Revisiting the Hullabaloo about the Civil War, Slavery, and Racism in Textbooks and Standards | Cloaking Inequity

Revisiting the Hullabaloo about the Civil War, Slavery, and Racism in Textbooks and Standards | Cloaking Inequity:

Revisiting the Hullabaloo about the Civil War, Slavery, and Racism in Textbooks and Standards

There has been allot of hullabaloo about the Civl War recently. Just yesterday, South Carolina voted to take down the confederate flag. However, there are still a variety of folks in the South that are romanticizing Civil War and want to teach children that it was not about slavery. Back in 2010, there was an adoption of the new social studies standards in Texas. Jenn Gidman, at Newser sums up the reoccurrence of the standards and textbook issue in her piece New Texas Texts: Slavery Was ‘Side Issue’ of Civil War:

About 5 million Texas school children will get their hands on brand-new social studies textbooks when school starts up again, the Houston Chronicle reports—textbooks that USA Today says are “misleading, racially prejudiced, and, at times, flat-out false.” The beef with the new primers: They’re in keeping with state education standards adopted in 2010 that gloss over slavery as the main impetus for the Civil War, instead placing it as a peripheral factor behind “sectionalism” and “states’ rights,” reports the Washington Post. Slavery was merely a “side issue to the Civil War,” one member of the state’s board of education said when the standards—which include Moses and Solomon as prime influencers in the founding of our country—were greenlit in 2010. Per the Post, the new standards “barely address racial segregation,” and the state’s guidelines for history instruction have zip on the Jim Crow laws or the Ku Klux Klan.

Many critics aren’t on board with the new standards, revamped to correct what the board thought was a too-liberal stance on American history. Ex-Education Secretary Rod Paige tried to sway the board in 2010, saying, per the Texas Tribune, “I’m of the view that the history of slavery and civil rights are dominant elements of our history and have shaped who we are today. We may not like our history, but it’s history, and it’s important to us today.” But his pleas seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, because the standards were pushed through with the states’ rights angle. The Washington Post editorial board published its take on the matter Monday, writing that “by distorting history, Texas tells its students a dishonest and damaging story about the United States that prevents children from understanding the country today.”

Well the revisionist textbooks are about to hit classroom in Texas and ELSEWHERE. I discussed in the post Texas: The butt of many jokes that the Lone Star State is the second-largest purchaser of textbooks in the country followed by California. Thus public school districts in many other states follow Texas lead because texts are often mass-produced by the publisher.

Have you studied the representation of racism in standards? The cycle of peer reviewed work is quite long. It can take a year or two or more to originate an idea, conduct the research, write the article, submit to a journal for peer Revisiting the Hullabaloo about the Civil War, Slavery, and Racism in Textbooks and Standards | Cloaking Inequity:

House GOP Betrayed Parents Passing the Student Success Act | Truth in American Education

House GOP Betrayed Parents Passing the Student Success Act | Truth in American Education:

House GOP Betrayed Parents Passing the Student Success Act

The Republican leadership in the US House of Representatives has worked a tremendous disservice on its members and the American children, parents, and taxpayers.  Yesterday, after heavy wrangling by Republican leadership, the House of Representatives passed HR5, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

By failing to eliminate or even curb the federal testing mandates, the bill instead serves the testing industry rather than the people.  Under NCLB, that industry has grown to a $2 billion per year industry. As reported by PR Watch:

School testing corporations have spent at least $20 million on lobbying along with wining and dining—or even hiring—policymakers in pursuit of big revenues from federal and state testing mandates under “No Child Left Behind” measures and the Common Core curriculum, according to new analysis detailed in this Reporters’ Guide by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

Sadly, standardized tests provide very little instructional value, take up an enormous amount of true instructional time, and cost the states enormous amounts of money.

Furthermore, HR5 amounts to an assault of child privacy interests.  It removes protection against socioemotional profiling in the statewide assessments (eliminating NCLB’s prohibition against including assessment items that “evaluate or assess personal or family beliefs and attitudes”). Not only does it fail to protect against psychological data-gathering, it actually dictates the type of Brave New World assessments that operate by compiling and analyzing psychological profiles on children.  Unlike NCLB, HR5 also requires assessment on behavioral/skills-based standards rather than solely academic standards.

