Schools Matter:
Schools Matter All Week
In June a corporate reform school outfit called STRIVE, which is headed by a former TFA cult member, had its application rejected unanimously by Metro's school board. With the help of CorpEd crony superintendent, Jesse Register, that all changed last week. From Joey Garrison at the Tennessean:. . . .STRIVE, a middle school, is cleared to open next fall, joining five other new charters already ap
KIPP Memphis Collegiate $230,000 In Debt to Shelby County As State Test Scores Crater
Today's Commercial Appeal reported in the print edition that KIPP Collegiate Schools owe Shelby County Schools $229,443.42 for overpayment based on KIPP's projected enrollment or for failure to pay teacher retirement benefits, utility bills, etc. to the County. There is no link because the story has been scrubbed from the Commercial Appeal website.Shelby County is asking the State "to allow
Marshall Tuck's staunchest supporters are unabashed Ayn Rand votaries
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." — John Rogers I'm frequently accused o
YESTERDAY
Dumber and Then Huffman
Is dumberer a word? TN's state ed chief and TFA cult member, Kevin Huffman, told the New York Times yesterday that TN would not back down on using invalid, unreliable, and unfair methods to evaluate teachers in Tennessee. Do "the best interests of children" really require us to ignore science, common sense, and public opinion? Some states will continue to use test results in teacher e
Arne Duncan: Just Sucking
As he watches Bill Gates' Common Core spinning quickly now before it heads down the toilet bowl, Arne Duncan has once again offered too little too late to save the latest miseducative boluses of the profiteers and privatizers at CorpEd. Trying to suck the air out of the Resistance by offering one year off from the high stakes part (for teachers) of the testing idiocy (which is half of what Bill Ga
AUG 21
Americans again rate local schools higher than schools of the nation
Groundhog Day: Americans Again Rate Local Schools Higher than Schools of the NationStephen KrashenAs is the case every year, the PDK/Gallup poll (September 2014) found that people rate their local schools much more positively than they do schools in the US in general. The differences, as usual, were striking: Fifty percent of respondents said they would give the public schools in their neighbor
See KIPP Co-Founder, Dave Levin, Model Totalistic Control & Compliance at Million Dollar Summit
Source: Robert Lifton labeled the extraordinarily high degree of social control characteristic of organizations that operate reform programs as their totalistic quality (Lifton 1961). This concept refers to the mobilization of the entirety of the person's social, and often physical, environment in support of the manipulative effort. Lifton identified eight themes or properties of reform environme
MA Taxpayers Fed Up With Up Expansion of Segregated Corporate Charters
This is the beginning of the end for another failed experiment by profiteers and businessmen to feed on public education. From the Boston Globe: Voter support for more charter schools in Massachusetts appears to be weak, according to a new Boston Globe poll, highlighting a politically risky situation for charter school supporters if they pursue a ballot question. The poll found that 47 percent of
Money For Tanks And Tear Gas, But None For Education
From The Real News Network:Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is a Freeman Fellow with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. A St Louis, MO, native, the Rev attended high school there and has strong family ties to the area. He is the Pastor for Formation and Justice at the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, MA, and is spending the summer as a Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King Education and Res
Read Ken Derstine to Understand CorpEd in Philadelphia
Here is the intro:IntroductionPrior to becoming Secretary of Education in the Obama administration, Arne Duncan was the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools for seven years. Until he became Secretary of Education, Duncan was on the board of the Broad Foundation. The Broad Foundation is one of the leading “philanthropies” promoting privatization through its Broad Superintendents Ac
Tennessee's No-Growth Model for Minorities: 4% of Black Students Meet All ACT Benchmarks in 2014
As shown above, 8 percent of black students met 3 or more benchmarks in 2013. Below is the chart showing the percentages of students meeting all four benchmarks in 2014 (click to enlarge):
New PDK/Gallup Poll Shows 60 Percent of Public Opposed to Common Core
We'll be posting from the new 2014 PDK/Gallup poll of public attitudes toward the public schools. Here's the one that caught my eye first:
New York's High Stakes Test Data of "Diminished Usefulness" Due to Opt Out Numbers
New York parents and students who opted out of the last round of testing should be proud and energized, even though the state's chief miseducator remains unbowed so far by the opt out numbers that are finally coming to light. This school year should be one of organizing resistance in every town and village to choose education and reject the unending corporate testing agenda that is destroying what
AUG 20
The common core does not address the real problem
Sent to the Washington Post, August 20, 2014The Post has reported that according to a recent PDK/Gallup poll, the "Common Core educational standards are losing support nationwide" (August 19). The poll asked those opposed to the Common Core why they were opposed, giving them several possible reasons. The options did not include the reasons many educators oppose the Common Core: There is
Tennessee Schools Soar to 43rd in ACT National Standings
Tennessee's now in its 22th year of a failed experiment that began in 1992 to use value-added assessment to improve Tennessee schools. In 2013 Tennessee ranked 46th among states for composite ACT scores.This year Tennessee is 43rd for the ACT composite score, but the state still ranks 48th in math, with only Mississippi and Hawaii behind the proud home state of the Sanders Model. The other long-
Poem by Doug Storm
TreeThe girth and grip of the tulip trunk thrustWrist deep into the soil of the school playgroundFronts an edifice risen only to crumble.Unfallen and aged, escaping the steel chain,Your crown unbestowed, no body bendssupplicant to you, though all are at base abject.You seek no fealty but stand resoundingagainst the proclamations of pretenders.When your reign ends so all succession.
AUG 19
Apartheid Schooling in New Jersey
Bob Braun's Ledger: on One NewarkI remember standing in line at the career fair at the New Jersey university where I received my Master of Arts in Teaching and certification to teach secondary history and social studies. The line at the Newark table was vacant. No one, not one person, was interested in starting a career in Newark New Jersey public schools. Despite financial incentives, jobs in New
Fox News Viewers at Socialist Health Clubs
I work out at a city-owned health club, where old men who hate government come in their white tennis shoes and walk on the new municipally-owned treadmills, while watching the babes on FoxNews hand out to them their morning doses of hate. They walk, glower, and sour without apparent purpose other than to make their hearts harder as hard as their arteries. But yesterday I figured out how to get ol
More Bogus Research from UofArkansas's Walmart School of Ed Reform
What a shame that a great state university like Arkansas would allow billionaire bullshit "research" to sully its good name!NEPC has reviewed the recent charter school "research" study by Jay Greene and his team and found it severely lacking in most everything that research requires to be legitimate:BOULDER, CO (August 19, 2014) –A recent report from the University of Arkansas
Workforce Investment Act Becomes $3 Billion Handout to Predatory "Colleges"
No bills get through Congress these days without an overwhelming amount of money to be made by both sides of the corporate aisle. Such a bill sailed through last month without so much as racial slur at the President, something quite unheard of in the age of an ostensibly-black Commander in Chief. The legislation is called the Workforce Investment Act, and it's worth $3.1 billion to corporate high
AUG 17
CTA Joins Forces with CorpEd to End Teacher Due Process
from WSWS.org:By Alan Gilman 28 June 2014 On June 25, Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 215, legislation which streamlines the teacher dismissal process. The bill was lobbied heavily by the California Teachers Association (CTA) which joined with the right-wing anti-teacher organization EDVoice to get the bill passed. The issue concerning the process for firing teachers
Teaching is Not a Business!!!
Teaching Is Not a BusinessBy DAVID L. KIRPAUG. 16, 2014PhotoCreditEleanor DavisContinue reading the main storyShare This PageTODAY’S education reformers believe that schools are broken and that business can supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the idea of competition. Others embrace disruptive innovation, mainly through online learning. Both camps share the belief that the solution resides
