Latest News and Comment from Education

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/11/17


Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/11/17
Featured Post

Corporate-Elite Totalitarianism: Are we Creeping or Leaping?





Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity
Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity : Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity "Gates and other venture philanthropist's have 'pioneered' and 'seeded' new education markets through direct funding and by shaping 'education reform' policies. Charter schools are an essential component of th
All Things Education: Perriello's ties to problematic education reformers
All Things Education: Perriello's ties to problematic education reformers : Perriello's ties to problematic education reformers As I wrote a month ago , I am supporting Ralph Northam in the Democratic primary for the Virginia gubernatorial race. I agree with much of Tom Perriello's policy agenda and he is saying a lot things that resonate with me. If he wins the primary I will work hard to get hi
Graduation Not Incarceration: No to exit exams in Washington! | I AM AN EDUCATOR
Graduation Not Incarceration: No to exit exams in Washington! | I AM AN EDUCATOR : Graduation Not Incarceration: No to exit exams in Washington! Some 6,000 high school seniors in Washington are at risk of not graduating because they haven’t passed one of the myriad of high-stakes tests, including the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Common Core aligned language arts and math exams, as
Corporate-Elite Totalitarianism: Are we Creeping or Leaping?
Corporate-Elite Totalitarianism: Are we Creeping or Leaping? : Corporate-Elite Totalitarianism: Are we Creeping or Leaping? Pleas e join Internet radio host Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. and special guest Dr. Victoria M. Young for our second show on the Education Wars in American and Corporate-Elite Totalitarianism. Is American Creeping or Leaping Toward a Totalitarian State? Dr. Young's focus ha
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Baby baby edition + Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Baby baby edition : ICYMI: Baby baby edition I'm a little behind on reading and writing this week, but on the plus side, I'm way ahead on babies. Here's some reading from the week behind us. Read and pass it on. Some Unpopular Thoughts on Teacher Evaluation Mitchell Robinson with some interesting thoughts about how teacher evaluation ought to work. Linking Graduation to Hig
How diplomas based on skill acquisition, not credits earned, could change education - The Hechinger Report
How diplomas based on skill acquisition, not credits earned, could change education - The Hechinger Report : How diplomas based on skill acquisition, not credits earned, could change education NEWPORT, Maine — Algebra was not Kylee Elderkin’s favorite subject at the beginning of the school year. “I was a little behind,” said Kylee, 14. “I wouldn’t understand.” The Nokomis Regional High School nin
The Sunday Times. | Fred Klonsky
The Sunday Times. | Fred Klonsky : The Sunday Times Unionized teachers in 32 of the city’s charter schools voted to merge with the Chicago Teachers Union this week, officials announced Friday. Max Blumenthal ✔ @MaxBlumenthal The US hand in the Syrian and Libyan tragedies, no end in sight to the catastrophic effects of interventionism https:// consortiumnews.com/2017/06/09/the -us-hand-in-the-liby
Reign of Error Redux Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discu ss better education for all : Reign of Error Redux Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all Jersey Jazzman: The Charter Fraud in New Jersey 3 by dianeravitch / 51min Mark Weber, veteran teacher in New Jersey now studying for his doctorate at Rutgers, has yet another revelation of Chris Christie’s determination to place charter schools
Saving Schools That Save Students: Alternative High Schools Are An Essential Element of School Districts | Ed In The Apple
Saving Schools That Save Students: Alternative High Schools Are An Essential Element of School Districts | Ed In The Apple : Saving Schools That Save Students: Alternative High Schools Are An Essential Element of School Districts I guess we can call 2016-17 “The Year of ESSA,” the planning/crafting year of the federally required Every Student Succeeds Act that will submitted to the US Department
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Seattle School Board Elections 2017 - District IV
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Seattle School Board Elections 2017 - District IV : Seattle School Board Elections 2017 - District IV Editor's Note: in writing up my thoughts, opinions and reflections on candidates for the Seattle School Board, I used interviews (my own and the 36th Dems recorded interviews), Google, Facebook and Twitter searches. The questions I asked were these: 1. What was yo
Think Tanks, Fake News, Astroturfing, and Lies in the Era of Trump and DeVos - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People
Think Tanks, Fake News, Astroturfing, and Lies in the Era of Trump and DeVos - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People : Think Tanks, Fake News, Astroturfing, and Lies in the Era of Trump and DeVos The powerful influence of think tanks, fake news, astroturfing, and lies in our policymaking process is nothing new to us. In the past, the influence of lobbying was frequently d

YESTERDAY

To Understand Betsy DeVos’s Educational Views, View Her Education - The New York Times
To Understand Betsy DeVos’s Educational Views, View Her Education - The New York Times : To Understand Betsy DeVos’s Educational Views, View Her Education HOLLAND, Mich. — The students formed a circle around the Rev. Ray Vanderlaan, who draped himself in a Jewish ceremonial prayer shawl to cap his final lesson to graduating seniors in his discipleship seminar at Holland Christian High School. “We
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/10/17
Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/10/17 Featured Post In Historic Move, Charter School Educators’ Union Vote Overwhelmingly to Unify with Chicago Teachers Union - eNews Park Forest Proof Your Teacher Evaluation is 

Top Posts This Week



Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity

Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity:

Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity

Image result for big education ape Venture Philanthropy

"Gates and other venture philanthropist's have 'pioneered' and 'seeded' new education markets through direct funding and by shaping 'education reform' policies. Charter schools are an essential component of this mission… allowing impact investors to be the drivers of the education reform industry's final mission: to fully dismantle public education by way of 'anywhere, anytime learning' and 'personalized' technologies."
Image result for big education ape Venture Philanthropy
In the late 19th century many US industrialists -- Andrew Carnegie, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and others -- who amassed immense wealth through the exploitation and degradation of workers (including children), began to establish philanthropic trusts and foundations. Oil monopolist John D. Rockefeller (senior) described this social mission as a divinely inspired "business of benevolence." Accordingly, historian Benjamin J. Soskis reports that Rockefeller declared in 1906:
I believe that the power of making money is a gift from God… I believe it is my duty to go on making money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.
As such, philanthropists of this time channeled charitable gifts to civil society and aid-based organizations charged with facilitating the cultural reproduction of American values derived from the Protestant ethics that sustain US capitalism: individualism, self-reliance, hard work, meritocracy, discipline and obedience. In terms of the benevolent role of philanthropists during this period, Soskis frames it this way:
This conflation of the obligations of business and businessman was encouraged by the concept of stewardship, the dominant means by which Americans understood the responsibilities of wealth in the nineteenth century. By the dictates of stewardship, men could not claim ultimate ownership over their possessions, but held them only as trustees for some higher authority -- in the concept's Protestant manifestation… By bridging the realms of accumulation and redistribution, stewardship linked provisional property rights with the responsibilities that attended those rights. Stewardship provided a bridge between the imperatives of service and self-interest, a causeway over which proponents of corporate philanthropy would make their unsteady way in the decades to come.
Through this doctrine of divine providence, these charitable "Captains of Industry" advanced everything from universal public education, immigrant assimilation and poverty mitigation to the arts, public health and science and medical research. Naturally, this giving came with a social engineering agenda. For example, as documented in my article "The Despotic Origins of Public Secondary Education," their financial and political support for universal public education was intended to bolster US hegemony, by furthering US industrial capitalism's imperialist pursuits as tied to the nation's foundational structures of heteropatriarchy, white supremacy and settler colonialism. Relatedly, the article goes on to document how:
At the turn of the 20th century, capitalism's proclivity for crisis was fomenting rebellion within the US through massive labor strikes, struggles for universal suffrage and relief from poverty as a major depression gripped the nation due to overproduction. In response, the nation's political and economic elite 
Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy's Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity:
Image result for big education ape Venture Philanthropy

Image result for big education ape Vulture

Image result for big education ape Venture Philanthropy