Category Archives: libraries

Washington State Judge rules against Charters

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Well, this is welcome news–a judge has ruled that public funds cannot be used for charters under private management.  Yes!!  A win for public schools!

What they really think of the old

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Fred Klonsky has a Chicago Tribune cartoon depicting retirees as dogs that need to be muzzled.

Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

Klonsky also has a blog up on Moral Mondays.  Update here.

This from Diane Ravitch on how to starve people so they’ll accept whatever crumbs you feel like giving them…

And in my corner of the world, Glenda Ritz continues to fight for her publicly elected position that received more votes than Pence.

Charter Schools:  it’s all in the family.

Reign of Error; Kochs, et al, planning assault on Ed.

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Patrick Walsh has a report up on Reign of Error, by Diane Ravitch.

Oh, and have you heard?  It’s open season on teachers.  The climate that No Child Left a Mind and Race to the Bottom have created—to punish students for not being perfect students and their teachers, who are under tremendous pressures to not have any stupid kids (said facetiously)–has now come to fruition.  I’m sure Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michelle Rhee, et al, are laughing themselves silly.

Jan Ressenger put up a link to this report from the Guardian on just how far the Kochs and their comrades are willing to go….not only to destroy public education, but continue attacks on working folks and unions…

SPN’s president, Tracie Sharp, told the Guardian that “as a pro-freedom network of thinktanks, we focus on issues like workplace freedom, education reform, and individual choice in healthcare: backbone issues of a free people and a free society.”

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I wonder if she could get the word “free” in there any more…was she wrapped in a flag, too??  Because that would *definitely* mean that this program was patriotic and would strengthen democracy…

...by destroying it…

“it’s for your own good” has to be the biggest lie ever told!

Side note~ someone in the comments section linked to the Yes Men video. Enjoy. (Be sure to click on Part 2–with Surviva-balls.  Hilarious.)

Someone also kindly posted a link to a list of Kraft foods.  Again…where are the antitrust laws?  Why is one food manufacturer able to control so much of the market share?  Not that junk food, which is the majority of crap that Kraft makes, is something healthy..what if folks were able to afford healthy made-from-scratch food…?  We could do some serious damage to Kraft’s bottom line if we refused to buy their junk food and bought only fresh….and we’d be healthier, too.

Center for Media and Democracy has the scoop on SPN.  (As a side note~ I haven’t been getting regular emails of the CMD for a few months now–it’s been spotty at best…interesting.  I’ll have to make a note to keep checking their website for updates.)

True to nature, they hide their lobbying disguised to avoid paying taxes.  Good Grief, these people know how to play the game of getting someone else to pay while they reap the benefits.

The mention of the Goldwater Institute raises huge red flags–Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl.  An excellent blog here on her history…er, her trying to re-write her history…and Bill’s.

The Clintons LOVE poor black people on welfare

• The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) that was dreamt up by past Republican administrations, was actually passed by Congress and signed by Clinton. This act was filled with vindictive measures aimed at the poor. Among other things, it set a five-year lifetime limit for cash assistance and gave the states power to adopt stringent restrictions in several other areas. Another key part of the Act, was the imposition for the first time of lifetime limits on welfare. Once a welfare mother uses up this lifetime limit, set at five years by the federal government, she and her children can never again receive federal cash benefits, no matter how desperate their condition and no matter what happens to the overall economy.
Bill Clinton has certainly laid his Mack game down heavy in the black community. Maybe that’s why the African-American community has been so thoroughly duped by lip service, prominent public appearances and appointments, and an office on Harlem’s 125th (although Clinton certainly hasn’t used it much).

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Ahem.   There are white people on food stamps, as well.  The Clintons, along with the Kochs, et al, don’t like POOR people.  Period.

We can’t talk about Bill Clinton’s love for his “black race” without mentioning Rwanda. You remember what happened in Rwanda? If you don’t, then I suggest you rent the movie “Hotel Rwanda” and be prepared to be thoroughly disgusted. Bill Clinton not only refused to intervene to save over one million people from being hacked to death, but he even declined to convene his Cabinet to discuss the crisis.

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I highly recommend Hotel Rwanda.  Just don’t watch it and Schindler’s List on the same weekend.  I actually had to call my son after watching them both one weekend….I needed to talk to a sane human being…

And let’s not forget this piece on the secretive group Hillary Clinton belongs to.  As I’ve said on many occasions…it never ceases to amaze me how people who call themselves Christian act nothing like Christ.  Who would Jesus bomb, Hillary?

