Veteran journalist Bob Braun reports that Cami Anderson–the Christie administration’s state-appointed superintendent in Newark (and a graduate of Teach for America)–may lay off 700 Newark teachers and replace many or most of them with TFA.
He writes:
“The state administration of the Newark Public Schools (NPS) is expected to lay off hundreds of experienced city teachers and replace many with new hires, including more than 300 members of Teach for America (TFA). The report comes from union sources but is supported both by the latest version of the state’s “One Newark” plan and by the Walton Family Foundation website. The foundation is expected to subsidize the hiring of the new teachers.
“The NPS has not responded to requests for information or confirmation or denial of previous reports that Cami Anderson, the state-appointed superintendent of Newark schools, will ask outgoing state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf to waive seniority rights of hundreds…
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest marriage of neo-liberal and neo-conservative corporate hijacking of freedom in the history of our nation.
“Education may be the hardest civil rights fight of all,” Gates said. “Discrimination is harder to prove and people often don’t know what levers to pull to fix the problem.”
Dear Bill and Melinda,
The minds of Americans are on Martin Luther King, Jr. today. The fact is, your corporate education reforms are all a terrible undoing of all that Martin Luther King, Jr. worked for, sacrificed for, organized for, and ultimately lost his life for in the summer of 1968. So what has happened to Dr. King’s dream?
I wonder,what if corporate reformers re-wrote Dr. King’s, “I Have a Dream” speech to create their own version? Deconstructing Dr. King’s famous speech, here is what we are witnessing across America — as corporate reformers have engaged in the unholy marriage between non-partisan neoliberals and neoconservatives — through the wedded ring of BIG business.
Another example of failed corporate public school reform.
“The Columbus Dispatch reported in September 2013 that nearly 84,000 Ohio students, or roughly 87 percent of the state’s charter-school students, attend a charter ranked D or F by the state. For comparison, 75% of public schools were rated C or better. Since 1997, roughly 30% of the charter schools have closed and their median life is 4 years. “
Money for Education Misplaced If Ohio legislators truly want the best education for all children then why are most public school students from third to tenth graders required to take 17 standardized tests, written by a variety of educational vendors, while private school students take one, the OGT?
Why is the state of Ohio giving tax credit scholarships for some students to attend one of at least 20 private schools that teach creationism and the age of the Earth to be between 6-10,000 years old?
Why are legislators defunding public schools to handover nearly a billion dollars annually to for profit businesses to manage charter schools?
The Columbus Dispatch reported in September 2013 that nearly 84,000 Ohio students, or roughly 87 percent of the state’s charter-school students, attend a charter ranked D or F by the state. For comparison, 75% of public schools were rated…
Conservatives are the loudest critics of public education, so let’s see if their governance lives up to their claims by looking at the ten best and worst public schools by state.
Education Week issues annual state report cards based on six areas of educational policy and performance on a 100 point scale. The score for the final grade will be in parenthesis behind each state. (edweek.org)
The ten states with the worst public schools:
Nevada (65.7), New Mexico (66.6), Mississippi (68.9), Louisiana (69.9), Arizona (70.2), West Virginia (71.6), Arkansas (71.8), Alabama (72), Oklahoma (72.2), California (72.4), and South Carolina (72.6).
Six of the states with the worst public schools are controlled by the Republican Party (GOP):
Two—West Virginia and California—were controlled by Democrats.
Political control of New Mexico is split between a GOP governor and the Democratic controlled State Senate (28D – 14R) and House (37D – 33R).
Arkansas has a Democratic governor while the State Senate (21R – 14D) and the House (51R – 48D) is controlled by the GOP.
Next, the 10 states with the best public schools:
Massachusetts (91.4), New Jersey (88.2), New Hampshire (88), Connecticut (87.5), Minnesota (87.3), North Dakota (86.9), Vermont (86.4), Maryland (85.9), Virginia (84.8), and Iowa (84.2).
Virginia’s governor and lieutenant governor are Democrats, the state Senate is split evenly and the state House is controlled by more than 2 to 1 by Republicans.
In New Hampshire, the state Senate is controlled by the GOP by a slim margin (13 R to 11D) but the governor is a Democrat and the state House is controlled by the Democrats by a (221D [55%] to 179R [45%])
New Jersey has a GOP governor, Chris Christie (who’s a declared critic and enemy of public schools and is doing all he can to turn New Jersey’s successful public schools over to private sector profiteers and robber barons—the wolves of Sesame Street) but the Democrats control both the state Senate (24D to 15R) and General Assembly (24D to 16R). Note that four of the previous governors were Democrats and the state has voted for Democratic presidents for the last twenty-two years. Christi is a popular governor who won 60% of the vote in November 2013. The Democratic challenger had 38% of the vote.
Six of the best states for public education are controlled by the Democratic party: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Maryland.
Two states: North Dakota (clearly controlled by GOP for 119 of the last 125 years) and Iowa (where the Democrats have a slight majority in the State Senate—26D – 24R) is controlled by the GOP, but Iowa was controlled by the Democrats from 2006 to 2011 and the state went with Barack Obama in the last two presidential elections.
In conclusion, the GOP’s score is 6 of the worst state and 2 of the best, compared to Democrats with 6 of the best and 2 of the worst. This indicates that the GOP’s policies regarding public education earned a 25% Fail compared to a 75% C for the Democrats.
In addition—if you think this one issue isn’t enough—this isn’t the only comparison where the GOP’s political agendas seem to fail when compared to the Democrats.
In another post—Conservative Red versus Liberal Blue–a new way to see politics in America—published August 22, 2012, the GOP governed 15 of the 20 states with the most obesity; 8 of the top 10 states listed as the most racist; 7 of the 8 most politically corrupt states; 7 of the 10 most violent states; only 2 of the top 10 least violent states, and 2 of the 10 smartest states.
In fact, GOP presidents from Eisenhower (1953 – 1963) to G. W. Bush (2001 – 2008) added almost $11 Trillion to the national debt compared to $256.5 Billion for Democratic Presidents—not counting Obama because he’s still in office and inherited two wars from President G. W. Bush, and the biggest financial disaster and increase in unemployment since the Great Depression.
Knowing what you know now, who party do you trust to run the states and America and why?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
This article by Michael Brenner, a professor of international relations at the University of Pittsburgh, is a trenchant summary of the relentless attack on public education launched by the Obama administration and backed by billions of federal and private dollars.
Brenner begins:
“A feature of the Obama presidency has been his campaign against the American public school system, eating way at the foundations of elementary education. That means the erosion of an institution that has been one of the keystones of the Republic. The project to remake it as a mixed public/private hybrid is inspired by a discredited dogma that charter schools perform better. This article of faith serves an alliance of interests — ideological and commercial — for whom the White House has been point man. A President whose tenure in office is best known for indecision, temporizing and vacillation has been relentless since day one in using the…
Red all about “The Wolf of Sesame Street” and the plot to fire all public school teachers in the Untied States; then turn over the public school to corporations for profit.
In today’s world, language often means the opposite of what it says. We must deconstruct everything we read.
A “reformer” is someone who wants not to “reform” public schools but to replace them with privately managed schools, sometimes operated for-profit or by non-educators making exorbitant salaries.
“Pension reform” these days means someone has a plan to get rid of your pension if you are a public-sector worker.
“Turnaround” means that someone in D.C. decided that everyone…
When, in the course of a teaching career, it becomes essential to break from excessively rational beliefs and schemes and to begin thinking openly and freely, disregarding the dictatorial influences of political hacks, the insidious prodding of education gurus and the bleating of complacent peers, it is necessary that the thinking educator admonish the world with the whys and wherefores of their intended independence from those scourges of productive learning, Corporations and their Behaviorist lackeys.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that education is best described as a journey, not a destination; that education is not a medicine or treatment to be inflicted upon learners; that a partnership between willing learner, skilled teacher, and supportive guardian forms the foundation of productive education; and that a democratic society sustains itself by practice of its ideals within the educational environment. Numerous corporations and anti-public education fronts—including, but not limited…
Bill Phillis, leader of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition, is a dedicated advocate for equitable funding of public schools. He reports here that charter schools–many of which are very low-performing–receive nearly $1 billion a year.
He writes:
Total payment to charter schools is $903,344,671.24 as of the January 2014 report. This is a one-year figure.
Ohio has spent $1.4 billion on charters that never received a C or higher on the report card and/or scores below the average performance index score for Big 8 Urban buildings.
Initial estimates show that Ohio has spent about $1 billion on charters that have closed for a variety of reasons since the 2002-2003 school year, only 25% of that can be attributed to charters that were…
In a republic and/or democracy where eligible adults vote, the majority of voters decides who wins seats in Congress, and when elected—representing the people—Congress votes on bills/laws; the majority wins.
This is how it works in Congress. This is even how it works in the Electoral College during presidential elections—the presidential candidate who wins the majority of votes in the Electoral College becomes president. It doesn’t matter who wins the popular vote.
For instance, when President G. W. Bush was 1st elected, everyone didn’t vote for him. In the 2000 presidential election Bush had 271 electoral votes to Al Gore’s 266; more than 51 million Americans voted for Gore but their candidate lost and those voters had to live with President Bush for four years—the man they didn’t vote for.
Then in 2004, Bush won the White House a second time with 286 electoral votes to John Kerry’s 251; more than 59 million Americans voted for Kerry; they didn’t get the president they wanted.
That’s the way a democracy works, but that’s not what’s happening in the United States today when it comes to public school reform.
Teachers Union Exposed, an anti-teacher website, thinks it’s wrong that the two teacher unions should pay for lobbyists to represent the majority of their union members in Washington D.C. Their reason: a minority of teachers don’t agree with political activity of the two unions.
Teachers Union Exposed claims “Unions don’t reflect members’ politics. … Over the last 20 years, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has given more than $28 million in campaign contributions; the National Education Association (NEA) has given almost $31 million.”
Teachers Union Exposed (I wonder who is behind this Website) points out that looking at polling data from the 2003 National Education Study, only 51 percent of teachers who are also union members identify as Democrats. The rest identify as Republicans (25 percent) or Independents (24 percent)” … and the “Harris Interactive poll from 2003 showed that 83 percent of Republican teacher union members felt that the union was more liberal than they were.”
How many Republican teachers are there? The NEA has 3.2 million members and the AFT 1.5 million. Do the math and that means 970 thousand (20.6%) of the 4.7 million teachers felt the union was more liberal than they were.
Big deal! How many Americans felt that President G. W. Bush was more conservative than they were? The same question could be asked about President Obama: how many Americans feel that he isn’t as conservative as they are?
It’s an established fact that in a democracy elected leaders can’t please everyone. But what happens when someone who isn’t elected spends money to influence the government and elections?
I’m talking about corporate oligarchs. Throughout history, oligarchies have been tyrannical (relying on public obedience and/or oppression to exist) or relatively benign, and corporations are run by CEOs who are not democratically elected.
For instance, Diane Ravitch posted Researchers Reveal Funding Network for Washington Charter Law and exposed the undue influence of oligarchs in an election. Ravitch says, “a small number of very wealthy individuals and organizations bought a policy of their choosing. This subverts democracy. It subverts the principle of one man, one vote. These are not reformers. They are plutocrats who use their vast wealth to buy what they want.”
The Ravitch post is long but worth reading. To keep it short, the plutocrats Ravitch writes about spent more than $35 million on one campaign in Washington State to support a YES vote on proposition 1240 in 2012—legislation that would benefit private sector charter schools paid for by taxpayers. Voters in Washington state had defeated similar propositions three times in the past, but the oligarchs refused to give up.
For a comparison, the leaders of the democratically run teacher unions spent $59 million over twenty years representing the majority of their members—who elected them to run the unions—in Washington D.C. That breaks down to $2.95 million annually, but the oligarchs spent more than $35 million for one proposition in one state.
Therefore, why is it okay for these alleged tyrants to spend fortunes to influence and manipulate voters but if the democratically elected labor unions that represents millions of teachers do it with a lot less money, it’s wrong?
In fact, one of the oligarchs, Bill Gates, has spent about $200 million to turn public schools over to corporations—private sector schools the taxpayers support.
That means one day the13,600 public school districts in the United States with more than 90,000 school teaching over 50 million children run by democratically elected school boards might vanish and America’s children would be turned over to billionaire oligarchs who run/own corporations. To discover how much Gates and his billionaire oligarch partners stand to gain from privatization of the public schools, click Big data and schools: Education nirvana or privacy nightmare?
In her post Ravitch listed about 20 oligarchs who donated money directly—or through nonprofit foundations the oligarchs financially support—to insure proposition 1240 passed and it did by a slim margin of 50.69% to 49.31%.
Who do you really think represents the interests of most Americans and their children: 4.7 million teachers—willing to die to protect children—who elect their union leaders, or 20 (alleged tyrants) billionaire oligarchs—protected by private security?
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winningRunning with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
The author Robert Zubrin scanned the state’s tables ranking schools based in large part on test scores. And this was his amazing discovery:
“So, does this testing data, acquired at great expense in both money and class time, tell us which schools are doing their job and which are performing poorly? Not at all. Rather, what really jumps out of the data is the extremely strong relationship between school rank and student family income. This correlation is so strong that it is possible to predict the rank of the school in advance with fair accuracy just by using a simple formula that multiples its percentage of low-income students by 4 and subtracts 20….
“In short, what we have managed to learn is that the children of doctors and lawyers do better on standardized tests than the children of…
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 