You may not know this, but there a war going that’s designed to destroy the democratically run public schools in the United States that really aren’t broken and don’t need to be reformed. They need some help—not much—but not destroyed and shut down.
The public schools that are as transparent as can be.
But the for profit, private sector, corporate run Charter schools that are mostly owned by the fake education reformers who will profit off the tax payer are as opaque as can be.
Read the rest of this post to discover why those fake schools in the profit driven corporate sector must be as transparent as the public schools they want to replace.
In God We Trust? How about a bill that would require charter and cyber schools to post their PA School Performance Profile scores prominently in any advertising paid for with public tax dollars?
Blogger Rant:
At a recent school board meeting I voted against authorizing a payment to Agora Cyber Charter School. Why? During the NCLB regime, Agora never once made AYP; this year their PA School Performance Profile Score was 48.3 (scale of 100). In my district, our Middle School score was 94; our High School score was 96.4. Agora is run by K12, Inc., a for-profit company founded by convicted bond felon Michael Milken. K12 paid it’s CEO $13 million from 2009 through 2013 and spent our tax dollars on over 19,000 local TV commercials. I do not believe Agora should receive one cent of…
In a remarkable job of reporting, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post describes the creation of the Common Core standards. Two men–Gene Wilhoit and David Coleman–went to see Bill Gates in 2008 to ask him to underwrite national standards. He agreed, and within two years, the standards were written and adopted by almost every state in the nation.
This is the closest thing to an educational coup in the history of the United States. Our education system is made up of about 14,000 local school districts; most education policy is set at the state level. But Bill Gates was able to underwrite a swift revolution. It happened so quickly that there was very little debate or discussion. Almost every consequential education group was funded by the Gates Foundation to study or promote the Common Core standards. Whereas most businesses would conduct pilot testing of a major new product, there…
The fake education reform (greed fed insanity) movement steals teachers from other countries; then treats them like indentured servants or slaves, who, out of fear of being sent home, never stop paying, while Teach for America (TFA) invades other countries with its cancerous educational theories and practices.
This is an amazing story, written by investigative reporter George Joseph. It seems there are recruitment agencies that go to other nations, the Philippines especially, hire good teachers, charge outrageous placement fees, and send them to work in American schools.
He writes:
“Between 2007 and 2009, 350 Filipino teachers arrived in Louisiana, excited for the opportunity to teach math and science in public schools throughout the state. They’d been recruited through a company called Universal Placement International Inc., which professes on its website to “successfully place teachers in different schools thru out [sic] the United States.” As a lawsuit later revealed, however, their journey through the American public school system was fraught with abuse.
“According to court documents, Lourdes Navarro, chief recruiter and head of Universal Placement, made applicants pay a whopping $12,550 in interview and “processing fees” before they’d even left the Philippines. But the exploitation didn’t stop…
As you watch this video and roar in laughter as I did, ask yourself this question: How many White House shares has President Obama sold to corporations and billionaires? I think anyone who doesn’t laugh profits off the cable companies in some way.
Next: How do we get John Oliver to take on Obama’s Machiavellian Common Core agenda to destroy America’s public schools and torture the teachers all while a tsunami of private sector Charter school fraud and lies floods the country?
Let’s keep Net Neutrality and end Common Core!
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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!”
But this is Obama, Arne Duncan and Bill Gate’s favorite way to fight poverty. Spend billions on Ed Tech but not one more cent for schools and early childhood education programs for children living in poverty. Do you think speeding billions for Apple iPads will take a child from poverty and motivate them to work harder in school so they grow up and join the middle class?
I worked with children who lived in poverty for thirty years and I know an Apple iPad will not change anything. All the iPad will become is an expensive toy—another form of TV to distract children from reading and doing homework. In fact, I was born to poverty and grew up as a child in poverty. I know!
“Educational outcomes are one of the key areas influenced by family incomes. Children from low-income families often start school already behind their peers who come from more affluent families, as shown in measures of school readiness. The incidence, depth, duration and timing of poverty all influence a child’s educational attainment, along with community characteristics and social networks. However, both Canadian and international interventions have shown that the effects of poverty can be reduced using sustainable interventions. Paediatricians and family doctors have many opportunities to influence readiness for school and educational success in primary care settings.”
Where does America rank in early childhood education programs? Watch the video and find out.
An Apple iPad does not equal high quality material that may be used in the classroom. That choice must be left up to teachers—not politicians or billionaires like Bill Gates.
Caitlin Emmaof Politico.com paid a visit to Finland and was surprised to discover that teachers are not depending on educational technology. By contrast, American schools are spending billions of dollars on tablets, laptops, and other devices.
She writes:
“Finnish students and teachers didn’t need laptops and iPads to get to the top of international education rankings, said Krista Kiuru, minister of education and science at the Finnish Parliament. And officials say they aren’t interested in using them to stay there.
“That’s in stark contrast to what reformers in the U.S. say. From President Barack Obama on down, they have called education technology critical to improving schools. By shifting around $2 billion in existing funds and soliciting $2 billion in contributions from private companies, the Obama administration is pressing to expand schools’ access to broadband and the devices that thrive on it.
“School districts nationwide have loaded up students with…
Discover how the traditional media is doing all it can to cover up the truth about Obama’s Machiavellian Common Core and discredit the democratic resistance, and is there a link between Bill Gates billions and this propaganda?
It is getting to be a dizzying experience to read about the Common Core on the Néw York Times. When Motoko Rich reported from Tennessee, she found an unlikely left-right alliance questioning the standards. A few days later, and the familiar script is back in place: only the far right opposes this fine experiment.
Once again, Mike Petrilli is trotted out to defend them. This seems to be his job now.
No mention of the early childhood experts who oppose them or the critics of high stakes testing or computer graded tests or standardization or the Chicago Teachers Union or Carol Burris or Anthony Cody or any number of credible, non-Tea Party critics.
It would be refreshing to learn in the Times which groups have received millions from the Gates Foundation to support the CCSS.
It is not because they get better results. They don’t.
It is not because they save money. They don’t.
They are very effective at busting unions. Nearly 90% of the nation’s charters are non-union. This makes possible a flexible workforce that works long hours, accepts whatever pay management wants to pay, and makes no demands.
Last week Vanderbilt hosted an education writers seminar. It was a pretty big deal. Such a big a deal that it brought Arne Duncan to town. Arne spent some time making appearances with his good buddy Kevin Huffman touting all the wonderful things that Mr Huffman was responsible for in Tennessee. There were quite a few quotable quotes dropped. My favorite was, “The biggest challenge of our nation isn’t the knowledge side of things but the courage. There is a courage gap.” That’s the one that got me thinking.
The more I thought about it, the more I saw its relevance. You know holding children accountable is very difficult. I’ve got a three year old and a 4 year old in my household, so this is a constant running battle. My wife and I attach a great deal of importance to instilling accountability in them. Its important to us that they understand actions have…
Here’s more evidence that the fake education reform movement in the United States and the international PISA test are both frauds. After two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that lifted limits on political campaign contributions so the wealthiest Americans can buy the U.S. government, there may be only one country left on the earth that billionaire oligarchs like Bill Gates, the Walton family, the Koch brothers and American Hedge Fund billionaires can’t buy. To discover the answer, watch the video and read the rest of this post.
What Does the PISA Test really reveal about U.S. Public Education?
Guess who may be dropping out of the PISA?
China
Here’s a piece that appeared in The Washington Post on May 26, 2014: “No. 1 Shanghai may drop out of PISA”:
The Washington Post says: “First in 2009 and then in 2012, Shanghai’s 15-year-old students (or, rather, a supposed representative group) were No. 1 in the world on the recent Program for International Student Assessment reading, math and science exams. But now, according to a popular Shanghai newspaper, Shanghai is considering dropping out of PISA. Why?
“According to the article, explained in the following post by scholar Yong Zhao, Shanghai officials want to de-emphasize standardized test scores, homework and rote learning that has characterized Chinese education. And PISA, which is sponsored by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, emphasizes standardized test scores.
“Last year, China began a major education reform initiative designed to increase student engagement and end student boredom and anxiety — and reduce the importance of standardized test scores.”
<strong>Imagine that, China moving away from raising generations of robots while the Western Democracies, with the exception of Finland, are moving toward standard thinking and behavior</strong>. Who would have thought?
