CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI (December 13)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI (December 13):

ICYMI (December 13)

Time for that Sunday reading list!

What's Your Purpose 

Rob Miller has one of those posts that is great for refocusing and gearing up for the week to come-- plus a cool diagram

Shaming the Devil

Man. My hat is off-- way off-- to this blogger who decided to call out Steve Perry, the crowd-pleasing, money-grabing, self-aggrandizing reformster. Quite a tale here.

Testifying before Cuomo's Common Core Task Force

This is a throwback, but since Cuomo's Task Force offered up their recommendations this week, it seems like the perfect time to revisit Critical Classroom's account of testifying before the Task Force five weeks ago.

EdTweak

Some I had up till now missed this little diversion-- a short faux journal published every now and then in the style of everybody's favorite education news publication. Check out articles like "Reformers Address Deficiencies in Children's Screen Time."


Ex-Star Principal Tells of Her Downfall

Depressing. If you want a picture of how a principal can get caught up in culture of graft and corruption, read this Detroit Free Press article about one of the school officials caught in the federal investigation of misbehavior in Detroit.

Progressive Public School Shakedown

I've been remiss in not bringing this up sooner. The Progressive magazine has assembled a group f twelve fellows to cover education reform news for the magazine. The group includes top drawer folks like Jose Luis Vilson, Xian Barrett, Jennifer Berkshire, and Sabrina Stevens  (and full disclosure-- I have also snuck into the group somehow). You can follow the project on twitter under @Progressive4Ed; the fellows offer up a new piece at least once weekly, and even those of you who may not consider yourselves in tune with the overall agenda of the magazine will find the Progressive Fellow pieces informative and useful.

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Asking about Advanced Learning and Highly Capable Issues

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Asking about Advanced Learning and Highly Capable Issues:

Asking about Advanced Learning and Highly Capable Issues

Based on reader comments (as well as more than a few e-mails), I queried the district about several Advanced Learning issues.  Here are the replies(italics are SPS.)

Thanks for reaching out to us about Advanced Learning. Some of these questions/statements are answered on our Advanced Learning pages, but for convenience sake, Stephen Martin has answered most of them below.

1. It is too difficult to understand the programs (especially Spectrum and how it is presented differently at nearly every single school in the district depending on principal).

Advanced Learner/Spectrum students are served according to the CSIP developed at each school. Some schools also have published ALO plans. The district embraces site-based decision making in meeting the needs of Advanced Learner/Spectrum students. Most schools have adopted the practice of grouping advanced students within general education classrooms rather than placing them in self-contained classrooms. This is consistent with existing policy and procedures. The AL office is committed to supporting Seattle Schools Community Forum: Asking about Advanced Learning and Highly Capable Issues:

Peg with Pen: Solidarity on a Sunday Night

Peg with Pen: Solidarity on a Sunday Night:

Solidarity on a Sunday Night

Not enough time to blog lately but I get in a few short FB messages from time to time. From my FB tonight:

Many thanks to everyone that continues to help with the Twitter storm (search hashtag #NPAF #rejectrelay for more info) against Relay fake Graduate School during the National Principal Academy Fellowship in NY this weekend. There are lots of folks out there watching quietly who appreciate your help. For those of you headed back to work tomorrow in a Relay environment please remember that you are not crazy - stay in touch with your humanity and your pedagogy. There is no research stating that standards, targets, and/or success criteria correlate with student achievement. None. So, you are not crazy to think that plastering this BS on your wall every day is a waste of time. It is a waste of time.

However, there is a clear correlation between compliant learners and test-taking for schools that use this technique combined with a no-excuse discipline model (Teach Like a Champion - which demands bad ideas like cold call, snapping, and barking orders atchildren in a militant way). All of this is done in order to demand "perseverance" and "fidelity" to the tests and therefore increase test scores. Test scores do not equal learning. And ultimately, all of this is done to drive out experienced teachers who know what Peg with Pen: Solidarity on a Sunday Night:

U.S. Department of Education Enters the Twilight Zone | Save Maine Schools

U.S. Department of Education Enters the Twilight Zone | Save Maine Schools:

U.S. Department of Education Enters the Twilight Zone

 Last week, in a move that was timed to coincide so perfectly with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that italmost made you wonder if the whole thing was pre-planned behind the scenes, the U.S. Department of Education released its five-year technology plan.

No big surprise here: rather than offer sensible suggestions and grant opportunities for states and local districts to implement technology in ways that have been proven to be beneficial for kids, the plan instead reads like a blueprint for a complete overhaul of our national educational system.

It also mirrors the plan which is being pushed by the testing, charter, digital/online learning, and student loan industries, as most of its recommendations appear to come straight from “Ten Elements of High Quality Digital Learning” – a list of recommendations developed by a council of executives from testing giants like Pearson and McGraw Hill, charter chains like Rocketship, tech companies like Apple and Microsoft, and – of course – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Personalized learning (Mark Zuckerberg’s other new baby), competency-based education, and embedded, stealth assessment – including assessment of “non-cognitive competencies” – all play prominent roles in both the “Ten Elements” and the U.S. DOE’s new technology plan.

But if that alone doesn’t give you shivers, there’s more.

Despite an admission that research on the effectiveness of technology-enabled programs and resources is still limited, the technology plan also suggests that “the roles of PK–12 classroom teachers and post-secondary instructors, librarians, families, and learners all will need to shift as technology enables new types of learning experiences.”

Yes – you read that right.  According the U.S. DOE, not only our schools, but also our families will need to change to make way for the Brave New World recommended by the edu-profiteers.

The plan also says that we will need to consider the “redesign of physical learning spaces to accommodate new and expanded relationships among U.S. Department of Education Enters the Twilight Zone | Save Maine Schools:

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Classroom Update #4 fo 2015

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Classroom Update #4 fo 2015:

Classroom Update #4 fo 2015

One of the ideas that the ELA curriculum wanted students to get in this first unit was, how author background affects their work. I did like the particular piece they chose for this, Langston Hughes’ Theme for English B. It was a work that I was not familiar with, but it works well with upper elementary (5th grade) since it is made up of statements delivered in a first person voice. The biggest problem I had was trying to get the kids to understand that it was not “auto-biographical” but “semi-autobiographical” since the author was NOT from Winston-Salem, but Missouri, etc. but having facts to point to is easier to discuss, than more abstract ideas. It’s a good way to introduce perspective in race. The line in the poem about being the only black person in the classroom seemed to resonate even among my non-black students. I found this nice video of the poem on YouTube that my students enjoyed.

At the same time I was using the Pam Allyn materials, we were readingBridge to Terabithia, and I found a great resource for author background Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Classroom Update #4 fo 2015:

CURMUDGUCATION: TFA Is Rescued!

CURMUDGUCATION: TFA Is Rescued!:
TFA Is Rescued!

Teach for America continues to take shellacking from people who think to ask questions like "How do you prepare someone to be a teacher in five weeks?" or "Why aren't wealthy, white districts lined up to take advantage of this awesome program?" or "How exactly does it help a high needs school to have an endless parade of untrained amateurs wandering through classrooms for just a couple of years at a time?"

But TFA fits the reformster narrative in many ways (Some people are just better than others, so they should make great teachers-- certainly better than those dopes who are in teaching as a career. Poor schools are failing because the Right People aren't there, so we'll put the Right People there and that will fix everything!), and it has allowed many people to put "teacher" on their resume as they move onto their real careers as bureaucrats, lobbyists and political appointees, so that TFA has become a multi-million dollar operation with plenty of friends in high places. Still, they also participate in another popular reformster narrative-- "Even though we are Better People and we're doing Great Things, people keep popping up to say mean things about us, and that makes us sad."

And so periodically reformsters try to fight back, and we get the bizarre spectacle of millions of dollars being spent to outfits like the $12 million Education Post or the $4 million per year the74 to combat a bunch of people who blog for little or no money.

Now TFA is joining the party. As reported by Lyndsey Layton in the Washington Post, NYCAN (part of  a network of pro-charter, anti-public school, anti-teacher union reformsters) has set up a Big Fat PR engine to combat TFA criticism. Why would NYCAN do that for TFA? Well, most likely because they CURMUDGUCATION: TFA Is Rescued!:

THE LAUSD CONSPIRATORIAL CULT OF CONFORMITY - Perdaily.com

THE LAUSD CONSPIRATORIAL CULT OF CONFORMITY - Perdaily.com:

THE LAUSD CONSPIRATORIAL CULT OF CONFORMITY

 (Mensaje se repite en Español)

In looking at LAUSD's latest defamatory attack on nationally acclaimed teacher Rafe Esquith, one can only surmise that those running the district are starting to run scared, because Esquith's billion dollar lawsuit brought by lawyer Mark Geragos has too great a probability of bankrupting the district, if allow it to be tried in a neutral court forum as it should be. So the LAUSD smear machine aka "LAUSD investigative team" is given their marching orders not to find the truth, but rather to get the goods on Esquith...even if they have to fabricate or distort the facts to do so. And what LAUSD has in place after years of war against teachers and other certificated and classified employees- whose only crime was they questioned district policy or made too much money- is an amoral group of administrators or outside contractors seeking to supplement their income or position, even if they have to lie, fabricate, or distort evidence to do so.

We can see how deceptive and lying public entity cultures like this work in the recent inditement of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke for 1st degree murder, after a 13 month coverup of his execution of Laquan McDonald. One can see what happens when an organization is allowed to investigate itself in a manner where the preordained conclusion of organizational innocence is all that is acceptable for those whose loyalty to the organization takes precedence over their comittment to truth and the rule of law- giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they ever had any.

At the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), this same self-dealing culture has existed for generations to the preclusion of good pragmatic public education. As a matter of fact, no administrator would ever have gotten to any THE LAUSD CONSPIRATORIAL CULT OF CONFORMITY - Perdaily.com:

A Look Back - Wait, What? Blogs of the past Week - Wait What?

A Look Back - Wait, What? Blogs of the past Week - Wait What?:

A Look Back – Wait, What? Blogs of the past Week

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

The Decline of the Great American Middle Class

CT Republican Strategy 101 – Snatching Defeat out of the Jaws of Victory

While Team Malloy says full steam ahead on the Common Core and Common Core Testing Mania…

Google Spying on 40 Million K-12 Students…

CT-Democratic Budget Deal – An irresponsible farce

MORE ON SFER – Corporate Money in the 2015 Denver Board of Education Election

$17 million SBAC testing money should be used to prevent the terrible cuts to programs that actually help children.  (Guest Post by CT Educator James Mulholland)

A Look Back - Wait, What? Blogs of the past Week - Wait What?:

Charter schools and journalistic ethics | Bob Braun's Ledger

Charter schools and journalistic ethics | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Charter schools and journalistic ethics

Natasha Levant, from her Facebook entry

Today The Star-Ledger published an op-ed column by a woman identified as Natasha Levant in which she credited the school her son attends, the North Star Academy Charter School in Newark, for “changing” her son’s life and “saving” him.  The newspaper described her only as “a resident of Newark and mother of five.”

What the newspaper did not do is identify her as anemployee of the same charter school chain. She is paid to promote the very school she is using the pages of The Star-Ledger to promote. Levant also is  employed by the Prudential Insurance Company as an assistant to the media director. Prudential is a financial supporter of North Star and its chief investment officer, Scott Sleyster, sits on the school’s trustee board.

The Society of Professional Journalists has published an ethics code in which it states:

“Identify sources clearly. The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources.”

The Star-Ledger did not clearly identify the source of the article it published Sunday under Levant’s byline.

The Star-Ledger repeatedly publishes editorials supporting charter schools, privately-operated but publicly-funded schools that, even according to  supporters, drain money away from the traditional public schools in Newark. In October, it specifically editorialized against legislation that would impose a moratorium on the growth of charter schools until a study could be made of their impact on traditional public schools; that is the same position taken by Levant in her article.

Tomorrow, The Star-Ledger undoubtedly will be covering the pro-charter lobbying Charter schools and journalistic ethics | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Schooling in the Ownership Society: The real force behind D.C. school 'reform'

Schooling in the Ownership Society: The real force behind D.C. school 'reform':

The real force behind D.C. school 'reform'

She's the wife of a media mogul, a friend of the Washington Post’s Graham family. She’s a philanthropist, adviser to public officials, and conduit to private foundations and investors in what has become her life’s work. In D.C., likely no private citizen is more involved in public education than Katherine Bradley.

City Paper's Jeffrey Anderson has written a feature story on D.C. socialite Bradley, calling her a "force multiplier" when it comes to the district's corporate-style school reform.

To me, she sounds a lot like D.C.'s version of New York's charter maven Eva Moskowitz who uses her clout to build her personal charter school empire and assail public schools and teacher unions.

Bradley’s primary advocacy vehicle is CityBridge Foundation, a nonprofit that distributed nearly $25 million in grants, scholarships, and donations from 2004 to 2013—mostly to charter schools and groups like Teach for America, which received Schooling in the Ownership Society: The real force behind D.C. school 'reform':

Hundreds of Parents Pull Students Out of San Lorenzo Schools, Demand Raise for Teachers | NBC Bay Area

Hundreds of Parents Pull Students Out of San Lorenzo Schools, Demand Raise for Teachers | NBC Bay Area:

Hundreds of Parents Pull Students Out of San Lorenzo Schools, Demand Raise for Teachers

Problems with video? go here Hundreds of Parents Pull Students Out of San Lorenzo Schools, Demand Raise for Teachers http://bit.ly/1NqHCGA

Hundreds of parents pulled their kids out of school Monday in the San Lorenzo Unified School District and are calling on others to do the same thing on Tuesday.

The move was the latest effort to get the district to increase pay for teachers. In addition, about 150 parents and students shouting "pay our teachers!" protested Monday in front  of the school district office.

• San Lorenzo Teachers May Strike Over Salary Negotiations

"My whole point is to make an impression to the district so that they negotiate and the teachers do not go on strike," said Renee Ybarra, who pulled her 10-year-old daughter out of school on Monday to take a stand. "I don't think substitutes are qualified to teach my daughter for any length of time."

More than 1,200 absences were reported in the district on Monday, including 650 at San Lorenzo High School. The absences amounted to a $44,000 loss for the San Lorenzo Unified School District in attendance funding.

San Lorenzo Teachers May Strike Over Salary Negotiations

San Lorenzo teachers are considering a possible strike over failed contract negotiations. Pete Suratos reports. (Published Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015)

Many parents said they are worried the teachers will strike if they do not get a decent raise.

The San Lorenzo Education Association said a strike could happen soon.

• Driver 'Lucky' After Metal Object Crashes Through Windshield

"I think a strike is definitely a possibility," said Donna Pinkey, teachers union president. "We want a 6.2 percent increase and they are offering 1.5 percent, so there is quite a bit of distance between us."

Superintendent Fred Brill said the district is already operating in the red and said pulling kids out of school will only hurt the district's efforts to increase pay for Hundreds of Parents Pull Students Out of San Lorenzo Schools, Demand Raise for Teachers | NBC Bay Area:

BustED Pencils Trending News: Grit; Segregation; Gold | BustED Pencils

BustED Pencils Trending News: Grit; Segregation; Gold | BustED Pencils:

BustED Pencils Trending News: Grit; Segregation; Gold

“the exposure to trauma has a profound impact…” , writes AISHA SULTAN

The Limitations of Teaching ‘Grit’ in the Classroom

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/when-grit-isnt-enough/418269/

High-achievers segregated.

The New ‘Education Segregation’ Hurting the U.S.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/haroldsirkin/2015/12/03/the-new-education-segregation-hurting-the-u-s/

Gold for corporations!

TS Gold – A Child’s Report Card

http://www.pegwithpen.com/2015/12/ts-gold-childs-report-card.html

Get BustED Pencils Trending News to come right to your in-box!

Enter your email under “SUBSCRIBE” on our Home or Trending News page at bustedpencils.com

BustED Pencils Trending News: Grit; Segregation; Gold | BustED Pencils:

With A Brooklyn Accent: Fordham, Gentrification and the University's Role in the Bronx

With A Brooklyn Accent: Fordham, Gentrification and the University's Role in the Bronx:

Racial Tensions at Fordham are a Harbinger of What Gentrification Might Mean for the Bronx

Fordham used to have a great reputation in the Bronx because it helped save the neighborhoods of the Northwest Bronx from the arson and disinvestment that swept through the Southern sections of the borough. But as the danger of disinvestment faded, in large part because of the heroic efforts of the community groups Fordham helped, the University gradually shifted its target recruitment area from the New York metropolitan area to the entire nation, bringing in a more affluent student population than it had traditionally targeted. This helped raise the university's academic profile and US News and World Report ranking, but in the process increased the gap, in race and class and culture, between Fordham's student population and the population of the Bronx, a gap symbolized by the gates surrounding the campus and the University's increasingly large and vigilant security force.

Now, the Fordham is at a crossroads. With Gentrification and Displacement, rather than Disinvestment, becoming the major danger facing the Bronx, which way will Fordham go? Will it change course by recruiting more low and moderate income students, embrace the culture of Bronx communities, and make Bronx residents feel more welcome on the Fordham campus or will it continue to bring large number of people who have little respect for the Bronx into the campus and surrounding neighborhoods while doing little to sensitize them to their surroundings?

The economic interests and academic ambitions of the 

Fordham, Gentrification and the University's Role in the Bronx

Fordham used to have a great reputation in the Bronx because it helped save the neighborhoods of the Northwest Bronx from the arson and disinvestment that swept through the Southern sections of the borough. But as the danger of disinvestment faded, in large part because of the heroic efforts of the community groups Fordham helped, the University gradually shifted its target recruitment area from the New York metropolitan area to the entire nation, bringing in a more affluent student population than it had traditionally targeted. This helped raise the university's academic profile and US News and World Report ranking, but in the process increased the gap, in race and class and culture, between Fordham's student population and the population of the Bronx, a gap symbolized by the gates surrounding the campus and the University's increasingly large and vigilant security force.

Now, the Fordham is at a crossroads. With Gentrification and Displacement, rather than Disinvestment, becoming the major danger facing the Bronx, which way will Fordham go? Will it change course by recruiting more low and moderate income students, embrace the culture of Bronx communities, and make Bronx residents feel more welcome on the Fordham campus or will it continue to bring large number of people who have little respect for the Bronx into the campus and surrounding neighborhoods while doing little to sensitize them to their surroundings?

The economic interests and academic ambitions of the University, not the racism of university administrators- who for the most part are genuinely horrified by recent racist acts- have put it add odds with the interests of surrounding communities. Getting Fordham to change course and truly embrace the people and culture of the Bronx will take heroic efforts over the course of many years

The time to start that effort is now  

Fordham, Gentrification and the University's Role in the Bronx

“Good” and “Successful” Teaching: Where Does the Student Enter the Picture? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

“Good” and “Successful” Teaching: Where Does the Student Enter the Picture? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

“Good” and “Successful” Teaching: Where Does the Student Enter the Picture?

The singular and important role of the classroom teacher in getting students to learn is well established in the research literature (see here and here). I have no quarrel with that frequent finding (whatever the metrics) to confirm that teachers are instrumental to student learning.  What is far less clear is what part do five to 18 year-old students play in the chemistry of learning.

It is a question that I have puzzled over in my many years teaching high school and graduate courses. And I have no certainty in answering it.

For some teachers, as one told me after I observed his mediocre lesson, “I was selling but the students weren’t buying,” students bear the lion’s share of the responsibility. They are expected to come to class, obey the rules, do the homework, participate in discussions, and do well on tests. Those are students’ responsibilities. Other teachers (and policymakers) see it differently, that is, teachers bear full responsibility for motivating students, insuring that they have the classroom resources to succeed, and hammering home what has to be learned. Teachers, researchers, policymakers, and parents would quibble if one were to allocate percentages, for example, for the teacher is–to pick arbitrarily a number–70 percent and the student is, say again, 30 percent responsible. The uncertainty over percentages occurs because of different meanings attached to such phrases as “good” and “successful” teaching and learning.

Consider that “good” and ” successful” teaching are necessary to reach the threshold of what observers call “quality” teaching. To lead us through the “Good” and “Successful” Teaching: Where Does the Student Enter the Picture? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Ed Notes Online: Wonderful Video - Seen Them Opting Out on Broadway - Alan Schwartz - The Bald Piano Man

Ed Notes Online: Wonderful Video - Seen Them Opting Out on Broadway - Alan Schwartz - The Bald Piano Man:

Wonderful Video - Seen Them Opting Out on Broadway - Alan Schwartz - The Bald Piano Man

-- Or how teachers' asses are being saved by the parent opt out movement.
"The unions didn't accomplish this. Parental anger at an arrogant state executive forced the change. To the power of parents everywhere." 

Brilliant lyrics and performance by Alan C. Schwartz, The Bald Piano Man, December 11, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/alan.c.schwartz.3/videos/10153748881142889/

American Education 2017

A Billy Joel parody reboot to celebrate Andrew's Cuomo's humbling about face on high-stakes testing. The unions didn't accomplish this. Parental anger at an arrogant state executive forced the change. To the power of parents everywhere...

Posted by Alan C. Schwartz on Friday, December 11, 2015

Some of my high school friends tell me that teachers in their schools couldn't care less about the opt out movement because most high school students don't opt out of regents and other tests. But high school teachers have been swept up in the outcomes of the existential threat opt out presents to the ed deformers. Witness Cuomo's (temporary) retreat in an effort to cut the legs out of opt-out. Don't be fooled. Every teacher should do what they can (without getting into trouble with their admins) to spread news of opt out. Ie. contact Change the Stakes to have someone stand outside your school with leaflets at dismissal.

Russ on Reading: Teaching as Meaningful Work

Russ on Reading: Teaching as Meaningful Work:

Teaching as Meaningful Work

In his terrific 2009 book on the complexity of success, Outliers,Malcolm Gladwell identifies “meaningful work” as one necessary component of a fully successful life. Gladwell defines meaningful work as work that provides a person with autonomy, complexity and rewards that equal the effort put forth. Gladwell identifies teaching (and medicine and entrepreneurship) as meaningful work.

I went into teaching because, even as wide-eyed, idealistic, eighteen year-old entering college, I had a sense that teaching was meaningful work. In my years as a human resources director for a school district, I encountered literally dozens of adults who were in the midst of a career change from the business world into teaching because they were looking for more meaningful work. I believe the vast majority of us who are teachers chose teaching as a career because we wanted meaningful work.

And yet today as I talk to teachers and prospective teachers, I hear a great deal of frustration. Many are leaving the profession by either retiring early or seeking jobs out of the field. Prospective teachers I work with at Rider University are wondering aloud if they have made a good career choice. As Education Week has reported, enrollment in schools of education at colleges around the country is plummeting.

What’s going on? Clearly, nearly two decades of education reform policies, from No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top and from the Common Core to the Common Core aligned standardized tests, have taken their toll. I believe there is a general sense that teaching is somehow less “meaningful” than it once was. A look at Gladwell’s components of meaningful work might help us understand why.

Autonomy

For teachers autonomy means the ability to make critical curricular and instructional decisions based on our content knowledge, our professional judgement and our unique knowledge of the students in front of us. Education reform has undermined this autonomy unnecessarily through Russ on Reading: Teaching as Meaningful Work:

Consolidating Power: Urban and Neighborhood Based Organization Matters - Online University of the Left

Consolidating Power: Urban and Neighborhood Based Organization Matters - Online University of the Left:

Consolidating Power: Urban and Neighborhood Based Organization Matters

David Harvey: ‘The Left Has to Rethink Its Theoretical and Tactical Apparatus.’

FROM ROAR MAGAZINE. David Harvey, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of our times, sits down with the activist collective AK Malabocas to discuss the transformations in the mode of capital accumulation, the centrality of the urban terrain in contemporary class struggles, and the implications of all this for anti-capitalist organizing.

AK Malabocas: In the last forty years, the mode of capital accumulation has changed globally. What do these changes mean for the struggle against capitalism?

David Harvey: From a macro-perspective, any mode of production tends to generate a very distinctive kind of opposition, which is a curious mirrored image of itself. If you look back to the 1960s or 1970s, when capital was organized in big corporatist, hierarchical forms, you had oppositional structures that were corporatist, unionist kinds of political apparatuses. In other words, a Fordist system generated a Fordist kind of opposition.

With the breakdown of this form of industrial organization, particularly in the advanced capitalist countries, you ended up with a much more decentralized configuration of capital: more fluid over space and time than previously thought. At the same time we saw the emergence of an opposition that is about networking and decentralization and that doesn’t like hierarchy and the previous Fordist forms of opposition.

So, in a funny sort of way, the leftists reorganize themselves in the same way capital accumulation is reorganized. If we understand that the left is a mirror image of what we are criticizing, then maybe what we should do is to break the mirror and get out of this symbiotic relationship with what we are criticizing.

In the Fordist era, the factory was the main site of resistance. Where can we find it now that capital has moved away from the factory floor towards the urban terrain?

First of all, the factory-form has not disappeared—you still find factories in Bangladesh or in China. What is interesting is how the mode of production in the core cities changed. For example, the logistics sector has undergone a huge expansion: UPS, DHL and all of these delivery workers are producing enormous values nowadays.

In the last decades, a huge shift has occurred in the service sector as well: the biggest employers of labor in the 1970s in the US were General Motors, Ford and US Steel. The biggest employers of labor today are McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Walmart. Back then, the factory was the center of the working class, but today we find the working class mainly in the service sector. And why would we say that producing cars is more important than producing hamburgers?

Unfortunately the left is not comfortable with the idea of organizing fast-food workers. Its picture of the classical working class doesn’t fit with value production of the service workers, the delivery workers, the restaurant workers, the supermarket workers.

The proletariat did not disappear, but there is a new proletariat which has very different characteristics from the traditional one the left used to identify as the vanguard of the working class. In this sense, the McDonalds workers became the steel workers of the twenty-first century

If this is what the new proletariat is about, where are the places to organize resistance now?

It’s very difficult to organize in the workplaces. For example, delivery drivers are moving all over the place. So this population could maybe be better organized outside the working place, meaning in their neighborhood structures.

There is already an interesting phrase in Gramsci’s work from 1919 saying that organizing in the workplace and having workplace councils is all well, but we should have neighborhood councils, too. And the neighborhood councils, he said, have a better understanding of what the conditions of the whole working class are compared to the sectoral understanding of workplace organizing.

Workplace organizers used to know very well what a steelworker was, but they didn’t understand what the proletariat was about as a whole. The neighborhood organization would then include for example the street cleaners, the house Consolidating Power: Urban and Neighborhood Based Organization Matters - Online University of the Left:

Ohio charter schools that misspent money still owe state $6 million | The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio charter schools that misspent money still owe state $6 million | The Columbus Dispatch:

Ohio charter schools that misspent money still owe state $6 million

Dozens of Ohio charter schools collectively have failed to repay more than $6 million in misspent tax dollars, a first-time compilation of state audits reveals.

The improper spending involved about 40 of the tax-funded, privately operated schools and was uncovered by audits conducted between 2008 and 2014.

“A majority of the unresolved findings for recovery are against individuals who operated or worked at the schools, and many of these schools are now closed,” according to the report that Ohio Superintendent Richard A. Ross recently submitted to federal officials.

>> Bill would prohibit charter schools from spending tax money on ads

The biggest offender: former school treasurer Carl W. Shye Jr. of New Albany, who misspent a reported $2.1 million while handling finances for more than a dozen former charter schools in Columbus, Dayton and Youngstown, according to state Auditor Dave Yost.

Shye served a two-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2012 to embezzling nearly $500,000 from four charter schools, including the former George Washington Carver Preparatory Academy in Columbus, between 2005 and 2011.

The charter-school audit findings were compiled by the Ohio Department of Education at the request of federal regulators, who in November placed a hold on a $71 million grant awarded to the state.

The funds were to be used to open new charter schools in Ohio. But officials with the U.S. Department of Education said they were concerned about the state agency’s rigging of charter-school evaluations and wanted assurances that the grant money would be spent properly.

The federal review is ongoing, officials said on Friday.

The Dispatch reported in September that Ohio’s grant application had inaccuracies and questionable claims, including that the state had no “ poor-performing” charters in the 2012-13 school year, even though about a third failed to meet a single standard on state report cards that year.

The application also promised that only the “best-rated” charter-school sponsors would receive grant money for new schools. But former school-choice chief David Hansen, who drafted the state’s application, failed to mention he had left off grades of failing online schools from sponsor evaluations to boost their ratings.

Hansen resigned after admitting he scrubbed the data.

Ohio currently spends about $1 billion a year to educate more than Ohio charter schools that misspent money still owe state $6 million | The Columbus Dispatch:

Report: Most states providing less K-12 funding than before Great Recession - The Washington Post

Report: Most states providing less K-12 funding than before Great Recession - The Washington Post:

Report: Most states providing less K-12 funding than before Great Recession

A new report on public school funding across the country finds that most states are now providing less support per K-12 student than before the 2007-2009 Great Recession — and that some states continue to cut funding.

The report, published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research and policy institute, cites what it says is the most current available data on state and local funding and finds that, after adjusting for inflation:

• At least 31 states provided less state funding per student in the 2014 school year (that is, the school year ending in 2014) than in the 2008 school year, before the recession took hold. In at least 15 states, the cuts exceeded 10 percent.
• In at least 18 states, local government funding per student fell over the same period. In at least 27 states, local funding rose, but those increases rarely made up for cuts in state support. Total local funding nationally ― for the states where comparable data exist ― declined between 2008 and 2014, adding to the damage from state funding cuts.
• While data on total school funding in the current school year (2016) is not available, at least 25 states are still providing less “general” or “formula” funding ― the primary form of state funding for schools ― per student than in 2008.  In seven states, the cuts exceed 10 percent.
• Most states raised “general” funding per student slightly this year, but 12 states imposed new cuts, even as the national economy continues to improve. Some of these states, including Oklahoma, Arizona and Wisconsin, already were among the deepest-cutting states since the recession hit.

Here’s a state-by-state chart (with a handful of states not included because of lack of data; see footnote to chart):

Among the consequences of K-12 state-level spending are, the report says:

• Weakening a key funding source for school districts. About 46 percent of K-12 spending nationally comes from state funds (the share varies by state). Cuts at the state level force local school districts to scale back educational services, raise more local revenue to cover the gap, or both. And because property values fell sharply after the recession hit, it has been particularly difficult for local school districts to raise significant additional revenue through local property taxes without raising tax rates, a politically challenging task even in good times.
• Slowing the economy’s recovery from the recession. School districts began cutting teachers and other employees in mid-2008 when the first round of budget cuts took effect, federal employment data show. By mid-2012, local school districts had cut 351,000 jobs. Since then, they have restored some of the jobs but are still down 297,000 jobs compared with 2008. These job losses reduced the purchasing power of workers’ Report: Most states providing less K-12 funding than before Great Recession - The Washington Post: