The Mayor of Springfield is not happy about it. He read Robert Amsterdam’s exhaustive report about the Gulen schools “Empire of Deceit”), and he knows that the public schools will lose funding to this charter chain operated by allies of the Fethullah Gulen Movement.
Of course, the Gulen charter school says it is not a Gulen school at all. It is just happenstance that the CEO of the school is a Turkish national. Gulen schools always deny any connection to Gulen, who now has a charter chain of about 160 schools. As usual, follow the money. If the landlord is Turkish, if contracts for construction go to Turkish firms, if a significant number of its teachers are Turkish, if the majority of the board is Turkish, it is a Gulen school. Chances are, as one fallen-away Gulen teacher told 60 Minutes, that the teachers are tithing their salary to Gulen. And th school is paying rent to a Gulen Corporation.
The mayor understands that the charter will drain funding from the local public schools, where the overwhelming majority of children are enrolled.
Why do we allow a religious sect to operate what are supposed to be public schools?
In 2016, the voters of Massachusetts overwhelmingly rejected a state referendum to expand the number of charter schools in the state. Why is the State Board still increasing their number? The chair of the State Board donated large sums to the pro-charter side. He lost.
Is the State Board determined to undermine one of the top-performing states in the nation?
Tom Ultican reviews the anguish of the libertarian CATO Institute, founded and financed by Charles Koch, and its efforts to refute the critique of vouchers by the Center for American Progress. CAP loves charters, hates vouchers. CATO lives the free market and embraces all forms of choice.
The libertarian ideology, he shows, is indifferent to facts. There is a libertarian Bible and a libertarian God, and his name is Milton Friedman, champion of free markets. If Friedman wrote something, it must be true, no further discussion.
“This ideology is a religiously held belief positing that private enterprise is always more efficient and cost effective than a government enterprise. However, privatized police forces, privatized prisons, privatized armies and privatized fire departments are clearly problematic.”
Friedman asserted that nothing had changed in American schools for 200 years.
Ultican asks:
”Let me get this straight, the father of vouchers believes teaching methods in America have not changed since 1795. Why did anyone ever listen to this blathering fool?”
Friedman’s fanatical followers treat his words as gospel. Privatization solves all problems. Except when it creates new ones, unleashing greed and rampant indifference to the common good.
Ideology tends to blind its adherents to facts or evidence.
The report shows that academic pressure has invaded kindergartens and that children have lost the time once spent in play, socialization, recess, even lunch.
Child-directed activities have increasingly been replaced by teacher-directed activities and scripted curricula.
It seems that “reform” in early childhood classes means stamping out the interests of children.
This is wrong. Let the children play. Let them have a childhood.
A Message from NYSAPE (New York State Allies for Public Education):
Please TAKE ACTION NOW CLICK HERE and share your stories with NYSED and the Board of Regents. ASK them to CORRECT the MISINFORMATION and INTIMIDATION being spread on opting out of the 3-8 grade state tests.
Despite the fact that Commissioner Elia has acknowledged that parents have the right to opt out of the state tests, NYSAPE has been flooded with emails from parents sharing stories of misinformation being disseminated by their school districts regarding test refusals. Many stories detail intimidation and bullying, as well as false claims that schools or students will be punished for opting out.
Here is the reality: NO student will have a low score entered into their records for opting out, NO school will be identified as failing because of high opt out numbers and NO school will lose funding.
The New York State Education Department (NYSED) and Board of Regents MUST HEAR from you regarding intimidation and misleading information being spread in your school district regarding your right to refuse the NYS Grades 3-8 state tests.
Here is the truth according to NYSED: “To comply with the federal law, one school academic accountability calculation still must be based on the percentage of all students who pass state tests.… But New York’s plan also creates a new “core subject performance index” that reflects the results only for the portion of students who actually take the state tests [emphasis added] If the result using the index calculation is better, that performance measure can be used to determine whether a school is targeted for additional funding and academic support. In essence, both of these measures are looked at,” Schwartz [of NYSED] told the Regents… “if we have schools that have high achievement but also have high rates of non-participation, those schools will not likely end up on our list of those schools that need to be focused upon.” [1]
Schools have a legal obligation to administer the state tests. HOWEVER, parents have the legal right to opt out their children free of coercion or penalties of any sort.
We are imploring NYSED and the Board of Regents to address these issues!
We refuse the state tests because we do not want to have our schools focus on test prep, and have our children subjected to biased, flawed exams. We demand that our schools focus instead on creating a meaningful, student-centered learning environment. If you’re in doubt about what to do, check out the video of one of our founders, Jeanette Deutermann, available here.
If you do decide to opt your child out of the tests, here’s a NYSAPE TEST REFUSAL LETTER to send to your child’s teacher/s and building principal.
Time is of the essence, as state testing is around the corner! Please TAKE ACTION NOW CLICK HERE and share your stories with NYSED and the Board of Regents. ASK them to CORRECT the MISINFORMATION being spread, and to stop the bullying of our children.
The governor of Oklahoma insulted teachers, saying they were like teenagers who wanted a better car. How much is she paid to defend the interests of the oil and gas industry? She even claimed that the state’s teachers were influenced by outside groups, like “antifa,” the black-clothed anti-fascist agitators. Shades of the civil rights movement, when racist governors refused to believe that “their” blacks wanted change.
Resseger writes:
“If you have been watching the courageous teachers, first in West Virginia, now in Oklahoma and Kentucky, standing up for their right to be paid fairly—to have a pension after long years of working with children and adolescents—to work in schools adequately supplied with enough counselors and social workers, technology and an ample and stimulating curriculum—I wonder if, like me, you find it refreshing to see a large number of teachers out in the open speaking about what they do. In these days of too many guns, teachers are more and more safely locked into schools with the children they teach. They and their contributions are pretty much invisible to the rest of us. We forget about them and we take them for granted.
“We neglect to make any mental connection to what it means for teachers (and children) when politicians promise us we can grow the economy by slashing taxes. Teachers, however, have to pay attention when ballooning class sizes make it harder to address personally the needs of 35 or 40 children. They watch kids grieve when football or instrumental music or a high school newspaper dies. They notice when there are too few counselors to help students whose parents are not college educated put together a good college application. They know the consequences when their rural school lacks access to broadband. Better than anybody else, school teachers understand the meaning of cuts to the state education budget. And this month teachers have been creating opportunities to tell us all what they know.
“Maybe part of our forgetting about teachers comes from gender bias. As we have all noticed in West Virginia last month, and now in Oklahoma and Kentucky, most of these teachers are energetic young women. All the old messages come into play: Teachers do their work because they love our children; the money isn’t so important to them. They’re probably married and have another income to depend on in addition to whatever they can bring in from teaching. These women should be good sports as they do more with less. And the worst: Teaching is really just glorified babysitting.
“Teachers do love to work with our children, but at the same time their work is the job by which they must support their own children. They must pay for food, housing, a car, and childcare. The required contribution to the family’s’ health insurance keeps rising. They have to save for their children’s college, and they need to save for retirement, particularly when the pensions they pay into every month are cut.”
”In a raucous board meeting on the school’s campus, Gregory Blount, the school’s executive director and founder, revealed that the financially struggling school has little money in the bank and that the school has been operating on short-term loans since November.
“The tumult raised fears that the 425-student school might be forced to close later this month if the school can’t persuade enough teachers to continue working.
“Accusing Blount of misleading the staff, the school’s two principals resigned during Monday’s board meeting, and the board chairman and the school’s special-education coordinator threatened to quit as well if Blount wasn’t removed from his position. Several other staffers also threatened to resign.
“I can no longer support something that I feel is an absolute charade,” board Chairman Tim Quinn said.
“Blount has been criticized for steering more than $150,000 of school money into his own companies since the school opened in 2014. In 2016, he was forced to repay $46,000 after The Palm Beach Post revealed that the school gave him the money in the guise of a loan.”
New York State has been negligent in protecting the right to an adequate education in Yeshivas. The state has a large, vibrant, and politically powerful Orthodox Jewish community.
It is sponsored by Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED)
April 5 Press Conference to Discuss how NY has Betrayed Its Values to Please A Bully and Next Steps in Fight to Protect the Rights of Orthodox Children
For immediate release: New York, NY (4/2/18)
Contact: Naftuli Moster, Exec. Director, naftuli@yaffed.org
A press conference will be held in front of City Hall to protest how in the NY State budget deal, elected officials rolled back the protection of children’s right to an adequate education.
When: Thursday, April 5, 2018 at 1pm
Where: The steps of City Hall in lower Manhattan
Who: Members of Yaffed, along with former Yeshiva students and invited elected officials
Why: A new law passed as part of the 2018 NY state budget was crafted specifically to affect only Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish children. It seeks to weaken the NY State Education Department’s ability to provide sufficient oversight to ensure that these children receive an adequate education.
This law was passed as result of the efforts of Simcha Felder, a State Senator from Brooklyn who alone held up the state budget in order to insert language intended to deprive students of their right to a basic education that will prepare them for good-paying jobs and success in life.
New York State law requires non-public schools to provide an education that is “at least substantially equivalent” to that of public schools, so that no student is left in ignorance. The law requires non-public schools to provide instruction in “arithmetic, reading, spelling, writing, the English language, geography, United States history, civics, hygiene, physical training, the history of New York state and science.”
But this law has not been enforced for decades, by either the state or the city. The Mayor and the NYC Department of Education has delayed taking any action for over two and a half years, even after they had promised to do so repeatedly. The NY Commissioner of Education was in the process of drafting new guidelines to enforce the law, which apparently prompted Sen. Felder’s actions to attempt to exempt Yeshivas from meeting any educational standards. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of children are not receiving the basic education to which they are entitled.
At the press conference, advocates from Yaffed, former Yeshiva students and elected officials will speak out against extremists who are strong-arming our government to block sensible education policies, and. will discuss next steps in the fight to protect the human rights of all children to be adequately educated.
For more information on Yaffed’s five-year campaign to achieve a better education for ultra-Orthodox children, see http://www.yaffed.org
To understand how bad things are for teachers, children, and public schools in Oklahoma, read this article.
Oklahoma is a red state that followed the ALEC script. Cut taxes, cut taxes, deregulate, cut taxes.
It was supposed to produce economic growth. It didn’t. It created massive deficits and underinvestment in public services.
Nearly 200 of the state’s 550 school districts were closed as 30,000 teachers rallied at the Capitol along with other public employees.
“Teachers are demanding that state legislators come up with $3.3 billion over the next three years for school funding, benefits, and pay raises for all public employees. On Monday, lawmakers didn’t give an inch.
“That made teachers even angrier…
”Oklahoma’s teachers are rebelling against a decade of state tax cuts that triggered deep cuts in education spending, forcing about 20 percent of public schools to switch to a four-day-week schedule and pushing average teacher salaries to rank 49th in the country. Teachers haven’t gotten a raise in 10 years.
“Oklahoma is still dealing with a budget crisis after lawmakers have slashed business taxes and top income tax rates year after year. A round went into effect in 2009; then taxes were lowered further in 2012 and 2014. The tax cuts were supposed to lead to an economic boom, but instead, they triggered a massive budget gap of about $1.5 billion each year.
“To deal with the shortfall, the government cut spending everywhere. The cuts to education were so deep that 20 percent of the state’s public schools had to switch to a four-day school week. Oklahoma teachers made an average salary of $45,276 in 2016, according to the National Education Association. The last time teachers got a raise from the state was in 2008.”
Who will be the first to admit that the ALEC playbook is a disaster? Will any legislator blame ALEC and resign?
Now that we know the bitter fruit of deep tax cuts year after year, will the public wake up?
Thousands of teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky walked off the job Monday morning, shutting down school districts as they protested cuts in pay, benefits and school funding in a movement that has spread rapidly since igniting in West Virginia this year.
In Oklahoma City, protesting teachers ringed the Capitol, chanting, “No funding, no future!” Katrina Ruff, a local teacher, carried a sign that read, “Thanks to West Virginia.”
“They gave us the guts to stand up for ourselves,” she said.
The walkouts and rallies in Republican-dominated states, mainly organized by ordinary teachers on Facebook, have caught lawmakers and sometimes the teachers’ own labor unions flat-footed. And they are occurring in states and districts with important midterm races in November, suggesting that thousands of teachers, with their pent-up rage over years of pay freezes and budget cuts, are set to become a powerful political force this fall.
The next red state to join the protest movement could be Arizona, where there is an open Senate seat and where thousands of teachers gathered in Phoenix last week to demand a 20 percent pay raise and more funding for schools.
The growing fervor suggests that labor activism has taken on a new, grass-roots form.
“Our unions have been weakened so much that a lot of teachers don’t have faith” in them, said Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher in Tolleson, Ariz., outside Phoenix, and leader of the movement calling itself #RedforEd, after the red T-shirts protesting teachers are wearing across the country.
Mr. Karvelis said that younger teachers had been primed for activism by their anger over the election of President Trump, his appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary and even their own students’ participation in anti-gun protests after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“Teachers for a long time have had a martyr mentality,” Mr. Karvelis said. “This is new.”
The wave of protest is cresting as the Supreme Court prepares a decision in Janus v. Afscme, a major case in which the court is expected to make it harder for public sector unions to require workers to pay membership fees. But the recent walkouts suggest that labor activism may not need highly funded unions to be effective. Unlike in strongholds for labor, like New York or California, teachers’ unions in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona are barred by law from compelling workers to pay dues. Yet that has not stopped protesters from making tough demands of lawmakers.
Striking West Virginia teachers declared victory last month after winning a 5 percent raise, but Oklahoma educators are holding out for more.
Photo
Teachers and their supporters protested against a pension reform bill at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort on Monday.CreditBill Pugliano/Getty Images
Last week, the Legislature in Oklahoma City voted to provide teachers with an average raise of $6,000 per year, or roughly a 16 percent raise, depending on experience. Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, signed the package into law.
Teachers said it was not enough. They have asked for a $10,000 raise, as well as additional funding for schools and raises for support staff like bus drivers and custodians.
About 200 of the state’s 500 school districts shut down on Monday as teachers walked out, defying calls from some parents and administrators for them to be grateful for what they had already received from the state.
To pay for the raise, politicians from both parties agreed to increase production taxes on oil and gas, the state’s most prized industry, and institute new taxes on tobacco and motor fuel. It was the first new revenue bill to become law in Oklahoma in 28 years, bucking decades of tax-cut orthodoxy.
In Kentucky, teachers earn an average salary of $52,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, compared with $45,000 in Oklahoma. But teachers there, thousands of whom are picketing the Capitol during their spring break, are protesting a pension reform bill that abruptly passed the State House and Senate last week. If Gov. Matt Bevin signs it into law, it will phase out defined-benefit pensions for teachers and replace them with hybrid retirement plans that combine features of a traditional pension with features of the 401(k) accounts used in the private sector. Teachers in the state are not eligible for Social Security benefits.
Andrew Beaver, 32, a middle school math teacher in Louisville, said he was open to changes in teacher retirement programs, such as potentially asking teachers to work to an older age before drawing down benefits; currently, some Kentucky teachers are eligible for retirement around age 50. But he said he and his colleagues, many of whom have called in sick to protest the bill, were angry about not having a seat at the negotiation table with Mr. Bevin, a Republican, and the Republican majority in the Legislature.
“What I’m seeing in Louisville is teachers are a lot more politically engaged than they were in 2015 or 2016,” he said. “It really is a wildfire.”
In Arizona, where the average teacher salary is $47,000, teachers are agitating for more generous pay and more money for schools after watching the state slash funds to public education for years.
“We’re going to continue to escalate our actions,” Mr. Karvelis said. “Whether that ultimately ends in a strike? That’s certainly a possibility. We just want to win.”
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Oklahoma educators are holding out for more than the $6,000 per year raise that was signed by the Legislature last week.CreditAlex Flynn for The New York Times
Mr. Karvelis, 23, said teachers would not walk out of class unless they were able to win support from parents and community members across the state, including in rural areas. But he said the movement would be influential regardless of whether it shuts down schools.
“We’re going to have a lot of teachers at the ballot box who I don’t think would normally go in a midterm year,” he said. “If I were a legislator right now, I’d be honestly sweating bullets.”
With Republican legislators and governors bearing the brunt of the protesters’ fury, the Democratic Party is trying to capitalize on the moment. The Democratic National Committee plans to register voters at teacher rallies, and hopes to harness the movement’s populism.
The teacher walkouts are “a real rejection of the Republican agenda that doesn’t favor working-class people,” said Sabrina Singh, the committee’s deputy communications director. “Republicans aren’t on the side of teachers. The Democrats are.”
That type of rhetoric is a sea change from the Obama years, when many Democrats angered teachers by talking less about core issues of schools funding than about expanding the number of charter schools, or using student test scores to evaluate teachers and remove ineffective ones from the classroom.
“School reformers kind of overshot the mark, and we’re now in a pendulum swing where teachers increasingly look like good guys,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank.
Republicans, too, he said, should consider pitching themselves as teacher-friendly candidates, perhaps by tying teacher pay raises to efforts to expand school choice through private school vouchers or charter schools.
Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, called the movement an “education spring.”
“This is the civics lesson of our time,” she said. “The politicians on both sides of the aisle are rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.”
“It’s not a good look on a master’s degree. It’s beneath them. However, it’s not beneath them to qualify for food stamps or use food pantries or wait tables or drive uber or mow lawns or sell blood or quietly scratch for survival under unfair wages. It’s not beneath them to teach on broken chairs out of ripped up books. That’s kind of noble. (Give those teachers an apple.) But unseemly demands? Pressure upon politicians? Coming out en masse? Inconvenience? No, no, no. Take that exploitation quietly and with forbearance.”
Advice to teachers, with or without a master’s degree or a doctorate: Just do it. God helps those who help themselveslves. You know your legislators. They will give you nothing unless you pressure them and embarrass them. The lobbyists are squeezing tax breaks out of them. Bring your collective strength to the table. Ignore the naysayers. Continue the struggle. And know that millions of people are with you.
Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Dr. Martin Luther King
“Fire hoses can’t deal with a million people … Dogs can’t bite a million people.” — The Atlantic
OEA Pres. Alicia Priest:
“Educators across Oklahoma have said, ‘Enough!’ Their frustration is justified, but that frustration — because of years of broken promises — turned into courage, and that courage turned into energy, and that energy into momentum, and that momentum created this moment that forced that legislature to act.” — FB Video
