In rural communities across America, the public school is the hub of the community.
Destroy it with school choice, and you destroy the community.
Archives for the month of: February, 2017
http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/02/17/69091/pta-asks-parent-teacher-alliance-a-charter-school/
We are constantly told that charter schools are a huge hit with parents, but the California Charter School Association apparently feels it must deceive parents.
In the current Los Angeles school board election, the CCSA created a group called the “Parent-Teacher Alliance” to campaign for pro-charter candidates. Sounds suspiciously like the nonpartisan PTA.
Now the National Parent teacher Association is suing the “Parent Teacher Alliance” to demand that they stop using a name so similar to their own.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/02/17/69091/pta-asks-parent-teacher-alliance-a-charter-school/
“In the midst of a contentious race for Los Angeles Unified School Board, some voters have gotten knocks at their door from pro-charter school canvassers introducing themselves as “volunteers with the Parent Teacher Alliance.”
“They’re not volunteers for the well-known parent-run school fundraising organization, but for a group funded by the political affiliate of the California Charter Schools Association. The Parent Teacher Alliance has already spent $550,000 on advertising, phone banking and door-knocking in hopes of influencing the L.A. Unified race.
“Leaders of the California Parent Teacher Association – the aforementioned parent-run school fundraising organization – want them to find another name.
“This week, leaders of the National Parent Teacher Association sent a cease-and-desist letter to the charter association’s political arm, CCSA Advocates, saying the use of “Parent Teacher Alliance” in political advertising is muddying the PTA’s non-partisan brand.
“The letter accuses CCSA Advocates of “false advertising and deceptive practices,” according to a written statement from National PTA president Laura Bay.
“It’s the second time the Parent Teacher Association has made such a request.
“In the 2016 statewide primary elections, the Parent Teacher Alliance PAC and other pro-charter groups were huge sources of outside spending in legislative races. After the June vote, leaders of the National Parent Teacher Association sent their first cease-and-desist letter to CCSA, noting the national group holds trademarks on both their name and the “PTA” acronym.”
Why deceive voters?
When Republican leaders like Jason Chaffetz encounter a crowd of 1,000 angry constituents in his home district in Utah, that’s a sign that the American people say NO to Trump’s authoritarian rule.
The people in Utah and elsewhere are, knowingly or not, taking the advice of The Indivisibles, a group of former Congressional staffers who explained how to conduct resistance.
https://www.indivisibleguide.com
“Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was confronted by angry crowds at a town hall in Salt Lake City on Thursday, over what they saw as his failure to properly investigate President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interests, in another showing of a growing resistance to the new administration.
“Almost 1,000 constituents were gathered inside the Brighton High School auditorium, many booing and shouting, “Do your job!” at Chaffetz, who is chair of the House Oversight Committee, as he claimed that presidents are exempt from conflict of interest laws. At another point, when Chaffetz said he wanted to get rid of Trump’s recently-confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—indeed, he wants to eliminate the Education Department as a whole—an audience member shouted, “We want to get rid of you!”
“Outside, another large crowd shut out of the proceedings despite available seats chanted “vote him out,” and “Chaffetz is a coward.” At least one woman was arrested.
“Chaffetz ultimately left 40 minutes early and refused to take questions from the press.
“Republican lawmakers are increasingly facing protests at town halls and other events, as communities have been taking up the call of numerous resistance factions that formed after the election—with some inspired by the Indivisible Guide, a manual written by former congressional staffers that helps activists organize at the local level using the same tactics that Tea Party conservatives used successfully against former President Barack Obama.”
If you have a Republican Congresdmember, go to the town hall meeting, if they dare hold them. Ask questions. Speak up.
This is what democracy looks like!
Here is a terrific post by Steven Singer, documenting what the Founding Fathers said about education.
There was no public education when they wrote the Constitution. There was private education, Dame schools, church schools, and large numbers of children who were not educated at all. Some states funded charter schools, which were private academies for wealthy children. In the early nineteenth century, not much had changed. It was a great step forward when real reformers like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard began a national campaign to persuade states to take responsibility for creating public school systems, tax-supported and staffed by qualified teachers.
The curious thing about today’s reformers is they want to return us to the olden days, with the public paying for religious schools and private schools, subsidized by taxpayers.
Singer writes:
“One of the founding principles of the United States is public education.
“We fought a bloody revolution against England for many reasons, but chief among them was to create a society where all people could be educated.
“Certainly we had disagreements about who counted as a person. Women? Probably not. Black people? Doubtful. But the ideal of providing a quality education for all was a central part of our fledgling Democracy regardless of how well we actually lived up to it.
“In fact, without it, our system of self-government just wouldn’t work. A functioning Democracy, it was thought, couldn’t exist in a nation where the common person was ignorant. We needed everyone to be knowledgeable and enlightened.
“That’s why we have public schools – so that an educated citizenry will lead to a good government.
“Our founders didn’t want a system of private schools each teaching students various things about the world coloring their minds with religious dogma. They didn’t want a system of schools run like businesses that were only concerned with pumping out students to be good cogs in the machinery of the marketplace.
“No. They wanted one public system created for the good of all, paid for at public expense, and democratically governed by the taxpayers, themselves.
“Don’t believe me?
“Just look at what the founders, themselves, had to say about it.
“More than any other fathers of the Revolution, Thomas Jefferson preached the Gospel of education and its necessity for free governance.
“As he wrote in a letter to Dr. Price (1789), “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”
“He expanded on it in a letter to C. Yancy (1816), “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
“James Madison agreed. As the author of the Second Amendment, he is often credited with giving gun rights primary importance. However, he clearly thought education similarly indispensable. In a letter to W. T. Barry (1822), he wrote:
“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
Here is my favorite quote, which captures precisely what the Founders dreamed:
John Adams wrote:
“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”
Please open the post and read the links.
Thanks to reader Cathere Blanche King for finding the link to my appearance on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365959312/
Tavis is a terrific interviewer, very smart, well-informed, and it was a great pleasure to talk to him. We taped the show on February 13, and it was released on February 17.
Three credentialed professors of psychiatry wonder about Trump’s mental health.
They wrote a letter to President Obama during the transition.
Nothing was done. Nothing in our Constitution prepared us for this bizarre situation.
The authors of the letter are:
Judith Herman, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Nanette Gartrell, M.D.
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
University of California, San Francisco (1988-2011)
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School (1983-87)
Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Community Health Systems
University of California, San Francisco (2005-2013)
They wrote:
“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM – 5, Cluster B) for “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” by The American Psychiatric Association (APA)
“Here, according to The APA, are the 9 criteria for “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”. If an individual has 5 out of the 9 they have a confirmed diagnosis of this illness. Many individuals have “traits” of narcissism but only about 1% of the population has clinical NPD.
“Summary : A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
3. Believe that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement
6. Is interpersonally exploitative
7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.”
I am not a credentialed psychiatrist. The definition that sounded best to me was “malignant narcissism.”
John Oliver returns with a searing and bitingly funny review of Trump’s tenuous grip on reality.
Where does Trump get his news? Oliver explains it.
How do you distinguish between facts and alternative facts? Oliver explains.
There is a deeply serious side to all this. When Trump gets his news from a TV talk show host who believes the Sandy Hook Massacre was a staged fraud, the nation is in deep trouble. Not funny.
Peter Greene has an important message for Betsy DeVos. DeVos said that those who oppose her are afraid of change. Greene says, “Au Contraire!”
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke today to a gathering of Magnet School folks, and opened up by suggesting that “some people” are “hostile” to change.
Greene writes:
“I just want to be clear. I am not hostile to change. In fact, there are some changes that I would love to see.
“I would love to see a change in the rhetoric about failing schools. Instead of declaring that we will “rescue” students from failing schools and offering lifeboats for a handful of students, I’d like to change to a declaration that where we find struggling and failing schools, we will get them the support and resources that they need to become great.
“I would love to see a change in how we approach the communities where those schools are located. Instead of pushing local leaders aside so that outsiders who “know what’s best” for them can swoop in and impose decisions for them instead of letting them have control of their own community.
“I would love to see a change in how teachers are treated. Instead of trying to bust their unions, smother their pay, ignore their voices , and treat them as easily-replaced widgets, I would like to see teacher voices elevated, listened to, respected, and given the support and resources that would lift them up. I would like to see them treated as part of the solution instead of the source of all problems.
