Progressives launch last-minute push against Betsy DeVos, and conservatives counter with online ad campaign - The Washington Post

Progressives launch last-minute push against Betsy DeVos, and conservatives counter with online ad campaign - The Washington Post:

Progressives launch last-minute push against Betsy DeVos, and conservatives counter with online ad campaign

More than 300 state lawmakers hailing from all 50 states have added their voices to the chorus objecting to President Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

The lawmakers, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, voiced their opposition to DeVos in a joint letter that is expected to be delivered to U.S. Senators on Monday, the day before a Senate committee is scheduled to vote on her nomination.

They comprise a minority of the more than 7,300 state legislators nationwide, but their criticisms echo those that have been made in recent weeks by Democratic Senators, labor unions, civil rights groups and advocates for children with disabilities, as well as many parents and teachers.

[Teachers, parents, kids protest DeVos ahead of confirmation vote]

The state lawmakers argue that DeVos, who has no professional experience in education, is unqualified for the job and that the charter schools and voucher programs she has worked to create and expand have undermined public schools, which they see as critical civic institutions that serve the majority of students.

As states embrace greater authority over education under the new Every Student Succeeds Act, the legislators wrote, “we are deeply concerned that Ms. DeVos will bring her lack of experience with public education, her failure to understand key federal laws, and her track record of undermining public education at the state level with her to Washington.”

The letter was coordinated by SiX Action, a group that has ties to labor and pushes progressive policies within states. (Read the full letter at the bottom of this post.)

The state lawmakers’ letter is just one of the latest volleys in what has become a pitched partisan battle over DeVos’s confirmation.

[Key Republican defends DeVos, says Dems are ‘desperately’ searching for reasons to reject her]

America Rising Squared — an arm of the Republican super PAC America Rising — on Monday launched an online advertising campaign defending DeVos as someone who “knows what it takes to repair our failing schools.”

Progressives launch last-minute push against Betsy DeVos, and conservatives counter with online ad campaign - The Washington Post:

Betsy DeVos's Nomination Inspires NYC Parents of Form Grassroots Group - Network For Public Education

Betsy DeVos's Nomination Inspires NYC Parents of Form Grassroots Group - Network For Public Education:

Betsy DeVos’s Nomination Inspires NYC Parents of Form Grassroots Group

Public School Watchdogs is a completely grassroots group of parents, children and teachers organizing through our schools. We’ve spread by word of mouth from just one parent standing in front of her school collecting letters to being a network of parents from about 25 NYC schools collecting over 4,000 letters to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand opposing DeVos.

It’s been easy to organize — first I told a few friends I was doing it, then they joined me and told their friends, and now there’s a core group of about 15 of us who work together to organize actions. Our 1-week old Face Book group has over 400 members, from New York and other places as well. We’d love to spread all over the country.

After our first, somewhat frustrating visit to our Senators’ offices, when we stood in the lobby with our first stack of 1500 letters and heard that neither Senator had taken a position on DeVos, we decided to ramp up our drive and involve our children too. Middle and high school students wrote their own letter and circulated it around their schools at lunchtime. One group of elementary school students organized their own rally and letter writing campaign.

Parents and children showed up with another huge stack of letters, and talked to some of Senator Gillibrand’s senior staffers. We joined a larger rally protesting all of Trump’s nominations bringing a very loud and visible anti-DeVos presence. I actually think that we have had an influence. Now that both Senators have committed to voting no, we’re urging Schumer to lead the entire Democratic Caucus to vote against her, and to try to actually block her.

Whatever happens with the DeVos appointment, we will keep organizing to protect public schools from privatization, and to defend schools, students, families and teachers.Betsy DeVos's Nomination Inspires NYC Parents of Form Grassroots Group - Network For Public Education:

Attention Public Education Advocates: Kentucky Needs Your Help!

Kentucky is the largest of the seven remaining states that have yet to enact charter legislation. Thanks to a recent shift in power in their state government, that’s about to change. A vile and overreaching charter school bill is poised to become law as soon as their general assembly resumes next week.

