Jersey Jazzman, aka Dr. Mark Weber, teacher, scholar, and blogger, brings the facts about the Newark schools up to date.
He does so in part because of Senator Cory Booker’s campaign, which has prompted news stories about the “Newark miracle.”
Bottom line: Don’t believe in miracles, at least secular miracles.
This is another brilliant post by Sara Roos, known as Red Queen in LA.
She read the report of the leaked emails among charter advocates. She notes their double talk, their rhetorical legerdemain, their organizations that pop up like mushrooms, then morph into new organizations.
Behind this seeming chaos is a steady purpose: to disrupt and destroy public education.
Behind the chaos is the steady flow of millions from the billionaires who despise the commons.
The connect between the chaos and the billionaires are outstretched hands for hire.
She begins:
Charter schools in California band together as an embattled group, agitating for hostile takeover of the Public Commons. They serially convene, dissolve and reform a plethora of working groups to bombard public schools with “messaging” and disinformation. The groups as well as charters themselves of course, drain resources from schools, necessitating capital (monetary and human) defending what should be protected by the people, for the people.
One of these itinerant ideologues is Ben Austin, founder of the “Parent Trigger”, who in 2014 resigned from his astroturf group to foment a new one, Kids Coalition. A collection of emailsmade public by the municipal-transparency site michaelkolhaas.org uncovered a set of strategies developed among this cabal, reported by Howard Blume at the LATimes hereand here.
The collusion, as one of them explains elsewhere, is “all about the messaging”. And the message revealed in aggregate over 5000+ emails, lays out a very stark code-shift. The catchy phrase, “kids first”, is a logical fallacy. Iterated unceasingly by charter advocates, it simultaneously casts aspersions on a presumed alternative (‘a time or place when kids were not first’) even while kids in schools have always been “first”. But consistent with the ideology of long-standing and now charter-mega-fundersKoch and Walton (among others), that term “kids first” effectively codes for “anti-union”. Because if formerly it were true that kids were not first, it would be the fault of the system that transposed their status, their teacher’s union. ‘If the proper order of kids is not upheld, it must be the fault of their teachers’ is the sly message.
Likewise there is a constant drum-beat against “bureaucracy” and “adult issues” but that too is simply code for “anti-regulation”. Charter schools aren’t really about finding a better way around bureaucracy. It is reviled incessantly, but the rules they denounce are precepts of democratic transparency, safety, efficiency, equity – cumbersome perhaps but the tenets of our republic. Instead the path they forge is of non-accountability: government funding without regulation. And this, even while the maxim “another day another charter school scandal” has been commonplace for decadesnow.
Blogger MIchael Kohnhaas says that Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner precleared a major policy speech with charter lobbyists. He provides documentation. Critics feared that the charter majority was choosing Beutner to do their bidding.
This post suggests they chose well.
The story about the secret plan was reported by the Los Angeles Times here.
The Plan is to win control of the board, the Mayor’s office, Sue the district, fight the teachers’ union.
Ben Austin’s email to charter supporters is quoted. Austin, you may recall, founded the billionaire funded Parent Revolution. He likes to pawn himself off as a “liberal,” who just happens to love charters and win Walton funding. His Patent Revolution spent millions trying to persuade poor parents to sign petitions to turn their public schools over to charter chains. It was a bust. The Revolution never happened. But Ben has now moved on and has created another AstroTurf group called “The Kids’ New Deal.”
Howard Blume writes:
The overriding issue of the email is how to overcome setbacks at the hands of the teachers union. Leaders of the union had vilified charters in the lead-up to the strike, saying that rapid charter growth was undermining traditional public schools by siphoning away motivated students and their families — and the public funding that travels with them. One day during the walkout was devoted to a march on the local headquarters of the California Charter Schools Assn.
Meanwhile, at the state level, charter supporters had spent big on losing candidates in the 2018 race for governor as well as Tuck’s bid for state superintendent. A central concern was that the growth of charters would be halted or even reversed.
[Ben] Austin asserted in his email: “As Machiavelli says, it’s better to be feared than loved. Right now we are neither.”
Charles Foster Johnson, leader of Pastors for Texas Children, reflects on the meaning of citizenship:
The Boston Globe has a daily feature called Fast Forward written by Teresa Hanafin. I enjoy reading whatever she writes. Here she is in Trump’s parade:
All I wish on this Fourth of July holiday weekend is that Trump doesn’t embarrass us any more than he already has with his co-opting of the DC celebration for partisan political purposes and a grandiose exercise in self-flattery.
Blowing up what has always been a nonpartisan event for ordinary Americans, Trump set up a special VIP viewing section in front of the Lincoln Memorial and distributed tickets to the Republican National Committee, but not the Democratic National Committee. He also gave a bloc of VIP tickets to his campaign organization and to big-money donors, essentially using the celebration as a major fundraiser for his reelection campaign.
As Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post put it, nothing says Fourth of July like preferential treatment for rich toadies.
And then there are the tanks. And the armored vehicles. And the fighter jets. (Tinpot Trump demanded that the service commanders of each branch stand beside him during the flyovers, although CNN is reporting that some commanders, uncomfortable at being used as political props, won’t attend.)
This vainglorious show of US military might, compensation for a deceitful failure to serve, is simply not what we do. Everybody knows we have the biggest hammer in the world. We have never felt the need to brag about it.
Retired four-star Army General Stanley McChrystal suggested that Trump could have honored US values of citizenship and service by recognizing say, Peace Corps volunteers.
“Tanks, planes, they are things,” he said. “They are not the sinew of the nation.”
What is? Democracy. The rule of law. Freedom. Justice. Integrity. Civility. And, in stark contrast to Trump’s display of military muscle, it’s also the Founding Fathers’ grand experiment in civilian self-rule.
And then there’s the price tag. The White House refuses to provide taxpayers with cost estimates. All we know is that the National Park Service, which oversees the National Mall and the monuments, is being forced to transfer $2.5 million to Trump’s kingly Quinceañero, money that’s supposed to be used to maintain and improve national parks across the country. But that’s just a fraction of what the celebration will cost — an event that in previous years cost just $2 million.
Narcissism, divisiveness, reckless spending of public money, no transparency, last-minute chaos … sounds like the entire Trump reign, no?
Me the president instead of We the People. Politics instead of patriotism. Ego instead of egalitarianism. The cult of personality rather than the promise of the collective.
A new poll shows that only 45 percent of US men and women are “extremely proud” to be Americans. (What a shock.) So what to do? Celebrate with your families and friends. Embrace and encourage the good in your communities. And remember the true promise and glory of America.
Fred Klonsky proclaims his agreements with NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
“If Democrats can choose a nominee who speaks to our impending challenges, but who doesn’t say irresponsible stuff about immigration or promise free stuff we can’t afford, who defines new ways to work with business and energize job-creators, who treats with dignity the frightened white working-class voters who abandoned them for Trump,“wrote Thomas L. Friedman in this morning’s New York Times.
I think this is good advice.
Well, except for that part about “frightened white working-class voters…”
As for promising free stuff we can’t afford? I’m down with that.
Of course, Friedman is probably talking about national health care and free college tuition.
I’m thinking of corporate giveaways and tax breaks to Amazon.
Billions and billions of tax giveaways to corporations. Outrageous.
Be a good corporate citizen. Pay your taxes.
Be a patriot. Pay your taxes.
Trump aims to be our very own Il Duce. Having seen (on TV) the great military parades in North Korea, Moscow, and Beijing, where the Maximum Leader commands all attention, Trump wants the same adulation. He has joked about serving a third term because his base won’t let him leave. He has admired the fact that Kim is President for Life.
His delusions of his own magnificence are limitless. Any day now, I expect to see him decked out in a military u inform with epaulets, covered with decorations he awarded to himself. Designed, no doubt, by Ivanka.
Trump has redesigned the annual July 4 event as a celebration of himself.
The Washington Post describes the preparations here.
There is no estimate of the full cost of the parade because the last time he planned a military parade, the cost was estimated to be $92 million. Public outrage was so great that the parade was canceled. This time, no true cost estimates are available until the event is over.
There will be two Abrams tanks, each of which weigh 60-70 tons. Local officials worry that the area around the Lincoln Memorial is not strong enough to carry this weight. They are fearful of serious damage to underground storage areas. Trump also promises “brand-new” Sherman tanks of World War II vintage, which have not been produced for decades.
Meanwhile, the White House has said VIP tickets will be issued for members of the administration and their family members and friends. HuffPost reported Monday that the tickets are also going to Republican donors and political appointees, and the Republican National Committee confirmed that it had received passes to Trump’s address….
Trump intends to address the nation from the memorial, upending tradition and bringing extensive change to the annual Fourth of July fireworks display.
His “Salute to America,” with music, military demonstrations and flyovers by Air Force One, the Navy’s Blue Angels flight team and other aircraft, is to take place from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m…
Trump said Monday that this Fourth will be “like no other.”
But local officials and critics have complained that he is turning a nonpartisan celebration of the nation’s birthday into a political campaign event.
No president has been part of a Fourth of July celebration on the Mall in recent memory…
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, said Monday that battle tanks could significantly damage the Mall, not long after the Park Service spent millions of dollars in public money to refurbish the site.
“These tanks, heavy equipment, and weapons of war have no place on the Mall at all, particularly as we celebrate the Fourth of July,” she said in a statement.
And Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called on Trump to “personally reimburse” taxpayers for any damage done to local roads and bridges during the event.
Neema Avashia learned that her middle school in Boston was going to close. She decided that she would stand and fight. She did. She is a true patriot. She made a difference. She defeated the powerful. She is a hero of the Resistance. She joins the honor roll of this blog.
She writes:
My gloves came off the day representatives of my school district told us they would be closing our school. Our students would be sent to a turnaround high school that had never taught middle school students. Recently arrived immigrant students in language-specific programs, which the high school did not offer, would be dispersed across the city. As for our staff, the representative from Human Capital glibly told us, “We have no plan for you.”
What does it mean when the school system that you’ve poured your heart into doesn’t have the decency to consider a thoughtful transition plan before making the decision to close your school?
It means they never saw you as human in the first place.
It means that your job, then, is to make it impossible for them to look away from your humanity.
I went home from work that afternoon and opened a Twitter account. Opponents of other district proposals had successfully used Twitter to shame city leadership into changing course.
“I am a @McCormackMiddle teacher,” my first tweet read. “Today the district announced they will be closing my school, and I am left full of questions.”
Once I began, there was no stopping. I knew that if the McCormack closed, I would not be a teacher anymore. That the work it took to build these relationships, and this community, was not something I could take up a second time under the scepter of further closures.
On Twitter, I relentlessly poked holes in the plan: BuildBPS was founded on the premise of renovating pre-WWII buildings, yet our building was constructed in 1968. Multiple schools have failing heat systems and leaking roofs, but our building had received a new boiler, windows and roof within the last ten years. BuildBPS purported to prioritize the most vulnerable students, yet disrupted the education of our English Language Learners.
My recklessness knew no bounds. I went before the Boston School Committee and announced, “I’m here to give you a history lesson,” then reminded them that our students had merged with a turnaround previously — the elementary school next door — and that doing so had placed the elementary school under even higher scrutiny from the state.
Read her story. Hers is the kind of dedication that the corporate reformers and Disrupters can’t buy. She is a champion of children, not a billionaire’s lackey. She carries within her the spark of revolution that inspired patriots in the 18th century. She is a patriot for our times, uncowed by money and power.
Steven Singer wrote this last year, but it remains pertinent and on the money. He says that there is a narrative spun by Disrupters that American schools are in “crisis” and are “failing.” He says this is baloney, or bologna, whichever spelling you prefer.
Singer says that American public schools are among the best in the world.
He writes:
Critics argue that our scores on international tests don’t justify such a claim. But they’re wrong before you even look at the numbers. They’re comparing apples to pears. You simply can’t compare the United States to countries that leave hundreds of thousands of rural and poor children without any education whatsoever. The Bates Motel may have the softest pillows in town, but it’s immediately disqualified because of the high chance of being murdered in the shower.
No school system of this size anywhere in the world exceeds the United States in providing free access to education for everyone. And that, alone, makes us one of the best.
It doesn’t mean our system is problem free. There are plenty of ways we could improve. We’re still incredibly segregated by race and class. Our funding formulas are often regressive and inadequate. Schools serving mostly poor students don’t have nearly the resources of those serving rich students. But at least at the very outset what we’re trying to do is better than what most of the world takes on. You can’t achieve equity if it isn’t even on the menu.
The important thing to know about the international test scores is that we were never #1. Never. When the first international test of mathematics was offered in the mid-1960s, we came in last.
What holds us back is our high rates of child poverty. If we reduced poverty, we would improve our schools because children would arrive in school ready to learn, and would not lose days of instruction due to illness and lack of medical attention.
The biggest problem in American education, aside from our national indifference to the well-being of students, is that we have a crazy federal law that makes test scores the goal of education. That’s backwards. Test scores are supposed to be a measure, not a goal.
We should aim to be more like Finland, which not only has high test scores without test prep, but has been rated the happiest country in the world. Less testing, more time for the arts and more attention to creativity and divergent thinking. Teachers with autonomy and a love of teaching. Students encouraged to do their best but not measured by standardized tests. You know where Finland got these ideas? They borrowed them from the U.S., and we forgot them and went for standardization. As Albert Einstein said many decades ago, standardization is for automobiles, not for people.
Linda Lyon served honorably for many years in the U.S. Air Force. She retired with her wife to Arizona where she became involved in the local school board. A strong and forceful person, she eventually was elected president of the Arizona School Board Association. She is a strong advocate for well-funded public schools.
Some weeks ago, she read that the Arizona Chamber of Commerce wanted to hold a Teacher Appreciation Night but 100 teachers in Flagstaff wrote an open letter declining to attend because of the Chamber’s persistent attacks on public schools, their finding, and teachers’ pensions.
Lyon concluded:
These teachers, standing up for those most vulnerable among us, are the real patriots. They know there can be no great democratic republic when there is no educated citizenry and that our public schools are the only ones that can address the problems we face at the scale demanded. Over 90% of America’s K–12 population attends public schools and that is where our singular educational focus should be. No. That is where it MUST be. Yes, to provide an engaged citizenry who can think creatively and determine fact from fiction.
True patriots stand up for our Constitution. Teachers do that every day.
Diane Ravitch's blog 