Archives for the month of: February, 2017
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Farewell, EduShyster, and Good Luck in the Next Stage of Your Career

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
23

I received an announcement from Jennifer Berkshire, aka EduShyster, that she is changing the name of her blog. It seemed she got too many complaints that the word “shyster” has anti-Semitic overtones, and in this new era, where so much hatefulness has been let loose into the climate, she decided to drop the name.

http://haveyouheardblog.com/why-im-saying-farewell-to-edushyster/

In the future, the blog will be Have You Heard, and we can be sure that it will be as informed and as witty as in the past.

I can’t help but add, as a Jew, that I was never offended by the name of the blog and always enlightened by what I read. Keep writing, Jennifer, under any name or title you want. There are many who love you and are grateful for your humor and smarts.

Categories Education Reform, Humor

Help NPE Continue the Fight for Our Students, Our Teachers, Our Public Schools: We Won’t Back Down

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
5

Please take the time to read this letter from Carol Burris, the CEO of the Network for Public Education and the NPE Action Fund.

Carol describes NPE’s plans to continue the struggle for our public schools.

We know what the DeVos agenda is, and we know she will tout the failed remedies of corporate reform.

Make no mistake: corporate reform is the status quo! It has had the unrelenting support of the U.S. Department of Education since 2001. It has the support of a long list of billionaires and foundations. Federal policy from NCLB TO Race to the Top to ESSA is the status quo. It is policy built on the assumption that schools will get better if the state threatens teachers and principals with punishments and rewards. Many schools have been stigmatized and closed based on false assumptions. Many educators have unfairly been terminated based on flawed evaluation methods.

We want to create a strong and powerful grassroots network of defenders of public education. We want to help you connect with allies in your state, your district, your hometown.

We now have more than 300,000 members, ready to join in our crusade. Be strong and join with us. (“Somewhere beyond the barricades, is there a world you’d like to see?” Les Miserables). Is there a different, better kind of school you’d like to see? We can dream it. We can do it. But first we must survive the next four years.

Diane

Categories Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Real Education, Resistance

The Onion Reveals Betsy DeVos’ Plans to Shake Up Dept of Education

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
18

The Onion is usually first with the news. Judge for yourself whether it’s real or fake.

At her first meeting with Department of Education staff, she rolled out her ambitious plans.

http://www.theonion.com/infographic/how-devos-plans-change-department-education-55259

Here are the first major initiatives. Open the link to read the rest of the plan.

“Modify Title IX to allow invisible hand of the market to sort out any student rape cases that may arise

“Identify at-risk students and do nothing whatsoever

“Ensure that all students, regardless of background, receive the opportunity to bask in the shining light of Christ

“Let low-income parents choose which one of their children gets to go to school.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Humor

UTLA Writes a Letter to Eli Broad about Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
12

The United Teachers of Los Angeles sent this letter to billionaire Eli Broad. Broad has been a major funder of privately managed charter schools in Los Angeles, Detroit, and other districts around the nation. He currently is promoting a $450 million plan to put half of all students in Los Angeles in charter schools. He also donates large sums to candidates who advocate the replacement of public schools with charter schools.

A few days before the vote to confirm Betsy DeVos, Broad announced that he opposed her.

UTLA wrote to Eli Broad:

Dear Mr. Broad:

UTLA and public education advocates, parents, students and community members have been fighting against Betsy DeVos’ nomination as Secretary of Education months before your letter, dated Feb. 1, was sent to all US Senators, in which you asked them to vote against her confirmation, which just took place today.

You were late to that struggle. We are not surprised.

If you are, according to your letter, “a believer in high-quality public schools and strong accountability for ALL public schools, including traditional and charter,” then you can do something right now: Immediately withdraw your financial support for the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

CCSA is a lobbying arm of the charter school industry that has amassed more than $170 million to fight the very existence of our neighborhood public schools.

Instead of continuing to fund CCSA, you should take responsibility for the damage you have caused, through your funding, to the school systems in California, Detroit, and New Orleans. In the latter two places, you worked hand-in-hand with Betsy DeVos.

To repair the damage, send your generous donations with no strings attached to the democratically elected school boards in California, especially the Los Angeles School Board, as well as schools in New Orleans and Detroit. School boards and school communities will invest this money appropriately.

In your letter, you say you “have never met Mrs. DeVos” and you have “serious concerns about her support of unregulated charter schools and vouchers as well as the potential conflicts of interests she might bring to the job.”

Forgive us as we take a moment to put this statement in context.

Last year, as one of the largest donors to CCSA, you helped thwart common-sense legislation like SB 322, which would have protected charter school students from unfair expulsions. You, through donations to CCSA, also intensely lobbied against AB 709, an accountability and transparency bill, which would have required that charter schools comply with the same state laws governing open meetings, open records and conflict of interest that traditional public schools do.

You and DeVos teamed up to fund legislative races in Louisiana, a state that, post-Hurricane Katrina, became the poster child for unregulated charter growth and the systematic destruction of the civic institution of public education.

Since 2008, you gave $212,500 to DeVos’ lobbying organization founded and chaired by her called “Alliance for School Choice.” It is a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm that, similar to CCSA, undermines public education and pushes for expansion of unregulated charter schools and school vouchers.

You and DeVos both funded the Educational Achievement Authority in Michigan, which oversaw the mass charter-ization and de-unionization of Detroit public schools, resulting in a wasteland rife with student equity and access violations, recently documented in a front page story in the New York Times.

While you claim to have never met her before, you have worked with her on multiple fronts, in multiple cities.

In 2016, with a donation of $2 million to CCSA Advocates, you were the most generous among California’s
elite handful of billionaires, including the Walton family of Walmart, Reed Hastings of Netflix and Doris Fisher of Gap, Inc. Your friend and former Los Angeles mayor Richard J. Riordan donated $50,000 to CCSA. He has also given
$1 million in the school board district race against School Board President Steve Zimmer.

You have so much money, maybe there is confusion around what legislation and which candidates your
vast wealth is actually fighting or supporting.

Because of your torrential financial support, last year CCSA far surpassed all other funders in state political races, including groups backed by the energy industry and real estate developers.

You and members of your billionaire club gave more than $27 million to various PACs like the Parent Teacher Alliance (PTA), the title of which is sneaky and confusing to parents. PTA has amassed $8 million this year alone. EdVoice amassed another $9 million. You gave more than $1.5 million to both of these PACs.

These independent expenditures help fund groups like Speak UP, Parent Revolution and Great Public Schools Now, as well as countless CCSA-backed candidates, who then work to undermine public education on your behalf.

When DeVos was first nominated, on Nov. 23, CCSA released a statement with high praise for Trump’s pick, and even said “Mrs. DeVos has long demonstrated a commitment to providing families with improved public school options and we look forward to working with the administration on proposals allowing all students in California to access their right to a high quality public education.”

CCSA and Great Public Schools Now have since backed off their enthusiastic support for DeVos,sensing it would be unpopular. We hope you have a deeper reason behind sending out your letter to the Senate, and that it will signal a shift in your financial support.

In your letter, you say DeVos is “unprepared and unqualified for the position.” You further say that we must have someone “who believes in public education and the need to keep public schools public.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Our public schools are in great need, many of them suffering from the years of unrelenting attacks from people like you.

Make amends. Join parents, students, educators and community members in our fight to save public education.

Immediately suspend your financial support of CCSA. Give your generous donations with no strings attached to public schools in California, Detroit, and New Orleans, and leave the educational decisions to our elected school boards and local stakeholders, who — unlike billionaires — are truly accountable to our communities.

Sincerely,

UTLA President
Alex Caputo-Pearl

Cc:
United States
Senators

—
Anna Bakalis

UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net
http://www.UTLA.net

Categories Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, Supporting public schools

When Trump Quoted Thomas Jefferson….

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
11

Trump recently quoted Thomas Jefferson to sustain Trump’s campaign against the press, which he has called “The enemy of the American people.”

Trump certainly didn’t read Jefferson, but someone on his staff found this quote for him, to make it appear that Jefferson opposed a free press.

“When Thomas Jefferson said ‘nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself,’ he said, ‘becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.’ That was June 14 — my birthday — 1807.”

The Washington Post has started a regular column to fact check Trump’s claims, and the fact checker pointed out:

Trump selectively quotes from Jefferson here, who for most of his life was a fierce defender of the need for a free press. When Jefferson wrote to 17-year-old John Novell, urging him to avoid a career in journalism, he was embittered by reports spread by his political opponents that he had slept with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves. Today, most historians now believe she was the mother of six of his children.

This quote from Thomas Jefferson shows his fierce dedication to a free press and literacy:

Paris Jan. 16. 1787.

the basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. but I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

Based on his attacks on the press, we can safely assume that Trump would prefer the former.

Categories Democracy, Freedom of the Press

The Dirty Tricks of California’s Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
5

The Los Angeles Times endorsed two strong supporters of charter schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District board, both favored by the California Charter School Association. The rationale was simplistic: new voices are needed.This is bizarre. It doesn’t matter whether a voice is old or new. What matters most is what the voice is saying. Will a new board try to turn Los Angeles into New Orleans? Will it be Eli Broad’s puppet? His voice is the oldest of all. It would be truly refreshing if the LA Times told him to keep his hands off the public schools since all of his experiments have failed (e.g., Michigan’s Education Achievement District). Why don’t they tell him to stick to art and medical research and stop meddling in the schools?

However, the Times published an article by columnist Steve Lopez that offers a clear-eyed analysis of the CCSA’s dirty tricks. The CCSA and its billionaire buddies have decided that it is time to take out Steve Zimmer, chair of the LAUSD school board. They are raising millions of dollars to push him out, even though he has not been hostile to charters. But the billionaires don’t want a fair-minded board president who has classroom experience (Zimmer came into education through Teach for America but remained a teacher for 17 years). The last time they tried to beat him, they outspent him 5-1, but he prevailed. His winning issue apparently was the $1 million from former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, which gave the appearance that a New Yorker was trying to buy control of the LA schools. So this time the $1 million came from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan.

So here’s the dirty trick. CCSA created a phony group called LA Students for Change to demand Zimmer’s ouster. Once again, like Families for Excellent Schools in New York City, which is composed of billionaire families who will never see the inside of a public school, the charter industry finds it necessary to deceive voters. Worse, CCSA printed up flyers for their student-props, blaming Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 Billion iPad fiasco.

How comical is that? The embarrassing iPad scandal caused Deasy to resign, with a cloud over his head. Deasy now works for Eli Broad. Broad is the city’s charter kingpin and a major financier of CCSA. and now CCSA’s student group is pinning Deasy’s mess on Zimmer.

I salute the Los Angeles Times for recognizing that it’s time for Monica Garcia, the board’s most fervent charter advocate, to go. The Times endorses Lisa Alva, a classroom teacher who would be a valuable addition to the board. She and Carl Petersen are running against Garcia, and here’s hoping that they pull enough votes to force her into a run-off and defeat her.

Los Angeles should have a great public school in every neighborhood. That won’t happen as long as charters continue to drain away the students they want and drain away resources, leaving LAUSD with the students most expensive to educate and less money to meet their needs.

The district needs that vision, not just new voices and faces for the sake of novelty.

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Trump Claims Media Doesn’t Cover Terrorist Attacks: New York Times Responds

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
21

More alternate facts from Trump. He accused the media of not reporting terror attacks. To support his claim, the White House released a list of terror attacks that allegedly had been ignored or under-reported.

The New York Times responded by fact-checking the White House list.

What was interesting was that the White House list did not include terrorist attacks on Muslims. Nor did it include terrorist attacks by white supremacists, like the Charleston Massacre of nine African Americans by Dylan Roof.

Another ironic angle to this story: the Times recalled that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had criticized the media for paying attention to terrorists, thereby giving them the publicity they sought.

Categories Education Reform, Lies, Media, Trump

North Carolina: Judges Put a Temporary Halt to Legislative Coup

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
6

If you recall, the Tea Party legislature in North Carolina was so angry that he Republican Governor Pat McCrory was narrowly defeated that they called a special session after the election to strip the new Governor, Roy Cooper, of many of his powers. This brazen act was criticized nationally as a coup, a power grab.

Governor Cooper sued, and a three-judge panel put a temporary hold on the new laws.

“The judges’ order blocks the state Senate from enforcing the cabinet confirmations law, at least until Friday, when another hearing the case is scheduled. A full trial on the case is expected to be held in March.

“The senators, you see, were holding confirmation hearings on one of Cooper’s cabinet appointees, even though the law authorizing a legislative role in cabinet appointments was being challenged in the courts.”

We will know soon enough if the party controlling the legislature can remove the governor’s powers in an act of pure vindictiveness.

Categories North Carolina

Sean Spicer Cites the Atlanta Terrorist Attack to Justify Immigration Ban–But It Never Happened

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
42

Sean Spicer has referred to terrorist attacks in Boston, San Bernadino, and Atlanta as justification for Trump’s ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority nations. He has mentioned them at least three times.

Do you remember the Atlanta terrorist attack? Neither do I. Neither does the Atlanta police.

There was a bombing carried out by a rightwing radical named Eric Rudolph at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. A year later, a lesbian nightclub was bombed. No one ever said these were the work of Islamic radicals.

What is it with these people? What websites do they read?

Maybe they are trying to create a new line of work for researchers as fact-checkers. A job-creation program. Trump can claim credit for expanding the employment rolls.

Categories Fake News

Elizabeth Warren Silenced While Trying to Read a Letter by Coretta Scott King on Senate Floor

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
27

During the debate about the nomination of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions for Attorney General, Elizabeth Warren began reading a letter from Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., written many years before, opposing his nomination for a federal judgeship. Senator a Mitch McConnell told her to stop, told her she was impugning the integrity of a fellow senator, then told her to sit down and stop reading. Like a very bad little girl, she was silenced. Four other senators (male) were then allowed to read the controversial letter without reprimand. Hey, it is a man’s world.

Here is the letter.

Warren was not permitted to speak in the debate after her reprimand. But as she was silenced, the New York Times said, she got a very large megaphone.

Sessions was just confirmed. All eyes will be on him to see if he enforces civil rights laws.

Categories Education Reform
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