The California Charter School Association recently held a rally in front of the State Capitol and declared that its motto was “Stand for All Children.” Only 10% of children in California are enrolled in charter schools.
Our blog poet, SomeDAM Poet, wrote a poem to go with the CCSA slogan:
“Stand for All (10% of) Students” (SAP)
Stand for ten percent
Stand for self-dealt rent
Stand for charter scam
Stand for Gulen man
Stand for puffing cheeks
Stand for quiet halls
Stand for hedge fund checks
Stand for Wall Street calls
Stand for standard test
Stand for testing prep
Stand for testing best
Stand for booting rest
Stand for cherry pick
Stand for hyped up claims
Stand for grad rate trick
Stand for PR games
Stand for wild west
Stand for lack of laws
Stand for what is Best
Stand for charter cause
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent!
I hope I can adapt this for use in Oregon.
Great poem that defines much of what is wrong with the free market, free for all, charter industry.
The charter school industry is not a “free market” industry. As it currently stands that industry is rigged to insure maximum profit taking by the privateers.
All “free” markets are rigged to insure maximum profit. In fact, there is no such thing as a “free” market. There have to be rules that determine the market and how it works. It’s just a matter of whether the rules favor the rich and powerful or whether the rules try to level the playing field. We have been conditioned to call the former “free” markets, while the latter is “communism!!!” or “socialism!!!!” or “welfare state!!!” or some other such dreadful thing.
Exactly!
That’s when the “invisible hand” chokes working people. I have an old, blind diabetic pomeranian. Last year I paid about $30 a bottle for his vetsulin. Yesterday, I paid $94 for the same medication. That’s the choking of the invisible hand. I feel worse for diabetics that are being ripped off by Big Pharma, and it’s life or death for them.
I took high school econ from a raging right-winger (I didn’t fully appreciate just how raging he was at the time – I lived in a very conservative community and he didn’t seem that out of line with anyone else, plus I was young and dumb). I remember learning about supply and demand but how in some cases demand is not much affected by price because people need it no matter what – medicine was his example. Even as raging right-wing as he was, even he said it would be wrong to raise prices in such cases even though it would obviously result in higher profits. I remember my reaction at the time being something like, “well, duh – who would even think of doing such a thing?” If only I’d’ve known then what our world would turn into.
On a side note, this was also a time when it was unthinkable for medical professionals/hospitals to advertise, beyond hanging out a shingle. People would even joke, “what are they going to advertise? ‘Come get your appendix out and we’ll do your tonsils for free!’?” Well, we’re really not that far off any more. I think our current society is in large part what happens when you let advertisers take over.
Advertisers HAVE taken over medicine.
The opioid crisis brought to you by the Sackler advertising agency is proof positive of that.
Doctors are supposed to be our best and brightest but they bought into the Sackler ads that Oxycontin was not addictive without question.
Doctors (and more than just a few of tgem) arre COMPLICIT in the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Wat happened to Do no harm? Did that go out the window with Make a lot of money?
The opioid crisis demonstrates a complete breakdown in our medical establishment but people are not even talking about this aspect.
A really “free market” would not seek government subsidies.
Exactly!
But then again there never has been a truly “free market” either.
Imagine an island on which live three people. One–let’s call him Ralph–has a gun. He claims to “own” the coconut palms on the island and stands ready, at any time, to enforce his ownership. People from off the island travel to it by boat to trade with Ralph for the coconuts. The other two people on the island don’t have anything to trade that Ralph wants. Being, he says, a “charitable sort,” Ralph allows the other two people on the island to gather the scraps left over from when he splits coconuts for his own use. Ralph says that the coconut trade on the island is “free.” Anyone who can meet his price can participate in it. Is it “free”?
Bravo!
BRAVO to SomeDAM, our poet laureate!
You inspire me, SomeDAM. A song I wrote a couple months ago:
To the Don, Chetto Trumpbalone
There’s a big sinkhole at Mar-a-Lago.
Let that sink in.
Donnie is our president
Although he did not win
A popular plurality,
And that is just a sin.
Ask me what I think of him.
Oh, where do I begin?
He’s a freaking hero to
The skinhead Aryans.
It ought to be a clue that he
Has such great popularity
With skinhead Aryans.
Wink wink it’s not an accident
That one so twisted and so bent
Should be a freaking hero to
The skinhead Aryans.
It’s getting near that time of year
I never really miss much,
When Trumpty Dumpty will decry
Imagined wars on Christmas..
Our Obergruppenführer’s gone
Back to the heart of Dixie.
But Mr. Barr is now in place
To engineer a fix; he
Will try his best to exorcise
The ghost of Robert Mueller
And so prevent the sure demise
Of Putin’s favorite ruler,
That self-made man
Who built his wealth
With one small loan from Daddy
Of half a billion dollars
To his little Scottish laddie.
oops. That would be The Don, Cheeto Trumpbalone
Great poem!
If the poem referred only to the billionaire-funded charter school associations, the situation would be bad. But the content applies to CAP, DFER and their politicians, also
The DCCC announced it will boycott the political strategy firms that work to elect primary candidates against incumbents e.g. Susan Davis, Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker. Gina Raimondo’s DGA could do the same to protect Jared Polis and Newsome (should he prove to be in Silicon Valley’s pocket).
Arne Duncan was there. Duncan spoke prior to Steve Perry, the national anti-public school activist.
https://www.charterconference.org/2019/program/keynotes.php#Arne
Has anyone ever spotted an ed reformer at a PUBLIC school rally? Why not? They all claim to be “agnostics”. Why don’t they ever advocate on behalf of public school students?
The worst is when public schools actually hire and pay ed reformers as “consultants”
Charter schools would never hire anti-charter school lobbyists. Why are we hiring anti-public school lobbyists? Is that a good use of public funding, hiring people who seek to eradicate the schools our children attend? That’s nuts.
Not only do charter schools get 100% ed reform echo chamber-approved consultants, public schools do too! Surely we can find someone else to advise our schools.
Perry refers to teachers unions as roaches.
My public school hired and paid an ed reform “consultant” from Massachusetts who spend the entire “outreach to the community” day promoting High Tech High and selling ed tech garbage.
We can do better than this. We can hire people who aren’t part and parcel of this echo chamber. There’s absolutely no reason public schools should be spending limited funding on growing the ed reform monolith. Find a strong public school system in your area and hire that principal or superintendent as a consultant, if you must hire one.
Ed reformers return no value to public schools or public school students. Stop paying them. Hire someone else.
Chiara, I hope the superintendent and school board heard from you.
You don’t need to hire people to promote Ed tech.
Ed tech will send you salespeople for free.
“In small towns around Wichita, Kan., in a state where school budgets have been so tight that the State Supreme Court ruled them inadequate, classes have been replaced by software, much of the academic day now spent in silence on a laptop. In Utah, thousands of children do a brief, state-provided preschool program at home via laptop.
Tech companies worked hard to get public schools to buy into programs that required schools to have one laptop per student, arguing that it would better prepare children for their screen-based future. ”
It was glaringly obvious to any sentient being that 1. ed tech was designed and promoted as a cheap replacement for teachers, and 2. ed tech companies were acting wholly out of self interest when they promoted laptops in schools.
Stop hiring people who get snookered by stuff like this. They’re not smart. They don’t know the difference between science and marketing.
The kids in Kansas will now pay for the fact that Our Leaders are not very bright, ask no questions, and will fall for literally any marketing campaign that comes down the pike.
They wanted every kid on a laptop so they could sell cheap junk and save money on teachers. It’s not complicated.
I hate to say it but Arne Duncan is yet another nationally-known Ivy League graduate who isn’t very smart.
You really start to wonder if they’re all getting in on legacy or bribe admits.
Duncan is innumerate. He doesn’t understand 6th grade math. He falls for each and every dumb gimmick and fad that ed reform embraces. He promotes blatantly self-interested corporate marketing campaigns as if they’re “science”. He has a limited vocabulary, which seems to consist solely of slogans. He sounds like a business seminar held at the Holiday Inn.
Why do the most elite and expensive schools seem to churn out these people? Maybe instead of bashing the public schools the unwashed masses attend they should take a hard look at why they produce such mediocrity. Jared Kushner and Arne Duncan are nothing to brag about.
Arne was a star basketball player. That might have been his ticket to Harvard.
“He sounds like a business seminar held at the Holiday Inn.” Exactly, Chiara! You nailed it.
Why would anybody equate educational background with creativity and creative output?
The poem feels like the first 5 verses of infinitely many.
…
Stand for helpful vouchers
Stand for wealthy vultures
Stand for online teachers
Stand for earbud whispers
…
The ultimate “stand for” smack down. Well done.
Indiana leads in the number of students on vouchers. I sent this information to my state Senator Niemeyer [R-IN] and Representative Chris Chyung [D-IN], along with my comment.
Chyung has sent out flyers stating that he supports more funding for public schools. Niemeyer sent out a flyer saying that this Congress has put more money into education. He is satisfied with what Indiana is doing and believes in maintaining a strong state budget.
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Voucher school condemned after students in blankets huddled around heater during class
Seth Slabaugh, Muncie Star PressPublished 5:58 p.m. ET March 21, 2019 | Updated 12:11 p.m. ET March 22, 2019
MUNCIE, Ind. — Fire and building inspectors say they found six students at the private Delaware Christian Academy “huddled around a kerosene heater in blankets trying to stay warm” one morning last week.
Authorities ordered the building — the former Riley Elementary School on North Walnut Street — to be vacated. The children’s teacher took them home.
Meanwhile, the city building commissioner on Wednesday condemned the structure, finding it unsafe for occupancy.
A school of six students
The school, whose enrollment has declined to just six students, was using only one classroom in the 28,282-square-feet building…
Check out this story on thestarpress.com: https://www.thestarpress.com/story/news/education/2019/03/21/city-condemns-voucher-school-after-inspection/3233855002/