The keynote addresses by Karen Lewis, John Kuhn, and me may be found at http://www.schoolhouselive.org/
Unfortunately, the last three minutes of my speech were not recorded. Lost in space and time.
Watch, enjoy, feel energized, and get to work.
Right now!
Peter Greene writes here on why the “reformers” will lose.
The subject of my speech at the NPE conference was “Why We Will Win.” I will post it when I find the link in a few minutes.
Peter notes that no one espouses the “reformer” agenda unless they are paid to do so.
On our side, as we saw at the NPE conference in Austin, everyone is a passionate and knowledgeable volunteer, unpaid and deeply concerned first and foremost about children and the future of our society and the survival of a basic public institution–our public schools.
When I read his post, I was reminded of a brief exchange I had with the reporter from the Wall Street Journal, who stopped by our conference for a few minutes, on her way to SXSW, which enlists every imaginable corporate sponsor, from Pearson to Amplify, to dozens of others.
We talked about the issue of money and profits. She said, to my shock, “There are people on both sides looking to make money.” I waved my hand across the room of education activists and said, Who here is making money? The teachers making $40,000 a year? The parents? Everyone here paid their own way, or we supplemented their expenses. We have no corporate sponsors. We have no union sponsors. Who is making money?” I am still waiting for an answer.
Oh, I did admit that Randi Weingarten gave us money. She joined as an individual member and paid $20.
Larry Lee, a native Alabamian who is devoted to public education, is an admirer of State Superintendent Tommy Bice. Here he explains why:
Education Matters
By Larry Lee
How many legislative hearings have I attended in my life? Too many is probably the correct answer. But I recently witnessed something in one that I’ve never seen before. A standing ovation.
It was a joint meeting of the Alabama Senate and House education ways & means committees. Dr. Tommy Bice, state superintendent of education was making his presentation.
He took the members of the legislature and the audience through a day in the life of the Alabama K-12 public school system. With a power point he put faces to numbers. For instance more than 50 percent of the state’s 740,000 students ride a bus to school. More than 7,500 buses cover nearly 500,000 miles a day with many routes beginning before daylight.
He explained that our schools provide more than 90 million lunches annually and that 64 percent of them are free.
At one point he was so emotionally involved in discussing one particular student that he had to stop and gather himself.
When he finished, the room rose to their feet in applause and Senator Trip Pittman, chair of the senate committee, told him it was the best presentation that committee had ever heard.
As I read about superintendents around the nation and share info with friends in other states, I’m often struck by the fact that there is an adversarial relationship between their chief education official and other education “players.” It appears that too many are chasing the latest rabbit sent their way by another Washington think tank or scrambling after the blessings of another giant foundation.
Each time this happens, I say thank God for Tommy Bice.
For any kid growing up in Alexander City, AL in the 1960s, like Bice, there was always the thought that their career might lead them to Russell Mills. After all, many considered that Alex City was Russell Mills and vice versa.
When Bice received a four-year scholarship to attend Auburn University and study textile engineering on his high school graduation night it looked as if his future was on that path. But throughout his freshman year and all the pre-engineering classes, something kept tugging at him.
That “something” was the connection he made with students as a volunteer in a special education class in high school. “For whatever the reason, I just related to them,” recalls Bice decades later. “And I still do to this day.”
By the end of his first year, Bice knew that his heart was not in textile engineering and he switched to the school of education. Little did he imagine that this change would one day lead to him being named Alabama State Superintendent of Education as of January 1, 2012.
One thing is certain, Bice paid his dues on the way to the top. He has held almost every position in the education field. From classroom teacher at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, to alternative school director, to high school principal, to superintendent of the Alexander City school system to Deputy State Superintendent.
“I loved the classroom,” says Bice, “but I realized I could have broader influence on more students if I became an administrator.” Dr. Jack Hawkins, longtime president at Troy University and then president at AIDB, encouraged Bice to go to graduate school.
Bice hit the ground running when he became state superintendent. And it has quickly become apparent that each of his stops along the education ladder left their mark and his decisions are guided by what is best for students, schools and teachers. At a time when well-funded foundations are buying a seat at the education reform table and a deft way of churning out “sound bites” is given more credibility than classroom and school administration experience; Bice trusts his own instincts and listens to those he knows share a common background.
For example, in 2009 the U.S. Department of Education dangled millions upon millions of dollars before states to get them to jump on the Race to the Top bandwagon. Like dozens of other states, Alabama went through the extensive application process. The application was denied and editorial writers and politicians seized the opportunity to decry the condition of our education system.
But like many things that sound too good to be true, for the most part so was RTTT as “winning” states have had to agree to implementing programs that experienced educators consider questionable at best.
“Not getting selected was a blessing,” says Bice. “Too many folks failed to remember that the one who pays the fiddler gets to call the tune.”
Instead, Bice and his staff have crafted a well-thought out, well-researched document called Plan 2020 that details the objectives and strategies for Alabama K-12 education into the foreseeable future. The four components of the plan lay out what is expected of students, support systems, teachers and administrators and school systems.
