Right now, the cherry blossoms are at their peak . Usually, the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens would have large crowds of people, who want to see this wonderful explosion of color. Now the gardens are empty. But open the link and enjoy the splendor.
Bill Becker worked for two decades in the U.S. Department of Energy. Bill is the executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project. I had the good fortune to meet him at a conference at Oberlin College a year or so ago. I have been on the mailing list for his blog ever since. He wrote: Wanted: A Vision for America By William S. Becker Joe Biden has just released an updated clean-energ
Shawgi Tell, professor at Nazareth College in New York, describes the multiple ways in which corporate charter chains are cashing in during the pandemic. He begins: While private businesses like non-profit and for-profit charter schools have been seizing enormous sums of public money for decades,1 they continue to seize hundreds of millions of public dollars during the “COVID Pandemic”—a move tha
Donald Cohen of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” has assembled a brief history of anti-government rhetoric. He has assembled quotations from the anti-government crowd. It is only 12 pages and a quick, enlightening read. It is called The Anti-Government Echo Chamber . Here is the introduction on the ITPI website: “They play to your fear, government plays to your fear.” “Will you resist the
Steven Singer warns that public schools are facing deep cuts in state funding due to revenue losses caused by the pandemic. Hey, it’s Teacher Appreciation Week, just the time to start mobilizing against cuts that could cause the layoff of nearly 300,000 teachers. That means larger class sizes, fewer electives, cuts to the arts, to everything that is not tested. Don’t expect Trump to stand up for
An article in the National Geographic describes how New Zealand effectively eliminated coronavirus. New Zealand has had a small number of infections and fewer than two dozen deaths. Travel journalist Aaron Gulley was in New Zealand when the pandemic was recognized. He writes: If there is a bright spot in the global response to the pandemic, it is surely New Zealand. While governments worldwide ha
The New Tork Times reported two studies that found that children transmit the virus. Among the most important unanswered questions about Covid-19 is this: What role do children play in keeping the pandemic going? Fewer children seem to get infected by the coronavirus than adults, and most of those who do have mild symptoms, if any. But do they pass the virus on to adults and continue the chain of
Well, that was fast! Only minutes after news broke that Governor Cuomo had asked Bill Gates and his foundation to help “reimagine” education in New York, parent groups responded with a loud NO! Don’t mess with New York parents! Remember, they started the biggest opt-out from state testing in history. Here is their public letter: May 5, 2020 To Governor Cuomo: As educators, parents and school boar
If you are ready for a hilarious read, read this. Kellyanne Conway’s husband George is a conservative lawyer. He despises Trump. He is now leading an anti-Trump group of prominent Republicans called the Lincoln Project. They recently aired an ad called “Mourning in America,” on FOX News. Trump saw it and went crazy. He began tweeting insults at George Conway, who fielded them with grace and wit,
Governor Andrew Cuomo announces that he is working with Bill Gates to re-imagine education in New York after the pandemic. @ ZackFinkNews .@NYGovCuomo says New York State will be working with @gatesfoundation to develop a blueprint to “reimagine education” in New York State in post-COVID19 world. Obviously Cuomo knows that Gates is one of the richest men in the world. Obviously he does not know t
James Hohmann of the Washington Post summarizes Trump’s calculated effort to destroy all oversight of his administration, including firing independent Inspectors General and refusing to send anyone to testify in hearings conducted by the House of Representatives. He believes he rules by divine right. He has all the makings of a fascist dictator. Do not be surprised if he cancels the November elec
The Economist is an influential publication based in London. It writes, as its name suggests, about world economic affairs. In its current issue, the publication makes the case that the schools must quickly reopen in order to restart the economy. The Economist contends governments across the world should open schools as soon as possible. It argues that so long as schools are closed, the achieveme
Mercedes Schneider describes a great puzzle at Eva Moskowitz’s celebrated Success Academy charter chain. Moskowitz laid off staff, allegedly because of state budget cuts, which cost her chain $60 million. At the same time, she is hiring new staff. And the chain has $60 million in reserves. And if it is austerity time, why didn’t Eva cut her own compensation of $889,000 a year? You know, as a gest
A new study reported in VOX contends that viewers of the Sean Hannity program on FOX News were likely to spread the coronavirus because of his assurances that it was not dangerous. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sea
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote this opinion piece, which appeared in McClatchy newspapers across the country, including the Miami Herald. Please open the link and read it in
New York to work with Gates Foundation to 'reimagine' schools: governor
(Reuters) - New York will work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to "reimagine" the state's school system in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, part of a broader reform of society, Governor Andrew Cuomo told a daily briefing on Tuesday.
Cuomo also pushed back against comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, who in an interview with the New York Post dismissed the idea of giving federal funds to states financially crippled by the crisis, saying it would amount to bailing out Democratic governors who had mismanaged their states.
Calling on Trump to take a non-political approach, Cuomo said blocking funds to states hit hardest by the pandemic would prove to be "self-defeating" because it would lead to gridlock in Congress and hold back key engines of economic growth.
"If you starve the states, how do you expect states to fund this entire reopening plans," said Cuomo, who has estimated New York was facing a $10 to $15 billion budget shortfall. "If you go down this path of division you will defeat all of us."
Cuomo also spoke about rebuilding the healthcare system so it can better handle future crises and laid out a broad vision for improving society, noting reforms made after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
"We want to build back better," Cuomo said.
Cuomo said New York would work with the foundation of Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates and his wife as part of an effort to "reimagine" education including through the better use of technology. He did not provide specifics on that cooperation.
New York's education system, like others in the country, has struggled to teach children remotely, especially those in poorer areas without access to the internet or computers.
As hospitalizations and deaths have trended lower in recent weeks, Cuomo has turned his attention to reopening the state. On Monday he provided an outline for which industries and regions might get back to work first.
(reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)
COVID-19 “CARES Act” Bankrolls AlI Post-Human Education
DeVos, Thiel, Phase 2 of Project BEST
In 1982, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement for the US Department of Education, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, blew the whistle on the Reagan Administration’s Project BEST (Better Education Skills through Technology): a techno-fascist plan to privatize the American school system by selling it out to Big Tech corporations that deliver B. F. Skinner’s operant-conditioning method of “programmed instruction” through computerized “teaching machines.” Almost thirty years later, the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act” is primed to pump a flood of federal education funds into online charter school corporations, such as K12 Inc., KIPP, and Connections Academy, which deploy “adaptive learning” software that replace human teachers with artificial-intelligence courseware programmed with “Skinner-box” cognitive-behavioral algorithms geared to condition students for workforce training.
The CARES Act Cares about Robots
As teachers and students are forced to convert their coursework to online platforms during the COVID-19 lockdown, the CARES Act is creating deregulatory loopholes to expand the federal funding of adaptive-learning courseware delivered by online education corporations such as K12 Inc. (which was bankrolled by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos) and Connections Academy (which is owned by the globalist Pearson Education PLC: the “world’s largest education company”).
Students Go Weeks Without Schoolwork as ‘Distance Learning’ Standards Vary The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit analyzed distance learning guidelines for dozens of school districts across California and found education standards vary from district to district, creating a learning gap for some students.
It’s been seven weeks since the coronavirus forced most California schools to shut down for the year and many students have learned to adapt to the new normal of Zoom classrooms and virtual assignments. But parents and educators tell NBC Bay Area some students haven’t learned much of anything since school closed, causing those students to fall behind their peers.
Right now, the state is allowing each local school district to develop a distance learning plan that works best for their communities and has canceled all standardized tests to help reduce stress on kids. The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit reached out to more than 70 school districts across the state and asked to see their education plans during the shelter-at-home to compare what students are learning. More than half responded and our review found significant inconsistencies from district to district, creating a potential learning gap for students.
Many districts developed their plan within the first two weeks after closing and require teachers to:
Assign reading and math lessons daily
Make lesson plans available to administrators for quality review
Interact with students and set-up regular office hours
Track attendance to identify students who need more help
Other districts took more than a month to create a plan and issued contradictory guidelines for teachers which include:
No content requirements
No assessment or review of teacher lesson plans
Discourage teaching through live video lessons or speaking to students 1on1
Trump: Teachers over age 60 may ‘have to sit it out for a while’ when schools reopen, but students should be ‘in great shape’
President Trump was asked by a student during his Sunday virtual town hall with Fox News anchors at the Lincoln Memorial about how she could feel safe going back to school during a second wave of covid-19. He told her he thought she would be “in great shape” but that “a bigger problem” was older teachers being in their classrooms.
Trump answered questions from Fox’s Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as well as from Americans about his government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic and other issues.
Responding to Rebekah Johnson from Minneapolis, in light of experts warning that covid-19 is not going away, he said schools need to reopen and that students would be fine, although they “may wear masks for a while.”
He also said teachers who are 60 or 65 may have to stay home when schools open. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those at high risk for severe illness from covid-19 are people 65 years and older, and people of any age with specific underlying medical conditions, including those with chronic lung disease, moderate to severe asthma and diabetes.
The percentage of America’s teachers who are 60 and older is not precisely known. The latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics says that in 2012 about 23 percent of America’s teachers were between the ages of 50 to 59 in 2012 and more than 7 percent were over 60. But since then, many teachers have left the profession, and others have joined.
There are teacher shortages in most school districts around the country, which would probably be exacerbated if older teachers don’t return to schools when they reopen.
So when you go back — and you have one problem that is a bigger problem, and that’s teachers over 60 or 65 years old — the teachers. Because I think that Kristin [another student] or Rebecca are going to be in great shape, and they may wear masks for a while and they may be separated further than what they’re used to. And I think they’re going to be in great shape.
As most of the 13,000 districts in the U.S. plan for re-opening schools, a few photos of re-opened ones in other countries may give readers a sense of what’s in store for American parents preparing to send their sons and daughters to school.
Schools re-open in different parts of China.
TOPSHOT – Students sit in a classroom as grade three students in middle school and high school return after the term opening was delayed due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, in Huaian in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on March 30, 2020. (Photo by STR / AFP) / China OUT (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)
In Vietnam:
In Israel:
Israeli students at the Orot Etzion school in Efrat wear protective face masks as they return to school for the first time since the outbreak of the Coronavirus. 1st-3rd graders returned to school this morning, with keeping social distance inside of hte classrooms, CONTINUE READING: Schools Re-Opening in Other Countries | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
