Category: For Profit Education

July 24th, 2014

7/24/2014

Just a few more days on education policy------let's continue to look at higher education and Maryland is ground zero for the dismantling of our public education system at all levels.

Yesterday I showed that Economic students are demanding universities stop teaching only neo-liberal economics-----they said the field had become so narrow as to block all other thought. Think how that translates to Common Core in our K-12. They intend to do the same thing in our grade schools as they have done in universities.......narrowed the curricula to corporate policy. 'Competition' replaces personal best......'Getting the edge' becomes bullying........'Taking out the competition' becomes rape. The level of aggression in our schools and universities is growing because of this corporate mentality. Attacks on women are soaring even at universities because Chancellor Kirwan does not see himself as a public servant upholding public justice and Rule of Law-----

WE WILL SELECT WHOMEVER WE WANT TO BE HEARD IN ELECTION FORUMS AND THERE WILL BE NO DISCUSSION ON ANY UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND CAMPUS THAT IS ANTI-NEO-LIBERALISM!

We heard recently that UMUC----the online college structure that O'Malley spent hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars to create is failing miserably. No one wants online education yet neo-liberals funded by Bill Gates and Wall Street are going to push this until we have no choice they say. O'Malley even went overseas to push our active military to use their GI Bill education benefits on these online degree programs----IT IS A DISGRACE. As you will see below there is absolutely no research that shows these online education programs are providing any quality or creating higher achievement. The data is not there. The only reason they are creating these online venues for 90% of Americans is that it is cheap and only prepares for a job.

FORGET THE WELL-BALANCED EDUCATION THAT IS BROAD AND ALLOWS GRADUATES TO APPLY THEMSELVES TO MANY FIELDS.

First UMUC was going to be made a non-profit so the public could not see how it operates.....now University of Maryland is keeping a failed structure alive but wants to deregulate. Bill Gates requires online instruction and neo-liberals are going to give it to him! The amount of education funding wasted on these global corporate policies mirrors O'Malley's tying the public to Hilton and Hyatt hotels in order to keep them from losing money. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are lost every year in all categories of industry in what is clearly public malfeasance and fraud against the citizens of Maryland. Why do we need a UMUC Asia/Europe?

Meanwhile financial aid and grants are being cut and that aid given is being tied to these cheaper structures as WE THE PEOPLE see our strong public education dismantled by neo-liberals.

DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN TO CHANGE THIS----THIS IS REPUBLICAN POLICY-----NEO-CONS ARE JUST AS BAD.

UMUC’s Mission in Asia

The mission of University of Maryland University College (UMUC) in Asia is to offer academic programs to United States military communities throughout Asia and the Pacific. While serving overseas, students can take a single course or many courses leading to a certificate, an Associate of Arts degree, a Bachelor of Arts degree, or a Bachelor of Science degree. Since University of Maryland University College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, students can take courses with the intention of transferring their credits to other colleges or universities in the United States. Students may also continue their studies with UMUC online. Additional information is available at www.umuc.edu.

Although the educational setting is overseas, UMUC’s programs in Asia are in all respects comparable to those offered at public institutions of higher learning in the United States. Courses are taught by faculty whose credentials meet standards set by appropriate University of Maryland University College academic departments in Adelphi, Maryland. All UMUC courses taught in Asia carry University of Maryland University College resident credit. UMUC is committed to maintaining standards of academic excellence. The past 50-plus years demonstrate that those standards can be maintained in overseas settings.

UMUC Europe offers thousands of courses for students interested in associate's and bachelor's degrees and undergraduate certificates. UMUC also offers graduate-level certificates and several master's degrees in Europe. With UMUC's 150 locations worldwide, and extensive online offerings, students can begin and finish a degree with us regardless of where they are located.

I bet the citizens of Maryland did not even know UMUC was a global corporation. Meanwhile fewer Maryland citizens are going to 4 year universities.

I don't hold any credence to these online workplace comment programs because they work like American Idol. It is good to see a consistent referral to 'people needing to be treated with respect'. ' Low pay with no opportunity to grow'. THIS IS NOT AN ENVIRONMENT WE WOULD WANT IN A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY. THAT IS WHAT A CORPORATE STRUCTURE LOOKS LIKE. That is because it IS a corporate structure. Under neo-liberals labor is treated as badly as if a Republican were in office yet every election Maryland labor unions get behind these neo-liberal pols. We need the citizens of Maryland taking back the Democratic Party to reverse this failed neo-liberal/neo-con policy!

“Failing company, horrible management” Academic Advisor (Current Employee) Pros – Great vacation/time off. Get to become a state employee after 3 years.

Cons – Moral is so low! Micromanaged beyond belief, constant layoffs, not worth you time.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat us like the educated adults that we are. Learn to value your employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Add Employer Response

Apr 8, 2014
- Culture & Values
- Work/Life Balance
- Senior Management
- Comp & Benefits
- Career Opportunities
“Not good. Too many secrets and financial problems” Administrative Assistant (Current Employee) Largo, MD I have been working at UMUC full-time for more than 8 years

Pros: Convenient location and great benefits Cons: Low pay and minimal advancement Advice to Senior Management: Treat the regular people like people No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company… More

Below you see what the deregulation issues discussed by Mikulski and Kirwan will include----as you see again everyone in the system is in the dark as to what these discussions look like. WE DON'T ALLOW CITIZENS IN MARYLAND KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING SAY NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.

UMUC considering plan to become independent nonprofit with ties to university system
Under proposal, it would no longer be a state entity; president seeks input from university community

By Nayana Davis, The Baltimore Sun

7:54 p.m. CDT, July 10, 2014

The University of Maryland University College, which has been struggling with declining enrollment, is considering severing some ties with the state university system to avoid burdensome regulations and work more closely with the private sector.

Under the proposal, the university would become an independent nonprofit organization that retains an affiliation with the state system. The school's president, Javier Miyares, said during a Thursday town hall meeting in Largo that the idea came from a task force of experts organized by the university as a response to a shrinking student body.

UMUC, a mainly online institution, has struggled with a competitive online education market and a smaller military. Members of the military or their families make up about half of the college's students.

The main objective of the proposal is to more readily secure partnerships with the private sector, including working with companies to make courses more employer-friendly and building relationships to help students secure jobs. Miyares said such partnerships can be challenging to forge as a state agency.

"This way we would not be bound by all the regulations and statutes that apply to a public state agency," Miyares said.

University officials also hope the move would help it attract more students outside the United States, though it would retain the University of Maryland name. Based in Adelphi, UMUC offers courses to students in 24 countries.

The plan would allow the university to keep ties with the 12-institution University System of Maryland, but the details have not been worked out. "The validity and credibility you get by being part of the University of Maryland system is huge," Miyares said.

No immediate action will be taken on the task force recommendation, as the school begins a process of soliciting feedback from the college community. University officials said there are few concrete ideas on how the effort would be implemented at this stage; Miyares said he wanted to get input first.

UMUC has the support of the University System of Maryland to look into alternate business models.

"The university is facing some significant challenges," said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the system. "They are appropriately addressing those challenges."

Kirwan said a more concrete proposal would need approval from the system's Board of Regents before implementation, and possibly the governor and General Assembly. The governor's office declined to comment on the plan.

But some higher education experts expressed concern about the university putting out such a proposal with few details.

Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said it's not uncommon for public universities to form private-sector relationships to outsource certain functions, but it's unclear what the change in status would mean for the university.

"Honestly, I don't know what to make of this," he said. "The decision to operate under a different set of rules is interesting. Whether the move is good, I don't know."

UMUC has been struggling with declining enrollment both stateside and overseas since fall of 2011. Although the rate of decline stateside has remained less than 10 percent in the past three years, overseas enrollment declined 20 percent for spring 2014.

The school has struggled to increase enrollment because of competition from traditional academic institutions that have started offering Web-based classes and popular massive open online courses known as MOOCs, university officials said.

A shrinking military, which is facing large-scale budget cuts, also is a factor in loss of enrollment.

University officials said that 90 percent of its budget comes from tuition and 10 percent from the state. Other colleges in the university system get about 30 percent of their budgets from the state.

"We don't know what the future is going to be like," Miyares said. "But if we don't adapt, we will go into a death spiral."

UMUC's struggles are "a reflection of how competitive online education has become," Kirwan said. "What we do need is to explore if operational flexibility is possible."

"UMUC has been quite unique in the university system," Nassirian said. "It had been mostly self-sufficient because it provides excess revenue back to the system, but that [online] business model has not fared well as of late."

Traditionally, changes in business models for colleges have occurred when a struggling nonprofit university becomes a for-profit venture after a large corporation acquires it. Nassirian gave the example of the Clinton, Iowa-based school Ashford University being purchased by Bridgepoint Education.

Miyares said the change could occur as early as next summer. Academic programs and staffing levels are not expected to be affected if the model changes, unless enrollment continues to drop.

The school laid off 70 staff members from departments at the Adelphi and Largo campuses earlier this year, and 58 the year prior. The university employs about 2,000 in the U.S.

"The whole goal is to get enrollment up," Miyares said. "If enrollment is fine, there should be no dramatic difference to the academic side. This is a pivotal moment in our history."

nadavis@baltsun.com

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The article above gives yet another spin----that UMUC and online colleges are being edged out by the popularity of MOOCs-----only MOOCs are not popular. They are used less frequently then online UMUC. We are being fed nothing but spin and this happens more and more because the public universities that would be the first to shout THAT IS NOT TRUE ----IT IS SPIN are now the ones handing us spin because they are corporations. Maryland Assembly was the very first to pass laws that move the accreditation process towards making these online structures legitimate. NO ONE THINKS THIS IS GOOD POLICY. Needless to say when it comes to bad education policy it is Johns Hopkins pushing it in Maryland. Indeed, Baltimore is cursed with a gorilla in the room that pushes the worst of policy all so they can make more profits.

This looks like a Gates Foundation study-------most employers in North Carolina have not heard of MOOCS but 3/4 of them think they are good. Meanwhile, there is no interest in the public for MOOCs outside of simple extracurricular help with existing university structures. Gates says he will buy these policy implementation yet! You know, because he is the 'good billionaire' as NPR always tells us.

All Hail MOOCs! Just Don’t Ask if They Actually Work | TIME.com

Why Do So Many Students Drop Out of MOOCs?www.brighthub.com/education/online-learning/articles/...

Study: MOOCs Viewed Positively Among Employers

April 2, 2014 Inside Higher Education

Most North Carolina employers haven't heard of massive open online courses, but about three-quarters of them view MOOCs as having a positive effect on hiring decisions, a survey conducted by Duke University and RTI International shows. The study, founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also suggests 71 percent of employers could see themselves using MOOCs for professional development.

Think about how the real world views MOOCs but the article in the Maryland media makes you think they are supported. It happens all the time because they can get away with it. Online resources for education are good----everyone thinks online instruction adds to the classroom at any level. The problem is that corporations have as a goal to replace the classroom with these online products ------aiming at the 90% of Americans becoming trapped by Vocational K-12.......
With all public education funding going to subsidize corporate research and Human Resources we have to make the cost of educating the 90% as cheap as possible say neo-liberals and neo-cons! Calling MOOCS a democratizing tool in a nation with the strongest public education system in the world is a mockery. STOP DEFUNDING AND DISMANTLING PUBLIC EDUCATION.

The University of Maryland is now taking a look at bestowing transfer credit to those who are able to demonstrate a specific level of knowledge after completing a MOOC.

- See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/online-schools/can-moocs-be-a-solution-to-the-us-student-debt-crisis/#sthash.uhO1mk7Y.dpuf

Are MOOCs really dead?

By Jake New, Editor, eCampus News

June 6th, 2014 Recent studies suggest that MOOCs are very much alive, but are not a threat to traditional higher education For some educators and journalists, the rasping final breaths of massive open online courses (MOOCs) began late last year.

They followed nearly two years of hype and excitement that even the most skeptical of instructors and reporters got swept up in. Many of those who denounced the courses did so in a similarly frantic fashion, writing proclamations and open letters condemning MOOCs, as though they were caught in a great academic war.

Then, suddenly, a blow was struck. And it came from one of MOOCs’ most famous creators.

“Sebastian Thrun, godfather of the massive open online course, has quietly spread a plastic tarp on the floor, nudged his most famous educational invention into the center, and is about to pull the trigger,” Rebecca Schuman wrote at Slate in November 2013.

It was a dramatic way of saying that Thrun had announced that his company, Udacity, would now focus its MOOCs more on vocational training rather than traditional liberal arts courses.

That Udacity was only one company of a growing number focused on MOOCs — and that many of these platforms, including its main competitor Coursera, still aimed to disrupt traditional higher education — did little to slow the wave of speculation.

It was the capper on a year of MOOC hand-wringing. If 2012 was the “year of the MOOC,” then 2013 was the “year of the MOOC backlash.” Those who trust Gartner’s “Hype Cycle” believed MOOCs were going through a common “trough of disillusionment,” that would soon be followed by a “slope of enlightenment.”

But by the start of 2014, many were already asking: “Are MOOCs dead?”

The answer is not as sensational as the question. MOOCs aren’t dead — not yet -- but they likely won’t be replacing any traditional means of higher education, either.

Here is the source of creating a massive online system of education for the 90% in Maryland-----Wall Street itself! The quality of education drops each time they grow this online education industry. Since it isn't working at the university level they are now talking of sending it to K-12 vocational. Sitting children in front of computers for online classes the goal of education reform as vocational K-12----YOU BET

Johns Hopkins Offers Nine-Course Specialization in Data ...www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/coursera... CachedThe series of nine MOOCs are now open for enrollment and free to anyone. ... 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205. ... Courses Careers Accreditation Web Policies ...

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July 22nd, 2014

7/22/2014

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Now that universities are corporations we need to get rid of all that public protection stuff that will keep them from being profitable. Forget all that silly stuff about educating Americans to be citizens and leaders......forget equal opportunity and access for the disabled......you cannot maximize profits that way. Let's open our universities to the world's rich and let them attend simply because they can pay higher and higher tuition. THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON FOR YOU.....IT'S ALL ABOUT PROFIT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

As you can see it is Maryland behind this deregulation attempt just as it leads in corporatization of universities into global systems.

LOOK----THERE'S MIKULSKI -----MISS NEO-LIBERAL HERSELF. SHE HANDED A COOL TRILLION OF TAXPAYERS MONEY OVER TWO DECADES TO MAKE JOHNS HOPKINS A GLOBAL CORPORATION AFTER ALL.

Also at the lead is University of Maryland Chancellor Kirwan-----you know----the one Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is taking to court for rigging the elections for governor by choosing which candidates were heard on public university campuses across the state-----all of which is illegal. Sure, we solve this corruption by fewer regulations!

WE WILL SELECT ANY CANDIDATE WE CHOSE FOR THESE ELECTION FORUMS FOR GOVERNOR SAYS CHANCELLOR KIRWAN.

Oh, that's how you keep installing legislation no one wants ----you rig the system so we cannot get people in office that will reverse these policies! THAT'S KIRWAN FOR YOU-----A TRUE GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL/NEOCON. Public universities as the hotbed of democratic political debate? That's no way to maximize corporate profits!

A New Deregulatory Push

February 13, 2014
By Michael Stratford Inside Higher Education

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Higher Education Act came up for a vote in Congress in 2008, Senator Lamar Alexander trotted out a five-foot stack of cartons onto the Senate floor to show the enormity of existing regulations governing higher education.

Now that lawmakers are once again contemplating how to rewrite that massive piece of legislation -- which authorizes, among other things, the $150 billion-a-year federal student aid program -- Alexander is returning to his props.

Speaking to a group of community college leaders Wednesday, Alexander unfolded the full paper version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which was taller than he is, to underscore his distaste for the federal government’s bureaucratic reach onto college campuses. And last week he made the same demonstration before a group of private college presidents.

Alexander said Wednesday that his goal is to “simplify and deregulate” higher education in the upcoming renewal of the Higher Education Act -- a process he has said should “start from scratch.”

“What we’re trying to do is establish a continuous process for deregulation to overcome the continuous momentum for overregulation,” he said, noting that the “inertia” for creating new regulations comes from across the political spectrum.

“The conservative senators, from my party, they’re sometimes the worst,” he said, describing how he has to remind his colleagues that they are “the party of federalism, the 10th amendment” when they want to impose conservative ideas on how colleges should be run across the country.

All of their ideas “sound good, but you know what happens when you have to comply with it: it takes time and money away from your mission,” he told a group of community college trustees and presidents.

Alexander has formed, along with three other senators, a task force to recommend ways to reduce federal regulations on colleges and universities.

That group of higher education leaders gathered behind closed doors at the offices of the American Council on Education on Wednesday to begin producing recommendations on how to deregulate the industry. The panel consists of college presidents from a range of sectors and higher education associations.

Reducing or eliminating regulations on colleges has long been a goal of the higher education lobby in Washington, though previous efforts have largely been unsuccessful.

William E. (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and co-chair of the task force, said he was encouraged by the Congressional interest in reducing regulations.

“What seems different this time is the very strong commitment of these four senators,” Kirwan said. “They are determined to address this issue and get our help in finding some meaningful reforms.”

Alexander and Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, attended Wednesday’s meeting, and two other lawmakers -- Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, a Democrat, and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a Republican -- are also on board.

The panel will focus on identifying “the most egregious, excessive regulations," but will also make recommendations on the Education Department’s rule making process in general, Kirwan said.

“The hope is that we can make some suggestions that will enable us to meet our obligations and be accountable to the federal government but to do so in a way that is cost effective and not excessively bureaucratic,” he said.

Kirwan said that one example of the type of regulations that his task force would be targeting is a campus safety rule that requires colleges to collect crime information from local police jurisdictions when students study abroad or when athletes travel to an out-of-town hotel.

The task force hopes to produce a report on its recommendations within the next 12 months, Kirwan said. The group will also be coordinating with the National Research Council, which was directed by Congressional appropriators last month to conduct a $1 million study of the cost of regulations on higher education.

Kirwan, who also chairs the subcommittee at the NRC that will oversee the study, said that work would be focused on all federal regulations that affect higher education, while the Congressional task force would focus only on Education Department regulations.

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This is what Kirwan and his group of global corporate bosses think they are going to do with our universities and deregulating gets rid of all that public justice and civil rights stuff....you know----THE US CONSTITUTION AND OUR STATUS AS AN EQUAL PROTECTION DEMOCRACY. Who in the world wants people like this deciding what is good.

That is what testing from K onward is about----the state determining how a child will be tracked and into what vocation from elementary school on. Remember, school privatization means the entity deciding will be corporations. This is already happening in Baltimore and it is nothing but autocratic.

O'Malley has made his career as Governor of Maryland building these tracking systems into our schools at every level......it is failing miserably although spin will make it sound a great success.

It is the for-profit colleges AND THAT DEREGULATION that distorted who and how students went to college last decade and it is infused with fraud and corruption so it is not our decades-old system of allowing families to decide where and what that child will pursue that failed----

IT IS THE SAME PEOPLE WRITING THESE PRIVATIZATION POLICIES THAT DISTORTED A GOOD SYSTEM.

This article is long but please glance through!

College material or not: who should decide?

By Valerie Strauss March 26 (The Washington Post)

College, of course, isn’t for everybody, but who should decide — and how and when — which students should go and shouldn’t? In this post, Kevin Welner and Carol Burris ask whether the decision should be made by policy makers and school officials or parents and students after young people have had equitable opportunities to learn in elementary and secondary school.

Welner is the director of the National Education Policy Center, located at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. He is the author of the 2008 book, “NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling.” Burris is the award-winning principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.

By Kevin Welner and Carol Burris

Robin should become a printer. That’s what Robin Calitri’s school counselor told his dad in 1965. Robin thought his counselor’s advice was just swell. He wasn’t a motivated high school student. But his dad, who was a professor of English Literature at Hofstra University, made it clear to the counselor that his son was going to college.

Robin later became the principal of Long Island’s South Side High School and was a finalist for the national principal of the year in 1999. He would tell that story about the counselor whenever he explained the harm done by tracking—the sorting of some students into classes that are not designed to prepare those children for post-secondary education.

If his dad had gone along with the counselor’s recommendation, his son would likely have ended up in a trade that was becoming obsolete. To his credit, Robin understood that this was precisely the situation faced by children in working-class and poor families. Research on tracking and choice confirms this; working-class and poor families, as well as parents without a college education, are more deferential to the advice of school authorities and less willing to push back on the system. Robin also understood that a young person’s future hangs in the balance when school authorities are making rules that will cut off college as an option.

