Unsafe Water in New York Schools

The NYTimes has a disturbing story on how new water tests in New York public schools now shows high levels of lead in the drinking water of many city schools.  

How are the new tests different from the old tests?  Quite simple.  In the old tests, water was allowed to run for two hours before being sampled.  By doing so, most of the lead collected in the pipes was flushed out, and tests came back essentially clean.

So boys and girls of New York, if you need a drink of water without lead, be sure to get a hall pass that allows you to run the fountain for two hours before drinking. 

White Male Protestant Elites Can No Longer Afford Democratic Values

I have believed for some years that the American Republic would be safe only so long as white, male Protestant elites continued to believe they had enough influence and support to win elections.  

During the 2016 presidential campaign, authoritarian intellectual, Michael Anton concluded in a widely-read essay that immigration policy, changing demographics, and majority American values have made it clear that white conservatives can no longer afford to lose an election.  From New York Magazine:

The most intellectually important essay of the 2016 election cycle, and possibly of the whole political era that has begun, is “The Flight 93 Election.” Its previously anonymous author turns out to be former Bush administration speechwriter Michael Anton, reports Michael Warren. Anton is now working as a senior national security official in the Trump administration. Anton’s role in the administration lends his signature essay all the more importance as a statement of Trumpism. The essay has many interesting aspects, which made it the subject of fervent debate during the election. But its most notable characteristic is its almost textbook justification for authoritarianism. 

The premise of democracy is that — unlike dictatorships, in which the winning side gains total and essentially permanent power — the losers can accept defeat, because they know they have a chance to win subsequent elections. Without that predicate in place, the system collapses. Anton’s essay makes the case that conservatives should support Trump because, despite his manifest flaws, they cannot survive a single election defeat.

If white conservatives, white nationalists, and white supremacists no longer have the numbers to win elections, obviously this long-held tradition of American society must be curtailed, discontinued, or controlled.  Sort of like elections are done in Russia, you might say. 

The author of this essay, Michael Anton, is now working for the Trump White House, and he is a chum of Steve (Bad Otis) Bannon.  

Look for voter suppression, deportation, and violence against minorities to become a chief priorities at the federal level.  It just makes sense, you see.

Kelly Ann's Advice: Ignore Trump Lies and They Won't Be Important

Help Wanted, or Will Work of Real Results

I am looking to become aligned with a group, a band, or a cell, of individuals interested in acting to achieve the three goals below by any non-violent means necessary.  

A group of ten souls will constitute a quorum, and upon reaching this number, the group will meet to elect officers, develop by-laws, and priortize a course of action to achieve these goals:

• adequately and fairly funded public schools for every parent who wants them;

• safe public schools administered and staffed by professionally prepared educators and support services professionals who are committed to supportive, challenging, economically-integrated, and humane schools that are open to all;

• curricular, instructional, and assessment methods and content that reflect local values and priorities and that are enacted by elected school boards.

In order to achieve these three goals, basic changes are required as to the present conceptualization, prioritizing, and operations of schools that receive public dollars to operate:

• all charter school expansion will be halted, and existing charter schools, whether non-profit or for-profit, will be closed as public schools re-integrate these students;

• grouping of students in segregated classrooms, whether by ability, ethnicity, religion, sex, or sexual preference, will be discontinued;

• all school voucher programs, regardless of the name used to disguise the intent of such programs to fund private or parochial schools, will be discontinued.

• Standardized assessment of any kind whose results can be identified with individual students or teachers will no longer be required of school personnel or public school students;

• All student educational or demographic data will remain the property of students and parents, and no student data of any kind will be gathered, stored, or shared among private entities, whether corporate or otherwise;

• The use of technological devices and programs in schools will be determined by current pediatric medical standards and social science knowledge bases with regards child physical and mental development, child health, and child learning.

• The National Assessment of Educational Progress will follow the long-ignored recommendations of national testing experts to establish cut scores that reflect realistic expectations and accomplishments by the nation's students.

