States Use ESSA to Accelerate Online and Blended Classrooms

When the ESEA was boiled down into a racist states rights version, labeled ESSA, and quickly passed, it was Diane Ravitch and her loyal ghostwriters who hailed the new law as a huge success. 

She even gave Lamar Alexander's office nine (9) separate opportunities to sell the high tech and charter incentive stimulus bill as the greatest federal funding event since 1965, when ESEA was originally passed.

The world found out later, of course, that ESSA had been the preferred deal cut by the Clintons and their corporate funders.  AFT, NEA, FairTest, and NPE had been trotted out to sell it, and sell it they did. 

Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and we hear nothing from Ravitch and the Clintonians about how god-awful this ESSA piece of dreck really is. 

Ravitch and her sheeple are spending all their time jabbing at their DeVos voodoo dolls and poring over their extended blog posts that try as they might to distinguish bad privatization (for profit online charters) from good privatization (nonprofit blended charters).

Will someone ask Ravitch, Monty, Randi, Lily, and the rest of the zombie resistance gang to explain once more why they supported ESSA?  Or the benefits of hooking up children to more alienating and isolating total surveillance computer screens, even as their teachers wander the classroom feeling inadequate, guilty, and cut off from their students? 

New report linked here from Yahoo Finance page on states' plan to expand depersonalized learning through ESSA. 

Even Fox News Can't Take It Anymore

Such is the future of education: On hiring exclusively adjunct faculty

Fictitious letter of recommendation from Julie Schumacher. 2014.  Dear Committee Members: A Novel. p. 77. Anchor Books

Alex Ruefle has prevailed upon me to support his teaching application to your department, which I gather is hiring adjunct faculty members exclusively, bypassing the tenure track with its attendant health benefits, job security, and salaries on which a human being might reasonably live. Perhaps your institution should cut to the chase and put its entire curriculum online, thereby sparing Ruefle the need to move ... You could prop him up in a broom closet in his apartment, poke him with the butt end of a mop when you need him to cough up a lecture on Caribbean fiction or the passive voice, and then charge your students a thousand dollars each to correct the essays their classmates have downloaded from a website. Such is the future of education.

The Dubious Claims by the TN Dept. of Education

Tennessee politicians enjoy a long, sordid history of underfunding public schools, crying about poor education quality, making outrageous demands of students and teachers, and complaining about federal interference while begging for federal grant stashes to keep state school doors open. 

One of those big stashes of federal cash is about to run out in 2019 unless state politicians can gin up a good reason for extending the Gear Up TN, a 7-year grant awarded in 2012 "that aims to expand the college-going culture in Tennessee and empower students to succeed."  

This program, which focuses largely on counseling high school students into college and career fields that fit the needs of corporations receiving huge public incentives to locate in Tennessee, is worth $29,590,281 to state politicians, who, by the way, are unwilling to ask TN's wealthy elites or said corporations to pay a fair share to educate Tennessee children.

And so recently the TN Department of Education (TDOE) manufactured a report that claimed that 30 percent of TN's high school graduates had skirted high school requirements, as established in 2010 by Business Roundtable honchos with the U. S. Diploma Project.  Could this be the reason why so many kids drop out of college, the State asks.  How could this happen! 

According to TDOE, it would seem that quite overnight the State realized that Tennessee school counselor corps falling down on the job, along with administrators and teachers who should act as counselors when counselors can't keep up.  And thank goodness, too, for Gear Up TN.  Where would the state be without it!! 

Obviously, TDOE never guessed that someone might challenge their phony claims that were published in this glossy report.  And as you might guess, TDOE never asked local school boards or superintendents to help verify the shocking statistic that 30 percent of graduates were not taking required courses to graduate.

Well, a local superintendent did challenge the fake numbers and came up with quite a different set of numbers.  The news spread, and now the TDOE phony data has been exposed:

While state officials continue to check districts’ data, it appears that more than 70 percent of what looked like missing requirements were in fact data errors. Thirty percent of the time, students had actually been allowed to graduate without taking required courses — meaning that only about 12 percent of graduates overall had not met requirements.

TN Ed Commish, Candace McQueen, added this bit spin that somehow does not restore confidence:

McQueen said the state is taking several steps. At the top of the list, she said, is working with the companies that manage student information to improve data entry.

Does anyone know which companies she is talking about?  Are these the same companies that produced the Report?  How reliable or secure is this student data?

How embarrassing for Haslam's coterie of dissemblers at TDOE.  How will they now justify another $30 million of Gear Up TN federal welfare grants to fund what fiscal conservatives won't pay, themselves?  Surely, one of the State's contracted data mercenaries can come up with something.

Trump's Fake Media: The Fix Is In

FL KIPP Gets Its Own State Appropriations Bill

KIPP Jacksonville has remained at the bottom of the testing performance barrel since opening at a donated kennel club in 2010.  Despite a brutal "no excuses" regimen with 10-hour days and a medium security penal discipline system that grinds up both teachers and students, KIPP Jacksonville earned another "D" this year in the state assessment system.  

If this KIPP were a public school in Florida with the same performance history, it would have a target on its back for charter conversion.  But since KIPP has already reached the permanent safe harbor protection of the corporate welfare system, Jacksonville elites know the direct route to getting even more money for what doesn't work.  

Thus, one of Jacksonville high rollers has offered a bill written just for this one KIPP, which is expected to sail through the Florida legislature, which guarantees KIPP $1.2 million additional state dollars to fortify the cultural sterilization program that is KIPP's raison d'etre:

The bill, filed by Jacksonville Republican Jason Fischer (a former member of the Duval County School Board), seeks to continue the $1,224,000 appropriation from the previous budget to benefit Jacksonville’s KIPP school.

HB 2787 is well-positioned to succeed: Jacksonville powerbroker Gary Chartrand, a member of the local KIPP school’s Board of Directors, is close with Gov. Scott and is on the State Board of Education. . . .

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.