…well, this gives new meaning to the song. As someone said in the comments– I wonder what Tom Petty thinks of that title?
It’s absolutely stunning how driven these warped individuals are–they cannot fathom a world where they don’t have ultimate control. Good Grief.
DN! has a report up from Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Public Teachers Union. She is saying that the biggest thing that got applause for the new contract was the clause that the teachers could write their own lesson plans. Woot!!
I saw how much the stupid No Child Left a Mind law did for teacher’s ability to conduct their classrooms according to their own intellectual, creative, and intuitive talents. As Karen Lewis stated, teachers have been micromanaged in the classroom for things they know are harmful to their kids.
The anti-bullying clause is stunning–principals who were setting up teachers to fail. This has been in the back of my mind with this whole evaluation process putting the full load on the teacher’s shoulders. A school administrator could easily set a teacher up to fail by loading her/his class with students who are slow learners or have behavioral problems, etc. Then she/he would have a failing classroom, by the impossible standards set up by these draconian laws.
The best thing that Karen Lewis spoke of was not only a longer school day, but a higher quality school day including a more well-rounded curriculum with arts, etc. From my own experience as a substitute teacher, I could see how myopic the math and reading curriculum was–and how mind-numbing it was for kids. The creative thought is what creates intelligence…anyone can recite numbers and facts, but to truly be able to problem-solve, one needs creative thought to look at all factors influencing the problem.
It’s very telling that President Obama, a Democrat, did not lend his support to the union. Also very telling, but not surprising, is the Romney/Ryan ticket supporting Rahm Emanuel, a democrat in name only. That should raise red flags as to what this is all about.
What also should raise red flags is Lewis’ assertion that the school closings are about real estate–and a school board that did not attend the school closing hearings. See, they frame it to be about the kids, while making land deals behind the scenes.
And as Karen Lewis asks, “Where is the accountability?” The “Accountability Movement” is geared towards one goal and one view. God Bless her for her courage and strength.
Turtle Talk has this blog up on a petition to expand Violence Against Women Act to protect Native American women.
Video here:
Here’s an article with more details on what is going on. Be forewarned–the links to other instances of rape and people condoning it (Australia)–even participating in it (California) are tough to read. The 15-year-old gal that was raped barely escaped being murdered, if she was so brutalized that she was unconscious. Makes me sick to my stomach. What can possibly be going on in someone’s brain to make them treat another human being like that??
Valerie Strauss has an excellent article up here on her perspective of the critical reasons for the strike.
The problem with the whole pay incentive thing is that really doesn’t appeal to those who love kids and love to teach–this appeals to people who are there for the paycheck…
People who love money over everything else have little sense of fairness and compassion.
I really don’t want them anywhere near kids…
Story here.
Emanuel is just another member of “the team” that is trying to undermine public education. (haha, I typed “undermind” at first–perhaps a better term? 🙂
…because, you know, bankers, financiers, business-oriented people who look at kids as products or resources to be exploited. They look at the kids with $$ in their eyes–what can we squeeze out of them? What kind of profit can we make off of them?
From the story:
But Russ Simnick, president of the Indiana Public Charter School Association, said it’s disingenuous to compare charter schools with other schools based on the ISTEP results. For one, such comparisons are between individual charter schools and the overall results of school corporations, in which high and low ISTEP scores are lumped together. Thus, he said, larger corporations have a better ability to mask their lower scores than smaller individual schools. A more honest comparison, he said, would involve lumping all charter schools together and treating them as one school corporation in order to compare with others.
Simnick also disputed Schnellenberger’s statistics on the lowest 50 ISTEP scores; he said only four were charter schools, and all of these opened in 2008. He said it’s not fair to expect such young schools to post high ISTEP scores, especially since many charter schools are in some of the most challenging communities and take in students who just transferred from poorly performing schools.
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Unbelievable. What a way to worm out of accountability. The teachers from public schools have made the argument for not giving them a failing grade for the above reasons–children from “challenging communities” are difficult to bring up to speed if they are poor, the parents are not involved, and there is some learning/behavioral difficulty.
But charter schools officials want to claim it’s not their fault that the kids are failing?
This from Pennsylvania. Nepotism? Um, yeah. Nice little game they have going there.
Notice how they use the same lines as the Indiana officials–the kids are poor performers, they’re special needs…blah, blah, blah. If you’ve got only a 15% graduation rate, you’re not the people to be teaching kids. Period.
This from Miami. Taxpayers should not be funding them at all. But that would cut into the profit margin for the education vultures, wouldn’t it?? You know, privatize the profits while socializing the costs, eh?
This is just too unbelievable. I cannot imagine the mindset of someone in charge of taking care of kids urging them to fight.
…big bullies creating little bullies…
…and they can’t figure out why bullying is epidemic?
Look to the adults who are acting badly.
And this is a cultural thing, not specific to any group, from where I sit.
Good God. Treat ’em like their criminals when they’re behaving like…kids? Is it now criminal to be a kid? What is the incentive to behave when you’re treated badly for stupid stuff? Holy crap, the adults are acting worse than the kids…
Well, after the last post, this is certainly brighter…
I cannot imagine how it would feel to have my family members’ remains on display for…entertainment? …macabre curiosity?
Glad to see they are going home.
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From this article is a link to NCLB actually diminishing Native American children’s education.
It would be a freaking miracle for a child to have truly been educated under the No Child Left a Mind Act…a miserable law that destroyed a well-rounded public education. The law orders measurement of what can’t be measured. It does not value art and music in education, even though it’s been shown that math skills are improved with music comprehension and art sparks creativity.
A link here.
Without creativity, one cannot think outside the box and innovate—the capacity to come up with creative solutions to problems is diminished. Lastly, the school day is so controlled and so rigid that the teachers are constricted in their own personal teaching styles.
Incredibly, the citizens of Bhopal, India, are still left holding the bag after Union Carbide’s tragic 1984 accident that killed 20,000 people and polluted unknown amounts of water, soil and air.
In the environmental book I’m reading, they recount the Love Canal disaster and all the complexities involved in resolving a toxic event. The original company, Hooker Chemical, sold the land to the local school board, and incredibly, the school board took it with a contract that stipulated that Hooker Chemical was not responsible for any chemicals on the land. They had been dumping chemicals there for years—and they built a school on top of the land. Parents began complaining about their children’s health issues within five years after the schools’ opening.
This is where it gets interesting–they were ignored, and when they were finally believed, at first the reaction is what you would expect by those in charge–they admitted there was a problem, and came up with solutions for it. However, once the financial numbers were crunched, they decided there wasn’t a problem, after all. Even the state’s health dept scientists were loathe to charge the state for the clean-up.
And the ones who did the toxic dumping–the chemical company–walked away. This is the real problem–chemical companies, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies that screw up and just walk away because it’s more important to keep them in business than it is to hold them accountable.
…as California goes, so goes the Nation (she says hopefully)… (hat tip to organic consumers)
I wasn’t as impressed with this article as Ronnie Cummins. It failed to note the Purdue University scientist, Dr. Huber, who sent a letter of concern to Vilsack. But it was sure to get in GMO advocates that have nothing to back up their assertions that this *stuff that resembles food* is safe.
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By now, you have heard of the *cough* research that says people who buy organic food are….jerks. Um-hmmm…
Organic Consumers states that reason.com is a part of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian “think tank”, which is…wait for it…a member of ALEC.
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Another link organic consumers had was to a movie trailer about the coming water crises. However, it was made by the folks who brought us “Waiting for Superman” a smear piece on the public school system that was used as a prop to promote charter schools…so yeah, I’m not linking to it.
Eagle 
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