Ken Previtti (Reclaim Reform) has a follow up to the mother whose child was in hospice and the state of Florida was demanding he be tested. Keep the kleenex handy.
Godspeed to her and her family.
Heartless creeps.
Category Archives: education
Charter Schools Gravy Train
(hat tip to scathing purple musings) Forbes, of all places, has this article up that pretty much summarizes all that is wrong with charter school profiteers.
As mentioned here before, the article notes that Bill Clinton allowed them to proliferate by giving them tax credits and not only that, but green cards for foreign investors. Yep.
As I’m reading about the for-profit scheme and how the author notes that they have not been that profitable…I’m thinking of the “classes” being given to kids via video or online “learning”…so they don’t have to pay a teacher at all. Or–they have one teacher to answer questions or grade tests for however many kids they can squeeze in….I don’t even know the answer to that and I’m not going to even try to guess. They don’t really care, anyway, if the child is getting a good education…as long as it looks something like an education, they’re just fine with that…
Lastly, I’m even more impressed with public schools after reading this–the author notes that charter schools can pick and choose their students, so they should be showing better test scores than public…less than a third do that.
So…even with the students that are autistic or mentally challenged, the public schools still outdid the charters. Here’s to the dedicated and beleaguered public school teachers….::clink::
U of Illinois faculty on strike ** edited
Fred Klonsky has a picture blog up on the U of Illinois at Chicago faculty strike. I hope he’ll provide more details as it goes…
**edited: Fred wrote about it last week. Link.
People don’t understand that faculty are not making the big $$$. When I graduated in 2000, the new hires (assistant professors) were making a whopping $25,000. This while the university was funneling money into athletics.
Breaking up with Common Core
Diane Ravitch has this up on a high school junior, Grace, that sent a break-up letter to Common Core.
Kudos to Grace for speaking out.
More evidence why we need media diversity
Protestors in Venezuela were blocked on twitter from posting images of the protests.
PBS, which is supposed to be free from corporate influence, is now under fire for airing an anti-Pension series sponsored by John Arnold. David Sirota’s article on it here.
In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.
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…both PBS’s “Pension Peril” correspondent and the AP reporter did not mention that according to budget data, pension shortfalls in Illinois are far smaller than the amount the state is spending on expensive taxpayer subsidies to corporations.
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The state is just choosing to spend that money on huge subsidies to corporations like Sears and Google rather than paying its bills or making its required pension payments.
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See…the money is there…but it’s going into the pockets of the 1%, see? Note the $4 billion per year in subsidies in New York! OMG talk about greedy, greedy, greedy!
And here we have the smoking gun of executives knowing who was funding it and refusing to disclose it:
“We were sitting in a meeting talking about another issue and (PBS officials) were drawing examples of how they were working with other campaigns, and one of their executives said they’ve got a series called pension peril coming up talking about the threat of pensions at the state and local level,” said the source. “I asked who was funding that project, and the executive said that at this point they are not disclosing who their funders are, and everybody sitting around the room kind of paused.”
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Link to Jane Meyer’s article in the New Yorker here.
In 1997, he [David Koch] began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country’s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications—which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times—might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company “as a vehicle for their political voice.”
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$50 for Christmas bonus? Are you kidding me? So much for trickle down economics, eh?
Meyer’s piece brings up the ABC News story on Disney hiring pedophiles being cancelled…because Disney owns ABC. If I recall correctly, the reporter of the story was asked if he was crazy for investigating it….
Even more depressing is the upcoming PBS pieces by Chitester on the “evils of the welfare system” I can hardly wait. What a bully this guy is…pick on the ones who are least likely to fight back. Creep.
The $$ behind destroying unions
…in this case, the big bad teacher’s unions. They are portrayed as taking away the civil rights of children…by billionaires who are paying their parents less than livable wages…so they can have even bigger bank accounts and totally take over public education.
Meanwhile,Diane has this up on the Schools as Soap Operas, brought to you by corporate profiteers.
Additionally, Reclaim Reform has this up on the hypocrites of reform. Pretty sobering.
But wait…here is some good news–Pittsburgh schools cancel contract with Teach for America. Yay!
Wisconsin Senator reveals plan to close public schools
Well, those of us following the Education fiasco already knew this, but perhaps the doubters will finally realize the school profiteers have wanted to close public schools all along.
“For the next several years, 5% of public schools must be named as failing – even if those schools weren’t failing by current standards. With few exceptions, schools that failed for three years would be required to close or be operated by an independent private charter management company with a minimum five-year contract. Local school boards would have little authority over this company for five years. For Milwaukee, this change would apply to schools that failed for just one year.”
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The Education Show
Seriously, these folks are running schools by script. Unbelievable. (from Diane Ravitch’s blog)
As Diane says, it’s dangerous to speak out….but this has been going on in the private sector for quite some time–somehow, one’s right to Freedom of Speech stops at the corporate door.
So now it has reached the Education doors….and that is why Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, et al, have tried to destroy teacher’s unions. It’s much harder to fire a teacher who speaks out against corruption when that teacher belongs to a strong union that stands behind her or him. That’s kind of the bully playbook—separate people into aloneness, and attack. It’s much easier to take one down than a group.
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More on Education--this post is just sickening. Depressing as hell that Pearson has now monopolized the United States Education system.
This post from Mom of Five is alarming:
My daughter’s principal just informed me that she doubts any California district will ever order a textbook again: Everything bought in the future will be digital. Her school has pretty much phased out textbooks already and at my mom’s high school the district just got rid of over 4,000 books from the library. Even though the high school has just been built (3 weeks ago) I find it sad that the library is very small. Instead, there are numerous “student lounges” where kids go to hang out.
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Really disturbing. Of course, the technology terrorists will wrap this in a “progress” blanket to quash any objections to it. We’ve been sold this line of garbage that anything new in technology is automatically a good thing and means we are “progressing”. What does that mean, exactly? They don’t really say. All it is is something “new”. They know that marketers put “new” and “improved” on can labels so that consumers will buy it…doesn’t matter that it’s the same stuff as before and “improved” is a subjective word.
And if you notice the comment of teachingeconomist, the resident troll, he uses the word “nostalgic” as a code word for “you’re so far behind the times clinging to the past…” to shut people up…
I see farther down the comments that Mom of Five had the same sentiment:
Momoffive
Oh yeah, I forgot the best part…she let me know that the reason I’m having a problem with all this is because “us older parents” have a difficult time with change and moving into the global 21st century.”
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Diane has probably blogged on this, but with all the information out there, I have trouble keeping up–Valerie Strauss (God love her) has this up on the Bush connection to this education fiasco.
More here from an old post at dailykos. I think I may have posted this before–but doesn’t hurt to repost…easier to keep up with the octopus of education $$.
McSchools
Diane Ravitch has a great blog up today on one family’s monopoly on charters in Minnesota and the resulting segregation.
A great comment by Reteach for America explains just how charters actually give parents less choice…and less power…when it comes to their child’s education:
Charter schools have no civic responsibility.
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Many parents don’t realize this lack of democratic representation or really any say whatsoever in their children’s school is a serious issue until they have a concern about the charter and the charter tells them they are welcome to shop for another school. When they turn to the district for help, they’re often told the same thing. You don’t like McDonalds? Go to Burger King.
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So, imagine that your town no longer has independent restaurants, but only McDonald’s, Burger King, or any other national chain….you dislike the fast food and wish for a home-cooked meal that fits your diet…none of these chains have decent food, so you no longer have a choice. You either eat the stuff that resembles food, or you stay home. They don’t care about you, as an individual, but only YOU as a collective group to profit off of…
….this is essentially what charters like the ones in Minnesota are doing. McSchools.
When ridiculous turns to cruelty
Indignant Teacher has a story up on the ridiculous test, test, test, mentality of the Department of Education…which turns to cruelty when a child who is dying and a child with only a brain stem must.be.tested. Good God.
Apparently, my communication through her that he was in hospice wasn’t enough: they required a letter from the hospice company to say that he was dying. Every day that she comes to visit, she is required to do paperwork to document his “progress.” Seriously? Why is Ethan Rediske not meeting his 6th-grade hospital homebound curriculum requirements? BECAUSE HE IS IN A MORPHINE COMA. We expect him to go any day. He is tenaciously clinging to life.
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This just makes me angry. How utterly insane and cold and unfeeling to put this additional burden upon this mother whom is going through the most horrible thing a mother should ever have to endure–the death of her child.
Eagle 