From Nebraska comes a letter from a retired teacher. He thinks there should be a special award for the person who best exemplifies the failed ideas of Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko was a biologist and agonomist whose ideas about agriculture were wrong but made compulsory.
Here is the winner:
A challenge to readers of your blog:
Find an organization or a department or college of education that would develop the criteria for Lysenko Awards, that would investigate those worthy of the Lysenko Awards, and that would grant Lysenko Awards to deserving persons with proper ceremony and publicly. Recipients shall forever be known as Lysenkoites, the followers of Lysenkoism. .
The awards will remind everyone of Soviet director of genetics for agriculture Trofim Lysenko’s use of centralized political power to implement unscientific genetics using pseudoscience.
Lysenko rejected evidence about genes and plant hormones but accepted false theories of genetics which he required researchers and agriculture leaders to follow.
Lysenko put Soviet agriculture behind for a generation.
Centralized political power continues to implement No Child Left Behind , Race to the Top, Common Core, and inBloom Untested ideology with bribes and punishments requires miseducation in the name of pseudoscience.
More than one person should receive the Lysenko Awards. Arne Duncan’s actions have mirrored those of Trofim Lysenko. After an Award Ceremony, he would be called Lysenkoite Arnie Duncan.
Lysenko Awards would help stop American education from regressing further. Do not let American education, like Soviet agriculture, be put behind for a generation.
Pail Kaldahl
Retired Teacher
Bellevue, Nebraska
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While I have no suggestions as to who should administer such an award, since the passing of Jerry Bracey (whose Rotten Apples awards covered some of the same ground), I have a number of early nominees.
David Coleman
Michelle Rhee
Arne Duncan
Bill Gates
John Deasy
Joel Klein
the editorial writers on education of the Washington Post (Jo-Ann Armao) and the NY Times (Brent Staples)
Pearson – the now fined educational foundation as well as the corporation
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Oh, and I suppose I cannot leave out Eli Broad and his bogus academy for Superintendents
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and of course how could i forget Wendy Kopp??
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Perhaps the first recipients should be the state school board of Kansas for its long history of backing intelligent design as a science standard for the students in the state. It would be more of a lifetime achievement award than for a specific current position.
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I nominate the Dover Area School District of Pennsylvania.
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Another excellent candidate.
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Great idea. Just one problem. Any student of modern Russian history would instantly recognize this reference. But since “facts” in social studies are downplayed, the irony might be lost by the time you explained it all…
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Ha! 😉
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As I read through the suggestions above, it suggests that like so many other awards, such as the Nobel Prize or even The Academy Awards, there are so many worthy candidates, that multiple categories might be warranted – individuals, groups, lifetime dechievement . . .
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Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent Pamela Brown who has encouraged the arrival of TFA into Buffalo Schools and is currently attempting to close 3 Buffalo schools and turn them into charters. The plan was forwarded with no parental input and no consultation with teachers. One of the schools happens to be located in a ” promise neighborhood” financed by a local banker whose on whose Board of Directors Mrs. Brown just happens to sit. Incest they name is ed reform.
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How about a new professional society headed up by the recipient of the Lysenko award for all the GAGAers* who implement the Lysenkolite** malpractices. The GAGAers, on formal admission to the society (they have to first demonstrate $$tudent $$ucce$$** to be admitted) will be tattoed (so chic, eh) with a scarlet “A”*** in the middle of their left cheek (didn’t say which one) to be proudly displayed so all may know that they are destined for the 21st***** level of hell upon their passing.
*Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution***** upon their passing from this realm.
**Lysenkolite, with the lite emphasizing for the type of thinking the GAGAers utilize when implementing said malpractices.
***Thanks KTA!!
****Representing the Apparatchikenshits that they are by implementing these educational malpractices.
*****Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity
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Messed up on those *****. Where’s the editor of this joint!
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If a corporate body could be a recipient, I suggest MSNBC. With their Education Nation series, they give more of a voice to people who have no background in education and ridicule and ignore those with real experience. This is all to create the myth that there are both sides to this issue and present it to a mass audience.
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George Mason University and the Koch brothers.
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It is appropriate to remember Nikolai Vavilov, the Russian plant geneticist who was imprisoned, and who died in prison, because of Lysenko. The “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say.
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I’d like to see them awarded state by state. Here in Indiana, we’d have our Governor Mike Pence, all the State Board of Education Appointees, the Director (Claire Fiddian-Greene) and the employees of CECI, and of course, the illustrious Tony Bennett to choose from. Oh and Brian Bosma and Bob Behning! (-: Gosh there are just so many to nominate!
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Let us not forget the New Jersey Bromancers Chris Christie and Christopher Cerf.
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