Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed a tuition tax credit bill that is widely recognized as a backdoor voucher. The tax credits would benefit wealthy individuals and corporations. Cuomo has said this measure is a high-priority for him, and he has campaigned with Catholic clerics and in Orthodox Jewish communities.
The rationale, as with all privatization proposals, is to help low-income students escape “failing schools.” In fact, the plan will drain at least $150 million annually from the state’s education funds, which will harm far more low-income students than those who depart for religious schools.
Bruce Baker has taken a close look at the way the tuition tax credit actually works, and it is very disturbing. He notes that an Orthodox Jewish sect created a tiny village in Néw York called Kiryas Joel. It was started in the late 1970s, is populated mainly by Satmar Jews, whose first language is Yiddish. The village sought recognition from the state as an independent school district, which would have been exclusively religious in nature. In 1989, the legislature complied, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law.
Baker quotes this summary:
“In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that the statute’s purpose was to exclude all but those who lived in and practiced the village enclave’s extreme form of Judaism. This exclusionary intent failed to respect the Establishment Clause’s requirement that states maintain a neutral position with respect to religion, because it clearly created a school zone which excluded those who were non-religious and/or did not practice Samtar Hasidism. Indeed, the very essence of the Establishment Clause is that government should not demonstrate a preference for one religion over another, or religion over non-religion in general.”
Ironically, as Baker shows, Cuomo’s proposal would give Kiryas Joel what it lost at the Supreme Court.
Folks, as vouchers and tuition tax credits spread, we are heading into uncharted waters: the state will subsidize Protestant schools, Catholic schools, Jewish schools, Muslim schools, evangelical schools, and schools of every other religion and sect.
Is this about better education? What do you think?
Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Amendments with full knowledge of the religious wars that had devastated Europe for centuries. They wanted Americans to have freedom of religion but they did not want the state to establish or sponsor any religion. They were wiser than us.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Anyone who knows about history knows the importance regarding the separation of church and state. http://www.arlinc.org/pdf/doerrimportance305.pdf
Private schools, public tab
Posted on May 19, 2015 | By TU Editorial Board
http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/private-schools-public-tab/32463/
Max Weber explained all this a long time ago. Capitalism cares nothing for religion or spirit, but exploits its rites and raiments as handy tools for its own ends.
Cuomo will buy votes anywhere or place he can in order to keep his fantasy of a Presidential run alive. He is a desperate man, and as such being Governor is dangerous.
In fact, I think churches should PAY their fair share of taxes.
And … just for the record, NFL is a not-for-profit organization, well … this is nuts. The NFL is a FOR-PROFIT organization. Right NFL is not a religious org., but sure acts like one and makes more money than I could ever imagine in my entire life and the lives of others I know.
This country is so messed up.
“The Church of NFL”
The Church of NFL
Is taking up collections
To save us all from Hell
With lots of genuflections
And deflated balls as well.
Drew’s balls got deflated, that’s for sure.
make that tom’s balls
You got what you voted for.
10 Richest Religions in the World. Richest one is the Catholic Church. Interesting info. provided in link below. And how many wars have been because of religion? Answer: FAR, FAR too many. Read history.
http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/the-10-richest-religions-in-the-world/
Re Catholic Church wealth let me recommend Gerald Posner’s 2015 book, God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican. The church takes in many billions of dollars per year in public funds for its private schools in the US (vouchers and tax credits), Canada, Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, France ($t billion per year in France), plus billions more outright in Germany, France,Spain and Italy. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
I am not against religion, just fanatics. I just think we need to understand religion and its part in this economic system.
The second that they get taxpayer money is the second they should have to comply to all the rules and regulations of public schools. If they get public money, they aren’t private schools. Common Core and PARCC those schools, pronto.
But they’re not public schools. They’re publicly funded private schools. Voucher schools in Ohio actually promote this- that’s the draw. They don’t pretend to be public schools.
I actually think it was inevitable when both Parties signed onto redefining “public” as “publicly-funded”. Private schools are the natural and inexorable result of that philosophy. There’s a political angle too- if charter schools are pulling from religious schools and the voucher folks are political allies of the charter folks, well, private schools need public funding too or they get hurt.
As usual, there’s NO consideration of the effects on public schools. Our schools are an afterthought. if that.
I think it’s such a bad idea because if it takes off it will so fragment the country. Public schools are one of the few things we share (the vast majority of us went to one). Of course they have all kinds of problems but just throwing up your hands and saying “not worth it! hand out the vouchers!” seems to me to be wildly irresponsible and a real betrayal of hundreds of years of investment and work by prior generations.
I just can’t imagine throwing it away.
They don’t have any idea what the systemic effects will be of this really radical restructuring of turning “public schools” into publicly-funded contract service providers. That is a fundamental and profound redefining of “public” schools.
It is a brilliant scheme for Cuomo and politicians.
Large constituencies of religious people get their vouchers from an indirect non-government identity that the government OKs by giving them 75% of the tax bill for that individual.
So the state actually takes in 25% because someone can only get 75% of their “investment” back.
The critical piece here though, is that in order to benefit from such a thing, you need the money in the first place to give, and a tax bill to write it off on commensurate with the amount you can give unless it’s also refundable (you give most of your paycheck such that you become entitled to more money than you owe in taxes for the year – does the state cut you a check or not).
So this entity uses 100% of funds for schools (barring of course those inevitable administrative costs of who knows how much), and the state takes it from the schools at a 75% rate and the schools lose money anyway because they lose pupils as well.
Between the property tax cap and its corresponding sweetner for keeping it, the gap elimination adjustment, and now this way of siphoning off both students and a large percentage of public tax dollars to families that never had their students in public schools to begin with, these are all cutting equitable school funding off at the knees.
Campaign for Fiscal Equity may have won, but where is the court making sure all these pieces of legislation don’t actually hurt the students everyone is purporting they help. Somehow these tax breaks all seem targeted at wealthy people, yet, are marketed for the poor?
If a family can’t afford private school tuition now, and has a low tax bill, how are they going to come up with the money to contribute – and will specific children or schools be allowed to be earmarked for the money given? Why not – private organization after all?
I’m amazed public school parents in NY are putting up with it. Not “vouchers”, they may have no objection to that, but Cuomo’s outright hostility to public schools.
He’s started a war with the schools their children attend. That will not benefit their children.
M- You have exposed the malicious intent of this scheme, more devious ways to suck the education coffers dry and destroy public education in New York, brought to us from the same vulture capitalists that destroyed the economy in 2008. Let us hope a judge will find this a violation of church and state. I am not going to hold my breath though for a positive outcome with all the influence from free market billionaires and libertarians around.
As I ride around our village in Rockland county, which joins the Monsey Village where th orthodox population has exploded, I see long rows of signs saying” NO! vote on on the school budget, NO! on higher taxes! I know that despite my vote today, the schools where my sons attended will not receive a penny to maintain them.
This orthodox religious group has starved the East Ramapo schools so that the system has deteriorated rapidly. Once 70,000 students attend the schools, now 17,000 kids receive an inferior education. Yet, the orthodox community demand taxpayer funds for bus transportation.
Over the apst 20 years, zoning laws have been changed so that a wooded landscape where one house per acre was the rule, now sports tracts of multiple houses, and concrete monsters for religious purposes line the roads… and of course pay no taxes. Spring Valley is a valley devoid of nature, and New Square expanded to envelop it.
The school ‘board’ is totally run by men from the religious community, all of whom send their children to yeshivas. This community votes down every single thing a viable school district needs, and even when a special overseer was appointed, they found a way to negate it.
Our local elected official Christopher St Lawrence is a toady for the community and the destruction he has wrought is matched by the personal corruption that allowed him to put up a baseball stadium , built by his company, despite the fact that the bond to finance it was voted down and it sits unused for most of the year.
You have to live with this kind of disruption to understand what ‘freedom of religion’ means to groups that have no respect for the secular community.
I taught in this district hone the local Jr.H.S. was considered to be third in the state as regards its practices… now it is a failing school. The people who serve us, police, fire department and all the service jobs in our community do not deserve good schools for their children, thanks to the abuse of the law.
We have regular squabbles here with religious issues in our public schools, It’s not employees- it’s parents and volunteers.
it comes up about once a year, but usually some compromise is reached and everyone goes home slightly unhappy. There’s a sort of consensus on how far they can push it, and then it’s reined in 🙂
Nothing like what you describe, though. What a nightmare for the people who aren’t in the dominant religion there. I’d have to move.
Yes. I think vouchers will lead to the Balkanization of society.
also the bilkinization
You have no idea.
This was a gorgeous suburb 45 minutes out of NYC, just before Bear Mountain. We bought in 1966, and sent our kids to the best school district in the state… and then they moved in from Brooklyn, put up multiple dwellings in Monsey, and then in a decade or more, when their young kids married moved into the next village, Grandview, and now they are eyeing my little village of Wesley Hills, which is trying to keep the zoning laws, but still send the kids to East Ramapo. You should see the once lovely country roads line end to end with their structures. They tear down old northeastern forest… the backdrop for all of the homes that we secular folks bought years ago in the gorgeous foothills of the Hudson Valley, and turn it into Williamsburg.
A few years ago, I become active when they wanted to use the land across the road from my home. That woodlands had been purchased originally for the school system to use for a public school. It has a pond and is a natural preserve of acres on the hills, with trees and meadows which the high schools use as a biological site. It is gorgeous.
This community wanted to us this land to build a school! Talk about ORWELL> this ‘school’ would be for Talmudic ADILT ‘students , MEN AND their families, which are huge. We–whose taxes are too high for thEM– would pay for sewers, road maintenance, police, fire, and all government services, etc.
I became active and our village fought it, so now, they are looking at building their stuff in the next village, which is fighting it too, as it endangers the wetlands nearby. Millions spent on court costs to keep these selfish ‘clans’ from using our Constitution to enrich their lives at our expense.
And the corrupt politicians whether local or state, just love thier money… and they have vast sums at their disposal.
We need to ensure that Cuomo never sees elective office again.
Why do people vote for such malignant people. The publisher of the site where I write, asked all his writers to weigh in on that question… it is fascinating commentary.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Are-the-Biggest-Lies-by-Rob-Kall-Billionaires_Consumption_Corporations_Delusion-150513-693.html#comment544874
go read some of the answers we gave.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority
Susan,
I heard about this district on This American Life. It’s so sad what happened to this community. 😦
This is a new entitlement program. How many separate publicly funded systems of education can a state support effectively?
That is the main thrust of charters, vouchers and rigged testing. The goal is to weaken and destabilize public schools so they will be easy pickings for the Wall St. vultures to swoop in and privatize. When there is a complicit governor eager to put schools into receivership, you have a recipe for disaster for public education.
Private schools exclude children difficult to teach. My own son was forced out of a Catholic school because of ADHD and autism. The way they work, is to make it as difficult and uncomfortable as possible. We found our later the teacher only called the students as numbers (no names) and locked our son in a closet as a “time out” room. We transferred to a public school and he is going to college. In Battle Creek Michigan, the Catholic school expelled a child finishing up chemo at the end of the year, even though she was passing core courses. I have nothing against Catholics and am one myself. But I hold out hope Pope Francis can improve things.
Private schools only exist as they do now because of public schools. If all schools were private, most parents could not afford them or the quality for the 99%ers would be low. The “free market” would provide an education only to a wealthy few.
The risk to these private schools on accepting taxpayer money is the future demands by taxpayers for more transparency and public governance. The old phrase taxation with representation.
I think ed reformers are headed for a real dilemma. How much “choice” should a publicly-funded system have? Do I have to compromise with anyone on anything in a public system, or is “my choice” the one and only measure?
They ran into it with opt-out. They were making a public good argument. The problem was they had spent the prior 15 years telling parents there WAS no public good- that their “choice” was all that mattered.
I think they’ll see negative effects on funding. If schools are just service providers, well, why should I support yours? I don’t use it.
The good part of public schools is they’re public. The bad part of public schools is they’re public 🙂
The key to the new political climate seems to be entitled selfishness. Your homosexuality or choice offends my religious freedom so I can refuse to serve you or pay for birth control as a benefit to employees. Charters are more of the same type of narrow thinking. Segregation is my right to choose. Our founding fathers are turning over in their graves!
I find the acceptance of vouchers by private schools their eventual ruin. Yes, we will have private schools for the wealthy, but with more tax money being funneled to religious schools without accountability, it is a matter of time until the public demands to know how their money is being spent at the middle class private schools.
People in these blogs often give an example of one ( I mean one) and they use it to generalize. It is impossible to verify the example given. A catholic school expelling a child finishing chemo is unbelievable and does not pass a simple sanity check. Once such a statement is made, right or wrong other blogs will take it as granted and this statement will proliferate as truth. This is how unverified data becomes truth that is cast in concrete. The age of the Internet makes this possible, everything looks good, clean and spell checked on the screen to make ordinary person who is not a serious purveyor of information to believe in it.
It is never 100% fair in this world. If it was we will be living in Utopia and this blog will have no use and will not exist. There is always an outlier or two, a case where some one is hurt. It is impossible to be fair to one and all in this democratic nation.
One with a good conscience running the school follows a set of rules and some times some one gets hurt. I do not believe that private schools or public schools are intentionally harming the students. They all believe in morality and public good. When someone becomes a case that is an outlier, there are rules and regulations that may be used to set matters right. The person or persons that are hurt will have to negotiate through proper channels to get fair play. This happens all the time in every one’s life.
Private schools exist because there are some people who believe that their children can get better education in a private school environment. They have their right to such belief and to send their children to private schools. We have no right to judge them.
Existence of private schools has nothing to do with the existence of public schools or in most cases the quality of education provided by public schools.
Raj, America was founded under a belief that there should be a separation between church and state. Public schools did not teach religion, and if parents wanted a private school to teach one, they paid for it themselves.
People like Cuomo who want public funds to pay for religious education so we can underwrite the cost of private school while taking that money out of public schools are opening up a can of worms. Can the Ku Klux Klanners donate to schools that teach the religion that white christians are the only true Americans? I guess you see nothing wrong with that. Some of us don’t think taxpayer dollars should be spent on that, but of course, you think that’s the American way. Sad.
Raj, I agree that we should not pass judgement on private schools. More power to them, but not at the expense of public schools which serve the vast majority of students in the US. Private schools should not be funded by tax dollars.
Juts a simple clarification, my comments are specific to what Mathvale stated above.
“It is impossible to verify the example given. A catholic school expelling a child finishing chemo is unbelievable and does not pass a simple sanity check.”
First, without even knowing whether the story is true or not one can nonetheless say this much: the implication that it is not true because it (supposedly) “does not pass a simple sanity check” is little more than a logical fallacy (argument from incredulity).
Second, it actually is possible (easy, in fact) to verify the example simply by doing an internet search. It took me all of 2 seconds to search on the terms battle creek michigan catholic school expelled student and find many news articles about the girl who was indeed expelled (or “dismissed”, which means the same thing) including one from CBS news“Girl who battled cancer is dismissed for missing school”
The school eventually reversed their original decision to expel the student after the case was publicized, but that does not change the fact that she was expelled/dismissed in the first place.
>It is never 100% fair in this world. If it was we will be living in Utopia and this blog will have no use and will not exist.
Well, then, your ranting comment goes nowhere but drifting back at you like a boomerang. It hits you so hard on the head, huh?
Raj. Google it up. The girl went to St. Joseph Middle School in Battle Creek. Her name is public and Rose. Yes, it is hard to believe, but it happened. To be complete, the school took her back with the weakest of excuses, and only after a public outrage. I bring it up only because that is a case we know about. The Catholic church is still reeling from years of cases of abuse where people DID accept that the world is not 100% fair and wrongs were hidden. These were not outliers.
Most people will agree the world is not fair. But that is different from just. The important aspect of justice is we first do not accept that harming another is acceptable without consideration. History has shown what happens when we just accept the loss of individual’s rights.
Private schools are not in a bubble. Of course they will be judged just like public schools. Private schools today only exist as they do because of public schools. Again, history shows that education has been the privilege of a wealthy few. If the 90% of children in public schools suddenly had to seek private schools, either the demand would push the price of schooling beyond the reach of most Americans, or schools would stratify even more, or we would eventually end up back where we started with public schools.
This information is new to me. I’m just learning about how charter schools drain the public school funds. I think many people assume that they are self supported. It would be good for a Time magazine Journalist to write an article about school funding and to break it down in to graphs so the public can be informed. We are currently attending a charter program and are having a positive experience minus their mandated loyalty to the Common Core for state funding. The teaching and instruction has been good and the quality of homework coming home is intelligent as opposed to mindless dittos. I think as long as they take funding away from public schools that the numbers or charters in cities should be regulated. Most of us are in the dark regarding charters and how they work. I suggest more news stories to break down the numbers for the public to see.
Don’t hold out hope for Time. They are, along with others, responsible for elevating Rhee to her pedestal, for which they’ve never acknowledged guilt nor apologized.
For a long time here people thought charters were “magnet” schools- selective public schools.
That worked in their favor, the belief that they were selective. It took almost 15 years for people in Ohio to understand “chartering”.- they’re always shocked that some of the schools are for-profit.
“Public” MEANS “non profit” to the vast majority of people. I think charters have benefitted from that assumption, too. An ordinary understanding of the word “public” includes “non profit” I think that’s why it took 15 years for people to get it.
“retired teacher
May 19, 2015 at 10:27 am
The key to the new political climate seems to be entitled selfishness. Your homosexuality or choice offends my religious freedom so I can refuse to serve you or pay for birth control as a benefit to employees. Charters are more of the same type of narrow thinking. Segregation is my right to choose. Our founding fathers are turning over in their graves!”
I was amused when they compared opt outers to anti-vaccine people. The lack of self-awareness there is mystifying. They have spent 15 years saying system-wide effects of really radical experiments don’t matter and redefining public schools as service providers and parents and students as consumers.
Opt out pops up, parents and students treat schools as service providers and act like consumers, and all of a sudden they’re worried about the Common Good.
It’s just mind-blowing to me.
This “movement” has some fundamental structural flaws. It’s freaking incoherent right below the surface 🙂
Chiara,
I’m from the 60’s and in my 60’s and it is amazing how many things I was taught by my parents, teachers, and coaches are now considered wrong, hateful, or ignorant.
“This “movement” has some fundamental structural flaws. It’s freaking incoherent right below the surface :)”
I contend that one can say the same thing about community public schools as they operate today. Way too many public school boards, administrators and teachers have jumped in with the whole “measure” everything” attitude, when the vast majority of what they attempt to measure is not measurable and causes vast harm to many children.
The need is great to get back to a more “progressive” person-orientation in schooling children in contrast to this neo-liberal orientation I’ve seen it work at the elementary and middle school levels to great effect, small classes, two-three adults (many times involving parent volunteers) in each room, etc. . . . But that would cost a little more money and the neo-liberal mantra doesn’t include more taxes for a public good, only less taxes for the avaricious few.
DUANE, I do not want this to trail along the side, so go an d find my response to what you said about “what is needed”.
Of course it has to be personal, and that is what they removed… the personal touch.
What is needed?
What a question? Lauren Resnick asked it and proposed a theory, about effort and how to get kids to do real work, to plan,to analyze, organize and to execute… actually and produce results..
Go to the big comment where I explain, again that YOUR QUESTION HAS BEEN ANSWERED…by a major study, from Harvard with zillions from Pew … so as to explain EXACTLY what is needed in every and any classroom for LEARNING TO TAKE PLACE.
The Nevada legislature is passing a similar law, funds go with the kid to any school. They even plan to include home schooling here. They claim it will relieve the overcrowding in the schools and alleviate the need to build more schools. You can’t make this stuff up.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
Mark Twain
“Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Amendments with full knowledge of the religious wars that had devastated Europe for centuries. They wanted Americans to have freedom of religion but they did not want the state to establish or sponsor any religion. They were wiser than us.”
and as Benjamin Franklin said upon the signing of the Constitution, you have your republic, if you can keep it.
We get what we vote for.
Who voted for Cuomo anyway?
NYC and the surrounding environs voted for this knucklehead.
Has Cuomo ever bothered to read Article XI, Section 3 of the NY constitution, which bans such misuse of public funds and which was uphelp by NY voters n 1967 by 72% to 28%? — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Similar legislation is moving through the Pennsylvania legislature.
http://www.pennlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/05/house_backs_100m_boost_for_edu.html
This was created to get around the massive opposition to vouchers by Jeb Bush when he was Governor of Florida.
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-10-31/story/concerns-raised-over-scholarship-program
In NH, the state constitution specifically forbids the use of public funds for sectarian schools. But the deformers are working on that, of course.
This is a reply to Duane Swacker who speaks so eloquently about what is missing in the classroom, and offers his view of what would enable learning.
So wonderful, in fact that I had to answer him, but I want you all to hear this… again,.. as I have told it here an everywhere for years now!
You see, there actually WAS a wonderful study,— a genuine 3rd level research study — over years , which examined classrooms across the nation, and looked at what is essential for learning. WHAT GOTTA BE THERE FOR KIDS TO LEARN!!!
The pity is while everyone has heard and witnessed the absurd NCLB “standards’ — that bogus teacher evaluation scheme to remove the professional voice from instruction, so that the schools would surely fail– no one has heard of the REAL NATIONAL STANDARDS research, which sets the objectives and explains exactly “WHAT learning looks like and what enables and facilitates it.” (‘standards’ jargon, FYI)
Well that is not true. YOU all (and Diane) have heard me explain about The 8 Principles. More than once I have explained here about the millions which were spent by Pew for the research!
I told you all, that the LRDC (the Ph’d arm of The University of Pittsburg) were the tools folks that examined the classrooms of the cohorts… so they could see the ‘personal’ stuff that made the kids LEARN and match them to the indicators for each principle of learning.
Harvard put it all together! The Pew, National Standards Research!!!!!!!!
Of course, as you noted, Duane, the personal touch of the teacher is KEY…, and that is what they removed… the personal touch of the teachers we all loved, those who possessed as a SKILLS SET, the mentor’s special ability to reach the emergent mind of a child.
How simple is this… the OLIGHARCHS took out the professional practitioner and, ohmy, the schools failed!
If they mandated bad medical practice to doctors the patients would die?
Learning died!
But. Duane — and you smart teachers out there… how does one explain what enables learning? What would the rubric look like, if one wanted to list the most essential ingredients that is found in classrooms where the human brain learns skills., and essentially learns HOW TO LEARN?
What exactly is ‘best practice?’ What does it LOOK LIKE?
WHAT DOES LEARNING LOOK LIKE?
This is the ‘mantra’ of the real research and WHAT A QUESTION!
It makes us think a little about aptitude and effort, and how they differ.
Lauren Resnick asked it and wrote about it… she proposed a theory, about effort-based education which she and others had studied— how to get kids to do real work, to help the brian acquire THE SKILLS needed to plan,to analyze, organize, apply and to execute ideas.
Click to access organizing-for-effort.pdf
When she came to Harvard from the LRDC — which she had headed– she proposed the theory– “The 8 Principles of Learning:” which became the thesis that Pew decided to PROVE.
MY QUESTION , dear Duane, is IF all this is history… then WHY FOR CRYING OUT LOUD is everyone STILL POSTULATING about what will work and what won’t?
Why in education is there this NEED To endlessly RE-INVENT the wheel.
Pew HAS proved that in each and every successful classroom (not just those in Osh Kosh and Kalamazoo) but in ALL classrooms where effort-based learning occurred, there are 4 principles in play, and around 15 to 20 indicators what show that a teacher follows such a principle in her/his practice.
I won’t mention them again. I have done so too many times. but I will say this , the other 4 principles (out of 8) …THOSE THINGS THAT ARE CRUCIAL IF LEARNING IS TO OCCUR were for the school ADMINISTRATORS to do — and were principles that support the CLASSROOM PRACTITIONER.
YUP! Schools that failed to support teaching in 4 ways… made learning impossible
So, if THE CRUCIAL INGREDIENTS, the RUBRICS, the ‘Standards’ are known and proven, how does a nation end up getting a Magic Elixir like the NCLB act.?
(answer: no evidence required! http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
How does a nation end up destroying the very things that make LEARNING POSSIBLE? How clever are these oligarchs that they put into place NOT THE 8 PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING, but the NCLB, the CC and VAM an alphabet soup of destruction.
Somebody call Vicki Bill , for crying out loud.
She was there in NYC when I was the cohort, and she was studying ME while I attended the LRDC seminars in our District. 2.. now flush with $$$ from Pew!
What did learning LOOK LIKE in any classroom, to her and the GENUINE standards researchers? Ask her why they CHOSE ME as the cohort, in the Last district i chosen of the Pew study, — NYC District 2?
What was it about MY practice?
I was not perfect, but my kids learned because they Wanted to learn with me. Why? How did this exemplify the principles of learning — so that my work was chosen to be SENT AROUND THE NATION by the staff developers at the LRDC?
What did they see in my best practice that was UNIQUE, but also what did they see which were exactly the same indicators that were OBSERVED in ALL classrooms where learning took place,— no matter the age or the ethnicity of the child.
What did BEST PRACTICE reveal about the 4 principles in play … because these things, you see ARE the STANDARDS— the principles that enable effort based learning that MUST be in all classrooms… Period.
I just get tired of listening endlessly to conversations asking questions that have already been answered. We know what best practice for medical outcomes look like. We know what best practice of a professional pedagogue reveals, too.
Ask Vicki Bill what Stephanie McConnaughie said when she first encountered my work, or what he Danforth Seminar revealed when my work was studied by staff developers and chancellors from around the country?
Not because I was so wonderful, but because what I did was what all successful teachers did, no matter the content or the age group.
ISN’T IT TIME?
Someone with more voice and power than I possess MUST discover/uncover WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO THE PEW RESEARCH ON THE NATIONAL STANDARDS, part of “Clinton’s 2000′ (his education effort!)
Then, we can say HERE THIS is what we teachers need to do!
MAKE IT HAPPEN!
All religious institutions and people should be taxed as everyone else. No exemptions.
I haven’t looked that closely at the US Constitution but where does it proclaim that religious institutions and people should be given preferential treatment vis a vis taxes?
Duane, the wall between Church and State has two sides. The tax exemption of church property is the other side of it, one of those devilish details that people trying to “tear down that wall” ironically fail to realize.
Here’s what i want to know: Where in the Constitution does it say that corporations are persons?
I figure it must be in there somewhere cuz John Roberts and his pals ruled that corporate spending is speech protected my the first amendment, and Roberts is a genius, you know. He went to (hee)Hawvid law and all.
It’s not in the Constitution, nor has any Supreme Court ever ruled conclusively on the question. They always weasel out on technicalities.
See —
Thom Hartmann • Unequal Protection : How Corporations Became “People” — and How You Can Fight Back