The “Ignorance Hypothesis”

U.S. Income Disparity: Actual, Perceived Actual, Perceived Ideal

From "Theoretical Egalitarians" by Timothy Noah for Slate, September 27, 2010:

…Why aren't the bottom 99 percent marching in the streets?

One possible answer is sheer ignorance. People know we're living in a time of growing income inequality, [Paul] Krugman told me, but "the ordinary person is not really aware of how big it is." The ignorance hypothesis gets a strong assist from a new paper for the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science: "Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time." The authors are Michael I. Norton, a psychologist who teaches at Harvard Business School, and Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist (and blogger) at Duke…

The richest 1 percent account for 35 percent of the nation's net worth; subtract housing, and their share rises to 43 percent. The richest 20 percent (or "top quintile") account for 85 percent; subtract housing and their share rises to 93 percent. But when Norton and Ariely surveyed a group whose incomes, voting patterns, and geographic distribution approximated that of the U.S. population, the respondents guessed that the top quintile accounted for only 59 percent of the nation's wealth…

Americans' ignorance about wealth (and, probably, income) distribution is encouraging in the sense that it offers hope that most voters might opt for government policies more conducive to equality if only they knew how unequal things were…

The dramatic rise in income inequality started about 30 years ago. This timing coincides with the rise of this current free-market style of public education reform which started after the 1983 A Nation at Risk.

Whether they are billionaire and millionaire "philanthropists", hedge fund managers, or Ivy League-trained others (the zealot TFA-crowd), the people who drive and support the "reform" are typically from the small group which is accumulating more and more of this nation’s wealth. They shun public schools for their own children, but that doesn't stop them from being obsessed with dramatically transforming and weakening the public school system used by everyone else.

What's going on is a power grab. This "reform" group supports the elimination of local control via elected school boards, the reduction of expenditures on public education and social services, the dismantling of teachers unions, an increase in the number of publicly-funded private schools (vouchers and charter schools), the increased spending on testing and associated services and products, the implementation of an agenda that forces 18-year olds into lifelong debt (see “Top Ramen For Life: The Student Loan Crisis”), etc. This group spreads propaganda (and HERE) and actively suppresses opposition. 

The evidence is everywhere that our nation is shifting to a plutocracy. As for education, South Bronx Teacher is correct when he says, "Apathy and ignorance of what is going on with education today will ultimately be our undoing."

Observations on local control

This issue is all about who allows whom to have power in the society. Anti-local control people don't have a problem with wealthy communities having local control over their school districts. For instance, no one gripes about the local control of Piedmont City Unified (CA), even though the district is labeled “failing” because it hasn’t made AYP since 2003 (median household income = $168,947).

There's probably some dividing line of wealth in a district, above which local control is a non-issue for the anti-local control crowd, but under which they consider local control to be abhorrent. We can't let the unwashed masses make their own decisions and have their own leaders, can we?

And if the complaint is that there is a dearth of strong local leadership talent at the grassroots level, then why don’t the reformers urge their philanthropist friends to pour money into long range efforts that will develop the leadership skills of more people in the local community? To me that would be a socially healthy way to proceed in a country which considers itself to be a democracy. Oh right, I forgot...if that ever happened it would disrupt the monopoly of who is in control.

I recall Charlie Rose and Yale president Richard Levin talking about Yale's approach to developing leaders (2004 interview). Levin said:

“We have like 250 undergraduate student organizations. Now that means that there are 250 presidents, or leaders, of these organizations…So it really is a lot of opportunity for Yale students to learn how to work in teams, to learn how to work in groups toward a common purpose, and then have opportunities to rise to leadership roles within them.”

That approach sounds smart to me.

A lot of urban school students have been chronically deprived of clubs and similar healthy social opportunities. What better way to prevent those young people from having the types of experiences which might develop their leadership talents?

The public education theater of war

"Mr. President, there is a war going on in this country and I am not referring to the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The reality is that many of the nation's billionaires are on the warpath..."

This is a multi-theater conflict. In the public education theater of war, the force is funded and commanded by:

• Bill Gates,
• Eli Broad,
• Michael Bloomberg,
• The Walton family,
• and a whole host of others

 
 

Teacher effectiveness: the student perspective

Manny Lopez, an Oakland teacher in his 15^th year of teaching, recently shared this story with members of a local parents’ listserv. Curious about what students in his Fourth Grade (bilingual) class would say, he asked them what made an effective teacher.  A ten minute brainstorm produced the following ideas:

QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE TEACHER

- a patient person
- a kind person
- one who is respectful of students
- one who is smart
- multilingual
- no nonsense
- one who looks after us when we're feeling sick
- one who is interesting
- one who comes to school regularly (not frequently absent)
- fun and creative
- helpful
- happy
- a curious person
- someone who is excited about the material
- someone who doesn't rush through the lessons
- a clean and organized person
- someone who is on time/punctual
- someone who can be a little goofy
- someone who occasionally introduces ideas to students that doesn't necessarily have to do but can be connected with what is being taught

Mr. Lopez then told his students that there is an ongoing discussion about teacher effectiveness, and explained to them that one line of thinking believes that teachers should be measured by their students' test scores. He wrote:

If only you could see the expressions on my fourth-graders' faces.  I asked one student whose face was particularly scrunched up what she thought.  She said that that didn't seem fair.  Virtually every one of my students agreed with her.  I got the following three reasons before they were dismissed:

- some students don't pay attention.
- when in a hurry, some students just fill in any bubble
- chance is involved

So there you have it, the elemental T-R-U-T-H.

How can we get Gates, Broad, Duncan, et al. to listen to the thoughtful words that come out of the mouths of babes?


h/t Manny. Thanks for sharing.

The affiliation between the Gulen Movement and a large network of U.S. charter schools is now official

New mainstream sources confirm the connection between members of the Gulen Movement and a large network of U.S. charter schools (122+). The association is undeniable. At long last, the American public is gaining knowledge about the Gulen Movement's activities in the U.S. and an honest public conversation about this unusual situation can commence. Since there is no official singular Gulen Movement organization in the U.S. which provides the public with a comprehensive list of the schools operated by its members, a listing of the probable affected charter schools is presented HERE. Learn how the schools serve the movement HERE.  

1. Upcoming Rice University event: "Transnational Religious Nationalism in the New Turkey: The Case of Fethullah Gulen," a presentation by Dr. Joshua Hendrick with a response by Y. [Yuksel] Alp Aslandogan, will take place at the Baker Institute on December 9, 2010.

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Joshua D. Hendrick, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of international studies at the University of Oregon, addresses the conflict between Turkey’s secular and Islamic forces by explaining the organizational impact of the education and business community known as the Gülen Movement. The followers of Fethullah Gülen, one of Turkey's most famous and controversial religious personalities, attract a great deal of international attention because of the extent of their education network, which now spans over 100 countries and includes approximately 100 charter schools in the United States... [my bolding]

ADDED ON JANUARY 11, 2011: 

• Watch the video of the webcast HERE.

2. On October 7, 2010, Dr. Helen Rose Ebaugh, professor at the University of Houston, Department of Sociology, spoke about the financing of the Gulen Movement’s institutions at “Mapping the Gulen Movement,” a conference sponsored by Dialoog Academie, a Gulenist organization in Amsterdam. Here is a partial transcript from the video posted on YouTube.

@ 06:58 - Now also, I interviewed the top CEO’s of some of the Gulen-related institutions. I interviewed Mr. Kabaca at the bank of Bank Asya. I interviewed Mr. Dumanli at Zaman. I interviewed officials at Samanyolu TV, at Kimse Yok Mu , at schools, at Fatih University, at a lot of the media institutions in Turkey. And I wanted to know the history of the establishment of these institutions. Who put up the initial money? Where did it come from? Where did the capital come from? And then how was it sustained?

And I began to notice some patterns, some very strong patterns…

@ 08:02 - The businessmen and other people in the movement – but a lot of the real capital comes from these entrepreneurs – would put up the initial money to buy the land, to build the buildings, and operating capital for the first usually two or three years. And then gradually these institutions, and fast in my estimation, became self-supporting.

The schools [outside the U.S.] for example, charge tuition. They’re private schools and so they charge somewhere between seven and nine thousand a year in tuition. All the schools in which I interviewed also provide scholarships, for somewhere between twenty to twenty-five percent of their students who can’t afford it. But other than that, the students pay tuition, so the schools become self-supporting. Then the sponsors go to another project, in Turkey, or increasingly, outside of Turkey.

@ 11:05 - In Turkey I saw no government money going into these [Gulen] institutions. There’s a little bit in other countries.

I just came from Azerbaijan. I’m tracing the movement now out of Turkey as it’s moved around the world. For example in Azerbaijan the government put up the original land and building where the first school was built in 1993. That was the first school outside of Turkey.

So there’s some government money sometimes in the beginning of the project, but usually these buildings are so dilapidated it takes more to renovate them than they’re worth.

Also in countries like…I was in Melbourne where they also have schools. The government there supports private schools, so the Gulen schools get support just like any other private school.

Do you know in Texas we now have 25 Gulen schools? They’re called charter schools, totally financed by the state, and it’s causing problems...

3. “The Global Imam” by Suzy Hansen in The New Republic, November 10, 2010 online; December 2, 2010 in print.

Even as the movement has sprouted numerous organizations and companies, the schools have remained at the center of the Gülen orbit…Gülenists operate over 1,000 explicitly secular schools and universities in more than 100 countries…

In February 2009, the Texas finals for the Turkish Language Olympiad took place in Houston. Hundreds of students were competing to land spots in the final round…2,500 spectators cheered and waved American and Turkish flags. The hosts of the competition, two Fox-affiliate TV personalities, were both decked out in “traditional Turkish” costumes…

… As one of the young contestants, Dante Villanueva, recited a very long Turkish poem—earnestly and fluently teasing out the awkward 35-syllable words—middle-aged Turkish men in the audience wept.

There’s a decent chance that Dante Villanueva, like many of the other kids in the competition, attended a Gülen charter school. Such schools—many with fuzzy-happy names like Harmony, Magnolia, Pinnacle, and Amity—are only part of the cornucopia of cultural offerings that the movement has brought to the United States…

I asked to see a Gülen-affiliated charter school and was brought to the Harmony Science Academy, a K-12 school and one of 33 charter schools operated across Texas by a group called the Cosmos Foundation. (At both Harmony and another charter school I visited in Washington, D.C., people told me they were nervous about having their schools labeled Gülen institutions. At the same time, almost all of the Turkish men I met at these schools said they sympathized with or were followers of Gülen.) “Did you wonder why this school was founded by a bunch of Turkish men?” I asked the three mothers who’d been dispatched to give me a tour. “Totally oblivious, didn’t even think about it!” a tall, energetic woman named Colleen O’Brien immediately replied in her undulating Texas accent…

4. Motives for the GM's involvement in our public school system are suggested by Nazli Ilicak, a Turkish journalist who received a prison sentence in 2010 for criticizing a Turkish judge. Her comments appeared in Sabah (a Turkish publication): h/t Tom Stellar of the Arizona Daily Star. 

“We discussed the subject among ourselves: If 600 schools are bought this way in the United States – and that’s what the members of the Gulen movement are striving to do, - and if 200 students graduate from each one of these schools, then 120 thousand sympathizers of Turkey join the mainstream out there every year. We are trying to lobby against the Armenian genocide resolution every year. And yet, through education, we can teach tens of thousands of people the Turkish language and our national anthem, introduce them to our culture and win them over. And this is what the Gulen movement is striving for.”

5. Added on 11/21/2010: More admissions from another Anglo-Gulenist, Karen Fontenot. Fontenot admits that she is a member of the Hizmet Movement (Gulen Movement) and that she is on the “advisory board of Gulen schools in Louisiana.” Fontenot is the vice president of the Pelican Educational Foundation  which oversees Abramson Science & Technology Charter School (New Orleans) and Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School (Baton Rouge). Fontenot speaks at the dinner reception of “Mapping the Gulen Movement,” a conference held in October 2010 at the Dialoog Academie, a Gulenist organization in Amsterdam.

@ 0:47 – “I’ve been involved in the movement since 2005 and I’m fortunate to live with my [co-op?], my husband Dr. Michael Fontenot, and we were asked to present a paper at that conference in 2005 at Rice University...”

@1:50 – “When she [Helen Rose Ebaugh] said that members of the Hizmet Movement – of which I consider myself one, as does Father [Thomas] Mitchel, I agree with him. I’m not a Muslim and I’m not a Turk but I believe that I am a member of the Hizmet Movement. And she said ‘all the members seem to share something in common; you could recognize them.’ And I think we have to attribute that to Fethullah Gulen, because he is the one who saw a need, who communicated the vision, who has done it so eloquently, and also who has provided a place for every single member…”

@3:27 – “To conclude, I’m just going to give a personal account. A few weeks ago, somebody that I work with on the schools – I’m on the advisory board of the schools, the Gulen schools in Louisiana – and he looked at me and he said, “You would make a very good Muslim wife. And I was immensely flattered…”

This is a video about the 2009 Turkish Language Olympiad held in Houston which was mentioned above in #3. It was produced by Ebru News, a Gulenist media organization.

UPDATE ON MARCH 25, 2011: I just learned about this op-ed published April 30, 2010 by a columnist for Today’s Zaman, a daily English-language Turkish newspaper operated by members of the Gulen movement.  Some of the phrases in “A misguided crusade against pious Turks in the US” read near verbatim of what is often posted on comment boards under articles about Gulen charter schools [my bolding]:

…Since the US is a free country, why should it be a problem if pious Turks operate public charter schools, as long as they meet the legal and academic criteria? That's the case with the schools inspired by Gulen's pacifist ideas. Authorities constantly monitor these schools. Had there been any credible evidence of illegal or inappropriate activity, they would have taken the necessary punitive actions (as they should). You may find a few parents or teachers angry with the administration for various reasons at any school. Given the stereotypes about Islam, they may also try to use the “foreign” and “religious” element to bolster their arguments. However, a majority of the students, parents and local authorities believe these schools are making an immense contribution to social peace and justice in the US via education. In a country where there is a serious public education crisis, the last thing one should do is discourage successful entrepreneurs at charter schools…

We Should Be Careful With Our Words

This is a guest post by Steve Neat, a 5th Grade Teacher in Oakland Unified and an Oakland Education Association officer.

Charter schools have a track record of inconsistency at best. A Stanford University (2009) study—the most comprehensive done yet—found that only 17% of charter schools outperformed public schools according to the tests that receive the most attention as the only evidence of effectiveness. 37% did not perform as well as traditional public schools. Charter schools, however, represent a critical step away from traditional public schools, where public money goes to a public entity run by democratically elected officials, and towards yet another privatization scam. Charter schools are private entities funded by public money. They are semi-private. Look up charter in the dictionary. It's defined as "an official document in which certain rights are given by the government to a business." "Public charter" is an oxymoron. Certainly there are some charters that are wonderful neighborhood schools, but schools of this kind could be—and have been—replicated under the traditional public school model. Charter schools have been agents of destruction in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. A parent there put it best when she said, "They stole our public schools, and they stole our democracy while we were out of town." Here in Oakland they are stealing our public education and our democracy and we don't even have the excuse of being out of town. It's not only particular charters here and there that are failing. The entire charter movement has failed, whether you call them public or not.

Time and again in the past 20 years experiment after experiment has used our students--particularly our students of color--as guinea pigs in attempts to close the "achievement gap." We do not have an achievement gap. We have a poverty gap and we have a funding gap. Of course poverty is not such an easy problem to solve, nor is the problem of adequate school funding, so we have to invent problems that have a simpler solution. The latest idea is that the problem is ineffective teachers protected by unions. So now the solution is to use test score pay to prod teachers into finally educating the children (I'm not sure what they think we've been doing). They used to call it merit pay. But since "merit" really just means "worth" or "goodness," perhaps the term was too vague. Its new name is the value-added model because however extensive is the damage done to our society by the corporate world, the business of America is business. The corporate world sets the agenda and the corporate world decides our vocabulary list. Money is made from public schools. More money could be made if schools were completely privatized and unions were eviscerated.

Just as is the case with charter schools, all evidence indicates that the value-added model (latest study coming from Vanderbilt, September this year) is not effective in raising students' test scores. So even if we start with the loaded assumption that higher scores on bubble-in, high-stakes, once-a-year tests somehow equates with education, test score pay does not improve the education of our children. Yet test score pay continues to be pushed. Even within the text of Measure L the adjective "effective" was inserted before "teachers." Why? I consult my dictionary again and I find that "effective" is defined as "bringing about the result wanted." Now isn't that interesting? What is the result wanted? That was never explained by the people who—at the very last minute inserted the word "effective" in the ballot language of Measure L. Did that word lead to the loss of the measure? It was certainly a factor, and when a vote is so close, any factor could have been the difference. The fact of the matter is the value-added model has no merit, whatever new name for it you come up with. In addition, people in positions of power in education shouldn’t throw around terms like “effective” without clearly defining what they mean.

I'm not a billionaire TV personality. I'm not a failed Chicago schools chief turned Education Tsar. I'm not a millionaire motion picture director. I'm not even an OUSD director. But I have been a classroom teacher for nearly a decade now and I'm getting very tired of buzzwords and schemes like public charter, merit pay, value-added, effective, and rigor (which I bet you didn't know actually means "great strictness or harshness"). My brother was in the Air Force for 6 years. We've had lots of conversations about euphemisms (“blue-on-blue mishap,” “insurgent,” etc.). I find it particularly offensive that some people who purport to have the best interests of our children at heart use words in the same deceitful way as people who are in the business of killing.

If they want to use words in the same way as those who wage war, then I declare a war of words on them. Every time I hear "public charter" I will say "you mean semi-private school." Every time I hear "achievement gap" I will say "you mean poverty gap, or funding gap." Every time I hear "merit pay" I will say "you mean test score pay." Every time I hear "value-added model" I will say "you mean business model." Every time I hear "rigor" and every time I hear "effective" I will ask "What do you mean?" and when they give me their answer, then I will say, "I think you need to pick a more accurate word."

I urge all of you to do the same.

Finland’s approach to education & the corporate ed reformers

It has now become commonplace to hear glowing mention of Finland’s student test scores and international rankings, and about its fabulous educational system which was reinvented a generation ago. However, there is never a follow-up conversation about how the U.S.'s current education policy is heading us in the exact opposite direction.

A complete disconnect seems to exist between what has been proven to work (and what we should be adopting), and what is currently being forced upon districts and schools. For this, we can thank the corporate ed reformers and their ilk who, having attacked and marginalized educators, cleverly acquired occupation of important federal and state ed central offices so they could set the policies. For the sake of our country’s future, these people need to be unseated...now.

Pasi Sahlberg of the Finland Ministry of Education has been doing his best with trying to help us see the light. He compares the two approaches in slide #37 (IMAGE ABOVE) of his PowerPoint presentation “Lessons from Finland: The evolution of the Finnish school system and its lessons for other nations.”

Global vs. Finnish Way

Global educational reform movement (germ)

• Teaching core subjects
• Standardization
• Test-based accountability
• Race to the top
• Renting reform ideas: Adopting educational reform ideas from corporate world and scientific management. Hiring private sector experts as leaders.

Education policies in Finland

• Broad and creative learning
• Customizing
• Professional responsibilities
• Slow learning
• Owning a dream: Building a shared inspirational vision of what good education system school and teaching look like. Appointing education professionals to leadership positions.

From this list of priorities, it looks to me as if Finland is on another planet. And who knew that 40% of Finnish secondary school students are in vocational school/apprenticeship training (slide 23)?

Even if we adopted Finland’s approach, we’ve got HUGE problems that will probably get in our way from achieving similar success. For instance, Finland’s child poverty rate is one of the lowest of all OECD countries at 4.3%. The child poverty rate in the U.S. is one of the highest at 22.4%. Child poverty rates in U.S. public schools are certain to be substantially higher.

Would Finland's academic success be the same if its child poverty rate was sextupled? There is no way to gloss over this disturbing difference.

Finland’s trade union membership is 76% of its employed population, ranking it at #2 of the OECD countries (tied w/Denmark). The U.S. is near the bottom of the ranking (#17), at 13% and dropping.

So maybe what we need to simultaneously be doing is focusing on reducing our despicable child poverty rates as well as providing security to families a la union-type protections. And we’ll also need to deal with the impact of our family-destroying incarceration rate (# 1 United States: 715 per 100,000 people; #113 Finland: 71 per 100,000 people).

For more comparisons see HERE.

Listen to Pasi Sahlberg of the Finland Ministry of Education discuss his nation’s program. Just ignore Andrea Mitchell’s awful and uninformed commentary.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You can read Sahlberg’s 2009 paper “A short history of educational reform in Finland” HERE.

Watch another report on Finland’s schools on this NBC Nightly News piece HERE.

Maybe this leak of rationality from Education Nation, in what otherwise was nothing more than a pro-school-privatization propaganda-fest, will help keep this ship from being dashed to pieces on the rocks after all.

Education Nation reflection and fallout

FALLOUT

1 a : the often radioactive particles stirred up by or resulting from a nuclear explosion and descending through the atmosphere; also : other polluting particles (as volcanic ash) descending likewise

b : descent (as of fallout) through the atmosphere

2 : a secondary and often lingering effect, result, or set of consequences

Okay, this past week’s propaganda-fest peak seems to have passed, so now all we have to deal with are the toxic particles that remain. This was probably one of the plans hatched up by the billionaires at the clandestine May 2009 summit organized by Bill Gates, which was attended by Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, Winfrey, and others.

Here is Stephen Lazar’s reflection of his experience as one of Education Nation’s featured teachers:

Education Nation: I Should Have Known Better

Over the past few days, I have had the unbelievably depressing and deflating experience of being part of NBC’s Education Nation. I was one of the first teachers on stage for Sunday’s Teacher Town Hall, and I returned on Monday for a panel entitled “Good Apples,”…

Arriving at Rockefeller Plaza Sunday morning was a surreal experience. I am going to give NBC credit for two things: they have poured a ton of human and financial resources into having a conversation about education in America, and they built a beautiful setting to do so. I felt like I had entered a dream world where the voices of teachers would actually be listened to and respected in a forum where major educational decisions were made. I should have known better…

I admit, I should have known better than to expect anything positive to come out of NBC’s Education Nation. It became abundantly clear that while well intentioned, NBC really knew very little about the topic they decided to cover, and instead of any real conversation or reporting, relied on the most famous faces in education to argue over the same old points that get us nowhere. I hoped the conversation would change, but with the people they had involved, I should have known there was little hope for that...

Be sure to read the whole thing HERE.

Memorable accounts of what was going on at NBC behind the scenes in the days leading up to Education Nation are preserved in the online history books now.

Leonie Haimson informed us in Education Indoctrination about how NBC named one of its panel sessions “Does Education Need a Katrina?” then changed the title after public outcry. She also reviewed for us how Yong Zhao was disinvited, and how, in fact, anyone skeptical of the dominant education “reform” was pretty much excluded.

Diane Ravitch, one of the most prominent voices about education matters, especially over this past year, was originally invited to appear live via satellite, but Education Nation decided to do a taped interview instead. This segment was cut down and spliced together with segments of other things. In other words, NBC gave Ravitch an insulting spit of an appearance.

All of this would seem odd for a multi-day program with such an important and far-reaching agenda, unless you knew who was driving the program’s mission.

Then there’s Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey jumped on the bandwagon with her billionaire friends and presented an education show, too (“show” being the telltale phrase). At one point, she canceled the appearance of a teacher who had been invited to appear (the woman had even flown to Chicago) in favor of giving fellow billionaire Mark Zuckerberg a chance to try to protect his self image which has been sullied by a soon-to-be-released movie, and to redeem himself by donating $100 million to Newark public schools which can only be used under conditions which may well be illegal.

Anthony Cody summed up the whole sordid affair and coined a great new word: “OprahPaganda.”

Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post had this take:

Oprah Winfrey may imagine that she runs a serious policy forum on her television show. You know, the one on which she routinely features: celebrities; hoarders (Aug. 5,6); dieters; people facing unusual crisis, such as a woman who had a tumor that covered half of her face (Aug. 2), and a woman who discovered her dead husband’s mistresses (July 30).

But she doesn’t. Shows recently aired include:

• 09/14/2010 Exclusive - How Wynonna Judd Survived the Ultimate Betrayal
• 09/13/2010 Oprah’s Farewell Season Premiere with Special Guest John Travolta
• 09/08/2010 Harpo Hookups - Cher, Justin Timberlake, will.i.am, Usher
• 09/07/2010 Women Who Claim They Were Child Brides in the USA
• 09/06/2010 Stars of Reality TV: Fantasia’s Comeback and Ruby’s Revelations
• 09/02/2010 Oprah’s Make Over My Man Crew Strikes Again
• 09/01/2010 The Most Talented Kids with Justin Bieber and Charice
• 08/31/2010 Oprah Says Goodbye to Nate Berkus: The Grand Finale
• 08/30/2010 Oprah and Simon Cowell: The Farewell Interview
• 08/25/2010 Inside Sex Addiction Rehab

So yesterday when she aired the show called “Waiting For Superman - The Movie That Can Transform America’s Schools,” her viewers should have known that they were watching an entertainment show with a show woman -- not an educator -- as host…

But then there’s the smarmy Joe Williams of DFER who is now basking in the rays of this explosion of propaganda and wrote this message to his hedge fund-manager friends:

I mean, seriously?

Oprah? Meet The Press? Matt Lauer and Obama talking hard-core, down and dirty ed reform on the Today Show? One hundred million dollars for Newark school reform from that Facebook dude? Education Nation? Front page of Time Magazine? Waiting for ‘Superman’????...

Due to the passion of an awful lot of people on this email list [his hedge fund manager friends], the tracks were laid over the course of the last few years for the kind of high-profile conversations that are taking place right now on the airwaves, in movie theaters, and in public squares all over the land…

All of us have made tremendous personal and professional sacrifices [translate: donations to the cause of the privatization and oligarch-ification of the U.S.] to help get this issue where it is today…

But thank God for Leonie. From Gotham Schools:

A group of city public school parents blasted NBC today for its week-long special programming on education, saying that the network has kept parents and skeptics of education reform off the air.

The network is running a series of televised interviews and panel discussions it is calling “Education Nation” all this week. Parents gathered today outside of the “Learning Plaza” the network has built at Rockefeller Center to complain about the series’ line-up of speakers, which is dominated by politicians, officials and philanthropists.

“Parents are offended about the way in which NBC has refused to invite a single NYC public school parent onto any of their panels,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. “Instead, the network has allowed wealthy billionaires once again to control the agenda.”

The group also criticized NBC for allowing Mayor Bloomberg to deliver a policy speech televised on the network Monday morning without taking questions from reporters.

This (me) urban public school parent, non-union member, who has experienced 17+ school years (the last eight of them in so-called "failing" schools), and has been the parent "client" of at least 100 teachers and 10 principals -- and knows A LOT at this point -- has one final thought.

A friend of mine doesn't share my passion about all this education stuff, but will sometimes chime in and say something that's spot on, such as:

"Who would want to be a teacher these days? You get paid s**t. You have to deal with unmotivated, disrespectful students and complaining, uninvolved parents. You have to deal with crappy administrators.

"Not only are you busy all day, but then you have to go home and grade all those papers.

"What pleasure could you get out of that? At least you have the summers off.

"Maybe if you were really into teaching, or if you are married to a millionaire and doing it to keep busy. Or if you were teaching in a school like Head Royce [one of our local hoity-toity private schools] where there are a lot of resources.

"It’s a lot of work."

I know this view is simplistic, harsh, and unromantic, but it does contain some truth. And it doesn’t even mention the current fad of bashing and demoralizing teachers, or the degree to which many of them spend their own hard earned money on their classes.

My years of working in the Parent Center at my local middle school gave me so many insights about day-to-day school life. It's too bad more people don't have a chance to see teachers in action so they can become aware of what they do, and learn to appreciate it, too.

This would be the movie that needs to be made.

Ravitch speaking the truth

Diane Ravitch speaking to teachers in L.A. on September 24, 2010. The mainstream media has been ACTIVELY blocking out the presentation of this point of view. Read Leonie Haimson's "Education Indoctrination" for the little-known facts.

And it's not too late to sign the petition encouraging Oprah to feature Ravitch as her guest. Go to Change.org's "Petition to Oprah."

Ed deform propaganda in full bloom

The pro-charter/anti-union/oligarch-orchestrated cabal's propaganda is in full bloom, and stinking up the place like a amorphophallus titanum (Corpse flower). In case you’ve been trapped in a closet this week, here’s what’s been happening so you can get up to speed.

On September 13, NBC issued a press release about Education Nation in which it announced the confirmed speakers to date. BE SURE TO LOOK AT THE LIST OF THESE PEOPLE AND THEIR DESCRIPTIONS BELOW!

Read Teacher Ken’s website and comments about the onslaught HERE.

A couple of folks started a Miseducation Nation Facebook page @ http://www.facebook.com/MiseducationNation when NBC started deleting and blocking comments made by people who were bothered by the one-sidedness of this Gates/Broad-sponsored, and probably designed, event.

Anthony Cody at Living in Dialogue on OprahPaganda and NBC’s blocking of comments!

• http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2010/09/oprahpaganda.html
• http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2010/09/education_nation_frustration_w.html

Sign this petition urging Oprah to have Diane Ravitch as her featured guest!!!: http://education.change.org/petitions/view/petition_to_oprah

Word was getting around about the comment-blocking issue on Education Nation’s Facebook page, and a public relations problem was brewing, so NBC changed their settings. Let them know what you think @ http://www.facebook.com/educationnation

Breaking news reports from Norm Scott in NYC @ http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/

And from the Grassroots Education Movement NYC, a trailer for "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman."

Re: the Superman movie

This piece of propaganda was funded by former eBay CEO Jeffrey Skoll and Phillip Anshutz, a far right-wing, evangelical billionaire. Theaters should hold special screenings for the resisters, so we can boo all we want.

The line-up for Education Nation's special guests (grab your barf bag)

POLITICIANS (recipients of filthy, manipulative Duncan, Gates, and/or Broad money)

• Michael Bloomberg: Mayor, City of New York (Gates donated $4 million to keep Bloomberg in control)
• Cory Booker: Mayor, City of Newark, New Jersey [As Joe Williams wrote in a September 2009 e-newsletter from Democrats for Education Reform: “Tip #5. Start your new school year off on the right foot by getting yourself one of the highly sought-after DFER 2009-10 school year calendars, featuring pin-ups of your favorite education reformers. (Ladies, Newark Mayor Cory Booker is Mr. January… Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.) You can get your free calendar by contributing $50 or more to DFER’s political action committee.”]. Good grief.
  
• Phil Bredesen: Governor, State of Tennessee (home of Vanderbuilt University which just released a study showing that one of the ed deformers' favorite ideas is a big flop)
• Jennifer M. Granholm: Governor, State of Michigan
• Jack Markell: Governor, State of Delaware
• Michael Nutter: Mayor, City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Antonio Villaraigosa: Mayor, City of Los Angeles, California

GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS (all have had formal affiliations with the Broad Foundation)

• Arne Duncan: US Secretary of Education
• Joel Klein: Chancellor of New York City Schools
• Michelle Rhee: Chancellor, District of Columbia Public School System of Washington, D.C.
• Margaret Spellings: Former US Secretary of Education

EDUPRENEURS AND COGS IN THE GATES/BROAD ED DEFORM MACHINE

• Geoffrey Canada: CEO & President of Harlem Children's Zone Project (the press release didn’t mention that he is a spokesman for American Express, listed at #2 of Education Nation’s sponsors)
• David Coleman: Founder & CEO, Student Achievement Partners; Contributing Author of the Common Core Standards
• Reed Hastings: Founder & CEO of Netflix (a major charter school proponent; the press release didn’t mention that he sits on Microsoft’s Board of Directors under Bill Gates)
• Wendy Kopp: CEO and Founder of Teach for America (married to KIPP CEO Richard Barth)
• John Legend: Musician; Founder of the Show Me Campaign (a great voice who has become some kind of variation of a sentimental, rescuing-mentality teachers' pet)
• Sally Ride: First Female Astronaut; Vice-chair of Change the Equation (Started by former Intel CEO Craig Barrett and the Gates')

RIGHT-HAND MEN OF THE BILLIONAIRES

• Allan Golston, President, US Program, The Gates Foundation (the GF is the #3 sponsor)
• Gregory McGinity: Managing Director of Policy, The Broad Education Foundation (the BF is the #4 sponsor)

ABLE TO BE BOUGHT-OFF (all are recipients of major amounts of Gates’ largess)

• Byron Garrett: CEO of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
• Randi Weingarten: President of American Federation of Teachers (AFT-CLO)
• Janet Murguia: President & CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR)

SEEKING TO IMPROVE A SHAKY REPUTATION AND TO REVERSE THE BAD PRESS

• Bill Pepicello, Ph.D.: President of University of Phoenix (#1 on the list of sponsors)

TOKEN PARENT “LEADER”

• Gwen Samuel, CT delegate to Mom Congress (Mom Congress is an “advocacy initiative” hatched up by Parenting magazine to help sell more magazines) http://www.pta.org/3596.htm

ASSORTED CEOS WHO DON’T KNOW A THING OR GIVE A HOOT ABOUT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

• Barry Schuler: Former CEO of AOL
• Edward Rust: Chairman & CEO of State Farm Insurance Companies
• Sterling Speirn: CEO, Kellogg Foundation
• Walter Isaacson: President & CEO of the Aspen Institute

CLUELESS TALKING HEADS WHO ARE TOTALLY OUT OF TOUCH WITH PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE PEOPLE WHO INHABIT THEM

• Maria Bartiromo: Anchor of CNBC's "Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo" and Anchor and Managing Editor of "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo"
• Tom Brokaw: NBC News Special Correspondent
• Ann Curry: News Anchor, "Today" and Anchor, "Dateline NBC"
• Lester Holt: Anchor, "NBC Nightly News," Weekend Edition and Co-Host, "Today" Weekend Edition
• Brian Williams: Anchor and Managing Editor "NBC Nightly News"
• David Gregory: Moderator, "Meet the Press"
• Andrea Mitchell: NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Host, "Andrea Mitchell Reports"

IT'S UP TO US NOW AND NO ONE IS GOING TO HELP. SO IF YOU CARE ABOUT PUBLIC EDUCATION YOU NEED TO TAKESOME KIND OF ACTION.

STOP THE ARROGANT, POWER-HUNGRY, PUBLIC ED DEFORMING OLIGARCHS FROM RUNNING THIS SHOW!!!

At the very least, sign this petition urging Oprah to invite Diane Ravitch to be her featured guest!!!: http://education.change.org/petitions/view/petition_to_oprah

Yong Zhao: On nurturing passion

Professor Zhao's wise message needs to be given the widest possible audience. Please send it along to your coworkers, friends, and family.

Our nation's future is at stake.

No Child Left Behind and Global Competitiveness from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

Parents Across America send letter to President Obama

Several of us have linked together and, today, our letter to President Obama was posted on Valerie Strauss' The Answer Sheet (a Washington Post education blog). If you agree with its sentiments you can send your own message to the President by going to the online form at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.

This letter is a follow-up to a one we sent in May about Obama's Blueprint for Reform, (re the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA) which you can find here. As you may or may not know, the decision about keeping, altering, or scrapping the current version of ESEA, aka NCLB, was supposed to be done in 2007, but Congress never attended to the task. So, as a result, this despised and damaging law was rolled over and has now been enforced for at least three years beyond its natural lifespan.

In late 2006, Washington insiders predicted a delay with reauthorization, but wrongly imagined it might be as late as 2009. Boy, oh boy, were they wrong!

Dear President Obama...Sincerely, Parents Across America

Dear President Obama:

Several weeks ago, we wrote to you about our concern that your proposed “Blueprint for Reform” did not acknowledge the critical role parents must play in any meaningful school improvement process. We also expressed our serious reservations about some of the Blueprint's strategies.

Our goal is simple – to ensure that our children receive the best possible education. As parents, we are the first to see the positive effects of good programs, and the first line of defense when our children's well-being is threatened. Our input is unique and essential.

Recently, Secretary Duncan announced that he would require districts that receive federal school improvement grants (SIG) to involve parents and the community in planning for schools identified for intervention. We appreciate this response as a first step; however, more needs to be done.

First, leadership must come from the top. We would like to see meaningful, broad-based parent participation not just in our local districts, but at the U.S. Department of Education, where critical decisions are being made about our children's education.

Second, we need more than rhetoric to feel confident that only educationally sound strategies will be used in our children's schools. The current emphasis on more charter schools, high-stakes testing, and privatization is simply not supported by research.

Disagreement on these matters is not a result of parents clinging to the “status quo,” as you have recently asserted. No one has more at stake in better schools than we do – but we disagree with you and Secretary Duncan about how to get them.

We need effective, proven, common-sense practices that will strengthen our existing schools, rather than undermine them. These include parent input into teacher evaluation systems, fairly-funded schools, smaller class sizes and experienced teachers who are respected as professionals, not seen as interchangeable cogs in a machine. We want our children to be treated as individuals, not data points. And we want a real, substantial role in all decisions that affect our children’s schools.

More specifically, and urgently, we insist on being active partners in the formulation of federal school improvement policies. The models proposed by the U.S. Department of Education are rigid and punitive, involving either closure, conversion to charters, or the firing of large portions of the teaching staff. All of these strategies disrupt children’s education and destabilize communities; none adequately addresses the challenges these schools face.

We also insist on being active partners in reforms at the school level, with the power to devise our own local solutions, using research-based methods, after a collaborative needs assessment at each individual school.

Our voices must count. If you listen, you will make real changes in your School Improvement Grant proposals as well as your “Blueprint” for education reform.

We look forward to your response and a brighter future for our children and our nation.

Sincerely, Parents Across America (signatories attached)

Natalie Beyer, Durham Allies for Responsive Education (DARE), NC

Caroline Grannan, San Francisco public school parent, volunteer and advocate, CA

Pamela Grundy, Mecklenburg Area Coming Together for Schools, NC

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, New York, NY

Sharon Higgins, public school parent, Oakland, CA

Susan Magers, Parent Advocate, FL

Mark Mishler, active public school parent, former president, Albany City PTA*, NY

Bill Ring, TransParent®, Los Angeles, CA

Lisa Schiff, San Francisco public school parent, board member of Parents for Public Schools*, member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco*, "School Beat" columnist for BeyondChron, CA

Rita M. Solnet, President, CDS, Inc.; Director, Testing is Not Teaching, FL

Dora Taylor, Parent and co-editor of Seattle Education 2010, WA

Julie Woestehoff, Parents United for Responsible Education, Chicago, IL

*for identification purposes only

Reflections on one teacher's life work

I am positive that the profession of public school teaching -- and any remaining respect for that fine work -- is being destroyed right before my eyes. I simply do not understand the teachers’ passivity, nor that of everyone else.

What’s happening to public school teachers is breaking my heart, and I am so very, very grateful that my grandmother, Luella Robinson, did not live to see these times.

Mrs. Robinson graduated from Snow College in her hometown of Ephraim, Utah, and commenced to teach public school children for the rest of her life. She was an elementary school teacher for most of that time, finishing her years by teaching special ed.

This was a woman who absolutely loved children, and they loved her back. Dresser drawers in her home were filled with gifts from former students and their parents.

Since my sister and I ended up with a relatively unstable home life, we found refuge in the time we spent with our Grandma Robinson. Until we moved out-of-state, we would often spend Friday nights at her house. On the Saturday mornings, she would take us to the nearby train tracks and hold our hands as we walked up and down, balancing on the rails. Sometimes a slow train would come along and we would all wave to the operators and wait for the caboose.

Back at her little house in Sugarhouse (in Salt Lake City, Utah), she would encourage us make mud pies on her back steps and huge flour-water dough messes in her kitchen. We'd make blanket/furniture forts, swing on her willow tree’s branches, pick hollyhocks and use toothpicks to turn them into little dolls, draw and paint, read books, decorate cookies, and drink Dr. Pepper.

After she retired and we were older, if we all went shopping and there was a little child standing in line, Mrs. Robinson would approach that child and parent, say some kind words, and give the child a nickel. In those days, a nickel would buy something small that was tasty.

Luella Robinson was strongly against corporal punishment and shared her vision with other people in the world. To her, there was never (ever!) any reason to hit a child. “If a child is misbehaving," she explained, "all you need to do is get down to their eye level, place your hands on their shoulders, and look directly into their eyes as you are talking.”

I am certain that my grandmother put this same kind of love into daily practice in her classrooms during each and everyone of the years she worked. Her intelligence, grace, and skill are certain to have made a positive difference for hundreds and hundreds of children. Her life of teaching was not centered around test scores.

Maybe the ed deformers' next idea for "improving" the "effectiveness" of public school teachers will be to bring back the stocks. I expect U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would also cheer that on.

From Wikipedia: "Stocks are devices used in the medieval times for torture, public humiliation, and corporal punishment. The stocks partially immobilized its victims and they were often exposed in a public place such as the site of a market to the scorn of those who passed by. Since the purpose was to punish offenders against the standards of conduct of the time anybody could assault, revile or aim filth at the victim."

And by the way, Norm Scott is right.