Yes, we can all agree: college is not for everybody. But should school officials and top-down policy makers decide based, for example, on Common Core college readiness test scores, or should the decision be left to parents and students after schools have given them meaningful, enriching, equitable opportunities to learn?

While college is not for everybody, opportunities to be prepared for college definitely should be. When college-educated parents have the capacity to secure the college advantage, they certainly seize it for their own children. It is not unusual, for example, to see upper middle class parents spend thousands on tutoring—including tutors for the SAT and the college essay. College-educated parents understand that a four-year diploma is key to securing financial success.

That’s just one reality that Mike Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, refuses to confront in his article in Slate, with the man-bites-dog title, “Kid, I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material” Is exactly what we should be telling a lot of high school students.”

The “we” who are the deciders is left somewhat undefined, but it’s safe to assume that the use of “we” does not give power and capacity to the students themselves.

Before continuing, this is a good spot to pause and acknowledge when we are talking about other people’s children. The two of us, like Mr. Petrilli, represent families where post-secondary education is a given. Accordingly, we’re essentially debating what’s best for those “other” families. As we contemplate tinkering with their fate, it is wise to remember John Dewey’s axiom:

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”

Perhaps we are unwise in working our tails off for our children to go to college. But unless and until we acknowledge this, we should be wary of sending other families down a different path.

The vocational education push isn’t coming from just Mr. Petrilli. As he notes, it’s also coming from a project headquartered at Harvard University (apparently with no irony intended) as well as from policymakers throughout the nation. The Education Commission of the States recently studied the “State of the State” addresses from the nation’s governors and found that “at least 13 governors and the D.C. mayor outlined proposals improving or expanding CTE [career and technical education, aka vocational education] options for students.”

Mr. Petrilli and the governors are correct to the extent that they are simply acknowledging that not all children will go to college and that those who do not should nonetheless have opportunities to thrive. It is also true that the decision to forgo or delay college should be made before graduation day.

From that point on, however, the “sort and select” advocates get almost everything wrong. Their fundamental two-part assumption is, first, that they can and should identify children who are beyond academic hope. Second, they believe that it is possible and beneficial to identify these children early, separate them from their academically oriented peers, and put them on a track that hopefully prepares them for post-secondary employment but does not prepare them for college.

Equitable schools reject such tracking policies because they believe in the American Dream and because they have learned from past mistakes. History tells us that schools should not be in the business of foreclosing children’s options. At the start of the 20th century, schools faced an influx of immigrants, and policymakers responded by creating programs for those who were called the “great army of incapables.” Vocational tracks prepared immigrants to be factory workers, while the children of well-off parents were given a college preparatory education. This pattern of separating students into different classes was repeated during the era of racial desegregation as a way to maintain segregated classrooms—and then again in the 1970s when students with special needs were increasingly enrolled in mainstream schools.

History and research show that when schools sort in this way, it is the disadvantaged children who are directed toward lower-tier tracks. No matter what criteria are used—scores, recommendations or even choice—the same patterns of stratification occur. Accordingly, when lawmakers adopt these misguided policies, they open up opportunity gaps that inevitably lead to the achievement gaps that these same lawmakers then decry.

Mr. Petrilli concedes that he understands the danger. Describing the bad old days, he writes, “Those high school ‘tracks’ were immutable, and those who wound up in ‘voc-ed’ (or, at least as bad, the ‘general’ track) were those for whom secondary schooling, in society’s eyes, was mostly a custodial function.” Yet he turns back to voc-ed because, as he contends, the odds are otherwise too long for disadvantaged students.

Beginning with the statistic that only 10 percent of these disadvantaged students earn a four-year degree, Mr. Petrilli asserts that if we work really hard as a society maybe this number would rise to 30 percent, which for Mr. Petrilli is not good enough. Since recent data show that 33.5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 29 have at least a bachelor’s degree, that sounds like a pretty good outcome to us. By the way, that’s the highest percentage ever for Americans, and it doesn’t include those who earn two-year degrees as well as certificates in our community colleges and post-secondary technical schools.

The “You’re Not College Material” approach is the same one we use far too often in schools. Too many kids hear--You’re not ‘honors’ material, or Challenging science and math isn’t for you. And every time that strategy is used, we see the same results—classes that are stratified by social class and race. It’s an approach that reinforces existing inequalities. To say in a supposedly neutral way that not all students will go to college is disingenuous without first acknowledging something else: that what’s really being said is that we should accept that college is for the already advantaged.

On some level, Mr. Petrilli grasps these concerns—when he acknowledges the past harms of tracking and that “when judgments were made on the basis of ZIP code or skin color, the old system was [deterministic, racist, and classist].” What he doesn’t acknowledge is that his new system would be the old system.

It’s interesting to us that the Petrilli article’s argument relies in part on the German system of tiered schooling, where college-bound students head to the Gymnasium while vocation-bound students head to the Hauptschule or Realschule. Yes, it’s true that students attending the German vocational schools do better than voc-ed students here, in part because of a more equitable job sector following graduation. But a team of German psychologists recently published an article in The Journal of Educational Psychology on the effects of the German vocational track on the development of student intelligence—and they found that students in the academic track experienced substantial IQ gains as compared to those voc-ed students. Not only did the learning gap grow, so did the very capacity to learn between German academic and vocational students. That outcome should give us pause.

Our quarrel is not with offering vocational opportunities in high schools. Rather, we favor a smart and fair approach that works for children and families who, at the right time and place, make the choice for a career after high school. We might, for example, retool our two-year colleges so that they offer more programs in technology and other marketable areas, without making students jump through remedial hoops to stay. We might also follow the lead of Finland and prepare students with a strong and equitable academic education without tracking until age 16, and then allow them to make meaningful career and life choices. We may even look at promising models, such as California’s Linked Learning schools, which integrate career preparation while still preparing students for college. High schools have an obligation to do their best to prepare students for college and career; preparation for both has more overlap than often assumed.

We reject, however, No College for You! proposals that sort 14 year olds into vocational high schools. South Side High School, one of the best in the nation, would likely be a very different place if co-author Carol Burris’ predecessor, Robin Calitri, had obliged his counselor when he was told “Kid, you are not college material.” That counselor did not have the right to make that decision—and neither does Mike Petrilli.

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Neo-liberals installed the education policy in South Korea after the Korean war that it is trying to install in the US today. The difference is that the US has a history of public education and people as citizens with the rights to legislate and equal protection laws. From Korea this policy traveled to China and Singapore and involves very autocratic and pedantic learning where parents in these countries have been fighting for decades to get rid of it. NO ONE LIKES THESE NEO-LIBERAL EDUCATION POLICIES. Look below and you see the AFT union leader Weingarten with Arne Duncan praising this neo-liberal model. Weingarten allowed the AFT to support these Race to the Top and Common Core policies for the first years of Obama's terms but the public outcry and teachers grew too large for Weingarten to follow the neo-liberal lead and as you see in the article after this one-----the AFT is now fighting Obama's and Wall Street's education reform.

IT WAS THE PUBLIC OUTCRY THAT FORCED THIS UNION LEADER TO STOP FOLLOWING NEO-LIBERALS. WE MUST HAVE THE PUBLIC PROTESTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY TO SUPPORT TEACHERS IN KILLING THIS VERY BAD EDUCATION REFORM. NEITHER REPUBLICANS NOR DEMOCRATS WANT THIS REFORM. IT IS ONLY ABOUT MAKING EDUCATION INTO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.

I spoke at great length about the Finland model for education that has made Finland number 1 in education. Finland embraced the American model of the 1950s and 1960s while the US was dismantling the best in the world public education to make this corporatized model they are pushing today.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GOING BACK TO THE PUBLIC EDUCATION BUILT FOR DEMOCRACY AND AWAY FROM THIS AUTOCRATIC CORPORATE MODEL.

Which winning ideas could the U.S. steal from Singapore?

Singapore has one of the best education systems in the world, according to international assessments. President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talk about its performance. United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten visited in 2012 and her counterpart at the National Education Association, Dennis Van Roekel, has praised its teacher training. And in 2012, Singapore was featured in the first-ever International Summit on the Teaching Profession as a country that many places – including America – could learn from.

In light of all this hype, I spent the past week in Singapore visiting schools to find out why they are so successful. But, not surprisingly, there’s no big secret or magic trick that the United States could simply copy tomorrow. Rather, my impressions were of a nation where education is respected, where educators and administrators think critically about their jobs and the qualities they want their students to develop and where self-reflection is ingrained. Those are qualities already found in many American schools, and that reformers are trying to spur in others.

But some of Singapore’s latest strategies go beyond or challenge some of the most popular ideas right now for improving American schools. At the same time, it’s important to remember the vast differences between the two countries that make it difficult to transfer ideas. Here are my main takeaways from my conversations with educators, students and education officials:

- Singapore is looking to revamp their standards. As most states in America continue the rollout of the Common Core State Standards, an internationally benchmarked guide laying out what students are supposed to learn in each grade in math and English, Singapore also has changes planned. But education officials there are more concerned about some less tangible skills, like collaboration and creativity, and coming up with ways to systematically introduce those into the curriculum. In theory, the end goals of Common Core and Singapore’s newest push are similar. They both aim to create individuals with critical thinking skills who can thrive in a modern economy. But as we try to copy Singapore’s methods, like their math sequencing, educators there are already moving on to new ideas.

- Lots of Singaporean students are stressed. The country is looking for ways to reduce this and trying to decrease the emphasis on grades and test scores. The Ministry of Education is trying to reduce the emphasis on the primary school exit exam, which all students have to take to determine which secondary school they will attend, for instance. But many people told me one of the biggest challenges will be changing the mindset of parents. Not all students in Singapore worry endlessly about exams, but several people said that for those that do, parents are a primary source of their anxiety.

- Singapore is small. As several people pointed out to me, if you drive for an hour in any direction, you arrive at the water. While some people told me the small size of the country has disadvantages for education – it severely limits options for field trips for instance – it also has its benefits. Most notably, the country’s size, along with the fact that the schools are run by a centralized authority, allows the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Education – which trains every teacher in the country – and the schools to be in close communication about research and new strategies. New programs can be implemented quicker and the National Institute for Education can easily keep track of what is actually happening in classrooms to tweak its offerings when needed.

- The schools are big. Half a million students are enrolled in the island’s schools, but most schools have student populations of more than a thousand – even at the primary level. With that many students, classes of 35 to 40 are typical, but nothing seemed disorderly. The atmosphere in the classrooms that I visited switched between formal and relaxed. Students bowed to greet visitors and again to thank them for coming. They stood up to speak whenever called upon, and chatter while a teacher was talking was almost nonexistent. At the same time, though, laughter was common. Teachers would gently tease students and discussion was highly encouraged.

Not everything Singapore does would apply to our much larger, decentralized education system and not everything they do should be emulated. But there are some inspirations we could draw from the country, such as trying to get more high-performing students into the classroom as teachers or being more explicit in the character qualities we want students to develop – without obsessing over how to measure them.

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As a social democrat I do not want to break from the Democratic Party-----I want to take the Democratic Party back from corporate neo-liberals. The important thing is that more and more people are understanding where this is going and know we can stop and reverse this no matter what political stance you take. We need Republicans pushing against this as these policies are written by neo-conservative and neo-liberal think tanks.

'The way forward for teachers requires a complete break with the pro-corporate trade unions and Democratic Party.

.......calling for Duncan’s resignation, saying he had championed a “failed education agenda” consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”

Seeking to regain credibility, US teachers unions criticize Obama’s education secretary
By Phyllis Scherrer
22 July 2014

After spending the last five-and-a-half years collaborating with the Obama administration’s attack on teachers’ jobs and conditions, the two teachers’ unions in the US recently passed resolutions seeking to distance themselves from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his anti-public education policies.

The National Education Association (NEA) passed a resolution at its national convention in Denver, Colorado, on July 4, calling for Duncan’s resignation, saying he had championed a “failed education agenda” consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”

This was followed by a July 13 resolution at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference in Los Angeles, California, which called on President Obama “to implement a secretary improvement plan” for Duncan, modeled on the punitive testing measures used to fire “failing” teachers. “If Secretary Duncan does not improve, and given that he has been treated fairly and his due process rights have been upheld, the secretary of education must resign,” the statement read.

The conventions were held just weeks after Duncan’s enthusiastic support for the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Vergara v. California case, which attacks tenure and another job protections won by teachers over decades of struggle. At the time Duncan hailed the right-wing forces behind the lawsuit, saying, “millions of young people in America” are “disadvantaged by laws, practices, and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students.”

The NEA and AFT resolutions, however, were nothing more than an exercise in damage control by the unions, aimed at reviving the credibility of both unions, which have been undermined by their collaboration with Duncan and the administration’s pro-corporate “school reform” agenda. The resolutions will have no affect whatsoever on the continued collaboration of the teachers’ unions with the Obama administration.

In fact, the day the NEA convention passed its resolution, officials from the rival AFT were at the White House meeting with Duncan to collaborate on the implementation of a new “teacher equity plan,” another teachers “evaluation” plan to rid poor school districts, with the assistance of the unions, of higher paid, more senior teachers.

Duncan dismissed the NEA resolution with the contempt it deserves, saying, had NEA officials not been at their convention, “I think they would have stood with us on this” today, too. He congratulated new NEA President-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia and added, “We’ve had a very good working relationship with the NEA in the past.”

In addition to concealing their own role, by presenting Duncan as the author of this anti-teacher agenda, the unions are seeking to protect President Obama and the Democratic Party. The teachers unions promoted the lie that Obama would reverse the attacks of his Republican predecessor. In fact, the Democratic president has gone well beyond the attacks associated with Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001.

Under Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) the administration allocated $4.35 billion to fund a “competition” designed by the Bill & Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, Boeing, Walton Family and other Foundations. School districts were forced to vie against each other for funds already severely reduced under Bush’s NCLB—federal funds that under the War on Poverty reforms of the 1960s were allotted directly to districts serving high percentages of students in poverty.

Under RTTT “winning” districts are those who agree to fire teachers and close or privatize schools based on poor standardized test scores, which are chiefly the result of poverty and decades of budget cutting, not bad teachers. Since the implementation of RTTT, public schools have been starved of funding, 330,000 teachers and other public school employees have lost their jobs, at least 4,000 public schools have been closed, and the number of students enrolled in charter schools has doubled.

Obama and the Democratic Party have embraced the anti-teacher nostrums long associated with the most right-wing sections of the Republican Party. This is underscored by the fact that former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and several other former Obama aides are spearheading a national public relations drive to support lawsuits in New York and other states, modeled on Vergara, to overturn teacher tenure, seniority and other job protections.

On the local level, Democratic mayors and school officials from Chicago, Philadelphia and New York to Detroit, New Orleans and Washington, DC, have spearheaded the attack on public education and expansion of for-profit charters.

The well-heeled executives who run the teachers’ unions--including AFT President Randi Weingarten and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel who received salaries of $543,150 and $306,286 respectively in the last year alone—are not opposed to the pro-corporate school “reform.” On the contrary, they are only looking to be partners in this process, as the AFT slogan, “School reform with us, not against us,” makes clear.

Both the NEA and the AFT were direct recipients of Gates’ money for the implementation of the so-called Common Core curriculum, which will be used to further attack teachers, while subordinating public education to the needs of profit-making technology and publishing companies. In 2012, the AFT accepted $4.4 million in order to “work on teacher development and Common Core Standards.” In July 2013 the NEA endorsed the Common Core and was awarded $6.3 million to assist with developing the Common Core Curriculum.

As teachers became wise to the character of Common Core, and every more disdainful of the AFT’s support of it, AFT officials tried to distance themselves from Gates last March by refusing to take any additional money from the Gates Innovation Foundation Fund, only one of several conduits of the billionaire’s money to the AFT.

Part of the grandstanding against Duncan is the increasing turf war between the AFT and NEA and their competition for dues money among a shrinking number of teachers. The AFT convention passed a dues increase by 45 cents per month this year and 55 cents per month next year, for a total monthly dues bill of $18.78 for each member by September 2015—largely to offset the loss of Gates money—and is increasingly seeking to get a foothold among low-paid charter teachers, as well as non-teaching members like nurses.

The NEA, the nation’s largest union, with just over three million members, including teachers, paraprofessionals and higher education instructors, has seen a significant drop in membership. Since the 2010-2011 school year, which coincides with the recession and the election of Obama, union membership for the NEA is down by 201,000 of its teacher members.

Under conditions in which more states are enacting Republican-backed “right-to-work” laws, which end automatic dues deduction from teachers’ paychecks, and sections of the Democratic Party are openly discussing dispensing with the services of the unions altogether, the AFT and NEA are doubling down to ensure state and local officials that they can be relied on to slash costs, destroy teachers’ conditions and suppress opposition to the closing of schools and the attack on education.

Over the last five years there have been growing struggles of teachers—in Wisconsin, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, St. Paul, Minnesota, and other cities—which have led to a direct clash between teachers on the one hand and the Democratic Party and their servants in the trade unions on the other.

Well aware of the growing anger of rank-and-file teachers, a section of trade union bureaucracy and its supporters in pseudo-left movements like the International Socialist Organization, whose supporters have gained union positions in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and other districts, are doing everything they can to refurbish the image of the teachers’ unions.

Their model of “social justice unionism” has proven to be a dead end as the betrayal of the 2012 teachers strike, by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis and Vice President Jesse Sharkey, a supporter of the ISO, showed. The CTU shut down the nine-day strike by 26,000 Chicago teachers before it could develop into a direct political confrontation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff—and the White House.

This betrayal gave Emanuel the green light to close 50 schools and lay off 3,500 teachers and school workers. As a reward, an AFT-affiliated union was given the franchise to “organize” low-paid teachers at the Chicago United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) charter schools run by one of Emanuel’s closest supporters.

Lewis and the CTU are now promoting the idea of running “independent” political campaigns in Chicago. Far from challenging the Democratic Party and advancing any independent political strategy for the working class, these campaigns fully accept the domination of society by the corporate and financial elite and are solely aimed at pressuring the Democrats to more effectively use the unions as partners in the dismantling of public education.

The way forward for teachers requires a complete break with the pro-corporate trade unions and Democratic Party and the fight to mobilize the working class as a whole against the profit system and to defend all of the democratic and social rights of the working class, including access to high quality public education.

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Below you see how other states still have democratic debates and open elections while in Maryland any politician that speaks against neo-liberals and neo-cons are censured. We must fight for free and fair elections to make sure we can vote these neo-liberals out of office.

Remember, Common Core is not about quality education.....it is about controlling what is taught. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are already standardized and we do not want our humanities and liberal arts standardized because that is what makes the US a plurality and democracy-----differing points of view. So this is simply a policy meant to give global corporations control of what our children learn in classrooms.

We have the AFT, the CTU, and it looks like the UFT moving against these education reforms and now we need parents and communities fighting with them. It does not matter your political stance----these policies hurt all Americans.

New York Now Leads the Way in the Movement Against Common Core- At The Polls | With A Brooklyn Accent
20 Jul 2014 | Common Core · New York Share NPE News Briefs

Something truly extraordinary has happened in the New York State Gubernatorial race-something with broad national implications. A big money Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, who thought he was going to make himself a front runner in the 2016 Presidential Race by ramming through legislation requiring teacher evaluations based on Common Core aligned tests, has generated so much opposition among teachers and parents that there are now three different Gubernatorial candidates who oppose Common Core- the Republican candidate, Rob Astorino, the Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, and the new and quite formidable challenger in the Democratic Primary, Zephyr Teachout.

There are two reasons this situation is “game changer”

First, it shows how much opposition to Common Core is emerging across the political spectrum. For the last year, Common Core supporters in the media, the corporate world, and the US Department of Education have tried to portray Common Core opponents as extremists whose views should be rejected out of hand, but the what we have in New York is a mainstream Republican, a strong candidate on the left, and a liberal Democrat all saying that Common Core is untested, undemocratic and a threat to strong, locally controlled public schools. And this position is going to be put forward strongly from now until election day. Even if Andrew Cuomo wins the Democratic primary, he will be facing two strong anti-Common Core voices in the general election.

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July 08th, 2014

7/8/2014

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CORPORATIONS ARE USING PRIVATE NON-PROFITS TO CONTROL PUBLIC POLICY. THEY CAPTURE AN ISSUE AND PROMOTE POLICY THAT WORKS TO THE ADVANTAGE OF CORPORATIONS. IN MARYLAND THE PUBLIC SECTOR HAS BEEN DISMANTLED AND IS REPLACED BY THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS. IT IS WHY THERE IS NO PUBLIC VOICE OR CONTROL OF POLICY IN MARYLAND. A DEMOCRAT WOULD NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN....NE0-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ARE DOING THIS!

I have spoken about Maryland's capture of politics centered in the movement away from a strong public sector which has been replaced by private non-profits controlled by corporations that simply place someone as head of the organization that makes sure public policy goes the way the corporations want. In Maryland we have AGAB serving that goal. Johns Hopkins creates and controls most non-profits in Baltimore and in doing so captures all public policy. What we see less of in Maryland and Baltimore are real citizens coming out and organizing and controlling their own non-profits. My non-profit, Citizens Oversight Maryland speaks freely because there is no corporate connection. If you see a non-profit that is silent on all of the issues I address here-----they are being controlled by a corporation. We have great groups doing good work in Baltimore but very few of them will shout against the power structures -----Johns Hopkins and Baltimore Development or identify the fact that all of Baltimore's politicians work for these institutions and not the citizens of Baltimore. I told you about the anti-fracking environmental group that ran when I asked them to educate about Trans Pacific Trade Pact and the fact that it allows all environmental laws to be ignored. Now, if an environmental non-profit is not talking about this----it is headed by a corporation. This is why TPP is not even mentioned in Maryland.....corporations control all of our private non-profits.

PLEASE WAKE UP AND ENGAGE IN POLITICS FOLKS! THE MIDDLE CLASS CANNOT WATCH AS THE POOR ARE BRUTALIZED BECAUSE WE KNOW THE GOAL OF NEO-LIBERALISM IS TO GET RID OF ALL MIDDLE-CLASS. YOU OR YOUR CHILDREN/GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE THE POOR. YOU CANNOT BE SILENT FOR FEAR OF YOUR JOB BECAUSE LOSING DEMOCRACY AND YOUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS IS MORE IMPORTANT.

Maryland and especially Baltimore is now running just a global corporations do overseas----Non-governmental organizations NGOs control our state and local governments as a 'quasi-governmental agency' and corporations 'donate' rather than pay taxes to private non-profits that then do what that 'donor' wants. No doubt national non-profits have always been this way but now they are controlling all policy at state and local levels as well. This is the capture we are feeling in Maryland. The neo-liberals and neo-cons work to establish these private non-profits and then make sure that these groups are the ones heard in policy discussion. This is why many community associations in Baltimore are silent to politicians pushing neo-conservative/neo-liberal policies that are killing the residents living in these communities. They instead are the ones backing these same pols dismantling our democratic structures. The heads of these organizations sound to be supporting the community when in fact they are working to push corporate policy.

As you see below you must have politicians in office that want the public engaged in public policy. They build the structures to make sure to stimulate participation. In Maryland all policy is written behind closed doors and the public is pulled from public meetings if they try to speak on the most important issues. Go to Baltimore City Hall and you look at pols that are simply sitting there----they are no more connected to the people speaking than a man on the moon. They are simply meeting a charter requirement to have hearings.

IT IS THE DISMANTLING OF ALL OF THE PUBLIC STRUCTURES OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT THAT HAS PRODUCED THE LACK OF PARTICIPATION AND IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS.

The Citizens Most Vocal in Local Government

View detailed demographic data from a national survey about the most and least likely people to speak up. by Mike Maciag | July 2014 Flickr/Kelby Carr

In his first few months in office, Park City, Utah, Mayor Jack Thomas has heard from quite a few constituents. His office phone rings off the hook. Going out for lunch takes about twice as long as before, too, as he constantly fields concerns from residents who walk up. “If you want a quiet moment,” he jokes, “you’ve got to leave town.”

The small resort community is home to some of the nation’s more vocal residents. In a recent survey, 28 percent of city residents reported contacting elected officials to express their opinions and 37 percent said they had attended a local public meeting over a 12-month period.

Nationwide, though, citizen participation in local government remains abysmally low. The National Research Center (NRC), a firm that conducts citizen surveys for more than 200 communities, compiled data for Governing shedding light on the types of residents who are most active. Overall, only 19 percent of Americans recently surveyed contacted their local elected officials over a 12-month period, while about a quarter reported attending a public meeting.

In many city halls, extremists on either side of an issue dominate public hearings. Those who do show up at the sparsely attended meetings are often the same cast of characters week after week. But some public officials have found ways to reach a much wider segment of residents.

Park City’s Mayor Thomas said he’ll go door-to-door along the town’s main corridor to gauge resident sentiment about everything from new development projects to air quality and garbage pickup. “If you want to have a government that’s rooted in the community, you better start that way,” Thomas said. “It’s all about trust.”

NRC survey data identifies types of residents who are the most active or, in some cases, the least vocal. Individuals living in a community for more than 10 years, for example, are about three times more likely to attend public meetings and contact elected officials than new residents. Among racial groups, Asians tend to have the lowest participation rates. Low-income residents also aren’t as active as those earning six-figure incomes.

In general, residents often aren’t compelled to weigh in on an issue unless it negatively affects them, said Cheryl Hilvert of the International City/County Management Association. It’s for this reason that much of the citizen engagement in communities is confined to typical hot-button issues, such as planning and zoning meetings.

Many residents don’t think they have time to participate. Others, particularly newer residents with lower participation rates, may not know where or how to get involved, Hilvert said.

Survey data further suggests that younger residents aren’t inclined to speak up. Those under the age of 35 attend meetings and contact elected officials at far lower rates than those over 35. Hilvert suspects their busy lifestyles may have something to do with it, especially if they have children.

Connecting with these groups of residents requires stepping outside of city hall and meeting residents on their own turf. Park City officials say they’ve held meetings in school lunch rooms, performing arts centers and with local homeowners’ associations.

“To truly engage the community,” Hilvert said, “managers have to think broader about it than in the past.”

Some localities employ unconventional approaches to raise the level of citizen engagement. When the city of Rancho Cordova, Calif., debated permitting more residents to raise chickens on their properties last year, it launched an online Open Town Hall. More than 500 residents visited the interactive forum to make or review public statements. “It is noisy and smelly enough with pigeons, turkeys, feral cats, and untended dogs without adding chickens to the mix,” wrote one resident. The city drafted an ordinance reflecting citizen input, then emailed it to forum subscribers.

Outreach efforts through local media or civic organizations help further community involvement. Some residents also form Facebook groups or online petitions to promote their causes.

The city of Chanhassen, Minn., relied heavily on social media to connect with citizens when it confronted an issue that’s about as contentious as any local government can face: a proposal to build a new Walmart. The city posted regular updates on its Facebook page and uploaded all documents online. Laurie Hokkanen, the city’s assistant city manager, said residents continued hearing rumors even after the city rejected the company’s rezoning proposal. As a result, staff kept lines of communication open.

“A vote by the city council does not end the issue for residents who are invested in it,” Hokkanen said. “It’s important to tell people you appreciate their input.”

Citizen Survey Data Across much of the country, citizens rarely voice their opinion to local governments. The National Research Center provided survey results from local jurisdictions throughout the country participating in the National Citizen Survey, collected between 2012 and earlier this year.

Two questions on the survey assessed how vocal citizens were in government. Survey respondents were asked if they had done the following in the last 12 months:

1) "Contacted [locality name] elected officials (in-person, phone, email or web) to express your opinion?"

Yes: 19 percent
No: 81 percent

2) "Attended a local public meeting?"

Two times a week or more: 1 percent
Two to four times a month: 1 percent
Once a month or less: 22 percent
Not at all: 76 percent

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We all know the quasi nature of Baltimore Development and the University of Maryland Medical Center but let's look at AGAB and how corporations 'donate' for tax write-offs and then simply write the public policy tied to that non-profit.

If you could look at what this organization does------and the details are very private-----you will see that corporations and the rich simply choose a category to contribute and then are allowed to write what that 'donation' will create. So, greening as a category can channel money to paying for corporate parks that simply subsidize the costs of a corporation's headquarters. Why pay to landscape your property when you can get a tax write-off as 'donation' to greening and have the city contribute a chunk for example. A corporation wanting to 'donate' to eduction would direct that money to a national education non-profit controlled by corporations to go into schools and tell parents, teachers, and students just what 'wellness' will look like in the schools. In Baltimore parents asking for recess for their children may not be discussed in these 'wellness' groups in many schools.

This entire system allows corporations not paying taxes in Baltimore and Maryland to instead 'donate' money and then control the public policy in whatever area they choose. This is how the citizens of Maryland have lost their voices in their own communities. When I first moved to Baltimore I had the nerve as a citizen to try to organize for an athletic field on a vacant lot in my community and the response-----JOHNS HOPKINS HOMEWOOD DEVELOPMENT WILL DECIDE WHAT WILL GO THERE----ARE YOU CRAZY? As a resident of a community you must go to that development corporation for community grants to do anything and that allows that development corporation to decide what they want-----

AND ALL OF THIS IS THE CORPORATION THAT IS JOHNS HOPKINS AND BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT.

This is what happens when the public sector is dismantled-----all money is funneled through private non-profits that have no transparency and whose membership becomes ever more exclusive.

GET RID OF THE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ALLOWING THIS DISMANTLING OF OUR PUBLIC SECTOR----REMEMBER, IF YOU THINK GOVERNMENT HAS TOO MUCH CONTROL----CORPORATE CONTROL IS MUCH WORSE AS REGARDS DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS.

About The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG)

ABAG's mission is to maximize the impact of philanthropic giving on community life through a growing network of diverse, informed and effective grantmakers.

The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers is the region’s premier resource on philanthropy, dedicated to informing grantmakers and improving our community. ABAG was founded in 1983 to provide a forum in which colleagues could address common problems, approaches and interests.

Our members include more than 145 private and community foundations, donor advised funds, and corporations with strategic grantmaking programs - representing the vast majority of institutional giving in our area.

ABAG is …

The Resource on Grantmaking

ABAG provides critical information and services to the philanthropic and nonprofit communities.

