Jersey Jazzman quotes Frank Sinatra and George Carlin to mark Labor Day. Sinatra made more sense than our Harvard-educated pundits.
Sinatra said:
“All I know is that a nation with our standard of living, with our Social Security system, TVA, farm parity, health plans and unemployment insurance can afford to address itself to the cancers of starvation, substandard housing, educational voids and second-class citizenship that still exist in many backsliding areas of our own country. When we’ve cleaned up these blemishes, then we can go out with a clean conscience to see where else in the world we can help. Hunger is inexcusable in a world where grain rots in silos and butter turns rancid while being held for favorable commodity indices. ”
JJ commented:
“That was more than 50 years ago, and what has happened since? We’ve actually gone backwards: a 40-year slump in which the working American has seen his or her wages and benefits decrease, while nearly all of the productivity gains in this country have gone to the very, very wealthiest among us……
“One of the central theses of this blog is that the education “reform” project is largely a distraction designed to keep America’s eyes off our predestined inequity. An entire industry has sprung up, using education policy to conflate the issues of social mobility and inequity, to support the tenets of reforminess. The pundit class, largely not our best-and-brightest, has so little historical perspective and so little command of basics in mathematics and logic that they eat this conflation up like it’s ice cream…..
“Which brings us to the true threat of a progressive education: the only hope the American middle class has at this point is for our nation to foster enough critical thinkers who can see through the blizzard of crap that large swaths of our feckless media spew at us daily. Teachers have the power to cultivate such thinkers — and that may well be why some short-sighted plutocrats are spending large amounts of money to de-professionalize us, and why they are pushing to make our teaching increasingly standardized. Divergent thinking is being replaced by “close reading,” which is great for the ruling classes, because they get to determine what exactly is being read closely.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Divergent thinking is being replaced by “close reading,” which is great for the ruling classes, because they get to determine what exactly is being read closely.”
Gates must have realized this before giving over 900 grants to libraries. He who owns the information….
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/search#q/k=library&contenttype=Grant&sort=rec
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They are discontinuing their support of libraries
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Global-Libraries/Access-to-Learning-Award-ATLA
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I don’t know if you-all saw this:
“This past week, parents of students outside of the EAA have been receiving letters from the EAA. The letters are recruitment letters, trying to bring in more students, but masquerade as official letters informing the parents that their students have been formally assigned to the EAA. Keep in mind that the EAA was created out of the schools with the poorest academic performance in Detroit.”
“The letters shown here, in fact, were sent to a parent in Ferndale, a suburb 12 miles north of downtown Detroit. This parent happens to be Karen Twomey, the secretary of the Ferndale Schools Board of Education and a teacher in Bloomfield Hills. As an informed educator, Twomey was able to spot the deception immediately. Not all parents would have that ability to see these letters for the deception that they are.”
http://www.eclectablog.com/2014/08/breaking-education-achievement-authority-sending-out-deceptive-letters-to-poach-students-from-other-districts.html
The letters look official and they say “confirmation of school assignment”. It’s not true. These kids weren’t “assigned” to the privatized schools.
Is anyone in ed reform going to object to these tactics? Crickets? They can’t get enrollment up in the charters without deceiving people?
Come on. I know lawmakers have relinquished public schools to contractors, but this is ridiculous. Anyone know why we’re paying ed reformers to “run” public schools? Why not just hire an accounting firm to transfer public ed funds to the contractor and call it a day’s
work? We’d at least be able to see the books if we did that.
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Wow Chiara… that is completely hideous! Can legal action be taken on this? Sure should happen!
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They apologized, so it’s no harm no foul.
It’s actually a violation of the terms of their contract with the public school, so I guess someone can sue in a civil proceeding.
It’s Michigan and it’s a charter district. There won’t be any state action. I’d put money on that.
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Here’s more on the EAA’s deceptive seat-filling campaign.
“Families across South Oakland County have been receiving strange notices in the mail saying that their children are to report to EAA-run schools on the first day of class instead of their own. Titled “Confirmation of 2014-2015 School Assignment,” the letters say that students have been selected to be part of the EAA school.
The letters come from the Educational Achievement Authority, which is a state-run school district that was intended to take over “failing” schools and put them under state administration. The notices have come as a surprise to school officials and families alike, and Ferndale Superintendent Blake Prewitt is among those urging families to disregard the misleading notices.”
http://oaklandcounty115.com/2014/08/31/families-in-several-cities-sent-deceptive-school-enrollment-notices-from-eaa/
Not that it matters. Arne Duncan’s best buddy Rick Snyder was out promoting charter schools on Labor Day today. Mr. Right To Work is a big fan of the “working class” on Labor Day in an election year, apparently.
I don’t know if anyone asked him why his EAA is deliberately misleading public school parents. That would be impolite.
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Have you seen this article from the Chicago SunTimes?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/29378381-452/drop-cps-reform-strategy-cps-neighborhood-school-growth-outpaces-charters.html#.VATsFRGYbmS
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Close reading over literature as if it is essential to chose one or the other and to actually MEASURE how much literature a learner is allowed to read in order to label it “second status” are components of the “brave new world” that Huxley wrote about …thinking of the term “bokanofskify”
An excerpt that Coleman probably says his prayers to is taken from a Brave New World:
“Major instruments of social stability…
“Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg…”
“Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!” The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. “You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” He quoted the planetary motto. “Community, Identity, Stability.” Grand words. “If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved…”
Ironic that “ed reform” makes our humanity into a crime these days.
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“Dangerous Teachers”
Teachers are a threat
Because they nurture thinking
Dangerous? You bet!
Sends the shysters slinking.
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except edushyster
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Darn right! Everyone has to have their own, she’s OURS! The only good one.
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In my defense “Sends all but one of the shysters slinking” doesn’t work quite as well.
But, hey it’s only meter (and here inc the US, people don’t even know what that is, right?) and I’ll take that under consideration when I come out with my book
“VAM’s and DAMs of Billyan Errs”
and Common Cores and ed softwares
And standard testing everywheres
I’ve looked at ed that way
But now they only block the fun
Harass and stress-out everyone
So many things I could have done
But DAMs got in my way
I’ve looked at DAMs from both sides now
From lose and lose, but still somehow
It’s DAMdelusions I recall,
I really don’t know DAMs at all
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So sad, but true!
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(Public sector unions might not exist without JFK)
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Interesting to think about the changes since 1964.
Life expectancy at birth is a good deal higher, many fewer poor in the world, schools are prohibited from ignoring students with learning disabilities, the voting rights act yet to be passed.
Chaney, Goodman, and Schewener gunned down in Mississippi in 1964. Nelson Mandela sentenced to life in prison in 1964. Brian De La Beckwith is released because of a hung jury in 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not allow Dr. Ravitch to exercise the basic rights accorded to most who live in the United States.
It is hard for me to see that 1964 was so obviously better than 2014, but I am just an economist.
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Thanks te for once again ignoring the obvious in order to drop your selfish droppings in the punch bowl of the Labor Day party. Your obstinate refusal to see the obvious and to ignore subtlety shoes you are a true economist.
Comparing the state of organized labor 50 years ago to today is invalid because racism existed then. Really? Or were you simply offering an example of the dangers of a lack of critical thinking?
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Chris,
I am pointing out that we have made remarkable progress as a society over the last 50 years. We are better off materially and folks are much less limited by the color of their skin or their gender.
The only thing that was better fifty years ago is that some of the follks here were fifty years younger. I think that colors some of the memories.
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I’m not sure how it’s possible to go back 50 years, and I doubt if most kids would like to live in 1964. I like my gadgets, and I’m sure they do to. Gas was 25 cents a gallon in 1964. More importantly, a Bank of America savings account paid 4% interest, risk free. Imagine that. Now to get that much investment return you have to take risks in the stock market, because a one year cd pays ZERO interest. I highly recommend Joshua Rauh’s discussion with Adam Shapiro about the pension crisis on Fox Business, which can be viewed as an alternative companion history of education funding. In the period of 1977 to 2007 there was a huge growth in the stock market that is unprecedented in history. During that period public pension funds began to invest more in stocks and less in bonds, assuming that this unprecedented growth would go on forever. Currently these funds assume a Madoff 8% growth, and if the fund managers can’t achieve that, then budget cuts to schools make up the difference. Randi Weingarten has tried to blacklist hedge fund managers who don’t believe in the sustainability of db pensions from doing business with teacher pension funds. I would question the wisdom of even investing vast amounts of taxpayer money with these risky alternative investments.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/3097288790001/pension-crisis-solution-shared-pain/#sp=show-clips
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Fox Business? lolololololol
Now there is some good fictional writing!
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