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NY Times: Intelligence Officials ContradictTrump

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2017 //
24

The latest on Russian hacking of our election:

 
Cybersecurity Takes Center Stage on The Hill

 
WASHINGTON — Rebuffing efforts by President-elect Donald J. Trump to cast doubt on Russian interference in the presidential election, top intelligence officials and senators from both parties on Thursday issued a forceful affirmation of the findings. They took relentless aim at Mr. Trump’s public skepticism and suggested he had negatively affected morale in the intelligence community.

 
“There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said at the hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 
Mr. Clapper added that “our assessment now is even more resolute” that the Russians carried out the attack on the election. President Obama received a classified briefing on the intelligence community’s findings today, followed by one for Mr. Trump on Friday. An unclassified report will be released to the public next week.
The hacking was only one part of the Russian endeavor, which also included the dissemination of “classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” Mr. Clapper said.
The gathering was extraordinary as much for its context as its content — a public, bipartisan display of support for the intelligence community that seemed aimed, at times, at an audience of one.
Though Mr. Clapper and most Republican senators were careful to avoid antagonizing the president-elect directly, the hearing spoke to the searing rift Mr. Trump has threatened to create between the incoming administration and the intelligence officials tasked with informing it.
Intelligence Officials Testify About U.S. Cyber Security

 
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the committee, said the purpose of the gathering was “not to question the outcome of the presidential election” but to move forward with a full understanding of what had happened.

 
Repeatedly, though, Mr. McCain and his colleagues seemed to undercut Mr. Trump’s past messages of support for Russia and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whom Mr. Trump has appeared to defend.

 
“Do you think there’s any credibility we should attach to this individual?” Mr. McCain asked.
“Not in my view,” Mr. Clapper said. Another witness at the hearing, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, a leader of the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, said he agreed.

 
Later, as if concerned the point had not been duly made, Mr. McCain asked Mr. Clapper again to describe his view of Mr. Assange.
Mr. Clapper noted that Mr. Assange had been “holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London” to avoid a Swedish arrest warrant on allegations of sexual assault. WikiLeaks’ revelations, Mr. Clapper said, had sometimes put Americans at risk. “So I don’t think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him.”

 
In Twitter messages on Thursday before the hearing — one day after sharing with his followers remarks from Mr. Assange, who has dismissed the intelligence findings — Mr. Trump accused the “dishonest media” of concluding that the two men agreed.

 

“I simply state what he states,” Mr. Trump wrote, “it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!”

 
Mr. Clapper, while withholding revelations about the Russian attack ahead of next week’s release, did promise to “push the envelope” in declassifying as much detail as possible, including the motive of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in carrying it out. “We’ll be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some fragile and sensitive sources and methods here,” he said.
He said he welcomed skeptical questioning from Mr. Trump, allowing that the intelligence community was “not perfect.” But Mr. Clapper spoke sternly of the wall of stars in the C.I.A. lobby, commemorating the deaths of agency officers on duty, and said the agencies’ efforts to keep the country safe were not always appreciated.
Democrats on the committee repeatedly coaxed intelligence leaders to underscore the contrast between their view that the Russian government was behind the hacking and Mr. Trump’s multiple assertions that a random individual hacker might be to blame.
Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, told Mr. Clapper that in the conflict between the intelligence agencies and Mr. Assange over Russian responsibility for the attack, “We’re on your side every time.” He asked Mr. Clapper to convey his level of confidence in attributing the election attack to Russia, rather than “someone in his basement.”
“It’s, uh, very high,” the laconic intelligence director replied.
At one point, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, wondered aloud “who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community….”

 
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, used the occasion for an aside about Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, who has a history of sharing discredited news stories and conspiracy theories. Mr. Kaine said he was unsure whether Mr. Flynn was acting out of “gullibility” or “malice,” but said it was a cause for “great concern” that Mr. Flynn shared stories that “most fourth-graders would find incredible.”

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform

CNN: Trump Has Selected Indiana Senator Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2017 //
5

Trump continues the dumbing down and politicization of federal agencies by selecting rightwingers Dan Coats of Indiana as director of national intelligence, a job that up until now has gone to nonpartisan professionals.

 

Wonder how Coats feels about Putin? Must have pledged allegiance to the KGB.

Categories Education Reform

More than 1,100 Law Professors Sign Petition Opposing Jeff Sessions as Attorney General

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
15

 

 

More than 1,100 law professors signed a petition in opposition to the nomination of Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as Attorney General.

 

“The letter, signed by professors from 170 law schools in 48 states, is also scheduled to run as a full-page newspaper ad aimed at members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be holding confirmation hearings for Sessions on Jan. 10-11.

 

“We are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States,” states the letter, signed by prominent legal scholars including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of Law.”

 

We are in a strange new era in our country’s history, when the people leading the federal government are manifestly unfit for their positions. All the way to the top.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Skate-Boarding Women in Niqabs: Saudi Arabia’s Hit Video

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
18

 

 

According to the Washington Post, this video is a sensation in Saudia Arabia. Women in full regalia skateboarding and playing basketball. Not driving. Driving may lead to…

 

Does it suggest that women’s rights are on the horizon? Probably not.

 

Whats Trump doing in there? A symbol of male dominance? If you understand the lyrics, let us know.

Categories Education Reform

Owen Davis: How Pearson Made a Killing from the US Testing Mania

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
17

Journalist Owen Davis explains in this article how the giant British education publisher Pearson made a killing as American politicians went gaga for standardized testing.

it is important to bear in mind that annual standardized testing is neither necessary nor customary. No other nation requires every child in grades 3-8 to take standardized tests every year. The US didn’t do it either until after the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. NCLB was a bonanza for Pearson and other testing companies. They beefed up their lobbying operations to make sure that the testing industry was well protected in DC and in state capitols. One of the architects of NCLB, Sandy Kress, went home to Dallas and became a well-paid lobbyist for Pearson.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Pearson, Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Testing

Will Indiana’s Choice Program be the Model for the Trump-DeVos Plan?

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
20

http://www.journalgazette.net/food/the-dish/Indiana-s-vouchers-wow-GOP-16999984

 

Mike Pence is a devout believer in school choice and privatization of public funds. The Indiana state constitution specifically prohibits spending public funds in religious schools but the state courts ruled that the public money went to families, not to the religious schools that actually received the money. Now Indiana is a national model for the privatization movement, although the public was never asked to vote on this dramatic abandonment of public schools.

 

Indiana lawmakers originally promoted the state’s school voucher program as a way to make good on America’s promise of equal opportunity, offering children from poor and lower-middle-class families an escape from public schools that failed to meet their needs.

 

But five years after the program was established, more than half of the state’s voucher recipients have never attended Indiana public schools, meaning that taxpayers are now covering private and religious school tuition for children whose parents had previously footed that bill. Many vouchers also are going to wealthier families, those earning up to $90,000 for a household of four.

 

The voucher program, one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing, serves more than 32,000 children and provides an early glimpse of what education policy could look like in Donald Trump’s presidency.

 

Trump has signaled that he intends to pour billions of federal dollars into efforts to expand vouchers and charter schools nationwide. Betsy DeVos, his nominee for education secretary, played an important role in lobbying for the establishment of Indiana’s voucher program in 2011. And Vice President-elect Mike Pence led the charge as the state’s governor to loosen eligibility requirements and greatly expand the program’s reach.

 

Most recipients are not leaving the state’s worst schools: Just 3 percent of new recipients of vouchers in 2015 qualified for them because they lived in the attendance area of F-rated public schools. And while private school enrollment grew by 12,000 students over the past five years, the number of voucher recipients grew by 29,000, according to state data, meaning that taxpayer money is potentially helping thousands of families pay for a choice they were already making.

 

Most recipients qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, according to state data, but a growing proportion – now 31 percent – do not.

 

Opponents argue that vouchers are not reaching the children most in need of better schools. They also assert that voucher programs violate the constitutional separation of church and state by funneling public dollars into religious schools, including those that teach creationism instead of the theory of evolution.

 

Indiana’s program survived a legal challenge in 2013, when a judge ruled that the primary beneficiaries of the vouchers were families, not religious institutions.

 

Growing larger

 

The Indiana General Assembly first approved a limited voucher program in 2011, capping it at 7,500 students in the first year and restricting it to children who had attended public schools for at least a year.

 

“Public schools will get first shot at every child,” then-Gov. Mitch Daniels said at the time. “If the public school delivers and succeeds, no one will seek to exercise this choice.”

 

DeVos, who had lobbied for the program as chairwoman of the American Federation for Children, hailed its passage and proposed that other states follow Indiana’s lead. Two years later, Pence entered the governor’s office with a pledge to extend vouchers to more children.

 

“There’s nothing that ails our schools that can’t be fixed by giving parents more choices and teachers more freedom to teach,” Pence said during his inaugural address in 2013.

 

Within months, Indiana lawmakers eliminated the requirement that children attend public school before receiving vouchers and lifted the cap on the number of recipients. The income cutoff was raised, and more middle-class families became eligible.

 

When those changes took effect, an estimated 60 percent of all Indiana children were eligible for vouchers, and the number of recipients jumped from 9,000 to more than 19,000 in one year.

 

The proportion of children who had never previously attended Indiana public schools also rose quickly: By 2016, more than half of voucher recipients – 52 percent – had never been in the state’s public school system.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Indiana, Privatization, Vouchers

Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Opposes Charter Schools for All the Right Reasons

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
4

Kentucky is one of the few states that did not have any charter schools until the Republicans swept into power. Republicans have longed for school choice, because choice and competition are baked into free-market ideology. Besides, their neighboring state Tennessee has charter schools. They didn’t care that Kentucky’s students perform better than those of Tennessee on the National Assessment of Educational Performance. The Republicans in Kentucky want the same failed ideas as everyone else.

 

The school board of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, passed a resolution saying that they don’t want charter schools. They want to protect and improve their public schools, not destroy or privatize them. They don’t see the point of a dual school system.

 

In the resolution, the board expressed concerns about charter schools siphoning money from public schools, lacking similar transparency and accountability standards as public schools, and failing to help at-risk students.

 

“The Elizabethtown Independent Board of Education opposes any Charter School legislation that will establish a separate system of state-authorized public charter schools that are funded through a funding formula that unilaterally takes critically needed funds from the local school districts and redirects them to charter schools, thereby debilitating the significantly underfunded existing system of funding for public education for all Kentucky students,” the resolution states.

 

The board held a discussion on charter schools before unanimously passing the resolution.

 

“We know with very good confidence that charter schools will continue to defund what is already underfunded,” said Tony Kuklinski, a board member. “They will take taxpayer money, money from the people we represent, and put it into a private enterprise for personal gain with no substantial data to support a better education system than a public school system.”

 

Kuklinski added that once the charter schools fail or decide to close shop, children will return to public schools undereducated.

 

“We already have things in place where if we don’t meet certain requirements and standards that the state has implemented, there can be sanctions up to and including the state coming in and taking over a school district,” he said…

 

Kentucky is one of seven states that does not have charter school legislation. Other states without charter schools are Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia.

 

 

Hardin County Schools Board of Education Chairman Charlie Wise, who also opposes charter schools, said the district will discuss and consider writing a similar resolution next month once new board members have been sworn in.

 

Congratulations to the Elizabethtown school board, which is far wiser than the Kentucky legislature.

 

Here is hoping that your courage and resolve spreads to many other school districts across the state and that it wins bipartisan support from every citizen in every school district. Everything in your resolution is correct. Charter schools are under private management; they are NOT public schools. If you sue them for excluding your children with special needs, they will tell the judge that they are a private corporation, not a “state actor.” They will drain resources from your local public schools, because the legislature has no intention of replacing the money you lose when kids are lured away with false promises. If charters are opened in your district, your public schools will lose money, teachers, and programs. Stay the course. Don’t let the corporations or representatives from ALEC bully you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kentucky, Privatization, Resistance

Why We Will Miss Debbie Reynolds ( LINK ADDED!)

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2017 //
24

A few days ago, our redoubtable friend Duane Swacker wondered why we take the time to mourn over movie stars and other celebrities when so many thousands and millions of deaths go unremarked.

 

Here is why: I remember Debbie Reynolds because she brought me great joy. Singin’ in the Rain is my favorite movie. It is innocent and fun and happy and escapist. Other people watch science fiction for escapism. I love the old MGM musicals. I love Eleanor Parker; I love Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald; I love Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. I spent New Year’s Eve with friends watching “That’s Entertainment,” parts 1 and 2. I love the songs of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I know most of them by heart.

 

My friend Marc Epstein, who knows that I share his love for this era of entertainment, shared this wonderful column about Debbie Reynolds. I don’t care who she was in “real life.” She will always be that ingenue of 19 for me. Hard to imagine that she never danced until that movie. Gene Kelly taught her to dance until her feet were bleeding, according to lore. Now, that’s grit!

 

PS: I don’t know what her test scores were. I know that her daughter Carrie Fisher never finished high school. According to what I read, she dropped out of high school to join the chorus line in one of her mother’s shows. Yes, she was a fabulous story teller and writer. I don’t thin she had any test scores. I will always be grateful for the way she reconfigured what it meant to be a princess: not a helpless teen in pink waiting to be saved by Prince Charming, but a strong and resolute woman able to pick up a space weapon and blast away.

 

That’s entertainment.

Categories Education Reform

A Different Kind of Philanthropist, Now Forgotten

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2017 //
3

This is a review of a biography of Julius Rosenwald, a man who became very wealthy and used his money to help others. His most notable contribution was the building of thousands of schools for African American children in the South. Without the Rosenwald schools, these children would have had no schooling at all.

The review, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal, was written by Leslie Lenkowsky, an emeritus professor at Indiana University. The title of the book is A Catalog Of Generosity: Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World

At the beginning of the 20th century, three figures dominated the rapidly expanding world of American philanthropy. Two—Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller—are still remembered, mostly because of the foundations they established. But the third—Julius Rosenwald—is largely forgotten. No foundations, and few buildings, bear his name. If his approach to giving was more modest in spirit, it was no less influential and effective in its day.

That Rosenwald became one of the leading philanthropists of his era is itself a remarkable story. As Hasia R. Diner tells us in “Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World,” a volume in Yale’s Jewish Lives series, he was the son of an immigrant peddler who arrived in Baltimore in the middle of the 19th century and eventually wound up in Springfield, Ill., running a clothing store. In 1879, the 17year-old JR (as he was known) went to New York to learn the garment business from his relatives. Soon enough, he made connections with other ambitious young men, such as the future financiers Henry Morgenthau and Henry Goldman. After returning to the Midwest and starting his own clothing store in Chicago, Rosenwald invested in a catalog sales company that needed capital: Sears, Roebuck. He gradually became more involved in the business and, when co-founder Richard Sears resigned in 1908, took over its leadership. An initial public offering two years earlier (underwritten by Henry Goldman in his first IPO) had not only provided resources for the company’s growth but had also made JR a wealthy man…

The most striking part of Rosenwald’s philanthropy may well be his funding of African-American education in the South. Influenced by Booker T. Washington, he developed a program to construct elementary and secondary schools in any black community that wanted such support. Over a 20-year period, nearly 5,000 schools opened. “One 1930s estimate,” Ms. Diner writes, “concluded that 89 percent of all buildings in which Mississippi’s black youngsters received schooling” were “Rosenwald schools.” He also used his gifts to induce more assistance for black education from public-school officials in the stillsegregated region. Ms. Diner attributes much of Rosenwald’s generosity to his sense of Jewishness at a time when Jews were often discriminated against as outsiders. Although he was not a particularly devout man, Rosenwald’s philanthropy reflected his understanding of Jewish history and traditions, as well as his close association with Emil G. Hirsch, a leading Reform rabbi in Chicago (and a political Progressive). Rosenwald, Ms. Diner writes, saw his giving as a means of refuting popular impressions of Jewish selfishness and particularism…

For both Jewish immigrants in the slums of Chicago and black sharecroppers in the rural South, Rosenwald’s philanthropy sought to promote practical efforts at self-improvement, not ambitious plans for social change. This approach made his gifts relatively uncontroversial, despite their magnitude. (Compared with today’s arguments over the funding of charter schools, the “Rosenwald schools” generated little political backlash.) But, as Ms. Diner notes, it also left his philanthropy vulnerable to accusations of timidity, a reluctance to take on the entrenched political and legal restrictions underlying the problems that Jews and African-Americans faced…

Rosenwald’s modesty lay behind his insistence on closing his foundation after his death and his opposition to attaching his name to projects. Perhaps his near-obscurity is one reason why many contemporary philanthropists, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, are more likely to pursue bold goals, like eradicating the world’s deadliest diseases. But others may be considering a different path. Last summer, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced that he intended to become more philanthropic and asked for suggestions about how to help people in the “here and now.” The founder of today’s version of Sears, Roebuck could hardly do better than to peruse Ms. Diner’s biographical portrait and study Julius Rosenwald’s noble example.

Categories Education Reform, Philanthropy

What I Learned During My Break

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2017 //
46

I announced that I was taking a break from Christmas to New Year’s. I think my break lasted a few hours.

 

I learned that I need to connect with my friends.  I learned that my need to communicate was greater than my need for a break.

 

I learned that I need to adjust my schedule so it is not as constrained as it was before. I was posting five times a day, sometimes more, but never less that five times a day. 9, 10, 11, 12, 1 pm.

 

I no longer feel it necessary to stick to that schedule. I will post when I have something to say. It might be five times or more or less or not at all.

 

I used to watch the number of hits. I am now over 29 million hits. I won’t watch anymore. If I reach 30 million, I will say so, but I no longer have a numerical goal. I don’t care.

 

I will be as honest as I can be. I won’t bite my tongue. I have only contempt for Trump, and I will not hesitate to say so. I think he is a danger to the future of the world. His arrogance and ignorance threaten civilization. We can only hope that the Republic will survive. I don’t remember a president who filled the top jobs with people even more unqualified than he is.

 

To those who come to the blog to argue, you are welcome as long as you are civil.

 

Just don’t forget that it is my living room and you are here on my sufferance. If you are rude or if you insult me or teachers as a group, I will not hesitate to throw you out.

 

Meanwhile, those of us who want a better education for all are in for a rough ride these next four years. I want the blog to be a source of hope, succor, information, comfort, humor, and possibly inspiration for those who do the hard work of educating our children. I will look for the good and praise it. I will call out the phonies. I will look to you for news about what’s happening in your state and district.

 

We face threats to knowledge, science, education, academic freedom, even the very existence of facts. The threats are real.

 

Together, we will outlast and overcome the darkness that looms before us. There have been worse times. We will survive this one too and get our beloved nation back on track, moving towards its ideals and values.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform
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