SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: deutsch29 Mercedes Schneider's Blog (deutsch29.wordpress.com)

SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: deutsch29 Mercedes Schneider's Blog (deutsch29.wordpress.com)

To My Beloved Teacher

29 11h

When I visited you two years ago After an absence of at least fifteen years I noticed the slip You forgot what you did only moments before More than once And you were not aware that you forgot. It was a mild shock for me. You remember the far away events Better than the recent. I knew, but I did not want to know. Still, I adjust. I repeat myself as often as you need, Without any hint that I alrea

DEC 26

The Waltons and Their Charter-Choice “Inroads”: Making Strategic Purchases

90 3d

On December 24, 2018, the Associated Press (AP) published this article about the billionaire Walton family’s attempts to purchase “like minded” persons of color in order to advance charter schools in America. From the AP article: Amid fierce debate over whether charter schools are good for black students, the heirs to the Walmart company fortune have been working to make inroads with advocates an

DEC 25

The Value of Closing Shop

5d

It’s Christmas. This morning, I had several pieces of Whitman’s chocolate for breakfast–a childhood dream (smile). And like an adult who understands digestive action and consequence, I followed that chocolate dining wonder with a bowl of bran cereal, for I know the time will come to, ahem, “pay the piper,” so to speak. Christmas is a slow morning for me, providing a relaxation that I savor. This

DEC 23

“White Saviors”: Privileged, Uninformed, Insistent, and Destructive.

100+ 6d

I have not read journalist Jordan Flaherty’s book, No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality , but an October 2017 review of the book surely resonates with my experiences regarding the overwhelmingly wealthy, white steamroller of market-based ed reform with destructive message, “We are white; we have money, and we’re in charge For Your Own Good.” Below are excerpts from Aura B

DEC 22

Gentrification: Where Affluence Wins.

200+ 7d

Gentrification is the process of displacing the original, usually lower-class, residents in an urban area with more affluent residents. It is a controversial means of “improving” the socioeconomics of a city by driving out the previous residents because many original residents can no longer afford to live in the area. The new, affluent residents are often the ones who enjoy the benefits of gentri

DEC 19

Students Sing to Their Teacher After Finding Out She Has Cancer

45 10d

After learning that their teacher has been diagnosed with cancer, an assembly of her students sings a song of comfort to her. From Twitter, on December 18, 2018: My heart They sing to their teacher after they find out she has cancer Retweet pic.twitter.com/cLdcrS1dBt — StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) December 18, 2018 It turns out that the video above of the students’ beautiful tribute was filmed in

DEC 18

College Options for High School Grads with Low or Modest GPAs

50 11d

In May 2018, Anna Wulick of ACT’s PrepScholar blog posted this informative entry for high school graduates who wish to attend four-year college but who have less-than-impressive GPAs. For those high school grads whose GPAs are really low (like, “I walked the D-average line class after class, year after year”), the piece includes three institutions that base acceptance on criteria other than GPA:

DEC 16

Is the Kentucky GOP Trying to Intimidate Democratic Teachers Into Not Running for Office?

91 13d

It seems so. On December 14, 2018, Kentucky’s Courier Journal reported that the Kentucky GOP has filed numerous public records requests for teacher emails, and it seems that these requests are little more than an attempt to intimidate Democratic teachers from running for office. In November 2018, an astounding 51 Kentucky teachers ran for election for the Kentucky House and Senate, with 36 runnin

DEC 14

New Orleans Superintendent Sure Is Having to “Emergency Revoke” a Lot of Charters…

62 15d

It seems that Orleans Parish Schools superintendent Henderson Lewis has his hands full in dealing with New Orleans charter schools that find themselves in fiscal trouble. As the November 13, 2018, New Orleans Lens reports , Lewis has decided to close three charter schools “in the past six months,” and he threatened to close two others “last year”: Orleans Parish schools Superintendent Henderson L

DEC 12

The Gimmick Behind a Walton-Featured, 100-Percent-College-Acceptance Charter School

100+ 17d

In April 2018, the Walton Family Foundation (WFF) announced that it formed two new nonprofits for the purpose of loaning money to charter schools “to make it easier and more affordable for public charter schools to find, secure and renovate facilities.” Siblings Robson, Alice, and Jim Walton One particular point about the above press release caught my attention. But first, a splash of Walton ed r

DEC 09

No Matter Who Gets Credit for the Original Idea, School Vouchers Have Yet to Shake a Racist History

31 20d

The history of school vouchers in American K12 education is rooted in racism. This fact is indisputable. Economist Milton Friedman, known as “the father of school choice,” is the name most commonly connected to the use of vouchers in K12 education. His 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education,” is the text often cited as central to Friedman’s views on school choice in the form of vouchers

DEC 08

Rhode Island School District to Use Collection Agency to Collect School Lunch Debt

35 21d

I teach in southern Louisiana, and our school’s lunch policy does not include fronting meals to students who do not qualify for free lunch. (Over the years, I have on numerous occasions either loaned or given students lunch money or directly provided them with food. However, in all cases, this was my personal decision.) So, the idea of a policy that allows for students (parents?) to accrue lunch

DEC 07

First-Ever Report Details Loss of Revenue to Public Ed Due to Corporate Tax Breaks

100+ 22d

Corporate tax breaks divert public support for a state’s infrastructure into the corporate coffers. It is a way to give away tax money without ever collecting it. One of the lines of defense for the corporate tax break is that the tax break does not constitute giving away tax money since the money was never collected. Nice try. However, the diverting of tax money into corporate tax breaks results

DEC 05

Nation’s First Charter School Teachers Strike Heads for Day Three

100+ 24d

Charter school teachers are not supposed to strike. They are supposed to be at-will employees, able to be fired at the will of their employer, without due process. Such is the dream of market-based ed reform: Power concentrated at the top, with the average worker discouraged (prevented?) from any collective negotiations. However, those on the losing end of market ed reform’s doormatism become tir

DEC 04

Help Me Prevent a Holiday Eviction

25d

UPDATE 12-05-18: Fundraising goal has been reached! As of this writing, the campaign has $1405 in donations ($1355 after GoFundMe fees). Many thanks to all who have contributed! _____________________________________________________________________________________ I was surprised to find one of our school’s regular substitutes crying in the teachers’ lounge. I asked what had happened, and she expl

DEC 02

New York Times Exposes Louisiana School’s 100-Percent-College-Acceptance Lie, and More

27d

If you read about a school with a 100-percent college acceptance rate for its grads, keep in mind that one of the surest ways to achieve such astounding results is to lie– to whip up fictitious student success stories that include a horrid home life and a string of glowing achievements that shows that these students Beat the Odds. Such is apparently the tack of the husband and wife leadership at

Interested in scheduling Mercedes Schneider for a speaking engagement? Click here.

Want to read about the history of charter schools and vouchers?

School Choice: The End of Public Education? 

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of two other books: A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?. You should buy these books. They’re great. No, really.

Don’t care to buy from Amazon? Purchase my books from Powell’s City of Books instead.

US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students

US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students

US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students

Over the past year, the Trump administration’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational program garnered $300 million in pledges from big tech companies. Implicit in this push is the commonly accepted though questionable notion that millions of cutting-edge STEM jobs await US workers but go unfilled because public schools have failed to prepare students for them. The STEM bandwagon rolls on at the expense of social studies, art, history and literature — all deemed “irrelevant” to career success and to education as a commodity — while promoting often biased and inaccurate corporate curricula.

Open inquiry scarcely figures in corporate-funded curricula, according to Gerald Coles’s recently published book, Miseducating for the Global Economy. Coles points to materials developed by the Bill of Rights Institute (an organization created by the billionaire Koch brothers) as an example of the ideological distortions present in corporate-funded educational materials. For example, the curriculum developed by the institute teaches students that “the Occupy movement violated the rights of others.”

Though Occupy protested abuses of the richest 1 percent, the Bill of Rights Institute curriculum is not concerned with this. Instead, according to Coles, it asks whether the police crackdown on Occupy was justified — and answers “yes,” because the New York Occupy demonstrators had purportedly damaged both the park and adjacent neighborhood. Somehow this was construed as a First Amendment violation and “consequently the government had a right to inflict pain (with pepper spray, for example) on the Bill of Rights abusers.” Occupy protesters in CONTINUE READING: US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students