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Wednesday, December 16, 2015

John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen? | Crazy Crawfish

John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen? | Crazy Crawfish:

John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen?


Those who follow k-12 education in Louisiana closely know about state supt. John White and his illusionist tricks.  There have been several times over the last few years I expected John to hightail it out of here, only to see him double down on his egregious and dishonest behavior and come out stronger than before each crisis.  Amazing and mystifying, but he is a true magician.
In the last BESE (BESE is the State School Board responsible for hiring and firing the state superintendent) election John White’s out-of-state billionaire supporters (led by education crime syndicate boss and chairman of LABI, Lane Grigsby) poured millions into the race to save his lying ass from getting canned for all the atrocious, dishonest, and antagonistic behavior he’s exhibited over his entire tenure as State Sup and local Sup of the New Orleans Recovery School District.
White even received some national notoriety (and praise) for “standing up” to Governor Bobby Jindal over the issue of Common Core State Standards. While this dispute may have been staged for the benefit of Jindal’s National presidential ambitions from the outside it looked like Jindal was really giving White a hard time.
(Fighting something controversial is a good way to stay in the media – see Donald Trump’s entire campaign – but actually resolving issues has a way of removing that spotlight so I don’t believe Jindal actually wanted to resolve the Common Core issue.)
Jindal is now leaving office in disgrace, unable to become more than a sad footnote in this presidential race, unable to extricate the state from Common Core, leaving a mortgaged state in shambles with a budget held together by rusty screws and tattered, generic Scotch tape, and a gaping multi-billion dollar deficit for years to come for governor elect John Bel Edwards.
Whatever the truth, Jindal looks like Tweedle-dum, and White looks like the John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen? | Crazy Crawfish:

Hope and the Teacher | The Jose Vilson

Hope and the Teacher | The Jose Vilson:

Hope and the Teacher

tanehisicoates
My colleague asked me point-blank: “You’re saying you don’t think you’re having an effect on kids?”
I guess I should have been more poignant. I’m also not one for small talk, an affliction I acquired from years of nervous ticks when I spoke in normal situations. I also suffered from an extreme case of “I respect this person’s current work on these issues to not be honest.”
The thing about teaching, writing, and advocating at the same time is that I’m simultaneously aware of the energy it takes to teach my 150 students at 45 minutes a class for an entire day and the legions of self-interested actors who, at any given moment, would turn these very children against me. That’s our current educational discourse, an overlay of the socioeconomic and political realities of a nation at risk of every and anything at all times. Everything is right or wrong and the only way to fix it is to double down or completely change course. Every person is either good or evil. We must choose a side, one for each eye, if we’re granted that at all.
In my positionality, I am hopeful things will change. I am doubtful anything will.
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog, he says that writers, specifically those who write with history in mind, who only work with a hopeful lens haven’t done much homework, or are willfully ignorant of Hope and the Teacher | The Jose Vilson:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/16/15



CORPORATE ED REFORM







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YESTERDAY

Jersey Jazzman: Dear Reformies: You Got Nothing
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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/15/15
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