Schools Matter: Jay Mathews and KIPP Journalism

Schools Matter: Jay Mathews and KIPP Journalism:

Jay Mathews and KIPP Journalism

 by Jim Horn

Before my book on teaching in KIPP Model schools went on sale yesterday, Jay Mathews and the “No Excuses” charter empire were already at work.  In fact, Jay had already delivered to hisWashington Post editors a two-part response/review to my book.  Part 1 appeared yesterday.

Jay’s dubious assessment of Work Hard, Be Hard… may reassure KIPP’s corporate patrons, venture philanthropists, and the hedge funders that all is well in "No Excuses Land," but his remarks do nothing to shed light on the intent and content of my book, which was conceived and executed with the principal aim of allowing former No Excuses teachers to share their stories with the public. At the same time, I wanted to show that these grueling accounts of life inside "No Excuses" corporate charter schools reflect the realization of a paternalistic social vision and a hard-fisted privatization agenda that jointly constitute two of the greatest threats to democracy in our era.  

Because “No Excuses” charters are key to achieving this corporate-sponsored vision and mission, it is, indeed, important that Jay Mathews go all out to downplay my book and the importance of hearing former KIPP teachers’ shared experiences of life inside KIPP.  For if parents, policymakers, and prospective teachers come to understand the patronizing aims, draconian methods, and unhealthy outcomes of the KIPP Model charter schools, then a major tool of the education privatization and social control agenda could be jeopardized. 

Here is a the first clip from Jay’s Part 1 that requires a response:

I wish the book [Work Hard, Be Hard] were not so one-sided. In the great tradition of American polemics, Horn is entitled to his relentlessly anti-KIPP view. But he never satisfactorily explains how a charter network, if it is as harmful to teachers and children as he says, could attract nearly 70,000 students to 183 campuses in 20 states and the District.

I should first acknowledge my utter failure in this regard, for if there is anything I have learned from my years of sparring with the heavyweight champ of KIPP apologists, it is that there is no way to satisfactorily explain to Jay Mathews, at least, how the KIPP Model could reflect anything other than the spit-shined corporate image that he and the Washington Post editorial board have helped to carefully polish for the past decade. My book, however, explores in some measurable Schools Matter: Jay Mathews and KIPP Journalism:

Shameless Promotion Plus a 20 Percent Discount

Click the image to enlarge.  See promotion code in bottom right.  Thank you.  jh

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2016/02/shameless-promotion-plus-20-percent.html

Vergara v. California Appeal Underway: The Case that Will Yield No Winners | VAMboozled!

Vergara v. California Appeal Underway: The Case that Will Yield No Winners | VAMboozled!:

Vergara v. California Appeal Underway: The Case that Will Yield No Winners

In June of 2014, defendants in “Vergara v. California” in Los Angeles, California lost the case. Plaintiffs included nine public school students (backed by some serious corporate reformer funds as per Students Matter) who challenged five California state statutes that supported the state’s “ironclad [teacher] tenure system.” The prosecution’s argument was that students’ rights to a good education were being violated by teachers’ job protections…protections that were making it too difficult to fire “grossly ineffective” teachers. The prosecution’s suggested replacement to the “old” way of doing this, of course, was to use value-added scores to make “better” decisions about which teachers to fire and whom to keep around, as based on teachers’ causal impacts on students’ “data.”

This week, this case is being appealed, back in Los Angeles (see a recent Education Week article on the appeal here; see also the Students Matter website for daily appeal updates here). This, accordingly, is a very important case to watch, especially as many agree that this case will eventually end up in no lesser than the state’s Supreme Court.

On this note, though, I came across a great article, also in Education Week, this morning, capturing as per the article’s title, the “Five Reasons Vergara Is Still Unwinnable.” I already tweeted this one out, but for those of you not following us on Twitter, I didn’t want you to miss this one.

The author — Charles Taylor Kerchner, Research Professor at Claremont Graduate University — puts the key pieces of the case in context as well as under a fair and appropriate light, more specifically explaining why “this is a case that the plaintiffs can’t Vergara v. California Appeal Underway: The Case that Will Yield No Winners | VAMboozled!:

As protests rise over high-stakes tests, more students likely to opt out

As protests rise over high-stakes tests, more students likely to opt out:

As protests rise over high-stakes tests, more students likely to opt out

MICHAEL BRYANT / STAFF

Yard signs in Lower Merion urge parents to forgo student testing.

Last year, a small, angry band of parents and teachers in the Lower Merion School District took on a big challenge: convincing their neighbors that the intensifying emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests was harming their children's education.

This year's challenge: coming up with enough yard signs so converts to the cause can broadcast their displeasure with the coming Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, tests given in grades three through eight. Their opt-out message - "Our kids & schools are more than a score" - has popped up on curbsides around the affluent Main Line suburb.

Danielle Arnold-Schwartz, a Lower Merion teacher and local chapter leader of the national education activist group Parents Across America, said about 100 yard signs were snapped up for $1 each after a recent Villanova University screening of a documentary critical of high-stakes testing.

"There are people still asking for more," she said, "and it's not fully testing season yet."

The protest signs are a leading indicator that across the region, the parent-led push to opt out of standardized tests - whether the PSSAs, or Pennsylvania's controversial Keystone Exams, or New Jersey's year-old PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) - may be nearing a tipping point.

Earlier this month, anti-testing advocates in Pennsylvania won a major victory when Gov. Wolf signed a bill delaying until 2019 the use of the Keystones as a graduation requirement - a two-year stay that local superintendents and schools boards overwhelmingly supported. The tests were to be part of new state standards in Language Arts, Algebra 1, and Biology.

Last year, about 4,500 students in Pennsylvania sat out achievement tests; in New Jersey, the opt-outs numbered 115,000, or 14 percent of the exam-taking pool. Activists predict those figures will spike upward when the next round of tests begins late next month and continues into April. Across the country, an estimated 640,000 opted out last year in the 14 states that reported, according to FairTest: National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

Perhaps more important are the signs that elected officials, from the White House on down, are listening to the swelling criticism that excessive testing, with weeks of preparatory drills, puts undue pressure on students, robs them of classroom time for real learning, and is an unfair measure of teacher and school performance.

In a video posted on Facebook last year, President Obama said too much testing "takes the joy out of teaching and learning." In December, he signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), replacing the contentious No Child Left Behind law. ESSA gives states more leeway in how test results are used to evaluate students and teachers - although, like No Child, it allows for federal funds to be withheld from schools where participation falls under 95 percent.

Even Larry Wittig, Pennsylvania Board of Education chairman and a vocal supporter

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20160228_As_protests_rise_over_high-stakes_tests__more_students_likely_to_opt_out.html#xrG3AuSTGZcyAhz4.99

CURMUDGUCATION: MA: Charters Hate Compromise

CURMUDGUCATION: MA: Charters Hate Compromise:

MA: Charters Hate Compromise

This morning's Boston Post reports that a "Bitter Fight Brewing over Mass. Charter School Expansion" (though it could also have been "Mass Charter Expansion"). And while the battle has not been "brewing" so much as "going on for a while now," the article centers on one question-- can the legislature come up with a compromise on increasing the number of MA charters, or will the whole mess end up as a ballot initiative in the fall?

Massachusetts jumped on the charter bus with real enthusiasm back in 2010 when they saw it as a way to grab some Race To The Trough money, but of course that money is no longer available, and local districts and taxpayers are noticing what charter school "hosts" everywhere notice-- that funding a new entoitlement for students to attend private school at public expense is costly.

The battle is playing out mostly in the Senate-- the charter-reformster industry has already purchased themselves a governor and a House of Representatives in Massachusetts.

Reporter David Scharfenberg suggests that in the past, charter legislation has been an area of compromise, but this time offers a different summation:

“It’s the pure charter play this time,” said Martha “Marty” Walz, a management and public affairs consultant who helped usher the 2010 bill into law as cochairwoman of the Legislature’s education committee.

The governor has tried to sweeten the pot by budgeting more money for the big pile used to re-imburse districts (temporarily) for the money sucked out by charters, but Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg is moving above that, suggesting that legislators look at issues "from financing, to CURMUDGUCATION: MA: Charters Hate Compromise:

Moskowitz offers rare apology in private memo to staff | POLITICO

Moskowitz offers rare apology in private memo to staff | POLITICO:

Moskowitz offers rare apology in private memo to staff

Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz offered a rare, albeit brief, apology on behalf of her charter school network in a private memo to staff on Thursday night, a contrast to her publicly defiant stance in the wake of a recent spate of negative media coverage.

"No matter how you view it, this is a tragic situation for the scholar and her mother, and many of us are deeply sorry that we have let her down," Moskowitz said in the memo, responding to a New York Times report that the mother of a Success student who had her work paper torn up by a teacher has withdrawn her child from the school. The Times also reported that the child and her mother, Nadya Miranda, are homeless, and live in a family shelter. 

Much of the rest of the memo focused on criticizing the Times, an institution that has rivaled even Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration and the United Federation of Teachers recently as the prime subject of Moskowitz's scorn. But the apology is notable for its bluntness, and for the fact of an admission of responsibility.

In public, Moskowitz has responded to the Times story by lambasting the press, and in particular what she scornfully refers to the "paper of record." She has accused the Times of bias, and has commissioned her recently-hired group of media relations professionals at Mercury to send near-daily press releases calling on the paper to direct more coverage to problems in the city's district schools. Moskowitz offers rare apology in private memo to staff | POLITICO:

Fear of Deportation Is Driving Migrant Kids to Stay Home from School | VICE | United States

Fear of Deportation Is Driving Migrant Kids to Stay Home from School | VICE | United States:

Fear of Deportation Is Driving Migrant Kids to Stay Home from School

It was 6:30 AM when Wildin David Guillen-Acosta stepped outside his house in Durham, North Carolina, headed to school. The 19-year-old had just begun his second semester of senior year at Riverside High School, where teachers considered him an exemplary student and peers called him a leader. But that morning, Acosta never even made it down the street—two immigration agents waited in the driveway and commanded he get in their vehicle.

"The agents picked my son up in the driveway and asked him questions, and they didn't identify themselves until they got him in the car," Acosta's mother Dilsia Acosta told me in Spanish, recalling the incident on January 28. "He just wanted to go to school. He loved it there. He wanted to keep studying, to go to the university and become an engineer."

Acosta, a Honduran native who fled gang violence for the US at age 16, is among dozens of Central American youths around the nation who have recently been targeted for deportation on their way to class, to work, or to the store.

The arrests are part of the Department of Homeland Security's large-scale crackdown on Central American migrants, in reaction to a record number of women and children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador crossing the border. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducted highly publicized raids on families in early January, and on Tuesday, Thomas Homan, the executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE, announced that the agency had created dozens of teams to continue apprehending and deporting Central Americans.

"Consistent with our laws and values, recent border crossers, including those apprehended as unaccompanied children, who are unable to establish they are eligible for relief and have exhausted appeals have been, and will continue to be, ICE removal priorities," Homan testified at a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday.

But as ICE boasts about its strict enforcement tactics, it declines to acknowledge the jarring impact these raids have on US soil: Many students have simply stopped going to school.

Attendance dropped by one-third in several classes at Riverside High School the day after Acosta's arrest, according to Bryan Proffitt, the president of the Durham Educators Fear of Deportation Is Driving Migrant Kids to Stay Home from School | VICE | United States:

Letter Grades, Assigned by States to School Districts, Tell Us Little about Real Opportunity | janresseger

Letter Grades, Assigned by States to School Districts, Tell Us Little about Real Opportunity | janresseger:

Letter Grades, Assigned by States to School Districts, Tell Us Little about Real Opportunity

Ohio’s release last Friday of school district report cards that rate schools and school districts and assign letter grades for a range of calculations that remain incomprehensible to the general public has set me to thinking about opportunity.  The grades, after all, purport to rank and rate our state’s school districts according to their success or failure in serving all children. School district grades and ratings, however, are almost entirely abstract.  Experience is categorized, assigned numbers that become factors in algorithms, and described as a letter grade for each of a number of categories.

Consider instead what Mike Rose, the education writer and UCLA education professor, says about opportunity: “(I)’m interested… in the experience of education when it’s done well with the student’s well-being in mind.  The unfortunate thing is that there is nothing in the standard talk about schooling—and this has been true for decades—that leads us to consider how school is perceived by those who attend it.”  (Why School? p. 34) “(T)he creation of opportunity involves a good deal of thoughtful work on the part of the provider, and as well, demands significant effort on the part of the recipient… In this regard, I’m especially interested in what opportunity feels like. Discussions of opportunity are often abstract—as in ideological debate—or conducted at a broad structural level—as in policy deliberation.  But what is the experience of opportunity?  Certainly one feels a sense of possibility, of hope. But it is hope made concrete, specific, hope embodied in tools, or practices, or sequences of things to do—pathways to a goal.  And all this takes place with people who interact with you in ways that affirm your hope.” (Why School? pp. 13-14)

By contrast, the Plain Dealer covers last Friday’s release of school district grades and rankingsin the most abstract way—totally removed from any attention to the “experience” of attending school.  The newspaper covers the ratings almost as a sports competition—listing the top 20 school districts in Northeast Ohio and the top 20 school districts in the state.  All of them across the state are exurban, high income, and homogeneously white. They include the wealthiest outer ring suburbs of Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, Lorain, Akron, and Youngstown.

Decades’ of research confirm that test scores primarily reflect the aggregate family wealth of a Letter Grades, Assigned by States to School Districts, Tell Us Little about Real Opportunity | janresseger:

Analytics.usa.gov: Now with Agency-Specific Dashboards| The US government's web traffic.

analytics.usa.gov | The US government's web traffic.:

Analytics.usa.gov: Now with Agency-Specific Dashboards

• BY TIM LOWDEN, GRAY BROOKS, GABRIEL RAMIREZ, ERIC MILL, JULIA WINN AND COLIN CRAIG 
• FEBRUARY 18, 2016 
• DATA, OUR WORK
• ADD REPLY

We’ve added agency-specific dashboards to analytics.usa.gov!

Starting today, you’ll see a dropdown from the main analytics.usa.gov page that allows you to view the same dashboard, but filtered for websites that are administered by one of 10 specific agencies:

• Department of Commerce
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of the Interior
• Department of Justice
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• National Archives and Records Administration
• Small Business Administration

What Do These Pages Show Me?

These dashboard pages allow for greater insight into how the public interacts with specific agency websites as a complement to the aggregated view available atanalytics.usa.gov. In many cases, the information we see as a government-wide percentage does not perfectly mirror an individual agency’s data. For example, at the time of writing this post, the domestic vs. foreign traffic on the whole of participating Digital Analytics Program (DAP) sites is about 90% to 10%, respectively. But the VA specifically has a 99% to 1% ratio, while NASA has a 62% to 38% domestic to foreign visits ratio.

The pages also allow you to see things like the most popular downloads at an agency-level. During tax season, the IRS contributes the majority of downloads in the “Top Downloads” section on analytics.usa.gov, which is logical since it is tax season. With agency dashboards, you can observe downloads at the agency level.

Why These Agencies? Are There More to Come?

The agencies included in this initial “batch” of dashboards volunteered to be part of the first release. They are not representative of total participation in DAP, which is currently at 45 agencies. In the future, we hope to continue to expand the number of agency-specific pages. If you’d like to see a dashboard for your agency, contact us.

Are the Dashboards Representative of All Agency Websites?

In most cases, no. The dashboards reflect only websites that participate in the Digital Analytics Program. You can see which sites are included in the data set for each agency by downloading the “Visits to all Domains in the Last 30 Days” .csv file from the “Download the Data” section. You can also get an idea of the level of participation of an agency at pulse.cio.gov. If you work on a federal website that you’d like to have participate in DAP, email us.

We think this level of data is valuable to gain a more clear understanding of the kinds of interaction the public has with the various different parts of the federal government, and what is important to them. We hope you feel the same!

Top Pages

• Now
• 7 Days
• 30 Days

People on a single, specific page now. Download the full dataset.

The FSA ID | Federal Student Aid

392

Federal Student Aid

207

FAFSA: Applying for Aid | Federal Student Aid

118

Income-Driven Plans | Federal Student Aid

113

Public Service Loan Forgiveness | Federal Student Aid

95

My Student Aid | Federal Student Aid

63

Loan and Grant Fact Sheets | Federal Student Aid

62

Filling Out the FAFSA | Federal Student Aid

55

Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans | Federal Student Aid

50

About Us | Federal Student Aid

46

Forgiveness, Cancellation, and Discharge | Federal Student Aid

46

Loan Consolidation | Federal Student Aid

45

Tax Benefits | Federal Student Aid

45

Federal Pell Grants | Federal Student Aid

43

Home | U.S. Department of Education

39

Contact Us | Federal Student Aid

38

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. Department of Education

37

Create A Graph

36

Listing Colleges on the FAFSA | Federal Student Aid

34

Contact Us & General Inquiries | U.S. Department of Education

32

analytics.usa.gov | The US government's web traffic.:

When Integrating A School, Does It Matter If You Use Class Instead Of Race? : NPR Ed : NPR

When Integrating A School, Does It Matter If You Use Class Instead Of Race? : NPR Ed : NPR:

When Integrating A School, Does It Matter If You Use Class Instead Of Race?

LA Johnson/NPR

"Stronger Together" is not the name of the latest social-media fitness app. It's a grant proposed in President Obama's new budget, reviving an idea that hasn't gotten much policy attention in decades: diversity in public schools. If the request is approved, $120 million will go to school districts for programs intended to make their schools more diverse.

As a new pair of reports from the progressive Century Foundation shows, integration policies have seen a resurgence: In 2007, 40 districts pursued integration. Today that number has more than doubled, to 83, plus nine charter schools or networks. That adds up to a total of 4 million students in classrooms that are more diverse than they'd otherwise be.

This new wave of integration has come with one big difference that sets it apart from the busing battles of the past. These programs rely on family income, not race, as the driver.

To be clear, there's evidence that socially as well as racially integrated schools benefit all students. When a school reaches a stable level of about 30 percent middle-class students, the lower-income students achieve at higher levels and the privileged students do no worse, says Halley Potter, the author of one of the Century Foundation reports. Similarly, the racial achievement gap shrinks in schools that have less than a "supermajority" of 60 percent of any one race.

But the real case for diverse schools is a lot bigger than test scores, says Amy Stuart Wells, who teaches at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the author of the second report. "The qualitative and quantitative evidence is powerful enough to say, 'We should do this.' "

It's worth pointing out that because of the legacy of discrimination and institutionalized segregation in the United States, in most communities mixing up students by class also means mixing them up by race.

"Diversification by socioeconomic status also means by race," says Mercedes Ebanks,When Integrating A School, Does It Matter If You Use Class Instead Of Race? : NPR Ed : NPR: 

Something Doesn’t Add Up With National PTA’s Intimidation Letter To Delaware PTA… – Exceptional Delaware

Something Doesn’t Add Up With National PTA’s Intimidation Letter To Delaware PTA… – Exceptional Delaware:

Something Doesn’t Add Up With National PTA’s Intimidation Letter To Delaware PTA…

I was thinking about this a lot the past two days.  Since I posted theNational PTA “Comply Or We Will Make You” letter to the Delaware PTA, something didn’t feel quite right.  Was it the absolute absurdity and gall of National PTA, or the timing of it?

The Delaware PTA heavily advocated House Bill 50, the Delaware opt-out legislation that our cowardly weasel of a Governor vetoed last July.  When an attempt  to have our legislators do the right thing and override Markell’s veto, the Delaware PTA staged a rally outside of Legislative Hall in Dover.  This was a month and a half ago.  The very next week, the Delaware PTA announced National PTA would be coming out with a position statement against opt-out very soon.  They did so in the beginning of February.

Let us flash forward to last Wednesday.  The Wilmington Education Improvement Commission has their post-State Board meeting where State Board of Education President Dr. Teri Quinn Gray is grilled and served on a plate by Wilmington school districts and members of the Commission.  State Board Executive Director Donna Johnson is most likely highly embarrassed about the allegation she advised State Board members how to vote on the WEIC plan.  The very next day, President of Delaware PTA Dr. Terri Hodges gets the comply or die letter from Laura Bay, the President of National PTA.  Right before the assessment inventory meeting at the Delaware Department of Education.  Right before.  As she walks into the meeting, handouts are provided to the committee and members of the public.  One of them is the National PTA position statement on assessment and opt-out.  It was a very odd choice for a hand-out.  Especially since it was NEVER discussed at all during the meeting.  Dr. Hodges attended the previous meeting, and I’m sure the DOE knew some type of Delaware PTA representation would attend the meeting.  I’m not coming right out and saying this, but I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

Yes, the National PTA did issue the position statement against opt-out.  For what reasons, I absolutely cannot fathom.  But Kilroy’s Delaware did present something very interesting today in regards to National PTA President Laura Bay.  It turns out she is the coördinator Something Doesn’t Add Up With National PTA’s Intimidation Letter To Delaware PTA… – Exceptional Delaware:

Navigating the legal threats posed by LCAPs :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Navigating the legal threats posed by LCAPs :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Navigating the legal threats posed by LCAPs

(Calif.) Two prominent attorneys who tend to face-off from opposite sides of most public school issues have found common ground on one thing – that districts face significant legal threat over the development and execution of local performance plans.

Already Los Angeles Unified was sued over its method for calculating the base cost of services to disadvantaged students, and with administrators getting started this spring on the third update of their Local Control Accountability Plans, even more scrutiny from outside groups is expected.

“This coming year is going to be critical,” said Sloan Simmons, partner at Lozano Smith. “Districts may for the first time start to have data upon which they can measure success of their LCAP initiatives and whether they are meeting their programmatic and spending goals.  For districts that perhaps don’t meet intended goals, they can determine what needs to be adjusted in their LCAPs so that funds are benefitting the target groups as intended.”

Legislative leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown ushered in the Local Control Funding Formula almost three years ago giving schools billions in additional dollars to expand educational services to low-income students, English learners and foster youth. Although there’s a general understanding that local educational agencies are still adjusting and transitioning to the new rules, there’s also some pressure from parents, advocacy groups and lawmakers to show results.

Last week at a hearing of the Senate Education Committee, members of California’s State Board of Education and Department of Education were asked pointedly when taxpayers can expect to see a return on the LCFF “concentration” and “supplemental” grants invested in schools.

The answer, said board president Mike Kirst, is likely two years off – maybe longer as the state continues to struggle with reinventing how it will measure school and student performance under the newly-adopted Common Core State Standards and added complications from adoption of the nation’s new education law, the Every Child Succeeds Act.

It is unlikely that public interest law firms and advocacy groups will wait that long before raising questions about whether districts are meeting their LCAP goals.

“We continue to see districts that fail to even identify what their school-wide and district-wide actions and services are that they are spending supplemental and concentration grants on,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates.

“You’ve got to separately identify each distinct action or service supported by supplemental and concentration spending,” he explained. “Instead we see a lot of summary explanations that simply say things like ‘we invested in programs to support our English learners’ – that’s not good enough.”

At issue in the L.A. Unified case is whether the district properly included special education spending Navigating the legal threats posed by LCAPs :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Will Democrats Malloy, Wyman and the CT Dem Party disavow Ed Marcus’ disgusting attack on Sanders and all Democrats? - Wait What?

Will Democrats Malloy, Wyman and the CT Dem Party disavow Ed Marcus’ disgusting attack on Sanders and all Democrats? - Wait What?:

Will Democrats Malloy, Wyman and the CT Dem Party disavow Ed Marcus’ disgusting attack on Sanders and all Democrats?

Former Connecticut Democratic State Chairman Ed Marcus is, among other things, a thug.

After serving for ten years in the Connecticut General Assembly, six of which I also worked as the Connecticut Democratic Party’s Political Director, I left Connecticut politics in 1993.

At the time, I ended my career in elective office and Democratic politics a number of reasons, the primarily one being that I wanted to be an active, engaged and hands-on father for my newborn daughter and my second daughter yet to come.

However, in addition, I left because the Democratic State Central Committee selected Ed Marcus to be the Party’s Chairman.  Marcus ran on a platform claiming that he would fire me his first day in office due to my legislative work on behalf of a fairer and more progressive state tax structure that included a new state income tax.  He also condemned by “liberal” politics.  It was with a sense of honor that I cleaned out my office and left Democratic Headquarters the day Marcus became its leader.

Today, just like back then, Ed Marcus was utterly unable to recognize that the underlying principle of being a Democrat begins with the concept that a Democrat believes in democracy (a word that beings with a lower-case d).

Now, in a truly unbelievable and disturbing commentary piece in the CT Mirror entitled,Letting Sanders run as a Democrat was a big mistake by the DNC, the former head of the Connecticut Democratic Party proclaims that Bernie Sanders is not “Democrat” enough to run for President as a “Democrat.”

For those of us who were brought up and believe in the principles that motivated millions of Democrats to support and vote for elected officials who would make our towns, states, Will Democrats Malloy, Wyman and the CT Dem Party disavow Ed Marcus’ disgusting attack on Sanders and all Democrats? - Wait What?:

More Bad Journalism about Bad Edu-Books (and Why the New Media Can Rock) – the becoming radical

More Bad Journalism about Bad Edu-Books (and Why the New Media Can Rock) – the becoming radical:
More Bad Journalism about Bad Edu-Books (and Why the New Media Can Rock)

 So Ed Boland wrote a really bad edu-book that all the mainstream media adores because, well, you know, nobody gives a crap what a teacher thinks, but let ANYbody dip a toe in education who isn’t an educator and then everyone is all gaga.

Like our old reliable bad journalism source, The New York Times: The Myth of the Hero Teacher (note the very serious and pensive opening photo).

But this will be a short post, one that simply notes that I have told you so, again and again—mainstream journalism about education is godawful.

I also want to turn your eyes to the promise of the New Media, where two posts have addressed the bad journalism and bad edu-book very well, I think:

• Nobody Told Him How to Take a Cellphone Away from a Kid, Alan Singer

My fear is that this will book will be used as another weapon in assaults on public schools and teacher certification programs. I have no question there are public schools that are not functioning and should be closed, although it would not be fair to make a judgment based on Boland’s report. Boland says he is in no way blaming the students, they are the victims of poverty. He claims the book is about his personal catharsis and is an indictment of the conditions that produce this kind of student behavior. But that is not how it comes across in interviews or what sells books. The focus in “The Battle for Room 314” is on the horrors Boland feels he experienced because of the students and he offers a detailed description of their behavior, at least as he understood it.

• Education Tourists Can’t Save Anything or Anyone, John Warner; note:More Bad Journalism about Bad Edu-Books (and Why the New Media Can Rock) – the becoming radical: