That's My Congressman

Congressman Smith gives internet search companies hell for their complicity in the imprisonment and torture of Chinese dissidents. From the Times piece:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — In a crowded House hearing room, Representative Christopher Smith, Republican of New Jersey, unleashed a scathing condemnation of four American Internet and technology companies — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco — for a "sickening collaboration" with the Chinese government and for "decapitating the voice of the dissidents" there. . .

Now, if he would provide a similar lambasting to Verizon, Sprint, etc. for their complicity in the illegal U.S. Government spying on American citizens.

Let's Hear It for Reality-Based Science

Here is a clip from the Times story today that could signal the extinction of Intelligent Design (in the schools) as we know it. Of course, this will not stop those who would seem to require a factual basis for their religious faith, thus requiring no faith at all. They'll be back.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 14 — The Ohio Board of Education voted 11 to 4 Tuesday to toss out a mandate that 10th-grade biology classes include critical analysis of evolution and an accompanying model lesson plan, dealing the intelligent design movement its second serious defeat in two months.

No thanks, in 40 Minutes!

From:	USAT ED Forum
To:	vze754n
Date:	Tue Feb 14, 2006 11:35:29 AM EST
Subject:	RE: op-ed submission

Thanks for your submission, but we'll decline. From: vze754n [mailto:ontogeny1@verizon.net] Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 11:08 AM To: USAT ED Forum Subject: op-ed submission Editors: Please consider the remarks below for inclusion on your op-ed pages. Thank you. James Horn, PhD Spring Lake Heights, NJ 07762 Teacher Education for Democracy Every year about this time, for a month or so at least, we commemorate the struggles for freedom, social justice, and peace that were embodied in the short, remarkable life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who have fought to realize the ideals of equality on which the Republic was founded. They are the politics expressed by Dr. King, himself, when he said “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” They are the same politics celebrated most recently by those attending the memorial service for Dr. King’s late widow who, as Rev. Lowery reminded us, “opposed discrimination based on race—she frowned on homophobia and gender bias.” They are the same politics urged by President Clinton, when he made this challenge to all of us: “You want to treat our friend Coretta like a role model? Then model her behavior.” They are the same politics that, unfortunately, are now scrutinized and savaged by the representatives of a radical minority of educational fundamentalists. These neo-conservative critics have gone on the attack against the professional preparation programs for teachers that make dispositions toward social justice and equity central components in assessing the fitness of their teacher candidates to teach in the classrooms of America. These radical critics see no place in the university classroom for preparing teachers who share the values of Dr. King, or any of those, both Republican and Democrat, who rose at Coretta Scott King’s memorial to remind us of the Kings’ unfinished legacy of non-violent resistance to bigotry and oppression. The political logic of the new critics reflects some very old sentiments that most of us, fortunately, have chosen to leave behind. In sacrificing the goal of social justice in favor of a feigned political neutrality, it no longer matters if Johnny’s teacher embraces the values of skinheads or Klansmen, just as long as she is able to get Johnny a passing grade on his proficiency exam or his AP test. Nor does it matter, in this twisted logic that makes the promotion of democracy a partisan issue, if Johnny’s teacher rejects the values expressed in our Constitution or Declaration of Independence, just as long as he gets Johnny interested in contributing to an economic future that includes, by the way, the planned oversupply of engineers and scientists. While fitting these blinders onto teacher educators, teachers, and American children may serve those who wish to conflate political freedom, moral freedom, aesthetic freedom, religious freedom, cultural freedom, and intellectual freedom into a selective and self-serving version of economic freedom, such a plan will never work to engender a free and responsible citizenry capable of sustaining the continuing struggle for a true democratic republic, one that places human rights and civil rights at the forefront of all societal decision-making. Although I would argue that every human is born with a preference for autonomy and liberty rather than for repression and enslavement, that preference, however, only becomes a true ethical value through modeled teaching, plenty of practice, and professional guidance in that practice. The intellectual chain gangs envisioned by those focused solely on the economic future are not intended to provide that teaching, practice, and guidance. What the social antiquarians and the new wave of neo-empiricists disingenuously argue is that we, as a nation, must choose between a narrow intellectual competence for economic competitiveness and a broad social consciousness for cultural understanding. I believe that most Americans view this either-or proposition as the divisive and false dichotomy that it is, and if given the choice, they will choose to re-invigorate their public schools toward all these important purposes for all of our people. Jim Horn

How Many Dinosaurs Does it Take to Fill an Ark?

Former teacher, Ken Ham, has a religious road show that is touring the country confusing children along the way about religion and science. Example: How did Noah get all those dinosaurs onto the Ark? Easy--he chose baby dinosaurs. These and other creationist science facts can be found in this story, reprinted from the Times.

In the meantime, back in the real world, developments are moving quickly, it seems, against the intelligent design folks. This story in today's Times about developments in Ohio:

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 13 — A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for "critical analysis" in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.

A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge's ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

A small rural school district in California last month quickly scuttled plans for a philosophy elective on intelligent design after being challenged by lawyers involved in the Pennsylvania case. Also last month, an Indiana lawmaker who said in November that he would introduce legislation to mandate teaching of intelligent design instead offered a watered-down bill requiring only "accuracy in textbooks." And just last week, two Democrats in Wisconsin proposed a ban on schools' teaching intelligent design as science, the first such proposal in the country. . .

.

Government by BushCo.

In New Orleans, homeless Katrina victims look desperately for a place to live on the day of hotel eviction. (Photo NY Times)







In Hope, Arkansas, 10,000 new FEMA trailers worth $360 million sit with no occupants.








Story in The Boston Globe.

From the Heartland

What a way to launch a column! By Bill Horne, no relation, in the Times-Gazette of Hillsboro, Ohio:

Go, Bill!

Government tries to kill public education
Folks, I would like to share some thoughts with you on education. Probably each of the following problems or areas deserves its own attention, but let’s touch on a number of issues first.

Recently, “The Orchard Group,” did a poll of 4,000 teachers and school administrators. One of the results of the poll was that 75 percent of our educators believe that the Ohio Legislature is trying to dismantle public education.

I have felt that our government has been trying to kill public education for several years. One of the reasons that I agreed to write this weekly column was so that issues like this could be given open public debate.

Twice each week, I have the opportunity to teach a class that is comprised of mostly post-secondary students. Post-secondary students are students that have chosen to attend college classes before they have graduated from high school. This is a fun class to teach because, by and large, the students are intelligent and self-motivated.

Recently, I asked these students this question: “What do you think is wrong with public education?”

They came up with several issues; but the No. 1 issue, and there was consensus on this, is that teachers cannot have fun in the classroom anymore. Teachers are now required to teach the test.

We used to say that teachers were forced to teach “to the test” but now students tell me that teachers are actually teaching “the test.” So, my next question became, “If the teachers aren’t having fun, are the students still having fun?”

The answer is: No, they are not having fun. And, these students also stated that many things that were fun outside the classroom are being taken away. Fun things that taught these students social skills and teamwork skills like art, music, theater, and sports, are being eliminated one by one.

We need to take a new look at our state-testing program. The testing, as it is designed now, is not achieving the results that were originally expected. These state tests are framed to pass a certain number of students and to fail a certain number of students. Any teacher will tell you that tests can be designed that will pass most students or fail most students. Tests should be able to measure learning or predict success. The tests we are using now don’t accomplish either of the above.

Folks, when I was in the seventh and eighth grades, and yes I know that was some time ago, both grades were in the same room. Not only that but all subjects were taught by the same teacher. This teacher also performed the duties of the principal. The school, by the way, was Concord Local in Sugar Tree Ridge.

The point that I want to make is that the principal would go out of his way to stop at the Hillsboro Library and check out books for each of us to read. Each one of us was on our own learning program as well as the required learning program.

Today, the state seems to have placed all students on a one-size-fits-all education system. Is it really important that we all know exactly the same things? And worse yet, is it really important that all don’t know the exact same things?

The other topic that deserves immediate public attention is school funding. Our current funding system does not allow the children from low tax base districts to have the educational opportunities that children from high tax base districts have.

Some of our local school districts have recently had to lay off personnel. And several have had to go to a pay to play system for extracurricular activities such as sports. The area that is one of my major concerns is that when hiring new teachers many local schools have to look at only the teacher that they can hire the cheapest and not necessarily the best. Hiring the cheapest generally means they are new to teaching and may or may not be a good teacher.

The privately owned charter school system is another issue that needs the “light of day.” These private “for profit” schools are now sucking between $400 million and $500 million of tax money away from the public schools and much of this money, our tax money, finds its way into the owners’ pockets.

Except for a small handful, these private charter schools are doing a horrible job of educating. I believe that we cannot call what they are doing education. It is purely a money grab and it is our tax money that they are grabbing.

I understand, and this is strictly hearsay, that we, here in Ohio, did not get the new Toyota manufacturing plant because we don’t have an educated workforce.

The institution of public education began years ago. There are some philosophers who think an institution, like public education, should be rebuilt or restructured to fit the needs of each new generation.

Folks, it is time to rebuild our education systems to fit the needs of the next generation. Pouring money into the pockets of profiteers whose interest is in making money, not education, and adding more and more tests and testing, and taking the fun out of learning is not getting the job done.

We need to take a fresh look at public education and we need to do it quickly. I am seriously concerned that we are failing a whole generation of students with our greed imposed testing, and our real estate tax school system.

It is not a crime to have fun in the learning environment. The crime is not serving the needs of our newest generation.

Bill Horne is a professor of economics at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The Times-Gazette.

Racial Profiling With a No. 2 Pencil

New Jersey uses District Factor Groups (DFG) as a measure of a school district's socio-economic status. DFGs range from A to J, with "A" designated as lowest incomes and "J" as highest incomes.

Here are the latest ASK4 scores for Language, broken out by DFG. Now if there is anyone in America who can look at these scores and talk with a straight face about closing the achievement gap without closing the economic gaps, please step forward so that I can personally kick that part of your anatomy for which your head has no place being.

DFG Benchmarks for ASK4--Language

DFG	% Partial	% Proficient	% Advanced
A (poorest	34.8	63.9	1.2
B	27.0	71.1	1.8
CD	22.2	75.5	2.2
DE	15.8	80.6	3.6
FG	13.4	82.5	4.1
GH	11.6	82.7	5.7
I	7.9	83.3	8.8
J (wealthiest)	6.1	84.6	9.3

All the threatening and all the testing and all the phony rhetoric and wishful thinking will not change this fact, which most of us are still unwilling to acknowledge, even as we push for more and more draconian teaching models for children who have already been dehumanized by their "education." In the meantime, our public schools are being shut down and privatized, all because they will never accomplish what no school alone can ever get done.

Pumping Fear to Generate More Corporate Giveaways

We know now that the scam to add new science and math teachers provides a needed diversion for the real purpose behind the American Competitiveness Initiative, which is stated clearly in the recommendations of the scare document, Rising Above the Gathering Storm . . .:

The Research and Experimentation Tax Credit is currently for companies that increase their R&D spending above a predetermined level. To encourage private investment in innovation, this credit, which is scheduled to expire in December, should be made permanent. And Congress and the administration should increase the allowable credit from 20 percent to 40 percent of qualifying R&D investments.

The bottom line, if you will, is to have the Federal government pay for the R & D that corporations are unwilling to pay for, themselves, as long as we the taxpayers will do it for them. That explains, too, why we see almost three times as much money in the 2007 Bush budget for the restoration of the corporate tax credits as we see going for new education initiatives to counter the "gathering storm." This is noted, too, by Allan Sloan in this Newsweek piece:

the vast majority of the money Bush is seeking for it in fiscal 2007—$4.6 billion of the $5.9 billion—is to reinstate the research-and-development corporate-tax credit that expired last year.

What is left over will go into “education initiatives.” Yet as Sloan make clear, this "new investment” is just about half of what will be cut every year for the next five years from education in the form of reduced college tuition assistance. So part of that $12 billion in cuts to student aid will go to fund the "new initiatives." The remainder will be offered for Intel and Dupont R &D.

And what we now know, too, despite what is said by chief ED spinner, Margaret Spellings, the reduced subsidy to banks and other loan companies is made up for handsomely by increasing the interest rates and increasing the amount that students can borrow. And borrow they must, since tuition costs have increased by 35-60% over the past five years, while Pell Grant amounts have remained flat. Remember that Boehner would never allow any ed policy change that could bring harm to his patron, Sallie Mae.

Test Prep for the Test Prep

Disagreement abounds on the reasons that children and parents aren't signing up for more of the same mindless junk school that they have to contend with all day every day in the chain gang schools of urban America. The only beneficiaries of this big supplemental services giveaway (over $1 billion a year) are the private tutoring companies such as Kaplan whose lobbyists made sure they got a big chunk of the action in the current scam of NCLB to end public education and to put the poor children of America in intellectual straightjackets. Here is a clip from the Times piece on this phase of the crook and crony show that is masked as compassionate conservativism:

City and state education officials and tutoring company executives disagree on the reasons for the low participation and cast blame on each other. But they agree that the numbers show that states and school districts have not smoothed out the difficulties that have plagued the tutoring — known as the supplemental educational services program — from its start as a novel experiment in educational entrepreneurship: largely private tutoring paid for with federal money.

Officials give multiple reasons for the problems: that the program is allotted too little federal money, is poorly advertised to parents, has too much complicated paperwork for signing up, and that it has not fully penetrated the most difficult neighborhoods, where there are high concentrations of poor, failing students.

The Last Shall Be First

Here is a clip from a piece by high school teacher, Stan Karp:

Currently, the No Child Left Behind Act has schools across the country reeling as its impact unfolds in numbing bureaucratic detail. As many as 80 percent of the nation's public schools may find themselves labeled as schools "needing improvement," on the narrow basis of annual test scores and unreachable performance targets. The scheme uses achievement gaps among up to 10 different groups of students to label schools as "failures," without providing the resources or support needed to eliminate them. It includes an unfunded mandate that by 2014, 100 percent of all students, including special education students and English-language learners, must be proficient on state tests. Schools that do not reach increasingly unattainable test score targets face an escalating series of sanctions up to and including possible closure and the imposition of private management on public schools.

Instead of an appropriate educational strategy, NCLB's test and punish formula is part of a calculated political campaign to leave schools and children behind as the federal government retreats from the nation's historic commitment to improving universal public schooling for all children. The sanctions that NCLB imposes have no record of success as school improvement strategies, and in fact are not educational strategies at all. They are political strategies designed to bring a kind of market reform to public education. They will do little to address the pressing needs of public schools but they will create a widespread perception of systemic failure, demoralize teachers and school communities, and erode the common ground that a universal system of public education needs to survive. The privatization agenda in NCLB is reflected most clearly in its provisions for school transfers and supplemental services. (A straightforward voucher program was taken out of the original proposal as part of the legislative compromise that got it passed, though the administration continues to pursue vouchers through separate means.) Instead, NCLB has provisions that require a district to spend up to 20 percent of its federal funds to support transfers from failing schools to schools that meet their AYP targets or that don't receive Title I funds.

Now have a look at this piece from today's Washington Post that serves as a case study for what Karp has described above. Here is a clip:

It has been eight years since Maryland told the Prince George's County school to shape up, or else. It has been four years since the federal government raised the pressure with a law meant to force shake-ups through aid and sanctions.

Yet Charles Carroll Middle School has continued to fall short of state standards, even though the county has switched textbooks, changed principals three times and even assigned a "turnaround specialist."

So far, actions and threats have been fruitless. The school, for a second straight year, is at the final stage of a state "needs improvement" list. It will stay there at least one more year. State officials call this stage "the deep end."

Earlier than D.C., Virginia and most other states, Maryland faces a question posed by the No Child Left Behind law: What happens when a school reaches the end of the line?

Last week, the Bush administration offered one answer. It proposed $100 million to help parents with children in last-stage public schools move them to private schools or obtain tutoring. The proposal riled school-voucher opponents but underscored the issue's growing urgency.