Saturday, August 7, 2010

Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite by Gary North

Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite

by Gary North
by Gary North
Recently by Gary North: The Ron Paul Curriculum: A New Way to Educate Americans Free of Charge

Ruling elites as recently as 1600 appealed to God to justify their continuing rule. This was called the divine right of kings: rulership beyond any earthly court of appeal. That began to be undermined in the second half of the seventeenth century. A century later, Enlightenment democratic theory had replaced the divine right of kings. The divine right of Parliament or the divine right of the People replaced it.

This forced a major strategic change on the ruling elite. The ruling elite has to pretend that it does not exist. It formally acknowledged the legitimacy of the People as the final court of appeal. This involved training and screening the judges.

Basic to maintaining this deception has been control over the media. Also vital has been control over the schools – compulsory attendance laws, teacher certification, tax funding, and school accreditation. Above all has been control over textbooks.

This control is ending in the area of printed media, especially newspapers, which are dying. Control over TV news is fading. Digits are killing them. Now control over education is about to be undermined. Same reason: digits.

COMPETING DIGITAL CURRICULA

I have recommended to Ron Paul that he hire a director of curriculum development in one of his educational organizations. The director should then contract with

Lewis: An education in 'boiler-room' tactics universities tapping taxpayers - The Denver Post

Lewis: An education in 'boiler-room' tactics universities tapping taxpayers

By Al Lewis
Dow Jones Newswires

POSTED: 08/07/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Joshua Pruyn had one of those jobs where you get on the phone with sales prospects and lie to them all day long.

From November 2007 to May 2008, he was an admissions counselor at Westwood College, a for-profit school with an online division and 17 campuses nationwide.

Westwood is owned by privately held Alta Colleges Inc. in Denver and its admissions process is conducted on what Pruyn called "a boiler-room sales floor."

"Enrolling a student was a psychological game," Pruyn said. "Lying was encouraged. The most appalling example was when the assistant director of admissions on my team was presented with a 'Best Liar' award at a team celebration."

Pruyn made these accusations Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor,

When whites have it tough, too - Winnipeg Free Press

When whites have it tough, too

By: Gregory Rodriguez

7/08/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

The biggest blow to affirmative action in its nearly 50 years of existence was the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States. Not because Obama is against the policy (he is, as on so many issues, nuanced in his support; i.e., he believes it should exist but not extend to his children) but because his election was widely perceived as being reflective of a profound shift in the country's racial balance.

I believe that white racial anxiety, not immigration, will be the most significant and potentially dangerous socio-demographic trend of the coming decade. The combination of changing demographics and symbolic political victories on the part of nonwhites will inspire in whites a greater racial consciousness, a growing sense of beleagurement and louder calls to end affirmative action or to be included in it.

Home / Headlines / Nuke U: How the University of California Is Helping to Blow Up the World - Media Monitors Network (MMN)

Nuke U: How the University of California Is Helping to Blow Up the World

by Norman Solomon

(Saturday, August 7, 2010)

"For sure, there's plenty of money sloshing around to reward the masters—and academic servants—of the nuclear weapons industry. But should the University of California be managing laboratories that design the latest technologies for nuclear holocaust?"

On my way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago, I found it listed in a New Mexico phone book—under "University of California."

Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation's top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California's public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business.

Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for

Filipino teachers file lawsuit against recruiters | ABS-CBN News | Latest Philippine Headlines, Breaking News, Video, Analysis, Features

Filipino teachers file lawsuit against recruiters

By Henni Espinosa, ABS-CBN North America Bureau

Posted at 08/07/2010 5:04 PM | Updated as of 08/07/2010 5:04 PM

LOUISIANA - More than 350 Filipino teachers hired to work in Louisiana public schools filed a class action against their recruiters, Los Angeles-based Universal Placement International and Manila-based PARS International Placement Agency.

The Filipino teachers said they were cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars and forced to sign contracts that exploited them.

The federal lawsuit was filed before the US District Court-Central California by the American Federation of Teachers, Southern Poverty Law Center and the Law Offices of Covington and Burling.

The lawsuit accuses officials of Universal and its sister organization, PARS, of human trafficking, racketeering and fraud.

Defendants are Lourdes Navarro, owner and president of Universal, Jack Navarro, director of Universal, and Emilio Villarba, director of PARS.

In 2007, Filipino teachers were hired to work in various school districts in Louisiana. The

Eating away at education: Math doesn't add up when teacher salaries and budget cuts collide - San Jose Mercury News

Eating away at education: Math doesn't add up when teacher salaries and budget cuts collide

By Katy Murphy
Oakland Tribune

Posted: 08/01/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

Updated: 08/02/2010 11:30:03 AM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

School Employees picket over proposed Mt. Diablo School District cuts in as they emerge from the...

The math is simple: California schools have less money than most other states, but their teachers are the most highly paid in the nation.

Per pupil spending, on the other hand, trails the national average by about $2,500.

Until the financially troubled state government finds more money to invest in its public schools, which make up more than half of its general fund spending, something has to give.

School budgeting has become a zero-sum game.

California school districts spend more than half of their dollars on teacher pay and benefits. In better times, when education funding rose each year to keep pace with the cost of living, so did salaries. But the state now gives schools less money for each student than it did

CHARTS

What's a student worth and teacher salary trends

in 2005-06, when the average teacher made 11 percent less.

To make payroll, districts are laying off teachers and loading more children into each classroom. They are cutting secretaries, assistant principals, custodians, aides, instructional coaches and security. They are closing schools and slashing supplies. They are

Prolific in poop and procreation, aphids invade the Bay Area

This summer has produced a bumper crop of aphids, which flourish in the canopies of Modesto Ash trees -- and leave a mess everywhere.

Milwaukee teachers fight for Viagra drug coverage

Schools' no-lice policies called overkill by doctors' group

Foothill-De Anza Community College District proposes $69 annual parcel tax

Three South Bay students head to China Girls Math Olympiad

Parents push for sprinklers, automatic alarms at Trace Elementary

Editorial: Public has a right to know | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/06/2010

Editorial: Public has a right to know

Philadelphia schools chief Arlene Ackerman has the law on her side in refusing to release her employee evaluation after getting a $65,000 bonus.
But if the School Reform Commission believes Ackerman deserved a bonus, it should release the evaluation. The SRC obviously believes she is doing a good job. As such, it should provide the supporting document that backs up its decision.
The School Reform Commission gave Ackerman a bonus in April equal to 20 percent of her annual salary of $338,000. In doing so, the SRC said she had met the criteria to earn the bonus.
Initially, the SRC refused to release the criteria used to determine the bonus. The school board did so this week only after The Inquirer won a ruling by the state's right-to-know officer.
But that decision did not include Ackerman's employee evaluation. The state open-records law exempts

Atlanta Forward / Another View: ‘We will carry on’ without rule-breakers �| ajc.com

Atlanta Forward / Another View: ‘We will carry on’ without rule-breakers

By Beverly L. Hall

At Atlanta Public Schools, we demand high standards of students, teachers and principals. We accept no excuses — not race nor poverty — and expect steady gains in academic performance. Unfortunately, in any large organization, a few people may cheat to try to meet high expectations, and they were the focus of a recent investigation into possible manipulation of students’ test scores.

Cheating on tests: Schools inquest must continue

More opinion »

Columns and blogs

We will ferret them out. We will implement the recommendations of a blue-ribbon commission that investigated the manipulation of APS students’ test scores, and we will ensure that any who cheated students face severe consequences.

New LA Way to School Reform: From the Ground Up CityWatch - An insider look at City Hall

CityWatch - An insider look at City Hall

New LA Way to School Reform: From the Ground Up

EDUCATION
Monica Garcia

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As we begin this new school year, we face extraordinary challenges for public education and for this District. We have absorbed the body blow of over a billion and a half dollars in budget cuts. Our communities, meanwhile, continue to demand equity and quality in our schools now.

In order to survive, this District has had to change.

We owned the fact that we were spending billions of dollars a year, but fundamentally failing in our core mission of teaching our kids to read and getting them across the finish line to graduation, college-ready and career prepared. We cast off this district's stubborn defense of the status quo and we shed old practices that just didn’t work.

LAUSD has redefined the scope of our work. We no longer argue about whether there is a crisis in our educational system. We recognize that there is a crisis, and that the crisis is ours to address.

And we have also changed the way we go about doing our work. Guided by our wise Superintendent, we have defined a shared theory of change. I like to call it, Reform the LA Way.

Reform the LA Way isn't a cookie cutter, top down approach. It is a portfolio of school models, created on the ground by innovators in the community and at our school sites, and always accountable to our parents.

Reform the LA Way means empowered school communities, freed from bureaucratic red tape, making their own decisions about how to budget appropriately, what work rules to adopt, and how best to meet the unique instructional needs of all their students.

And finally, Reform the LA Way is a recognition that the smartest answers do not come from district headquarters at Beaudry. They

Valencia County News-Bulletin: Charter hits reading AYP, but not math

Charter hits reading AYP, but not math

Written by Deborah Fox/News-Bulletin

Saturday, 07 August 2010 00:00

School of Dreams Academy had its first Adequate Yearly Progress report for the charter school's first year in operation.

Principal Mike Ogas told the governing council on Aug. 3 he was pleased that the school met AYP in reading, but said he would have liked to have met AYP in math.

"Most middle schools don't meet AYP," Ogas said. "It's a baseline for us, to see where we're at. We'll be looking at individual student profiles to see where they are and how we need to help them move forward."

The report is another tool to help the school develop the Individual Learning Plan for each student and to meet the school charter goal of providing a well-rounded education.

"It's just a piece of the puzzle; it's not the whole thing," Ogas said. "In the overall creation of a well-rounded individual, obviously you need a strong academic background, but you also need to help students develop into a contributing member of society."

Another area Ogas intends to improve is attendance. The AYP summary reported

Saturday coffee. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Saturday coffee.

by preaprez

The countdown begins this weekend.
A week of hosting visiting offspring and grand kids ends this morning when I drive them all to O’Hare for the flight back to Brooklyn. Having family in another city means seeing my grandchildren grow in fits and jerks. Four months go by. Six months go by. A toddler becomes a little boy. A little girl suddenly seems wiser than you expected.
It will be quieter around the house.
Then it is two weeks before the start of the school year on August 20th. A Friday, for goodness sakes!
I need to get the room set up. I have a meeting of the school’s teacher leadership team. The weather forecasts

Texas GOP delegation turns to Pelosi in battle over Texas education funds | TRAIL BLAZERS Blog | dallasnews.com

Texas GOP delegation turns to Pelosi in battle over Texas education funds
	4:08 PM Fri, Aug 06, 2010 \| Permalink \| Yahoo! Buzz Melanie Mason/Reporter Bio \| E-mail \| News tips

Led by Sen. John Cornyn , 20 members of the Texas GOP congressional delegation have sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urging her to strip a Texas-specific provision out of an upcoming spending bill.

The amendment, inserted by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, requires Texas to preserve current education funding levels through 2013 in order to receive $820 million in federal funds to protect teacher jobs. Texas is the only state to face specific requirements.

Republicans, including Gov. Rick Perry, say the provision violates Texas' state Constitution.

"By adding the additional two-year requirement, the House language only

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Saturday, August 7, 2010