On May 22, 2015, 12 year old Lacey Slekar stood in front of the Board of Education in her school district and tried to convince the adults in the room that standardized testing is bad for children. Her speech was eloquent, well-organized, and very persuasive. She is a hero for writing and delivering a speech that truly presented the student point of view.
“Lacey wrote a research paper about standardized testing. We had no idea she was doing this until she asked Tim for some advise. She felt very strongly about sharing her findings with the school board. Her teachers encouraged her to read it, so she did. Wow, very proud of our BustED Pencils Student…
There is a very deceptive petition now being circulated by Care2, which customarily promotes worthy causes. This petition asks you to sign if you support education as a civil right.
When you open it, it asks you to support the punitive accountability measures of NCLB, and criticizes the Senate ESEA bill for not including the mandated tough accountability that closed public schools in poor communities, but did not close opportunity gaps.
It says:
“Keep Education Bill’s Civil Rights Promise
23,101 SIGNATURES BY:Loron HaysTARGET:Senate Majority and Minority Leadership and Education Committee Chairs
“The US Senate has passed Every Child Achieves without the equity provisions that are so central to equitable education opportunities for ALL children.
“Without access to educational resources and much needed Title 1 funding, many of America’s children will continue to slip through the cracks. This Ed Week article articulates the concern being raised by some advocacy groups that…
This is one of the enduring questions of our age. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Lab School and so do his children, as well as the children of Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel. When he was tapped to be CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, why didn’t he strive to make public schools as rich in curriculum and opportunities as the Lab School? Why didn’t he take what he knew and experienced and carry that knowledge to the U.S. Department of Education? That would have been not just “reform,” it would have been revolutionary.
I earlier posted this article on a Chicago blog about Arne’s decision to send his children to the Lab School. This is a decision that I do not criticize, by the way, as I think parents should choose any school they wish, as long as they are willing to pay the price for a…
The MYTH that corporate charter schools work magic is a bubble that has been burst repeatedly, but the RheeFormers who profit thanks to fools who believe their fraud and lies refuse to go away.
Gary Rubinstein has been following the results of the Tennessee “Achievement School District” since its inception. At the time, its founder Chris Barbic pledged that–in five years time– he would lift up the schools in the bottom 5% of the state to the top 25% in the state. His strategy: turn them into charters and let the charter magic do its work.
Barbic recently resigned, although the experiment has not reached the five year mark.
Although there are regular claims of dramatic progress, Gary has the results of three years of the experiment for the original six schools in the cohort.
Of the six, four are still in the bottom 5%; the other two are in the bottom 6%. Some scores went up, some went down. The strategy of converting schools to charter with…
What we want to do with Common Core is explain it. Just put honesty and truth back into the debate….
I just published a book on the history, development, and promotion of Common Core, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?(TC Press, June 2015), and I have news for Campbell Brown:
Common Core did not begin in “honesty and truth,” and you cannot “put back” what was not present to begin with.
If Common Core was officially completed in June 2010, why would there be confusion in 2015 over what Common Core actually is?
Simple: Common Core is yet another top-down reform; it started years before it made its 2010 public appearance, and much of the planning…
Summer School- Turning the Heat Up On Achievement
by – One Fired Up Teacher
NOTE: This was written by a teacher in a high poverty district somewhere in the US. Child and Teacher Abuse in full effect
A time to maintain achievement, right? To prevent the “summer slide” and keep students engaged and excited about learning. After all, it’s building relationships with our students that can extend far beyond the confines of classroom walls.
But what happens when the school offering summer school has no air conditioning? Does that sound beneficial? Healthy? Safe? Temperatures inside the classroom reading 98 degrees on the thermostat. How about that for the student with Epilepsy who’s seizures are triggered by heat exhaustion and dehydration. Sound safe? Healthy? Beneficial?
If that doesn’t have your attention, let’s turn up the heat a little more. Requiring teachers to supervise lunch for the students but not allowing them…
I just ordered a DVD of this documentary through Pay Pal. Easiest Pay Pal transaction I’ve ever made. Order your copy today and learn what the psychopaths are doing to our democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools.
Brian Malone, documentary film-maker, has self-funded a film about the corporate assault on public education.
His film is a MUST-SEE. It is titled EDUCATION, INC.
Malone is a parent of two children in the public schools of Douglas County, Colorado. He documents the well-funded effort to take control of the local school board. Grassroots activists running for school board raised $40,000. Corporate reform privatizers received over $1 million in funding, which they used for a slick propaganda campaign. They won control of the school board and immediately began implementing their plans for vouchers, charters, union-busting, and salary caps for teachers. The exodus of teachers from the district more than doubled. The district paid hired guns (including former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett) to praise its “reforms.” A commissioned study by Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute hailed DougCo as “the most interesting district” in the nation.
A revealing, closer look at how the oligarch’s opaque, for-profit, often fraudulent corporate RheeForm movement works to fool the public to gain support in the destruction of democratic, transparent, non-profit public education.
Paul Farhi, a veteran reporter at the Washington Post, wrote an article recently about Campbell Brown’s new “news site” called “The 74,” which is a vehicle for her ongoing campaign against teachers’ unions and tenure and for charters and vouchers. Brown, who has no experience as a teacher, scholar, or researcher, who attended a private high school (her own children attend a private religious school), has become the new face of the corporate reform movement since Michelle Rhee stepped out of the limelight. Last year, Farhi wrote about Brown’s transition from TV talking head to advocate for vouchers, charters, and the elimination of teacher tenure. (You will notice in the earlier article that Brown takes great umbrage to my having described her as telegenic and pretty; well, she IS telegenic and pretty, and I would be happy if anyone said that about me! I consider it a compliment.)
When David Coleman said, “no one gives a shit about how you think and feel,” did that reveal his psychological profile as an alleged psychopath?
As an alleged psychopath and one of the key architects behind the Common Core (so-called) State Standards agenda and the corporate education reform movement to privatize public education and profit off public money, Coleman probably wouldn’t understand that emotions drive most of the decisions that 99% of people make in life.
For instance, Psychology Today reports that “Your emotions will drive the decisions you make today, and your success may depend upon your ability to understand and interpret them. When an emotion is triggered in your brain, your nervous systems responds by creating feelings in your body (what many people refer to as a “gut feeling”) and certain thoughts in your mind. A great deal of your decisions are informed by your emotional responses because that is what emotions are designed to do: to appraise and summarize an experience and inform your actions.
What about David Coleman and the other leaders—Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, etc.—of the often fraudulent and propaganda driven corporate school reform movement?
“Imagine if you never felt guilt, or embarrassment, or remorse for anything you did, ever! And there is no emotional attachment to other people and their emotions have no effect on you. In other words, you have no “conscience”, no inner policeman telling you what you should and should not do. And never any regrets either. … The decision making of people who fit the definition of psychopathy is very different from yours or mine. They can decide to do things that we would never do. … Of particular importance are psychopaths operating in positions of power. Remember that they like to control and manipulate people for their own benefit. It makes sense then, that they will try to put themselves in positions of power, using whatever tricks, deceit and manipulations they can. Remember for them, the end justifies the means. … Remember that their own decision making process is not dominated by emotions, so their decisions are organized around their own selfish motives. … It is thought that 1% of the population are psychopaths.” – Decision Making Confidence.com
Does that 1% that represents the alleged psychopaths among us equal the 1% at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid of wealth and power? This may not seem like a big number but the damage these psychopaths inflict on society and on individuals, emotionally, physically, sexually, mentally and psychologically is enormous.
For instance, 20% of prison inmates fit the definition of psychopath and about 50% of major crimes are committed by psychopaths. But most psychopaths do not end up in prison. Experts say that if they have not committed a crime, it’s only because they have not been discovered yet, and they use their charm to disarm. They use mind control techniques to manipulate people, and when in trouble, they use guilt and fear so that people do not publicly criticize them.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
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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What I would like to ask Hillary after watching the video is:
1. What do you mean by the Common Core being a “wonderful direction”? Do you know what the 42 Common Core English Language Arts Standards are and in what ways they help or hinder students becoming thoughtful readers, effective writers, and deep and broad thinkers?
I am very familiar with those 42 Common Core English Language Arts Standards and know that they are detrimental to producing thoughtful readers, effective writers, and deep and broad thinkers. I doubt that Hillary has read those standards and, even if she has, has no idea about the developmental needs of students and the best ways to teach them.
Of course, standards can be a good idea, but only if the standards themselves…
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 