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Saturday, March 11, 2017
'Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. and Today ...Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:
New Strategy, Same Agenda, Lamar Alexander and Accountability by Cheryl Binkley - Badass Teachers Association:
Badass Teachers Association: New Strategy, Same Agenda, Lamar Alexander and Accountability by Cheryl Binkley:
New Strategy, Same Agenda, Lamar Alexander and Accountability
by Cheryl Binkley
New Strategy, Same Agenda, Lamar Alexander and Accountability
by Cheryl Binkley
Why would Lamar Alexander suddenly start to dismantle the “accountability” regulations of ESSA, the landmark Education Bill he worked over a year forging and heralded as a fabulous bi-partisan feat; one of the few of the Obama era?
Is Accountability which he so avidly promoted for so long suddenly not needed? He spent about a half hour explaining the change, but ....
Accountability has been the battle cry from both parties for almost 20 years of Education Reform. Why abandon it now?
Those defending the Public Schools have long known the push to privatize our local schools is a bi-partisan effort. Both of Obama’s Secretaries of Education were firmly committed to sustained step by step reform using standards-standardization, “accountability,” and high stakes testing as the interlocking strategies for closing local schools-- as were the Republicans. And it was working fairly well as a means of funneling money to hybrid public-private charters; all under the auspices of Civil Rights for poor students, and “school improvement.”
The story went, State and Federal Officials and Company Owners had to protect children from the local teachers and school boards. These locals were denying them access to educations like children of Harvard and Yale alums were receiving. Of course, no one was suggesting that children of the projects or working class neighborhoods and towns receive the healthy food, extra parent time, enrichment vacations, healthcare or safer environments their wealthy counterparts received- just the daily school part had to change.
Everything was going fairly well until roughly 2010 when grassroots groups began to spring up among teachers and parents, resisting the narrative. People started refusing to believe that public schools were Badass Teachers Association: New Strategy, Same Agenda, Lamar Alexander and Accountability by Cheryl Binkley:
Accountability has been the battle cry from both parties for almost 20 years of Education Reform. Why abandon it now?
Those defending the Public Schools have long known the push to privatize our local schools is a bi-partisan effort. Both of Obama’s Secretaries of Education were firmly committed to sustained step by step reform using standards-standardization, “accountability,” and high stakes testing as the interlocking strategies for closing local schools-- as were the Republicans. And it was working fairly well as a means of funneling money to hybrid public-private charters; all under the auspices of Civil Rights for poor students, and “school improvement.”
The story went, State and Federal Officials and Company Owners had to protect children from the local teachers and school boards. These locals were denying them access to educations like children of Harvard and Yale alums were receiving. Of course, no one was suggesting that children of the projects or working class neighborhoods and towns receive the healthy food, extra parent time, enrichment vacations, healthcare or safer environments their wealthy counterparts received- just the daily school part had to change.
Everything was going fairly well until roughly 2010 when grassroots groups began to spring up among teachers and parents, resisting the narrative. People started refusing to believe that public schools were Badass Teachers Association: New Strategy, Same Agenda, Lamar Alexander and Accountability by Cheryl Binkley:
Fighting Off a Prop-39 Parasite
Fighting Off a Prop-39 Parasite:
Fighting Off a Prop-39 Parasite
When LAUSD denied two Celerity charter renewals in October LAUSD Charter School Division (CSD) Director José Cole-Gutiérrez was quoted as saying that they had “severe concerns with regard to their lack of transparency. We are not even clear who the board members are.” Since then, the FBI and other federal agents have raided the offices of Celerity Educational Group “collecting laptops and copying data from computers”. The Los Angeles Times has also written two exposés on the publicly funded private schools that included charges that Celerity provided “few school supplies but [held] a lavish party” and the CEO, who was paid $471,842, paid for extravagant “expenses with a credit card belonging to her charter schools”. All this was not enough to stop the District from offering Celerity co-location space at Arminta Street Elementary School under Proposition 39.
Fighting Off a Prop-39 Parasite
– Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2017
When LAUSD denied two Celerity charter renewals in October LAUSD Charter School Division (CSD) Director José Cole-Gutiérrez was quoted as saying that they had “severe concerns with regard to their lack of transparency. We are not even clear who the board members are.” Since then, the FBI and other federal agents have raided the offices of Celerity Educational Group “collecting laptops and copying data from computers”. The Los Angeles Times has also written two exposés on the publicly funded private schools that included charges that Celerity provided “few school supplies but [held] a lavish party” and the CEO, who was paid $471,842, paid for extravagant “expenses with a credit card belonging to her charter schools”. All this was not enough to stop the District from offering Celerity co-location space at Arminta Street Elementary School under Proposition 39.
At a parent meeting on Thursday morning to discuss this proposed co-location, Cole-Gutiérrez explained away his department’s offering of the site by claiming that the law does not allow him to use the existence of the investigation to reject Celerity’s request for space. However, this ignores the fact that the CSD has already used information that it has collected to recommend against the approval of two new Celerity charters along with the renewals that were rejected in October. In all of these cases, the concerns extended beyond the individual school sites to include the charter management organization that runs them. Since all of the Celerity run schools are tainted, it is clear that instead of working to find Celerity new facilities, the District should have been putting its efforts into shutting these charters down.
The parents of Arminta have organized themselves to fight the co-location at their public school and were well prepared for the meeting. They pushed to find out how much work the CSD had put into verifying that Celerity actually had enough potential students to meet the need for additional co-located space but they were not given the information that they requested. During his presentation, Cole-Gutiérrez did say that the fact that Celerity was Fighting Off a Prop-39 Parasite:
Florida Voucher Nonprofit, Step Up for Students: A Tale of 15 Tax Forms | deutsch29
Florida Voucher Nonprofit, Step Up for Students: A Tale of 15 Tax Forms | deutsch29:
Florida Voucher Nonprofit, Step Up for Students: A Tale of 15 Tax Forms
Florida Voucher Nonprofit, Step Up for Students: A Tale of 15 Tax Forms
Step Up for Students (Step Up) is the Florida nonprofit founded by venture capitalist John Kirtley (see his bio here). Until 2011, Step Up was known as the Florida School Choice Fund (FSCF), which officially became a nonprofit in July 2000.
In recent news, the former Florida voucher student whom Donald Trump featured in his February 28, 2017, Congressional address, Denisha Merriweather, was both former Step Up student and employee.
Step Up oversees Florida’s round-about private school voucher program known as a “tax credit” program. Through tax credits, both corporations and wealthy individuals are able to donate money directly to a “scholarship fund” in exchange for tax credits. The state ends up with less revenue than it would if it did not offer such credit, but allowing private entities to put the cash directly into the fund and receive a tax break afterward is a clever means of keeping the label “public” off of the money that is donated even as the amount of public funds in the public coffers is lowered in the name of “tax credit.”
The Step Up for Students website calls such a practice “redirecting tax obligations”:
In 1998, a young Tampa venture capitalist named John Kirtley discovered the lack of educational options available for low-income children and took matters into his own hands. Kirtley, working with the national Children’s Scholarship Fund, created the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Tampa Bay to provide privately funded scholarships for low-income children to attend a K-8 school of their choice. …With Kirtley’s help, [Florida] lawmakers in 2001 created the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. The program gave corporations credit for redirecting their state tax obligations toward K-12 scholarships that helped low-income families send their children to participating private schools or to public schools outside their districts.
Note that the FSCF/ Step Up max amount to send students to public schools out of district is $500 for transportation. The primary purpose of the tax credit is to send students to private schools, as the same web page proudly highlights:
Today, Step Up serves more than 97,926 FTC [Florida Tax Credit] students in more than 1,712 private schools throughout Florida.
There is no such web site highlight regarding the number of students who attend out-of-district public schools.
Step Up for Students also doesn’t mention the wealthy individuals who are able to Florida Voucher Nonprofit, Step Up for Students: A Tale of 15 Tax Forms | deutsch29:
Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers
Raw deal for regular folks: Health & Education “Savings Accounts” | The Edvocate Blog
Raw deal for regular folks: Health & Education “Savings Accounts” | The Edvocate Blog:
Raw deal for regular folks: Health & Education “Savings Accounts”
Raw deal for regular folks: Health & Education “Savings Accounts”
The two most important things we will ever pay for in this world are K-12 education and health care. That said, Americans are being fear-mongered by politicians over everything from losing healthcare to the constant lie that public schools are failing.
Central to this threat is the concept of a “savings account.” Like everything else in the “reform” lexicon the political intent is wholly different from what it seems. Most people don’t equate “saving money” to vouchers, privatization and forcing citizens to incur extraordinary debt for what seems like a basic human right.
This is “Gaslighting” in its purest form. Corporations, politicians and billionaire ideologues are manipulating the 99% with psychological spin to make us question everything we know to be true.
We’ve spent decades happily sharing the cost of insurance with employers with a reasonable expectation that the cost of accidents and illnesses would be covered without penalty. That confidence has been eroded by five to ten thousand dollar annual deductibles that leave folks paying out of pocket for everything but the most catastrophic health crisis. This high stakes “access” to coverage has left millions of Americans completely priced out of affordable health care. There’s a will, but no way.
Similarly, taxpayers across the nation invest at least $800 billion dollars per year to fund free public education at the state level. School “reformers” such as U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, use aggressive rhetoric in an attempt to wear down the affection people have for their teachers and public schools. The goal is to convince parents to use vouchers to “Choice” into private, mostly religious schools. What is not made clear is that the voucher, Raw deal for regular folks: Health & Education “Savings Accounts” | The Edvocate Blog:
The Blinders of Partisanship: How Republicans and Democrats Miss the Point – We’re All Being Screwed | gadflyonthewallblog
The Blinders of Partisanship: How Republicans and Democrats Miss the Point – We’re All Being Screwed | gadflyonthewallblog:
The Blinders of Partisanship: How Republicans and Democrats Miss the Point – We’re All Being Screwed
The Blinders of Partisanship: How Republicans and Democrats Miss the Point – We’re All Being Screwed
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of this election cycle wasn’t Donald Trump’s victory.
It’s how quickly many of our allies on the right gave up their beliefs to fall in line.
Under President Barack Obama, those on the left and right were united against Common Core.
We both realized it was a terrible policy – though sometimes for different reasons. Never-the-less, we put aside politics to fight Bill Gates, David Coleman, Eli Broad and other privileged left-leaning elites.
And through this common struggle we came closer ideologically. I’m a New Deal FDR Democrat, but even I could see how the Obama administration overstepped its federal authority pushing charter schools, standardized testing and the Core down our throats.
But as soon as Trump ascended to the Oval Office, many conservatives gave up their objections to this same kind of federal overreach.
Apparently Obama was wrong to push charters, but Trump is just fine pushing school vouchers. Obama was wrong to require high stakes testing, but Trump is just fine requiring the same thing. Obama was wrong to push Common Core, but all these Republican-controlled state houses that could eliminate Common Core tomorrow are right to leave it in place unchallenged.
This is incredibly hypocritical. Yet it’s not just with this one issue.
We see the same thing with healthcare. What we now call Obamacare was invented by a far right think tank, the Heritage Foundation. It was first implemented by Mitt The Blinders of Partisanship: How Republicans and Democrats Miss the Point – We’re All Being Screwed | gadflyonthewallblog:
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