I’ve read this piece before, but this sentence just packed a punch:

It emerged, he [Reverend Don Jones] says, as a third way, a reaction against both separatist fundamentalism and the New Deal’s labor-based liberalism.

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…a reaction against….the New Deal’s labor-based liberalism.  In other words:   unions….working folks….public education…social security…medicaid…..livable wages…(and the environment, too, but that would come later).

…and if you listen carefully to conservative media, you’ll hear subtle and outwardly snide attacks on Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Get it, now?

And this:

Niebuhr and Tillich’s combination of aggressiveness in foreign affairs and limited domestic ambition naturally led Clinton toward the gop. She was a Goldwater Girl who, under the tutelage of her high school history teacher Paul Carlson (whom Jones describes as “to the right of the John Birchers”), attended biweekly anticommunist meetings and later served as president of Wellesley’s Young Republicans chapter.

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…she attended biweekly anticommunist meetings.  Wellesley…if the movie “Mona Lisa Smile” is any indication, is a conservative’s utopia…so Young Republicans chapter there?  Pretty hard to swallow that this was a fluke -a flash in the pan….especially when one turns a critical eye to Hillary’s record.  I mean, if they call themselves Democrats, but act as Republicans…

“Mind conservative but a heart liberal” tells me that she is like so many guys who say they’re “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative”.  What this means is:  I’m selfish and self-absorbed.  And I don’t follow my heart.  I let my purse strings do the thinking for me.   In other words, I choose money over God.  (Jesus said that we could only serve one Master–money or God.  Not both.)

Okay, there is more to write, but I’m really tired from the day and need to call it quits.

 

The War against Teachers

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Reclaim Reform has this somber post up on the worldwide attack on the teachers, the teacher’s unions, and free speech, as well. The last video (world wide) really got to me–treating these folks like animals!  Take note that World Bank demanded the austerity measures….

The witch hunts of teachers

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The latest from Teacher’s Letters to Bill Gates.  Queen Melinda seeks to rule education high atop her perch in her gated castle.

I’m glad that someone else has noticed the disturbing similarities between the Puritan witch hunts of Salem and what is happening to teachers.

Again, I say that it has been happening in the private sector for awhile now, but unrecognized by others.  As I read this disturbing piece, from the above link, the “good enough” mother espoused by Phyllis Chesler** popped into my head.  Teachers will never be perfect.  None of us will ever be perfect, even though some of us might try to reach for it. Again, there are disturbing similarities between the demands for teacher perfection and motherhood perfection.   The demands against mothers has largely gone unreported and unnoticed by the mainstream media…except to pile on the negative.  Mothers and teachers both have been pilloried by the media.

**A side note~ Wilson mentions in her article that uppity women and lesbian/bisexuals are likely to lose custody.  One doesn’t even have to be a lesbian in order to lose custody–all the ex has to do is allege she is lesbian in order to lose custody.  A woman who does not have a gentleman friend can be alleged to be a lesbian….and on the flip side, if she is a party girl and has dated frequently, she will also lose custody.  In other words, if she isn’t screwing around, there’s something wrong with her.  If she is screwing around, there’s something wrong with her.  She can’t win.

Also mentioned in the Teacher’s Letters articles are the tent cities.  They’ve been on my mind, lately, especially with all the happy, happy news that the economy has turned a corner and the jobs are flowing again….yeah, I’m not seeing it, either…

Here’s a list of Bush/Clinton cities.

A good article here.

Another here:

They fail to go into more depth about all the factors leading to the economic collapse, which is so important because those factors–deregulation of the banking/insurance industry, NAFTA, ignoring antitrust laws, not taxing corporations nor the rich, 40% of the budget going towards the defense department,  and stagnant wages–have not been dealt with and the economy will not become robust again without correcting them.

 

 

 

Cheap Real Estate – your local school **edited

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Jan Ressenger has this disturbing link to a Philly.com article on investors buying school building cheaply.  She also has this link to a Valerie Strauss report in the Washington Post.

Strauss reprinted a report by Helen Gym:

For more than 10 months, Parents United for Public Education and our lawyers at the Public Interest Law Center of  Philadelphia have been fighting to make public the Boston Consulting Group’s list of 60 schools recommended for closure and the criteria it used for developing the list. In 2012, BCG contracted with the William Penn Foundation to provide “contract deliverables,” one of which was identifying 60 public schools for closure. William Penn Foundation solicited donations for this contract, including some from real estate developers and those promoting charter expansion. The “BCG list” was referred to by former Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen in public statements. But District officials refused to release the list, saying that it was an internal document and therefore protected from public review.

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Does anybody else smell ALEC involvement?  I mean, the playbook of hiding what should be public information is sooo ALEC.