Bice has the whole-hearted support of the State Board of Education in this effort. In fact, one board member recently called the plan “brilliant.”
“We have to rethink how we’ve been doing some things,” says Bice. “We must redefine what a high school graduate should know, we must have collaboration among the end users of our product, whether it is businesses or universities.
“We’ve been preparing kids to take a test, instead of preparing them for real life,” he continues. “This has to stop.”
Tommy Bice still lives in Alexander City where Russell does not cast the shadow it did when he was growing up there. From 1930 to 1970, the Alex City population increased 173 percent. But since 1970, about the time Bice was discovering his connection to special children, growth slowed to less than one percent annually.
And fortunately for Alabama, Dr. Tommy Bice decided to be an educator, rather than an engineer.
Larry Lee led the study, Lessons Learned from Rural Schools, and is a long-time advocate for public education and frequently writes about education issues. larrylee33@knology.net
The Lion of Judah charter school in Cleveland is closing, and the founder was sentenced to five years probation.
“Prosecutors last year accused Romey Coles Jr. and other officials of the Lion of Judah charter school of funneling at least $1.2 million in public funds to businesses associated with the troubled charter school….”
“Prosecutors left Coles’ sentence up to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside, who made it clear to Coles that he would have to make a substantial effort to pay restitution, including telling him to liquidate assets, such as multiple homes he owns.
“Coles, 46, told Burnside, “I’ve made some mistakes and I’m looking to take responsibility for it.”
“Burnside said she didn’t see a prison sentence as proper in the case because she felt the state didn’t properly anticipate the mistakes that could be made when citizens or non-lawyer tried to run charter schools.
“On the other hand, there was a misuse of public dollars and the public is owed it back,” Burnside said.
“Coles’ attorney, Fernando Mack, said his client had good intentions when opening the school on East 55th Street but then got greedy when he saw easy opportunities to make money….
“According to prosecutors, the academy from 2006 to 2011 took in almost $5.8 million from the state and federal government and $1.2 million of it was spent illegally, including items that were purchased for the school but went to the Church of the Lion of Judah, where Coles was a bishop and his wife was a pastor.”
By the way, the Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3314.03 states very clearly in the case of charter schools that “The school will be nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations, and will not be operated by a sectarian school or religious institution.”
Does anyone care?
From Angie Sullivan in Nevada, where the rich play, kep taxes low, and are privatizing the public schools:
“Some of the most wealthy people in the world live in Nevada.
What do billionaires and business people do for fun in Nevada?
Reform public education of course!
What do Casino Tycoon Elaine Wynn, Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, and Zappos Tony Hsieh have in common? Teach for America and ALEC inspired education reform. The return on investment model should be applied everywhere!
All this experimentation with public education – without research or time tested results , wouldn’t bother me so much if the situation were not so financially dire in the State of Nevada. Last in the nation in funding, huge at-risk populations, and limited funds to siphon for billionaire fly-by-night ideas.
Did you know that Nevada will vote on a 2% tax on businesses earning $1 million or more in November 2014? This has our education reforming billionaires really twisted. Nevada is one of the few states that does not tax corporations. This attracts billionaires who are adverse to paying . . . anything.
Did you know that Jeff Bezos the founder and CEO of Amazon.com has a warehouse outside of Fernley, Nevada in the desert?
Did you know that this ecommerce company pays taxes based on location of warehouse?
Did you know that Amazon.com has a history of union-busting and treating labor poorly to maximize income?
Did you know that Amazon.com is a known tax evader and does all it can to not pay its fair share?
Did you know Jeff Bezos belonged to ALEC and ALEC aided him with his Amazon.com loopholes?
Did you know that Jeff Bezos is really excited by charter schools, privatization and union-busting? Bad news for public schools.
Did you know that Amazon.com bought Zappos?
Did you know that Tony Hsieh is the founder and still works at Zappos – which is now located in downtown Las Vegas – revitalizing the area?
Did you know that Tony Hsieh is involved with Teach for America and plans to continue to bring at least 1,000 TFA to Vegas?
Teach for America are young and excited but they aren’t trained to be teachers – unless you think a few weeks is enough. 150 Teach for America were hired in Vegas at the same time 1400 fully licensed Teachers were pink slipped resulting in union-busting.
Did you know TFA mingle with Zappos employees, even going on spring break trips and retreats together?
Did you know that Victor Wakefield, Executive Director of Teach for America, is married to Nevada State School board member (former TFA) Alexis Gonsalez-Black, Zappos?
Did you know that Elaine Wynn, Casino Tycoon, and Tony Hsieh, Zappos donated heavily to the Nevada State Election Campaigns of Alexis Gonsalez-Black and Allison Serafin? President Elaine Wynn, Alexis Gonsalez-Black and Allison Serafin who all have connections to big money and Teach for America sit on the Nevada State Education Board. Hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars spent on unpaid board seats — one has to ask . . . why?
Did you know that during the last legislative session the NV assembly prevented TFA from receiving additional tax payer funds for its non-profit. And TFA then went to CCSD and asked for additional funds – this was rejected. And then TFA went to the City of Las Vegas – and received money from the city . . . unprecedented “education funding” to a cash flushed non-profit? Public Schools recently endured one billion in budget cuts but there is money for this?
Did you know that Teach for America is becoming a major political player and national campaign contributor – as a non-profit?
Did you know that Governors in other states refused to give TFA money because they had so much? $350 million in net assets.
Did you know that education philantrophy makes a nice non-profit tax shelter.
Did you know that Elaine Wynn is President of the National Non-Profit Communities in Schools- which declares an unbelievable and most likely unprovable – drop out prevention (return on business investment) success story?
Wynn donates hundreds of thousands across the nation to Communities in Schools – she is so kind!
And her international $135 million giving to Macau was even cause for investigation! The SEC called the gift suspicious; More suspicious is Wynn’s appointment by the Governor of Reno to the Nevada State School Board while being investigated?
Does anyone see a pattern with these business oriented billionaires and their plans for public schools? When public education is a large portion of the state budget and you are a billionaire partially because of sketchy business practices and tax dodging . . . it makes sense that you want to distract everyone by reforming public schools instead of paying your fair share and funding schools adequately.
Nevada needs the community to vote for the TEI in November 2014.
The high rolling billionaires need to pay their fair share this time around instead of coming up with “great education ideas” that don’t work.
http://www.theeducationinitiative.com/
Angie”
Notes and Links:
Jeff Bezos
Amazon is required to collect the tax only in states where it maintains a physical presence, such as a warehouse. But Amazon now is supporting the bill, which has passed the Senate and is pending in the House. State sales taxes no longer pose a real threat to Amazon; with an emphasis on same-day shipping, the company is building distribution warehouses across the country and would have to pay the tax anyway.
The Bezos Family Foundation — whose board includes Bezos, his parents and other family members — gave more than $11 million in 2011 to an array of national organizations such as Teach for America, Stand for Children and the KIPP Foundation, according to tax filings. The foundation also gave grants to scores of individual schools around the country as well as several charter school chains, including Uncommon Schools, which operates schools in New York and Massachusetts.
http://askville.amazon.com/address-Amazon-warehouse-Sparks-Nevada/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=9142399
Amazon.com Inc
1600 Newlands Dr E
Fernley, NV 89408
(775) 575-8000
http://www.amazon.com/Locations-Products-Careers/b?ie=UTF8&node=14237861
Fulfillment and Warehouse Centers
We receive, pack, and ship tens of millions of items from our global network of fulfillment centers.
North America
* New Castle, Delaware
* Coffeyville, Kansas
* Campbellsville, Kentucky
* Hebron, Kentucky
* Lexington, Kentucky
* Fernley, Nevada
* Red Rock, Nevada
* Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
* Carlisle, Pennsylvania
* Lewisberry, Pennsylvania
* Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/41846337.html?device=tablet
Close of facility in Red Rock, Nevada – Fernley still opened
http://www.housmans.com/boycottamazon.php
Amazon are Union Busters
Amazon have a little-reported, but undeniable record of preventing their work force from unionising. In 2001, Amazon.co.uk hired a US management consultancy organisation, The Burke Group, to assist in defeating a campaign by the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU, now part of Unite the Union) to achieve recognition in the Milton Keynes distribution depot. It was alleged that the company sacked four union members during the 2001 recognition drive and held a series of captive meetings with employees.
Unionbusting
http://www.housmans.com/boycottamazon.php
Tax dodging and union busting
Amazon’s workplace practices have come under fire in recent years. News outlets have detailed everything from the exhausting nature of warehouse work (employees can walk as much as 15 miles daily) to ambulances waiting outside a facility to collect workers who overheated because of a lack of air conditioning. Warehouse workers in Germany have walked out several times over wage issues. Some later traveled to Seattle to picket in front of Amazon’s headquarters.
Read more: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement | TIME.com http://business.time.com/2014/01/16/how-amazon-crushed-the-union-movement/#ixzz2tHJIic4x
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Purchase of Wasington Post
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/aug/16/jeff-bezos-washington-post
Bezo’s Politics called into questions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/08/07/the-politics-of-jeff-bezos/
Donations to keep from being taxed
Family big support’s of charter schools
Donations on both sides of the aisle.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/08/05/jeff_bezos_inscrutable_libertarian_democrat.html
Donation to gay marriage equality
Donations to various candidates
Donations to defeat taxes
http://www.alternet.org/media/what-will-washington-post-be-under-jeff-bezos
But what has not made news is Bezos’ careful activism on behalf of big business and some of the richest Americans. In 2010, a coalition of Washington state public interest groups, teachers and socially minded wealthy Americans like Hanauer and Bill Gates Sr. supported Initiative 1098, which would have established the first-ever income tax in the state. If passed, the initiative would’ve established a tax on adjusted gross income for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and $400,000 on married couples or domestic partners. By taxing high-income Washingtonians, the initiative would also have allowed for a reduction in property taxes and the expansion of certain business tax credits.
http://www.thenation.com/article/168109/protesters-confront-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos#
Amazon has also taken heat for its membership in ALEC—the American Legislative Executive Council—a corporate-funded group that backs right-wing politicians. ALEC also drafts and promotes laws like those that effectively disenfranchised large numbers of minority voters, the “Stand Your Ground” legislation that has resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin and a number of other people, and the anti-union laws brought to national attention by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
And Amazon was behind the curve in withdrawing from ALEC, lagging well behind companies such as KFC, Taco Bell, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Intuit, McDonald’s, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods. Most of these companies left ALEC more than a month ago, when revelations about its role in “Stand Your Ground” gave renewed momentum to demands that corporations leave it.
But then, ALEC has treated Amazon very well. It has defended the “Amazon loophole” that allows online sellers to avoid charging sales taxes the way other businesses do. This unfair advantage has given Amazon a lot more clout against neighborhood bookstores and retail book chains—clout it has used to drive many of them out of business.
Bezos is a libertarian who reportedly exults in the fact that Amazon’s loophole prevents the government from collecting taxes. He appears to exemplify a certain kind of Internet or computer entrepreneur—call them “digital libertarians”—who can be visionaries in technological and cultural ways and yet blind to social and economic realities.
http://news.rapgenius.com/The-bilderberg-group-list-of-attendees-for-2013-bilderberg-group-meeting-annotated#note-1837452
Bilderberg Group
Privatization and Union-Busting
There’s one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but it is largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a neoliberal education agenda:
• The Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform.
• The Bezos Foundation provided $500,000 to NBC Universal to sponsor the Education Nation, a media series devoted to debating high-stakes testing, charter schools and other education reforms.
• The Bezos Foundation provided over $100,000 worth of Amazon stock to the League of Education Voters Foundation to help pass the education reform in Washington State. Last year, the group helped pass I-1240, a ballot measure that created a charter school system in Washington State. In many states, charter schools open the door for privatization by inviting for-profit charter management companies to take over public schools that are ostensibly run by nonprofits.
Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.
But will Bezos’ interest in changing education policy affect his control of the Post? Only time will tell.
The most troubling part of Amazon’s record, as it might relate to Bezos’ ownership of thePost, is Amazon’s December 2010 decision to shut down WikiLeaks’s server access after the group published a trove of State Department cables. Robert McChesney, citing Amazon’s move to pull the plug on WikiLeaks, released a statement today condemning the sale.
Tony Hsieh – Zappos
The http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100601/why-i-sold-zappos.html
acquisition closed on November 1, at a valuation of $1.2 billion (based on Amazon’s stock price on the day of closing). Our investors at Sequoia made $248 million. Our board was replaced by a management committee that includes me, Jeff, two Amazon executives, and two Zappos executives. As CEO, I report to the committee every quarter, and Zappos is responsible for hitting revenue and profitability numbers. But unlike our former board of directors, our new management committee seems to understand the importance of our culture — the “social experiments” — to our long-term success. In fact, one Amazon distribution center recently began experimenting with its own version of Zappos’s policy of paying new employees $2,000 to quit if they’re unhappy with their jobs.
The acquisition closed on November 1, at a valuation of $1.2 billion (based on Amazon’s stock price on the day of closing). Our investors at Sequoia made $248 million. Our board was replaced by a management committee that includes me, Jeff, two Amazon executives, and two Zappos executives. As CEO, I report to the committee every quarter, and Zappos is responsible for hitting revenue and profitability numbers. But unlike our former board of directors, our new management committee seems to understand the importance of our culture — the “social experiments” — to our long-term success. In fact, one Amazon distribution center recently began experimenting with its own version of Zappos’s policy of paying new employees $2,000 to quit if they’re unhappy with their jobs.
Four years ago today on July 22, 2009, Amazon.com finalized an agreement to acquire Zappos.com for $807 million. Since both of these internet-based retail companies have a global reputation for their customer-centric missions and associated fanatic customer loyalty, the union of Amazon and Zappos was logical, expected, and controversy-free. By all reports today is an anniversary of AmaZappian bliss for leaders Jeff Bezos and Tony Hsieh, who have both been busy leveraging their success over the past four years.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/nov/10/add-education-zappos-downtown-investment-forays/
As Zappos prepares to relocate to downtown Las Vegas, its growing list of investments in the area now includes more than $1 million to lure dedicated teachers to the area’s schools.
Teach For America, which trains teachers to work in schools that serve children from households in poverty, will receive a donation of $300,000 from the company and $1.2 million from CEO Tony Hsieh.
Allison Serafin, a special consultant to Clark County Schools Superintendent Dwight Jones, also went through Teach For America’s program after graduating from Texas Christian University in political science and social work.
“It completely changed my life,” Serafin said. “I was able to see firsthand through the experience of teaching my sixth-graders that the students were brilliant and capable.”
Serafin, who works by contract with the School District, called Teach For America one of “many excellent partners who share the same commitment to students … and a commitment that all children can achieve.”
http://vator.tv/competition/las-vegas-valley-alternative-spring-break
Zappos Spring Break – Teach for America
What is it?
The Teach For America – Las Vegas Valley & the Zappos Family of Companies Alternative Spring Break is intended to spark bold, new innovations that expand opportunities and close the achievement gap in the Las Vegas Valley community. Applicants will submit a response to one of three challenges being posed via video by three Las Vegas Valley corps members. Twenty five students from across the country will be selected and will be invited to join Teach For America- Las Vegas Valley, the Zappos Family of Companies, and Las Vegas Valley community leaders for an all expenses paid alternative spring break trip to the Las Vegas Valley in March. Programming will be Monday to Friday (with travel on Sunday, the 18th and Saturday, the 24th) and will include travel, all meals, activities, and housing, which will be with current Las Vegas Valley corps members. Participants will continue the spirit of social innovation and tackle community, school, and business challenges in Las Vegas with the Zappos Family of Companies, Teach For America corps members and staff, and other Las Vegas Valley community leaders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America
According to a 2009 USA Today article, Teach For America has been criticized by opponents who claim that the program replaces experienced teachers with brand-new employees who have had only five weeks of training during the summer and are brought in at beginners’ salary levels. John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, sent a memo in May 2009 stating that union leaders were “beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire Teach For America college grads due to a contract they signed.” Wilson went on to say that Teach For America brings in “the least-prepared and the least-experienced teachers” into low-income schools and makes them “the teacher of record.”[16]
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/may/20/legislative-showdown-brewing-over-2-million-teach-/
Fixing Cities: Fixing the world
For Hsieh, though, this was part of the appeal. Transforming downtown Vegas would “ultimately help us attract and retain more employees for Zappos.” For the city itself, it would “help revitalize the economy.” More important, it would “inspire,” a word Hsieh uses often. Hsieh closed his presentation at the faux log cabin high above the desert with the sort of fact he seems to always have on hand: up to 75 percent of the world’s population will call cities home in our lifetime. “So,” he concluded, “if you fix cities, you kind of fix the world.”
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/23/tony-hsieh-las-vegas-zappos/
1,000 Teach for America Core Members
But now, he has to build the neighborhood. Much of the plans are already in the works. Plans are being finalized for 21,000 square feet of “co-working” space along the lines of General Assembly in New York. The small business development team is exploring building a back-office technology platform that the mom and pop shops can share to handle accounting, inventory, payroll and the like. Hsieh has made a $1.5 million deal with Teach for America to bring 1,000 core members and alumni to live and teach in the area. He is talking to the creators of the Burning Man festival about supplying art to the neighborhood. Party buses? He and his team are in the process of acquiring and revamping a dozen. Oh, and Hsieh is also part of a group trying to buy the Las Vegas 51s, the farm team; cue the new stadium plans.
There remains but one question for us to answer, dear reader: is there a way for the tax payers of Nevada to increase their stake in the excellence project that is Teach for America? Good news again. In his state-of-the-union address, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval announced that the state is ponying up $2 million to bring still more TFA recruits to the Sagebrush State. Of course not everyone here is rolling out the welcome mat for the excellence express. Take the residents of Towne Terrace, a down-at-the-heels apartment complex in downtown Las Vegas, purchased by Zappos magnate (and Alexis Gonzales-Black employer) Tony Hseih who dreams of repopulating the entire area with more than 1,000 TFA corps members and alum. Except that the residents of the Towne Terrace made it exceedingly clear that they had no interest in being evicted to make way for excellence. Oh well, next time…
http://downtownproject.com/2012/teach-for-america-has-a-lot-to-celebrate/
In addition to this week’s activities and the recruiters’ conference in May, our local TFA team has more excitement to look forward to in the very near future. They’ll be welcoming their new corps members for induction week during June and will be relocating their offices to Downtown in July.
Alexis Gonzales-Black
Holacracy Implementation Team
Las Vegas, Nevada (Las Vegas, Nevada Area) Human Resources
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexisgonzalesblack?_mSplash=1
http://www.doe.nv.gov/State_Board_Education_Members/
$50million in education initiatives? Downtown Projects
http://downtownproject.com/2011/downtown-project-designates-50-million-in-funding-for-education-initiatives/
Victor Wakefield ( married to Alexis Gonzales-Blavk) TFA Leadership Nevada
Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers to Las Vegas is an important aspect of Downtown Project’s education initiatives as it partners with Teach for America. “The largest ingredient in school quality, just like in urban success, is human capital—the talents of the teachers,” writes Glaeser. It’s a sentiment echoed by Victor Wakefield, executive director of Teach for America-Las Vegas Valley.
Victor Wakefield
http://www.teachforamerica.org/where-we-work/las-vegas-valley
Nevada funding for cash flush TFA
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/apr/11/money-okd-bring-150-more-teach-america-educators-c/
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/teach-for-america-rises-as-political-powerhouse-98586.html
http://www.communitiesinschools.org/press-room/resource/philanthropist-elaine-wynn-makes-5-million-donatio
Elaine Wynn Chair National Communities in Schools
Mrs. Wynn has been a member of the Communities In Schools’ board of directors since 2000, assuming the Chair position in 2007. Under Mrs. Wynn’s leadership, the organization has focused on data-driven results, including the release of a five-year, third-party evaluation, a return on investment report, and annual program results demonstrating that the organization’s cost-effective model is effective in urban, suburban, and rural communities.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/dec/17/governor-taps-elaine-wynn-state-education-board/
Kazuo Okada, a co-founder of Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN) who is locked in a legal battle with his former partner Steve Wynn, accused the company of making a “suspicious” $135 million donation to a Macau university.
Texas billionaire John Arnold, who has drawn attention for his interest in public sector pension reform (meaning that public sector pensions are too generous), is supporting both sides of the gubernatorial race in Rhode Island.
David Sirota wrote about how the Arnold Foundation underwrote a PBS special on the pension crisis and underwrote a Brookings Institution report on the same subject. PBS returned $3.5 million to the foundation because of Sirota’s disclosure.
Arnold is also a major supporter of charter schools, Common Core, and other “reforms” favored by corporate reformers.
The Providence Journal reports:
” PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Billionaire Houston philanthropist John Arnold is not only investing heavily in the political future of state General Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Gina Raimondo — he’s also backing a national education effort showcasing her Democratic rival: Providence Mayor Angel Taveras.
“Arnold’s philanthropic organization, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, has awarded $4.25 million in grants over the last three years to “Education Reform Now,” 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with ties to the “Mayor’s for Educational Excellence Tour,” according to the foundation’s website.
“Taveras, a Democrat in his first term, is one of four mayors taking part in the tour, which is meant to highlight new education efforts in their cities.
The tour includes San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and is scheduled to stop in Providence on April 25.
“Education Reform Now” is operated by “Democrats for Education Reform,” a New York-based political action group that supports, among other things, closing down failing schools and establishing national education standards.
“Last week, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation confirmed that it helped finance the nonprofit and nonpartisan Brookings Institution’s report, “Pension Politics: Public Employee Retirement System Reform in Four States.”
“The report, released last month, highlights the state pension system overhaul that Raimondo spearheaded in 2011 as a national model.”
So, billionaire Arnold hails Raimondo as a “pension reformer,” and supports Taveras an an “education reformer.”
The voice of a new blogger! At least, new to me. Glad to make his/her acquaintance.
This post was written by a veteran teacher who knows how to get students to love literature.
But it is a brave new world, and now the teacher must be trained to say the right words and terms by a “perky” Pearson trainer.
She tried! She really, really tried.
She traded jargon with the trainer, blow for blow.
But in the end, she couldn’t do it.
She knew the verbiage was empty nonsense, even if the trainer didn’t know it.
And she concluded:
Fifth graders fall in love with great books when teachers read them out loud with passion, and then talk about them with interest and knowledge. They learn to write when they are inspired to say something. Truth? They don’t need to be told what their reading level is: they need to be surrounded by books and they need to play around with them. Truth? They don’t need a rubric to learn how to craft a story where “the dialogue moves the story forward on the story arc” (Seriously? Whoever wrote this crap never read Vonnegut). They know that a story is good when their friends tell them, “This was great!”
Imagine that! No rubric! No text-to-text comparisons! Just reading for meaning and the joy of language and story. That will never do!
In an essay posted by Gene Glass, the distinguished researcher David Berliner here explains the importance of public education and the heroic role of teachers.
Gene Glass writes:
The Teacher as Sisyphus
Sisyphus was a king whose sins were punished by being made to push an immense rock to the top of a hill every day only to have the rock roll back down each night. Philosophers and poets for centuries have given various interpretations to the Sisyphus myth, some making him out to be a fool, some a hero.
In the 1925, a German psychoanalyst wrote a book that grew out of his experiences as head of a project in 1919 called Kinderheim Baumgarten, which provided housing and education for 300 Jewish children from Poland, who were displaced after WWI. The title of his book was Sisyphos oder die Grenzen der Erziehung (roughly, Sisyphus or the Limits of Education). (Bernfeld, who was analysed by Freud’s daughter Anna, eventually emigrated to the U.S. and practiced psychoanalysis in San Francisco for several years before his death in 1953.)
Bernfeld likened the task of the teacher to the labors of Sisyphus: arduous work over long periods of time against huge odds, both psychological and environmental. Of course, the modern myth is that Teacher is Zeus – all powerful, able to accomplish any goal, hence if the Teacher fails, the Teacher is entirely to blame; and in the end, there are severe limits to what any teacher can accomplish.
