Child Doping Goes to College

Pressure cooker schools (see Race to Nowhere) and the doping of school children (see The War on Kids) are having a predictable but no less tragic outcome.  As reported by the New York Times, suicide, depression, cutting, bulimia, and other manifestations of mental illness are approaching epidemic proportions on college campuses.  Predictably, unnamed experts in the Times piece do not find the doping a children as the culprit but, rather, as allowing more troubled children to attend college:

Experts say the trend is partly linked to effective psychotropic drugs (Wellbutrin for depression, Adderall for attention disorder, Abilify for bipolar disorder) that have allowed students to attend college who otherwise might not have functioned in a campus setting. 

Big Pharma to the rescue for problems that child doping initiated, going back to Ritalin in elementary school.  I suggested to the Times reporter in an email that he read some of the work by Dr. Peter Breggin to get some facts that aren't purchased by Smith-Kline or one of their competitors.

Here is another clip from the Times piece that captures some of the reality at Stony Brook:

. . . .Stony Brook, an academically demanding branch of the State University of New York (its admission rate is 40 percent), faces the mental health challenges typical of a big public university. It has 9,500 resident students and 15,000 who commute from off-campus. The highly diverse student body includes many who are the first in their families to attend college and carry intense pressure to succeed, often in engineering or the sciences. A Black Women and Trauma therapy group last semester included participants from Africa, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from violence in their youth.

Stony Brook has seen a sharp increase in demand for counseling — 1,311 students began treatment during the past academic year, a rise of 21 percent from a year earlier. At the same time, budget pressures from New York State have forced a 15 percent cut in mental health services over three years.

Dr. Hwang, a clinical psychologist who became director in July 2009, has dealt with the squeeze by limiting counseling sessions to 10 per student and referring some, especially those needing long-term treatment for eating disorders or schizophrenia, to off-campus providers.

But she has resisted the pressure to offer only referrals. By managing counselors’ workloads, the center can accept as many as 60 new clients a week in peak demand between October and the winter break.

“By this point in the semester to not lose hope or get jaded about the work, it can be a challenge,” Dr. Hwang said. “By the end of the day, I go home so adrenalized that even though I’m exhausted it will take me hours to fall asleep.”
For relief, she plays with her 2-year-old daughter, and she has taken up the guitar again.

Shifting to Triage
Near the student union in the heart of campus, the Student Health Center building dates from the days when a serious undergraduate health problem was mononucleosis. But the hiring of Judy Esposito, a social worker with experience counseling Sept. 11 widows, to start a triage unit three years ago was a sign of the new reality in student mental health.

At 9 a.m. on the Tuesday after the campus’s very busy weekend, Ms. Esposito had just passed the Purell dispenser by the entrance when she noticed two colleagues hurrying toward her office. Before she had taken off her coat, they were updating her about a junior who had come in the previous week after cutting herself and expressing suicidal thoughts.

Ms. Esposito’s triage team fields 15 to 20 requests for help a day. After brief interviews, most students are scheduled for a longer appointment with a psychologist, which leads to individual treatment. The one in six who do not become patients are referred to other university departments like academic advising, or to off-campus therapists if long-term help is needed. There are no charges for on-campus counseling.. . .

Most important youtube video ever

This is a FANTASTIC video.

Some high points, thanks to Susan Ohanian:

Nothing to Hide and No Excuses: Video Evaluation to Raise Teacher
Quality

School Reform Foundation and Charter Teachers for the Future of America have a
plan for teacher evaluation. Every reform cliche is turned on its head here,
starting with "the strong correlation between student low performance and
teachers having desks.

# We need an inquisition to make schools strong again.

# with video replay and stop motion we can analyze every last twitch or spasm in

transforming student outcomes.

# You're not hiding something are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpmQZ5MXs8c

The Media Bullpen

Keep an eye on this new "media/policy platform," The Media Bullpen.  It's put together by the Center for Education Reform and is funded, at least in part, but the Gates Foundation.

From Idealist:

The Center for Education Reform is seeking a top-notch Managing Editor as it prepares for the launch of The Media Bullpen, a groundbreaking journalistic media/policy platform dedicated to dedicated to: a) correcting the record on K-12 education issues and; b) improving the media/public understanding of topics in K-12 education and education reform.

The ideal candidate will lead The Media Bullpen’s editorial program, under the supervision of CER senior executives, through an evolving combination of hands-on content creation and management/supervisory responsibilities. He/she will create and/or direct the creation of all Media Bullpen editorial content, will be thoroughly acquainted with education players and issues, will be a passionate advocate for education reform, and will have a strong journalistic background, which includes high-volume daily content creation in a fast-paced and Web-based environment.

He/she will be a consistent, accurate, compelling, and lively “voice” for the Media Bullpen. As the platform grows, the Managing Editor will have increasing supervisory responsibility for a growing team of researchers, analysts and freelance writers who will also generate original content for this national media initiative.

Qualities sought: Decisiveness, tenacity, authority, passion for the issues, journalistic background, flexibility, superb and succinct writing/editorial style, reliability, comfort in a tech-heavy social media environment, balance, “voice”, and a sense of humor.

Sample Duties:
• Drafting and posting rapid-fire content creation with high accuracy; concise editorial responses to media stories from daily news feeds (up to 300 stories per staffer/per day)
• Assuring the accurate inflow of state-wide and national multimedia news inflows on an ongoing basis
• Overseeing the acquisition, placement, and appropriate use of content, data, art, and graphics
• Making prioritized editorial assignments to other staff members
• Evaluating new opportunities for improving online content from various sources to ensure complete coverage
• Must be able to react to change productively and handle other essential tasks as assigned

Requirements:
• Professional experience: 5-10 in traditional and online journalism with superb references and a demonstrated record of excellence
• Education: Bachelor’s Degree (minimum), MA preferred; communications, journalism, public policy
• Knowledgeable about education issues and policy; with a passion for education reform
• Ability to craft short, clean copy for consumers, policy makers, grassroots activists, and media stakeholders
• Strong headline writing, copywriting, teaser development
• Able to make quick decisions and judgment calls
• Experience generating daily, high-volume content
• Experience developing and motivating writing teams
• Ability to work easily with data and social media in a technology-centric editorial environment
• Adept with Web-based CMS tools and content generation applications
• Experience in web publishing, keyword research and tagging, HTML/CSS
• Aware of legal requirements for content acquisitions and re-use
• Flexible, self-starting, accountable, and absolutely reliable
• Exceptional project management skills with an ability to set priorities and deadlines
• Ability to communicate effectively with co-workers and manage telecommuting relationships
• Exhibits and models sound journalistic ethics
• Able to provide "live" radio interviews & two-ways on the topic of education & reform for use on the air

Hours: Full Time (Note: Initial Part Time training and/or consulting engagement may be considered as precursor)

No relocation assistance.

Boston's Appointed Superintendent and School Board Couldn't Be More Polite and Undemocratic

Last updated December 17 8:30 AM
The air of irony last evening could not have been thicker at the first public high school of Boston, as all the children in the audience at Boston's Public High got an unforgettable lesson in what democracy does and doesn't look like.

On the "doesn't" side was the feckless School Committee, peering down from the stage of the school auditorium at speaker after speaker, 70 in all, most of whom came to speak against the impending school closures.  The seven appointed Board members and their appointed Superintendent of Schools sat, some leaning forward, some flouncing, some yawning, some chatting, and all waiting patiently for the anticlimactic climax, to make the centrally-planned backroom decision official, while thumbing their noses at the citizenry, regardless of pleas, logic, tears, begging, demonstrations, catcalls, raps, and the rest.

The school closing decision, of course, had been made for them, and they were there last evening to play their bit parts in the democratic farce that has come to the Commonwealth where Horace Mann battled for the creation of public schools, where Benjamin Roberts, Robert Morris, Frederick Douglas, and Charles Sumner made the case for integrated public schools a hundred and sixty years ago.  Now looms the incredible specter of a system based on apartheid, zero-tolerance charter school chain gangs in the black and brown areas of the City.

The children in the audience last night also saw the promise of a democracy renewed in the strong, eloquent voices of their friends, teachers, parents, bus drivers, school helpers, and community activists, who are now galvanized by the decision of the Mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and the corporate foundations to turn their backs on so many amazing school programs and committed teachers and energized parents.

The School Committee vote last evening was one of the first bombs lobbed into the laps of Boston's public school parents, teachers, and students, and there are sure to be more.  Waiting with their anti-public strategies wrapped in measured, unyielding, Puritan politeness are the charter zealots and the corporate CMOs, EMOs, and CEOs who see education as a controllable commodity whose production cannot be exported but can be exploited for economic gain.

The next bomb will try to blow apart teachers and parents, with school resources or teacher salaries on either side of the crater.  And waiting in the wings for the empty school properties are the charter schools, which in fact are the reason for the $63 million shortfall to begin with.  If Boston were not paying for these charter schools and the incredibly expensive and inefficient transportation to them, there would be no shortfall of $63 million.

The day before yesterday the Mayor was the invited speaker at the Annual Breakfast hosted by Chamber, where he stood before a backdrop of Bank of America and Chamber of Commerce logos to announce the closings or mergings that got formalized last evening.  And even though the mayor got his first standing ovation in all his speeches to the Chamber of Commerce, he should enjoy it while he can.  The Boston public is aroused and angry and ready to act.  If you thought you saw repudiation in Washington, DC in November, just wait.  This could easily be the event that signaled the beginning of the restoration of public control of the Boston Public Schools.  

Finally, one of two elected official to speak last evening was City Councilman, Felix Arroyo, whose eloquent appeal to save the schools fell on the same deaf ears.  When the Councilman's 2 minutes were almost up, he was reminded by the Committee's timekeeper on the stage.  Someone in the audience yelled, LET HIM SPEAK--HE WAS ELECTED!

Perhaps in the not so distant future, those on the stage will be elected as well.  Let's make it happen.  Let's restore Democracy to the Cradle of Democracy in America.

Gates Gives to Rs

Here's a partial list of Bill Gates' donations from 2010.  These are the Republican recipients.  This is hardly a lot of money: $11,000 is less than pocket change for Bill, and candidates are not bought off with $1,000 donations:

1/8/2010 $1,000 to Mike Pence

1/14/2010 $1,000 to Bob Goodlatte

1/15/2010 $1,000 to John Thune
1/21/2010 $1,000 to Mitch McConnell
6/21/2010 $1,000 to Cathy McMorris
6/21/2010 $1,000 to Kevin McCarthy
6/22/2010 $1,000 to Eric Cantor
6/24/2010 $1,000 to Richard Burr
6/30/2010 $1,000 to Joe Barton
7/19/2010 $1,000 to Mitch McConnell
7/19/2010 $1,000 to Mitch McConnell

You can look up other donations via the FEC website.  A list of Gates' donations, including Democratic recipients, is available here.  Eli Broad, on the other hand, sticks strictly to Dems.  Both, of course, have donated to right-wing think tanks.

Save money and improve education at the same time: A suggestion

Sent to the Los Angeles Daily News, Dec 15.

Re: "Gov.-elect Jerry Brown says money for schools could be chopped by up to 20-25 percent," Dec, 15.

California can save a lot of money by eliminating programs that aren’t doing any good. A good place to start is the High School Exit Exam.

Analyst Jo Ann Behm has estimated that the combined state and local costs of California's high school exit exam exceed $500 million per year.

The most recent review of research on exit exams, done by researchers at the University of Texas, concluded that high school exit exams do not lead to more college attendance, increased student learning or higher employment.

In fact, researchers have yet to discover any benefits of having a High School Exit Exam.

Stephen Krashen, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

University of Southern California

Most recent review: Holme, J., Richards, M., Jimerson, J., and Cohen, R. 2010. Assessing the effects of high school exit examinations. Review of Educational Research 80 (4): 476-526.

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_16857249?source=most_emailed

How to "fix things fast" in education: Support libraries and librarians

Sent to TIME Magazine, Dec 14, 2010

TIME's report that the US "lags behind" countries like Finland and South Korea" on the PISA reading test ("In school, China on the rise," Dec 20), and TIME's positive evaluation of the film Waiting for Superman (The Best Movies of 2010, Dec. 20), leads to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong with American education and that "we have to fix things fast." A closer look at the data shows that what is wrong is our unacceptably high rate of child poverty.

Poverty had a huge impact on American PISA reading test scores. American students in schools with less than 10% of students on free and reduced lunch averaged 551, higher than the overall average of any of the 34 member countries of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). Those in schools with 10 to 25% of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch averaged 527. Among the OECD countries, only Korea and Finland did better.

In contrast, American students in schools with 75% of more of children in poverty averaged 446, second to last among the 34 OECD countries.

Our overall scores are less impressive because we have one of the highest rates of child poverty among all the countries tested. According to a 2005 UNICEF report, the US has a child poverty rate of over 21.9%; in contrast, the rate in high-scoring Finland is only 2.8%.

Among other things, high poverty means less access to books at school, at home and in the community. Less access to books means less reading, and less reading means lower performance on tests such as the PISA.

What all this means is that our first priority should be to protect children against the effects of poverty, including making sure all children have access to reading material. And the obvious way to do this is to support school and public libraries and school librarians.

The PISA report confirms this: Reading fiction for enjoyment and on-line reading were associated with higher PISA reading scores across all countries tested.

Stephen Krashen

Watching Big Brother Makes Him Very Nervous and Angry

From Michael Moore:

Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange (A statement from Michael Moore)

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Friends,

Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail.

Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars.

We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again.

So why is WikiLeaks, after performing such an important public service, under such vicious attack? Because they have outed and embarrassed those who have covered up the truth. The assault on them has been over the top:

**Sen. Joe Lieberman says WikiLeaks "has violated the Espionage Act."

**The New Yorker's George Packer calls Assange "super-secretive, thin-skinned, [and] megalomaniacal."

**Sarah Palin claims he's "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands" whom we should pursue "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."

**Democrat Bob Beckel (Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign manager) said about Assange on Fox: "A dead man can't leak stuff ... there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch."

**Republican Mary Matalin says "he's a psychopath, a sociopath ... He's a terrorist."

**Rep. Peter A. King calls WikiLeaks a "terrorist organization."

And indeed they are! They exist to terrorize the liars and warmongers who have brought ruin to our nation and to others. Perhaps the next war won't be so easy because the tables have been turned -- and now it's Big Brother who's being watched ... by us!

WikiLeaks deserves our thanks for shining a huge spotlight on all this. But some in the corporate-owned press have dismissed the importance of WikiLeaks ("they've released little that's new!") or have painted them as simple anarchists ("WikiLeaks just releases everything without any editorial control!"). WikiLeaks exists, in part, because the mainstream media has failed to live up to its responsibility. The corporate owners have decimated newsrooms, making it impossible for good journalists to do their job. There's no time or money anymore for investigative journalism. Simply put, investors don't want those stories exposed. They like their secrets kept ... as secrets.

I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo. That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.

But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes?

But back then only a few people had access to that document. Because the secret was kept, a flight school instructor in San Diego who noticed that two Saudi students took no interest in takeoffs or landings, did nothing. Had he read about the bin Laden threat in the paper, might he have called the FBI? (Please read this essay by former FBI Agent Coleen Rowley, Time's 2002 co-Person of the Year, about her belief that had WikiLeaks been around in 2001, 9/11 might have been prevented.)

Or what if the public in 2003 had been able to read "secret" memos from Dick Cheney as he pressured the CIA to give him the "facts" he wanted in order to build his false case for war? If a WikiLeaks had revealed at that time that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do you think that the war would have been launched -- or rather, wouldn't there have been calls for Cheney's arrest?

Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 -- after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin -- there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of our soldiers (and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today.

Instead, secrets killed them.

For those of you who think it's wrong to support Julian Assange because of the sexual assault allegations he's being held for, all I ask is that you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey. Please -- never, ever believe the "official story." And regardless of Assange's guilt or innocence (see the strange nature of the allegations here), this man has the right to have bail posted and to defend himself. I have joined with filmmakers Ken Loach and John Pilger and writer Jemima Khan in putting up the bail money -- and we hope the judge will accept this and grant his release today.

Might WikiLeaks cause some unintended harm to diplomatic negotiations and U.S. interests around the world? Perhaps. But that's the price you pay when you and your government take us into a war based on a lie. Your punishment for misbehaving is that someone has to turn on all the lights in the room so that we can see what you're up to. You simply can't be trusted. So every cable, every email you write is now fair game. Sorry, but you brought this upon yourself. No one can hide from the truth now. No one can plot the next Big Lie if they know that they might be exposed.

And that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done. WikiLeaks, God bless them, will save lives as a result of their actions. And any of you who join me in supporting them are committing a true act of patriotism. Period.

I stand today in absentia with Julian Assange in London and I ask the judge to grant him his release. I am willing to guarantee his return to court with the bail money I have wired to said court. I will not allow this injustice to continue unchallenged.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. You can read the statement I filed today in the London court here.

P.P.S. If you're reading this in London, please go support Julian Assange and WikiLeaks at a demonstration at 1 PM today, Tuesday the 14th, in front of the Westminster court.

The $hared No Labels Goals of the Corporate Party

From the website:

The No Labels movement was born out of support for these shared goals, and we are committed to helping our nation remain true to these values that we all profess in an environment, [sic] which encourages fact-based discussions.

We are not labels – we are people.
We must put our labels aside,
And put the issues and what’s best for the nation first.
A promising future awaits us.

It sounds so right, doesn't it.  Yes, I am ready.  Yes, we can can our democracy.  The shared goals we all agree on?  Replacing the old-school goal of a nation serving as a beacon for democratic living and the spread of democracy will be, first and foremost, world economic hegemony and cutting away the social net at home for our corporate benefit (my underlining).  I am feeling the power surging through us:

 The US must Remain the World’s Premier Economic Power- Most Americans realize that unprecedented levels of debt threaten America’s economic growth. [i]  What’s worse, half of that debt belongs to foreign countries like China. We need to restore fiscal solvency. Because a huge share of the budget goes to fund mandatory, “entitlement” programs, fiscal solvency is simply not possible without entitlement reform.[ii]  We need our representatives to do the math, without worrying about ideology.

To remain # 1 at the cash register, we will need an energy policy that is aimed toward the same goal, one that does not mention the annoying and impending extinction of most species on Earth:

We need an Energy Policy that Promotes National Security. . . . The United States needs a coherent energy policy to guarantee our economic vitality and energy security for years to come. We need an approach that focuses on increasing energy supplies from diversified, clean, sustainable sources. We need to reduce unnecessary and inefficient demand. Developing abundant energy must be a unifying effort for our country--a national mission that draws on America’s extraordinary invention and entrepreneurship. 

And let's not leave out education.  After all, to change a democracy, you must change its education system. Where old-school thinking was focused on civic virtue, democratic values, productive citizenship,  we set out our new shared goals for our children, goals for the benefit of our shared corporate economic engine that put labels aside (unless you cling to the status quo and insist on resisting the corporatization of America and its public spaces).  And let's base our shared goals on some bold decontextualized "facts" from a discredited scare document from 2005 called Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.   The sequel, just out in October of this year, is scarier still: Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5:

We Must Prepare Our Children for 21st Century Jobs—The United States now ranks 20th among industrialized nations in high school completion rates [iv]   And-- in a global economy that is increasingly driven by technological development--, we rank a dismal 48 in quality of math and science education.[v]  This year a National Academy of Sciences panel found our students are less competitive than they were five years ago.  Our children should be prepared for the best jobs in the world; they deserve an educational system that does that.  It is time for our children to come before entrenched interests that protect the status quo.  We need increased accountability throughout the educational system, as well as the the support systems teachers and students need to succeed. We need elected officials who realize this is not an option. 

Not an option, and No Excuse, by the way.  After all, we have universal agreement in the No Labels camp for more name taking and punishing and grinding children into test scores for the benefit of us billionaires.

And finally, our shared goals the government, itself, which is hopelessly broken like every other institution requiring a corporate fix.  Please note that "for the people" has been eliminated from Lincoln's speech, for purposes determined by the Home Office:

We Need a Government of the People, By the People—None of the problems we list above are new. But our government has failed to come up with common sense solutions because our political process is broken. . . .

I am glad we all agree, and I am hopeful that all of you will vote for mayoral control nationwide as we ramp up the campaign to put Mayor Bloomberg in the Corporate Wing of the White House as CEO of the CEOs.

Old (Unreported?) News

I sure didn't see any news coverage of it at the time, but Imagine Schools' CEO Dennis Bakke gave $1,000 to Sharron Angle's political action committee in August of 2010.  Via the FEC:

Angle recently started a new political action committee (everyone's doing it these days!)