“I would love to see a change in how we discuss race and poverty, treating them as neither destiny nor unimportant nothings.
“I would love to see a change in how we treat public education. I would love to see public education treated like a sacred trust and not a business opportunity. I would love to see us pursue a promise to educate all children– not just the few that we deem worthy or profitable or best reached by a sensible business plan. Every child.
“I would love to see a change in the status quo. Because at this point, the status quo is a public education system that is being smothered and dismantled by people who lack expertise in education and belief in the promise of public education. The education “establishment” has been pushed out and replaced by well-meaning amateurs, profiteers, scam artists, and people who have no desire to maintain the institution that has been the foundation of a robust and vibrant democracy. Reformsters are the status quo, and that is a status quo I would love to change, because they have had their shot, and all of their promises have proven to be at best empty and at worst toxic.
“I would love to see us change from test-centered schools, data-centered schools, and revenue-centered schools to schools that are student-centered, that steer by the children at their center.
“And all of that is because I welcome the change that I have always welcomed, built for, worked for– which is the change of young humans into grown, fully-realized, awesome, grown, valuable, living, breathing, completely individual and fully capable adults, the change of each child from an unsure rough draft into the version of their own best self.
“No, Secretary. I am not hostile to change at all. I embrace it, welcome it, hope for it and work for it every day. There are many of us out here, and if you imagine we are hostile to change, that is one more thing about public education that you do not understand.”
Emma Brown of the Washington Post wrote about the radical rightwing evangelical agenda for America’s schools. A little-known but elite evangelical group called the Center for National Policy laid out the plans. (Peter Greene wrote about this scary little manifesto a few days ago, but his circulation is not near that of the Washington Post.) Members of the Center for National Policy represent the “who’s who” of the Christian Right.
It begins:
“A policy manifesto from an influential conservative group with ties to the Trump administration, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, urges the dismantling of the Education Department and bringing God into American classrooms.
“The five-page document produced by the Council for National Policy calls for a “restoration of education in America” that would minimize the federal role, promote religious schools and home schooling and enshrine “historic Judeo-Christian principles” as a basis for instruction.
“Names of the council’s members are closely held. But the Southern Poverty Law Center published a 2014 membership directory showing that Stephen K. Bannon — now chief White House strategist for President Trump — was a member and that Kellyanne Conway — now counselor to the president — served on the council’s executive committee.
“DeVos was not listed as a member, but her mother, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, was named on the council’s board of governors. Her father-in-law, Amway founder Richard DeVos Sr., twice served as president, most recently from 1990 to 1993. And she and her husband have given money to the council as recently as 2007 through their family foundation, according to federal tax records.”
Apparently this group never heard of “separation of church and state.” If they did, they oppose it.
An employee at North Carolina’s largest voucher-receiving school was charged with the theft of $400,000 in taxpayer money.
He discovered how to make money in education: Steal it.
Lindsay Wagner writes:
“The athletic director of a private religious school that has received the most publicly-funded school vouchers in the state of North Carolina was arrested this week on charges of embezzling from the school nearly $400,000 in public tax dollars, the Fayetteville Observer reports.
“Heath Curtis Vandevender is charged with embezzling $388,422 between Jan. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2015, from Truth Outreach Center Inc., located in Fayetteville. Trinity Christian School, which has received nearly $1 million in publicly-funded school vouchers since 2014, is under the Truth Outreach Center’s umbrella, according to the Fayetteville Observer.
“The funds that Vandevender is accused of embezzling over a seven year period are allegedly taken from employee withholding tax money that was to go to the N.C. Department of Revenue.
“Vandevender “aided and abetted the corporation to embezzle, misapply, and convert to its own use $388,422.68 in North Carolina Withholding Tax,” according to the Department of Revenue’s press release.
“It’s unknown whether or not federal tax funds that the organization is supposed to withhold from employee paychecks and submit to the federal government were also misappropriated.”
Wagner attempted to get a copy of the school’s financial audits but discovered that the law requires audits but does not require that audits be made public.
Sweet deal. But not for taxpayers.
Hope Betsy DeVos goes to visit Trinity Christian to show the nation how vouchers are working out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 