….than republicans. Sorry, couldn’t help myself….:)
Category Archives: voters
Poverty and school performance
Diane Ravitch mentions a link to Noel Hammitt’s blog on the correlation between poverty and how well a student does in school. She taught Noel as a student undergrad.
Note: Noel Hammitt has copyrighted this material, but kindly allows liberal use of it as long as copyright is noted.
The first chart is stunning in how the “F” grade corresponds with the kids in poverty. Again–they are trying to blame teachers for something that is out of their control–and the biggest factor in how well a child does in school….poverty.
From this chart it appears that there is a powerful pattern in the relationship between the concentrations of poverty in schools and the assigned letter grades for schools. However, we should note that for four years Louisiana put out a report that highlighted High-Poverty High Performing Schools, which suggested that there are, perhaps, many schools that defy this pattern. After carefully examining the lists, which reported higher numbers of schools each succeeding year, with 56 schools in the 2011 release, we noted that many of the schools actually had a lower percentage of students qualifying for free meals than the state average. In addition, most of the schools were magnet schools or schools where Gifted/Talented programs were masking lower test scores for other groups of students in the schools. Finally, there were schools like Lake Forest Elementary, in New Orleans, that had extensive application and testing procedures that eliminated low-scoring students from the schools. We also noted that there were no schools that had been on the list every year. Not one school out of over 1300 schools in the state that had overcome the challenges of poverty every year.
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We note that although the private schools seem to have an advantage on the scores, they enroll very few special education students, and they get to select their students.
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NAEP scores can be useful checks against a natural tendency of states, districts, and schools to focus on teaching to the test, because NAEP assessments are much more difficult to game or teach to than state level tests. An example of this can be found in states where 90 percent or more of students receive passing scores in their state at the basic level, when only 20 or 30 percent of their students are passing NAEP at the Basic Level.
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I think this last quote is really important for the non-teacher to understand what is going on with testing. As we have learned, tests can be manipulated in that the teacher is forced to teach so the children can pass the test so the schools will not be penalized either by closing them or denying them their federal tax dollars through programs such as Race to the Bottom…er, I mean, Top….so the assessment is muddied. The national assessment appears to circumvent that and gives a true picture of how the children are doing.
Noel notes that a child in poverty can also make high grades–he emphasizes that one should understand this and not have low expectations of these children. I agree. The problem isn’t that the child is not capable….but they have so many obstacles to overcome every day that get in the way.
Finally, the biggest point of the paper is that just because a school is called “failing” doesn’t necessarily mean that the kids and teachers are stoopid. Again, parents and the public need to ask how that school was assessed, is poverty a huge problem with the students?
Pregnant mothers, mercury, and toxins
Well, this sounded refreshing by the title. But I’ll hold my applause until they actually put their money where their mouths are and get off their duffs.
This sentence is why I have my doubts:
“What we’re trying to get is the balance between awareness and alarmist,” said Dr. Jeanne Conry, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
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We are waaaay past alarm. If you’re not alarmed, you haven’t been paying attention. This is decades past due! They knew this back in the sixties, so spare me the tender steps and get on it already. And don’t act all concerned with women’s health when you’re willing to poison them with vaccination….and of course, you’re not willing to treat poor women with whatever they can pay you.
I cannot believe they are recommending fish, especially catfish, tuna and salmon. This report states catfish are okay, but I have read in other reports that they are high in mercury. Fish can be high not only in mercury but toxins from pesticides [PDF} and other farm run off. I don’t go along with the statement that this is good news in regards to standards for drinking water. I cannot drink tap water because of the contaminants. Note that they are STILL finding DDT decades after being banned. And because of “budgetary restraints” glyphosate (Monsanto’s RoundUP) was not measured. This should alarm everyone.
…and they’re asking the American Chemical Society for its input? A group that makes its living off of chemicals that are toxic to us and destroy our immune systems? Seriously??
And in the we-are-our-own-worst-enemy category–the report states there are high concentrations of chemicals from home lawn and garden use in streams, etc. in the urban setting. I’ve told the story before, but it bears repeating–there was a couple who had the perfect yard–grass was unnaturally green and not a “weed” in sight. They sprayed for weeds frequently, I’m told. They had not one but two dogs die of cancer. Yep.
So…yeah, we have our own culpability for contributing to the toxic soup in pursuit of a perfect yard. And perfect looking vegetables and fruits…who cares if they’re nutritious or not….kind of like our state of society right now, eh? We judge more by the outside packaging than by what is on the inside….
Okay, I’m off my soapbox. For now.
Monsanto bulldozer keeps on rollin’
While we’re looking the other way at issues that should be non-issues….another sneaky thing in the House version of the Ag part of the funding of the government is to continue the Monsanto Protection Act. Yep.
From Organic Consumers:
URGENT: House Passes Monsanto Protection Act. Ask Your Senators to Stop It!
Dear Supporter,
On Friday, September 20, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Continuing Resolution (H.J.RES.59), a bill to keep the government running through December 15. The bill will force a showdown with the Senate because it includes a provision to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
But the Continuing Resolution is controversial for another reason. It extends the Monsanto Protection Act, officially referred to as the Farmers Assurance Provision, a law that gives biotech firms immunity from federal prosecution for illegally growing GMO crops.
Please call your Senators today and ask them to pass a clean version of the Continuing Resolution, one that doesn’t extend the Monsanto Protection Act.
You can call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected with your Senator. Or find individual senators’ phone numbers here.
You can say:
“I’m calling to ask the Senator to oppose the Farmers Assurance Provision, sometimes referred to as the Monsanto Protection Act, and to vote no on any bill, including the Continuing Resolution, which includes the provision.”
If you want to go into more detail, you can add:
“New GMOs aren’t regulated enough as it is. Even the American Medical Association complains that the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t safety test new GMOs for human health risks before allowing them on the market for human consumption. The AMA last year recommended that GMOs undergo mandatory premarket safety testing.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture does conduct a mandatory review of new GMOs, but not for human health risks.
“The USDA is notorious for ignoring the impact new GMOs will have on organic and non-GMO farmers who experience serious economic losses when their crops are contaminated.
“In recent years, the courts have had to step in and stop the planting of new GMOs. The courts did this by requiring that the USDA complete a thorough Environmental Impact Statement before approving a controversial crop. The Monsanto Protection Act strips the court of its constitutional power to review executive branch decisions, which means the courts can no longer intervene in order to protect the public. Now, the USDA can rubber-stamp new GMOs and, even if serious harm could result, the court can’t stop them from being planted.
“I hope the Senator will work to stop the Monsanto Protection Act from being extended past September 30 and vote against any bill that includes it.”
Background
The Monsanto Protection Act was first passed in March, when it was quietly and without debate slipped into the earlier version of the Continuing Resolution, a bill to fund the government through September 30. As Politico reporter David Rogers explained in his Monsanto Protection Act exposé, “Big Agriculture Flexes its Muscle,” the Monsanto-friendly rider was never voted on. Rogers, a seasoned political reporter, described how the Monsanto Protection Act became law “with little or no floor debate and in a period of turmoil.”
The backroom deal that made the Monsanto Protection Act law generated a public backlash. It was the subject of a Daily Show episode. And it helped spawn a worldwide March against Monsanto, reported on by the New York Times.
Because the Senate never voted on the Monsanto Protection Act, we don’t know where all of the senators stand on the issue. But here’s what we do know:
• Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) conspired with Monsanto lobbyists to write the law.
• Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, publicly apologized for letting the Monsanto Protection Act slip through. But, she said, she had a responsibility to avoid a government shutdown.
• Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), tried for a vote to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act during the Senate Farm Bill debate.
• Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) blocked Merkley’s amendment.
• Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D- Mich.) promised Merkley that the amendment wouldn’t be renewed without a vote.
Can Sen. Stabenow keep her promise? We’ll find out this week when the Senate debates the new Continuing Resolution. While the focus will be on the House’s provision to defund Obamacare, we need every senator to know that it is not acceptable to include the Monsanto Protection Act in the new bill.
Please call your senators today. Ask them to reject extending the Monsanto Protection Act and vote no on the Continuing Resolution unless this blatant giveaway to the biotech industry is removed.
Thank you!
Organic Consumers Association
6771 South Silver Hill Drive – Finland, MN 55603 – Phone: 218-226-4164 – Fax: 218-353-7652
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Protected: More
Private Prisons **edited
**edited to add links. Gees-o-pete. Sorry. Just done chelating and it’s definitely showing.
….what a misnomer, if there ever was one….Private Prisons evokes some sort of luxury…ha.
Diane Ravitch has this up. But I wanted to search a little more. Interesting that the news piece she mentions is not coming up on the top of the list. I did find a blog by Jonathan Turley, where he features Mike Spindell:
The “uptick” in crime comes about because this prison is understaffed and what staff they have are not capable of providing a similar level of prison security, to that provided when the prison was run by the state. This is a cost that was unanticipated in the initial sale and the addition of this cost makes the enterprise less cost effective than originally stated.
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“But in the year since Corrections Corporation of America took over the 1,700-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution, state audits have found patterns of inadequate staffing, delays in medical treatment and “unacceptable living conditions” inside the prison — including inmates lacking access to running water and toilets. The state docked the company nearly $500,000 in pay because of the violations.”
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You know, it’s pretty bad when we have more people in prisons than RUSSIA and CHINA.
From the descriptions of the conditions in the prisons…for-profits will run prisons like dungeons and not think a thing about it.
A commenter posted the video of Dick Cheney’s culpability in the for profit prisons:
I never heard any more about the indictment, so I went searching, and found only a few articles dated 2011, and the rest in 2008. It’s been disappeared, apparently.
Another commenter posted this, and I immediately thought of the public schools:
I don’t believe in the privatization of prisons for many reasons but one in specific. A friend’s son worked in one down in Florida about ten years ago. He lasted maybe a year. Besides the low pay and bad hours his biggest complaint was corruption. You see, the prisoners got to grade the guards. You would think this was a good idea right? Not so much. The guards became the prisoners puppies. The ones who moved up the chain of command were the ones who stayed out of the way and brought in the contraband. The rest were short timers who couldn’t take it anymore. Ponder on that thought for a while.
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I also found this on dailykos. Why does it not surprise me the ALEC is connected to these for profit prisons?
NOOOOO!!!!!!
Bill de Blasio is apparently blessed by the Clintons….he is in the circle.
Peter Beinart should do his freaking homework before writing such a long-winded article on politics….especially when it raises the hopes of those of us who are wise to the Clintons and want to see their grip on politics broken.
Klonskys Rainy Sunday Blog and others **edited
Fred Klonsky has an excellent blog covering the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham bombing, the NY Post slam piece on Diane Ravitch, and more.
As I was watching Bill Cosby speak on MSNBC Sunday, I thought of the bombing happening in August….and President Kennedy being killed just a few months later…and Martin Luther King just five years after that…the Kent State and Jackson State shootings…
Dailykos Teacher Ken blog on Diane’s book here.
The end of Clinton/Reagan politics. We can only hope there will be no more Clintons or Clintonites in the White House after Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush…and I don’t agree that Barack Obama has been quite as Clintonite as the author believes–maybe at first, but I really feel he has started to break away from that in his second term. …especially within the last year. And I can do without all the psycho-babble of why people choose political candidates….psychology and sociology theorists would like to put people in packages that suits a scientific measure, when people are much more complex than that. Take me, for example….I am nothing like they would like to pigeonhole me as….
If a person matures psychologically as they get older, they will make their own choices according to their inner voice–not according to outside influences. I think this is especially true if they are a spiritual person.
Challenge for Steve Perry. Wow, it is unbelievable this guy is a Principal! Really on the outer edge in his tweets, rightwinger for sure. So glad that NBC and CNN are supporting the destruction of the public school system. /very snarky, indeed
HIs “no excuses” garbage is just that–just look at the statistics for how many of them his school serves. And making a five year old stand up during lunch period because her mother didn’t send her to school with the proper uniform? Are you kidding me??
Nobody is making excuses…the teachers and parents fighting for the public schools ARE fighting for kids in poverty and in minority neighborhoods who have multitudes of issues to deal with. Not getting shot on the way to school is one of them…
Nancy Flanagan why all the snark?
A word about competition and profits
Rhee tells Philly how to solve problems.
Michelle Rhee penned an article about how to fix the public schools of Philadelphia. She says it is time for performance pay, so that there is “a great teacher” in every classroom.
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Great. let’s start with Michelle Rhee’s performance in D.C. Fail! Or…how about her taping the kdis’ mouths shut and then laughing about it when they peeled the tape off and it tore their delicate skin off, too, leaving them crying and bleeding? Fail! Or…how she is married to a predator?? Not someone I would want in charge of schools.
Be sure to click on the renegade video by an attendee to the *cough* conversation of Michelle Rhee and I think she mentions Steve Perry, too. I love this–passionate public school advocates standing up against the propaganda. Notice that they tell her they are “at the end” of the program and they try to hurry her up to quash her statement…but that is only 7 minutes into the program…it goes on for another 20 minutes!
The man talking (Perry) uses a LOT of emotional language–a red flag he doesn’t have facts to back up what he’s saying. And, as the video asks…who are these “wrong” students Perry is talking about? Not the dreaded poor, disabled, and minority students…that he says he wants to serve and calls Ravitch, et al, racists for not sending them to charters who will dump their butts for not jumping through hoops…..okay, I’m confused….
Also–as the commenter notes–Rhee mocks Hannah Nguyen. Um-hmmm….but, yes, of course Rhee sincerely wants a conversation. bwahahahahaha *snort* bwahahaha
**edited to take off the school finance link. Like I said, I was tired last night, and mistakenly put that up. After viewing one of the videos, it appears that the blog is pro-charter schools. Or perhaps I should say anti-public schools. Sorry for the mistake.
Environmental stuff
Minke whale washes ashore in Portuguese Cove, Nova Scotia. Why on Earth are they not taking the whale to someone who can analyze why it died? They’re more worried about the smell of the carcass than finding out what caused its death. Mercury? Runoff from chemical farms? Genetically modified organisms? Oil? Pharmaceuticals washed out to the ocean?
Greenpeace protests with mechanical polar bear. Pretty cool exhibit, eh?
Behind the science
I found the comments in this post intriguing. I’m like the others with the post itself, however, not too happy with it.
I didn’t know what STEM stood for, so I looked it up: Science Technology Engineering Math.
I don’t know why education has to be divided into either/or with Math/Science and the Arts. They both benefit from the other. I would say Science benefits more from the arts than the other way around, but that’s just my take on it.
The comment on Darwin’s theory being used to justify power over others is spot on. I don’t think Darwin meant for it to be interpreted that way. Robert Shepherd asserts that Darwin saw all of us as interconnected, rather than adversaries as the social darwinists would have you believe. I believe it, too. That is one reason I became a vegetarian. I only went back to eating meat because I had gotten sick and was advised that i should eat meat. I think that we owe it to the animals who give their lives for us some respect. Factory farms do not do that. Once again, it’s following the golden rule of doing unto others as we would have done to us.
Another comment was striking:
Sharon
I think STEM is being oversold and that some skepticism is in order. Here is one personal story on top of those articles and the information provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
My daughter was very strong in math and ended up majoring in chemistry at a top-20 school. After college she was selected to be a paid intern in the research division of a successful pharmaceutical company. One year later she started in the PhD program for organic chemistry at a top University of California system school. STEM-speaking, this would all seem to paint a rosy picture for her future because she’s done everything right. Right?
But what she learned from working at the pharmaceutical company and from talking with other organic chemistry graduate students, was that much of the R&D in that particular STEM field is being increasingly outsourced to Asian countries. Not only that, but the pharmaceutical company was inclined to fill its labs with a large number of imported scientists (to save money). Some people have theorized that the reason for the current STEM push is to saturate the market with extremely educated scientists who then get stuck having to accept lower and lower wages.
In the STEM field of chemistry, American PhD graduates, even those from top universities, are not having an easy time finding work. These are people in their 20s who have been very, very self-disciplined about their schoolwork from the time they were in grade school. So, as far as our children’s futures go, pursuing any old STEM field does not guarantee success. But that is NOT what Arne Duncan or President Obama would have us all believe.
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Okay….here is someone who did everything right….and look what has happened to her. (working for Big Pharma aside….)
Note the comment on Boeing wanting people getting a well-rounded education so they can “think outside the box”. If it’s for airplanes, I don’t have a problem with it, but there’s just something wrong with teaching children better arts skills so they can find more creative ways….to kill people.
From the commenter Democracy:
The Sandia Report (Journal of Educational Research, May/June, 1993), published in the wake of A Nation at Risk, examined carefully its specific claims. The Sandia researchers concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
“average performance of ‘traditional’ test takes on the SAT has actually improved over 30 points since 1975…”
* “Although it is true that the average SAT score has been declining since the sixties, the reason for the decline is not decreasing student performance. We found that the decline arises from the fact that more students in the bottom half of the class are taking the SAT than in years past…More people in America are aspiring to achieve a college education…so the national SAT average is lowered as more students in the 3rd and 4th quartiles of their high school classes take the test. This phenomenon, known as Simpson’s paradox, sows that an average can change in a direction opposite from all subgroups if the proportion of the total represented by the subgroups changes.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
“The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
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He/She goes on to mention an article in Columbia Journalism Review by Beryl Lieff Benderly. It’s really eye-opening to the myth of scarcity of math;/science majors. It’s not hard to question who is putting this myth out there and why….especially when they are bringing in foreign workers who will work for lower pay. Is the myth being created so that they can justify bringing in the foreign workers? It would appear that way.
From the article:
It is a narrative that has been skillfully packaged and promoted by well-funded advocacy groups as essential to the national interest, but in reality it reflects the economic interests of tech companies and universities.
High-tech titans like Bill Gates, Steve Case, and Mark Zuckerberg are repeatedly quoted proclaiming a dearth of talent that imperils the nation’s future.
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“When the companies say they can’t hire anyone, they mean that they can’t hire anyone at the wage they want to pay,” said Jennifer Hunt, a Rutgers University labor economist, at last year’s Mortimer Caplin Conference on the World Economy.
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And this, which alludes to the point I was making yesterday on the ageism in the corporate world:
For instance, tech companies that import temporary workers, mainly recent graduates from India, commonly discard more expensive, experienced employees in their late 30s or early 40s, often forcing them, as Ron Hira and other labor-force researchers note, to train their replacements as they exit. Age discrimination, Hira says, is “an open secret” in the tech world.
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I saw yet another blip the other day on the nooz of how many tech jobs are going unfilled because “there aren’t enough tech grads out there”….so now, after reading all of this, I realize they’re actually saying “there aren’t enough tech grads willing to work for minimum wage”.
And the whole debate on Science vs. Arts fails to include the argument for being well-rounded citizens who can think critically, analytically, with creativity of arts’ mindset. I think art that is unscripted allows one freedom of expression that translates into, for want of a better word, “looseness”. I think science is rigid where art is not (or shouldn’t be), and that translates into humanity’s acceptance of differences. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but there you go…
Eagle 