Kellyanne Conway told the CPAC meeting of uber-conservatives that she was not a feminist because feminists are anti-male and support abortion.
Merrimam-Webster took the unusual step of tweeting out the correct definition of feminism.
Archives for the month of: March, 2017
Eva Moskowitz has rented the Rockefeller Center Radio City Music Hall for her charter chain’s annual test-prep rally.
The charter network’s dance team will perform, school officials will present awards to students for academic excellence and Moskowitz will deliver a keynote speech.
Eva Moskowitz photo angers protesters outside her home
Moskowitz and Success Academy grabbed headlines in 2016 when the network purchased ground-floor classroom space in a luxury Midtown tower for nearly $68 million.
Success Academy reported $49 million in net assets in 2014 and received at least $35 million from hedge fund billionaires in 2016.
The privately run, publicly funded charter network operates 41 city schools with three more set to open this year.
Two years ago, the Success Academy charter chain spent $734,000 on a pep rally in Albany to seek more public funding for their well-funded schools.
At that time, Politico reported:
Success and Families for Excellent Schools, the pro-charter group that officially organized the rallies, have denied requests to disclose its spending on the events, but financial documents obtained by POLITICO New York indicate the network spent at least $734,000 on the 2015 rally.
The spending included $71,900 for the beanies and $62,795 for the T-shirts, according to receipts submitted to Success’s board of directors.
“T-shirts are a critical part of large-scale events,” said one receipt. “They help get the event’s message across, demonstrate mass participation, and provide the primary visual that captures the public’s attention.”
The network also spent $539,923 on busing and $59,375 on lunches for the rally.
The Albany rally represented just a small fraction of Success’s total spending on political advocacy and its public image, according to several internal financial documents.
Success Academy is such a financial powerhouse that one has to wonder why it is funded with public money when it can blow away millions of fabulous rentals and T-shirts and beanies. Real public schools need money for basics. They can’t afford to rent Radio City Music Hall or spend $71,900 on beanies.
Peter Dreier describes the full assault on Steve Zimmer by the plutocrats. They want control of the Los Angeles school district, and he is in their way. What is their goal? Privatization and profit.
Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system and Steve Zimmer, a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hired Nick Melvoin to get rid of him. No, he’s not a hired assassin like the kind on The Sopranos. He’s a lawyer who the billionaires picked to defeat Zimmer.
As a result, the race for the District 4 seat — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — is ground zero in this battle over the corporate take-over of public education. The outcome of next Tuesday’s (March 7) election has national implications in terms of the billionaires’ battle to reconstruct public education in the corporate mold.
The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education). They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.
Read more to learn their names. They will be familiar to you.
It seems every school board race in Los Angeles is a struggle for the existence of public education.
That is because Eli Broad and his billionaire friends pour millions of dollars into local school board races (and Eli is one of the few billionaires who actually lives in Los Angeles) to try to control it.
Why do they want to control it? None of them has a child in the system. They despise public schools and they want to turn Los Angeles into a charter school demonstration district. It is all about power and money. No matter how many scandals they are in charter schools in Los Angeles or in California, or how many charter leaders are arrested, or how much money is stolen or misappropriated, the charter school advocates won’t give up. They refuse to devote their energy and money to rebuilding the Los Angeles public school system.
Despite Eli Broad’s last-minute disavowal of Betsy DeVos, don’t be fooled. He is thrilled to see a like-minded reformer in charge of the U.S. Department of Education. After all, he is used to it. He was best buddies with Arne Duncan and John King. It wouldn’t do to have someone in the federal Department who actually cared about public schools.
The Network for Public Education Action Fund hopes you will vote for pro-public school candidates next Tuesday.
In District 2, one of the most vociferous advocates of privatization is Monica Garcia. We urge you to vote either for Lisa Alva (teacher) or Carl Petersen (parent) so that Garcia is forced into a runoff.
NPE Action Fund did not make an endorsement in the race for school board chair.
I personally endorsed Steve Zimmer because I know him and believe that he will be far better than any of his challengers. Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, and Michael Bloomberg have bundled a large amount of money to defeat Steve, and that’s reason enough to know that he want him gone. He has tried to be reasonable but they don’t want anyone reasonable. They want a puppet.
I urge you to vote in District 2 for either Alva or Petersen.
And to vote for Steve Zimmer, if you live in his district.
Vouchers died in the Oklahoma legislature, for now. The sponsor of voucher legislation pulled the bill, saying he didn’t want it to squeak through. Probably, he didn’t have the votes.
No reference was made, apparently, to the research showing that vouchers don’t improve academic performance and often depress it.
“A divisive school-choice proposal that would create state-funded education savings accounts allowing students to attend private schools is off the legislative agenda, at least for now.
“Sen. Rob Standridge, R-Norman, pulled Senate Bill 560 from consideration on Wednesday, which appears to eliminate the possibility of school vouchers becoming law this session.
“The move was a bit of a surprise. Five senators had signed on as co-authors, and Standridge had collected letters of support from political groups and religious leaders.
“Up against the committee deadline, though, Standridge felt he didn’t have the votes.
“I don’t want to pass it by a thin margin,” Standridge told senators in an appropriations committee meeting Wednesday morning. “I want us to feel good about this.”
“The bill had squeaked through the education committee Feb. 20 by a vote of 9 to 7.
“An education savings account – or education scholarship account, as SB 560 called it – gives parents a portion of the state funding used to educate their child, and the parents can spend the money on private school tuition or other qualifying expenses. Critics of education savings accounts and other forms of school choice say such programs siphon money from district schools, hurting public education, and channel it to private schools, often religious ones.
“Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Aurora Lora, in a written statement, urged senators to reject the proposal because it would compound budget cuts that public schools have already endured.
“Vouchers are not the answer to improving educational outcomes for all students, especially in the current budget crisis,” she wrote.
“The Oklahoma State School Boards Association also opposed the measure.
“I appreciate the Senate for not moving forward with a divisive bill that distracts from the most important issues facing Oklahoma’s nearly 700,000 public school students: a historic teacher shortage and severe budget cuts,” Executive Director Shawn Hime said.
“Standridge, however, said he’s not giving up, and like-minded legislators have encouraged him to reintroduce education savings accounts through another avenue, such as in the budget negotiation process. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” he said.
“Standridge’s proposal would have varied students’ fund amounts based on their families’ household income, and the total number of participants would have been capped at 1 percent of all public school students.
“Based on those parameters and others, Senate staff estimated public schools could see an estimated net loss of $16 million the first year. More than $5 million would have remained in the school funding formula for 7,000 students who were no longer in public school.
“The School Boards Association ran its own fiscal analysis, finding that the proposal would divert from public schools up to $30 million in the first year and $1.6 billion over a decade.”
For the second time in the past year, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state is not spending enough on public schools. Governor Sam Brownback has tried to prove that he could be the nation’s leading tax-cutter, but his tax cuts have generated large budget deficits. Now that he is under court order to raise education spending, his response is not to come up with new money but to offer school choice. This lays bare the rationale for school choice as a way to cut costs and to avoid providing adequate resources.
In a unanimous ruling, the court said black, Hispanic and poor students were especially harmed by the lack of funding, pointing to lagging test scores and graduation rates. The justices set a June 30 deadline for lawmakers to pass a new constitutional funding formula, sending them scrambling to find more money to pay for a solution.
This is the second time in about a year that Kansas’ highest court has ruled against the state’s approach to paying for schools, just as Mr. Brownback finds himself wrestling with growing budget deficits and as his relations with fellow Republicans have deteriorated to new lows.
Mr. Brownback, who has made cutting taxes and shrinking government the centerpiece of his administration since taking office in 2011, championed the largest tax cuts in state history, turning Kansas into a national testing ground for his staunchly conservative philosophy. But the state has since struggled with gaping deficits, and patience has run thin, even among some former allies.
Just last month, the Republican-dominated Legislature approved a tax increase that would have raised more than $1 billion to help narrow the budget gap — a bold rejection of Mr. Brownback’s vision. In the end, the governor vetoed the measure, and he barely survived an override attempt. The school funding ruling now adds yet another layer of fiscal trouble for Kansas and political tumult for Mr. Brownback.
“Either the governor will have to bend, or we have to get enough votes in the House and Senate to override him,” Dinah Sykes, a Republican state senator, said, noting that lawmakers will have to get to work immediately to find money in the budget to satisfy the court’s requirements. “I thought that the tax plan that we put on his desk that was vetoed, I thought that was a compromise,” Ms. Sykes said.
Governor Brownback doesn’t want to raise taxes, he doesn’t want to provide extra funding, so he turns to choice as his only answer:
Mr. Brownback, who is barred by term limits from seeking re-election next year, has faced plunging approval ratings and increasingly criticism from the moderate wing of the Republican Party. In a statement, he acknowledged that some students in Kansas had not received a suitable education, calling for a new funding formula to “right this wrong.”
“The Kansas Legislature has the opportunity to engage in transformative educational reform by passing a school funding system that puts students first,” Mr. Brownback said. “Success is not measured in dollars spent, but in higher student performance.”
He made a pitch for schools outside of the public education system, suggesting that parents “should be given the opportunity and resources to set their child up for success through other educational choices.”
The hollowness of this offer is transparent.
On March 1, there was a heated debate around the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” hosted by Intelligence Squared. The room in New York City was packed. Two academics–Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and Julian Vasquez Heilig of Sacramento State–debated two charter advocates–Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform and Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute in D.C.
Education Week covered the debate here.
Vicki Cobb, a celebrated writer of science books for children, attended the debate and reports on it here. Cobb notes that she previously served on the board of a charter school, so was not anti-charter. Apparently the audience was evenly divided or undecided before the debate.
Cobb describes the major issues: the question of democracy and control; the question of teacher turnover. On the matter of data, charter schools on the whole perform no better or worse than public schools. Some get higher scores, some get lower scores. It is a wash. But as the anti-charter side pointed out, test scores are not everything.
As Julian Vasquez Heilig argued for the motion: “Charter schools, if they don’t have public accountability, direct public accountability, are antidemocratic. So, saying that publicly elected school boards and districts and unions, which are also democratic organizations are an old idea — I don’t think democracy is an old idea. In fact, I think we need excessive democracy when it comes to our thinking about education reform. We need to avoid education reform that is top down and concentrates power in the hands of just a few people.”
Cobb writes, “By the way, the team for the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” won the debate.
According to Education Week, The debate’s winner was determined by the percentage of audience members who changed their minds. In the first vote of live audience members, 33 percent cast votes for the motion and 31 percent against. In the final vote, 54 percent were for the motion and 40 percent were against. The rest were undecided.
The IndyStar reports that former Governor Mike Pence used a personal AOL account to conduct state business, and that his account included sensitive information about security.
Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.
Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.
Cyber-security experts say the emails raise concerns about whether such sensitive information was adequately protected from hackers, given that personal accounts like Pence’s are typically less secure than government email accounts. In fact, Pence’s personal account was hacked last summer.
Is it time to start chanting “Lock him up”?
This is an alarming post. Read at your own peril.
Trump gave a shout out to the glories of vouchers when he spoke to Congress. DeVos, a religious zealot, smiled with gratification as her 30-year crusade to transfer public funds to religious schools now appears near accomplishment.
Trump pointed to a young woman who had achieved success because of receiving a voucher funded by a tax credit in Florida. Her accomplishments are considerable.
But what kind of school did she attend?
“Over the past three years, Merriweather has had the opportunity to tell her story in numerous media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, the Tampa Bay Times, and The 74 (a pro school choice media site funded by charter school and voucher advocates such as the Walton Family Foundation and the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation). She’s also been the subject of pro school choice profiles in politically conservative news outlets. And after Merriweather was highlighted at the Trump’s speech, she was interviewed by Fox News.
“None of this is to take away from the sincerity of Merriweather’s writing or the validity of her lived experience. But it needs to be noted that few public school students have had such prominent venues to repeatedly tell their success stories.
“Further, the school Merriweather attended through the school choice program Trump champions is no ordinary school.
“Religious Fundamentalism At Taxpayer Expense
“The private school Merriweather attended and graduated from is the Esprit De Corps Center for Learning in Jacksonville which she has described in testimony she gave last year to a U.S. House Committee as “a church based school, a church that I actually attended.”
“According to the Esprit de Corps website, the “vision for the school was birthed from the mind of God in the heart of Dr. Jeannette C. Holmes-Vann, the Pastor and Founder of Hope Chapel Ministries, Inc.” The education philosophy guiding the school is based on “a return to a traditional educational model founded on Christian principles and values. In accordance with this vision, each component of the school was purposefully selected and designed.”
“A significant “component” of the Esprit de Corps school is its adherence to a fundamentalist Christian curriculum. Its official listing in a Jacksonville directory of private schools describes its education program as a “spiritual emphasis and Biblical [sic] view, which permeates the A-Beka curriculum.”
“A Beka is one of the most widely used K-12 curriculum series for home schooling and private Christian schools,” Rachel Tabachnick explains to me in an email. “This includes many private schools receiving public dollars through voucher and tax-credit programs.”
“Tabachnick has collected textbooks used by voucher and corporate tax-credit schools for over ten years, including curriculum from A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press.
“In an investigative article for Alternet in 2011, Tabachnick writes, “Throughout the K-12 curriculum, A Beka consistently presents the Bible as literal history and science. This includes teaching young earth creationism and demeaning other religions and other Christian faiths including Roman Catholicism.”
“An A Beka history text she reviews teaches that “socialist propaganda” exaggerated the Great Depression “so that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could pass New Deal legislation” and that the Vietnam War “divided the country into the ‘hawks who supported the fight against Communism, and doves, who were soft on Communism.’”
“Tabachnick quotes a fourth-grade A Beka text that celebrates President Ronald Reagan’s presidency under a banner of “A Return to Patriotism and Family Values.” In describing President Bill Clinton’s administration, an A Beka high school history text calls First Lady Hilary Clinton’s effort to overhaul health care as a “plan for socialized medicine” and describes Vice President Al Gore as “known for his radical environmentalism.”
“Christ Is History, Africans Are Inferior
“In her emails to me, Tabachnick shares excerpts from a newer edition of A Beka’s textbook on “History and Civil Government” that teaches, “The first advent of Jesus Christ to earth – His incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension – is the focal point of history. History began with God and His act of Creation. I climaxed with Gods’ act of redemption.” (emphasis original)
“In the current edition of A Beka’s 10th grade history text “World History and Cultures in Christian Perspective” Tabachnick shares with me, “modern liberalism” is described as “the desire to be free from absolute standards and morals, especially the Scriptures.”
“From this text, high school students like Denisha Merriweather learn, “The beginning of the 20th century witnessed a cultural breakdown that threatened to destroy the very roots of Western civilization. The cause of this of this dissolution was the idea or philosophy known as liberalism.” (emphasis original)
“The curriculum used by Esprit de Corps also taught Merriweather and her African American classmates about the innate inferiority of the African continent and its people.
“The textbooks teach the narrative that the people of African nations descended from Noah’s son Ham and that Ham’s descendant Nimrod led the rebellion against God by building the Tower of Babel,” Tabachnick tells me. This Biblically supported lesson is often referred to as “the curse of Ham,” which has historically been a primary justification for slavery among Southern Christians, according to numerous sources.
“In the A Beka text “History and Civil Government,” Adam and Eve are referred to as “the parents of humanity” and racial variations in human kind are described as the result of “recessive traits” due to “(1) a rapidly changing environment, (2) a small population, (3) and extensive inbreeding.”
“Current A Beka texts also falsely claim that only ten percent of the population of Africa is literate and that literacy rates may drop further because of communists shutting down mission schools,” Tabachnick tells me.”
Read the entire article. Ask yourself whether religious fundamentalism provides the kind of education that our nation’s children need to prepare for a complex world.
Governor Nathan Deal never gives up in his effort to defund the state’s public schools. Last November, the voters soundly rejected his proposal to create a district where he could gather low-scoring schools, eliminate local control, and give them to charter operators.
Now he is back with tax credits to funnel money into vouchers.
Here is an analysis by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, which projects that this plan will cost $100 million annually by 2023:
https://gbpi.org/2017/ballooning-tax-credit-private-school-scholarships/
“State lawmakers are considering a bill that proposes to swell the annual price of Georgia’s tax credit for private school scholarships. House Bill 217 raises the cap to $100 million from the current $58 million on a program that diverts tax revenue from the state to organizations that provide private school scholarships. The tax credit would leave the state short $42 million that could be used for more proven investments, including high quality childcare, services for schools serving impoverished children or need-based financial aid for low-income students. In addition there is little information about who participates in the program and none about its impact on student learning. In 2015 Gov. Nathan Deal’s Education Reform Commission outlined recommendations to increase the program’s transparency and report more information about participants. The recommendations are not yet adopted.
“Overview of Proposal
“Under current law, taxpayers can receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit in exchange for contributions to a student scholarship organization. Individuals can donate up to $1,000, couples up to $2,500 and corporations up to $10,000 each year. The annual cap on contributions is $58 million.
“Students can receive a scholarship if they are Georgia residents eligible to enroll in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten or first grade or attend a public school for six weeks. The attendance requirement is waived if the student is otherwise required to attend a public school identified as low performing, suffered from a documented case of bullying or is homeschooled for at least one year.
“The proposal outlined in HB 217 increases the cap by 10 percent annually if contributors claimed the total amount of available tax the prior year until the $100 million cap is reached.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 