• All public school employees will be guaranteed representation from collective bargaining units and/or unions, with the stipulation that any such collective bargaining unit will agree to and abide by these principles and goals.

Please contact me at ontogenyx@gmail.com.  Suggested changes are welcomed.

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

…oh, wait, never-mind.

Let's not forget that neoliberal school privatization is a bipartisan project. Both parties fail education.

A natural progression of neoliberalism

• Rod Paige
• Margaret Spellings
• Arne Duncan
• John King
• Betsy DeVos

Not opposing the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda when Democrats were in charge is what led to the DeVos disaster. Not unlike how the Hillary Rodham Clinton camp's "Elevating Pied Piper Candidates" led to the Trump fiasco.

Trump Lies Reach Biblical Proportions

Betsy DeVos, Serial Plagiarizer

In one instance she lifted from ALEC, which is entirely fitting, since ALEC will now be writing Rules and Regs at ED.  

Below is a clip from Dr. Roxani Marachi's blog:

. . . .Senator Murray asks,

“If you claim to support accountability and transparency, why do the model voucher policies from the American Federation for Children that you chaired fail to require students in private schools receiving vouchers to take the same assessments and report the same data as those in public schools?”

DeVos answers:

“The model voucher policies include strong accountability provisions. I’ve included the language below for your review:
(C) Academic Accountability Standards. There must be sufficient information about the academic impact Parental Choice Scholarships have on participating students in order to allow parents and taxpayers to measure the achievements of the program, and therefore:
(1) participating schools shall:
(a) annually administer either the state achievement tests or nationally norm-referenced tests that measure learning gains in math and language arts, and provide for value-added assessment, to all participating students in grades that require testing under the state’s accountability testing laws for public schools;
(b) provide the parents of each student with a copy of the results of the tests on an annual basis, beginning with the first year of testing;
(c) provide the test results to the state or an organization chosen by the state on an annual basis, beginning with the first year of testing;
(d) report student information that would allow the state to aggregate data by grade level, gender, family income level, and race; and
(e) provide rates of high school graduation, college attendance and college graduation for participating students to the Department or an organization chosen by the state in a manner consistent with nationally recognized standards.”

The Senate’s review should note that her response appears to be a near-identical match to language from the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) Parental Choice Scholarship Program 

“(C) Academic Accountability Standards. There must be sufficient information about the academic impact Parental Choice Scholarships have on participating students in order to allow parents and taxpayers to measure the achievements of the program, and therefore:
(1) participating schools shall:
(a) annually administer either the state achievement tests or nationally recognized norm-referenced tests that measure learning gains in math and language arts to all participating students in grades that require testing under the state’s accountability testing laws for public schools;
(b) provide the parents of each student with a copy of the results of the tests on an annual basis, beginning with the first year of testing;
(c) provide the test results to the state or an organization chosen by the state14 on an annual basis, beginning with the first year of testing;
(d) report student information that would allow the state to aggregate data by grade level, gender, family income level, and race; and
(e) provide graduation rates of participating students to the Department or an organization chosen by the state in a manner consistent with nationally recognized standards.” 

The few words indicating any substantive difference are in section “a” where Devos’ response to Murray includes tests that she thinks should provide for value-added assessment.
So, which of the two following situations is more likely?
Situation 1: DeVos lifted the ALEC language and failed to include a citation or link referring to the ALEC specific policy? Such an action would apparently indicate further evidence of plagiarism…
or…

Situation 2: Since Senator Murray’s question refers specifically to model voucher policies from DeVos’ American Federation for Children (see earlier post for AFC involvement in ALEC) then perhaps DeVos had actually authored the policy she wrote about in her response. If this is true, then she would have had a far greater role in shaping ALEC bills than had been indicated in her earlier paperwork. Unfortunately, such a scenario would reveal a glaring omission in her written disclosures of activities within, for, or with the ALEC organization. When prompted to list organizational memberships, her response appears to have been exhaustive, and goes so far as to include three yacht clubs, yet fails to make any mention of ALEC. How would she be held accountable for such an omission if indeed she has participated in ALEC activities? . . .

Anti-DeVos Sentiment Almost Makes Us Forget Dems' Privatization Efforts

Charter schools are not the issue here.  --Senator Al Franken at Betsy DeVos hearing

Indeed, charter schools are not the issue, since Democrats have long supported the billions of federal dollars that Team Obama gave to vastly increase the number of charter schools over the past 8 years.

During the failed Clinton campaign of 2016, NPE, NEA, and AFT were on the hot seat for their candidate's staunch support for even more charters.

Now they have launched campaigns against the nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.  DeVos supports privatization of schools, and she doesn't much care how she does it.  Charter, voucher, private, for-profit charter, non-profit charter--it just doesn't matter--she is on a mission from god, or someone.

NPE, NEA, and AFT, however, have more discriminating tastes when it comes to school privatization. They prefer the non-profit variety, which is to say, the kind that offers the corporate whales big tax breaks for supporting them.

NEA president, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, was on MSNBC last week to make it clear that NEA does not support the for-profit, "unaccountable" kind of charter schools, the ones that drain tax money from public education.

At the same time, she made it clear that NEA supports high-scoring, "innovative," non-profit charter schools that are "accountable" and that do not drain public education dollars.  You know, that "innovative,"segregative, no excuses variety that all the billionaires love.  

It's almost as if Garcia believes that the charters that NEA and AFT prefer do not drain public funds, and that the ones that the ones that Betsy supports do drain public funds.  Sorry Lily, the thousands of public dollars that leave public schools with every charter kid are lost regardless of the profit or non-profit status of the charter reform school.



No doubt, the BATs, NPE, AFT, and NEA have an impressive campaign going against the privatizing DeVos.  Imagine what might have happened if they had put that money and spirit behind quashing the debilitating spread of charter schools for the past 8 years.  If they had, perhaps there would have never been a DeVos nomination.  Or Donald, for that matter.

DeVos Makes Appearance at WH Daily Press Briefing

Why Eli Broad is opposed to Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education

By Tim Scott

Eli Broad’s opposition to Betsy DeVos further exposes the current financialization model of education he and his peers maintain, which is based on funneling public funds to seed and support government protected/regulated (NCLB, RTTT, ESSA, etc) education markets. For insiders like Broad:

(1) A voucher system that funds truly private and dispersed schools is too pure of a market-based model for venture philanthropists like Broad, who seek a cohesive standardized (universal) education system that is about social control as a means to maintain their neoliberal social order. Thus, Broad is fearful of how radical free-market interventions will disrupt current federal/state-finance partnerships where publicly funded charters - with aligned curriculums - are positioned as sites of authoritarian incubators for the tech industry and its function within the larger Internet of Things/Artificial Intelligence surveillance “ecosystem.” Read more here, here and here.

(2) Since Broad’s model currently relies on a social justice marketing narrative that exploits subordinated groups as investment opportunities (Social Impact Bonds, etc), there is also a PR purpose in opposing the Trump administration’s far too explicit white supremacist agenda… at this time. Many Silicon Valley companies are now distancing themselves from this agenda for PR purposes and so they can continue their current labor practices of largely relying on workers with H-1B visas.

I suspect that when DeVos is confirmed, she and her boss will quickly get in line with how things “are supposed to work,” particularly since universal state controlled education systems have always served as a bedrock for nationalism.

Simply, Broad is only seeking to protect a model of education that is in the making – one that is state protected and intended to bolster the supremacy of finance capitalism via highly sophisticated and profitable surveillance technologies – from the irrational far right who promise to destabilize the still fragile seedling markets and infrastructure that he and his ilk are still irrigating.