CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Lorain, HB 70, And A Reformy Attack

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Lorain, HB 70, And A Reformy Attack

OH: Lorain, HB 70, And A Reformy Attack

I began my career in Lorain, Ohio, so the ever-spinning mess there is of personal interest to me. But it is also a picture of much of the damage being inflicted on public education in the name of reform. This is going to be a really long read, the longest I've ever posted on this blog, but it's a story worth telling, because here we find most of the problems of ed reform on display.

I: Lorain Back in the Day

I arrived in Lorain in the fall of 1979, fresh out of college and desperate for a job within 40 miles of downtown Cleveland. It was a rough start-- Lorain was the 16th interview I landed that summer, and August was ticking away. I signed a contract on Thursday. New teacher orientation happened on Friday. Monday was set to be the first teacher day, with students arriving to start the new year on Tuesday. But on Sunday, the union met and voted about 750-6 to go out on strike. The strike lasted for six weeks.

What do I remember about Lorain in 1979. A population of about 83,000 people (I had to write a report for grad school). Several auto plants. Steel plants. At least one ship-building plant. Of the 83,000 people, roughly 82,500 were blue collar workers, with a few doctors and lawyers thrown in. Lorain was a labor town; supposedly there was a city ordinance that fined anyone who crossed a picket line to scab.

My first teaching job was right about here.

Most of the things you would expect in a city of that size weren't there. Tiny newspaper and radio stations, because Cleveland was less than 30 minutes away. A stretch of one street displayed the vestiges of a downtown, but there was no real center to Lorain. Instead, there were blocks after blocks of neighborhoods, with a mom and pop grocery store on every other corner.

There was a reason for that, just as there was a reason that Lorain called itself an "international" city. Virtually every possible ethnicity was represented in Lorain. Having student taught in Cleveland Heights just seven months earlier, I was exceptionally on edge about racial tensions in a CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: OH: Lorain, HB 70, And A Reformy Attack

Badass Teachers Association Blog: An Open Letter to Teach for America Regarding Teacher Strikes by Seth Khan

Badass Teachers Association Blog: An Open Letter to Teach for America Regarding Teacher Strikes by Seth Khan
An Open Letter to Teach for America Regarding Teacher Strikes by Seth Khan

Originally posted at:  An Open Letter to Teach for America Regarding Teacher Strikes

Dear Ms. Villanueva Beard, CEO, Teach for America:

The current wave of teacher strikes across the United States leads us to request that Teach for America leadership rethink your organization’s stance towards your members’ participation in those strikes.

An Associated Press article (“Teach for America Slammed over Oakland Strike”, Feb 12) indicates that your advice to TFA members in the event of a strike is to do what they think is right, but to understand that joining the strike may come at substantial financial cost to them. To be fair, your spokesperson hints that TFA “is exploring if it could help supplement an AmeriCorps education award if a teacher loses it.”This advice is troubling for three reasons. 

First, it’s textbook coercion to lay a decision and the penalty for making it alongside each other while acting like you don’t mean to connect the dots. The fact that AmeriCorps has a policy preventing participants in its programs from striking doesn’t make the threat less of a threat. That is, it’s no less coercive by virtue of being accurate.

Second, there’s a conflict between the fact that your members are fully faculty at the schools where they teach, including their right to become members of the union, and your policy that they face penalties for participating in perfectly legal activities attached to their membership. They’re allowed to pay dues; they’re allowed to file grievances; they’re allowed to vote in union elections; but they are penalized for striking. It’s difficult to see any logic in which those propositions are consistent.

Finally, TFA’s claim not to have a position on strikes rings awfully hollow in the context of your support for and collaboration with publicly anti-union forces; this piece from Gary Rubinstein names just a handful, and anyone who has followed TFA over the years is likely familiar with more.

We understand you’re trying to thread a needle: recognizing the right of your members to participate in legal activity while recognizing a policy of your partner organization. To be candid, we would be more sympathetic to the difficulty of that position if TFA hadn’t been so unfriendly to CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association Blog: An Open Letter to Teach for America Regarding Teacher Strikes by Seth Khan

Appreciating Teachers: Responding to Donald Trump Jr. | janresseger

Appreciating Teachers: Responding to Donald Trump Jr. | janresseger

Appreciating Teachers: Responding to Donald Trump Jr.

Recently at the President’s rally in El Paso for his border wall, his son, Donald Trump, Jr., warmed up the crowd with a speech in which he gratuitously attacked teachers: “Bring it to your schools… You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.”  It is hard to know what all that means, although I suppose we can infer that attacks on so-called socialists are going to be a centerpiece of the campaign if the President runs for reelection in 2020.

Valerie Strauss covered responses to this disgusting ad hominem attack on schoolteachers. Teachers themselves have been speaking up, she explains, on twitter with the hashtag #loserteachers.

Strauss also published a response to Trump Jr. from three teachers—Jelmer Evers (the Netherlands), Michael Soskil (2017-18, Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year) and Armand Doucet (Canada) who co-authored a 2018 book, Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice. Evers, Soskil, and Doucet write that for them, Trump Jr.’s speech was a chilling moment: “Throughout history, schools and teachers have always been among the first to be targeted by authoritarian regimes and extremists.  Independent thinking, creativity, compassion and curiosity are threats to dogmatic beliefs and rule.”  “Whether Democratic or Republican, liberal or conservative, right, left, center, blue or red—seeing and reinforcing the value of a teacher should be a national pillar that rises high above partisan politics and cheap applause…  If we can be accused of anything, it is that we are on the front line of democracy.  Education reformer John Dewey famously said, ‘Democracy has to be born again each generation and education is its midwife.’  As members of a global profession, we reject the narrowing of the mind and we stand by our colleagues defending academic freedom.”

President Trump and his son were both educated in private schools.  I suspect that neither has even visited a public school, and I wonder if either one has ever considered what teachers do, or what shapes teachers, or what teachers consider as they work every day with children and CONTINUE READING: Appreciating Teachers: Responding to Donald Trump Jr. | janresseger

The Internet Is Sowing Mass Confusion. We Must Rethink How We Teach Kids Every Subject (Sam Wineburg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Internet Is Sowing Mass Confusion. We Must Rethink How We Teach Kids Every Subject (Sam Wineburg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Internet Is Sowing Mass Confusion. We Must Rethink How We Teach Kids Every Subject (Sam Wineburg)

Sam Wineburg, a professor of education at Stanford University, is the author of “Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone).”  This op-ed appeared in USA Today, February 12, 2019

In 2016, months before the presidential election, my research team surveyed nearly 8,000 students from middle school through college on their ability to judge material from the internet. We concluded that students’ ability to navigate online information could be captured in one word: bleak. We released our findings two weeks after Donald Trump’s election and were immediately swept up in the media maelstrom.

Our most reported finding was that 82 percent of middle school students couldn’t tell the difference between an ad and a news story. But putting it that way isn’t really fair to kids: While dozens of outlets reported this nugget, none mentioned an industry study that showed 59 percent of adults couldn’t tell the difference, either.

We are all in the same boat. That boat is taking on water.

In the wake of mass confusion caused by the internet and social media, there have been calls for a renewed commitment to teaching civics and instructing students in the foundations of democracy. But if we think this challenge is only about civics, we’re deluding ourselves. Bringing education into the 21st century demands that we rethink how we teach every subject in the curriculum.

We’re still teaching history using only print texts even as kids are being CONTINUE READING: The Internet Is Sowing Mass Confusion. We Must Rethink How We Teach Kids Every Subject (Sam Wineburg) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

ERIC BLANC: Oakland Teachers Are Striking Against Billionaire Privatizers #Unite4OaklandKids #WeAreOEA #WeAreCTA #strikeready #REDFORED

Oakland Teachers Are Striking Against Billionaire Privatizers

Oakland Teachers Are Striking Against Billionaire Privatizers 
Oakland teachers are on strike today to defeat plans by the superrich to take over and dismantle their public schools.

The project of free market education reform is so widespread in America that many cities and states insist on claiming the title of “ground zero” of education privatization. Whether or not Oakland can claim that unfortunate title, it’s clear that the privatizershave made huge headway in the city: Oakland is now the city in California with the highest percentage of students in privately run charters, and the city’s school district is aiming to deepen its downsizing project by closing twenty-four of the city’s eighty-seven public schools.

Which makes the teachers’ strike that kicked off today in Oakland all the more crucial.

Stopping and reversing the privatization offensive will take mass collective action. It will also require understanding the billionaires and their political proxies who are behind these attacks on public education. Here’s a crash course on the powerful enemies of Oakland’s public schools.

The Rogers Family

Recently deceased, Gary Rogers was the CEO and owner of the multibillion-dollar ice cream company Dreyer’s. His Rogers Family foundation was and remains the largest financial contributor to GO Public Schools, a front group through which the ultrawealthy have funded the takeover and privatization of Oakland public education.

To ensure the election of pro-charter candidates to the school board in 2012, 2014, and 2016, Rogers teamed up with fellow billionaires including former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Walton Family, which founded Walmart, to spend millions dollars in campaign contributions. By all accounts, their investment has paid off. If the Rogers Foundation and GO get their way, well over 50 percent of Oakland schools will soon be charters.

The rich may be greedy, but they are not stupid. Rather than openly announce their hopes to bust unionsand make profits in the $600 billion industry that is public education, Rogers and his friends have funneled their money into GO, which claims to be an organization to improve schools for Oakland students and parents. Its website affirms that “quality education is the path to opportunity for our kids and can interrupt historical inequity and oppression. Student needs drive our work.”

The irony of such claims is that, in practice, the spread of charter schools has greatly exacerbated educational inequities.

In Oakland, and across the nation, charters systematically cherry pick certain students, while leaving high-needs children — with disabilities, traumatic family backgrounds, or a lack of proficiency in English — to regular public schools. As such, it’s not surprising that privatization has greatly increased racial resegregation in Oakland: 19.2 percent of charter students are African American, compared to 29.5 percent in district schools.

At the same time, charters drain over $57 million in funds from Oakland schools yearly. This is why Oakland Education Association president Keith Brown has said that “the privatization of education is a blatant attack on our black and brown students.”

Eli Broad

Ever since the state takeover of Oakland public schools in 2003, the district has been led by a revolving door of apparatchiks trained by Eli Broad, the fourth-richest person in the United States, worth over $7.4 billion.

Though Broad has no professional experience in education, this hasn’t stopped him from using his immense personal fortune to impose his vision upon Oakland schools. After making a killing in the home building and insurance industries, he founded the Broad Academy in 2002 to train a new generation of privatizing school leaders.

By 2012, the center was boasting that it had “filled more superintendent positions than any other national training program.” In Oakland, Broad graduates include superintendents Randolph Ward (2003–2006), Kimberly Statham (2006–2007), Vincent Matthews (2007–2009), and Antwan Wilson (2014–2017).

The Broad Foundation has also directly influenced decision-making in Oakland by granting $6 million for “staff development” and paying for the salaries of no less than ten top administrators. Under the tutelage of Broad trainees, the number of students in Oakland charters has skyrocketed upwards to 30 percent.

Part of the reason why Eli Broad has, until recently, largely avoided public vilification is that he’s a liberal — as well as a major funder of the Democratic Party establishment, including leading lights such as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Chuck Schumer. “The unions no longer control the education agenda of the Democratic Party,” Broad bragged to the Wall Street Journal. The unspoken subtext: billionaires like him do.

His trainees have also smartly draped themselves in the veneer of corporate antiracism. Former Oakland superintendent, and Broad Academy graduate, Antwan Wilson thus framed his corporate reforms — which, among other things, wrecked the district’s budget — as a means to achieve social justice.

Behind this rhetoric, however, lies a neoliberal ideology that blames public services and individuals for  CONTINUE READING: Oakland Teachers Are Striking Against Billionaire Privatizers

L.A. Schools’ Superintendent Attempts a Coup – Carl J. Petersen – Medium #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

L.A. Schools’ Superintendent Attempts a Coup – Carl J. Petersen – Medium

L.A. Schools’ Superintendent Attempts a Coup

“The secrecy has got to stop.”

- LAUSD Board Member Scott Schmerelson

In a clear case of insubordination, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Austin Beutner has ignored a request for copies of contracts that the District had signed for four months. On at least one occasion, Beutner publicly promised to turn over these “confidential contracts” to Board Member Scott Schmerelson but did not do so until last week. “The consultants’ work was not disclosed”.

To make matters worse, it appears that information about the contracts, which “total $3 million so far”, was selectively released to other Board Members. Schmerelson noted at yesterday’s Board meeting that he is “sure that certain offices receive more information than others”, which eliminates any notion that the information was somehow unavailable. The lack of disclosure was willful and a clear attempt to keep information away from an elected Board Member who is, by definition, Beutner’s boss. In the private sector, this would be a fireable offense. It should be no different in the public sector.

In discussing Schmerelson’s “Reimagining Open Government Based on Transparency, Accountability, and Oversight” resolution, no direct reason was given for lack of candor by the Superintendent. However, Board President Monica Garcia did complain in passing about the past handling of “sensitive CONTINUE READING: L.A. Schools’ Superintendent Attempts a Coup – Carl J. Petersen – Medium

Boiling Frogs & Building Brands: P&G’s Partnership With Strive – Wrench in the Gears

Boiling Frogs & Building Brands: P&G’s Partnership With Strive – Wrench in the Gears

Boiling Frogs & Building Brands: P&G’s Partnership With Strive

This is a follow up to my previous post about Strive Together’s plans for “cradle to career” collective impact. Pursuing this work is a curious experience. Most times I can’t tell what, if any, progress I’m making. Yet I continue to forge ahead and regularly stumble across guideposts that seem to affirm I’m doing the work I’m supposed to do. So, I sit back down at the kitchen table and keep going, as my friend Chris says, a Jeremiah warning of the coming Babylonians.

A recent sign for me had to do with Strive (and Knowledgeworks) being based in Cincinnati. It’s not a city most people think much about, but it holds a prominent place in my childhood memories. You see, my dad was a career executive at Procter and Gamble (P&G), which is headquartered there. His job, selling Folgers coffee, was our family’s ticket to a comfortable suburban life, far different from his own unstable childhood as the son of an often under-employed mason and cashier. It seems somehow fitting that I step up now to call this company out on its efforts to set up an infrastructure of cybernetic biocapitalism.

Strive worked closely with executives at P&G in setting up its “collective” impact roadmap as seen in the following excerpt from the report, “Putting Collective Impact in Context,” prepared for the Wallace Foundation by Teachers College, Columbia University in 2015. The cradle to career pipeline is being constructed with specific metrics that will underpin speculative investment markets in human capital. Everyone was given marching orders. Comply with the established metrics or you’re out of the club. CONTINUE READING: Boiling Frogs & Building Brands: P&G’s Partnership With Strive – Wrench in the Gears

I’m a Loser, Baby. So Why Don’t You Kill Me? | Teacher in a strange land

I’m a Loser, Baby. So Why Don’t You Kill Me? | Teacher in a strange land

I’m a Loser, Baby. So Why Don’t You Kill Me?

I decided right away, when Donald Trump Jr. made his inane remark about ‘loser teachers’ spreading socialism, that I wasn’t going to respond in any tangible way. A serious eye-roll perhaps, or a brief snort. I knew there would be reactions—memes, blogs and columns and snarky tweets, digital photo frames spelling out ‘LOSER’ in red —to wallow in. No need to add to the clutter of pointless, short-term outrage.

After all, the guy’s a moron. Crafting a snarky response for just another forgettable disgrace in the daily parade of verbal horrors would be too easy.

So I waited for the spate of blogs.  I’ve read a at least a dozen pieces written by earnest, irate teachers who work so hard, don’t get enough money or recognition, and are tired of this shit.

Of course, those teachers DO work so hard. Of course, they’re doing a good job, making a difference, changing lives 24/7 for $40K a year, barely able to feed their families and driving 14-year old Cavaliers. It’s outrageous that the President’s feckless son calls them ‘losers,’ for their effort to instill a little lukewarm democracy in their classrooms.

Then I read a piece on Education Week from a teacher blogger making the same case: We have a right, even a duty, to imbue our students with basic principles of citizenship CONTINUE READING: I’m a Loser, Baby. So Why Don’t You Kill Me? | Teacher in a strange land

West Virginia Teachers Went on Strike Again to Protest School Privatization. They Stayed on Strike to Send Their Lawmakers a Message - Teen Vogue

West Virginia Teachers Went on Strike Again to Protest School Privatization. They Stayed on Strike to Send Their Lawmakers a Message - Teen Vogue

West Virginia Teachers Went on Strike Again to Protest School Privatization. They Stayed on Strike to Send Their Lawmakers a Message
Most of the state’s public schools were shut down for a second day.

Teachers in West Virginia stayed on strike Wednesday, February 20, after a tense standoff with state lawmakers over education legislation. As reported by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, leaders from West Virginia’s major school-employee labor unions called for a strike starting February 19. On Tuesday, 54 of the state’s 55 school districts shut down as teachers walked out.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Fred Albert, the president of AFT West Virginia, wrote in a statement that at issue was an education overhaul bill they say is a threat to public education funding.

“The state Senate is trying for a second time this year to ram through a so-called education bill that defunds public education, retaliates against teachers who stood up for their students last year, and appears to be driven by outside wealthy interests like Americans for Prosperity that, like Betsy DeVos, want to eliminate public schools,” wrote Albert and Weingarten in their statement. The reference to DeVos, President Donald Trump’s secretary of education, seeks to link the bill at play in West Virginia to the secretary’s controversial school-choice policies.

Striking educators have already filled the House gallery in West Virginia's capitol building, awaiting today's legislative discussion of the Republicans' bill introducing school privatization into the state. In the rotunda, thousands are chanting "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" pic.twitter.com/0FRKzk2zMc

— Eric Blanc (@_ericblanc) February 19, 2019

Albert and Weingarten accused the state Senate of “ramming through a secret bill on a purely partisan vote,” a reference to a broad education bill that would allow allocating public funds for private education and allow the first-ever charter schools to open in West Virginia, according to the CONTINUE READING: West Virginia Teachers Went on Strike Again to Protest School Privatization. They Stayed on Strike to Send Their Lawmakers a Message - Teen Vogue

The Real Reason Betsy DeVos Tried to Fire Her Own Department’s Inspector General | janresseger

The Real Reason Betsy DeVos Tried to Fire Her Own Department’s Inspector General | janresseger

The Real Reason Betsy DeVos Tried to Fire Her Own Department’s Inspector General

Betsy DeVos is back in the news.  She recently tried to fire the U.S. Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General, Sandra Bruce, and replace her with Phil Rosenfelt, who has been serving as the Department of Education’s General Council. Democrats in Congress criticized the nomination of Rosenfelt because the Office of Inspector General in any federal department is supposed to be an objective watchdog—independent from the operation and policies of the department it oversees.

When Democrats raised concerns, DeVos backtracked and reinstated Sandra Bruce in her old job.

Early in February, the Washington Post’s Laura Meckler explained: “The White House backed down Friday from plans to install a longtime Education Department official as the agency’s acting inspector general following an outcry from congressional Democrats… President Trump had already signed papers designating Philip H. Rosenfelt, a career lawyer who works in the Education Department’s general-council office, as acting inspector general. The move was never officially announced, but Education Department leaders notified the inspector general’s office and lawmakers that it was official.” Congressional Democratic leaders had formally complained: “The conflicts or appearances of conflict are a result of Mr. Rosenfelt’s prior work in the Department’s Office of General Council, which has a role implementing virtually all programs that the inspector general investigates…”

Now, however, it turns out that DeVos’s motive for trying to fire Sandra Bruce was far more suspicious than just an attempt to hire someone who would protect the pet projects of the Department. It looks as though DeVos tried to fire Sandra Bruce because, as part of her job as Inspector General, Bruce was investigating DeVos’s reinstatement last November of Departmental approval for a shady accrediting agency of for-profit colleges, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). Late in 2015, The Obama Department of Education had removed approval of ACICS as a federal accreditor of for-profit colleges.

A brief review…

Why does federal accreditation of for-profit colleges matter?  For-profit colleges and trade CONTINUE READING: The Real Reason Betsy DeVos Tried to Fire Her Own Department’s Inspector General | janresseger

Good News, Arizona Teachers: No DNA Database for You | deutsch29

Good News, Arizona Teachers: No DNA Database for You | deutsch29

Good News, Arizona Teachers: No DNA Database for You

Betsy DeVos is back in the news.  She recently tried to fire the U.S. Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General, Sandra Bruce, and replace her with Phil Rosenfelt, who has been serving as the Department of Education’s General Council. Democrats in Congress criticized the nomination of Rosenfelt because the Office of Inspector General in any federal department is supposed to be an objective watchdog—independent from the operation and policies of the department it oversees.

When Democrats raised concerns, DeVos backtracked and reinstated Sandra Bruce in her old job.

Early in February, the Washington Post’s Laura Meckler explained: “The White House backed down Friday from plans to install a longtime Education Department official as the agency’s acting inspector general following an outcry from congressional Democrats… President Trump had already signed papers designating Philip H. Rosenfelt, a career lawyer who works in the Education Department’s general-council office, as acting inspector general. The move was never officially announced, but Education Department leaders notified the inspector general’s office and lawmakers that it was official.” Congressional Democratic leaders had formally complained: “The conflicts or appearances of conflict are a result of Mr. Rosenfelt’s prior work in the Department’s Office of General Council, which has a role implementing virtually all programs that the inspector general investigates…”

Now, however, it turns out that DeVos’s motive for trying to fire Sandra Bruce was far more suspicious than just an attempt to hire someone who would protect the pet projects of the Department. It looks as though DeVos tried to fire Sandra Bruce because, as part of her job as CONTINUE READING: Good News, Arizona Teachers: No DNA Database for You | deutsch29

Dallas Chamber of Commerce Disrupts Dallas Schools | tultican

Dallas Chamber of Commerce Disrupts Dallas Schools | tultican

Dallas Chamber of Commerce Disrupts Dallas Schools

By T. Ultican 2/20/2019

Since 2012, the business community in Dallas has aggressively asserted control over Dallas Independent School District (DISD). For the first time, running for one of the nine DISD school board positions is an expensive proposition. Besides wielding a political war-chest, prominent business leaders are supporting charter schools and advocating for increased hiring of untrained temp teachers from Teach for America (TFA). Money is also dedicated to advancing school vouchers. Democratic local control of public schools in Dallas faces serious threat.

A harbinger of this all out political attack by wealthy Dallas residents living in gated communities came just before the 2012 school board elections. Mike Miles was hired as Superintendent of Schools starting in July 2012. Miles came from a small school district in Colorado Springs, Colorado one year after training at the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. The academy Billionaire Eli Broad founded to train education leaders in his philosophy of school governance.

The Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation has contributed $100’s of millionstowards privatizing public schools and they have a remarkable record for placing their trainees in market-reform friendly school districts.

One of the documents studied by Broad’s administration students is The Broad Academy School Closure Guide. Broad-trained administrators are famous for; closing public schools, hiring consultants, bad relations with teachers, large technology purchases and saddling school districts with debt. Oklahoma educator and historian, John Thompson, wrote a series of articles documenting the disruptive history of Broad Academy graduates (1, 2, and 3).

Among the first hires Miles made was communications Chief Jennifer Sprague. Dallas magazine noted,

“The 31-year-old had performed the same job for Miles in Colorado Springs, at Harrison School District Two, where she earned $86,652. He brought her to Dallas for $185,000.”

Besides hiring pricey cronies, Miles brought the billionaire spawned reform agenda to Dallas and created discontent throughout the DISD organization. In CONTINUE READING: Dallas Chamber of Commerce Disrupts Dallas Schools | tultican

Marie Corfield: The @StarLedger, #FakeNews & the #PARCC Propaganda Machine

Marie Corfield: The @StarLedger, #FakeNews & the #PARCC Propaganda Machine

The @StarLedger, #FakeNews & the #PARCC Propaganda Machine

Years before 'fake news' became a household word, New Jersey's largest newspaper, The Star Ledger started its very own propaganda machine to bash teachers and prop up PARCC testing.

With the flurry of PARCC testing bills posted in Trenton in the past couple of weeks, the state's largest newspaper and education 'reform' cheerleader has been shaking its pom-pons recently in favor of the deeply flawed test, tossing out wild claims with little evidence to back them up (all emphasis mine):

Phil Murphy has long strained to appease powerful critics of the PARCC, namely the teacher’s union, which prefers we let kids graduate without the kind of tests that hold teachers accountable. 

The idea that an invalid, poorly designed and un-vetted test can hold teachers "accountable" is simply illogical. The Ledger offers no evidence to support this far-fetched claim. Even the Christie administration wasn't so sure it would work because they kept changing the test's percentage of our evaluations seemingly at random.

But we need the PARCC because an A in Millburn is not the same as an A in Camden. We have to ensure that all kids succeed, not just those in affluent districts.

If the Ledger's only measure of success is the number of prestigious colleges and CONTINUE READING: Marie Corfield: The @StarLedger, #FakeNews & the #PARCC Propaganda Machine

Bernie Sanders is Running for President, and the Establishment Just Sh!t Its Pants! | gadflyonthewallblog

Bernie Sanders is Running for President, and the Establishment Just Sh!t Its Pants! | gadflyonthewallblog

Bernie Sanders is Running for President, and the Establishment Just Sh!t Its Pants!

You’ve heard of the shot heard round the world?

Well yesterday we had its fecal equivalent!

When Bernie Sanders said he was running for President for a second time, establishment hacks on the left and right had to make a run for the bathroom.

And after a single day of the Sanders campaign in which it raised almost $6 million of small donations from everyday folks, neoliberals and neofascists of every stripe are a little bit lighter this morning – a little less…. full.

Take our bullshitter in chief.

Donald Trump loves to squeeze out twitter storms in the early morning hours – presumably while sitting on his White House thrown.

This morning, he was moved to thumb out the following:

“Crazy Bernie has just entered the race. I wish him well!”

Like Hell you do, you arrogant xenophobic windbag!

Bernie is running for President – the best candidate situated to take you down.

He’s anti-establishment. A populist. And stands for the opposite of everything you’ve built your rocky neoconfederate administration on.

You wish him well! HA!

Trump is the most transparently fake candidate in CONTINUE READING: Bernie Sanders is Running for President, and the Establishment Just Sh!t Its Pants! | gadflyonthewallblog