RESIST! Public Is Learning How to Fight for Democracy | Diane Ravitch's blog

RESIST! Public Is Learning How to Fight for Democracy | Diane Ravitch's blog:

RESIST! Public Is Learning How to Fight for Democracy

When Republican leaders like Jason Chaffetz encounter a crowd of 1,000 angry constituents in his home district in Utah, that’s a sign that the American people say NO to Trump’s authoritarian rule.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/10/town-halls-become-indivisible-epicenters-trump-resistance-grows

The people in Utah and elsewhere are, knowingly or not, taking the advice of The Indivisibles, a group of former Congressional staffers who explained how to conduct resistance.

https://www.indivisibleguide.com

“Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was confronted by angry crowds at a town hall in Salt Lake City on Thursday, over what they saw as his failure to properly investigate President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interests, in another showing of a growing resistance to the new administration.

“Almost 1,000 constituents were gathered inside the Brighton High School auditorium, many booing and shouting, “Do your job!” at Chaffetz, who is chair of the House Oversight Committee, as he claimed that presidents are exempt from conflict of interest laws. At another point, when Chaffetz said he wanted to get rid of Trump’s recently-confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—indeed, he wants to eliminate the Education Department as a whole—an audience member shouted, “We want to get rid of you!”

“Outside, another large crowd shut out of the proceedings despite available seats chanted “vote him out,” and “Chaffetz is a coward.” At least one woman was arrested.

“Chaffetz ultimately left 40 minutes early and refused to take questions from the press.

“Republican lawmakers are increasingly facing protests at town halls and other events, as communities have been taking up the call of numerous resistance factions that formed after the election—with some inspired by the Indivisible Guide, a manual written by former congressional staffers that helps activists organize at the local level using the same tactics that Tea Party conservatives used successfully against former President Barack Obama.”

If you have a Republican Congress member, go to the town hall meeting, if they dare hold them. Ask questions. Speak up.

This is what democracy looks like!

RESIST! Public Is Learning How to Fight for Democracy | Diane Ravitch's blog:

My Appearance on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS

17by dianeravitch / 16h

Thanks to reader Cathere Blanche King for finding the link to my appearance on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. http://www.pbs.org/video/2365959312/ Tavis is a terrific interviewer, very smart, well-informed, and it was a great pleasure to talk to him. We taped the show on February 13, and it was released on February 17.

Three Psychiatrists Ask: Is Donald Trump Mentally Stable?

11by dianeravitch / 21h

Three credentialed professors of psychiatry wonder about Trump’s mental health. They wrote a letter to President Obama during the transition. Nothing was done. Nothing in our Constitution prepared us for this bizarre situation. The authors of the letter are: Judith Herman, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School Nanette Gartrell, M.D. Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Univers

John Oliver: Trump vs. Truth

25by dianeravitch / 22h

John Oliver returns with a searing and bitingly funny review of Trump’s tenuous grip on reality. Where does Trump get his news? Oliver explains it. How do you distinguish between facts and alternative facts? Oliver explains. There is a deeply serious side to all this. When Trump gets his news from a TV talk show host who believes the Sandy Hook Massacre was a staged fraud, the nation is in deep t

Peter Greene to Betsy DeVos: I Am Not Afraid of Change! I Want Change!

80by dianeravitch / 22h

Peter Greene has an important message for Betsy DeVos. DeVos said that those who oppose her are afraid of change. Greene says, “Au Contraire!” Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke today to a gathering of Magnet School folks, and opened up by suggesting that “some people” are “hostile” to change. Greene writes: “I just want to be clear. I am not hostile to change. In fact, there are some chang

Washington Post: The Trump-DeVos Evangelical Agenda for America’s Schools

49by dianeravitch / 23h

Emma Brown of the Washington Post wrote about the radical rightwing evangelical agenda for America’s schools. A little-known but elite evangelical group called the Center for National Policy laid out the plans . (Peter Greene wrote about this scary little manifest o a few days ago , but his circulation is not near that of the Washington Post.) Members of the Center for National Policy represent t

North Carolina: Employee at Voucher School Charged with Stealing $400,000

23by dianeravitch / 1d

An employee at North Carolina’s largest voucher-receiving school was charged with the theft of $400,000 in taxpayer money. He discovered how to make money in education: Steal it. Lindsay Wagner writes: “The athletic director of a private religious school that has received the most publicly-funded school vouchers in the state of North Carolina was arrested this week on charges of embezzling from t

A Reader Explains Why It’s Impossible to “Work Together” with This President

64by dianeravitch / 1d

When I asked you to respond to a poll about whether I should write less about Trump, one reader sent this comment that explained my own feelings very well. I would have added: “I will not work together to privatize public education or 

Bill Gates says job-stealing robots should get taxed like humans

Bill Gates says job-stealing robots should get taxed like humans:

Bill Gates says job-stealing robots should get taxed like humans

Bill Gates thinks robots should get taxed just like humans, he said in a recent interview with Quartz.

“Right now if a human worker does you know, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed,” the billionaire said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think we would tax the robot at a similar level.”

Gates said robots can be good thing by doing certain types of labor done by humans so that people can focus in other fields where there is a shortage of workers.

“If you can take the labor that used to do the thing automation replaces, and financially and training-wise and fulfillment-wise have that person go off and do these other things, then you’re net ahead,” Gates explained, “But you can’t just give up that income tax, because that’s part of how you’ve been funding that level of human workers.”

Gate said companies with robots shouldn’t benefit from the profits generated by automated labor without paying any taxes. He said the tax system on automated labor should work like how it does with people’s earnings when the government takes part of the wages to fund social programs.

Gates said companies also wouldn’t go mad over a robot tax.

“I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax,” he said. “It’s OK.”

The billionaire also said the government should play a more active role when it comes to implementing a tax on robots.

There have been numerous reports on technology replacing human workers, including a 2015 McKinsey report, which said 45 percent of jobs could be replaced with current technology. 
Meanwhile, Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane said in November 2015 that 80 million jobs in the U.S. and 15 million in the U.K. could be taken over by robots.Bill Gates says job-stealing robots should get taxed like humans:

Keeping retirement weird. Betsy DeVos and racial education gaslighting. | Fred Klonsky

Keeping retirement weird. Betsy DeVos and racial education gaslighting. | Fred Klonsky:

Keeping retirement weird. Betsy DeVos and racial education gaslighting.

I entered first grade in 1954. It was a historic year for education in the United States.

That year the U.S. Supreme court ruled that school segregation was illegal. The court found that apartheid schools could never provide equal education to children of color.

In 2016, 62 years after Brown v. Board of Education a U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) report  instead found that U.S. schools are quickly becoming more racially segregated than ever.

Black, Hispanic and poor students are increasingly concentrated in what researchers for the GAO called “isolated schools.”

GAO investigators found that from the 2000-2001 to the 2013-2014 school year, both the percentage of K-12 public schools in high-poverty and the percentage comprised of mostly African-American or Hispanic students grew.  During that period high poverty, segregated doubled from 7,009 schools to 15,089 schools. The percentage of all schools with so-called racial or socio-economic isolation grew from 9% to 16%.

Researchers define “isolated schools” as those in which 75% or more of students are of the same race or class.

“Isolated schools.” It sounds more benign and passive than calling them segregated. As if nobody did it.

Such schools offered disproportionately fewer math, science and college-prep courses and had higher rates of students who were held back in ninth grade, suspended or expelled.

GAO investigators found, that public charter schools, what new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls choice schools, take minority and poor students from larger more diverse public schools and enroll them into less diverse schools.

Investigators found, Hispanic students tended to be “triple segregated” by race, economics and language.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and one of two lawmakers who requested the study, said it “confirms what has long been feared and proves Keeping retirement weird. Betsy DeVos and racial education gaslighting. | Fred Klonsky:

Schools Matter: States Use ESSA to Accelerate Online and Blended Classrooms

Schools Matter: States Use ESSA to Accelerate Online and Blended Classrooms:

States Use ESSA to Accelerate Online and Blended Classrooms

When the ESEA was boiled down into a racist states rights version, labeled ESSA, and quickly passed, it was Diane Ravitch and her loyal ghostwriters who hailed the new law as a huge success. 

She even gave Lamar Alexander's office nine (9) separate opportunities to sell the high tech and charter incentive stimulus bill as the greatest federal funding event since 1965, when ESEA was originally passed.

The world found out later, of course, that ESSA had been the preferred deal cut by the Clintons and their corporate funders.  AFT, NEA, FairTest, and NPE had been trotted out to sell it, and sell it they did.  

Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and we hear nothing from Ravitch and the Clintonians about how god-awful this ESSA piece of dreck really is. 

Ravitch and her sheeple are spending all their time jabbing at their DeVos voodoo dolls and poring over their extended blog posts that try as they might to distinguish bad privatization (for profit online charters) from good privatization (nonprofit blended charters).

Will someone ask Ravitch, Monty, Randi, Lily, and the rest of the zombie resistance gang to explain once more why they supported ESSA?  Or the benefits of hooking up children to more alienating and isolating total surveillance computer screens, even as their teachers wander the classroom feeling inadequate, guilty, and cut off from their students? 

New report linked here from Yahoo Finance page on states' plan to expand depersonalized learning through ESSA.  Schools Matter: States Use ESSA to Accelerate Online and Blended Classrooms:

Stop HR 610 | Real Learning CT

Stop HR 610 | Real Learning CT:

Stop HR 610

The new administration’s attack on public education has begun, and we need to take action to stop it.

In late January, HR 610 was introduced by Steve King of Iowa, with representatives from Maryland, Texas, and Arizona signing on.

HR 610, the School Choice Act, will eliminate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was passed as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty”.  Federal funds that are now given to schools will be given to parents who choose to enroll their children in private schools or to homeschool their children. Doing that will give upper middle class parents who can almost afford private schools for their kids help in paying the steep tuition of private schools and will leave public schools minus adequate funds to provide for the education of the children remaining in them.

HR 610 will give taxpayer money to parents to send their children to religious schools. That is a main intent of the bill. Children will be given vouchers to attend religious schools like the one that Donald Trump praised when he visited it. You can watch this video of the children at that school pledging allegiance to The Bible.

HR 610 will also roll back nutritional standards for free lunches for poor children.

With HR 610, the opportunity gap between the haves and the have-nots will widen in our nation. Education as the great equalizer will cease to exist.

Please contact your Member of Congress and object to HR 610.

It is very clear that bills like HR 610 will be supported by both the U.S. Department of Education and the White House. In fact, it appears that every alternative to democratically controlled public schools will be favored. A clear bias against public schools exists.Stop HR 610 | Real Learning CT:

Current Status "SHELVED" in the House Education and the Workforce Committee

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H.R.610 - To distribute Federal funds for elementary and secondary education in the form of vouchers for eligible students and to repeal a certain rule relating to nutrition standards in schools.115th Congress (2017-2018) | Get alerts

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Sponsor:	Rep. King, Steve [R-IA-4] (Introduced 01/23/2017)
Committees:	House - Education and the Workforce
Latest Action:	01/23/2017 Referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.  (All Actions)

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2. Passed House
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All Actions H.R.610 — 115th Congress (2017-2018)All Bill Information (Except Text)

Bill History – Congressional Record References

Teacher to DeVos: No, I’m not ‘hostile’ to change. We just don’t agree on the changes schools need. - The Washington Post

Teacher to DeVos: No, I’m not ‘hostile’ to change. We just don’t agree on the changes schools need. - The Washington Post:

Teacher to DeVos: No, I’m not ‘hostile’ to change. We just don’t agree on the changes schools need.

Pennsylvania teacher Peter Greene has a message for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

DeVos, a Michigan billionaire whose nomination by President Trump sparked unprecedented opposition for an education secretary, has been speaking out recently about her critics and about protesters who greeted her at a D.C. public school when she visited last week. On Feb. 15, she gave a speech at the Magnet Schools of America 2017 National Policy Training Conference and said:

“Last Friday, a handful of protesters tried to block my entrance into Jefferson Middle School Academy here in D.C. While I eventually made it in, and had very constructive conversations with Chancellor Wilson, many D.C. administrative leaders, some terrific teachers and Principal Dohmann, the protesters’ behavior is a reflection of the way some seek to treat our education system — by keeping kids in and new thinking out. Friday’s incident demonstrates just how hostile some people are to change and to new ideas.”

Some of those people beg to differ. Green,  a veteran teacher of English in a small town in Pennsylvania, is a critic of DeVos and her passion for school choice over traditional public schools, in which he teaches. He published the following post on his Curmudgucation blog.

By Peter Greene

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke recently to a gathering of magnet school folks, and opened up by suggesting that “some people” are “hostile” to change.

I just want to be clear. I am not hostile to change. In fact, there are some changes that I would love to see.

[DeVos: Critics want to ‘make my life a living hell’]

I would love to see a change in the rhetoric about failing schools. Instead of declaring that we will “rescue” students from failing schools and offering lifeboats for a handful of students, I’d Teacher to DeVos: No, I’m not ‘hostile’ to change. We just don’t agree on the changes schools need. - The Washington Post:

solidaridad: Schools Matter: The Monica Garcia - Betsy DeVos connection

solidaridad: Schools Matter: The Monica Garcia - Betsy DeVos connection:

Schools Matter: The Monica Garcia - Betsy DeVos connection

“Monica Garcia believes in… choice… She expanded charter schools” — Michael R. Bloomberg and A. Jerrold Perenchio’s Coalition for School Reform

Extremist Betsy DeVos was a long time favorite of neoliberal corporate education reform oriented Liberals and reactionary organizations like Democrats for Education Reform, so it's surprising that there's a little bit of consternation coming from some Democrats over Trump's ED pick. On the other hand, right-wing extremists like Campbell Brown seemingly can't contain their joy over the arch-reactionary appointment. Ultimately DeVos's school privatization policies won't differ substantively from those of the doltish Arne Duncan or John King. She'll just get to our rulers' end goal of eliminating public education quicker than the Bush and Obama Administrations were able to.

Los Angeles has had its own Betsy DeVos for many years in the form of anti-public school politician Monica Garcia. Garcia is running for a third term, and her long record of expanding revenue streams and market share for the lucrative charter school industry is legendary. Here are some of DeVos and Garcia's connections and shared values:

• Betsy DeVos financially supports, and was on the board of publisher (The 74) of the dubious "LA School Report", a high-profile blog that has provided non-stop favorable publicity and propaganda for Moníca García since its inception.
• DeVos has made sizable contributions to organizations that in turn made campaign contributions to SuperPAC Independent Expenditures supporting García's elections. Follow the money to organization like the now defunct Coalition for School Reform, and Great Public Schools Los Angeles, and also the current CCSA run Parent Teacher Alliance dark money SuperPAC.
• DeVos funds the organizations espousing racist "school choice" policies from which García derives many of her policy positions and talking points.
• DeVos and García openly support religious, and religious affiliated organizations running charter chains. DeVos with the various Christian Identity and white supremacist organizations she's associated with, and García, whose long time relationship with The Pacifica Institute and the shadowy Gülen network are well documented.

solidaridad: Schools Matter: The Monica Garcia - Betsy DeVos connection:

Author; Research Professor Diane Ravitch - Watch Tavis Smiley on PBS |

Watch Full Episodes Online of Tavis Smiley on PBS | Author; Research Professor Diane Ravitch:

Author; Research Professor Diane Ravitch

Former Assistant Secretary of Education and current president of The Network For Public Education joins us to discuss the uncertain future of America's education system.



 Watch Full Episodes Online of Tavis Smiley on PBS | Author; Research Professor Diane Ravitch: