Tennessee Taliban Challenges Rights of UT Students to Discuss Sex

From Huffington Post:

Tennessee lawmakers advanced legislation this week officially condemning a group of students for holding a "Sex Week" event on campus.

A resolution with 29 co-sponsors currently moving through the Tennessee House of Representatives will do nothing to stop "Sex Week" from taking place at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Instead, it declares the event "an outrageous misuse of student fees and grant monies," and says that it "fits nowhere within the mission" of the university, "nor should it ever."

The bill originally condemned the school's administration, which is not involved in the event. An amendment changed it to focus on "the organizers," which is to say, a group of students. The resolution passed a committee vote Wednesday and is scheduled for a full House vote next week.

"If those people who organize this thing want to have it, hey, let them get off campus," state Rep. Richard Floyd (R-Chattanooga), the primary sponsor of the resolution, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "They can go out there in a field full of sheep if they want to and have all the Sex Week they want." . . . 

Political Cowards Blaming Parents for School Closures

Tomorrow evening the titans of King Cotton in Memphis will decide the next round of public school turnovers to the corporate welfare kings and queens lined up at the public feeding trough.

Superintendent Dorsey Hopson is correct about one thing: closing these schools is not about saving money. If it were, he would be hard pressed to explain the economics of handing over $7500 per child to corporate charter operators hand selected by the "Achievement" School District, which is headed by a former corporate charter kingpin.  See this earlier piece on how the charter takeover cycle works.

For that $7500 per child, the County gets a culturally sterilized child who is taught to answer "how high" when told to jump by white corporate missionary girls from TFA or or MTR who are placed in positions once occupied by teachers.

If anyone were to believe Mr. Hopson on any of his other points, they would have concede that it is the parents'  fault that these poverty-wracked and malignantly neglected public schools should be closed. In fact, Hopson takes this own irresponsibility one step further by making his closure choices contingent upon whether parents have submitted an improvement plan to keep them open:

“The problem is that the population in these communities does not support the schools,” Hopson said. “Again, neither of these proposals addresses the declining population.”

Really? Community schools should be decimated because parents working two minimum wage jobs cannot put together a school plan that can stand up under the scrutiny of lawyers and economists and greedy charter operators?

This rationale ranks right up there near the pinnacle of all time political cowardice, and those who show up tomorrow evening should be taking close notes who not to vote for in the next round of elections.

Shelby County has a chance to do something to address educational inequality and segregation as it redraws boundaries examines its option, but instead of using proven methods to make schools attractive so that parents will come back to them, Mr. Hopson and his handlers have a corporate apartheid solution in mind that destroys the profession of teaching and the art and science of education.

Meanwhile, those claiming that education in Memphis is the civil rights issue of this generation are working overtime behind the scenes to institute the the kind of Jim Crow schooling that Memphis children have not seen for a half century.

Be at the School Board Meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 5:30.  160 South Hollywood.

Please take a closer look at the Common Core

Sent to the School Library Journal 2/23


Librarians may be "findings aspects of the common core to celebrate"("What's happening at the core," Feb. 2014), but they are ignoring very serious problems. 

The standards might look like look like they involve "deeper levels of critical thinking" but they are completely untested. There were no pilot studies. The language arts standards force students to deal with demanding nonfiction texts in order to promote earlier mastery of "academic language," but there is no evidence that making reading harder produces better results. There is, however, plenty of evidence that the route to academic language includes a great deal of self-selected, recreational reading, which is now nearly impossible to include in the current version of the Common Core.

The common core demands an astonishing amount of standardized testing. The US Department of Education asserts that we will have testing at all grade levels, all subjects, interim tests, and maybe even pre-tests in the fall to be able to measure improvement through the academic year. The tests will be administered online, an untested plan that will cost billions, and that will demand more and more taxpayer money as today's equipment becomes obsolete, and as new "advances" in technology are developed, draining money from projects and approaches shown to help students, including libraries.

When the new system fails to produce results, teachers will be blamed, and there will be calls for more "rigor" and more testing.

The Common Core, a product of the business world, not professional educators, is an extreme and misguided proposal. I hope the SLJ and librarians will take a harder look. 

Stephen Krashen


Sources:

The route to academic language: Krashen, S. (2004).  The power of reading.  Portsmouth: Heinemann and Westport: Libraries Unlimited. Krashen, S. (2012). Developing academic proficiency: Some hypotheses. International Journal of Foreign Langauge Teaching, (2): 8-15. (available at ijflt.com) 

Free reading nearly impossible: Krashen, S. 2013. Access to books and time to read versus the common core standards and tests.  English Journal 103(2): 21-39.

Amount of testing: Krashen, S. (20130> How Much Testing?” Diane Ravitch’s Blog
(July 25).

Cost of the testing:  Krashen, S. and Ohanian, S. (2011). High tech testing on the way: A 21st century boondoggle?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/ /2011/04/high_tech_testing_on_the_way_a.html.

Libraries: Krashen, S., Lee, S.Y. and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is the library important? Multivariate studies at the national and international level. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 8(1): 26-36.

Colonial Philadelphia, or Colonized?

from Ken Derstine:

Is the School District of Philadelphia a colony of the state of Pennsylvania?

by Ken Derstine

February 20, 2014

Parents of Philadelphia students and prospective students should know their right to choose a school for their children is under attack. Several weeks ago the SRC held round table discussions about Universal Enrollment. Participants were asked their opinion about a system where parents would go to a central location when they wanted to choose a school. Parents would be directed to a few selections that an administrator pointed them towards. At the meeting and in the posted notes about this meeting, there was overwhelming opposition to having a Universal Enrollment system.

When the expansion of charters began over the last ten years they were touted as giving parents choice. Universal Enrollment does the opposite. It takes away choice and gives the choice to a bureaucrat in an office who does not even know the child but is looking at a spreadsheet. The overriding concern is not the interest of the child, but the demand of the market, whether this be a traditional, charter, or parochial school.

We are told that we are now in the “listening phase” of implementation of Universal Enrollment. First of all, at the beginning of September, 2013, it was already announced by Mr. Mark Gleason of the Philadelphia School Partnership, the corporate group brought to Philadelphia by “philanthropies” to oversee privatization of public schools, in testimony before City Council, that plans for Universal Enrollment have been made. So this meeting a few weeks ago was just an attempt to sell to parents on what has already been decided by the SRC. In Newark, New Jersey corporate education reformers are already farther along with the same Universal Enrollment plan and it is one of the issues that parents have been opposing which led to the arrest of a parent leader who tried to post flyers opposing the turning of community schools into charters. The administration of Superintendent Cami Anderson has said that the public will not even be told the computer algorithm which is being used to place the children.

We have been through the listening phase before. At the beginning of last year, Dr. Hite and SRC members held community meetings about the proposed closing of schools. For hours, students, parents and teachers lined up to plead for their schools. When the vote was finally taken on March 7th, it was clear that the decision had been made to close most of the schools before there were any community meetings and 24 schools were closed in June. These meetings were little more than a facade of democracy and now the same method is repeated with Universal Enrollment. It is clear that despite community opposition the community will be ignored.

Ever since the state takeover the of the Philadelphia School District in 2001 there has been an ever increasing colonization of the School District by the state. The community has been systematically excluded from decisions about schools and treated as little more than customers and the students as products. Like a medieval village under siege, the School District has been invaded by outside corporate interests and gradually starved of resources even as charter schools are expanded. A few weeks ago the High School for Creative and Performing Arts announced that they may not be able to put on the Spring Show again this year, like they were not able to last year, because they were short of funds. In one day, the community raised $10,000 so they could have their Spring Show this year.

At the same time, the Performing Arts Charter School, a high school of the String Theory charter chain,  was running full page color ads in community newspapers encouraging high school students to enroll in their school in September. There is obviously no shortage of funds there. This school is part of a 2012 $2 million grant for the charter chain from the Philadelphia School Partnership. Traditional schools cannot run ads because they do not have the funds. Teachers must spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars to have the supplies they need to give their students a bare bones education.

Traditional schools have 14 librarians in the entire District. Nursing has been cut in half so most schools have a nurse one or two times a week. High schools with 3000 students have two full time counselors so students must wait weeks to get help with college applications. Yet at the same time we see ads for charters boasting that that have nurses and counselors every day and fully staffed and supplied libraries. 

In August, right before the opening of schools, when the School District was in crisis with the layoff of over 3800 employees, the federal government advanced $45 million to ease the crisis. Governor Corbett held this money up in an attempt to pressure the teachers into making concessions. He only relented after the outcry after the death of student Laporsha Massey which may have been caused by the lack of a nurse in the school who would have recognized the asthma symptoms and would have told the parents to get Laporsha to the hospital or called 911 herself. This holding up of funds for the education of thousands of children for a political agenda is more serious than the trouble New Jersey Governor Christie is in for holding up traffic on the George Washington Bridge for a political vendetta.

It is ironic that this colonization of our School District is happening in the city where, a little more than 237 years ago, the American colonies declared their independence from England. This document has been an inspiration to democratic movements all over the world ever since.

We are very familiar with its opening sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But do we know the rest?

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is time that Philadelphia schools be returned to the people of Philadelphia. We do not consent to the privatization of our public schools! We need an elected school board with taxing powers so we can fix the schools for our children and the future of our city. 

A few weeks ago in the Washington Post, James Meredith, the Civil Rights pioneer who risked life and limb to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 issued an ‘American Child’s Education Bill of Rights’. His reason for issuing this document? He said,

We are losing millions of our children to inferior schools and catastrophically misguided and ineffective so-called education reforms. Our schools are being destroyed by politics, profit, greed and lies. Instead of evidence-based practices, money has become the engine of education policy, and our schools are being hijacked by politicians, non-educators and for-profit operators. Parents, teachers, citizens and community elders must arm ourselves with the best evidence and take back control of our children’s public education before it is too late. We all must work together to improve our public schools, not on the basis of profit or politics, but on the basis of evidence, and on the basis of love for America’s children.

Tony Bennett's Chewytrain Lands in Camden

by Doug Martin

One of the most embarrassing moments of Tony Bennett’s rein as Indiana’s corporate school chief (and there were many) was when his partner Dale Chu (better known as @chewytrain), happy as a teenage girl at a Jonas Brothers' concert (one of the Jonas Brothers, by the way, loves to perform at for-profit school Rocketship events), tweeted his admiration of the filthy rich out to privatize education at a Jeb Bush/Rupert Murdoch shindig in San Francisco.

The Ivy Leaguer and former charter school principal who resigned with Bennett in Florida after it was revealed that Bennett changed the grade of a donor’s charter school in Indiana, Chu is at it again, this time in Camden, New Jersey, where the corporate school takeover has been in full swing, as Jersey Jazzman has detailed, since Chris Christie, a former Edison Schools lobbyist, and Chris Cerf, Tony Bennett’s con man at Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, has made it an agenda.

In fact, there is a possible investigation brewing in nearby Newark, thanks to Christie and Cory Booker, the former corporate Democratic mayor and waterboy for Walmart and the Bradley Foundation's Black Alliance for Educational Options.  

Chu is now pulling in $160,000 ($10,000 more than he made in Florida) as the project director of the Camden City Schools  (page 83 in PDF box) where he’s doing “teacher talks” this month because, according to Chu, only three high school students in the entire city of Camden are college-ready. 

So that Jeb Bush would know about this Camden student "failure," Chu tagged him in one of his tweets.  As I recently mentioned to the good folks in Clay County Indiana, Jeb Bush was really the Indiana supt. of education when Chu was here, inviting friends at Charter Schools USA and Edison Learning to take over so-called "failing" schools and lobbying for online learning outfits like Pearson’s Connections Academy which invaded a community-led rural charter school to rake in millions.

As Rutgers professor Stephen Danley has pointed out, Camden "parents and residents must choose between crumbling district schools and shiny charter schools" in "a manufactured crisis caused by the refusal to fund repairs of district buildings."

Chu must be happy.  The powers-that-be in the Christie/Jeb Bush clan have at least opened up the bridge for Chewytrain to come, cash in, and weep in admiration of the 1 percent again.

Our focus should be on protecting children from the impact of poverty.

Published in the Wall Street Journal, February 21.
Response to: "A progressive education" (Editorial, Feb. 14)
Your editorial sends the message that our public schools are failing. They aren't. When researchers control for the effects of poverty, American schools rank near the top of the world. Our overall scores are unspectacular because the child poverty rate in the U.S. is very high, 23%, second-highest among all economically advanced countries. Children of poverty suffer from hunger, malnutrition, inferior health care and lack of access to books. All of these have a powerful impact on school performance. The best teaching in the world won't help when children are hungry, ill and have little or nothing to read.
Our focus should be on protecting children from the impact of poverty.
Prof. Em. Stephen Krashen

Students of Democracy in Colorado and Around the World: Two Videos

Parthenon Group Advises Schools, Education Industry, and Investors: How Could They Ever Lose?

The billions of ready cash from No Child Left Behind provided a dollar-powered incubator for the birth of the modern day education industry.  State and local education agencies in search of quick solutions to meet NCLB’s impossible demands desperately turned to business solutions, ranging from direct instruction products to more expansive plans for corporatization of schools and school governance.  NCLB’s focused control mechanism built on collection of test data and a primitive fear-based accountability provided a model for expansion of the education industry into higher education. 

When combined with the ideological incentives to gain control of unions, re-position the teaching profession within corporate boundaries, and establish total social control over poor and minority populations, the profit possibilities triggered by NCLB gained traction like never before in American education. 

With $700 billion at stake each year in education spending, schooling has become big, big business, a fact that has made corporate control at the federal and state levels paramount in order to keep the revenue streams running.   Among the most well-positioned and fattest parasites among a new consultant species is the Parthenon Group.  Rob Lytle heads its “Education Practice,” which is strategically burrowed into a corporate governing bureaucracy that advises large swaths of K-22 educational institutions, both public and private.

What makes Parthenon’s position most interesting, however, is the fact that Lytle and the jackals under his watch take the information gleaned from advising schools and colleges in how to establish new techno-efficiencies to then create flashy powerpoints to share with hedge fund gangsters, ed industry profiteers, and venture philanthropists looking to steer public policy while collecting huge tax breaks to do so.

Here is what Lytle told a group of investors in Manhattan in 2012 about the coming bonanza from Common Core:

Think about the upcoming rollout  of new national academic standards for public  schools. . . . If they’re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number  of schools  will suddenly  look really bad,  their  students testing  way behind in reading and math.  They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson  plans,  educational software  and  student assessments  will be right  there to provide  it. . . You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up. It could get really, really big.

In 2009, Lytle declared in another powerpoint aimed at higher ed investors looking to make a killing in the online business that “all students are not equal—some are more profitable than others.”

And just yesterday, Lytle was in DC at the Education Industry Days Summit with another powerpoint, “Parthenon Perspectives: What is Next in K-12 - Digital is Coming!” 

How do we know “digital is coming?”  Because Lytle has been manufacturing opinion that says so.  Here is his slide to prove that "district decision makers" prefer technology over decreasing class size:

No doubt Lytle has another presentation that he uses with school officials that says that "increased technology use" has been shown in research studies by the Gates Foundation to be cost effective in raising scores than lowering class size.