Finland’s poverty rate is less than 5%. In the U.S., poverty is 23% or almost ten times the total population of Finland.
What does the PISA results reveal about poverty?
Professor Robert Lingard compares Australia and New Zealand with a focus on poverty and reveals the truth.
When the OECD releases the PISA report every three years, many people use the ranking to claim public education in the U.S. is failing and push their corporate education reform agenda. But looking at the data, lessons that can be learned from the highest performing countries point in a completely different direction. Watch the first video again, and again, and ….
You may be wondering why the GOP was included in the title of this post. Ask yourself, why Republicans haven’t said a word about the fake education reform movement that started with President G. W. Bush, is being driven by his brother Jeb Bush and supported by the Obama Administration and Arne Dunan, appointed by Obama, as the Secretary of the Department of Education.
And if you are having trouble shaking off the lies that only the tea party people are protesting Obama’s Machiavellian Common Core standardization of the United States public education system, visit Education Bloggers Network or Diane Ravitch, and discover how many tea baggers there are among these professionals.
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!”
Don’t read me wrong as you read this post. There are some great administrators in the public schools but some are horrible and in this post you will meet a few.
The problem is that the incompetent administrators don’t think they’re incompetent—they think everyone else is. Imagine a school with a hundred teachers and one really bad principal and he thinks most of the teachers don’t know what they are doing so he tells them what to do and that advice backfires. Who do you think gets blamed for that principal’s failure?
In addition, school boards are elected and sometimes some can be misguided and ignorant, and it doesn’t help when the district administration is just as bad or worse.
It’s actually easy to identify the incompetent administrators if you know what to look for. With 13,600 public school districts in the U.S. and more than 1,000 of them in California where I taught for thirty years, it makes sense that some would eventually end up being managed by idiots who would make Hitler, Mao and Stalin envious.
My first full-time teaching job started in 78-79 when Ralph Pagan, my first principal, hired me one summer and asked me to drive from Chicago to Southern California by Monday. The call came 48 hours before the school year started, and we drove straight through only stopping for gas. That was quite a drive.
The first three years before that phone call, (75-78), I was a full-time, paid intern (75-76), and then a substitute for the next two years in seven school districts.
I think Ralph Pagan was a genius, and he spoiled me. He managed Giano Intermediate like the schools in Finland by turning the school over to the teachers and together with Ralph’s support we turned a school that had a bad reputation and was considered one of the most dangerous schools in California’s San Gabriel Valley into a success story.
Ralph supported the teacher teams on just about every decision made on discipline and curriculum, and he ran interference between district administration and teachers—but we didn’t know that until after he had his heart attack/stroke. The pressure the idiots who worked in the district office caused for Ralph with their incompetence must have been intense to almost kill him and land him in the hospital.
Until I retired in 2005, the few highly placed district administrators in Rowland who managed the district were incompetent, because no matter what language was used to describe how the district was managed, teachers weren’t part of the decision making process. We were usually told what to do by someone who worked in the district office and if that often no-choice mandate didn’t work, teachers got the blame for the failure even if they had never liked what they were forced to do.
In addition, I walked picked lines more than once when the district had more than enough money to cut class size and increase pay to keep up with the cost of living, but the district fought us almost every time we negotiated a new contract. I’ve been out of the classroom now almost ten years, and I have no idea what the elected Rowland Unified school board is like or if the top district administration is competent and fair. I hope so. The teachers deserve the best, and they also deserve to be part of making major decisions that reach into the classroom and affect kids. If a majority of teachers don’t like a curriculum or program that administration is in love with, that program shouldn’t be used.
In this post, I want to shine a spotlight on Chino Valley Unified School District in Southern California. A former colleague-teacher and friend of mine, who once worked at Nogales in Rowland Unified—until he couldn’t stand the incompetent decisions micromanagers out of the district office were making that hurt teachers and kids—left to teach in Chino where he was happy until recent years. Once you watch the video, you’ll know how to identify incomplete public school leadership from the elected school board to the top administration.
My friend wrote in his e-mail: “I thought you might want to read about the sad state of negotiations in my district (The Chino Valley Unified School District). Of course, you experienced this type of negotiating in the Rowland Unified School District when you were teaching. Feel free to use this information in your Crazy Normal blog.”
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His 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!”
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 