A reader comments:
“It’s rather ironic and infuriating that our schools have been robbed of necessities under the catchy phrase “No Child Left Behind” and the more straight foward one, “Race to the Top” ( or push to the bottom) I have been teaching for over 30 years and have watched as the robbing and eventual exploitation of our children has become the norm. The bad old days before any of this began were so much better. In my opinion, they have segregated education once again. Now it’s the haves and have nots. I read a phrase that describes it well, “Cookies for Corporations, Crumbs for Children” That’s how it is and now they are trying to take away the crumbs!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on McBlog.
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Thirty years ago was well before the IDEA act was passed (originally passed in 1990, amended in 1997 and 2004). That certainly made teaching K-12 more of a challenge, and changed the flow of resources in public education from one group of students to other students.
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Teachingeconomist:
Fedderal Special Education mandates, first articulated in the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), in the mid 1970s, made states responsible for implementing the law and provided a funding mechanism for implementation (EHA, part B). Congress never fully funded EHA (40% of implementation cost). Thus by dint of
Allocating insufficient fund, states and Local Education Agecies (LEAs) were left with massive funding burdens. Lest to say, that when state ffunds flow to local general funds and are not earmarked for education and local education funding is dependent on property taxes, the scene is set for a “contest for resources”, which forces local funds to flow to the higher cost mandated programs.
When local education funding is driven by property taxes, the stage iis set for major differences in education programs between affluent and ‘poor’ LEAs.
No doubt, the EHA and IDEA,placed increasing burdens on regular education staff via its mandates. Let’s not forget that civil tights and education laws (right to a free appropriate public education) always requires dislocations from prior practices.
The current crisis in public education can not be laid at the feet of special education. Rather, look at the long term impact of income inequality on the lives of children in and out of school, insuficient and ‘broken’ funding mechanisms and usurpation of the educational governance by those who seek to ‘reform’ public education by its destruction.
In summary, your post is simplistic at best and misleading and inaccurate at worst.
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Just pointing out that the “bad old days” may have been much better for some, but worse for others. I was not attempting a history of public education in a single short post.
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The spirit of the law never matched the funding. When parents petitioned the courts for this law in 1975 we were only identifying 3% of the total school population as special needs students. The latest figure I saw was for 2010 which puts that figure at 13% of the total school population. We are doing a better job of identifying these students. Special education students also have due process rights which regular ed. students do not have.
Time and again we hear that districts have to borrow from their reg. ed budgets to fund their special education budgets resulting in teacher lay-offs,and program cuts. I believe you can not have a serious discussion about saving public education without looking at the impact this mandate has had. By the way, I have a child that was identified with special needs. It is time for Congress to fully fund IDEA or revise the mandate. I also believe that charters are a way to bypass IDEA.
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IDEA was first passed in 1975.
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IDEA was not passed in 1975. IDEA was the legislation that replaced the legislation from 1975.
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PL94-142 sticks in my mind as the first legislation to address special education in the mid 70s.
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The first legislation was passed in the middle seventies. IDEA was much later.
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I think I said that…
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Just trying to help Duane.
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Heh, Koch sucker, you never answered my question if you post on this website of free will or are carrying water for your ideological idols. I take your silence as an explanation of guilt.
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A new name to call me. Dr. Ravitch has an interesting living room.
I have answered your question each time you asked. You should check the little box to get posts via email so you don’t miss replies.
My spouse and I are both teach at a public research university. My children attended traditional zoned public schools. What else would you like t know?
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TE: Stop talking to P-12 educators as if you know P-12 education better than they do. If you’re trying to make a point about the history of education, be accurate or leave it to the experts.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 aimed to protect the rights of people with disabilities in programs receiving federal funds. The first comprehensive federal legislation mandating a free and appropriate public education was the Education for All Handicapped Children act of 1975, aka PL 94-142. That was reauthorized with revisions and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was established that same year and is also applicable to public accommodations provided by the private sector, including child care centers.
No one is saying education was ever perfect, but the impetus had been increasingly towards recognizing, protecting and supporting the rights of all children and that momentum has changed dramatically. Now education is about winners and losers and vital resources are being denied to the most needy. Educational profiteers are the ones who are recognized, protected and supported today, not kids, despite all the propaganda, euphemisms and slogans to the contrary.
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That education was never perfect is, of course, my point. We are doing a better job educating some of our students than we did 50 years ago, a worse job educating other students.
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It was not a trade off between general education and special education. That’s a false dichotomy. If any decline occurred over the past decade and a half, it should be examined in regard to the intrusions in education of high-stakes testing and other policies demanded by non-educator politicians and business people, including the stripping of educators’ autonomy within their classrooms.
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Budgets impose trade offs everywhere. We are always limited by our resources and outer technology.
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Spoken like a capitalist who wants to see spending limits based on personal interests, instead of making ALL children a priority or allocating resources according to needs. No doubt, gifted education would win out over all else on your agenda.
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Sigh.
The need to make choices does not depend on how you organize an economy. Resources used to provide healthcare to the elderly can not also be used to educate the young. The resources used to construct the internet that allows this blog to exist can not also provide teachers to those with learning disabilities like my foster son.
Where would you get the resources needed to educate all the students according to their needs? Would that include one on one uttering for my foster son so he could better deal with his learning disabilities? Would it include graduate level instruction for my middle son so he could continue to advance his education before graduating from high school?
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Monies earmarked for education come from a variety of funding streams and sources, such as property taxes and the lottery, not from the same pot as funds for Medicaid, which workers and employers contribute to in payroll taxes, or this blog –which Diane pays for out of her own pocket.
Of course you got that promo in for gifted ed. Too bad case law decreed that special ed students get a chevy education and not a cadillac. It’s also a shame that the federal government has failed to pay as much into special ed as it originally pledged. Maybe they’d be more inclined to do so if they received corporate taxes from highly profitable corporations, like the companies that paid no taxes listed here:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460519/major-corporations-no-taxes-four-year
Double sigh.
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What is and is not in a pot is the result of legislation, and legislation can change the flow or resources to whichever end is preferred. No earmarks are permanent, no tax levels are written in stone, the lines between what is best done centrally inside a firm, best done in a decentralized market, and best done centrally in a government change as our capabilities change.
I had thought you were in favor of ALL students, both my oldest, middle, and youngest sons. Perhaps I was mistaken about your desire to help each according to their need.
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cx: Sorry, meant Medicare not Medicaid
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Of course I support ALL students. Hence I proffered the notion of taxing corporations equitably, so that the federal government fully funds special ed, instead of treating companies like favorite children. It’s politicians, not educators, who see everyone else as undeserving stepkids.
Stop with the condescending attitude already.
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My apologies. When you took exception to promoting gifted education, I interpreted that as a statement that gifted students not be given what they need. Glad to know that you are in favor of that.
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I support gifted education AND specialized services for children with disabilities, and I’ve always stated this. However, I thought you primarily advocated for kids who are gifted, not those with disabilities, too. My error. Sorry.
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I primarily advocate for gifted students like my middle child because no one else commenting on this blog does. There are many who advocate for students with learning disabilities and those born into extreme poverty like my oldest son.
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The names seem cheeky anymore.
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Which names?
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I think they really have to watch these appearances with commercial concerns that stand to benefit from the reforms.
I’m really uncomfortable with this. I think it puts kids in the role of supplicants and politicians in the role of promoting a specific commercial enterprise. It’s just going to lead to a deeply cynical and disengaged electorate.
One really does have to draw a line between public and private. It has to be there.
I believe a lot of them on the state side are well-intentioned, and they are cash-strapped, so they grab whatever, but boy, nothing is “free”. We’re going to pay a price for this. At the very least we should identify what we’re willing to trade for all this “free” money that comes from donations.
It just seems incredibly reckless and pie in the sky to me. We just took hundreds of millions of dollars from the tech industry, for public schools. Does anyone believe they don’t buy influence over “blended learning” with that? Of course they do. We’re now wholly dependent on their “gifts”.
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yup. that’s about right
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You got it. Thanks to our DOE and POTUS.
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Race to the Top. The dummies always go for the sports metaphors. Here, an update of the Rheformish Lexicon:
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Bob, unless I missed it, how about adding “public school” to the Rheformish Lexicon?
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Done, Ed:
From the Reformish Lexicon:
public school. Dumping ground for defective prole children who might bring down the average test scores of a charter school; temporary housing for defective prole children prior to their transfer to a for-profit prison. Archaic usage: Failed experiment with the ludicrous goal of providing “equal” educational opportunity to inferior prole children, only now being undone due to persistence of “ideals” promulgated by that great-grandfather of Marxism, John Adams, who wrote of diffusing “Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue,” via “public schools and grammar schools in the towns.”
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No! I refuse to let the deformers take the term public schools and turn it into dirty words. Public schools were established for the common good even if people had other agendas they hoped to accomplish. I grew up believing that everyone had the right to a public school education, however misinformed I was in my very white suburban existence. I may not have known that my belief wasn’t reality, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be. There is not an organization or endeavor that does not fail its mission in some way. Since we are human, that is to be expected. Libertarians seem to say that collective will will always be corrupted, so everybody should be allowed and hence expected to muddle through on their own totally dependent on their own resources. Screw community before it screws you. I say that anyone that thinks they can do it on their own is a fool. If I had a cave, I’d let you sit in it (for free even!). Spend your pennies equipping yourself for your sorry me and mine first, last, and always existence. Since you refuse to give anything for the common good, generate your own power, supply your own water, provide your own fire protection, stay off my roads and don’t use my public transportation, don’t buy any food that is subsidized by the government. I’ll pay the damn taxes that allow you to squat on my land. You don’t have anything I want or need, and I no longer have to be concerned about your rights or welfare.
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This has got to be my favorite of the “Rheeformish Lexicon”…
C.C.C.C.R.A.P. Common Core College and Career Readiness Assessment Program; aggregate name for the Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), and whatever Lord Coleman is going to call his new SAT.
This one was laugh out loud funny! Thanks for sharing the link!
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Not every thing was great about the good old days but at least the good teachers were allowed an opportunity to be effective. I have memories of outstanding educators as well as some that did not do as much to encourage, inspire or motivate. However in the current environment it does appear that it is more challenging for good teachers to be effective and that there is an attack on the funding of public education for the purpose of preparing students to be creative, critical and contributing citizens.
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The whole reform game in a single graphic:
http://www.nationofchange.org/infographic-why-corporations-want-our-public-schools-1393084820
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This is only half the story, Maine acquaintance. BECAUSE the public school cadre of teachers bashes private enterprise from a socialist perspective (as the UAW does politically too—that may be why they lost the Tennessee Volkswagon vote), rather than philosophically supporting private enterprise, the private sector has, in my view, concluded that the only way to remedy the philosophical corruption of the minds of the children by communitarian approaches, is to destroy the public school system if possible.
It’s not just greed, it’s a philosophical civil war. If the public school cadres would stop being anti-capitalist, attacks on them would eventually die away. But when the entire educational system is dominated by a philosophy which is fundamentally contrary to one major part of the American ethos, you should expect pushback in the direction of privatization.
The extreme progressive position came from the left first, as long ago as Dewey. What you are seeing now is an unpleasantly extreme correction from the right. We see on this blog that NO liberal will compromise. Even so reasonable a person as Diane, makes it all come down to taxing the wealthy more to pay for an elite education for all. But since the needs are bottomless, or at least would cost 4 trillion to redistribute enough income to make everyone equally middle class, it wouldn’t even work to equalize educational outcomes.
I don’t have a solution, but what I observe is a grim and dogged determination among conservatives to reject communitarian confiscatory taxation such as President Obama is rumored to be advocating in his new budget.
Right or wrong, many off us are just not going to accept the capitalism bashing any more, especially when every penny spent in the public sector comes from the private economy. The illogic of advocating shooting off one’s own legs just doesn’t sit well with those of us who are the toes, feet, calves, knees and thighs of the public sector. Thy hypocrisy is astounding, and that’s why opposition to the public school systems continues to exist.
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Who? When?
Teachers in the 70s?
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Most of the posters to this blog and everyone in BAT will exemplify my claim.
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Harlan that is a big load of BS. Teachers aren’t teaching anti-capitalism. For heaven’s sake, Bill Gates funded the Common Core and there’s barely a school district in the US that doesn’t work hand in hand with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable in order to mold curriculum to the supposed needs of business.
The list of people involved in NCLB, RTTT, and all the reforms for the last half century is overpopulated with capitalists and business people and their voices have been drowning out everyone else’s for decades. Susan Ohanian has spent the better part of the last 20 years documenting this capitalistic infiltration and takeover of public education with painstaking accuracy and proofs beyond reproach.
The war on unionization has absolutely nothing to do with teachers being anti-capitalist in the classroom and everything to do with removing the only real obstacles to profiting from and deregulation of education so that rent-seekers can take large chunks of money from the public tax fund unopposed. They wish to realize the dreams of Powell and Friedman.
This is not a partisan idea but indisputable fact.
You can begin your education by reading this manifesto from Milton Friedman:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0804.anrig.html
Continue here with how corporate America works to divide Black America from public education using the old divide and conquer strategy:
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-thecorporate-right-divided-blacks.html
And from 1971, the infamous Powell Memo which you echo in your comment:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
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Capitalism can have many flavors. But it isn’t a religion. It has to work and not be accepted merely on belief. After 2008, it should be obvious our system failed spectacularly and saved only by goverment intervention. Read the recent Fed transcripts from 2008 and you will find a similar head-in-the-sand, faith based approach to free markets by some of the regional feds.
Having participated in private enteprise for several decades and transferred a considerable chunk of my wealth to business grad school, I have moved to a more enlightened position. We can’t keep blindly adhering to the old deregulated, supply side, trickle down ideas of the Reagan era. We can’t wrap ourselves in the flag and equate free thought and reflection on our system with disloyalty. Our system of capitalism is broken and needs to improve. Too many people are slipping into poverty. Income inequality directly correlates to instability. Fear and paranoia are not a good system of governance. Our markets are no longer free nor truly markets (see social mobility and crony capitalism). Risk is socialized; rewards are privatized. The Ukraine is probably a canary in the mine.
Education does need to evolve for the better. But applying failed market principals to education is having a broken hammer and seeing every problem as a nail. Rather than zero sum competition and simple minded stack ranking, we need collaboration and careful evolutionary (not revolutionary) approaches to education. Americans are very capable of adapting and improving both education and capitalism. But it is pretty clear the blaming, anti-teachers mentality and haphazard “accountability” driven, top down, one size fits all, test till you drop approach is not effective. We should be first listening to teachers rather than undermining them in the classroom and imposing big government mandates. We need to look at what works even if it means suppressing hubris and integrating what other (gasp! SOCIALIST!) countries are doing. Finally we need to again respect and trust our teachers giving them the freedom to teach, experiment, and refine their classrooms.
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I might agree with your conclusions, Math Vale, but not your premises. Reaganomics worked. It is not “obvious” that capitalism failed after 2008. The government mandated making those liar loans. No bad loans required (in effect), nothing for Wall Street to buy and repackage as mortgage based securities. If your premises about capitalism are wrong, then possibly your conclusions are too.
I’d like to see parents have a voucher. That’s enough equity.
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HU,
Will have to reply tomorrow as I’ve been drowning my sorrows over just how shitty the USA Olympic Mens Hockey team played today. They should all be fired, especially Quick for that abomination of a game played between the pipes and for the coach for not yanking him at the beginning (let him skate out there and then call him back, just to send a message to the team, a la Mike Keenan) of the third period to wake up the team.
Twas a national travesty!
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“Reaganomics worked.” HU is one amongst many who hold this misconception. From April, 2013, “Do Americans still not get Reaganomics? A new poll shows Americans laud Republicans’ economic management. Facts show they’re being way too generous”:
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/do_americans_still_not_get_reaganomics/
30 years of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama neo-liberal economic policies have given us:
“…A larger gap between the richest and poorest Americans than has existed at almost any other time in our nation’s history. Stagnating wages for all but the wealthiest Americans. Increased hours, decreased benefits and enormous public debt caused by a financial crisis that was the direct product of the radical deregulation of our financial markets.”
Those at the top got lots of cookies and the masses got mostly crumbs. That “trickle down” was planned, too. Nobody ever aimed for the rest of us to get a windfall in the deal.
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Puh-leeze don’t conflate Bush (1) and Bush(2) and Obama with Reagan. Reagan’s tax cuts worked, but then his policy was abandoned. Bush (1) said “no new taxes” and then let himself be hornswoggled by the Dems. Bush (2) spent too much money. And Obama lifted the debt to 17 trillion all on his own. Economic inequality IS a major problem, but the Reagan economic expansion made every household $10,000 richer. NOW, only the rich are getting richer. You seem to think that there is only a fixed amount of value in the economy and the only way to make the poor richer is to take away from the rich. That is called a “zero sum” game. If I prosper it is at your expense. But value can be created by intelligence applied to materials and so the “pie” gets larger and everyone can have a bigger slice. There will always be inequality, but the bottom need not be destitution (compared to the rest of the world, the poor here are rich), and in fact it isn’t because of the transfer of wealth occurring now. That’s what American does. NO ONE not on drugs or alcohol starves. NO ONE. In derision, liberals call the Reagan policies, “trickle down.” He said, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” He was right. It worked for Kennedy too.
I doubt this summary will persuade you, but I thought I ought to put it out for all to see anyway.
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“Puh-leeze” yourself, Harlan, since you are unable to recognize that we have been led by “New Democrats” since Clinton, who do not claim to be liberals, and they have instituted virtually the same kinds of corporate loving neoliberal economic policies as the GOP.
David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director, admitted that “supply-side economics” is trickle-down economics: He said, “It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle down,’ so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really ‘trickle down.’ Supply-side is ‘trickle-down’ theory.” http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/?single_page=true
Tiny trickles do not lift all boats, which is why this country has such income disparity today and so many are amongst the working poor.
Either you got to ride the boat in the deep end with the elites and just don’t give a damn about the masses condemned to the shallow end of the sea, or you’re being snookered by false ideology.
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It was a truly historical moment, back in the Reagan era, when David Stockton publicly confessed that “supply side economics” was intended to be just new window dressing on “trickle down economics”, in order to sell the myth –and he was taken out to the woodshed for being so honest. I guess HU either wasn’t paying attention at the time or he just didn’t care what life was like for the recipients of trickle down.
I know personally how trickle down played out. I worked for different employers of private for-profit child care programs then, all of whom were Reagan loving Republicans. They took the money and ran, frequently traveling around the world while what trickled down to the non-union, degreed teachers, who had worked at those schools for years, was a nickle or a dime above minimum wage. Regardless of how long we worked there, teachers’ incomes never even caught up with inflation, so it was impossible to get ahead.
After 10 years of economic hardship in one of those teaching jobs, when I asked for a pay raise so that I could be earning a livable wage, the response I got from my employer was, “Can’t your mommy help you?” No, she had no money and could not help. However, even if she could, I was in my 30s then and it was expected that I support myself. Ironically, my employer had that expectation of her own grown child.
Will such employers ever have the same expectation for their employees? I doubt it, especially when the government is encouraging them to be greedy and keep the wheat, letting just the chaff trickle down to their employees.
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When I was reading the article noted below by Mike Lofgren regarding why he left his inside job in the GOP after 30 years, I was thinking about how to get through to people who have no clue about the GOP’s steadfast allegiance to big business over everyone else –how to reach those whom he described as “low-information voters,” as opposed to the Harlans who know about it but think it’s just dandy.
It reminded me that I had calculated how trickle down was impacting me at the time. I simply did the math where I worked and figured out that my school was taking in a minimum of $75K per year from the students in my classroom alone, while I was grossing under $10K annually. I figured it out the disparity for the other classrooms and teachers, too, and informed them. That was a rude awakening for many, most of whom had been naturalized citizens and swing voters, and they became very skeptical of the Republican party.
So, if you know any “low information voters” who are in similar situations, I’d suggest you encourage them do the math as well.
Of course, the problem which remains is that today’s Democrats are not really much better than the GOP.
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From what I noticed as a teacher, the extra money given to the low performing schools was used to pay VENDORS. Our school district paid some company to come in and “help” the teachers. The guy walked around a lot, then hired people from all over the US. My “helper” came to MI all the way from Vermont. She probably made more than me and her plane fare and hotel was paid.
We got a new Algebra program called Carnegie. I went to training for 2 weeks and then once a month. After two years, all the trained teachers were gone. I was the only one left. Then that was abandoned and we got the TI-inspire calculators. I was trained on that and loved it. After all the training, they sent me to an elementary school. I noticed the teacher had the calculators but not the laptop and router that is part of it.
Now they had me teaching reading and we had 2-3 reading programs going on at once and vendors running all over the schools having meetings. We bought thousands of books and then the school was taken over by the EAA. (Check that state school takeover out).
My point is that the vendors are making promises and they get money and the kids are the guinea pigs.
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“Right or wrong, many off us are just not going to accept the capitalism bashing any more, especially when every penny spent in the public sector comes from the private economy”
Let’s not forget that money spent from the public budget has been thrown right into the clutches of Wall Street in the grand bailouts, in the form of tax relief beyond belief, off shore tax havend, and it also pays out public funds to you and millions who receive social security.
It’s a two way flow, Harlan, in case you have not noticed.
Get those contact lenses back in your eyes . . . . .
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Yes. I am confused by that statement. Money circulates between the public and private sector. When the public sector “spends” money, it often transfers back to the private sector in exchange for goods or services and on and on creating the multiplier effect. Plus the line between public and private is blurred. Many “private” enterprises would not be around or as successful without government support. Like pure democracy, pure capitalism is impractical and does not exist.
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Yes, MathVale, HU confuses me most but not all of the time.
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The multiplier is a Keynsian myth.
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Don’t get personal, Robert. It is NOT a two way street. SS should be privatized. Every dollar the government sends back into the economy must first be removed from the economy, minus administrative expenses.
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“SS should be privatized”. Will that get my money back that I paid into it from the time I was 16 to 38 when I began teaching? If so then I agree and screw everyone else. I want mine, me, mine and more than mine if the government will give it to me like these charter school operators.
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There’s nothing personal here.
Privatized, Harlan?
Really?
You mean like Chile, where over 40% of senior citizens have been left broke because the SS system was “reformed” in a privitization movement ? . . . .
There should be nothing speculative about a guaranteed system of benefits for our elderly. That includes you, Harlan, at 78.
I don’t know how you think sometimes.
If you feel that strongly, then put every liquid cent you have and earn into the stock market and support your causes . . . . In fact, maybe you can take your SS check and have it rerouted directly into a stock fund. If you gain, you gain, and if you lose and have nothing at the end of the month or not enough, well, then, that will be your problem . . . . .
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There is, of course, something speculative about any social security system: how much the recipients are to be paid. The issue is who is doing the speculation. It might be the future recipients or it might be the future providers of the payments.
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We must all remove our children from these pathetic institutions of death
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This may be difficult for those in education, but I suggest, looking forward to the “next big thing” in education, before buying in to the wonderful benefits a new govt. program
will provide, look into the ‘rear view’ mirror to past programs
and what they brought along with the benefits.
Educators across the country have seen first hand not all the promises have been keep and the burden placed on the schools
were never mentioned.
We have had thirty five years of the helpful hand of the Federal govt., and other than the money it sends to states I don’t believe
the US Dept. of Education does anything each state’s own DOE can do better, without the added layer of bureaucracy which adds unneeded costs.
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There are some legitimate roles for the federal government to play. They can make sure, for example, that students have real equal access. But I, too, am horrified by the extent to which it has overstepped its legitimate bounds and become an instrument of centralization and tyranny. After spending years railing against it, the oligarchs in this country are recognized that it can be their tool, convenient in its unilateral omnipotence.
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Infographic: Why Corporations Want Our Public Schools
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/why-corporations-want-our-public-schools
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What we are experiencing is the “Deep State”
See: http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-deep-state-hiding-in-plain-sight/
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So what exactly is the “Deep State”? What so many of us here have suspected, which people like HU both support and deny:
“…there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country…”
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BTW, what’s really fascinating is, without knowing a thing about Mike Lofgren, who describes the “Deep State” on Moyers & Co., it’s very evident that these insights come from a Republican insider. See, “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult”
http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=3079:goodbye-to-all-that-reflections-of-a-gop-operative-who-left-the-cult
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Truly scary.
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Here’s former GOP insider Mike Lofgren’s book,
“The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted”
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America’s Child..inspired by the comments of the NC Third Grade Teacher
Just a look at the Faces
Of the Children in the Race
It’s so easy to observe
A Scene of Colossal Disgrace..
I live in America..
I dreamed of the chance
To experience all firsthand
Not just do a Testing Dance
I hear about the sands..
And the Sea to Shining Sea..
I am tested on the passage
But I sense not ..of its glee
If I could stop a moment…
and Touch.. and… Feel the Sand..
Then maybe I can learn..
To value the Freedom in our Land
I do not ask for riches
I do not ask for more
I know what this Race is all about
A Test and my Perfect Score
Who cares about my life???
I often wonder as I test
I raced so long .. it was no fun
I failed …though.. I raced my best
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