Randi Weingarten doesn't share Jeb Bush embrace of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary - SaintPetersBlog

Randi Weingarten doesn't share Jeb Bush embrace of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary - SaintPetersBlog:

Randi Weingarten doesn’t share Jeb Bush embrace of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary

Though education was rarely discussed by Donald Trump on the campaign trail, at the top of his list of priorities was to spend $20 million on school choice, which would come from “reprioritizing federal dollars.” In picking Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos to serve as his Education Secretary, he made it clear that intended to make school choice and voucher plans for low-income families a focal point of his education agenda.

And Jeb Bush has been effusive in praising the selection every step of the way.

In November, the former Florida Governor described DeVos as an “outstanding pick” for to lead the Department of Education. In December, he said he was “so excited” when talking about her at the National Summit on Education Reform, sponsored by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which he founded and chairs and on which DeVos serves as a board member.

Now, just before her confirmation hearing was set to take place (since postponed until next week), Bush is back again, penning a letter to the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where DeVos will appear next week. In the note, he praises her as a “champion of families, not institutions.”

“For her, local control of education decisions means local control,” he wrote. “She trusts parents to choose what is in their unique child’s best interests, and she believes in providing every parent with the resources to pursue those decisions.”

DeVos is a leader in the movement to privatize the U.S. public-education system but has quickly become a lightning rod in the education world since her nomination by the president-elect.

One of her biggest critics is Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the one-million-member-plus union that endorsed Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election. She says that DeVos simply doesn’t believe in public education.

“These are the schools that 90 percent of children go to,” Weingarten told FloridaPolitics on Monday afternoon. “The job of an education secretary, not a lobbyist, but an education secretary, is to strengthen and improve public schools. Her entire ideology, her zealousness, her lobbying for the last two-to-three decades has been to undermine public education.”

Weingarten said that was most evident in the past year in Michigan, where she says DeVos “fought aggressively against the consensus” that the establishment in Detroit had envisioned recreating a public school system.

One of DeVos’ various groups, the Great Lakes Education Project, supported an A-F accountability system that the state created for Detroit. But POLITICO reports that the group fought back hard against a proposed Detroit commission focused on improving both charters and traditional schools, contending it would be beholden to the city’s mayor and school district officials.

“Her antipathy towards public schools is something that she has worn proudly on her sleeve,” says Weingarten.

Bush’s embracing of DeVos isn’t just turning off officials with the teacher’s unions. As quickly became apparent on the campaign trail in early 2015, the one-time presidential candidate’s support for federal Common Core standards was a big turnoff for some conservative groups.

Jane Robbins, a senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington, penned a column on the Townhall website calling DeVos selection “Jeb’s Revenge.”

“Jeb Bush and his ideological compatriots, including DeVos, advance what could be called a Randi Weingarten doesn't share Jeb Bush embrace of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary - SaintPetersBlog:

Parental Discrimination Lawsuits on the Rise - The Atlantic

Parental Discrimination Lawsuits on the Rise - The Atlantic:

The Revolt of Working Parents

Mothers—and some fathers—are increasingly suing employers for discriminating against working parents. They are succeeding.

“There is no way you can be a good mother while achieving what I aspire."

“Let’s face it. It’s a man’s world. The woman always stays home with the child.”

“It’s hard to do this job with two kids.”

These are just a few phrases working mothers reported hearing from their supervisors when discussing promotions or demotions, according to recent court filings. The subtle—and sometimes overt—perception illustrated by these statements—that mothers are less devoted to their jobs than childless workers—has been dubbed “the Maternal Wall” or “the New Glass Ceiling.” This has led to a wave of claims of gender discrimination based on parental responsibilities, which now make up a growing number of lawsuits against American employers.

In the past decade, the number of caregiver-discrimination lawsuits has tripled compared to the previous decade, according to research from the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, San Francisco. Between 2006 and 2015, researchers found that more than 3,000 such cases were decided in state and federal courts, even as overall federal job-discrimination claims were declining. This growing number of lawsuits includes claims from mothers, fathers and those who take care of ill or disabled relatives. These aren’t baseless lawsuits either, as more than half have led to compensation for victims—a higher-than-average success rate for job-discrimination claims.

In a major class-action lawsuit filed last summer, seven high-level female employees of the software developer, Qualcomm, sued the company on behalf of more than 3,000 female workers for gender discrimination, including motherhood discrimination. The women claimed that they were repeatedly passed over for advancement in favor of less-qualified male employees. They believe this explains why women make up only 5 percent of senior management positions at the San Diego-based tech firm, and only 5 percent of top engineering positions. “Qualcomm maintains an unwritten policy of disparately rewarding employees who work late into the night over employees who choose to arrive early and leave at the end of a normal work-day. This policy disparately impacts and causes the Company to undervalue caregivers of school-aged children ... These common policies stigmatize employees with caregiving responsibilities and disproportionately penalize women,” they wrote in their complaint.

One of the plaintiffs, a senior-level market analyst and working mother, said that she was passed over for promotions in favor of substantially less-qualified male Parental Discrimination Lawsuits on the Rise - The Atlantic:

Will Betsy DeVos Restart The ‘Education Wars’?

Will Betsy DeVos Restart The ‘Education Wars’?:

Will Betsy DeVos Restart The ‘Education Wars’?

Education, which was hardly ever mentioned in the recent presidential election, has suddenly been thrust to the frontline in the increasingly heated conflict over President-Elect Donald Trump’s proposed cabinet appointees. The reason for that turn of events is his choice of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Her nomination risks “reigniting the education wars,” according to Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union.

Weingarten stated that warning in an address this week at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, and broadcast live on the AFT Facebook page.

The union leader joins a chorus of education leaders and activists, as well as Democratic party government officials on Capitol Hill, in calls to delay the hearing for DeVos until after government ethics officials have finished their review of DeVos’ numerous ties to financial and charitable interests. After these calls for delay, the confirmation hearing was indeed postponed for a week.

But what education wars?

During her address, Weingarten referrs to the passage of new federal education legislation in 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act, that resolved many of the disputes over testing, teacher evaluation, and test-based “accountability” provisions that had been instigated by the previous federal law, No Child Left Behind.

Weingarten calls the consensus over ESSA “hard won” and “positive progress” in the way Republicans and Democrats could work together to govern the nation’s schools. But in Trump’s Will Betsy DeVos Restart The ‘Education Wars’?:

The Long Shadow of Poverty and School Segregation by Income | janresseger

The Long Shadow of Poverty and School Segregation by Income | janresseger:

The Long Shadow of Poverty and School Segregation by Income

\

One of the serious problems posed by the likely Trump administration’s policy on public education is that it sidesteps entirely the deeply troubling challenges on the ground for children and their teachers.  While the only education idea being mentioned by the new administration is the rapid expansion of privatization—a kind of school choice which has shown itself not only to be unavailable to the poorest children but also threatening to the financial stability of the public schools in the poorest communities, there is indisputable evidence that the standardized test scores by which we now judge schools derive far more from poverty and economic segregation than the school teachers we are blaming.  Yet addressing poverty both outside the school and inside has slipped off the radar as, once again, the proposal to privatize is being prescribed as a remedy.

Last fall’s issue of the Russell Sage Journal, The Coleman Report and Educational Inequality Fifty Years Later (Vol 2, No 5) calls our attention back to the matter we need to be considering. The journal is edited by Karl Alexander, the Johns Hopkins University sociologist who authored a longitudinal study reaching back to the 1982 first grade year of a group of Baltimore’s young adults: The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood. Alexander introduces the collection of articles with a short history of 50 years of research on the topics of The Coleman Report: Is It Family or School? Getting the Question Right.  His topic and the subject of all the studies in this journal is to further untangle and identify the many strands of the opportunity gap across our nation’s schools.

Alexander explains that The Coleman Report, published in 1966, has been misconstrued over the years by those who have used it to prove that “schools make no difference” and to insist that we accept a binary explanation for school achievement as driven (or held back)  by either the school or the family.

Here, according to Alexander is what may be fairly concluded from the 1966 research of James Coleman and his colleagues: Family background is of great importance for school achievement; The Long Shadow of Poverty and School Segregation by Income | janresseger:

Conflicts of DeVos – Center for American Progress #DumpDeVos

Conflicts of DeVos – Center for American Progress:

Conflicts of DeVos
Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and a Pay-to-Play Nomination

Billionaire activist Betsy DeVos and her family have given a massive $4 million to the Republicans who will decide whether to confirm her as Trump’s secretary of education, according to a new analysis by the authors.

DeVos’ hearing begins this Wednesday, and her family has donated a quarter of a million dollars alone to the members of the education committee who are tasked with vetting her nomination. The DeVos family has given a total of more than $950,000 to 21 senators who will have the opportunity to vote on her confirmation.

On top of those direct contributions, DeVos and her family also gave $2.25 million last fall to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). And the family has donated over $900,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a fundraising group for the Senate.

Altogether, that’s a $4 million bid to buy DeVos a cabinet position. While the donation tally goes back to 1980, the DeVoses gave 80 percent of it in the 2016 election cycle and 13 percent in the 2014 cycle. To uphold the ethical standards of the Senate—and avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest—senators who have received donations from DeVos and her family should recuse themselves from considering her nomination.

Unfortunately, no member of the Senate has indicated that they might step aside. Put differently, Republicans under Trump are showing that they can be bought and sold.

For her part, DeVos, a long-time Republican megadonor, has made clear that her extensive campaign donations are meant to sway policymakers. “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence,” DeVos once remarked. “Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return.”

It’s an approach she shares with her potential future boss, President-elect Donald Trump, who has also bragged about the political pull of his campaign donations. “I’ve given to everybody. Because that was my job,” Trump crowed at a rally last January. “I gotta give it to them. Because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”

For this analysis, the authors compiled campaign donations from DeVos and her relatives. The bulk of the $4 million comes from her and her husband, his siblings, their spouses, and his parents. Many of these relatives bundle their giving, making contributions on the same date and often in the same amount. Details are available here.

A number of media outlets and researchers have described the hundreds of millions of dollars the DeVos family has poured into right-wing causes for many years. A few have noted their pattern of giving to members of the Senate. But none have revealed a complete and up-to-date tally of her financial sway over the Senate that will consider her nomination.

DeVos has taken this pay-for-play approach before. Just consider the impact she had in her home state of Michigan last year. As a reward for passing a no-accountability charter school law in the state, the DeVos family once gave state Republicans $1.45 million in a seven-week period. That’s about an average of $25,000 a day. “A filthy, moneyed kiss” is how the Detroit Free Press’ editorial page editor described the lobbying effort.

If Michigan was a kiss of graft, though, Congress might soon be an orgy of corruption. DeVos will have her hearings in front of five members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, or HELP, who have taken enormous checks from her and her relatives—interestingly, all in the last two election cycles.

It’s worth a closer look at the DeVos family donations to the HELP members. Sen. Tim Scott (R–SC) has received $49,200 from the DeVos family and was a keynote speaker at DeVos’ American Federation for Children annual summit in May 2016. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has received at least $70,200 from the DeVoses. Two other HELP committee members, Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), each have received $43,200 from the family. Newly elected Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who has joined the HELP committee, got $48,600 from the DeVos family in 2016.

Unless these senators remove themselves from the nomination process, it appears that Conflicts of DeVos – Center for American Progress:

Big Education Ape: DeVos hearing delayed: Call the HELP committee members today - Network For Public Education #DumpDeVos - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/01/devos-hearing-delayed-call-help.html

Friends - Please Do What You Can To Support Wait, What? - Wait What?

Friends - Please Do What You Can To Support Wait, What? - Wait What?:

Friends – Please Do What You Can To Support Wait, What?

Now, more than ever, truth-tellers are needed for as George Orwell so wisely observed, “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

For six years, Wait, What? has been dedicated to educating, persuading, engaging and mobilizing readers about the important issues of our time including the Charter School Industry’s ongoing effort to  privatize public education.

Thanks to the incredible support of its readers, Wait What? has attracted well over 2 million hits and produced nearly 30,000 comments since its inception in January 2011.

Wait, What? commentary pieces have regularly appeared on Diane Ravitch’s blog, as well as, in the Washington Post, Progressive Magazine, Truthout and other national, regional and state publications.

Wait, What? has also served as an important platform for other education advocates to add their voices to the battle to promote public education and fight for our students, parents, teachers and public schools.

At a time when many in the media and politics run and hide from the serious problems and challenges that face Connecticut and our nation, Wait, What? serves as a vital vehicle in the effort to speak the truth and hold our elected officials accountable.

Please take a moment today and make as generous a contribution as you can afford to Wait, What?

On-line donations can be made via the following link – https://fundly.com/please-do-what-you-can-to-support-wait-what

Or, if you would prefer, donations can also be made by check.

Checks should be made out to Wait, What? and sent to

Wait, What?
c/o Jonathan Pelto,
PO Box 400,
Storrs, CT. 06268

Thank you so much for your support

Jonathan Pelto

Friends - Please Do What You Can To Support Wait, What? - Wait What?:

Jersey Jazzman: Will NJDOE Turn Charter School Teachers Into Indentured Servants?

Jersey Jazzman: Will NJDOE Turn Charter School Teachers Into Indentured Servants?:

Will NJDOE Turn Charter School Teachers Into Indentured Servants?

Last week, the New Jersey state Board of Education held hearings on regulatory changes for the state's charter schools. Probably the most significant -- and most controversial -- of the Christie administration's proposed revisions were changes to the certification requirements for charter school teachers.

Basically, the Department of Education wants to create a new certification just for charter school teachers. From what I can tell from reading the proposed regulations (available at NJ Spotlight), a prospective teacher who did not go through traditional college-based training -- what's referred to as an "alternative route" -- would follow a different path toward getting certified than would an alt-route teacher working in a public school.

A quick primer on alt-route: in New Jersey, there are a series of steps a prospective teacher has to take to be eligible for hiring. Once those are completed, she receives a Certificate of Eligibility (which can also be with Advanced Standing). She can then be hired by a district, which leads to a Provisional Certificate. While teaching, she takes courses and is mentored by a qualified teacher with a standard certification (I've been a mentor several times). If all goes well, the Provisional Certificate becomes Standard after a couple of years.

The ostensible reasons for all of this are:

1) No one gets to go into a classroom without at least meeting some very basic requirements. With the CE, a teacher has to have, for example, some college credits in French if they're going to teach French. They also have to take what's known as a "24-hour Jersey Jazzman: Will NJDOE Turn Charter School Teachers Into Indentured Servants?:

DeVos hearing delayed: Call the HELP committee members today - Network For Public Education #DumpDeVos

DeVos hearing delayed: Call the HELP committee members today - Network For Public Education:

DeVos hearing delayed: Call the HELP committee members today

Thousands of calls have been made to senators’ offices, and over 95,000 emails have been sent by Network for Public Education members since the DeVos nomination.

The DeVos hearing was delayed until the 17th.  In order for senators to make truly informed decisions, there must be a place for public voice. Yet, we are hearing that no witnesses have been asked to speak.

We must demand that the hearing include the testimony of citizens.  Here is what we asking you to do.

1. Make phone calls. Below is a list of HELP committee members. Even if you called their office, call again. ​​Tell​ the senator’s staff that citizen testimony should be included in the hearings. We have provided a new script and phone numbers at the end of this email.

2. Join our twitter campaign. Just hit “click to tweet” on the tweets below and the link will bring you to twitter where the tweet will automatically be generated for you to send.

It’s as easy as that!

@SenAlexander, over 1,000 TN public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenatorBurr, over 1,700 NC public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenatorIsakson, over 1,400 GA public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@RandPaul, hundreds of KY public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenatorCollins, hundreds of ME public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@BillCassidy, hundreds of LA public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenToddYoung, over 2,000 IN public school allies sent an email asking to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenOrrinHatch, hundreds of UT public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenPatRoberts, hundreds of KS public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@lisamurkowski, hundreds of AK public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenatorTimScott, hundreds of SC public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes!Click To Tweet

@PattyMurray, almost 3,000 WA public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenSanders, hundreds of VT public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenBobCasey, almost 6,000 PA public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenFranken, over 1,300 MN public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenBennetCO, almost 2,400 CO public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenWhitehouse, hundreds of RI public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenatorBaldwin, over 1,000 WI public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenMurphyOffice, over 1,000 CT public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenKaineOffice, almost 2,600 VA public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenatorHassan, hundreds of NH public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

@SenWarren, over 2,500 MA public school allies sent an email asking you to #DumpDeVos! Please, respect their wishes! Click To Tweet

All of the tweets are on our website too – share the link on social media so that others join the campaign.

Let’s send a clear message to Washington–keep your hands off our neighborhood public schools and local tax dollars. Don’t put a privatizer in charge!

Here is an article in The New York Times that is a blistering portrayal of Betsy DeVos.

Here is our latest installment in our charter school series. It focuses on how profiteers and charters are defunding public schools in Pennsylvania. Get armed with the facts. Read and share both.

Here is the list of HELP members.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Script

My name is ______________________  and  I am calling to ask the senator to insist that the testimony of citizens be included during the HELP hearings for Betsy DeVos. Recent articles in The New York Times indicate that Ms. DeVos has neither the character nor expertise needed for the job.  It is imperative that testimony be included during such an important hearing, so that the committee can make an informed decision.

Thank you.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Thank you for all that you do.

Carol Burris

Network for Public Education

Executive Director

{{ GroupSignoff | default: ‘Thank you!’ }}

DeVos hearing delayed: Call the HELP committee members today - Network For Public Education:

Why the Office of Government Ethics Needs Weeks to Investigate Betsy DeVos | deutsch29

Why the Office of Government Ethics Needs Weeks to Investigate Betsy DeVos | deutsch29:

Why the Office of Government Ethics Needs Weeks to Investigate Betsy DeVos

I do not often agree with the New York Times (NYT) editorial opinions on education. However, even they are worried about the financial entanglements of Michigan billionaire and US ed secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos.

An excerpt from the January 10, 2017, NYT editorial board opinion piece on DeVos:

As the Senate races forward with confirmation hearings this week, the spottiest disclosures have come from wealthy private-sector nominees with no governing experience and many potential conflicts. In other words, the people most in need of a complete ethics review.

Exhibit A is Betsy DeVos, a billionaire and education lobbyist who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary. Ms. DeVos’s finances are a tangle that could take weeks to investigate. Despite that, Republicans had set her confirmation hearing for Wednesday. But late Monday night, they pushed it back to next Tuesday. …

[DeVos and her hisband Dick] have investments in some 250 companies registered to a single Grand Rapids, Mich., address…. [The DeVos] investments could take weeks for the ethics office to research. Already, though, there are reports that the DeVoses are indirect investors in Social Finance Inc., a private company that refinances student loans. Private lenders like Social Finance are banned from most of the direct student lending market; their lobbyists have already written to the Trump transition team pitching to change that.

The NYT editorial board then questions whether DeVos also has a financial stake in for-profit colleges or ed tech operations. Such information should be clear– and in the public eye– prior to a Senate vote on her confirmation.

And, as the NYT editorial board continues, there’s the damaging DeVos influence on public education in Michigan:

…She has poured money into charter schools advocacy, winning legislative changes that have reduced oversight and accountability. About 80 percent of the charter schools in Michigan are operated by for-profit companies, far 

Why the Office of Government Ethics Needs Weeks to Investigate Betsy DeVos | deutsch29:

 

Big Education Ape: DeVos Hearing Senate HELP Committee Members. Call today. - Network For Public Education - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/01/devos-hearing-111-updated-senate-help.html

CURMUDGUCATION: Bad Management

CURMUDGUCATION: Bad Management:

Bad Management

I have a theory that one of the major problems in America today is just plain bad management. I have watched it trash companies on the smaller, more local scale here, and periodically we get to watch large American corporations go down in flames.

For instance, consider retail giant Sears. Business Insider has published a blistering look inside the ongoing death spiral of the venerable retail giant. Hayley Peterson's reporting is thorough, brutal, and depressing, and it provides a striking look at how bad management can sink a business because in the case of Sears, the problems are neither complicated nor complex-- one terrible CEO is managing to torch the entire place.

CEO Eddie Lambert is the very model of a modern major management disaster. He has no background in retail, and yet, somehow, he is running a giant retail corporation. What's his actual background? Running hedge funds. Making money from investments. This is one of the precepts of modern management-- anybody can manage any business as long as they have previously managed some other business. And if they have previous experience shuffling investment money, then so much the better.

Lambert has tried a variety of stupid bad management ideas. In 2013, Business Insider took a look at his bright idea to split the company into divisions and pit them against each other, because (as you may have heard) competition fosters excellence. It didn't. It fostered a huge lack of cooperation that in turn led to decisions that were bad for the enterprise as a whole. (You can read more about this special kind of management stupid in action here at Bruce Baker's blog post at the time).

Lambert tries to manage at a great distance, by screen. This is also a bit of modern management CURMUDGUCATION: Bad Management:

My Child, Your Child, Everyone's Child (Five Years An Actual Father) | The Jose Vilson

My Child, Your Child, Everyone's Child (Five Years An Actual Father) | The Jose Vilson:

My Child, Your Child, Everyone’s Child (Five Years An Actual Father)

Five years ago, my son was on his way to us. We hailed him as a Three Kings’ Day (01/06) gift, the bookend to an otherwise brutal winter. We waited 41 weeks and counting to no avail as he refused to leave his mothers’ natural cocoon. The hospital staff ranged in their hospitality, but our main doctor came in like gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I remember not sleeping for 24 hours, restless over my new prince’s birth. When I finally cradled him in my arms, I remember thinking we might have made the world a better place and parented accordingly.

Both of Alejandro’s parents are educators with that mindset. Nine days later, I would return to the children our communities birthed.

My son’s birthday reminds me of the deep gulf between the lofty aspirations of our best days and the doldrum realities of our worst days in our classrooms. I’d say “truth be told,” but there’s so many contradictory truths I hold at once. I do believe in students’ capacity to learn, sometimes more than they believe in themselves. I get angry when students don’t try their best, though that might actually be their best. I don’t need my students to be compliant, but their understanding of respect My Child, Your Child, Everyone's Child (Five Years An Actual Father) | The Jose Vilson:

Why We Need Independent Media | Seattle Education

Why We Need Independent Media | Seattle Education:

Why We Need Independent Media

Posted with permission from TurningPointNews.org.

About the author:
Elizabeth Hanson M. Ed. Is a college instructor from Seattle Washington and co-founder of turningpointnews.org. She is also a co-author of the book, “Weapons of Mass Deception, The War against our public schools.” https://weaponsofmassdeception.org/

Elizabeth can be reached at ehansonwa@gmail.com

In this article I compare the headlines of mainstream news to the headlines of independent news as an example of why we need independent news. I also give suggestions on how to ascertain the truth when reading news articles on the Internet.

In November of 2016, the Washington Post published a blacklist of 200 websites which they deem as promoting Russian propaganda and thus dangerous to U.S. consumers of news. It was published by a group called “Prop or Not”.

Here’s the link to the Prop or Not list –http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html

The Washington Post has many excellent reporters and has published some great stories over the years, so when I first heard about this list, I thought “Oh… it probably lists some Why We Need Independent Media | Seattle Education: