Peter Greene responds to the NEA resolution. Calling for Arne Duncan to resign. he first deals with the debate on Twitter, about who would replace Arne Duncan. The assumption behind the discussion is that President Obama has no idea what Duncan has been doing and that when he finds out, Duncan will be ousted.
Greene quite rightly points out that Duncan is doing exactly what the President wants. Were he to leave, which is unlikely, he would be replaced by someone as committed to high-stakes testing, privatization, closing schools, and undermining the teaching profession as Duncan. A likely replacement: Ted Mitchell, the newly appointed Undersecretary of Education, was most recently the CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, the epicenter of privatization and anti-public school activism. Then there is always Michelle Rhee, whom the President and Duncan have lauded.
In a recent online discussion, it was argued by one voice that the public schools have failed, because they don’t teach independent thinking.
However, I disagreed.
Evidence that the public schools work well—just not the way the one percent wants—comes from several surveys where the opinions of the top one percent are not included, because they can’t be reached.
I mean, if you wanted to call Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family or the Koch brothers, and ask them questions to a survey, how easy would that be? It’s obvious that the responses to surveys do not come from the one percent but from the 99 percent who are easier to reach.
Therefore, if anyone really want to know if the public schools do the job they are supposed to do, stop looking at standardized test results and look at the product of the public schools—that product is the majority of American adults and what they think reveals a lot about what they learned in the public schools when they were children.
What explains the public’s 77-percent approval rating of the Nation’s Public Schools?
From Gallup we discover that while the nation’s public schools only earn an 18-percent approval rating, 77 percent of parents gave the public schools their children attended an A or B grade indicating the real quality of the public schools, because how can parents honestly grade the rest of the nation’s public schools when their children have never attended them?
But Red State.com reports that “Bill Gates spent hundreds of millions to get unions, businesses, think tanks and states on board with Common Core standards developed by people who have no business being involved with the education of children.”
Gallup says, “No fewer than two in three Americans want the U.S. to put more emphasis on producing domestic energy using solar power (76%), wind (71%), and natural gas (65%). Far fewer want to emphasize the production of oil (46%) and the use of nuclear power (37%). Least favored is coal, with about one in three Americans wanting to prioritize its domestic production.”
Creationism versus Evolution
The National Center for Science Education reports that 64 percent of adults with less than a high school education believe in creationism while only 31 percent of college graduates do.
Did you get that—64 percent of Americans with less than a high school education believe in creationism? It’s obvious that ignorance leads to a lot of wrong-headed thinking.
Conclusion: I think the problem is ignorance and/or poverty in addition to elite private schools where the children of the rich, powerful, and famous learn that whatever they want, they can buy it—but the public schools teach the majority of children, who do not come from wealth, how to think independently through critical thinking and problem solving.
The one percent—of course—can’t accept that, and the public schools must go and be replaced by schools the one percent controls so the schools stop teaching children how to think independently and, instead, turns them into drones.
I wonder if it’s time to bring out the pitchforks and sharpen the guillotine, and then let’s invite the one percent to a party. Is the U.S. ready for its second independence day yet?
_______________________
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).
Occasionally, an e-mail arrives in my overcrowded inbox—like one did today—from an author asking me to review a book, and 99.9 percent of the time I say no. Then I offer advice on where to seek reviews from what I have learned since I launched my first title in December 2007.
Does that mean I don’t read books? Of course I read books. I have exactly sixteen very patient tree-books waiting on my bedside table. Some have been waiting to be read for months. I also have four audio books (on CDs) waiting for me to review. These days, I read more books with my ears than my eyes.
Hint—ask avid readers for reviews who don’t write books. The odds of hearing a yes might be better.
The reason why I don’t accept 99.9 percent of books authors ask me to review is due to the fact that I’m usually…
When will there be a leader in the United States from a major party who will step up and fight President Obama’s administration that is obviously destroying the best education system in the world? What happens to the United States when its public schools and public colleges are gone and replaced by private sector, for profit Charter schools riddled with fraud and incompetent teachers who don’t stay long enough to gain the experience to teach effectively?
Up until now, we thought that American higher education was the best in the world. That’s why students come from all over the world to attend our colleges and universities.
But wait! There is an OECD test that shows our college graduates don’t know much. That supposedly proves we need more tests, more regulation, motte evaluations.
I know this much, if this program had been around when I was a kid, who was born to poverty and grew up in poverty as a child, I’d probably hate reading, and today I’m an avid reader because there were books that I enjoyed reading offered in the public schools that I attended.
Katherine Crawford-Garrett, a literacy professor at the University of New Mexico,wrote on this blog about how the rating system used by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) affected her own ability to assign readings; her dean warned her that her syllabus might offend them. After her post appeared, it was criticized by Arthur McKee, who directed the NCTQ review of teacher preparation institutions. He ridiculed Crawford-Garrett for ignoring “the science of reading.”
This is Crawford-Garrett’s response to McKee.
Dear Dr. McKee,
I just read your response to the blog entry I posted on Diane Ravitch’s website earlier this week. I interpret your response to mean that you are, perhaps, paying attention to the onslaught of critique your organization is receiving.
I decided to reply in the interest of exposing yet another layer of inaccuracies put forth by NCTQ about the teaching of reading.
This is a terrific article by Steve Nelson. I wish I could republish it in full but that is not allowed.
He actually says that wat is called reform is “a national delusion.”
He writes:
“As I watch the education “debate” in America I wonder if we have simply lost our minds. In the cacophony of reform chatter — online programs, charter schools, vouchers, testing, more testing, accountability, Common Core, value-added assessments, blaming teachers, blaming tenure, blaming unions, blaming parents — one can barely hear the children crying out: “Pay attention to us!”
“None of the things on the partial list above will have the slightest effect on the so-called achievement gap or the supposed decline in America’s international education rankings. Every bit of education reform — every think tank remedy proposed by wet-behind-the-ears MBAs, every piece of legislation, every one of these things — is an excuse to continue…
The answer, with exceptions: profits and money and union-busting, all rolled in one.
Take Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark. At least $20 million went to consultants. Consultants!
Sirota writes:
“But, of course, a lot of corporate execs working for the firms who got Zuckerberg’s money did indeed personally profit off the pro-charter-school campaign. Additionally, in states where charter schools are for-profit enterprises, there are even more business interests with personal financial stakes in undermining traditional public education. And, again, there are all the profits inherent in the aforementioned tax credits. Meanwhile, there’s the whole anti-union element to the charter school movement. As any political consultant for a business group knows, if you get union-free charter schools to replace traditional public education, you damage the public sector unions – aka one of the few…
Just because the First Amendment of the United States protects a free press and free speech from government censorship doesn’t mean what we read or hear from the media is the truth. Inf act, today, most of the traditional media is full of propaganda and misleading claims. The war against public education is the perfect example.
Few things are worse than mainstream media coverage of education.
Except for that sentence above, which stretches hyperbole beyond credibility.
But that is exactly where the mainstream media finds itself when covering education. Journalists, in their quest to maintain the traditional commitment to “fair and balanced” journalism [1], consistently endorse and perpetuate organizations without credibility (such as NCTQ) and baseless claims (such as cries of “bad” teacher, “bad” teacher certification, and “bad” unions).
Who is funding the war on public education, teachers and labor unions?
Michael Dobie, an editorial writer at Long Island’s Newsday asked, “Who gets a 4 percent raise these days?” He was complaining about teacher pay—that teachers were paid too much.
In this post, I will answer Dobie’s question.
Bill Gates, for one. In 2012, his net worth was estimated at $66 billion. In 2014, it was $80.7 Billion. That’s an increase of $14.7 Billion or 22.2% of what he was worth in 2012.
In addition, Think Progress.org reports that “From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.” Divide that 33 year period into 725 percent and the average increase of CEO pay was almost 22 percent annually, and Dobie was complaining in his Newsday OpEd piece about teachers who got a 4 percent annual raise—1.7 percent lower than the growth in worker compensation.
Then The State of Working America.org reported: “From 1983 to 2010, 38.3 percent of the wealth growth went to the top 1 percent and 74.2 percent to the top 5 percent. The bottom 60 percent, meanwhile, suffered a decline in wealth.”
For a comparison, according to CNN.com, “median household income fell slightly to $51,017 a year in 2012, down from $51,100 in 2011 — a change the Census Bureau does not consider statistically significant.”
What is the medium pay of public school teachers compared to the national median household income?
Salary.com reports: the bottom 10% of teachers earn $39,627 annually. The top 10% earns $68,273. The median was $52,380.
Let’s also look closely at what Congress pays itself. In fact, they gave themselves a raise in 2013. How would you like to have the power to give yourself a raise?
“The annual salary of members of (the do nothing but say no) Congress will rise from $174,000 to $174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House and Senate majority leader, will likewise get an increase.” They also get an allowance beyond the salary, and in 2012, individual representatives received MRA allowances ranging from $1,270,129 to $1,564,613, with an average of $1,353,205.13. In the Senate, the average SOPOEA allowance is $3,209,103, with individual accounts ranging from $2,960,716 to $4,685,632, depending on the population of the senators’ states.
But teachers don’t have an expense account. They pay out of their own pocket. The Journal.com reports: “Teachers Spend $1.3 Billion Out of Pocket on Classroom Materials.” And I know a teacher who pays a retired teacher $25 an hour to help him keep up with correcting student work. He doesn’t have the time, because he is required to call the parents of his 150 – 170 students every night to remind them their child has homework.
Hey, Dobie, before you kick a teacher again, look at Bill Gates, a member of the top 1%, and Congress and think about who really deserves your boot in the butt.
_______________________
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).
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“Half of all African-American male dropouts are concentrated in 660 high schools.” But there are 24,544 public secondary schools in the United States. Those drop out factories mentioned in this post represent 2.68% of the total number of secondary public schools. And because of that small number, the fake education reformers want to do away with public education across the board and replace them with opaque, private-sector, corporate, profit-driven charter schools that throw out the same kids who end up dropping out of the public schools.
Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University, in an article in the New York Times, offers some sensible and proven ideas about how to cut dropouts among the most vulnerable students.
The likely dropouts can be identified as early as sixth grade, he writes, by attendance, behavior, and course performance.
Half of all African-American male dropouts are concentrated in 660 high schools. “These 660 schools are typically big high schools that teach only poor kids of color. They are concentrated in 15 states. Many are in major cities, but others are in smaller, decaying industrial cities or in the South, especially in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina.”
Once identified, they should get the extra attention, support, and help they need so that they will stay in school and keep up with their peers and eventually graduate.
“In 2008, my colleagues and I decided to focus on those struggling sixth and…
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 