Remembering Dr. King in the Era of the New Reverend Ikes of the Megachurches

CNN has a story on the new black megachurches built from the "prosperity message." They have no time or place there for Dr. King's message of justice and sacrifice and courage and freedom and peaceful resistance and determination and hope:

. . . . Forty years after his death, King remains a prophet without honor in the institution that nurtured him, some black preachers and scholars say.

They also say King's "prophetic" model of ministry -- one that confronted political and economic institutions of power -- has been sidelined by the prosperity gospel.

Prosperity ministers preach that God rewards the faithful with wealth and spiritual power. Prosperity pastors such as Bishop T.D. Jakes have become the most popular preachers in the black church. They've also become brands. They've built megachurches and business empires with the prosperity message.

Black prophetic pastors rarely fill the pews like other pastors, though, because their message is so inflammatory, says Henry Wheeler, a church historian. Prophetic pastors like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, often enrage people because they proclaim God's judgment on nations, he says.

"It's dangerous to be prophetic," said Wheeler, who is also president of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana.

"I don't know many prophetic preachers who are driving big cars and living very comfortably. You don't generally build huge churches by making folks uncomfortable on Sunday morning," he said.

The prosperity gospel started as a fringe doctrine in the black church. It was pioneered by "Rev. Ike," a prosperity televangelist with a pompadour who boasted during his heyday in the 1970s that "my garages runneth over."

Jonathan Walton, author of "Watch This! Televangelism and African American Religious Culture," says that although people may have chuckled at Ike's flamboyance, his theology exerts more influence in the modern black church than King's. . . .

Here is what Dr. King had to say a few days before he was assassinated on the subject of sacrificing truth and principle in order to worship Mammon:

. . . .One day a newsman came to me and said, "Dr. King, don’t you think you’re going to have to stop, now, opposing the war and move more in line with the administration’s policy? As I understand it, it has hurt the budget of your organization, and people who once respected you have lost respect for you. Don’t you feel that you’ve really got to change your position?" I looked at him and I had to say, "Sir, I’m sorry you don’t know me. I’m not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I’ve not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion." Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain’t goin’ study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

Let me close by saying that we have difficult days ahead in the struggle for justice and peace, but I will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope as we come to Washington in this campaign. The cards are stacked against us. This time we will really confront a Goliath. God grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath of refusing to deal with the problems, and go on with the determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be.

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.

Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here.

For more than two centuries our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king, and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail.

We’re going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I can still sing "We Shall Overcome."

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

We shall overcome because Carlyle is right—"No lie can live forever."

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right—"Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again."

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right—as we were singing earlier today,

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future.

And behind the dim unknown stands God,

Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Thank God for John, who centuries ago out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos caught vision of a new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

God grant that we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development. If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace. And that day the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy. God bless you.

Delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968. Congressional Record, 9 April 1968.

School Vouchers Dead, Again, in Florida

Just as in a bad horror movie, this monster just don't want to stay dead. Well, it's dead now at least for a few years in Florida. From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, April 5:

The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission defeated the second of a two-part plan to remove constitutional bars to Bush's "Opportunity Scholarships" in Florida. That plan was found unconstitutional in 2006. It was the nation's first statewide voucher program. At its peak, only about 700 students received the vouchers.

The Florida Supreme Court found the Opportunity Scholarships were unconstitutional in 2006, ruling that the plan violated the constitutional ban requiring a "uniform" K-12 education system by using taxpayer funds for nonpublic schools.

Friday's proposal would have given voters in November the chance to change the constitution by allowing the state to fund other forms of K-12 education beyond the public school system.

The plan was defeated, 16-9, just missing the 17-vote threshold for passage.

Last week, the TBRC had cleared one potential legal hurdle for resurrecting Opportunity Scholarships by approving a November statewide referendum issue on eliminating the constitutional ban on using taxpayer money in church-run or religion-based programs.

The Supreme Court did not rule in 2005 on whether Opportunity Scholarships violated that ban. But a number of popular programs, including the pre-K program and the McKay scholarships for handicapped students, use state money for private and faith-based schools as well.

The TBRC meets every 20 years with the power to place constitutional amendments directly on the ballot.

While last week's vote on the wall between church and state gathered support as a defense for myriad state-funded programs like the McKay scholarship and faith-based prisons, the debate Friday was dominated by concerns that opening up funding for private schools with taxpayer money would dilute public education. . . .

Socioeconomic Integration and Achievement

Here is more fuel for an idea long overdue: socioeconomic integration of schools.

From the North County Times:

NORTH COUNTY ---- Wealthier school districts appear to do the best in educating low-income students, state data show.

The data, provided by the California Department of Education, show that poorer students in wealthier districts pass state standardized tests at up to double the rate of similar students in less affluent districts.

Educators said last week that that could be because wealthier districts can offer more individualized help and often have more resources.

In addition, those districts have high numbers of students with strong language skills and that can rub off on low-income students, who often start school a bit behind, said Sandy Gecewicz, chief academic officer for Vista Unified School District.

However, even in wealthier districts, a large achievement gap remains between poorer students and their classmates, the state records show. State and local school officials have said closing the gap is a priority.

"As educators, it's a moral imperative for us to be able to equip all students with the ability to compete and be anything they want in life," said Brenda Jones, assistant superintendent of the Escondido Union Elementary School District. . . .

Making New Schools Green with Geothermal Heat Pumps

Click image to enlarge.
From the Knoxville News-Sentinel:

By Scott Barker
Monday, March 24, 2008

When students walk through the doors of Hardin Valley Academy in August, the air circulating through the building will have been cooled by the earth.

Knox County's newest high school will feature an expensive but ultimately energy- and cost-saving geothermal heating and cooling system.

While using geothermal heat pumps at Hardin Valley is a first for Knox County Schools, there are nearly 500 schools across the country using them, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Environmentally friendly geothermal systems cost more up front than conventional heating and air-conditioning systems, but the savings in utility bills and maintenance costs will make up for the difference within five years, according to project manager Jeff Galyon of the Public Building Authority.

"Basically, your cooling is free," Galyon said. "You've got a constant moderate temperature to heat and cool with, which is very, very efficient."

The system pumps water through 286 pipes sunk 300 feet deep beneath the parking lot, where the temperature of the earth is a constant 55 degrees. The water circulates back through heat pumps in each room in the 211,260-square-foot building.

"It's more expensive up front, but it will be worth it in the long run," said school board member Thomas Deakins, who represents the Northwest Knox County community where the school is being built. "It's a wise decision because utility rates will be increasing."

According to an engineering analysis performed for the PBA, installation costs are pegged at $3.24 million, compared to $2.61 million for the least-expensive conventional option. But energy consumption is less by far - $176,191 in the first year, as opposed to a range of $231,750 to $255,884 for conventional systems.

Conventional heat pumps work harder when the air is very cold or very hot. The constant water temperature in a geothermal heat pump system reduces energy use.

And because there are no gas boilers, as in many conventional school heating and air systems, maintenance costs also are lower, Galyon said. The engineering analysis projects first-year maintenance costs to be $16,900, compared to $21,123 to $31,685 for conventional systems.

Galyon estimates that the increased installation costs will be offset within five years. Gil Melear-Hough, of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said the system could pay for itself even faster.

"Especially with a new building, you can quickly get your payback," Melear-Hough said. "A geothermal (system) will save them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars."

Plus, he added, there's a positive environmental impact.

"You're reducing emissions because you need less power," Melear-Hough said. "Every kilowatt you don't need, that TVA doesn't need to burn coal or generate nuclear power for, the better it is for everybody. It's clearly one of the technologies we need to embrace more and more."

PBA is looking to do just that. Galyon said the agency is conducting tests at the downtown site of Knoxville's new transit center, which would require 68 wells for pipes should geothermal prove feasible.

"If the tests come back positive," Galyon said, "we'll move forward with it."

Scott Barker may be reached at 865-342-6309.

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White House Leads Effort to Censor Medical Database

We know, of course, that censorship, surveillance, and secret policing are primary tools for operating within this Administration, but the worst part of this story is the instant capitulation by those charged with operating the database. They simply struck the word "abortion" from the search engine without a peep. Scary.

From Wired Blog Network:

University administrators of the world's largest scientific database on reproductive health blocked the word "abortion" as a search term after receiving a complaint from the Bush administration over two abortion-related articles listed in the database.

"The items in question had to do with abortion advocacy -- the two items dealing with abortion were removed following this inquiry, and the administrators made a decision to restrict abortion as a search term," said Tim Parsons, a spokesman for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

The blocking of the keyword "is a decision that the dean does not support in any way," he added, and the administrators are unblocking the search for the term right now.

"I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the Popline administrators restore 'abortion' as a search term immediately," said Michael J. Klag, the school's dean in a statement issued on Friday. "I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction."

The Popline search site is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.

Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."

Sandra Jordan, director of communications in USAID's office of population and reproductive health, could not identify the documents that prompted her office's complaint, but said the publications were one-sided in favor of abortion rights.

"We are part of the Bush administration, so we have to make sure that all parts of the story are told," says Jordan. "The administration's policy is definitely anti-abortion, and the administration does not see abortion as a part of family planning policy."

Jordan says that the Johns Hopkins database administrators blocked the word "abortion" on their own, and had misunderstood USAID's request.

"We're glad they're restoring the search function to the site -- the studies and statistical information are certainly important information to family planning," she adds.

The massive Popline database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like "Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births," and "Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005."

As previously reported, a search on "abortion" used to produce nearly 25,000 hits on the site. But on Thursday, the same search resulted only with the message "No records found by latest query."

The American Library Association's president Loriene Roy applauded dean Klag's swift move to restore the search functionality, but said in a statement that she is still concerned about the overall policy.

"Any federal policy or rule that requires or encourages information providers to block access to scientific information because of partisan or religious bias is censorship," she said. "Such policies promote idealogy over science and only serve to deny researchers, students and individuals on all sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information."

Here is link to earlier story.

New GI Bill Gaining Support Despite White House and Pentagon Opposition

Here are a few facts offered in a Feb. 13 piece from The Hill on a bill offered by Sen. Jim Webb to re-write the GI Bill:

Webb’s bill, which has 32 co-sponsors, would cover the full cost of attending a state university for in-state residents and provide a stipend for living expenses. The benefit is capped at the cost of the most expensive public state college or university. The total cost to the federal treasury is projected at about $2.5 billion per year.

Currently, the most a veteran can receive is approximately $9,600 a year for four years. Those who served combat tours with the National Guard or Reserves are eligible for even less — typically just $440 per month, or $5,280 a year.

By contrast, the College Board reports that the average four-year public college costs more than $65,000, about $16,250 a year, for an in-state student. A private university costs on average about $133,000 for four years.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have relied heavily on the Reserve forces. Webb’s bill would ensure that reservists who served at least two years of active duty would receive the same benefit as the active-duty troops.

Currently, benefits used under the GI Bill count against federal student aid. And there is a 10-year limit on assistance for current educational benefits.

The original GI Bill provided full tuition, housing and living costs for some 8 million veterans.

So what is the source of the opposition to offering this important benefit to veterans, whose educational levels, it seems, would be vital to our competition in the global economy, yes? According to the Pentagon, which directs the spending of $3 billion every week in Iraq, this new GI Bill proposal is too expensive. And from their perspective, Webb's bill threatens the readiness to conduct war without end (or maybe just a hundred years), which can only be carried out by underpaid, undereducated "volunteers" who do not have viable career options outside the military. (We all know that if we were drafting middle class kids to serve as IED targets in Iraq, this war would have been over a long time ago).

Here is a small piece of the transcript from a News Hour report from Feb. 12 that offers the Pentagon rationale and Webb's common sense response:

Retaining recruits
JOHN MERROW: But there's another issue: Keith Wilson is the director of education service at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Is there a concern that if you raised the benefits dramatically, substantially that men and women would leave the service, go to college?

KEITH WILSON, Department of Veterans Affairs: Potentially that could happen. Then we'd get into a situation of diminishing returns, and we end up potentially losing more people than we would be gaining into the military, which would create potentially a vicious cycle.

SEN. JAMES WEBB: They don't comprehend that if you put a benefit like this one on the table, you're going to broaden your recruitment base, so you're going to have more people attracted to coming in.

KEITH WILSON: We are looking at administering the program as effectively as we can, meeting the congressional intents of the program, and they seem to be working well right now. A lot of people are using the program, more than ever in history.

So to say that it would cover everybody's costs, absolutely not, but it seems to be meeting the needs of more people than ever.

JOHN MERROW: Senator Webb's bill is under consideration in the Congress, but has a long way to go if it's to become law.

The Congress did pass one piece of legislation recently which should please Chris Mettler, who lost his education benefits because he resigned from the Reserves. It allows him and other active-duty reservists and National Guard to receive their benefits even after they leave the service.

So far the Republican War Hero candidate, John McCain, is toeing the White House line in opposition to the bill, even though 51 senators have now joined Jim Webb as co-sponsors of the Bill.

Here's a more recent story from USA Today on where the bill stands this week.

Nebraska Takes a Leap Backwards on Assessment As Christensen Resigns

When I heard Doug Christensen speak at Teachers College, he said that as long as he was State Commissioner of Ed, Nebraska's assessments would not be based on a high stakes test. Well, sadly, Doug is leaving. What a great pick for an Obama Cabinet.

From Monty Neill:

Terrible news - Nebraska Commissioner Doug Christensen is resigning. There is little info in this news clip, but it is highly probably that his resignation stems from the looming legislative decision to destroy the carefully built local assessment system, which has been repeatedly attacked by the federal government and (I've been told by other Nebraskans) a small group of ultra-wealthy Omahans, and replace it with the typical one-size-fits-all testing program. Doug has been harshly critical of such a move, but it is advancing. A year ago, the legislature passed a law for a state test; the Ed Dept was going to create a mix of a state exam (including performance tasks) and the local assessments. At that time, many teachers came out to speak in support of the local assessments, but the legislature ignored them. From my experience and talking with others in and out of Nebraska, it is quite clear that the assessments were steadily improving, teachers were developing much greater assessment knowledge, and the processes not only of assessment but also the growing collaboration among educators in schools that the assessment development process spurred combined to positively improve school educational cultures.

In any event, that law was not good enough for the single-test zealots. They won't ban local assessments, by they will no longer count in the accountability system that NCLB has imposed. That means, as in every other state, pressure to teach to tests combined of multiple-choice items with perhaps a few highly coachable open ended items.

Chalk up another destructive consequence of NCLB, for without that "accountability" pressure, the odds of survival would have been far greater for the Nebraska local assessment system.

If you want a quick read on the benefits of the local assessment system, see Chris Gallagher's article on the North Dakota Study Group website at http://www.ndsg.org/documents.html. His book "Reclaiming Assessment" (Heinemann) is a great read. And the Nebraska Dept of Ed still has valuable information on the state's locally-based assessment system.

I am terribly saddened by this development though it's been coming for the past few months.

Monty

________________

Published Thursday | April 3, 2008
Nebraska education commissioner Christensen resigning

LINCOLN (AP) - Nebraska education commissioner Doug Christensen is resigning.

In a letter to the state Board of Education dated Thursday, Christensen said he will step down July 15.

He said his leaving is in accord with the discussions he had with the board during closed sessions in January and March. His letter did not mention any board efforts to change his mind.

It's time to move on to the next phase of his professional and personal life, Christensen said, and to spend more of his days with family.

"I need to be able to schedule my time around their priorities instead of the reverse," he said.

"This decision is not easy," Christensen said. "I can think of hundreds of reasons to stay on and continue this work. But, my heart tells me, now is the time."

In addition, he said, "It is time for me to write the book that I believe is in me."

He didn't say what type of book. An aide in his office Thursday said he was in a board meeting so couldn't be reached. His press spokeswoman did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

Christensen has been commissioner since 1994.

He has fought for years to keep Nebraska's unique, district-created assessments, saying local teachers are best equipped to judge their student' achievements.

But the Legislature is considering whether to make standardized tests the state's only tool to measure academic success.

A bill to do so (LB1157) has been given second-round approval. If it became law, it would replace a 2007 law mandating state tests in reading, math, science and social studies beginning in the 2009-10 school year.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law enacted in 2002, states were called upon to devise and offer the same tests in reading and math for every child each year in third through eighth grades, as well as one year of high school.

In 2003, after much resistance from federal education officials, Christensen convinced the U.S. Department of Education to accept Nebraska's unique system and declare that it met the requirements of No Child Left Behind.

Christensen's resignation comes near the same time the state will lose another champion of education. Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, who is chairman of the Education Committee, will be forced out of the Legislature by term limits at the end of the year.

Raikes and Christensen have butted heads over the years over student testing.

"We have not agreed on every issue," said Raikes, who said he wished Christensen well. "On the other hand, the perspective from that position is different."

Raikes said while the state may be losing experienced figures on the education front, it could benefit from new ideas and fresh perspective.

Contact the Omaha World-Herald newsroom

Copyright ©2008 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.

Randi Weingarten, Darling of the School Privatization Movement

When Randi Weingarten got behind the Bloomberg-Klein teacher bonus pay plan based on test scores, and when she put out the welcome mat in NYC for Green Dot Public Schools, Inc. (GDPS,Inc.--how perfect!), she vaulted herself to # 1 on the Hoover Institute's union leader rating system, gained glowing reviews for her work from Rod Paige, and even earned the praise of the nation's leading charterizing propagandist and union critic, Andy Rotherham.

Will this make her a shoe-in to lead the AFT toward further corporization of schools? Is there anyone else running?

See the rest of the NYTimes story:

Randi Weingarten has spent more than a decade cultivating a reputation as the archetypal union leader: a combative dealmaker and consummate political street fighter for city teachers. Yet at a recent education conference in Nashville, there was a fellow from the conservative Hoover Institute, Eric A. Hanushek, gushing with praise for Ms. Weingarten, and promising to do all he could to support her bid to become the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the national union. . . .

Treating Students as Human Beings as a Way to Combat Dropping Out?

From ABC News:

By NEAL KARLINSKY
April 1, 2008—

Clover Park High School in Lakewood, Wash., is proof that things can change. While graduation rates are dropping across the U.S., Lakewood's rate shot up from 39 percent just a few years ago to more than 70 percent today, a trend line which principal John Seaton calls "very positive." So, how did they do it?

After a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the school restructured itself, dividing students into small groups and pairing them with the same teachers for all four years, essentially turning teachers into surrogate family members.

"You've got a relationship that is so tight with those kids that they're willing to share their life with you," Seaton explained. "So you can become part of the solution for their problems."

Teachers at Clover Park aren't alone. A handful of schools across the country have discovered that a key ingredient to helping kids be successful in school is helping them deal with the problems they have in the outside world.

At Berrien High School in south Georgia, they created the position of "graduation coach" a sort of super-counselor to get involved with kids and look for risk factors, like pregnancy, poverty and truancy.

Sheila Hendley, the Berrien graduation coach, said, "I have sat with students and literally begged, 'please don't do this, the rest of your life depends on this decision.'"

The results have been dramatic. In just two years, graduation rates at Berrien shot up from 57 percent to 77 percent a 20 percent increase.

Other schools have focused on problems specific to their neighborhoods, such as literacy or English as a second language, as a way to keep at-risk students from falling through the cracks. For students who do, the setbacks are real.

"Earnings of dropouts amount to only three-quarters of what high school graduates earn, and less than half of what college graduates earn," said Vicki Phillips, director of education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Educators say the solution won't come in the form of more testing.

As one principal put it today, the key is to see students as human beings, not statistics.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Gaps

Thanks, Dr. Kovacs and Educator Roundtable. And ht to Susan Ohanian: