To learn more about Trump’s choice for Secretary of Labor, read what he wrote about how to reduce poverty in California.
In Andy Puzder’s worldview, when government tries to ameliorate poverty, it only makes it worse.
A simple solution: free enterprise, less government regulation, more charter schools, no tenure for teachers.
That’s it, folks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Best Tony Sent by phone
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Thanks, Tony.
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“Charter schools: rah rah rah!, public schools: boo hiss!”
99% of our elected representatives in DC love charter schools and hate labor unions and most of them would probably agree with everything he wrote there.
He’ll fit right in.
Let me know when you find a DC politician who supports PUBLIC schools. They’re so rare they’re almost extinct.
In fact, let me know when you find a DC politician who actually knows a rank and file labor union member PERSONALLY- as a friend or neighbor or family member. I bet there are fewer than ten in Congress who do.
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Representative Mark Takano (D) serving Riverside, California. He is a former public school teacher and a champion for public school students, parents, and teachers. You can bet that he will be vigilant and focused as the Trump administration puts public education in its sights.
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Not that it matters, but is that even remotely true about CA charter schools? Are they better than CA public schools?
Ohio just rejected the California charter school authorization scale as an end run around regulation.
If OHIO is rejecting the CA charter model that doesn’t say good things about CA charter schools. The worst charter operators in Ohio were lobbying for it. They lost but they wanted the CA model so they could continue to open more and more schools with little or no oversight.
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No, what they were trying to copy in Ohio was just the comparative scale part of the California model, while conveniently ditching the absolute scale and the growth part. The charter association was pretty vocal in opposing the misuse of the model.
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This is “hilarious.” Puzder said: In Chief Executive Magazine’s 2014 survey of CEOs’ views on the best and worst states for business, California came in 50th for the 10th year in a row. It’s no surprise that Toyota moved its U.S. headquarters from Torrance to Texas or that even California-based Tesla Motors is locating its planned giant battery factory in Nevada rather than in California. End quote.
Ha, ha, ha. I thought NJ was supposed to be the worst state for business, I thought NJ was the most business unfriendly state in the universe, according to Christie and most of the NJ GOPers. Christie parrots this NJ-is-the-most-business-unfriendly-state practically 24/7 while he’s also bashing the NJEA. The translation of all this phony baloney blather is that they want to cut taxes on the corporations even more than they already have done. G_d forfend that the corporations should be inconvenienced in any way by taxes or regulations. These oligarchs are shameless beyond normal human comprehension. Their greed and shamelessness are on a galactic scale.
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What?
You mean these well-worn solutions, the millions already spent on charter schools and the billions poured into education in California by taxpayers, the Broads, the Waltons, the Gates folks have not made a difference?
Has there been no real improvement gained from the work of education scholars and think tank programs at Stanford or Berkeley or UCLA? What about those CORE Districts working under a waiver from RTT and guidance from the Education Trust West? Haven’t there been some “breakthrough” results from the application of Dr. Carol Dweck’s “mindset theory” and sales of her brainology products?
Sorry for the snark, but the free-market thinking and millions spent in time and effort to change “outcomes” strike me as a perfected case of not listening to teachers on the ground, or parents, or students. I think of Oakland where the Broadie-trained Superintendent from Denver landed for two years before moving cross-country to be Superintendent of the Washington DC schools. What lessons, if any, can be extracted from the Deasy scandal in LA, the Vergara fiasco? I guess there are none.
Free enterprise, less government regulation, more charter schools, no tenure for teachers. Nothing else is needed.
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Thank you, Laura.
I was starting to think I was the only one in the world who noticed UCLA taking Bill Gates bribe money to turn from high level research to low level product development instead. They sent a STUDENT to my district school to train us teachers on “brainology”. (Are we not intellectual enough to say neurology, or has neurological research nothing to do with it in the first place anyway?) Here’s some training-based sarcasm:
Brainology: Teachers are always going around telling everyone how smart they are. That’s because teachers are stupid. Teachers should go around telling people how much grit they must have instead of intelligence in the 21st century. People don’t need intellect. They need grit. And the ability to operate an iPad. That’s Brainology! UCLA fight fight fight!
It was once a great university, you know.
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Thank you. I thought I was the only person who was aware of and concerned about the brainology bit. It is a version of grit, grab your bootstraps and stop giving excuses, but also a branded product line with about $5000 required for an authorized training. The national PR was aided by USDE, a package that pushed for SEL learning, with Dweck and Duckworth among those in the inner circle pushing for federal funds.
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I should note that in SoCal, they call it resilience instead of grit.
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Laura,
Thank you again. Your knowledge on the subject is relieving. My CORE district (thanks a heap, Deasy and Duncan) is entirely Brainology ensconced. I am convinced this issue needs much more attention.
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Sounds like a great pick to me! Finally a cabinet with some people that have some real world experience, know how to lead, run a business, make money, and understands how the unions are political tools that are a boondoggle to tax payers and protect/keep crappy teachers in positions way past their expiration date. Unlike an Obummer cabinet full of people that have never made a payroll, run a janitorial crew and/or spent their careers in the microcosm of academia.
You’ll finally see a group of people that know how to produce, get things done and worry less about whose feelings get a boo boo and achieve results.
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Sure, we need more ENRON, AIG, Lehman Bros., WorldCom, Adelphia, Washington Mutual, IndyMac, etc. geniuses.
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Bush said he would run the government like a business and we know how that tuned out.
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When leaders saying they will run the government like a business actually mean: I will run the country as a deregulated free-for-all and do nothing to stop the massive profiteering.
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Yes. Having a business leader run Michigan has done wonders for my state. (Sarcasm noted.) And running a business and a government are two entirely different things. Businesses have specific audiences and clientele. Government is supposed to serve everyone. This usually does not work out.
Plus, running a business is a very specific skill set. It doesn’t imply that anyone is good at anything else. The mythology of the genius business leader is ridiculous.
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Are you sure, TLo, that you understand what you’re talking about? Would you care, by any chance, to grace us with some evidence to support your thesis, to wit that business leaders alone possess the skills to operate a republican (not the partisan political organization, but the res publica, in the Roman sense) government? As Joe points out above, corporate leaders in the past generation or so have succeeded mostly in looting their companies and shafting their employees. Try to remember that you’re not in a right-wing fake news echo chamber here, but among educated people who have spent entire careers actually thinking, analyzing, and writing about these issues–not just reacting to them. I understand clearly your contempt for intellectuals. Unfortunately, your opinions aren’t facts.
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Free markets exist where there is very little government. Think folks from Michigan trading good flint for shells along the trading paths that came through the heart of Tennessee. Even in the days of the Silk Road, the Merchants were controlled by the people whose land they passed through. There is certainly no,free market today, and any attempt on the part of government to regulate is paltry compared to the dominance of the big businesses.
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1936 Harold Laswell gave a definition that was taught to me in my first political science course in 1971 . Its simplicity is beautiful.
Economics is who gets what . How the products of any society are distributed..
Politics is who decides who gets what . thirty years later my son taking AP economics was given Laswell’s definition .
There are not now, nor have there ever been, nor can there ever be free markets. Somebody will always pick winners and losers. that is the inherent definition of politics,(government) deciding who gets what.
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Do modern free market believers really understand the political effect of those who decide where money is going? Locke suggested that a person acts upon a thing of nature, he makes it his own, gives him ownership, property. Adam Smith thought people who owned things would make good decisions about what to do with their wealth if unimpeeded by Kings. He saw kings as upsetting the natural order of things. Modern free market people seem to think their society will be much better in the absence of government. They echo the sayings of these two like mantras. But to me these are ideas that seem utopian in the extreme.
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What they believe and reality are not necessarily the same. Laswell is not proposing a what if . He is describing the functioning of economics. From the smallest societal unit of the nuclear family to a modern “post industrial ” society.
As for today’s free marketeers many of whom are to be found in our Tech sector . They are simply brilliant they have achieved unfathomable wealth due to the merit of their efforts and abilities.
The Government has had nothing to do with their achievement except for ;
Providing the patent protection that prevented every Tom, Dick and Harry from duplicating and selling their genius and selling it far cheaper.
Free marketeers pushing free trade agreements whose primary function is restricting markets . Protecting “intellectual property” . Restricting communities and even whole Nations from legislating any rules that would enforce the will of their peoples over a global elite and Multinationals Corporations. Yes we are all to be equal and a corporation is just another individual with free speech rights . Let the market decide.
Except that we will expect government to provide the police force that prevents Puzder’s or Trumps or Bezos’s workers or angry consumers of defective drugs and products from exercising their free will and lynching them, ripping their heads from their shoulders which is usually the end result of telling people to “eat cake”. The sole purpose of Police being the protection of wealth(property). A force that has been used in this country from Hay Market Square to Occupy Wall Street very effectively, to maintain our markets free from Government interference!!!!.
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I google earthed the “free market” and it’s located a couple of hundred miles south of the Azores in the Eastern Atlantic
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Diane- I saw you on Democracy now- brilliant! I live in Indiana (hooray for me) and I am completely discussed with our educational system here, especially from the perspective of a mother of two children on the autism spectrum. My older son receives less support, but my younger son has transitioned from the First Steps early intervention services receiving intensive services at a school within our district but not our home school down the street- they for whatever reason have to provide the services at the one elementary school, which happens to be title 1. I was hoping you could help me understand what exactly is going on. Westlake is a special education program that operates in Lake County. They have an office within the district high school but only have “support” teachers at the high school, and a social worker/psychologist. My older son is in Algrebra at the lowest track,in a class with 30 kids, no aids, but the same teacher teaches higher tracks. She does not alter the learning style and my son is still failing the class- now with my little guy he gets ST, OT, and social skills once a week each. He has a room that used to be a sensory resource room for “melt downs” but was eliminated due to cost, and he goes to a reasource class room to do more one on one reading comprehension and math when he is unable to self regulate or falls behind the class. He is extremely smart in ways beyond his years and sadly, I do more home education than he gets through the program. Westlake bills medicaid and we all pay 150 a year- but again,they have cut paraprofessionals and much of what he recieved the first two years k and 1st- I noticed that in the annual report the amount per head is less than the year before-they claim its based on attendance. teachers salaries range 28 to 74 grand a year, and I am really confused as to where the special education funding is coming from- how medicaid is related, and if the voucher and charter school programs are causing school districts like ours to lose special education funding, or ability to provide such services. We are in Lake Central Corporation. I am so confused- again Im in Lake County- NWI- quite populous-and our entire district is serviced by Westlake. What can you tell me? Im sure you are busy- I am just very afraid- and as a sidenote- while we are middle class and not in the worst shape in comparison to many in the county- I worry for areas like Gary,Indiana- I have heard how their Charters have not helped many and so many students that have moved to our district from pooer parts of the county, I volunteer in the classroom and a few kids are glaringly obvious in need of special services and are not even getting them- they are slipping through the cracks right in front of many of our eyes. The teacher seems overwhelmed and its a mess. When you get a chance please explain to me where special ed funding money comes from in Indiana or any info to point me to..thank you!
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Special ed money comes in small part from the federal government. It typically contributes less than 15% of the cost. The rest is state and local funding.
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So, at long last we are here at a no-bullshit moment.
This is the whole game now. One person, the upcoming Secretary of Labor, embodies everything we already knew about what the Trump admin will bring. Full on, no-prisoners assault not only on public education but also unions and anything that smacks of unions. And we don’t even have to mention the upcoming Secretary of Education.
Opt Out can’t help us in this pickle. Randi Weingarten and the approach she personifies can’t help us out of this one either. (What power will she be attaching herself to now?) Academic papers and position pieces won’t make a dent here. And obviously, being right doesn’t mean a thing, no matter how many ways you prove it.
It’s all gone. ALL GONE.
Unless we do everything we were hoping we would never have to do. And do it well….first time.
Organizing, resisting everything, walking out of things, walking in on others, saying no, occupying space, hiring lawyers…..all that. Gotta do it all now. None of us are conditioned for it. So very few have the “grit” for it. The risks are tangible.
That’s the thing we all wanted to never have to say….there are things we now must do that are going to involve risk. Our leaders and ourselves, well, we’ve been secretly hoping we could make it through this wave of privatization and Ed reform without risking anything…..by hoping that the usual political mechanations would inevitably save it all. Well, it won’t. That thinking probably helped get us to this awful moment. Regardless, that’s over. Risk is now a thing we must accept. Risking our daily routines and comfort. Risking our workplace “peace,” risking our jobs even……that’s in front of us now. Only door available. Otherwise the loss of our jobs and all that is a given.
The stakes are actually as high as they have ever been. But now it looks like the showdown is upon us. No idea what our response should look like, but I know we can’t handle this the way we’ve handled the last 8 years.
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I agree with you. Direct action and confrontation is what’s going to be needed. Protesting, marching, position papers, studies won’t mean a damn thing, they just want the money we earn. Therefore, upping the ante to active resistance is the next step which will involve risking A LOT. Do we mean this? Or are we collectively too fat and happy with our lot that we don’t want to rock the boat and therefore will make the best of the worst? I don’t know about you but the only Opt-Out that’s going to happen is opting out of dispossession, therefore, I chose the former. If the writing is on the wall and our dispossession is inevitable, what have we got to lose?
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I favor acting out, open resistance, refusal. Rock the boat.
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I agree 100% . I have argued in the past that Union leaders were hesitant to put it all on the line knowing that members did not have the stomach to put it on the line.
It would seem that we are heading with Trump to a place the country has not been in a hundred years . The reason we have not been there, was an existential threat to the oligarchy existed internally and externally during Great depression. the Roosevelt administration
chose wisely.
It is important to understand that labor was not winning that war in the 1920s. The UMW went from 100,000 to 10,000 members .
The most violent battle fought since the Civil war was fought in the hills of West Virginia. It will not be won with violence nor will it be won by Workers in individual industries.
So what labor has to do is assemble a broad coalition.Trumka proposed that in 2012 when he suggested giving voting positions in the AFL CIO to other organizations ie the Sierra club and the NAACP Push the democrats aside and become the party that abandoned the real majority of Americans. That position did not go over well at the time . The dynamics have now change
As a start Trump and the Republicans have to be put on notice that they lost this election and are heading to an unwinnable situation one that becomes more precarious year by year. One that when they are unable to deliver for those white working class voters whose interests are diametrically opposed to the oligarchy, will come to a quick end .
I plan on being in Washington on the 21st of January Lets put millions in the streets. Three Republican Senators break ranks and and Trump can be neutralized.
On a side note, I heard Chris Mathews say that it was good the republicans would dump the filler buster and get things done.
Yup dump it, because when you are out of office we will expand the court to negate your picks. Install medicare for all .repeal ^Taft Hartley and Landrum-Griffin empowering Unions again and restore the tax rate to 1950s levels. Nationalize all drug research and shorten all patent protection. Declare Public Schools through the University our national priority making education through graduate degrees a birth right for all who were qualified. . I am betting that those reforms would generate another 5 Term presidency like the last time. We had progressive Presidents
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If civil disobedience starts in cities from social justice groups like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter, parent groups, unions, other education groups should join and support. Even the soccer moms from the burbs should support. If privatization occurs in cities, it will spread like the plague to the suburbs. The best protest is one in which there is a united front.
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Agreed
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Ed reform article number 5, 340 on Trump that completely and utterly ignores public schools:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2016-12-05/donald-trump-doesnt-have-to-alienate-democrats-over-school-choice?src=usn_tw&utm_content=buffer7f1a2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
How amazing it is that we are hiring a huge group of public employees in DC who have ZERO interest in PUBLIC schools. 90% of schools. Omitted from ANY discussion of the Trump Administration.
here’s your homework assignment Try to find an article written by an ed reformer that mentions public schools in ANY positive way outside how we have to test public school students. You will not find one.
Trump could close down every public school in the country and as long as he meets the litmus test on “choice” the national ed reform “movement” would roll right along as if nothing of value was lost. They might not notice at all until “testing season” came and they weren’t receiving “the data”.
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I hate to break it to people but DC Democrats have already rolled over on public education and the Trump Administration hasn’t even launched the attack.
They’re pre-surrendering. As long as he vastly expands charters they’ll trade away public schools in a heartbeat. The marketing campaign is well underway. They’re negotiating with themselves. It’s only been a month and they’re already embracing vouchers and hedging on for-profit charters.
It may not matter. DC is increasingly irrelevant to public schools anyway. If public schools survive this it won’t be because of Senators and House members or federal agencies.
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Here’s another one. It’s “about” DeVos and public education but it omits any mention of public schools:
http://educationnext.org/betsy-devos-and-charter-school-regulation-a-view-from-michigan/
The only schools in the United States are charter schools and private schools, if you read ed reformers.
It’s like an alternate universe. They simply don’t care what Trump or DeVos do to or for public schools. Not an area of interest, clearly. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Trump said “vouchers” and every public school in the country disappeared.
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This administration-to-be has gone from a terrible joke to a screwed up frat prank. This assemblage of inexperienced elites will self-destruct within 6 months, plain and simple.
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Here is my own experience that I would like to share.
On my second successful journey by wooden boat, I was 7 days and 8 nights without food or water from day 4 to 8.
I was well prepared by practicing no food for 24 hours, but plenty of water to drink before I escaped by wooden boat. This did not prepare me well enough to be in a dire situation of 4 days without food and water.
I felt dizzy and floating.
In the same vein, please consciously remind ourselves that all resistances need to have well backup plan of SUFFICIENT brain power (=leadership), resources in money (food, transportation and communication) and strong bond (= unity by put differences away).
This will help us to STAY TOGETHER until to achieve our survival, NOT TO BE DIZZY AND FLOATING. Back2basic
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