Wendy Lecker on Eli Broad: The Wannabee Koch Brother | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker on Eli Broad: The Wannabee Koch Brother | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker on Eli Broad: The Wannabee Koch Brother

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently for the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate and is a regular contributor to the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Recently she wrote about Yale’s agreement to adopt Eli Broad’s school-wrecking “Broad Institute” in return for a donation of $100 million. The Broad Institute is a vanity project by a billionaire who readily admits he knows nothing about education but enjoys disrupting school districts because he can.

Lecker writes:

Wendy Lecker: Putting a price tag on public schools

When it comes to using one’s fortune to influence American policy, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch stand out.

The Kochs have spent a fortune pushing American politics and policy to the right. Their secretive organization, Americans for Prosperity, is a major player in anti-labor activities, such as Wisconsin’s slashing of union rights, and fighting minimum wage increases nationwide. The Kochs poured money into the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”) a stealth lobby organization that writes bills that advance Koch industries’ interests specifically and the Koch’s extreme free market ideology in general, and then gets legislators all over the country to introduce them.

They have also donated millions of dollars to establish research centers at universities to push their brand of unregulated capitalism. They impose conditions and performance obligations on the donations, interfere in hiring decisions, and make CONTINUE READING: Wendy Lecker on Eli Broad: The Wannabee Koch Brother | Diane Ravitch's blog

Betsy DeVos Compares Ending Abortion With Ending Slavery | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos Compares Ending Abortion With Ending Slavery | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos Compares Ending Abortion With Ending Slavery
The education secretary told conservatives their fight to restrict abortion access was like President Abraham Lincoln’s quest to abolish “a vast moral evil.”

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told an audience of conservative Christians that their fight to restrict abortion was like President Abraham Lincoln’s quest to abolish slavery, and compared defenders of slavery with modern abortion rights activists.

Lincoln, “too, contended with the pro-choice arguments of his day. They suggested that a state’s choice to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it,” DeVos said Wednesday at a dinner for Colorado Christian University, held at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. “Well, President Lincoln reminded those pro-choicers that is a vast portion of the American people that do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it as a vast moral evil.”

She continued:

Lincoln was right about the slavery choice then, and he would be right about the life choice today. Because as it’s been said: Freedom is not about doing what we want. Freedom is about having the right to do what we ought.

The event was closed to the press, but attended by the Colorado Times Recorder, which first reported on DeVos’ comments Thursday.

DeVos told the audience she hopes to make abortion “unconstitutional” and “unthinkable.”

She also praised President Donald Trump for installing conservative judges on the nation’s courts — including the Supreme Court, where conservatives hope dismantling CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Compares Ending Abortion With Ending Slavery | HuffPost

Diane Ravitch Declares the Education Reform Movement Dead - The New York Times

Diane Ravitch Declares the Education Reform Movement Dead - The New York Times

Diane Ravitch Declares the Education Reform Movement Dead

SLAYING GOLIATH
The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Schools
By Diane Ravitch

She came. She saw. She conquered.

Such is the triumphant theme of “Slaying Goliath,” the latest work by the education historian turned education activist Diane Ravitch. The book exults in the failures of a reform movement that the author has spent the past decade denouncing — a movement that has often deserved her indignant critiques. In winning, however, Ravitch has also lost: Missing from these pages are the subtle insight and informed judgment for which she was once known.

Ravitch came to the education scene in the late 1960s, writing articles for education journals and then a series of well-respected books about the history of public schooling in America. In 1991, her career took the first of many turns: Ravitch was invited to join the administration of President George H. W. Bush as an assistant secretary of education. Though a lifelong Democrat, she took the job, and over the next several years she found her beliefs moving rightward. “In the decade following my stint in the federal government, I argued that certain managerial and structural changes — that is, choice, charters, merit pay and accountability — would help to reform our schools,” she later wrote. “Having been immersed in a world of true believers, I was influenced by their ideas.” Pushed forward by the advocacy of Ravitch and many others, these ideas (including the introduction of “charters,” independently operated public schools freed from many of the regulations imposed on traditional public schools) began to take root in the real world.

And then Ravitch’s thinking took another turn.

She saw, sooner than most, that the changes imposed by the federal laws known as No Child Left Behind (during the presidency of George W. Bush) and Race to the Top (under the administration of Barack Obama) were burdening students, who were being subjected to endless rounds of test-prep and test-taking, and demoralizing teachers, who were being evaluated and penalized in ways that were rigid and often unfair. In a book published in 2010, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” Ravitch described her transformation from enthusiastic champion to vocal critic of conservative efforts to remake education in the United States. Three years later she published “Reign of Error,” a book that condemned these efforts in even more forceful terms. CONTINUE READING: Diane Ravitch Declares the Education Reform Movement Dead - The New York Times

It's Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... A VERY BUSY DAY | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

It's Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... A VERY BUSY DAY | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Classroom Instruction Resources Of The Week

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES ON CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION IN 2019 – PART TWO. Here are this week’s picks: Accurate and Equitable Grading is by Joe Feldman. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Grading Practices . A Strategy for Boos

Every Teacher Should Watch This Video: “How to Use Wikipedia Wisely”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

geralt / Pixabay This new – and short – video from the Stanford History Education Group suggests what I think many of us have been telling students for years to do – yes, go to Wikipedia, and immediately go to the bottom and find its sources. I’m adding it to The Best Tools & Lessons For Teaching Information Literacy – Help Me Find More .

Three New Resources For Learning About Auschwitz

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

carlosftw / Pixabay Here are three new additions to A Beginning List Of “Best” Resources To Learn About Auschwitz – 75 Years After It Was Liberated: Holocaust Survivor Returning To Auschwitz: ‘It’s Like Going To The Family Cemetery’ is from NPR.

A Look Back: Sister Classes Around The World

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

I thought that new – and veteran – readers might find it interesting if I began sharing my best posts from over the years. You can see the entire collection here . In 2008, I worked with six other English teachers in different parts of the world to create simple and easy projects where our English Learner students taught each other about their respective countries. The Sacramento Bee wrote an art

How Can We Connect Current Events To What We’re Teaching In The Classroom?”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

The next question-of-the-week at my Ed Week Teacher column is: What are the best ways to connect current events to what we’re teaching in the classroom? Feel free to leave your responses in the comments section…

This Is Pretty Interesting: An Online Historical Archive Of Notebooks Used By Schoolchildren Around The World

by Larry Ferlazzo / 16h

The Exercise Book Archive is an online archive of children’s notebooks from around the world. Some are actual “exercise” notebooks, with pre-printed exercises designed to help children learn, and containing their completed notes and doodles. Others were blank notebooks that were used by teacher-created exercised filled-in by students. Many are translated, as well as being transcribed. I’m adding

Pins Of The Week

by Larry Ferlazzo / 16h

I’m fairly active on Pinterest and, in fact, have curated 20,000 resources there that I haven’t shared on this blog. I thought readers might find it useful if I began sharing a handful of my most recent “pins” each week (I’m not sure if you can see them through an RSS Reader – you might have to click throug

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Vicki Cobb Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Vicki Cobb Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

Vicki Cobb Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH

Vicki Cobb is an award-winning author of more than 90 children’s books, mostly about science.

In this post, she reviews SLAYING GOLIATH.

The review begins like this:

For the past 25 years there has been a national war between so-called education reformers and public schools.  Education historian and indefatigable blogger on the topic, Diane Ravitch, has been chronicling the attacks, losses and now, finally, victories through her blog, where she posts up to ten times a day, every day, since April of 2012. In her new book Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, she pulls the disparate threads together and writes a brilliant,  page-turner story of this war against public schools for a period that included my 5 grandchildren.

Who are the bad guys?  Millionaires and billionaires who come from a business background where forces of free-market choices,  competition, and new standards create disruption in the market place allowing the best products to rise to the surface.  Ravitch names names.  We know who they are and they include Bill Gates, Betsy De Vos, and the Walton (Wallmart) families.
Ravitch aptly changes their names from education “Reformers” to education “Disrupters.” Measurement is key to determining educational CONTINUE READING: Vicki Cobb Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH | Diane Ravitch's blog

NANCY BAILEY: Problems Surrounding Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts to Teach Reading

Problems Surrounding Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts to Teach Reading

Problems Surrounding Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts to Teach Reading

Many teachers and parents raise concerns that instruction is age-inappropriate. Many school districts have signed on to Amplify to teach subjects including language arts and reading. Teachers must teach virtual, scripted, commercial programs.

Even if you don’t live in Oklahoma, I recommend checking online to read Tulsa Kids. Betty Casey is the editor and her reports about schools are well-written and informative.

Betty gave me permission to repost this report. It’s about Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts online program. It’s an eye-opener! It raises questions about how Amplify is being used not only in Oklahoma but around the country.

Are the instructional objectives and expectations with Amplify’s online reading and CONTINUE READING: Problems Surrounding Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts to Teach Reading

America’s Social Policies and School Funding Levels Fail Our Poorest Children | janresseger

America’s Social Policies and School Funding Levels Fail Our Poorest Children | janresseger

America’s Social Policies and School Funding Levels Fail Our Poorest Children

President Donald Trump has been at Davos this week exalting the United States’ soaring economy. While Trump brags about more people working, however, he neglects to mention the ongoing collapse of manufacturing and its replacement—gig and temporary employment—along with the paltry wages of many workers. Last week Paul Krugman more accurately described how many families are faring  in greater Cleveland, Ohio, where I live.  Krugman writes: “The other day a correspondent asked me a good question: What important issue aren’t we talking about? My answer, after some reflection, is the state of America’s children.”

The problem starts with today’s jobs and today’s low minimum wage, but Krugman explores a range of other ways the fraying social safety fails to support the poorest children: “What’s especially striking is the contrast between the way we treat our children and the way we treat our senior citizens. Social Security isn’t all that generous… but it doesn’t compare too badly with other countries’ retirement systems. Medicare actually spends lavishly compared with single-payer systems elsewhere. So America’s refusal to help children isn’t part of a broad opposition to government programs; we single out children for especially harsh treatment… The answer, I’d suggest, goes beyond the fact that children can’t vote; while seniors can and do. There has also been a poisonous interaction between racial antagonism and bad social analysis.” Krugman describes all the myths about social programs causing “a culture of dependency” among the poor, and he continues: “At this point, however, we know that cultural explanations of social collapse were all wrong. The sociologist William Julius Wilson argued long ago that social dysfunction in big cities was caused, not by culture, but by the disappearance of good jobs. And he has been vindicated by what happened to much of the American heartland, which suffered a… disappearance of good jobs and a similar surge in social dysfunction… Multiple studies have found that safety net programs for children have big long-term consequences.  Children who receive adequate nutrition and health care grow up to become healthier, more productive adults.”

Here are just some of the issues that have emerged in recent articles in my clipping file about the plight of America’s children.

At the top of the list is the persistence of family homelessness in America’s cities.  At the end of October, New York City’s Advocates for Children reported that for the fourth year in a row: CONTINUE READING: America’s Social Policies and School Funding Levels Fail Our Poorest Children | janresseger

With A Brooklyn Accent: Woodie Guthrie and Billie Holiday- Revolutionizing Music and Society in the Great Depression

With A Brooklyn Accent: Woodie Guthrie and Billie Holiday- Revolutionizing Music and Society in the Great Depression

Woodie Guthrie and Billie Holiday- Revolutionizing Music and Society in the Great Depression

The Great Depression was a moment in US history when two features of American life in the 1920's were decisively challenged- the unchecked leadership of the nation  by its business elite,  and the rigid segregation of Blacks in all areas of social and economic life  As the nation's economy collapsed, and a large percentage of its population experienced poverty and insecurity on an unprecedented scale, radical activists- some of them Socialists and Communists-  organized protests which challenged the idea that  the leadership by the rich, and the segregation and stigmatization of Black people was good for the nation as a whole. In fact, they argued the opposite- that if the nation was to be saved, its working people, not its wealthy elite had to take the lead, and that Black people had to be an integral part of every movement for progress and national renewal. Little by little, these ideas began to influence political discourse, labor organizing, journalism and literature. and by the end of the decade,  popular culture and popular music  Though racism remained virulent in all spheres of American life, the Depression marked a time when a critical mass of whites began to join with blacks in movements to protest lynching, employment discrimination, limitations on voting rights, and segregation in all its forms. These anti-racist  protests drew strength from, and were often connected to, an unprecedented upheaval of America's working people, resulting in the funding of  government aid to the jobless, the beginnings of a social safety net and the unionization of the nation's largest industries, efforts in which Black people played an important part

Popular music of the Depression reflected, and at times reinforced these changes in the way the nation saw itself and conducted its business.  For the first time in many years, artists began singing  about the hardships faced by the poor, the displaced and the homeless; CONTINUE READING: With A Brooklyn Accent: Woodie Guthrie and Billie Holiday- Revolutionizing Music and Society in the Great Depression

Cartoons on Technologies Today | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on Technologies Today | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on Technologies Today

OK, I confess: I cannot resist cartoons that poke at Americans’ love of technologies. Sure, affection for new machines and devices is age-old. From colonial times to yesterday, Americans–not all, of course–have invested their dreams of convenience, entertainment, and effortless labor into new technologies. Here are some cartoons that get at that unstoppable, irresistible urge. Enjoy!

MORE CARTOONS: Cartoons on Technologies Today | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice