Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”
Check the agenda of meetings present and past.
There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.
These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.
They are meeting again this year, and they will slap each other on the back for supporting school closures, charter schools, high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and hiring inexperienced teachers.
They have the chutzpah to call themselves “stakeholders,” although none of them are teachers, parents of public school students, or have any stake in the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American students. Exactly what do they have a “stake” in?
Wow. It’s a stunning, definitive list. Would b fascinating to see how many of these Dems have their own kids in private school (remember Jimmy Carter, the one President who participated in public school in DC?)
Notice Reed Hastings, the best friend/lover of the Obamas. Maybe Barack and Michelle will be showing their horrible faces there.
No one who works in or supports a public school will be invited.
They’re “public education advocates” who exclude public schools, public school employees, and public school students and families.
If you’re in a public school or support a public school they offer you absolutely nothing of value or interest, other than their fervent belief that you should immediately transfer to the charter and private schools they promote.
“Speakers include former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, National Urban League President Marc Morial, Progressive Pollster Cornell Belcher, and CNN Political Political Commentator Patti Solis Doyle”
MUST NOT invite a speaker who actually has any experience in a public school or supports one, or has, I don’t know, ENTERED one in the last 30 years.
Good points.
Patti Solis Doyle ran Hilary’s 2008 campaign.
O’Leary was a senior advisor to Hillary’s 2016 campaign.
Feel the Bern.
DINO’s
2019- Gina Raimondo (Gov. of R.I., friend of Cory Booker and hedge funds, and, Chair of the Democratic Senate campaign committee, Eric Holder, Reed Hastings, Howard Dean
2018- Ct. Gov. Daniel Malloy and James Carville
2017- Mitch Landrieue and Michael Bennet
2016-Ann O’Leary- current Chief of Staff for Calf. Gov. Neusom and Jared Polis
“The inaugural Camp Philos convened in Lake Placid, NY, in May of 2014. Over 150 of the nation’s most influential thought leaders on education were in attendance to hear from compelling speakers including NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Senator Mary Landrieu, Eva Moskowitz, Dr. Howard Fuller, Ben Austin, and more.”
Now why would people who “support great schools!” and are “agnostics” deliberately exclude anyone who runs a public school year after year after year?
They invite charter chain CEO’s. Why are public schools excluded from consideration if they’re setting policy for public schools? How is that fair to public school students? That their advocates are not at the table when these Very Influential Thought Leaders set policy that impacts every public school student in the country?
Do public school students just not deserve actual committed advocates? They are in the status quo, government, failing, archaic system that these folks disdain so just don’t get a seat at the table?
Checked the website for Philos – wanted to know how many actual “educators” were invited to attend or even attended – or COULD attend. Calling it a “reform” movement without teacher voices is like babysitting without children. More of a movement designing and speaking FOR and not WITH those that truly matter in education – Educators!
I doubt there will be any actual educators at this meeting, but lots of Wall Street folks and washed-up politicians. Those who are running for office are running away from charters.
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
This #BackToSchool season over 56 million K-12 students and 3.7 million teachers headed back to school across America. We’re celebrating those students, teachers, faculty, and staff today by bringing our #EducationFreedomTour to Ohio and Pennsylvania!”
except for public school students, who we don’t serve and indeed will not lift a finger for, even if we’re paid by the public.
That disclaimer should be on every piece of ed reform campaign lit, including Camp Philos and everything that comes out of the US Department of Education.
They love students! They just don’t much care for 90% of them.
I think Democrats who are not “thought leaders” can ask a very simple question to determine if the prospective elected official supports public education.
Ask them to show you what they have accomplished on behalf of public school students.
If the answer is “charter schools and vouchers” – which is the ed reform answer- you then know that person is not your candidate because not only did they not accomplish anything for public school students, they don’t even recognize our students exist.
They exist. They are the vast majority of US students. If you’re not serving them you’re not serving “public education”, you’re serving a charter and voucher agenda. Which is fine! But we don’t have to hire you if you’re choosing not to do 90% of the work.
They have chutzpah to use the word “philos” in relation to their objective. Philos means love or loving in Greek. Yet, they show none of it to public school students and their parents. It is a strange term for people that seek to transfer money out of public schools and in to private hands. Undermining a public institution in favor of serving private interests is vulture capitalism, not love. In prior meetings these DFER vandals were greeted by protesters. Let’s hope the people Washington, D.C.show up and give them a less than loving welcome.
Ditto the term “philanthropy” meaning love of mankind, for the many of those who work against the public good and its democratic mgt.
They know the anti-public school message is unpopular though. They’re all political professionals. You all saw the debates. Democrats are running away from privatization because unlike these folks they actually have to campaign and get elected. Howard Dean hasn’t run for anything in 20 years. He’s a full time professional public school critic.
This will be a desperate attempt to “rebrand” and somehow come up with something that remotely resembles an actual positive agenda for US public education other than what they have, which is 1. charters and vouchers and 2. testing.
I don’t think they can do it. They’re too much a calcified echo chamber to switch gears and they really DO ideologically oppose the continued existence of traditional public schools. It’s central to the belief system of the whole “movement”.
They never offer anything positive or of value to public schools or students because the end goal of this movement is we no longer have those.
“Pretentious” is right. Sheesh.
Shame on everyone involved, including whoever coined the locution “thought leader,” which is somehow both infantile and pretentious at the same time.
Of course, topping the list is Rhode Islands’ one and only Gina….who sends her kids to private schools and who is complicit in the circus that is Providence public schools.
Can we never get rid of her and her political appointees?
I read the article you posted about New Orleans schools and teacher turnover, and I was really struck by the fact that they didn’t really solve any of the problems in those schools. The city is still very poor and very unequal, the class sizes are huge and they have CRAZY teacher turnover. The little boy in the article who was struggling was only getting assistance because he qualified for a smaller class and more help. That would happen in any public school- it’s a federal law.
They really just privatized the schools and changed nothing else. I was shocked by that, given how much money was poured into there and how much hype there is around it.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. I’ve been reading them long enough now to know that 90% of the stuff they churn out is puffery and marketing.
I had not realized that Howard Dean was so rabidly pro-charter. I wanted to learn more, and lo and behold it turns out that just today the ignorant man embarrassed himself by putting this on his twitter feed (he is referring to Eva Moskowitz, CEO of “we only teach the kids who we deem worth it” Success Academy Charter schools):
“Very interesting. On the one hand Eva runs an authoritarian ship and kicks out kids who can’t make it. On the other, she does get results for some poor and minority kids who would otherwise be lost, and their parents appreciate it. Not ideal, but a big difference for some kids.”‘
Howard Dean used to know something about health insurance, and I can’t imagine what he would respond if the government of Vermont decided to give part of its Medicare money to an insurance company that covered only the senior citizens it wanted to cover:
“Very interesting. On the one hand “Insurance for the Healthiest Seniors” runs an authoritarian ship and kicks out senior citizens who aren’t healthy enough. On the other, the insurance company does cover some very healthy seniors who would otherwise die, and their families appreciate it. Not ideal, but a big difference for some of the healthiest seniors who would otherwise die if they weren’t covered by an insurance company that only covers the healthiest seniors.”
I’m guessing that Howard Dean would understand how idiotic he sounded when he claimed the healthiest seniors would die if they weren’t covered by an insurance company that only covers the healthiest seniors and dumps them when they get too sick.
And yet he is so ignorant as to believe that the children whose parents meet the criteria demanded of the charter (and even then are dumped if they aren’t high achieving enough) would fail miserably anywhere but in that charter.
Howard Dean: “I’m so glad this “charter” insurance company is here to give insurance only to senior citizens who can run 3 miles in less than 40 minutes without any health problems. Clearly all those very healthy seniors this “charter” insurance company is insuring would die if they were covered by Medicare.”
That is how stupid (and racist) his tweet is.
Howard Dean seems to be absolutely certain that the nearly 90,000 African-American and Latinx 3rd through 8th grade students in NYC public schools who do well on state tests do not exist. They cannot exist for Howard Dean! What? That would mean there were over 180,000 African-American and Latinx students in Kindergarten through 12th grade who are doing well! That cannot be, says Howard Dean. Those students only do well when they have authoritarian treatment.
This is the kind of math question that all the reformers flunk.
35% of the African-American and Latinx students in a public school system do well. A charter is willing to teach 2% of that population, as long as they are allowed to pick and choose which kids to teach.
And reformers claim that means the kids the reformers teach would absolutely be failing in a public school.
It is like Howard Dean insisting that an insurance company that cherry picks healthy seniors and dumps them when they get sick is entirely responsible for the fact that 99% of the seniors who are still being insured by the private health insurance company are alive and healthy! Because Dean’s logic is that they would all die without the private health insurance company being able to cherry pick them.
These guys like Dean should publicly shamed for their ignorance.
I doubt Dean would embrace a right winger explaining why we need to get rid of Medicare immediately and give all that money to private “charter” insurance companies who choose who they want to teach because Howard Dean says as long as the seniors they insure are healthy, that means those seniors would have died under Medicare. But that is exactly what Dean is saying about charter schools.
^^When challenged about his certainty that those African-American and Latinx students would all be utter failures in public schools, Dean then tweeted this today:
“Actually I know some white parents who could send their kids elsewhere and choose Success academy and love it. As I said. It’s complicated.”
Dean neglects to explain how his white pals “need” Success Academy just like he knows that African-American and Latinx students “need” that authoritarian structure in order to learn.
Can you imagine if Dean wrote this about the white parents he knows:
“I know some white parents who send their kids to Success Academy. On the one hand Eva runs an authoritarian ship and kicks out white kids who can’t make it. On the other, she does get results for some white kids whose parents I know and say their kids would otherwise be lost if they were in a good public school, so their white parents appreciate it. Not ideal, but that authoritarian regime make a big difference for some white kids, according to what their parents tell me.”
I bet that Dean’s white pals who send their kids to the special Success Academy schools that have disproportionately very low rates of economically disadvantaged students would NOT thank him for explaining that their white children needed an authoritarian regime because their child would be lost in any other type of school that was not authoritarian.
You point out the hypocrisy of privatization. They will only serve those on which they can make a healthy profit. When a problem arises, they cut ties. Private insurance collects premiums for years, and some of them drop the sick people that really need the care the most. That is no way to run a service that people count on and need. Dean is flaunting his ignorance.
Yes, not just his ignorance but his deep-seated racism. Look at the difference between these two tweets:
When talking about non-white students:
“On the one hand Eva runs an authoritarian ship and kicks out kids who can’t make it. On the other, she does get results for some poor and minority kids who would otherwise be lost, and their parents appreciate it. Not ideal, but a big difference for some kids.”
When talking about white students:
“Actually I know some white parents who could send their kids elsewhere and choose Success academy and love it. As I said. It’s complicated.”
Remember, “it’s complicated” when it comes to white kids. But when it comes to poor and minority kids, Howard Dean has the chutzpah to claim that they would “otherwise be lost” without that “authoritarian ship”.
Notice Dean didn’t say that the white kids would absolutely be lost without that authoritarian ship. I wish someone would tweet back and ask him if their parents know that their kids would be lost without the authoritarianism he says that the African-American and Latinx students owe their academic success to.
Hahaha! Your rephrasing of Dean’s public school tweet as a health insurance tweet is priceless!
& again, thanks for the stats comparing Eva’s students who do well on annual state-stdzd tests vs those in NYC’s pubschs. I have saved them in my bank of Snappy Answers to Stupid Ed-Article Comments.
In the New Orleans article, too, the brand new teacher says she is shocked that the kids are so “behind”.
Behind what? New Orleans has been privatized long enough for every 3rd grader to have come thru that system. “Behind”…the hype? What she was told or believed about the “miracle” of charterization? They’re not “behind” anything. They came up in the charter system and this is where they are. They (unsurprisingly) have exactly the same problems they had when it was a public system, because the only thing they changed was going to government contractors.
They are stakeholders in a variety of neo-liberal free-market schemes, such as Tax Increment Financing (TIF), “enterprise zones,” the “New Market Tax Credit Program,” as well as Trump’s “opportunity zones,” all of which give financial incentives for the rich to invest in blighted areas. That translates as participating in money-making deals and getting tax credits, while promoting gentrification which pushes out low income residents. See: “Tax law’s ‘opportunity zones’ won’t create opportunities for the people who need it most” https://theconversation.com/tax-laws-opportunity-zones-wont-create-opportunities-for-the-people-who-need-it-most-94955 (In my city, TIFs are often used in areas that are not actually blighted, as well as for religious organizations that will never generate tax dollars.)
None of them do it out of the goodness of their hearts or because they have a sense of community, value the common good or actually care about the down-trodden. They are greedy people who just can’t have enough wealth for themselves, but they often get away with packaging their investments as philanthropy and pat themselves on the back for it, even though they are in it primarily for the financial payoffs.
The rich are always looking for places to park their money, where it can be used to further increase their wealth, while avoiding taxes and sending the poor packing, because they are “the owners,” as George Carlin noted. They bought their power from both parties and they call the shots. It’s one of the manifestations of the inequitable distribution of wealth that’s reflective of capitalism gone wild. No wonder the youth in America are beginning to recognize the merits of democratic socialism…
Thanks for the link. When wealthy individuals “park their money” for tax breaks, the poor people in an area rarely benefit. They often wind up being displaced, and they are no better off except now they live in a less convenient neighborhood. Poor neighborhoods not conveniently located continue to decline despite the infusion of cash. The poor will remain poor unless they can obtain jobs on which they can support their families and social justice. Tax breaks are no panacea. It is flawed economic theory designed by the wealthy for the wealthy.
So absolutely right on, homeless educator, & thanks for the spot-on cynical perspective. As retired teacher says, corporate tax breaks/ sweet deals generally harm not help the poor. I look at it as simple physics. When you allow private interests to siphon off pooled taxpayer funds aimed at assisting the community, you create a vacuum, & private money flows back in. But when it comes back, it’s on their terms, not the public’s.
Thanks so much for your cogent responses, retired teacher and bethree5!
Actually, I can’t stand being this cynical and I work hard to remain positive in my personal life, despite continuing to face a lot of adversity. However, so much of this has occurred under Democratic leadership, ever since the early 90s when Bill Clinton turned the party to the right, including in my own highly Democratic city, that I have learned cautious optimism is no longer called for when addressing neo-liberals and their preferred policies.
That’s because those in the Democratic party who call themselves “centrists” are really right of center, not in the middle. They are effectively Democrats In Name Only (DINOs) and much more like Country Club Republicans, who tend to be economically conservative and socially liberal. This basically means they’ve lost sight of the common good, as they have supported privatization and promoted profits over people. (And some of them and their families have benefited personally from neoliberal policies, such as Joe Biden’s brother who’s a non-educator involved in running charter schools).
Occasionally, DINOs throw a bone to their base, such as historically marginalized groups like the LGBTQ community. They have sold out the working class though, including labor unions that have given them a lot of endorsements and campaign funds, despite the fact that DINOs have turned their backs on workers (which probably continued because the GOP is so much worse). But this has been going on with mainstream Democrats for way too long now, so I think that calling them out on the behaviors which indicate they have fleas because they’ve been sleeping with dogs is truly necessary, in order to raise awareness and effect change, so that we have at least one party that will protect the common good and genuinely represent the common man again.
The DeVos agenda might emphasize vouchers over charters but at it’s most basic emphasis on privatization, it is not all that different from the Duncan agenda.
It might make sense to list the Democrats who DON’T support that agenda (or at least didn’t when Obama was in office, which is the telling thing)
I suspect the list would be quite short.
Of course, all Democrats say they support public schools — at the same time many of them continue to talk about public” (sic) charter schools.
Ha ha ha.
Vouchers over charters, appears to be the Koch talking point.
Gates gave $12 mil. to the Cristo Rey Catholic school chain. The school’s San Jose prototype- 60 students, one teacher (one coach, one tutor) seems a lot like the Bridge International Academies model, an investment with a 20% anticipated return for investors like Z-berg and Gates.
The website for this and prior “Camp Philos.” events lists a few names but it is free of any detail about the policies theis group actually forwards.
The website lists a few names of major speakers and the venues for prior meetings. But that pretty-picture website is free of any details about the policies this belief tank forwards.
This once-a-year “Camp Philos” meeting is a project of Education Reform Now and that is where you can see what they brag about. Examples:
• We lobbied Congress and made it a requirement for all states to report how much they spend per student — so that we can use this transparency in our fight to make sure that funding is distributed equitably and towards the students who need it most.
• We lobbied Congress to fix the problem that students of color and students from low-income communities are often taught by the least experienced, qualified and effective teachers. The result is that under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states much address inequalities in the assignment of teachers and work to ensure an equitable distribution of great teachers for all students.
• We are a major player in pushing both Congress and the U.S. Department of Education to rigorously monitor how states are implementing their ESSA plans. We are also tireless watchdogs on alert to turn back efforts to weaken state ESSA plans.
• We play an active role in co-leading coalitions in Colorado, Louisiana, New York, and Washington, DC that mirror those at the national level and that succeeded in ensuring their state’s ESSA plans met high standards for accountability. (Really?)
• We work annually with coalition partners to enlist support for the federal public Charter School Program (CSP). In March 2018, Congress approved $400 million – a 17 percent increase – for the CSP in its FY 2018 spending bill, bringing the program it to its highest funding level in history.
• We succeeded in securing funding to replicate and expand high-quality public charter schools, one of President Obama’s most enduring legacies on education reform.
• At the state level, we achieved significant funding wins for public charter schools throughout the country, …
.
This outfit has chapters in eight states. It is also a useful in reminding all of us that ESSA is designed to make public education fail while posturing about equity.
more at https://edreformnow.org/about/
You can also see the IRS form 990 for the advocacy arm of this group and how they spend money to advance school choice, specific political campaigns and individuals here.
Click to access 260596684_201712_990O.pdf
The Education Reform Now definition of an experienced, well qualified teacher is TFA with no experience
It is surprising how this group is so out of sync with how most people today view charters. They are in a bubble of denial. ESSA, which they feel is amazing, is nothing more than a barrel of pork for greedy corporations that know nothing about education.
This is hysterical:
“A top official with the US Education Department touring successful schools in several states made a stop at Tucson’s high-achieving University High on Monday.
But Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Scott Stump mistakenly thought the TUSD school was a charter rather than a public school with an advanced academic curriculum.
“We’re here celebrating not just the Blue Ribbon School status from a few years ago but also the fact that Arizona charter schools have done something really unique in the past decade,” Stump said during a news conference at the school.”
They went into the school as part of their marketing plan to bash public schools and sell charters, but they had mistakenly visited a PUBLIC school instead of a charter 🙂
Now they’ll have to rescind their praise of the school.
https://tucson.com/news/local/fed-education-official-touts-charter-schools-in-visit-to-tusd/article_a7587411-b693-5eaa-9786-638a8b6639a2.html
They’re so completely indoctrinated into the “public schools suck!” ideology they literally CAN NOT BELIEVE a strong school is public 🙂
Chiara,
I posted that article yesterday!
“A news release announcing Stump’s visit to University High said he would be visiting “classes at University High, a charter school recognized as among the best in Arizona and the nation.”
I know (now) how to get ed reform politicians to support public schools. Tell them they’re all charter schools.
“It’s unclear why Tyris — who asked that his last name not be used — was recorded as leaving Manual to home-school. Officials with Charter Schools USA, the for-profit operator that has run Manual since low test scores led to state takeover in 2012, would not comment on specific cases, citing privacy reasons.
The school stood out in Chalkbeat’s analysis of students leaving high school for home schooling. Manual reported that its class of 2018 numbered 83 graduates, six dropouts, and 60 students who left at some point during their high school years to be home-schooled.”
This is Indiana but I think Florida is doing this too. They’re pushing lower performing kids out as “homeschooling” which is why the percentage of children (allegedly) homeschooled has quadrupled.
What ed reformers believe is an amazing growth in homeschooling is actually students dropping out. I wonder what happens to the Florida Success Story when someone finally accurately measures what’s going on there.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2019/09/17/hidden-dropouts-how-indiana-schools-can-write-off-struggling-students-as-home-schoolers/
Ruiz is my State Senator. I voted Republican.
Meet the Democrats Who Helped Get Trump Elected….at Camp Puke.
I just saw that Congressman Joe Kennedy is challenging Ed Markey in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts Senator. I tried to find information about their respective stands on school privatization and charters but could not. Anyone know?
I am positive they both will do the usual dance that we will see from people at Camp Philos — they support “public charters” “good schools” and “rewarding good teachers”. But I wonder if both Markey and Kennedy are both pro-charter or if one of them will stand up against charters and privatization and endorse the NAACP moratorium.
It was great when charters and support for them became a big issue in the Virginia Governor’s race in the Democratic primary. In that case, the so-called “progressive” candidate was a major DFER Dem who was getting money from reform billionaires, and the candidate who was pro-public schools was the so-called “corporate Dem”. But the “corporate” pro-public education Democrat won and I believe Virginia continued to be a model state for those who support public education, with minimal charters.
So I hope that charters became an issue in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts Senate, too. When charters and reform are the issue in a primary, people who support public school win. And fewer Democrats can attend events like Camp Philos without having to answer to their constituents (when the majority usually support public schools, not privatization).
How embarrassing to have an ed reformer like Teresa Ruiz as chair of our NJ state senate education committee. Her name has already come to my attention as an ed-reform mouthpiece who pushes back against our new govr’s pro-pubsch/ teachers union positions, but I hadn’t realized she held that position.
Before running for state senate at age 33, she was deputy chief of staff for a County Exec, so figure she started in politics at about age 27(?). Her resume includes BA in Eng, & an unspecified time as a PreK teacher – at most 5 yrs. Something about that [most-likely private-school] teaching experience caused her to ditch it for politics– yet apparently “qualifies” her to be our state senate ed honcho…
so often it feels as if states simply say: Hey, We Need Someone In This Ed Position. You’re Young And Enthusiastic But Have No Experience? Sure, We Don’t Believe This Is An Important Job So Why Not You.
Wow Like a Batman line-up. So very surprised and disappointed to see Chris Murphy’s name alongside such abject sell-outs as Gina Raimondo. They crow about “Citizens United” and then lick the boot-heels of corporate America. We need another FDR.
Senator Murphy gets campaign funds from DFER.
& I just love it that the term “The Honorable” is used before their titles/names. What is it that makes them honorable? Nothing, as far as I can see.
Never liked Howard “DINO” Dean & despisethe crook Raimondo (has been investigated by the S.E.C., &, of course, nada). She had been in ILL-Annoy (it really was) at the invitation of a right-wing economic group, & got our DINO legislators all worked up about our pensions. Quite possibly, it was she who started the G.A.’s war on teachers’ pensions. But…she’s “honorable.”
It’s funny that you mention this “honorable” thing. “retiredbutmissthekids”. I have my students use these great, little guidebooks to look up who their elected officials are. (Our county still prints them every year….I go to the government building each spring to ask for the latest edition.) Sure, the kids could use their smartphones to look up their senators and town supervisors. But there’s something about these hard copy booklets, what with the piles of names and positions and towns and villages and all the county offices, that really give my students a sense of just how wonderfully confusing and complicated representative democracy is. And, many times the kids have asked, as they page through the lists of names, “What is this ‘Hon.” thing?” (It’s included in the booklets.) Yeah, “Honorable”….what DOES that idea mean these days, in the Age of Trump? I mean here’s a president who will insult the Federal Reserve and invite the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9-11. I’m afraid that these government guidebooks, like so much of what is printed on paper these days, is soon destined to be only a memory. It’s heartbreaking to see what else our country is losing these days.
What’s wrong with insulting the Federal Reserve? Do you realize that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan – an Ayn Rand acolyte – was responsible for the lion’s share of our current toxic monetary policy? People treated him like a god, like his every word should be written in the Bible and obeyed unquestioningy. In truth, he was a demon. And it’s not like any of his successors made any effort to clean up the cesspool.
Of course, I’ll be the first to note that Trump’s insults are hollow because he’s not doing anything to clean up the mess either (why would he, he’s profiting off it too).
Agree completely about Fed.Reserve. Declining middle class demand isn’t a variable of interest to them. The Fed. Reserve system is made up of an insular group that is fixated on what is best for the richest individuals on Wall Street. With absurd confidence, they use imprecise tools having limited knowledge about outcomes, while ignoring issues like those that almost destroyed the U.S. in 2008.
Donald Trump calls names as if he’s a schoolyard bully. It’s not acceptable, civil behavior, regardless of how any President of the United States feels about the Fed. Actually, to say Mr. Trump behaves like a junior high student is an insult to the 8th graders I’ve taught.
He calls names “like a schoolyard bully” because he is a schoolyard bully. His parents pulled him out of a private school and sent him to military school to try to fix his obnoxious character but it didn’t work.
Gina Raimondo raided teachers’ pensions in RI
Yep, & her own fiduciary dealings were investigated by the SEC, w/bupkis results. &, as I stated earlier, she came to IL & started this whole uproar over our state teachers’ pensions.
One of the worst of the worst…
Diane- Here’s a link to an article in today’s Providence Journal….it never ends, although given our governor and Commissioner of Education, we should not be surprised.
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190918/raimondo-wants-teach-for-america-to-get-more-involved-in-providence
Susan L Osberg Mathematics Teacher and Department Chair, North Kingstown HS, Retired Mathematics Instructor, URI, retired Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching, 2002 Past President RI Mathematics Teachers Association
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Posting today.
I remember when I heard then VT Gov. Howard Dean talking about public schools on the radio as I drove to school in the 90s. He seemed to speak with such conviction in support of public education. I wanted him to be President. I thought he’d be a real Education President. But his kid was in Teach for America and I’ve heard nothing to show he supports public schools since that time. I must have been dreaming.
Having a son or daughter in TFA or the charter industry makes a difference.
It’s rather ridiculous to say that Marc Morial and Eric Holder aren’t “stakeholders” in anything.
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They are stakeholders in “something,” but not public schools.
Unless you mean that everyone who pays taxes is a “stakeholder,” in which case the term is so general that it is meaningless.
It’s rather ridiculous to say that Eric Holder and Marc Morial aren’t “stakeholders” in anything.
In what sense areEric Holder and Marc Morial stakeholders in public schools?
Are they parents of children in public schools?
Please let me know.
Shifting gears to GOP failures-
Donna Arduin, a favorite of Americans for Prosperity (Koch), goes from state to state slashing budgets for Republican Governors. Reportedly, she was paid $30,000 a month in Illinois for the hatchet job. Mich. Gov. Engler’s approval rating went down 13% after Arduin came to town. She “slashed and burned” Florida for Jeb Bush.
Alaska may be AFP’s Waterloo, the governor faces a serious recall effort attributed to the weaponizing of the budget.
Talking Points Memo reports that Arduin has been removed from her position as Alaska’s budget director.