive each year, as well as a variety of other services and programs.
Not every state is considering a school voucher program, however, and as the Texas Legislature debates that possibility (officially called an education savings account), details like pupil count are going to matter a lot more than either voucher supporters or opponents are considering right now.
Here’s how we know.
I’ve been studying school choice policy for two decades. That work includes official evaluations on behalf…
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 