Gym makes the point that these records, although termed “internal” are shared with philanthropic organizations and stakeholders.  I would like a definition of stakeholder—because from where I sit, the public IS a stakeholder.

And she is right on with the query: is Right to Know now Pay to Know?

**edited to correct attribution. Oops.

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Diane Ravitch has a link up to this excellent article by DSWright.  Notice how Duncan ignores the racist remark and patronizes people once again by dismissing it as just awkward delivery of the message.  He again lies about how our kids are doing in schools–they are not failing, No Child Left a Mind and Race to the Bottom are failing!!  Common Core is an outrageous legalized plan of child abuse that requires kids to answer questions that are above their psychological development.

Duncan also slips into the conversation how “partnering” with corporations is being promoted.  The lines are being blurred between public and private sectors.

Nowhere in Duncan’s speech does he talk of better educated kids for well-rounded citizens to sustain a democracy.  The promotion of the corporate octopus into public education will use schools as their personal training centers (more than they already are)—NOT for democracy.  Well educated people ask too many questions.  They know too much to take whatever is dished out.

Knowing history

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(woke up yesterday with a migraine-like headache from the stupid chemtrails.  Thought it best that I not post.)

At about 12:30 today, I asked the kids if they knew what happened this day 50 years ago…hoping that they knew.  Nope.  I told them what happened (briefly, no gore), and then told them some of the things JFK did.

It was disheartening that they knew so little of the circumstances or about John F. Kennedy.  I’ll bet they are very aware of presidents who promote war, however. (cynical, I know, but the over-emphasis on war in textbooks and the absence of praise for peace is glaring.)

It all seems like it happened yesterday to me.  And they have no comprehension of how this day changed everything.  I wished I could have gone into more detail with them, but that would not have been appropriate.   And as I write that, i’m thinking….these kids witness more violent acts than any generation before them….why would this not have been appropriate….?  I clumsily tried to explain to them that our society is more violent now than it was then–how could I convey that to them when they have no idea how that act, and the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest were out of the ordinary?    They hear about violence daily.  They experience bullying at school.  They’re being pressured to perform like circus animals at school.  Their world is so far removed from Camelot….it’s like trying to explain colors to someone who is blind.

 

Education News

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Here’s a great post on what is happening to the kids.  You know….those kids that the reformers say they are concerned about??

G2 put a comment linking to this post. I found this passage especially poignant:

It is imperative, therefore, that we make school a supportive environment free of the extreme stress that can harm healthy development. Some stress is productive and promotes growth. However, especially for children living in poverty, creating an unnecessarily stressful environment has long-term damaging effects.

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To label schools as “just” a place to get an education is a short-sighted, narrow view.  Children in poverty are already stressed out by worrying that they won’t have enough to eat that day…that Mom will be crying again because she doesn’t know how she’s going to pay the bills…

…and the one thing that can make that child feel worth something?  Knowing the answer to a question the teacher asks.  Getting an “A” or even a “B” on a test.   Having a teacher provide a treat on his/her birthday….which he/she might not get at home because there just isn’t any extra.

School can be the difference between a poor kid seeing beyond their environment and reaching beyond their little world.

More here:

Child-development experts have decried the age-inappropriateness of the Common Core. In 2010, more than 500 people signed a statement stating that the “standards conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades.”

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A reminder of the nonsensical approach of Common Core.

This just says it all:

The U.S. Department of Education hyped the Common Core as creating a “national market” for “educational entrepreneurs.”

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Makes you sick, doesn’t it??

One of the commenters said that homeschooling is the next step.  Yes and No.  If you’re wealthy enough that one parent can stay home, you can do that.  And we would lose so much of the connectedness that school encourages.  We would be further isolated from each other.  I just can’t wrap my brain around that–our children and grandchildren will be living in the same neighborhood, but regarding the others as strangers.  I see kids out playing in the neighborhood and it makes my heart sing.  If this continues, there won’t be the shared experience of discovering new things together, of sharing their personal stories in class discussions (finding common ground or discovering other cultures), of class plays, of singing together, of inspiration…

Bring it on, Arne.  She’s referring to this by Duncan. Oh.My.God.  Did he really say that??  Did he really just insult a group of women who know their children and know their schools and know their teachers?  Is he really that condescending and arrogant? And racist?  I mean, really, if it was stated that a group of “angry, black women” were not accepting their failing schools, it would be seen as the racist statement that it is.

There’s another link here, to a report on Common Core playbook, from the Perdido site.

There’s more but this is making me so depressed I need to step away for the moment.