Category Archives: Uncategorized

This is a fascinating blog post. I urge you to read it. Milwaukee school board member Larry Miller went to New Orleans to learn more about the district that reformers applaud.

And he discovered this editorial in the New Orleans Tribune, which is the oldest African American newspaper in the city, dating back to the 19th century.

Here are some excerpts:

This thing appears to be a run-a-way train.

And we can’t stop it.

We have said all of this and more in the past several weeks and months. Yet, here we are again—devoting an entire issue to sharing the truth about the post-Katrina education reform that is hurting local students, marginalizing parents and disenfranchising voters and taxpayers and that will hurt us for generations to come.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Surely, we could find other uses for our newsprint and ink.

Well, we do not…

Carol Burris went to Albany to attend the trial of Sheri Lederman’s case against the state of New York, which rated her “ineffective” based on her students’ growth scores. Many other educators attended the trial, which has national implications.

Sheri is an outstanding fourth grade teacher in a high-performing district. When she learned of her poor, computer-generated rating, she was devastated. But her husband Bruce, an attorney, determined to sue the state. He gathered affidavits from some of the mation’s leading experts on teacher evaluations, as well as students, teachers, and her principal.

At the trial, the judge recognized that grading teachers on a curve made no sense.

Burris reports:

“The exasperated New York Supreme Court judge, Roger McDonough, tried to get Assistant Attorney General Galligan to answer his questions. He was looking for clarity and instead got circuitous responses about bell curves, “outliers” and adjustments. Fourth-grade teacher Sheri Lederman’s…

Peter Greene reviews Eli Broad’s plan to privatize at least half of the public schools in Los Angeles. The Beoad Foundation, the Walton Family Foindation have decided to provide privately-managed charter schools for half the district’s schools.

Peter writes:

“My hat is once again off to folks who have the chutzpah to unilaterally declare themselves the head of a previously-democratic sector of society. Did somebody elect the Broad Foundation to the school board of the LA USD? No? Well, why let that stop them from going ahead and setting policy. I think I may go ahead and declare myself the chief of police here in my town, stop down to City Hall, and let them know what the new polici are going to be.”

They have to keep some public schools open to enroll the children who didn’t get accepted by charters or were pushed out or told they were…

A deflated football, Megyn Kelly’s period, Benghazi, and that thing on the top of Donald Trump’s head – distractors all.

As our children continue to be tormented by meaningless, mandated high stakes tests that subvert education tax funds to private corporations as profits, we are being distracted. Let’s get real.

How can parents put a stop to this institutionalized abuse that labels our children for life? Why should our children feel like losers because of invalid tests?

Read AN ACTIVIST HANDBOOK FOR THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION: United Opt Out’s Test of Courage.

Yes, parents must defend our children from this institutional abuse.

Yes, it will take some courage on the part of each parent – at first.

Since 20% of the children of one state, New York, have refused testing and/or opted-out for their children, the paid politicos are stymied. Other states and communities are also successfully stopping this abuse.

Read…

This article on “The Costs of Accountability” appeared in The American Interest. It was written by Jerry Z. Muller, a professor of history at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. It is a long and thoughtful article, and I can offer just a few snippets. I urge you to read it. It is a five-star article that explains how much money and energy is wasted in pursuit of the Golden Fleece of “accountability.” It has become an industry unto itself.

He begins:

The Google Ngram Viewer, which instantly searches through thousands of scanned books and other publications, provides a rough but telling portrait of changes in our culture. Set the parameters by years, type in a term or phrase, and up pops a graph showing the incidence of the words selected from 1800 to the present. Look up “gender”, for example, and you will see a line that curves…

Stanley Kurtz has a very interesting article at the conservative National Review, calling out Jeb Bush for pretending that he does not really support the Common Core standards and that he is in favor of local control. At the Republican debate last week, Jeb was questioned about his strong support for Common Core, and he equivocated, trying to leave the impression that he had no particular allegiance to Common Core. He said, “I don’t believe the federal government should be involved in the creation of standards, directly or indirectly, the creation of curriculum content. That is clearly a state responsibility.”

As Kurtz documents, Jeb has been one of the loudest cheerleaders for Common Core, even though federal involvement in its creation (requiring its adoption as a condition of eligibility for Race to the Top funding) and in directly subsidizing Common Core testing (PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment) arguably violates federal…

Reader Jack Covey explains the injustice of “teacher jail” in Los Angeles.”

“Wow, the article from THE NATION
about teacher jail and Dr. Stevenson
is devastating. It was published in
April 2014, when Dr. Stevenson was
still languishing in teacher jails,
and written by one JoAnn Wypijewski.

“It deals with Deasy’s exploiting the “sex” and “child molestation” angles as a dishonest way to crush innocent veteranteachers—the highest paid naturally—and simultaneously destroy teacher unions’ ability to protect innocent teachers unjustly accused of something

http://www.thenation.com/article/179605/where-shame-policy-inside-las-teacher-jail

“Here’s the opening paragraphs:

————————————————————————-

JoAnn Wypijewski of THE NATION:

“Iris Stevenson hurt no child, seduced no teenager, abused no student at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. This is what her supporters say in rallying outrage that this exemplary teacher has languished for months in the gulag of administrative detention known as ‘teacher jail’: she doesn’t belong there.

“And she doesn’t.

“Days before being removed from…

My Op-Ed in The State (Columbia, SC) paper, Entrenched racism drives down SC child-well-being scores, prompted both email responses and a few posted comments online.

A recurring theme of the negative feedback reflects entrenched white denial, offering insight to why our political leadership tends to avoid addressing directly systemic racism and social class inequity and exposing why the Republican candidates thrive despite what should otherwise be viewed as a collection of buffoons at best and racists, sexists, and classists at worst.

Any time racism and class inequity are confronted, the “individual responsibility” response rings strong. As well, the “I was poor but succeeded” mantra is shuffled out.

What is always notable, however, is that the overwhelming evidence of racism and classism is never directly addressed. White denial always remains trapped in slogans and anecdote.

For example, one online comment addresses the evidence I provided with “if whites are getting…

D.L. Paulson is a reader who has commented before on the entrepreneurs who are investing in privatization and disruption in public education. Here he comments again on GSV (Global Silicon Valley), a leading edge investment company in the education sector.

GSV is a syndicate of financial/investment companies. GSV Advisors is where some of the trouble lies, at least in terms of conflict of interest and self-dealing. The management team invests personally in charter schools which in turn buy the products of its other portfolio companies. GSV (Advisors or Capital, it’s not altogether clear) also supports edsurge.com, which serves as a faux-journalistic voice for this “reform” movement. And all this goes on while GSV Advisors dispenses its advice to its “sister company”, GSV Capital, which makes the big investments, including the bad ones in Coursera and Chegg. (The jury is still out on U2 and Declara.)

GSV Advisors operates in a…

It’s not too late to save public education in California! With Eli Broad and his fellow billionaires poised to privatize education in Los Angeles, it is time to say NO! Join the campaign to repeal the charter law in California.

Join Voices Against Privatizing Public Education’s efforts to repeal the California charter school law

There is a small grass-roots group that has been working diligently to create a ballot proposition to repeal the charter school laws. While a seemingly daunting task, there might not ever be another chance to do this before the privatizers eliminate public schools altogether (Eli Broad just announced his plans to cut LAUSD’s public schools in half). The group has an online petition that now has over 600 signatures. They also have a facebook group. (Open the link.)

Ballot Initiative to REPEAL the CA Charter School Act of 1992

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

Most importantly…