Teresa Hanafin of the Boston Globe Updates the Dotard’s Activities

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
8

As I have mentioned more than a few times here, my favorite daily reading is Teresa Hanafin’s “Fast Forward” in the Boston Globe. She always begins with some kernel of wisdom from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Today, she says that the Almanac has a children’s edition every other year and she includes sample pages that show kids how to whistle. Very important information. She updates Boston sports news, then offers nuggets on the latest madness from Trumplandia. More obstruction of justice. Plus, the Supreme Court will hear a case on whether it is okay to fire someone because they are LBGT. The Trump administration, despite his many claims to the contrary, is siding with the anti-gay side of the argument. Are you surprised? He has to keep his evangelical base happy.

Today:

 

Breaking: In my great and unmatched wisdom, I was shocked (shocked!) that the coverup cowards in the Trump administration were going to let Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, testify before Congress this morning, given their panicked efforts to hide everything they can from the American public.

Never mind! Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the plug on Sondland’s deposition at the last minute this morning. Of course he did.

Sondland is a pretty critical witness in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. He’s the guy who told Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson that nearly $400 million in US military aid came with a quid pro quo: Ukraine’s willingness to dig up dirt on Trump’s top political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.

Johnson, upset by the information, asked Trump about it, and then actually believed him when he denied it. Or at least he says he believes him. Who knows what these Republicans are really thinking as they lay awake at night watching their souls slowly seep out and puddle on the floor.

Sondland, a businessman with no diplomatic experience, got his gig as ambassador to the EU because he donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. How he came to oversee the US relationship with Ukraine is murkier, given that Ukraine is not a member of the EU.

Actually, maybe it isn’t murky: Sondland led the effort to pressure the Ukrainian president to publicly announce that he’d investigate the Bidens, even going so far as to write a statement for him to read (which he never did). Sondland also wrote in a text messagethat Trump expected “the deliverable” from the Ukrainians, and tried to ward off objections to the dirty deal from Bill Taylor, the Ukraine embassy charge d’affaires.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Taylor texted Sondland Sept. 1. (Translation: “We’re committing a crime, right?”) “Call me,” Sondland responded. (Translation: “We can’t leave a paper trail on this stuff.”)

About a week later, Taylor, an experienced career diplomat, again tried to get things on the record, texting Sondland, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” That really scared Sondland, because he called Trump, worked out a response, then texted Taylor back five hours later with what read like an official White House CYA formal statement:

“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign. I suggest we stop the back and forth by text. If you still have concerns, I recommend you give Lisa Kenna or S a call to discuss them directly. Thanks.” (Translation: Um, none needed.)

Meanwhile, in his press conference response to Sondland’s failure to appear, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiffsaid that Sondland has unreleased text messages on a personal device that are “deeply relevant.”

So look for subpoenas, look for Trump and his minions to continue to hide as much as they can, and look for House Democrats to bundle all of these coverups into obstruction articles of impeachment.

So is Trump about to hand his BFF Putie a lovely birthday present? (The Russian strongman turned 67 yesterday.) The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says Trump is planning to pull the US out of the Open Skies Treaty, and if true, then Putin will be dancing the barynya at his dacha on the Black Sea.

The treaty is a critical one: It allows the signatories — 34 countries have signed on — to fly unarmed surveillance planes and dronesover each other’s territory as a way to keep an eye on military activity and weapons development and keep everyone in check. Russia is one of the countries because it wants to send surveillance flights over Europe, but it doesn’t like that Ukraine can fly over its territory.

Current and past diplomats are horrified at the prospect, but the White House is silent. Let’s see if Trump goes through with it.

But it does raise the issue of how much Trump has helped Russia. No wonder Putin tried to interfere in the US election in 2016 to get Trump elected.

Take that meeting at the United Nations in New York last month between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The Washington Post points out that while everyone has focused on their July phone call, in their NY talk, Trump told Zelensky that he should patch things up with Russia and accept a deal that Russia favors.

Yes, Russia, the country that invaded and took over Crimea, part of Ukraine, and has gradually moved into the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donbas and Luhansk. In case you forgot, the US is supposed to be protecting Ukraine from Russia’s aggression.

Trump’s withdrawal from northern Syria is also seen as benefiting Russia (as well as Turkey; see below), and he harangued former British PM Theresa May over her government’s claim that Russia poisoned one of its former spies on British soil. (My Putie? Nah.)

Speaking of northern Syria, Trump has another reason for letting Turkey have its way there: In my great and unmatched wisdom, I read that he has a big conflict of interest in Istanbul,where his name adorns two massive residential/office towers, a licensing deal that has paid him up to $5 million a year since 2015.

During the 2016 campaign, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan easily manipulated the candidate by threatening to have Trump’s name removed from the towers, endangering that revenue stream. Wouldn’t you know it, Trump soon was praising the strongman.

He found nothing wrong with Erdoğan’s brutal crackdown after a failed military coup (that some think was staged), imprisoning political opponents, jailing journalists, stripping Parliament of most of its duties, and increasing his power and iron grip on the country. “I do give great credit to him for turning it around,” Trump said. Isn’t that sweet.

The Supreme Court hears arguments in another controversial case today, this one about LGBTQ rights: Trump is claiming that federal employment law that bars discrimination based on sex does NOT include sexual orientation and gender identity, because he wants his conservative supporters to be able to harass or fire gay and transgender workers at will. So the next time he brags about how much he protects LGBTQ people … well, you know the drill.
Categories Education Reform, Hypocrisy, Lies

Mercedes Schneider: Billionaires Jim and Alice Walton Seek to Purchase Louisiana State Board

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
8

 

The Walton Family is collectively worth more than $150 billion, and their hobby is undermining and disrupting public schools across the nation. Since Louisiana has an election for the state board of education in a few days, you will not be surprised to learn that Jim and Alice Walton dropped $200,000 on candidates pledged to support charter schools, vouchers, and Teach for America.

Mercedes Schneider reports in this post that the Waltons waited until close to Election Day so that Louisianans would not have time to learn that out-of-State billionaires were trying to buy the state board elections.

The Waltons are determined to harm the public schools that educated their father Sam Walton and most of them.

The family belongs on the blog’s Wall of Shame for their ceaseless attacks on public schools, unions, experienced teachers, and communities.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Teach for America, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Michael Moore on Education in Finland

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
25

 

Michael Moore visited Finland with a camera crew to learn about its education system.

How could a nation post high test scores on international tests when its schools emphasize creativity, play, physical activity, and the arts and ignores standardized testing?

Watch his video and see what you think.

Categories Arts Education, Creativity, Education Reform, International, Play, Standardized Testing

Jack Covey on Checker Finn vs. Finland

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
70

 

Reader Jack Covey, a teacher in Los Angeles, sent the following comment to me:

 

First, watch this clip from Michael Moore about
schools in Finland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-DcjwzF9yc
Now, read Education Next on the same topic, in
the context of a book review by Cherker Finn.
https://www.educationnext.org/more-play-will-save-our-schools-book-claims-review-let-the-children-play-sahlberg-doyle/
Here’s the ending of Chester Finn’s “Stick with GERM” 
review of Past Sahsberg’s new book, and his
argument that “play” hurts poor kids, but it’s fine
for middle class kids (and presumably upper class
kids as well).  
He says we’re “bizarrely and cruelly” damaging 
those poor kids when U.S. schools “model themselves 
on a charming small country in northern Europe 
(it’s Finn vs. Finns, I guess)
CHESTER FINN:
But wait. We’re living in a time when academic achievement is flat at the end of high 
school; when scads of young people emerge unready for either college or career success; 
when American employers must look overseas for skilled personnel; and when results-based  
accountability for kids, teachers, and schools alike hangs in the balance and “soft skills” are in
 the ascendancy. 
We also have ample evidence that while “playful teaching and learning” does little harm to 
middle-class kids with support and structure in the rest of their lives, for children from 
troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure. Many such youngsters already have plenty 
of “play” of various sorts in their lives, even a corrupted sort of “natural state,” but 
precious little formal learning—and few of the other benefits (character formation, 
self-discipline, citizenship, etc.) that also flow from purposeful adult direction.
Are we—bizarrely and cruelly—to exacerbate the achievement, economic 
and mobility gaps that already plague us as a nation, while turning a blind eye to the 
academic mediocrity that already afflicts even those on the up side of those gaps, 
all in the name of modeling America on a charming small country in northern Europe? 
The evidence the authors cite is persuasive that kids need to play but not that we 
should diminish the quest for stronger skills and knowledge or should try to organize 
U.S. schools the way they do in Vuohtomaki, the rural village where Sahlberg grew up. 
Appealing as that model is in its way, it doesn’t transplant at scale to the Bronx, nor 
would it pave a path out of poverty for children who live there (or in Memphis, Houston, etc.)
I think I’ll stick with GERM—and keep doing what I can to infect others. It 
may be too late to block America’s migration from one education sun to the other, 
but it’s a dreadful mistake to accelerate it.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Categories Accountability, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Education Reform, International, Play, Privatization, Testing

New York: Charter School Executives on Long Island Misused Credit Cards

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
11

 

Unlike many other states, New York has a State Comptroller who audits both public schools and charter schools. The latest audit of a fast-growing charter in Hempstead, New York, found that executives were charging large expenses to the school’s credit card without documentation. 

The Hempstead district is about 70% free & reduced-price lunch, overwhelmingly Hispanic and African American, only 2% white. It is a segregated and low-income district.

John Hildebrand of Newsday writes:

Five senior managers at one of Long Island’s fastest-growing public charter schools charged more than $60,000 in credit-card expenses without receipts or itemizations required by their school’s own rules, state auditors reported.

The state’s review of spending practices at the Academy Charter School in Hempstead found that 17% of credit-card transactions sampled, totaling $36,329, were approved for payment without supporting receipts, auditors said. Another 12% of sampled purchases, totaling $25,342, had receipts that were not itemized.

Overall, credit-card purchases made on behalf of the academy totaled $496,970 during the 2017-18 academic year, according to the state comptroller’s office, a watchdog agency that conducted the audit. The school’s total annual budget was $18.9 million…

The Academy’s written credit-card rules require that users explain the purpose of each transaction and provide a detailed receipt, not just a summary, according to the comptroller’s report.

This often did not happen, as in the case of one school official who charged $1,476 for a meal, describing it only as a “group lunch.” Academy leaders later said the event was a luncheon for teachers attending fall training.

Card purchases, auditors said, included $5,590 for furniture that did not have an itemized invoice attached, $1,576 to a party rental vendor for what was described only as a “school event,” and five gift cards for about $550 each. School officials listed gifts as teacher appreciation awards, without naming recipients or providing proof that the school’s board of trustees had approved the awards.

School managers also failed to adequately document travel expenses for out-of-town conferences, auditors said. They checked 119 card charges for travel expenses totaling $23,920 and found that 40% lacked receipts. This included 29 charges for lodging and air travel.    

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York, Privatization

Jamie Gass: How the Common Core Dumbed Down Standards in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
57

 

Jamie Gass writes here about a powerful literary tradition that was honored in Massachusetts and perhaps a few other places, but was tossed aside by the state when it adopted the Common Core.

Gass illogically puts the blame on “educrats” and schools of education for the decision that junked the state’s reverence for literature: the political decision by its governors to pursue Race to the Top funding and endorse the Common Core. The blame lies with the Gates Foundation, which funded the federally mandated, content-free Common Core. Then with the authors of the Core, who took upon themselves the task of writing national standards. And then, of course, the elected officials of both parties who put money above principle.

Gass writes:

The Bay State, with English standards that were rich in classic literature and high-quality vocabulary, outperformed every other state between 2005 and 2017 on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), “the nation’s report card.”

When Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker studied English at Harvard, its revered professor W. Jackson Bate won the 1978 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for his Samuel Johnson biography.

Interestingly, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionarydefines “politician” as “a man of artifice; one of deep contrivance.”

In 2010, the hollowness of the Patrick administration’s sloganeering – “education is our calling card” – was revealed when they took $250 million in one-time federal grant money to abandon our proven English standards and MCAS tests in favor of inferior nationalized Common Core and PARCC testing, which cut enduring fiction by 60 percent.

The Baker administration could have easily ended Common Core’s academic mediocrity in the Bay State, but instead it followed Patrick’s example by deferring to the wishes of career state edu-crats.

Why blame state employees for decisions made by the governors of both parties, the state commissioner, and the state board?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Literature, Massachusetts

Trump’s Latest Narcissistic Tweet

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2019 //
40

 

As Republicans and top military brass recoil in shock after Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds (which benefits Putin while betraying a faithful ally), Trump tweeted this:

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!),” he wrote. 

The stable genius’s self love is unlimited. His wisdom is most definitely limited.

Do you think Republicans might begin to think about how to liberate their party from the iron grip of this shallow and ignorant con man?

Categories Education Reform

Arkansas: Supporters of Public Schools Demand Democracy

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2019 //
2

Grassroots Arkansas sent out the following alert to friends of public education and democracy:

 

Friends,

It has been a long, hard five years of state control, and so much of the future of public education in Arkansas will be decided this week. We need YOU to join us, stand up, and speak out. NOW is the time. We all must choose to stand on the right side of history against a district where democratic representation is divided by race and class. We’re up against some of the biggest corporations in the world. The only way we win is together. #OneLRSD #AsaFaubus

We are ABSOLUTELY standing against state, city, county, and/or special interest groups’ control. We want the entire district back with a locally, democratically-elected school board, and we want to have access to all of our resources to create the healthiest structures and develop world-class, equitable, sustainable community schools for every student in every classroom at every school.!

Monday
Join us in our 1,000 calls/tweets/e-mails ASAP to request Governor Hutchinson meets with the Support Our LRSD Coalition on either Monday, 10/7 or Tuesday, 10/8. Contact the Governor ASAP, every day at (501)682-2345, info@governor.arkansas.gov, or @AsaHutchinson on Twitter.
Join us for informational picketing, 5-6pm on MLK over I-630
 
6pm: Tune in to the Journey4Justice podcast as they host Dr. Anika Whitfield
Tuesday
Share a 1-2 minute live video of yourself, your child/children/grandchild/grandchildren expressing that, “We support our LRSD. We are #OneLRSD who loves #OurLRSD and we will work as long and as hard as we must until we #ReclaimLRSD together! Join us in wearing red for public education and to stop state control!” @Grassroots Arkansas, @AsaHutchinson, @cnnbrk, @MSNBC_Breaking, @adv_project, @j4j_usa. Call/text/email/ message friends, family, co-workers/colleagues, constituents, neighbors, faith community members or share with with them one day during breakfast/lunch/dinner what is going on with the LRSD and request they join us the following 3 days:
  • The State is dividing our children and the type of resources being provided them by socieconomic class.
  • The State has taken away our representation, but is steadily collecting our tax dollars.
  • The State is giving our public schools (that are paid for and maintained by our property taxes) to charter school companies.
  • The State is threatening to dissolve the LREA (teacher’s and educator’s union).  Retirement plans, jobs/employment, bargaining negotiations for contracts and employment conditions will no longer be protected.
Wednesday
Join us for a Community Action Training from 6-7pm at Bishop Leodies & Goldie Warren Community Development Center, 1200 Bishop Warren Dr Suite A and then for a Candlelight Vigil on at Central High School, 7:30pm
Thursday-Friday
Plan on being at the State Board of Education meeting Thursday, 10/10 10am-? and Friday, 10/11 9am-? as the State Board votes to destroy the last teachers’ union in Arkansas.
The people united will never be defeated!
Categories Arkansas, Democracy, Resistance

Andrea Gabor: To Succeed in Business, Major in the Liberal Arts

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2019 //
49

 

Andrea Gabor blows up the myth that the path to success in business requires a major in business or that there is a “skills gap” in STEM subjects.

If you want to succeed in business, she writes, major in the liberal arts.

The combatants in the U.S. education wars don’t agree on much, but there’s at least one concern that most reformers and educators across the political spectrum seem to share: fear that universities aren’t producing enough science, technology, engineering and math majors. But just as statesand school districts add new technology requirements and open STEM-oriented schools, leading technology companies are heading in the opposite direction, forming partnerships with liberal-arts colleges and seeking to hire their graduates.

It’s a welcome development. Recent research suggests that contrary to the popular idea that majoring in art or literature is a route to personal penury and a contributor to industrial decline, there are actually plenty of science majors, except among low-income students. Moreover, while newly minted graduates with science and technical degrees enjoy a salary premium over their classmates in the humanities, that premium fades over time, in part because technological skills become obsolete faster. Liberal arts majors, by contrast, trained to be creative communicators and critical thinkers, are more adaptable.

Corporations have good business reasons to embrace history, philosophy and English majors. Companies need well-rounded employees conversant in both digital and creative skills. With some additional training and investments by the government, companies can leverage both the liberal arts and digital know-how that is needed for increasingly complex technological systems.

To understand the limitations of a business degree, consider the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

Go ahead and major in art history or philosophy or history or comparative literature. You may end up as CEO.

Categories Higher Education

Los Angeles: Michael Kohlhaas Explains How Charter Lobby Neutralized the LAUSD Inspector General

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2019 //
6

 

Working with his treasure trove of emails among charter operators, which he obtained via a public records request, blogger Michael Kohlhaas explains how the Charter Lobby managed to reduce the powers of the Office of Inspector General, whose investigations into corrupt charters had been a thorn in their side.

This is an important post. Read it in full. The charter lobby dedicates a lot of time and money to avoiding accountability and transparency.

He begins:

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a particularly powerful oversight office, the Office of the Inspector General, known in the trade jargon as OIG. And in 2018 the School Board failed to renew then-IG Ken Bramlett’s contract. According to LA Times education reporter Howard Blume, pro-charter board members Monica Garcia, Kelly Gonez, and Nick Melvoin voted against renewal, which was enough to deadlock the board and prevent Bramlett’s return. Blume also noted that Bramlett had aggressively investigated some charter schools, in some cases leading to criminal charges being filed, and that charter schools had been clamoring for limits on OIG’s ability to investigate them but he stopped short of saying that Bramlett’s fall from grace was due to charter school influence.

And later a bunch of overwhelmingly salacious details of a number of really appalling and quite serious hostile work environment complaints against some of Bramlett’s senior subordinates came out along with credible accusations that Bramlett had at best failed to take these complaints seriously. Regardless of the validity of the uproar, and it seems quite valid indeed to me, this had the effect of directing most of the media attention away from charter school involvement in Bramlett’s downfall. Not entirely, though. For instance, Kyle Stokes, education reporter with KPCC, did mention that charter schools had been seeking to limit OIG’s role in overseeing them, although in that same article noted that “sources who spoke to KPCC said that concern over charter oversight was not a factor in the board’s thinking”

But newly published internal documents from the Los Angeles Advocacy Council, a shadowy organization run by the California Charter School Association and about 20 local charter school leaders, paint a very different picture. In fact LAAC and the CCSA give themselves credit for taking advantage of the chaos at OIG in order to effectively remove oversight of charter schools from OIG’s purview.

Not only that but they claim to have kept quiet about the issue in order to protect their public image. In the same document they also claim that they were asked to do so by unnamed people in the District who promised CCSA and LAAC that “they would handle it, and they followed through” Given some statements in another document it’s not impossible that convicted felon and then Board member Ref Rodriguez was one of these unnamed people. The charterites were thrilled by the outcome of their work against OIG oversight, announcing that it “should be seen as a major win by and for the charter community.” Perhaps this media strategy underlay Stokes’s sources’ comment about charter involvement in Bramlett’s non-renewal.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization
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