Senator Bernie Sanders has produced an excellent plan for education .
Thus far, he is the only candidate to address K-12.
His first principle is crucial:
Every human being has the fundamental right to a good education.
Read the plan.
Sanders’ commitment to funding education is breathtaking. He intends to triple the funding of Title 1 for the neediest children. He proposes a national floor for per-pupil spending. He wants to reduce class sizes. He promises that the federal government will pay 50% of the cost of special education.
He promises to:
Significantly increase teacher pay by working with states to set a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000 tied to cost of living, years of service, and other qualifications; and allowing states to go beyond that floor based on geographic cost of living.
He also pledges to protect and expand collective bargaining rights and tenure.
He does not shy away from the charter industry.
He recommends a flat ban on for-profit charters. He endorses the NAACP resolution that calls for a new moratorium on new charters. He recognizes that charters are funded by billionaires and not in need of federal aid.
He says:
That means halting the use of public funds to underwrite new charter schools.
We do not need two schools systems; we need to invest in our public schools system.
This is a powerful program that addresses the three critical issues of our time.
First, the need for adequate and equitable funding.
Second, the need to restore teacher professionalization.
Third, the need to reject privatization.
What will
the other candidates do? Senator Sanders has challenged them to match his boldness. Will they?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m thrilled he actually addressed public schools.
Charter school regulation is one thing, but in my opinion the real way ed reform has failed is they do absolutely nothing for public schools or public school students. That to me is the “tell” that ed reform is ONLY about privatization because if it wasn’t they would have some positive plan or approach to public schools, and they don’t.
You watch. The ONLY ed reform discussion of this plan will be around the charter school provisions. They will completely ignore the parts that relate to public schools. That’s consistent in the “movement”. Public schools (and public school students) are either actively opposed and harmed OR utterly ignored and neglected.
Bravo for Sanders for finally, finally addressing the vast majority of students and schools that are NOT charter or private schools. That IS revolutionary- we haven’t seen that in 20 years.
Increasing Title 1 would also benefit every charter school in the country, but that won’t be discussed. Instead all we’ll hear about are the provisions that are specific to charters.
Because ed reform doesn’t really advocate on behalf of “public education”. They advocate specifically and exclusively on behalf of charter schools and private school vouchers.
Sanders has a public education plan that would increase funding to existing charter schools. Ed reform has a charter and voucher plan that completely excludes all public schools and students. That’s the real difference.
Yes I noticed that about Title 1.
If you are a “public charter” school and you teach low-income students- but ONLY the low-income students who are inexpensive to teach – you can be richly rewarded. That’s why DFER doesn’t allow the progressive candidates who support them to mention attrition rates.
The myth that has done so much to destroy public education is that charter schools are teaching the exact same students taught in failing public schools, but they do a better job and do it with less money.
Progressive candidates have – to date – simply encouraged that myth instead of trying to debunk it.
When that myth is debunked, there would be no reason whatsoever to have any charters given public money.
I sure hope someone in this primary actually tries to debunk that myth instead of making comments that support that myth and give it progressive credibility.
^^By the way, I continue to believe that the reason that this myth continues to be believed by progressive white politicians is their inherent racism. The notion that ANY low-income African-American students could do well is so alien to them that they profess astonishment and gratitude that a “public charter” can get such good results. It must be the miracle of the charter, because they believe that low-income African-American students who can perform at grade level are so rare and unusual — I’m guessing they think it is 1% of the population — that any charter that has a class of them must working miracles.
I always point to NYC public schools, where despite nearly 75% of the students being at risk, over 1/3 of the African-American and Latinx students are proficient.
So the fact that charters who teach 1% or 2% of those students is not the miracle that progressives keep trying to convince the public that it is.
It is the result of cherry picking and attrition and discipline methods that should be called out by every progressive politician.
I have no doubt that if NYC was an all white city and a charter school educated a very tiny percentage of white students using reprehensible methods to get rid of the students they didn’t want to teach, progressive politicians would not ignore the complaints of the white parents. They would not believe the charter school CEOs who insist so many white 5 year olds are acting out violently because it is their nature and nothing to do with their teaching methods. And progressive politicians would not marvel at the miracle of a charter who is able to teach a tiny percentage of white students and have them pass state tests.
Progressive politicians would not insist that white students needed that charter because public schools had failed them.
Until the myth of the miracle charter school is debunked — and shown to be only something racists would believe — the education reform movement will still be going strong.
Yaaaaayyyyyyy!
This is terrific!
I hope Bernie’s bold plan forces other Democrats out of the shadows. Other candidates should be asked directly what they will do to improve public schools. They should be asked if the current system of sending public money to privately operated charters has improved education.
Yes. Also the candidates MUST be forced to define their terms.
“I don’t want to send public money to privately operated charters” can easily mean “I support sending lots of public money to ‘public’ charters that are working miracles because they turn at-risk students into scholars'”.
“I want transparency for charters” can easily mean “We think the SUNY Charter Institute does a wonderful job overseeing those public charters we support and we want every state to have a SUNY Charter Institute overseeing their public charters and getting rid of “for-profit” charters that DFER is fine with getting rid of.”
Yes!
By Bernie coming out with such a strong and specific plan, it may force the other Dems to speak up
By the way, the charter trolls are out in force on Twitter. Please jump in and express your support for Bernie’s strong support for public schools, the schools of the90%.
Feel the Bern!
YES!! Feel the BERN!
The latest polling data has Biding leading with 39.1 percent and Sanders is in second place with 16.4 percent. There are eleven other Democrats on the list and none of them have even 10 percent. Eventually, most of them will drop out and it looks like it will be Sanders vs Biden when the Democratic Convention is held. Sanders numbers will go up. He still has a chance to bury Biden who is just another neo-liberal corporate Democrat.
I hesitate to disagree with you, Lloyd, but this is far, far too early to call. The debates will be crucial, as will events between now and then. We won’t know until after New Hampshire and Iowa. Don’t count out Buttigeig. He will kill it in the debates. He’s extraordinarily bright and articulate and charming. I have this fantasy of seeing Buttigeig debate IQ45. It would be like watching Tom Cruise debate metaphysics with Thomas Nagel or physics and mathematics with Andrei Linde. High comedy!!!
Imagine, Trump stalking Buttigieg, a combat vet, as he did to Hillary Clinton on the debate stages. When I saw Trump doing that, it was freaky. Any sane person would have never voted for him after he did that stalking, serial-killer thing. That’s exactly what I thought at the time.
The Trump on that stage looked like a serial-killing psychopath to me.
The moderator should have stopped the debate at that point and asked Trump to return to his podium. His demeanor was churlish and threatening. He wasn’t challenged for his behavior then, and hasn’t been since. We’ve gone down a dangerous, unmarked road.
The reason Trump hasn’t been challenged is that the Republican Party has controlled the strings that allow the president to be challenged.
Now that the Democrats control the House, they are challenging him and he is defying Congress and launching a Constitutional Crises that the GOP ignores like it isn’t happening. In fact, the leadership of the GOP is supporting Trump’s unconstitutional grab to become the first Emperor of the United States – did any Republican speak out when Trump said he should get two more years in the White House without an election because of his lying claims that the Russian Investigation was a witch hunt?
Well, Republican Justin Amash of Michigan has crossed that divide on Twitter, calling for impeachment. I’m much more concerned about the snail’s pace at which the Democrats are responding.
Profile in no courage:
Senator Romney, who once said that Trump was totally unfit for the Presidency, back when he was trying to save the soul of the Republican Party, now says that he sees no grounds for impeachment.
Bern the field!
And now, direct from the Common Room of the Sunnyvale Senior Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, the first of five presidential debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Each candidate will be limited to two scoops of jello during the proceedings.
Intellectually, Bernie is still a young man, as sharp as he ever was, and he combines this with wisdom acquired over many years. The best of both worlds.
Yes! BERN the field.
“Bern the field!”
Finally a suggestion for consistent, simple spelling in English. More please.
“Intellectually, Bernie is still a young man, ”
That’s exactly what shows when he wrote
We do not need two schools systems; we need to invest in our public schools system.
He is capable of grasping new ideas, and listens. People in his age tend to think, they are the once giving advice to others.
The one thing I wish that septuagenarian socialist would address, is WHO is going to pay for all of his crack-brain ideas? What is he smoking? And where does the federal government have any mandate (constitutionally) to get involved in education anyway?
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
― James Madison
Given the billions wasted on charters — much of which went into the pockets of people who donated to the Republican party to make sure that more billions would be spent on charters — I can’t imagine why anyone is worried about where the money will come from.
No one ever worries about where the money will come from when the money spent goes to make very, very rich people who donate to Republicans even richer. They need more money to donate more money so that the federal government can spent more money to make them even richer.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on their richest donors, the money of their constituents.” Did James Madison say that?
Charles asked, “The one thing I wish that septuagenarian socialist would address, is WHO is going to pay for all of his crack-brain ideas?”
Here is your answer, Charles. There are two ways to pay for Sander’s rational, logical, socialist safety-net agenda that will benefit everyone in the country but the richest one-percent.
First Option: The same way the U.S. has funded all of its wars and bloated defense budgets since World War II, and the reason the U.S. has a federal national debt of more than $20 trillion dollars. MOST of the federal national debt did not come from food stamps, Social Security, or Medicare. It came from HUGE inflated defense budgets and endless wars starting with Korea. If we can do it to kill and maim an estimated 20 million people all over the world, we can do it to make life better for most Americans like they are doing in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Did you know that Vietnamese are still suffering from the Agent Orange the U.S. sprayed on Vietnam? Babies are born with birth defects, missing limbs, etc. and the U.S. still refuses to do anything to fix that problem. How long did it take Vietnam vets through the courts to force the VA to offer health care for the ravages of Agent Orange?
Second Option: Raise taxes back to the levels the U.S. had under Eisenhower, that was at that level to pay off the debt that piled up fighting World War II, and before President Teflon RayGun lowered taxes in the 80s and launched his trickle down, spend more failure that led to the federal national debt burden the U.S. has today. That means corporations and wealthy people would pay for those programs. The money wouldn’t vanish into a rich man’s vault. Instead, that money flow moving to the working class, that is also the consumer class would recycle that money repeatedly and the wealthy would still have enough money to live a luxurious lifestyle. For instance, Betsy DeVos might only be able to own one large luscious yacht instead of ten.
I dunno, Chuck, why don’t we use those billions your friends at the Department of Defense have lost in Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.? Oh, right, because they LOST it.
Do you ever stop to wonder how our non-stop wars and surveillance get paid for? Of course not, because that lines your pocket.
You are sick, Chuck. Seek help.
Dienne: a trillion here, a trillion there. Pretty soon you’re talking real money. Esimtated cost of US wars post-9/11, according to the Cost of War Project at Brown University: 5.9 TRILLION dollars. Let me put that into perspective. A million seconds is 11.57 DAYS. A trillion seconds is, rounding up, 31,709.8 YEARS. We’ve spent as much money on wars in the Middle East, since 9/11, as there are seconds in 187,087.77 years.
So what you are saying Bob is that if we spent a dollar every second, we’d see the end of $6 trillion in 200K years.
Another way of looking at this is that $6 trillion in 18 years means $330 billion a year spent on wars we do need to fight.
I don’t know Charles, but I do know that there are a lot of private testing companies, private ed tech companies, private curriculum companies, private text book companies, private “stink tanks” taking billions of tax payer dollars earmarked for education yet they aren’t delivering anything close to an education for millions of school children. Just think if all that money could be pumped directly into schools and teacher salaries…that would be a dream come true.
I agree!
Trump is a septuagenarian. Bernie is a DEMOCRATIC socialist as in Finland, Sweden, Norway or Denmark. Where do we get money for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public roads, the infrastructure, the police, firefighters and public schools. From taxes. Bernie has made it very clear that his programs would be funded by taxes and by raising taxes on the uber rich and the corporations. You would get your tax money back by not paying insurance premiums, with CHEAPER DRUGS and tuition free college (if the kid qualifies). We have tuition free K-12, why not tuition free 13-16? Yes, funded by taxes. Trump just gave away a trillion dollars of tax money by giving a huge tax break to the uber wealthy. Medicare for all and tuition free university are crack pot ideas? Not in Germany or the Scandinavian countries and much of the rest of western Europe.
Bernie is a crackpot because he fights for ordinary Americans? Un real. Bernie gets my vote. The real crack pot is already in the White House.
The crackpot in the White House is a toxic, virus of a crackpot.
Charles. Let’s consider healthcare. The US is one of 36 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It pays 17.8 percent of its GDP for healthcare. The average in OECD is 8.6 percent of GDP. We spend OVER TWICE AS MUCH per capita, but we have worse results. Why? Those other countries have national healthcare systems that hold down costs. We have a healthcare system in which half our healthcare dollar is siphoned off into private profits by the racketeers who run our insurance, hospital, pharmaceutical, and other healthcare rackets. WE ARE ALREADY PAYING FAR, FAR TOO MUCH. And if you would bother to read Senator Sanders’s white papers, he details EXACTLY how he intends to pay for his policy proposals. But you are not going to like this. He is actually expecting the wealthy in the US to pay their fair share. Since 1975, productivity (the value produced by workers) has almost doubled, while wages have remained almost flat.In other words, almost al the increased value has gone to a fraction of the one percent at the top. The European Social Democracies have figured out how to run countries that meet their people’s needs. In any of those countries–Denmark or Finland, for example–Sanders would be considered a MODERATE. And those countries, ofc, consistently rank as the happiest in the world.
Our Doctors also earn twice what equally skilled Physicians in other high-income democracies earn. Ever notice all the Doctors in Congress. Eighty percent of whom are Republican. They sit there with a straight face cutting Medicaid wanting to cut Medicare and trying to eliminate ACA; telling you they are physicians and know what is best for American patients. Greedy bastards would be a better description.
That said had ACA never been enacted. The calls for Universal coverage single payer would have been deafening after more workers lost their employer-sponsored healthcare in the Great Recession. But taxing the rich alone won’t do it. Try convincing Americans that their employer-sponsored healthcare coverage is actually part of their wages. That they are already paying the equivalence of a tax because of deferring those wages to the employer to pay for health insurance.
It is probably hopeless. NYS municipal Unions and the construction trades just killed a NY Medicare for all plan.
It will take them getting crushed and losing those benefits to wake up.
from World Health Organization
“Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception.”
US healthcare costs, 2016, from the Centers for Disease Control:
$10,348 per capita (per person)
Total expenditure, $3.3 trillion
Healthcare as percent of Gross Domestic Product: 17.9 %
OECD costs, 2016, from the Centers for Disease Control:
Average healthcare cost per capita, 2018: $4,069 USD
Average cost of healthcare as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product in the OECD, 2018: 8.9 %
Life expectancy of the following OECD countries is higher than in the US: Chile, Costa Rica, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Belgium, Denmark, France, Austria, Korea, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Australia, Iceland, Span, Sweden, Israel, Norway, Italy, Japan, Switzerland (2017, OECD)
Infant morality rates in the following OECD countries are lower than in the US: Iceland, Finland, japan, Slovenia, Norway, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, Korea, Ireland, Australia, Austria, Demark, Israel, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Latvia, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Greece, Lithuania, Canada, Slovak Republic, New Zealand (2017, OECD)
Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception.”
The US has something better: uniworseall health care
I want Trump’s $12 a year healthcare plan. Of course, I am aware that it covers nothing. As always, he hasn’t got a clue about healthcare or insurance. It is amazing that the president of the United States is so blatantly stupid on so many subjects. I maintain that he not only doesn’t read, doesn’t learn from his experiences, but is suffering from both narcissism and dementia or Alzheimer’s.
………..
18 Confusing Things Donald Trump Has Said About Health Care
…Trump bragged to the New York Times, “I know a lot about health care.” But he demonstrated just how thin that knowledge is as he struggled to describe the difficulty of enacting reform. “So pre-existing conditions are a tough deal,” he said, in comments that puzzled health care wonks. “Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan. Here’s something where you walk up and say, ‘I want my insurance.’ It’s a very tough deal, but it is something that we’re doing a good job of.”
So, what does Trump really think about health care? Judging from his circuitous, contradictory, and downright confusing comments over the years, it’s not clear even he knows the answer…
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/20/18-confusing-contradictory-and-just-plain-kooky-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-health-care-215402
Reminder: The U.S. also has the highest ratio of children living in poverty, except for one of the countries, Romania, on the list of 35 that arguably shouldn’t be on the list.
“A new report released this week by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveals alarming child poverty rates within affluent, or ‘developed’, nations. The US ranks second highest among all measured countries, with 23.1 per cent of children living in poverty, just under Romania’s 25.6 percent.”
“UNICEF: U.S. Among Highest Child Poverty Rates in Developed Countries”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2012/05/30/unicef-us-among-highest-child-poverty-rates-developed-countries
And, just in case “someone” (guess the name in my head – a regular that comments herer) pops off and blames poverty on being lazy welfare queens:
“A profile of the working poor, 2016”
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2016/home.htm
In addition, here is a great piece that appeared in the April 2019 National Geographic Magazine: “The Working Homeless” [Looks like this one is behind a paywall. I read it because I subscribe to the magazine that is printed on paper.]
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/04/navigating-the-increasing-cost-of-city-living/
What’s he smoking? Well, at least he’s not snorting Adderall like comic book supervillain, hero of the Aryan Nation, and part-time President Pinocchio, aka Vlad’s Agent Orange.
Exactly right, Bob, all the money we need is already here being looted by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. We can certainly afford Bernie’s education plan, as well as all it takes to end homelessness, child hunger, and outfitting the nation for the green new deal. Bernie is pushing the envelope, wonderful.
There’s so much corruption, Ira, all the way to the top. It stinks to high heaven. But the wealthy need to learn the lessons of history. They can keep pushing their toy until it breaks, or they can learn what we teach in kindergarten, how to share.
We have allowed ourselves (some exceptions) to be looted and bamboozled.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to the President of expending, in foreign lands on unnecessary wars, the blood and treasure of the American people.
― SomeDAM Poet
AMEN
If Sanders ends up running against Trump in 2020, Trump can’t lose even if he loses the election, because all of the kleptocrats (Gates, Zuckerberg, the Waltons, the Kochs with ALEC, et al – corrupted jerks and suckers all) are going to pour an avalanche of money into Trump’s campaign that Trump will manage to somehow siphon off and hide in foreign banks as he did with most of the money donated to help fund his inauguration.
And when the dust settles and Trump is finally dragged out of the White House in a straight jacket and with Duct Tape across his mouth, he will later brag on Twitter how he did exactly what he said he’d do … that he’d make money off of being president.
Lloyd,
Am in complete agreement w/ you. The president & DoE can pontificate all they want.
However, we still have a big donor class such as Gates, Zuckerberg, Waltons et al. who give huge $ to charters. Well-connected folks such as Eva Moskowitz & The 74 have been effective in recruiting their buds to fund their ventures.
—And few are even mentioning so-called non-profits such as TFA, KIPP, Relay et al.—who continue to get $millions in ‘innovation grants’. Finally, how does a Bernie policy really help places like New Orleans, which lost its entire teaching force, only to be replaced w/ TFAs? It’s real thick, y’all.
The only way to deal with the fake, lying, manipulating, non-profits is to vote the GOP out of the majority in both Houses of Congress and support and vote in more AOCs. We also must get rid of the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Because of pressure from the Republican Party and corporate Democrats (neo-liberals and libertarians) like Biden and Obama, the IRS has stopped investigating these types of non-profits to discover the fake ones like ALEC and TFA and then take away their non-profit status.
“IRS Rarely audits non-profits for Politicking”
“When Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate in November, they could thank dozens of conservative ‘dark money’ nonprofit groups for spending nearly $130 million to boost their preferred candidates or bash their political enemies.
“Those nonprofit groups, including many that enjoy a preferred tax status because they purport to be focused on ‘social welfare,’ are barred from engaging in electoral politics as their primary activity.” …
https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/irs-rarely-audits-nonprofits-for-politicking/
I think young people have caught onto the game of the donor class. It’s the reason AOC won and will continue to win. She caught on AND she spoke out. I don’t think it will be long before Mark “the Cyborg” Zuckerberg goes down in flames. Bernie Sanders is working it at the opposite end of the age range….because Medicare and SS are important to the senior citizen crowd. Sanders and AOC together are a dangerous combination for the GOP and ALEC crowd.
“I don’t think it will be long before Mark “the Cyborg” Zuckerberg goes down in flames. ”
I want to see that happen and soon. I never thought of that before but he does sort of look like a cyborg, doesn’t he?
LisaM
I like AOC but the reason she won is that a Republican hasn’t won in that district since Lincoln was President. And Joe Crowley did not think he had to campaign in the primary. The district in 30 years had a major demographic shift from Irish and German to predominantly Hispanic and Asian. Congressional districts have about 750k people in them AOC got 15k votes, Crowley got 12k. Does not sound like anybody was catching anything.
It would be wonderful if the nation was catching on. I just don’t think that is the case. In 1972 when McGovern got the nomination I thought we were catching on. I am still waiting.
I will vote for Warren or Sanders but I am not very hopeful.
In Diane’s blog
Sent from my iPhone
>
Because of your blog and people writing to him and his team, I think he is seeing the light snd has been courageous enough to speak out. We have to continua to let him know the importance of public PreKK-12 education and the corruption of charter schools.
Yes!!! Thank you, Diane Ravitch!!! Once again, your nation has reason to be grateful to you!!!
AFT, NEA are you listening?
I will be sharing this with my union local.
“The most important function of government”
Catfish are key
I surely agree
Without them we’d be
Like 🐈 up a tree
and so very important that members do NOT allow either of the national teachers’ unions to suddenly endorse a centrist candidate: they must be willing to endorse the candidate who will BEST support teachers
That means halting the use of public funds to underwrite new charter schools.
This should also say no public funds for charter school FACILITIES. If you can get to Bernie, be sure that is included.
I hope this becomes a challenfge to other candidates and ultimately gets into the platform and “down-ticket” campaigns.
It’s a start but there is a still a fair amount of edublather, missing fundamental problems with our schools, and no acknowledgement of the complete failure of the current standards and testing malpractice regime.
At least he has brought education into the limelight. Hopefully it will force the others to follow suit in laying out their thoughts/platform for public education as public education is THE most important function of government. And we’ve paid the price for allowing the discourse to be dominated by edudeformers and privateers.
Actually, he has already committed on the issue of testing. From his website: “We must put an end to high-stakes testing and “teaching to the test” so that our students have a more fulfilling educational life and our teachers are afforded professional respect.” https://berniesanders.com/issues/reinvest-in-public-education-and-teachers/ I suspect he’ll be coming out with more on that.
Thanks for the link. Good to see!
THE most important function of government??? Not hardly, Catfish.
“The most important function of government”
Catfish are key
I surely agree
Without them we’d be
Like 🐈 up a tree
The name is Swacker, HU, not Hunter. 🙂
Go Bernie! His Thurgood Marshall Plan consists of: increased funding and compensation for public schools and teachers, regulation of charters, and regulation to decrease discrimination and inequality. By having a Thurgood Marshall Plan, Bernie is confronting head on the advertising gimmicks of Republicans and mainstream Democrats who support privatization and austerity. Because of Bernie’s solid, loyal base of supporters like me, teachers being his main source of campaign funding and students his main source of campaign energy, he is able to compete against the candidates who sit in the laps of Wall Street financiers and billionaires.
They will have to compete against him. Will they do it by adopting some of his platform or by doubling down on the advertising gimmicks? I don’t know, but I do know that the popularity of charters and testing is on the wane. Smart candidates will join with Senator Sanders.
And by the way, the voice of Diane and all us striking teachers comes through loud and clear in parts of Bernie’s new education plan. Hard work and risk was involved. Thank you.
Not me. Us.
What is socialist about public education? Does Sanders suggest nationalizing any industry? Modern conservative retoric has assumed that an extant government is a move toward socialism. Hogwash.
Public education is no more socialist than the police, fire fighters or even the military. It is a common good that all support and benefit from. It is by far the most efficient way to provide the service, and it helped build our nation. As Bernie said, public money should not go to private contractors that do not have to operate the same way that public schools do.
The right wing libertarians are out of touch! They are full of hogwash because they are brainwashed.
retired teacher
“Public education is no more socialist than the police, fire fighters or even the military. ”
They want to privatize all of them too.
That’s why they are extremists. They want to profitize all of it so we can pay $1400 for one piece of hardware. That is how military contractors operate. Wasteful, corrupt private enterprise.!
Don’t you understand, Roy
From the Rheformish lexicon:
Socialism: any expenditure of public funds on a public good that does not primarily benefit members of the Party to which you are not invited.
So, vast government expenditures that benefit the oligarchy are excepted.
Public school is ice cream socialist
If a country has a socialist system does that mean the ice cream is free?
What will Bernie do to restore EDUCATION to the public schools?
When will we have higher test scores?
When will we have youngsters who CAN and WILL read for pleasure?
We will when we restore phonics to the first grade and skip all the fads of ed schools that are guaranteed to dumb down America.
I am NOT for charter schools because I do not believe Americans should have to support two parallel educational systems — but the public schools are failing us and no one seems to be able to change the course of Mis – Education.
When will we have higher test scores?
When we stop forcing k-12 public schools to stop conducting those useless, secretive, profitable for Pearson, et. al, high stakes rank and punish test scores – then it won’t matter if there are any test scores
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/04/24/why-the-big-standardized-test-is-useless-for-teachers/#1a35ccab4bc8
The best tests are teacher-made tests that those teachers use to access what is being learned from their teaching and then adjust.
When will we have youngsters who CAN and WILL read for pleasure?
Learning to love reading starts in the home soon after the children are born. That’s what happens in most homes in Finland. The parents don’t wait for their child to start school. They start teaching them to read and to enjoy it as young as age two.
ONE: Read aloud to your child from birth
TWO: Create a bedtime routine where you read together every night.
THREE: Read WITH your child not just TO your child … (There are nine more steps on this list and the last one says “Limit technology” …
“Teaching your child to love to read is one of the most important things as we can do as parents. Educating them and instilling a love of reading right from the start has many benefits and can help children to become confident readers in the future. There is nothing better than watching a child who loves to read curled up enjoying a book by choice.”
https://bilingualkidspot.com/2017/05/04/teach-child-to-love-reading/
Teachers cannot achieve what parents can. Teachers should focus on teaching critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and logical thinking while helping students develop strong imaginations and a love of learning.
This is correct, Lloyd.
Lloyd: you are so right. Teaching a child to read is impossible without the bond created by the nighttime sit and read session. What child ever learned to read without feeling the warm closeness of a loved parent?
We all bemoan the reality of a society were parents are often distant and/or incapable of doing what they need to do. So many of my children go home to empty houses because parent is at work. Still others fight difficulty trying to learn to read too late.
Dolly Parton, East Tennessee native and popular singer in the Nashville tradition, funded the imagination library for the state. Every child who signs up gets a book a month. My daughter attributes to this program her love of reading. Almost all of the books we read to her.
“What child ever learned to read without feeling the warm closeness of a loved parent?”
How do you define love?
When I was seven and repeating the 1st-grade, my mother was told by some office expert that I was too retarded to learn to read. Back in the early 1950s, no one knew about dyslexia. I was extremely dyslexic and so was my older brother who never learned to read. I also needed glasses. My vision was so bad, I couldn’t read what was on the page of a book in front of me or what the teachers wrote in the blackboard.
My mother and father were both high school dropouts (not by choice but because of the Great Depression) but they were also avid readers. They both dropped out at 14 in a world without TVs, smartphones and texting and the internet so about the only recreation was to read and even poor people could read because of public libraries (that the privatizers of everything public also want to take over and make a profit from).
Growing up, I saw my parents reading from books every night. We had a TV and it was on but I don’t think they paid much attention to the droning idiot box because their noses were buried in a book all the time.
But it is obvious that the retarded child me did learn to read. How?
My mother cried all the way home after she was told I’d never learn to read but she couldn’t let that happen so she went to my current 1st-grade teacher and asked for advice.
Then she did what that teacher told her to do [if just more parents would do that and follow through — it works wonders when teachers are seen as trusted advisers too], except for the wire coathanger thrashings.
That teacher also suspected I needed glasses and helped my mother have me checked and get glasses. My family lived in poverty so the glasses must have come from some non-profit of some kind. They were ugly things
Then I started to learn to read, late-in-life at seven. But the child me didn’t want to do that. It was too hard. That child rebelled, wined, begged, but my mother refused to let me have my way and go out and play … and stay illiterate.
WIth glasses for the first time in my life and a pain-causing thwacking coat hanger she got out of the closet (the teacher did not mention the coat hanger with her advice) little Lloyd learned to read and eventually loved it so much he started to read more books than his parents did while the TV droned on in the background and was pretty much ignored and for years I haven’t been able to keep up. Its easier to buy books than read them at the same pace.
My mother died when she was 89 and close to her death she confessed to me that she had felt bad about that thwacking coat hanger for decades. She asked for my forgiveness.
I replied, “Mom, if you hadn’t done that, I’d be illiterate today and my life would have been a disaster. There is nothing to forgive. I’m glad you thwacked me with that wire coat hanger.”
Lloyd Lofthouse: “Teaching a child to read is impossible without the bond created by the nighttime sit and read session. What child ever learned to read without feeling the warm closeness of a loved parent?”
My mother made it thought high school but had bad hearing and was, as a result, a slow learner. My father, because he was the eldest, never graduated from high school. He stayed home on the farm and helped my grandfather with the chores.
There was no reading material in our home and even though there was a library, nobody ever thought to drive there and get a book. There were no books or magazines in our home. There was no money for frivolous drives.
My parents eventually got the Sunday paper and my father, when I was quite young, would read me the funnies. That was the amount of reading done in my home.
I had therapy in my early 50’s for five years and learned that I had had severe emotional and mental abuse from my mother. My father considered his job to be the breadwinner and at the age of 4, I was told that I was too old to receive any more hugs from him.
The only thing that saved me was that my father wanted me to achieve in school. I worked to please him. I graduated from Washington State with honors and from Roosevelt University in Chicago with high honors. The only source of energy for making it through college was the anger that I had towards my mother. I learned that in therapy. My therapist told me that most people who come from a home like mine become either drug addicts or bag ladies. She told me I would not have survived either of those options.
We were dirt poor. What I did learn is to have compassion for other people. The wealthy, like Trump, were given everything materialistic and never learned to care about others. I know what poverty feels and looks like.
After I had finished college at Washington State, I went into the Peace Corps. I wanted to get as far away from my home as possible. I went to Borneo and worked in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. I obviously was able to read but didn’t do it to any degree until I was in Borneo. We were given a foot locker full of books. That is when I found books to be entertaining. I started reading James Bond books.
I made it without the ‘bond created by the nighttime sit and read session and with out feeling the warm closeness of a loved parent’. It is not a route that I’d recommend for anyone but it is possible.
Carol,
A moving story and a tribute to your determination to learn. You are a survivor. Hats off to you.
Diane, thank you for the compliment!!!
I also escaped my home after high school but I think the Peace Corps was a better choice than the one I made. I joined the Marines before the Tonkin Gulf Incident escalated the Vietnam War. Before the Tonkin Gulf, the media didn’t focus much on what was happening in Vietnam so I had no idea the U.S. was marching toward another war.
Dolly Parton deserve the Medal of Freedom more than Gates or Tiger Woods.
Lloyd: from your narrative, I sense that my own narrative is not the only one. Forgive me, it was shortsighted to suggest. I only meant to second the assertion you made that we should read with our child, something I have loved myself.
I was fortunate for most of my age 7 to 18 years. My parents were both avid readers and even when the TV was on, they were reading and so was I. Occasionally when the laugh track was really loud, we’d look up from our pages but make sure to mark the spot where we stopped reading with an index finger. Once we saw that whatever the canned laughter was for wasn’t warranted, our heads would nod and focus back on the books we were reading.
Amen, Lloyd.
We will have higher test scores when we begin to test the brightest students who enjoy the testing procedure and buy into the idea. this will raise the probability that the students get correct answers. The wording of all the test questions I encounter as a teacher renders the tests we give worthless, even if there were not logical problems with the idea of scores to stack students up. This stacking from birth means that there are automatically more than half of the group who see no point in the attempt. Why try, I am never going to beat the guy way above me. I think I will turn the question on its head.
Does the LCAT give us better lawyers?
Does the MCAT give us better doctors?
Does the SAT give us better college students?
I could go on. If we look at a thing we do in curriculum and ask if that thing produces better citizens, then we are asking he right questions.
The SAT “adversity score” sounds like a Hail Mary for a test that schools are eliminating.
Indeed! And Peter Greene has the lowdown:
(Trigger warning – you’ll never think of mac and cheese the asme way!)
https://t.co/08UjsRFkCy
Bernie calls for increasing teacher pay. Here’s how he should do it:
After three years of service in a high needs, title1 school district, a teacher then becomes exempt from paying federal income tax. If they leave their district they lose their tax exempt status. This plan not onlyattract HQT candidates but also incentivizes retention and stability in a teaching staff.
Rage, I completely agree!
I sent this plan to Bernie today. In case anyone was wondering, the lost tax revenue gets skimmed from the obscenely bloated defense budget. At nearly one trillion dollars the DOD wouldn’t even notice. This plan does not cost school districts/local taxpayers anything.
Not all of us teach in Title 1 districts, but in Title 1 schools within the wealthy students, whose districts won’t work harder to get Title 1 funding for the school. I’m in one of those schools. All of the problems with none of the funding.
Districts, NOT students.
B & B might actually beat Trump.
Just my opinion but I think Bed and breakfast have already beaten him.
Paying teachers better would be VERY BAD NEWS for Ed Deform. All those knowledgeable, capable people who would stick with teaching if the pay weren’t so abysmal will not be willing to be dictated to by the Vichy collaborators with the top-down, autocratic standards-and-high-stakes-testing regime. They will have ideas of their own. Deformers hate that. They believe in command and control over the rabble. Uneducated teachers (pimply kids from TFA) fit their model exactly–these are the ones who will be willing simply to tell kids to sit down, shut up, and do their depersonalized Common [sic] Core [sic] online lessons.
It’s up!
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/A-Thurgood-Marshall-Plan-f-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Bernie-Sanders-2016-Presidential-Candidate_Billionaires_Education_Education-Costs-190519-38.html
“Bernie Sanders’ education platform doesn’t suck.” —Peter Greene
So glad to her that Bernie heard what you were saying about charter schools and responded with this plan. I hope the other Democratic candidates take note.
Teachers in Indiana are getting fed up. I sent this article with my curt comments to Senator Niemeyer [R-IN] who is a block head and to Representative Chyung [D-IN].
………
[NWI Times] Northwest Indiana educators protest funding changes, new rules
…The educators were upset about state funding changes that give more money to charter schools and vouchers to attend private schools, less for poverty-stricken schools and no raises for teachers; a new rule that teachers must get 15 externship hours to renew their licenses, to give them experience in the business world; and a state law that makes the superintendent an appointed rather than elected position.
“They are affecting our kids by defunding our schools,” said Hara Halkias, a second-grade teacher and union representative for the Merrillville Community Teacher Association, as gray clouds moved in overhead. “They’re giving to schools that don’t have the same accountability and same results. They’re pulling our resources and we can’t keep up with costs, and giving to schools that don’t have good results.”
“This is our future,” she said, pointing to 8-month-old Lilliana Cueller, whose mom, Kristen, also a second-grade teacher in Merrillville, was holding her.
Hammond School Board member Carlotta Blake-King called it a form of “class warfare” that urban schools in the northern part of Lake County don’t get the funding they need.
“They won’t give us a pay raise,” she said. “We’re losing our teachers to other states.”…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/northwest-indiana-educators-protest-funding-changes-new-rules/article_d3b25a65-f5f3-544e-ae99-b11987bb14d5.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
Biden is the front runner and he has nothing to say. Anti-Trump and waving a flag isn’t the same as specific proposals. This country is, so far, once again proving that it isn’t very smart. Biden is a moderate supported by corporations. Nothing much would come from him.
……..
Biden Preaches Unity to a Nation Sick of Division
May 18, 2019
…“We are only 140 miles from Gettysburg, perhaps the most famous symbol in our nation’s history of the cost of division,” Biden told the crowd. “In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln didn’t only honor the bravery of those that lost their lives at Gettysburg. He had a message for the living. He said it is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that a government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
“Folks, that was not just a challenge from Lincoln to those present that day. The challenge he handed down was for every generation of Americans that followed. Now that challenge has been handed to us as the test above all others that future generations of Americans will measure us by.
“Will we be the ones that let a government of, by, and for the people perish from the earth? Dare we let that happen? Absolutely not. I will not. You will not,” he concluded…
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/18/biden_preaches_unity_to_a_nation_sick_of_division_140371.html
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is having a moment as she releases one policy proposal after another and is reaping the political benefits in the process.
As Amie Parnes writes, Aides and allies to the Massachusetts Democrat say her policy proposals are showing signs of paying off in the primary race. While Warren had a bumpy start, they say her hoard of proposals — from a wealth tax to opioids — have given her momentum as she climbs in the polls. According to the latest Fox News poll, Warren sits behind former Vice President Joe Biden (D) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 9 percent, making her the only candidate nearing double digits at this point.
Those around her say she is giving voters what they want in terms of new ideas and filling in the details with meat on the bone.
As for Biden, the party’s front-runner for the nomination, he wrapped up his campaign rollout before nearly 6,000 supporters in Philadelphia on Saturday by making clear his desire to unify the country after what he viewed as years of division under Trump’s leadership (RealClearPolitics).
The speech, delivered in the shadow of Independence Hall, was a culmination of over three weeks of campaigning in early states as he cemented his position as the Democrat in pole position for the party’s nomination. In the Saturday address, he hardly paid attention to the other 23 Democrats vying for the 2020 nod and trained his focus on Trump, making the president and a return to the pre-Trump era as the centerpiece of his message.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
He will probably not get a nomination but at least he has a plan. Time to hear a plan from others.
I just saw this and thought we all need a break from ordinary type thinking. OMG!! This fellow was a teacher in Texas? I managed to learn survival level Spanish and Malay. Kind of puts me in my place, doesn’t it?
…….
Who had the highest IQ ever recorded?
His name might not ring a bell, but the guy sure had a lot of lightbulbs flipping on in his head. At only age 5, William James Sidis had learned Greek, Latin, French, Hebrew, Russian, German, and English. Having enrolled in Harvard at the tender age of 11—after being turned down at age 6—Sidis had a reported IQ between 250 and 300. He was fluent in more than 40 languages by the time he graduated college; he later moved to Texas where he worked as a teacher and made a small attempt at a career in politics.
Warren’s a no on charters:
I definitely agree with Bernie on this one.
……………………………………………………………
Bernie Sanders: ‘Beating Trump is not good enough’
Yahoo News•May 19, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., says his presidential campaign is about much more than beating President Trump.
“That is not enough,” Sanders said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked about Democratic rival Joe Biden’s approach to global warming.
In a speech in Philadelphia the day before, Biden said: “If you want to know what the first and most important plank in my climate proposal is: Beat Trump.”
Sanders argued that defeating Trump is only the first step.
“It goes without saying that we’ve got to defeat Donald Trump, who in my view is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country. He’s a pathological liar. He’s a sexist and a racist, et cetera, et cetera,” he said.
He continued: “But if we’re talking, for example, about climate change, what the scientists tell us is we have 12 years before irreparable damage is done to this planet. Beating Trump is not good enough. You’ve got to beat the fossil fuel industry. You have to talk on all of those forces of the status quo who do not want to move this country to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”…
https://news.yahoo.com/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-trump-global-warming-150639043.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=ma
Who writes this stuff? It has complete sentences so even though it came from the WH, it wasn’t written by the orange-faced, yellow-haired pea brain.
…………
Friday’s news coincided with a Proclamation from President Trump recognizing World Trade Week, 2019, in which he reflected on the trade principles he promised to the White House:
“The American people see through Chairman Nadler’s desperate ploy to distract from the President’s historically successful agenda and our booming economy. Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands . . . The American people deserve a Congress that is focused on solving real problems like the crisis at the border, high prescription drug prices, our country’s crumbling infrastructure, and so much more.”
After decades of politicians putting the global business class ahead of America’s industrial and agricultural heartland, working families finally heard the voice of a President that was willing to fight for them on January 20, 2017.
“From this moment on, it’s going to be America First,” President Trump said at his Inauguration. “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
I know this sounds impossible, but every once in a long while (with an emphasis on the word “long”), Trump actually tells the truth.
The first time: Those familiar with him saw his 2016 run as a surreal marketing strategy, and Trump has said as much, telling Fortune way back in 2000, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/10/02/how-trump-is-tryingand-failingto-get-rich-off-his-presidency/#7fa3d6e73b1a
The second time: a 2005 recording of him bragging about groping women without their consent. “Grab them by the pussy,” Trump is heard saying in the recording. “You can do anything.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/trump-biden-allegations/
Lloyd Lofthouse: “People bought into the building based on the brand being synonymous with luxury,” says Cyndy Salgado, a real estate broker who once worked for the Trump Organization, selling condos in the Chicago tower. “Now many people feel that the brand represents divisiveness, embarrassment and questionable morals.” All told, the shift in perception has erased an estimated $50 million from the value of his residential units in Chicago and New York.
I have been past the Trump tower in Chicago a number of times. I wanted to go there and eat lunch BEFORE Trump became a candidate for president. Once I found out what a pea brained unethical, immoral, ignorant POS he is there was no way in the world I’d ever enter that building. The thought of that despicable airhead getting a nickel from me is unthinkable.
Trump’s name is being removed from one building after another. Trump doesn’t own the buildings. He licensed his name to other builders/owners because it used to mean something different than it does today now that we are discovering who the real Trump is.
“All six New York buildings that held the name of “Trump Place” have decided to remove the President’s name—the final two buildings voted to take down the signs this week.
“In a vote of the Manhattan’s Upper West Side condo board at 220 Riverside Blvd., that included 83 percent of the building owners, “74.7 percent voted to remove the signage, and 25.3 percent voted not to remove the signage,” according to an email obtained by the Washington Post.” …
“However, Trump’s company will continue to manage the buildings. The residents just don’t want to live in a place with the president of the United States’ name on it. What a world we live in.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-place-799310/
From everything I’ve read, it isn’t easy to get rid of Trump once you sign a contract with him. Even with his name gone, he’ll keep earning money from those buildings because one of his many LLC’s manage them. That was in the contracts too.
From Nikhil Goyal in The Nation:
“Dubbed ‘A Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public School Education,’ Sanders’s plan is the most progressive and equitable public-education agenda of any presidential candidate in the modern history of the United States. Sanders is making a clean break with a bipartisan consensus that has led to the dismantling of public education under successive Republican and Democratic administrations. It is an unapologetic repudiation of the Betsy DeVos–Arne Duncan era of market-based school reform. It is also an implicit jab at his Democratic rivals—namely former vice president Joe Biden, who supported anti-segregation busing programs in the 1970s, and Senator Cory Booker, who as mayor of Newark wanted to make the city the ‘charter school capital of the nation.’ ”
https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-public-education-plan/
And this is the result of a single conversation of Bernie’s aid with Diane. If Bernie wins then this conversation may end up igniting a huge change in US education. Very interesting to imagine.
Q Every human being has the fundamental right to a good education.
END Q
I cannot find this “right” stated in any state constitution, nor in any federal constitution. Most states have undertaken the task to provide for “free” public education, paid for with taxes. But there is no such “right”, and there never will be.
Charles: Don’t run for public office. You’d never get my vote. Everyone has a fundamental right to a good free public education. Everyone is also entitled to good affordable healthcare.
What is your problem?
“But there is no such “right”, and there never will be.”
Our Oracle has spoken; we better listen: the US will never ever catch up with the rest of the Western world in human rights. We’ll always make sure we’ll restrict the rights of the 99% to provide freedoms for the few.
Philanthropy is not a cure for bad government policies.
…………………………………..
We Are Applauding the ‘Gift’ of an Affordable Education. Something Has Gone Wrong.
The Morehouse College class of 2019 will walk into adult life unburdened by student debt. What about everyone else?
… Since 2001, a handful of elite institutions led by Princeton University have committed to tap their endowments to provide funding for students to graduate without loans. Last year, Michael Bloomberg pledged $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins to reduce the reliance of Hopkins students on borrowed money. But most American colleges, including Morehouse, lack the resources to make such a commitment. This is not merely a problem for students and their families. Economic growth requires an educated work force. Americans who entered their working primes in the 1990s were far more likely to have college degrees than their peers in other developed nations. Now the United States has fallen behind much of the developed world — and one reason is that the average cost of obtaining a college degree is among the highest for any developed nation.
The sea change at American public colleges and universities is particularly striking. Over the last quarter century, average tuition rose by 85 percent, adjusting for inflation, while average state spending measured on a per-student basis declined by roughly 5 percent…
WordPress did it again. “DOCUMENT NOT FOUND” was from the NYT.