FOM: A “New” CCS (Coalition for Community Schools) | commoncorediva

FOM: A “New” CCS (Coalition for Community Schools) | commoncorediva:

FOM: A “New” CCS (Coalition for Community Schools)

The “Fib-o-Meter” is back and ready to bust open the fallacies, fibs, half truths, or whole truths about the OTHER CCS (Common Core Standards). Today’s look is into the IEL (Institute for Educational Leadership) and its CCS (Coalition for Community Schools). Is it tied to the Common Core? If so, how? Is it part  of the plan to have aligned communities like those in the ‘cradle to career’ movement of ‘Strive Together’? (*Note: ST is associated with the Chief Council of State School Officers, KnowledgeWorks, and other pro CCSS Machine members). Let’s crank up the “Meter” and see what we can find!

IEL, Institute for Educational Leadership:

Its website: http://iel.org/

If you visit their website, be sure to head directly to the “About Us” page and click on the word “Staff” to find the “Total Truths” of current or former associations with other groups each member has. You’ll find organizations like the NEP (National Education Policy), Workforce Development, education reformers, and a more than healthy dose of social justice causes. You still with me? I hope so. Let’s see what else “Fib-o-Meter” can find…

Their Board of Directors is a big dose of “Total Truth” or more like a who’s who among some of the CCSS Machine members. For example, Dr. June Atkinson (the president of the Council of Chief State School Officers as well as the NC State Superintendent for Public Schools), The IEL website only uses  her NC title as her employer. “Total Truth”? No way! (If you missed Dr. A’s presidency, see: http://www.ccsso.org/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/CCSSO_Welcomes_New_President_and_Board_of_Directors-x2650.html )
Other pro CCSS represented groups: Data Quality Campaign, Harvard University, Scholastic Books, Learning Matters, and many others. To find the entire “Total Truth” for yourselves, go to the “About Us” tab, and click on “Board of Directors”.

Well, are you ready to see what else “Fib-o-Meter” has uncovered about the Coalition  for Community School’s parent organization? I am!

The Gates Foundation has granted IEL many dollars from ‘before 2009′ to 2011. “Fib-o-Meter” found this “Total Truth” on the Gates Foundation Grants Page. You can too. See:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=IEL

Another “Total Truth” about IEL is that it is working to ensure key points are embedded inFOM: A “New” CCS (Coalition for Community Schools) | commoncorediva: 

When Charters Go Union

When Charters Go Union:

When Charters Go Union

Most charter school funders hate unions and unions generally hate charters. But more and more charter teachers want to unionize, and labor is helping them do it. 

This is a sneak peek at an article set to run in the upcoming Summer 2015 issue. 

The April sun had not yet risen in Los Angeles when teachers from the city’s largest charter network—the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools—gathered outside for a press conference to discuss their new union drive. Joined by local labor leaders, politicians, student alumni, and parents, the importance of the educators’ effort was not lost on the crowd. If teachers were to prevail in winning collective bargaining rights at Alliance’s 26 schools, the audience recognized, then L.A.’s education reform landscape would fundamentally change. For years, after all, many of the most powerful charter backers had proclaimed that the key to helping students succeed was union-free schools.

One month earlier, nearly 70 Alliance teachers and counselors had sent a letter to the administration announcing their intent to join United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the local teachers union that represents the 35,000 educators who work in L.A.’s public schools. The letter asked Alliance for a “fair and neutral process”—one that would allow teachers to organize without fear of retaliation. The administration offered no such reassurance. Indeed, April’s press conference was called to highlight a newly discovered internal memo circulating among Alliance administrators that offered tips on how to best discourage staff from forming a union. It also made clear that Alliance would oppose any union, not just UTLA. “To continue providing what is best for our schools and our students, the goal is no unionization, not which union,” the memo said.

The labor struggle happening in Los Angeles mirrors a growing number of efforts taking place at charter schools around the country, where most teachers work with no job security on year-to-year contracts. For teachers, unions, and charter school advocates, the moment is fraught with challenges. Traditional unions are grappling with how they can both organize charter teachers and still work politically to curb charter expansion. Charter school backers and funders are trying to figure out how to hold an anti-union line, while continuing to market charters as vehicles for social justice.

Though 68 percent of K-12 public school teachers are unionized, just 7 percent of charter school teachers are, according to a 2012 study from the Center for Education Reform. (And of those, half are unionized only because state law stipulates that they follow their district’s collective bargaining agreement.) However, the momentum both to open new charter schools and to organize charter staff is growing fast. 

IRONICALLY, THE FIRST MAJOR PROPOSAL to establish charter schools came from the nation’s most famous teacher union leader. At the National Press Club in 1988, Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave a speech outlining a “new type of school.” Shanker envisioned publicly funded but independently managed schools, which would be given the space to try out new educational approaches and would continue to receive public dollars so long as their approaches proved to be effective. These schools would act as educational laboratories, testing grounds of new and better practices that could then be adopted by traditional public schools. A few months after his speech, Shanker dubbed his idea “charter schools,” in a reference to explorers who received charters to seek new land and resources. Later that year, the 3,000 delegates at the national AFT convention endorsed When Charters Go Union:

Jerry Brown and CA Legislature Demonstrate Support for Public Education in State Budget | janresseger

Jerry Brown and CA Legislature Demonstrate Support for Public Education in State Budget | janresseger:

Jerry Brown and CA Legislature Demonstrate Support for Public Education in State Budget

Summer weather is being intensified by the heat of the state budget season—a time when, in too many places, the cost of tax cutting and privatization of the public schools is being represented clearly in dollars and cents.  And today’s attack on the common good is bipartisan.

A new report shows that New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, and the NY legislature have been the target of $13 million in lobbying in the past year to push the expansion of charters and a tuition tax credit voucher program—both hot topics in NY’s budget debate—with Cuomo leading the charge for privatization and vouchers.

Another report explores the impact of pro-charter school lobbying on the Democratic governor of Connecticut, Dan Malloy—money from people like Jonathan Sackler, who made his fortune producing Oxycontin at Purdue Pharma, and who is the founder of ConCAN (which is part of a nationwide, Sackler supported, coalition of far-right privatizers, 50-CAN). In an opinion piece in the Stamford Advocate, Wendy Lecker explains: “Governor Malloy’s tenure has been characterized by denigrating teachers, vigorously opposing adequate funding of public schools and vastly increasing financial support for privately run charter schools…. Why would Malloy favor these questionable privately run schools over underfunded public schools?… The web of charter money is so thick it must have blinded Malloy to the needs and wishes of constituents from Stamford and Bridgeport.”

And  in the middle of the country, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, a Republican and radical income-tax slasher, was forced to raise sales and cigarette taxes to keep the state from going broke—the predictable result of his deep income tax cuts enacted last year.  No matter that regressive sales and cigarette taxes eat up a larger percentage of the income of poor people, Brownback had bragged about his adherence to far-right orthodoxy, in his belief that the income tax cuts that have left his state on the verge of bankruptcy will eventually grow the economy.  John Hanna explains in an Associated Press report: “Kansas found itself in such a deep budget hole because the tax cuts implemented in 2013 initially led to a steep fall in revenue that has still not reversed as much as Brownback had hoped.  For the fiscal year beginning next month, the state estimated in mid-April that it would face a shortfall of 12 percent of its general fund budget.”  Hanna explains further: “Brownback and his GOP allies managed to avoid backtracking on past reductions on income tax rates… Instead,  Jerry Brown and CA Legislature Demonstrate Support for Public Education in State Budget | janresseger:

CURMUDGUCATION: Monsters + Sweden vs. Nevada

CURMUDGUCATION: Monsters:

Monsters

When somebody does something awful, my most immediate response is to wonder what was going on in their head that made that action seem okay. See, I believe that the vast majority of people try to do what they believe is right, what is in line with the rules for how the world is supposed to work. Even the most horrible acts are somehow, in their perpetrator's mind, okay.

Sometimes it's because that person's mind really is broken. When someone starts taking orders from the voice of Satan speaking through a dog, his perception of reality is so twisted that it's hard to imagine how he ended up in that dark and distorted place where it's okay to kill people you don't even know. But Son of Sam type killers are not the norm.

I don't think I believe in monsters. At least, I don't believe that monsters are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of the non-monstrous population. I think monsters are people who have found a way to see doing something monstrous as okay. And while I believe that each of us is ultimately responsible for our own choices, I also believe that as a culture, we grease the downward path to certain dark conclusions.

Humans are hardwired against killing other humans, and so the first step toward killing someone else is to see that person as not-a-person, not really human. A person, of course, is someone like me, someone who thinks, feels, reacts, believes as I do. Not-persons act out of some other set of impulses and motivations that I cannot comprehend.

Our culture is depressingly adept at labeling not-persons. Our entertainment narratives repeatedly hammer home that persons are white guys, and women and not-white guys are persons to the extent that they come close to the white guy. Our politics have become heavily infected with the idea oCURMUDGUCATION: Monsters:

Sweden vs. Nevada

Folks who are excited about Nevada's joyful embrace of choice-on-steroids might want to take a look at Sweden.

As my esteemed colleague Edushyster reminds us, the all-choice system experiment has been tried. Sweden has been creating an all-choice, all-privatized system for decades, and it has not gone well.

"It was in the early 2000s that the Swedish school system somehow seems to have lost its soul. Schools began to compete no longer on delivering superior quality but on offering shiny school buildings in shopping centres, and I think that’s the issue we are really seeing." Andreas Schleicher, OECD.

I am going to keep repeating this line until it starts to sink in:

The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.

We have our own free-market education laboratory-- post-secondary education. As you may have heard, the cost of college has expanded like a hamster clamped onto a helium tank. There are a variety of suspects, all instructive.

One theory is that costs are driven up by the amount of money people have to spend. Student aid has been climbing, which has had the same effect on costs that you could expect if you went to a used car lot and announced, "Oh, I though I only had ten grand to spend on a car, but it turns out I actually have fifteen." (Hint: the salesman does not say, "Oh, put that extra five K away-- you won't need it for anything.")

Some analysts blame frills, like Schleicher's "shiny school buildings." Parents who drop their children off at schools far nicer than their own add anecdotal punch to this idea. Why do schools add frills? Because a frill is good, easy marketing, and because not all customers in the marketplace are driven by rational consideration of educational quality.

Other analysts have noted the increase in administrators. More money, more students, more facilities, more marketing = more people in charge.

All of this is predictable by the what I'm going to call the Jobs Effect, from an interview with Steve Jobs in which he observed that past a certain point, improving your product does not make you more 

Sweden vs. Nevada

Is Teaching a Profession, an Occupation, a Calling, or a Job? | Taking Note

Is Teaching a Profession, an Occupation, a Calling, or a Job? | Taking Note:

Is Teaching a Profession, an Occupation, a Calling, or a Job?

“So, are they quitting because they’re fed up with their heavy-handed union bosses?” The hostility of the question took me by surprise. I was explaining to my dinner companion, a veteran lawyer, that 40% of teachers leave the field within five years, and right away he jumped to his anti-union conclusion disguised as a question.

No, I explained. Unions don’t seem to have anything to do with it; it’s most often related to working conditions: class size, discipline policies, and how much control and influence they have over their daily activities.

“It’s not money?” he asked, aggressively suspicious. Not according to surveys, I explained.

I described what I’d seen of a teacher’s daily work life. He interrupted, “How can it be a profession if you can’t take a leak when you need to?”

While that’s not a criterion that social scientists use to define a profession, my cut-to-the-chase acquaintance might be on to something.

Can teaching be a true profession if you can’t take a bathroom break when nature calls?

Certainly, teachers and their supporters want teaching to be seen as a profession. They’ve won the linguistic battle. If you Google ‘the teaching profession,’ you’ll get 153,000,000 references, while ‘teaching as an occupation’ and ‘the teaching occupation’ produce only 67,000,000.

Social scientists have no doubt about status of teaching, according to Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania. “We do not refer to teaching as a profession. It doesn’t have the characteristics of those traditional professions like medicine, academia, dentistry, law, architecture, engineering, et cetera. It doesn’t have the pay, the status, the respect, the length of training, so from a scientific viewpoint teaching is not a profession.”

He carefully refers to teaching as an occupation, noting that it’s the largest occupation of all in the USA. And growing at a faster rate than the student population.

Jennifer Robinson, a teacher educator at Montclair State University in New Jersey, disagrees with Ingersoll. She believes our familiarity with teachers and schools breeds disrespect for teaching. “We don’t treat teaching as a Is Teaching a Profession, an Occupation, a Calling, or a Job? | Taking Note:

Study: Educators in Columbus, other urban districtsget lower marks than rest of state

Study: Educators in Columbus, other big districts get lower marks than rest of state | The Columbus Dispatch

Study: Educators in Columbus, other big districts get lower marks than rest of state

 Ohio’s new teacher-evaluation system offers a positive picture in its first year: About 90 percent of teachers were rated “accomplished” or “skilled” — the top two ratings of a system that relies on student test scores.

But looking at the data across districts, a two-year study by the Ohio Education Research Center found that evaluation ratings varied, notably in urban districts compared to rural and suburban ones.

Nearly 19 percent of teachers in the state’s Big 8 districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) were rated as either “ineffective” or “ developing,” compared to only 8 percent of their colleagues in other districts in the 2013-14 school year.

Similar gaps were also pronounced among principals: Roughly 28 percent were either “ineffective” or “developing,” compared to only 9 percent of their colleagues in suburban and rural districts.

Teachers and administrators in charter schools were also more likely to receive lower ratings than their peers in school districts; 25 percent of teachers and 18 percent of administrators were given “ineffective” or “developing” ratings.

Districts with higher student poverty tend to have higher proportions of educators rated “ ineffective” or “developing” — an area that warrants further examination, said Marsha Lewis, a lead researcher on the study, “Ohio’s Student Growth Measures: A Study of Policy and Practice.”

She said one year’s worth of data is not enough to explain the link, whether it is poor-performing teachers or disadvantaged students not making enough progress.

“We wanted to look at the first year of the transformational change in the way the state of Ohio evaluates its teachers and principals,” said Lewis, an assistant professor at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs. “It helps illuminate what the key research questions are going to be in the next couple of years.”

Lewis noted another area of interest among researchers: Teachers in non-core academic areas that relied on district-created assessments to measure growth had higher ratings than their peers who taught reading and math and whose results were based on state tests.

The difference was not lost on teachers: 76 percent of teachers surveyed for the study felt the variety of assessments didn’t make for Study: Educators in Columbus, other big districts get lower marks than rest of state | The Columbus Dispatch

The Reading Rush: What Educators Say about Kindergarten Reading Expectations - NEA Today

The Reading Rush: What Educators Say about Kindergarten Reading Expectations - NEA Today:

The Reading Rush: What Educators Say about Kindergarten Reading Expectations

A student sits at the kitchen table of her Washington, D.C.-area home. She rubs her eyes as she cries. A book lay open in front of her. The six-year-old kindergartener shouts in desperation at her mother, “I can’t do this! I don’t know how to read!”

Many kindergarteners are experiencing similar outbursts with the national push to get them to read and write by year-end. For some students, this is a walk in the park. But the majority of educators who responded to an NEA Today Facebook post on reading-age appropriateness, say most kindergartners aren’t ready.

“Parents think their children will learn letter recognition and sounds. They are shocked to learn what is expected in kindergarten,” says Hilda Kendrick, a kindergarten teacher in Jeffersonville, Ind. “The reading requirements stress out teachers and students.”

Kendrick explains that the Indiana Academic Standards and the College and Career Readiness Standards for reading expect kindergartener to not only read, but write sentences, too. Under the Common Core State Standards, kindergarteners do more than just sing the ABCs. They are guided to develop a deep understanding of what the alphabet does and how each letter blends to make words.

Pennsylvania kindergarten teacher Holly Mariucci says, “There are a lot of kids who aren’t ready for that. There’s so much pressure on them to perform.”

The root of this pressure could be traced as far back as 1983, with the Nation at Risk, which lambasted the state of U.S. schools and called for a host of much-needed reforms to right the alarming direction that public education was seen to be headed.

Since this scathing indictment, most schools have taken drastic steps to meet the report’s challenge to adopt “more rigorous and measurable standards” for learning.

In 2002, No Child Left Behind scaled up expectations that trickled down to young learners. Subsequently, “the law placed pressure on students in kindergarten, first, and second grades to pass the third-grade standardized test,” says Shyrelle Eubanks, a senior policy analyst for NEA and a former kindergarten teacher in Maryland.

But Eubanks says children can do more in kindergarten. “It is not developmentally inappropriate to learn to read in kindergarten. It’s the approach that could be developmentally inappropriate.”

Peggy Martin-Lockhart of the Greater St. Louis Area agrees, saying it’s okay to expose early learners to print so they can begin to recognize site words, “but you can’t The Reading Rush: What Educators Say about Kindergarten Reading Expectations - NEA Today:

Parent Power School- May 2015 | NYC Coalition for Educational Justice

Parent Power School- May 2015 | NYC Coalition for Educational Justice:

Parent Power School- May 2015

The second Parent Power School of 2015 was held on May 30th, 2015 at Professional Staff Congress in Manhattan. Nearly 60 parent leaders joined us to further learn about great parent engagement models like Academic Parent-Teacher Teams and “Parent Education and Empowerment Partners” or PEEPs created by New Settlement Parent Action Committee in the Bronx. We also learned how to do a power analysis and understand the key players in changing a specific policy in a school. We look forward to seeing you at our next Parent Power School!

In the meanwhile, here are the materials from the training. Please share widely!

Parent Power School May 30th PowerPoint
Parent Power School May 30th PowerPoint SPANISH
Barriers for Family Participation in APTT Meetings
SPANISH_Barriers for Family Participation in APTT Meetings
Participant Handouts English
Participant Handouts in Spanish

Parent Power School- May 2015 | NYC Coalition for Educational Justice:

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Powerful Association of Whiteness With American Identity

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Powerful Association of Whiteness With American Identity:

The Powerful Association of Whiteness With American Identity

In the larger scheme of things, being "white"- however you define it- should not mean all that much. Europeans come in a wide variety of complexions, as do peoples from other continents and other parts of the world But when you study the history of the United States, you realize that the term was so powerfully woven into the identity of the emerging nation that people with that designation assumed it was the part of the unspoken, and occasionally explicit definition of what an American was. Moreover, this association of "whiteness" with "Americaness" lasted long after slavery was ended and indigenous peoples throughtout the continent were conquered, and not only in the South, where "white supremacy" was written into law as official policy. Dark skinned European immigrants such as Jews and Italians struggled long and hard to have themselves defined as "white" both in the census and in the popular imagination and Mexican Americans in Texas sued successfully to have themselves classified as "white" while Jim Crow was still the law in that state. Well into the 50's and 60's people all over the United States would say " I'm free, white and 21, you can't push me around" as though whiteness wa one of the fundamental criteria for the unique freedoms the United States appeared to grant its citizens.

Given this history, it is more than a little chilling to hear that the young killer of 9 in the Charleton church shouted "you're taking over our country" as he poured bullets into the peaceful worshippers. The word "OUR," combined with the deadly actions, reflect the still potent, and ever more toxic, association of "whiteness" with American identity. All too many "white" people- however they define themselves, whoever they actually are- see the election of a Black president, and the huge influx of 

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Powerful Association of Whiteness With American Identity:

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Gov. Haley: 'No CEO's complained' about Confederate flag. But how many black CEOs were surveyed?

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Gov. Haley: 'No CEO's complained' about Confederate flag. But how many black CEOs were surveyed?:

Gov. Haley: 'No CEO's complained' about Confederate flag. But how many black CEOs were surveyed?

“I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.” -- Gov. Haley

Following the racist, terrorist attack by Dylann Roof which left 9 African-Americans dead in a Charleston Church, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley (R) defended the flying of the Confederate battle flag over the Statehouse. In response to the growing demand that the flag be taken down, Haley responded that the Confederate flag was a “sensitive issue.”



“What I can tell you is over the last three and a half years, I spent a lot of my days on the phones with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state,” the governor noted. “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.”



Her comment was revealing, not only about Haley's gross insensitivity to the victims Schooling in the Ownership Society: Gov. Haley: 'No CEO's complained' about Confederate flag. But how many black CEOs were surveyed?:

Assembly Member, Parents and Virtual Educators Charge that For-profit Charters are Failing Students, Violating Law

Assembly Member, Parents and Virtual Educators Charge that For-profit Charters are Failing Students, Violating Law - California Teachers Association:

ASSEMBLY MEMBER, PARENTS AND VIRTUAL EDUCATORS CHARGE THAT FOR-PROFIT CHARTERS ARE FAILING STUDENTS, VIOLATING LAW

Flanked by educators, including educators teaching at California Virtual Academies (CAVA), CAVA parents and students, Assembly Member Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) during a Thursday morning news conference, slams the for-profit charter company for putting corporate interests above those of students and teachers.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) – More than a dozen teachers, parents, and students from the California Virtual Academy (CAVA) and Assembly Member Roger Hernandez (D-Covina) at a Thursday morning news conference in front of the state Capitol denounced the operators of the charter school with putting corporate interests above the interests of students and their parents.

“These for-profit charter school operators have created schools with low graduation rates, the misuse of federal funds, and poor services for special education students,” asserted Assembly Member Roger Hernandez, author of a measure to regulate these schools.

The Assembly Member’s AB 787 would prohibit a charter school from operating as or being operated by a for-profit corporation.

It is one of several charter school regulation bills CTA is cosponsoring.

Teachers representing their CAVA colleagues from around the state discussed the problems at the schools that have prompted 69 complaints to local school districts, county superintendents, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the State Department of Education. The complaints allege a pattern of violations of state and federal laws, including misuse of federal Title 1 money. CAVA allegedly used Title 1 funds that were intended to help students from low-income families instead for conferences in Yosemite and Palm Springs.

“California Virtual Academy has shown us that children suffer when charter schools are more responsive to their shareholders than to their students,” the state legislator said. “The school’s focus should be on improving learning conditions, enhancing student learning, and ensuring that teachers have the tools and resources they need. Charter schools should not be entities that out-of-state corporations can use to profit at taxpayers’ expense.”

Ellen Davison, a CAVA teacher, declared that the school is failing its students. Swift action must be taken to address issues including a high dropout rate and other counterproductive irregularities.

Said Stacy Bailey, a teacher based out of CAVA@Los Angeles, “Students deserve the best education we can offer, but those enrolled in CAVA are not getting the Assembly Member, Parents and Virtual Educators Charge that For-profit Charters are Failing Students, Violating Law - California Teachers Association:

Stop blaming the teachers - Newsday

Stop blaming the teachers - Newsday:

Stop blaming the teachers

Where is the single, national voice of the teacher in the United States decrying the fallacy that teachers and teachers unions are destroying American education?

I have been, for the last 40 years, a public high school teacher and English department supervisor in New Jersey. I am responsible for 29 teachers and 3,500 teenagers and their reading and writing. I've worked in rural, urban and suburban high schools, and I have personally witnessed the work of hundreds and hundreds of teachers in my career. They all graduated from college, and they all cared about helping children be better readers, writers and people.

Demagogues and financial moguls bark that teachers aren't preparing young people for college, professions and for the future demands of a sophisticated, technical society.

Haughty politicians who berate teachers graduated from excellent high schools and colleges. They must have seen some decent teachers lurking in those hallways.

Industry tycoons with their money blame teachers for the poor quality of student achievement. These dabblers in education have no idea about the quality of the 3.5 million teachers in America. Perhaps these CEOs attended exclusive private schools and universities. Perhaps they found a few good teachers hidden among those leather books and gilded reputations.

I've been to teacher conventions, given talks to teachers all over the country. I read the professional teacher journals. I have observed teachers coach teams, counsel students, conference with parents, collaborate with colleagues, use technology.

I've seen teachers building the confidence of their students, guiding them in their college choices, helping them with their homework, helping them see the possibilities of the future. As Christa McAuliffe said: "I touch the future. I teach." Politicians and CEOs across the country are blaming teachers for the ills of the economy instead of admitting to their own egotistical ambitions and greed. Teachers don't teach. Teachers unions are bad. Teachers don't work enough days. Teachers can't do anything else, so they teach. Bad teachers are causing the collapse of our economy. Teachers are the root cause of the ills in our society.

Scapegoats abound in our national myths. Let's blame the devil. A cow in Chicago started the Great Fire of 1871. And we all know that Rachel Carson with her book "Silent Spring" is to blame for the modern environmentalist movement and the roadblocks to corporate growth.Stop blaming the teachers - Newsday:

Charter schools get probation, will stay open

Charter schools get probation, will stay open:

Charter schools get probation, will stay open

State officials placed four charter schools on probation but decided not to close them after investigating enrollment and financial concerns.

Two new charter schools — Freire Charter School and Delaware Design Lab High School — will open this fall as scheduled. Two already-open charters — Academy of Dover and Prestige Academy — will stay open, assuming they meet the terms of their probation.

Academy of Dover was placed on formal review amid allegations its former school leader misused a school credit card to make personal purchases at Home Depot, Lowes, Staples and Sam’s Club.

The state auditor and Department of Justice are investigating the incident. But the allegations raised concerns that the school didn’t have strong enough safeguards on spending.

The school is also on the hook for a $650,000 in a lawsuit filed by Mosaica, its former charter management organization, which said the school wrongfully terminated its contract. That payout raised concerns about whether the school could pay its bills.

Secretary of Education Mark Muprhy and the State Board of Education on Thursday placed the school on probation, requiring it to prove that it is financially viable, has strengthened its budget oversight and re-trained its school board. If it fails to do so, it could be closed.

In approving the probation for Academy of Dover, state board members referenced an earlier incident in which school leaders at Family Foundations Academy charter school also used school cards for personal purchases.

“We have seen some mismanagement in the charter space, but they seem to be getting caught by auditors,” said board member Pat Heffernan. “It’s not good for anybody for us to be having these problems.”

Concerns about financial oversight of charters spurred state Rep. Kim Williams to propose legislation placing authority over hiring auditors with the State Auditor, rather than with charter schools themselves.

Design Lab, Freire and Prestige were placed on review because they had not enrolled enough students as required by their charters. Low enrollment is a problem because charter schools get funding based on the number of students they serve.

All three will be required to submit continued updates showing they have enough students to remain on solid financial footing and have solid school leadership, transportation and other services established.

Freire is also facing controversy over its new building in the Midtown Brandywine neighborhood in Wilmington. Residents who live in the area say the school will cause traffic woes and doesn’t have enough parking, and have unsuccessfully petitioned both the Department of Education and the city of Wilmington to delay its opening.

Those residents have argued the school needed to get a “major modification” to its charter from the state because it chose a different building to occupy than it had originally planned. Major modifications require approval by both the Department of Education and the State Board.

But department officials said the school’s charter required it to occupy a building in Charter schools get probation, will stay open:

Blog: Scandal-Ridden Mayor Hosts Ben Carson in Sacramento

Blog: Scandal-Ridden Mayor Hosts Ben Carson in Sacramento:

Scandal-Ridden Mayor Hosts Ben Carson in Sacramento

 Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s past is riddled with misuse of federal funds, fines, serious allegations of  sexual misconduct with minors, and more recently failing to file timely reports in 25 cases of donations made to non-profits.

But that didn't stop presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson from appearing with Johnson at the Guild Theater this past Monday. Carson was a featured speaker at the mayor's black empowerment forum, Indivizible.  Johnson launched  Indivizible in 2011 to “ensure the African-American community becomes one of the most powerful political and economic forces in our country."

The former NBA point guard is a power player who counts the Obamas as close friends. After investigating Johnson for ripping off Americorps funds to the tune of $845,018.75 in 2008, Gerald Walpin, an inspector general for the agency which oversees Americorps,  referred Johnson for  "criminal and civil prosecution" to the local U.S. Attorney.  Walpin was promptly fired by President Obama for his trouble while 'KJ' went on to become the 72ndPresident of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The sexual abuse accusations against Johnson go back to 1995 and extend up to 2006-2007, shortly before his mayoral campaign in 2008. Walpin's report included allegations of sexual assault from students at Johnson's St. HOPE charter school. In 2007 Michelle Rhee, DC's former school superintendent and stealth Common Core instigator, ran interference for her then fiancée, asking Walpin to go easy on him. Rhee married Johnson in 2011 and in 2014 was named chairwoman of the board at St. HOPE Public Schools , an organization founded by her husband.

Interestingly, another lingering sex scandal involving Johnson was resolved

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/scandalridden_mayor_hosts_ben_carson_in_sacramento.html#ixzz3dWLPbt1d 

empathyeducates - “Nigger”

empathyeducates - “Nigger”:

“Nigger”

'I knew it was bad, and the first time I heard it I could only respond with shock. The second time, I was disturbed.'

By thelittlewarrior | Originally Published at Medium. Culture Club. February 2, 2015 | Photographic Credit; thelittlewarrior Sometime around the 5th grade.

The boy who first called me nigger was my classmate in the 5th grade—a dark-skinned Filipino boy, with the darkest skin in my school. He actually didn’t really offend or upset me. I don’t even consciously remember learning about the word, maybe except in my mother’s sporadic mentions of negro spirituals, slavery, and Nina Simone. I also saw old photographs of white Southerners and the KKK holding “nigger” signs, but I thought it was a time long forgotten.

Although I knew so little about the word, I equated it with dark-skinned black people. Bryce was ten to fifteen shades darker than me, and for a while I think I even thought he was black, so as far as I was concerned, if there was any nigger around it was him.

Despite my disconnection to the word, it was as if intergenerational/ transgenerational traumatic memories had been inherited from my ancestors and embedded in my mind before I’d even had a chance to confront the term on my own. But I knew it was bad, and the first time I heard it I could only respond with shock. The second time, I was disturbed.

Mitchell, a plump, red-faced, Chinese boy sat behind me in a classroom of 40 students. Neither of us had ever really fought. I don’t remember a conversation, but he was already upset with some other boys after a game of softball had gone sour during lunchtime.

There was no conversation, but I was facing him when I turned around, most likely to hand over a new worksheet from the teacher, and as he stared directly into my eyes, grabbing the papers, he suddenly muttered, “Nigger.”

I don’t think I even responded, but I told on him immediately.

When Mrs. Johnson took us both into the hall, I reported what he’d said, and with her piercing blue eyes, she viciously retorted, “but you called him fat!”

Mitchell concocted some cockamamie story about how I’d made fun of his weight, and that therefore warranted him calling me nigger. I never called him empathyeducates - “Nigger”: