Back to School 2016 - Part 2

Back to School 2016 - Part 2

Pleas e join Internet radio host Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. for part 2 of our special Back To School 2016 War Report.


Dr. Miller will be taking a close look at what our college students are facing in 2016. They have been told that college and career is their ultimate goal, but they find themselves facing a life time of debt. Is college the modern-day indentured servitude?


Dr. Miller will also be introducing a series on digital learning and how it is being used to destroy public education, our teachers, and authentic teaching and learning. Digital learning aka Computer Based Education is the end game for the educrats. It will lead to the privatization of all students now and in the future.


Please tune in and call in and learn and be an agent of disruption in the Machievellian agenda.

Knowledge is power !

RESISTANCE MATTERS
RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE
RESISTANCE IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF EXPRESSION OF DEMOCRACY
RESISTANCE IS SURVIVAL


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The official website for  The War Report on Public Education | Facebook

Two Americas: Racial inequality has persisted since '60s - NonDoc

Two Americas: Racial inequality has persisted since '60s - NonDoc:

Two Americas: Racial inequality has persisted since '60s 

Gold medalist Tommie Smith (podium), silver medalist Peter Norman (left) and bronze medalist John Carlos (rear) infamously protested racial inequality during a ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. (WikiCommons)

Many years after the protests of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, we still regularly see instances of racism and prejudice alive in America.

The horrific images and stories of young African-American males dying from mistreatment within the justice system are all over newspapers, television and the internet. Social media has increased the masses’ ability to view and analyze these events within their networks of friends and family, and it has brought the conversation of race in America back to the forefront of social awareness.

Likewise, a key difference between now and the 1960s is that most anyone can use social media as a platform to discuss racial issues, and a wide diversity of people can comment on those issues.

Prominent athletes are also using their platforms to make statements and protests about America’s systems of racial inequality. At the 2016 ESPYs, Lebron James and friends emphasized that more needs to be done for social equality. More recently, Colin Kaepernick has protested by refusing to stand for the national anthem. Athletes using their positions in the public eye to draw attention to social injustice is not unprecedented. Furthermore, the dissent hurled at athletes about their activism is not new, either.

How far have we really come?

Let’s flash back to the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City where American athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith — with support from Australian Peter Norman — staged a silent protest by raising their fists in the air.

Much like Kaepernick, Carlos, Smith and Norman received a multitude of dissent. Booing and racial slurs were hurled at them while on the podium. After the silent protest, both Americans were forced to leave the Olympic village and kicked out of the Olympics. The two were accused of making a sort of Nazi salute and even called an embarrassment to the country. Norman, meanwhile, was held off the next Australian Olympic team, and he wasn’t even invited to participate in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Kaepernick hasn’t lost his job like Smith and Carlos did, but unconfirmed rumors about him converting to Islam have been used to question Kaepernick’s patriotism and to suggest that his religious beliefs would alter his feelings toward the United States. In protesting, the quarterback has become a lightning rod much like the sprinters generations earlier.

Two events nearly 50 years apart, and yet they are greeted with similar hostility. Could it be that racial equality hasn’t progressed much since the 1960s?

Racial inequality means two Americas

With that being the question, the people of the United States seem conflicted about the Two Americas: Racial inequality has persisted since '60s - NonDoc:

California Students and Teachers Win Major Ethnic Studies Fight | News | teleSUR English

California Students and Teachers Win Major Ethnic Studies Fight | News | teleSUR English:

California Students and Teachers Win Major Ethnic Studies Fight

The new bill marks a huge achievement for educators across the country fighting for the inclusion of Latino, Black, Native and Asian communities.

The state of California approved on Thursday an Ethnic Studies Bill that mandates the creation of an ethnic studies course in every school, and local educators expect it to expand nationwide, a major victory for activists and a blow to right-wing racists.

OPINION:
Enforced Assimilation: 'English Only' Versus 'Dirty Spanish'

The courses will focus on the historic contributions and struggles of Latinos, Blacks and Asians, as well as other minorities in the U.S., as well as literature, history and social justice​. Topic could include everything from social movements to labor struggles involving the state's historic reliance on agricultural laborers drawn from Asia and Mexico, the racist past of large California communities, ethnic portrayals in Hollywood films and Native American literature.

In California, some of the key figures likely to be studied under the new curriculum could include labor organizers such as Luisa Morena, Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, and others, and their collective struggle for economic equality for oppressed groups within the U.S.​

Other subjects could include the genocide of Indigenous nations such as the Chumash and Shasta tribes, Los Angeles' long-forgotten 1871 massacre of 17-20 Chinese immigrants by a white mob, segregation in large cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, the internment of Japanese-Americans in such infamous concentration camps as Manzanar, the simmering tensions in police-community relations that led to the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and the 1992 L.A. Riots, the Ku Klux Klan's historic reign in Anaheim, the 1970 Chicano Moratorium anti-war march, student-led walkouts against anti-immigrant legislation in 1994, and myriad other watershed moments in the state's highly-racialized history.

Various books on the tumultuous history of oppressed nationalities in the U.S. could land on students' desks under the new program | Photo: teleSUR

Sean Arce, former head of the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, Arizona, said that to date the study of minorities' contributions has been lacking in U.S. schools.

Arce moved to California after speaking out against Arizona's law banning Mexican-American studies at schools passed in 2010. Prior to leaving Arizona, Arce took part in forums and discussions across the California, inspiring students and educators to organize and launch a similar struggle.

“For too long schools have marginalized these communities,” Arce told teleSUR. “Schools served as reproduction sites of inequalities.”

The PBS documentary "Precious Knowledge" (2012) featured a similar student-led fight for ethnic representation in Arizona's schools.

Grassroots formations such as the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition in Los Angeles and Union del Barrio, a grassroots Mexican-Chicano socialist organization, have been in constant battle with education authorities, demanding they offer California Students and Teachers Win Major Ethnic Studies Fight | News | teleSUR English:

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » The price black students pay…

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » The price black students pay…:

The price black students pay…

Right before school started, edublogger Jersey Jazzman, posted a video of a lesson being taught from Success Academy meant to be used for teacher training.

The response from his readers was scathing, as it involved a couple of typical methods of teaching favored by no-excuses charters (but loathed by child-centered educators). The video is no longer public (SURPRISE!) so you can’t see it, but I’m going to talk about something that struck me as I was watching it.

The students participated, but I noticed a lot of them stuttering over their words. The teacher is constantly talking over and interrupting them when they are incorrect. The young white teachers are in a class full of black students. A really excellent example of a “Becky”moment.

I wanted to share a story that it reminded me of when I first saw it, but before that, some background…
My husband is black and grew up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s. His parents spoke AAVE/Black English/Ebonics reflecting their Southern background. My husband speaks standard English, and always has, but he once shared a story of another boy in his neighborhood, who struggled Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » The price black students pay…:

The Purpose of Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

The Purpose of Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People:

The Purpose of Education

In their annual poll of the public’s attitude toward public education, what prompted the well-respected PDK (Phi Delta Kappa) association’s new question about the purpose of education?

And how is it the question asks about the main goal of a public school education while the website, and discussion that followed, shifts the conversation to the purpose of education?

Just semantics? Maybe. But, did you know that one definition of semantics is “a deliberate distortion or twisting of meaning, as in advertising, propaganda, etc.”?

Purpose is the reason for which something is done.

Goal is an aim or desired result.

And because struggles in the education reform war continually demonstrate that words are determining outcomes of our battles, we should pay close attention. Words have become the weapon of choice against an unsuspecting public.

The words of reform sold us a perceived need to reform a whole system. The realityis that we needed to only reform the schools in our country that needed re-forming — high-poverty, low-performing schools. We had already identified them before the 1980’s.

The truth? Test-based accountability methods changed nothing. And school choice only reshuffled the deck.

But let’s look at the question of the hour…

….and look at what one long-time. …long, long time… education-and-the-economy expert, The Purpose of Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People:

Diane Ravitch Recommends: MY TWO CENTS – My thoughts on public education and other things

MY TWO CENTS – My thoughts on public education and other things:

MY TWO CENTS – My thoughts on public education and other things

Mary Holden: A Teacher Begins Her Blog | Diane Ravitch's blog - http://wp.me/p2odLa-ffF 

I had planned to start this blog in April of 2015. Having recently attended the 2nd annual Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Chicago, I was really motivated to start writing. But… you know… the daily things that occur regularly in life just kept happening, darn it! and I never found time to actually do it. I may have also been a bit nervous about actually hitting the Publish button. Now that I’ve quit teaching – you can read all about it here, here, here, and here! – I have some time to think.

So now, I present my original first blog post. At the time, my 14th year in the classroom as a high school English teacher was winding down. Here it is:

APRIL 27, 2015

I have been tossing around the idea of blogging for quite some time now. There are several reasons why I haven’t started this blog earlier. One reason is time. Or lack of time, to be exact. But when I say that out loud, it really just sounds like a lame excuse. Another reason is anxiety. I’m a little nervous about putting my thoughts onto paper (or screen) for all the world to see. Even if only three people end up reading this, it’s still anxiety-inducing. The fear of being judged isn’t so easy to shake off, it turns out. But I’m over 40 now, so I’m trying not to give a damn. The final reason I haven’t blogged until now is that up until this weekend, I didn’t really think I had anything original to say.

I mean, I’m just a teacher. I’m just one of thousands of teachers who do their best and work hard to reach their students. But I’m fed up and tired of wanting to bang my head against the wall every time I read another article about the current state of public education.

A few years ago, I started getting upset about what was happening in education. I started teaching in 1998, so I’ve see the pendulum swing from no standards to state standards to Common Core standards and the testing frenzy we have now. And around 2008, I was starting to get frustrated. Maybe it began before that, but by 2011 I was downright angry. And that’s when I started researching educational issues online and realized there were many others who were feeling the exact same way.

Only I didn’t personally know many of those teachers. I seemed to be the only one I knew who was angry and aware of what was happening in education on a national level. I found like-minded people online, in the Badass Teachers Association (BATs) on Facebook and in the comments section of Diane Ravitch’sblog. But where I worked, I wasn’t encountering many who felt the same way I did at that time.

Even now, there are still so many teachers around me who have no idea of the struggle we are engaged in for the future of public education. They are content to close their classroom doors and shut it all out. Maybe they know but don’t want to face it. Maybe they are quietly seeking a way out of the profession so they won’t have to get involved or be here when it really gets bad. Or maybe they know but don’t know what to do. Many don’t speak out because of fear, and still others just have no idea what is happening outside of their own school or district. But MY TWO CENTS – My thoughts on public education and other things:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: John King's Evidence-Based Revisionist History

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

John King's Evidence-Based Revisionist History

30by Peter Greene / 2h

The US Department of Education and Secretary of Education John King are out with a one-two punch of silly bureaucratic blather and revisionist history. Friday's PR release carries the pithy title " U.S. Department of Education Releases New Guidance on Using Evidence to Strengthen Education Investments During Back to School Bus Tour " and it provides a handy link to Non-Regulatory Guidanc

YESTERDAY

USED: How Teachers Can Be Heard

15by Peter Greene / 15h

Maddie Fennell is a Teacher of the Year from Nebraska who hooked up as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the US Department of Education, and she wrote what seems like a perfectly innocuous piece at Ed Week called " Hello from the Other Side " listing a few key lessons from her time there. Some of the insights are perfectly swell. Don't put education policy on a pedestal, because it's just

Petrilli: Mission Accomplished

8by Peter Greene / 1d

Remember when we had a terrible, terrible crisis in the number of terribly bad awful really no good schools (filled with stinky, disastrous teachers) and we had to put the reform pedal to the scholastic metal toot de suite! Common Core, teacher evaluations, choice-flavored systems-- we had to have them RIGHT NOW and couldn't afford to wait another second because crisis crisis CRISIS! Remember all

What do you mean? I took the test.

65by Peter Greene / 1d

My class is wasting our time engaged for two days with a popular "research-based, computer adaptive assessment that helps kids learn." It is several hours of our lives that we can't have back, and it reminds me once again of the very basic hurdles that these standardized bubble tests have trouble overcoming. The biggest first hurdle is that the students have to care. The students have to

SEP 15

Forest and Trees

19by Peter Greene / 1d

Like many jobs in the world, particularly those that deal with humans, teaching requires focus on both forests and trees. A teacher faces questions like these in the classroom: What body of information do I need to convey to my students in a deep and integrated manner that best fits their pedagogical requirements and will most help them take their place as fully-actualized adults in the world? Wha

SEP 14

TN: (Not) Mrs. Jobs' Mall Charter [Update]

55by Peter Greene / 3d

You may recall that last fall we were talking about Laurene Powell Jobs' (Wharton Business School, Goldman Sachs) entry into the world of Rich Amateurs Fixing Schools -- the XQ project , a grant competition to design America's next super-school. Well, the super-schools are here. Almost here. And Memphis, Tennessee gets one of them. (Well-- almost*) Among the charter schools approved by the Shelby

SEP 13

Hess: The Reform Agenda

23by Peter Greene / 3d

Man, it is always so hard to get your hands on a copy of an agenda. For instance, we've been hearing about gay agenda for years, and yet nobody seems to have an actual copy of the thing. But last week over at the National Review, Rick Hess (AEI), one of my favorite writers that I generally disagree with, laid out the reform agenda (actually a reprint from conservative forum ). And I'm not just rea

SEP 12

The New Mascot

16by Peter Greene / 5d

Consider Pitbull. The rappish artiste and modern poet ("Face down, booty up, that's the way we like to- what?!") has greeted the new school year with his third charter school. Pitbull has tried to make something out of the nickname he was tagged with once-- "Mr. Education"-- but it hasn't really caught on. But it hasn't stuck, perhaps because Pitbull's actual connection with th

SEP 11

OR: Oh Noooos!! SBA Results Are In!

100+by Peter Greene / 5d

Out in Oregon, the Smarter Balanced Assessment results were in this week, and various outlets raised the cry of dismay over the results. But Betsy Hammond at the Oregonian did an outstanding job of capturing everything wrong with SBA fever in her "8 Sobering Takeaways... " piece. First, she reminds us that "the tests are designed to measure whether students are on track to be ready

Election Education Update

45by Peter Greene / 6d

After the two conventions, it began to look like public education would not have any champion in this Presidential cycle. So maybe now that the candidates have had a chance to put together clearer statements and assemble some advisors, has the picture changed? Are things looking up for fans of public education? Well, in a word, no. And in more than a single word...? Trump Flaps His Gums This was t

ICYMI: Catch up on your reading (9/11)

3by Peter Greene / 6d

Here's some education reading for a quiet week in September. As always, please share and pass on the pieces you like. To the Gentlemen Talking about Lazy Teachers This blog is operated by two former teachers, but clearly the woman still remembers how the gig works. I Don't Want My Son To Read in Kindergarten One more great argument in favor of letting small children be small children. Black Teache

(Some of) What Technocrats Get Wrong

41by Peter Greene / 6d

Slate ran an article this week about the newsy side of Facebook , and it's a reminder of so many reasons that technocrats are not to be trusted around education. Facebook has been having trouble handling the news. Well, and history. They censored the award-winning photo sometimes known as "napalm girl," an immediately recognizable Vietnam war photo both important in its role for driving

SEP 10

PA: Judge Cuts School Funding

45by Peter Greene / 6d

Here in Pennsylvania, we've had a potentially game-changing ruling come down that could create all new problems for school districts and their funding. This story has many moving parts, so you'll have to stick with me for a bit here. The 

CURMUDGUCATION: