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Sunday, November 17, 2019

enrique baloyra: What is #TooFarLeft? - YouTube

What is #TooFarLeft? - YouTube

What is #TooFarLeft?




enrique baloyra

I get it when wingnuts like Tucker Carlson or Anne Coulter cry about the “radical left.” It’s their job. They get paid $millions to do it.
But when the man who swept into office on big hopes of transformational change tell an audience, “Persuadable independents or even moderate Republicans [whatever that is] are not driven by the same views that are reflected on certain left leaning Twitter feeds, or the activist wing of our party,” what is going on?
I hate to break it to you, but anyone who after 70,000 brown children have been put in cages, tens of millions of Americans are losing their healthcare, veterans get deported, and the president openly admits he tried to extort a foreign power to meddle in our elections and still considers herself a Republican isn’t going to be persuaded by a little hope and some spare change.
You know that talking point that Medicare-For-All is unrealistic? Even the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation — founded by the Koch brothers —estimates it will actually cost three $trillion less than our current system over there next ten years.
Not to mention ensuring the most vulnerable members of our society is the right thing to do.
“White nationalism is allowed to be mainstreamed but not progressivism. That's why I say I don't trust anyone who has more to say about leftist twitter than racism. People are dying.”
https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/statu...
I don’t hear establishment Republicans complain their party is
#TooFarRight when over 900 leaked emails confirm White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller is a white supremacist.
It’s not that we’re not grateful for everything he did. Clearly, he the most extraordinary individual to occupy the White House in generations.
But things have changed since Mr. Obama was last won an election in 2012. The worst case scenarios climate scientists warned us about have become the best case. The wealth gap has become a chasm, where billionaires have fleets of $40 million yachts and poor kids are publicly shamed when they can’t afford school lunch.
And regular people are genuinely outraged that the top corporations pay nothing in taxes.
And progressive ideas don’t just make economic sense, they’re also politically viable.
Over a hundred million otherwise eligible Americans aren’t voting because they feel neither party is speaking to them. You think a federal jobs package might get their attention? College loan forgiveness? Medicare For All?
Be bold. Go big. Or get out of the way.







What is #TooFarLeft? - YouTube

In DeVos-Trump Era of Alternative Facts, Belief in Flat Earth Grows | Diane Ravitch's blog

In DeVos-Trump Era of Alternative Facts, Belief in Flat Earth Grows | Diane Ravitch's blog

In DeVos-Trump Era of Alternative Facts, Belief in Flat Earth Grows

If all facts are subjective and dependent on religious and personal views, there is no such thing as fact, truth, objectivity or science.
Ohio’s dumb Republican-controlled legislature isn’t on the verge of passing a law that puts religious belief and science on the same plane.
So it is not surprising that believers in a Flat Earth are on the rise., according to CNN.They can’t find proof that the world is round, so they don’t believe it, even though you can see the curve of the earth’s surface from an airplane window at 35,000 feet, even though astronauts and satellites have taken pictures from outer space of the earth as a sphere.
Faked photos, say the Flat Earthers.
Is stupidity contagious?
Or does it flow from the top?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Parents Surrender: Is That Juneau's Message?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Parents Surrender: Is That Juneau's Message?

Parents Surrender: Is That Juneau's Message?

In the past, many superintendents have used the term "laser-focused" but Superintendent Denise Juneau is about the only one who really walks the talk on that term.

But I see signs that there seems to be a parallel, less articulated agenda with the Superintendent and the Strategic Plan.  Let's examine the evidence.
This is what she says at the Strategic Plan webpage:


Seattle Excellence, is guided by four priorities and is laser-focused on supporting students of color who are furthest away from educational justice, beginning with African American boys and young men. This work is not about changing students. It is about changing broken systems and undoing legacies of racism in public education. By actively addressing racism in our educational system, and ensuring students furthest from educational justice thrive, conditions in Seattle Public Schools will improve for all. 

During the 2019-20 school year, we are focused on three initiatives: Seattle Super Readers, making sure all students read well by 3rd grade; safe and welcoming schools; and culturally responsive professional practice and instruction. 
The main "Theory of Action" posited is this (bold mine):

Targeted Universalism holds that targeted and differentiated efforts are required to meet the needs of specific student populations, so every student meets the universal goal. By focusing on students of color who are furthest from educational CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Parents Surrender: Is That Juneau's Message?

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)


Soup Party Day Edition 

My nephew and his wife are hosting a big soup party today, which I'm pretty sure is a first for me. Kids these days. In the meantime, here an assortment of reading material from the week. Remember-- share the stuff that really speaks to you. That's how bloggers become rich and famous- okay, well, not actually. But it is how media outlets find out they should do education coverage, and it's how people hear about the things that you hear about.

LA Schools Graded F for 4+ Years Mostly Serve Low-Income Students

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider unravels how the Louisiana school grading system tells us what we already knew-- the measuring system favors schools with white, well-off students.

Betsy DeVos Might Outlast Them All

She's not beloved, but she's probably not going anywhere, either. Rebecca Klein at HuffPost explains why.

Khan Academy: A World Class Education For No One 

Alex Lochoff bends over backwards to start by saying that he's not saying that Khan Academy is terrible. Then he does a pretty good job of explaining why Khan Academy is terrible.

What's Wrong With Teacher Raises  

Adam Laats takes a look at what's wrong with taking Hanushek's Grand Bargain of greater pay for tighter accountability.

Why I Won't Be Voting For Bloomberg 

Jan Resseger has a great rundown of Bloomberg's NYC education history, and why it disqualifies him.

Ohio Catholic School Announces Mandatory Random Drug Testing For All Students

Attendance at the school, says the letter sent to parents, is a privilege, not a right.

The Wrong "Scientific" For Education

Paul Thomas looks at some of the recent uses of the S word and explains why they fail to impress.

Should A Cooperating Teacher Be A Big Fat Jerk?

Okay, I rewrote Nancy Flanagan's headline, but the idea is the same. On the topic of making life harder for student teachers.




CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)




CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION



FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

So previously there was the Best and the Brightest program, which awarded teacher bonuses based on student test scores and the teacher's own SAT scores. From high school. It had a variety of problems (above and beyond the basic boneheadedness of the idea) and the new governor, Ron DeSantis found it "confusing." Yes, you can still buy swampland in Florida This newer, betterer plan comes along with
Betsy DeVos Accuses FBI Of Ignorance, Blames Public Education (And More)

Never let it be said that Betsy DeVos won't go out of her way to blame US public education for all the ills of the country, real or imagined. In retrospect, it seems like an oversight that she hadn't had a "Kids These Days" moment, but now that omission has been corrected. The young FBI agents are ignorant, and public education is to blame. That's been the headline from this speech , but there's s

NOV 15

OH: Outlawing Facts

The Ohio House of Representatives is ready to help students take a bold step forward into the post-fact world. Wednesday they passed (and when I say "they," I mean the s olid vote-as-a-bloc GOP ) HB 164 . It's called the "Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019" and it sets out to accomplish a few things: It removes the limits on exercising expression of student religious beliefs. The old, st

NOV 13

NAEP Board Gets DeVosian Additions

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos just announced six new appointees (and one returnee) to the National Assessment Governing Board. These are the folks that oversee the National Assessment of Educational Progress aka NAEP aka the nation's report card aka that big standardized test that everyone tries to use to prove a point every year . So who did we get? Returnee Alberto Carvalho, plus Frank Edelblu
Pearson In Your Pants

Pearson, the edu-product giant that hopes to eat the world, just announced a new product. It's part of the overall Pearson vision-- and nobody does large-scale vision like Pearson. They see everything happening in a "digital ocean. " They have ideas about an "assessment renaissance" so huge that it took me five posts to write about it ( here's the shorter version ). And just this summer, they ann
FTC Cracks Down On Edu-Influencers

One of the small tricks that education marketers have developed is to enlist teachers as brand ambassadors. Teachers are, after all, the voices most often trusted by other teachers, so it's got to be a real boost if you can get Mrs. Teachwell to tout your product on Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest. And the beauty of it is that Mrs. Teachwell may come cheap-- some free product, box of pens, maybe

NOV 10

ICYMI: Happy Birthday, Mom Edition (11/10)

Today is my mother's birthday, so there will be cake involved later. She's a pretty swell lady, so it's a day worthy of cake. Also, if you look to the right, you'll see that I've revamped the blog list and added a section of websites of interest that aren't necessarily blogs. So you can poke through that if you like. In the meantime, here's some reading from last week. What Betsy DeVos Got Wrong A

NOV 09

Digital Curriculum And Lesson Management Is A Crock

Ed Tech overpromises in so many areas, but one the great lies is that implementing This Year's Great New Program is going to save teachers just oodles of time. It never does. It particularly never does when it comes to the kind of software leviathan's used to manage curriculum and lesson plans. The sheer volume of data entry for these programs (enter the curriculum, unit plans, lesson plans, all c

NOV 08

FL: Even The State Thinks Florida Virtual School Needs To Shape Up

Virtual charter schools have a lousy track record, so bad that even bricks-and-mortar charter advocates have called for them to shape the hell up. Meanwhile, Florida has implemented every reformy method of undercutting public schools that could be imagined. So it's entirely predictable that Florida would have its own cyberschool, and that it would be a mess. But a lucrative one, as under previous

NOV 07

Hanushek Offers Teachers A Grand Bargain

If there is anything we don't lack in the education sphere, it's economists who know all about how to make education work real betterer. Two faves are Raj Chetty and Eric Hanushek, who have both pushed some super-great ideas. You probably remember the one about how the right first grade teacher can mean you'll make umpty-zillion more dollars in your lifetime , a piece of foolery that might be call

NOV 06



FL: How The State Supports Discrimination By Charters

A Florida news station has heard from the state's department of education exactly how charter schools can discriminate against students with special needs. Part of the charter sales pitch has always been a claim that charters 
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