We put together a website and Facebook page, and sought to align with other groups with similar concerns. That task has proved difficult to do, even as charter legislation is looming. Our coalition kick-off meeting attracted more than 20 organizations who supported our group’s mission, but they have been slow to sign on to an anti-charter position statement. Our district’s largest public education advocacy groups, in order to have a “seat at the table,” have chosen not come out forcefully in opposition to charter legislation. Many others are waiting to see what is in the final bill to take a stand, but by that time it may be too late.

In the meantime, many residents in Kentucky are interpreting this quiet, cooperative stance as being “in favor” of charters. Local media have been running mostly pro-charter stories, often times not even realizing they are using coded language provided by the education reformers. SOSKY has urged them to share the other side, but they, like the rest of the population, don’t recognize the buzz words that have been spoon fed to them. They continue to regurgitate these concepts in their “balanced” stories.

For about a year now, our group has been sharing stories of what has unfolded in charter schools around the rest of the country, using the hashtag #NowAreYouStartingToGetIt? We invited friends to follow our page, join our “private group” on Facebook, and come to our strategy meetings.

Crickets. But then this happened.

Earlier this month, our state’s new supermajority congress passed sweeping and unscrupulous measures (“right to work,” attacks on women’s reproductive rights, and dismantling our local university’s board of trustees under a bill pretending to be about dog ownership), in just their first week in session.

Then came Betsy DeVos and suddenly, Kentuckians are starting to wake up!

In just the past few weeks our Facebook followers have increased 5-fold, from a steady < 100 to well over 500. Two weeks ago we opened our second SOSKY chapter, this time in Lexington. And in just the past week, we’ve opened 10 more in rural communities around the state.

But will it be enough? The Kentucky legislative session resumes on Feb. 7, where they are expected to ram through this horrific ALEC-inspired bill. Stopping charter legislation in Kentucky will take a Herculean effort, but here’s why we all must come together to build a strong coalition to resist, for our nation’s sake:

• Free public education is the cornerstone of our democracy.We need to shore up our public schools, not allow their resources to be siphoned off by outsiders.
• Kentucky is next.We are one of just seven states that has, so far, managed to avoid this chapter of the “education reform” playbook.
• Things are actually looking up. As a result of avoiding the charter school detour, we are actually starting to see our performance numbers outpace our neighboring states. According to data published on our state’s Department of Education website, Kentucky was recently ranked #16 in the nation in K-12 achievement. But our citizens would never know that, due to the rhetoric that is being circulated by education reformers.
• The balance of power just shifted.This past November, the Kentucky state House, the last democratically held house in the south, flipped. This resulted in a dramatic shift to a charter hungry supermajority state congress. Furthermore, with the prospect of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, states that can resist implementing charter legislation just a little bit longer, might actually have a fighting chance to avoid the damage she is certain to unleash on public schools across the country.
• Our community is asleep at the wheel.Kentuckians have no idea what’s about to happen to their schools. They are starting to hear whispers that “school choice” is coming, but they don’t know the full story. The bureaucrats and billionaires are telling us it won’t hurt, it won’t impact our rural counties, it will make our urban schools better, and competition is good. But you and I know that’s a lie. We’ve seen what has happened elsewhere. But many of our well-meaning taxpayers aren’t hearing both sides.
• If Kentucky wins, we all win.With your help, Kentucky could be the domino in public education reform that remains standing. This is our chance, our moment, to stop the madness and Save Our Schools once and for all! Help save our schools in Kentucky and you could help reinforce the public school resistance everywhere.

How can you help us? We have put together a pretty sound strategy and ground game, but we are outspent, out-messaged and outmanned at every turn. Here are a few ways you can help:

• Support our Fight on Facebook. Share our posts, use our hashtags #StopChartersInKY and #NowAreYouStartingToGetIt? and help us get the national attention this fight deserves.
• Use Your Connections. Reach out to folks you know in Kentucky and help move them from ambivalent to activist. Get them to take action by talking to neighbors and friends, writing letters to their local paper, and of course, contacting their representatives to tell them to vote “no” on any charter legislation that is proposed.
• Join our Coalition.Let folks know you support our efforts by letting us post your logo on our coalition page. NPE just did!

The time and place to focus our efforts on putting the lights out on devastating charter school legislation is right here, right now, in Kentucky. We need our fellow public education advocates all over the country to help make sure Kentuckians learn the real facts about charters, not the “alternative facts” masterminded by the billionaires and bureaucrats. Using every resource at our disposal, we ask you to come to Kentucky’s aid and help us hold on to one of the final battlegrounds of public education. We have a chance to stop education reformers in their tracks and send them packing! Please help us #StopChartersInKY.Attention Public Education Advocates: Kentucky Needs Your Help!

Glenda Ritz on Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and Indiana's School Choice Program - Network For Public Education

Glenda Ritz on Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and Indiana's School Choice Program - Network For Public Education:

Glenda Ritz on Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and Indiana’s School Choice Program

by Glenda Ritz, former Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction

We did not hear much about education during the presidential campaign. But one thing that Donald Trump made clear in the months leading up to his election was that he would spend billions of dollars on vouchers for private schools rather than investing in public education.

On Jan. 17, Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a longtime champion of “school choice” policies and voucher programs, faces the Senate during her confirmation hearing. She will be one step closer to making Trump’s school choice agenda a reality.

While “school choice” might make for a good sound bite, the details of school choice and voucher programs are far less appealing. Trump’s plan will gut our public education system in an attempt to privatize and deregulate the education of millions of American children. I’ve already witnessed it in Indiana.

Over the last four years, I have seen firsthand how the school choice ideology hurts our public schools and our students. As Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction during Mike Pence’s tenure as governor, I spent my term fighting for public education. While my goal was to build a high-quality, equitable public education system, Pence sought to privatize education whenever and wherever possible under the auspices of “school choice.”

Indiana’s school choice program started under a prior governor as a small pilot, tailored to poor families that did not believe public schools were providing their children with an adequate education. Gov. Pence, however, escalated this program into a de facto entitlement for middle-upper-class families, pulling millions of dollars from our poorest schools so that these more affluent families could subsidize a private school education for their kids. Betsy DeVos wants to expand these voucher programs to as many states as possible.

Pence likes to claim that Indiana has the largest voucher program in the country. What he does not like to admit is that in five years of this program, Indiana’s taxpayers have sent more than $345 million to religious schools with little to no state oversight or regulation. These taxpayer dollars would have otherwise funded public education in our state.

Even worse, these private schools are now admitting that most of their voucher students would have gone to private schools anyway. After all, it is the private schools that are doing the real choosing, picking their favorite students while leaving out others. More than half of Indiana’s Glenda Ritz on Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and Indiana's School Choice Program - Network For Public Education:

Hoosier School Heist TV is Doug Martin's channel featuring videos of his book tour across Indiana speaking on the corporate takeover of public education. Order Hoosier School Heist at http://hoosierschoolheist.com/.

Follow Hoosier School Heist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HoosierSchoolHeist

Tweet with Doug Martin at: https://twitter.com/DougMartinED

Cutting middle class scholarship could hit Southern California hard | 89.3 KPCC

Cutting middle class scholarship could hit Southern California hard | 89.3 KPCC:

Cutting middle class scholarship could hit Southern California hard

A proposal by Governor Jerry Brown phase out funding for the Middle Class Scholarship could affect more than 46,000 students statewide.

That’s the number of University of California and California State University students who received the tuition aid in the current academic year.

Fifty six percent of those students attend a Southern California campus.

Data provided by the California Student Aid Commission shows that this year UC Riverside, UC San Diego, and UCLA topped the list of UC campuses with the most students receiving the scholarship. CSU Northridge and CSU Long Beach topped the list among the 23 CSU campuses.

“This is not a time to be backpedaling and really withdrawing support for students attending higher ed,” said Lupita Cortez Alcala, the commission's executive director. The group oversees state-funded financial aid.

Sacramento legislators created the Middle Class Scholarship three years ago as a way to help students whose families don’t qualify for financial aid for low income students. The scholarship is awarded to families with less than $156,000 in yearly income and assets. The aid pays for about a third of a student’s tuition.

“There continue to be avenues for student financial aid, whether it’s through federal Pell Grants or institutional aid,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for Brown’s finance department.

But most of those efforts target low income students.

And Alcala said that because the cost of living in Southern California is higher than in other parts of the state, the loss of the scholarships would hurt students here more than others.

If approved, the proposed cut would stop funding any new scholarships. It would continue to fund any existing scholarships until the student earns a degree.

The cut is far from a done deal. The governor will issue a revised budget in May after the state gets a clearer indication of how much state tax revenue it will be receiving and legislators are bound by law to pass a budget by the summer. Before that, supporters of the Middle Class Scholarship are expected to lobby those lawmakers to keep the funding.Cutting middle class scholarship could hit Southern California hard | 89.3 KPCC:

Badass Teachers Association: Being Muslim Is Not a Crime by Ferial Pearson

Badass Teachers Association: Being Muslim Is Not a Crime by Ferial Pearson:

Being Muslim Is Not a Crime 

by Ferial Pearson

As-Salam-u-Alaikum
Peace be upon you
Bismillah ar rahman ar rahim
I would like to begin by paying my respects to the indigenous people whose land we are on right now. In particular, I pay my respects to the Umoⁿhoⁿ people for whom this city is named.
Unless you belong to the indigenous tribes of this land, you are an immigrant, as well. Chances are, some of your ancestors were refugees too.
My name is Ferial Pearson and I am a Muslim immigrant from Kenya. I came to this country nineteen years ago on a student visa to fulfill my dream of becoming a teacher, and I have dedicated my career to educating children in Nebraska. Most of my students have been immigrants, children of immigrants, refugees, and asylees. They have been the hardest and smartest workers I have ever met. They have gone on to do great things and are creating positive change in communities around the world, including here in these United States of America.
I am here to tell you that being Muslim is not a crime. Being a refugee is not a crime.
I would like to lift up the voice of Warsan Shire, a British-Somali poet, who wrote this poem entitled Home. I hope you listen with an open heart as she is not here to speak these words herself today.
Home, by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home
unless home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well.
your neighbours running faster than you,
the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home when home won’t let you stay.
no one would leave home unless home chased you,
fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.
it’s not something you ever thought about doing,
and so when you did — you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that you would not be going back.
you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.
who would choose to spend days and nights in the stomach of a truck unless the miles Badass Teachers Association: Being Muslim Is Not a Crime by Ferial Pearson:

What Might Seem to Benefit the Educational Consumer Turns Out to Be a Disaster for Society | janresseger

What Might Seem to Benefit the Educational Consumer Turns Out to Be a Disaster for Society | janresseger:

What Might Seem to Benefit the Educational Consumer Turns Out to Be a Disaster for Society

This week the Senate will consider President Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to be our next U.S. Secretary of Education.  Tomorrow the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will very likely vote to recommend DeVos’s confirmation for a vote on the Senate Floor. Her nomination has become extremely contentious. Please call your U.S. Senators again today to oppose the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as the next Education Secretary.

Because Betsy DeVos has devoted her life and her financial fortune to replacing our society’s system of public education with publicly funded tuition vouchers that children can carry to private schools and with unregulated charter schools that are publicly funded by privately operated, much attention has been paid this month to weighing public vs. privatized education.  Valerie Strauss has published another excellent piece by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, that enumerates What Taxpayers Should Know About the Cost of School Choice.  “School choice” is, of course, another name for school privatization—always framed by its supporters through the much prized values of freedom and choice without naming their social consequences.

Burris examines the financial implications of school privatization. She explains: “American taxpayers cannot afford to run the multiple systems of K-12 education that the ‘choicers’ desire, nor would it be in the best interest of children to do so. We have been experimenting with taxpayer-funded choice for two decades, and the evidence is clear. We have wasted billions in tax dollars, with no comprehensive evidence that charters, online schools and vouchers have resulted in increased academic performance of American students.  It is time we have an honest discussion about the true cost of school choice.”

Here is Burris’s argument.  I urge you to read her entire article to grasp the quantity of evidence she amasses to demonstrate each of her propositions:

1. “Billions of federal tax dollars have poured into charter school promotion, without regard for success and with insufficient oversight.”  Burris explains that by 2015 the federal Charter Schools Program had spent $3.7 billion in startup grants for charter What Might Seem to Benefit the Educational Consumer Turns Out to Be a Disaster for Society | janresseger:

Lack of Community and Teacher Involvement Leads to Abandoned Math Innovation (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Lack of Community and Teacher Involvement Leads to Abandoned Math Innovation (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Lack of Community and Teacher Involvement Leads to Abandoned Math Innovation (Part 2)

The old adage of “success has many fathers, failure is an orphan” rings true in the aftermath of a district in the heart of Silicon Valley abandoning a highly-regarded, “personalized learning” innovation called Teach To One (see Part 1).

Finger-pointing and blame dances among various actors in this all-too-familiar story of reform failure. Chances are that blame will finally come to rest on the superintendent and board for keeping the program under wraps and not fully planning with teachers and parents for the roll-out of the personalized math program for all sixth graders in the District’s two middle schools.

Full planning means describing and explaining the program  to teachers and parents prior to launching the pilot for hundreds of students, taking small groups of teachers and parents to visit the sites where the innovation was operating, and involving teachers and parents from the very beginning of the program and asking for their suggestions.

But why go to these lengths to insert a highly touted innovation into one part of the school system?

Answer: The history of reform is littered with the debris of once glittering innovations that top district leaders unilaterally decided upon and delivered to schools. Such failures conspicuously lacked teacher and parent involvement.

Ignoring both is a recipe for failure. Why? Because schools are political institutions highly dependent upon these two groups to provide critical support and muscle for any instructional policy aimed at altering how teachers teach and students learn enter classrooms.

A primer on schools as political institution.

Tax-supported public schools were established to reach desired community goals including how to live and act in a democracy. School boards,  administrators and teachers are agents hired to achieve those community-inspired goals.  Consider that taxing property owners and levying sales taxes on everyone regardless of whether they have children or not to run public schools means that schools Lack of Community and Teacher Involvement Leads to Abandoned Math Innovation (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Protecting Privacy at the Expense of Privacy | Truth in American Education

Protecting Privacy at the Expense of Privacy | Truth in American Education:

Protecting Privacy at the Expense of Privacy

When we think of children, the first thing that comes to mind is their protection; protection from known risks, protection from violence, drunk drivers, illness, and the likes of Madonna and Ashley Judd.  In the age of internet-everything we want kids to be safe from exposure to pornography and child predators who spy on children without our knowledge.  When we’re not with them, we want to find a place where they will be safe and we can feel comfortable they’re under the watchful eye of people who also want to protect them.

Many parents think of school as that place.  We anticipate teachers are concerned for our children’s well-being, Madonna and Ashley Judd won’t be invited for career day, and there wouldn’t be porn or internet stalkers (because we know schools wouldn’t let internet stalkers spy on our kids).

What could go wrong?  How about everything?

As technology has become more deeply embedded in school culture, student level data is being gathered at an accelerated rate.  Tech companies are being given nearly unfettered access to student information via 1:1 devices, online resources and apps used by teachers in classrooms, digital textbooks, and the expansion of adaptive/personalized learning.  Every keystroke, every search term, every bookmark, every internet site, every log-in to a standardized test, is gobbled up, chewed, and swallowed by Big Data.

The proliferation of technology in classrooms has created serious concerns about the glut of data streaming out of classrooms and into the possession of multi-billion dollar corporations.  Google, which has flooded classrooms with Chromebooks, has consistently been the subject of a myriad of litigation involving abusive privacy practices such as intercepting email communications, scanning email for the purposes of targeted advertising, and collecting and data mining children’s personal preferences. A class action filed in March 2016, alleges illegal collection and use of biometric information.  Hello there, creepy internet stalker!

In 2015, Congress passed the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Protecting Privacy at the Expense of Privacy | Truth in American Education:

Anti-Trump protesters in Elizabeth resist attacks on immigrants |

Anti-Trump protesters in Elizabeth resist attacks on immigrants |:

Anti-Trump protesters in Elizabeth resist attacks on immigrants

Demonstrators outside Elizabeth Detention Center

Angered by President Donald Trump’s sudden and unprecedented attack on refugees and immigrants, nearly 1,000 protesters from throughout New Jersey demonstrated in the wind-driven cold for hours Sunday outside a privately-operated, for profit prison in Elizabeth.

The march on the Elizabeth Detention Center–owned by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and operated under contract with the US Department of Homeland Security–was part of a national reaction of outrage against executive orders signed by Trump that suspended entry to the United States by Muslims–including those who were permanent residents of this nation.

“We must do everything we can to resist,” US Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) told the demonstrators outside the prison in the factory section of the city adjacent to Newark Liberty Airport. Coleman, a member of House panels on homeland security and oversight, said those responsible for suspending entry into the country should be required to explain what they were doing.

Demonstrators outside he Elizabeth Detention Center

So far, three federal judges have issued temporary restraining orders blocking some aspects of the executive orders aimed at  Syrian refugees and Muslims from seven Middle East nations–but not from Saudi Arabia. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from the Saudi kingdom, but Trump has business dealings with the oil-rich monarchy.

House members Frank Pallone and Bonnie Watson Coleman outside the Elizabeth Detention Center

Coleman was joined by US Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th) who condemned Trump’s actions.

“It’s illegal, it’s unconstitutional and we’re Anti-Trump protesters in Elizabeth resist attacks on immigrants |:

CURMUDGUCATION: Friedrichs At It Again

CURMUDGUCATION: Friedrichs At It Again:

Friedrichs At It Again

 

You remember Rebecca Friedrichs. She had a whole lawsuit named after her in which she was the face of union-busting in California. That case stalled when Justice Scalia died and the GOP decided that they would keep the court stuck with eight justices for almost a year (yes, that would be the same GOP that says only dirty rotten America-haters would obstruct a Presidential appointment).

But Rebecca "I'm Not Anti-Union I'm Just Drawn That Way" Friedrich has found other fun things to do, like record a video for Prager University entitled "Why Good Teachers Want School Choice." (Spoiler alert: to stick it to those evil unions). If you want to see the current version of the choice argument in action, this clip is for you.

Teachers' unions? Let's kill them with fire.

Prager University might be best described as an alternative university founded by conservative Dennis Prager and, well, is not so much a university as a library of videos. Many are hosted by semi-famous conservative voices, and none of them are particularly friendly to public education. There are several about choice and charters, but let's just deal with this one today.

What if schools had to compete for students in the same way that businesses have to compete for customers?

That's how Friedrichs, with a kind of sing-songy delivery, opens the video, and while you might be inclined to reply, "Do you mean by marketing based on spin, puffery, half-truths and the occasional flat out lie? Or do you mean by ignoring the larger market and just focusing on the customers you want?" But of course she doesn't mean either of those things.

Well, actually she kind of does, because she;s going to unleash some of those magical alternative facts before we even hit the twenty second mark. Would schools get better or worse with CURMUDGUCATION: Friedrichs At It Again:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: HCC and Equity, Part One

Seattle Schools Community Forum: HCC and Equity, Part One:

HCC and Equity, Part One

It is clear from many, many threads and comments that to talk about the Highly Capable Cohort (formerly known as APP) is to start a discussion about equity.  I think that equity is certainly a part of the picture but to focus only on that is a disservice to all children who would benefit from the program.  

I'll say that again; there are children - especially those of color - who are not being found and served.  THAT is the real issue.  

(Editor's note: we are going to have a calm discussion here, looking for solutions.  If your solution is to dissolve the program, certainly say that but please have a real reason why.) 

There are other threads where we could rehash history but let's go to the Cliff Notes and then onto discussion.  (I do plan another thread on race and equity in this district as the issue of HCC seems to be some kind of uniform rallying cry around equity which I find odd.  Like many other issues, it seems to be a confluence of both timing and focus.)

Here are my beliefs right up front:

 -  I think the premise that seems to feed this discussion over HCC (but which doesn't really get said out loud) is the belief that giftedness in academics for children does not exist.   I'm sure most people will agree that there are "off-the-charts in intelligence" students but that those students are few and far between and certainly not the population of HCC.

I'm hoping no one is going to deny this because it is the subtext I hear over and over and I reject it.  The reasons I reject it are :

1) I think there are off-the-charts intelligent kids, across the racial spectrum and,
2) I think that there are very bright kids - across the racial spectrum - who need that talent to be nurtured.  

But I will say, there is no child so bright that he or she will always easily learn everything and will not struggle in a particular subject.  Children only truly learn when challenged (unless you count rote learning and I don't for this discussion.)  

Because you can be a bright child but still have academic challenges.  In fact, I think this is one of the hardest issues for some of these students is that academic work comes very easily to them and when they do get challenged, they aren't ready to rise to that challenge. 

- just like many other challenges, this district struggles with getting it right.  Compare this info from the Bellevue School district to the FAQs from SPS.   Now, Bellevue's is not trying to pack everything about the program in Seattle Schools Community Forum: HCC and Equity, Part One:

A list of HELP senators’ fax numbers | GFBrandenburg's Blog

A list of HELP senators’ fax numbers | GFBrandenburg's Blog:

A list of HELP senators’ fax numbers

This is so you can bug them with faxes, telling them not to vote in favor of Bigoted, Billionaire Betsy.

Al Franken                          MN        (202) 224-0044

Bill Cassidy                          LA            (225) 929-7688

Christopher S. Murphy  CT           (202) 224-9750

Elizabeth Warren             MA         no faxes

Johnny Isakson                 GA          202-228-0724

Lamar Alexander              TN          (202) 228-3398

Lisa Murkowski                 AK          202-224-5302

Maggie  Hassan                 NH          no faxes

Michael F. Bennet            CO          303-455-3358

Pat Roberts                         KS           202-224-3514

Rand Paul                            KY           (202) 228-6917

Richard Burr                       NC          (202) 228-2981

Robert P. Casey, Jr           PA          (202) 228-0604

Sheldon Whitehouse       RI            (401) 453-5085

Susan Collins                      ME         (202) 224-2693

Tim Scott                             SC           (855) 802-9355

Todd Young                        IN           no faxes

Patty Murray                     WA          (202) 224-0238

And here is my letter to them (I’ve visited, or lived in, 46 of the states so far):

Dear Senator:

I have visited your great state in the past, but since I was born and raised in the District of Columbia and still live there, I have no senator. So I’m calling on you.

I would like to put myself on the record as vigorously opposing the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Not only does she have ZERO personal experience with public education in any form, she in fact is on record as favoring turning ALL education over to private businessmen and religious groups, including the weird form of messianic Christian fundamentalism her billionaire family favors. Her billions of dollars of personal wealth, mostly gained by a pyramid scheme that should have put her family in jail long ago, have been used to purchase politicians to promote her useless ideas, because she was never able to get voters to approve them.

During her confirmation hearings, she demonstrated that she has NO understanding of ANY of the most important issues concerning students and their parents today.

As a result of her machinations, local control has been removed from Black and Brown communities all over Michigan, and educational funds are flowing to all sorts of unethical, unregulated, for-profit charter school operators and religious fundamentalists running unregulated, storefront voucher schools. As a result, the scores of Michigan students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have, over the past 20 years, tumbled from being significantly above the national averages to being significantly below the national averages, both in reading and in math. And Detroit now has the very worst scores of any city in the nation. Thanks to Betsy Devos. And let us not forget that her policies also brought us the national shame of polluted water in the entire city of Flint.

You must vote AGAINST DeVos for Secretary of Education.

Thank you.

Guy Brandenburg

DC Resident, DC Native, Parent of two DC public school gradsA list of HELP senators’ fax numbers | GFBrandenburg's Blog:

 CALL 202-224-3121 AND TELL YOUR SENATORS

 “VOTE NO” ON BETSY DeVOS ON JAN. 31ST! 

Tell Your Senator to Vote NO for Betsy DeVos - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/p3bR9v-26K