In Case You Missed This Great Conversation with Amy Frogge

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2020 //
2

Last night, I had a Zoom talk with Amy Frogge, who has served for eight years on the Metro Nashville school board.

We talked about charters, vouchers, the Dark Money that infiltrated school board races, and the promising things happening in Nashville.

She is soon leaving the board to become executive director of Pastors for Tennessee Children.

Amy is one of the heroes featured in my book SLAYING GOLIATH. Watch our discussion and you will understand why. She has chosen a life of service and made a difference.

You can watch here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Nashville, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Resistance, Tennessee, Testing

Jan Resseger: Time to Stop Using Armed Police in Schools

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2020 //
14

Jan Resseger writes here about the decision by Minneapolis and other school districts to remove police from the schools.

She begins:

In the aftermath of the tragic police killing of George Floyd and the widespread protests of police brutality that have followed, the Schott Foundation for Public Education comments: “We want to lift up one ray of hope in this dark moment: The Minneapolis Board of Education made in important step… when it voted to sever its relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department… which until now had been the recipient of more than $1 million in education funds to put its officers in schools… The danger of police officers in schools—and their contribution to creating the school-to-prison pipeline that threatens so many children of color—is well documented and their removal has been a central demand of education justice organizations that Schott is proud to support….”

Several school districts have followed the lead of the Minneapolis Board of Education including the schools of Rochester, New York, and Portland, Oregon. It also looks as though the members of the Denver, Colorado Board of Education will vote to terminate the employment of police school resource officers, known everywhere these days as SROs.

Categories Minneapolis, Safety

Mercedes Schneider Interviews an ex-TFA of SPED in Chicago

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2020 //
12

In this post, Mercedes Schneider interviews Annie Tan, who joined Teach for America in 2011, and, with inadequate training, was assigned be a teacher of special education in Chicago. Her experience was, she says, a disaster.

One of Tan’s responses:

Tan: I will never forget the first day when we had our celebration, and the CEO of Chicago Public Schools came and made a speech to us. It felt very strange for him to be there for some reason. Yes, we were going to be 250 new teachers in Chicago, so logically it may have made sense to introduce us and do a welcome, but I also couldn’t imagine him doing that at a regular university that had education majors graduating. I couldn’t imagine him going to one of those graduations and making a speech.

There were a few moments that I still remember that were odd, as well. I remember the first day of professional development through Teach for America, when we got no talk around how segregated Chicago was, just people alluding to it, like Teach for America was not even going to approach that schools were unequal because of race and income, especially in Chicago, which really stands out since I worked in Chicago Public Schools for five years and taught there for four.

And then, the speech from some Teach for America staff members, that we might be the first teachers in some of these kids’ lives that had high expectations for them. I first thought to myself, “How can I have high expectations for my students when I don’t even know them yet? All I’ve done was graduate from a fancy college, so how am I better than someone else?” That really rubbed me the wrong way.

Schneider called this attitude “the savior complex.”

Who thought it was good to place an unprepared young teacher in a classroom of children with special needs?

It is a revealing interview.

Categories Chicago, Failure, Special Education, Teach for America

Alabama: A Charter is Closed Before It Opens

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2020 //
7

The Alabama Charter School
Commission decided to revoke the charter of Woodland Prep, which had not yet opened.

Blogger Larry Lee has the inside scoop.

He wrote:

In the end, it was as much a story about a very rural community that simply refused to quit fighting and standing up for what it believed in strongly. It was about a community that takes pride in its public schools and refused to be bulldozed by a group of education “experts” from out-of-state who were far more intent on making money than helping children.

It was widely believed that the charter was part of the Fetullah Gulen charter chain, one of the nation’s largest. For unexplained reasons, the charter decided to open in a small rural community where sentiment ran against it, commitment to the local public schools is strong, and local people look askance at Muslims (and possibly other religions).

Larry Lee wrote many posts about Woodland Prep. See here and here.

It is really dumb and insensitive for out-of-state people to plant themselves in a rural community, announce that they intend to open a school to compete with the local school and expect to be welcomed.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization, Resistance, Rural Schools

Tom Ultican: The NewSchools Venture Fund, Masters of Disruption

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2020 //
9

This is one of the most important posts you will read today, this week, this month. If you want to understand the hoax of so-called “education reform,” read this post. Share it with your friends. Tweet it. Put it in Facebook. It rips the veil away from the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Thomas Ultican has found the beating heart of the Disruption movement, the organization where plans are hatched and funded to destroy public schools. He tells the story of the NewSchools Venture Fund, where very wealthy people collaborate to undermine and privatize one of our most essential democratic institutions: our public schools.

He begins this important post:


The New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) is the Swiss army knife of public school privatization. It promotes education technology development, bankrolls charter school creation, develops charter management organizations and sponsors school leadership training groups. Since its founding in 1998, a small group of people with extraordinary wealth have been munificent in their support. NSVF is a significant asset in the billionaire funded drive to end democratically run public schools and replace them with privatized corporate structures.

Read this remarkable account that ties together the masters of the universe, who have decided to rearrange the lives of lesser mortals, that is, people who lack their vast wealth and political connections.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology

Dana Milbank: Trump Speaks Out on Race–Word for Word

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
37

Dana Milbank knows that Trump is preparing to give a speech on the subject of race, but he has anticipated what he will say by summarizing what he has already said on the subject. His article has many links, which you can find if you google the article. The article contains many links to original sources, which you can find if you open the article. I hope it is not behind a paywall.

President Trump’s planned address to the nation on race, American Urban Radio’s April Ryan reports, is being written by none other than Stephen Miller, a Trump aide and aficionado of white nationalism.

This is bound to raise a fuhrer. What next? Paul Manafort drafting a presidential address on business ethics?

But Miller can stand down. Trump has already given his remarks on race — many times, in fact. Here they are, entirely in Trump’s own words, excerpted:

I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks. Oh, look at my African American over here. Look at him.

Nobody has ever done for the black community what President Trump has done. My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln. George [Floyd] is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that is happening for our country. A great day for him.

Diamond and Silk, you’re so, so great. Thank you, Kanye, thank you. Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.

Think of this: Blacks for Trump, Black Voices for Trump, African Americans for Trump. Call it whatever the hell you want. I have a group of African American guys and gals, by the way, that follow me around, and they think I pay them and I don’t.
A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage. Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!

To the African American community, I say what the hell do you have to lose? You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed. Last in crime, last in this, last in homeownership, last in the economy, lowest wages. Our inner cities are a disaster. You get shot walking to the store. They have no education, they have no jobs.

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now”?

Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States? No human being would want to live there. A disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).

So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?

Why do we need more Haitians? Why are we having people from all these shithole countries come here? We should have more people from places like Norway.

An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud. His grandmother in Kenya said, “Oh, no, he was born in Kenya.” A lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate.
You ever see Maxine Waters? A low-IQ individual. LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.

What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society and the police? Let our politicians give back our police department’s power to keep us safe. Unshackle them from the constant chant of “police brutality.” BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE!

You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park, from Robert E. Lee to another name. Robert E. Lee was a great general. They’re trying to take away our culture. A Great American Heritage.

I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!

Categories Race, Racism, Trump

Happy Birthday, Saul Bellow!

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
16

Garrison Keillor writes today in “A Writer’s Almanac” about Saul Bellow:

It’s the birthday of Saul Bellow, (books by this author) born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, in 1915, two years after his parents emigrated from Russia. He was born in Canada, but when he was young he was smuggled across the border into Chicago, and so he grew up as an illegal immigrant. His dad was an onion importer and a bootlegger. His mom was religious, and she hoped he would be a rabbi or maybe a concert pianist. But when he was eight years old, he read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and he decided he would become a writer.

He wrote two novels that didn’t sell very well. But then he won a Guggenheim Fellowship and moved to Paris to write. And while he was there, he realized how much he loved Chicago.

So he started a new novel whose opening lines are: “I am an American, Chicago born — Chicago, that somber city — and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way.” That was The Adventures of Augie March (1953),which became his first real success and won the National Book Award. He continued writing plays, nonfiction, and more novels, including Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), and Humboldt’s Gift (1975).

He said, “In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.” And, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” And, “I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.'”

Categories Literature

Gates-Funded Fordham Institute Says New Florida Standards Are No Good

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
12

The rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute has rejected Florida’s effort to replace the Common Core standards, which were wholly funded by the Gates Foundation. When the Common Core was released a decade ago, Gates paid millions to Fordham to evaluate them.

Politico Morning Education reports:

GATES FOUNDATION-BACKED INSTITUTE CALLS FLORIDA’S NEW K-12 STANDARDS ‘WEAK’: The Fordham Institute said the state’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking standards, which came from a push from Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Common Core and to set a national example, are in need of “significant and immediate revisions.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a supporter of Common Core, backs the institute.

— “As for other states, they should indeed look for model standards, but they won’t find them in Florida,” wrote Fordham Institute President Michael Petrilli and Amber Northern, senior vice president of research. The study also says Florida leaders are unlikely to reexamine the new standards “anytime soon.”

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Reform, Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Watters: Toward a Future Of Humanity, Caring, and Grace

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
8

Audrey Watters gave a talk at the Academic Technology Institute. I am always interested in her writing because she is truly an original thinker. She sees the future of surveillance, control, and loss of human agency. She is our Cassandra. Some things never change. Some things seem to change despite our efforts. Audrey gives up hope in a desperate time that we can still stop the machines that seek to own us.

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Freedom, Technology

Audrey Watters: From Grief to Resistance

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
8

Audrey Watters summarizes the present crisis that grips the nation.

Uncontainable. Inconsolable. Over the past few months, we have all experienced the grotesque failures of the state, and we’ve all lost something to the pandemic — directly or indirectly from the disease. But racism and white supremacy are the scourge that have destroyed so much more, for so much longer. “America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic,” Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer argue. But I don’t think that Americans are giving up on justice. We can’t. People will clench their fists and fight on.

“Black lives matter,” brands have all suddenly proclaimed. But we should know better than to take them seriously, particularly the technology companies who build tools and services that put Black lives at risk. It’s “Black Power-washing,” Chris Gilliard writes, “wherein companies issue essentially meaningless statements about their commitment to Black folks but do little to change their policies, hiring practices, or ultimately their business models, no matter how harmful to Black people these may be.” These companies speak, to borrow from the situationist Raoul Vaneigem, with corpses in their mouths. (And yes, that includes many ed-tech CEOs. Just because I’m silent on Twitter right now as I mourn my son, don’t think I don’t see you showing your whole ass with your “all lives matter” “let’s hear both sides” bullshit.)

Categories Education Industry, Hope, Racism, Technology
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