Visualizing the Common Core Curriculum - The New York Times

Visualizing the Common Core Curriculum - The New York Times:

Visualizing the Common Core Curriculum

Rian Dundon had to go back to high school for nine months last year. Mind you, he was already a working photojournalist. His assignment was to create a visual narrative for the Common Core, the educational initiative that has generated as much controversy as it has expectations.

There are so many buzzwords associated with the Common Core — career readiness, deeper learning, critical thinking — that it’s hard to know what it all even means. Adopted by over 40 states, the educational initiative that is now in its fifth year, aims to prepare students from kindergarten through high school for entry-level careers, training programs or college.

But, what does that actually look like? For some parents who are unable to engage with teachers directly in the classroom, either because of work or language barriers, it can be a pile of papers, a confused child struggling to decipher math problems, strange new tests, or maybe a website with some Frequently Asked Questions.

In California, the state with the largest public school system, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation partnered with New America Media last year to see if they could help these parents understand the initiative. Together, they awarded nine fellowships to local journalists, and Mr. Dundon was asked to translate the Common Core into a visual narrative.

Mr. Dundon’s project was also supported by the journalism nonprofitEconomic Hardship Reporting Project.

Photo

Students play handball during lunch period at W.C. Overfelt High School in San Jose, Calif., March 2015.Credit Rian Dundon

“The 21st century job force is Silicon Valley, so it seems particularly salient to look at Common Core in Silicon Valley and how it was succeeding or not,” Mr. Dundon said, “because if they can’t succeed here then they can’t succeed anywhere.”

When he began, the first thing he thought was: “How do you visualize something like academic policy?”

At first knowing “zero” about the Common Core, he chose to document three high schools in the area: Design Tech High School in Millbrae, which he called, “a new experimental charter school, kind of established under the design thinking principles of Stanford Design School,” Pescadero High School, a rural school, he said, with just under 100 students, and the William C. Overfelt High School in east San Jose, where, he said, “they’re doing a lot with a very little.”

With the help of the foundation, Mr. Dundon was able to gain access to schools; classrooms; education conferences, where policy makers and administrators talked about Common Core; and groups of teachers who Mr. Dundon described as, “equally confused about it.”

“There is a certain obtuseness to the language that’s used,” he said. “The thick packets that are handed out, trying to explain how you Visualizing the Common Core Curriculum - The New York Times:

Teachers object as LAUSD expands plan to cut arts instruction time | 89.3 KPCC

Teachers object as LAUSD expands plan to cut arts instruction time | 89.3 KPCC:

Teachers object as LAUSD expands plan to cut arts instruction time

Some art teachers are protesting as Los Angeles Unified expands a plan to provide arts education to more students by shortening the time spent on each subject.

Under the plan, elementary students would receive nine weeks of instruction in each of four art forms — visual arts, theater, music and dance. Historically, these were taught in longer increments of up to one year.

The program, known as the Creative Network Pilot, launched last year in 31 schools and will expand this fall to an additional 10 schools. Third to sixth-graders take part in the program. Younger students at the schools involved receive instruction in the arts that is blended into other subjects throughout the school day.

Many art teachers expressed concerns when the district first rolled out the nine-week pilot program. The move to expand it is renewing their worries.

Katherine Williamson, a long-time elementary music teacher, described the nine weeks of instruction as a "breadcrumb" approach. She sees the program as a rollback rather than an expansion of arts instruction in the district.

"It just doesn't make sense to me. And every art teacher that I talk to — we're just dumbfounded that we would go backwards," she said. 

The criticism comes as LAUSD and other California school districts struggle to comply with a state law that mandates arts education in public schools for all four core art subjects. The districts have generally said they lack resources to provide the required instruction.

LAUSD's head of arts education Rory Pullens defended the Creative Network Pilot program during an interview with KPCC in late June.

"This is a step in the right direction when we talk about, you know, access and equity for all," he said. But Pullens acknowledged the program has its limitations.

"There certainly, in this model, are some structural deficiencies in the sense that students are getting arts exposure, but they're not getting the same depth of instruction that we would actually like them to have," he said.

Pullens said as more funding becomes available, the district is looking at expanding the program from nine weeks for each art form to a full semester per subject. 

When the program was announced during a school board meeting in April 2014, Steven McCarthy — the district's head of arts education at the time — described the new program as a bit of a step backwards. “This is pruning,” he said at the time. 

But in a report released in May, which McCarthy helped prepare, the program was described more positively:

"The Creative Network pilot is both ambitious yet practical in that it has uniquely marshalled the limited arts financial resources, instructional time, and teacher talents to effectively implement an arts education model that can positively affect future equity and access to the arts far all LAUSD students."

The report also notes the district is currently out of compliance with the state's education code, which requires that first through 12th-graders have access to arts instruction every year of their public school careers. Under the current system, which the report calls “void of equity and access,” a student could go through Teachers object as LAUSD expands plan to cut arts instruction time | 89.3 KPCC:

Pearson Goes Back to School to Suck the Life Out of Education- Yahoo Finance

With $1.3 Billion and No Pink Paper, Pearson Goes Back to School - Yahoo Finance:

With $1.3 Billion and No Pink Paper, Pearson Goes Back to School 

Like other textbook publishers, London-based Pearson is moving away from print and toward digital materials for schools. Some 62 percent of revenue at Pearson is now from digital formats, up from 44 percent in 2009, the company says.

‘Bruising’ Changes

As it shifts online and expands in emerging markets, Pearson has gone through what CEO Fallon calls a “bruising” restructuring. Since early 2013, Fallon said, the company has eliminated more than 4,000 positions and halved its warehousing capacity for textbooks and other physical media.

“It was not easy,” Fallon said. “My job is to get Pearson’s top line growing again, and I think we’re now in better shape to start doing that.”

About half of Pearson’s U.S. revenue is from higher education, where a decline in college enrollments in recent years means fewer students are purchasing textbooks and taking tests.

The other half of its U.S. business is largely in primary and secondary schools, which have become a political battleground as states revamp teaching and testing under the so-called Common Core curriculum. A raft of new competitors have entered the market, and teachers increasingly communicate directly with one another to share ideas and materials, cutting big companies like Pearson out entirely.

Contract Losses

Pearson has also suffered setbacks in its lucrative business of designing and administering standardized tests for schools and universities. In May, it lost the bulk of a four-year, $340 million contract in Texas, keeping only $60 million in special needs tests. In July, New York State took away a $39 million contract for evaluating third through eighth graders. And in March 2014, Florida awarded a nonprofit group a six-year, $220 million contract to administer comprehensive assessment tests, taking the deal away from Pearson.

Fallon acknowledges that the U.S. testing unit will see some 100 million pounds in lost revenue next year, but notes that it accounts for just 7 percent of Pearson’s sales and the company still has contracts in 20 states. He said Pearson has regained some share in books and digital content aimed at university students and led the market in new contracts in the first half, when it saw its fastest growth since 2011.

Web-Based Courses

Sales in the first half of 2015 edged up by 1 percent, versus a 2 percent increase a year earlier, and operating profit, adjusted for some items, fell to 72 million pounds from 73 million pounds. Fallon said that as the decline in college enrollments slows, states are spending more on curriculum.

“While we’re accelerating the transition to digital,” he said, “we’re still the largest textbook publisher in the world.”

Tim Nollen, an analyst at Macquarie Capital USA Inc. in New York, said Pearson is smart to invest the proceeds of the FT sale in online education. Pearson already works on Web-based courses for about 200 schools, including Arizona State University and New Jersey’s Rutgers University.

Costs “have gotten so high you have students questioning the value” of a traditional university degree, Nollen said. “The real growth potential is in digital programs.”

‘Recession Proof’

Research house Outsell Inc. says the U.S. market for education materials such as textbooks and workbooks has expanded 2.6 percent annually since 2012, to $23.5 billion last year. Education technology such as software used by administrators and teachers is growing almost twice as fast -- 4.7 percent a year - - to $8.7 billion in 2014. Kate Worlock, an analyst at Outsell, says Pearson is the leading player in both areas and can benefit from its shift to the Web.

“Online education is an opportunity for the content providers to do bigger deals with universities,” Worlock said. Though growth in education is slow, “it’s very recession proof; spending is rarely cut.”

Fallon said that while the company will use proceeds from the sale of the FT and Economist to shore up its online business, there’s no rush to make acquisitions.

“We can sell the FT and not have anything immediately lined up to buy,” Fallon said. “We’ve got large scalable presences in these areas already.With $1.3 Billion and No Pink Paper, Pearson Goes Back to School - Yahoo Finance:

This American Life explains why school segregation still exists — and is so hard to change - Vox

This American Life explains why school segregation still exists — and is so hard to change - Vox:

This American Life explains why school segregation still exists — and is so hard to change

School integration has shrunk steadily for nearly three decades: ever since 1988, the number of black students and white students who attend school together has decreased. And the achievement gap between black and white students has grown.

Sunday's This American Life provided a potent look at how hard it is to reverse that trend, and how strong the resistance to school integration still is. Nikole Hannah-Jonesof The New York Times Magazine reported from Missouri's Normandy School District, where Ferguson's Michael Brown went to school before he was shot by police officer Darren Wilson last August:

Students from Normandy began to integrate majority white schools in the St. Louis suburbs almost by accident, when Normandy lost its state accreditation. Students from the district, which was almost entirely black and had a dismal academic record, could transfer into Francis Howell, a majority white district with much better test scores. A thousand parents — one-third of the district — opted to send their students to that district, even though it was 30 miles away. Some buses left as early as 5 a.m.

The most powerful section in Hannah-Jones' report is from a meeting in Francis Howell, where parents vehemently objected to accepting poorer, black students from a failing district, even though they were required to by law. (It starts at the 24:00 mark in the audio above.)

• "I want to know where the metal detectors are going to be and I want to know where your drug-sniffing dogs are going to be," one mother said, to rapturous applause.
• "I shopped for a school district," another said. "I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed or taking a drug or getting robbed."
• "We don't have to like it, and we don't have to make it easy," another man suggested, saying the school district should start 20 minutes or 40 minutes earlier, "making it a little less appealing" for the Normandy students to attend.
• And, perhaps inevitably, one parent argued that it wasn't about racism, but reverse racism: "This is not a race issue. I just want to say to… the first woman who came up here and cried that it was a race issue, I'm sorry, that's her prejudice calling me a racist because my skin is white."

The good news was that after facing this much opposition from parents, Normandy students ended up having a fairly good year in their new schools. But the following year, the state took over the district, and the transfer policy was canceled.

Hannah-Jones' full report is really worth your time (and it continues next week). Near the beginning, she sums up why integration works:

"It is not something magical happens when black kids sit in a classroom next to white kids," Hannah-Jones said. "It's not suddenly that a switch turns on and they get intelligence or the desire to learn when they're with white kids. It gets black kids in the same facilities as white kids, and therefore it gets them access to the same things that those kids get — quality teachers and quality instruction."This American Life explains why school segregation still exists — and is so hard to change - Vox:

A teacher’s unusual evaluation of Arne Duncan — through the prism of Harvard basketball - The Washington Post

A teacher’s unusual evaluation of Arne Duncan — through the prism of Harvard basketball - The Washington Post:

A teacher’s unusual evaluation of Arne Duncan — through the prism of Harvard basketball

Gary Rubinstein is a math teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York. He was a Teach For America corps member  early in the organization’s existence but has become a serious critic of the organization as well as of the policies implemented over the last seven years under Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Here is an open letter that Rubinstein wrote to Duncan this year about the Obama administration’s $4.3 billion education initiative, Race to the Top, which allowed states to compete for federal funds by promising to implement Duncan-approved school reform. Rubinstein evaluates Duncan and his program in an unusual way — by applying the metrics that Duncan pushed states to use in the assessment of teachers to the Harvard basketball team that Duncan co-captained when he attended the university in the 1980s.

This letter makes references to accountability metrics that Duncan has championed, such as “value-added” measurement, or VAM, which takes the standardized test scores of students, plops them into a complicated formula and purports to discover how much “value” a teacher added to student performance on a single test. Rubinstein also refers to “growth” scores, which are calculated in a process that includes computer-based predictions of how students “should” perform based on past student scores.

He also refers to PISA, or the  Program for International Student Assessment, which is given every three years to 15-year-olds around the world in reading, math and science. Many governments and school reformers — including in the United States — look at the scores as judgments of the quality of their education systems, though critics say the tests are flawed and the results should not be taken seriously.

A version of this letter to Duncan first appeared on Rubinstein’s blog. He has written other open letters to figures in the education world, including this one to TFA founder Wendy Kopp.

Here’s Rubinstein’s letter to Duncan:

Dear Secretary Duncan,

“Race To The Top” was intended to improve education in this country by finally holding accountable the schools and the “adults” who work in those schools — meaning the teachers — for their failure to get students to adequately grow academically.  Under the program, “ineffective” teachers should be identified and fired, and “failing” schools identified and closed.  Unfortunately, the entire program collapses without reliable metrics to judge which schools are truly “failing” and which adults are truly “ineffective.”

To illustrate the issues with the accountability metrics that have been the trademark of your tenure, I’ve applied them to something you know intimately, your senior year Harvard basketball team, the 1986-1987 Harvard Cagers.  Were the 1986-1987 Cagers a “failing” team?  Was Coach Peter Roby an “ineffective” coach?  Were you and Keith Webster “ineffective” co-captains?

It all depends on which metrics you use.

Your last-place finish — a 9 and 17 record — is just one way to judge your efforts. Some would use it as the sole metric and declare this a  “losing” season. But if you just look at points scored, you didn’t do so badly with 2,152, which was pretty close to the 1972 Harvard record of 2,221 points at that time. So if we look at just offense, the team was not failing. But you also gave up A teacher’s unusual evaluation of Arne Duncan — through the prism of Harvard basketball - The Washington Post:

NY school problems highlight debate over outside 'receivers' - Yahoo Finance

NY school problems highlight debate over outside 'receivers' - Yahoo Finance:

NY school problems highlight debate over outside 'receivers'

 BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- The clock is ticking for leaders of New York's most chronically underperforming public schools, who under a new state law must quickly begin to turn things around or lose control to an outsider — a tactic that has produced mixed results elsewhere.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo points to Massachusetts, where education officials say giving a state-appointed leader, or receiver, the freedom to lengthen school days, replace principals and make other changes has been working.

But with 144 schools in 17 New York districts now targeted, opinions vary on whether taking schools, and broad powers, away from school boards is the answer.

Receivership is the state's way of shifting the blame from its own failure to adequately support struggling schools, most of which are in impoverished districts, said Karen Magee, president of New York State United Teachers.

On the other hand, Buffalo parent leader Sam Radford sees "the dawn of a new day" for schools where progress has been hampered by conflicted leadership and a lack of agreement on what to do.

Under the law passed in April, the 20 schools statewide that are classified as persistently struggling — failing for 10 straight years — and 124 more called struggling because of three years of low academic performance, will start the upcoming school year in the receivership of their districts' superintendents.

Equipped with an array of new powers, including expanding the school day and year, renegotiating union contracts, changing budgets and curriculums, and converting the schools to charter schools or community schools with services like health care and counseling, the superintendents will have one year to show improvement at the longest struggling schools and two years for the others. The schools will share $75 million in extra funding.

"If we come together and figure it out this year, great," Radford said in Buffalo, where five schools are classified as persistently struggling and 20 struggling, the most of any district outside the New York City area. "But if we don't, we start seeing schools to go independent receivership, which means we've got another bite at the apple to figure out how to get things to work with somebody who's not tied down to the contracts and to the politics."

In three years of receivership, schools in Lawrence, Massachusetts, have seen the graduation rate increase to 66.9 percent in 2014, up from 52.3 percent in 2011, as well as a 13 percentage point NY school problems highlight debate over outside 'receivers' - Yahoo Finance:

KJ: SACRAMENTO CAN"T AFFORD WORLD CLASS | The Sacramento Bee

Foon Rhee: ‘Clear eyes’ on big projects | The Sacramento Bee:

KJ: SACRAMENTO CAN"T AFFORD WORLD CLASS

It’s far less contentious than another idea to boost working families – raising the city’s minimum wage. A task force launched last week by Mayor Kevin Johnson is studying the pros and cons, but business groups are warning of disaster if Sacramento follows the lead of Los Angeles and San Francisco, both headed to $15 an hour.

“Friday Night Lights” is one of my favorite TV series of all time. Don’t get me started on how it didn’t get the audience or critical acclaim it deserved. If you’re a fan as well, you’ve memorized the rallying cry of the fictional Texas high school football team: “Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose!”

It’s a pretty good philosophy for life – and for public policy. “Clear eyes” means having a vision, but also recognizing reality. “Full hearts” means having compassion for the less fortunate, but also the courage to do big things. “Can’t lose” means overcoming hurdles to accomplish important goals.

I’ve been thinking that Sacramento City Hall could do a lot worse than follow the motto. The city is showing “full hearts” by helping poor families pay higher garbage fees. To partly offset increases that hit customers July 1, the city is expanding an assistance program that will reduce solid waste charges by $12. A family could save $156 a year on its utility bill – not a ton, but better than nothing.

It’s far less contentious than another idea to boost working families – raising the city’s minimum wage. A task force launched last week by Mayor Kevin Johnson is studying the pros and cons, but business groups are warning of disaster if Sacramento follows the lead of Los Angeles and San Francisco, both headed to $15 an hour.

“Clear eyes” is especially important when it comes to two big-dollar projects on the horizon – a new performing arts center and a convention center expansion.

Though boosters hope the city will build both, there’s no firm plan to pay for either. I’m skeptical that Sacramento can afford them, and I’m not convinced they’re needed.

First up is a decision on whether to build a brand new arts center – or renovate the 41-year-old Community Center Theater. Because the city is basically tapped out, that determination will depend on whether there’s enough private money out there.

A task force is working with the city’s staff and the mayor’s office to produce a financing plan to build a $200 million arts center, plus cover a $1.4 million annual operating subsidy. In May, the task force presented a preferred design for a 2,200-seat theater and identified sites near Memorial Auditorium and near Crocker Art Museum.

Most arts groups say a modern center is far better than spending as much as $50 million to fix the Community Center Theater, which critics call an ugly relic. It certainly isn’t as glitzy as the Mondavi Center at UC Davis or the Harris Center at Folsom Lake College.

Sacramento’s ballet, opera and philharmonic hope a sparkling new venue will help reverseFoon Rhee: ‘Clear eyes’ on big projects | The Sacramento Bee:

RELATED STORY: The city of Sacramento’s Compensation Commission voted unanimously to grant the part-time mayor  a 2 percent salary increase

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article29921656.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/foon-rhee/article29891314.html#storylink=cpy

Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education Issues - Education Week

Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education Issues - Education Week:

Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education Issues

National and Local Outlets Providing a Wealth of Specialized Content

Joshua P. Starr considers himself a big consumer of news about education. The veteran educator and former superintendent has had a lot more content available to peruse lately.

The past two years or so have seen a boom in online news outlets covering education. New local and national sites are focusing exclusively on the subject; general-interest sites have education beat reporters or otherwise include K-12 issues in their mix.

"I happen to be a pretty avid reader of a lot of those things," said Mr. Starr, who was in the news himself in February after he and the Montgomery County, Md., school board failed to come to terms on renewing his contract as district chief.

He rattled off a few news sources he checks regularly, including some that fit the definition of new, some that are decidedly old-school, and others that fall somewhere in the middle: Education Post, The Hechinger Report, Politico Morning Education,The Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog, and Education Week.

He also checks a number of other blogs, print publications, and news "aggregators," which are sites such as Real Clear Education that link to articles from a variety of sources.

"I do think that superintendents need to stay abreast of what's being said about public education, and what the discourse is," said Mr. Starr, who in June became the chief executive officer of Phi Delta Kappa International, the professional association that publishes the Kappan magazine and the annual PDK/Gallup Poll on education.

Disruption Yields New Titles

The "digital disruption" of the news business—which involves huge financial challenges for "legacy" news organizations but also an explosion of online outlets—has so far "been pretty good for education reporting," said LynNell Hancock, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Multimedia

"There are far more places now that are doing serious, long-form education reporting," said Ms. Hancock, who directs the Spencer Fellowship Program for midcareer education journalists and who covered education for Newsweek. "And there are more places for reporters to do this kind of work than ever before."

The new sites are diverse in scope as well as in business model or funding status. While several are for-profit ventures or part of larger companies, many are nonprofits supported by various philanthropies.

In addition to all the titles on Mr. Starr's daily reading list, the new online outlets include such education-specific ones as Chalkbeat, which has bureaus covering state and local education news in New York state, Tennessee, Indiana, and Colorado; LA School Report, which covers the Los Angeles district; and IdahoEdNews, a new effort covering school matters in that state.

Some of the newest education-focused sites include Bright, a more feature-oriented outlet; and The Seventy Four, co-founded by the former NBC News and CNN anchor Campbell Brown. That site, whose name refers to the 74 million U.S. children under age Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education Issues - Education Week:

Big Education Ape: Greedy Corporate Education Reformer's Newest Media Blitz: Pre-K and Charter Schools http://bit.ly/1I6hiBg

Study Questions Value of Teacher Development - WSJ

Study Questions Value of Teacher Development - WSJ:

Study Questions Value of Teacher Development

Report from nonprofit group suggests rethinking ways to boost skills of teachers

Investments in ongoing training for teachers usually didn’t improve their performance, and schools should rethink how they try to bolster their teachers’ skills, according to a study released Tuesday by a national nonprofit group.

TNTP, a Brooklyn-based organization that trains educators and promotes stringent evaluations, analyzed several years of data from three school districts. It found the districts spent an average of $18,000 per teacher yearly on professional development, including coaching in the classroom, formal feedback, vendor contracts for training and staff time.

Despite that investment, the report found that only three out of 10 teachers in these districts saw their practice improve substantially over two or three years, and two out of 10 teachers saw their performance decline.

The report comes as districts nationwide struggle to boost teacher quality, which many experts call the most important in-school factor affecting how much students learn. The three districts weren’t identified, but the authors of the study said they were representative of large public school systems nationwide.

ENLARGE

The researchers surveyed more than 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders in the three districts, analyzed teacher ratings and interviewed staff members.

TNTP chief executive Dan Weisberg, chief of labor policy for New York City schools during the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said schools nationwide should re-evaluate what helps teachers improve, innovate to match different teachers’ needs and measure what works.

“The current approach to teacher development is broken,” Mr. Weisberg said. “We are throwing a lot of things against the wall and not even looking to see what sticks.”

TNTP was launched in 1997 as The New Teacher Project and first led by Michelle Rhee, who later as Washington, D.C., schools chief drew fierce opposition from teachers unions. TNTP is funded by several philanthropies that back using achievement data to drive school policy, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.

Tuesday’s report drew praise from several education groups, including the American Federation of Teachers. Union president Randi Weingarten said the AFT had criticized Study Questions Value of Teacher Development - WSJ:

Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society

Former Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, center, speaks during a news conference to announce the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's donation of $51.2 million dollars to the New York City school system at Morris High School in the Bronx, New York, Wednesday, September 17, 2003. He is flanked by Joel Klein, former chancellor of the city's Department of Education and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

America has experienced "gush-up" rather than "trickle-down." The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism, who have assaulted us with the message of "winner-take-all" wealth over the common good. George Will perpetuates the neoliberal myth by quoting one of his idols, John Tamny: "Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful...it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas.." 

But in the realm of reality, there are many reasons for embarrassment: 

1. Just Because They're Rich, Billionaires are Trusted to Design Our Education and Health Systems 

Bill Gates leads the way here. He got rich in questionable ways from technology, and as a result much of America feels he's qualified to be a great humanitarian. Because of his corporate-endowed foundation, says Arundhati Roy, Bill Gates can "find himself designing education, health, and agriculture policies, not just for the U.S. government but for governments all over the world." 

In addition to Gates, education 'reformers' include Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow billionaires Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family, none of whom have much educational experience, and all of whom are promoting education reform with lots of standardized testing and little accountability to the public. 

In agriculture, wealthy western philanthropists decide the future of African farmers from a corporate point of view, with a sense of disdain for traditional methods of small farming. 

Much the same in health care, with World Health Organization director Margaret Chan summarizing the role of money in global decision-making: "My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests." 

2. A Prime Destroyer of Low-Income Homes is Awarded for His "Contributions to Society" 

As part of the 2015 New York University's 183rd Commencement, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson received an award for his "Outstanding Contributions to Society." The commencement program addressed him: "..Your influence is felt throughout broad sectors of society..your commitment to..a better quality of life for people across the world." 

In 2007 Paulson had conspired with Goldman Sachs to create packages of risky subprime mortgages, so that in anticipation of a housing crash he could use other people's money to bet against his personally designed sure-to-fail financial instruments. His successful bet against American households paid him $3.7 billion. 

3. As America Adds $30 Trillion in New Wealth, 6 Million More Kids Go on Food Stamps 

The number of children on food stamps grew from 9.5 million in 2007 to 16 million in 2014, at the same time that U.S. wealth was growing from $52 trillion to over $83 trillion. 

4. 40% of Food Wasted.....and 40% of Households Food-Insecure 

According to Feeding America, almost 50 million households, or about 40 percent of American homes, experienced food insecurity at some point in 2013. 

At the same time, the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that 40 percent of food in the United States goes uneaten. 

5. Graduate Students Work 6+ Years for a PhD, then Need the Safety Net to Survive Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Steve Zimmer Beats the Billionaire Boys Club

Steve Zimmer Beats the Billionaire Boys Club

Los Angeles school board president beat and unprecedented effort to unseat him by corporate education reformers. He relays how Michael Bloomberg, who gave $1 million to defeat him, didn't even know who he was.

Education’s Erin Brockovich | Long Island Business News

Education’s Erin Brockovich | Long Island Business News:

Education’s Erin Brockovich

Jeanette Deutermann’s family has long been involved in education. Her sister is a teacher. Her father taught physics; his students include a man who became one of the state’s top education officials. And she and her family moved back to Long Island from North Carolina, in part because of the quality of its public education.

But through a combination of personal experience, circumstances and her own education about New York State’s system, Deutermann became the first or one of the first Long Island parents to have her children “opt out” of now-controversial state assessments.

She founded Long Island Opt Out and grew it, using social media, strategy and a loophole in education law to get 65,000 Long Island students recently to refuse to take state assessments.

She became a major force in recent school board elections, as her group’s blessing propelled dozens of candidates to seats. Some call her education’s Erin Brockovich, a mother who shaped concerns about excessive, untested testing into a movement.

“I can’t say I’m not selfish,” Deutermann said. “I’d love to say, ‘It has nothing to do with me, I’m doing it for other people.’ I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it for my kids.”

Deutermann built an organization and became a calming and collaborative force, leading the charge as Long Island becomes a blackboard battleground.

“She’s a strong leader who understands how to cultivate relationships and community build to motivate others to take action,” said Lisa Rudley, a Westchester mother also leading the charge. “She is a thoughtful leader with tremendous integrity and has lit up this opt-out movement in unprecedented ways.”

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The story of Long Island’s opt-out movement is the story of the biggest social movement to be mobilized on Long Island in years. More than 65,000 students “opted out” of standardized tests for students in grades three to eight this year, amid concerns that new tests had twisted the education system.

“One day we were complete strangers,” said Deborah Abramson Brooks, an attorney and co-founder of Port Washington Advocates for Public Education, who works with Deutermann. “The next, we were attending rallies together and bonding over the fight for the well-being of our children.”

Even New York State Chancellor of Education Merryl Tisch, who leads the state’s Board of Regents, weighed in on the issue of excessive testing.

She at a recent Regents meeting said the board needs to “reflect carefully about how much testing

Read more: http://libn.com/2015/08/03/educations-erin-brockovich/#ixzz3hoMxYci5