tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26240230093636724692024-03-09T02:14:18.932-08:00The Horace Mann LeagueAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.comBlogger803125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-8249078762427122892013-06-01T21:14:00.001-07:002013-06-01T21:14:19.464-07:00The Corporate Dictatorship of PBS and NPR<br />
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<span style="color: #9c162e; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;">By </span><a href="http://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/48233" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">The Daily Take</a><span style="color: #9c162e; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;">, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed</span></h2>
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<b>PBS is blowing it, and their decision not to air a documentary on the Koch brothers is pretty horrifying proof of it.</b></div>
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But it wasn't always this way. On November 7, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act.</div>
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The act set up public broadcasting in the United States, by establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which led to the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, and National Public Radio.</div>
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After signing the act into law, Johnson said that, “It announces to the world that our Nation wants more than just material wealth; our Nation wants more than a 'chicken in every pot.' We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man's spirit. That is the purpose of this act.”</div>
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The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 states that, “It is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes… it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to complement, assist, and support a national policy that will most effectively make public telecommunications services available to all citizens of the United States.”</div>
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<b>When public broadcasting in America was first established, the intent was that Congress would provide funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would in turn divide that funding up among the various public television and radio stations across the country.</b></div>
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This worked great for years.</div>
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The Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio brought educational programming, and independent news and political analysis to millions of Americans.</div>
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But, with the onset of “Reaganomics” 33 years ago, federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been slashed.<br />
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<b>As a result, public broadcasting institutions now rely more and more on corporate and billionaire cash to operate, which is probably why PBS and NPR now filter what they play on their airwaves, so that they don’t anger their wealthy backers.</b></div>
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<b>This is where the documentary “Citizen Koch” comes in.</b><br />
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“Citizen Koch” is a documentary about money and politics, focusing heavily on the uprising that took place in Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.citizenkoch.com/page/content/trailer" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">It talks about how</a> the Citizens United decision paved the way for secretive political spending by major players, including the Koch Brothers.</b><br />
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<b><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12118/pbs-killed-wisconsin-uprising-documentary-citizen-koch-appease-koch-brothers" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">As Brendan Fischer over at the Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch points out</a>, the documentary was originally supposed to air on PBS stations nationwide, but its funding was abruptly cut off when, it appears, David Koch was offended.</b><br />
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<b>But why would PBS care if David Koch didn’t like one of their documentaries?</b></div>
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<b>Because, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/27/130527fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker</a>, David Koch has donated upwards of $23 million to public television. And when you donate $23 million dollars to public television, you get more than just a tote bag or a coffee mug – you get to dictate the on-air programming.</b><br />
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This is the kind of influence and control that we see in mainstream media today too.</div>
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Thanks to the giant transnational corporations that own them, mainstream media outlets tailor their programming to appease their corporate backers.<br />
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<b>We can't do anything about the big corporations that own our so-called “mainstream” media, but Public Broadcasting is still, at least in part, both legally and morally a part of our commons.</b><br />
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<b>It’s time to take back our public airwaves, and cut-off the corporate and billionaire control over them, so that David Koch and his buddies don’t get to choose what you watch on TV.</b><br />
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And the only way to do that is to fully fund public radio and television.</div>
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Call your members of Congress, and tell them to protect funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so that it can pick back up its work to “enrich man’s spirit.”</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-13467886136760815982013-06-01T20:42:00.001-07:002013-06-01T20:57:41.271-07:00On Common Core: The Leading Groups Are Wrong Again<br />
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<span style="color: #888888;">by <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/author/dianerav/" style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136) !important;">D</a>iane Ravitch</span></td></tr>
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The joint statement issued by the National School Boards Association, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Secondary School Principles, and the American Association of School Administrators makes clear that public education in the United States is in deeper trouble than many thought. <b>The problem, though, is not one of pedagogy or teaching personnel. It’s a serious lack of leadership.</b></div>
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<b>The “leadership” groups’ statement on the Common Core standards shows that these “leaders” just don’t get it. They know no more about the Common Core than they did about No Child Left Behind.</b></div>
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<b>Indeed, they say that the Common Core “tests are necessary” for “use in teacher and principal evaluation,” but those tests must be coupled with “sufficient, accurate, and timely data in addition to test scores.”</b> Huh? Say what? After more than a decade of tests and “data-driven” instruction and evaluation, we need even MORE of it? Are they serious? <b>This is like saying the economy needs more tax cuts for corporations and the rich to “stimulate” job creation. Or like a doctor saying he needs to bleed more “bad blood” from the patient in order to cure him.</b></div>
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The “leaders” state that <b>“the prudent course is to avoid over-reliance on the assessments” UNTIL the Common Core standards “are fully implemented...” Then they add this nutty conclusion:</b></div>
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<b>“Failure to consider this reality will result in the...the same disappointing results of NCLB-era accountability.”</b></div>
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Sigh.</div>
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<b>Did these people never grasp that the “proficiency” requirements of No Child Left Behind were impossible to achieve? That the projections for 2014 were that 99 percent of California schools would be labeled as “failing,” with “failure” rates of 95 percent in the Great Lakes states and elsewhere?</b></div>
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<b>A former assistant secretary of education in the Bush administration said that NCLB was really a “Trojan horse...a way to expose the failure of public education...to blow it up a bit.” Is the Common Cre really so different?</b></div>
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<b>Look at who supports the Common Core standards: Margaret Spellings, former Ed Secretary, who infamously called NCLB “99.9 percent pure;” Jeb Bush, who is pushing charter schools and vouchers across the country; Bill Gates, who funded the Common Core, and who wants more H1-B visas for his company despite the fact that American education churns out three times as many STEM graduates as there are jobs; and, the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who lobbied aggressively for unfunded corporate tax cuts that spawned huge deficits and debt, and for laissez-faire regulatory policies that aided and abetted massive fraud and corruption (especially on Wall Street) and that blew up the economy.</b></div>
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And now public school “leaders” are lending their support?</div>
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<b>Public education in the United States is a foundational cornerstone of democratic governance. Both are in greater jeopardy than many of us thought."</b></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-59902705281294904652013-05-30T16:31:00.001-07:002013-06-01T09:55:04.356-07:00Influential National Network Calls for Elimination of School Boards<br />
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ALEC is still at it, Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, cautions in “<a href="http://www.wasb.org/websites/wisconsin_school_news/File/2013May/Underwood%20Commentary.pdf" target="_blank">School Boards Beware</a>,” a commentary in the May issue of <a href="http://www.wasb.org/websites/wisconsin_school_news/index.php?p=261" target="_blank">Wisconsin School News</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>The
model legislation disseminated by the pro-free market American
Legislative Exchange Council’s national network of corporate members and
conservative legislators seeks to privatize education and erode the
local control, Underwood says.</b><br />
<br />
<b>“The ALEC goal to eliminate school
districts and school boards is a bit shocking — but the idea is to make
every school, public and private, independent through vouchers for all
students</b>. By providing all funding to parents rather than school
districts, there is no need for local coordination, control or
oversight,” she writes in the magazine of the <a href="http://www.wasb.org/websites/wasbmain/index.php?p=5" target="_blank">Wisconsin Association of School Boards.</a><br />
<br />
Underwood, who says that Wisconsin public schools already face <a href="http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/campus_connection/campus-connection-dean-is-bullish-on-public-k--schools/article_40b3ae94-f3b0-11e1-bb65-0019bb2963f4.html" target="_blank">unprecedented change</a>,
last year co-authored a piece about ALEC’s grander plans, a
<b>“legislative contagion (that) seemed to sweep across the Midwest during
the early months of 2011.”</b><br />
<br />
In her recent piece, <b>Underwood argues
that a push to privatize education for the “free market” threatens the
purpose of public education: to educate every child to “become an active
citizen, capable of participating in our democratic process.”</b><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #827e70; font-size: 32pt;">School Boards Beware</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 20pt;">Influential National Network Calls
for Elimination of School Boards</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">An organization with nationwide influence is working hard
to negate the decision-making and leadership authority of each</span> <span style="color: #1a1718;">school
board in Wisconsin and across the country.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">According to the Report Card on American Education, the
education agenda of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) calls for:</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1718;">Reducing </span></b><span style="color: #1a1718;">the influence of, or elimination of,
local school districts and school boards.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1718;">Privatizing </span></b><span style="color: #1a1718;">education through vouchers, charters
and tax incentives.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
In<b><span style="color: #1a1718;">creasing </span></b><span style="color: #1a1718;">student testing and reporting.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1718;">Introducing </span></b><span style="color: #1a1718;">market factors into schools,
particular the teaching profession.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">In short, ALEC seeks to undo much of the work and power of
school boards.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 13pt;">What is ALEC?</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">ALEC is a national network based in Washington, D.C.,
which has had strong impact on legislation in Wisconsin. ALEC describes itself
as a membership organization for those who share a common belief in “limited
government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberties.” Its goal is to
create and enact model legislation, which they develop.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">Although identified as nonpartisan, ALEC’s members skew to
the conservative end of the political spectrum and include corporations,
foundations, and “think tanks.” The corporations (profit and nonprofit) pay
large annual fees and pay the additional costs of sponsoring meetings.
Corporate members pay to serve on their taskforces, and provide the funds for
the state legislators to attend ALEC meetings.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">Model legislation is developed through the ALEC taskforces
(<i>e.g., </i>health, safety, education), each co-chaired by a corporate and
legislative member. In order to pass a model bill out of the ALEC task- force,
both the public and elected sides of the committee must agree. The elected
officials then submit these proposals to their own state legislatures.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">Members of the taskforces have an interest in the topical
area of the taskforce. For example, education taskforce members include
representatives from the Friedman Foundation, the Charter School Association,
the private school associations, and corporations providing education services.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">The proposals cannot move out of the taskforce without the
approval of the corporate interests. The corporations involved have an interest
in the areas and thus typically stand to profit financially from the proposals.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">For example, two large for-profit corporate providers of
virtual education, Connections Academy and K-12 Inc., had heavy involvement in
the development of the ALEC model Virtual Public Schools Act. At the time it
was drafted by ALEC, the chair of the education committee was Mickey Revenaugh,
a principal employee of Connections Academy. Connections Academy and K-12 have
reaped huge financial benefits in the states where the Virtual Schools Act has
been passed.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">In Tennessee, K-12 Inc. received the state contract for
virtual schools shortly after it passed their legislature as a no-bid contract.
For this contract they received more than $5,000 per student from the state
during the 2011- 2012 school year. Currently, the legislature is auditing this
contract due to low student performance in the program.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 13pt;">ALEC in Wisconsin <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">ALEC’s effect in Wisconsin has been significant. The
original Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, enacted in 1990, was championed by
Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, an early ALEC member.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">“Myself, I always loved to go to these [ALEC] meetings
because I always found new ideas, and then</span> <span style="color: #1a1718;">I’d take them back to
Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit and declare that it’s mine,” Thompson
said in a 2002 interview with National Public Radio.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">True to Thompson’s word, the outline for the Milwaukee
Choice Program can be found in ALEC’s <i>1985 Education Source Book</i>. Also
see sidebar “ALEC Legislation in Wisconsin.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">One of the key goals of ALEC is to privatize education
through vouchers. Milton Friedman argued vouchers would foster competition and
improve students’ learning. Experience has not borne this out.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">The research indicates that voucher schools do not
outperform their public school counterparts. The children in voucher programs
should in fact be doing better because they represent the “easier” to educate
segment of the public school population.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">I say “easier” because, first, there are far fewer students
with disabilities served in private voucher schools. Second, even though they
receive public funding, private schools retain the right to select, reject, and
expel students through admissions and disciplinary rules. Finally, children in
voucher schools come from families who are engaged enough in their children’s
education to have actively moved them to the private system. Education research
is clear that children with actively engaged parental or home support will
clearly outperform students who do not have that support in their lives. With
“easier” student voucher schools should clearly outperform the publics. Doing
almost as good can hardly be called success.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1718;">The American Legislative Exchange Council </span></b><span style="color: #1a1718;">(AlEC) is
working to, among other goals, reduce the role of school boards in education.
here is a listing of bills (and enacted statutes) from the 2011-2012 Wisconsin
legislative Session that mirrored AlEC model legislation <i>(see
www.alexexposed.org for database of ALEC model legislation).</i></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">Voucher advocates argue that even if the academics are not
up to par, at least the cost for the state is lower. Sad, and not true. First,
if you are not attracting public school students to switch to private schools,
the state just ends up paying tuition for those students already enrolled in
the private school — this just shifts private costs to taxpayers. Second, the
local schools district pays for more than the cost of the voucher; typically
paying for transportation, special education and support services. Vouchers
have neither shown success academically nor financially.</span><b><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 13pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 13pt;">Reducing the Role</span></b> <b><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 13pt;">of School Boards</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">The ALEC agenda in education is ambitious. Model bills
seek to influence teacher certification, teacher evaluation, collective
bargaining, curriculum, funding, special education, and student assessment.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">Common throughout the bills are proposals to decrease
local control of schools by local school boards while increasing control,
influence, and profits of the companies in the</span> <span style="color: #1a1718;">education
sector. Privatization is consistent with the interests of the corporate ALEC
members.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">The ALEC goal to eliminate school districts and school
boards is a bit shocking — but the idea is to make every school, public and
private, independent through vouchers for all students. By providing all
funding to parents rather than school districts, there is no need for local
coordination, control or oversight.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">Personally, I believe there is a purpose for public
schools and the local public oversight necessary to support and guide them.
Public education was created to serve the needs of the public — ensuring that
every child had access to an education that would help him/her become an active
citizen, capable of participating in our democratic process.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1718;">What happens to our democracy when we return to an
educational system where access is defined by corporate interest and divided by
class, language, ability, race, and religion? In a push to a free market
education do we lose the purpose of public education? </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: #1a1718; font-size: 11pt;">Underwood, J.D., Ph.D., is a
professor and the dean of the School of Education at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-37115754323620814052013-05-29T23:13:00.005-07:002013-06-01T20:59:13.274-07:00The Arbitrary Albatross: Standardized Testing and Teacher Evaluation<br />
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On Chicago's streets and Hollywood's silver screens, education reform
has been cast as a false dilemma between students and teachers.
Reputable actresses and liberal mayors have both fallen prey. At the
center of this drama lie teacher evaluations. A linchpin of the debate,
they weigh especially heavily around the necks of educators like me.</div>
</div>
</div>
<h2>
Think: Shaky Foundation</h2>
With the arrival of spring, testing season is now upon us: America's new
national pastime. I believe student results from standardized tests
should not be used to evaluate teachers because the data are imprecise
and the effects are pernicious. Including such inaccurate measures is
both unfair to teachers and detrimental to student learning.
<br />
<br />
As a large body of research suggests, standardized test data are
imprecise for two main reasons. First, they do not account for
individual and environmental factors affecting student performance,
factors over which teachers have no control. (Think: commitment, social
class, family.) Second, high-stakes, one-time tests increase the
likelihood of random variation so that scores fluctuate in arbitrary
ways not linked to teacher efficacy. (Think: sleep, allergies, the
heartache of a recent breakup.)
<br />
<br />
High-stakes assessments are also ruinous to student learning. They
encourage, at least, teaching to the test and, at most, outright
cheating. This phenomenon is supported by <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law" target="_blank">Campbell's law</a>,
which states statistics are more likely to be corrupted when used in
making decisions, which in turn corrupts the decision making process
itself. (Think: presidential campaigns.)
<br />
As a teacher, if my livelihood is based on test results, then I will do
everything possible to ensure high marks, including narrowing the
curriculum and prepping fiercely for the test. The choice between an
interesting project and a paycheck is no choice at all. These are
amazing disincentives to student learning. Tying teachers' careers to
standardized tests does not foster creative, passionate, skillful young
adults. It does exactly the opposite.
<br />
<h2>
Evaluation and Accountability</h2>
The <a class="external-link" href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-29/politics/38126217_1_superintendent-beverly-hall-state-probe-cheating" target="_blank">Atlanta cheating scandal</a>
is a stark illustration. A dispositive result of the testing obsession,
it's an outcome as predictable as it is tragic. When bonuses and
continued employment are largely determined by a single test, there is a
perverse incentive to manipulate the system. Teachers and
administrators are charged as felons for doctoring answer booklets;
educators face jail time. We don't just think high-stakes testing leads
to cheating. We know it does.
<br />
<br />
Fortunately, this is not an issue in my district. It remains a wonderful
place to teach. But over half the states and the District of Columbia
now use high-stakes tests to evaluate teachers, and this national trend
must be reversed.
<br />
<br />
Because standardized tests are an inexact estimate of a teacher's
ability, they are also unfair. By focusing on a sliver of the curriculum
-- often rote facts --standardized tests do not measure meaningful
understanding. (Think: Who was the last French monarch? versus How much
violence is justified in revolution?) And unless you believe bubbling
the letter of the best answer is crucial in the 21st century,
standardized tests exclude evidence of important skill development.
Indeed, my students learn much more than can be measured on a Scantron,
and I want to be held accountable for it all.
<br />
<br />
Instead, we should consider reforming the observation method of
evaluation, preserving student input, and incorporating a range of
student work. Ironically, a focus on observation in performance review
aligns with many other professions. Nurses, lawyers, even investment
bankers are judged in large part by what their peers and supervisors see
them doing. Plus when results are used, they are the results themselves
-- not contorted approximations. Consider how you yourself are
evaluated at work. I bet it's most likely through feedback and
observation.
<br />
<br />
So, occasionally videotape a lesson, observe my classes, evaluate my
students' work. If peers and administrators find my performance less
than effective, prescribe some additional training. But please don't
judge me based on student scores on standardized tests. I'll suffer, and
so will the students.
<br />
<h2>
Beginning the Conversation</h2>
Rather than focusing on evaluations altogether, let's <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">professionalize the profession</a>.
We should create a rigorous entrance exam, an educational bar, as a
gateway to licensing. Once teachers demonstrate mastery, they should be
allowed to instruct according to expert standards -- just like in
medicine, law and finance. If teaching is seen as exclusive, with
formidable barriers to entry, it will become a more respected career,
and teachers will earn the right and the latitude to practice.
<br />
<br />
If this makes sense, or if you're slightly curious, there are a number of steps you can take. Check out <a class="external-link" href="http://www.learningismore.org/" target="_blank">Learning is More Than a Test Score</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://unitedoptout.com/" target="_blank">Opt Out National</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.fairtest.org/" target="_blank">FairTest: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing</a>.
<br />
<br />
Best of all, begin a conversation. Talk with friends and neighbors about
this important issue affecting our communities and our country.
Education is a lifelong pursuit, and teaching is a beautiful career.
Let's decouple high-stakes testing from teacher evaluations for the sake
of students and teachers alike. </div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-86484172156979360812013-05-29T22:28:00.002-07:002013-06-01T21:01:01.058-07:00 Jeb Bush Talks Education At Mackinac, Pushes Michigan's Questionable Charter School Sector<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. -- <b>Jeb Bush praised charter schools
and slammed traditional public schools and teachers unions in a speech
here Wednesday, saying that public education “dumbs down standards to
make adults look better," a phrase often used by U.S. Secretary of
Education <a href="http://www.ed.gov/blog/2011/10/arne-on-dumbing-down-standards-and-the-next-generation-of-assessments/" target="_hplink">Arne Duncan.</a></b><br />
<div class="entry_content">
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<br />
<b>"We must expand [school] choice," said Bush, delivering a keynote
speech at the annual Mackinac Policy Conference in northern Michigan.
"Our governance model includes over 13,000 government-run monopolies run
by unions."</b><br />
<br />
Since he left office, the former Florida governor has become an evangelist for a certain strand of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/education-reform-money-elections_n_1105686.html" target="_hplink">education reform</a>; through his $19 million <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-usa-education-bush-foundation-idUSBRE8AT18Y20121130" target="_hplink">Foundation for Excellenge in Education</a>,
he advocates for online education, grading schools based on test scores
and forcing students to repeat grades if they don't pass standardized
exams. <br />
<br />
<b>At Mackinac Wednesday, Bush championed the growth of charter schools,
the fastest-growing sector of public education across the country.</b><br />
<br />
There are 274 such schools in Michigan, and Bush argued that the
state leads others in charter school performance, with those schools
also outperforming traditional public schools.<br />
<br />
But it is difficult to <a href="http://shankerblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/CharterReview.pdf" target="_hplink">concisely characterize charter school quality nationwide</a>, and the study on Michigan's schools Bush touted is less definitive than he made it sound.<br />
<br />
<b>That study, released in January by Stanford University's <a href="http://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/MI_report_2012_FINAL_1_11_2013_no_watermark.pdf" target="_hplink">Center for Research on Education Outcomes,</a>
found that while students in Michigan's charter schools are raising
their test scores more quickly than their peers in public schools, they
are still performing at much lower levels. Charter school students in
the state gain about two months of reading and math knowledge over their
peers each year -- but 80 percent of charter schools perform below the
50th percentile of achievement in reading, and 84 percent perform below
that threshold in math. </b><br />
<div class="ad_wrapper" id="ad_mid_article">
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<b>Another
study -- this one by the National Association of Charter School
Authorizers -- found that about a quarter of Michigan's charters fell
into the bottom 15 percent of the state's schools on eighth grade math
and the bottom 21 percent in eighth grade reading.</b><br />
<br />
That poor performance has disappointed education advocates like Amber
Arellano, who directs the nonpartisan advocacy group EdTrust Midwest.<br />
<br />
"A lot of people here ... had hoped that charters were really going
to be the solution to urban children's lack of quality options,"
Arellano told The Huffington Post <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/charter-school-quality_n_2490931.html" target="_hplink">in a January interview</a>.
<b>"They're not. There are not enough high-performing charters here [in
Michigan] to really address the educational inequities that we have here
in the state. Just letting the market decide isn't the answer."</b><br />
<br />
According to an EdTrust Midwest study, the operators of new schools
that opened up after Michigan lifted its cap on charters in 2011 have
below-average academic track records.<br />
<br />
But on Wednesday, Bush explicitly praised fellow Republicans state
Sen. Phil Pavlov and Gov. Rick Snyder for their courage in working to
lift the cap, even though the deregulating move has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/charter-school-quality_n_2490931.html" target="_hplink">sometimes been credited</a> with letting school quality lag. <br />
<br />
Bush begged Michigan Republicans not to abandon support for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/common-core-state-standards-center-on-education-policy_n_1233181.html" target="_hplink">Common Core</a>, the standards for math, reading and science already <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/common-core-moratorium-teacher-evaluations_n_3187419.html" target="_hplink">adopted by 45 states</a> and approved by Michigan’s Board of Education in 2010. <br />
<br />
<b>"What we have is not good," Bush said of current standards. "What we could have is a lot better."</b><br />
<b>But he may have been a day too late: On Tuesday, Michigan’s House of
Representatives approved a budget-containing a measure that blocks any
funding for Common Core.</b><br />
<br />
Bush told reporters after his speech that education spending should not be the only metric used to measure school quality.<br />
<br />
<b>"We spend more per student than any other country in the world," he
said. "What's important is where it's spent --where's the focus. Are you
funding the beast, or are you funding classroom education? Are you
funding your priorities as it relates to early childhood education or
are you just sending money down without any reform at all?"</b><br />
<br />
<b>He went on to call for an overall gutting of the current public
school system. "We can't just outsource public education to
bureaucracies and public education unions and hope for the best," he
said.</b></div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-42609756226547827552013-05-29T00:23:00.001-07:002013-05-29T00:23:06.562-07:00Learning First Alliance Honors Linda Darling Hammond with its 2013 Education Visionary Award
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Linda Darling Hammond is a member of the Board of the Horace Mann League.)</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXG4WVl-lQslGqD3v8nRvfXC33DeXWUapqrOYs15xCxyt8ncvDLwfnOj7gd3vkhDmZNOYF9uc7j7rYq9YeX_0Vj5Bby0FFhRa1JcloGgSC0Bymzw4Axn0IIHMMKwd36zcS4C-egUPKt74i/s1600/darling_linda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXG4WVl-lQslGqD3v8nRvfXC33DeXWUapqrOYs15xCxyt8ncvDLwfnOj7gd3vkhDmZNOYF9uc7j7rYq9YeX_0Vj5Bby0FFhRa1JcloGgSC0Bymzw4Axn0IIHMMKwd36zcS4C-egUPKt74i/s200/darling_linda.jpg" width="166" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dr. Darling Hammond heralded
for leadership in teacher quality, educational equity and school reform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Washington, D.C. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Learning First
Alliance (LFA), a partnership of 16 leading education associations with more than 10 million members dedicated to
improving student learning in America's public schools has named Linda Darling Hammond
as its 2013 Education Visionary Award winner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Charles E. Ducommun
Professor of Education at Stanford University and an accomplished author Darling-Hammond’s
research, teaching and ongoing policy work make her an industry leader in the areas of teacher quality and educational equity and
reform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Throughout her highly
respected career, Linda Darling-Hammond has been truly dedicated to the betterment
of public education,” said Cheryl S. Williams, executive director of the
Learning First Alliance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our organization is committed
to improving public education and student learning and is honored to recognize
an individual who has worked and
continues to work so diligently to achieve this common goal.” In addition to serving
as a professor, Darling-Hammond is the Co-Director of the Stanford Center for
Opportunity Policy in Education. She also launched the Stanford Educational
Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network and has served as faculty
sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Darling-Hammond is the
former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member
of the National Academy of Education. From 1994 to 2001, she served as
executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future,
whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, led to sweeping
policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report
was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education, and Darling-Hammond
was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational
policy over the last decade. Darling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hammond is also a
well known author of more than 400 publications including: The Flat World and Education: How America’s
Commitment to Equity will Determine our Future (2010) and Powerful Teacher Education
(2006). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Darling-Hammond holds
a BA magna cum laude from Yale University and an EdD (Urban Education) from
Temple University. She began her career as a public school teacher. Additional professional
experience includes service as Director and Senior Social Scientist for the
RAND Corporation and as William F. Russell Professor of Education and Co-Director<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">of the National
Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching at Teachers College,
Columbia University. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors for
the National Council for Educating Black Children, the Alliance for Excellent
Education, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and the
Center for Teaching Quality, among others. She was also education adviser to
President Obama during the 2008 election campaign and led his education policy
transition team.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Honorees of the
Learning First Alliance Education Visionary Award are individuals who exhibit:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">·</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Exceptional leadership in bringing
groups who have a variety of points of view together to work collaboratively<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">·</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tenacity in focusing on the needs of
children from all environmental and economic backgrounds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">·</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Respect for professional educators and
a belief that they too have the best interests of children as the focus of
their work <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">·</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A demonstrated belief that public
education is the cornerstone of our democratic way of life and should be nurtured
for the benefit of every American. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Previous recipients
of the Education Visionary Award includeformer U.S. Secretary of Education, Richard
W. Riley (2011) and founder of the
Center on Education Policy <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jack Jennings (2012)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To learn more about
the Learning First Alliance and its Education Visionary Award, visit <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">www.learningfirst.org<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">About The Learning
First Alliance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Learning First
Alliance is a partnership of 16 leading education associations with more than
10 million members dedicated to improving student learning in America's public
schools. Alliance members include: the American Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education, American Association of School Administrators, American Association of
School Personnel Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, American
School Counselor Association, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Association for
Middle Level Education (formerly National Middle School Association),
International Society for Technology in Education, Learning Forward (formerly
National Staff Development Council), National Association of Elementary School
Principals, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association
of State Boards of Education, National Education Association, National School
Public Relations Association, National PTA, National School Boards Association
and Phi Delta Kappa International. The <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<!--EndFragment--><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-26910566040893555642013-05-28T17:17:00.001-07:002013-06-01T21:02:46.027-07:00'Greed Is Good': Top 7 Most Piggish Commencement Speeches<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/">AlterNet</a></span></span></span> / <em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/lynn-stuart-parramore">Lynn Stuart Parramore</a></em><br />
<br />
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<img height="150" src="http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/greedy_pig_1.jpg" width="200" /></div>
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It’s that time of year. The sun is shining, the flowers are in bloom
and all across America, graduating students are forced to endure that
dreaded rite of passage, the commencement speech. Often boring,
typically clichéd and frequently self-aggrandizing, commencement
speeches form their own subgenre of fatuous prose.</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
Get out the barf bag! Here are a few choice orations from some of America’s most illustrious jerks.<br />
<strong>1. Ivan Boesky at Berkeley, 1986</strong><br />
<br />
Ivan
Boesky was a big-time stock trader who hustled his way to riches
betting on corporate takeovers. On May 18, 1986 at the University of
California, Berkeley, he <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-12-15/features/8604030634_1_ivan-boeskys-greed-fund">shared</a> these lustrous pearls of wisdom with business school students:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>“Greed
is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is
healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”</b></blockquote>
Boesky
clearly felt very good about himself at the time. But not for long.
<b>Several months after the address, Boesky was nabbed by the SEC when it
found that his stock manipulations were often based on tips from
corporate insiders which is –oopsie! – illegal. Mr. Greed soon found
himself in possession of a nice prison cell.</b><br />
<br />
Oliver Stone used
Boesky’s speech as the inspiration for one given by the ethically
challenged corporate raider Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film <em>Wall Street.</em> “Greed is good” became the catchphrase for Wall Street callousness and excess.<br />
<br />
<strong>2. Jamie Dimon at Syracuse, 2010</strong><br />
Just
two years after the Wall Street-driven crisis left many Americans
itching to grab the nearest pitchfork, the JPMorgan Chase honcho was
invited to <a href="http://www.syr.edu/news/articles/2010/jamie-dimon-commencement-remarks-05-10.html">speak</a>
to Syracuse students, despite a wave of protests. His speech pretty
much alternates between insisting that he’s not like the rest of those
banker a-holes and finding new ways to praise himself. He also makes a
stab at humor:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>“Graduating today means you are through
with…the cold sweat of sleepless nights preparing to answer seemingly
impossible questions. Well, that’s a feeling we banking executives know
pretty well these days – we call it ‘testifying before Congress.’”</b></blockquote>
<b>Haha!
LOL! In 2012, Dimon demonstrated his coolness under pressure by calmly
lying to Congress when questioned about the infamous London Whale fiasco
in which billions of dollars went missing from his bank. </b><br />
<br />
Which
is interesting when you consider how much lip service he gave to the
subject of honesty in his speech, including this gem: <b>“One must be
honest with one’s self to be accountable. Shakespeare said it best: ‘To
thine own self be true.’” </b>(Dimon evidently skipped English 101 in
college, or he would have known that Shakespeare was being sarcastic.)
It must be said that Dimon honestly likes being really rich, so in that
sense he has remained remarkably true to himself.<br />
<br />
<strong>3. Lance Armstrong at Tufts, 2006</strong><br />
The cyclist and doper extraordinaire gave the <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.c-spanvideo.org%2Fprogram%2F192695-1&ei=Q3meUdSzJffd4AOzloDgBg&usg=AFQjCNFMorf8qMe6GgFhBYyHGeDjpcbpEQ&sig2=-yxOv5nqgRWy0N5Rtqrg8g&bvm=bv.47008514,d.dmg">commencement speech</a>
at Tufts in 2006, where he was also awarded an honorary doctorate
(since rescinded). <b>The subject of Armstrong’s oratory was the need for
students to follow his shining example and become actively engaged
citizens. At one point he describes his cancer doctor speaking to him of
the need to fight for the cure:</b><br />
<blockquote>
<b>“I, of course, loved
the idea that he wanted to talk to me about something that even
mentioned the word 'cure,' thinking he might want to tell me he snuck me
the secret stuff that works every time.”</b></blockquote>
<b>Turns out
Armstrong knew all about the secret stuff that works every time. Too bad
for the millions of kids, sports fans and cancer patients who looked up
to him.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>4. Glenn Beck at Liberty University, 2012</strong><br />
Liberty
University teaches its students that the Earth is 5,000 years old and
that dinosaur bones washed up in Noah’s flood. So it’s little wonder
that the school would not only select the loony and fact-averse Glenn
Beck to address its graduating seniors (which included his daughter),
but award him an honorary doctorate, a gesture that gave Beck the
weepies.<br />
<br />
<b>“We live in a time when it seems truth is on the run,”
said Beck, an observation that no doubt stemmed from watching reruns of
his Fox TV show (since canceled). The man who says what people who
aren’t thinking are thinking, as Jon Stewart aptly described Beck, began
with various meditations on the evilness of Barack Obama and then
launched into a tidal wave of homilies, which included a mandate that
students always ”<a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2010/05/15/becks-advice-to-his-daughter-liberty-u-grads-in/164793">shoot to kill</a>.” This from a man who was constantly warning of the inherent violence of the left.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>5. John Ashcroft at Bob Jones University, 1999</strong><br />
Attorney general-designate John Ashcroft delivered a <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/2001/01/We-Have-No-King-But-Jesus.aspx">speech</a>-cum-sermon to graduating students of Bob Jones University, the great bastion of Christian fundamentalism, in 1999.<br />
<blockquote>
“You
could quote the Declaration with me, 'We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights.' Unique among the nations,
America recognized the source of our character as being godly and
eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood
that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king
but Jesus.”</blockquote>
All righty then! Social studies teachers
across America, take note that the country's founding document is
actually a religious pronouncement.<br />
<br />
But Ashcroft is just a godly
sort of fellow. After having Clarence Thomas anoint him with oil, a
ritual he insisted on before taking each office in his career (and which
was once performed by his father with a dollop of Crisco), <b>Attorney
General Ashcroft expressed his unique vision of America’s holiness in
his dedication to initiating secret detentions, thwarting gun control,
and hounding physicians who help terminally ill patients commit suicide.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Ashcroft has also been famed for his Christian charity, evidenced in his <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/352/000022286/">reasons</a>
for vetoing funding for an AIDS care center when he was governor of
Missouri: "Well, they're there because of their own misconduct, and it
wasn't very reputable misconduct, either."</b><br />
<br />
He is now a highly paid lobbyist in Washington. God works in mysterious ways.<br />
<br />
<strong>6. Alan Greenspan, Basically Everywhere</strong><br />
Alan
Greenspan, Ayn Rand acolyte and free-market fundamentalist, was a
favorite commencement speaker at elite colleges for decades. As
white-collar criminologist Bill Black put it, “his standard commencement
speech while Fed Chairman was an ode to reputation as the
characteristic that made possible trust and free markets.”<br />
<br />
<b>In his
address to the 2005 class of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton
School of Business, the Master of Disaster goes to great lengths
explaining how the markets magically regulate themselves and make
themselves resistant to fraud without any need for oversight. Companies
would not cheat or violate ethical standards, he assured, because they
value their reputations and would quickly be driven out of business if
they misbehaved. While acknowledging a few business scandals in the
1990s, Greenspan blithely asserted “We should not be surprised then to
see a re-emergence of the value placed by markets on trust and personal
reputation in business practice.” Bernie Madoff certainly hoped so.</b><br />
<br />
Less
than three years after Greenspan made that speech, the fraudulent and
criminal behavior of large financial institutions nearly wrecked the
global economy. And the crime wave continues, in part because of the
widespread acceptance of Greenspan’s discredited economic theories.<br />
<br />
<strong>7. Manny V. Pangilinan at Ateneo de Manila University, 2010</strong><br />
It’s
so damn hard to think up what to say to graduating students. So why
bother when you can just pinch someone else’s words? The great tradition
of plagiarizing commencement speeches has been carried on by <a href="http://gawker.com/5547555/columbia-valedictorian-plagiarized-graduation-speech">Ivy League valedictorians</a>, <a href="http://features.rr.com/article/07QmcT48lpgfG">law school students</a>, politicians, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2011/06/13/edmonton-dean-apology-plagiary.html">deans</a>, and <a href="http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/111373/">school board chairmen</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Telecom
mogul Manny V. Pangilinan, head of the Philippine Long Distance
Telephone Inc., made his mark in this fine tradition by admitting that
his <a href="http://dine.racoma.com.ph/celebration/manny-v-pangilinans-commencement-address-at-the-ateneo-march-26-2010/">speech</a>
included portions lifted from commencement addresses given by Oprah
Winfrey, Conan O’Brien, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, and President
Obama. (Like a true corporate titan, he blamed it on his speechwriter.)</b><br />
<br />
<b>In
addition to the old “I was born poor” story and a variety of
platitudes, Pangilinan’s speech contains a section on the various types
of bosses students were likely to encounter in their careers, including
despots and narcissists. He neglected to include cheats, which are
easily just as abundant.</b><br />
<br />
<div class="bio-new body_education">
<div class="author-bio">
Lynn Parramore is an
AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding
editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt
in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in
English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing
and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue
Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.</div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-56781509313478599192013-05-28T16:06:00.006-07:002013-06-01T21:03:50.174-07:00Signs of the Coming Revolution in America's Education System <br />
<div class="byline story">
<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://ourfuture.org/">Campaign for America's Future</a></span></span></span> / <em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/jeff-bryant">Jeff Bryant</a></em>
</div>
<br />
<div class="teaser">
<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even">
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/red_fist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/red_fist.jpg" width="320" /></a>The
recent revolt against standardized tests as well as legislative concern
over testing corruption are just some of the of the signs of an
approaching education "revolution."</div>
<div class="field-item even">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="story_images">
<div class="field field-name-field-story-image field-type-image field-label-hidden">
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<div class="story-image-sourcing">
<div class="story-image-source">
<cite>Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Eugene Ivanov</cite></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="story-date">
<em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" content="2013-05-21T12:48:00-07:00">May 21, 2013</span></span></span></span>
</em> | </div>
<div class="article_insert_separator">
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“It’s always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts,” wrote John Tierny in<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/the-coming-revolution-in-public-education/275163/" target="_blank"> The Atlantic</a> recently.
<b> “I’m not an expert on revolutions,” he continued, “but even I can see
that a new one is taking shape in American K-12 public education.”</b><br />
<br />
Tierney pointed to a number of signs of the coming “revolution:”<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Teachers refusing to give standardized tests, parents opting their kids out of tests, and students boycotting tests.</b></li>
<li><b>Legislators reconsidering testing and expressing concerns about corruption in the testing industry.</b></li>
<li><b>Voucher and other “choice” proposals being strongly contested and voted down in states that had been friendly to them.</b></li>
</ul>
Tierney linked to a blog post by yours truly, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/02/the-inconvenient-truth-of-education-reform/" target="_blank">“The Inconvenient Truth of Education Reform,”</a> explaining
how the movement known as “education reform” has committed severe harm
to the populations it professes to serve while spreading corruption and
enriching businesses and political figures.<br />
<br />
Echoing Tierney, on the pages of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/science/2013/05/cheating_scandals_and_parent_rebellions_high_stakes_school_testing_is_doomed.single.html" target="_blank">Slate</a>, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/nation20130527.pdf" target="_blank">The Nation</a>, and <a href="http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/david-l-kirp-balloon-bursts-on-test-driven-school-reform/article_cef6a6a8-a577-5f8c-b1b3-d8086e816681.html" target="_blank">elsewhere</a>,
David Kirp, education professor and author of a popular new book
casting doubt on competitive driven, market-based school reform,
declared that cheating scandals and parent rebellions over high stakes
standardized testing were proof that much ballyhooed reform policies
championed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Education
Secretary Arne Duncan are not “a proven – or even a promising – way to
make schools better.”<br />
<br />
<b>Kirp declared that mounting evidence from
school reform efforts in major U.S. metropolitan areas reveals “it’s a
terrible time for advocates of market-driven reform in public education.
For more than a decade, their strategy – which makes teachers’ careers
turn on student gains in reading and math tests, and promotes
competition through charter schools and vouchers – has been the dominant
policy mantra. But now the cracks are showing.”</b><br />
<br />
In a legislative view, the <a href="http://progressivestates.org/news/dispatch/backlash-brews-against-corporate-education-reform" target="_blank">Progressive State Network,</a> which
supports left-leaning state legislators and monitors legislative policy
in state houses, noticed<b> “a backlash is brewing in many states as more
and more parents and legislators alike start asking questions about
corporate education reform.” </b>The post on PSN’s website referenced
<b>Tierney’s article and highlighted a Minnesota bill that eliminates
testing requirements for graduation and several states that are
embroiled in battles to defeat measures known as the “parent trigger,”
which enables private takeovers of public schools.</b><br />
<br />
<b>These
observations are not alarmist chatter but well-reasoned, valid
conclusions that anti-government collectivist actions related to public
school policy are scaling up from isolated protests to a nationwide
movement of unified resistance.</b><br />
<br />
The movement is widespread among
teachers, students, and parents. It is grassroots driven and way out in
front of most journalists and political leaders. And it’s scaling up in
intensity.<br />
<strong>A Teacher-Student-Parent Movement</strong><br />
<br />
For
quite some time now, education historian and reform opponent Diane
Ravitch has written about the ever expanding discontent among teachers
over the emphasis on standardized testing and test-based teacher
evaluation and school rating systems.<br />
<br />
<b>As proof of this discontent, Ravitch has closely followed and commented on a boycott against standardized testing among <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/29/seattle-teachers-expand-testing-boycott/" target="_blank">teachers in Seattle,</a> an ongoing protest among<a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/11/hooray_for_the_long_island_pri.html" target="_blank">principals in New York state</a> against new teacher evaluations, and objections to the “testing beast” among <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/30/the-moms-that-stopped-the-testing-beast-in-texas/" target="_blank">educators and parents in Texas</a>.</b><br />
<br />
<b>In ever-greater numbers, however, students are also leading the resistance. A recent article in <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/174268/philadelphia-raleigh-students-resist-racism-and-austerity#" target="_blank">The Nation</a> reported on the growing student resistance movement driven by grievances over austerity budgets and systemic racism.</b><br />
<br />
From all corners of the country – North Carolina to Philadelphia to Louisiana to Chicago –<a href="http://ricksmithshow.tumblr.com/post/49811487725/today-students-as-young-as-8-walked-out-of-school" target="_blank">students as young as eight years old</a> are organizing and taking part in a variety of actions including <a href="http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2013/02/student-zombies-march-on-ri-department-of-education-in-protest.html" target="_blank">zombie protests</a>, school walkouts and sit-ins, and acts of defiance like the recent rant by <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/jeff-bliss-teacher-rant-duncanville-texas_n_3245992.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&ir=Education" target="_blank">a high school student in Texas</a> that
went viral over the Internet when he castigated a seemingly indifferent
teacher for dispensing education in “packets” rather than engaging the
class in meaningful, relevant learning.<br />
In Chicago, youth voice is
forming in grassroots groups like CSOSOS (Chicago Students Organizing
To Save Our Schools) and VOYCE (Voices of Youth in Chicago Education)
that have led <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/cps-student-boycott-high-_n_3148447.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago%20actions" target="_blank">prominent, headline-earning protests</a> to school closures, teacher firings, and over emphasis on high-stakes testing.<br />
<br />
In Philadelphia, a handful of students used their <a href="http://axisphilly.org/article/how-a-few-philly-high-school-students-organized-themselves-into-a-few-hundred-in-four-days/" target="_blank">social media and organizing skills</a> to
whip up student resentment and send hundreds of students into the
streets to protest budget cuts to their favorite education programs.<br />
<br />
In <a href="http://www.9news.com/rss/story.aspx?storyid=323774" target="_blank">Denver</a>, high schoolers have formed Students4OurSchools and staged walkouts protesting the over-emphasis on standardized testing.<br />
<br />
<b>Students in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Philadelphia-Student-Union/24866821739" target="_blank">Philadelphia</a>, Providence, <a href="http://www.providencestudentunion.org/" target="_blank">Rhode Island</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PortlandStudentUnion" target="_blank">Portland, Oregon</a>, and elsewhere have formed student unions that have developed attention-getting tactics, which have spread to a <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/30/dont-you-love-the-providence-student-union/" target="_blank">national scale</a>.
These student organizations’ Facebook pages speak in unison against
school closures and cutbacks, widespread teacher firings, and top-down
implementations of mandated standards and high-stakes testing.</b><br />
<br />
<b>In many places, teachers and parents are supporting rebellious students and even<a href="http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-allentown-school-budget-march-20130506,0,5740762.story" target="_blank"> joining in the protests</a>. Grassroots parent groups, in fact, have been the driving force behind efforts to beat back school voucher proposals in <a href="http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2013/04/grassroots-report-how-tennessee-parents-stopped-vouchers/" target="_blank">Tennessee</a> and parent trigger legislation in <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-parent-trigger-fails-florida-20130430,0,6985862.story" target="_blank">Florida</a>.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Resistance
is particularly vehement in low-income communities of color in large
urban school districts where reform measures have lead to widespread
teacher firings and school closings.</b> In Chicago, Philadelphia, New York
City, Cleveland, and Detroit, vocal protestors have been organizing in
their own communities but also uniting in national campaigns, such as
this year’s <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14925-journey-for-justice-mass-school-closings-and-the-death-of-communities" target="_blank">Journey for Justice</a> effort that brought hundreds of activists in allied grassroots organizations to the White House to protest school closings.<br />
<br />
<b>Unlike school reform proponents who benefit from massive donations from <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/01/walton-foundation-giving-8-million-to-rhees-studentsfirst-plus-2012-donations/" target="_blank">rich foundations</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/michelle-rhees-backers-in_n_1300146.html" target="_blank">politically connected funders</a>, grassroots groups leading the resistance – like the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alliance-for-Educational-Justice-AEJ/123778274327296" target="_blank">Alliance for Educational Justice</a> and <a href="http://www.aqeny.org/" target="_blank">Alliance for Quality Education</a> – have far humbler means and few connections to the political class and deep pocketed philanthropists like <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/12/gates-gives-150-million-in-grants-for-common-core-standards/" target="_blank">Bill Gates</a>.</b><br />
Nevertheless, these groups have generated <a href="http://www.louisianaweekly.com/students-rally-in-protest-of-policies-that-criminalize-youth-of-color/" target="_blank">strong outpourings of popular dissent</a> and produced important analyses of the <a href="http://www.nygps.org/report" target="_blank">duplicity of the reform agenda</a>.<br />
<br />
<strong>A Movement Getting More Recognition</strong><br />
<b>Mostly,
grassroots-led protests against education mandates have gotten little
attention from even the few media outlets and reporters focused on
education.</b><br />
<b>That changed, however, when the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, <a href="http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130508/why-we-need-a-moratorium-on-the-high-stakes-of-common-core-testing" target="_blank">called for a moratorium</a> on the consequences of high-stakes testing related to the Common Core.</b><br />
<br />
<b>All
of a sudden, when there was a crack in the conventional wisdom that
education policy was a centrist agreement between teachers’ unions and
conservative belief tanks, many education bloggers and journalists
decided the school accountability movement had reached a surprising new
level of intensity.</b><br />
<br />
Long-time education journalist <a href="http://www.danagoldstein.net/dana_goldstein/2013/04/cracks-in-the-common-core-coalition-on-the-right-left-and-now-in-the-center-too.html" target="_blank">Dana Goldstein</a> speculated
on her blog that Weingarten’s moratorium call is proof that education
matters that were once considered products of a “coalition” of
centrist-minded – although mostly conservative – wonks and Beltway
operatives are now points of strong contention.<br />
<br />
<b>Her conclusion was
that these differences represent a “deep divide” among the political
class about whether it’s a good idea to “scare us into meaningful school
reform.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>Another experienced education journalist, <a href="http://www.samchaltain.com/has-testing-reached-a-tipping-point" target="_blank">Sam Chaltain</a> also
reflected on his blog on calls for a testing moratorium. He recalled
that after Barak Obama was elected, Obama proceeded with “a series of
education policies that further entrenched America’s reliance on reading
and math scores as a proxy for whole-school evaluation.”</b><br />
<br />
Critics
of those policies “vented,” Chaltain explained, but “policymakers
nodded. And absent any real noise, the tests continued.” B<b>ut with this
more recent backlash to education mandates, Chaltain observed,
“policymakers have been unable to ignore a groundswell of noise and
resistance.”</b><br />
<b>Chaltain concluded that conflicts over school policy had “reached a tipping point.”</b><br />
<br />
Similarly, veteran education reporter at Education Week <a href="http://bit.ly/10gxzuj" target="_blank">Michelle McNeil</a> observed,
“Not since the battles over school desegregation has the debate about
public education been so intense and polarized.”<br />
<br />
McNeil sourced
the polarity to the conventional wisdom that public education is “an
institution that historically is slow to change,” and now it’s being
“forced to deal with so much change at once.” And she asserts that the
controversy over change is mostly “about centralization or
decentralization” of specific “reform” efforts.<br />
<br />
<b>But what
Goldstein, McNeil, and others on the sidelines fail to grasp is that the
push back against the nation’s education policy is not new. The
“polarization” is not “obscuring” the issues – as McNeil contends – it’s
clarifying them. And the “debate” over education has broken free from
being an issue confined to “fringes” and “policy elites” to take its
rightful place at the center of “a growing, broader backlash.”</b><br />
<br />
Indeed,
just like the fight to integrate public schools was connected to the
larger struggle for civil rights, fights to preserve and strengthen
public schools – whether they take the form of students walking out of
class to protest education cuts, parents fighting against deceptively
named “empowerment” policies, or teachers boycotting standardized tests –
are connected to much larger struggles over what kind of nation America
is becoming.<br />
<br />
<strong>A Leadership Out Of Touch</strong><br />
<b>The
growing rebellion to education mandates has been driven mostly by
grassroots groups formed first among low-income communities of color,
but now the movement is extending to people of greater means and
social-political capacity like parent groups that worked an inside game
with state legislators to thwart implementation of the Common Core
standards in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/13/indiana-halts-common-core-implementation/" target="_blank">Indiana</a>, block parent trigger bills in <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/30/breaking-news-florida-parents-beat-trigger-again/" target="_blank">Florida</a>, and curb the emphasis on high stakes testing in <a href="http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/moms-group-shakes-up-status-quo-on-texas-testing-r/nXZCx/" target="_blank">Texas</a>.</b><br />
<br />
This unification of the grassroots with the <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grass_tops" target="_blank">“grass tops”</a> in education is not well understood in the media or among policy elites.<br />
<br />
<b>In
fact, people in charge of education governance appear to be more
clueless than ever about what they are intent on accomplishing and
legislating.</b><br />
<br />
Witness the recent confession from one of the
movement’s most influential leaders, Bridgeport, Conn., school chief
Paul Vallas. As <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/11/a-major-school-reformers-nixon-goes-to-china-moment/" target="_blank">Valerie Struass</a> reported
at her blog onThe Washington Post, <b>Vallas has led reform efforts in
Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans that have become blueprints for
education policy ideas across the country. Yet he admitted that the
policies he has championed are resulting in a “nightmare” of complexity.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Reportedly,
he characterized his efforts to enact test-based teacher evaluations as
a feature of a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you
literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so
complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>Vallas’
newfound doubts over what he has created reflected other confusing
comments from education policy leaders. Most notable was the commentary
by <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bill-gates-a-fairer-way-to-evaluate-teachers/2013/04/03/c99fd1bc-98c2-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html" target="_blank">Bill Gates</a>,
widely acknowledged as a leader in the movement to base teacher
evaluations and school ratings on student test scores, warning against
the “rush to implement new teacher development and evaluation systems”
based on test scores.</b><br />
<br />
Even more perplexing was Secretary Duncan’s
recent inability to deliver a straight answer about parent trigger
bills. <b>As Beltway gadfly <a href="http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2013/05/update-duncan-endorses-parent-trigger-sort-of.html" target="_blank">Alexander Russo</a> recently
reported, “Duncan described the trigger as ‘an important tool’ for
parent involvement -– but not the only or even the most important one” –
whatever that means.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Compared to authentic grassroots outpourings
for resources, equity, and real democracy, these equivocations from
education policy leaders are puny and venal to say the least.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>Intensity Is Building</strong><br />
<b>“Scared”
or not, recalling Goldstein’s comment, activists driving protests
against the nation’s prevailing education policies are ratcheting the
fight to unprecedented intensity that will likely become even more
forceful in future efforts.</b><br />
<br />
Later this month, for instance, teachers in <a href="http://wgntv.com/2013/05/02/teachers-union-plans-3-day-march-to-protest-cps-closings/" target="_blank">Chicago</a> are
planning a citywide three-day march to protest impending school
closures. Education related bills in state legislatures in California,
Texas, New York, North Carolina, and elsewhere will be highly visible
points of contention. And actions to protest the imminent <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/warren-student-loan-petition-lower-rates_n_3267028.html?utm_hp_ref=business" target="_blank">doubling of college loan debt interest rates</a> – certainly an issue related to public education – are generating a unified response from hundreds of thousands of Americans.<br />
<br />
<b>Clearly, the
resistance to top-down education mandates is building. The movement is
propelled by forces far greater than what education journalists and
policy leaders understand – widespread grievances about inequity,
unfairness, and public disempowerment.</b><br />
<b>The revolt is happening. The revolt is now.</b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-32531467341569351142013-05-26T16:13:00.001-07:002013-06-01T10:34:46.295-07:0010 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You <h3 class="byline">
By<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null">SARAH MORGAN</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjSb98dbuQ-x88E6K9FE2uCfcI-jpCyUzYCtsmuRTANWYQ8To6PqU-6tMbiZExGfgIO50IdclFZXpKt0H9LmdrPZFYmUxVkoe-TBCEx1j9NZ2sLEutFiLc_1ZkEl_wNXJVWmurnmBbhAsk/s1600/chartrstudents.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjSb98dbuQ-x88E6K9FE2uCfcI-jpCyUzYCtsmuRTANWYQ8To6PqU-6tMbiZExGfgIO50IdclFZXpKt0H9LmdrPZFYmUxVkoe-TBCEx1j9NZ2sLEutFiLc_1ZkEl_wNXJVWmurnmBbhAsk/s200/chartrstudents.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<strong>1. We're no better than public schools.</strong>
<br />
Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know. See our earlier story, <a class="" href="http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/rip-offs/10-things-your-school-district-will-not-tell-you" target="_blank">10 Things Your School District Won t Tell You</a><br />
<br />
A host of other studies on <a class="" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704170404575624562978485450.html">charter school outcomes</a>
have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional
public schools, there are great charters and some that aren't so
great. There s a lot of variation within charter schools, points out
Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State
University who studies issues related to school governance. In fairness
to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them
are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that
it taints charter schools as a whole, Bulkley says.<br />
<br />
<strong>2. Our teachers aren t certified.</strong>
<br />
<b>According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics,
charter-school teachers are, on average, younger and less likely to hold
state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. </b>In a
2000 survey, 92% of public school teachers held state certification,
compared to 79% of charter school teachers. A 2008 survey found that 32%
of charter school teachers were under 30, compared to 17% of
traditional public school teachers. Charter schools often recruit from
organizations like Teach for America that provide non-traditional paths
into the profession, and more-experienced teachers who already have jobs
in traditional public schools may have little incentive to give up the
protection of tenure.<br />
Relying on relatively untrained, inexperienced staff may have a real
impact in the classroom. A lot of them don t have classroom management
skills, says May Taliaferrow, a charter-school parent.<br />
<br />
<strong>3. Plus, they keep quitting.</strong>
<br />
<b>As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year,
according to a 2007 study by Gary Miron, a professor of education at
Western Michigan University, and other researchers at the Great Lakes
Center for Education Research and Practice. That s about double the
typical teacher turnover rate in traditional public schools.</b> Charter
schools typically pay teachers less than traditional public schools do,
and require longer hours, Miron says. Meanwhile, charter school
administrators earn more than their school-district counterparts, which
can also make teachers feel underpaid, he says. The odds of a teacher
leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charter schools
than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 study by the
National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University. That study
also found that much of this teacher attrition was related to
dissatisfaction with working conditions.<br />
Higher turnover is inevitable with a younger staff and the ability
to get rid of ineffective teachers, says Peter Murphy, a spokesman for
the New York Charter Schools Association. There needs to be more
turnover in district schools, Murphy says. Instead, what you have is
this rigid tenure system where teachers are not held accountable, and
children suffer.<br />
<br />
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<strong>4. Students with disabilities need not apply.</strong>
<br />
Six-year-old Makala was throwing regular tantrums in school, so her
mother, Latrina Miley, took her for a psychiatric evaluation, eventually
ending up with a district-mandated plan that stated the girl should be
taught in a smaller class where half the students have special needs.
The charter school s response, Miley says, was to tell her she could
either change her daughter s educational plan, or change schools. She
moved Makala to a nearby public school where, she says, teachers have
been more effective at managing her daughter s behavior issues. The
school says it can t talk about specific cases.<br />
<b>Critics say charter schools commonly counsel out children with
disabilities. While a few charter schools are specifically designed to
serve students with special needs, the rest tend to have lower
proportions of students with special needs than nearby public schools,
according to a review of multiple studies conducted by the University of
Colorado s Education and the Public Interest Center. Charter schools
also appear to end up with students whose disabilities are less
expensive to manage than those of public school students.</b> A Boston
study, conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, found that
91% of students with disabilities in the city s charter schools were
able to be fully included in standard classrooms, compared to only 33%
of students with disabilities in the traditional public schools.<br />
<br />
<strong>5. Separation of church and state? We found a loophole.</strong>
<br />
<b>Charter schools are public schools, supported by public tax dollars.
But among the thousands of charters nationwide are schools run by
Christian organizations as well as Hebrew and Arabic language academies
that blur the line between church and state. What would not be
tolerated in a regular public school seems to be tolerated when it s a
charter school, says Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New
York University and the author of The Death and Life of the Great
American School System</b>. Even if these schools aren't explicitly
teaching religion, it s potentially segregation by religious
preference, Bulkley says.<br />
<br />
<strong>6. We don t need to tell you where your tax dollars are going.</strong>
<br />
An investigation by Philadelphia s City Controller earlier this year
uncovered widespread financial mismanagement among the city s charter
schools, including undisclosed related party transactions where
friends and family of school management were paid for various services,
people listed as working full time at more than one school, individuals
writing checks to themselves, and even a $30,000 bill from a beach
resort charged to a school.<br />
<b>Financial scandals have come to light in schools around the country,
but what s more troubling, says advocate Leonie Haimson of Class Size
Matters in New York City, is that charter schools have opposed state
audits of their finances. The New York Charter School Association won a
lawsuit against the state comptroller last year, with the court ruling
that the legislature had violated the state constitution when it
directed the comptroller to audit charter schools.</b> Charter schools in
the state are already overseen and audited by at least two other
agencies, Murphy says. We have never objected to being audited, being
overseen, and being held accountable. In fact, this organization has
come out in favor of closing low-performing charter schools, he says.<br />
<br />
<strong>7. We ll do anything to recruit more kids </strong>
<br />
Walking around New York City, it s impossible to miss the ads on
buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. <b>The
school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has
been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some
schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in
Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students,
and another school in Louisiana gave out cash.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>8. but we ll push them out if they don t perform.</strong>
<br />
T<b>he Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools have been criticized
for high rates of student attrition, in part because it s the struggling
students who are more likely to leave schools mid-year so if more
students leave charters, that churn could boost a school's scores. </b>A
KIPP study released in June found students leaving at rates comparable
to the rate at which students leave traditional public schools but,
according to Miron, that study ignored the fact that KIPP schools don t
then fill empty slots with other weak, transient students the way
traditional public schools do. Traditional public schools have to take
everybody, Miron explains. Charter schools can determine the number
they want to take and when they want to take them, and then they can
close the door. <br />
Miron found there was a 19% drop in enrollment in KIPP schools from
grades 6 to 7, and a 24% drop from grades 7 to 8. Some charter schools
lose 50% of a cohort each year, Miron says. <b>And in some cases, students
can be explicitly pushed out of a charter school for failing to meet the
school s academic or behavioral standards an option that s not
available to a traditional public school.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>9. Success can be bought.</strong>
<br />
<b>Some of the most successful charter schools are also some of the
wealthiest. Harlem Children s Zone, for example, had over $193 million
in net assets at the end of the 2008-2009 school year, according to its
most recent IRS filing. The organization s charter schools spend $12,443
per student in public money and an additional $3,482 that comes from
private fundraising. </b>That additional funding helps pay for 30% more time
in class, according to Marty Lipp, spokesman for the organization.<br />
<b>It s great to see schools that have the resources to spend lavishly
to help children succeed, Bulkley says, but it's difficult to see how
those schools can then be models for traditional public schools largely
constrained by traditional public budgets.</b> All schools should get what
they need, Lipp says, but adds, You give two people $10 and they spend
it different ways, so it s not simply about money.<br />
<br />
<strong>10. Even great teachers can only do so much.</strong>
<br />
Much of the public debate over charter schools focuses on teacher
performance and the ability to fire ineffective teachers something
that s more difficult at a traditional public school where teachers are
typically union members. <b>While it's true that teachers represent the
most important in-school factor affecting student performance,
out-of-school factors matter more, Ravitch says. The single biggest
predictor of student performance is family income, she says. I
certainly wish it were not so, but it is. Children from higher-income
families get a huge head start thanks to better nutrition, a larger
vocabulary spoken at home and other factors, she says. The narrative
that blames teachers for problems that are rooted in poverty is
demoralizing teachers by the thousands, Ravitch says. And you don t
improve education by demoralizing the people who have to do the work
every day. </b><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-66042694118929242762013-05-26T15:58:00.004-07:002013-05-26T16:05:44.216-07:00<h2 class="itemTitle">
Education Reform in the New Jim Crow Era </h2>
<h2 class="itemTitle">
Click <a href="http://truth-out.org/news/item/16601-truthout-tv-interviews-pl-thomas-about-the-new-jim-crow-era-of-education-reform?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=truthout-tv-interviews-p-l-thomas-about-the-new-jim-crow-era-of-education-reform">here</a> to view an interview with P.L. Thomas </h2>
<span class="itemDateCreated">
</span><span class="itemAuthor">By <a href="http://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/47452">P.L. Thomas</a>, <a href="http://truth-out.org/">Truthout</a> | Op-Ed
</span>
<br />
<div class="itemFullText">
<span class="wf_caption" style="clear: left; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="OFFICERS SCHOOLS CRIME 7 main" height="340" src="http://truth-out.org/images/2013_May_Images/OFFICERS_SCHOOLS_CRIME_7_main.JPG" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 5px;" width="306" /><span style="clear: both; display: block; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; text-align: left; width: 303px;">Officer
Craig Davis, a former municipal policeman now with the Houston school
district force, monitors a hallway at E.L. Furr High School in Houston,
March 20, 2013. (Photo: Michael Stravato / The New York Times)</span></span><i> </i><br />
<b><i>There
are significant parallels between the war on drugs and market-oriented
education reform, and both create an underclass - especially among
African American males, according to Thomas, who traces the history.</i></b><br />
<br />
In the United States, the intersection of the criminal justice system
and public schools has intensified in the wake of school shootings,
prompting similar solutions from supposedly opposite ends of the
political spectrum. As noted in a New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/criminalizing-children-at-school.html" target="_blank">editorial</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/criminalizing-children-at-school.html"> </a>"The
National Rifle Association and President Obama responded to the
Newtown, Conn., shootings by recommending that more police officers be
placed in the nation's schools."<br />
<br />
As the editorial points out, however, research tends to show that <a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/police-in-the-hallways" target="_blank">police in the hallways</a> <a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/police-in-the-hallways"> </a>creates
schools-as-prisons and students-as-criminals, increasing, rather than
eliminating, the problems. In another piece, Chloe Angyal highlights the
<a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15840-punishing-students-for-who-they-are-not-what-they-do" target="_blank">disturbing connection</a> between incarceration and education:<br />
<blockquote>
Punishment rates in schools mirror the rates in the 'real world' -
though what could be more real than entrenched discrimination in our
schools? - and in fact, contribute to those real world figures. The
Civil Rights Project report notes that the abuse and misuse of
suspensions can turn them into "gateways to prison." Even if that were
not the case, even absent a school-to-prison pipeline, the situation
would be grim enough. What this report reveals is a disregard for the
well-being of marginalized populations that, were it directed at other
groups, would never be allowed to stand. If a quarter of white middle
school boys were being suspended every school year, and if pretty white
ladies were being frisked on the streets of Manhattan, there'd be an
uproar.</blockquote>
<b>While the term "a nation at risk" tends to be associated with the <a href="http://datacenter.spps.org/uploads/SOTW_A_Nation_at_Risk_1983.pdf" target="_blank">1983 report</a> on
US education from the Reagan administration, the early 1980s also
spawned an era of mass incarceration, built on claims that the United
States was also a nation at risk because of illegal drug sales and use,
identified by author Michelle Alexander as <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/" target="_blank">The New Jim Crow</a>:</b><br />
<blockquote>
In October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his
administration's "War on Drugs. At the time he declared this new war,
less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most
important issue facing the country. This fact was no deterrent to
Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public
concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By
waging a war on drug users and drug dealers, Reagan made good on his
promise to crack down on the racially defined "others" - the
undeserving. (p. 49)</blockquote>
Within a year of each other, then, the Reagan administration launched
a war on drugs and a crisis response to public education. Just as
Alexander details the masked intent behind the war on drugs, John Holton
exposed A Nation at Risk as less about education reform and more about <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/An-Insider-s-View-of-A/20696" target="_blank">political agendas</a>.<br />
<blockquote>
We met with President Reagan at the White House, who at first was
jovial, charming, and full of funny stories, but then turned serious
when he gave us our marching orders. He told us that our report should
focus on five fundamental points that would bring excellence to
education: Bring God back into the classroom; encourage tuition tax
credits for families using private schools; support vouchers; leave the
primary responsibility for education to parents; and please abolish that
abomination, the Department of Education. Or, at least, don't ask to
waste more federal money on education - "We have put in more only to
wind up with less."</blockquote>
For three decades, the War on Drugs has led to mass incarceration,
primarily impacting African American males, the racially defined
"others," and the education reform movement based on high-stakes
accountability <a href="http://hepg.org/her/booknote/293" target="_blank">has targeted</a> "other people's children" <a href="http://hepg.org/her/booknote/293"> </a>in
ways that suggest market-oriented education reform is a school-based
component of the New Jim Crow grounded in the criminal justice system.<br />
<br />
Mass incarceration and market-oriented education reform share more
than their genesis in the 1980s, since both have been shown to cause far
more harm than good and to further marginalize African American and
impoverished youths and adults.<br />
<br />
<b>The Dark Reality of Market-Oriented Education Reform</b><br />
The education accountability era begun in the early 1980s focused on
implementing curriculum standards and high-stakes testing, first at the
state level and then over the decade since No Child Left Behind (NCLB),
increasingly at the national level.<br />
<br />
The evolution of the education reform movement has included some
central ideological commitments - focusing on in-school-only reform and
relying on slogans such as "no excuses" and "poverty is not destiny," as
expressed in a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705078.html" target="_blank">2010 manifesto</a> from several key figures in reform, Michelle Rhee, Paul Vallas and Joel Klein:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>So, where do we start? With the basics. As President Obama has
emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether
students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP
code or even their parents' income - it is the quality of their teacher.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
Yet, for too long, we have let teacher hiring and retention be
determined by archaic rules involving seniority and academic
credentials. The widespread policy of "last in, first out" (the teacher
with the least seniority is the first to go when cuts have to be made)
makes it harder to hold on to new, enthusiastic educators and ignores
the one thing that should matter most: performance.</blockquote>
<b>At first, reform was driven by revolutionary promises and often
unverified claims of public school failure, but over the past 30 years,
ample evidence now suggests that political education reform has failed
to fulfill its promises, and, in a mechanism similar to the negative
consequences of the mass incarceration, has harmed the exact students
those reforms were designed to help.</b><br />
<br />
<b>The Broader, Bolder Approach to <a href="http://www.boldapproach.org/" target="_blank">Education</a> has
resisted market-oriented, in-school-only reform championed by Secretary
of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Rhee, Vallas and Klein, calling
instead for social and educational reform seeking equity of opportunity
for all families and students. In Broader, Bolder's "Market-Oriented
Education Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality"</b> (April 18, 2013), Elaine
Weiss and Don Long <a href="http://www.boldapproach.org/" target="_blank">examine test-based teacher</a>
evaluations, school closures and expanded charter schools in Chicago,
New York City and Washington, DC, concluding: "The report finds that the
reforms delivered few benefits and in some cases harmed the students
they purport to help. It also identifies a set of largely neglected
policies with real promise to weaken the poverty-education link, if they
receive some of the attention and resources now targeted to the touted
reforms." (p. 3)<br />
<br />
<b>Market-oriented education reform has depended on addressing inequity
indirectly, trusting mechanisms such as choice and business models of
managing teachers as well as schools to initiate social change. This
reform has specifically targeted goals such as closing the achievement
gap, better serving impoverished and minority students, and raising
international indicators of educational quality.</b><br />
<br />
As Weiss and Long show, however, test-based teacher evaluations,
school closures and expanded charter schools haven't succeeded, even
against their advocates' promises:<br />
<blockquote>
<b>· Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in "reform" cities than in other urban districts.</b><br />
<b>· Reported successes for targeted students evaporated upon closer examination.</b><br />
<b>· Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.</b><br />
<b>· School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts money.</b><br />
<b>· Charter schools further disrupted the districts while providing mixed benefits, particularly for the highest-needs students.</b><br />
<b>· Emphasis on the widely touted market-oriented reforms drew attention and resources from initiatives with greater promise.</b><br />
<b>· The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance.</b><br />
<b>· Real, sustained change requires strategies that are more realistic, patient and multipronged. (p. 3)</b></blockquote>
<b>Further, additional evidence reveals (ostensibly) unintended consequences of market-oriented reform have included <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/schools-without-diversity" target="_blank">increased segregation</a>
by race and class in charter schools and a widening gap between the
type of educational experiences affluent children receive compared with
the authoritarian and test-prep-focused "no excuses" schools for
minority and impoverished students, notably <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hope-Against-Struggle-Americas-Children/dp/1608194906" target="_blank">as detailed in</a> Sarah Carr's Hope Against Hope, exploring the post-Katrina rise of charter schools in New Orleans:</b><br />
<blockquote>
But inside the schools, the war over education no longer seems so
stark and clearly defined. Edges blur, shades of gray abound, and simple
solutions prove elusive. . . . Many of the most powerful people in the
country have a plan for the future of education in America, one focused
on more charter schools, technocratic governance, weakened teachers'
unions and the relentless use of data to measure student and teacher
progress. (pp. 5, 6-7)</blockquote>
<b>But Carr's narrative and analysis show that, as detailed in the
Broader, Bolder report, market-oriented reform tends to replicate and
even perpetuate inequity instead of eradicating it: Students in New
Orleans sit in "no excuses" charter schools that are both authoritarian
and segregated, while the post-Katrina Recovery District reduced the
African American teacher workforce from 75 percent to 57 percent of the
city's teachers.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Despite the slogans and <a href="http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/open-letter-to-political-leaders-action-not-tributes-and-rhetoric/" target="_blank">the rhetoric</a>, schools experiencing the array of market-oriented education reform policies have shown that <a href="http://truth-out.org/news/item/8993-studies-suggest-economic-inequity-is-built-into-and-worsened-by-school-systems" target="_blank">home and community</a>
characteristics do predict educational opportunities, mirroring the
historically greatest challenge facing traditional public schools.
</b>Ultimately, like the War on Drugs, current education reform exists as a
key element in America's New Jim Crow era.<br />
<br />
<b>Education Reform and "Racially Sanitized Rhetoric"</b><br />
<b>Just as the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Manufactured-Crisis-Americas-Schools/dp/0201441969" target="_blank">education reform</a> movement was spurred by a "manufactured crisis," <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Manufactured-Crisis-Americas-Schools/dp/0201441969"> </a>as exposed by <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20440437?uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102017269563" target="_blank">Gerald Bracey </a>and
Holton, the War on Drugs grew out of a racially divisive political
agenda, a drug crisis that did not yet exist, but created "mass
incarceration in the United States . . . as a stunningly comprehensive
and well-designed system of racialized social control that functions in a
manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow," as Alexander details. (p. 4)</b><br />
<br />
Since market-oriented education reform is producing evidence
highlighting the ineffectiveness and even negative outcomes associated
with those policies, that the agendas remain robust suggests, again like
mass incarceration, education reform fulfills many of the dynamics
found in the New Jim Crow.<br />
Just as mass incarceration from the war on drugs continues
institutional racism once found in slavery and Jim Crow, education
reform, especially the "no excuses" charter school movement, resurrects a
separate but equal education system that is separate, but certainly
isn't equal. The masked racism of mass incarceration and education
reform share many parallels, including the following:<br />
<br />
· Both depend on "racially sanitized rhetoric," according to
Alexander, that thinly masks racism. "Getting tough on crime" justifies
disproportional arrests, convictions and sentencing for African
Americans; "no excuses" and "zero tolerance" justify highly
authoritarian and punitive schools disproportionally serving
high-poverty children of color.<br />
<br />
· Both depend on claims of objective mechanisms - laws for the war on
drugs and test scores for education reform - to deflect charges of
racism. Alexander recognizes "this system is better designed to <i>create</i> [emphasis
in original] crime and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals,
rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals," (p.
236) just as test-based education reform creates and does not address
the achievement gap.<br />
<br />
· Both depend on racialized fears among poor and working-class
whites, which Alexander identifies in the Reagan drug war agenda: "In
his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the 'excision of the
language of race from conservative public discourse' and thus built on
the success of the earlier conservatives who developed a strategy of
exploiting racial hostility or resentment for political gain without
making explicit reference to race" (p. 48). The charter school movement <a href="http://www.alternet.org/education/why-sending-your-child-charter-school-hurts-other-children" target="_blank">masks segregation</a> within a progressive-friendly public school choice. <br />
<br />
· Both depend on either current claims of post-racial America or the
goal of a post-racial society: "This system of control depends far more
on racial <i>indifference </i>[emphasis in original] . . . than racial hostility," Alexander notes. (p. 203<br />
· Both depend on a bipartisan and popular commitment to seemingly obvious goals of crime eradication and world-class schools.<br />
· Both depend on the appearance of African American support.
Alexander explains about the effectiveness of the war on drugs:
"Conservatives could point to black support for highly punitive
approaches to dealing with the problems of the urban poor as 'proof'
that race had nothing to do with their 'law and order' agenda." (p. 42<br />
<br />
<b>This last point - that African Americans seem to support both the war
on crime and "no excuses" charter schools - presents the most
problematic aspect of charges that mass incarceration and education
reform are ultimately racist, significant contributions to the New Jim
Crow.</b><br />
<br />
For example, Carr reports that African American parents not only
choose "no excuses" charter schools in New Orleans, but also actively
cheer and encourage the authoritarian policies voiced by the schools'
administrators. But Alexander states, "Given the dilemma facing poor
black communities, it is inaccurate to say that black people 'support'
mass incarceration or 'get-tough' policies" because "if the only choice
that is offered blacks is rampant crime or more prisons, the predictable
(and understandable) answer will be 'more prisons.' " (p. 210)<br />
<br />
New Orleans serves as a stark example of how this dynamic works in
education reform: Given the choice between segregated, underfunded and
deteriorating public schools and "no excuses" charters - and not the
choice of the school environments and offerings found in many elite
private schools - the predictable answer is "no excuses" charters.<br />
<br />
<b>Market-oriented education reform continues to produce evidence that
it fails against its own goals and standards. But more disturbing is
that current education reform also shares with the war on drugs evidence
that the United States is committed to the New Jim Crow, to which
Alexander quotes Martin Luther King Jr.: "Nothing in all the world is
more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." (p.
203)</b><br />
<br />
<b>The war on drugs and highly punitive, segregated charter schools are
creating an underclass, significantly among African American males -
facts that must be acknowledged before equity of opportunity can be
secured. About this intersection of the criminal justice system and
education reform, Angyal asks, "But the real question is, what will it
take for us to fix this system that punishes students and citizens for
no other reason but their membership in marginalized groups?"</b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-60725790695474782022013-05-24T09:37:00.000-07:002013-06-01T21:04:56.107-07:00Schumpeter: Creative destruction and imposing markets in education<h1 class="title entry-title">
<span style="font-size: small;">by <span class="fn">mches</span></span></h1>
<span class="fn"> </span>
<br />
<div class="content entry-content">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3kV7o5TflN5M13YDdYwZvOAYXYxBft-y3fgdgt1WZ0EWI0f6UE3ts2WuMkdyDPUUjznASs4esKuXnSDQwXH2ZN0s8aj3oYgND009q-p5an9V5HLwRdV9uROEM6a1PIaO6AgZoKkTf5Zpv/s1600/corporate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3kV7o5TflN5M13YDdYwZvOAYXYxBft-y3fgdgt1WZ0EWI0f6UE3ts2WuMkdyDPUUjznASs4esKuXnSDQwXH2ZN0s8aj3oYgND009q-p5an9V5HLwRdV9uROEM6a1PIaO6AgZoKkTf5Zpv/s320/corporate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I’ve taken a decidedly more strident tone as of late, so I want to
spend some time examining why this is so. It’s not that TFA or
education reform as a whole has changed much in the last couple of
years, but my analysis of it certainly has. The longer I spend in the
classroom, the greater emphasis I place on the importance of
relationships and community and care. <b>I tend to think of these as
values which often run afoul of the values of the economic elite like
austerity, efficiency, or being data-driven. </b> I see the former group as
necessary tools of being an educator and the latter as the tools of an
economist.<br />
<br />
<b>What I’ve done with this post is explore the conflict behind the
corporate reformers and the educators they seek to impose their will
over. In it, I hope to prove that the aims of corporate reformers and
those of educators are necessarily at odds with one another.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>Introduction to Market-Based Reformers</strong><br />
<br />
T<b>he corporate reform movement is an attempt by a group of wealthy
philanthropists to impose market forces where there had previously been
none or had protections against them. The policy instruments they
support are: </b><br />
<ol>
<li><b>data-driven management designed to weed out undesirable
employees and reward superstars; school choice models,</b></li>
<li><b>designed to
foster competition for student enrollment and their tax dollars to bring
down costs and improve customer satisfaction, and</b></li>
<li><b>weakening teacher
unions to allow for greater labor market flexibility.</b></li>
</ol>
<br />
<b>This tribe of reformers resolves that market-oriented reforms will
offer a better, more varied and customer-pleasing product.</b> Or, it will
deliver at least the same quality of product for less money. And, in
doing so, these reforms will yield a more equitable education for
children in low-income households because parents will not be forced to
send their kids to the substandard schools available in their
neighborhood.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Intentionality of Disruption</strong><br />
<b>The argument that such reforms will be disruptive, lead to job loss,
would cause total havoc to the education system as a whole falls on deaf
ears. One of the staggering capabilities of markets is their capacity
for creative destruction, a term popularized by the economist Joseph
Schumpeter. </b> Because of the efficiency of markets to adapt to consumer
demands, the products, services, and firms of one era will almost
certainly <b>fall prey to the changing needs of the markets.</b><br />
<br />
<b> One company
rises (Microsoft), another falls (IBM).</b> An innovation captures the
imaginations of millions one generation only to crumble mere decades
later (Polaroid). This is good for us because we reap the benefits of
this relentless creative thrust. Things get better, faster, and
cheaper, and our lives are made easier and more fun.<br />
<br />
<b>For market-based reformers, the destruction of public education is
not a bug; it’s a feature. Like a phoenix out of the ashes, a new,
robust, monetized educational system is something to be desired so that —
finally — schools can harness the awesome power of private markets.</b><br />
<br />
In order for markets to work and not descend into some corporatist
public-private hybrid, the role of the entrepreneur is essential. <b>They
are the risk-takers. They strategically gamble on the novelty of their
ideas, on the notion that there is a group of people out there who want
what they can provide and that no one else is providing what they’ve
got. In the last half-century, these are the Gates, Jobs, and
Zuckerbergs of the world, risking the security of a sure-thing job at an
established firm for the possibility of striking gold on your own.
This risk is what makes innovation possible and is what drives the
dynamism of markets.</b><br />
<br />
My question is this: are the roles of educator and entrepreneur mutually compatible? Can one be both risk-taker and caretaker?<br />
<br />
<strong>Risk-taker v. Caretaker</strong><br />
<b>As a caretaker, I value stability, engendering trust, meeting the
needs of someone else before my own, and cooperation. The risk-taker
values reward, self-interest, recognition, and accomplishment. I think a
Venn diagram between the two roles would show an intersection for
things like cooperation, recognition, and accomplishment. </b> But I think
of cooperation as an end for the caretaker and a means to an end for a
risk-taker. For accomplishment and recognition, it’s vice versa. <b>My
interest in personal accomplishment is a means to the end of improving
the lives of my students.</b><br />
<br />
<b>I feel that the corporate reform movement doesn’t value things like
trust or stability or meeting others’ needs because they are very
difficult to quantify.</b> Note the reforms they support in the
introduction: employee management based on test data, competition in
school markets, labor flexibility. All of these things can be measured
using dollars, student enrollment numbers, or standardized test data.<br />
<br />
<b>How do I know my school is successful? The caretaker will talk to
you about conversations they have had with parents and students, the
sense of joy and love they have in their work, the great progress their
students have made towards adulthood which may or may not be
college-focused. The risk-taker will point to their numbers: test
scores went up, student enrollment went up, revenues went up.</b><br />
<br />
This poses an interesting challenge for the market-based approach to
schools. If we measure schools on their metrics alone, where do we find
the market winners and losers? In other words, where are the good
schools and bad schools in a market system?<br />
<br />
<strong>Good schools v. Bad schools </strong><br />
<b>Let’s take a look at students who move frequently versus those who
stay put in one location. The creative destruction of markets means
schools will open and close with fluidity. The bad ones won’t have
enough customers, the good ones will open up more campuses or expand
existing ones to meet consumer demand. </b> There will be students who find
themselves in the middle of this tumult more so than others. Those
students will also be bouncing between teachers and their different
teaching styles, perhaps different curricula, different sets of rules
and consequences, different peers and friends(4). <b>Because the schools
don’t have to keep them, kids with behavior challenges will bounce more
than anyone. The public schools will become the last bastion for these
students and others with special needs. Those who have a stable school
home will have better social and better academic outcomes and these will
often be the children of parents who can afford the “good” schools much
like the parents who can afford “nice” homes today.</b><br />
<br />
<b>My guess is the “bad schools” in the market will often be located
near the “bad schools” of today. This is because the supposed goodness
or badness of schools has less to do with the staff or administration or
innovations like long hours and days and years, or with some magical
properties of the school building itself. </b> No, school quality comes down
to peer effects. This is how it works when we describe “nice”
neighborhoods or churches or grocery stores. You want to know what
makes the “nice” HEB so nice, why the store is cleaner, why it offers a
greater diversity of products that are healthier than the HEB down the
street from my school? Give me a minute…do you think it’s because its
customer base is wealthier? <b>You mean, it’s not because the store
managers or cashiers are less capable or because the west side HEB
patrons just aren’t <em>motivated</em> enough to want 75 varieties of
hummus(5)? Of course not. This is just the market at work. The market
doesn’t care about equity, period. The market responds to the demands
of its consumers.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Contrary to the wishful thinking of education reformer grandpappy <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2005/12/01/the-father-of-modern-school-re">Milton Friedman<img class="snap_preview_icon" id="snap_com_shot_link_icon" src="http://www.previewshots.com/images/v1.3/t.gif" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("http://www.previewshots.com/images/v1.3/theme/silver/palette.gif"); background-position: -1128px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px none; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "trebuchet ms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 12px; left: auto; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; max-height: 2000px; max-width: 2000px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 1px 0px 0px; position: static; text-decoration: none; top: auto; vertical-align: top; visibility: visible; width: 14px;" /></a>, if the market demands even more segregation than is currently available in government schools, then <a href="http://cloakinginequity.com/2012/11/06/impact-on-access-and-segregation-are-vouchers-a-panacea-or-problematic-pt-ii/">so be it<img class="snap_preview_icon" id="snap_com_shot_link_icon" src="http://www.previewshots.com/images/v1.3/t.gif" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("http://www.previewshots.com/images/v1.3/theme/silver/palette.gif"); background-position: -1128px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px none; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "trebuchet ms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 12px; left: auto; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; max-height: 2000px; max-width: 2000px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 1px 0px 0px; position: static; text-decoration: none; top: auto; vertical-align: top; visibility: visible; width: 14px;" /></a>(6).</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>If a neighborhood has “bad schools,” they’ll just have to adapt by
getting rid of low-performing teachers and students until they are good.
</b> And those low performers will be thrust back into the marketplace to
find a new home, even though every other school will succumb to the same
pressures. <b> The public school will necessarily become the dumping
ground for the most challenging or expensive to teach students.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Contrary to the theoretical model put forth by
free-market ideologues, markets do not yield more equitable results.
The gulf between the “good” and “bad” schools widens because of the
inherent segregating properties of market forces.</b><br />
<br />
<strong>A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Creative Destruction in Education</strong><br />
Let’s think about what is lost in this creative destruction.<br />
<ul>
<li><b>First and foremost, kids lose. Since charters are not public
schools, they will lose their constitutional rights.</b> Many more kids
will lose art, physical education, music, journalism, debate, dance,
creative writing, a variety of foreign languages, and any other class
that is not tested, not considered “essential.” Students will profound
special needs will be further segregated from non-disabled peers because
so few schools will want to take on the additional responsibility.
Students with language needs will languish trying to find a school that
will take them and meet their needs appropriately.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Parents lose their voice. </b> They are granted a voice as customers,
but this is illusory. <b>They are subject to the availability of what the
market provides. </b> If they are dissatisfied, they move to another school.
This is rough on the kid and on the parents who now have to shop for
this other school, possibly in a neighborhood they of their child can’t
get to easily. If the school is not satisfied with the student, the
student can be booted out in spite of parental protest.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Teachers lose their voice.</b> As labor participants, we are given a
choice of where we want to work, but without organized labor to speak on
behalf of workers, the market will dictate wages and hours. <b>The
private school, either for-profit or not, will have incentive to remain
competitive, trimming the fat wherever possible. </b> The bulk of a school’s
operating cost goes to personnel. This means teachers get their
salaries cut and their hours extended. And when that happens, it’s our
fault because these are the schools we chose to work in. This is what
we signed up for.</li>
</ul>
<div>
I don’t want to suggest that no one would gain from such a system.
Parents of certain religious inclinations would now have government
funds to send their children to parochial schools, and market reforms
would certainly aid those parents who wish to include a spiritual
element to their child’s curriculum. <b> However, there’s the whole
separation of church and state thing to worry about, not to mention the
lunatics who teach creationism as science. With vouchers, parents who
already send their kids to private schools now have a subsidy to do so.
So it’s regressively redistributive, but hey, rich people get harangued
all the time, isn’t it time they got a break? And, let’s not forget
the windfall of business opportunities for-profit endeavors would have
access to(7).</b></div>
<div>
</div>
<strong>The Future of Education Reform</strong><br />
How should we proceed then, as caretakers or risk-takers? What do we
value in schools and from teachers? It is my view now that these roles
are inherently opposed to each other. <b>If we are to seek equity, social
justice, and equality of opportunity for children of lesser means, then
we should reject the suggestions and impositions of the corporate
reform movement steadfastly. We ought to limit the influence of
misleading or useless metrics such as census standardized test scores
and recognize the folly of competitive markets when what is at risk is
not mere capital but human beings with complex lives. We ought to push
for reforms that empower all families to be involved in their children’s
education and success in schools, that seek a level playing field, that
work to integrate all walks of life into a community of equals.</b><br />
<br />
The risks are too great to pursue the destructive ends a market will
wreak. The stakes are far too high to pursue anything less than equity
for our kids.<br />
<br />
NOTES<br />
(1) Charters schools and voucher programs.<br />
(2) Ostensibly parents and children.<br />
(3) Including, but not limited to, diminishing or eliminating the
importance or necessity of licensure. Hence preferences for TFA,
alternative certification programs, and charters, all of which
circumvent the market artifice of traditional teacher certification.<br />
(4) Assuming the gubmint keeps their dirty hands off standards
altogether. Oops, sorry libertarians, this one is not coming close to
happening.<br />
(5) DING DING DING! For getting this question correctly, you get a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for Pita Pal-brand hummus.<br />
(6) The late free-market guru Milton Friedman fretted that no true
universal voucher program had ever been instituted in the United States
and therefore no real reform would occur. He also believed that such a
voucher system would allow parents to get their kids out of
low-performing schools and improve the education of those students.
<b>Well, Chile has had a universal voucher system and, quelle surprise,
the vouchers have </b><a href="http://cloakinginequity.com/2012/11/06/impact-on-access-and-segregation-are-vouchers-a-panacea-or-problematic-pt-ii/"><b>“exacerbated segregation between schools and between types of schools.”</b><img class="snap_preview_icon" id="snap_com_shot_link_icon" src="http://www.previewshots.com/images/v1.3/t.gif" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("http://www.previewshots.com/images/v1.3/theme/silver/palette.gif"); background-position: -1128px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px none; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "trebuchet ms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 12px; left: auto; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; max-height: 2000px; max-width: 2000px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 1px 0px 0px; position: static; text-decoration: none; top: auto; vertical-align: top; visibility: visible; width: 14px;" /></a><br />
(7) To be denied decades of government largesse only to suddenly be
afforded access to millions of kids with shiny golden tickets in their
hands worth $5000 a piece…you know the investment world is salivating at
the opportunity.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-31802496084875140792013-05-23T16:14:00.003-07:002013-06-01T21:07:25.138-07:00SCHOOL CLOSING QUOTABLES <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
</h3>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsxW5qZgovuBSmhsa7gIbjUwfr7qti9v0_KK-dRMhdvW7g2UFJgWnwrzPIQCAcrPkGHQBRfC_4ehqanqUpxd_SriB2ANLp3MDCgFsnZESnSOEjiP6x81cn3iueT_EpaY4gk4CnkKViSKo/s1600/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpg"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsxW5qZgovuBSmhsa7gIbjUwfr7qti9v0_KK-dRMhdvW7g2UFJgWnwrzPIQCAcrPkGHQBRfC_4ehqanqUpxd_SriB2ANLp3MDCgFsnZESnSOEjiP6x81cn3iueT_EpaY4gk4CnkKViSKo/s280/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trumbull Local
Schools Council member Ali Burke hugs Wendy Kattan of Raise Your Hand
following the board of education's vote to close 50 Chicago Public
School, May 22, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sun-Times headline</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In less time than it takes to boil an egg -- </i><a href="http://www.suntimes.com/20258773-761/cps-makes-history-closing-scores-of-schools-in-less-time-than-it-takes-to-boil.html">This morning</a></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Columnist Mark Brown</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In the end, the board was so tone deaf to its audience that on the
crucial vote that closed most of the schools, they used the
parliamentary maneuver of adopting the previous favorable roll call —
instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to each say “yes” once more. The
average person in attendance didn’t even know the closings had been
approved until it was over. </i>-- <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/20285798-761/cps-closings-vote-shows-its-time-for-an-elected-school-board.html">"CPS closings vote shows it’s time for an elected school board"</a></blockquote>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZe4aiT24kwFGe1DZiAGXELOO85EB1z4keguBOkQ5AlF0D5NBcUU9eXKEHW5nRblrJig0ED0TJxGAGdZLvHMOUlcc8ANVlTIZYADfGPDQjmHmSPvYVzCYjjJo788vR2WEz-aefzs1EFH8/s1600/schools+close+calista+brown.jpg"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZe4aiT24kwFGe1DZiAGXELOO85EB1z4keguBOkQ5AlF0D5NBcUU9eXKEHW5nRblrJig0ED0TJxGAGdZLvHMOUlcc8ANVlTIZYADfGPDQjmHmSPvYVzCYjjJo788vR2WEz-aefzs1EFH8/s280/schools+close+calista+brown.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whitney Young students hold vigil. (Sun-Times)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prof. Mark Naison</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>One key component of this strategy is demographic inversion- moving
the poor out of the center city into the periphery, where they will no
longer be able to physically or politically threaten the global elites
who will be working and playing in the redeveloped Center. This process
is already well under way in cities like New York, Chicago, Washington
and Milwaukee- with the result being that more poor people now live in
suburbs than in cities.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px;">..</span><br />
<i> ...</i> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-naison/erasing-history-in-chicago-and-other-places/10151363569306503?notif_t=note_tag">"Erasing History In Chicago and Other Places"</a></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prof. Federico Waitoller, Dept. of Special Ed, UIC </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>This combination of factors will make school closings doubly hard for
students of color with special needs. The sheer magnitude and speed of
these changes will be especially painful for what is already the school
district’s most vulnerable population. </i>-- <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-21/opinion/chi-20130521-waitoller_briefs_1_black-students-closings-special-needs">Letter to Tribune</a></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sports writer Dave Zirin</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current
spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political
life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the closing of
fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the
justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will
be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new
basketball arena.</i> -- <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/174478/rahm-emanuels-zombie-pigs-vs-chicagos-angry-birds#">The Nation</a></blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-26196725844867329422013-05-23T16:12:00.001-07:002013-06-01T21:08:28.547-07:00Apple's Tax Hypocrisy, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl7JecX-4Tao03aeFjHH_sQFzIX4C-0LLDb34QZOTdmk_ttQ2sx2VyqdfI9bkSwwLFjVqhpyyJk9wecywnnY1V3jR5vdBY0AZERmVCwdiX78whEO9CxmTe_dAe9aRnSGktIpKmYbnUM5dm/s1600/apple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl7JecX-4Tao03aeFjHH_sQFzIX4C-0LLDb34QZOTdmk_ttQ2sx2VyqdfI9bkSwwLFjVqhpyyJk9wecywnnY1V3jR5vdBY0AZERmVCwdiX78whEO9CxmTe_dAe9aRnSGktIpKmYbnUM5dm/s1600/apple.jpg" /></a></div>
Alec MacGillis, New Republic, May 23, 2013<br />
<br />
<b>It’s remarkable how quickly the storm of outrage over Apple’s epic tax avoidance has passed over Washington. All it took was for Apple CEO Tim Cook (2011 compensation: $378 million) to share some yuks with senators about their love for his company’s products (“I love Apple. I love Apple,” enthused Claire McCaskill) and to cast Apple’s extreme measures to avoid taxes (paying not a cent on $30 billion in global profits parked in an Irish subsidiary that has as much physical reality as a leprechaun) as a mere matter of subjective perspective: “The way that I look at this is there’s no shifting going on that I see at all,” Cook told John McCain. “I see this differently than you do, I believe.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>There’s one aspect of the Apple tax avoidance that I’m particularly surprised has been allowed to slip unscrutinized. As you’re probably aware, the Silicon Valley giants have been in Washington a lot of late for something other than explaining the postmodern relativism of tax liability: to lobby for immigration reform. </b>They're interested, in particular, in greatly expanding the number of H-1B visas, which Apple, Google, Facebook and the rest of the tech behemoths rely on to hire foreign software engineers. They need to bring these workers over from India, China and elsewhere, the companies say, because there simply aren’t enough qualified native ones being trained here at home. One of the biggest champions of this demand was none other than Steve Jobs, Cook's predecessor, who made the pitch directly to President Obama in 2011. Sometimes, the companies phrase it euphemistically: The lack of H-1B visas, Google’s public policy shop explains, is “preventing tech companies from recruiting some of the world’s brightest minds.” <b>Mark Zuckerberg was slightly more candid in his big Washington Post op-ed, throwing his weight behind immigration reform: “To lead the world in this new economy, we need the most talented and hardest-working people” (you hear that, Middle America?) And sometimes it comes out just plain awkward: “There are simply more smart Indians and Chinese than there are Americans,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said over the weekend on CNN. (Yes, he is of course literally correct, sample size and all—there are more dumb people over there too!—but still…)</b><br />
<b>We’ve become so used to hearing our educational system disparaged from all corners that we have insufficiently zeroed in on this part of the Silicon Valley argument. There are many reasons why our schools fall far short of the ideal—students arriving unprepared, bureaucracies constrained by hidebound rules, etc. And one reason is, yes, inadequate resources, more in some parts of the country than others. Which brings us to Apple. From the deeply-reported New York Times story that laid bare its tax avoidance last year:</b><br />
<br />
A mile and a half from Apple's Cupertino headquarters is De Anza College, a community college that Steve Wozniak, one of Apple's founders, attended from 1969 to 1974. <b>Because of California's state budget crisis, De Anza has cut more than a thousand courses and 8 percent of its faculty since 2008. Now, De Anza faces a budget gap so large that it is confronting a ''death spiral,'' the school's president, Brian Murphy, wrote to the faculty in January. Apple, of course, is not responsible for the state's financial shortfall, which has numerous causes. But the company's tax policies are seen by officials like Mr. Murphy as symptomatic of why the crisis exists.</b><br />
<br />
''I just don't understand it,'' he said in an interview. '<b>'I'll bet every person at Apple has a connection to De Anza. Their kids swim in our pool. Their cousins take classes here. They drive past it every day, for Pete's sake. ''But then they do everything they can to pay as few taxes as possible.''</b><br />
<br />
As that piece reported, <b>Apple not only does its utmost to avoid paying federal taxes in the U.S., but also to minimize its taxes at the state and local level. One favorite trick: Nevada. The Times: “With a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>If Apple really cares about a shortage of homegrown engineering talent, then it should pay taxes to fund the institutions that could address that problem. </b>Yes, I know. What they've done in seeking out every loophole from Eire to eternity is technically legal. It’s the fault of the governments that allow these loopholes to exist. Everyone does it. But here’s why these rationalizations don’t cut it any more, if they ever did. In taking such an influential role in shaping our new immigration policy, the Silicon Valley giants are offering themselves as having a stake in our country’s common prosperity: <b>To thrive, they are saying, we Americans must fix this immigration morass, by, among other things, making it easier for us to hire labor from abroad. There will be winners and losers, but it will be good for us all in the long run.</b><br />
<br />
The industry’s new aspiration to a kind of town-father, old-fashioned Chamber of Commerce investment in the greater good comes through in George Packer’s terrific new New Yorker dispatch from Silicon Valley. Packer cites the scene of Obama’s 2011 visit to the Valley in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs: Cisco CEO John Chambers “kept pushing [Obama] for a tax holiday on overseas profits that are reinvested in the United States…While Chambers was lobbying Obama, over cod and lentil salad, Zuckerberg turned to Valerie Jarrett, the President’s adviser, and whispered, ‘We should be talking about what’s important to the country. Why is he just talking about what’s good for him?” Packer also quotes Joe Green, a Zuckerberg roommate at Harvard who was not part of the original Facebook team but has since reunited with him to run the new Silicon Valley group, FWD.us, that is pushing immigration reform. “How do we move America into the knowledge economy? And how do we create a voice for the knowledge community that is about the future and not selfish?”<br />
<br />
<b>FWD.us has already run into some murky controversies as it tries to navigate the realities of partisan Washington. But the larger question raised by the industry’s new aspiration to playing a constructive role is pretty simple: Isn’t one way to show that you want to be part of the nation’s common good—a “not selfish voice”—to, you know, pay taxes?</b> Or rather, not go completely out of your way to avoid paying them? <b>Yes, companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to grow profits. But in their quest to reform immigration laws to their liking, the Valley giants are arguing that there is some sort of commonwealth that will, in the end, benefit our entire bottom line—corporate and national</b>. <b>Why does the same logic not apply at all when it comes to their tax liability? Why can the case not be made to shareholders that it would be good for Apple in the long run if that community college just down the road from the company’s main campus (a campus that is about to be transformed into a $5 billion fortress) were not falling apart? Who knows, it might even produce a homegrown employee one of these days, like that Wozniak guy.</b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-15871943601300084842013-05-23T16:03:00.003-07:002013-05-26T13:19:38.667-07:00Scott Walker, GOP Slip ALEC Education Agenda Into Wisconsin Budget<span class="submitted">by <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/users/35275/brendan-fischer" title="View user profile.">Brendan Fischer</a> </span><br />
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Governor Scott Walker seeks to "radically" overhaul Wisconsin's
education system using several pieces of American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) model legislation, and to do it through the budget
process, meaning this privatization agenda could be enacted with minimal
public discussion or debate.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Scott Walker" height="179" src="http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/walker.jpg" style="float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" width="225" /><br />
<b>The proposed budget provisions have the potential to "radically
change public education in the State of Wisconsin," says Julie Mead,
chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.</b><br />
<br />
On the campaign trail in 2010, Walker had <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20101118093945/http://www.scottwalker.org/issues/government-reform" target="_blank">pledged</a> to
"strip policy and pork projects from the state budget." But at least 46
non-budgetary items have been slipped into the proposed 2013-2015
budget, including ALEC-connected proposals limiting local school board
oversight for charter schools, expanding "voucher" programs, and
creating new teaching licenses for individuals with no education
background.<br />
<br />
"If these proposals have merit, they should be discussed in full light
of day," she said. "They should not be snuck in through a budget bill.<br />
<br />
The ALEC-inspired budget provisions include:<br />
<h2>
Limiting Local Control Through Expanding Charter Authorizers</h2>
<strong>One budget provision creates a "Charter School Oversight Board" that would approve nonprofit entities as independent charter school authorizers. It tracks the general ideas in the ALEC <a href="http://alecexposed.org/w/images/5/57/2D4-Next_Generation_Charter_Schools_Act_Exposed.pdf" target="_blank">Next Generation Charter Schools Act</a>.</strong><br />
<br />
Currently, only local school boards, elected by the community, can
authorize a charter school; in Milwaukee, the Common Council and
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are also authorizers.<br />
Michael Resnick of the National School Board Association says his
organization supports charters -- provided that they are approved by the
local school board.<br />
<br />
"What you want is a strong level of collaboration between the charter
and school district," he told the Center for Media and Democracy,
ideally with both the charter and traditional schools learning from one
another. "The goal is working within the community and wanting all
children to succeed."<br />
<br />
<b>"The local school district has a vested interest in the kids enrolled
in charter schools, particularly because kids will come back into the
public school system if the charter is inadequate," Resnick said. If
that happens, "the public school is then held accountable for [the
student's] performance, regardless of what academic disturbance might
have occurred in the charter."</b><br />
<br />
<b>For Mead, another issue is accountability: both local school boards
and the state superintendent are elected by the community, but
independent charter school authorizers have no such
accountability. "This means the publicly-funded charter schools are
completely shielded from voter input," she said. </b><br />
<br />
A press release from Governor Walker's office <a href="http://walker.wi.gov/Default.aspx?Page=65ea2073-bf41-460b-8f8a-911f18f8c620" target="_blank">claims</a> the board will "preserve local control." Mead disagrees.<br />
<br />
<b>"There would be no local control here," Mead says. "It would wrest
control from school boards, and likewise from the community that elects
those school boards."</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>Mead also notes that, if a charter school proposal was rejected by a
community and its school board, an independent authorizer could be "a
defacto appellate mechanism." A charter operator could move on to the
unelected independent authorizer for approval.</b><br />
<br />
A <a href="http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/republican-bill-calls-for-a-board-of-political-appointees-to/article_a685fc34-5426-11e0-bd7a-001cc4c002e0.html" target="_blank">similar proposal</a> to establish a board that would directly authorize charters was introduced as a standalone bill in 2011, but failed to pass.<br />
<h2>
Expanding Taxpayer Funded Vouchers</h2>
<strong>The budget also expands the school voucher program that
diverts taxpayer dollars away from public schools to subsidize private
and for-profit schools, not only by increasing funding for
vouchers, but also by requiring voucher programs in any district with
more than two schools deemed "failing." The private school accepting the
student would receive the aid for the student and the former school
would lose it. This reflects the principles in the ALEC <a href="http://alecexposed.org/w/images/e/e7/2E3-Education_Accountability_Act_Exposed.pdf" target="_blank">Education Accountability Act</a>.</strong><br />
<b>
</b><b>The proposal would immediately affect at least nine school districts,
including Madison. The Madison Metropolitan School District estimates
that it could lose up to $7 million in state aid once the voucher
program is fully implemented.</b><br />
<br />
"If we’re losing millions in state aid, we have to cut back on something,” <a href="http://www.madisoncommons.org/?q=content/public-private-schools-in-madison-consider-the-impact-of-voucher-program" target="_blank">said</a> Madison
Board of Education member Arlene Silveira. “We’ll have to reduce
programming and increase class sizes,” and possibly raise property taxes
to help cover the loss.<br />
<br />
<strong>Another budget provision would provide taxpayer-funded vouchers for all students with disabilities, regardless of family income. This tracks the ALEC Special Needs Scholarship Program Act; ALEC <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/ALECs_17th_Report_Card.pdf" target="_blank">has been tracking the passage</a> of the bill across the country. A similar proposal was introduced as a standalone bill last session but failed to pass.</strong><br />
<br />
Families using a voucher might unknowingly forfeit the protections
provided by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),
including the right to a "free, appropriate education" and an
individualized lesson plan.<br />
<br />
<b>According to Mead, IDEA already contains an opportunity for students
to get reimbursed for private school tuition, but only if they show two
things: one, that the public school was substandard, and two, that the
private school met IDEA's requirements for a free and appropriate
education.</b><br />
<br />
Under the proposed Special Needs Scholarship Program, parents would
be entitled to a voucher without such a showing. And there would be
little accountability for the schools accepting students under the
voucher system. The Department of Education has already <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/wisconsin-told-to-boost-oversight-of-voucher-schools-disability-rolls-7f9q8ht-205839281.html" target="_blank">raised concerns</a> about the lack of oversight for Wisconsin students with disabilities attending private schools on a regular voucher.<br />
<br />
<b>"The idea that we want to make special education high-quality is
beyond argument. We want it to be continuously improved in the same way
want all education programs improved," she said. "But how does a voucher
that allows parents to exit that system, and puts kids in a private
setting with no oversight, accomplish that goal?"</b><br />
<br />
<b>Mead is also concerned about the broader issue of public
accountability under taxpayer-funded, privately-run voucher schools.
"The Supreme Court has held that students have a constitutional right to
a sound, basic education," she says. With the public system, "if that
is not provided, parents can press on their policymakers to make
improvements and satisfy that right."</b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>With "choice," though, Mead is concerned that the right merely becomes "a right to shop."</b><br />
<b>
</b><b>"Lawmakers can claim they are absolved of responsibility to improve the system, and instead just tell parents to shop around."</b><br />
<h2>
Teachers Who Aren't Teachers</h2>
<strong>Another budget provision would create a new teaching license for individuals with no formal education background but subject-matter experience to teach in charter schools. This reflects the ALEC <a href="http://alecexposed.org/w/images/8/85/2F0-Alternative_Certification_Act_Exposed.pdf" target="_blank">Alternative Certification Act.</a></strong><br />
<br />
<b>"Teaching standards have evolved the way they have because research
shows a high-quality teacher not only needs a background in the subject
they are teaching, but also that they are schooled in pedagogy and
classroom management," Mead said. "Can we find folks who have no
training that can teach? Of course. But teaching standards and training
have evolved as a minimum way to guarantee to public and parents what
they can expect when they enroll students."</b><br />
<br />
Mead also notes what she calls an "interesting juxtaposition." The legislature recently created a new <a href="https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/115/II/415" target="_blank">educator effectiveness evaluation system</a>,
which ratchets up state oversight over teachers by creating performance
criteria based on student performance and other standards. But at the
same time, with this bill, Republicans are simultaneously reducing
requirements for becoming a teacher <br />
"They are lowering standards on one side while raising standards on the other," she said.<br />
<h2>
Wisconsin: Laboratory for Education Privatization</h2>
Wisconsin has long been a laboratory for the ideologically-driven school "choice" movement. <br />
In 1990, Milwaukee was the first city in the nation to implement a
school voucher program, under then-Governor (and ALEC alum) Tommy
Thompson. ALEC, which had <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/National_Journal_1984_full_plate%20.doc" target="_blank">promoted vouchers since the early 1980s</a>, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/Heritage_Milwaukee_1990_ALEC.doc" target="_blank">quickly embraced</a> the legislation. <b>The Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation <a href="http://cspcs.sanford.duke.edu/sites/default/files/Bradley%20Foundation%20and%20School%20Vouchers.pdf" target="_blank">funded</a>
the groups that laid the groundwork for Milwaukee's voucher program,
and when the plan was challenged in Wisconsin courts, Bradley <a href="http://cspcs.sanford.duke.edu/sites/default/files/Bradley%20Foundation%20and%20School%20Vouchers.pdf" target="_blank">bankrolled</a>
its legal defense, which included hiring Kenneth Starr -- later known
for pursuing Bill Clinton over Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky -- to
represent the state.</b><br />
<br />
Bradley is a top national funder of right-wing causes and
organizations, including ALEC, and just over the past eleven years has
spent over $31 million promoting "school choice" around the country, <a href="http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/p-is-for-payoff.pdf" target="_blank">according to</a> One
Wisconsin Now. The foundation has over $600 million in assets and is
headed by Michael Grebe, Scott Walker's campaign co-chair.<br />
<br />
<b>Originally promoted as a program for Milwaukee's low-income students
of color to have access to private education, the initial voucher
program gained support from some African-American leaders and was
co-sponsored by Rep. Polly Williams, a Milwaukee Democrat. But last
session, Walker and his fellow Republicans broadened vouchers to
families with higher incomes, and in the 2013-2015 budget are
threatening to further expand the program. "They have hijacked the
program," <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/207753841.html" target="_blank">Williams says</a>.
“As soon as the doors open for the low income children, they’re
trampled by the high income,” she said. “It’s as if the struggle we went
through 20-some years ago -- now the upper crust have taken over.”</b><br />
<br />
By 2014-2015, Wisconsin taxpayers will have spent an estimated $1.8 billion sending students to private and religious schools.<br />
<br />
<b>School privatization interests are also major political funders in
the state, spending at least $10 million in the last ten years, <a href="http://www.wisdc.org/pr040513.php" target="_blank">based on</a>
a review of political spending by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Walker alone received $2.35 million in contributions and outside support
from pro-privatization groups.</b><br />
<br />
The total spent could actually be much higher, thanks to gaps in
reporting requirements. ALEC member American Federation for Children,
for example, told state officials it spent only $345,000 on the 2012
elections, but <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12101/issue-ad-charade-american-federation-children-uncovered-wisconsin" target="_blank">boasted to its funders</a>
it spent $2.4 million on Wisconsin legislative races. AFC got what it
paid for: the top beneficiary of its spending, Rick Gudex, said he would
vote against any budget bill that does not include an expansion of
vouchers.<br />
<h2>
Will Radical Reform Happen Through the Budget Process?</h2>
The decades-long effort to reshape Wisconsin's public school system
in an ideological mold might finally pay off this year -- and it could
happen through the budget process, with minimal public input or debate.<br />
<br />
<b>"There is that saying, 'democracy is the worst form of government,
except for all the others.' The public school system is the same way,"
Mead says. "It has problems, and can be better, but has served us pretty
well for 150 years." </b><br />
<br />
<b>
</b><b>
"We shouldn't be ready to seriously alter it through the budget process,
without a real conversation about whether the proposed changes will
result in better systems overall."</b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-61162884927079514482013-05-21T14:38:00.000-07:002013-05-26T13:24:26.005-07:0012 Jobs on the Brink: Will They Evolve or Go Extinct?<br />
<div id="sal_ct_hd" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; zoom: 1;">
<h1 style="font-size: 21px; margin: 3px 0px;">
</h1>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Find Out If Your Job is on the Endangered Occupations List</span></h2>
<br />
<article class="widget-byline-content-widget widget"><span class="byline">By <a href="http://www.salary.com/author/heather-dugan" rel="author" style="color: #4ea346;">Heather Dugan</a>, </span></article><article class="widget-byline-content-widget widget" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></article><article class="widget-byline-content-widget widget">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4Nj7mVZX99es6Cgo2_JisewjJWKUgUYhC_Kv2MmH-8ypXwlyukUVx8ZL7TjftHgWRNOXJ0zrw068W8jWV6Jg30sIABrfpj7hgqWjldN_MXp4objnXaXFjJkccjkEzSaOhFXYwQ3er4wK/s1600/jobs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4Nj7mVZX99es6Cgo2_JisewjJWKUgUYhC_Kv2MmH-8ypXwlyukUVx8ZL7TjftHgWRNOXJ0zrw068W8jWV6Jg30sIABrfpj7hgqWjldN_MXp4objnXaXFjJkccjkEzSaOhFXYwQ3er4wK/s200/jobs.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Once upon a time
good employees updated their job skills and advanced to the next career level
with the regularity of Mario questing for Princess Peach.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then
technology proliferated, and the well-read encyclopedia salesman, savvy VCR
repairman and worldly travel agent either faded away or morphed into updated
versions of their former selves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Are you prepared
for an evolving work environment or, worse, job extinction? Don't be the Cro
Magnon who creates trendy CD artwork in an MP3 world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Check out these
jobs on the brink and remember,<i>clever </i>and <i>creative</i> are
transferable skills -- <i>if</i> you're adaptable and ready <i>for
the next big thing.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">1. Librarian: Shelved or renewed?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Glamour girl
Google and her friends Bing, Yahoo and Cha Cha dethroned the trusty silencer of
the stacks, our public librarian.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Now, the
local library is online, shoes and shirts are no longer required and we can use
our "outdoor voice" indoors if we are so inspired. Will the decibel
diva's future be shelved?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolved. Although virtual media and the
Internet search deleted the Dewey decimal system, people still enjoy reading
books the old-fashioned way and appreciate research help. The new librarian is
a digital archivist, savvy with searches, keywords and helpful websites.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">2. Professional typist: Alt, ctrl, deleted?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Words per
minute used to mean something when errors required a tedious application of
white-out. But word processing on virtual paper has removed the wow factor of
typing perfection.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Professional
typists lost out to the backspace key. And also to spell check, which can rack
up artificial IQ points as easily as a good video game cheat code. <b>Verdict</b>:
Evolving. Since even "hunt and peck" keyboarders can tap out an
email, top typists need additional software proficiencies to keep a spot at the
keyboard.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">3. Video store clerk: Don't bother returning?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Video store
clerks usually knew the quirky art house film your friend recommended that had
a foreign word in the title and starred the guy with the spiky hair. (And
they’d find it, too, if they weren't busy whispering into their cell phone
behind the counter or inventorying microwave popcorn in the back.) With live
streaming movies on the web and mailbox deliveries, however, video stores --
and clerks -- are edging into relic status.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Extinct. No more just-before-midnight
returns to avoid late fees. And, alas, no job security for the guy who could
name every species inhabiting the Star Wars galaxy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">4. Umps and refs: Earning their stripes?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Umpires,
line judges and referees face more than heckling wannabes in the stands these
days since instant replay technology lets us judge the judges.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
While
traditionalists view such use of video as more controversial than an ump's
"make-up" call, there's no denying the consistency of calls provided
by good camera work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolved. These quick and eagle-eyed
moderators of fair play will continue to stay in the game, as both judges <i>and</i>
reviewers of instant replays. Hey Ump! We vote you add the stands to your
jurisdiction and tell that foul-mouthed fan with the painted beer belly,
"You're outta here!"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">5. The iceman: Chipped away?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Before Mr.
Edison came along, nothing happened when you pressed that button for ice on
your Frigidaire. People had to rely on an <i>iceman </i>to deliver blocks of
ice directly to their homes. Then they stored this ice in the (ready?) <i>icebox</i>
to preserve their perishables, and no one's arugula wilted in the heat of
summer. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Then one day
someone's proud mom needed a magnetic surface for her children's school papers
and artwork, and the refrigerator was invented. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Extinct. Kudos to those who parlayed their
ice skills to swan sculpting and Zamboni driving. Otherwise, this once hot
business is ice cold.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">6. Travel agents: A few reservations<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Travel used
to be two steps: Call a travel agent, then pack. Travelers’ biggest concerns
involved dodging the in-laws intent on a family vacation, and squeezing into
last season's bathing suits.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
But with
booking and travel details accessible online now, almost anyone can research
destinations, make reservations and be their own agent. And just <i>wish</i>
they had a travel agent when the hotel is overbooked and that tropical depression
gets seriously angry.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolving. Surviving agencies live in a
niche. Secure your career by specializing in adventure/foreign travel or
special event packages.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">7. Newspaper deliverer: Tossed to the curb?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
A newspaper
route was once a pre-dawn suburban rite of passage, but then the digital age
dawned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
No more
homeowners climbing ladders to retrieve yesterday's news from the gutter or
drying out the sports section across the family room floor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Verdict:
Extinct. Newspapers are but a click away on our computers, making the accuracy
of the neighbor boy or girl's aim less impactful to our understanding of world
events (and our choice of bathrobe or boxers of less interest to our
neighbors).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The <i>truly </i>enterprising
paperboy has put his door-to-door skills to work building a lawn mowing empire.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">8. The family farm: Out to pasture?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Automation
and corporate conglomerates have plowed under many family farms, leaving malls
and shopping plazas in their wake.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Fortunately,
there are health-conscious proponents of local produce. Savvy landowners have
added organic farm markets and seasonal attractions such as pumpkin patches and
Christmas trees. Some even offer paying guests a sleep-in-the-barn experience
with opportunities to do farm chores. (File that one under the Tom Sawyer
"paint my fence" business model.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolved. But carrying on the family farm
will require more business sense than horse sense.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">9. Switchboard operator: The end of the line?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
The voice
prompting us to push buttons and recite the "last four" of our
"Social" used to be a live person sensitive to our manners.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Voice
recognition has made the phone operator nonessential and probably happier in
some alternate universe where "please" and "thank you" are
as common as YouTube videos.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Extinct. Some of us still speak kindly to
the automated voice, in case an actual operator or our mother overhears us. But
many of us just repeatedly punch "0" for Customer Service in hopes of
venting to a real human once again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">10. Supermarket cashier: Checked out?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
E-commerce
and self-checkout have eased our need for cashiers. Turns out we can crush our
own bread and break the eggs at roughly the same rate and with less of a wait.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
"Ten
items or less" lives, but scanners never smirk at your choice of domestic
beer or bargain toilet paper. And you'll still get that human touch when the
scanner misfires and you're forced to signal for the single harried clerk who's
helping a coupon queen use self-checkout for the very first time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolving. Customers do more of the labor.
Clerks monitor and facilitate. Good customer skills are your <i>human</i> <i>edge</i>
over the machine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">11. Postal worker: Pump up the volume<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Will email
filter out the U.S. postal service? With so much of our communication,
shopping, bill-paying and even banking taking place online these days, it seems
like paper mail may soon be as quaint as ice and milk truck deliveries.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolved. Although traditional letterboxes
may show up as planters in antique shops (next to the butter churns), the rise
of eCommerce has increased business shipping needs, and faxing hard goods is
still the stuff of science fiction, so a responsive U.S.P.S. has refocused
their efforts on package deliveries.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Advice to postal
workers: Bulk up those biceps.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">12. On-air DJ: Jockeying for position<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Podcasting,
web and satellite radio, and syndicated programming have forever changed your
local radio station.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Yeah, you
can still be the 12th caller and talk to a live DJ, but these endangered
creatures may be running out of air.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Verdict</b>: Evolving. The airwaves are being replaced
by "web waves" and satellite signals. Disc jockeys who can see past
terrestrial radio and bring their communication skills into the future stand a
good chance of keeping their voices heard, the songs playing -- and our
teenagers' music choices driving us crazy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Stayed employed: Join the evolution<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b>A stubborn
ignorance of the technical didn't do in the dinosaur, but keeping pace with an
evolving work environment is certainly <i>your</i> best bet against job
extinction.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
Watch big
picture trends, update your skills and direction as necessary, and get
personal. Specialized service may become the new luxury item as society does
its cyclical swing (but learning VCR repair should <i>not</i> be on your bucket
list).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>An overload of
"DIY" and <i>virtual</i> everything may lead consumers to value
skilled laborers as the new "big thing." Just remember that quality
work is always in style and <i>value </i>will never be obsolete.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Good
luck.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></article></div>
<div class="slideMain article" id="sal_ct_main" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; float: left; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; margin-left: 2.5px; margin-right: 2.5px; padding: 0px; width: 315px;">
<div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; line-height: 13px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-53217966131738515242013-05-21T14:16:00.001-07:002013-05-21T14:16:15.891-07:00A Handy Reference Guide on Who is Donating to Corporate-Style Education Reform
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<span style="font-family: Arial; letter-spacing: 5.0pt; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"> EDUCATION </span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><i>By</i> <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/jessie-b-ramey"><i><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Jessie B. Ramey</span></i></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">As Big Money continues to shape public
education, it can be hard to keep all the players straight — from wealthy
individuals, to foundations, to corporations. Here's your guide.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">The
way some of them throw around the green stuff, you'd think corporate style
education reformers were made of money. Oh, wait. Some of them are. As Big
Money plays a bigger and bigger role in shaping public education, it can be
hard to keep all the players straight— from wealthy individuals, to
foundations, superPACs, astroturf groups and corporations. Here's a handy
reference guide: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">1. Individuals</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Some
of the wealthiest people on the planet are pouring their money into
corporate-style education reform. Some are doing this through foundations (see
below) and others are happy to invest their millions in politics to shape
policy, or directly into charter schools as money-making investments. Some have
a profit motive and others seem more ideologically driven (to privatize public
goods, oppose union rights, etc.). One thing all of these folks have in common?
Not one is an educator or education researcher. And none of their ideas is
based on evidence of what actually works for kids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Start here in Pennsylvania with
charter school operators like Van Gureghian, Governor Corbett’s largest
campaign donor. He makes so much money that he and his wife bought beach front
property in Florida worth $28.9million, while he’s been fighting for years to
keep his salary a secret. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/soaking-the-public/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Soaking the
Public</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Recall that 4 of the top contributors
to all political races last fall in our state had ties to charter school
operators. Wealth advisors are on record recommending that people add charter
schools to their investment portfolios, especially in places like Pennsylvania.
[See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/charters-are-cash-cows/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Charters are
Cash Cows</span></a>”] Cyber charter schools are particularly lucrative
investments, as the public taxpayers are currently over-paying them by
$1million every single day. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/one-million-per-day/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">One Million Per
Day</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">How about folks
like Philip Anschutz? He’s the oil billionaire with ultra-right politics
who owns Walden Media, which made the anti-public school films, “Waiting for
Superman” and “Won’t Back Down.” He funds groups that teach creationism in our
schools and oppose gay rights, environmental regulations, and union rights.
[See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/we-wont-back-down-either/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">We Won’t Back
Down Either</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Then there’s New
York Mayor Bloomberg, who likes the idea of privatizing schools so much
that he put $1million into the Los Angeles school board races last
month to try to maintain a corporate-reform minded majority there. Too bad his
horse didn’t win. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/school-boards-matter/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">School Boards
Matter</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">2. Foundations</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">The
“big three” foundation are Gates, Broad, and Walton. Education historian Diane
Ravitch calls them the “billionaire boys club,” though each has a slightly
different emphasis. And there are others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">The Gates
Foundation is currently funding teacher evaluation systems throughout the
country. As I have argued before, not only does this focus on the wrong thing,
by avoiding the issue of poverty (or even early childhood education where many
agree we might most effectively concentrate our resources), it starts with the
faulty assumption that we have a plague of bad teachers. Though the foundation
itself has warned that teacher evaluation should not be based solely on
high-stakes-testing, this is exactly what is happening all over the country (or
in many places, student testing is being used for a large portion of teacher
evaluation). The Gates Foundation is so large and distributes so much money
that it can essentially set policy through its grant making. And combined with
the Great Recession, school districts and other beneficiaries have not been
able to say no to the money nor been willing to point out that the emperor is
not wearing any clothes (i.e. that his “reforms” don’t work). Gates has also
launched a clever campaign to shift public opinion, by strategically targeting
grants to community organizations (for example, over a <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2013/02/OPP1069924"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">half-million to
A+Schools</span></a> this year) and astroturf groups (see below) in
communities where they are working.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">The Eli and Edythe
Broad (rhymes with “road”)Foundation runs a non-accredited
superintendents training program premised on the idea that business executives
with no education experience will improve urban school districts. Both the
current and former Pittsburgh superintendents are Broad Academy graduates
(though Dr. Linda Lane is an educator). The Foundation promotes teacher
effectiveness and competition (i.e. charter schools), and <a href="http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/429-arrasmartoptions.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">drafted
President Obama’s current reform strategy</span></a>. They also literally<a href="http://failingschools.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/school-closure-guide1.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">wrote the book
on how to close schools</span></a>, using Pittsburgh as an example. Eli Broad
also continues to spend his personal millions on corporate-reform, putting a
half-million into the LA school board races this spring alone. [<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-school-board-money-20130425,0,6967603.story"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Los Angeles
Times, 4-24-13</span></a>]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">The Walton Family
Foundation derives its money from Wal-Mart and gave $158 million in K-12
education grants last year to promote charter schools and voucher programs. Its
current top grantees include Teach for America, which has come under increased
scrutiny for its method of placing young college graduates with only a few
weeks of training in urban schools with the neediest students, where they stay
only two years. (Teach for America, by the way, is looking to set up shop in
Pittsburgh and has been making inquiries about hiring a local executive
director. Stay tuned.) Here in our state the Walton Family Foundation is also
funding the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools. And they fund
Bellwether Education Partners, the group hired by Pittsburgh Public Schools
(through subcontract with FSG) to craft its education plan. [<a href="http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/about/2012-grant-report#education"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Walton Family
Foundation 2012 Grant Report</span></a>]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Let’s not overlook the role
that other foundations play in education reform. Remember a decade ago when
thePittsburgh Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, andGrable
Foundation (the big three education philanthropies in Pittsburgh) yanked
their funding from the school district, forcing them to introduce new reforms?
[<a href="http://old.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20020710foundationcity1p1.asp"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Post-Gazette,
7-10-02</span></a>] The history books have yet to finish writing that episode –
and there were no doubt both positive and negative long-term outcomes – but it
illustrates the power that foundations can wield over a school district.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">What about when a venerable old
foundation starts behaving badly? Our big sister grassroots group in
Philadelphia, Parents United, recently filed a legal complaint against
the William Penn Foundation “based on the fact that they had
solicited millions of dollars in donations for an exclusive contract” with a
consulting group, with an agreed “set of ‘deliverables’ such as identifying 60
schools for closure, mass charter expansion, and unprecedented input into labor
and contract negotiations – without the School District of Philadelphia being a
party to the contract.” After a legal analysis by the Public Interest Law
Center that concluded the foundation was essentially engaging in illegal
lobbying and funneling private donations for the purpose, Parents United joined
the Philadelphia Home & School Council, and the Philadelphia branch of the
NAACP in bringing the complaint. [<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/big/Philadelphia%20Home%20&%20School%20Council,%20and%20the%20Philadelphia%20branch%20of%20the%20NAACP"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Parents United,
2-14-13</span></a>]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">3. SuperPACs</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">The
Citizens United ruling opened the door to massive spending by corporations in
politics and ushered in the era of superPACS. Without spending limits, now we
are seeing just how much influence money can buy in politics (where education
policy is set).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Students First PA PAC (not
to be confused with Michelle Rhee’s national organization, see below), started
in 2010 by three Philadelphia investment brokers to funnel millions into the
state races of pro-voucher candidates. Co-founder Joel Greenberg is on the
board of the American Federation for Children, a national group run by Betsy
DeVos with mega-wealthy (and ultra-right) backers including the Koch brothers,
who have used the super PAC to channel their out of state dollars into
Pennsylvania politics. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/its-all-about-the-money-money-money/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">It’s All About
the Money, Money, Money</span></a>”] And Gov. Corbett tapped Joe Watkins, the
chairman of Students First PA, to be the Chief Recovery Officer for the
struggling Chester Uplands school district last year – a bit like putting the
fox in charge of the hen house, since he now has the power to hand those public
schools over to charter operators. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/taking-the-public-out-of-public-education/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Taking the
Public out of Public Education</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Fighting Chance PA
PAC shares a name with a campaign launched by the “Pennsylvania Catholic
Coalition” last spring, an effort associated with the Philadelphia Archdiocese,
which has been lobbying hard for voucher legislation to fund its struggling
schools. The new PAC was entirely financed by three wealthy Philadelphia
hedge-fund founders who started the Students First PA PAC, because apparently
one super PAC on your resume is just not enough. And their largest
contribution? To Rep. Jim Christiana, a Republican from Beaver County (site of
the proposed Dutch Royal Shell cracker plant) who introduced last year’s
voucher-in-disguise EITC tax credit bill. Rep. Christiana also received money
from the Walmart PAC. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/2-4-6-8-who-do-we-appreciate/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">2-4-6-8 Who Do
We Appreciate?</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">4. Astroturf groups</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Astroturf
groups are fake grassroots organizations. They are funded by deep pockets,
manipulated to look like local efforts to give the impression that they
represent real community opinion. But they are as authentic as a field of
plastic grass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Operating at the national level
are groups such as Michelle Rhee’s Students First. Rhee is best known as
the former Chancellor of the D.C. school district where she publicly fired a
principal on film as part of her massive school closure effort there. She became
well known for supposedly increasing student test scores, but there are now
serious questions of large-scale cheating (by adults). Students First promotes
her privatization agenda of charters and vouchers as well as merit pay and
teacher evaluation systems based on high-stakes-testing. The Walton Family
Foundation just gave the organization $8 million. [<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/01/walton-foundation-giving-8-million-to-rhees-studentsfirst-plus-2012-donations/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Washington Post,
5-1-13</span></a>] At the same time, Rhee has been caught inflating the number
of members in her organization to make it appear that it has a much broader
base of support by using deceptive petitions (for un-objectionable issues such
as anti-bullying) on the progressive change.org site to capture the names of
unsuspecting new “members.” [<a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2012/08/03/why-does-studentsfirst-deceive/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">DianeRavitch,
8-3-12</span></a>]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Parent
Revolution practically wrote the book on how to create an astroturf
organization. Founded in California by a charter school operator – with major
backing from Gates, Broad, and Walton – the group got a “parent trigger law”
passed and then hired agents to convince two towns to turn their schools over
to the them. But many parents later said they had been purposefully misled and
filed lawsuits to try to stop the conversion of their schools to charters. [See
“<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/wont-be-silent/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Won’t Be Silent</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Closer to home, we learned just
last week that the Gates Foundation is backing a new astroturf group here in
Pittsburgh. Called Shepherding the Next Generation, the Washington D.C.
based organization has been trying to recruit churches – especially in our
African American communities – to preach the Gates agenda of teacher
evaluation. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/astroturf/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Astroturf</span></a>”]
Having one of the wealthiest people on the planet funding outside organizations
like this to come into a community and shift the public conversation seriously
erodes democracy. This is not about promoting an authentic community dialogue,
but about promoting a specific ideology of school reform.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">5. Corporations</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Perhaps
not surprising, corporations control some of the big money at stake in
corporate-style education reform. Here are a few to keep your eye on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Testing companies have
significantly benefitted from the dramatic expansion of testing under No Child
Left Behind. Nationally, we are spending $1.7 BILLION a year testing our kids.
[<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2012/11/29%20cost%20of%20assessment%20chingos/11_assessment_chingos_final.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Brown Center on
Education Policy at Brookings, report Nov. 2012</span></a>] And corporations
like Pearson Education, Inc. and McGraw Hill spend millions lobbying
state legislatures to keep their products in favor. [<a href="http://www.republicreport.org/2012/testing-company-pearson-spending-millions-to-influence-schools/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Republic Report,
5-4-12</span></a>] The new national Common Core Standards are also creating a
bonanza for companies that make textbooks and assessment materials.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Pennsylvania has a contract
with Data Recognition Corporation. Taxpayers in the Keystone state
are footing the bill for average spending of $32.2 million a year on testing
students. [<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2012/11/29%20cost%20of%20assessment%20chingos/11_assessment_chingos_final.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Brown Center on
Education Policy at Brookings, report Nov. 2012</span></a>] That’s a lot of
money that is not getting spent on actually educating children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Struggling school districts are
increasingly turning to hybrid or “blended” learning models to deliver content
at least partially on-line as a cost-savings measure. A major 2010 <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Department of
Education review of the literature</span></a> found that blended-learning
does not offer better learning outcomes for students, but it will surely be
good for corporate bottom lines. Pearson is promoting its <a href="http://www.connectionslearning.com/connections-learning/home.aspx"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Connections
Learning</span></a> as the solution to schools looking to close their
achievement gap and reduce the cost of teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">•<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Finally, don’t forget
about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council where corporate
members write business-friendly laws and have them introduced word-for-word
into state legislatures. In education reform, ALEC promotes the unregulated
expansion of charters and vouchers, keeping both unaccountable to the public
while taking away control from local democratically elected school board officials.
In Pennsylvania, <a href="http://www.alec.org/wp-content/uploads/pennsylvania.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">ALEC issued a
guide</span></a> helpfully pointing out how legislators could get around
our troublesome constitution, which prevents public money from being spent on
religious schools. The Gates Foundation granted $375,000 to ALEC from
2010-2013, before cutting all ties with the organization last spring after
becoming the target of an online petition that gathered over 23,000 signatures
in just a few hours. [See “<a href="http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/theres-nothing-smart-about-alec/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">There’s Nothing
Smart About ALEC</span></a>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Now
that’s a lot of money coming from a lot of sources. It’s helpful to think about
the “big tent” metaphor here: there are many Big Money players in this tent,
with multiple motivations. Clearly some are driven by profit motive and stand
to make a lot of money. Some share ultra-right interests in de-unionization and
de-regulation and are happy to push those interests in the field of education.
Many others are driven by an ideological agenda of corporate-style education
reform. One thing is for sure: all that Big Money under one big tent is having
an enormous impact on our public schools.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-65241100671643476382013-05-21T14:08:00.003-07:002013-05-26T13:30:07.317-07:00The Similarities Between the Charter School Movement and the War on Drugs<br />
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<span style="font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;">Paul L. Thomas is an associate professor of education at Furman University.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_T9BECvvDoYTb7JY01H0X65tF0SApcf6hLvn6ljHmaF7o2b8t45_-7Y_AQuBd6WOEEa-_ljxX8q17QpR_VBuBeE3ruyD68S8tHgmrRWINoOz8jDXRsiTfcSBSwWon0gVbR93zO0W1EKAs/s1600/charterschools.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_T9BECvvDoYTb7JY01H0X65tF0SApcf6hLvn6ljHmaF7o2b8t45_-7Y_AQuBd6WOEEa-_ljxX8q17QpR_VBuBeE3ruyD68S8tHgmrRWINoOz8jDXRsiTfcSBSwWon0gVbR93zO0W1EKAs/s200/charterschools.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In the United States, the intersection of the criminal justice system and public schools has intensified in the wake of school shootings, prompting similar solutions from supposedly opposite ends of the political spectrum<span style="font-weight: normal;">. As noted in a New York Times </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/criminalizing-children-at-school.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">editorial</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-weight: normal;">, </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/criminalizing-children-at-school.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-weight: normal;">"The National Rifle Association and President Obama responded to the Newtown, Conn., shootings by recommending that more police officers be placed in the nation's schools."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">As the editorial points out, however, research tends to show that <a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/police-in-the-hallways"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">police in the hallways</span></a> <a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/police-in-the-hallways"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a>creates schools-as-prisons and students-as-criminals, increasing, rather than eliminating, the problems. In another piece,<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Chloe Angyal highlights the</span><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15840-punishing-students-for-who-they-are-not-what-they-do" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">disturbing connection</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> between incarceration and education:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Punishment rates in schools mirror the rates in the 'real world' - though what could be more real than entrenched discrimination in our schools? - and in fact, contribute to those real world figures. </span>The Civil Rights Project report notes that the abuse and misuse of suspensions can turn them into "gateways to prison."<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Even if that were not the case, even absent a school-to-prison pipeline, the situation would be grim enough. </span>What this report reveals is a disregard for the well-being of marginalized populations that, were it directed at other groups, would never be allowed to stand.<span style="font-weight: normal;"> If a quarter of white middle school boys were being suspended every school year, and if pretty white ladies were being frisked on the streets of Manhattan, there'd be an uproar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">While the term "a nation at risk" tends to be associated with the <a href="http://datacenter.spps.org/uploads/SOTW_A_Nation_at_Risk_1983.pdf"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">1983 report</span></a> on US education from the Reagan administration, the early 1980s also spawned an era of mass incarceration, built on claims that the United States was also a nation at risk because of illegal drug sales and use, identified by author Michelle Alexander as <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The New Jim Crow</span></a>:<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his administration's "War on Drugs. </span>At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the country. This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and drug dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined "others" - the undeserving. (p. 49)<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Within a year of each other, then, the Reagan administration launched a war on drugs and a crisis response to public education. Just as Alexander details the masked intent behind the war on drugs, John Holton exposed A Nation at Risk as less about education reform and more about <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/An-Insider-s-View-of-A/20696"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">political agendas</span></a>.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We met with President Reagan at the White House, who at first was jovial, charming, and full of funny stories, but then turned serious when he gave us our marching orders. </span>He told us that our report should focus on five fundamental points that would bring excellence to education: Bring God back into the classroom; encourage tuition tax credits for families using private schools; support vouchers; leave the primary responsibility for education to parents; and please abolish that abomination, the Department of Education. Or, at least, don't ask to waste more federal money on education - "We have put in more only to wind up with less."<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">For three decades, the War on Drugs has led to mass incarceration, primarily impacting African American males, the racially defined "others," and the education reform movement based on high-stakes accountability <a href="http://hepg.org/her/booknote/293"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">has targeted</span></a> "other people's children" <a href="http://hepg.org/her/booknote/293"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a>in ways that suggest market-oriented education reform is a school-based component of the New Jim Crow grounded in the criminal justice system.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Mass incarceration and market-oriented education reform share more than their genesis in the 1980s, since both have been shown to cause far more harm than good and to further marginalize African American and impoverished youths and adults.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The Dark Reality of Market-Oriented Education Reform</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The education accountability era begun in the early 1980s focused on implementing curriculum standards and high-stakes testing, first at the state level and then over the decade since No Child Left Behind (NCLB), increasingly at the national level.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The evolution of the education reform movement has included some central ideological commitments - focusing on in-school-only reform and relying on slogans such as "no excuses" and "poverty is not destiny," as expressed in a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705078.html"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">2010 manifesto</span></a> from several key figures in reform, Michelle Rhee, Paul Vallas and Joel Klein:<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So, where do we start? With the basics. </span>As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income - it is the quality of their teacher.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Yet, for too long, we have let teacher hiring and retention be determined by archaic rules involving seniority and academic credentials. The widespread policy of "last in, first out" (the teacher with the least seniority is the first to go when cuts have to be made) makes it harder to hold on to new, enthusiastic educators and ignores the one thing that should matter most: performance.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">At first, reform was driven by revolutionary promises and often unverified claims of public school failure, but over the past 30 years, ample evidence now suggests that political education reform has failed to fulfill its promises, and, in a mechanism similar to the negative consequences of the mass incarceration, has harmed the exact students those reforms were designed to help.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The Broader, Bolder Approach to <a href="http://www.boldapproach.org/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Education</span></a> has resisted market-oriented, in-school-only reform championed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Rhee, Vallas and Klein, calling instead for social and educational reform seeking equity of opportunity for all families and students.<span style="font-weight: normal;"> In Broader, Bolder's "Market-Oriented Education Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality" (April 18, 2013), Elaine Weiss and Don Long </span><a href="http://www.boldapproach.org/" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">examine test-based teacher</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> evaluations, school closures and expanded charter schools in Chicago, New York City and Washington, DC, concluding: "The report finds that the reforms delivered few benefits and in some cases harmed the students they purport to help. It also identifies a set of largely neglected policies with real promise to weaken the poverty-education link, if they receive some of the attention and resources now targeted to the touted reforms." (p. 3)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Market-oriented education reform has depended on addressing inequity indirectly, trusting mechanisms such as choice and business models of managing teachers as well as schools to initiate social change. This reform has specifically targeted goals such as closing the achievement gap, better serving impoverished and minority students, and raising international indicators of educational quality<span style="font-weight: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">As Weiss and Long show, however, test-based teacher evaluations, school closures and expanded charter schools haven't succeeded, even against their advocates' promises:<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in "reform" cities than in other urban districts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· Reported successes for targeted students evaporated upon closer examination.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts money.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· Charter schools further disrupted the districts while providing mixed benefits, particularly for the highest-needs students.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· Emphasis on the widely touted market-oriented reforms drew attention and resources from initiatives with greater promise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="color: red;">· Real, sustained change requires strategies that are more realistic, patient and multipronged. (p. 3)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Further, additional evidence reveals (ostensibly) unintended consequences of market-oriented reform have included <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/schools-without-diversity"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">increased segregation</span></a> by race and class in charter schools and a widening gap between the type of educational experiences affluent children receive compared with the authoritarian and test-prep-focused "no excuses" schools for minority and impoverished students,<span style="font-weight: normal;"> notably </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hope-Against-Struggle-Americas-Children/dp/1608194906" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">as detailed in</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sarah Carr's Hope Against Hope, exploring the post-Katrina rise of charter schools in New Orleans:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">But inside the schools, the war over education no longer seems so stark and clearly defined. Edges blur, shades of gray abound, and simple solutions prove elusive. . . . Many of the most powerful people in the country have a plan for the future of education in America, one focused on more charter schools, technocratic governance, weakened teachers' unions and the relentless use of data to measure student and teacher progress. (pp. 5, 6-7)<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">But Carr's narrative and analysis show that, as detailed in the Broader, Bolder report, market-oriented reform tends to replicate and even perpetuate inequity instead of eradicating it:<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Students in New Orleans sit in "no excuses" charter schools that are both authoritarian and segregated, while the post-Katrina Recovery District reduced the African American teacher workforce from 75 percent to 57 percent of the city's teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Despite the slogans and <a href="http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/open-letter-to-political-leaders-action-not-tributes-and-rhetoric/"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">the rhetoric</span></a>, schools experiencing the array of market-oriented education reform policies have shown that <span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://truth-out.org/news/item/8993-studies-suggest-economic-inequity-is-built-into-and-worsened-by-school-systems">home and community</a> </span>characteristics do predict educational opportunities, mirroring the historically greatest challenge facing traditional public schools.<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Ultimately, like the War on Drugs, current education reform exists as a key element in America's New Jim Crow era.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Education Reform and "Racially Sanitized Rhetoric"</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Just as the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Manufactured-Crisis-Americas-Schools/dp/0201441969"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">education reform</span></a> movement was spurred by a "manufactured crisis," as exposed by <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20440437?uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102017269563"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Gerald Bracey </span></a>and Holton, the War on Drugs grew out of a racially divisive political agenda, a drug crisis that did not yet exist, but created "mass incarceration in the United States . . . as a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow," as Alexander details. (p. 4)<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Since market-oriented education reform is producing evidence highlighting the ineffectiveness and even negative outcomes associated with those policies, that the agendas remain robust suggests, again like mass incarceration, education reform fulfills many of the dynamics found in the New Jim Crow.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Just as mass incarceration from the war on drugs continues institutional racism once found in slavery and Jim Crow, education reform, especially the "no excuses" charter school movement, resurrects a separate but equal education system that is separate, but certainly isn't equal. <span style="font-weight: normal;">The masked racism of mass incarceration and education reform share many parallels, including the following:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">· </span>Both depend on "racially sanitized rhetoric," according to Alexander, that thinly masks racism. <span style="font-weight: normal;">"Getting tough on crime" justifies disproportional arrests, convictions and sentencing for African Americans; "no excuses" and "zero tolerance" justify highly authoritarian and punitive schools disproportionally serving high-poverty children of color.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">· </span>Both depend on claims of objective mechanisms - laws for the war on drugs and test scores for education reform - to deflect charges of racism.<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Alexander recognizes "this system is better designed to create [emphasis in original] crime and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals," (p. 236) just as test-based education reform creates and does not address the achievement gap. </span><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3067:poverty-and-testing-in-education-%E2%80%9Cthe-present-scientificolegal-complex%E2%80%9D" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">·</span> Both depend on racialized fears among poor and working-class whites, which Alexander identifies in the Reagan drug war agenda: "In his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the 'excision of the language of race from conservative public discourse' and thus built on the success of the earlier conservatives who developed a strategy of exploiting racial hostility or resentment for political gain without making explicit reference to race" (p. 48).<span style="font-weight: normal;"> The charter school movement </span><a href="http://www.alternet.org/education/why-sending-your-child-charter-school-hurts-other-children" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">masks segregation</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> within a progressive-friendly public school choice. </span><a href="http://www.alternet.org/education/why-sending-your-child-charter-school-hurts-other-children" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #128ca7; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">· </span>Both depend on either current claims of post-racial America or the goal of a post-racial society: "This system of control depends far more on racialindifference [emphasis in original] . . . than racial hostility," Alexander notes.<span style="font-weight: normal;"> (p. 203)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">· </span>Both depend on a bipartisan and popular commitment to seemingly obvious goals of crime eradication and world-class schools.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">· </span>Both depend on the appearance of African American support. Alexander explains about the effectiveness of the war on drugs: "Conservatives could point to black support for highly punitive approaches to dealing with the problems of the urban poor as 'proof' that race had nothing to do with their 'law and order' agenda."<span style="font-weight: normal;"> (p. 42)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">This last point - that African Americans seem to support both the war on crime and "no excuses" charter schools - presents the most problematic aspect of charges that mass incarceration and education reform are ultimately racist, significant contributions to the New Jim Crow.<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">For example, </span>Carr reports that African American parents not only choose "no excuses" charter schools in New Orleans, but also actively cheer and encourage the authoritarian policies voiced by the schools' administrators.<span style="font-weight: normal;"> But Alexander states, "Given the dilemma facing poor black communities, it is inaccurate to say that black people 'support' mass incarceration or 'get-tough' policies" because "if the only choice that is offered blacks is rampant crime or more prisons, the predictable (and understandable) answer will be 'more prisons.' " (p. 210)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">New Orleans serves as a stark example of how this dynamic works in education reform: Given the choice between segregated, underfunded and deteriorating public schools and "no excuses" charters - and not the choice of the school environments and offerings found in many elite private schools - the predictable answer is "no excuses" charters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Market-oriented education reform continues to produce evidence that it fails against its own goals and standards. But more disturbing is that current education reform also shares with the war on drugs evidence that the United States is committed to the New Jim Crow, to which Alexander quotes Martin Luther King Jr.: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." (p. 203)<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The war on drugs and highly punitive, segregated charter schools are creating an underclass, significantly among African American males - facts that must be acknowledged before equity of opportunity can be secured. About this intersection of the criminal justice system and education reform, Angyal asks, "But the real question is, what will it take for us to fix this system that punishes students and citizens for no other reason but their membership in marginalized groups?"</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-74850745753602114982013-05-21T13:03:00.000-07:002013-05-21T13:03:01.179-07:00Apple’s Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds<br />
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By <span itemid="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/nelson_d_schwartz/index.html" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/nelson_d_schwartz/index.html" rel="author" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: none;" title="More Articles by NELSON D. SCHWARTZ">NELSON D. SCHWARTZ</a></span> and <span itemid="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/charles_duhigg/index.html" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/charles_duhigg/index.html" rel="author" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: none;" title="More Articles by CHARLES DUHIGG">CHARLES DUHIGG</a></span></h6>
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WASHINGTON — Even as Apple became the nation’s most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday.</div>
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<br />The investigation is expected to set up a potentially explosive confrontation between a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at a public hearing on Tuesday.</div>
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Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.</div>
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“Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that is holding the public hearing Tuesday into Apple’s use of tax havens. “Apple successfully sought the holy grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”</div>
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Thanks to what lawmakers called “gimmicks” and “schemes,” Apple was able to largely sidestep taxes on tens of billions of dollars it earned outside the United States in recent years. Last year, international operations accounted for 61 percent of Apple’s total revenue.</div>
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Investigators have not accused Apple of breaking any laws and the company is hardly the only American multinational to face scrutiny for using complex corporate structures and tax havens to sidestep taxes. In recent months, revelations from European authorities about the tax avoidance strategies used by Google, Starbucks and Amazon have all stirred public anger and spurred several European governments, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based research organization for the world’s richest countries, to discuss measures to close the loopholes.</div>
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Still, the findings about Apple were remarkable both for the enormous amount of money involved and the audaciousness of the company’s assertion that its subsidiaries are beyond the reach of any taxing authority.</div>
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“There is a technical term economists like to use for behavior like this,” said Edward Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a former staff director at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “Unbelievable chutzpah.”</div>
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While Apple’s strategy is unusual in its scope and effectiveness, it underscores how riddled with loopholes the American corporate tax code has become, critics say. At the same time, it shows how difficult it will be for Washington to overhaul the tax system.</div>
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Over all, Apple’s tax avoidance efforts shifted at least $74 billion from the reach of the Internal Revenue Service between 2009 and 2012, the investigators said. That cash remains offshore, but Apple, which paid more than $6 billion in taxes in the United States last year on its American operations, could still have to pay federal taxes on it if the company were to return the money to its coffers in the United States.</div>
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John McCain of Arizona, who is the panel’s senior Republican, said: “Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders.”</div>
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In prepared testimony expected to be delivered to the Senate committee by Mr. Cook and other Apple executives on Tuesday, the company said it “welcomes an objective examination of the U.S. corporate tax system, which has not kept pace with the advent of the digital age and the rapidly changing global economy.”</div>
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The executives plan to tell the lawmakers that Apple does not use tax gimmicks, according to the prepared testimony.</div>
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Mr. Cook is also expected to argue that some of Apple’s largest subsidiaries do not reduce Apple’s tax liability, and to press for a sweeping overhaul of the United States corporate tax code — in particular, by lowering rates on companies moving foreign overseas earnings back to the United States. Apple currently assigns more than $100 billion to offshore subsidiaries.</div>
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“Apple sought the holy grail of tax avoidance," said Senator Carl Levin, left, a Michigan Democrat.</div>
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While the company cited an effective rate of 24 to 32 percent in its disclosures, its effective tax rate was 20.1 percent, based on the committee’s findings. And for a company of Apple’s size, the resulting difference was substantial — more than $8 billion in 2009, 2010 and 2011.</div>
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Because of these strategies, tax experts say, Washington is forced to rely more and heavily on payroll taxes and individual income taxes to finance the government’s operations. For example, in 2011, individual income taxes contributed $1.1 trillion to federal coffers, while corporate taxes added up to $181 billion.</div>
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As companies’ earnings have accumulated offshore, many executives have been pushing more aggressively for a tax holiday that would allow them to bring back funds at lower tax rates. Apple has recently announced that it will return $100 billion to shareholders over three years through a combination of dividends and purchases of its own shares. Though Apple has enough cash on hand to pay for those initiatives, the company recently announced it would take on $17 billion in debt, rather than bring overseas money back to the United States to avoid paying repatriation taxes on those returning funds.</div>
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“If Apple had used its overseas cash to fund this return of capital, the funds would have been diminished by the very high corporate U.S. tax rate of 35 percent,” Mr. Cook is planning to testify, according to the prepared text. Apple “believes the current system, which applies industrial era concepts to a digital economy, actually undermines U.S. competitiveness.”</div>
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Critics, however, say these so-called repatriation holidays, which bring back funds at lower tax rates, do virtually nothing to stimulate the economy and benefit only corporations, their executives and shareholders. Congress enacted a repatriation holiday in 2004, allowing corporations to bring back about $300 billion from overseas and pay just 5.25 percent rather than the regular 35 percent corporate rate.</div>
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But a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 92 percent of the repatriated cash was used to pay for dividends, share buybacks or executive bonuses.</div>
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“Repatriations did not lead to an increase in domestic investment, employment or R.&D., even for the firms that lobbied for the tax holiday stating these intentions,” concluded the study, which was conducted by a team of three economists that included a former Bush administration official. Tuesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill, along with the disclosures about Apple’s tax policies, are likely to make lowering repatriation taxes a more difficult proposition for lawmakers to stomach, Congressional staff members said.</div>
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On Capitol Hill Monday, legislators made plain their fury over what they called Apple’s “egregious” and “outrageous” conduct.</div>
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While other companies have taken advantage of loopholes, Mr. Levin said, “I’ve never seen anything like this and we don’t know anybody who’s seen anything like this.”</div>
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Nelson D. Schwartz reported from Washington and Charles Duhigg from New York. David Kocieniewski contributed reporting from New York<br />.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-63801568352274688162013-05-21T09:51:00.001-07:002013-05-26T13:34:49.785-07:00Ed. Funders Giving More to Same Few, <br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em;">'System challengers' get growing share</span></h1>
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By <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/contributors/sarah.sparks_3549540.html" style="color: #336699; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Sarah D. Sparks</a></div>
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As more and more foundation money floods into K-12 education,<b> it is being channeled to fewer and fewer groups, according to new research presented at the <a href="http://www.aera.net/tabid/10208/Default.aspx" style="color: #336699; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">American Educational Research Association meeting</a> here last week.</b></div>
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<b>Researchers also found that <a href="http://www.edweek.org/media/30aera-quinntompkinsstangemeyerson.pdf" style="color: #336699; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">foundation money is moving <nobr style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">away</nobr></a><nobr style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></nobr> from traditional public schools and toward "challengers to the system"—primarily charter schools—and that the funders in general are becoming much more active in shaping how those challengers develop.</b></div>
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"We've only scratched the surface of looking at support from philanthropies alongside federal funding," said Sarah Reckhow, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University in East Lansing, who co-wrote one of the studies with doctoral student Jeffrey W. Snyder.</div>
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The total assets of the United States' 76,000 foundations has grown from an estimated $272 billion in 1995 to $625 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2012, according to the Urban Institute at the Washington-based <a href="http://www.air.org/" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">American Institutes for Research</a>.</div>
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The Michigan State researchers tracked grants from the 15 foundations that gave the most to K-12 education in 2000, 2005, and 2010. Several of those—the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Wallace Foundation (formerly the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds), and the Walton Family Foundation—also support some coverage in <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Education Week</i>.</div>
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At the start of the decade, less than a quarter of K-12 giving from top foundations—about $90 million in all—was given to the same few groups. Five years later, 35 percent of foundation giving, or $230 million, went to groups getting support from other foundations, and by 2010, $540 million, representing 64 percent of major foundation giving for K-12, was similarly aligned.</div>
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<b>"Not only are they giving more, but they are giving more, faster, and we find that very interesting," Mr. Snyder said. "Every five years, it roughly doubles—the number of grantees getting at least $1 million."</b></div>
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Charter Focus Expands</h2>
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The type of groups funded shifted during that time, too. In 2000, the top five groups subsidized with philanthropic dollars were the Rural School and Community Trust, based in Washington; Annenberg Challenge schools in Detroit and Chicago; the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, a local California group; and the Public Education Network, a network of local education funds whose central office has since closed.</div>
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A decade later, three of the five top-funded groups were linked with charter schools: the <a href="http://chartergrowthfund.org/" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Charter School Growth Fund</a>, in Broomfield, Colo.; the <a href="http://www.newschools.org/" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">NewSchools Venture Fund</a> in Oakland, Calif.; and the <a href="http://www.kipp.org/" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Knowledge Is Power Program</a>, or KIPP, school network, based in San Francisco.</div>
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Another top-five group was Teach For America, a New York City-based organization that enlists young college graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools. The last was the D.C. Public Education Fund, which supports school improvement in the District of Columbia.</div>
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<b>"We see over time that [donations to] these traditional operators—public schools, state [education departments], and universities—decline and challengers increase," Mr. Snyder said.</b></div>
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<b>Foundations also became a lot more hands-on with the charter sector they were helping create, according to Rand Quinn, an assistant professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania.</b></div>
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Mr. Quinn and his co-authors—Debra Meyerson, an associate professor of education at Stanford University, and Megan Tompkins-Stange, a public-policy lecturer at the University of Michigan—tracked the influence of foundations on California charter schools.</div>
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They analyzed tax forms, annual reports, meeting minutes, achievement-test results, and other administrative data and interviewed 41 charter leaders and their foundation supporters.</div>
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<b>Beyond providing money, Mr. Quinn and his colleagues learned, foundations reviewed and recombined the elements of existing charters to develop new and preferred models for schools; furthered those models by enforcing evaluation systems that included the elements they wished to foster for all grantees; and supported education, training, and professional development to build up a new pool of teachers and leaders to staff the schools.</b></div>
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<b>Mr. Quinn found that even within the charter school sector, foundations focused on expanding the biggest players, the charter-management organizations, rather than single-school charter holders. In the process, both the funders and the charter operators reported that there was less focus on being integrated into and responsive to a particular community, and more on "building a brand" for the schools that could be scaled up quickly.</b></div>
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Katrina E. Bulkley, a professor of education leadership at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., who was not involved in either study, said <b>the changes also point to a broader trend of their adopting a more rational approach to making grants, focused on requiring measurable results and providing money to the organizations that can produce them.</b></div>
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<b>"Grantmaking is a key way of how foundations signify who they consider valuable contributors to school reform,"</b> Ms. Bulkley said.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-51641575740769461592013-05-21T09:46:00.004-07:002013-05-26T13:35:08.698-07:00What teachers need and reformers ignore: time to collaborate<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: inherit; line-height: 26px;">By</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: inherit; line-height: 26px;"> </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/valerie-strauss/2011/03/07/ABZrToO_page.html" rel="author external" style="border: 0px; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: 26px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Visit Valerie Strauss’s website">Valerie Strauss</a></span></h1>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/files/2013/04/clock.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="clock" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-10685" height="196" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/files/2013/04/clock-300x196.jpg" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; height: auto; margin: 0px 1em 1em 0px; max-width: 97.5%;" width="300" /></a>One of the primary things that teachers value but that school reformers have given short shrift is time to collaborate. Here, Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, an expert on teaching and teacher education, writes about why this is so important to the profession. Darling-Hammond directs the Stanford University Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. A former president of the American Educational Research Association, Darling-Hammond focuses her research, teaching, and policy work on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.</div>
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<b>By Linda Darling-Hammond</b></div>
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Concern for 21st century learning has driven the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by more than 40 states. <b>These new standards recognize that the premium in today’s world is not merely on students’ acquiring information, but on their being able to analyze, synthesize, and apply what they’ve learned to address new problems, design solutions, collaborate effectively, and communicate persuasively.</b></div>
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<b>Achieving these goals will require a transformation in teaching, learning, and assessment</b> so that all students develop the deeper learning competencies that are necessary for post-secondary success.</div>
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<b>Whether that transformation occurs has everything to do with how policymakers and practitioners approach this new reform. Ironically, old style factory-model thinking could undercut richer student learning if we follow traditional patterns of education reform implementation. Like a contractor who is paid a bonus to finish a project on a tight timeline, school systems that cut corners by trying to “automate” teaching decisions through pacing guides, scripted curriculum, or frequent, narrow testing are likely to produce rickety, undeveloped student learning skills.</b></div>
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<b>Efforts to manage instruction through top-down prescriptions rather than the development of deep expertise will not enable the kinds of teaching that are required to help students learn to read, listen, and think critically; conduct research and use evidence; communicate productively orally, in writing, and with technology; and continually improve their own work</b>. Teachers will need to be able to model and demonstrate these skills, identify what their students already know and link it to what they need to learn, build on students’ diverse experiences and language backgrounds, and structure rich learning opportunities that combine explicit instruction with inquiry, feedback, reflection, and revision.</div>
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<b>How will teachers transform their practice to meet these expectations? In fields like trauma care and the building trades that have seen sharp gains in quality over the past generation, the emergence of new standards for professional practice coincided with a focus on improving collaborative decision-making and inquiry to solve problems in real time. If we want to see similar gains in education, we must structure for success by understanding that effective collaboration in schools doesn’t occur by happenstance—it requires purposeful action.</b></div>
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<b>New research from the <a href="http://www.ncte.org/ncle" style="border: 0px; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">National Center for Literacy Education</a> (NCLE) shows that educators in every subject area and role are eager to work together to deepen literacy learning:</b> Across fields, 77% of educators, principals, and librarians agreed that developing student literacy is one of the most important responsibilities they have. <b>It also showed that educators are committed to common-sense changes to improve teaching and learning practices: they most value time to co-plan with colleagues to create new lessons or instructional strategies and to analyze how their students are developing and what they can do together to advance progress.</b></div>
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<b>On the face of it, these results don’t seem surprising—in every field, professionals benefit from connecting with dedicated colleagues to improve practice. What is surprising, even alarming, is how rarely collaborative activities that are essential to improving outcomes are supported in our schools.</b> Here is what NCLE survey respondents reported about support for working together in their schools:</div>
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· <b> Only 32% have a chance to frequently co-create or reflect with colleagues about how a lesson has worked.</b></div>
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<b>· Only 21% are given time to frequently examine student work with colleagues.</b></div>
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<b>· Only 14% frequently receive feedback from colleagues.</b></div>
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<b>· And only 10% frequently have the opportunity to observe the teaching practice of a colleague.</b></div>
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Even worse, evidence suggests that time afforded to educators to collaborate and problem-solve is eroding quickly. As recently as 2009, <a href="https://www.metlife.com/metlife-foundation/what-we-do/student-achievement/survey-american-teacher.html?WT.mc_id=vu1101" style="border: 0px; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a MetLife study i</a>ndicated that 68% of educators had more than an hour per week to engage in structured collaboration with colleagues to improve student learning. <b>By 2012, only 48% had an hour or more per week for this essential work. In what professional field can practice improve if most practitioners don’t have even an hour a week to work together collaboratively?</b></div>
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But the NCLE survey data also gives us a foundation to build upon. <b>It found that in schools where educators report that professional collaboration is routinely practiced, trust among all educators is high, and new learning about effective practices is shared much more rapidly.</b></div>
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<b>It makes sense that where principals, school system leaders, and instructional coaches model collaborative decision-making and tackling problems as shared questions to be studied and solved, real change in student learning results.</b></div>
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<b>So we can read the NCLE survey results as both a cautionary tale and a reason for optimism. </b> They suggest that far from resisting change or shirking responsibility, educators are eager to work together to evaluate the quality of teaching at their site and design changes that continuously improve student learning. <b>But, not many schools are yet structured to provide the time and learning opportunities necessary to build this sustainable path to change.</b></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-55154327265112256142013-05-21T09:41:00.003-07:002013-05-21T09:41:31.337-07:00Big $$$ Behind NC Privatization Bills<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left; width: 560px;"><tbody>
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<span style="color: #888888;">by <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/author/dianerav/" style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136) !important;">D</a>iane Ravitch</span></td></tr>
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Same old story in North Carolina as elsewhere: big money from reactionary millionaires funding the theft of public education. American Federation for Children is based in Michigan. It supports vouchers.</div>
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Wake the town and tell the people.</div>
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Large, out-of-state donors fuel North Carolina's school "choice" movement<br />More than $90,000 funneled to state legislative campaigns in 2012</div>
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By Lindsay Wagner</div>
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In March of 2012, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis and ten other state lawmakers flew to Florida on the dime of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC), an organization known for endorsing conservative education reform initiatives, including school vouchers.</div>
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In the year that has followed, North Carolina has absorbed a flood of more than $90,000 in campaign contributions to lawmakers friendly to the school choice movement.</div>
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The stated intent of last year's trip was to educate North Carolina lawmakers about Florida's tax credit scholarship program, which encourages companies to donate scholarship money for low-income children to attend private schools by providing matching state tax dollars. Critics of the Florida program say it's a thinly-disguised voucher scheme that diverts funds from the public school system to send kids to private institutions that are not held to the same high standards applied to public schools.</div>
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The Florida trip, which cost $8,300, was clearly billed as "educational," rather than "influential," by PEFNC in an effort to ensure that the trip did not violate NC lobbying laws.</div>
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Since the Florida gathering, lawmakers in the North Carolina legislature have introduced more than 20 bills related to school choice. Rep. Marcus Brandon, one of the eleven lawmakers who went to Florida, argues that "it is unconstitutional not to give students a choice" when it comes to their education. He has introduced six bills related to school choice this session, including two bills that would bring vouchers to the state.</div>
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Brandon was also one of several lawmakers who, in 2012, received campaign donations from PEFNC's PAC as well as individual PEFNC funders.</div>
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Though not indicative of any apparent unlawful activity or purpose, the story of where this money originated and how it flowed shines a revealing light on a movement that bills itself as a grassroots effort driven by the demands of average families.</div>
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American Federation for Children</div>
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Earlier this month, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a copy of the American Federation for Children's (AFC) "2012 Election Impact Report." The report reveals that AFC, a well-known national school choice advocacy organization, funneled more than $90,000 to the 2012 election campaigns of Republican and Democratic North Carolina lawmakers who support school choice, with the help of two local PACs in North Carolina.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-43016868788900082582013-05-21T09:39:00.001-07:002013-05-26T13:37:01.865-07:00FOUR KEY FACTORS OF EFFECTIVE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP<br />
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<em style="border: 0px; color: #464646; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;">Elizabeth Crawford-Brooke, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Vice President of Education and Research, Lexia Learning</span></em></h1>
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In a time when schools are being held accountable to the highest level of standards, strong leadership is critical for the schools’ success. These standards are reminiscent of the Reading First days, when schools were being asked to progress monitor their students and set high goals for every individual. There were several key factors noted in Reading First schools who demonstrated success, despite having challenging student populations (Crawford & Torgesen, 2006). These factors can be applied to these similar times in order to create a school environment that is open and supportive, and where strong leadership is demonstrated not solely by the principal, but rather it is established based on a shared vision with coaches and teachers.<br />
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Numerous studies on the topic of effective school leadership focus our attention on four key factors: Organizational Knowledge; Use of Data; Scheduling; and Positive Beliefs and High Expectations.<br />
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Organizational Knowledge<br />
Effective leadership begins with extensive knowledge of the instructional environment: individual student needs, strengths and weaknesses of staff members, aspects of the instructional programs, student data, and schedules. It is the manner in which school leaders weave these data sources together that they lay the foundation for effective school leadership.<br />
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Researchers exploring the qualities of effective school leadership often begin with the leader’s knowledge of the students in his or her school. By developing a data-driven understanding and knowledge of the students, the principal and other school leaders can inform their decisions pertaining to:</div>
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• Resource allocation – Do I have enough teachers and enough time to meet the needs of my at-risk students?</div>
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• Scheduling – Have I scheduled the reading blocks in such a way that my teachers and paraprofessionals have sufficient time to provide instruction, and provide intervention for students in need?</div>
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• Professional development – Have patterns in student skill gaps revealed a gap in teachers’ instructional abilities requiring additional professional development?</div>
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• Funding and procurement – How do the characteristics of my student population affect the available sources of funding or the ways in which I can allocate my budget?<br />
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Effective leaders have a strong knowledge of the range of instructional tools available to address their students’ needs. This entails—in many cases—a team-based approach to researching and vetting research-proven programs that address specific needs. Because of the sheer volume of programs available, many school leaders rely partly on their leadership teams to continuously research and share information about new tools and methodologies. Information sources such as the What Works Clearinghouse and the National Center on Response to Intervention provide a shortlist of instructional programs, some of which have extensive efficacy research.<br />
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Once an instructional program has been selected, it is imperative that school leaders develop an in-depth understanding of the program in order to ensure fidelity of implementation, drive behavior around proper use levels and ensure that teachers avail themselves of the training and professional development resources provided to them.<br />
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Use of Data<br />
Effective school leaders develop their organizational knowledge based, in large part, on their understanding of student data. This includes the use of summative data—analyzing outcome data in the spring to allocate resources and plan for the upcoming school year—as well as a wealth of real-time formative data. There are a number of assessment products—and even some online instructional programs that gather student data without administering a test—that can provide real-time performance data to inform instructional decisions.<br />
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Effective school leaders take an active role in data meetings, ensuring that teachers understand how the data indicate the instructional priorities for each teacher’s classroom. Far too many schools focus their data-driven culture on the process of data collection. While frequent measures are important for meaningful formative assessment, the most important aspect of data-driven culture is an ongoing focus on data analysis. Frequent (e.g., weekly, bi-weekly, etc.) data meetings help schools to effectively inform instruction, accurately identify and monitor students needing intervention, and provide school leaders the opportunity to modify children’s instructional programs in real-time. The frequency of the meetings can meet the needs of the individual school. The critical piece is that the meetings are scheduled ahead of time, so they do not get pushed out and missed on a regular basis. It is important to establish these meetings as something that is important to the school leadership, because when student data is closely examined on a frequent basis, teachers understand the importance of driving improvements on these performance indicators.<br />
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An important factor of effective data meetings is having the right people in the meeting in order to act on the decisions made about the data. Time spent tracking down the appropriate team member to inform or act upon a particular data point results in missed opportunities to improve student outcomes. Data meetings must include all of the key players, or at the very least, incorporate specific next-steps to ensure that instructional decisions are made and implemented based on the findings at the data meeting.<br />
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Scheduling<br />
High-performing schools consistently identify scheduling as one of the key factors of their success. For purposes of this discussion, we will focus on schools’ efforts to support an uninterrupted period of at least 90 minutes for reading instruction. Schools place a priority on supporting differentiated, small group instruction for struggling students. Therefore, in resource-constrained scenarios facing many schools, effective scheduling helps maximize available support staff. This can be accomplished in several ways:<br />
• Some schools schedule a 90-minute reading block across all grades first thing in the morning, regrouping students into homogeneous skill groups in each classroom. Sometimes called the “walk and read” model, this approach helps schools better utilize all of their trained intervention staff by placing them in classrooms with the students most at-risk of reading failure.<br />
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• Other high-performing schools stagger their reading blocks, which allows reading specialists to serve multiple grades and classes throughout the day, and enables them to observe and model lessons in more than one classroom or grade level during the reading block.<br />
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In addition to scheduling dedicated instructional and intervention blocks, high-performing schools place a high priority on scheduling data meetings. This requires the allocation of sufficient time and resources, such as substitute teachers, when necessary. Data meetings must be considered as equally important to other aspects of the school day—particularly since the effective use of data will inform nearly every other aspect of instruction.<br />
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Positive Beliefs and High Expectations<br />
A factor that is often overlooked in effective schools is a culture of positive beliefs and high expectations. High-performing schools often have a stated, school-wide belief in their students’ abilities to achieve, despite significant obstacles such as limited resources, high ELL population or low parental involvement. Leaders in these schools focus on raising expectations for students, not lowering them. In order to address high absenteeism or high numbers of behavior referrals, many of these schools have started expressing their belief in the students to the students themselves, to the parents, and to the community. By establishing a school culture in which all members of the school community believe that the students will be high achievers, the belief in reaching these high expectations becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.<br />
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Positive beliefs and high expectations may be the most important factor in high-achieving schools. Not only does it establish a culture of success, but it is also an approach that draws upon a limitless resource. During these difficult economic times, when school budgets continue to tighten, your school’s belief system is the one critical resource that cannot be affected by funding sources or staffing levels.<br />
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Conclusion<br />
Successful schools highlighted in research consistently demonstrate strong aspects in each of the four key factors of effective school leadership. In these schools, their successes began with the principal establishing a collaborative approach to leadership. As a principal, you don’t need to have all of the answers. You need to know the right questions to ask, and you need to foster the environment to empower a shared sense of ownership in the problem, and a shared sense of ownership in the solution.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-5772758780505299492013-05-21T09:30:00.002-07:002013-05-21T09:30:47.194-07:00You'll Be Shocked by How Many of the World's Top Students Are American<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4em;">The U.S. claims one-third of the developed world's high-performing students in both reading and science</span></h1>
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When you look at the average performance of American students on international test scores, our kids come off as a pretty middling bunch. If you rank countries based on their very fine differences, we come in 14th in reading, 23rd in science, and 25th in math. Those finishes led Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">flatly declare</a> that "we're being out-educated."<br />
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<b>And on average, maybe we are. But averages also sometimes obscure more than they reveal. My colleague Derek Thompson has <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/why-gloomy-pundits-and-politicians-are-wrong-about-americas-education-system/267278/" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">written before</a> about how, once you compare students from similar income and class backgrounds, our relative performance improves dramatically, suggesting that our educational problems may be as much about our sheer number of poor families as our supposedly poor schools.</b> This week, I stumbled on another data point that belies the stereotype of dimwitted American teens.<br />
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<b>When it comes to raw numbers, it turns out, we generally have far more top performers than any other developed nation.</b><br />
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That's according to the graph below from the Economic Policy Institute's <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359-guestworkers-high-skill-labor-market-analysis/" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">recent report</a> on America's supply of science and tech talent. <b>Among OECD nations in 2006, the United States claimed a third of high-performing students in both reading and science, far more than our next closest competitor, Japan. On math, we have a bit less to be proud of -- we claimed just 14 percent of the high-performers, compared to 15.2 percent for Japan and 16.2 percent of South Korea. </b><br />
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<a class="hoverZoomLink" href="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/EPI_PISA_Top_Performers.JPG" style="color: #00598c; font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="EPI_PISA_Top_Performers.JPG" class="mt-image-none" height="256" src="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/assets_c/2013/04/EPI_PISA_Top_Performers-thumb-570x256-120278.jpg" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="570" /></a><br />
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Part of this is easy to explain: The United States is big. Very big. And it's a <i>far </i>bigger country than the other members of the OECD. We claim roughly 27 percent of the group's 15-to-19-year-olds. Japan, in contrast, has a smidge over 7 percent. So in reading and in science, we punch above our weight by just a little, while in math we punch below. <br />
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<b>But the point remains: In two out of three subjects, Americans are over-represented among the best students.</b><br />
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If we have so many of the best minds, why are our average scores so disappointingly <a href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46643496.pdf" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">average</a>? As Rutgers's Hal Salzman and Georgetown's B. Lindsay Lowell, who co-authored the EPI report, noted in a <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/pdf/453028a.pdf" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">2008<i>Nature</i> article</a>, <b>our high scorers are balanced out by an very large number of low scorers. Our education system, just like our economy, is polarized. </b><br />
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What's the takeaway? Salzman and Lowell argue that our large numbers of top scorers should help put to rest the concern that we're losing the global talent race executives and politicians love to fret about. I'm not sure they'll do the trick, though. In 2009, Chinese students in Shanghai sat for the PISA test for the first time, and their scores <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">were spectacular</a>. Although data for its other mainland provinces hasn't been published, the OECD's test guru <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17585201" style="color: #00598c; text-decoration: none;">says they're similarly impressive</a>. <b>It seems pretty likely, in other words, that China has more young math and science geniuses at its disposal than we do (whether that's something that should be keeping any of us up at night is another issue). But Salzman and Lindsay make another point that's worth dwelling on: You can't replicate a country's style of education without replicating its culture, so instead of looking abroad for ideas about how to teach our kids, as some policy-types are inclined to do, perhaps we should look at what's succeeding here at home and spread it.</b> Our schools are already producing plenty of bright thinkers of their own.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-25644873355922386492013-05-20T16:09:00.002-07:002013-05-20T16:10:24.800-07:00Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel's Neoliberal Savagery<span style="background-color: white; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;">By</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;"> </span><a href="http://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/47063" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Henry A. Giroux</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;">,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;"> </span><a href="http://truth-out.org/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Truthout</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #9c162e; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25px;">| Op-Ed</span><br />
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<span class="wf_caption" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Protesters march in the Loop March 27, 2013 during a rally to protest the proposed closing of 54 Chicago public schools." height="424" src="http://truth-out.org/images/2013_May_Images/2013_0520g_.jpg" style="border: 0px; margin: auto; padding: 0px;" width="637" /><span style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; margin: 3px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 637px;">Protesters march in the Loop March 27, 2013 during a rally to protest the proposed closing of 54 Chicago public schools. (Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagopublicradio/8595758053/" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">WBEZ/Robin Amer</a>)</span><span style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; margin: 3px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; width: 637px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b>Across the globe, predatory capitalism spreads its gospel of power, greed, commodification, gentrification and inequality. </b> <b>Through the combined forces of a market driven ideology, policy and mode of governance, the apostles of free-market capitalism are doing their best to dismantle historically guaranteed social provisions provided by the welfare state, define the accumulation of capital as the only obligation of democracy, increase the role of corporate money in politics, wage an assault on unions, expand the military-security state, increase inequalities in wealth and income, foster the erosion of civil liberties and undercut public faith in the defining institutions of democracy.<a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#I" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">1.</a></b> As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish - from public schools to health-care centers - there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values and the common good. One does not have to look too far to see what happens in America’s neoliberal educational culture to see how ruthlessly the inequality of wealth, income and power bears down on those young people and brave teachers who are struggling every day to save the schools, unions and modes of pedagogy that offer hope at a time when schools have become just another commodity, students are reduced to clients or disposable populations, and teachers and their unions are demonized. </div>
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<b>Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s current attempt to close down 54 public schools largely inhabited by poor minorities is one more example of a savage, racist neoliberal system at work that uses the politics of austerity and consolidation to further disenfranchise the unskilled young of the inner city.</b> The hidden curriculum in this instance is not so invisible.<b> Closing schools will result in massive layoffs, weakening the teachers unions. It will free up land that can be gentrified to attract middle-class voters, and it will once again prove that poor minority students, regardless of the hardships, if not danger, they will face as a result of such closings, are viewed as disposable - human waste to be relegated to the zones of terminal exclusion.</b> Not only are many teachers and parents concerned about displacing thousands of students to schools that do not offer any hope of educational improvement, but they are also concerned about the safety of the displaced children, many of whom "will have to walk through violent neighborhoods and go to school with other students who are considered enemies." <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#II" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">2.</a> <b>This is not simply misguided policy, it is a racist script that makes clear that poor black youth are disposable and that their safety is irrelevant. </b> How else to explain the mayor's plan to produce a Safe Passage Plan in which firefighters would be asked to patrol the new routes, even though they have made it clear that they are not trained for this type of special duty. <b>That many of these children are poor black children trapped in under-resourced schools appears irrelevant to a mayor who takes his lead from politicians such as Barack Obama and Arnie Duncan, two educators who have simply reproduced the Bush educational reform playbook, i.e., more testing, demonize teachers, weaken unions, advocate for choice and charter schools, and turn public schools over to corporate hedge-fund managers and billionaires such as Bill Gates. Emanuel’s passionate zeal to downsize schools in impoverished black neighborhoods is matched only by his misdirected enthusiasm to lay out $195 million "on a basketball arena for DePaul University, a private Chicago university."</b> <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#III" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">3.</a></div>
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<b>Emanuel’s policies are symptomatic of a much larger war against teachers, public goods and the social contract. We increasingly live in societies based on the vocabulary of "choice" and a denial of reality - a denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands and a growing machinery of social death and culture of cruelty.</b> <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#IV" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">4.</a> </div>
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As power becomes global and is removed from local and nation-based politics, more and more individuals and groups are being defined by a free-floating class of ultra-rich and corporate power brokers as disposable, redundant, and irrelevant. Consequently, there are a growing number of people, especially young people, who increasingly inhabit zones of hardship, suffering and terminal exclusion. </div>
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<b>Power has lost its moorings in democratic institutions and removes itself from any sense of social, civic and political responsibilities.</b> Mayor Emanuel, along with his neoliberal political allies, occupies the dead zone of capitalism - a zone marked by a ruthless indifference to the suffering of others and self-righteous coldness that makes human beings superfluous and unwanted. At the same time, this zone of capital accumulation and dispossession destroys those public spheres and collective structures such as public and higher education that are capable of resisting the logic of the pure market and the anti-democratic pressures it imposes on American society. Peter Brogan sums it up well in his analysis of the forces behind the current attacks on teachers and public education. <b>He writes that the neoliberal agenda behind such attacks has </b><span style="line-height: 1.467em;"><b>been outlined in numerous planning documents from different city administrations, some of which have been drafted by the Commercial Club and have at the center an urban development strategy based on revitalizing the downtown core and prioritizing the financial, real estate and tourist sectors of the economy while at the same time demolishing public housing and schools in order to gentrify historically African American and Latino working class neighborhoods.</b> These transformations are deeply related to the larger structural crisis of capitalism. The background to this is the crisis of profitability that comes to a head in the early 1970s, and the ushering in a period of capitalist regulation known as neoliberalism, marked by savage attacks on unions, workers and working class living standards. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.467em;">Reconstructing the built environment of the city has been absolutely central to all of these changes. This is one attempt to deal with the structural crisis of capitalism at this critical juncture. And destroying unions, and teachers’ unions in particular, have been key to that attempt.</span><span style="line-height: 1.467em;"> </span><a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#V" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; line-height: 1.467em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">5.</a></div>
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<b>This is all the more reason for educators and others to address important social issues and to defend public education as democratic public sphere.</b> And it is all the more reason to defend the Chicago Public Teachers Union in its struggle with Emanuel because this battle is not a local issue. On the contrary, it is a national issue that will set the stage for the future of American public education, which is on its deathbed. <b>The struggle in Chicago must be understood as part of a larger set of market-driven policies in which everything is privatized, transformed into "spectacular spaces of consumption," and subject to the vicissitudes of the military-security state. <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#VI" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">6.</a> One consequence is the emergence of what the late Tony Judt called an "eviscerated society" - "one that is stripped of the thick mesh of mutual obligations and social responsibilities to be found in" any viable democracy.</b> <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#VII" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">7.</a> This grim reality represents a failure in the power of the civic imagination, political will, and open democracy. <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#VIII" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">8.</a> It is also part of a politics that strips the social of any democratic ideals. It is also the politics that drives Emanuel’s policies in Chicago around education and a host of other issues.</div>
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<b>In Emanuel’s ideological script, the common good is viewed as either a source of profits or pathology. The market is the only template that matters in shaping all aspects of society, and freedom is reduced to the freedom to shop, indulge one’s self-interests and willingly support a society in which market values trump democratic values.</b> According to Emanuel and his ilk,<b> the arch enemies of freedom are the welfare state, unions and public service workers such a public school teachers.</b> And as was evident in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, law and order is the new language for mobilizing shared fears rather than shared responsibilities, just as war becomes the all-embracing organizing principle for developing a market-driven society and economy. <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#IX" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">9.</a> </div>
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<b>Emanuel supports a notion of educational reform in which pedagogy is often treated simply as a set of strategies and skills to use in order to teach prespecified subject matter. In this context, pedagogy becomes synonymous with teaching as a technique or the practice of a craft-like skill. Even worse, pedagogy becomes a sterile method for developing skills aimed at raising test scores.</b> The Chicago public school teachers must reject this definition of teaching and educational reform, along with its endless slavish imitations, even when they are claimed as part of an "educational reform" project. I<b>n opposition to the instrumental reduction of pedagogy to a method - which has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility or the demands of citizenship - progressive educators need to argue for modes of critical pedagogy that illuminate the relationships among knowledge, authority and power.</b><a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#X" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">10.</a><b> </b>For instance, any viable reform movement must raise questions regarding who has control over the conditions for the production of knowledge. Is the production of knowledge and curricula in the hands of teachers, textbook companies, corporate interests, or other forces? </div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.467em;"><b>Part of what the Chicago teachers are doing in their protests against the school closings is drawing attention to the ways in which authority, knowledge, power, desire and experience are produced under specific basic conditions of learning, and in doing so, they are shedding light on educational reform movements in which teaching is stripped of its sense of accountability to parents, place, and the complex dynamic of history and communities.</b> Under such circumstances, the Chicago teachers are refusing educational policies in which matters of authority and pedagogy are removed from matters of values, norms and power.</span></div>
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<b>Emanuel’s neoliberal educational philosophy has no understanding of what actually happens in classrooms and other educational settings because it is incapable of raising questions.</b></div>
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<b>Nor does it acknowledge that pedagogy is simultaneously about the knowledge and practices teachers and students might engage in together, along with the values, social relations and visions such practices legitimate.</b> What scares Emanuel and other neoliberal reformers is that pedagogy is a moral and political practice that is always implicated in power relations because it offers particular versions and visions of civic life, community, the future, and how we might construct representations of ourselves, others, and our physical and social environment. </div>
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At the heart of the Chicago demonstrations against Emanuel’s polices are a series of broader questions that situate the right-wing reform movement in a broader set of market-driven politics. <b>For instance, what kind of society allows economic injustice and massive inequality to run wild in a society allowing drastic cuts in education and public services? Why are more police being put in schools just as more prisons are being built in the United States? What does it mean when students face not just tuition hikes but a lifetime of financial debt while governments in Canada, Chile and the United States spend trillions on weapons of death and needless wars? What kind of education does it take, both in and out of schools, to recognize the emergence of various economic, political, cultural and social forces that point to the dissolution of democracy and the possible emergence of a new kind of authoritarian state?</b></div>
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<b>In an age of irresponsible privatization, unchecked individualism, celebrity culture, unfettered consumerism and a massive flight from moral responsibility, it has become more and more difficult to acknowledge that educators and other cultural workers have an enormous responsibility in opposing the current threat to the planet and everyday life by bringing democratic political culture back to life.</b> Lacking a self-consciously democratic political focus or project, <b>teachers are often reduced either to the role of a technician or functionary engaged in formalistic rituals, unconcerned with the disturbing and urgent problems that confront the larger society or the consequences of one’s pedagogical practices and research undertakings.</b> In opposition to this model, with its claims to, and conceit of, political neutrality, it is crucial that teachers in Chicago and cities across the United States combine the mutually interdependent roles of critical educator and active citizen. <b>This requires finding ways to connect the practice of classroom teaching with the operations of power in the larger society and to provide the conditions for students to view themselves as critical agents capable of making those who exercise authority and power answerable for their actions. The role of a critical education is not to train students solely for jobs, but also to educate them to question critically the institutions, policies and values that shape their lives, relationships to others, and myriad connections to the larger world. </b>Equally important is the task of teacher unions all over America to forge alliances with a range of social movements so that the struggle for education is connected to the struggle for social provisions, a new understanding of politics, and the development of mass movements that can shut down the savagery of a neoliberal public pedagogy and economic machine that is the enemy of any viable notion of democracy. </div>
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<b> Education is never innocent, and if it is to be understood and problematized as a form of academic labor, educators must resist all calls to depoliticize pedagogy through appeals to either scientific objectivity or ideological dogmatism.</b> Educational dogmatism now takes the form of blatant attacks on unions, the dissolution of public schools largely inhabited by poor minority students, the imposition of disciplinary apparatuses that criminalize the behavior of low-income and poor students of color, and the development of curricula that deadens the mind and soul through a narrow pedagogy of test-taking. <b>What is happening in Chicago and other cities in the United States is the production of pedagogy of repression. This suggests the need for educators to rethink the purpose and meaning of education, the crucial importance of pedagogy in a democracy, and the collective struggles that will have to be waged against neoliberal racism and its attempts to dismantle the power of teachers to gain control over the conditions of their labor.</b></div>
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<b>Education must be reclaimed as central to any viable notion of citizenship, civic responsibility and democracy itself. What Rahm Emmanuel and his ilk fear is the potential of public education to enable students to think critically, hold power accountable and imagine education as a form of educated hope. </b>Education and pedagogy cannot be reduced to the dictates of an audit culture with its rendering of critical thought nil and void just as it elevates a mindless pedagogy of test-taking as the ultimate pedagogical practice and the final arbiter over what constitutes quality teaching, learning and what it means to be educated. <b>What is lost in this pedagogical practice, is a pedagogy that provides the conditions for students to come to grips with their own power, master the best histories and legacies of education available, learn to think critically and be willing to hold authority accountable - and most importantly, the dangerous notion that changing attitudes is not enough and that students should also be pressed to exercise a fearsome form of social responsibility as engaged citizens willing to struggle for social, economic and political justice. </b>This is the last approach to education that the current mayor of Chicago wants to see materialize in the cities’ public schools.</div>
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<b>What Chicago public schools teachers are fighting for in their three days of demonstrations is the right to define teaching as a performative practice that is not only about teaching young people to be literate and knowledgeable but also to embrace the mutually informing modalities of power and knowledge so as to engage education as an act of intervention in the world, one that moves beyond simple matters of critique and understanding.</b> At the essence of the brave struggles waged by the Chicago public school teachers is the recognition that any viable approach to pedagogy must acknowledge the crucial nature of the labor conditions necessary for teacher autonomy, cooperation, decent working conditions, safety of the children, and the relations of power necessary to give teachers and students the capacity to restage power in productive ways - ways that point to self-development, self-determination and social agency.</div>
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<b>What these three days of demonstrations must address is that without power over the conditions of their labor, teachers become pawns in a neoliberal politics in which they are deskilled, reduced to security guards, and work under conditions that transform education into a form of training. High-stakes testing and its corresponding tactic of promoting cheating among administrators, putting into play the most degrading forms of competition, and its killing of the civic imagination is both a debased form of instrumental rationality and a reification of method - put another way, a kind of methodological madness. </b>What needs to be addressed is that pedagogy is more than a method or its antithesis, a free-wheeling conversation between students and teachers.<b> On the contrary, it is precisely by recognizing that teaching is always directive - that is, an act of intervention inextricably mediated through particular forms of authority that teachers <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">can </em>offer students - for whatever use they wish to make of them - a variety of analytic tools, diverse historical traditions and a wide range of knowledge. </b>At issue here is a pedagogical practice that must provide the conditions for students to learn and narrate themselves and for teachers to be learners attentive to the histories, knowledge and experiences that students bring to the classroom and any other sphere of learning. In this instance, pedagogy should enable students to learn how to govern rather than be governed. </div>
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<b>The war being waged against Chicago Public schools, teachers and students is the product of a corporate ideology and pedagogy that numbs the mind and the soul, emphasizing repressive modes of learning that promote winning at all costs, learning how not to question authority, and disdaining the hard work of learning how to be thoughtful, critical, and attentive to the power relations that shape everyday life and the larger world. As learning is privatized, depoliticized, and reduced to teaching students how to be good consumers, any viable notions of the social, public values, citizenship and democracy wither and die.</b></div>
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<b>What role might public school teachers take in light of poisonous assaults waged on public schools by the forces of neoliberalism? In the most immediate sense, they can raise their collective voices against the influence of corporations that are flooding societies with a culture of war, consumerism, commercialism and privatization. They can show how this culture of commodified cruelty and violence is only one part of a broader and all-embracing militarized culture of war, the arms industry, and a Darwinian survival-of the-fittest ethic that increasingly disconnects schools from public values, the common good and democracy itself. They can bring all of their intellectual and collective resources together to critique and dismantle the imposition of high-stakes testing and other commercially driven modes of accountability on schools. They can mobilize young people and others to defend education as a public good by advocating for policies that invest in schools rather than in the military-industrial complex and its massive and expensive weapons of death, for instance, the US government’s investment in procuring a number of F35 jets that cost $137 million each. They can educate young people and a larger public to fight against putting police in schools, modeling schools after prisons, and implementing zero tolerance policies that largely punish poor minority children.</b></div>
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<b>Instead of investing in schools, children, health care, jobs for young people, and much needed infrastructures, neoliberal societies celebrate militarism, hyper-masculinity, extreme competition, and a survival of the fittest ethic while exhibiting disdain for any form of shared bonds, dependency and compassion for others. </b>Advocates of neoliberalism have eliminated social provisions, destroyed pension plans, eliminated health-care benefits, allowed inequality to run wild, and have done so in order to safeguard and expand the assets of the rich and powerful. As social bonds and the institutions that support them disappear from such societies, so do the formative cultures that make civic education, critical literacy, and cultures of questioning possible. <b>Too many school systems operate within disciplinary apparatuses that turn public education into either an extension of the prison-industrial complex or the culture of the mall. When not being arrested for trivial rule violations, students are subjected to walls, buses, and bathrooms that become giant advertisements for consumer products, many of which are detrimental to the health of students, contributing to the obesity crisis in America.</b> </div>
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<b>Increasingly, even curricula are organized to reflect the sound of the cash register, hawking products for students to buy and promoting the interests of corporations that celebrate fossil fuels as an energy source, sugar-filled drinks, and a Disney-like view of the world. </b>And of course, this commodification of public education is migrating to higher education with the speed of light. University student centers are being modeled after department stores, complete with an endless array of vendors trying to sell credit cards to a generation already swimming in debt. <b>University faculty members are valued more for their ability to secure grants than for their scholarship. </b> </div>
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<b>What is encouraging about the growing opposition of the Chicago teachers to the poisonous policies, pedagogies, and shameless racism of Mayor Rahm Emanuel is their willingness, under the inspiring educational leadership of Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, to develop a discourse of both critique and possibility.</b> This has meant developing discourses and pedagogical practices that connect reading the word with reading the world and doing so in ways that enhance the capacities of young people as critical agents and engaged citizens. In taking up this project, Lewis and others have struggled to create the conditions that give students the opportunity to become critical and engaged citizens who have the knowledge and courage to struggle in order to make desolation and cynicism unconvincing and hope practical. Hope in this instance is educational, removed from the fantasy of idealism, unaware of the constraints facing the dream of a democratic society. Educated hope is not a call to overlook the difficult conditions that shape both schools and the larger social order. On the contrary, it is the precondition for providing those languages, values, relations of power and collective struggles that point the way to a more democratic and just world.</div>
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<b>Educated hope provides the basis for dignifying the labor of teachers; it offers up critical knowledge linked to democratic social change; it affirms shared responsibilities; and it encourages teachers and students to recognize justice, equality and social responsibility as fundamental dimensions of learning. Such hope offers the possibility of thinking beyond the given.</b> As difficult as this task may seem to educators, if not to a larger public, it is a struggle worth waging.</div>
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<b>It is important to note that democracy begins to fail and political life becomes impoverished in the absence of those vital public spheres such as public and higher education in which civic values, public scholarship and social engagement allow for a more imaginative grasp of a future that takes seriously the demands of justice, equity and civic courage. </b> Democracy should be a way of thinking about education, one that thrives on connecting equity to excellence, learning to ethics, and agency to the imperatives of social responsibility and the public good. <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16478-marching-in-chicago-resisting-rahm-emanuels-neoliberal-savagery#XI" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">11.</a> </div>
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<b>The right-wing governors, corporate-affiliated politicians, and the shameless hedge-fund managers and billionaires are waging a war in order to colonize public education and destroy the dignity of teachers, students and critical learning. </b> The Chicago teachers refuse to believe that the antidemocratic market-driven forces attacking American public schools are irreversible, part of a new common sense that is beyond critical inquiry and dissent. The three days of demonstrations hold a wider meaning for all Americans. <b>Not only do they demonstrate that the future is still open, but that the time has come through a show of collective struggle and moral and political outrage that public education is crucial to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic imagination, a renewed sense of social agency and an impassioned, collective political will. Public school teachers are one of the few remaining forces left in the land of corrupt bankers, hedge-fund managers and right-wing politicians who can imagine the promise of democracy and are willing to fight for it. The struggle being waged by the Chicago Public School teachers is part and parcel of a battle for the essence of education, if not democracy itself.</b></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="I" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>1.</div>
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See, for example, David Harvey, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The New Imperialism</em>, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); David Harvey, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A Brief History of Neoliberalism</em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Wendy Brown, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Edgework</em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Henry A. Giroux, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Against the Terror of Neoliberalism</em>(Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008); Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy,<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction</em>, (Oxford University Press, 2010).</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="II" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>2.</div>
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Valerie <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/17/three-days-of-marches-in-chicago-to-protest-school-closings/%20" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Strauss</a>, “Three Days of Marches in chicago to Protest School Closings,” The Washington Post (May 17, 2013).</div>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/17/three-days-of-marches-in-chicago-to-protest-school-closings/" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> </a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="III" style="border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a><span style="border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">3.</span></div>
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Travis <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/05/15/2016181/why-is-chicago-devoting-125-million-to-build-a-basketball-arena-for-a-private-university/?mobile=nc" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Waldron</a>, “Why Is Chicago Devoting $125 Million To Build A Basketball Arena For A Private University?,” ThinkProgress (May 15, 2013).</div>
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<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/05/15/2016181/why-is-chicago-devoting-125-million-to-build-a-basketball-arena-for-a-private-university/?mobile=nc" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> </a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="IV" style="border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a><span style="border: 0px; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">4.</span></div>
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See, for instance, on the rise of the racist punishing state, Michelle Alexander, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness</em> (New York: The New Press, 2010); on the severe costs of massive inequality, Joseph E. Stiglitz,<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> The Price of Inequality: How Today Divided Society Endangers Our Future</em> (New York: Norton, 2012); on the turning of public schools into prisons, see Annette Fuentes,<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse</em> (New York: Verso, 2011).</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="V" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>5.</div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Peter <a href="http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3700" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Brogan</a>, “What’s Behind the Attack on Teachers and Public Education?” Solidarity (September 14, 2012). </span><a href="http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3700" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"> </a></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="VI" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>6.</div>
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Quoted in Michael L. Silk and David L. Andrews. “(Re)Presenting Baltimore: Place, Policy, Politics, and Cultural Pedagogy.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 33 (2011), p. 436.</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="VII" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>7.</div>
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Terry <a href="http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/10/0083150%20" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Eagleton</a>, “Reappraisals: What is the worth of social democracy?” Harper’s Magazine, (October 2010), p. 78. <a href="http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/10/0083150" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> </a></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="VIII" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>8.</div>
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Alex Honneth, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Pathologies of Reason</em> (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 188.</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="IX" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>9.</div>
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For an excellent analysis of contemporary forms of neoliberalism, Stuart Hall, “The Neo-Liberal Revolution,” Cultural Studies, Vol. 25, No. 6, (November 2011, pp. 705-728; see also Harvey, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A Brief History of Neoliberalism</em>; Giroux, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Against the Terror of Neoliberalism</em>.</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="X" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>10.</div>
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For examples of this tradition, see Maria Nikolakaki, ed. <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Critical Pedagogy in the Dark Ages: Challenges and Possibilities</em>, (New York: Peter Lang, 2012); Henry A. Giroux, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">On Critical Pedagogy</em> (New York: Continuum, 2011).</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2624023009363672469" name="XI" style="border: 0px; color: #9c162e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </a>11.</div>
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See, Henry A. Giroux, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Education Deficit and the War on Youth</em> (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05665119284861633623noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2624023009363672469.post-45428830602119515362013-05-19T10:23:00.002-07:002013-05-19T10:23:41.928-07:00<br />
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<a href="http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/kiss-michelle-rhee-goodbye/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Permalink to Kiss Michelle Rhee Goodbye">Kiss Michelle Rhee Goodbye</a></h1>
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With the publication of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Fighting-Students-First-ebook/dp/B0089LOIAK" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Radical</em></a> and a few years after founding <a href="http://www.studentsfirst.org/content" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">StudentsFirst</a>, a policy advocacy organization, former Washington, D.C. Chancellor of schools continues to push her reform agenda nationally, one that was severely burned when she exited the district after only three years in office. Well versed in being a celebrity, Rhee made the rounds of high profile media (e.g., Jon Stewart<a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-4-2013/exclusive---michelle-rhee-extended-interview-pt--1" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"> show</a>) pushing her new book and the organization that she leads. So why should anyone kiss Rhee–”<a href="http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6232" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">America’s most famous school reformer</a>“– goodbye?</div>
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<a href="http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/images1.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="images" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6987" src="http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/images1.jpg?w=500" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></a></div>
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Because she is a divisive figure and damaged goods as an educator. Both mean that her celebrity-hood as a school reformer–on the cover of <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Time</em> magazine, chatting with Oprah and Jon–will give her visibility in 24/7 news cycle but not lead to any substantial elected or appointed political or educational office.</div>
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<a href="http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/time1.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="time1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6988" src="http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/time1.jpg?w=500" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></a></div>
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<b>No President will appoint her Secretary of Education; no governor will appoint her state superintendent of education and no school board will appoint her as their school chief. She is a polarizing, radioactive figure who will set off Geiger counters and create instant political turmoil and organizational instability–outcomes that may be good for media attention and garnering large speaker fees but disastrous for those responsible for making schools better and improving student performance.</b></div>
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<a href="http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/images-1.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="images-1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6989" src="http://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/images-1.jpg?w=500" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></a></div>
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<b>In the absence of actual work with states, districts, schools, and classrooms, her reputation as a divisive figure forever trailed by a dark hovering cloud of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/07/whats-missing-from-michelle-rhees-memoir/" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">cheating</a> on test scores will tarnish her efforts to have any direct impact on students, pushing her further and further down the food-chain of celebrity status. </b>She will slip into the land where once highly touted educational celebrities such as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/14/nyregion/paterson-principal-a-man-of-extremes.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Joe Clark </a> (<a href="http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20119876,00.html" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a> also) and Chris <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Whittle" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Whittle</a> (<a href="http://www.inc.com/chris-beier-and-daniel-wolfman/education-entrepreneur-chris-whittle-avenues.html" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a> also) became answers to the game: Whatever happened to _______ ?</div>
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Won’t her advocacy organization StudentsFirst lobbying state legislators for more charters, vouchers, performance evaluations for teachers, and the end of seniority for rehiring laid-off teachers make a difference? I doubt it for the following reasons.</div>
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<b>Compared with the efforts of the deep-pocketed Koch brothers in influencing state legislatures through the American Legislative Exchange Commission (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">ALEC</a>), or the well-funded Democrats for Education Reform <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/01/1087992/-DFER-and-Education-Policies" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">(DFER</a>), Rhee’s organization is minor league in political acumen, expertise, and experience in political advocacy. Nor does StudentsFirst have any bench strength; it is all Michelle.</b>If she leaves the organization out of fatigue or pique, no more StudentsFirst. Moreover, such political work to be effective is back-channel and under the media radar. Such work is not Michelle Rhee, considering her few years in Washington, D.C. and since.</div>
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But there is something that Rhee can do to reduce the radioactivity, remove suspicions about her motives, and regain a pinch of credibility that she carried as a school reformer when the mayor of Washington, D.C. appointed her in 2007.</div>
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<b>That something is for her to return to the classroom and teach for three to five years. Teaching will redeem her soiled reputation as a fame-seeking missile interested only in snatching the headline, the interview, the donor’s dollar</b>. She will regain her credibility as someone who cares about school reform by teaching and working to have her students do well in school and in life. She might even move on, were she so inclined, to take state and federal leadership posts.</div>
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Although I hope she will make such a counter-intuitive move, for I do admire her energy, intensity, and commitment to students, I doubt that will occur. <b>Celebrity-hood, once tasted, becomes addictive and, so often, spirals downward as the addict seeks the next moment-of-glory fix. With regret, I blow a kiss goodbye to Michelle Rhee even now as she rides the cresting wave of “America’s most famous school reformer.”</b></div>
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