Laura Chapman writes:
“E4E requires teachers to sign a “pledge” that endorses VAM as a component of their evaluation. I do not understand why anyone would sign a pledge to any organization that billionaires fund. This is a variant of the infamous Gates Compact that called for school districts run by elected officials and with public accountability to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would allow charter schools, privately run and often by out of state franchises, to use resources they did not pay for, occupy public school buildings, avoid the full costs of a district services such as those providing food and transportation. The charters were supposed to share their “best practices” with the district. The E4E pledge and the Gates compact are duping teachers and leaders of district in the same way…with contract-like arrangements totally out of bounds of professional work ing education.
“Imagine a hospital or medical practice that signed a ledge or a “compact” to prescribe only the drugs/treatments that a billionaire donor wanted, and under conditions where those drugs/treatments were known to be toxic for parents and the medical personnel.
“I am reminded of the pledge that I had to sign to be employed in Florida, mid-century last. The document asked if I had every been a member of the Communist Party or a member of one of the groups labelled “communist sympathizers”–with the list on legal paper, both sides, two pages two columns.
“I think the E4E pledge is intended to function much like a loyalty oath, but now it is one aspect of market-based thinking. It also draws on the actual and implied threats in a non-compete clause in some employment contracts.
“There is probably nothing that E4E can do to legally enforce compliance with the terms of the pledge–a pledge of loyalty to an agenda set by the billionaires. The whole point is to use teachers as marketers for the bad ideas of E4E and make them accomplices in their own demise.
“If you sign the pledge, you confirm that you are easy prey. Do not be duped or used.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OMG! VAM is BAD. So the deformers really want us to sign something that is totally WRONG?
Read this: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42789-keeping-us-education-segregated-is-a-highly-profitable-business-for-some
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Teachers that refuse to sign would probably lose their jobs.
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And that would be good for them.
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Yes, it probably would be better for their health. As long as they found work to earn enough so they can afford shelter and food, leaving education would probably reduce the stress that is aging them and putting them at risk of diseases.
Teaching has become a hazardous, high-risk profession due to all the pressure from the slimy pukes driving the privatization education bus.
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I am tired of billionaires and their extortionist practices. No public school employee should be expected to sign a pledge, oath or other non-negotiated agreements with private vendors, including Bill Gates.
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Me too, retired teacher.
Gates can kiss my rear-end. He’s evil.
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My whole district signed an agreement with Bill Gates to use Common Core everything, since my state refused to do it. Eli Broad got then Mayor Villaraigosa to push on us a superintendent who would do it. Ruthless billionaires. Evil billionaires. Extortion is the right word to describe it.
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LAUSD has been going down for over a decade. have you never gone Perdaily.com, which chronicled the corruption from the beginning?
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/03/lausd-and-utla–connecting-the-dots-of-blattant-corruption.html
Lenny Isenberg has chronicled the swamp that is LAUSD, the second largest school system in the 15,880; he explains that for every tenured teacher fired, or any teacher not allowed to reach tenure, the district saves 60,000 in benefits. With the budget about to be overwhelmed by budget obligations, instead of funding public education, the Eli Broad backed bureaucrats and corrupt politicians in LA, figured that thy could fabricate charges http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
He wrote: FORMER CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL LAYS OUT UNHOLY ALLIANCE BETWEEN UNION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION PRIVATIZERS http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
It has always been ALL about money: http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
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Susan,
How is it even possible for so many people to be so evil? I will never understand.
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Well, are is a possible answer!
Why Is Gratitude So Difficult, Yet Outrage So Easy?
View at Medium.com
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I’ve read that the most popular profession for psychopaths is to become a CEO.
DNA research has identified a gene that might be the reason we have psychopaths running around.
This research suggests our genes may play a role. This “warrior gene” controls the production of a protein that breaks down brain-signaling chemicals like dopamine, noradrenalin, and serotonin, which all influence mood. But the idea of a ‘psychopath’ gene remains controversial.
Some say yes.
Some say no.
They use to say the same thing about cigarettes causing lung cancer just like some are still saying that global warming isn’s caused by all those carbon emissions we’re pumping into the atmosphere.
The most successful CEO’s are usually intelligent and ruthless, and their children inert the gene that helps them become psychopaths too.
I’ve read that it is estimated that 1-percent of the population are psychopaths. That’s 3.2 million. That’s a lot of psychopaths running around ruthlessly fighting with each other to climb to the top.
The U.S. only has 520 billionaires and 5,000 U.S. households that are worth more than $100 million. There are 18,500 firms with 500 employees or more (and 18.500 CEOs with many of them ruthless).
I think that those who have gathered the most wealth and power will lead us to the most successful psychopaths that are causing the most damage.
I think there should be a law that limits what any individual can earn and keep so these psychopaths will never have the kind of money, for instance, the Koch brothers have.
Let’s say the top pay for all CEO’s should hit a ceiling of $5 million annually with no benefits and stock options and no individual or family should be allowed to hold on to more than $50 million in cash and investments beyond one main home and one vacation home.
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and so much that teachers, and nowadays both parents and kids, “sign” on Internet sites is written in language so small or so convoluted that extortion is the only word to describe the game
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If I recall correctly, you have to sign the thing before you get to eat the free pizza or go to the happy hour with the complimentary drink. This is what they guy who ran Green Dot did to the LA teachers before taking over their school and tossing them all to the curb. It’s remarkable how cheaply we can be bought.
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Sickening. Teachers should not have to put up with such coercion just because they want to help educate the public.
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In 1997 I was the NYSEnglish Council’s EDUCATOR OF EXCELLENCE . Harvard had filmed my practice when I was the cohort for The Principles of Learning ( which became The New Standards research by Pew). My work toured the nation, and our of the 20,000 teachers observed by the LRDC (Univ of pittsburgh) who went into the classrooms, I was one of SIX whose work was found to be UNIQUE and hugely successful.
Within six months I was in a rubber room, charged with all manner of things, including INCOMPETENCE. Randi eventually negotiated me into retirement so I could keep my pager pension.
Liars INC was running the nation, and the storerooms were filling with tests and the COMMON CORE crap… how were they going to tell me to put aside the curricula I had created. I had to go.
IF they took the PROFESSIONAL pracitioners out of the hospital, the patients would die. When they took the real professionals out of the schools, LEARNING DIED, and, thus the CABAL could end history….especially when these guys could mandate what kids learn
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SLS,
I’m sure that students would have been better off if they’d had instruction of the nature you designed.
Just a nit-picky copy editing note re paragraph 3, Common Core was not around circa 1997-98.
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No…Common Core was not around circa 1997-98, but there was talk of national standards for years.
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It sounds more like just marketing. They use a “trusted messenger” to persuade people that this is somehow endorsed by teachers.
Teachers actually poll pretty well. They’re MUCH more trusted than politicians like DeVos or Trump- you guys must have noticed that 🙂
It’s pretty amazing the trust has held up, considering the public is told again and again by these same marketing efforts that teachers are lazy, greedy and “self interested”. It must be quite resilient.
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“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos often rattles off the list of detractors standing in the way of expanding school choices for the nation’s children: the unions, the Democrats, the protesters and the bureaucrats.”
You know who DeVos never mentions? Public school families. It’s as if we don’t exist.
She has really convinced herself that every person in America loathes public schools as much as she does, and BUT FOR labor unions we would all “flee” our local school.
It’s such an echo chamber in ed reform she (or more likely, her speechwriters) don’t even seem to be aware that her speeches are 100% negative toward every public school in the country.
She also seems to think all public school children are thuggish bullies- her speeches are filled with stories about children being bullied or frightened at public schools.
This is deliberate. She spends public money and time actively lobbying against every public school in the country IN a country where 90% of children attend public schools.
No one in ed reform sees a problem with this. They all obediently endorse her every word.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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.@BetsyDeVosED highlights students from across the country who have benefited from educational opportunity. #EIE17
Except public school students. Who were deliberately excluded although they comprise the vast majority of students, for political purposes. Ed reform has to pretend public school families don’t exist because we’re inconvenient to their political strategy.
Why don’t kids in public schools get an advocate in their own government? Why do we have charter advocates and voucher advocates and then public school kids get the ineffective and weak “agnostics” who do absolutely nothing to benefit any kid in any public school anywhere?
That’s hardly fair. It’s outrageous.
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Public school kids weren’t just excluded from the ed reform cheerleading event.
DeVos portrayed them as bullying thugs that private school kids need a voucher to escape from.
Your tax dollars at work. She’s billing us to travel the country trashing your kids and your schools to promote her ideological agenda. I wish they’d all stay in DC. They’re actively harming kids in public schools.
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When I was beginning my teaching career in New York, this group popped up in the New York Daily News. The members quoted, I remember thinking, were more interested in getting their names in the paper than working toward meaningful change in public education.
So I’m not in the least surprised to learn that they are, in fact, full of crap.
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The California State University System still required a loyalty oath (“Are you now or have you ever been…”) when I started at CSULB in January 1988. I had to stop and decide whether I really wanted this job that I had moved across the US for. Excellent analogy with hospitals and hypothetical billionaire requiring use of specific drugs–especially given recent publicity about proposed take-over of Aetna Insurance by CVS/Caremark and articles on donations to arts/cultural institutions by Sackler family (Purdue Pharma). To paraphrase Tolkien: One billionaire to rule them all…
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Laura, thank you so very much (once again) for your tireless watchdogging, &, of course, to Diane for posting this. In yet another post today, the closing of more Chicago Public Schools, consolidation & addition of even more charter schools is connected to this. Eds. for Excellence signed on to the despicable (yes–it was, the entire time, even before SB 1947–“Tax Scholarships” {aka vouchers, further diverting tax monies from the publics}) SB 1, the “equalizer” bill, which would “Fix the (school funding) Formula” in ILL-Annoy. While numerous groups signed on to this (pity–they drank the Kool Aid), charter school/privatization standouts proudly displayed their logos on the bottom–in particular, Educators 4 Excellence, & Advance Illinois (look up one of Laura’s earlier posts on this blog, about the nefarious “50 CAN”). The “money- budget” solution was predicated upon kaboshing 25 or more existing programs benefiting students, PLUS throwing money heretofore legally dedicated to funding special education & throwing it into a pool…just as CPS does, thus sorely under serving/NOT identifying (thus denial of services) students needing special education teachers & other services.
There was/isn’t going to be NEW REVENUE to fund this bill. Then, we have the added passage of the tax “scholarship” bill (an add-on surely planned all along).
A “public” charter school being opened under the direction of the Covenant CHURCH?!
“Claypool Seeks $2.5 Million More for CPS Consultants”–?! (10/24/17 Chicago Sun-Times). Also, another article mentioned that several million would be floated to CPS charters.
Yes, by all means, float charters…& let the publics sink down the drains.
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Sorry–in the “NEW REVENUE” sentence, I meant to type “There wasN’T/isn’t…”
ILL-Annoy is one of the few states (I believe it is 6, but please do correct me if I’m wrong)
which continues to have a flat tax (& that is to satisfy the wealthy & corporations).
No progressive tax (or taxing LaSalle Street transactions) to create new revenue.
Better idea to destroy public schools, hire new, uncertified teachers (cheaper, & we’ll try to skip the benefits, too), hire fewer teachers (increase class sizes throughout the state) & to plunder public pensions–now thar’s the gold!!
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