I have to hand it to Bob Braun–the hits just keep coming. He has yet another great report up on how the Christie/Anderson plan of trashing public education via closing public schools and pushing children into charters may be illegal, according to New Jersey law.
I am so happy that at least someone is fighting for them. I wish we had them here….Indiana’s public schools will close before Hoosiers wake up to what is really happening…
**note that the 5 principals that were fired…er, put on indefinite layoff…were reinstated. Woot.
Diane Ravitch has this up on the destructive policies designed to push for charter schools that will ultimately mean the demise of public schools through siphoning funding away.
By the way, HB1320, has passed. By the legiscan link, it’s hard to tell whether it passed in the legislature or just the committee. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
Diane Ravitch has this up on Tennessee teacher Laura Hopson speaking out on what teachers really want–funny thing is they don’t want what the self-appointed education gurus say they want…
What a bombshell…the United States Department of Education is taking dirty money from Bill and Melinda Gates.
For a “collaboration conference” April 2012
Another “collaborative” effort to implement Common Core, December 2013
Note the “shared responsibility” white paper….and the focus is on labor collaboration…nothing about a well-rounded education as a robust part of democracy….the focus is on labor and business.
Note the paper states that the Dept. of Ed. is under “immense pressure” to implement labor-management collaborative…um, yeah, I don’t remember asking for more corporate involvement in public schools, have you…?
This sentence is telling:
To advance this collaborative theory of change the Department has been using both its convening and
grant making powers.
~~~~~~~~~~
(I have no idea why the font changed to smaller size…must be the pdf.)
…in other words, the Dept. of Ed. has been coercing schools to adopt the policy through grants and legislation…
n February 2012, the Department
announced the launch of the RESPECT Project.
RESPECT stands for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching.
The project’s purpose is to directly engage with teachers across America in a national conversation about transforming the teaching profession by
dramatically changing the way teachers are recruited,
credentialed, supported, compensated, promoted,
and retained in the profession.
The near-term aim of the RESPECT Project is to elevate teachers’ voices in shaping federal,
state, and local policy, with a long-
term goal of making teaching one of America’s most respected professions.
~~~~~~~~~~
This is such a joke. Respect means you pay teachers a decent wage that reflects their professional education and their experience. Respect means you do not bash teachers and teacher’s unions.
“…the…aim of RESPECT Project is to elevate teachers’ voices…” Unless, of course, those voices are in passionate disagreement with you:
Finally, I found this wonderful video that takes on “Waiting for Superman” and all the false claims made by the education profiteers and their allies:
I remember hearing of Terry Kath’s death on the radio. He was a soulful vocalist and guitar player for the band Chicago, born January 31, 1946. The news announcer said he was playing “russian roullette” with a gun when it went off. That was not true–he didn’t realize the gun was loaded. What a terrible loss.
Someone put together a pretty decent video of Terry:
He touched so many lives and he lives on…
Want to know a surprising thing? Terry couldn’t read music.
If today’s education gurus were to judge little Terry Kath by his inability to read music, he would be forever labeled “stupid” and put into a black hole, never to realize his potential because some hedge fund manager/education profiteer decided he had no potential because he couldn’t identify musical notes on paper. And we all know how powerful his musical ability was—what a waste that would have been to deny him that by labeling him.
Terry’s daughter, Michelle, is putting together a documentary on her father.
Fred Klonsky has this up on Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s threatening letter to parents who wish to opt-out of the testing, testing, testing of their children.
Again, it seeks to usurp parents’ ultimate responsibility towards the welfare of their children.
I would put it back in her lap– show us that these tests are provable measures of one’s intelligence. They can’t. Because they’re not. There is no test that can measure potential. And the kinds of questions being asked–whether a first grader knows the Code of Hammurabi shows a complete lack of understanding of child development.
This just makes my morning! Bob Braun’s article here.
The explosion of personal anger occurred at 8:30 pm, two hours after the meeting at First Avenue School got off to a delayed and troubled start. Scores of residents who wanted to attend the meeting were kept outside in single-digit temperatures. Then some were allowed to enter an unheated cafeteria. Police officers, citing fire regulations, said the auditorium in the school was too crowded.
The venue clearly was chosen to keep the size of the crowd down.
~~~~~~~~
See…you can control the negative speech against you by making it harder for the mounting opposition to even get a space to stand.
Remember what I said in the previous blog about education and how it seemed like they were trying to separate kids from their parents by reducing the amount of time at home?
Well, this statement kind of supports that:
a letter to families that suggested if Newark children were home from school they would get into trouble, make the city “less safe” and cause crime to go up
~~~~~
Where do I start? The insinuation is that parents don’t know how to raise their kids. That kids are little criminals just waiting for the opportunity to commit a criminal act.
Perhaps art and music instruction would be helpful here in creating and encouraging imaginations so that kids could entertain themselves while out of school, eh?
They could be painting, drawing, learning a new game, playing/practicing an instrument, playing tag outside, making snow sharks 🙂 , or doing something to give back, like shoveling an elderly/disabled person’s sidewalks, or running errands…the list is endless….
Update on this post on the power grab/information grab by Pence and his henchmen.
I found this summary of the bill– as you can see, it does not outline what information is being gathered. It does not say who is receiving this information. It does not outline how this benefits children and education. And why does the state need to provide backup when schools routinely backup their own records??
As I wrote on Diane’s blog–
It looks like Gates has his dirty little fingers in this–gathering more information for…what? or perhaps I should say…who? What kind of information are they gathering? Who will benefit from gathering this information?
The bill does not tell us. Highly suspicious.
I also found this excellent blog by Doug Martin (you might recall he posted on firedoglake).
If passed into law, HB1320 will probably hand another $3.7 million of our tax dollars to a private company which will sell off personal and confidential information of students and families to companies out to market their products and agenda to them.
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This new move is not a new one.In fact, HB1320 was probably inspired by a model billdrafted for various states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate sponsored bill-mill behind the scenes in Indiana and across the country bringing us school privatization, attacks on the postal service and unions, and the infamous Stand Your Ground Law.
Diane Ravitch has an account of a teacher’s experience in a Gulen charter school. Unreal.
No books. And teachers with 100 students limited to 25 copies per day. Money missing from their paychecks unaccounted for. Seriously?
All of this is flying under the radar because the mainstream media is not only not covering the Newark 5, they’re not covering the criminal and unethical activities of people running charter schools.
…but they’ll be more than happy to run story after story of bad teachers in public schools…
Eagle 
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