You should read this post. It is the story of a teacher who—in the telling of her story—is a dedicated, beloved teacher. She did her job, and she cared for her severely brain damaged child. The system punished her for taking too many personal days.
If she worked in the private sector, she would have been given the rights to which she was entitled. The school system treated her shamefully.
John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, has been researching the lives and times of the superintendents trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, funded by billionaire Eli Broad. This post features the three-year tenure of Mike Miles in Dallas. Miles was a West Point graduate, military veteran, and foreign service officer before he entered the Broad program.
For years, Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Chain in New York City has boasted about its test scores. Gary Rubinstein wondered how her students performed on the Regents Algebra 2 exam. He has been watching and waiting for two years. At last they were posted, and the results were unimpressive, especially for a school that boats so much about its math scores.
A charter school in Florida may be forced to close because it opened a private school on its campus to remove low-scoring students before the state tests.
“Several days before the Florida Standards Assessments began near the end of the school year, 13 third-grade students suddenly transferred from the Palm Harbor Academy charter school to a newly created private school on the same school campus, run by Palm Harbor Academy governing board chairman the Rev. Gillard Glover.
“With one exception, all of those 13 students had one thing in common: They were at least one full grade behind grade level. Many of the children were multiple grades behind grade level. Another five students in other grades, all at least two grades behind grade level, were also transferred out of Palm Harbor and into the private school at around the same time.
“The students’ transfer to a private school meant that they didn’t take the state assessments required of public school students — and, therefore, didn’t drag down the school’s state scores and school grade. A failing school grade would have meant shuttering the school, School Board Attorney Kristin Gavin said, because the school got a D last year.
“The school district has portrayed the moving of the students as an attempt by Palm Harbor to skirt the school grade process, at a cost to the students: Those with disabilities who were moved were not being provided state-mandated support, district officials said, at the newly created private school, the Academy of Excellence.”
Defending the Early Years (DEY) was organized to fight for the rights and childhood of little children.
One of their current goals is to stop the pilot testing of what is called “Baby PISA.”
PISA is like a giant octopus that wants to test everything that breathes. It is sponsored by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.) It already has the nations of the world frantic that only one of them is #1 in test scores.
The expansion of PISA to include 5-year-olds is part of what Pasi Sahlberg dubbed “the Global Education Reform Movement” or GERM.
Five states have agreed to pilot testing of Baby PISA. But no one knows which states they are, and the OECD refuses to say.
DEY issued this press release earlier this year.
In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development proposed an assessment of early learning outcomes called the International Early Learning and Child Well-Being Study. The proposal was made with little consultation with large facets of the early childhood community. In response to this international trend for increasing formal early childhood assessment that is gaining traction, Defending the Early Years releases the following statement:
Ignoring early childhood educators, researchers and scholars in making early education policy is not new, but the scale of this latest effort in the Global Education Reform Movement for young children is a frightening development. PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) has been used to test 15 year-olds since 2000. The new International Early Learning and Child Well-being study (IELS)- dubbed “Baby PISA” – will focus on testing 5 year-olds on narrow academic skills achievement.
The impact on the field of early childhood, already contorted by policies that push early academics and eradicate play, will be disastrous. If Baby PISA gains a foothold, we’ll see more of what we have already endured: more standardization, more academic drills, and more testing. And, we’ll see less of what we have already been losing: less of the arts, less play, less child choice, and less active, hands-on, developmentally meaningful learning. And we will see more children disaffected with school at younger and younger ages.
We early educators in the U.S. need to follow the lead of early childhood communities in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark and speak up in protest against the IELS and advocate for appropriate and developmentally meaningful learning.
For more information on Baby PISA please see Baby PISA is Just Around the Corner. So Why is No One Talking About It?
Joe Mathews, a California writer, has penned a hilarious column about the meteoric success of investment banker Austin Beutner, in being selected for jobs for which he had no experience or qualifications. Most recently, of course, he was chosen by the Los Angeles school board to be the city schools’ superintendent. His lack of any relevant experience was no barrier.
He writes:
No Californian inspires me more than Austin Beutner.
Haven’t heard of this Los Angeles investment banker? Your loss. Because following his example could change your life.
Beutner’s recent career exposes the lies we Californians tell ourselves about our limits. Sure, we want our children to believe they can grow up to be anything they want. But we believe that rising to the top in a field requires years of preparation, not to mention knowledge, and experience.
Austin Beutner shows us we’re wrong.
In this decade alone, Beutner has gone straight to the top in no fewer than four fields in the City of Angels—without having to pay his dues in any of them.
It started back in late 2009, when Beutner convinced Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to appoint him to be first deputy mayor of the city of L.A. Without any prior experience in local government, he helped manage 13 city agencies. During that stint, he was named interim general manager of L.A.’s most fearsome government agency—the Department of Water and Power—without experience in utilities.
After leaving city government, Beutner, without experience in journalism, took over as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
But all those were a mere appetizer for his latest job. Last week, Beutner became superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. With 600,000 students, it’s the largest school district in California and the second largest in the nation.
And if you think that earning such a position would require Beutner to have experience in school districts, you’re not thinking the right way.
What’s most impressive about Beutner is that he has had all these jobs in less than a decade. His stays in all of them were brief, about a year or so. Indeed, he also has managed to squeeze the building of a nonprofit called Vision to Learn, which provides free eye exams and glasses to children, into his sprint through L.A.’s major institutions.
Now, I admit that cynics might look at Beutner’s conquest of Los Angeles—the fastest takeover of a global city since the Visigoths sacked Rome—and suggest that there is something wrong in Southern California.
The sky is the limit. Dream big. Beutner shows that anyone can do anything. Experience and qualifications don’t matter.
In Idaho, a school went into lockdown, and some parents rushed to the school with their weapons to protect the children. Some brought their AR-15 assault weapons. The police stopped them and asked them not to intervene. The police were rightly fearful that there could be a shootout and a parent might be killed on suspicion that he or she was the shooter. Too many guns at the scene means bullets flying and the possibility of more victims, possibly students, teachers, police, or in this case, parents.
In New York City, where I live, the police don’t like to see civilians with guns. It is illegal and it gets in the way of law enforcement.
This is a hilarious prank played on Donald Trump when he was known primarily as a rich playboy in Manhattan.
“In its short-lived existence, Spy magazine had a lot of fun with Donald Trump. The New York-based monthly is best known for making fun of the size of Trump’s fingers, but its deepest cut may have come as part of a 1990 prank.
“Spy correspondent Julius Lowenthal wanted to know just how cheap some of the city’s richest figures were. So he set up a company, called the National Refund Clearinghouse, and sent letters with checks for $1.11 enclosed, “for services that you were overcharged for.” The letters went out to 58 “well-known, well-heeled Americans,” 26 of whom promptly cashed them. Curious as to how low they might go, Lowenthal sent those 26 “nabobs” a second refund check, for $0.64. This time, 13 people cashed them.”
You can see what’s coming.
Observers have often been puzzled by Betsy DeVos’s opacity. Sometimes she seems baffled by simple questions. Sometimes she gives an answer that dodges the question. Sometimes she has no answer.
What she always has is a half-smile that appears to be a smirk. I have called it the Billionaire’s Smirk. It is a smile that says I am very, very rich, and you are not. You will never be. I am somebody. You are nobody.
Peter Greene explains in detail why she ignores the questions that members of Congress ask her. She feels no need to answer her inferiors. She is not only richer than their wildest dreams. She is on a mission from God.
Why should she respond unless she feels like it?
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/05/betsy-devos-does-not-owe-you-damned.html
The head of the board of a charter school in Louisiana treated himself to some good meals using the school’s credit card.
A world away from his Central City school, where 97 percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged, the head of a charter school board racked up $778 over six months at an upscale restaurant on St. Charles Avenue.
The Rev. Charles Southall III bought the meals with a credit card issued to Edgar P. Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy under his name. Monthly statements went not to the school, but to Southall’s church on Carondelet Street.
Southall spent $1,514 at restaurants in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in six months starting in July 2016. That’s $250 a month at establishments such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Cheesecake Bistro by Copeland’s and Le Pavillon hotel — all funded by the school.
Asked about the meals, Southall said, “They were lunches that were related to preparing to get a new school leader in.”
But Eileen Williams had been in charge of Harney since at least 2013 and continued until June 2017. Southall did not respond to follow-up questions.
The small school’s financial practices have drawn scrutiny from the Louisiana Department of Education and the Orleans Parish School Board. Auditors criticized the school’s one-man finance department and said the board should provide more oversight.
Last fall, the state Board of Ethics filed an official complaint against the school’s chief financial officer, Brent Washington Sr. The school paid him $54,500 on the side to do accounting work, which the ethics board contends broke the law.
Diane Ravitch's blog 