Seattle Police Chief Defends Officer Who Assulted Me With pepper spray | I AM AN EDUCATOR

Seattle Police Chief Defends Officer Who Assulted Me With pepper spray | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Seattle Police Chief Defends Officer Who Assulted Me With pepper spray

At a Martin Luther King Day protests this year I was assaulted by a Seattle police officer whopepper sprayed me in the face as I was on the phone with my mom, arranging plans for her to pick me up and take me to my son’s two-year-old birthday party. That day was deeply painful, and not only because of the burning in my ears, nostrils, and swollen eyes. What hurt the most was fear that I brought to my two sons who were deeply troubled watching me writhe in pain and pour milk on face to try to sooth the burning.

While I thought the worst of the emotional trauma was behind me, the news I received last week deeply injured me for a second time.

Here I am at my son’s two-year-old birthday party, shortly after having been pepper-sprayed by a police officer, trying to reduce the burning and swelling by pouring milk onto my face.

We finally found out that the officer who pepper sprayed me was Sandra Delafuente. An investigation by authorities sustained findings of unauthorized use of force and improper use of pepper spray against me and recommended that the officer be suspended for one day. But what really burned me is that the Chief of the Seattle Police, Kathleen O’Toole, agreed with the misconduct findings, but  intervened to down grade the discipline to merely an oral reprimand.

I called a press conference to address this miscarriage of justice and was joined by City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, Councilmember Nick Licata, Black Lives Matter activist Nikkita Oliver, and Social Equality Educators board member Roberta Lindaman. Together we all made the case for real accountability for police — especially since the Seattle police department is under a federal consent decree after an investigation by the Department of Justice found officers routinely used excessive force and evidence of targeting people of color and biased policing.

After the press conference, I had the opportunity to address the Seattle City Council at a meeting they were holding to hear Chief O’Toole’s request for expanding the budget of the police department. I entered the Council Chambers and took a seat in the front row and looked to my right to see the Chief of Police sitting at the end of the row. When my name was called during the public testimony period, I didn’t want to get up. I knew those in power would not like the questions I planned to ask, and I have to admit I was scared.  Breaking through the fear, I Seattle Police Chief Defends Officer Who Assulted Me With pepper spray | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Framing education as a business attracts the wrong people - Opinion - Crain's Chicago Business

Framing education as a business attracts the wrong people - Opinion - Crain's Chicago Business:

Framing education as a business attracts the wrong people

Today's guilty plea by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, in the wake of revelations that she has proved a strident (albeit inept) recipient of bribes, obviously represents another in a too-long litany of our city's public officials who prize personal gain over their pledge to be of service to us.

Is it dispiriting? Very much so. Does it strain our by now threadbare capacity to continue placing any faith in those charged with leading our municipality? It does. Once again. And we, the governed, grow more numb in the face of these enormities, and less willing to grapple with the conditions that permit the wrong people, with the wrong priorities, to maintain a hold on positions of prominence.

The word "municipal" is from the Latin root "municeps," meaning "citizen with privileges." Ms. Byrd-Bennett and her cronies clearly regard themselves as such, but their sense of what constitutes "privilege" is the rankest perversion of the original sense of the word. In the city-state of antiquity, free citizens were clear on the correlation between the prosperity they enjoyed and an abiding sense of duty that impelled them to be of service to their city. Sad to say, there is precious little of this sense of citizenship and allegiance among the appointees of an administration that can ill afford further degradations.

Quite plainly, the misdeeds of Byrd-Bennett represent the avarice of an individual—but they are also emblematic of a much larger failure—a failure of philosophy. Individuals, whatever their excesses, operate within systems—I'm not talking here of the culture of cover-up that has prompted a cash-strapped CPS to funnel an additional $150,000 to the legal defense of Byrd-Bennett's aides, or the mayor's office stonewalling on the release of its records on the episode—I'm talking about a wrongheaded approach to education more broadly.

Photo by AP ImagesByrd-Bennett with Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2012.

Byrd-Bennett's woes are rooted in her greed, yes (and her tone deafness to irony—"tuition to pay and casinos to visit?" Comeon—you might as well throw in a cackling "And your little dog, too!") But she has also acted as a foot soldier in the decades-long march toward privatization and misapplying the precepts of business to the complex (and in many cases generations-long) problems facing our schools.

Her downfall may be read as the logical extension, and, one hopes, the last gasp, of a badly flawed and shortsighted approach: namely the fallacy that business principles are well suited for every aspect of society.

Business, the thinking goes, being hardheaded and practical, is driven by results, and is therefore infinitely capable of tackling any issue. But business is geared toward maximizing a return in the near term, and effective education policy is akin to building a cathedral—the Framing education as a business attracts the wrong people - Opinion - Crain's Chicago Business:

Rightwing Pro-reform group spends big on 2015 campaign | Chalkbeat

Pro-reform group spends big on 2015 campaign | Chalkbeat:

Pro-reform group spends big on 2015 campaign

A committee affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform has spent nearly $90,000 on campaign materials for two Denver school board candidates.

The group, Raising Colorado, spent $87,667 with two East Coast advertising agencies to produce campaign materials, according to campaign finance records filed late this week.

Jen Walmer, registered agent for the committee and state director of DFER, detailed the spending this way:

• $14,277 was paid to Greenlight Media of New York to produce and send a mailer for board candidate Lisa Flores in   northwest Denver’s District 5.
• $51,685 was paid to Three Point Media of Washington, D.C., for support of Flores. Another $21,705 was spent on digital ads supporting candidate Anne Rowe in southeast Denver’s district 1.

Raising Colorado also spent $397 with High Line Communications of Littleton to provide web design support for Flores, Rowe and board president Allegra “Happy” Haynes, Walmer said.

All the money raised by the group this year — $250,000 – has come from New York-based Education Reform Advocacy, a DFER-related political group that raises money and redistributes it to state groups such as Raising Colorado.

The amount spent by Raising Colorado lags the nearly $95,000 donated to three other candidates by two teachers union groups. (See this story for details on DPS campaign donations, and use our database to find contributors to individual candidates.)

The money spent by Raising Colorado also is less than the combined total of about $114,000 raised by Flores and Rowe for their own campaign committees.

Raising Colorado is classified in state law as an independent expenditure committee, Pro-reform group spends big on 2015 campaign | Chalkbeat:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: District Can't Quit the Alliance That Fast

Seattle Schools Community Forum: District Can't Quit the Alliance That Fast:

District Can't Quit the Alliance That Fast

As I reported, the district and the Alliance for Education each put out a letter, outlining the dissolution of their 20-year partnership.  As I also said, there is something bittersweet to this as the Alliance started with the blessing of the late Superintendent John Stanford.  Here they are in one place at Scribed.

I was around then and I always did think of the Alliance as its own separate self but it was very much put forth as being a fundraising (to help meet challenges and gaps and provide enrichment) group as well as a civic cheerleading group for the district.  I remember the early years of pre-first-day-of-school pep rallies at Mariners field with a huge number of parents, teachers and children.

But there was a lot of upheaval and the Alliance morphed much more towards its business side.  I believe the Alliance was impatience with the slowness of change and very much wished it could control who sat on the Board and their governance. 

But these letters! Well, there's some hurt feelings, misunderstandings and at least one item that I suspect could end up in court.

Highlights from the district:

"...to outline concerns about the Alliance CEO." 

• discord with former Superintendent Susan Enfield and the CEO of the Alliance, Sara Morris
• discord between former Superintendent Banda and MorrisSeattle Schools Community Forum: District Can't Quit the Alliance That Fast:

Can Reading and Writing Overcome "The Beast Side?" | John Thompson

Can Reading and Writing Overcome "The Beast Side?" | John Thompson:

Can Reading and Writing Overcome "The Beast Side?"

D. Watkins's The Beast Side has a lot in common with Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me. Both grew up in Baltimore during the 1980s crack and gang years. Neither were violent people although both share the story of their one violent act. Unlike Coates, Watkins became a drug dealer. Both were saved by reading and writing, as well as the resilience they learned in their communities.

Both have stories so extreme as to seem surreal, but I saw the same things when crack and gangs took over my neighborhood, even though I viewed the tumult through the eyes of a thirty-something, white mentor. My young neighbors, like Watkins and Coates, did not have the buffer of white privilege or the experience born of already surviving their teens and twenties. My young friends were thrown into violence and oppression that most Americans would find inconceivable.

As much as I'd like to play basketball with Watkins and Coates, and see if I could match their trash talk, I'd never try to compete with their brilliant prose styles. Coates synthesizes the language of social science and journalism with the best of African-American writers such as James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. Watkins's humorous prose is infused with the wit and poetry of the street.

Coates goes in depth into the police shooting of his friend, Prince Jones, in order to explain how and why, "Prince was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country and all of the fears that marked it from birth." Watkins focuses on the growing casualty count of African-American young men recently killed by police and his much longer list of deceased friends.

Coates celebrates "black strivers" and describes a Howard University reunion as "a Can Reading and Writing Overcome "The Beast Side?" | John Thompson:

Change The LAUSD: Making the LAUSD Accountable to all Students #‎lausd‬

Change The LAUSD: Making the LAUSD Accountable to all Students:

Eli Broad's LAUSD?

Posted by Carl J. Petersen · September 28, 2015 8:00 PM

“While working for two years as an accountant, Eli Broad saw his homebuilding clients making much more that he was, and he and Edythe’s cousin’s husband decided they, too, could build houses.”

-Broad Foundation

There are some who like to quietly give to charities, being careful not to draw too much attention to themselves. Eli Broad is not this type of person. In a dispute with MOCA, an organization where he had been named “Founding Chairman,” he told the trustees that he wanted his “name on the building...in big letters, which were to go on the front of the building.” He had to settle having the lobby named after him, at least until he built his very own museum. However, when he gives money, he does not just want public recognition; he wants control. Broad and his wife, Edythe, are self-described venture philanthropists who focus “their charitable giving in a new style of investing that was more akin to their business acumen.”

Read more

Change The LAUSD: Making the LAUSD Accountable to all Students:

LASR Poll: What do you think of the Broad charter expansion plan?

 The @LASchoolReport wants to know what you think: 

http://laschoolreport.com/lasr-poll-what-do-you-think-of-the-broad-charter-expansion-plan/‪ #‎lausd‬

What do you think of the Broad charter expansion plan?

• I despise this idea because it harms traditional schools by taking money and resources out of the district.
  32%
  15 votes
• I don’t believe the charter people are really interested in improving education; I think this is all about weakening the teachers union.
  30%
  14 votes
• I love this idea because the school district needs more quality schools.
  19%
  9 votes
• I support the expansion plan because the current way of doing things is not doing a good enough job improving the academic performance of enough students.
  11%
  5 votes
• While I’m ambivalent about the idea of more charters, I could live with this idea if I knew one of these new schools would be in my neighborhood.
  0%
  0 votes
• If the district paid more attention to improving the quality of existing schools, this idea wouldn’t be necessary.
  9%
  4 votes
• I don’t care one way or another.
  0%
  0 votes

47 Total Votes

Under pressure: Some Mississippi educators told to stay quiet on school funding battle - The Hechinger Report

Under pressure: Some Mississippi educators told to stay quiet on school funding battle - The Hechinger Report:

Under pressure: Some Mississippi educators told to stay quiet on school funding battle

"Maybe I’m crazy to speak out. But ... this is a big moment in public education. It’s a time to have all hands on deck."

JACKSON, Miss — Meridian High School science teacher William Tucker has a sign promoting Initiative 42 in his front yard. He hands out pro-42 stickers and speaks out at public forums, urging people to support changing the state’s constitution to boost funding for its struggling public schools. For Tucker, the fight is personal: a lack of funding limits his ability to prepare a generation of students for college or the workforce.

Tucker says his science labs haven’t been updated in decades and his textbooks are the same he used in 2006, the year he graduated from Meridian High. The school’s sputtering computers are nearly a decade old. When the class dissects fetal pigs, pigeons, sharks and other specimens, students work in groups of between four and six to save money.

“I know how important this is because I see these kids every day,” he said. “I see what we are working with, and I know what we could do with the right resources.”

Tucker feels justified expressing support for the legislation that he believes will funnel more funding to his school.  Yet he’s among the Mississippi educators, including teachers and superintendents who say they’ve been pressured to keep quiet about Initiative 42, which will be on the ballot on Nov. 2 along with a competing amendment filed by lawmakers who are against 42 and want to keep funding fully in the hands of legislators.

Emotions are high in the weeks before voters will be asked to choose between 42 – which calls for a constitutional amendment to require the state to fund an “adequate and efficient” system of public school districts by 2022 – and 42A, which would nullify the effort by keeping funding as it is.

If 42 passes, funding would be determined using the Under pressure: Some Mississippi educators told to stay quiet on school funding battle - The Hechinger Report:

Rally calls for Community Schools, No Charter Takeovers | WeArePCAPS

Rally calls for Community Schools, No Charter Takeovers | WeArePCAPS:

Rally calls for Community Schools, No Charter Takeovers

Jerry Jordan  photo credit: Newsworks

Hundreds of teachers, parents, students and community members rallied before the School Reform Commission meeting yesterday demanding the SRC reject the attempt by the District to turn over three elementary schools to charter companies. A series of speakers, including parents and staff from the three schools denounced the District’s failure to give parents any meaningful say in the fate of their schools.

PFT President Jerry Jordan  told the crowd: “It’s time to try something different. It’s time to strengthen public education in Philadelphia through community schools, as has been done in Baltimore, Chicago, St. Paul and Cincinnati.”

Kenya Holmes-Nation, a parent leader at Wister, expressed the frustrarion of dozen of parents at the District, undemocratic process and called for Wister to become a community school.

Speakers also faulted the Renaissance  charter initaitive as expensive, destablizing and unfair.  PCAPS coordinator Ron Whitehorne noted that “an internal study by the District found that the majority of charter operators had not met their performance goals.   At two schools, Bluford and Douglas, the District chose not to renew Universal and Young Scholars, respectively as operators.   At one school, Birney, the operator went bankrupt.   ASPIRA, another charter company favored by the District, is under a cloud with unanswered questions about financial mismanagement as well as poor academic performance”

Parents and staff at the three schools are vowing to fight.   PCAPS will be joining this fight both at the schools and city wide.   Sign our open letter to the SRC, come out to next week’s  City Council hearing, Wednesday at l p.m. in Council Chambers to speak out.Rally calls for Community Schools, No Charter Takeovers | WeArePCAPS:

UNPARCC: Promote Learning, Not Test Prep

UNPARCC: Promote Learning, Not Test Prep:

Information and Resources

• UnitedOptOut.com
• The Network for Public Education
• FairTest.org
• Join New Jerseyans on Facebook refusing the PARCC
• Why we oppose the PARCC test
• Answers to questions about PARCC
• How to refuse the test
• To learn about threats to public education visit: Save Our Schools New Jersey

Operation BOO - The Big Opt Out

How to Spread the Word on Halloween Night

Parents will be out guiding their children from home to home seeking treats. This is your opportunity to meet and greet them and share the knowledge. So don't just treat the kids! Give the parents (not the kids!) our special treat! Wrap some candy in our special UNPARCC wrappers with the scary truth. If you run out of grown-up treats, just give them the flier.

Tell Other Concerned Parents

Tell your friends in your community and across New Jersey how they can spread the word on Halloween night. Send them to UNPARCC.ORG, or invite them to call 844-44PARCC (844-447-2722).

Take Printable Material

We have prepared UNPARCC candy wrappers for your adult treats. You can give out Kit Kats, Reese's Cups or Hershey bars in these beautiful themed wrappers.

Kit Kats and Reese's Wrappers

Click to view or download JPEG image at right.

Hershey Bar Wrappers

Click to view or download JPEG image at right.

The Plain Old Flier

If you run out of candy for grownups, just use the flier. Click to view or download JPEG image at right.

The flier is also saved here in the old Microsoft .doc format.

Tear Off Poster

Spread the word about Operation BOO before Halloween with this tear-off poster as shown (PDF).

Pre-Printed Material Available

If you cannot download the files to print yourself, they are also available to be mailed to you at cost.

A $6 package includes ten fliers and 5 of each candy wrapper sheet (for a total of 20 wrappers). PayPal payment only. Send inquiries and orders to tovatalk@hotmail.com.

UNPARCC: Promote Learning, Not Test Prep:

Stench of Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal wafts as far as Connecticut - Wait What?

Stench of Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal wafts as far as Connecticut - Wait What?:

Stench of Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal wafts as far as Connecticut

This past Tuesday (October 13, 2015) former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, one of the nation’s leading Corporate Education Reform Industry leaders, pleaded guilty for her role in a $23 million kick-back scheme with Gary Solomon and his education reform companies, The SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates.

As part of the plea agreement federal prosecutors told the court that they would drop all but one of the twenty fraud charges listed in Byrd-Bennett’s indictment and that although she faced a maximum of 20 years on each of 20 fraud counts, they would recommend a prison sentence of no more than seven 7 ½ years if she continued to “cooperate with federal investigators.”

Byrd-Bennett has previously served in top management positions with the Cleveland and Detroit public school systems.

As Barbara Byrd-Bennett was pleading guilty for her crimes in Chicago, The Detroit News reported that the FBI was investigating contracts Byrd-Bennett approved when she worked in Detroit;

According to six-month expenditure reports from May and November 2011, DPS paid $1,487,654.08 to Synesi for “Consultant Services/Curriculum/Office of Accountability.”

The report from November 2011 also lists an invoice of $128,698.77 to Synesi as “disapproved.”

The dark cloud of potentially illegal activities casts a long shadow over The Supes Academy, Synesi Associates, and a third company that is owned by Gary Solomon, PROACT Search.

As previously reported, Solomon’s PROACT Search has received a number of contracts in Connecticut.

The superintendent search firm was responsible for getting Garth Harries the superintendent’s job in New Haven and Manuel Rivera the same post in Norwalk.

When the New London Board of Education, with the help of Governor Malloy’s Special Stench of Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal wafts as far as Connecticut - Wait What?:

When it comes to Governor Dannel Malloy, Connecticut voters are rightfully angry

From the Quinnipiac University Public Opinion Poll;

Connecticut voters disapprove 58 – 32 percent of the job Gov. Dannel Malloy is doing, his lowest approval rating ever and the lowest score for any governor in the nine states surveyed this year by the independent Quinnipiac University Poll. The governor gets 4-1 negative scores for the way he his handling taxes and the state budget.

“Gov. Dannel Malloy’s job approval rating has plummeted to 32 percent, close to the historic 24 percent low hit by disgraced former Gov. John Rowland in January 2004, and Gov. Malloy is not in the middle of a corruption scandal,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, PhD.

“Only 36 percent of voters are satisfied with the way things are going in the state, one of the lowest scores since Quinnipiac University started asking this question in 1997.”

Three in four Connecticut voters disapprove of the way Malloy is handling the state budget.

When running for re-election last year, Dannel Malloy said that the state budget was balanced and that if he was re-elected he wouldn’t raise taxes, wouldn’t make cuts to vital services and wouldn’t need to demand concessions from state employees.

But after being sworn back into office this past January, Malloy raised taxes, cut vital When it comes to Governor Dannel Malloy, Connecticut voters are rightfully angry

CURMUDGUCATION: LIly Tries To Muster the Troops

CURMUDGUCATION: LIly Tries To Muster the Troops:

LIly Tries To Muster the Troops

This week NEA President Lily Eskelsen-Garcia kicked off the union's work as a campaigning arm of the Clinton campaign by doing some damage control and trying to get the troops in line.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw this tweet:

Is it? Is it clear that educators are on the same page about the next President? Exactly which page is that, I wonder?

The link in Eskelsen-Garcia's tweet takes us to this piece at her blog. "What's At Stake" presumably lays out what the union's campaign push will be.

The piece opens with a classic call to get in line. Lily has traveled the country, read the interwebs, and listened to the many points of view that teachers have been "not shy" about sharing. And "there will always be room for debate when it comes to the next candidate to support," which is good to hear, because there certainly wasn't any room to debate about the last candidate NEA leaders chose to support. But LEG is sure one thing is "abundantly clear"-- "Educators are on the same page when it comes to what our students need from the next president."

So what do we all agree on?

Well, one guy said teachers need a punch in the face and another guy wants us to all pack heat in school. We certainly don't want those guys! This is not so much "on the same page" as 'not reading CURMUDGUCATION: LIly Tries To Muster the Troops:





PARCC Expectations



As states continue to brace themselves for the release of crappy PARCC scores, now is a good time to look, again, at the PARCC Levels of Student Awesomeness:

Level 1: Student did not meet expectations.

Level 2: Student partially met expectations.

Level 3: Student approached expectations.

Level 4: Student met expectations.

Level 5: Student exceeded expectations

All levels share a critical term. Expectations.

It's a well chosen word from a PR perspective. Well-chosen, but not correct. Even, kind of, a lie.

After all-- what are expectations? They are an idea you set about before the fact. I have expectations about how my food will taste, and then I taste it. I have expectations about how good a movie will be, and then I watch it.

I don't listen to a new music release and then, after I've heard it, develop some expectations about whether it will be any good.

And in Teacher 101, we all learn that our expectations of our students will shape their performance-- what we expect them to accomplish will affect what they actually accomplish. Expectations are the horse, and performance is the cart.

So if we talk about expectations on a test, that means that before students take the test, we say, "I PARCC Expectations

Louisiana Educator: Please Help Fight the Tidal Wave of Money Engulfing the BESE Elections

Louisiana Educator: Please Help Fight the Tidal Wave of Money Engulfing the BESE Elections:

Please Help Fight the Tidal Wave of Money Engulfing the BESE Elections

My home is located in a part of Zachary that is in BESE District 8. Carolyn Hill is my BESE member.

Yesterday I opened my mailbox to find two slick, extra large full color cards extolling the virtues of Hill's only opponent, Jada Lewis. I had been getting mailings almost daily telling me what a wonderful BESE member Jada Lewis, who has probably never attended a BESE meeting, would be. I had also gotten one "hit piece" attacking Carolyn Hill because she had claimed travel expenses for traveling between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, without reference to the fact that BESE often meets in New Orleans. Later yesterday, I received a phone call from someone claiming to be pollster for the upcoming elections, only to find during the "poll" that it was really a push poll attempting to get me to vote for Jada Lewis. Based on this brief summary, can you imagine how much money is being spent just to defeat Carolyn Hill, even though she has done an excellent job of representing educators, parents and students on BESE?

I don't know much about Jada Lewis, except that she seems to have been totally bought by the Lane Grigsby PAC that is spending an obscene amount of money to maintain total control of BESE. I was furious that mostly out of state donors including the Walton family and the Broad Foundation would have the nerve to want to call all the shots concerning the governance of education in Louisiana even though they know almost nothing at all about our state and its educational system. See this articleabout the major funding for LABI and Grigsby candidates. I resolved that later today, my wife and I who are both lifelong educators will write a personal letter to all the homeowners in our subdivision recommending Carolyn Hill for reelection to BESE. We will hand deliver it to each home and answer questions.  Only by making personal contact with our neighbors can we possibly counteract this tidal wave of money from out-of-state attempting to swallow up the BESE election for the benefit of greedy individuals who want to privatize and profit from our tax dollars at the expense of our children!

Another example, of this attempt to totally control BESE is Louisiana Educator: Please Help Fight the Tidal Wave of Money Engulfing the BESE Elections:

Geaux Teacher!: BESE District 1 - Needs an Honest Representative:

Click Here to Follow Flip BESE on Facebook 

LEE P.BARRIOS FOR BESE 1 Web Site

JASON FRANCE FOR BESE 6 Web Site

MIKE KREAMER FOR BESE 7 Web Site