HR5 also grants the US Department of Education power that it had appropriated for itself to advance its Race to the Top and NCLB waiver processes. There, the Department used grants and waivers to usher the states into the Common Core.  Those mechanisms were not guaranteed, as Texas never surrendered, but they were highly coercive and effective against just about every other state.  Under HR5, money is tied to the Department’s approval of a state education plan. The state plan must include an accountability structure based upon the adopted standards and assessments to ensure “that all public school students graduate from high school prepared for postsecondary education or the workforce without the need for remediation.”  The Department used this same language to define alignment with the Common Core Standards and required it for approval of NCLB waivers and grants. (HR5 reinforces this alignment criteria by including that House GOP Betrayed Parents Passing the Student Success Act | Truth in American Education:

NEA Members Announce They Will Fight Institutional Racism. Do They Mean It?

NEA Members Announce They Will Fight Institutional Racism. Do They Mean It?:

NEA Members Announce They Will Fight Institutional Racism. Do They Mean It?

At the National Education Association’s recently concluded annual meeting—a gathering where the country’s largest labor union sets its policy priorities for the coming year—delegates passed several historic measures that committed the union to fighting institutional racism.

Perhaps the most notable measure was New Business Item B, which passed unanimously. It opened with language stating that the NEA “acknowledge[s] the existence in our country of institutional racism—the societal patterns and practices that have the net effect of imposing oppressive conditions and denying rights, opportunity and equality based on race.” Allocating $277,000 to the effort, the union pledged to, among other things, focus on providing support for programs that can “end the school to prison pipeline” and expand professional development opportunities that emphasize “cultural competence, diversity, and social justice.” While this funding will last for one year, the measure includes a clause that says some money should go toward “researching implications for NEA’s Strategic Plan and Budget for 2016-2018,” which suggests that the union would consider devoting more resources to anti-racist efforts in the future.

EduColor—a relatively new movement to elevate public school advocates of color on issues of equity and justice—released a statement following the NEA’s conference. While EduColor’s members applauded the steps taken by the union to confront institutional racism, they pointed out that “it should humble all of us to some degree that it took such a long time to do what seemed so obvious to NEA members of color.” With school segregation, inequitable school funding, and shortages of black and brown teachers, EduColor said, “Now, we must go beyond statements and into the substance of our actions.” Making anti-racist work compulsory for their union, they argue, must “sit side-by-side with collective bargaining rights.”

Jose Vilson, the founder of EduColor, writing on his blog, said he hopes the NEA is committed to fighting racism because its members truly believe in social justice, and not because its members are afraid of being labeled as racists if they don’t. Vilson noted that the NEA introduced and passed bills that he “wouldn’t have thought possible even a few months ago”—a testament to the hard and difficult conversations taking place in their union and across the country—but that still, “we have to recognize that many of our colleagues aren’t ready to hear that they may NEA Members Announce They Will Fight Institutional Racism. Do They Mean It?:

EduColor on FACEBOOK:  http://on.fb.me/1eNFLB6

This Week In Education: Thompson: What Explains the Remaining Support For NCLB Testing?

This Week In Education: Thompson: What Explains the Remaining Support For NCLB Testing?:

Thompson: What Explains the Remaining Support For NCLB Testing?

The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton, in Even As Congress Moves to Strip His Power, Arne Duncan Holds His Ground, begins her portrait of the last days of Arne Duncan with an anecdote documenting the sincerity with which he approached his job as US Secretary of Education. She also writes, "In a town where many like to talk, Duncan is regarded as a good listener. 'Arne is a great sounding board for the president,' said Valerie Jarrett, the president’s close friend and adviser."

It's too bad that Duncan listened so well to the Billionaires' Boys Club and ignored the professional judgments of teachers and education researchers. Now, even the Third Way, which seeks education policies consistent with corporate reform has to admit, “The question is not whether we’re going to put handcuffs on Arne Duncan,” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky of Third Way, a centrist think tank. “The question is how many handcuffs.”

One top education expert, Jack Jennings, concludes in regard to Duncan's policies, “The record will show these policies brought about minimum improvement, ... They also did considerable harm.”

And that is the essence of Duncan's competition-driven reform and its test, sort, and punish approach to education. Some students may benefit but only at the cost of inflicting harm on other children. 

Its ironic that the market-driven movement - that still pretends it is a civil rights movement - is going out with such an ignominious whimper. Output-driven reform not only damaged poor children of color by treating them as test scores, it has undermined liberals and Democrats who seek a larger agenda of equity and justice. So, a crucial short term battle is the civil war between progressives, with teachers determined to prevent Hillary Clinton (or anyone else) from repeating Arne Duncan's agenda.

This week's conflict is over the reauthorization of ESEA, and the effort to pull feuding Democrats together to support the Senate's effort to minimize the harm done by NCLB-type testing. The National Journal's Fawn Johnson, in Senate Democrats Scramble to Avoid a Split on Education Bill, reports that one reason why Democrats can't reach an agreement is that "civil-rights groups feel they have an ally in their opposition to the bill because the Obama administration also is questioning the bill."

Language matters and it is important that Johnson (aptly) characterizes the civil rights coalitions' position of ESEA renewal as a "virulent rejection" of the Senate bill. That raises the question of why an unwavering commitment to punitive, bubble-in testing is still thought - by some - to be a civil rights value. Why do these civil rights leaders believe they can promote justice by continuing to attack some of their most loyal, long term allies in the battles for equality and fairness?

It is the leaders of the civil rights groups who promoted NCLB who still support its high stakes testing. Another 38 civil rights groups have joined 175 organizations in opposing high stakes tests.

I wonder how many people have met black or brown parents who don't have a vested interest in the NCLB political agenda but who support its testing because they have seen evidence that it improved their children's schools. Where is the groundswell of parents demanding more punitive measures be imposed on their children and teachers?  

I sure don't see support for No Child Left Untested by rank-in-file civil rights supporters. I see black, This Week In Education: Thompson: What Explains the Remaining Support For NCLB Testing?:

All Aboard the Opt Out Bus - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform

All Aboard the Opt Out Bus - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

All Aboard the Opt Out Bus

The #OptOutBus is currently traveling the country giving away free books to children! Follow their progress at their Facebook page and donate to their FREE Books for Kids fundraiser here.  Join them on Twitter @optoutbus.

Susan and Shawn DuFresne write: We are taking the #OptOutBus on a West Coast Tour from Washington state, through Oregon, California, and possibly Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

Along the way we will share the message ofwww.UnitedOptOut.com and provide FREE BOOKS for kids as we tour.

Your donations will go towards books that will help spread the #OptOut message to deny the corporate reformers their profits. Through civil disobedience we will end the corporate elite’s mission to create a permanent underclass.

We have a small bookshelf on the Opt Out Bus, but hope to keep refilling it and putting new books in the hands of children across America.

You may suggest favorite books and we will do our best to add them to our shelf, but the road is long… And we’ve never met a bookstore we didn’t like.  

Many thanks to Susan and Shawn for spreading the word of Opt Out!!! Happy Travels!!

All Aboard the Opt Out Bus - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

2016 United Opt Out Conference: Philadelphia, PA Feb 26-28, 2016

Transcending Resistance, Igniting Revolution

Children are more than test scores: This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union

Children are more than test scores: This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union:

This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union

Catching up to my dedications and thanks you today from Delaware for my Walking to DC blog.

Day 15 on July 1, 2015 I dedicated 10 miles to my heroes the Newark Students Union > http://newarkstudentsunion.tumblr.com/about <

I first met members of the Newark Student Union last July at the the BAT March on Washington in DC. They were amazing back then, and they told me you haven’t seen anything yet walking Man. Far too often the Newark Students Union is mistakenly considered by Governor Christie, education policy makers, and many other political leaders as kids acting out.
But those of us who have taken the time to know them, see them for what they really are. The Newark Students Union is a remarkable on the ground organization, in your face, got the research, defenders of Newark's communities, children, parents, teachers and their public schools. They have earned the respect of activists all across the nation.  Earning that respect by gathering the facts, demanding justice and equity in our public schools, followed by intense dramatic on the ground based actions.  Such as speaking up at every board of education meeting, chaining themselves to the Newark Superintendent offices, occupying the superintendents office, by organizing 2000 of their fellow students to walk out of their schools to protest State control of the Newark Public schools.

I had the pleasure of meeting them once again personally at New Jersey TV news Community room meeting with save all schools in New Jersey, Communities United, Dr. Monica Taylor Montclair State University, Workers Caucus, and East Side high school teachers on to 30^th. I found myself amazed, inspired, empowered, and lifted up my their words and presents at that meeting.  Everyone present in that room felt the deepest respect for these incredible activists fighting for justice in the Newark public schools.          

My thinking is that these young activists are not just role models for young activists in Newark, but for activists of all ages all across the nation. They have tempered their actions with in in-depth  research on the issues, and have time and time again reached out to leadership of the north Public schools, the governor’s office, and every of the stakeholder involved in the Newark Public schools Children are more than test scores: This 10 miles is for our young giants the Newark Students Union:

Superintendents and Legislators - Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming! - Wait What?

Superintendents and Legislators - Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming! - Wait What?:

Superintendents and Legislators – Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming!

An open letter to Superintendents and Legislators 7/10/2015;

For more than a year and a half public education advocates in Connecticut have been delivering the message that the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test is unfair, inappropriate, discriminatory and fundamentally flawed.  The Common Core SBAC test is DESIGNED to fail the vast majority of public school students.  It is a product of the education reform industry who are dead-set on convincing policy makers and the public that our nation’s public education system is broken, that our public school teachers are bad and that the answer is more standardized testing and diverting scarce public funds to charter schools and other privatization efforts.

Rather then fight back, far to many politicians and school administrators climbed on board the education reform initiatives that undermining public education today.

In Connecticut, the SBAC disaster was slowed by a handful of  dedicated and committed public school superintendents who recognized that parents had the fundamental and inalienable right to opt their children out of the destructive SBAC test, but the majority of local education leaders (and elected officials) kowtowed to the Malloy administration and engaged in an immoral and unethical effort to mislead parents into believing that schools had “do degrees of freedom” on the SBAC testing issue.

We all know that defense was nothing short of an outright lie.

Now the results of the 2015 SBAC tests are coming in and students, parents, teachers and the public will finally see for themselves just how unfair and discriminatory the SBAC testing scam really is.

The Common Core testing is unfair to all public schools students, but it is particularly damaging to students who come from poorer families, those that have English language challenges and those who require special education services.

As the following Wait, What? blog post reports, Washington State, another SBAC testing ground, has already released their early results and 7 in 10 high school juniors have been deemed failures according to the SBAC math test.

Although the Connecticut State Department of Education continues to claim that the SBAC results are not yet available, the news from other SBAC states is that preliminary information has been handed over to the states and, as the corporate education reform industry always intended, the vast majority of public school students have been deemed failures.

So a warning to Connecticut’s superintendents and other school administrators.  Whether you have been given the results or are still waiting for them to be handed over, beware of the Tsunami that is coming…

We all know that while the state has a significant achievement gap due to poverty, language barriers and unmet special education needs, our public schools are not broken and our children and teachers are not failures.

Strategies exist to close the achievement gap, but the State of Connecticut and its leaders have simply refused to address the core issues that would improve academic achievement in any meaningful way.

And Connecticut’s parents will not forget that Superintendents and Legislators - Beware the SBAC Tsunami that is coming! - Wait What?:

Jersey Jazzman: Newark: Chris Cerf's Victory Lap

Jersey Jazzman: Newark: Chris Cerf's Victory Lap:

Newark: Chris Cerf's Victory Lap

And so Chris Cerf, the architect of the transformation of Newark into a "portfolio" school district, is now officially in charge. I have to say I was a little surprised Cerf's confirmation was only one vote away from deadlock; then again, given his close ties to embattled former State Superintendent Cami Anderson, only the most ardent supporters of Cerf wouldn't have their doubts about his appointment.

I'll say it again: Chris Cerf is not qualified to run a school district. He holds no standard certifications in school administration nor in teaching; if he applied for a suburban superintendent job, he wouldn't get past the first round.

I never thought he was a good choice to be the Education Commissioner, given his lack of experience as an educator. But that job has a quasi-judicial component, and Cerf is a lawyer (who, impressively, clerked at the Supreme Court), so his appointment to the NJDOE was at least somewhat defensible.

But not here. Newark, like all school districts, needs an experienced, well-trained school leader with a track record of success. Frankly, Cerf's record is one of mediocrity at best and failure at worst. His tenure at Edison Learning was an unmitigated disaster. His stint at the NYCDOE under Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein is regarded by parent advocates as a train wreck. I judge his record as NJ Education Commissioner to be one full of poor decisions, leading to the alienation of teachers, parents, students, and other stakeholders.

And Amplify? Well...

But let's focus on the future. Chris Cerf is, in the words of current Education Commissioner David Hespe, the man whose charge is to be the last State Superintendent of Newark. His mission, handed down from both Governor Christie and Mayor Baraka, is clear: bring the district back to local control. Will he?

My best guess now is that he will -- because this is Chris Cerf's last stand. Let's be brutally honest: if he doesn't get this right, he really doesn't have anything left. His resume lacks substantive accomplishments, in either the public or private sectors. He's going to have to have something to point to if he ever wants to work again in this field. Getting Newark to - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/07/newark-chris-cerfs-victory-lap.html#sthash.W5LESH9K.dpuf

The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder | janresseger

The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder | janresseger:

The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder

In a book on expanding opportunity in higher education, Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education, Mike Rose describes the GED exam and the students in adult education programs who have come back to school to try to improve their education and their credentials: “I am struck by the diversity of backgrounds and skills in this single room. People with postsecondary degrees from another country and a man who has barely been inside a schoolhouse.  People in their early twenties, a lifetime in front of them, and a woman with grandchildren, who comes to school to keep her mind alert.  People navigating cultures and languages.  People starting over.” (p. 39)

Rose published Back to School in 2012, right after for-profit Pearson, the mega-publisher of textbooks, standardized tests, and test-related curricula, joined with the American Council on Education to take over the GED program but before January of 2014, when a new GED test—much harder, much more expensive, and administered on-line—was launched.  The GED has for decades been the way so many people without a high school diploma have been able to climb back on the path to employment or further education.

Pearson’s partner in the new GED Testing Service, the American Council on Education (ACE) is an organization of college presidents, and it is presumably with ACE’s encouragement that the new, revised GED exam emphasizes college readiness despite that many who aspire to pass the GED seek job placement or technical education.  The new GED is based on the new Common Core standards, which emphasize analysis, higher-order thinking, and more advanced math.  This blog described the new GED and even a sample of one of the impossible-seeming questions in a post last January.  That post linked to an in-depth report about a collapse across the United States in the rate of passage of the GED, a sudden drop in scores that accompanied the re-design of the test.  Passage in 2014 dropped by 90 percent:  “The numbers are shocking: In the United States, according to the GED Testing Service, 401,388 people earned a GED in 2012, and about 540,000 in 2013. This year… only about 55,000 have passed nationally. That is a 90-percent drop off from last year.”

The problems have continued.  Here is a July 2015 report from the Columbus Dispatch: “GED Testing Service, a for-profit partnership that has the monopoly on the high-school equivalency degree in Ohio, is on pace to award about 3,700 GED certificates this year, according to the Ohio Department of Education.  That is less than a quarter of the 16,500 Ohioans on average who got GEDs each year between 2000 and 2013.  As bad as that 2015 number is, it’s up substantially from 2014, when only 2,164 Ohioans passed the test, down from more than 15,000 the previous year.  That drop coincided with GED Testing Service’s tripling the price of the test to $120, charging for practice tests for the first time, and selling practice materials on its website.”

Last month, Kentucky Public Radio reported a similar drop in the passage rate: “The number of Kentuckians passing the General Educational Development test, or GED, has dropped by 85 percent in the last two years, according to the state’s adult education program.  During the The New GED: Making A Second Chance So Much Harder | janresseger:

Louisiana Educator: Your Guide to BESE Elections

Louisiana Educator: Your Guide to BESE Elections:

Your Guide to BESE Elections

Why the John White Controlled BESE is Wrong for Louisiana

All elected seats for BESE will be up for election in the October 24, 2015 primary election. There are 8 elected members on BESE that run in districts similar to the old Louisiana Congressional Districts. Five of the present elected members have been closely aligned with State Superintendent John White and have consistently voted for policies that have done great damage to our public education system and to the status and wellbeing of our professional educators. It is my hope that these individuals will be defeated and replaced by persons who believe in public education governed by local voters and our elected local school boards. We need candidates who respect professional educators and who value their professional opinion on education matters. 

There are three elected members of BESE that have stood for local control, and that have opposed policies that are harmful to public education who should be reelected. These very positive, pro-public education members of BESE are Dr Lottie Beeberepresenting the 3^rd BESE district,  Mary Harris representing the 4^th BESE district, and Carolyn Hill representing the 8^th BESE district. I am asking my readers who live and vote in these three districts to please vote for and assist these good BESE members in getting reelected.

The flawed policies of the John White majority on BESE

·      Privatization of public schools: The John White controlled faction of BESE has consistently supported the approval of privately managed charters schools that use MFP funding over the objection of our local school boards. These charter managers are not responsible to the voters in each local district and can pocket a large percentage of our tax dollars without voter approval and at the same time deliver a substandard education to Louisiana children. Some takeover school managers have been allowed to choose their own governing agency and are not being returned to the local school boards as the original law intended.  This is an abuse of public trust.

·      Substandard accountability for Charter and Voucher schools:The John White controlled faction of BESE allows some voucher and charter schools to operate without proper professional staff and facilities. This shortchanges the students attending these schools financed by our tax dollars. Some of these privately managed schools use mandatory entrance interviews to cull out hard to educate students and serve fewer handicapped students, (This fact has been documented by a lawsuit against the Recovery District and the LDOE) Many charter schools dump discipline problems and low performers back to the real public schools, and counsel out students that would lower their school performance scores.

·      Unfair VAM Evaluations of Teachers: The John White controlled faction on BESE has approved BESE polices that require 10% of all VAM rated teachers must be found to be ineffective each year even if overall student performance on state standards improves. This inherently unfair and error plagued process for teacher evaluation that is driving away good teachers will not be changed as long as White controls the majority on BESE.

·       Damage to the Teacher Retirement System: Present BESE policy allows charter schools and voucher schools to opt out of the teacher retirement system while still retaining the full MFP Louisiana Educator: Your Guide to BESE Elections:

FLIP THE 
LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION 
( BESE)

Click Here to Follow Flip BESE on Facebook 

Big Education Ape: FLIP THE LOUISIANA BOARD OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ( BESE) http://bit.ly/1JKBCtL #flipbese

As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see - The Hechinger Report

As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see - The Hechinger Report:

As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see

As Congress considers bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the most heated debate has been over how to hold schools accountable for student performance, and who should decide.

But while these subjects are dominating the debate, a less-heralded provision in the 50-year-old law that has provided federal education support could also have a significant effect on schooling.

It’s no surprise that the flash point in this year’s rewrite of ESEA should be on accountability. The previous version of the law, the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, for the first time set national rules for accountability. States were required to test every student in grades 3 through 8, and once in high school, in reading and mathematics each year. Schools that failed to show “adequate yearly progress” in test scores — for all students and for each subgroup of students — were subject to an escalating set of sanctions.

The bills Congress is now considering would roll back that system substantially. Both the bill passed by the House on Wednesday and the bill the Senate is considering would continue the requirement for testing in each grade, but they would leave to states the responsibility for determining how to hold schools accountable for the results. This approach matches the Republican desire to reduce the federal role in education.

Related: The graduation rates for every school district, in one map

But to Democrats and their allies in the civil rights community (including my organization, the Alliance for Excellent Education), the bills go too far. They are arguing for amendments to require states to intervene in schools with low graduation rates and those that fail to bring up the performance of subgroups. These amendments would ensure that low-performing students and schools receive the support they need.

The outcome of the debate will have a profound effect on schooling — after all, No Child Left Behind left a major imprint on education. And it will set the terms for the federal role in education for years to come.

But another provision in the Senate bill, one that has received almost no attention, could also have a significant effect on schools. That provision would create a pilot program to allow up to seven states to develop and implement innovative assessment systems. If it becomes law, this provision could open the door to dramatic new ways of measuring student learning. And because of the strong effect of assessment on instruction, this provision could have a substantial impact on teaching and learning.

Specifically, the provision would allow states to use “competency-based assessments, instructionally embedded assessments, interim assessments, cumulative year-end assessments, or performance-As federal ed rewrite gains traction in Congress, here are some key changes schools may see - The Hechinger Report:

Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private? - Living in Dialogue

Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private? - Living in Dialogue:

Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private?

by Stephen Stollmack, Ph.D.

My life now seems to be on Fast-Track – so much more to learn about what’s going on in the world each day and more and more suspicion that the government has been hiding important things from us for years. Now that I am back to living alone, no longer having the responsibility of supporting a family, I am shocked at what I see. My sense of shame — for failing to follow and speak out against this trend towards less transparency and rampant secrecy – is what has motivated me to write this article.

President Obama’s 2008 primary fight against Hillary coincided with my coming out of the fog of married life and 2-3 years of drug abuse that dulled the pain and disappointment of separation and divorce. I began to recover my sense of responsibility to myself and the world by reading President Obama’s books and trying to figure out who this man was, while I struggled to understand his oppressive and inhuman education ‘reform’ policies with their emphasis on accountability, standardization and privatization. I read about and watched him in public appearances with his family and concluded that, while he seemed exceptionally smart and competent, he was also a well-meaning person.

I continued to support him, in the face of accusations that he was continuing his predecessor’s policies and wars. I have been profoundly disappointed about that and I am also disturbed at his failure to keep his promise to maintain a ‘transparent’ administration (among other things). I can see how he could have underestimated how difficult this would be given the fact that the functionality of all bureaucracies rests on the efficiency with which they withhold information from the public as well as from lower levels of management. Having worked for and contractually consulted to a number of federal agencies for 30-years, I knew first hand that information — what each bureaucrat knows about the ‘higher-up’s marching orders — determines his/her ability to survive and grow in his/her job.

I watched the President sign the TPA — a law that will assure passage of TPP, a trade agreement that will have profound and irreversible impacts on today’s and future generations with barely a squeak from the “free press.”

So, does TPA becoming law essentially mean TPP is a done deal? This internet article suggests not. It makes the point that Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) does not prevent Congress from debating TPP provisions but it limits such debates and public comments to within 90-days of seeing it for the first time. At or before the 90-day limit, Congress MUST give the bill a straight up-or-down vote.

TPA was first codified into law by the Trade Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-618) to give the president more leeway to conduct negotiations, while assuring other participants that their negotiations could be to no avail if the US Congress decides to not ratify the agreement.

The main objections to TPA (and fears about TPP) have stemmed from the fact that past trade Education and the Export of Jobs: Will All that is Public Become Private? - Living in Dialogue:

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...:

Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va). - Reuters

The Senate has passed an amendment to new proposed federal legislation, which would steer hundreds of millions of dollars intended for impoverished school districts and classrooms, into the pockets of Wall Street consultants. The legislation, authored by Sen. Mark Warner(D-VA) was tucked into the Senate version of a massive K-12 education funding bill currently up for congressional reauthorization.

Among the chief proponents of the congressional bill was the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington, D.C., think tank that is closely associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

Bank of America, which made fees off of school district swap deals made in Chicago and Denver, has donated at least $50,000 to the Center for American Progress. Other major donors to the Center for American Progress include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given at least $500,000, and the Walton Family Foundation (of the Walmart fortune), which has also given at least $500,000 to the think tank. Both the Walton and Gates foundations have partnered with the Boston Consulting Group.

David Sirota at IBT is hot on the trail. He writes;

As budget-strapped Chicago follows a mass school closure with a new plan to layoff more than 1,400 teachers, one set of transactions sticks out: the city’s moves to refinance $1 billion in debt through complex financial instruments called swaps. The deals were spearheaded over the last few years by financial advisory firms brought in by the city to help find money saving efficiencies. Instead of saving money, though, the Windy City took a big hit: The school system has lost more than Schooling in the Ownership Society: Wall St. public school strategy: Loot, pillage, burn...: