Tuesday, September 18, 2018

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Truth, Free Speech, the Constitution, and Cognitice Dissonance

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Truth, Free Speech, the Constitution, and Cognitice Dissonance

DeVos, Truth, Free Speech, the Constitution, and Cognitice Dissonance

The National Constitution Center is an interesting place. The "nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to the United States Constitution" was signed into existence by Ronald Reagan and the groundbreaking was attended by Bill Clinton. Located in Philadelphia, it houses the Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach; it also includes the Richard and Helen DeVos Exhibition Hall. Monday, it hosted Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for a speech that reads like one of the more honest-- and seriously conflicted-- speeches she has delivered in office.

The coverage has focused on DeVos's call for freedom of speech, in particular, focusing on the ways that college campuses have restricted such speech, from bureaucratic regulations to crowds of students who exercise the "heckler's veto" (which is a pretty good little phrase). But there are several moments that, if nothing else, may help crystalize where fundamental disagreements with her may lie.

The Founders discussed and debated and proposed "to the states a national government that would restrain itself by empowering its people." Well, the white penis-endowed ones, anyway. But there is that article of faith that the feds were never supposed to have real power.

The freedom to express ourselves-- through our faith, through our speech, through the press, through assembly or petition-- defines much of what it means to be human.

This freedom, preserved in our Declaration of Independence, comes from the truth that our rights are endowed by our Creator, not by any man-made government.

If you've been waiting for DeVos to let her God flag fly, this speech has it waving at the top of the pole. I have mixed feelings about her definition of Being Human. Yes, expression is important. But does that define humanity? And here's her definition of the mission of education:
The fundamental mission of formal learning is to provide a forum for students to discover who they Continue reading: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Truth, Free Speech, the Constitution, and Cognitice Dissonance




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Macklemore and Michael Bennett buy “Teaching for Black Lives” book for all Seattle secondary humanities teachers – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Macklemore and Michael Bennett buy “Teaching for Black Lives” book for all Seattle secondary humanities teachers – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Macklemore and Michael Bennett buy “Teaching for Black Lives” book for all Seattle secondary humanities teachers
T4BL_BookCover

Grammy award winning artist Macklemore and three time NFL pro bowler Michael Bennett team up to purchase the new critically acclaimed book, Teaching for Black Lives, for distribution to ALL Social Studies & Language Arts Teachers in the Seattle Public Schools

The new book from Rethinking Schools called, “A Handbook for all educators to fight racism” by the Washington Post

Hear from the editors of the book at a Seattle Town Hall event

MM&J
From left to right: Jesse Hagopian (co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives), Michael Bennett, Macklemore [Photo Credit: Ben Secord].
Seattle, WA, September, 12, 2018—Grammy award winning Seattle-based artist Macklemore and three-time NFL Pro Bowler Michael Bennett have teamed up to purchase and distribute copies of the new critically acclaimed book, Teaching for Black Lives to every middle and high school Social Studies and Language Arts teacher in the Seattle Public Schools. Michael Bennett said, “This is the book I wish I had coming up in school but it never existed. Now we have the opportunity to educate thousands of youth about the Black history that was too often missing from my schooling—from the building of the White House, to the role of Black youth in social movements, to organizing for restorative justice today.”

Macklemore added, “With everything from history, to poetry, to visual art, these lessons will help educators affirm the lives of their Black students and create deeper dialogue in our schools about the struggles and contributions of Black people that all students need to learn.”
Teaching for Black Lives is a collection of teaching activities, role-plays, essays, poems and art designed to help educators humanize Black people in the curriculum. The book demonstrates how teachers can connect the curriculum to young people’s lives and Continue reading: Macklemore and Michael Bennett buy “Teaching for Black Lives” book for all Seattle secondary humanities teachers – I AM AN EDUCATOR



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Shaquille O'Neal Joins Communities In Schools National Board of Directors : Communities In Schools

Shaquille O'Neal Joins Communities In Schools National Board of Directors : Communities In Schools

Shaquille O'Neal Joins Communities In Schools National Board of Directors
Arlington, VA—Communities In Schools (CIS), the national organization dedicated to empowering at-risk students to stay in school and on a path to a brighter future, is delighted to welcome NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Nealas the newest member of its national board of directors.  
"Over all the years I’ve known Shaquille, he has always shown himself to be a man of integrity and principle for whom giving back to his community is a top priority,” says Communities In Schools National Board Chair Elaine Wynn. "We are privileged to have him among the volunteer leaders of Communities In Schools.” 
Shaquille O’Neal, former NBA basketball player and Hall of Fame inductee, is currently a sports analyst on the television program,  Inside the NBA, and is considered one of the greatest players in NBA history. O’Neal’s athletic accomplishments include a 19-year NBA career, four NBA championships (three with the Los Angeles Lakers and one with the Miami Heat), and 15 All-Star game selections. He is one of only three players to win NBA MVP, All-Star game MVP, and NBA Finals MVP in the same year. 
Rivaling his athletic accomplishments are O'Neal's off-court undertakings, which include success in acting, music, television and gaming.  Inspired by positive childhood experiences at the Boys and Girls Club in Newark, NJ, O’Neal has a long career of partnering with youth organizations and giving back to his community.   
“Every kid, no matter where they’re from or how much money their parents make, deserves the Continue reading: Shaquille O'Neal Joins Communities In Schools National Board of Directors : Communities In Schools



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The voucher program we really need is not for school — it’s for after

The voucher program we really need is not for school — it’s for after

The voucher program we really need is not for school — it’s for after
Betsy DeVos can better serve working parents by supporting their aftercare needs


At 3 p.m. when most schools let out, some kids will stay back to attend an after-school program, some will be picked up by parents, relatives or paid caregivers to be taken home or to a soccer or swim class, and some others will hang out, on a street corner, or in the playground nearby with friends, or in an empty home. If you are a working parent with regular office hours, the group that your child belongs to depends on how much you can afford to pay for after-school care.
Unfortunately, the free, public part of education ends when the bell sounds.
Turns out that most of those who can’t afford to pay private school tuition can’t dole out funds for after-school programs either. In 2016, the online education news outlet Chalkbeat reportedthat only 18 percent of children nationally are served by before- and after-school programs. Many have no choice but to leave children in settings that won’t teach them skills that will help them get to college or snag a high-paying job.
The federal government could help. Students’ social and economic needs don’t end in the afternoon, and neither should the safety net that public schools provide. With the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos so eager to pass out school vouchers like Halloween candy, “to choose the learning environment that is right,” why isn’t there a voucher scheme for after-school programs?
The duration of school days is a vestige of a past when women were expected to stay at home, and able to pick their children up from school to take them back home. It’s long past time schools recognized that 61.1 percent of married couples, both parents work, and offered after-school programs that meet their demands. School hours — typically between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. — simply don’t match a 9 to 5 workday, let alone the more intensive days that come with certain kinds of jobs. What are parents to do with their kids in those in-between hours?
If parents don’t want their child to get after-school lessons from the streets or television, they are forced to pay for quality childcare and afterschool programs. There’s not much wiggle room for parents, and aftercare providers, keenly aware of this, charge accordingly.
According to a 2013 report by the U.S. Census, childcare costs rose 59 percent between 1985 and 2011 while family income stayed constant, meaning families paid a greater share of their income for childcare.
There is wide variability in what parents pay for childcare between Continue reading: The voucher program we really need is not for school — it’s for after



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Florida private schools get nearly $1 billion in state scholarships with little oversight, Sentinel finds - Orlando Sentinel

Florida private schools get nearly $1 billion in state scholarships with little oversight, Sentinel finds - Orlando Sentinel

Schools Without Rules: 
An Orlando Sentinel Investigation
Florida private schools rake in nearly $1 billion in state scholarships with little oversight. 
Part 1 of 3 Parts
By Leslie Postal, Beth Kassab and Annie Martin Staff Writers


Private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in state-backed scholarships this year through a system so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records.
The limited oversight of Florida’s scholarship programs allowed a principal under investigation for molesting a student at his Brevard County school to open another school under a new name and still receive the money, an Orlando Sentinel investigation found.
Another Central Florida school received millions of dollars in scholarships, sometimes called school vouchers, for nearly a decade even though it repeatedly violated program rules, including hiring staff with criminal convictions.
Despite the problems, the number of children using Florida’s scholarship programs has more than tripled in the past decade to 140,000 students this year at nearly 2,000 private schools. If students using Florida Tax Credit, McKay and Gardiner scholarships made up their own school district, they would be Florida’s sixth-largest in student population, just ahead of the Jacksonville area.

“The scholarships are good. The problem is the school,” said Edda Melendez, an Osceola County mother. “They need to start regulating the private schools.”
Melendez complained to the state last year about a private school in Kissimmee. The school promised specialized help for her 5-year-old twin sons, who have autism, but one of their teachers was 21 years old and didn’t have a bachelor’s degree or experience with autistic children.
“I feel bad for all the parents who didn’t know what’s going on there,” she told the state.
Last year, nearly a quarter of all state scholarship students — 30,000 — attended 390 private schools in Central Florida. The schools received $175.6 million worth of the scholarships, which are for children from low-income families and those with disabilities.
During its investigation, the Sentinel visited more than 30 private schools in Orange, Seminole, Lake, Osceola and Brevard counties, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and interviewed dozens of parents, private school operators, state officials and policy experts.
Unlike public schools, private schools, including those that accept the state scholarships, operate free from most state rules. Private school teachers and principals, for example, are not required to have state certification or even college degrees.
One Orlando school, which received $500,000 from the public programs last year, has a 24-year-old principal still studying at a community college.
Nor do private schools need to follow the state’s academic standards. One curriculum, called Accelerated Christian Education or ACE, is popular in some private schools and requires students to sit at partitioned desks and fill out worksheets on their own for most of the day, with little instruction from teachers or interaction with classmates.
And nearly anything goes in terms of where private school classes meet. The Continue reading: Florida private schools get nearly $1 billion in state scholarships with little oversight, Sentinel finds - Orlando Sentinel
Schools Without Rules: An Orlando Sentinel Investigation
The Orlando Sentinel spent months reporting on Florida’s scholarship programs, which will send nearly $1 billion to private schools this year. The Sentinel also reviewed thousands of pages of Florida Department of Education documents, court records and other materials in addition to interviewing dozens of people, including parents, students, school operators and policy experts.


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Checks and Balances Help Protect Us from Betsy DeVos | janresseger

Checks and Balances Help Protect Us from Betsy DeVos | janresseger

Checks and Balances Help Protect Us from Betsy DeVos
Sam Tanenhaus, the former editor of the NY Times Book Review, is quite a writer, and it is fascinating to contrast the Betsy DeVos we’ve come to know in the months since she became U.S. Secretary of Education with the Betsy DeVos we meet in Tanenhaus’s Vanity Fair profile of the western Michigan DeVos Empire.  Tanenhaus writes: “In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died Thursday at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence.”
Tanenhaus suggests that, “Trump was a useful vehicle for advancing nationally the revolution the DeVoses had already enacted in Michigan. There was, for instance, Betsy DeVos’s campaign to undo the state’s public education system and replace it with for-profit and charter schools that, as she had put it two decades earlier, shared her mission of ‘defending the Judeo-Christian values that made us what we are, but which are under attack from the liberal elite.’  There was also the campaign she and her husband had waged to weaken Michigan’s unions… Other lessons can be found in the pulp-fiction career of Betsy DeVos’s younger brother, Erik Prince, the former navy SEAL, who started Blackwater—the mammoth security company…. Behind all this is the story of a family dynasty that has been a driving force on the far right—the Michigan Medicis of Donald Trump’s America.”
So… how’s it going for Betsy after nearly 20 months on the job?
Last week a House and Senate conference committee approved a compromise education appropriations bill for FY 2019.  It must still be voted on by both houses of Congress and signed by the President, but Education Week‘s federal education policy reporter Continue reading: Checks and Balances Help Protect Us from Betsy DeVos | janresseger





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