The Network for Givers

ABAG convenes grantmakers and others to address issues and create lasting solutions.

The Voice for Philanthropy

ABAG represents the philanthropic sector to key audiences, including the media, legislators, and national organizations, raising public awareness and understanding about the role and impact of philanthropy on our society.

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Maryand Health Care for All and Baltimore Education Coalition are two examples of many. Maryland Health Care for All is a Johns Hopkins non-profit created to make sure the Affordable Care Act was the health reform that moved forward in Maryland and not REAL health care for all like Expanded and Improved Medicare for All. People see that the ACA is not about access----it is about building structures that will deregulate and consolidate the health industry killing oversight and accountability and denying most people most access to care. Maryland has already disconnected from Medicare by receiving exemptions from the Federal government. All of this makes Maryland have one of the worst health environments in the nation. The poor have a life span 30 years less than affluent, people are fearful when going to the hospital because of poor quality and staff work in some of the most difficult conditions. Now, the state health reform is creating a tiered health system that has most people only able to connect to clinic care. We see this breakdown in health care in Maryland best if we look at the dismantled Veteran's Administration with Baltimore having the worst in the nation. All of the doctors in this system were moved out and into private health systems that now cater to the world's rich------HEALTH TOURISM. THIS IS JOHNS HOPKINS SPECIALTY NOW.

Below you see two Hopkins grads placed in charge of controlling the health care policy. Bill and Hillary tried to do to health care what Obama has done with ACA at the same time they created the conditions for global banks---so this group in 1999 had the goal of moving health policy in that direction. This is why Maryland sought the exemption from Medicare----to create the private health systems that are tied to the Maryland state health exchange. Medicare and Medicaid fraud is rampant in Maryland because the oversight and accountability of the public sector was long ago dismantled.

The leaders advocating for the Affordable Care Act knew the goal was maximizing corporate profits and building global health corporations and not REAL health care for all. The groups joining this coalition often did not. They assumed they were actually working for health care for all. This is an example of corporate capture of a policy. Maryland spent this time from 1999 dismantling the public programs Medicare and Medicaid---and the Veteran's Administration and creating a tiered level of coverage that denied basic access by allowing health institutions to create the most profitable definition of care.

While neo-liberals claimed to be building the most cost-effective health delivery system------patient outcomes in Maryland worsened and longevity declined. So much for health care for all. Johns Hopkins was able to build a global corporate empire with all that Medicare and Medicaid----not to mention Federal, state, and local grants and public funding.

A GLOBAL HEALTH EMPIRE BUILT ON PUBLIC MONEY----THAT IS A SUCCESSFUL PRIVATE NON-PROFIT.

The people attached to Maryland Health Care for All really seeking this goal now need to join Expanded and Improved Medicare for All in Maryland to actually get health care for all. We need to replace the most private and profit-driven health system in the nation that is Maryland health exchange with this public structure that keeps Medicare strong.

The Founder of the Initiative is Peter Beilenson, MD, MPH, and the President is Vincent DeMarco, MA, JD.

The Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund (“MCHI”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy organization that was created in 1999 with a mission to educate all Marylanders about sound ways to achieve quality, affordable health care for all. In order to create a comprehensive, economically sound health care for all plan, MCHI organized the state’s largest coalition and solicited input from coalition members and thousands of Maryland citizens in town hall meetings. National experts at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Maryland Law School then worked to incorporate this community input into MCHI’s Health Care for All! Plan. In 2002, MCHI released its first plan and conducted a statewide campaign to educate people about how the plan would guarantee health care security for all Marylanders. A revised version of the plan was released in 2008 by the same set of experts that created the original following another round of public stakeholder meetings. The updated plan includes similar components as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) and is being used to guide analysis and planning for state and local implementation of the federal health reform law.

Over 1,200 faith, labor, business, health, and community organizations have joined the Health Care for All! Coalition to support enactment of MCHI’s plan. This is the largest coalition ever created in Maryland and certainly one of the largest health care consumer coalitions in the country.

The Coalition successfully advocated for a number of laws that will increase access to care and prescription drugs. In addition, MCHI continues to work with key state leaders to educate members of our broad coalition about how they can access health care programs now in existence. In the years ahead, MCHI will continue to educate and activate its powerful coalition to increase health care access in Maryland.

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Baltimore Education Coalition is the Michelle Rhee of privatization groups again created by Johns Hopkins this time with the goal of capturing education policy and making sure reforms go the way of corporate control-----just as did Maryland Health Care for All. In both cases the leaders knew the goal but the people joining often think they are really working towards the goal of health care for all or quality public education. It is not until all of the bad policy the BEC unrolls that many people in these coalitions find they did not get what they bargained for. Good people wanting to work for good public policy captured by joining private non-profits that exist to make sure that does not happen.

This is why activism in Baltimore and Maryland is so low----people trying to organize have to fight these corporate non-profits !

Please stop allowing corporate non-profits to control all public policy in Maryland. Know what the policies these groups are advocating and know that they actually have a goal that works for the people and not only for maximizing corporate profit.

This is a prime example of why getting rid of neo-liberals and neo-cons is so important. It is not only how they vote in City Hall or the Maryland Assembly. It is the environment they allow to exist in public community organizations ------where is the public discussion-----is it open and inclusive? Neither Maryland Health Care for All nor Baltimore Education Coalition would allow Cindy Walsh to come in to educate and/or speak against these policies. If they do not allow open dialog----they are hiding something and that is that what they are doing is not in the public interest!

Baltimore Education Coalition

We are public schools – traditional and charter. We are after-school programs and neighborhood associations. We are education policy organizations, religious institutions, broad-based organizations, and schools. We are policy analysts, teachers, students, parents, community members, grandparents, and Baltimoreans working together to organize, mobilize, and energize the City of Baltimore to achieve our mission that all Baltimore students receive an excellent education. We focus on the issues that impact our students and families the most. Together, we have stopped over $100 million dollars in proposed funding cuts to city schools. In the face of potential harmful cuts to School Based Health Centers the BEC responded and advocated to successfully keep this important resource in the budget. We have also worked together to address the deplorable facility conditions in Baltimore City including winning the bottle tax in Baltimore City to support the successful campaign to pass state legislation to provide an unprecedented financing plan providing up to $1 billion to rebuild or renovate schools in Baltimore City. This effort was successful due to the dedication and perseverance of the more than 3,000 parents, students, teachers, administrators, and community leaders who came to Annapolis and City Hall to make their voices heard for Baltimore City’s 85,000 students and their communities.

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June 03rd, 2014

6/3/2014

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TALKING ONE MORE TIME FOR NOW ON THE DISASTER OF PRIVATIZING PUBLIC HEALTH THROUGH PRIVATIZING UNIVERSITIES AND THE EFFECTS OF AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. WE CAN SEE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IN THE WAY THE PRIVATIZED PATENT SYSTEM AND THE LACK OF FDA OVERSIGHT IS MAKING OUR HEALTH SYSTEM DANGEROUS!

ALL OF MARYLAND CANDIDATE'S FOR GOVERNOR WILL CONTINUE THIS GLOBAL CORPORATE STRUCTURE FOR HEALTH CARE EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR

I listened to a NPR------corporate media all the time----report on the escalating problem of medical procedures and devices passing FDA approval and failing and sometimes killing the American people. The numbers are soaring as the FDA is now working to send these products to market for profit and allowing the failures to be discovered after the fact by harming the citizens of America. This NPR article looked at one medical procedure that was approved by the FDA after a supposed 'clinical trial' of a few hundreds of people. The entire process looked to be filled with false data and sketchy connections with who and how the medical research was conducted and if any of the results were reproducible or if the efficacy was real.

ERGO-----THE ENTIRE PUBLIC HEALTH CLINICAL TRIAL PROCEDURE IS BEING DISMANTLED AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC WILL NOW BE THE TEST SUBJECTS. IF HARM IS DONE-----TOUGH LUCK AND WE WILL ALLOW THE BAD MEDICAL PROCEDURE TO CONTINUE REGARDLESS IN ANOTHER FORM.

This is what a corporate state looks like and it is Trans Pacific Trade Pact already in action as Obama has filled his Federal agencies with the same kinds of people that Bush did-----people committed to global corporate control of all public policy.

THIS IS WHAT YOUR ELECTIONS FOR GOVERNOR AND MAYOR ARE ABOUT-----WE THE PEOPLE MUST WIN THESE ELECTIONS!

What is happening as well is that Obama and your neo-liberal Congress person sent hundreds of billions of dollars to higher education under the guise of building stronger education but what they are building are corporate university research facilities complete with patenting of research done at this university. Most institutions receiving those hundreds of billions to build their corporate R and D? Ivy League universities like Johns Hopkins. What this policy does is make these universities corporations that receive tons of public taxpayer money to subsidize research in the guise of education while it is simply a patent machine for corporate R and D. When you see BIOPARK outside of Johns Hopkins or University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore (a quasi-institution, not public so they say) ---you are seeing the public subsidizing with what is called education funding the profits of what are now corporations.

More important is combining this with the fact that the clinical trial structure and fast FDA approval of these patented procedures, devices, or medications that are simply rubber-stamped and you have ABSOLUTELY NO PUBLIC OVERSIGHT OF ANY OF THE HEALTH INDUSTRY ACTIONS. Remember, universities----especially public universities ------were the one institutions charged with making sure the data and research of products protected the people. These corporate structures built by neo-liberals like O'Malley and neo-cons like Erhlich are now doing just that.......creating an unaccountable and fraudulent system in our medical research structure.

OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS-----ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS------DELIBERATELY SENT MONEY TO BUILD WHAT THEY KNOW WILL HURT AND/OR KILL CITIZENS IN THE NAME OF CORPORATE PROFIT.

This is what Trans Pacific Trade Pact and the Affordable Care Act is all about.....consolidating the health industry into global corporate health systems that are deregulated and unaccountable and that will do harm without a second thought in pursuit of profit. This is what the Maryland Health reform has done these several years under O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake in Baltimore-----created the structures to allow all this to happen and with no oversight or accountability structures.

SEE WHY CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND AND HER PLATFORM MUST BE KEPT OUT OF THIS ELECTION????

'The 510(k) loophole

Although the FDA requests clinical data in about 10% of cases, one concern over the 510(k) system is that testing is insufficient and so products that are either unsafe or ineffective could be released to market'.

Please read below to the 510 loophole.....it has made the FDA just as the SEC----working for corporate interests against the people's interests. That is what a corporate state does.

How does the FDA 'approve' medical products?

Thursday 20 February 2014 - 8am PST

Written by David McNamee Medical News Today

You may have seen medical products that claim to be "FDA cleared," "FDA registered," "FDA listed" or "FDA approved" - but what do these labels mean? You would be forgiven for feeling confused.

In this feature, we look at what the differences in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classification actually mean, what you need to be aware of as a consumer and what the future holds for the regulation and classification of medical products in the US.

Though you may see labels on a wide variety of medical products - from implantable defibrillators to smartphone apps - bearing legends such as "FDA registered," in reality these claims are often disingenuous. But regulation over the correct terminology is rarely enforced.

Class 1, 2 and 3 In truth, the only products that the FDA specifically "approve" are drugs and life-threatening or life-sustaining "Class 3" medical technology (such as defibrillators). These are submitted to a rigorous review process called "pre-market approval" (PMA), to prove that the benefits of the products outweigh any potential risks to the health of the patient.

The only products that the FDA specifically "approve" are drugs and life-threatening or life-sustaining "Class 3" medical technology. Scientific evidence from clinical trials must be provided by the manufacturers demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of their product. Just 1% of products pass PMA.

Over-the-counter drugs are monitored by the FDA, but they are submitted to a less rigorous testing procedure, especially if they are assumed to be safe.

Vitamins, herbs and supplements are not tested by the FDA unless they are an active ingredient in a drug that requires FDA approval - so manufacturers of supplements are not allowed to claim that their products can treat any specific disease, only that they "promote health."

Despite this, some supplement companies are known to illegally claim their supplements are "FDA approved." It is thought that the FDA are unable to intervene in every instance due to limited resources.

Low-risk medical devices, such as stethoscopes and gauze, are known as "Class 1" and are exempt from FDA review.

"Class 2" medical devices are defined as not life-sustaining or life-threatening, though this category covers a wide spectrum of devices, from X-ray machines to some exercise equipment.

The level of scrutiny attached to Class 2 devices is much lower than Class 3. The devices do need FDA "clearance" before they can be marketed and sold, but rather than submit their products for clinical trial, the manufacturers are required instead to convince the FDA that their products are "substantially equivalent" to products that have been previously cleared by the FDA.

Substantially equivalent means that the device has the same intended use and approximate technical characteristics as an existing product.

Products that pass this clearance process may be referred to as "FDA cleared" or "FDA listed," but this is not the same as "FDA approved," which only relates to the prescription drugs and Class 3 devices that have passed PMA.

This approval method for Class 2 devices has been the subject of mounting controversy. The process is known as "510(k)" - named after its section in the law.

The 510(k) loophole

Although the FDA requests clinical data in about 10% of cases, one concern over the 510(k) system is that testing is insufficient and so products that are either unsafe or ineffective could be released to market.

Under 510(k), devices that have passed clearance, but have later been found dangerous or ineffective and are recalled, are not automatically removed from the FDA's list of cleared products. Another worry about this process is that the more "substantially equivalent" (but not identical) products are listed, the more a chain grows of FDA-cleared products that increasingly move away from the original product.

But perhaps the most concerning feature of 510(k) is that devices that have passed clearance, but then have later been found dangerous or ineffective and are recalled, are not automatically removed from the FDA's list of cleared products.

This is a loophole that allows any new products bearing the same faults to remain eligible for FDA clearance through 510(k).

In a 2012 report, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that 510(k) be replaced with an "integrated pre-market and post-market regulatory framework that effectively provides a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness throughout the device life cycle."

But these recommendations - though popular with consumer advocacy groups - were rejected by the FDA.

A congressman (now senator) for Massachusetts, Ed Markey, campaigned for the reform of 510(k) and proposed a 2012 bill to close the loophole.

But the bill was not passed. It received opposition from medical device manufacturers and members of Congress who claimed that the existing FDA review processes are already too time-consuming and unpredictable, compared with other countries, so inserting more safeguards and regulatory steps would have the effect of strangling innovation.

Medical News Today spoke to Dr. Michael A. Carome, director of the non-profit consumer rights organization Public Citizen's Health Research Group, about 510(k).

Dr. Carome cites a report that Public Citizen issued in 2012 highlighting "a concerted lobbying campaign intended to weaken the already lax regulatory oversight of medical devices."

"For example, in 2011 the medical device industry spent $33.3 million on lobbying, raising its total to $158.7 million since 2007. This lobbying campaign has been very successful and has generally drowned out calls for stronger medical device regulation from consumer advocates like Public Citizen."

Carome also sees a second obstacle in the FDA itself, "which has been very resistant to proposals to strengthen or replace the 510(k) system."

"The FDA seems beholden to the medical device industry and the mantra that promotion of 'innovation' is the most important goal in the regulation of medical devices," he adds.

More recently, Sen. Markey wrote to the FDA, appealing directly for them to reform 510(k).

Sen. Markey was satisfied with the FDA's response, announcing in December 2013 that database modifications proposed by the agency "will help decrease the dangers and increase the awareness of medical devices that may be made based on flawed models."

Dr. Carome feels, though, that the FDA's proposed measures "fail to adequately address the underlying flaws in the 510(k) premarket clearance process."

The central issue remains that new Class 2 medical devices found to be "substantially equivalent" to recalled but previously cleared devices are still obliged - by law - to be cleared by the FDA, despite whatever flaws the devices contain.

"The slightly improved transparency provided by FDA's revised database for 510(k)-cleared devices does not close this dangerous loophole in the existing law that threatens patient safety," Carome concludes.

But what are the Class 2 devices that have caused patient safety concerns?

Carome points to the DePuy metal-on-metal Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) hip implant - an "example of a medical device heavily promoted as being innovative and better than earlier types of devices."

In November 2013, DePuy - an orthopedics company owned by Johnson & Johnson - announced a $2.5 billion settlement to resolve more than 8,000 of 12,000 public liability claims filed in US courts after their metal-on-metal hip was recalled in 2010. The ASR was found to shed metallic debris as it wears, causing pain and injury to the patient.

The Myxo ring In 2008, a surgeon named Dr. Patrick McCarthy at Chicago's prestigious academic medical center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, was found to be installing a device he had invented - the McCarthy Annuloplasty Ring - into the hearts of cardiology patients without the informed consent of the patients.

"If you are planning to receive a medical device in a US hospital, there is no way to confirm whether the device is FDA approved, investigational or registered," says Dr. Rajamannan. Concerned patients were even more alarmed when they discovered that the ring had also not been submitted to the FDA for review.

"There are no guideposts for us. You don't learn about this stuff in med school," McCarthy was quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying, when questioned on why he had bypassed FDA approval.

The ring's manufacturer, a company called Edwards Lifesciences, later falsely claimed that the device was exempt from the 510(k) process and so did not require FDA clearance.

When a concerned colleague of McCarthy's, Dr. Nalini Rajamannan, contacted the FDA, an investigation was triggered, which ultimately saw the ring cleared for use - despite having already been sewn into the hearts of 667 patients.

But further controversy surrounded the FDA's clearance, which simply relied on a clinical study Dr. McCarthy himself had written as evidence that the ring - now rebranded "Myxo dETlogix" - was safe and effective.

Dr. Rajamannan - who was co-author on that study before withdrawing when she learned that the patients involved were not giving informed consent - later wrote a book detailing the controversy and continues to campaign on behalf of patients installed with the Myxo ring.

Speaking to Medical News Today, she says that the concerns over the Myxo device have still not been addressed by the FDA:

"The FDA has written a formal letter stating that they would not be investigating the matter any further. These heart valve rings that are being cleared under the 510k process for Edwards Lifesciences are associated with over 4,000 adverse events and over 645 deaths."

"The other major heart valve manufacturers have less than 20 events for their rings in the FDA database."

What does the future hold for FDA regulation? As we have shown in this feature, the confusion over the various stages of FDA "approval" and "clearance" is not limited to patients. These examples show that FDA classifications and processes can also - naively or wilfully - be misinterpreted by manufacturers and medical professionals.

The concerns from doctors, patients and consumer advocacy groups on the lack of regulation of medical products and the conflicts of interest within those regulatory processes remain.

Dr. Carome recommends that the IOM's 2012 guidelines be implemented and suggests that more of the Class 2 products sped through to market under 510(k) need to be reclassified as Class 3, for which the PMA process is much more stringent.

"Manufacturers do heavily promote their devices as being new and innovative, and many health care providers and patients believe that a 'newer' or 'innovative' device must be better," reasons Carome. "However, in most cases, there is no evidence that the newer medical devices are any better than older devices or other less-invasive treatments that don't involve a medical device."

"It is a real safety problem," agrees Dr. Rajamannan, who adds: "If you are planning to receive a medical device in a US hospital, there is no way to confirm whether the device is FDA approved, investigational or registered."

"The patients in the US are at major risk and the FDA is doing nothing to help the patients."
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As I said, Maryland TV is plastered with injury law firms gathering patients that are victims of this horrendous system. As we all know, the injury lawyers get all the money in the end and the patients are harmed for life. This is what a third world nation looks like----citizens cannot even seek medical help without being fearful the procedures are happening in their interests and not for profit.

In Maryland, the Maryland Assembly has passed laws that make it as hard as possible for the public to seek justice in medical malpractice and it does not require medical malpractice insurance---meaning doctors prone to bad practices would love to come to Maryland. NONE OF THESE POLICIES ARE DEMOCRATIC----YET MARYLAND IS CALLED A 'PROGRESSIVE' STATE. It is a neo-liberal/neo-con state.

New Jersey Personal Injury Blog FDA Failed to Properly Test Medical Devices before Approval

By Blume Donnelly Fried Forte Zerres & Molinari
on March 9, 2011

CNN recently reported that a review of recall data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that the majority of the 113 Class III medical devices that were recalled between 2005 and 2009 for serious, life-threatening dangers, did not undergo the FDA’s more rigorous pre-market approval process, also referred to as “PMA.” Instead, the agency cleared the devices using a less stringent process known as the 510(k) process, under which clinical testing is not required. This discovery brings to light that many medical products that were given clearance, such as automated external defibrillators (AEDs), artificial hip joints, and heart valves, were marketed to and used on consumers without undergoing clinical testing in advance.

Under FDA policy, all Class III devices are required to undergo the PMA premarket approval process, including clinical testing, in order to determine if “sufficient valid scientific evidence” is found that the medical device is safe for its intended use.

However, a report from the Government Accountability Office in 2009 discovered that approximately 66 percent of all Class III devices were approved using the less demanding 510(k) process instead of the PMA because it was “less burdensome”. An additional study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine, found that approximately 71 percent of the 113 medical devices recalled between 2005 and 2009 were given approval through the 510(k) process.

Many believe the reasons for the shortcomings in testing are because the agency does not have the necessary funding and staff to conduct a clinical study for all medical devices requiring same. While a medical device’s manufacturer does pay for a fraction of the expenses related to a PMA approval, the majority of the cost falls to the FDA, which is under-funded. Choosing to approve a medical device under the 510(k) process is much less expensive.

The FDA has admitted that the 510(k) approval process needs to be toughened, and has stated it intends to take action to improve the process in 2011. Additionally, the FDA has stated it will evaluate all remaining Class III devices slated for the 510(k) process to determine if the device should undergo the PMA process. As a result, there may be dangerous medical devices on the market that have not received proper government approval.

If you believe that a defectively designed or manufactured medical device may have seriously affected your health or the health of a loved one, contact a New Jersey product liability attorney at Blume Goldfaden. Call 973-635-5400 to schedule a no-cost consultation with one of our lawyers.

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Keep in mind that a republican Bush slashed funding for most Federal agencies as a way to make oversight and accountability go away. So, when Obama makes an increase of 2-3% he is doing nothing towards rebuilding these agencies. In fact, much of the funding that makes it to these agencies is simply lost in private outsourcing with all its fraud and corruption.

When they say 'it's the sequestration and the national debt'

WE SAY----NO, IT'S THE FAILURE TO RECOVER TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD THIS LAST DECADE.

This funding status quo simply keeps our Federal agencies in a mode of 'doing no harm' to corporate profits.

STOP ELECTING NEO-LIBERALS! DO YOU HEAR YOUR POLS SHOUTING TO BRING BACK TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD! MARYLAND POLS LOVE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION SO THERE IS NOT A WORD

Once again republican think tanks are crying foul but they are the ones behind all of the dismantling of these agencies creating the fraud and corruption and loss of trillions of dollars. Their figures are right---$900 billion from Medicare will be taken from the patient's care and not hospital profits.

Reaction to Obama's 2015 HHS funding:

Various health care providers and organizations have responded to the proposal, with many calling for increased funding for health-related agencies and initiatives.

The Federation of American Hospitals criticized proposed funding cuts to Medicare, with FAH President and CEO Chip Kahn saying they would "further threate[n] seniors' access to vital hospital services" and noting that both Republicans and Democrats oppose such reductions (Demko/Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 3/4). According to National Journal, the group is hoping to persuade Congress against the cuts by touting a new study estimating over $900 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years through cost cutting resulting from changes to the way providers deliver care (Ritger, National Journal, 3/4).

American Hospital Association President and CEO Richard Umbdenstock said the proposal contained some "problematic policies" that would hurt hospitals' abilities to improve the health care system and place patients' at risk of losing access to services (Demko/Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 3/4).

Kasey Thompson, president and chair of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA and vice president of policy, planning and communications for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, called for additional FDA funding, saying, "Given that FDA regulates about 25 cents of every dollar of the gross domestic product, it does not have enough money to fulfill its public health mission."

Alliance for a Stronger FDA Deputy Executive Director Steven Grossman added that the group plans to ask Congress for more FDA funding (Lee, Modern Healthcare, 3/4).

The proposed increase in NIH funding also generated backlash. Research! America President Mary Woolley in a statement said that the U.S. "simply cannot sustain [its] research ecosystem, combat costly and deadly diseases ... and create quality jobs with anemic funding levels that threaten the health and prosperity of Americans," adding, "These funding levels jeopardize our global leadership in science -- in effect ceding leadership to other nations as they continue to invest in strong research and development infrastructures" (Viebeck, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 3/4).

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This is how crazy things have gotten. California is indeed ground zero for this university as corporation model starting with Stanford and now consuming all public universities. Remember, California had the best education system in the world----I had the pleasure of attending California schools at all levels-----but this move to corporatize has ruined the entire higher education system and they are now creating the tiered higher ed as they are in Maryland with working and middle class being tracked into vocational K-career college.

This is critical to health care because these large universities whether public or private are the source of public protections for health. If the data is corrupt at universities-----no one is watching the health corporations either. So, if you think funding universities by making them corporations is a good idea----THINK OF ALL THE FACTORS CONNECTED TO THIS.

It is interesting to note that Governor Brown-----who will try to run for President as a 'progressive' on his old record as a real progressive in the 1970s---appointed Napolitano-----HEAD OF HOMELAND SECURITY WITH NO EDUCATION BACKGROUND as Chancellor of California Higher Education School System.

THE CONTINUED USE OF INSIDERS FILLING APPOINTED POSITIONS AT ALL LEVELS.

When they talk of 'start ups from this university research' they do not tell you that 9 times out of ten those start-ups that are successful are simply absorbed into global corporations. IT IS A PIPELINE. Keep in mind that these corporate universities sell this corporate structure as funding schools but it is this structure that has student tuition sky high subsidizing this research and patenting process. Maryland has done the same to its universities as this article shows in California and it is where all public funding for education is now going. Johns Hopkins has had so much money funneled to it from our Congress neo-liberals that it owns much of the land in Baltimore's downtown and city center and it is all simply businesses connected to Hopkins. THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD A GLOBAL CORPORATION THAT CONTROLS A REGION----

Patent-reform legislation spurs controversy among universities

Tina Pai/Staff By Tahmina Achekzai

Last Updated April 28, 2014

In 1994, Michael Doyle, then the director of a computer lab at UCSF, patented software that allowed doctors to view embryos online — the first “interactive” application on the web.

A few years later, the University of California licensed a patent to a company Doyle created called Eolas, which, claiming rights to the idea of embedding interactive content on web pages, sued Microsoft in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The university, a co-plaintiff in the case, took a $30.4-million cut in what is now widely regarded as a classic case of “patent trolling.”

This week, Congress is marking up legislation in hopes of combating patent trolls — companies that purchase patents not to commercialize a product but to reap licensing revenue.

The UC system holds nearly 4,000 U.S. patents that have led to thousands of inventions and hundreds of startup companies. The University of California leads the nation’s universities in patent development, but pending legislation may change that.

Politicians vs. trolls

Traditionally, researchers apply for patents that give them full ownership of their idea or invention and then sell the rights to outside companies, hoping to take their discoveries from the lab to industry. But when the inventions seem to have little hope for commercialization, “patent trolls” may step into the picture.

Trolls, more formally known as patent-assertion entities, will find and subsequently sue businesses they accuse of infringing patent rights. Serving as a middleman between inventors and businesses, trolls collect licensing fees, a portion of which the inventors may receive.

According to the 2013 White House Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation Report, suits filed by patent trolls tripled from 2010 to 2012, at which point they comprised 62 percent of all patent-infringement cases.

Experts say that because it costs millions of dollars to ascertain what a patent covers, companies faced with these lawsuits may choose to settle rather than to fight.

In November, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a bill hoping to increase transparency within the patent system and to curb the emerging trend of patent trolling.

The bill would require any patentee who has filed a lawsuit to disclose any financial interests. It also requires the Federal Trade Commission to exercise authority over the misuse of demand letters: notices to companies claiming restitution for breach of license.

Academic qualms

Though the legislation is designed to serve as a deterrent to patent trolls attempting to sue other parties, universities worry it will invariably impede their efforts to enforce their own patent rights.

Earlier this month, the Association of American Universities — of which the UC system is a part — signed a joint letter addressed to Leahy outlining its concerns. The letter was also signed by the Association of University Technology Managers, made up of representatives from “technology transfer” offices at many universities who guard university research.

“Much of the legislation that is currently under discussion in Washington goes far beyond what is necessary simply to prevent that abuse of the patent system,” said David Winwood, the vice president for advocacy at the Association of University Technology Managers.

Of particular concern among both universities and members of Congress is the possible addition of a fee-shifting provision, which would require the losing party in a lawsuit to cover fees and expenses incurred by the opposing party.

Carol Mimura, UC Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor of intellectual property and research industry alliances, explained that the threat of incurring additional fees could discourage universities from filing lawsuits against actual infringers.

“The provision favors large, deep pockets, not the little guys,” Mimura said in an email. “Big companies and deep pockets create a David and Goliath situation that discourages investment, as opposed to encouraging it.”

While the university protects its employees, co-inventors are sometimes undergraduate students who are not protected and would have to pay for the damages. As a result, she said, they may be discouraged from filing patents — and, consequently, inhibited from advancing “innovation.”

Gary Falle, UC’s associate vice president for federal government relations, argues Congress needs to take a more “balanced approach” when addressing patent abuses.

“The UC is the lead in the nation in the number of patents (awarded annually), and we want to make sure that is protected,” said Falle. “We just want to make sure that the patents the university is awarded are able to move into technology, commercialization and innovation.”

Trimming the troll

Yet Robin Feldman, a law professor at UC Hastings College of the Law who researches patent trolling issues extensively, believes the legislation is vital to the abused patent system.

Feldman suggested universities might have underlying incentives in opposing the legislation. She noted that universities, while not filing patent lawsuits directly, may deliberately ally with nonpracticing entities to increase revenue.

“They do appear to be feeding the patent trolls at least to some extent,” she said. “There’s so much pressure on universities to find funding sources, and it is difficult for them to resist the temptation to sell to those who won’t make any products.”

Still, according to Mimura, UC Berkeley only licenses patents to commercial entities in accordance with university patent policy. And, despite what history may suggest, Mimura said the University of California does indeed support patent reform and has even reached out to Sen. Dianne Feinstein thanking her for support of patent reform.

In regard to current legislation efforts, the UC system only wants to shift the discussion in the right direction, Falle said.

“We believe that addressing bad behavior by stopping those who send multiple demand letters in the hope of extracting fees out of fear will be the focus of reform — not shutting down the entire patent system that is the goose that laid the golden egg,” Mimura said.

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