Schools Matter: Wall Street: Massively Fraudulent Sociopaths

Schools Matter: Wall Street: Massively Fraudulent Sociopaths

Wall Street: Massively Fraudulent Sociopaths

by Jim Horn

Here's the link to the Bill Moyers interview with Bill Black. It runs about 25 minutes. Here is a clip:

. . . BILL MOYERS: Why did it take so long for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, to kick into gear on this? I mean, have they kicked into gear?

WILLIAM K. BLACK Well, they haven't kicked into gear fully, or they'd be naming Blankfein and other senior leaders of Goldman. And they've, as you just mentioned, they've only gone after a junior person. And there would be, if they were really in gear, there would be criminal charges here. And if they were really in gear, there'd be a broad investigation, not just of Goldman, but of all of these major entities.

In the last three weeks, we have finally done a half-baked investigation, mind you. Not -- nothing like we did in the Savings & Loan days -- of Washington Mutual (WaMu), Citicorp, Lehman, and Goldman. And we have found strong evidence of fraud at all four places.

And we have looked previously at Fannie and Freddie and found the same thing. So the only six

"Is The New Facebook A Deal With The Devil?" - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

"Is The New Facebook A Deal With The Devil?" - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Technology: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Makes you wanna go Hmmm. . . Too Big???

Are your kids on Facebook? Do THEY know?

"At first blush, it's hard from a user's perspective to find anything to criticize Facebook for in today's announcements. Those criticisms will no doubt start to form once people wrap their heads around all the particulars. On principal, though, there's going to be so much more Facebook around the internet that it feels like a real cause for concern. Centralization is a dangerous thing and Facebook is a young company that's proven willing to break its contract with users in the past (see Facebook's Privacy Move Violates Contract With Users)."

---From ReadWriteWeb

From ReadWriteWeb, "Is The New Facebook A deal With The Devil?":

"Facebook blew people's minds today at its F8 developer conference but one sentiment that keeps coming up is: this is scary. The company unveiled simple, powerful plans to offer instant personalization on sites all over the web, it kicked off meaningful adoption of the Semantic Web with the snap of the fingers, it

Capistrano School Board Rejects Teachers’ Proposal - California Teachers Association

Capistrano School Board Rejects Teachers’ Proposal - California Teachers Association

Capistrano School Board Rejects Teachers’ Proposal

Contact: Vicki Soderberg (949) 463-6951 (cell); vsoderberg@cuea.org; Bill Guy (619) 709-0028 (cell); bguy@cta.org

Ambiguous Offer To Negotiate Begins With Veiled Threat

ALISO VIEJO – “If you’re really serious about bargaining, you don’t start out by threatening legal action. Once again the Capistrano Board of Education is attempting to equivocate and obfuscate instead of negotiate,” said CUEA President Vicki Soderberg.

“Despite the board’s vague offer to commence negotiations ‘regarding various issues,’ they are flatly rejecting to bargain CUEA’s specific, unambiguous proposal. We clearly gave them a chance to avert a strike and their refusal leaves teachers no choice. CUEA members will walk the picket lines beginning Thursday, April 22. At the same time, our bargaining team will accept the board’s invitation to talk on Thursday. If we determine that they are serious about reaching a settlement, teachers and students can be back in the schools Friday. It’s up to the board to prove they’re serious about reaching a settlement.”

In a formal request delivered early Monday, April 19, giving the Capistrano board a 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, April 20 deadline to respond, CUEA asked the board to come back to the bargaining table to negotiate based on the following specific proposals:

1. The board will reverse the permanent nature of salary and benefits cuts they imposed March 31 by making them temporary;
2. There will be no increase in class size;
3. The board will restore salary, unpaid work days, and benefits cuts if unforeseen funds are received;
4. The board will implement already agreed to contract language that deals with working conditions, transfer of teachers, and leaves as stipulated to in the fact finding hearing.

“Where in the board’s response is the mention of making the permanent cuts temporary and of being willing to enter into the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the board has informally offered in public throughout the last two weeks? Where is a clear, unambiguous offer to restore the cuts if unforeseen

New Jersey Education Association

New Jersey Education Association

State report shows Christie’s
Pay freeze claims are false

$849 million shortfall even with a freeze
Governor Christie’s claim that teacher pay freezes would make teacher layoffs and property tax increases unnecessary are false, according to an April 2010 report by the state’s Office of Legislative Services (OLS). Noting that Christie has cut state aid to school districts by $1.09 billion, the report says that if every teacher took a pay freeze and contributed 1.5% of salary to health premiums, school districts “would still have to address a budget shortfall of at least $849.3 million” – or 77.9 percent of the proposed aid reduction. More>>

NJEA demands Christie apologize for calling students ‘drug mules’

NJEA President Barbara Keshishian, outraged after Governor Chris Christie accused New Jersey teachers of using students as “drug mules” at a State House press conference yesterday, is demanding that the governor apologize to both students and teachers. “Chris Christie’s incessant attacks on teachers and public education are out of control, and now he’s gone too far,” Keshishian said today. More>>

>>NJEA Vice President discusses election,
Christie attack on students Watch video

NJEA warns about Christie's "catastrophic" pension proposals

30,000 teachers could retire this summer
Governor Christie’s plan to enact legislation to force mass retirements of teachers and school employees will have a catastrophic impact on public education and on the state’s already-underfunded pension system, NJEA President Barbara Keshishian warned today. “Whether the governor realizes it or not, his legislation would be an all-out assault on the very future of public education in New Jersey,” Keshishian said. “He is threatening to do irreparable damage to every public school system in the state, and to the 1.4 million students we teach. More>>

Schundler’s figures don’t add up

NJEA challenges Commissioner’s budget testimony
Barbara Keshishian, president of the 200,000-member New Jersey Education Association, today challenged the budget testimony of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, saying it was misleading and poorly documented. “Despite today’s Monmouth University poll showing the public does not blame teachers for the governor’s impending school budget cuts, Commissioner Schundler’s testimony before the Senate Budget Committee was simply more of the same blame game,” said Keshishian. More>>

Christie takes another swipe at school funding

Governor’s school budget slam a “new low”
NJEA President Barbara Keshishian released the following statement today: "We are shocked and angered that Gov. Christie has taken his attack on public schools to an irresponsible new low. After cutting $1.5 billion from education in the first three months of his administration, he is now calling on local residents to make his cuts even deeper and more harmful to students by voting down their local school budgets." More>>

Members protest Christie’s budget slashing

Several hundred NJEA members protested Friday in Mays Landing outside of a $500-a-plate fundraiser attended by Gov. Christie. The protest was designed to highlight the damage being done by Christie’s deep cuts in education funding. Watch and read coverage of the event.

Capistrano Unified – Corruption Galore

Capistrano Unified – Corruption Galore

April 25, 2010

By Heather Pritchard

There is a path to follow in this series regarding the mess here in South Orange County and the Capistrano Unified School Districts Board of Trustees. The big picture needed to be outlined in one diary, to show how this board was working against the teachers and the bargaining process. It was merely a snapshot, the picture is bigger and it has been going on for years.
The second piece of the puzzle has to do with Education Alliance, a Political Action Committee in Tustin, CA and a number of other political entities hell bent on dismantling public education (And opposing other important political issues such as health care reform and climate change legislation) so that they can privatize and funnel money into charter schools.
The argument of the Charter school people is that Capistrano Unified isn’t working, even though it isranked as 137th in the State out of 870 school districts and it’s the highest ranked school if you consider it’s size by number of students. Capo also has an amazing graduation rate with over 95% of their students graduating high school with the State average at 79%.
The district is working, the teachers are the reason why our schools are competitive and the students are high achievers as well as passionately involved parents. Pacific Research Institute would like you to think otherwise, that communities like Capo are dysfunctional. PRI has been touting their documentary, Not as Good as You Think: The Myth of the Middle Class School which attempts to paint this as an issue of public education, which it is not. It’s an issue of corrupt and ineffective board of trustees. And they were corrupt, it’s why so many parents wanted them gone, so beginning in 2006, recall candidates started to replace the corrupt board and replace it with new slate of

Teachers in LA go on Hunger Strike against budget cuts. | Education School Online

Teachers in LA go on Hunger Strike against budget cuts. | Education School Online

Teachers in LA go on Hunger Strike against budget cuts.

Hungry for a Better Education: Teachers, Parents Lead Hunger Strike Protesting Cuts, Layoffs at LA Schools Teachers, parents and accord members are on a suffer accomplish complaintive cuts and layoffs at Los Angeles schools, which hit become as conception of a statewide try by Calif. Governor traitor Schwarzenegger to turn activity resource by nearly $1 billion. We intercommunicate to LA broad edifice pedagogue and Hungry for a Better Education contestant Sean Leys, today on his ordinal period of the suffer strike. [includes festinate transcript]

PhillyBurbs.com: �School leaders downplay tensions

PhillyBurbs.com: �School leaders downplay tensions

School leaders downplay tensions

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By: THERESA HEGEL

The Intelligencer

Looking at the school districts in Bucks and Montgomery counties, it seems as if the conflict between teachers unions and school boards has reached a boiling point.

North Penn School District is in the midst of a strike. Hatboro-Horsham teachers have been working without a contract for almost a year. And though it was almost two years ago, the 13-day work stoppage in Souderton School District is still fresh in many minds - especially since the strike was followed by a seven-month impasse before a contract agreement was reached.

But state representatives for teachers and school boards don't believe the local situation has larger implications for the rest of Pennsylvania - or the future.

"Ninety-five percent of all collective bargaining is settled without strikes," said Wythe Keever, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

He added that North Penn is only the sixth district to strike this year. Of the 200 or so unions bargaining for a contract in a given year, only about 10 vote to strike, Keever said.

David Salter, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, also said he didn't see evidence of mounting tension between unions and boards.

"We've seen a lot of districts in different parts of the state come to agreements," he said.

Local officials, however, paint a different picture.

"I've been (negotiating contracts) for 31 years + and I have not encountered as many obstacles to get to a contract settlement as exist right now," said Jeffrey Sultanik, a lawyer and chief negotiator for Hatboro-Horsham

Schools Matter: "The Cartel" Concludes Public Schools Greater Threat Than Terrorists

Schools Matter: "The Cartel" Concludes Public Schools Greater Threat Than Terrorists

"The Cartel" Concludes Public Schools Greater Threat Than Terrorists

by Jim Horn

If there is any narrative the Boston Globe loves to push more than charter schools and corporate education deform, it would be someone who truly hates public education and public school teachers as much as the Boston Globe. A new corporate propaganda fear film entitled "The Cartel" fills the bill on both counts, and the Globe's drooling hyperbolic review by Brian MacQuarrie reads like Eli Broad playtime fantasy:

When “The Cartel’’ opens Friday in the Boston area, it will take aim at what its creator calls the most important story in the country, one that the last person featured in his 90-minute documentary says is a greater threat to American civilization than terrorism.
It’s not the implosion of the financial system, the runaway national debt, or ideology-driven paralysis in Washington. The threat, instead, is the state of the nation’s public schools, and the powerful teacher unions that “The Cartel’’ believes are sabotaging the future.
It’s a subject that is familiar to countless parents, public officials, and even casual observers of the sausage-making of municipal government. But in “The Cartel,’’ a debut film by former television

Colorado's SB 191

by Kenneth Libby

With lots of attention being paid to the Perkins hearings, the Florida SB6 fiasco, and Duncan's "Race to Nowhere," a merit-pay bill in Colorado is slowly working it's way through the legislature. The Senate Education Committee on Friday passed Senate Bill 191 and will now head to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill has support from a number of groups - the Colorado branch of Democrats for Education Reform; the state's branch of Stand For Children; Education Reform Now; Colorado League of Charter Schools; and various other 

NorthJersey.com: School choice measure advancing in N.J. legislature

NorthJersey.com: School choice measure advancing in N.J. legislature

School choice measure advancing in N.J. legislature

Sunday, April 25, 2010

WIRE SERVICE

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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TRENTON — Plans to create a permanent public school choice program in New Jersey continue to advance in the state legislature.
The measure would allow parents to move their children to schools across district lines. It would replace a pilot program that expired in 2005, though many participating districts continue to informally honor its arrangements.
The Assembly passed the measure late last month 75-0 and sent it to the Senate, where it has been referred to the Education Committee. That panel, though, has not yet scheduled a hearing on the proposal.
However, the proposal is expected to be discussed Monday when state education officials appear before the Assembly's budget committee to discuss their 2011 fiscal year spending plan.
If the measure becomes law, schools seeking to participate in the program would apply to the state education commissioner, detailing services available to their students. The applications also would include an accounting of fiscal issues that schools could face by taking part in the program.
Students who want to transfer would have to apply to their district of choice, which would decide whether to accept students based in part on their interests in the school's offerings. Schools also would be allowed to hold lotteries if the number of applications outpace the number of available seats.
Students' home districts would have to provide or pay for transportation for elementary school pupils who live more than two miles from the receiving district, and for secondary school students who live more than 2 1/2 miles from their new school. Sending districts would not have to pay these costs if the new school is

Black woman leads former whites-only Philly school | News10.net | Sacramento, California | Education

Black woman leads former whites-only Philly school | News10.net | Sacramento, California | Education

Black woman leads former whites-only Philly school

Lesha Ruffin Last updated 1 hr ago

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A private Philadelphia boarding school for underprivileged children that once excluded blacks and females is now being run by an African-American woman.

Thirty-seven-year-old Autumn Adkins is in her first year as president of Girard College. Despite the school's name, it serves first- through 12th-graders.

The school was founded in 1848 with money from Stephen Girard, a shipping and banking magnate who died in 1831.

Girard's will specified that the school serve only poor, fatherless white boys. Numerous legal challenges eventually forced the school to admit blacks and girls.

But until Adkins arrived, the school had been run exclusively by white

Capo strike closely watched across state - News - The Orange County Register

Capo strike closely watched across state - News - The Orange County Register

Education communities across the state have watched closely as teachers in Orange County's second-largest school district walked picket lines for two days last week.

But while other cash-strapped districts are dealing with the same stalled negotiations with their teachers unions, experts say the strike in the Capistrano Unified School District was largely the product of years of aggressive politicking unmatched by most districts.

Teachers walk the picket line Thursday at the entrance to Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo on the first day of a teacher strike that has crippled student programs and services across the 52,000-student Capistrano Unified School District.

FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

More from Education

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  Capo strike closely watched across state
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  Strike update: No settlement Saturday
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  Strike update: Talks resume Saturday
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  Capistrano teachers strike: An overview
• 
  
  
  Capo strike resumes for second day

About 100 school districts across the state, including three in Orange County, are at impasse with their teachers unions – unable to hash out an employment contract, and with the state assigning mediators to each. That's four times the average of districts at impasse each year, according to the Sacramento-based school-finance consulting firm School Services of California.

Even so, Capistrano Unified has accelerated past all those other districts, becoming the first district in California this year to be confronted with a teacher strike. The Oakland Unified School District may follow suit; its teachers union is planning a one-day strike Thursday.

"It's part of a larger populist uprising that seems to be occurring in certain parts of the country," said political scientist Fred Smoller, who studies local government and school boards at Irvine's Brandman University, part of the Chapman University system. "It's not just about the 10 percent pay cut (in Capistrano Unified). It's about things not being perceived as fair. And when the system is not perceived as fair, that's different than people being asked to make a joint sacrifice."

Capistrano Unified's school board last month unilaterally imposed a 10.1 percent pay cut on the district's 2,200 teachers after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations.

Teachers decried the imposition, and after about three weeks of intense rancor and unsuccessful attempts to sit down with the district to talk through the imposed cut, union leaders decided to begin striking Thursday.

The end result of California's first teachers strike this year could significantly sway negotiations between unions and districts statewide or even lead the way to more strikes, experts say.

"A lot of interested parties are going to have to look at Capistrano," said Ron Bennett, president of School Services of California. "If it is perceived the strike was beneficial to one side or other, that might be a 

Allison Stacey Cowles, Educational Advocate, Dies at 75 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Allison Stacey Cowles, Educational Advocate, Dies at 75 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Allison Stacey Cowles, Educational Advocate, Dies at 75

By JAMES BARRON

Published: April 25, 2010

Allison Stacey Cowles, a longtime trustee of Wellesley College who was the wife of a newspaper publisher in Spokane, Wash., and, after he died, of the former publisher of The New York Times, died Saturday night in Spokane, Wash. She was 75.

Enlarge This Image

Colvin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review, via Associated Press

Allison Stacey Cowles in 1996.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her son, William Stacey Cowles.

Ms. Cowles was an influential advocate for educational and conservation programs, both in New York and in Washington State. But her ties to Wellesley were particularly strong. As a student there she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was editor of The Wellesley News in 1955, the year she graduated.

As the Wellesley president Diana Chapman Walsh noted in 1999, Ms. Cowles inhabited the world of newspaper publishing for the rest of her life. Her first husband was William H. Cowles III, whose family owns The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. He died in 1992.

Four years later she married Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose family controls The New York Times. He was publisher of the paper and chairman and chief executive of The New York Times Company; he is currently the company’s chairman emeritus.

When Ms. Cowles left Wellesley, she was set on becoming a history professor. She received a master’s degree in history from Radcliffe College and studied for a doctorate while Mr.

Students Organize Against Arizona Immigration Law � Student Activism

Students Organize Against Arizona Immigration Law � Student Activism

Students Organize Against Arizona Immigration Law

by Angus Johnston

A sweeping new immigration enforcement bill signed into law by the governor of Arizona on Friday has met with immediate opposition from students and others around the nation.
The law, known as SB 1070, has many elements, but its most controversial is a mandate that police officers to detain people they believe to be in the United States illegally.
President Obama on Friday described the law as a threat to “trust between police and our communities” and to “basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” The Archbishop of Los Angeles has compared the law’s provisions to Nazism.
SB 1070 provoked mass student protests even before it was signed — on Thursday morning more than a thousand Phoenix-area high school students walked out of classes and marched on the state capitol to demand that governor Jan Brewer veto the bill.
Dream Activist, a website by and for students organizing for immigration reform, reports that rallies and vigils

The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick � Tangerine, Florida

The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick � Tangerine, Florida

The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick

Privatization Will Not Help Us Achieve Our Goals: An Interview with Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch is a prominent historian of education, the author of a dozen books including Edspeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords and Jargon (2007), The Language Police (2003) and Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (2000).

Diane is not a political type, but neither is she afraid of controversy. In recent years she’s become a lightning rod for controversy. She has been embroiled in an ongoing battle in the press with Joel Klein, the Chancellor of the New York City public schools, about academic achievement. Here she takes on both Arne Duncan and NCLB!
**

The Interview

The Obama Administration and nearly every state have now endorsed national or common standards. Is this a good thing? Or is now the time to get worried, the logic being that, when ‘everyone’ is for something, the rest of us should watch out?

I have favored common standards for a long time. When I worked for Bush I in the early 1990s, I helped to launch federally funded projects to develop voluntary national standards in the arts, English, history, geography, civics, economics, science, and other essential school subjects. Some of the projects were successful; others were not. The whole enterprise foundered because a) it was not authorized by Congress, and b) it came to fruition during the transition between two

NorthJersey.com: Teacher brain drain looming

NorthJersey.com: Teacher brain drain looming

Christie plan may prompt mass teacher retirements, analysis shows

Sunday, April 25, 2010
LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY APRIL 25, 2010, 12:09 PM

BY LISA FLEISHER AND SEAN SPOSITO

STATE HOUSE BUREAU

STATE HOUSE BUREAU

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Governor Christie’s plan to get long-serving teachers to retire this summer could drain lots of experience from some districts, while largely sparing charter schools staffed by younger educators, an analysis shows.

FILE PHOTO

Governor Christie’s plan to get long-serving teachers to retire this summer could drain lots of experience from some districts.

Christie wants to cut pension and health benefits for current teachers, but would allow those who retire by Aug. 1 to get a free pass. The state’s largest teachers union says the plan, which has not been submitted to the Legislature yet, could prompt mass retirements.
The analysis shows more than 29,300 of the state’s nearly 143,750 certified teachers — about 20 percent of the workforce — qualified for retirement, either through age or years worked, according to data from the 2008-09 school year, the latest available. Some teachers may have since retired, died or otherwise left the system.
In Bergen County, the percentage is in keeping with the state average: About a fifth of its 13,926 teachers, or 2,820, would be eligible for retirement.

BY THE NUMBERS

County	Eligible	Total	%
Bergen	2,820	13,926	20.2
Passaic	1,999	8,163	24.5
Morris	1,619	8,382	19.3
Hudson	2,173	8,195	26.5
New Jersey	29,328	143,733	20.4
Source: New Jersey Department of Education

The portion is higher in Passaic County, where 24.5 percent, or 1,999, of 8,163 teachers are eligible.
Nearly a third of the number in Passaic County are Paterson teachers. According to the data, 660 of the city’s 2,764, teachers are eligible. Retirements could help avert some of the 775 layoffs looming in the city schools. But Peter Tirri, the teachers union president, said the retirement of large numbers of veteran educators would be chaotic.
"You need relationships with parents, you’ve got to establish roots in a school," Tirri said.
The number of eligible teachers exceeds the averages in some smaller districts in North Jersey.
In Carlstadt, nearly 39 percent, or 21 of the 54 teachers in the district, are eligible. The district has one school, as does Alpine, where 10 of 27 teachers, or 37 percent, are eligible. In Ringwood, 45 of 135 would be eligible, fully a third of the teaching staff, according to the data.
The analysis also found: