Say I didn’t just read that Chicago Board of Education Members, Henry Bienen and Mahalia Hines, were making fun of an impassioned parent who chose to speak up for her children and their teachers … ?
Really ? Really ?
So, while Rousemary Vega, Chicago parent, is pleading for her children in the space of under two minutes, while she is fighting for the rights of students and teachers everywhere, the right to speak up and be heard … they mock her? They turn and ridicule her?
I am a teacher. When we see that kind of behavior in the classroom, we are obligated to address it. If it continues, prolonged, it is an indicator of bullying. And, even from way down here in Florida, this teacher can call their behavior exactly what it is … bullying.
The New York Daily News reports that the revolt among the state tests is growing among parents. State officials are doing whatever they can to tamp down the parent rebellion against the state’s obsession with testing. No one at the State Education Department ever speaks of the “joy of learning,” as New York City Chancellor Carmen Farina did when her appointment was announced. The state department seems to be filled with statisticians, bean counters, technocrats, and bureaucrats who never read for fun, never enjoyed learning, don’t like learning. They love data. Data fill them with joy.
“…The revolt against the education overlords in Albany was gathering steam Thursday as parent organizers at Public School 368 in Harlem said they will not subject their kids to the annual English Language Arts (ELA) and math exams that begin next week.
Kimberly Casteline, whose 8-year-old son attends the school, said the tests…
Anthony Cody wonders why corporate education reformers hate democracy. They love mayoral control, but only if the mayor agrees with their privatization agenda. They hate local school boards, because they are elected and can be removed.
They love private corporate control. They work to enact ALEC’s goal of removing local control from communities.
Democracy is too messy. The reformers know how to buy mayors and legislatures. Campaign contributions do the job. But the problem with democracy is that voters are unpredictable. The “reformers” can’t buy them, although the reformers can spend millions to flood the airwaves with attack ads, and they own most of the mainstream media. Think Murdoch. Think Education Nation.
Think Reed Hastings, the billionaire who owns Netflix. He let the cat out of the bag in a recent speech, which Cody quotes and links to.
Cody asks:
“Reed Hastings was right about one thing. If you go…
Politicians in Florida are dysfunctional, petty and cruel.
When the story of the infliction of a mandated high stakes testing on a dying, blind, brain damaged child with cerebral palsy, Ethan Rediske, finally received full national attention, Ethan had just died. His mother, Andrea, had previously written a simple and clear letter prior to his death requesting that the insane demands by the Florida Board of Education and the State of Florida cease. The letter was included in the news coverage.
Ethan’s mom was then slammed by some members of the press for even attempting to opt-out of the test. Less than a month after Ethan’s death, Florida Secretary of Education Pam Stewart sent a letter to all of the state’s teachers demeaning Ethan’s mom without mentioning Ethan or Andrea by name. A law, Ethan’s Law, was introduced in order to simply exempt children such as Ethan from being subjected…
Say no to those who want to monetize our children!
Here is a report from Bob Schaeffer of Fairtest:
Anyone who still believes that the resistance to testing misuse and overuse is confined to a few big cities and “liberal” activists, should click through this week’s news clips. In fact, testing protests are spreading across “deep red” states” such as Alaska, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. And “conservative” commentators are speaking out against standardized exam overkill.
Conservatives—studies show they are better organized than liberals—are great at spreading cherry-picked facts (better known as propaganda, lies and misinformation) to fool and confuse America, and I read an example of this recently. I wasn’t sure it was an example until I did some Google digging.
Newsmax.com (March 23, 2014) reported a Fox News Poll that claimed President Obama’s Approval Ratings Keep Sliding. “The Fox poll shows 54% of Americans disapprove of how he has done his job.” Reverse that and he enjoys a 46% approval rating.
But what happens when we compare President Obama’s approval rating with others. For instance, the Republican Party.
Examiner.com reported in January 2014 that “According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 80 percent of Americans don’t trust the Republican Party.” Wow, does that mean only 20% trust them—less than half Obama’s trust factor?
I wonder why neoconservative Rupert Murdock’s Fox News…
Friday night our daughter came home from Stanford for the start of the spring break, and we ended up talking about what’s going on in the war between the Fake Ed Reformers and public education.
During our talk, it was obvious that someone or more than one person at Stanford got to her with the fake reformers message that incompetent teachers are the reason kids are not succeeding in school.
After sleeping on our conversation, I sent this e-mail to her.
There have been reputable, unbiased long term studies that have examined the impact an individual teacher has on a child’s education. These studies prove without a doubt that the fake reformers—and that list includes Bill Gates—is wrong to burden teachers with 100% of the responsibility and blame for the fake reformer manufactured crises.
Bill Gates and the other Fake Ed Reformers are ignoring these studies when they blame and punish all four million+ teachers with their Draconian theories and junk science.
For instance, in 1966, there was a groundbreaking government study—the Coleman Report—that identified that the schools were only responsible for ‘one-third’ of a child’s achievement in school. “Two-thirds” came from outside factors—mostly the home environment and parental influence. The Coleman Report is still—today—the definitive study that explains variable factors that influence a child’s education.
Added Note not in the e-mail: Some of the studies done as part of a re-analysis of Coleman’s data at Harvard reached similar conclusions, suggesting that the best way to improve academic achievement was neither to integrate students nor to offer compensatory programs but, rather, to raise overall family income. … This conclusion became more and more established over time, but policies at the state and federal level nonetheless continued to focus primarily on narrow school-based reforms. (NYSEDgov)
Scroll down to page five, Figure 1: How Much Variance in Student Test Score Gains is Due to Variation Among Teachers?
Haertel says, “Teachers appear to be the most critical within-school influence on student learning, but out-of-school factors have been shown to matter even more. One recent study put the influence of out of school factors at 60% of the variance in student test scores, and the influence of teachers at around 9%.”
I went on: Let’s take that one pull quote of Haertel’s Stanford study and factor in the influence of a single teacher in a child’s education K – 12. It is arguable that a child will have as many as 50 or more teachers in those thirteen years. If we were to divide that 9% up among 50 teachers, that means—on average—each teacher’s influence on the results of a child’s education is 0.18%.
If two of those teachers were incompetent, they are responsible for 0.36%. However, the parents of the average child are responsible for two-thirds or 60% of the influence on a child’s education.
Yet, the Fake Ed Reformers—including Bill Gates—are putting all the responsibility of a child’s education on teachers and punishing every teacher and child with their Draconian methods of reforming education in the United states while ignoring all other factors.
If we were to compute the odds that Bill Gates and his billionaire allies are right and all of those studies for decades are wrong, the odds would be less than 1% that they are right and more than 99% that they are wrong. Are you willing to gamble with those odds?
And Bill Gates has spent about $2.3 Billion dollars promoting his agenda for the Common Core and the testing regime that will benefit Apple Computers and Pearson Publishing, for instance, with billions in profits. How is Bill Gates doing this: by spreading his money from the Gates Foundation far and wide to buy as much political support as possible—even corrupting the presidents of the teacher unions, Congress and the White House. One of the Hedge Fund billionaires even bribed PBS with $3.6 million to produce a report that was favorable to the fake reformers. When that news broke, PBS gave the money back to this Hedge Fund billionaire, but the report had already aired so it was too late to undo the damage to the public’s perception of this issue.
And the Fake Ed Reformers have been blaming teachers for so-called failures in public education (with no valid study to prove this crisis actually exists) for more than thirty years spending billions on PR and false ads. The Walton family started back in the 1970s with the voucher movement, and the Waltons have never stopped their bombardment of public education. They will do anything; say anything to achieve their agenda to privatize education in the United States taking it out of the hands of parents and the 13,600 democratically elected school boards that run the public schools.
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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Rocky Killion, the superintendent of West Lafayette, Indiana, public schools and his film crew created a fabulous documentary about the greatness of teachers, of our kids and our public schools.
They traveled across the nation to interview leading policy experts, and spent lots of time in classrooms interviewing teachers and principals.
They produced “Rise Above the Mark,” which is inspiring. It is about an hour long.
The Chicago Teachers Union is getting politically active on behalf of public education and teachers. It supported candidates who oppose school closings and privatization via charters. Note the lessons: The last one is: “This ain’t Wisconsin.”
Incumbents seeking to erode retirement security in Chicago had better beware
CHICAGO – Throughout this primary season, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has been a strong and vocal advocate for voters on the South and West Sides of Chicago—many of whom have been most impacted by the foolishness of education deformers and pension thieves. It is time to stand up to the predatory corporate and political interests that seek to threaten the economic security of thousands of workers. Incumbents seeking to steal our retirement security, beware.
This just in. On Saturday, the Texas Democratic Party passed the following resolution:
WHEREAS Houston billionaire John Arnold, a hedge-fund manager and former Enron trader, is bankrolling an effort to transform all of the Dallas Independent School District into a so-called “home-rule charter district” that would not be subject to essential safeguards in state law for students, parents, teachers, and citizens of the district;
WHEREAS John Arnold is notorious for funding a nationwide attack on public employees’ pension funds, including state pension funds for school employees, and for funding various efforts to privatize the operation of public schools, including substantial financing of organizations that promote private-school vouchers;
WHEREAS the “home-rule charter district” idea that Arnold wants to impose on Dallas ISD is the brainchild of former Republican state Rep. Kent Grusendorf of Arlington, who managed to insert this option into state law in 1995 as a vehicle for nullifying many…
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 