Curmudgucation Reads Verdict on Hillary, But Co-Defendants Ignored

In coming to the evidentiary edge of connecting the dots among the DNC, DFER, Gates/Broad, and NEA/AFT, Curmuducation is pressing the envelope on preserving his elevated status in Diane Ravitch's Blogger Hall of Fame.  But he is not there yet, having stopped just short of a guilty verdict for Weingarten and Garcia for co-conspiring to allow the destruction of public schools and the teaching profession. 

Rather, it is Hillary whose verdict Peter Greene is here to deliver:

I would say that the jury is still out on Hillary, but honestly, I'd be lying. Hillary is pretty clearly tied to the same charter-loving, reform-pushing, corporate-driven, test-and-punishing reformsters as our last two Presidents. CAP, one of the fiercest reformster-driven advocacy groups in DC, was simply a holding pen for Clinton campaign leaders like John Podesta; they are close to Hillary and they have never, ever, been a friend to public education or public school teachers. DFER, a group that absolutely loathes teachers and the teachers union, is delighted that Hillary is running.

Meanwhile, Anthony Cody has been put in charge of pretending that there is some conversion process underway that will bring the wayward Weingarten and Garcia into the Ravitch fold.  The idiocy of such a notion is too ridiculous for comment.

Cody, in fact, needs time and resources to get his next big NPE talkathon in Orlando arranged, and he can't do it without the laundered Gates money that NEA and AFT have for him.

How teachers can continue to support this political pyramid scheme is truly baffling.

Duncan Creates Race to Bailout Online Diploma Mills

Race to the Top was a $4.35 billion bribery scheme to fund the corporate education reform movement for a few years.  We are living with the consequences today with Common Core, test based teacher evaluation, state education department austerity to pay for technology, and the proliferation of segregated charter "broken windows" chain gangs to behaviorally sterilize poor children.

Now Duncan has announced another corporate welfare plan, this time to bailout the for-profit Corinthian College.  Taxpayers will pay off the student loans for Corinthian students that amount to $3.5 billion.  You know, those student loans that students can never bankrupt on, the ones that have created a whole new generation of indentured corporate servants.  

Why must the federal government bailout Corinthian and pay off the student debt?  Because the feds allowed the scumbags who operated Corinthian to continue their predatory practices for years and years without oversight or accountability, as the $3 million a year CEOs bought yachts and built palaces. 

Why aren't Corinthian bigwigs on the hook for the student debt?  That's an easy one--the corporate crumbs at Corinthian DECLARED BANKRUPTCY.  

This is just the beginning.  Most of the $1.2 trillion in student debt is owed to the same kind of online matchbook colleges that are offering nothing in return for a lifetime of debt.

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. . . Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Monday that the Education Department would forgive the federal loans of tens of thousands of students who attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company that closed and filed for bankruptcy last month, amid widespread charges of fraud.

Mr. Duncan also said the department planned to develop a process to allow any student — whether from Corinthian or elsewhere — to be forgiven their loans if they had been defrauded by their colleges.

A special master would be appointed within three weeks, department officials said, to create procedures to apply for relief that are “durable, not just for Corinthian but beyond.”

Taxpayers could pay a huge price for forgiving so many federal loans; the government has never before opened debt relief to such a potentially large pool of students. The department estimated that if all 350,000 Corinthian students over the last five years applied for and received the debt relief, that cost alone could be as much as $3.5 billion.

In a news conference call on Monday afternoon, Mr. Duncan emphasized the plight of students who took on huge debt and ended up with a degree that meant little to employers, or no degree at all. . .

 

Gates Manufactures Another Astroturf Common Core Group in NY

The only remaining supporters of the Rotted Core are those who stand to profit in some way from the continuation of the manufactured failure of public education and the denial that poverty is a factor in student learning. 

The 80 billion dollar geek's latest gift to New York.  Story here:

. . . in reaction to the growing movement to opt students out of Common Core-based state tests and ramped-up campaigns by parent groups and teachers unions across the state, High Achievement New York is building its own countercoalition.

The group has been building a network of support from teachers, parents, administrators, education reform advocacy groups, businesses and community groups since it came into being a year ago. The group has the resources to do it, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the primary foundation responsible for financing and promoting the Common Core – as well as the Helmsley Charitable Trust, and Robin Hood, a New York City anti-poverty organization.

In a meeting with Buffalo News editors and reporters Monday, representatives with High Achievement New York were accompanied by members of education reform group America Achieves, the Buffalo Urban League and the superintendent of Randolph Central Schools in Cattaraugus County.

Their main mission to is make the broader public aware that the Common Core is about more than just a test, they said. It’s about creating a new way of thinking and learning. Aside from wanting to counter what they consider bad information being espoused by anti-Common Core groups, they also say too few educators are taking advantage of everything the learning standards have to offer.

Randolph Superintendent Kimberly Moritz, for instance, said district leaders and principals need to be able to analyze and maximize the use of the Common Core testing data they receive, to help their teachers do the same. While some teachers complain that the Common Core testing information they receive isn’t transparent or useful, Moritz said the reality is that some teachers aren’t given the tools they need to examine the data in practical and meaningful ways.

McIntyre Lies about Christina Graham Firing

Story here.

SCOTT WALKER IS THE LEADING REPUBLICAN "DERP"

Paul Krugman just wrote a column on “Fighting the Derp”in economics. I had never heard the word before and was surprised to find out, “’Derp’ is a term borrowed from the cartoon “South Park” that has achieved wide currency among people I talk to, because it’s useful shorthand for an all-too-obvious feature of the modern intellectual landscape: people who keep saying the same thing no matter how much evidence accumulates that it’s completely wrong.”

We have become a nation of “Derps”. Once upon a time the privilege of derping was relegated to pundits, columnists, and a few talk show hosts. Now everyone can derp. (Is it a coincidence that it rhymes with twerp?) Social media has instantly connected millions of derps to us all.

Krugman states, “True, the peddlers of politically inspired derp are quick to accuse others of the same sin. “ So I should probably add a disclaimer.

(Disclaimer: I am sure some of you consider me a derp as well. You however, are wrong as usual.)

Nary a day goes by without evidence of derping, especially in discussing politics, race, and education. These three topics are symbiotic these days.

How often have we seen “predictions that just keep being repeated no matter how wrong they’ve been in the past,” or “the never-changing policy prescription.”?

So who are the  derps sending those denigrating messages about teachers and their unions? Why does someone like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and other derps like him exist? Patrick Healy and Monica Davey of the New York Times tell us in their article, “Behind Scott Walker, a Longstanding Conservative Alliance Against Unions”.

There is a cadre of conservative businessmen and foundations who have paid for the rise of Walker and other derps to serve their interests. Michael.W. Grebe and the Bradley Foundation support the initiatives, ideas, and financing conservative public intellectuals, bankers and industrialists want implemented.

For example, “While the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation could not endorse candidates outright, it provided more than $2 million in grants to think tanks that implicitly championed Mr. Walker’s small-government platform, and $520,000 to Americans for Prosperity, a national group that held Tea Party rallies at which Mr. Walker spoke. In the months that followed, he would deliver on that promise, breaking Wisconsin’s public employee unions in a bitter battle, surviving a recall effort led by angry Democrats and making his fight the centerpiece of an as-yet-unannounced presidential campaign.”

Here is why Walker scares me more than any other Republican Candidate at the moment. He has put the conservative “less government is better at any cost” agenda into effect and is being rewarded for it. He is being “revered as a leader brave enough to face down unions and their liberal supporters.” In fact, “Scott Walker didn’t have the stature, influence or money to become governor on his own or to end collective bargaining on his own,” said Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O. “All of that flowed from Mike Grebe, the Bradley Foundation and a network of influential conservatives, including the Kochs.”

Mr. Neuenfeldt added: “He wouldn’t be running for president without these people. He would be their guy in Washington.”

He is the derp’s front man much as the character Bob Roberts was in the 1992 movie of the same name. Although Roberts was supported by some vague “Broken Dove” foundation, Walkers support is there for all to see. “The Bradley Foundation gave to Americans for Prosperity but was more integral to generating policy ideas and talking points that were picked up by Wisconsin’s powerful bench of right-wing talk radio hosts. In 2009, the foundation gave a $1 million grant to one of the think tanks, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, to recommend policy ideas for the next governor. It also backed the MacIver Institute, providing one-third of its budget.

Both think tanks proposed dozens of small-government policies, and at the top of their lists was curbing the power of the public employee unions.” “Koch Industries donated $43,000 to Mr. Walker’s 2010 bid.” He also received their support to defeat a 2012 recall and then get reelected in 2014. No surprise that, “David Koch offered an opinion at a recent private gathering that Mr. Walker was the favorite for the Republican nomination. And Mr. Walker’s old allies are hungry once more for a leader who will go to extremes, this time as president.” Or, as Grebe said in a recent video, “We believe that through that collaboration, together we can help change the world.”

I would translate that to mean, “conspire to make the US less equitable” one derp at a time. Mr. Walker is their Republican “candiderp” for President.

https://dcgmentor.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/scott-walker-is-the-leading-republican-derp/

Backfilling Hurts Charter Brands

Despite large numbers of unsuspecting parents clamoring to get their child into one of Litte Eva's hell schools in NYC, many empty seats remain.  Why? 

Bringing in new kids after low performers have been ridden out can hurt the brand.  And with hundreds of million$ at stake, we know the brand is sacred. 

A chart from WaPo showing the dwindling numbers between grades 3 and 8 at Succs Academy:

"I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords."

Remember the Simpsons, 1994, "Deep Space Homer"? A radio announcer thinks the Earth is going to be taken over by giant space ants and says: “One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”

United Opt Out did not welcome the common core overlords but launched a counterattack. And it is working.

unitedoptout.com

Testing Fever in the UK

Michael Rosen published an open letter to Nicky Morgan, UK Education Secretary in the Guardian:

Dear Ms Morgan: this isn’t education, it’s testing, testing, testing

Some quotes:

"A secondary pupil in year 9 can expect to be doing a sit-down test at the rate of one a week for a whole year. The system is becoming instruct-and-test over smaller and smaller time spans."

"At the very moment when the human condition is at its most curious, when the environment we adults construct can as easily foster that curiosity as slap it down, you are guaranteeing that many parents will focus on thinking that education is about doing tests."

"I can’t stop myself from imagining how a government could divert the time, effort and money being devoted to testing four-, five- and six-year-olds into the support of their reading through school libraries, local libraries and paid, trained librarians."

 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/02/nicky-morgan-letter-not-education-but-testing

Christie's Educationgate

Governor Chris Christie is trying to put the final nail in the coffin of New Jersey's public schools. It's time for an investigation into what's going on in Trenton and follow the money. Educationgate isn't far behind Bridegate. We can only hope. While everyone is up in arms over the great sucking sound that is TPP, few having been paying attention to the great sucking sound as money is siphoned away from public schools crumbling under the weight of punitive testing and accountability. Christie should be brought to justice for his latest move to starve public education and the poorest and most vulnerable children in his state. The pot is boiling and the frogs are jumping. Expect more damage to New Jersey while this failed governor wreaks more havoc.  GOVERNOR CHRISTIE WANTS TO HOLD CHARTERS HARMLESS, BUT NOT DISTRICT SCHOOLS According to the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services (OLS), Governor Chris Christie is asking the Legislature to hold charter schools harmless from the negative impact of his proposal to flat fund public education in FY16. This budgetary maneuver, if approved, will mean 83 school districts must send an extra $37.5 million to charter schools across the state. Under the Governor's proposal, charter schools would be funded at the 2016 or 2014 per pupil level, whichever is highest, plus enrollment growth over 2015. This change guarantees charters at least as much per-pupil funding as they had two years ago plus enrollment growth, even though district budgets are frozen at last year's level with no increase to cover higher costs, new mandates or more students. In nine districts, this change results in a loss of over $500,000 from their budgets. The Newark district must pay out a staggering $25 million more to hold charters harmless, or 66.5% of the statewide total. The proposed extra funding to Newark's charters is a major factor in the $40 million shortfall in the operating budgets of the 56 district-operated schools. The analysis of the Governor's proposal was performed by OLS in its April 2015 review of the NJ Department of Education's spending plan in the Administration's recommended FY16 State Budget. [See page 23 of the OLS Analysis of the New Jersey Budget: Department of Education.] Under the Charter School Program Act (Act), districts must transfer funding to charter schools in an amount equal to 90% of the sum of the district's prior year local revenue and projected year state aid, divided by the district's weighted enrollment to account for the additional costs of educating at-risk students and English language learners (ELL). The Governor is projecting no increase in state aid for districts, even for increasing enrollments. Many districts will have less funding on a per pupil basis than in prior years, resulting in less per pupil funding for charters if calculated under the Act's formula. To hold charters harmless from the impact of flat state aid, the Governor wants the Legislature to change the Act's formula for calculating district payments from projected year state aid to either the projected year or the 2014 aid level, whichever provides the higher per pupil amount. District budgets are reeling under the Governor's staunch opposition to any aid increase in 2015-16, the seventh straight year of flat or reduced funding under the School Funding Reform Act, New Jersey's weighted funding formula. Those high poverty districts most impacted by holding charters harmless - Newark, Trenton, Paterson, Camden and others - are all bracing for another round of deep cuts in teachers, support staff and other essential resources in schools operated by the districts. "The Governor's charter hold harmless is a double whammy for students in district-run schools, especially those in Newark," said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director. "The Governor provides no funding increase to support the education of district students, but then instructs districts to transfer more of their limited funds to charters to make sure they don't suffer the same cuts districts are now implementing in their schools." "It is patently unfair to protect charter school budgets while hurting students in district schools," he added. "The solution is for the Legislature to reject the Governor's hold harmless proposal and instead increase state school aid for all students in 2015-16. Legislators must meet the needs of students in all public schools, whether operated by districts or chartered by the State." Education Law Center Press Contact: Sharon Krengel Policy and Outreach Director skrengel@edlawcenter.org 973-624-1815, x 24         www.edlawcenter.org | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 2015 Education Law Center. All Rights Reserved. To unsubscribe from future mailings click here.

 

 

 

 

 

Sharon Krengel

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Education Law Center

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973-624-1815, x24

973-624-7339 (fax)

skrengel@edlawcenter.org

www.edlawcenter.org

Who are the education assassins?

SUSAN OHANIAN'S POWERFUL LETTER TO THE NY TIMES:

The headline of Frank Bruni's column ( The Education Assassins: May 31, 2015) is an attention-grabber, but plenty of people who work in public education will tell you that the real assassins of public ed can be found within the US Department of Education and their foundation allies, people who wouldn't last ten minutes in the reality of being shut up in a classroom with 28 seventh graders.

It is past time for the merry band of commentators at the New York Times to acknowledge that the huge disagreement with the US Department of Education policy and practice comes not from those folk Bruni terms "excessively alarmed conservatives" but from public school teachers and researchers who join with worried parents of all ideological persuasions.

As New York Times reporters continue to document public rejection of the Common Core, editorial support won't be enough to save it.

—    Susan Ohanian

Posted at http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1785