My website is dianeravitch.com.
I am a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University.
I was born in Houston, Texas, attended the Houston public schools from kindergarten through high school, and graduated from Wellesley College in 1960. I received my Ph.D. in the history of American education in 1975.
I am the mother of two sons. They went to private schools in New York City. I have four grandsons: two went to religious schools, the third goes to public school in New York City, and the fourth will go to the same wonderful public school in Brooklyn.
I live in Brooklyn, New York.
Diane Ravitch’s Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ProPublica has published this story of a 15 year old girl with special needs and an IEP, who was sent to a detention facility on May 14, after a state of emergency was declared. Her offense? She failed to complete her on-line school assignments on time.
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention
Hi Diane,
In Nebraska we are fighting against measures by the GOP Senators to allow public funds to go to private schools.
We would love if you would come on our podcast to help our state to understand the impact this would have. We have created a Red for Ed NE group to combat this. Educating people on the devastating effects of this privatization is a mission we are on. Not sure how to get ahold of you.
Hello, Diane. In Missouri, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education plans to spend $10 million dollars of their CARES money on a new state test to measure the impact of school closings last spring.
As you know, the only thing standardized tests measure is students’ socioeconomic background; I’m pretty positive that’s all this one will demonstrate. In other words, it is completely unnecessary!
Meanwhile, in the poor urban districts, we are going to need more staff (custodians! nurses! bus drivers! teachers!) if we are to open in a reasonably safe manner. That money could be better spent in so many ways.
Also, this entire idea is predicated on the belief that we knew students’ skills and knowledge beforehand, but we didn’t, because the tests change constantly, so one can’t really compare results from year to year. Here’s a link to a news article:
https://abc17news.com/news/education/2020/07/06/dese-to-create-new-assessment-to-look-at-the-impact-of-school-closure-on-learning/
Thanks for all you do for our schools!
Excellent look at what has been happening in Portland.
John Lewis’ death and the recurrence of Justice Ginsburg’s cancer has me at a low point today. Trump’s DHS goons add another level of despair.
“Since the feds got involved with police it’s gotten really brutal. I’d argue we’ve seen more police brutality in the last 50 days from Portland Police Department than anywhere else in the country. It’s brutal but it’s also predictable. There are rhythms to the way police work. It’s become an orchestrated dance with both sides.
“There are warnings and kicking people out of the demonstration area. But the feds have deliberately defied the rhythms. Last Saturday, the crowd was 100 or so. It was very chill — nothing going on beyond the now-normal occupation of the Justice Center. And feds came out grabbing people seemingly at random and beating people with sticks. There was the kid who got shot in the head and his skull was fractured. The federal law enforcement violence is unpredictable violence.”
Chris Hayes had a segment about Portland last night. Federal police without IDs were arresting protesters and throwing them into unmarked cars. One peaceful protester was shot in the head. Tear gas bombs. Smell of fascism in the air. The governor and mayor complained, as did one of the Oregon senators. The U.S. Attorney for the region has asked for a federal investigation.
. . . which raises the question: What happens when the perpetrator owns the Federal Department of Justice? CBK
Trump is too stupid and ignorant to come up with the idea of using unmarked federal law enforcement agencies to be his Nazi goons. I think that idea came from William Barr, and once he suggested it to Trump, the want-to-be fascist dictator jumped on the idea.
The reason I say that is because Trump knows nothing about how the federal government is organized. Until someone told him how he could use those federal law enforcement agencies, he did not know they existed beyond the FBI, and he probably did not know what the FBI’s duties were.
The list of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies is long. These are the troops Trump can order around without generals and admirals at the DOD getting in the way. Barr probably contacted the Trump loyalists appointed to run all of those federal law enforcement agencies and told them to handpick men loyal to Trump and no one or anything else. Those are the goons in unmarked uniforms using unmarked vans. Trump’s loyalists in charge of those agencies would not want to recruit anyone to that force of nothing less than a new secret police agency controlled by the Trump administration that believes in the oath they took to defend the U.S. Constitution. These handpicked troops are meant to be the enforcers for Trump’s “Final Solution”.
https://golawenforcement.com/federal-law-enforcement-agencies/
But, if it blows up and becomes a major political issue supported by both Republicans and Democrats, Trump will lie and say he had no idea Barr was doing this. Trump might even fire Barr to get the heat burning his little twitching, twitter fingers.
If Moscow Mitch and the GOP he controls in the Senate does nothing to stop Trump using these federal law enforcement agency troops as an army loyal to only Trump, the want-to-be fascist dictator will only get bolder until that knock on our doors comes at two or three in the morning and we vanish into a black hole with no record of where we were taken.
Barr orchestrated the fascistic attack on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park a few weeks ago.
Ironic in Portland that the federal agents allegedly came from the Border Patrol Police. Oregon is not on the Canadian border.
The governor of Oregon and the mayor of Portland, as well as Senator Ron Wyden, complained about the incursion into Portland to beat up protesters
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/msnbc-anchor-interviews-oregon-governor-and-tells-her-why-he-would-resist-detainment-by-the-secret-police-in-portland/
It is apparent that the eight generals and admirals making up the Joint Cheifs of Staff at the Department of Defense let Trump know their troops would not be used as Trump’s storm troopers to implement his Final Solution to turn America White.
That’s why Barr turned to the Federal Law Enforcement agencies to find those thugs we now see in unmarked black uniforms during unmarked black SUVs.
I agree with you, Lloyd; Barr’s the one running the show here in just the same manner Stephen Miller runs immigration policy.
Imagine how egregious are Trump’s crimes that he will go to these lengths to keep himself in office and out of jail. Barr perhaps is the Opus Dei true believer, like his counterpart Pompeo at State, but I think Trump mitigates something nefarious for him.
Diane, it doesn’t matter that Portland isn’t on the Canadian border. It’s 72 miles to the Pacific coast, putting it within the 100 mile border invoked under the Patriot Act, which enables DHS to claim jurisdiction.
This is rather disturbing video. There’s some vulgarity too, but it’s important to see.
Here’s more on Portland from Jenn Budd, a former border and intelligence agent.
“What I see as a former agent, as a former intelligence agent and student of CBP and Border Patrol through the years is a classic operation to create violence by federal agents. This is not to say that some protesters are not antagonizing or throwing water bottles at agents, some are. Obviously, there has been a lot of graffiti and vandalism going on, but those are not violent crimes and should not be met with violence. These agents are expected to follow use of force policies, and what I see are a bunch of agents hungry to start a fight. They are intentionally creating chaos. When protesters stand with their arms in the air and refuse to engage, agents start the violent engagement time and again.”
View at Medium.com
What’s happening in Portland should frighten all Americans.
From the fascist point of view, the free press is becoming remarkably problematic. CBK
Diane This in today from the Los Angeles Times:
“— In the first major change to general education across its system in decades, all 430,000 undergraduates attending Cal State universities must take an ethnic studies or social justice course, starting in the 2023-24 academic year.” July 23,2020 CBK
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes responded to Rep. Ted Yoho’s uncouth remarks and his subsequent non-apology-justification on the floor of the House today.
She is simply a brilliant thinker. The way she has synthesized all these ideas into one coherent denunciation is amazing. She tied together several strands of the misogyny borne by American women, even when they are elected to the highest offices of government. She delivered it with great dignity and restraint.
It is a speech that will be discussed and studied for years.
Despair is our enemy, but it’s hard not to yield. ICE and DHS have been shuttling small children around to hotels before deporting them, circumventing the asylum protections. There seem to be no reqirements or CORI checks for care givers.
“The Hampton Inns in McAllen, El Paso and Phoenix were used 186 times. No other hotels appear in the records, which indicate that 169 children were detained at the hotels, some with multiple stays.
“At least two 1-year-olds were held for three days. But some young children, including 3- to 5-year-olds, were detained for two weeks or longer. One 5-year-old was detained for 19 days in the McAllen hotel.
“The records indicate the children were not accompanied by a parent but don’t say more about the circumstances of their crossing the border. In the past, some very young children have been brought by older siblings or other relatives. Others have been sent by parents waiting for their court dates in refugee camps on the U.S.-Mexico border with hopes they will be placed with relatives.”
https://apnews.com/c9b671b206060f2e9654f0a4eaeb6388
We knew the GOP would sabotage the Post Office. It has begun:
“Typically, letter carriers sort a small amount of mail in the morning before they begin their routes. If mail isn’t sorted by the time carriers leave, they return midday to collect it or an assistant carrier would step in and ensure that all the mail is delivered on time. Now, according to letter carriers inside the Portland post office, clerks are told to stop sorting by 8:30 am, an hour and a half before most carriers leave for their routes, and are then sent home to cut costs, leaving first-class parcels unsorted in the office overnight.
“According to letter carriers in Portland, it’s medications, paychecks, and other first-class mail that’s getting left in the office overnight. They say Amazon packages are taking priority at the order of the postmaster and other supervisors in the building.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/22/maine-letter-carriers-allege-usps-leadership-willfully-delaying-mail-sabotage-postal
Teachers are known for their powerful sense of humor. In this satire, it may be all that keeps them alive!
“Dear Garfield Middle School Teachers,
“As we prepare for the start of our school year, I wanted to alert you to a recent addition to your classroom learning environment. As per the order of the State Department of Education, each classroom will now be equipped with a lion.
“The following information is designed to help you achieve your learning targets as you manage your lion. Please note: Due to the fact that we have never had lions in our classrooms and we’re figuring this out as we go, these recommendations could change at any moment.”
https://www.cmstevensmary.com/post/note-from-the-principal-this-fall-your-classroom-will-be-equipped-with-a-lion
Will any Democrats have the cojones to ask these questions of Bill Barr today?:
Even if a Democrat (like AOC) asks the tough questions that need to be asked that doesn’t mean Barr will answer them.
Look at how Lying Sack-of-Dung, Fascist Brutal Betsy avoids answering even the basic questions.
Never mind, the Dems are back to their disorganized, ineffective selves. Best allies Barr could ask for. They are more scattershot than the biggest mouthed blunderbuss one could imagine.
Please help us!!! (I have a tiny “following.” You have millions…)
It’s time to organize a phone campaign to flood the governor’s office:
(NYS – Cuomo: 518-474-8390 But all states should do this.)
Until movies, theaters, and music venues reopen and prove safe,
we can’t reopen school buildings. (Lots of adults will volunteer to go. Their safety can inform reopening decisions for school buildings.)
There is no such thing as a safe reopening during an out of control pandemic – no matter what the local transmission rate is… But this is the least we can do to gather some actual data from indoor spaces where people gather for hours.
People laugh in movies. (aerosols.)
Actors speak loudly and shout in theaters and audience members laugh. (aerosols again.)
And music venues – (Do I need to share the details?)
Thanks!
“Diverting CARES funds to private schools shows a twisted understanding of equity.” https://www.christiancentury.org/article/editors/why-betsy-devos-taking-cares-funding-underprivileged-schools-and-giving-it-private
This an oddly interesting, mesmerizing and informative video for geography and history geeks (check and check).
And this!
Chrissy Stroop has much to say about the intersection of homeschooling and the Dominionist sect, of which Betsy DeVos is, of course, a leading member.
Thought this was posted in April, it’s no less a compelling read a few months later:
“The single most important Christian Right lobby that most Americans have never heard of, HSLDA is largely responsible for the extent to which homeschooling has been deregulated since the 1980s. Under its advocacy, U.S. Christian homeschooling has become the province of rigidly fundamentalist beliefs, widespread failure to vaccinate, and apologia for the abuse and neglect of children. And, as a number of states have further relaxed what little oversight of homeschooling they required prior to the coronavirus outbreak, HSLDA isn’t alone in seeing the pandemic as an opportunity to further advance its illiberal agenda.
“As a March 31 press release from the new Christian Right advocacy group Public School Exit put it, ‘With coronavirus shutting government schools, millions of parents have a historic opportunity to try homeschooling and non-government alternatives.’ But while the press release claims that PSE is a ‘new movement,’ in fact it’s just the latest rebranding of a racist, patriarchal, and virulently anti-government movement whose adherents have spent decades working to destroy public education in the United States.
https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/04/17/mission-destroy-public-education-rebrands-under-covid-19
Stroop also linked to this article on Twitter:
“It seems shocking that anyone might think of a catastrophic event such as a global pandemic to further these goals, but the architects of the Christian school and Christian home school movements have long argued that it is precisely in the context of the destruction of civilization that Christians will have the opportunity to exercise dominion. What is more shocking is that the president of the United States would help with the dismantling.”
https://religionnews.com/2020/07/31/behind-trumps-push-to-reopen-schools-a-gift-for-bible-based-education/
August 6, 2020 will mark the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I recently watched Children of Hiroshima, directed by Kaneto Shindo in 1952, and Hiroshima, directed by Hideo Sekigawa in 1953 (and available on Prime), which were both recently shown on TCM. Worth watching for a much different perspective than is portrayed in the American cinema. Interestingly, both films were commissioned by the national Japanese teachers union. The first movie was deemed too esoteric to convey the stark message they intended. The second is much more graphic and used more than 80,000 extras. One can’t forget either. I hope you’ll mark the anniversary on your blog.
Hi Diane,
So this is happening in Pennsylvania – The Pennsylvania Family Institute is hosting a live webinar this evening titled “Education Options For Parents: Learn More about Christian Schools and homeschooling”. I’ve inserted their message below. I noticed there is no voice from an actual public school staff member.
As fall is quickly approaching and the news is abuzz with stories on schools opening or not opening, safety procedures, the uncertainty of what Governor Wolf may order, etc., it can be easy to become anxious and confused about what to do about your child’s education. In some places, teachers unions are threatening to strike, and some schools are planning to go entirely virtual. Are your taxdollars being used wisely? If you decide to homeschool, or do private school, or your child needs some extra tutoring because virtual classes are just not cutting it, what can you do?
State Rep. Clint Owlett (R-Tioga) and State Sen. Judy Ward (R-Blair) have introduced “Back on Track” legislation to ensure all Pennsylvania children will have access to the educational resources that they need. It will create new scholarship accounts for students whose education was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Rep. Owlett will be joining us for our Zoom webinar on Wednesday, August 5th at 7 PM to explain his bill and answer your questions. We’ll also have a panel of educational experts to take your questions about private Christian schools and homeschooling.
Live Webinar:
Educational Options for Parents
Learn more about Christian schools and homeschooling
Wednesday, August 5th
7:00pm – 8:00pm
The Panel:
State Rep. Clint Owlett (R-Tioga)
Colleen Hroncich, Senior Policy Analyst at the Commonwealth Foundation, and homeschool mom (Her four children have experienced public, private, cyber and home education.)
Phil Puleo, Superintendent at Christian School Association of Greater Harrisburg
Tom Shaheen, Vice President for Policy at Pennsylvania Family Institute
There will be a Q&A period, but you can also send us your questions ahead of time when you register.
Diane, please post this to the blog. Every word is true.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/sharpies
“We could have poured resources into prevention. We could’ve spent all summer enforcing mask use and social distancing. We could’ve sacrificed small pleasures for the greater good. We could’ve kept this from happening. But instead, we’re blindly barreling toward reopening even though we know teachers and students will die.”
I would change one WE in this paragraph to Trump. Guess where that WE is
political rhetoric
I do not understand what you mean by your two-word answer, “political rhetoric”
None of those “We could haves” was political rhetoric. However, instead of “we” that intro phrase to all the could haves should have said, “Trump could have …”
Since every country that has successfully managed the COVID-19 virus did all those “could haves [and more],” and The Kremlin’s Agent Orange did not, the political rhetoric you must be talking about is what keeps coming out of Donald-Eek-ThinlySkin-Always a Liar-Trump’s mouth and/or flowing from his rabid, tiny twitter fingers.
For those of you who are not inclined to read Ibsen, set your dvrs, An Enemy of the People will be on TCM East at 9 am Eastern Friday and TCM West at 9 am Pacific. Not the best, Steve McQueen means well, but adequate to understand irony the Idiot will never be able to.
Here’s excellent commentary from a part of the country we all too seldom hear from. It’s a rebuttal to The Atlantic article where a nurse scolded teachers to do their jobs and get back to school.
“Teachers should be thinking about children and get to work, huh? What makes you think we aren’t?
“When the school year ended and summer began, every teacher I know went to work to figure out the best way to teach vulnerable students while also protecting their health and safety. We’ve been providing feedback to our districts, planning for both in-person and remote instruction, and meeting remotely with administrators and senior staff to create reentry plans and discuss how best to open school safely. We have researched and collaborated and planned and trained.
“The idea that educators have been sitting around doing nothing besides finding reasons not to return to the jobs we love is one of the most insulting parts of her argument. We all want to be back in our classrooms. We just want to be there when it is as safe as possible.”
https://t.co/WQAJcEHZqV?amp=1
True, I have a younger friend still teaching who asked us to have Zoom meetings with him and his wife during the summer, so he could learn how to use Zoom properly while planning ahead for the 2020-2021 school year.
Dear Diane,
I am an English teacher, classroom researcher, and longtime fan of this blog. I’m writing to share my article, “Innovating for Self-Knowledge: How Distance Learning Helps My Students Find Themselves,” which will appear in the upcoming issue of California English. My 30 year classroom career has taught me that a central problem with school is that students learning about themselves and discovering how they fit in the world is simply not a part of the educational mission in most schools. My article explains how I attempt to solve that problem with my high school sophomores at American High School in Fremont CA, and how I advocate for innovation on what I am calling the developmental leg of curriculum. You can read the full article at https://bit.ly/3l1jFyq.
I’m not sure which of your blog topics my work most connects with, though I believe that if rich self-discovery up through the grade levels were a serious part of students’ experience of school, we would never have had to pronounce the words “President Trump.”
I owe you a debt for introducing me to Yong Zhao’s work, a leader with you, Ken Robinson and many others–most recently including Andre Perry–in the ongoing revolution for fuller humanity in education. I like to think my own work is also part of this revolution.
Below are the final paragraphs of my article.
With love and respect,
John Creger
We need to change how we think about curriculum. How do we renovate our current test-focused approach to more fully serve our students’ needs to understand who they are and how they fit and cope in a world soon to ask them to play more decisive roles as adults than any recent generation has been asked to play? At the moment, most schools’ educational missions do not include the serious pursuit of self-knowledge. But we know from the work of developmentalists Ba and Josette Luvmour that the essential developmental need of a teenager’s journey is to form an identity that can help them bridge successfully to their adult lives. A core purpose in how we design their school learning experience should therefore be to support the healthy formation of their identities. Our students need adults who are aware of their specific developmental needs, and know how to nourish those needs. The Luvmours’ work with Natural Learning Relationships is an essential resource for teachers and parents. “Children’s developmental trajectory,” reports Josette Luvmour, “is strongly influenced by our nurturing” (24).
Unfortunately, curriculum today allows little room for nurturing. I have found the two-legged approach I described earlier useful for designing nurturing into my courses. Last year, Zoom helped my sophomores and me support one another in delivering and responding to Creed presentations. What new tech tools will I find this year to enhance the arc of self-discovery I will design to nurture my students? Yong Zhao, scholar and thought leader in the ongoing revolution for fuller humanity in education, puts it this way: “We need a shift, a new paradigm. We need to abandon the horse wagon. We need to invent a new system. We need policies that stimulate local innovation, so we can all start moving toward the new paradigm.”
In the continuing reshaping of our society for racial and economic justice and environmental survival during and after the pandemic, classroom teachers should be incentivized to begin designing for self-knowledge. We should train to become experts in guiding our students to integrate self-realization in their learning. Samika, from the class of 2021, was calling for this kind of learning when she wrote: “We have been shown many powerpoints about learning to accept others who are different from ourselves. Wouldn’t it help us to accept others if we learned something about ourselves?” Samika and her generation need teachers willing to innovate for our students’ more fully human development. In a recent video, the incomparable Yong Zhao offers a memorable closing banner for us to contemplate and wave: “We need to think differently about readiness. Stop making kids ready for school, and start making school ready for kids.”
A recipient of NCTE’s James Moffett Memorial Award for Teacher Research, author of a Heinemann book on the Personal Creed Project, and Design Lead with the Fremont chapter of Teachers Guild, John Creger has taught English at American High School in Fremont since 1987. Explore his work and presentations at https://bit.ly/3fXMTu5, review his online course at https://bit.ly/31Wckrc, and connect with him on Facebook at https://bit.ly/2Q0h8pT or by email at john@personalcreed.com.
Works Cited
Luvmour, Ba & Luvmour, Josette. Brain Development and the Natural Learning Relationships of Children. Luvmour Consulting, 2018.
Zhao, Yong. “How Do We Enhance Our Education?” YouTube, uploaded by APB Speakers, 8 Feb. 2017, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjMoMtwSwrg.
Since I don’t do “off topic” in posts, I’ll post this here. Turns out the so-called, inappropriately named Lincoln Project is making a lot of money for the individuals involved: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/07/billionaire-democrat-donors-lincoln-project/ Which, let’s face it, is what it was all about in the first place. Mental masturbation for people who hate the Idiot and what he and his acolytes are doing to this nation without changing one vote or facilitating the votes of those who do. Still waiting for any evidence–ANY!–that their “viral” videos have converted a single person. But hey, they’re raking in the dough. And they’re doing so while plagiarizing and stealing like all good Republicans do: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lincoln-project-plagiarism-accusations_n_5f3bcb95c5b670ab17b01f36
I think the Lincoln Project is doing a great job. They are fast and smart and they run truthful attack ads so Democrats don’t have to. I didn’t see any evidence from the linked article that they enriching themselves. That’s what the Trumpers say about them. Their ads make Trumpers angry. They are not only supporting Biden and Harris, they target horrible senators like McConnell, Graham, and Collins. I salute the Lincoln Project and welcome their help in defeating the worst, most dangerous president in modern history, maybe ever.
Politico ran a piece on The Lincoln Project.
I found this one quote from the piece interesting and informative: “Research shows there’s a reason these ads could be effective with Republicans voters: Conservatives are an especially fear-prone group.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/06/lincoln-project-ads-republicans-democrats-349184
And, Media Bias/Fact Check rates Politico as “Least Biased” -Whenever anyone throws quotes around to support what they think, I recommend checking the bias rating for their sources. If the majority or all of the sources quoted are rated left or right biased, then we know the bias of the commenter is, too.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/politico/
Frog and Toad in Covid times.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/frog-and-toad-tentatively-go-outside-after-months-in-self-quarantine
THANK YOU! Reading about Frog and Toad’s management of life with covid was a wonderful way to start the day…
Hi,
I wish & hope everyone & everyone’s families are well – Know everyone is super-super-busy… but…
“R0” is the only legit way to determine when to open schools and (sadly) I think I know why this isn’t being spoken about more and then insisted upon – POLITICS!
Please fix this: Our large school district has the ability to easily do Surveilance Testing but is not doing so (needed to determine when R<1 for long enough to justify opening schools) and this is surely due to grossly misleading articles like the one below and similar politically-motivated propaganda & statements promoted by the CDC after Trumps election.
Sincerely-concerned,
Michael
FYI – Check it out, I think the CDC has put their foot in their mouth by admitting that using numbers that have tested positive, numbers in hospital with COVID or on respirators, or dead of COVID are all completely useless statistics! Irony? Hilarious!
The key (missing)word is (random) SURVEILANCE Testing!
Surveilance Testing is needed to provide an accurate snapshot in time of R0.
Political thug-Idiots appear MAY have intentionally placed this article right UP-FRONT on the CDC website when looking for info on EPIDEMICS & R0! Wow!
The author is 100% !!! CORRECT !!! that ALL the numbers now pushed by the US government such as # in hospital or # dead or testing positive are USELESS for calculating R0 and determining epidemic severity!
What IS NOT MENTIONED is that Random SURVEILANCE TESTING gives a PRECISE NUMBER FOR R0 that is absolutely essential WHEN USED in the PROPER WAY for the PROPER PURPOSE just as the authors say, indeed, the aithor jas dutifully listed the most obvious of shortcomings and possible mis-applications and wrong ways of calcuating R0! – Although it is hinted that R0 is generally regarded as the gold-standard and an indespensible tool – the authors somehow manage to imply that R0 is not THE ONE absolutely critical number that DEFINES (for all practical purposes of rational discussion) an EPIDEMIC so that when an outbreak is becoming an epidemic it is R < 1 or R > 1 that DEFINES WHEN AN EPIDEMIC IS REALLY AN EPIDEMIC – Period!
R0 IS worthless when CALCULATED & derived from BS GOVERNMENT NUMBERS like number
hospitalized & number-dead nonsense!
Here’s their conclusion, read it & weep:
Conclusions
Although R0 might appear to be a simple measure that can be used to determine infectious disease transmission dynamics and the threats that new outbreaks pose to the public health, the definition, calculation, and interpretation of R0 are anything but simple. R0 remains a valuable epidemiologic concept, but the expanded use of R0 in both the scientific literature and the popular press appears to have enabled some misunderstandings to propagate. R0 is an estimate of contagiousness that is a function of human behavior and biological characteristics of pathogens. R0 is not a measure of the severity of an infectious disease or the rapidity of a pathogen’s spread through a population.
**** R0 values are nearly always estimated from mathematical models, and the estimated values are dependent on numerous decisions made in the modeling process.****
The contagiousness of different historic, emerging, and reemerging infectious agents cannot be fairly compared without recalculating R0 with the same modeling assumptions. Some of the R0 values commonly reported in the literature for past epidemics might not be valid for outbreaks of the same infectious disease today.
R0 can be misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misapplied in a variety of ways that distort the metric’s true meaning and value. Because of these various sources of confusion, R0 must be applied and discussed with caution in research and practice. This epidemiologic construct will only remain valuable and relevant when used and interpreted correctly.
Dr. Delamater is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and a faculty fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. His research focuses on the geographic aspects of health, disease, and healthcare.
This research was supported through a grant from the George Mason University Provost Multidisciplinary Research Initiative.
This article (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgazpv/meet-r-nought-the-magic-number-that-spreads-infectious-diseases ) and other more recent articles (see below) just like it are only half-right:
The factor R0 is indeed “complex” in its applicational variations but this is because it is super-simple to measure directly (using random “Surveilance Testing”) and to apply if used to measure a well understood and described region (such as a school district or a city) and not to attempt to make more broad and distant projections and predictions.
I wonder if the Original (half-correct, slightly misleading therefore) Article & Reference Articles Editors & Authors are aware that their work is being used to support the politicalization of science and to mislead in regard the utility of R0?
Q1 – (I wonder?) Are they okay with putting the following article up on the CDC website without further comment?
Q2 – Do they think it possible that both the articles slanted tone and its placement on the CDC website were intentional?
Q3 – What is their true opinion of the value, relevance, utility, and nescessity, of R0 in policymaking (given that 1 in 7 is the chance of dying if one is over 75 and gets COVID19 & 50% of all persons will likely get COVID19 within 2 years)?
NOTE: Within a few short years 1 in 14 over 75 may die of COVID19
KEY CDC ARTICLE WITH AN ANGLE(?):
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/17-1901_article
This is the CDC Webpage that appears when Googling “R<1, epidemic, CDC!”
Read this article Abstract (following) and it sounds to me like they are saying that R0 is useless nonsense and THAT really is nonsense!
Volume 25, Number 1—January 2019
Paul L. Delamate
Comments to Author, Erica J. Street, Timothy F. Leslie, Y. Tony Yang, and Kathryn H. Jacobsen
Author affiliations: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA (P.L. Delamater); George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA (E.J. Street, T.F. Leslie, K.H. Jacobsen); George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA (Y.T. Yang)
Abstract
The basic reproduction number (R0), also called the basic reproduction ratio or rate or the basic reproductive rate, is an epidemiologic metric used to describe the contagiousness or transmissibility of infectious agents. R0 is affected by numerous biological, sociobehavioral, and environmental factors that govern pathogen transmission and, therefore, is usually estimated with various types of complex mathematical models, which make R0 easily misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misapplied. R0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen, a rate over time, or a measure of disease severity, and R0 cannot be modified through vaccination campaigns. R0 is rarely measured directly, and modeled R0 values are dependent on model structures and assumptions. Some R0 values reported in the scientific literature are likely obsolete. R0 must be estimated, reported, and applied with great caution because this basic metric is far from simple.
Some Closing Thoughts:
What defines when a disease spreading is really an epidemic?
Simplest answer: R >1 means the epidemic is NOT over.
R as Reinfection-Rate: Make knowledge of R (and science by extrapolation) a BIG deal. It is.
Schools should not open untill R<1!
R requires “Random Surveilance testing!”
The “# dead of Covid19” & “# in hospital” & “# testing positive” are near-worthless CRUDE APPROXIMATIONS of R that are EASILY MANIPULATED!
SCIENCE-SAYS:
It isn’t an EPIDEMIC until R>1 & isn’t in decline until R<1.
OPEN SCHOOLS ONLY When R<1 for a while!
Reinfection-Rate R uses Random Surveilance Tests;
Positive %’s of 4voluntary tests, # in hospitals & # dead/COVID19 are useless.
#1in5over75gettingCOVID19willDIE IS NOT OK!
Onward, thanks to our children!
I think it is wrong to blame the CDC. Blame Trump and/or his administration. It was Trump who politicized the virus. It was Trump who made the pandemic worse in the United States. It was Trump that demanded public schools open on time with illegal threats to cut off public funds if they didn’t.
Trump’s appointees to every federal agency are mostly crooks and frauds like him and he fired his way to the pirate crew running out government today so they would all be loyalists doing exactly what Trump wants.
Anyone that steps out of line, is fired and replaced just like all the others that Trump could not control one-hundred percent.
Anything the federal government does while Trump is president is done with the approval of Trump. When his appointees do something horribly wrong and it blows up in the media, Trump doesn’t admit he was the one that ordered them to do it. He fires them and replaces them with another loyalist to him.
What can those loyalists do when Trump throws them under a bus?
Trump demands total loyalty from his minions, and if they accept the jobs he offers like a carrot to a hungry horse, they have to sign confidentially agreements so it will cost them a lot if they tell the truth, that Trump ordered them to do it.
You featured a post of Dave Grohl a while ago, about a wonderful, authentic person he is. Here’s another example of a feel-good story we so desperately need:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/dave-grohl-10-year-old-drummer-virtual-challenge-nandi-bushell-1052688/
100% on target for return to school plans. May as well laugh!
Re the anniversary of Faubus’s bigoted conduct: whence the satirical/mournful jazz classic by Charles Mingus, “Fables of Faubus”:
I was never a money person. If I was I would never have become a teacher. I honestly believed that we were paid what they could afford to pay us. Seems stupid now but I was a kid. I was a fool. Twenty years ago I signed up to be a teacher. I wanted to be a teacher. I went to college for it. I knew I would never be able to support a family. It was ok, I wasn’t interested in having one. When I first became a teacher, I was shown a “step” system of pay. I saw that every year you’d make a little more. When you finally reached 20 or 25 years in the system the pay took huge leaps higher. Some years as much as a $10,000 increase if you can believe it. I thought I’d be rewarded for loyalty. That “step” system has long been abandoned. Now we recieve increases of around 1.3% a year. I thought the worst indignity came when I actually made less money than the year prior. The state of Florida forced us to contribute 3% to our retirement. Our yearly salary increase wasn’t even that much. This latest indignity is worse. Florida passed a new law raising the minimum teacher salary. Wonderful for new hires and attracting talent. Not so wonder for those of us that have put the years in. Now, after 20 years of dutiful service I make $5,000 dollars more than a 21 year old, fresh out of college. I am absolutely and totally morally devastated. The system seems to now be designed to have a perpetual series of inexperienced teachers. I need help. I need for my story to be heard. What do I do? What can I do? They don’t care about me. Now I don’t care about my job. When they showed me that “step” schedule 20 years ago, I believed it to be a nonverbal agreement about how much I would make, roughly, in the future. I was a fool. If I knew then I would never have become a teacher. I feel conned, duped, and lied to and I just can’t take it anymore.
Jason When I was teaching K-12 teachers, most had been working already and were coming back to get their
masters. Many, however, had left prior professions, some from Tech, or wall street, or businesses of some kind. And most had done so knowing full well that they were taking a huge pay cut.
Time and again, however, they said they had been terribly unhappy with their work before; and they somehow knew that they would be happier working with kids in a school environment. . . . and sure enough, what they were doing before could not match up AT ALL with the job satisfaction they had from teaching. Problems and all, they said, now, they get up in the morning and cannot wait to go to work whereas, before, they dreaded it.
FWIW, one of my own outtakes from the above, in the context of having read your note, is that a teacher’s relationship with the State and their under-funding of education, along with their obtuseness and carelessness about implied or formal promises to those who work in State services, is quite different from teachers’ relationship with our students. CBK
“Many, however, had left prior professions”
I did. I served in the U.S. Marines for three years and fought in Vietnam. I also started working in the private sector when I was 15. After the Marines and Vietnam, I went to college on the GI Bill and my first job out of college was middle management for a large corporation. The pay was better than teaching, but I did not like that job.
I was 30 when I left the private sector and went back to college to earn a teaching credential. Thirty years later, I retired from teaching. I did not like the politics focused on public education (I hated it), but I enjoyed the actual teaching and working with my students even though I worked 60 to 100 hours a week every week for most of that thirty years.
Although the corporate job I left paid more, I was more suited to be a teacher.
It seems that some people measure their worth in how much they earn even if the job stresses them out so much it will cut their life short by decades. Teaching wasn’t stressful. It was hard work. Harder than the Marines, harder than being a combat, harder than working in middle management in a corporation. But teaching wasn’t stressful like that corporate job was.
As a teacher, I earned enough to keep a roof over my head, put food on the table, and even enjoy myself outside of the job. I did not get rich but I am a lot healthier than anyone I knew that stayed in corporate America where the stress can be toxic.
Lloyd It’s an odd kind of love . . . we know we have a legacy, we just don’t know exactly what that is. On second thought, maybe not so odd . . . CBK
AH! So interesting. Thanks for sharing. I, too did nto profit financially by becoming a teacher, but I loved what I did, and I know I contributed to our society… and now 25 years later, as my students mow inter thirties, contact me, I know how I contributed in a positive way. But, dear Lloyd, Iw Ould never choose to teach today, because it is impossible to ‘teach’ the way that children actually learn… not with the hedge funds running the show, and the ignorance of our society growing as the disinformation flows from their monied pockets.
Real life
Is there any way we could get a national movement to NOT take the high stakes standardized tests this year? If any group could figure out how to go about it, I’d guess it’s this one.
NOE will work on this. My view is that the federal testing mandate should be abolished.
Thank you, Diane. Good to know and completely agree.
Samantha Bee on the school to prision pipeline. Jesse Hagopian appears both in real life and as an animation!
Our friend, Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post, has published this piece from 50 teachers at an NYC school. It is sobering. Keep the schools closed; there is far too little to gain and much to lose.
“To give but one example: We are particularly concerned about our students who have IEPs and how they will receive special education services in a hybrid model. There are currently no provisions for having two teachers in mandated co-taught settings, and it would be nearly impossible for most schools in New York City to meet this requirement under the stresses of fragmenting our staff to serve all groups of students. Tellingly, the city’s 109-page reopening plan includes only one and a half pages about special education, reducing the ethical mandate for equitable educational access to a declaration that schools provide services ‘to the extent feasible.’
“While it may seem counterintuitive, we believe the proposed hybrid structure will lead to students feeling more isolated, less engaged and less supported. We believe it is far from what we can provide in a remote learning setting, where the full resources of our school and staff are dedicated to a single model. Simply put: Hybrid learning is too great of a health risk, to say nothing of logistical madness, for such little gain.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/09/15/logistical-madness-hybrid-school-schedules-by-nearly-50-frustrated-teachers/#comments-wrapper
Cynthia Nixon in the NYT on school reopenings:
“I heard that building inspections would begin just a few weeks before school was set to open, even though out of the 1,700 buildings to be examined, a thousand already have documented ventilation problems. And I could only shake my head as I later saw that the system for testing these ventilation systems involves using a yardstick with a piece of toilet paper attached to it by paper clip to gauge airflow.
“Needless to say, the care and investment given to restarting television and film production in New York looks nothing like the uncertain, chaotic, shamefully underfunded and profoundly unsafe approach to reopening the public schools, which serve 1.1 million children, nearly three-quarters of them deeply underprivileged.”
Does Bill Barr even care that he will go down in history as the most craven, unconstitutional, and ideological toady attorney general is history (rhetorical question)? Obviously not. So he must think he’s going to profit financially beyond his wildest dreams. The Idiot has made an art of appointing people who are perfectly suited to undermine and kill the agencies and departments they have been chosen to lead. But in no federal function has he succeeded more than at DoJ. Betsy’s a close second. And she is very much the runner-up to Barr.
Trump and Bill Barr are all in on their con to take over the United States. Step by step, they are creating a false scenario as the foundation Trump will use to grab power and Barr will back him up. They have been collecting loyalists and testing them like the federal agents they sent to Portland wearing unmarked uniforms and driving unmarked cars to trample the 1st Amdmentt and the rights of peaceful protestors.
Trump’s mob thinks they are going to win and Trump knows that the winners are the ones that write history until a century or two later when some researcher-scholar publishes a book setting the record straight. But by then it is too late because there will always be someone that will believe the history Trump will have written for him.
If he wins, we all lose. I hope someone else sees what Trump and his cronies are planning and is working to stop them. Staying within the law to stop Trump might not be enough to get the job done. Trump doesn’t follow any laws that will limit what he is doing. That puts people like Biden at a disadvantage.
To beat Trump, they have to fight fire with fire.
Lloyd “Staying within the law to stop Trump might not be enough to get the job done. Trump doesn’t follow any laws that will limit what he is doing. That puts people like Biden at a disadvantage.”
While I understand your point about the “disadvantage” of following the law, the implications of what you say above would put the king’s cap on a Trump win. The problem is not with the law, but with the moral, political, and spiritual decadence of “the people” who blindly rally around him and who have allowed themselves to be led down a path of fear and hate. Without the people’s regard for the law and the Constitution, the law is not worth the paper it’s written on. The beauty of the law is that it’s not a person but the written word.
Even the hypocrisy evident in the conflict between (1) Trump’s campaigning on law and order and (2) his total disregard for the law apparently means nothing to his supporters who, themselves, claim to be “Americans” instead of the treasonous idiots that their actions tell us
they are. I can almost hear the vacuum of 50+ years of neo-liberalism sucking everything into its vortex. CBK
There are four groups involved in what has been happening to this country for decades, not just the neo-liberals in the Democratic Party. There are the Koch brothers libertarians and ALEC, et al, the neo-liberals in the Democratic Party, the neo-conservatives in the GOP, and the white supremacists like Trump, McConnel, and DeVos (they are a political force, too).
And, the neo-liberal and the neo-conservative movements both originated from the University of Chicago but by two different professors teaching there.
Lloyd Yes, lots of threads going back to many anti-democratic movements . . . most I think have a tight relation to racism and xenophobia. Ayn Rand has a big reactionary hand in it as she was able to reach common culture . . . precisely because she knew nothing about the difference between common and theoretical discourse. And the monied “elites” during FDR’s time.
We really do need a BIG TURNOUT. Like you, I have great hope in those who DO have some power not to pull their punches and use it when the time comes. CBK
Horrifc data; keep the schools closed.
“According to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, very few children who’ve gotten sick with the coronavirus have died. Of the 391,814 cases of COVID-19 — as well as the rare infection linked to it, pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome — that the CDC recorded between February 12 and July 31 of this year, only 121 (about 0.03%) were deadly.
“But among those 121 young decedents, few were white. The CDC reported that just 17 of those recorded fatalities were in white children, compared with 35 deaths of Black children, and 54 Hispanic deaths.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-black-and-brown-children-dying-from-the-coronavirus-2020-9
Diane, Could you please refer us to an article on the death of RBG which indicates how it might be at all possible to get around a Trump/GOP appointment to replace her before the election? Her death is truly devastating to me and I’m finding it impossible to feel anything but extreme anger at G-d for this on Rosh HaShana.
The only thing I can think of is how Hitler thought the death of FDR was a sign that he was going to be turning everything around and would win the war. I’m guessing Trump and his cronies are having similar thoughts today, while the rest of us are foreseeing a lot of excruciating years with a very conservative Supreme Court, on top of the conservatives Trump already appointed, including to the lower courts. I fear that means many decades ahead of injustice for all but religious extremists, corporations & the 1%, and that feels more hopeless than I can handle right now.
If the Democrats take back the White House, the Senate, and keep the House, they will be in a position to add seats to the U.S. Supreme Court. All they have to do is add four seats to 13 total and appoint four moderate progressives to those seats and then we will have 7 to 6.
I left a comment in another thread so I’m not going to repeat what I said there with the links. That info is called Packing the Court and the U.S. Constitution allows it.
Thanks so much, Lloyd!
I am always looking for the silver lining and this is the conclusion that I reached as well, shortly before Diane put up her posts regarding RBG.
We have to win a whole lot for that to happen, but despite the crazies who will continue to drink the Trump Kool-Aid and support him no matter what he does, I still believe that, unlike our leader who has not ethical code, most Americans live principled lives according to a moral code that benefits the common good, and have heart and brains enough to recognize the dangers we face around fascism taking over our country today.
Like many other teachers, most of whom support 1619, I did not like the pro-white male propaganda dished out when I went to school in the 50s and 60s, so I have always taught the truth about America to my students. I believe very strongly that, as a result, they and their progeny are a lot more sensitive to and understanding of the plight of historically marginalized groups, including women and people of color, so I do have faith that we will prevail…
Your faith that we will prevail and get rid of Trump with the November election is stronger than mine. Mine is about 50-50.
I expect Trump and Barr will attempt a coup if they think there is no way for Trump to win the election and the GOP to keep the Senate majority.
Trump already signaled he is thinking about a coup when he accused the Muler investigation being a coup that failed. Trump always signals what he is doing/thinking by accusing others of the same thing with no evidence but that doesn’t stop him. Then he repeates thopse lies to lodge them firmly in theminds of his deplorable, ignrant, easy to fill base.
And, Barr is threatening to arrest large city mayors who are almost all Democrats.
The first step will be when Barr sends out Trump’s tested Federal law enforcement thugs in their unmarked cars and uniforms and start arresting powerful elected Democrats probably starting with mayors as another test to see if they can get away with it. Next, they will go for Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Biden and accuse them of plotting a coup. They will vanish just like the children Trump’s thugs threw into cages and manage to keep their location a secret so no one can try to rescue them.
At the same time, for the coup to succeed, I think Trump and Barr will round up and remove the leadership of the Democratic party at the state and national levels and do it quickly. Then they will send in Trump’s tested unamrked federal law enforcement agents/thugs to shoot dead anyone that dares to gather and protest.
That is when the Civil War will explode in cities across the country but it will be mostly leaderless. Trump and Barr will then order the military in, to quell the violence and distruction if the military does not act to stop the coup in its early stages. That will probably be the case since we have seen the military say very little so far about Trump’s crimes and lies. Even retired generals like Mattis and Kelly have done little to counter Trump.
If successful. when the smoke clear, we will no longer be the Constutional Republic and any billionaires that Trump doesn’t like will have to flee the country like Bezos and Bloomberg if they are not already in a cage with the leadership of the Democratic Party. Trump will have Barr confiscate all of the wealth and properly of any billionaire or multi millionaire that he doesn’t trust or that will not swear total loyalty to him. In the end, Trujmp will become the first trillionare on the planet with all the loot he will grab just like the Nazis did to the wealthy Jewish families during WWII.
I have no doubt that Trump is aware of what Hitler did as he murdered millions and took all their money and property even the gold fillings in their teeth after they were dead. Trump has always loved and worshiped Hitler, Putin, Kim Jong-un and other dictators.
Lloyd From 2016, early voting makes a difference this time? CBK
Yes, I think it was ProPublica or FiveThirtyEight that pointed out that most of the states are using early voting and mail-in ballots to defeat Trump’s plot to sabotage the election, but failing that and knowing Trump’s fascists are losing, I think Trump and Barr will make an attempt, an old fashioned banana republic coup, to take over the country.
Trump has already set the stage by repeatidly telling his loylalists that the Demcorats are ceating druing the election. How many times has Trump said he cannot lose the election unless the Democrats cheat and he doesn’t have any evidence to support that lie.
Trump and Barr will do the coup in such a way that in the early stages if the military or the courts do not stop Trump, there won’t be enough evidence to find him guilty of attempting a coup, and if Trump and Barr are not stopped by the time the evidence is there, it might be too late.
And if, the Trumplican Senators and their leader Moscow Crooked Mitch McConnel do nothing but continue to support Trump every step of the way as the coup progresses, then short of a successful and very bloody Civil War that gets rid of Trump, his family and his loyalists like Barr and Moscow Mitch forever by sending them all to hell, the U.S. will not be a Constutional Republic anymore.
In fact, the U.S. won’t even be the U.S. anymore, because once Trump holds total power, he will rename the country Trumpastan or something similiar.
Trump, Barr and McConnel keep pissing on the rules, and because the Democrats keep trying to beat them by playing by the rules, the odds of Trump, Barr, McConnel and their loyasits of winning grow with every passing day.
The best way to stop wild fires is by fighting fire with controlled fires. In other words, fight fires with fires.
Lloyd “In fact, the U.S. won’t even be the U.S. anymore, because once Trump holds total power, he will rename the country Trumpastan or something similiar.”
I think this is the fundamental insight that is missing from the Trump voters’ thinking and their view of a post-election Trump-world–as if the democracy they experience now will remain the same if he is elected. CBK
I do not think Trump’s deplorable supporters would even notice the change from a Constitutional Republic to a brutal dictatorship.
Trump’s base is so deplorable, that I think Trump’s racist, ignorant, easy-to-control, and fool supporters would cheer every time Trump judged who was an enemy of “his” dystopian nation-state with a tweet and then had them executed without due process and a fair trial.
All it will take is Trump declaring someone is guilty of treason to him, and his base would shout, “Off with their heads!”
Lloyd,
Sometimes the genuine truth does come out in Trump’s unscripted, insanely long stream-of-consciousness rally speeches, like this recent one, which Biden seized on very cleverly:
https://www.facebook.com/joebiden/videos/im-joe-biden-and-i-approve-this-message/325150348809569/?so=permalink&rv=related_videos
Cleverness will lose in the end against rampant, ruthless lies, and cheating that go unchecked.
Trump doesn’t care about the election. It is obvious he doesn’t. That is why the clues are there that he is setting the stage to justify a coup to take over no matter what the results of the election are.
I know the scenario you described is a possibility and that does concern me, but of he loses, I prefer to think it would only take a handful of patriotic servicemen in the White House to remove him from there. (I have had a lot of students in my college classes who are on active duty in the service, most of whom are against Trump, and I can readily imagine them taking appropriate action to save our country from a dictator-wannabe.)
Trump loves to come off as the bully-in-chief, but he is aging rapidly and I don’t think he has the stamina to fight to his death in order to stay in power. I think he’d be more likely to try to commandeer a flight to Russia in order to avoid the orange jump suit that is awaiting him in NY.
Trump has never had support from the majority of voters & I don’t think he ever will, because he’s only been losing votes, not gaining them. If Biden addresses the people in fly-over country who’ve felt neglected by Democrats, I think he has a good chance of winning the electoral college, too. So I lean more towards believing we can and will succeed in winning back control over our country..
I have no doubts that Biden will win the popular vote by a higher number than Hillary did, but the Electoral College is still a big question mark.
The Russian propaganda that McConnel was unwilling to deal with by not funding increased security for the 2020 election will focus on the Electoral College, and not the popular vote using similar tactics like they did in 2016. In 2016, the Russian tactics worked and 700,000 black voters that had voted in previous elections stayed home handing the Electorall College to Trump with razor thin margins in three states. I do not think it will be as easy for the Russians to pull it off this time, but it isn’t impossible.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump
At this point, I think the odds are against Trump winning the Electoral College, but it isn’t impossible.
The Russian’s could succeed like they did in 2016 with just enough votes to eek out another win for Trump in the Electoral College.
*Lloyd** This is what I meant when I said that so many are voting early this time. Each vote for Biden NOW means one that won’t be influenced by some cockamamie October surprise. CBK
I haven’t thought of that. That is good. Much harder for Trump to control the voting that way.
The October surprise will probaby arrive the week before the election. Of course. it will be based on a lie and a conspiracy theory without enough time to get the message out to the public that hasn’t voted.
I think Trump and Barr will trump up some fake charges from someone outside of the country (another crook like Trump doing him a favor for something in the future if Trump stays in power) and there will be no time left for the evidence to come out revealing that the whole think is a hoax, a ploy meant to mislead like the EMAIL crap that Comey is responsible for that helped sink Hillary along with the Russian meddling and decades of fake conspiracy theories focusing on the Clintons. When I was doing yardwork on day, a neighbor taking a walk stopped to talk. He is a Trumper. Something I said set him off and he started ranting about Hillary having the real father of his daughters first child murdered. later, I couldn’t even find that conspiracy theory with a Google search it was so far out. When he started ranting about that, his eyes went rabid. I stopped the conversation, said I had to get back to mowing the yard so I could finish. Since then, I have avoided that Trumpish lunatic.
What I am talking about has little to do with the election and everything to do with a coup to replace the U.S. Constituion with Trump erasing, changing and adding laws based on what he is hearing from frauds like Hannity, Alex Jones and Limbaugh. Lying talking heads like them will become Emperor Trump’s advisor, and they probably already are.
Even if Trump’s long shot to win the election happens, the coup will still take place sometime during his second alleged term because he does not want to take any chances from all the law suits waiting to leap on him the moment his is out of the White House and the phoney protection that Barr created.
Trump is dreaming of all the power and wealth he will have if he becames president for life without the U.S. Constitution to get in his way. He wants total control over the agencies of the federal govenrment, the military, Congress, the federal court system, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Once he has that, he will violently crush any state that dares to defy him. Let’s hope Trump’s horrid dreams all evaporate and Biden has contingency plans with help from the military to stop Trump from a successful coup if that happens.
Like I said earlier, I think we have a 50-50 chance to get Trump out of the White House without a coup or civil war.
Lloyd “His eyes went rabid.” There’s some serious psychological stuff going on there. I’ve seen that “look” also. Trump really did tap into an huge national undersea of old, unfinished mess. CBK
Trump has tapped into two groups that he thinks are stupid and easy to fool:
The fundamentalist, born again into fake Christianity mob of lunatics, and the fear mongering, hate filled, nut cases that get all their faux conservative news and opinions from the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh and Alex Jones.
Both of these groups have been programmed for decades to distrust the rest of the traditional media that makes an effort to report honest news even if it might be biased.
Bias in a news piece doesn’t men the media is lying.
There is also some cross over between these two groups.
In Trump’s world, anti-Trump equates to telling and teaching the truth; and education equates to propaganda –his.
In MAGA, Great means return to slavery, suppression of women, white supremacy, and NO public services, and where rights and freedoms are only for rich sycophants who have all sold their souls at the Stock Market. CBK
I think that some black voters didn’t turn out in 2016 because they did not fully recognize that a backlash from having our first black president could result in a known racist taking the helm next. Now that they realize that black lives really don’t matter to Trump, there may be a lot more black voter buy-in, especially with Kamala Harris on the ticket.
I agree. Fool me once shame on you, Russia. If Russia shames me twice, shame on me.
This article reminds me of the “disruptor” mindset we’ve all suffered from in public education. Some entitled young people, with neither experience nor preparation nor a basic understanding of the task, through arrogance and overabundant self confidence, insert themselves to remedy a problem with drastic impact.
“How did a Kennedy end up in a sensitive role in the Trump Administration? After graduating from Harvard, in 2016, Kennedy did some time at consulting and investment firms; he planned to take the LSAT in March, but the pandemic cancelled it. At loose ends, he responded to a friend’s suggestion that he join a volunteer task force that Jared Kushner was forming, to get vital personal protective equipment, such as masks, to virus hot spots. Kushner, he was told, was looking for young generalists who could work long hours for no pay. ‘I was torn, to some extent,’ Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat, said. ‘But it was such an unprecedented time. It didn’t seem political—it seemed larger than the Administration.’ And he knew people who’d been sick. So in March he volunteered for the White House covid-19 Supply-Chain Task Force, and drove to Washington.”
Of course, Kennedy won’t suffer reprecussions as a whistleblower; his family and wealth will protect him; still he admirably stepped forward.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/28/a-young-kennedy-in-kushnerland-turned-whistle-blower?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned
Diane, Maybe you already posted this and I just overlooked it? From EPI on September 17th: “Teacher pay penalty dips but persists in 2019: Public school teachers earn about 20% less in weekly wages than nonteacher college graduates”
https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-penalty-dips-but-persists-in-2019-public-school-teachers-earn-about-20-less-in-weekly-wages-than-nonteacher-college-graduates/
As Boston prepares to resume in person schooling next month, here are 3 proposals for high schools. They are absurd. Clearly no one with experience in a classroom has had input. It merely a way to say school is in session.
“Students show up for their first period class and take that class together, masked and six feet apart.
“But next period, they’re all taking different courses. To avoid mixing with several different groups of students during the day, the students don’t go anywhere. They stay in the same classroom and tune in to their different classes via Zoom.
“Meanwhile, the teacher in that room is teaching students scattered around the school as well as at home. The teacher talks, and from time to time students also talk, but they’re all in different conversations. ‘Like a call center,’ is how one educator described it. Headphones provide some noise protection.”
https://schoolyardnews.com/a-day-in-the-pandemic-life-of-an-in-person-high-school-student-three-scenarios-7e77e5802ead
Anand Giridharadas breaks it down for Jeff Bezos and the other plutes:
Jeff Bezos wants to start a school for kids whose families are underpaid by people like Jeff Bezos
A free crash course in why generosity is no substitute for justice
https://the.ink/p/jeff-bezos-wants-to-start-a-school
Christine I saw this article and hoped someone would share it here. It’s certainly worth a watch. Thanks. CBK
What’s the skinny on this new tech, “Nearpod?”
Just checked new. The Idiot is in quarantine and awaiting test results. I may burst and die because of Schadenfreude.
He’s tested positive. I do sincerely hope he does as well as anyone else in his age and obesity group does.
The Boston Teachers Union has an MOA with the city on in-person teaching. When the city’s rate rises about 4%, schools are supposed to be remote. The city does not want to honor the MOA and some neighborhoods have rates about 8%. Here’s a bulletin from the union:
“We strongly object to the superintendent’s message yesterday which threatened disciplinary action towards members who exercise their rights in the MOA agreement that the city and district negotiated and signed on to. It is our belief that such actions, if taken, would be an illegal violation of the MOA agreement.
” ”Remember, our MOA language expressly states:
” ‘If the citywide COVID-19 positivity rate rises above 4% citywide, BPS will transition to full remote learning for all students, and BTU bargaining unit members will have the option to be remote as well.’
“The superintendent’s disingenuous interpretation of the MOA is simply wrong. We feel that the superintendent’s threats of discipline constitute an effort to intimidate educators – and that those efforts are at odds with our agreement, and highly inappropriate at a time during which positivity rates are as high as 8% in some of our Boston neighborhoods and when we have confirmed positive cases in our schools. We are also alarmed that the district would direct teachers who are teaching remotely to log off while they are safely providing instruction to students.”
https://t.e2ma.net/share/inbound/t/tqdtme/prv0j7b
I’m very happy to have found your blog!
Welcome, Henry!
An excellent post from a third grade teacher in Harlem:
“Stop for a moment to consider all that our communities have been through this year. Breathe in deeply, and notice the way the air travels into your lungs, and then out your nostrils.
“To stop and recognize this is a small act of resistance. Because our leaders don’t want us to pause for even a second. If we did, we might not be able to hold back our grief and rage, and then what might happen next?
“The truth is, this school year is the culmination of years of education policy and funding choices. For years we have been asked to bridge the gap between our society’s care for children and those children’s needs. The gap got wider and wider — an epidemic of school shootings, a wave of racist and xenophobic hatred, students struggling with homelessness and food insecurity — and we were asked to keep going, ‘for the children.’ We were emotionally manipulated into thinking we had no choice.”
https://theeducatorsroom.com/teachers-stop-what-youre-doing/
Diane, I know you read Garrison Keillor’s daily posts. I used to enjoy them as well, but stopped reading after he was accused of sexual harassment. Looks like he’s really put his foot in it now:
“When asked what people should do if, say, South Dakota and various like-minded states do decide to do away with abortion, or ‘criminalize LGBTQ,’ Keillor had a simple solution.
“ ‘I think a trans person out in the middle of South Dakota might feel a little more comfortable out in Minneapolis,’ he said. ‘There are places in America where if you are trans or bi or any variation… where you as an individual will feel more comfortable… This is why people from small towns have been moving to big cities for hundreds of years.’
“These are also words that have been repeated again and again, usually to the same groups of people. If your state refuses to treat you like a regular human being, move to another one. Go to the city. Seek out liberal enclaves where you can at least expect to be benignly ignored, if not loved. Godspeed, teens.”
http://citypages.com/arts/garrison-keillor-says-roe-v-wade-not-worth-fighting-for-anymore/572733271
I’m confused. Seems like good advice to me.
There’s a lot more. He says we should give up on Roe at the federal level. Same for rights of people in the LGBTQ community. Your human rights protections would depend on your place of residence.
“But the Court is not able to make abortion illegal, only states can do that,” Keillor wrote. “So abortion will be legal most places and not others. Meanwhile, we need to focus on providing health care and support for women, that will lessen the number of women who feel forced to abort… Meanwhile, R v W is a toxic issue that has poisoned our politics for almost 50 years and succeeded in electing a great many cynical and corrupt men to public office who oppose abortion publicly but would provide it for their daughters without question.”
You may be surprised to read this but Ginsburg was wary of Roe because she believed that the states would come around, as they were, and make abortion legal. She feared the backlash that a national decision would cause.
New York Times:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t really fond of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion. She didn’t like how it was structured.
The ruling, she noted in a lecture at New York University in 1992, tried to do too much, too fast — it essentially made every abortion restriction in the country at the time illegal in one fell swoop — leaving it open to fierce attacks.
“Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped,” she said, “may prove unstable.”
It was because of her early criticism of one of the most consequential rulings for American women that some feminist activists were initially suspicious of her when President Bill Clinton nominated her for the Supreme Court in 1993, worried that she wouldn’t protect the decision.
Of course, they eventually realized that Justice Ginsburg’s skepticism of Roe v. Wade wasn’t driven by a disapproval of abortion access at all, but by her wholehearted commitment to it.
Diane RBG was wise to the ways of history. There is a relationship between her view of Roe and MLK’s long arch of history that bends towards justice. CBK
Christine,
If I were a trans and lived in a small town, I’d take Garrison’s advice and move to a city. There’s a German saying, “City air makes you free.” It’s true.
I knew that about RBG and the Barrett hearings have shown that perhaps we need legislation to protect women’s autonomy. But to go back to Keillor, the idea that marriage, sexuality and health care are a lost cause nationally seems quite dangerously retrograde to me.
I just saw that you wrote the forward to paperback edition of Naomi Rooks’s book. Have you ever asked her about her choices of examples in her conclusion? As much as I thought the book was exceptional, the ending left such a lasting, bad impression that I can’t seem to shake. Kind of like taking a new car home and realizing someone keyed the passenger side right before you drove it home.
I never spoke to her. I loved her book but agree with you that the ending doesn’t feel right. It’s as if someone else wrote the last chapter.
I think Woody Guthrie would have approved of this. Only solidifies my opinion that This Land should be our national anthem.
It would be if we were really exceptional…
We could all use some balm for our souls as we head into the uncertainties of the next several weeks.
RE: A generation of “Held Back” students
Hello – I am looking for information about the Pandemic creating a need to normalize students being 1+ years “behind” in their progress through the traditional 4K-12 public school system. For example, students who are currently negatively referred to as having been “held back” or as “a 5th year senior” in high school need to accepted as being on their own track, not off the prescribed track, of progression through school. Age placement into a grade needs to be reexamined. Achievement grouping, within and across age groups, has documented positive and negative effects on student learning and self-perception. We have a generation of students, perhaps 15 solid years of leaning, that are being affected by the Pandemic. Old models for grouping students and moving (promoting) them through traditional grade configurations will not overcome the negative impact to learning that the majority of US K4-12 students are experiencing. Your thoughts, or direction to commentary about this issue, would be appreciated.
Diana in WI
parent/para educator
Diane, I do not know where else to suggest this, so I am going to suggest it here. I am a fan of Glenn Loury and John McWhorter and listen to their Blogging Heads talks whenever I can. I am also an old fan of yours – we have met and you signed my copy of your book once, at URI in Rhode Island. Loury, a professor at Brown, is a proponent of charters. His friend McWhorter recently claimed that the data did not back up their efficacy. I commented and suggested that Glenn set up a conversation with you about the matter.
Consider this missive a bug in your ear to contact Loury yourself and invite him to a discussion on charters and public schools in general. I love you both and you love to hear your discussion on the matter. Thank you, and keep up the great work you do!
Thank you, Ron.
In the age of Zoom, anything is possible.
Diane, here’s an excellent post on the lack of Social Studies in our public schools. I’m sharing the link with the permission of its author, Christopher Martell. He is a parent of a child in the Boston Public Schools, as well as an Assistant Professor of Education at UMass Boston. I think it deserves a wider audience.
*”A few weeks ago, a fellow Boston Public Schools parent wrote me worried that her child’s middle school principal was replacing social studies with humanities. I replied:
“I am concerned about any school moving to a “humanities model” or any other combination of English language arts and social studies. This is usually only done at the middle school level (although here in Boston, we see it at the high school level, as well). It is part of a misguided “back to the basics” view of school, or a belief that students just need literacy development and social studies content is just the vehicle for teaching reading and writing-when in fact it has different disciplinary structures and thinking skills that are developed. I would, however, want to better know the administrator’s intentions. It is one thing to have English teachers and history teachers coordinate their courses to provide a better humanities experience. That could actually be a great thing (when I was a classroom teacher, I worked with English teachers to do just that). However, what usually happens with these models is that it becomes one teacher trying to teach one of those two subjects with limited expertise (it is often an ELA teacher teaching social studies poorly). It can be a way for the principal to get rid of social studies positions or make room in students schedules for more literacy time.”*
http://christophermartell.blogspot.com/2020/10/humanities-classes-are-not-substitue.html
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think each state is different when it comes to Social Studies because public education is primarily the responsibility of the states and there is no “common” curriculum even though autocrats like Bill Gates tried to force one down our unwilling throats without asking or consulting the population.
Take California and its History-Social Science Framework.
The State Board of Education adopted the History-Social Science Framework on July 14, 2016. This is the final digital version of the Framework.
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/hssframework.asp
Re: social studies curricula:
Conservative Activists in Texas Have Shaped the History All American Children Learn | History News Network
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/177875
:
I clicked the link you provided and nothing was there.
Sorry. I don’t know why that happened. Here is the whole article (unfortunately, the whole article is behind the Washington Post paywall, so if you do not have WaPo subscription, you cannot read it all):
Conservative Activists in Texas Have Shaped the History All American Children LearnTheir activism reshaped the content of history textbooks, producing a heroic, skewed narrative
by Rob Alex Fitt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/19/conservative-activists-texas-have-shaped-history-all-american-children-learn/
Rob Alex Fitt is a PhD candidate in U.S. history at the University of Birmingham, UK. His current research looks at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics as site of neoliberal cultural production, and what this did to ideas of national and racial identity.
President Trump wants more “patriotic” American history curriculums. He’s not the first to try. Americans have long been anxious over what schools teach, and this has produced fierce ideological battles over what fills textbooks.
Many Americans believe students directly absorb whatever is written in their textbooks. That makes the stakes over what gets into these books on science, health or history immensely high — an entire generation of Americans stands to be indoctrinated. That perspective, at least, has been the sense of conservative activists in Texas, who for decades have campaigned for more “patriotic” books to ensure the next generation of voters receive, as they see it, the right message.
Since the late 1960s, these activists have become increasingly adept at shaping the character of school history texts. Because of the size of Texas’ textbook market, their activism influenced what was taught to all American children. For publishers, it was not economically viable to write one book to appease campaigners in Texas and a different version to sell elsewhere. The result: Students across the country got books that told U.S. history from the perspective of a small group of White, God-fearing, conservative Texans. Over 20 years, textbook activists shifted the meaning of “patriotic history” from a postwar liberal consensus to a right-wing, colorblind, nationalist retelling of the American story — one that persists today.
For as long as there have been history textbooks, there have been activists trying to change them. Since the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which found segregated schooling unconstitutional, conservatives have most vociferously and successfully campaigned for their version of history in textbooks. The accomplishments of the civil rights movement threatened all the social certainties that conservatives held dear. Alongside their resistance to desegregation, conservative activists seized upon the history curriculum because it allowed them a way to control the narrative of the changes America was undergoing.
By the 1970s, the turbulent history of the past two decades had to be included in the textbooks. In Texas, conservative activists transformed their approach, shifting focus from critiquing already-written textbooks toward a wholesale takeover of the bidding and selection process. Most significantly, they targeted the content guidelines, a set of basic instructions given to publishers upon which to base their books.
These guidelines had never been overtly left wing. They had always called for books to be “patriotic” in character. Indeed, with titles such as “The Glorious Republic” or “Land of Promise,” and with covers adorned with bald eagles and fluttering stars and stripes, there was no mistaking them for anti-government propaganda. But the definition of patriotism on which they were based reflected a bipartisan, postwar consensus of liberal internationalism.
As late as 1977, for example, the content guidelines counseled: “Textbook content shall promote citizenship and understanding of the free enterprise system, to emphasize patriotism and respect for recognized authority, and to promote respect for human rights.” Moreover, changing gender roles and the increasing participation in society by minority groups were to be accommodated alongside “traditional” understandings of the family and the Founding Fathers.
For conservatives, these guidelines were too liberal to meet the challenge of writing about the damage done to their White, patriarchal, nonthreatening American ideal during the 1960s. While they leaned right, these frames risked exposing students to the revolutionary potential of organized movements for racial equality, which threatened to further dismantle the structures of White supremacy. They also promised to uncritically acknowledge “un-American” monsters like communism, gender equality or LGBT rights. Such stories posed a threat to capitalism’s ideological dominance and the notion of the nuclear family around which it was structured.
By 1979, conservative activists, via newsletters, books and national press coverage, had successfully pressured the State Board of Education and the 15-member committee (which may well have agreed with them anyway) into making changes. Into the guidelines went an amendment counseling: “Textbooks shall present positive aspects of America and its heritage; they shall not contain material which serves to undermine authority; the amount of violent content should be limited; content shall not present lifestyles deviating from generally accepted standards of society.”
These new guidelines posed a challenge for textbook authors. How, for example, could one tell a history of the civil rights movement that didn’t portray the undermining of established power structures? Or one in which there was limited violence? More widely, what exactly constituted the “generally accepted standards of society?”
Publishers had to quickly settle on a solution. The violent history of struggle and change in the United States could not simply be ignored to appease new-right ideologues. It could, however, be recast in language that neither offended them, nor celebrated what they saw as “unpatriotic” stories of campaigns for racial, sexual and social equality.
The result was a heroic “vanilla” history of America. An American story in which the exceptionalism of the American creed met whatever challenges came its way, solved them and continued triumphantly onward. It was a history in which cause and effect were nullified, state violence removed and the kidnapping of humans from Africa labeled “immigration.”
Martin Luther King Jr.’s exhortation that all be judged on “the content of their character,” for example, chimed nicely with a colorblind conservative narrative that neatly folded civil rights struggle into a wider story of progress. Such oratory was celebrated, while the beating of civil rights protesters and King’s ideological socialism were downplayed. The more militant Malcolm X was included, but only so he could be shown to have been assassinated. The message was clear: In this version of the United States, protesting was unpatriotic, and it would get you killed. And those citizens, galvanized by racial inequality, who took to the streets in the late 1960s in protests and uprisings against recognized authority were cast as having simply destroyed their own neighborhoods in an act of wanton destruction. Patriotism, it seemed, had come to mean easy answers.
Liberal groups such as People for the American Way were aghast at what was happening in Texas. They launched counter campaigns in the early 1970s to try to break conservative activists’ stranglehold on the textbook selection process, to no avail. Liberal appeals to critical thinking, multiculturalism and social history failed to capture the imaginations of the decision-makers as successfully as the conservatives’ fire-and-brimstone rhetoric, which presented “unpatriotic history” as a threat to the nation’s soul.
As the 1980s wore on, the clamor at the state level spilled into national discourse. In 1983, the Reagan administration published “A Nation at Risk,” which decried the “dumbing down” of the nation’s textbooks and the problems this posed for younger Americans trying to compete in a rapidly globalizing workforce. By the early 1990s, many books about what America should be teaching its children became bestsellers, and a national commission convened to define once and for all a set of national standards for the history curriculum. But conservative pundits decried the outcome for the same reason conservatives had demanded change in Texas: They saw the guidelines as promoting an unpatriotic version of America.
Meanwhile, in Austin, conservative activists continued attending the public hearings on textbook content and lobbying hard for their version of the past. To this day, by crusading against what they see as dangerous ideas, they continue to influence what children all over America are taught. National discourse over exactly what history should be carries on, but the most effective change has always happened at the grass-roots level — where local officials are more receptive to demands that curriculums reflect the values of their communities.
Trump’s pledge to create a commission to promote patriotic history should be understood within this longer history of textbook activism. It is designed to promote a sunny, uncritical vision of the past that the president’s base has been demanding, with much success, for decades, even as historians point out flaws in these politically infused narratives.
Ed, Thanks for sharing that. When I was growing up and going to public school, the history texts were so boring, I tuned out.
I learned about history from reading historical fiction I checked out of the local libraries including the high school library. I read a lot of historical fiction about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict and a lot of historical fiction taking place in other countries as in the British Empire.
Oh FFS, NO!
This really doesn’t matter anymore. The American Experiment died tonight. The Duke Effect holds. The Senate is done. It’s over. We’re gonna wish we had it as good as Margaret Atwood’s nightmare.
Too soon, Greg. Do not despair.
Conventional wisdom has informed us that when high voter turnout occurs Democrats win. Conventional wisdom can now stick it up its ass. This country is a majority bigot, racist, xenophobe, and ignorant nation. Let’s come to term with this fact. As Kurt Tucholsky wrote in one of his final diary entries before he committed suicide, Sprechen (Speak), Schreiben (Write), Schweigen (Silence). It’s time for silence. The nation is no more. It’s a rigged game. And we lose. Even if, by some miracle, Biden gets 271 electoral votes, his administration will get nothing done, get all the blame, and is doomed because the American people are too stupid to comprehend reality. The Senate will continue to obstruct (or bend over and take it if the Idiot remains). The Supreme Court is a rubber stamp (and Louisiana and its “Democratic” governor will lead the way for its first coup). The House will be a shrill, useless entity. Gleichschaltung is here, get used to it. We will have no international allies except for Brazi, Israel, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, North Korea, and our new masters, Russia. The so-called confederacy won the long game.
And to James Carville (George Conway 1.0): STFU (George and the so-called Lincoln Project as well). How did all that the so-called Lincoln Project mental masturbation work out? They got rich, they have job security to continue to fleece the gullible constituency they have groomed. And did they do a damn thing to get out the vote? Did any of their Senate ads do a damn thing? Und jetzt ist es Zeit zum schweigen. Tchuss für immer.
It’s a low point, yes.
Removing Trump from office will only stop the bleeding out. It won’t save the patient. We have a lot to do.
Save us all from the predations of Chester Finn!
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/are-schools-essential-or-not
It might be helpful to remember a few of things. Who supports Mitch? Oligarchs, the same people who are destroying public schools. As a teacher, I know how easy it is to demonize students who disrupt class, and maybe their parents, but does that ever help? What helps is reaching out, and with parents, I had success calling them up, and if I didn’t reach them, knocking on their door and expressing my concerns. I have driven through South Dakota and Nebraska every June for the last 20 years, and every now and then I scan the FM stations to hear what’s airing and it’s invariably jarring. Liberals are terrible, socialism is awful and so on. Obviously someone is listening to these stations, and being influenced. Any Democrat who “knows” what is going on in the country by reading the New York Times will be completely missing the boat. And remember who funds both parties!
Haven’t checked here since my meltdown on Election Day. Great comment, thanks for sharing.
If you have 30 minutes (scroll forward @15 minutes) to waste and get frustrated–hide sharp objects or anything you might throw to break things you care about–consider asking a spouse, friend or neighbor tie you down so that you cannot move, it’ll be good for you and them–check out this horrible speech by, get this, lifetime appointee “Justice” Samuel Alito. He is truly an embarrassment to our Constitution, our history, our Supreme Court, our nation, our sanity, and just plain science and reality (can you believe anyone takes this idiot seriously?):
Simply appalling. He’s a pro se argument for expanding the court.
Good look at the shenanigans inside the Boston schools as Mayor Walsh (whose name is circulating in the ether as a possible Labor Secretary in Biden’s cabinet – good grief NO!) and Governor Baker (whose donors are the Kochs and Waltons) press to have schools reopen, despite surging infection rates in the city.
“93 of Boston’s 125 public school buildings do not have HVAC systems. Most have poorly functioning radiators and are usually too hot or too cold. On hot days in the fall and early summer, teachers and students on the top floors of some of these buildings have to try to do their work in temperatures above 80 degrees.
“Some of these schools have had new windows installed. These windows tilt about 8 inches but otherwise don’t open. I assume this is a safety measure so that people don’t accidentally fall out of open windows, but what it means is that the ventilation in these buildings is severely limited.
“One thing we know, and have known for months now, is that the risk of indoor COVID-19 transmission is greatly reduced by adequate ventilation. The City of Boston’s response to this was to provide a single box fan for classrooms with traditional windows with instructions that windows should be left open for the entire New England winter. Except in those old buildings with the tilt-in windows, where classrooms got a
little fan that perches precariously atop the opening where the window tilts in.
“The fact that both the City and the Commonwealth want students and staff to go back to work under these conditions illustrates the contempt they have for so many of us. They literally don’t care if students, staff, and their families live or die. The most important thing is ‘getting the economy moving.’ ”
View at Medium.com
After Pouring Gasoline On U.S. Divide, Charles Koch Now Claims He Wants To Heal Nation
“Boy did we screw up,” says the billionaire who backed Donald Trump. “What a mess.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/charles-koch-wall-street-journal-change-of-heart_n_5faf0af0c5b6d05e86e6e743
The only difference between Charles Koch and Trump is that Koch is a multi-billionaire instead of a pretend one heavily in debt, and he doesn’t Tweet or hold public hate rallies. When Koch has meetings, they are behind closed doors in secret where a lot of plotting goes to come up with ways to subvert the U.S. Constitution and buy elections.
I think Charles Koch is a hundred times more dangerous than Donald Trump unless Trump pulls off a diabolical miracle and becomes MAGA President for life.
The two Michigan legislators summoned to meet with Trump today have been bankrolled by – you guessed it! Betsy DeVos.
“On Friday, Trump is scheduled to meet with Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield. Michigan Republican Congressman Paul Mitchell ‘said he expects Trump is bringing Shirkey and Chatfield to the White House to pressure them to appoint pro-Trump electors to circumvent the popular vote as well as lean on the state’s GOP canvassers not to certify the election,’ according to the Detroit Free Press.
“President-elect Joe Biden won Michigan by roughly 150,000 votes, according to data compiled by the New York Times.
“The family of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is collectively Shirkey’s third largest career donor and Chatfield’s fourth largest career donor, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network. Chatfield also co-chairs a caucus of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a group bankrolled by corporate interests, nonprofits tied to Trump’s judicial adviser, and the DeVos family as well.”
https://www.dailyposter.com/p/trump-holds-coup-meeting-with-devos
Turns out that the Pasco County, Florida’s police have created and maintain a list of children who “are destined to a life of crime” based on information gleaned from school records. This has been going on since 2011. It’s not clear if Arne Duncan’s revision of FERPA allowed for this.
“The Pasco Sheriff’s Office keeps a secret list of kids it thinks could ‘fall into a life of crime’ based on factors like whether they’ve been abused or gotten a D or an F in school, according to the agency’s internal intelligence manual.
“The Sheriff’s Office assembles the list by combining the rosters for most middle and high schools in the county with records so sensitive, they’re protected by state and federal law.
“School district data shows which children are struggling academically, miss too many classes or are sent to the office for discipline. Records from the state Department of Children and Families flag kids who have witnessed household violence or experienced it themselves.
“According to the manual, any one of those factors makes a child more likely to become a criminal.
“Four hundred and twenty kids are on the list, the Sheriff’s Office said.
“The process largely plays out in secret. The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t tell the kids or their parents about the designation. In an interview, schools superintendent Kurt Browning said he was unaware the Sheriff’s Office was using school data to identify kids who might become criminals. So were the principals of two high schools.”
https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/school-data/
Makes me sick
you need to elect a new sheriff. He doesn’t understand his oath to the Constitution.
The info he is using is not a valid indicator of how a child will turn out. It is the way they are treated. the schools student records should not be exposed to scrutiny unless he or she has committed a real crime.
Not the B.S. they are calling criminal behavior. And who is the judge of what is criminal behavior. Take a close look at that person and their record. He is following a UN mandate that has been creeping in for at least 12 years that I know of. Go after your school board administrators.
Wow. File under: “You Can’ Make This S#!t Up.” This is what the KGB, Stasi, and other Iron Curtain nations’ secret police did.
Although it’s likely not understandable to most people here, November 25, 2020 is one of significant days in world history, the day Diego Maradona passed away. Americans like to use the word World, as in championship, for worldwide obscure sports like baseball, but there have been very few athletes who transcend nationalities, cultures and historical eras. In my opinion, this includes Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Emil Zátopek, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Althea Gibson, Pele, Joe Louis, Bob Beamon (for arguably the single most unique athletic achievement in history), Muhammad Ali, and Nadia Comenici…athletes that were not just exceptionally talented, but historical significant in the world. (Jackie Robinson doesn’t qualify, inarguably one of the most important figures in American sports history, virtually unknown outside of its borders. Same with Michael Jordan, his aura grew world wide through post-active career marketing.) Maradona was something special and more so fascinating because he was so flawed. When he scored a goal in the 1986 World Cup semifinal against England with his hand, he was asked it if was a handball, he answered with a comment that still grates the English to this day: “It was my head and the hand of God.” But the brilliance of the goal before the “hand of God” goal might still be the most exciting sporting moment ever. Argentina announced three days of national mourning today. Who else could get an honor like that? Here’s a wonderful example of why soccer fans still revere him, because of joy, not necessarily results: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDQ2jdnv-2w
RIP Diego Maradona! 1986 was the first World Cup I ever watched (could only see on Telemundo!), and I was watching this quarterfinal with England live. At the time, I didn’t realize that Maradona had used his hand (and I don’t remember learning from replay until after the game). Greg, it turns out his epic dribbling run came shortly (less than 5 minutes) after the “Hand of God” goal. England manager, the classy Bobby Robson, never forgave Maradona for that goal. In his recent autobiography, Maradona noted his fear that if he admitted scoring with his hand, the game might be replayed or he might be punished. Maradona is truly a world figure whose performance in Mexico sparked my own love of the beautiful game. May we remember him for his greatness and learn from his failings.
How a bad bill becomes a terrible law:
I began researching a law that promotes online courses for 6-12 students in the State of Michigan and realized that I had uncovered something pretty fundamental about the disconnect between our legislators and the effects of the laws they enact. Not only were they incredibly inept (and clearly pushing an agenda that they didn’t even understand), but they had no idea of the consequences.
https://tropicsofmeta.com/2020/11/23/how-a-bad-bill-becomes-a-bad-law-a-convoluted-process-of-good-intentions-and-terrible-results/
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sharon, for posting this. I found it utterly fascinating. I’ll be a little self-serving…having worked in both Congress and as one who has led and been involved in various grassroots advocacy issues, the question of how a bill becomes a law cannot be summarized in a Schoolhouse Rock jingle, as you rightly point out in this article. Peoples’ eyes glaze over when I bemoan the death of the federal legislative appropriations process and how it is the fundamental issue that needs to be reformed and brought to a regular process before we can move on and “change the system.”
I read your piece twice; that’s either a good thing or a bad thing. If the latter, it’s because I want to make sure I get my refuting arguments right and my daggers lined up effectivly. In this case, not knowing the particulars of Michigan’s politics, I was trying to make sure I was reading what I thought was reading. And I was (at least I think so)! You have created an important document/history/commentary/thing. I do hope it gets more attention. It is important.
Thank you so much for reading and for your thoughtful response. I’m not sure if it is comforting or disheartening that the legislative appropriations process seems to be broken everywhere and not just in Michigan. I hope to get more eyes on this piece, to heighten awareness. Once the COVID crisis has passed, schools will be right back where they were, forced to pay for students to take online courses (even when it is a terrible idea for specific students), and parents have no idea what the consequences often will be.
Please share widely.
Diane and all, FYI: In WaPo: “20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump’s quest to overturn the election”
Behind a paywall here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-overturn/2020/11/28/34f45226-2f47-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html but also located here: https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/for-donald-trump-20-days-of-fantasy-and-failure-f40273a3-5db0-4f49-b72a-c0c09d039243
Also, some good news: “Belief in Trump Fiction Can Be Worn Down by Fact”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/belief-trump-fiction-worn-down-140017912.html
Neera Tanden reported to be new head of OMB. First strike on education policy. What a horrible choice.
Diane, I thought you would be interested in this story about Dallas ISD discussing the waiving for this school year the district end of semester tests. These tests are used to determine how teachers are evaluated. Please stay safe and healthy.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-isd-considers-waiving-fall-end-of-semester-exams
Good for Dallas. These decisions should be made locally, not in DC.
My middle school age son is in quarantine due to “close contact” tracing. I’m sure the community here will be happy to know that he was still able to complete his map testing yesterday from home.
I’m sorry to hear that, Ohio! Hope he and the rest of your family are okay.
Damn stupid test policies.
Diane, I thought you would find this article from the Dallas Morning News about A-F accountability ratings suspended but the STAAR lives on like a zombie!
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2020/12/10/texas-cancels-a-f-accountability-grades-keeps-staar/
Stay safe and healthy!
Thanks, Joshua.
Do you know anything about the Wit and Wisdom curriculum? I’d love to know what readers think of it
As news revs up about a new Secretary of Education, perhaps it’s time to make a concerted push for the best way to re-establish face-to-face learning for our students while protecting educators and staff: outdoor classrooms
With new leadership in Washington, I feel that an enormous opportunity has been created to advocate for emergency spending on outdoor classroom infrastructure. We can build a broad support base for this among parents organizations, teachers and teachers unions, and outdoor education/outdoor learning advocates as the best way to safely re-open schools and create opportunities for face-to-face learning until the vaccine is widely distributed, which probably won’t happen in many areas until the end of the school year.
I have engaged in many conversations with parents and teachers about outdoor classrooms. I find overwhelming support for the idea, although of course there are questions about bad weather, security, etc. The fact is that many districts began to explore outdoor classrooms over the summer for the start of the school year, but, by then, the supply of tents was depleted. It may require assistance by the US Armed Forces, or an invocation of the Defense Production Act to provide the infrastructure for a widespread adaptation of outdoor classrooms, but this is exactly the type of bold action the incoming administration may be looking for to make good on its promise of getting children back to school, while demonstrating what confident, competent leadership can accomplish.
Seth Evans
.
Here’s how Brightbeam describes itself:
“Brightbeam is a nonprofit network of education activists demanding a better education and a brighter future for every child.
It is the umbrella organization for the platform known as Education Post. Don’t worry, Education Post is not going anywhere. Today it’s one of many digital platforms including Citizen Education, Project Forever Free, and more than 20 other local and regional sites that spotlight education issues nationally.
When Chris Stewart joined as CEO in May of 2019, we had an opportunity to broaden and deepen the impact we sought to make when we first launched Education Post in 2014…”
https://brightbeamnetwork.org/about/
So, number one, Citizen Stewart has found himself a new grift. Education Post? Well, we know.
They’re running a poll as to who should be DeVos’ replacement, under their “VoicetoAction”subsidiary.
https://voicetoaction.org/actions/vote-for-ed-secy/
These are their candidates:
Cory Booker, Geoffrey Canada, Brenda Cassellius, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, Howard Fuller, Jahana Hayes, William Hite, Janice Jackson, Sonja Santelises, Randi Weingarten
In pandemic times, there are all kinds of ways to extract money from ur public schools. The New Republic details one here: e-books.
“But in practice, this convenience comes at a staggering cost. Billion-dollar companies like Follett and EBSCO are renting e-books to schools each year, rather than selling them permanent copies. By locking school districts into contracts that turn them into captive consumers, corporate tech providers are draining public education budgets that don’t have a penny to spare.
“So how much does it cost for a school to rent a book? I asked Chrystal Woodcock, library media supervisor for the Menifee Union School District in Southern California.
“The Diary of Anne Frank, ‘a really important, classic piece of literature that social studies teachers have taught forever,’ Woodcock said, ‘costs $27 per student for a 12-month subscription.’
“In other words, you buy the book for $27, and it just—expires?”
https://newrepublic.com/article/160649/book-companies-follett-ebsco-overcharge-public-schools?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=EB_TNR&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1608586357
Microsoft (M) is doing the same thing for M Word. M announced earlier this year that by 2025, they will stop supporting all the Word programs that were sold on disks or downloaded for one price that could be used for as long as you wanted to use the programs (years or decades) and switch to charging an annual fee to be able to use the latest versions of M Word that they will continue to support.
I’m looking for free alternatives like Scrivener.
greedy bastids
Christine: I guess we shouldn’t be surprised . . . bait-and-switch has been a ploy of lowlife business people probably since “doing bidness” came on the scene. CBK
Educators have innovated through covid, but apparently, decision makers don’t.
“If you want to know what school was like in 2020, let me tell you about one moment that has stuck with me for months. One Thursday morning in October, my daughter, an eighth-grader, spent her “homeroom” period performing a school lockdown drill. She was, of course, in her own house, like all her classmates. The students watched a video on their computers about lockdown procedures, then practiced hiding under desks. And so it happened that in this, the most absurd and bewildering academic year of her life, my eighth-grader tucked herself under the table in her bedroom, to prepare for the possibility that someone might try to shoot her, someday later, at her school.”
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/12/school-shooting-drills-have-gone-virtual.html
Here’s some joy to spread around.
This is the organization which sporsored the kids: https://eleducation.org
Thanks so much for posting the piece by Theresa Thayer Snyder.
I’m writing to ask for help, specifically, for examples of best practices – preferably in NYS – from schools which have put this philosophy into practice.
Here’s why.
I am the parent of two daughters in elementary and high school, respectively, in the Vestal school district in Broome County. What the district is doing is nothing like what this wise educator is counseling districts to do. My 14-year-old daughter, who was on the honor roll all three years in middle school, failed her first class in the first marking period and will undoubtedly have worse results at The midterm. She has ceased taking private violin lessons because she’s too stressed out and depressed by school, which she hates. She is (was) very social, and Her friends feel more or less the same.
My 10-year-old daughter is faring better, in part because the fifth grade curriculum is less demanding, and in part because the elementary school in the district is doing much more to support kids during this difficult time.
The district has not been open to making changes of this kind and when I’ve tried to involve other parents through social media, the few that are actually interested in doing some thing feel paralyzed because they don’t have anything specific to recommend and are overwhelmed as we all are.
As you know, When imagination fails, seeing an example coming from a similar situation can be just the thing to jump to whether that be for parents that are at their wits end dealing with a broken system, or administrators and teachers who are doing their best but, with some modifications, going through the motions.
I am an educator myself, first in a college setting and for the last decade doing community education, and it seems to me like the height of insanity that the triple crises of the pandemic, the economic collapse and the political situation we find ourselves in are barely discussed in school. Rather, they are just going through the curriculum as written and attempting to do the impossible – get children of these ages to learn the same things that they would’ve learned in person through endless hours of zoom meetings. Even before the pandemic, our model of public education, as you have written about for many years, was profoundly broken. And like all the other broken systems in this country the pandemic has laid bare it’s deficits, but there’s been nothing automatic at all about change.
I would be most appreciative if you could assist me in this matter by providing examples, and for preference, contacts who I could talk to who are taking a different path. Then I feel like have the tools I need to make change, at least in my district.
Sincerely yours,
Adam
Anand Giridharadas has this message today:
“But here’s the deal, as Biden would say: America cannot afford the “resistance” to melt away once Trump finally leaves the scene. Because there is much in American life that continues to demand resisting, including the conditions that made Trump possible. And because Biden will not be a consequential president if he’s coddled by the soft bigotry of deep exhalations.
“The gaping inequities in this country still very much demand #resistance. The economic precarity that we have come to accept as normal for tens of millions of people demands #resistance. The lack of robust health insurance for everyone demands #resistance. The oxygen-sucking monopolies of our age demand #resistance.
“The predations and overextensions of empire demand #resistance. The conduct of forever wars demands #resistance. Unaccountable drone strikes demand #resistance.
“Police violence toward Black people demands #resistance. Weaponized white resentment of changing demographics, and weaponized male resentment of increasing gender equity, demands #resistance.”
https://the.ink/p/resistance
For teachers who were already members of #TheResistance under Obama, we’re on the verge of exhaustion, but we’re not done. These are our working conditions and by extension these are the learning conditions of our students. It remains a marathon.
Christine What better place in a democracy to keep the experiment alive than education. CBK
Exactly!
John Ewing, currently serving a president of Math for America, in Forbes exposes the lie that is “learning loss”, most recently exhorted in the NYT’s editorial of yesterday.
“There remains an enormous problem of equity. Students who live in poverty are at a severe disadvantage in remote instruction. No internet, no computer, sometimes little parental support. But while the pandemic exacerbates this problem, it’s not the cause. We need to solve the equity problem permanently, not just in the pandemic. We had an opportunity to do so in the spring by providing free internet access and computing devices to every student in need. It would have been roundoff error in the stimulus package. It would have entailed massive logistical issues, but that’s what responsive governments do in times of crisis. Our politicians chose not to do so.
“Should schools open for in person learning? Maybe. But not because of some ridiculous idea of learning loss. If schools choose to return to in person instruction, it’s because, like bars and restaurants, they serve a vital social and economic function. For younger children especially, the socialization afforded by schools is crucial for a child’s development. For parents, the childcare provided by schools allows them to work (or just to take a soul-saving break). The societal cost of eliminating these functions has been substantial.
“We have to balance that cost against the sickness and death that will be caused by the opening of schools. Balancing livelihoods against lives can be agonizingly complicated. It requires clear, precise thinking. Above all, it requires putting the right things on each side of the scale … and learning loss isn’t one of them.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnewing/2021/12/28/the-ridiculousness-of-learning-loss/?__twitter_impression=true&sh=7a3167d97c32
Christine The article certainly raises some important questions. One concern I have with it is the (false?) distinction Ewing himself seems to makes between “learning loss” and the “vital social and economic function . . . for younger children especially the socialization afforded by schools is crucial for a child’s development.”
I don’t know what the Times writer meant by “learning loss” . . . probably some think the way Ewing portrays in his article . . . rightly as ridiculous. However, that portrayal has a strawman sound to it? That is, somehow Ewing himself seems to thinks that a loss of learning does not include the loss of children’s socialization AS SOCIAL LEARNING? . . . which, though he doesn’t refer to it as learning, he rightly claims is so important.
Perhaps his title: President of Math for America might give us a clue . . . to his own tacit acceptance of STEM . . . as the only authentic learning that can be lost. And so he doesn’t include socialization as learning . . . while he still rightly endorses what WE know and refer to as other kinds of learning that, indeed, are BOTH the “hidden curriculum” in formal in-person schooling, but that also come from other more expansively-human curricula and programs.
Right as he is about a loss of socialization, it seems to me that Ewing himself harbors a false assumption that belies his right recognition of other forms of loss in educating our young in a formal school setting. CBK
[…] latest anti-school choice rant comes to us courtesy of Diane Ravitch, “a historian of education,” who is the Arthur C. Clarke of her field. When she writes, the reader is treated to science […]
[…] The latest anti-school choice rant comes to us courtesy of Diane Ravitch, “a historian of education,” who is the Arthur C. Clarke of her field. When she writes, the reader is treated to science […]
[…] latest anti-school choice rant comes to us courtesy of Diane Ravitch, “a historian of education,” who is the Arthur Clarke of her field. When she writes, the reader is treated to science […]
Wonder how this process went with regards to education policy for President Obama:
DECISION MAKING
“My emphasis on process was born of necessity. What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.
In such circumstances, chasing after the perfect solution led to paralysis. On the other hand, going with your gut too often meant letting preconceived notions or the path of least political resistance guide a decision—with cherry-picked facts used to justify it. But with a sound process—one in which I was able to empty out my ego and really listen, following the facts and logic as best I could and considering them alongside my goals and my principles—I realized I could make tough decisions and still sleep easy at night, knowing at a minimum that no one in my position, given the same information, could have made the decision any better. A good process also meant I could allow each member of the team to feel ownership over the decision—which meant better execution …”
Ohio Obama was probably “cherry-picking” via listening to the wrong people. And I cannot help but think he just hadn’t thought through the relationship of education to a democratic political field.
I do love that paragraph . . . thanks for sharing it with us. I think he just erred. CBK
Ohio Algebra II Teacher, you wondered,
“ Wonder how this process went with regards to education policy for President Obama:…”
Anyone in a leadership position making critical decisions in the field of education should have a doctorate in philosophy of education. Officials should not be allowed to make “gut” decisions. With a solid philosophy, decisions become much easier to make – no guessing.
You stated, “A good process also meant I could allow each member of the team to feel ownership over the decision—which meant better execution …”
So the collaboration of “gut feelings” in lieu of a informed decision, would be your guide? That is how Common Core and NCLB came about – anchored in Behaviorism.
A bit of humor:
“ “We have streamlined data entry for you during this difficult time,’ reads an e-mail from your supervisor. ‘Simply write a postcard to the main office. On this postcard, please note the height of each student, along with the color you most associate with their level of achievement. Combine these colors into an oil painting that depicts your deepest fear and hang it in a place of prominence in your home.’ ”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/kafka-narrates-my-online-teaching-experience?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned
Christine My head hurts from reading that quote alone. CBK
A Twitter friend shared yesterday that her normally happily engaged student is having a hard time with remote learning. It makes as much sense to give grades right now.
Christine, all kinds of leaning is taking the place of directing teaching and regurgitating.
My grandson in third grade was in the same situation that was mentioned in article you referred to:
“Your co-worker’s mouth is moving but no sound escapes. “Unmute your mic,” you say. The mouth continues to open and close. “You’re muted,” you say, louder. It is as if the mouth is eating its own sound. “We can’t hear you,” you say. “Excuse me,” a different mouth says. “You’re both muted.”
It was testing day and no sound was coming out of his teacher’s mouth. He immediately found a link to turn the volume on. Since my grandson became the host, he
couldn’t take the test. The machine wouldn’t let him. Later his teacher called my daughter telling her that her son saved the day.
No third graders should be taking standardized tests, at all, pandemic or not, remotely or in person.
Maybe a spelling test from their teacher, but that’s it. I hope that’s what your grandson was supposed to do.
Agreed, Christine, but they are. My wife teaches 3rd grade and her students (in school and those who’ve opted for remote) have taken 1 state AIR test, 4 MAP tests (2 reading, 2 math), 8 Acadience probes (2 reading, 6 math), and 2 Developmental Reading Assessments. She notes, “We’re just getting started.”
Aside from the usual concerns, these tests cannot be “standardized” remotely. The term indicates that the administration of the test was given in controlled conditions, standardized across the board for all test takers. They are just more invalid than usual.
Christine L.
I don’t know the type of assessment – it wasn’t a standardized test.
I’m glad of that. Best to your grandson for his initiative!
Wanted to share this Jan 7 message from my friend, Dr. Lorna Lewis, Superintendent of the Malverne School District on Long Island. Everyone needs to speak out. -Joan
Dear Staff,
There are moments in history that remain etched in our minds and provide lessons to guide our lives. I recall sitting in a 3rd grade classroom in Jamaica when my beloved teacher came in crying. We all started crying because that is the way it was back then. When you hurt, I hurt. Between sobs she told us that President Kennedy had been shot. I wondered why it had affected her so much since we were not living in the United States. She explained who this great man was and why his death would affect our small nation. That lesson, I still remember.
Yesterday we woke up to the news that an African American preacher and a young Jewish Journalist were elected to the Senate from the deep South. Whatever your political affiliations, the historic significance is profound. Many gains made on the civil rights front were as a result of the alliance of people of the Jewish faith and African Americans as they fought against injustice and persecution. This was a proud moment for our country. Only hours later our children witnessed the unthinkable, as they watched mobs scale the walls of the capitol building, break down doors, walk through the rotunda where Congressman John Lewis last laid in state, sat in the chair of the president protemp, and placed their feet on the desk of speaker Pelosi. We were all seized with fear and wondered how this could be happening here, particularly after the 9-11 invasion.
Many of our children saw the guards that greeted marchers of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer and the tear gas that they endured at Lafayette Square and they are now wondering why the protesters were allowed to desecrate our sacred spaces, seemingly without resistance. They may also be wondering about their own safety and the future of our democracy. They will look to you for guidance on this.
Thankfully we ended the night with democracy restored, as our elected demonstrated to the world that our democracy is sacred. Our children need to hear that story today. We need to put all of yesterday’s lessons into context and help them understand that sometimes democracy gets messy, but our constitution and men and women of good faith and purpose are here to navigate us through these rough waters. You are some of those good people. I am counting on you to lead our children to a better place.
Thank you for all you do to make this a great place for learning.
Dr. Lorna R. Lewis
Superintendent
Malverne UFSD
301 Wicks Lane
Malverne NY 11565
516-887-6405
Thank you for sharing with us! Moving.
KIPP, aka KIds in Prison Pipeline, wants to open a spanking new facility in Detroit.
The Detroit Superintendent, Dr. Nikolai Vitti isn’t having it.
“ ‘I do not believe the city needs another charter school,’ Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, said in a statement. ‘Instead, energy, resources, and time should be spent on the schools (public and charter) we already have. In addition, there are plenty of ‘model schools’ in our district (and even a few charters) that are examples of higher performance. No one needs KIPP to demonstrate what our students can do with the right leadership, teachers, and systems and processes. We know what this looks like.’ ”
https://detroit.chalkbeat.org/2021/1/13/22229515/kipp-to-open-detroit-school
Dr. Vitti belongs on the blog’s Honor Roll. (Maybe he already is?)
SAN DIEGO — Retired Major Brian Dix, Director Laureate of the United States Marine Drum
& Bugle Corps, will debut his recent work “Madam (Vice) President” in a performance by an
all-volunteer, all-female orchestra hailing from the state of California. Appropriately scheduled
in time for the 59th presidential inauguration, the virtual concert honors Vice President-Elect
Kamala D. Harris.
Randy Rainbow sees Trump to the door. Betsy has a cameo.
Alexander Navalny’s team has released a video of Putin’s Xanadu. Thought it might interest some of you. Interesting how Putin denies it, which, if true, would be easy to refute if it belonged to someone else.
A German paper reports that the toilet brushes are gold-plated.
Sounds like Trump and Putin have something in common when it comes to gold everywhere.
Story in a German paper today (unfortunately behind a paywall) about a German who lives in the apartment in Dresden (Plattenbau, colorless prefabricated apartment buildings that proliferated in East Germany) that Putin lived in when he was a KGB agent stationed there when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Turned out to be the Soviet/Russian version of Horatio Alger!
For Diane and the dog lovers out there:
What a wonderful video!
You’ve dismissed many of my comments, but everything that is happening today – it’s exactly why I supported the common core in 2010. The common core was the first set of standards that asked readers to deeply investigate and question the information they were reading. Never did I support the tests – I always said the tests never represented the standards. It was about the skills and lateral reading / thinking. But I agree that it should have been similar to a living document with the ability to change and improve.
A comment that was always thrown around – how a person in California doesn’t need to know that same thing as person in Montana or Kentucky or New York. As much as I tried to relate it to our future politics and access to inflated information, the members on this site would bring it back to jobs. Well, QAnon is across this country – and we are fools to think all of this will go away with Trump. Trump was not the cause – he was part of the effects of us not adapting to this new world.
Individuals throwing their two cents on the Internet has not leveled off yet and will continue to increase with the next two generations. We can either teach the people to think or we will be forced to do the thinking for them – and what a slippery slope that will be for democracy.
The development of the media, social media, globalization, and the Internet – we are in a turning point in our history.
Most of the people on this sight are way brighter and accomplished than I could ever be. So, I guess you can just call me an idiot – I think you actually did once.
As much as I agree that poverty is the key to provide opportunities for clearer minds to think, a good number of these Trump people would be considered “bright” in our society. We can laugh and call them stupid – but they are geophysicists, doctors, and sadly, some principals. I just don’t understand how we can protect our democracy without increasing our thinkers.
This is exactly what I was taking from the common core to fight against.
Education needs to change to prepare a majority of citizens to counter this monumental change.
The FairTest forum calling for the suspension of spring testing last night was excellent. Representative Jamaal Bowman is a true advocate for the causes most of us on this blog support. The virtual forum lasted about an hour and should be available on FairTest’s Facebook page. Recommended watching.
David Brooks at the NYT is tone deaf in the best of times, but he’s posted an execrable op-ed today:
The unions are not reflecting reality. Instead of addressing legitimate fears with facts and evidence, they are using their political muscle to inflame those fears. The most vulnerable people in our country are the victims.
* The negative effects of no school are the flip side of the many wonderful things teachers achieve when they are in school. But now the educational system is powerfully influenced by organizations that don’t seem to believe in critical thinking, adjusting beliefs according to the evidence, or combating fear with science.*
God help us.
Perhaps the Times would allow you a rebuttal, Diane?
The NY Times doesn’t publish what I write. After I was rejected for the nth time there for pieces eagerly published by other outlets, I started this blog. It just passed 38 million page views a few days ago. Time will rebuke Brooks.
I think time has. It’s just that Brooks hasn’t realized it yet.
38 million!
This simply demonstrates how clueless Brooks is on basically anything about Public Schools. It also reveals his institutionalist perspective in opposition to teachers’ needs and, what should be, rights. However, I see this across the political spectrum when reading perspectives of various media celebrities. There is a profound wall between what actually happens in schools and the inaccurate perception that exists among policy makers and the news media. Unions exist to serve their teachers while the establishment makes every effort to thwart meaningful change and Union influence. Teachers are scared, fed up, and leaving. Brooks and his brethren need to understand that this is a much greater threat to education than students not being in school. Listen to teachers and the unions and you just might find solutions to the problem.
Breaking News from The Guardian: “‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
As Arte Johnson’s character used to say, “Verrrry, interesting!” I tend to believe everything in this article. The cultivating of assets by Soviet/Russian intelligence is based on the “throw sh!t on the wall and see what sticks” model. Also glad that I’ve never, in all my business and personal trips to NYC, have ever stayed at the Grand Central Station Hyatt, no matter how enticing it was.
Now the truth can be told! Jewish space lasers caused California wildfires!
https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/marjorie-taylor-greene-penned-conspiracy-theory-laser-beam-space-started-deadly-2018
Here’s an interesting, not sure “fun” is the right word although the video in the story is “humorous,” way to highlight climate change. It story about how a small Finnish town, Salla, one of the coldest in the world, announcing its “candidacy” for the 2032 Summer Olympics:
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN29V2IG
Here’s the full film:
Here’s a link to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s live Instagram feed from last night. She is without a doubt a remarkable woman. What she endured on January 6 during the insurrection at the Capitol is abhorrent to all the values of American democracy. It’s only by luck we did not endure a blood bath on that day.
It’s 90 minutes long, but I urge you to make time to watch. (As an aside, she is a master of this medium.)
Saw an interview with Katie Porter about this today too. They had to endure six hours–six fecking hours–of terror! In the fecking halls of Congress! Imagine what a lifelong trauma this induces. Knowing now what happened, that trauma, though not nearly as intense, should be felt by all of us. I hope the House impeachment prosecutors bring them as witnesses. And here’s what I want them to confront each senator with:
“As we have made our case, we are countered with legalistic arguments looking for a fallback position, that [the Idiot] is no longer president so he can’t be convicted. But what you fail to admit, and seemingly fail to understand, is that this process is bigger than legal fictions. This is not a legal procedure, it is constitutional. It is about our national soul. It is about reality. If you want to rest your case on legalisms, we have proven why we should win on those terms. If you want to honor the Constitution, what this nation is supposed to stand for, then regardless of how you voted on Jan 26, you must rethink your preconceived ideas of political expediency. If you can’t, then no arguments will ever sway your compulsion to pander to those forces you know, deep in your intellect, are the death knell of our republic.
“More to the point, we have presented evidence of how close we came to, prior to this day, would have been unimaginable horrors. Yes, if we are honest, those potential horrors are not unimaginable. They would have been worse, especially in the media age in which we live, than the fate of Mussolini, of Ceausescu, of–yes, we’ll go there–Hitler. But in the case, it would not have been the deaths of autocratic dictators. It would have been unimaginable acts committed again duly elected members of a democratic republic. And not just any democratic republic, but the ‘shining city of the hill’ President Reagan cited.
“We have heard and seen evidence that our vice president, members of Congress and senators in this chamber were literally minutes, perhaps seconds, away from being, God forbid, assaulted, tortured or murdered. Legally elected representatives of our constitutional government! Make no mistake, the targets of this mob were not just individuals, these individuals represented the very existence of constitutional governing. The very reason this nation exists.
“As you decide how each of you will vote on conviction, take these facts and the arguments we have presented in consideration. If they are adulterated by political considerations, by ambition, by party loyalty, then know history will judge you accordingly. Should you make the wrong decision, then there will be no need for procedures like this ever again. There will be no nation left to save.”
Greg, I share your outrage. I can’t believe, I cannot fathom how the Republican members of Congress can brush off January 6 and absolve Trump of any responsibility. Both Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell held him accountable as they emerged from hiding. Then they did their political calculations.
…which, deep in your intellect, we are sure of this, you know to be the death knell of our republic…
I hope some of Ocasio-Cortez’ video is shown in the trial.
My daughters are the same age, and the older’s name is Alexandra, no “i”. I am furious as only a mother can be for what she went through. I hope some older GOP members might put themselves in the shoes of her family if they had to watch such a visceral reaction to the insurrectionists.
We don’t elect our representatives to face death at their place of work.
Here’s the difference between the Civil War and Jan 6: it would have taken years for the so-called confederacy to be victorious, it would have taken hours or days for the terrorists of Jan 6.
Greg,
I agree. I think we came very very very close to a bloody massacre in the Capitol. And then what? I don’t know.
Excellent analysis from The Guardian here:
While her disclosure of sexual assault with doubtless garner much of the media attention, the real purpose of AOC’s broadcast was to call for accountability for the Republican members of Congress who incited and may have aided the Capitol attack. “Accountability is about creating safety,” she said. It was their actions that caused the trauma inflicted on her and others; their actions that had incited the violence and ultimately, indirectly, led to several deaths. “The violence needed someone to tell the lie,” AOC said, referring to the false claims, made by Trump and stoked by Republicans. “They knew that these violent people needed the lie. Because it would be advantageous to them, they chose to tell the lie.”
That lie – the malicious, opportunistic, spiteful lie that hurt her and so many others directly, and hurt the nation irreparably, could not, she argued, go unpunished. Because impunity for the people who told the lie would amount to complicity in their conduct, to a grant of permission for them to do the same thing, or worse, again.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/02/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-republican-accountability-capitol-attack
I agree with you, Diane. I have speculated about the end of the American experiment for four years. We never came closer in our history, the Kansas and Missouri Compromises, Manassas, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, America First, McCarthyism, or Watergate included, than we did on Jan 6. This is becoming clearer with each passing day as revelations become public. Had Pence, Pelosi, AOC, Porter, et al, been caught and murdered in public that day, we would be in the throes of a civil war right now at best, a repressive dictatorship at worst. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional, naive or a traitor.
What most concerns me is folks seem to think the coup is over because the invaders were turned out of the Capitol. No. The coup against our nation and its very foundations is on-going. It becomes quite clear if you know anything about the history of Latin America. A failure to convict Trump and the seditious GOP members who collaborated with him in advance of the riot of January 6th will be a signal to pursue the end of our democracy. Few seem alarmed over the possibility.
Lass dich umarmen! (German, literally, give me a hug. More appropriately, let us put our arms around each other since we are in complete agreement.)
Greg,
The specter of terrorists scaling the walls of the Capitol and smashing through doors and windows was horrific. I still don’t understand why most Republicans dismissed it immediately as no big deal. I consider Trump, Cruz, Hawley and others to be traitors.
Lest anyone accuse us of hyperbole:
https://www.axios.com/trump-oval-office-meeting-sidney-powell-a8e1e466-2e42-42d0-9cf1-26eb267f8723.html
GregB Do you know these reporters? (I’m not familiar with them.) But in reading the report, if true, you can see at what times Trump goes straight down the rabbit hole. CBK
Jonathan Swan has been a very reliable reporter. He did the famous interview with the Idiot.
GregB Thanks. Trust in a reporter’s honesty (and even then . . . ) and our own experiences . . . like hearing the Orange Idiot with our own ears, and a modicum of critical reasonability, are all we have that distinguishes ourselves from the Trumper conspiracy theorists. CBK
My favorite parts of the Axios’ piece were Trump wandering off to his private diningroom and hanging up on Rudy, cutting off everyone else on the line.
The guy shouldn’t have been trusted with a golf cart.
Christine When I think of what Trump has done to the integrity of the Presidency, I remember the first time I realized that the ocean off of New Jersey, which I thought was so very pristine, was vomiting up medical waste on its beaches. CBK
A totally reprehensible and completely apt comparison, Catherine.
Boston middle school teacher Neema Avashia has posted her students’ responses to adult concerns over “learning loss” during the pandemic.
If our educational response to the pandemic is more of the same tired approaches that we were already trying before the pandemic—pages of standards, longer school days, more and more and more assessment—it will fail, just as it was failing prior to the pandemic. We have an opportunity to think and plan differently in this moment—to build a system that is responsive to the needs of the students it purports to serve. Doing so requires that we begin by listening to those young people and amplifying what they say they need, as opposed to what we as adults think they need.
The phrase “learning loss” is everywhere. Uttered by governors at press conferences as a rationale for reopening schools. Emailed out by consultants who offer “ground-breaking solutions” to addressing it. Batted back and forth in heated debates on Twitter between those who are wringing their hands over it and those who say, “Kids are surviving a pandemic, not losing learning.” And every time I hear another adult use the phrase, I wonder: Is learning loss the most pressing concern on my students’ minds? Or are there other losses that hit harder?
Here’s the truth that too many adults who don’t directly work with young people refuse to acknowledge: When our youths are frightened, disconnected, grieving, or anxious, they aren’t learning. Their brains aren’t taking in our lessons, or holding on to the Common Core standards. Their amygdalas are in charge, and adults just sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher. If we are going to address the academic loss that may have occurred during the pandemic, then we also need to fully understand the other kinds of loss our young people have experienced and have plans in place to support them through those losses.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-students-respond-to-adults-fixation-on-learning-loss/2021/02
I love (perhaps more accurately, greatly respect) this. Diane, in my humble opinion, this is worth a post. Thanks for posting, Christine!
Glad you enjoyed it Greg. Neema is fabulous.
Randy Rainbow to the rescue; humor helps!
Vulgarity warning, though the topic merits it.
Cori Bush is a newly elected Representative from the Ferguson, Missouri area. She was an activist in her community in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s murder. Here she is expressing her opposition to allowing Majorie Taylor Greene to remain on the education committee.
Last night’s vote to expell Marjorie Taylor Greene from the education committee was followed by testimony lasting an hour from members of Congress about the events of January 6. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez organized the hour, in which eight members made highly personal remarks about their frightening experiences. Ocasio-Cortez has been targeted since her Instagram video with claims that she is exaggerating, or lying, about what she experienced that day. These official remarks torpedo those attacks. This is an example of leadership, while the GOP tries to minimize the nearly catastrophic events recklessly caused by their party.
This link to the video is an hour and a half long, but the portion organized by Ocasio-Cortez ends after 60 minutes.
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1eaKbnlvDXZKX
AOC has been a target of the Alt-Right since she was elected to Congress. I can’t remember when she started to get death threats. Before she won the election or soon after?
If I could, I’d nominate Brianna Keilar and her production team for a lifetime Pulitzer Prize. She’s more than a breath of fresh air.
Brianna Keller is wonderful.
Diane, so sorry to learn that the inimitable, generous, brillant Karen Lewis died yesterday.
Diane: Your post about Paul Thomas and Reading wars prompted me to ask a friend with Hungarian ties if he knew Thomas from his days at Furman. I got this reply:
“The debates about reading are tedious. Hungary had a bout of them a decade ago — the irony there is that whatever method they were using before yielded some of the highest literacy scores in the world. So the then education ministry introduced a new method and the rate of literacy collapsed. There was much screeching and groaning nationwide. The government fell, the education minister retreated into oblivion, his party with him, never to be seen again. ”
Do you know anything about this?
Roy, no. Hungarian (Magyar) is very different from English . I don’t what reading method he refers to.
Thanks, Diane. I was wondering some of the same things. I mean to delve into the political issues here with my friend. Meanwhile, the idea of being able to compare the person who is literate in Hungarian to the person literate in another language seems silly on the face of it.
As a former Senate staffer who lived on Capitol Hill in the early 90s and as one who has lived there, flown and driven back innumerable times for business and personal reasons, I am baffled that one issue has not been addressed by the House managers (unless I somehow missed it): the current and foreseeable state of the city itself. Here’s a question I’d like to see posed: “This city, one that we revere and love, one that stands for so much more than being a seat of government, is currently under a state of siege and extraordinary, unprecedented safety measures. The American People not only do not have access to the People’s House, they cannot move freely in our nation’s capital city. There are thousands of soldiers deployed to keep people away from the People’s House. There are thousands of residents who have been and continued to be terrorized by the events of January 6. Who is responsible for this state of affairs? And should this person be given the opportunity to do this again to finish the job of killing this Experiment that has been in existence since the ratification of the Constitution?”
Diane:
I recently wrote above concerning the response I got from my dear friend who was Hungarian raised in Sao Paulo. I too the liberty of poking at him for being a wild Magyar invader. His response, as usual was both humorous and informative. It got me to thinking that the differences in language among cultures might explain how one culture or another might be better prepared to do some part of society better due to their thought pattern as introduced in their language.
His comments about the drying up of public education funding are also interesting, and I thought I would share this with you.
But you are so careless in poking fun at Hungarian literacy. In Brazil they will warn you not to poke a tiger with a short stick. You see now I cannot resist but to deliver a lesson in linguistics and you will have to endure it for punishment:
Hungarian is an agglutinative language. It uses various affixes, mainly suffixes but also some prefixes and a circumfix, to change a word’s meaning and its grammatical function. Therefore there is no way to read Hungarian by the whole-word way, since the “shape” of the words are changing all the time. Let me give you an example:
magyar – Hungarian (either language or people)
magyarok – Hungarians (only the people) (sufix)
magyaroknak – for Hungarians
magyarokkal — with Hungarians
almagyar – fake Hungarian (word, not people) (prefix)
delmagyar – southern Hungarian (person)
delmagyarok – southern Hungarians
Magyarorszag — the country of the Hungarians
legmagyarabb – the most Hungarian (in a nationalistic/patriotic sense) (circumfix)
etc.
In other words if you do not decipher the entire word with all its agglutinations, you will not understand what is being communicated. When the government, in its wisdom, decreed that schools should adopt whole-word instead of phonics, all hell broke loose. How can you do that? Lo and behold it did not work.
However, the fall in the rankings of international literacy rates coincided with other social, economic and cultural events and they were all conflated. At roughly the same time (~1988-1995) schools were defunded (the communists had poured a lot of money into education until the early 1980s, but as their finances ran dry school budgets were tightened. The tightening has yet to stop), cable TV entered the country, the economic dislocation in the wake of the fall of communism brought enormous stresses onto the family unit, and a sequence of governments tried different reforms in the education system, which only stressed it further. So the picture is a lot more complicated than the isolated attempt to introduce whole-word reading.
End of lecture, you are now free again. ;-))
Pongracz
Hey Diane! I have a favor to ask. Would it be possible for you to send John Ozalek my email. I have a geography question about upstate NY And I understand he lives up there
Roy: done.
Houston, we have a problem:
The Biden administration said Monday that states must administer federally required standardized tests this year, but schools won’t be held accountable for the results — and states could give shorter, remote, or delayed versions of the exams.
It’s the first high-stakes decision for the new administration’s Department of Education, coming even before its secretary of education nominee, Miguel Cardona, has been confirmed.
“To be successful once schools have re-opened, we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning and identify what resources and supports students need,” Ian Rosenblum, acting assistant education secretary, wrote in a letter to state education leaders.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/2/22/22296173/biden-administration-state-tests
Maurice Cunningham, who is featured in Diane’s Book Slaying Goliath has an update this morning on dark money groups behind the privatization of our public schools in Boston and nationally. Keri Rodrigues, featured in the post, loves to portray herself as a working class Latina mom, but little of that is actually true. She keeps turning up as an “everywoman” critic of teachers and teachers unions, including in the NYT. Money buys access.
If you’ve gotten this far let me say a few words about why I care about this stuff. We simply do not have a functioning democracy when the vast wealth of a few oligarchs sets the policy agenda and gains influence by showering money on upbeat sounding fronts like Families for Excellent Schools and Massachusetts Parents United. Nor do we have a functioning democracy when the true power—the men and women behind the curtain—remain unknown to the public and uncovered by the media. In Dark Money, Jane Mayer talks about “weaponizing philanthropy.” In Just Giving, Rob Reich points out the “plutocratic bias” enjoyed by the foundations. (Hey, did I mention all these public policy altering contributions by oligarchs are a valuable tax deduction to them? Yes, you’re subsidizing them to change your state’s policy. Never give a sucker an even break). Huge investments in policy change and hidden money threaten rule by the people.
And that’s what MPU is—a tax deductible front for oligarchs weaponizing their philanthropy in a campaign to privatize public goods. The Waltons, Koch, and other oligarchs don’t want us to peek behind the curtain. It is our democratic obligation to tear that curtain down.
http://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2021/02/25/lets-try-to-help-massachusetts-parents-united-with-transparency/
Speaking of the NYT, Nick Kristof wants you to know he has opinions. And his experts are private schools, religious schools, McKinsey and Emily Oster.
Closures also exacerbate racial inequity. According to McKinsey & Company, fifth graders in schools with mostly students of color mastered only 37 percent of the math that usually would be expected.
Yes, it’s hard to open schools during a pandemic. But private schools mostly managed to, and that’s true not only of rich boarding schools but also of strapped Catholic schools. As a nation, we fought to keep restaurants and malls open — but we didn’t make schools a similar priority, so needy children were left behind.
“The evidence on remote learning suggests that despite the best efforts of teachers it doesn’t work for a large share of kids,” said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who has studied the issue. “I think we’ve deprioritized children in a way that will do long-term damage.”
https://t.co/xG1fH6O5ZG?amp=1
Thanks for th e link Exactly: “We simply do not have a functioning democracy when the vast wealth of a few oligarchs sets the policy agenda and gains influence by showering money on upbeat sounding fronts like Families for Excellent Schools and Massachusetts Parents United. Nor do we have a functioning democracy when the true power—the men and women behind the curtain—remain unknown to the public and uncovered by the media.”
The oligarchs hidden behind the curtain own 90-percent of the media. That means they control the flow of news.
Lloyd . . . that is not to say that a good amount of truth doesn’t also come clear through the press. But I hear you. . . .CBK
Lloyd An afterthought to your comment “The oligarchs hidden behind the curtain own 90-percent of the media. That means they control the flow of news.”
You’ve also put your finger on the fundamental reason that public education should remain vibrant and healthy in a democracy: oligarchs and their corporate interests are much more likely to be able to stay “behind the curtain” and remain UNQUESTIONED when they own the curriculum. CBK
Whenever I see McKinsey cited as a “reputable” source of information, it takes all I can muster to keep down the epileptic-type seizures that are trying to take over my body. Instead I just mutter expletives.
Hi Diane–
A follow up on what is happening in California Dept. of Ed and their Charter approvals. Two years ago AB 1505 was passed which was supposed to return local control over charter school approvals to the local elected school officials. At the time of passing the California Charter School Association (ALEC for charters in CA) came out all smiles at the release press conference. Wonder why…
We have a local charter that our local school board has denied 3 times now (2x originally and now again for their renewal) and again has been overridden by CDE recommendations. Turns out the charter was reviewed by Craig Heimbichner who ignored serious allegations from the local public school officials over governance, finance and program problems to recommend approval of the renewal.
Problem is, according to an article in The Sacramento Bee from yesterday, is a renown conspiracy theory promoter. Why he is making decisions on the efficacy of charter schools and their programs overriding the determinations of actual educators is beyond me but at least he has been suspended. At the moment though, his “evaluation” of our local charter to be renewed still stands.
Articles:
https://edsource.org/2021/california-education-official-who-authored-articles-espousing-conspiracy-theories-put-on-paid-leave/650082
There is a link to the original SacBee article in the above (unfortunately it is behind a pay-wall so I’m not able to attach it directly).
Seems like some house-cleaning is needed in the CDE under Tony Thurmond.
Anyway, thanks for all you do for our kids!
This is far more than I ever expected from Joe Biden. Amazing:
Cincinnati Enquirer reports this morning that the Ohio Republican-controlled state house was going to give districts the option to skip testing this year…but now due to the edict from the White House…scheduling is back on for all schools. Aggravating.
Sometimes the threats to education come from right-wing idealogues. Sometimes from libertarian crazies. Sometimes from the wrecking crew. And now, from the techno-utopians. These people contacted me under the mistaken impression that I might help them market their AI education program. You might be interested in what they are up to. https://www.inspiritai.com/
Wonderful, nuanced report on the intricacies of re-opening school buildings. Finally!
“I was very disappointed in the school guidance that came out. I think it still has too much emphasis on ‘Covid theater’—like taking daily temperatures and cleaning down everything all the time,” said William Mills, a ventilation expert and engineering professor at Northern Illinois University. Mills, who has been advising his state on Covid-19, says governments have been resistant to embracing a more interdisciplinary approach to safety and have been too slow to accept what has been clear to industrial hygienists like him for a year.
“Many epidemiologists and infectious disease people do not get taught about the ‘hierarchy of controls,’” Mills said, referring to the standard way occupational safety experts analyze and address workplace hazards. While measures like personal protective equipment and social distancing are important, occupational safety experts put greater weight on so-called “engineering controls” like ventilation, which depend less on proper and sustained human compliance. Ensuring young children or teenagers consistently wear their masks and always remain properly distanced—in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and bathrooms—can be difficult, particularly if the school is crowded. “Engineered solutions remove the onus from individuals and their personal habits or attentiveness,” reads Covid-19 guidance from the American Industrial Hygiene Association. “Machines do not get tired, sloppy, or distracted.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/161608/inside-long-messy-year-reopening-schools
Randy Rainbow on vaccines!
Question for Teachers/Admins:
Are there any circumstances in 2021 when retention (5th grade) may be a viable, or at least a “least worst” choice in response to a student who is not ready and does not have skills needed for success, to progress to the next grade?
(Set the pandemic aside for this particular question…)
Interesting item by the Institute for New Economic Thinking from March 19, 2021 regarding the rush to reopen schools while ignoring the current research on the spread of Covid-19: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/new-cdc-guidelines-to-reopen-schools-could-be-dangerous
Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa have predicted correctly so much about the Trump era because they study authoritarianism. This episode of their podcast, Gaslit Nation, is even more illuminating than most. I’ve listened to it several times now. It helps one make sense of what’s already happened, and of what we need to remain attuned to.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/electoral-ruth-48849971
Hello, Diane. In case you haven’t read this article, I’m attaching the link. Always an interesting story, here in Saint Louis! Thanks for your excellent work supporting real public education, students, and teachers.
View at Medium.com
We live in Hamblen County, Tennessee and my fifth grade daughter is a straight A student, captain of her cheer squad, and has won too many awards to count for her academics. However, this past week we learned that she had not been invited to join the Beta Club at her school because admission is based upon TN Ready scores (our state standardized tests), but since the kids did not test last year because of Covid they based the eligibility on the math scores from the TN Ready test she took in 3rd grade (2 years ago). When I tried to use the argument that the school system is discriminating against little girls by doing this (no girls made the club at John Hay Elementary where she attends) I was told that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that standardized tests are fair for both boys and girls and they couldn’t help that no girls scored high enough to meet the qualifications. What can I do? I really feel this is discrimination and should be unlawful at the very least.
Erin, I’m sorry your family is going through this. Most important, I think, is to let your daughter know you are proud of her accomplishments and that they are not diminshed because the school system has chosen an invalid means to accept some students into the Beta Club while excluding others.
Second, I’m not a Title IX specialist, but any mechanism which excludes female students is discriminatory, just as if no students of color were admitted. You do know what you’re talking about. Using a test score from two years ago only provides a snapshot of where students were then and allows no room for growth in the interim.
I would try to speak with someone as high up in the hierarchy as possible, and I’d try to recruit some other parents of girls to make a big stink alongside me.
It is a frustrating conundrum. What does one do when one is told they “didn’t know what I was talking about” by apparatchiks (who don’t know or won’t admit they are tools of corporate profiteers) who don’t know what they’re talking about?