Seven steps Christie and Cerf can take today to atone for the hurt done to Newark’s children | Bob Braun's Ledger

Seven steps Christie and Cerf can take today to atone for the hurt done to Newark’s children | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Seven steps Christie and Cerf can take today to atone for the hurt done to Newark’s children

1) Formally recommend to state Education Commissioner David Hespe that the school board receive a score of 80 on the QSAC accountability score, thereby returning the governance prerogative to the local board. Gov. Chris Christie and Newarsk superintendent Christopher Cerf also should apologize for manipulating past QSAC scores for political reasons to keep Newark schools under state control.

2) Put an immediate end to the “One Newark” enrollment plan and allow children to attend their neighborhood schools. End the advantages the plan gives to charter schools.

3) Immediately stop the wholesale transfer of teachers required by the “turnaround” plan–and apologize for using a so-called education “reform” as retribution for the refusal of teachers to weaken their collective bargaining agreement.

4) Rehire to regular classroom positions the hundreds of teachers declared Seven steps Christie and Cerf can take today to atone for the hurt done to Newark’s children | Bob Braun's Ledger:

One alarming map shows what today’s school ‘reformers’ are missing - The Washington Post

One alarming map shows what today’s school ‘reformers’ are missing - The Washington Post:

One alarming map shows what today’s school ‘reformers’ are missing

In their efforts to change the public education system, today’s school reformers pay close attention to things such as  standardized test scores, graduation and attendance rates, curriculum standards and per-student cost. One thing they don’t talk much about — but that is a fundamental part of any effort to really help students learn — are the conditions in which young people live and spend most of their time. In other words, they don’t talk much — if at all — about student poverty rates.

For years, many reformers adopted a “no excuses” motto, meaning that nothing, including living in abject poverty, was an excuse for poor student performance in school if teachers did their jobs effectively. The notion that hunger or chronic illness or trauma could make it impossible for teachers to help students move the performance needle was rejected, and those who raised the issue were labeled as people who simply wanted to defend the “status quo.” (How it became acceptable to ignore the obvious — that needy kids need support services to do better in school — is a story for another time.)

Interestingly, a judge in California is considering an unprecedented class-action lawsuit arguing that the Compton Unified School District has failed to directly address the trauma that many students experience outside of class and that there should be accommodations made in school for this reason because it affects academic performance.

[Should schools be required to address students’ trauma? A lawsuit says yes.]

My colleague Emma Brown has this summer written about student poverty rates, first in this July story, with a series of maps showing poverty rates in school districts, and then in this recent story, with a map showing how student poverty has increased since the Great Recession of 2008.

Here is one map with student poverty rates in the nearly 14,000 public school districts around the country in 2013, the latest year for which there is complete information. It was created by the nonprofit EdBuild, which used Census Bureau poverty rates and then constructed an interactive map which you can find here and see how poverty rates changed from 2006 to 2013.  According to EdBuild, there was over that period a 260 percent increase in the number of students who went to school in districts with poverty rates of 40 percent or more.  (That isn’t a typo. It’s a 260 percent increase.)

Meanwhile, school reform is still heavily focused not on getting kids wrap-up around services that they need to help them concentrate in school and have One alarming map shows what today’s school ‘reformers’ are missing - The Washington Post:

How parents today are making their daughters emotionally fragile, afraid of new experiences | OregonLive.com

How parents today are making their daughters emotionally fragile, afraid of new experiences | OregonLive.com:

How parents today are making their daughters emotionally fragile, afraid of new experiences

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett

It's an inspiring quote. So inspiring that tennis player Stan Wawrinka, who won the prestigious French Open in June, had it tattooed on his arm a couple of years ago, back when he was having trouble reaching his potential.

None of the women on the professional tennis tour have followed Wawrinka's example, and it's certainly not because they don't like getting tattoos. They're simply less likely to share Beckett's mindset, says Jessica Lahey, author of the new book "The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed."

America's recent generations of girls have suffocated their "natural curiosity and love of learning at the altar of achievement, and it's our fault," Lahey writes. The "our," in this case, refers to parents.

Needless to say, many parents try to shield both sons and daughters from failure, and so has our culture in recent years -- hence the rise of "participation" trophies for every kid who shows up for a peewee league. It's an outgrowth of the idea, first popularized in the 1970s, that instilling high self-esteem in a child is the most important thing a parent can do.