My colleague David Berliner struck a note reminiscent of Bernfeld’s book on the occasion of his acceptance of a Doctorate of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from Manhattanville College last May. The teacher’s task is sometimes thankless and undertaken against the odds dealt by poverty and debilitating societal forces.
The Teacher as Sisyphus
David C. Berliner
Regents’ Professor Emeritus
Arizona State University
Good evening. First, I want to assure you all that I will not stand long in the way of your celebration. Only a fool stands for too long between food and drink. So I will be brief, which isn’t easy for a professor, since whenever we get a podium we think we should talk for 50 minutes. Second, I want to thank the administration of the college and the Board of Trustees for the recognition given to me. I am deeply honored, and immensely proud. Third, I want to congratulate you graduates.
I also want to tell your parents, relatives, and friends gathered here today to remember something very important, namely, that the future pay of each of the graduates you care about depends on your ability, and your desire to pay your taxes! Many of these graduates are likely to end up as workers for the common good, helping to serve us all. And those who work for the common good—the police, firefighters, librarians, our teachers and other educators— are all paid from monies collected in taxes. So if you parents, relatives, and friends think you are done helping to support these graduates emotionally and financially, think again! I don’t want to be a scold on this wonderful day, but these graduates will need your support for their entire careers.
Doing the business of education is hard work and emotionally draining work, and you should be proud, very proud, that a family member or friend of yours has chosen to give back to our nation a portion of what they have received. Thank you graduates, and thank you to your families and friends who helped make this day possible.
Now whether you graduates end up working in a public school or a charter school, a secular or religious private school, a public or private college or university, is irrelevant. And even if you work eventually outside of education, no matter where you end up, you all need to protect public schooling. I’d like to tell you why that is.
The Pulitzer prize winning historian, Lawrence Cremin, explained it this way: When the history of the United States is written from the vantage of the middle of the 21st century, and the question asked is what was it that made the United States the preeminent nation in the world during the 20th century, the answer will be found in the 19th century. Cremin argued that it wasn’t the Gatling gun, or the telegraph, or the telephone, or Fulton’s steamboat that made America great. Rather, it was the invention of the common school. That is the gift that keeps on giving.
It was the public schools that gave America some mobility across social classes, providing a modicum of truth to the myth that we were a classless society.
It was the public schools that changed our immigrants into patriotic Americans.
It was the public schools, along with public libraries, that gave Americans the skills and opportunities to develop the kinds of knowledge that Thomas Jefferson had rightly noted is first among the necessary conditions for a democracy to function.
It is the public schools that serve most of our nations’ special education students, hoping to give them productive lives, and hoping to give their parents a modicum of relief from a tougher parenting role than most of us have had to face.
It is the public schools that primarily serve the English Language Learners who, in another generation, will constitute a large part of the work force that we depend upon.
It is the public schools that serve America’s neediest children and their families.
And it is the public schools, in the wealthier neighborhoods, that provide a large proportion of American students with a world-class education.
Whatever your feelings about charter schools and private schools, for the foreseeable future the vast numbers of our students and the vast number of the jobs open to educators will be in our public schools. So for both personal and patriotic reasons, educators and their closest family members and friends need to support our nations’ greatest invention, our public school.
The teaching profession and education, as an enterprise, are not well understood by many. For example, research tells us that it takes teachers three to five years to learn how to be effective with their students, and even then they do not maximize their student’s test performance until about their seventh year on the job.
We are talking about these graduates joining a profession as a teacher, administrator, or teacher educator that takes three to five years to master, and five to seven years in which to become an expert. This is not easy-to-master work. But unless you all support these new graduates by how you vote, and what you pay in taxes, as well as by listening to tales of their successes and their challenges, and by laughing and crying with them as they develop in their careers, we could lose them to the profession. We know that we lose half of America’s newly certified educators within five years. We need to make the profession these graduates have chosen to enter a better one: one in which they will wish to stay. And that requires all of us to reconsider how we vote, whom we vote for, and what we say to each other about education and its role in American life.
I know that some say supporting our public schools is difficult to do because they are not doing their job well. Therefore, these people say, we need more alternatives to the public schools; charter and private schools, as well as support of home schooling.
Let me be sure you understand this issue. In three different recent international tests of literacy, science, mathematics and problem-solving skills in those three areas, the students in American public schools, where poverty rates were under 10 percent, scored the highest or among the highest in the world. And in public schools where the poverty rates were 10-25 percent of the student body, American students scored among the top few nations of the world. Those two groups of public schools, all of which serve middle and upper middle class students, educate about 15 million of our youth (30% of all K-12 students), and they do as good a job as any nation on earth, and a lot better than most other nations.
But they are not our only public school students. Public schools that teach the poor, where more than 75% of the children are in poverty, do terrible in international competitions. Those schools are not doing a good job, but it is hard to say that it is the professional educators that are at faultt when we also have public schools that these same teachers staff that are among the best in the world. It is much more likely that it is the fault of our political system that has plunged millions upon millions into poverty since the early 1980s, not our school system or the personnel who run it.
About 25% of America’s youth are locked into poverty, and in other wealthy nations, like Finland, that rate is under 5 percent. In fact, The U.S. now leads the industrialized world in income inequality and it makes education very difficult in schools that serve our poorest children. Our housing patterns lock students of all social classes into school settings that result in both poor and wealthy students going to school only with students from the same socio-economic class. And that gives us both wonderful public schools, but it also gives us public schools that are very hard in which to teach and learn.
So to help today’s graduates help America – should they end up teaching or managing or providing some other form of assistance for schools that serve the poor – we need to rethink our social programs and policies. If we changed many of the social and economic policies that are not now helping to lift achievement in schools that serve the poor, we could probably do with a lot fewer tests, and less performance pay systems, and less shaming and firing of teachers based on student test scores, and less quick and dirty certification of teachers. It is pretty clear that here in Westchester county, and in New York state, and throughout our nation, we won’t get much better in the schools that serve the poor with new standards, new curricula – a Common Core, in other words – new laptops or ipads, or through school closings, as they continue to do in the little city just south of us.
The best gift we can give to our newly minted educators, many of whom will be working in our public school systems, is a society that gives the parents of the children they teach jobs that pay fair wages and provide basic benefits. That would be the best gift to give our new teachers and administrators.
A brighter future for parents almost always results in kids perceiving a brighter future for themselves. And that makes the very tough job of teaching a whole lot easier. Nothing less than brighter futures for children born into poverty is what we owe these newly minted educators. It will make their jobs so much easier, and they will feel much more successful at the end of their careers.
Please understand, I strongly believe that America should have a diversity of school options. That is good for democracy and it is sensible from a market standpoint to have some competition, to see if anyone in charter schools or private schools can innovate and do a better job than that being done by traditional public schools. But we have learned that teaching is an old profession, though thankfully not the oldest profession, and most of what works well has been discovered already, though I am sure we will see some new wrinkles in instruction coming from all our new technology.
But all educational system are fundamentally about controlling 4 things. Someone, (usually that’s a teacher or a parent or a supervisor), is teaching, showing, telling or yelling something (like how to fix a carburetor, how to solve quadratic equations, or how to color within the lines) to someone else (a student, a child, an employee), in some setting (a classroom, a shop, an office, or on a basketball court).
Four variables: some one, teaching some thing, to someone else, in some setting
There are only four variables for schools and teachers and school administrators to control, so the general public thinks that teaching seems easy. It certainly sounds easy, until you remember that four is exactly the same number of variables that make up our DNA. And just as those four nucleotides result in billions of different people, and great variation even within the same family, those four educational variables result in no two classrooms ever being alike. Class-to-class and year-to-year variations, even in the same schools, end up requiring remarkably different skills to teach and to administer well. Teaching and schooling is hard work because you cannot ever be sure of what you will draw as a class or what the dynamics will be at a school. Although there are identical twins, there are no identical classes and no school settings or school years that are ever like the ones previously experienced.
So each year school administrators and school teachers start anew. Our job is to provide these educators with children who are ready and eager to learn. That should be as true in the schools that serve the poor as it is in the schools that serve the privileged. Of course all children in our nation deserve caring and competent educators, and Manhattanville provides that kind of educator to our schools. But all these educators deserve well-fed, well-loved, and physically healthy children, in order to be successful at providing those children with a high quality educational experience.
So I ask each of you here today to think about the young people your loved ones and friends will be working with, as they graduate and take up various hard-to-master positions in our education system. Do what you can to make sure that these educators you care so much about get the kinds of kid, and the kinds of community, in which they can succeed. If we can give them just these two gifts — healthy kids who come from healthy communities — we will not only make them successful educators, but we are sure to remain one of the preeminent nations of the world.
Endnote. David C. Berliner and I address the myths that threaten America’s public schools in a forthcoming book: Berliner, D. C. & Glass, G. V & Associates (2014) 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education NY: Teachers College Press. Please read it and arm yourself against the false narratives that threaten to turn our nation’s most prized institution into a profit machine for corporate interests.
Gene V Glass
Arizona State University
University of Colorado Boulder
The handover of public schools to private control is a defining feature of President Obama’s Race to the Top. Make no mistake, as the President likes to say, Race to the Top has been a mighty force for privatization. Although there are some charter schools that are managed by dedicated educators, the charter movement is now largely powered by ambition, a passion for control and power, and–yes–greed. In time–if not already–Race to the Top will be recognized as a historic disaster, an abandonment of our nation’s unfilled commitment to equal educational opportunity.
In this article, Paul Buchheit identifies four ways in which privatization perverts education.
First, privatization does not improve education.
Second, the profit motive perverts the goals of education.
Third, for-profit higher education has been an immense disaster.
Fourth, lower-performing children are left behind.
This spring may be the biggest mass protest against standardized testing ever, and school officials are worried, according to Education Week.
Diane Ravitch's blog 