As the Decider King Speaks

While the President was promoting more education and more tax cuts for the rich as the best ways to help American laborers, his henchmen in the Attorney General's office were declaring the Administration "immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act." Here is part of the story from YubaNet.com:

The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.

Citing an "unpublished opinion of the [Attorney General's] Office of Legal Counsel," the Secretary of Labor's Administrative Review Board has ruled federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower claims under the Clean Water Act. The opinion invoked the ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity which is based on the old English legal maxim that "The King Can Do No Wrong." It is an absolute defense to any legal action unless the "sovereign" consents to be sued.

The opinion and the ruling reverse nearly two decades of precedent. Approximately 170,000 federal employees working within environmental agencies are affected by the loss of whistleblower rights. . .

David Brennan's Soaking of Ohio Taxpayers Continues Unabated

How many politicians does charter-ite David Brennan own in Ohio? We know that he was instrumental in stacking the Ohio Supreme Court with Republicans, but these White Hat profits (click chart to enlarge) posted in this Akron Beacon-Journal piece are truly astounding, particularly when you consider that 60% of Ohio charter schools are in academic emergency, compared to 8% of Ohio's regular public schools. How long will Ohio political candidates ignore this corruption--there a real scandal here, ripe for the picking.

And how do you like that per-pupil expenditure for Brennan's charter competitor, Summit Academy? Truly impressive corruption.

Back to Testing Time, or Is There More to School?

Editorial from the L. A. Daily News:

It's that time of year again. The API scores have been released to the public, just in time for kids to go back to school. Anxiety, competition, fear and pride are felt by parents all over the city.

But hold on, Mom and Dad! The Academic Performance Index scores tell us only one thing: where the whitest, most affluent neighborhoods are.

I never got caught up in the API craze as a parent, but I do keep track of all of the API scores in the San Fernando Valley for my work. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that schools in the poorer neighborhoods with immigrant children can't compete with schools in the West Valley. And they never will.

My son entered kindergarten in 1999 in a low-income area with a high immigrant population. He and his peers have been on the front lines of the API wars and the No Child Left Behind Act since their inception. As a parent, I have witnessed firsthand how devastating this system of ranking schools, pressuring young children and segregating students based upon their race, financial status, and learning ability has on education and individuals. . .

The hopeful remainder here.

The Noblest Profession, Ignobly Recognized

The CEOs of America have been reliable and vocal critics in the continuing demonization of American teachers and schools. The corporate bean counters have always believed that it is the work of the schools and teachers to churn out a reliable stream of passive and unquestioning drones whose cognitive incapacitation in schools will prepare them to unerringly accept their own sacrificial leap into the capitalist crucible.

For these corporate elites, the KIPPsters motto of "Work Hard, Be Nice" says it all in terms of training future workers--and it is no surprise that the KIPP charter chain gangs, with unpaid overtime beginning in 3rd grade, should become embraced by corporate America as the preferred model for working class schools in America.

For today's obscenely-paid corporate princes, the global marketplace demands that American workers should be forced down to Third World standards, rather than aspiring to raise up the economically-oppressed of those countries toward Western standards.

On this Labor Day Weekend, then, let us pause to consider this point made in today's Times:

Enough already on how many millions this or that chief executive earns, how many stock options are tossed around to keep the Champagne flowing, the McMansion dusted, the Bentley polished.

As a little back-to-school thought, let’s shift gears to a group of workers who earn pennies in comparison but who, it could be argued, play at least as vital a role in society. It is teachers, after all, who try to make sure that those captains of industry have educated workers.

According to the American Federation of Teachers, the state with the highest average pay for teachers in 2003-04 was Connecticut, at $56,516; the lowest was South Dakota, at $33,236.

Or look at it this way: Pick a corporate chieftain — say, Jeffrey R. Immelt of General Electric. He earns $15.4 million a year. Every single day — including Thanksgiving and Christmas — he makes almost what the average teacher does for a year of taming wild children, staying up nights planning lessons, and, really, helping to shape a generation.

Jay Mathews Pumps National Testing

The neo-con (Fordham) and neo-liberal (PPI) sludge tanks have been using the same education-reform-by-testing textbook since the late 1990s, but now they are on the same page, together reading aloud in unison: “We want a national testing program.”

Jay Mathews, the leading testocrat at the Washington Post and Hoover-paid critic of alternative assessments, writes this morning in his inimitable op-news style to pump the Fordham Foundation’s recent report on how to go about creating a national testing program to replace the failing one recently sold to the Congress by these same geniuses. Instead of using state tests this time, which have thus far kept the privatizers from their goal of entirely destroying public confidence in the public schools, the sludge tank sophists are now urging a national test (NAEP) to achieve the same end, and thus open the door to charters (the PPI solution) and vouchers (the Fordham solution).

Mathews, who has made his fortune nurturing a unique kind of intellectual laziness to best serve the political power brokers in Washington, offers up another piece of dumbed down blather to take the Fordham talking points, remove all context markers, and then make them seem inevitable. For instance, he ignores the fact that NCLB offered states the option to make their testing proficiency targets tough in early years or tough later on toward 2014. Mathews then selectively cites those states with low up-front proficiency targets in order to make the contrast between easy state and the tough NAEP scores all the more dramatic and to paint state departments of education as the unresponsive malingerers that stand in the way of real standards and accountability.

For Hickok, Kress, Rotherham, and the hack-ademics on ed industry retainer, reauthorization of NCLB offers the last good chance for privatization before this crowd of corporate welfare artists is swept out of Washington.

Private and Charter School Research Confounds Education Privatization Plans

A good summary of recent events in this editorial from readingeagle.com:

Bush policies based on bad assumptions

The Issue: A report from the U.S. Department of Education shows fourth graders in public schools perform better than their counterparts in charter schools.

Our Opinion: The Bush administration, which has championed charter schools, should rethink its education policies.

Earlier this summer, a report that was released quietly by the U.S. Department of Education, revealed that public schools perform just as well, if not better, than private schools.

The reason the report was not accompanied by any fanfare was that it was an embarrassment to the Bush administration, which clings to the belief that public schools are failing.

That belief has been used to justify the administration’s school-voucher program, which allows students to transfer out of those failing schools and attend private schools at taxpayers expense.

Last week, another report was released by the Educa-tion Department that compounded the embarrassment. That report, based on scores from the 2003 National As-sessment of Educational Progress test, showed that fourth graders in traditional public schools did significantly better in math and reading than fourth graders attending charter schools.

Unlike private schools, charter schools are part of the public school system, but are free from most of the regula-tions that govern public schools. They are operated either by nonprofit organizations or for-profit companies.

The report also showed that the more closely affiliated charter schools are to the school districts in which they are located the better they perform.

Charter schools have been considered by the Bush administration and others as the panacea for what ails the country’s education system.

The fallacy of that contention became apparent two years ago when the American Federation of Teachers culled the 2003 test scores from data compiled by the Education Department.

The data had been made available to the public, but Education Department officials apparently never imag-ined anyone would dig through the mountain of informa-tion to locate this interesting nugget of information.

Last week’s report merely confirmed what the teachers union had uncovered.
With two reports, both compiled and released by the Education Department, indicating that the Bush admini-stration’s education policies are based on erroneous as-sumptions, it is unlikely there will be a third.

Mark S. Schneider, the federal commissioner of educa-tion statistics who released the report, indicated as much when he said the Education Department should stop con-ducting research comparing charter schools with public schools. That should be left to independent researchers.

An advantage to leaving such studies to independent researchers, of course, is that the administration then could find fault with them if the results don’t agree with its own presumptions.

It’s becoming harder for the White House to justify programs such as school vouchers, which assumes that public schools are failing, when its own reports don’t support that contention.

A few days after the report was released comparing public and private schools, Department Secretary Margaret Spellings proposed a $100 million school-voucher plan, which would provide low-income children languishing in public schools with a private-school education at taxpayer expense.

In light of the two reports, it’s likely that the voucher program will be sending those children to schools that are worse, not better.

As we have said before, rather than making assumptions that aren’t based on facts, the administration should determine what the real problems are and help the traditional public schools to solve them.

Using Controversy to Embrace Diversity in the Classroom

Here is a clip from a nice piece in the September issue of NEA Today:

That’s the aim of Palermo’s Leadership and Diversity class, an elective open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors based on the Help Increase the Peace Program (HIPP), a youth program developed in 1991 by the American Friends Service Committee. The class focuses on topics such as diversity, racism, and conflict resolution. They also plan and lead peer workshops that promote acceptance and mutual respect.

“The ultimate goal of any good social studies teacher is to inspire students to think beyond themselves, to take an interest in the world around them, and do something to improve it, even in a small way,” Palermo says.

It begins with taking an interest in current events and being receptive to differing viewpoints. Palermo establishes ground rules for discussion that encourage respect, openness, and empathy. “With ice-breakers and team-building activities, the students usually bond pretty quickly and feel comfortable with each other,” Palermo says. “This allows them to be honest and open when we’re discussing controversial issues.”

“How the teacher acts is what gives the students reassurance that they can be open and honest.”

On “Discussion Fridays,” Palermo leads the class in debates, aided by a Koosh—a stringy rubber ball named for the sound it makes on impact. Students toss the ball around the room; whoever holds it has the floor—no one else is permitted to speak. When finished, the speaker surrenders the floor by tossing the ball to another student, and the process begins anew. “I don’t feel the need to jump in at every moment, and I don’t have to worry about kids trying to get my attention,” he says. “There is much greater student participation, and very often the discussion will move in an unexpected, and usually interesting, direction.”

Students Still Have Constitutional Rights

From The Guardian:

Oliver Burkeman in New York
Friday September 1, 2006

Zachary Guiles knew he was being provocative when he showed up for school two years ago in a T-shirt that accused George Bush of being a war-mongering draft-dodger, a drunkard and a drug addict. What the 13-year-old may not have realised was that he would provoke a major free-speech battle that culminated this week in a court victory.

An appeals court in New York found that Zachary's constitutional rights were violated when officials at his Vermont school made him stick duct tape over parts of the T-shirt. The shirt also said the president was undertaking a "world domination tour" and showed a picture of his head superimposed on a chicken's body, along with cocaine, a razor blade and a martini glass. Zachary was suspended for a day, but continued to wear the T-shirt to school, complete with duct tape.

Lawyers for Williamstown middle high school argued the images contravened the school's ban on clothes promoting drink and drugs, but the court rejected the idea on the grounds that the T-shirt expressed "an anti-drug view". Mr Bush has spoken of his battles with alcohol earlier in his life.

The T-shirt "uses harsh rhetoric and imagery to express disagreement with the president's policies and to impugn his character", the court ruled, but the images "are not plainly offensive as a matter of law".

"The standard that the court set was that a kid has free-speech rights as long as the expression of those rights doesn't upset the normal workings of a school," said Allen Gilbert, of the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case.

Zachary said: "I think this is a very good sign that even with the current administration ... there can still be a justice that allows free speech."

Child Abuse Through Testing Not Cost Effective

From the New York Times:

More than half of the public school students urged to attend summer school for failing to meet Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s stiff promotion criteria will be forced to repeat a grade this coming year because they were unable to raise their scores enough on exams.

The mixed results for the 13,751 third, fifth and seventh graders raised questions about the cost-effectiveness of the summer program created to help them. Forty-six percent of third graders and 41.3 percent of seventh graders who attended the program, called Summer Success Academy, improved their exam scores sufficiently to qualify for the next grade. Fifth graders fared slightly better, with 54.4 percent who attended the sessions scoring high enough to move on to the sixth grade. . . .

This clip offers an insight into how blind and jaded these fools are to the child abuse that is being committed in the name of high educational standards and accountability. Do we have any doubt that these 7,000 children who are now forced to accept failure at an early age are the poorest children in New York City schools? Did we need a iron-fisted test to tell us that they were and are grossly behind other children academically? What does this forced failure do to correct the situation?

How long will we, as a society, continue to ignore what educational researchers and psychologists tell us about the abuse of power against children when a single test is used to determine their futures? Is this kind of educational genocide so acceptable now that our only concern is whether or not it is cost-effective? Will the Bloomberg focus now be to develop a cost effective way to further punish the poor?

Linda Schrenko Gets Her Orange Jumpsuit

Linda Schrenko, one of the founding crooks of the same Education Leaders Council (no link--site shut down) that helped design and channel the money stream of the NCLBA in 2001, will report to a Tallahassee prison on Sept. 11 to begin her 8-year sentence for, what else, stealing those same federal dollars in 2002 that she channeled in 2001. If oversight is ever restored in Washington, will other founding ELC members Keegan, Rotherham, and Hickok receive the investigative attentions they have thus far eluded?

At her sentencing in July, U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper scolded her, saying, "You're the reason the public confidence in the political process continues to erode."

Schrenko told reporters on her way out of the courthouse that she has made the most of her final days of freedom with a jaunt to the beach, a party with family and friends and quiet time with her dogs.

Now that is the type of contrition we have come to know from the right-wing virtuecrats.