Ok, this clip is neither about education nor politics, but I watched it four times and loved it. Think of it as a testament to discipline, determination, and training. The guy who was heavily favored to win came in second.
When Broad-trained military man Mike Miles was superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, the district experienced a mass exodus of teachers in response to Miles’ top-down style of management. Houston is experiencing the same phenomenon, the Houston Chronicle reported.
More than 4,000 employees left Houston ISD in June, bringing the total departures since the state takeover to over 10,000.
The record number is three times higher than the June departure average for the past five years, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of district employment records. Over 75% of the departures were recorded as “voluntary,” including retirements and resignations.
Teachers accounted for more than 2,400 of the employees who left in June, with the monthly tally exceeding the total number of teachers who typically leave HISD over an entire school year, according to the analysis. About 4,700 of HISD’s roughly 11,000 teachers left the district during the 2023-24 school year.
Some teachers cited state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ strict new reforms and sudden class assignment changes as the reasons they left. June’s bloated number of departures includes job cuts and terminations linked to job status notices.
Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, called the teacher departures “unprecedented.”
June’s HISD staff departures surged to three times the average
Over 4,000 staff members left the district this June. The record number of departures was more than triple the average for the past five years….
Bellaire High School teacher Brady Mayo, who taught business law and International Baccalaureate business management, said he chose to retire after seeing teachers hesitate to use time off and deal with new district-mandated policies, such as requiring classroom doors to stay open, at the campus he loved.
There was a culture of fear under new district leadership, he said, even though his campus was not a school in Miles’ New Education System.
“I mean, nobody asked me to leave. But I felt run off, just like most teachers. And nobody ran me off. It’s just the way I felt,” the 33-year educator said. “I felt like Mike Miles was going to put his teachers in place, whether they’re certified or not, his yes men.”
Askew Elementary School teacher Karen Calhoun said the district-imposed strategies did not allow teachers to use techniques that they knew worked for students. Calhoun, who retired in June ahead of Askew formally becoming an NES school this fall, said many “top-tier” teachers left the school. She had never seen turnover like this in her 40 years at the school.
“I decided to retire because I could see the change happening,” Calhoun said. “It’s obvious. People come in all the time (for classroom observation). They don’t identify themselves when they come in. You don’t know who they are. They take notes, they go back and they talk to the principal. You don’t even know what’s going on….”
School staff felt micromanaged, said Lea Mishlan, former principal of West Briar Middle School. Mishlan was told to resign by the district or face board termination.
“We were constantly — I mean, even the last week of school, we were expected to be in their rooms,” the 20-year educator said. “And so they just felt like they were being nitpicked. And so every time I had to present something to them, it was just like, what? Like, again? Like, another change? So, the morale was horrible, and it was really hard to maintain positivity throughout the craziness.”
State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters is eager to inject religion into the public schools. He has mandated the introduction of the Bible into every classroom. Some teachers in Oklahoma have begun assembling a collection of helpful lessons. Of course, as they show, you can integrate local places into your lessons. If you have some ideas, please pass them along.
For you teachers in Oklahoma, beginning this fall: This was posted on Facebook. Walters has become the butt of jokes nationwide.
Hallelujah! Thank you to my creative friends for all these great Biblical math problems. They’ll really help the Oklahoma school superintendent’s goal of inserting biblical content into math and science! I’ve collected a multitude of the problems into one post for ease of reading:
1) Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If he lay with one wife or concubine every night at the Mayo Hotel or The Skirvin but took off one day per week for rest, how many days would it take him to lay with all of his wives and concubines?
2) David captured the foreskins of 200 Philistines (1 Samuel 18:27). If David split those foreskins into baskets of 40 foreskins each, how many baskets would he need? That is the math. The science problem to solve: Since he ‘captured’ them, how did the foreskins run from David?
3) The prophet Elisha summoned two she-bears to kill 42 children after they mocked him for being bald (2 Kings 2:24) One she-bear mauled twice as many children as the other she-bear. How many kids did each she-bear maul? (Use fractions) (Courtesy of Margo Evans)
4) Jael killed General Sisera by driving a tent peg into his skull. (Judges 4:21) If Jael could hammer 1.5 inch per blow and the peg was 9 inches long, how many blows would she need to drive the peg all the way in? (Courtesy of Julie Brady Murdoch)
5) Moses parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21). If he moved the water in the Red Sea at 1,000 cubic liters per second, how long would it take him to part the Hudson River / Deep Fork River? (Courtesy of Lynn Nesmith)
6) There are 8.7 million animal species on Earth. If Noah took two of each of them onto the ark (substitute the Blue Whale in Catoosa) how many square cubits of space were required to accommodate all 17.4 million passengers? (Courtesy of Todd Kreisman)
7) Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). If it took him one minute to lethally inject / kill each pagan prophet, how long would it take him expressed in hours (Courtesy of James Frese)
8) Adam and Eve had two sons. One killed the other. So where did all the people come from? Rephrase question as: So where did all the people in McCurtain County come from? (Courtesy of Hilary Dumitrescu)
9) Jezebel was thrown from a window off the Devon Tower or atop the Golden Driller) and died (2 Kings 9:33). If the window was 30 feet high, and she fell at a rate of 16 feet per second squared due to gravity, how many seconds did it take for her to reach the ground? (Use the formula \ (s = \frac {1}{2}gt^2 \), where \( s \) is the distance, \( g \) is the acceleration due to gravity, and \( t \) is the time in seconds). (Courtesy of Dana Kienzle)
ALSO, I have started to craft an introduction to the Biblical Math book. Something like: The Bible and mathematics make a perfect match. Just consider the name of the Bible’s fourth book: Numbers. So, students of Oklahoma go forth and multiply (and add, and subtract, and divide). Once again, thank you all for your help in this project for the students of Oklahoma!
John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, sees a ray of hope in the pushback against State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ efforts to impose some version of the Christian religion on the public schools.
Thompson writes:
As Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters’s ramps up his attacks on public schools, it must be asked why is he becoming even more extremist when it seems so obvious that he’ll lose these battles? I won’t try to get into his mind, but I believe that four types of responses make it unlikely that Walters can implement his agenda. He’s losing due to resistance from educators, the courts, legislators, and the press, which is revealing his agenda in a professional manner.
As the Oklahoma Voice explained, Ryan Walters recently mandated “grade-level specific guidelines” for 5th through 12th grade classes. “They require students to analyze literary elements of biblical stories and to identify how those have impacted Western culture.” Moreover, “Every classroom must also have a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments.”
As the Oklahoman reports, eight mostly large suburban school districts say they “would not be altering their curriculum.” One district superintendent, Rick Cobb, said, “The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled this summer that selection of instructional materials is a matter of local control. … I hope that remains the law and continues to be our practice.”
I must add that these school systems’ leaders, like Cobb and Bixby’s Rob Miller, had previously been disproportionately courageous in defending their students from corporate school reform. (Miller is currently protesting the loss of teaching talent due to Walters, and how schools haven’t received their Title I allocations, which were due on July I.)
In what the Oklahoman characterized as a “veiled threat,” State Superintendent Walters doubled down on his orders, “Some Oklahoma educators have indicated they won’t follow the law and Oklahoma standards, so let me be clear: they will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.” And as the Frontier reports, Walters says that “teachers who don’t comply could lose their teaching licenses.”
But, Walters hasn’t been successful defending his mandates in court. As the Frontier’s Fact-Checkerreported, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office has said that Walters has no legal authority to require certain content be taught by sending a memo to school districts. And KFOR reports that Drummond has already informed Walters that he can’t continue to ban legislators serving on Education Committee from his executive committee meetings.
As the Oklahoma Voice reported, the Education Department ordered the Edmond schools to remove “The Kite Runner” and “The Glass Castle” from its high school library shelves, and “threatened a potential downgrade to Edmond’s accreditation status if it didn’t comply.” However, the “Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Edmond Public Schools that the state Department of Education overstepped its bounds.”
And the Oklahoman reports, the “Walters-led state Board of Education created an administrative rule prohibiting school districts and local schools from ‘altering sex or gender designations in past student records’ without the board’s authorization.” They did so after Walters insisted, “We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in this radical gender theory. It is the most radical concept we’ve ever come across in K-12 education, that you can be gender fluid (or) change your gender constantly.”
During the same week the Republican Representative Mark McBride discovered discrepancies between the information he received from the State Department of Education about state funding for Walters’ and his Chief Policy Advisor Matt Langston’s political trips, and the data presented to KFOR news by the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES). McBride “says it’s time for Attorney General Drummond’s office to step in and investigate whether OSDE violated the Open Records Act in this case.” The Lost Ogle added that one of the expenses that taxpayers paid for was Walters riding a hot air balloon; and he didn’t tip his Uber driver.
And below is Rep. Mickey Dollens‘ (D) latest critique of Walters and Stitt, listing “recent proposals introduced in the Oklahoma rooted in Christian Nationalism.”
– Bible mandate in public schools.
– Designating the Bible as the Official State Book.
– Establishing the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.
– Displaying the Ten Commandments at the state capitol.
– Mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom.
– Using Bible verses to justify spanking children with disabilities in school.
– Religious school tax credits.
– Banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.
– The governor claiming the state of Oklahoma for Christ in his inaugural speech.
Fourthly, we should take note of the number of excellent articles this piece cites. The Tulsa World’s Ginnie Graham is just one example of reporters presenting the evidence that districts are obeying the law when they reject Walters’ orders. Although the press is seriously underfunded, these local for-profit and nonprofit news organizations have done a fantastic job of documenting how Walters, and other local and national campaigns (like the Project 2025) are threatening both, public education and our other democratic institutions.
Finally, it was so exciting to be a part of the overflow crowd (not including the thousands who listened on Zoom) in Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Church when Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, spoke on Walters and the Project 2025. So I will end with her concluding words in The Hill about Walters:
The goal of all of these strategies is to assert Christian favor and privilege in America and to fight democracy’s steady march towards equality for all. It’s very much a backlash to all the progress that our society has made in recent times towards LGBTQ equality, towards women’s equality, towards racial equality and Black and brown equality.
Until recently, I doubt many Oklahomans believed that so many people would oppose his agenda.
In her latest post on her blog “Dirt Road Democrat,” Jess Piper expresses her joy at Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz to be her Vice-Presidential nominee. She opens by describing her return from a vacation in Maine, where she ate her first lobster roll and checked off her bucket list. Maine was everything she imagined it would be.
When she woke up this morning, like the rest of us, she was thrilled with the news. She wrote:
I woke up to some of the most hopeful and exciting news…Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her VP. From the day I saw his name on the short list, I was rooting for Governor Walz.
He is a former Social Studies teacher and he understands the assignment.
Walz is so perfect for the job of VP. He’s a rural progressive. He’s my people. A dirt road Democrat. He’s a liberal guy who lives among conservative folks. He’s a veteran, a teacher, a lawmaker, and a dad. Walz can speak to Republicans and can likely help pull in Independent votes.
He can show up to an event in a tee and a hat and a Carhart jacket and not look like he’s trying to be something he isn’t.
Walz is the guy who could install your gutters and snake your drain and patch a hole in your drywall. He can also sign a bill into law to feed every kid in your state breakfast and lunch for free. How can you not love the guy?
Here are just a few of his education and child-centered accomplishments:
As governor, Walz took advantage of a Democratic trifecta in state government to push through a progressive policy agenda that included free breakfast and lunch for all schoolchildren. Minnesota was the fourth state to offer school lunch to all students, an early adopter of a policy that has become a growing national trend.
The budget he signed in 2023 included a major funding boost for Minnesota schools and a $1,750 per-child annual tax credit that aimed to reduce childhood poverty. Congress has failed to reinstate the pandemic-era federal child tax credit that dramatically cut childhood hunger and poverty.
Walz also signed a free college tuition program for Minnesota families earning less than $80,000 a year. The program provides last-dollar scholarships that close gaps between students’ financial aid packages and the actual cost of attendance.
Tim Walz was my pick from the short list because of what he has done for kids in his state. I can’t tell you how heartwarming it is to see a person who actually cares for kids enact policies. In a time in which I am overwhelmed with mailers for political candidates who claim to be “pro-life” or “pro-child” but who are really just about abortion bans and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, Governor Walz is a breath of fresh air. He’s the real deal.
His Midwestern dad vibes are true.
Here’s the fun part though: Gov Walz is speaking on a call tonight — Rural Americans for Harris. I started talking with a few rural organizers two weeks ago about setting up a call to mimic many of the others supporting our next President, Kamala Harris. We worked to get several rural folks and lawmakers on the call and Gov Walz agreed to speak last week. I’m crossing my fingers that he can still make it since he’s had some big news today.
Here is the invitation below and here is the link. I will be on the call as well. I would love to see you there.
I feel so hopeful, friend. I feel so excited for our country.
Seriously, I have not been this pumped for national candidates in such a long time. You know I try to stay Missouri-centered because that is where the nasty policies for my state originate, but I am going to bask in the warmth of a woman Presidential nominee and her Social Studies teacher VP for a few minutes.
LFG.
~Jess
P.S. Missouri has the chance to elect our first woman Governor, Crystal Quade, and I am on my way to vote for her in the primary as soon as I hit send!
JD Vance said that Walz is even more “radical left” than Harris. That means Walz thinks people should have affordable health care (when his father died of cancer, his mother had to go to work to pay off the medical debt); he believes children should get free meals in school (feeding kids! very “radical”); he supports veterans; he opposes school vouchers; he is pro-union and passed legislation to protect unions; he supports abortion and passed legislation to protect women’s right to choose.
That sounds centrist and sensible to me, no matter what Vance says. Vance’s smear says more about him than about Walz.
PHILADELPHIA (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to Vice President Harris’s choice of Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump claimed that the Minnesota governor “was never white before.”
“I saw him on television many, many times, and, quite frankly, he was never white,” Trump said. “Then, he suddenly became white.”
Hinting that “there’s something going on,” Trump said that Walz’s “last-minute decision to become white” was “something that should be looked into.”
Asked what Walz was before he became white, Trump responded, “I think Walz is some kind of a dance. So what is he, white or a dance? I respect either one, but he obviously doesn’t
It was a thrilling moment when three Americans who had been held hostage in Russia emerged from their airplane about midnight, to be greeted in American soil by President Biden and Vice-President Harris. Almost all of their fellow citizens were thrilled, except for one: Donald Sourpuss Trump.
Trump was jealous that Biden got credit for negotiating the complicated deal involved multiple nations and hostages. It was really stung Trump when the Chancellor of Germany, who held the assassin that Putin wanted most, said that he agreed to the deal but “only for Biden.”
ATLANTA — Former president Donald Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin over a prisoner swap that took place this week, saying the Russian strongman had outsmarted U.S. officials as part of the largest such deal since the end of the Cold War.
At a rally here on Saturday, Trump did not mention any of the American prisoners who were released in the deal — including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was imprisoned for more than a year on charges the U.S. government has denounced as fabricated. In his previous comments on the deal, Trump has not mentioned any of the prisoners by name either, only criticized the U.S. government.
“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. … We have 59 hostages; I never paid anything. … Boy, we make some horrible, horrible deals. It’s nice to say we got ’em back, but does that set a bad precedent?” Trump said…
In fact, Trump authorized an agreement to pay $2 million to North Korea for medical bills in the release of Otto Warmbier, the comatose University of Virginia student sent home from Pyongyang in 2017, The Washington Post reported. Trump claimed the bill was never paid. Warmbier died soon after his return.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said this week that no money changed hands in the latest prisoner swap.
Trump had been reluctant to speak about Gershkovich for about the first year of the reporter’s detention but finally called for his release in May. The former president has repeatedly bragged about his close relationship with Putin, but also says that Putin respects him and would have never invaded Ukraine if Trump was president.
On several public occasions in recent months, Trump has said he would get Gershkovich released as soon as he was elected in November, and Putin would do it “for me, but not anyone else.”
The key to the swap was Germany, which held in prison a Russian agent who murdered a dissident in a park in broad daylight. Putin wanted him more than any other, to prove he could bring his killers home. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said publicly that he agreed because Biden asked him, and he said, “Yes, only for you.”
Republicans were blindsided when President Biden announced that he was stepping down, and he endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris. All of their planning and strategy was targeted on Biden, who—they said—was too old, senile, sleepy, confused, and unable to lead the country. They had ads and video clips ready to roll. They were not at all happy to learn that Biden was taking himself out of the race. They had to redirect their slime machine to Harris, not Biden.
Sad, very sad, as Trump might say.
They quickly recalibrated their attack ads. First, they insisted that Biden could not leave the ticket. It wasn’t fair, they said. Then they said Harris could not have access to the money raised for the Biden-Harris ticket; they threatened to sue. Then they said it was undemocratic to put Harris at the top of the ticket because primary voters didn’t choose her. But of course they did vote for her. They voted for Biden and Harris.
They said that Kamala Harris was “a radical Communist.” They said she was the “worst Vice President in American history.”
None of these claims caught fire, so they settled on attacking Harris because she laughed too much. Really. They called her “a cackling hyena.”
It’s true, Kamala smiles a lot and flashes her joyous smile at crowds. And she laughs often. Her laugh is genuine and it is contagious. She makes people happy.
So the Republicans thought they could diminish her by denouncing her expressions of happiness.
They must have thought that people would recoil at the sight of Kamala Harris laughing.
But they haven’t, they didn’t, and they won’t.
People see Trump and they see him scowling and angry. He likes to look angry. When he had his mug shot taken in Atlanta, he posed with a dark scowl.
Have you ever seen him laugh or smile? I haven’t. Does he have a sense of humor. I think not.
Imagine if you were offered an hour with either Trump or Harris. Which would you choose? The angry one or the happy one? The one who was embittered by his grievances or the one who would take an interest in you? The one who was angry or the one who was joyful?
The Harris campaign made an ad that begins with Trump saying that he hates it when people laugh at him. Then there is about 60 seconds of clips showing Kamala laughing uproariously.
They cleverly took Trump’s sneering at her laugh and made a cartoon ad featuring her laugh.
Diane Ravitch's blog 