Children's self-image is indeed important, but psychologist and author Jim Taylor insists we've been going about it the wrong way. "Parents were told to love and praise and reinforce and reward and encourage their children no matter what they did," he wrote in a 2010 Psychology Today article. "Unfortunately, this approach created children who were selfish, spoiled and entitled."

Not to mention anxious, depressed and afraid.

Recent studies on the subject suggest that the self-esteem parenting movement only makes early adulthood more difficult for kids, for we all inevitably meet failure and we need to know how to deal with it. And the growing problem appears to be much greater for girls, who tend to take failure more personally. They're more likely than boys to view failure as a value judgment on their inherent ability, as a definitive comment on themselves as individuals. Boys often will view a setback as a challenge to get better. Societal biases, often unconsciously in play, reinforce this attitude more with boys than girls.

The point, Lahey, Taylor and others say, is that failure takes practice. We have to get used to it, even embrace it. Otherwise, it will become a bogeyman.

Time magazine, citing the academic literature, writes that children have "been so protected from mistakes, usually by their parents, that they fear failure, avoid risk, and value image over learning. By the time they go to college, they are more vulnerable to How parents today are making their daughters emotionally fragile, afraid of new experiences | OregonLive.com:

Outsource Local School District Jobs to Private Companies to Cut Administrative Staff! Thanks Common Core and Bill Gates! » Missouri Education Watchdog

Outsource Local School District Jobs to Private Companies to Cut Administrative Staff! Thanks Common Core and Bill Gates! » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Outsource Local School District Jobs to Private Companies to Cut Administrative Staff! Thanks Common Core and Bill Gates!

Why assessments can be outsourced: Local knowledge is not common knowledge. When assessments must be aligned to the common, the individual needs of the students are non-existent.

Maybe it’s time to go to your school board members and ask if there can be a reduction in administrative staff in your district.  Many Missouri school districts are asking for more money for staff, but this company, Measured Progress, will outsource the creation of district assessments (to align with the Common Core State Standards) so what’s not to love?  Those bond issues may not be necessary at all if the district can rid itself of redundancy and unneeded administrative layers.  This slide illustrates the upside of cutting local jobs:

Think of the first cuts in administrative positions as curriculum/assessment directors are not needed and your school can join the thousands of schools with private NGO created assessments aligning to the CCSS.  Once the assessments are set, it will be a no brainer for a company such as Measured Progress to inform the district what curriculum would best align to Measured Progress’ assessments.  Another district position, curriculum director, can then be eliminated.

Take this to your school board and urge it to use a private company to provide the services previously supplied by district employees.  If all the assessments need to line up to Common Core (as Bill Gates said was necessary to determine if the experiment worked), you might as well cut out the local administrators whose educational expertise were designing assessments and determining curriculum choices to meet the needs of that individual district and group of students.  Gates’ vision will be close to completion.  The customer market will be unleashed for that large uniform base of products.  The word common is not the same as individual.  Developing curriculum and assessments unique is so unnecessary in the ‘common’ ed reform plan.  Outsourcing for a common goal and objective is the end game, not providing an exceptional education for students.

Isn’t it great to be common?  Just think of the cuts possible in the future when teachers can be replaced by individuals who don’t have an education degree or experience.  It won’t be needed when all the lessons are created by private companies that are aligned to CCSS.  Following a script wouldn’t necessitate a college degree.  All you have to do is follow the recipe.  Maybe the unions and NGOs might want to reconsider Outsource Local School District Jobs to Private Companies to Cut Administrative Staff! Thanks Common Core and Bill Gates! » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Normal People Don’t Work in a Public School - Lily's Blackboard

Normal People Don’t Work in a Public School - Lily's Blackboard:

Normal People Don’t Work in a Public School

I think I just need to say this. I mean it in a respectful way. Kind of. But Normal People don’t work in a public school. I know this, because I know what happened to me every summer break. I taught in a traditional, quite normal elementary school in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. Summer break was a normal routine.

Yeah, I’ll admit that I started relaxing in June. I usually had a professional development class to keep my certification current or my summer job (secretary temp or typing and charging per page), but there was more time for my boys and a camping trip or visiting grandma and grandpa. Things slow down when there aren’t 37 book reports to grade, or lesson plans to revise, or 37 parents to call about the school play.

That’s pretty normal, I guess. But then July would roll around.

By then, we had cleaned out the garage and weeded the tomatoes in the garden. I started calling my teacher friends.

“I’m thinking we should add Where the Red Fern Grows. I’m starting to make a vocabulary list for each chapter,” I’d say to Sue.

And Sue would admit that she’d already started on Tuck Everlasting. We’d talk about whether or not to keep trudging up Timpanogos Cave for our field trip, and how they’d cut our budget and what we were going to do to raise some bucks. We’d talk about how I’d take her class for music if she took my class for P.E., and maybe we should have a 6th grade Valentine’s Day Dance and teach the kids ballroom dancing.

By the end of July, I couldn’t take it. I started gathering things from the kitchen. Baking soda. Vinegar. Chemicals for science experiments. Old sheets and old hats and old things that could be turned into costumes for plays. I’d start hitting yard sales and thrift shops for extra copies of Where the Red Fern Grows and Tuck Everlasting and other books we could use for our literature program that my colleagues and I had created. We kept adding to that program every year until we had over 100 titles with teacher-made vocabulary lists and chapter questions based on critical thinking skills that required debate and discussion and allowed students to come to different conclusions if they could defend their answers with reason and evidence.

By August 1, I was sneaking into my classroom. Our school secretary, Marge, would just shake her head. She had an 11-month contract, but kept reminding those of us who showed up a month before our contract started that WE WERE ON VACATION. I think we caused Steve the Custodian the most heartburn because we wanted to put our desks and chairs in place, and he was still shampooing carpets.

My room was always ready a good three weeks before the first bell rang in the fall. The bulletin boards were cheerful, and the learning centers were inviting, and the lesson plans were chronologically and perfectly and Normal People Don’t Work in a Public School - Lily's Blackboard:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Day 9 of Dyett Hunger Strike #FightForDyett

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Day 9 of Dyett Hunger Strike:

Day 9 of Dyett Hunger Strike

Michelle Gunderson, In These Times

I spent yesterday afternoon over at Dyett and got to meet some of the hunger strikers like UIC grad student Prudence Browne and parent activist Jeanett Taylor-Ramann. They're living on liquids (bring some fresh juice when you come) and desperately hoping for community support in order to save the last of their neighborhood schools. 

Prudence helped write the strikers' proposal to create a new small school with a strong curricular focus, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology. The proposal is solid but the board is stonewalling it. It seems like the mayor and toady Ald. Burns are determined to go to any lengths, not to allow the activists their victory.

Progressive Caucus Ald. Rick Munoz shows up in support.

She was headed down to New Orleans to do research on the post-Katrina ed "reforms" for her dissertation, when she joined the strike. 

As for the amazing Ms. Taylor-Ramann, check out her interviews in Huffington andCatalyst. She has a great personal story of struggle and school/community activism. 

There's been good coverage of the Dyett hunger strike in independent and social media @FightForDyett, but hardly a word in the mainstream. Why not? It's a great story. An official blackout? I doubt it. Although I'm sure there's City Hall pressure being applied. Where are you great Sun-Times ed reporters? You can't all be on vacation.

Ah, there you are. Still not much. I thought I saw someone from the N.Y. Times. But...

Rabbi Brant Rosen

Yana Kunichoff has a written a good piece on the strike, now in its 9th day, in In These Times,



She writes:

The Dyett hunger strike is only the latest flare-up in a public school system in Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Day 9 of Dyett Hunger Strike:

CURMUDGUCATION: Robert Putnam and Cage Busting

CURMUDGUCATION: Robert Putnam and Cage Busting:

Robert Putnam and Cage Busting

It was probably because I was reading Robert Putnam's Our Kids and Rick Hess's Cage Busting Teachers, but in Putnam's book, this section leapt out at me. Putnam is describing social capital, the "informal ties to family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances involved in civic associations, religious institutions, athletic teams, volunteer activities, and so on."

Social capital has repeatedly been shown to be a strong predictor of well-being both for individuals and for communities. Community bonds and social networks have powerful effects on health, happiness, educational success, economic success, public safety and (especially) child welfare. However, like financial capital, social capital is distributed unevenly...

Contrary to romanticized images of close-knit communal life among the poor, lower-class Americans today, especially if they are nonwhite, tend to be socially isolated, even form their neighbors.

Perhaps more important, more educated Americans also have many more "weak ties," that is, connections to wider, more diverse networks. The reach and diversity of these social ties are especially valuable for social mobility and educational and economic advancement, because such ties allow educated, affluent parents and their children to tap a wealth of expertise and support that is simply inaccessible to parents and children who are less well off. 

Now, that speaks to me as a teacher learning about students-- but it also speaks to me just plain as a teacher. Putnam is talking about how the lack of social capital gives poor students a disadvantage, but it got me to thinking about teachers' social capital.

Hess's book talks about authority and power-- but what if Hess the issue Hess is talking about is really social capital?

After all-- one of the side effects of working almost exclusively with children is that teachers don't develop the kind of network of soft ties that other professionals do. In fact, teachers early in their careers are often so busy doing the work that they don't get out, don't join community groups, don't volunteer, don't become part of a "more diverse network." Even things as simple as meeting someone for lunch are not do-able in teacherville.

We've talked a lot about how reformsters have access to a great deal of money, but it's social capital as well. When David Coleman and his buds decided that they had the blueprint for re-inventing CURMUDGUCATION: Robert Putnam and Cage Busting:

2 Polls Span 2 Poles On Testing : NPR Ed : NPR

2 Polls Span 2 Poles On Testing : NPR Ed : NPR:

2 Polls Span 2 Poles On Testing

Please read the following two sentences carefully. Choose which is correct, A or B.

A. According to a brand-new national poll, two-thirds of the American public supports annual federal testing, and 59 percent oppose letting students opt out of tests, while only 1 in 4 support opting out.

B. According to a brand-new national poll, two-thirds of the American public thinks there is too much testing in schools. As for opt-outs, they are split, with 44 percent opposing it and 41 percent supporting it.

The answer: C. Both A (poll released Aug. 17 by EdNext) and B (poll released Aug. 24 by Gallup/PDK). The two polls suggest public opinion on this issue isn't clearly staked out.

i

iStockphoto

Standardized testing is a cornerstone of federal education policy in the U.S. States must test every student every yearin math and reading from grades 3-8, and once in high school, and report the results.

These tests — and the many other tests that states and districts add on top of them — have drawn controversy. The pushback has been led by New York state, where 1 in 5 students "opted out" from taking the state tests this past spring. This act of collective civil disobedience may invalidate that state's compliance with federal accountability requirements.

At the same time, the federal law that requires annual testing is up for renewal, and some have proposed amendments that would affirm the right of parents to opt out. So this is the right moment for a national debate.

To understand what's behind a poll, you have to look closely at three questions: Who is asking the question? Whom are they asking? What are they asking?

Both of these polls are large, representative national samples. And their results on other questions, like whether you approve of your local school, are nearly identical. Therefore, it's likely that the mystery can be solved by looking closely at the phrasing of these specific questions on testing.

The poll that found Americans in favor of testing and against opting out was conducted by the education-policy journal Education Next. EdNext has three sponsors: the Fordham Institute, the Hoover Institution at Stanford and Harvard's Kennedy School. Both Fordham and Hoover have been associated with policies such as charter schools, the Common Core State Standards and test-based accountability.

EdNext put the testing question this way:

Do you support or oppose the federal government continuing to require that all students be tested in math and reading each year in grades 3-8 and once in high school?

In the responses, 35 percent the general public said they "completely" supported annual tests and another 32 percent said they "somewhat" supported them, for a total 2 Polls Span 2 Poles On Testing : NPR Ed : NPR:

Destroying Special Education through Common Core Testing and Funding Cuts

Destroying Special Education through Common Core Testing and Funding Cuts:

Destroying Special Education through Common Core Testing and Funding Cuts

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. ~Mark Twain

The U.S. Department of Education says higher expectations mean more tests for students with disabilities (with Common Core’s PARCC and Smarter Balance), and college for everyone.

Along with this, we are also watching serious funding cuts to special education services in school districts around the country.

Stop Common Core NYS criticizes recent policymaking that claims there will be fewer alternative tests for students with disabilities. Students will instead be expected to take tests like PARCC and Smarter Balance connected to Common Core–and they will need to be college and career ready.

Decisions surrounding all of this should be between parents and teachers creating the IEP at the school. We know the U.S. Department of Education is overstepping their bounds.

We also saw this coming when the U.S. DOE recently refused to consider the New York Board of Education’s  attempt to lighten the load on students with disabilities when it came to testing. And then there was all the talk a year ago about needing to test students with disabilities and have “higher expectations.”

While the ante is being raised for students with special needs, they are also losing what Destroying Special Education through Common Core Testing and Funding Cuts:

Education commissioner begins plan to combat opt outs | POLITICO

Education commissioner begins plan to combat opt outs | POLITICO:

Education commissioner begins plan to combat opt outs

ALBANY — Education commissioner MaryEllen Elia already has begun a battle to stop the rapidly growing opt-out movement before next year’s state tests, reaching out to department attorneys and meeting with superintendents, she told POLITICO New York.

“We’re trying to pull together a tool kit, if you will, to support superintendents in how we can communicate in a much more effective way to people across the state,” Elia said.

That kit will include legal information, which is why she has reached out to lawyers, Elia said.

“I want the superintendents to understand the reflections and law that they can use as an information piece when they talk to people in their community … It’s important for them to be able to say, ‘Listen, it’s the law.’”

Elia said she already has been meeting with superintendents across the state and plans to have a review of the standards to get even more feedback.

“As you get more people involved in the process, you have more people understanding what’s going on and why you have assessments,” she said. “There are a lot of people that don’t know what the Common Core is."

Educators are hoping that the toolkit includes further guidelines, including what is and what is not ethical for teachers or school administrators to say publicly about the exams, an issue that has become controversial across the state.

In April, 20 percent of the 1.1. million eligible third through eighth graders statewiderefused to take the state math and English language arts exams.

Elia originally warned that the districts with the highest refusal rates could be penalized, potentially losing federal Title I money. Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch last week told the New York Times that there will not be federal sanctions, but did not rule out withholding money in the future if the state found district officials were encouraging opt outs.

When asked about possible sanctions, Elia said, “The bottom line is that at some point if it continues to rise, it’s against the law. Somebody could decide to do something. I can’t tell you what they’re going to do in Washington.”

At an Educators 4 Excellence event last week Elia said she believed opt out was “unreasonable,” and called it “unethical” for teachers to participate.

She told POLITICO New York that she anecdotally had heard teachers were calling homes and telling parents of low-scoring students to have their children refuse the tests.

“If this occurred, I don’t think that’s right,” Elia said. “I don’t have any proof that it occurred. I just don’t think that it’s appropriate for teachers to use their classroom and information about their kids to encourage people to opt out.”

The commissioner made those views clear when speaking with a group of education leaders in the Mohawk Valley last week, said Mark Vivacqua of the Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES. Those districts include Dolgeville schools, which had one of the highest opt-out rates in the state with 89 percent of its students refusing the English exam and 91 percent refusing math. 

But the line of what is and is not ethical is unclear, Vivacqua said. For example, teachers shouldn’t tell their low-performing students not to take the tests because it would impact their evaluations. If, however, a teacher speaks out against education policy Education commissioner begins plan to combat opt outs | POLITICO:

Hurricane Katrina Truths | Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Hurricane Katrina Truths | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

Hurricane Katrina Truths

The success of schools in New Orleans is more fiction than fact.  People in the United States prefer stories with a positive ending, where the good guys win, challenges are face head-on and overcome, and everyone lives happily ever after.  For too many kids in New Orleans, this is not the truth.

The improved matriculation rate is almost entirely due to using a new matching file.  You will see that over time this rate will no longer increase  The old rate did not include all Louisiana colleges or any out of state colleges.  You will see the largest increases in the better schools – because their best students were going out of state to flee the disaster that Bobby Jindal has made our Higher Education System into.  For now, this number has served its purpose by making many of you think New Orleans (and Louisiana for that matter) has achieved a miracle under John White.

The Recovery School District has been exiting as many as 18% of their 9th grade cohorts out of state or country.  This removes them from being calculated in School Performance scores, removes the impact of them actually dropping out, and raises graduation rates.  This rate has been steadily increasing for years to show increased performance to impress folks out of state looking to implement an RSD type solution.

The New Orleans system is divided between haves and have-nots.  The selective admission system has grown and done well.  The RSD competes not on quality but fancy advertising to draw new students – according to a survey of their own principals.

The population of New Orleans has changed.  It is less poor than prior to the storm as many of the poorest families were unable to return because they lacked the resources or any suitable housing.  There are no more housing projects in New Orleans and a lot less low income housing.  Comparing the two populations is not appropriate if you recognize poverty as a factor impacting performance.  By bringing up the poverty level of New Orleans in a recent op-ed, John White clearly does.

State Standardized Test Scores have been lowered by as much as 15% to improve the performance of RSD.  In other words, a student performing at Basic required 15% fewer correct answers than prior to John White’s arrival to achieve a “Basic” score, or about 40% of the material on our LEAP and iLEAP tests.

T (turnaround) schools occur every year and these schools do not appear in the “official statistics.  There is a perpetual population of students getting shuffled around and not being counted or considered in the success or failure of New Orleans schools.

Families often do not get their “choice”.  The choice selection is made by a computer program, not families.  Often the children are placed at schools very far away and require hours of busing to and from school.  Families with multiple children often find their children assigned to schools on opposite sides of the city making parental participation a nightmare or all but impossible.  Some parents report waking their kids up at 4am to get them ready for a bus that won’t bring them home until 7 at night – when there is only time for homework, a bite to eat, maybe a bath, and bed.  This forced separation destroys families.  Families that don’t like the choices assigned to them have the option of standing out unsheltered in the 100+ degree heat to try and make changes.  Thousands of families are forced to do this every year while Recovery School District Staff lounge in their luxury, climate controlled, downtown offices across from the Superdome.

Can you handle the truth?Hurricane Katrina Truths | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

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8 Frightening Characteristics Of Propaganda | PopularResistance.Org

8 Frightening Characteristics Of Propaganda | PopularResistance.Org:

8 Frightening Characteristics Of Propaganda

Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1965) has been called “a far more frightening work than any of the nightmare novels of George Orwell.” In it, the French philosopher and sociologist dispels some of the popular notions about propaganda and exposes how it really operates in the modern world.

In the first chapter of the book, Ellul describes some of the characteristics of modern propaganda. Eight of them appear below:

1) It Prevents Dialogue.

“To be effective, propaganda cannot be concerned with detail… Propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins… it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion.”

2) It Focuses on the Mass

“For propaganda to address itself to the individual, in his isolation, apart from the crowd, is impossible. The individual is of no interest to the propagandist; as an isolated unit he presents too much resistance to external action… The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass: it is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.”

3) It is “Total”

“Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal – the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. Modern propaganda must utilize allof these media. There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls; that is not propaganda.”

4) It Takes Over Education

“Education and training are inevitably taken over, as the Napoleonic Empire demonstrated for the first time. No contrast can be tolerated between teaching and propaganda, between the critical spirit formed by higher education and the exclusion of independent thought. One must utilize the education of the young to condition them to what comes later.

5) It Takes Over Literature and History

“Propaganda will take over literature (present and past) and history, which must be rewritten according to propaganda’s needs.”

6) It Must be Subtle at First

“Direct propaganda, aimed at modifying opinions and attitudes, must be preceded by propaganda that is sociological in character, slow, general, seeking to create a climate, an atmosphere of favorable preliminary attitudes… The ground must be sociologically prepared before one can proceed to direct prompting.”

7) It Must be Nonstop

“[Propaganda] must fill the citizen’s whole day and all his days… Propaganda tends to make the individual live in a separate world; he must not have outside points of reference… successful propaganda will occupy every moment of the individual’s life: through posters and loudspeakers when he is out walking, through radio and newspapers at home, through meetings and movies in the evening. The individual must not be allowed to recover, to collect himself, to remain untouched by propaganda during any relatively long period… It is based on slow, constant impregnation.

8) It Aims at Irrational Action

“The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief.”

Does this sound like anyone’s playbook today?8 Frightening Characteristics Of Propaganda | PopularResistance.Org:

New Report, "Out of Control," Shows How School Takeovers Disenfranchise Communities of Color | Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

New Report, "Out of Control," Shows How School Takeovers Disenfranchise Communities of Color | Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools:

New Report, "Out of Control," Shows How School Takeovers Disenfranchise Communities of Color

NEW REPORT 
  Out of Control: The Systemic Disenfranchisement of African American and Latino Communities Through School Takeovers

Click here to download a
PDF of the report.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. As advocates fight to preserve and strengthen the Act itself, The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools today released a new report detailing how communities of color across the country are facing a different attack on enfranchisement: instead of barriers to the ballot box, local elected governance is being dissolved altogether.

This fall, tens of thousands of students are returning to schools that have been placed under state authority. The new report, "Out of Control: The Systemic Disenfranchisement of African American and Latino Communities Through School Takeovers," shows how elected school boards have been dissolved or stripped of their power and voters have been denied the right to local governance of their public schools.

These state takeovers are happening almost exclusively in African American and Latino schools and districts – in many of the same communities that have experienced decades of underinvestment in their public schools.

In the past decade, these takeovers have not only removed schools from local authorities, they are increasingly being used to facilitate the permanent transfer of the schools from public to private management, all while increasing segregation and financial instability.

This report profiles some of the most prominent state takeovers in cities like New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia and Little Rock, and it details how these takeovers are stripping political power and control from Black and Brown communities and opening the door for private interests to usurp community property and assets.

Parents, students, teachers and communities must unite to stop these takeovers and fight for the resources to build the schools all our children deserve.

Click here to download a PDF of the report.

New Report, "Out of Control," Shows How School Takeovers Disenfranchise Communities of Color | Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools: