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July 24th, 2014

7/24/2014

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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
  1. 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



________________________________________________

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 23rd, 2014

7/23/2014

0 Comments

 
THE REASON MARYLAND IS SILENT AS THE REST OF THE NATION BRINGS OUT MILLIONS IN PROTEST OF NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CONS POLICIES IS THAT ERHLICH/O'MALLEY HAS WORKED HARD TO PRIVATIZE MARYLAND'S PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES.  IT IS HERE THAT HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE BEGINS AND THAT IS WHY NEO-LIBERALS FROM CLINTON TO OBAMA ARE WORKING AS HARD AS THEY CAN TO MAKE THEM INTO CORPORATIONS.

We saw yesterday that it is University of Maryland's Chancellor Kirwan seeing the need to deregulate universities.  Maryland has allowed for-profit career colleges defraud for a few decades now because of deregulation of private career education so now we need to see the same in our public universities.  Kirwan says we are making money using taxpayer money to patent research but we need to super-size the profits from the products we are now sending to the corporate structures attached to our campuses----YOU KNOW---THE 'BIOTECH FACILITIES'.  Kirwan and Mikulski are not only talking about getting rid of a silly regulation that is out of date----they are intending to deregulate how universities can operate as businesses.  All those requirements for receiving taxpayer money for research that make the public partners in this research need to go.  We have proprietary patents now with that taxpayer funded research and it is heading for the open market for profit! 

Below you see what Kirwan and Mikulski are working towards.  Corporations are dismantling their research facilities because universities ARE THEIR RESEARCH FACILITIES.  University students are now paying tuition to work in a corporate research project for free supported by NIH and NCA research money.  IT'S ALL ABOUT CREATING JOBS!  Actually, college grads are as likely now to remain unemployed now as at the time of the 2008 crash because global corporations and neo-liberals are keeping the US economy stagnant.  So, these students are more likely to work as VISTAs then to get a job in the field for which they received a degree.  Meanwhile, the foreign students coming in to get degrees------doing OK especially if they go back home to work for the US corporation overseas.  FREE LABOR PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS----NOW THAT MAXIMIZES CORPORATE PROFITS SAY NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.  See why taxes and tuition are soaring on the working and midde-class?  It costs lots to subsidize every corporate activity.

CORPORATIONS NO LONGER NEED RESEARCH FACILITIES------UNIVERSITIES DO THE RESEARCH AND ANYTHING THAT IS SUCCESSFUL COMES TO THE GLOBAL CORPORATIONS THROUGH STARTUPS BUYOUTS.  THE PEOPLE THEY HIRED TO DO THE WORK IN PRIVATE RESEARCH LABS ARE NOW STUDENTS PAYING TUITION.

The process of patenting university research while having corporations 'partnered' with these universities is a mockery as if people cannot see that this is why student tuition is soaring and all of taxpayer money is funding this 'university' research leaving no money for student financial aid and grants. Directors of these 'university' research facilities being paid like corporate executives.

LET'S GO BACK TO PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES AS PUBLIC EDUCATION!


Below you see what deregulation Kirwan and Mikulski are working towards......making universities driven by profit-----



Colleges Urged to Count Patents in Tenure Reviews

April 29, 2014
  Inside Higher Ed


Universities should begin making patents and other industrial and commercial research count toward promotion and tenure, in an effort to stimulate such research nationwide, argues a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. "There is a fundamental disconnect between technology transfer activities and incentives for faculty members in terms of merit raises, tenure and career advancement," Richard B. Marchase, co-author and vice president for research and economic development at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in a news release. "Beyond the monetary benefit of licensing, which is small in most cases, there is presently little to no benefit to a faculty member's merit raises, tenure and career advancement."

The paper builds on a 2012 report from the National Research Council and other groups saying that business and industry have "largely dismantled large corporate research laboratories that drove American industrial leadership," and which argues that research universities must "fill the gap."
In the new paper, called "Changing the Academic Culture: Valuing Patents and Commercialization Toward Tenure and Career Advancement," the authors argue that filling the research gap will entail changing the university "rewards culture" to value not only large research grants but also professors' patents and other commercial activities. Co-author Eric Kaler, president of the University of Minnesota, notes that this kind of work should not replace but "add to" traditional means of assessing scholarly activity. The paper's lead author is Paul R. Sanberg, senior vice president for research and innovation at the University of South Florida and president of the National Academy of Inventors. An abstract is available here.


_________________________________________________

Keep in mind the same global corporations for whom University of Maryland's Chancellor Kirwan and neo-liberals work are the same entities keeping the US economy stagnant-----and it is deliberate.  Remember, the bond market is going to crash causing a greater recession is so there is no intent to employ these grads----but they do free work and pay to do it with ever-higher tuition.  THIS IS A SWEET DEAL FOR CORPORATE PROFITS SAY NEO-LIBERALS IN MARYLAND!

The media shout that all of this a great education policy.  That more students are being sent to college and graduating with skills that corporations need.  OH REALLY? 

THEY NEED THEM TO WORK FOR FREE WHILE PAYING FOR COLLEGE AND THEN FORGET ABOUT IT AFTER GRADUATION.

The structure neo-liberals and neo-cons are building have the job pipeline coming from the Ivy League schools-----business leaders now come from these schools and any startups that may come from the public universities are simply bought by those corporations in the portfolio of Ivy League schools.  Working and middle-class grads are largely being funneled into poverty jobs or the military.


University of Maryland Baltimore County and Grabinsky were front page news as UMBC is the face of this free labor as corporate university.  While Maryland says its unemployment is 6.1% we all know that is only the number of people receiving unemployment checks.  Maryland's unemployment is 36% and growing with this economic model.  Remember, these are Republican policies of placing corporate profit first so voting Republican will not help----Democrats simply need to shake the corporate neo-liberals out of the Democratic Party!


FOLKS----THIS IS A NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMIC MODEL THEY CALL THE 21ST CENTURY ECONOMY!

All we need is to rebuild state economies having domestic businesses driving the economy and all of this will disappear.


The Deliberate Low-Wage, High-Insecurity Economic Model submitted by pmcovay3 ScienceIndex.com  Dec 2012

In contrast to the general biases of orthodox economists, the jobs crisis in America is not inevitable or natural-and more important, does not contribute to more economic efficiency through lower wages or more productivity. It is the result of deliberate political policy choices the nation has made at least since the early 1980s, when productivity was rising on a secular basis at a slow rate. Also, the policy choices were made before the rise of very low-wage emerging markets like China’s. In sum, there has been a low-wage, high-unemployment policy regime in the rich world, and especially in the United States, for a generation.


Students Call for Reform of Economics Education


May 6, 2014  Inside Higher Ed

Economics students in 19 countries have issued a joint call -- published in The Guardian -- to change the way economics is taught. The students' analysis (similar to that of some professors in the United States and elsewhere) is that economics has become too uniform in its approaches and too removed from real life. "[I]t's time to reconsider the way economics is taught. We are dissatisfied with the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum that has taken place over the past couple of decades," the letter says. "This lack of intellectual diversity does not only restrain education and research. It limits our ability to contend with the multidimensional challenges of the 21st century – from financial stability to food security and climate change. The real world should be brought back into the classroom, as well as debate and a pluralism of theories and methods. This will help renew the discipline and ultimately create a space in which solutions to society's problems can be generated."



All academics and analysts now look at employment figures as below----the employment to population ratio.  We all know some adults of working age may choose not to work but that percentage is not too high.  So, if 58% of the population is working------42% are not.  36% unemployment is about right.  As this article points out----with wages at an all time low people are now forced to have two incomes in a family.  The employment data media and government provides is simply meant to conceal this deliberately high unemployment.

Do you know who is not fooled by the failure of neo-liberalism------ECONOMICS STUDENTS!

The article above shows that university students are fed up with universities that only offer neo-liberal economic models in economic degree programs.  As this article states----WHY STUDY A FAILED ECONOMIC MODEL?  It is the duty of public universities to hold power accountable and give the public real data and we see this is not happening because of this corporate capture.

That is what university heads like Kirwan are doing.....they are appointed to force global corporate policies that no one wants and it is the governor that appoints these people to public universities.

Unemployment Data Manipulation The Economic Recovery is a Lie!
  By Seth Mason
Friday, November 1st, 2013  Wealth Daily

I've argued time and time again that, due to the severity of job losses during the Great Recession, there cannot be a true economic recovery until the labor market has recovered.

Unfortunately, hiring was weak in September, continuing a slowing trend that began in the spring.

To make matters worse, the majority of jobs created last month were menial in nature (nearly 2/3 of them were truck drivers, bureaucrats, salespeople, and temps). These trends have been ongoing throughout this economic depression.

The number of new jobs wasn't enough to keep up with population growth.

And yet the unemployment rate fell.

So, all is well... right?

Clearly, the "headline" 7.2% unemployment rate doesn't tell the whole story about the sad state of the American labor force.

You have to take any data from the Fed with a grain of salt, anyway, as the Obama administration has a vested interest in presenting the best-looking unemployment picture possible, just as all administrations have.

The employment-to-population ratio actually provides a much more accurate gauge of the health of the American job market — and wouldn't you know, it's been showing unhealthy readings since the economy crashed five years ago...

The proportion of Americans in the workforce has barely budged since falling from 63% to 58% during the Great Recession, as you can see on the following chart:



A Precipitous Decline

The last time the employment-to-population ratio was 58% — in the early 1980s — a relatively small proportion of American households sent more than one income earner into the workforce.

Now, in a nation of mostly one-breadwinner households, the 58% employment-to-population ratio was reasonable.

Today, however, due to a decline in real personal income (thanks for the inflation, Federal Reserve), most households send multiple income earners into the workforce.

In fact, it's not uncommon these days for households to have more than two income earners.

Under this paradigm, an employment-to-population ratio stuck at 58% like it's 1982 (when "homemaker" was still a common job title) is very unhealthy.


  Also worth noting is that a large percentage of the 58% of Americans who do work are working lower-quality jobs than they were before the economy crashed.

Although the population of the United States has increased by approximately 20 million since 2008, there are 5 million fewer “breadwinner” jobs in this country than there were before this economic depression.

"Breadwinner jobs" are those positions with a base salary of $35,000 or more that enable one to live independently, however meagerly. 

So the real health of the labor force is even worse than the unsettling 58% labor force participation rate!

Here we are, more than five years since the fall of Lehman, and the job market is still awful... and it's started to backslide again.



Niagara Falls

The Fed's Niagara Falls-scale liquidity pumping measures (I say "liquidity pumping" as opposed to "printing" because QE is only one of the Fed's tricks) clearly haven't had much impact on unemployment — or the federal government's $787 billion spending binge, also known as the grand "stimulus," for that matter.

Remember the laughable estimates of unemployment with and without the "Recovery Plan"?

According to the White House's October 2009 estimate (the dark blue line on the chart above), the Fed/federal government's plan should have taken us back to pre-recession unemployment levels by now...

Yet the unemployment rate sits at an unacceptable 7.2%.

And keep in mind the 7.2% headline unemployment rate belies the true awful state of the job market.

Considering the pitiful 58% employment-to-population ratio and the 5 million fewer breadwinner jobs since 2008, it would be an understatement to say that Washington's stimulus measures have failed to reduce unemployment. (That's assuming they were created for that purpose. More about that in a future article.)

We should expect more of the same from our esteemed central planners.

The Fed, which has officially delayed "tapering," will continue to pump indefinitely.

Uncle Sam will continue to borrow and spend like mad, whether he's wearing a DEM or GOP hat.

As a result, the "mother of all bubbles," as Nouriel Roubini has called it, will continue to expand...

And we'll continue party like it's 2006, only with higher unemployment.

We'll keep ignoring the fact that 2008 is just a couple of years away.

Happy crash 2.0!

Until next time,

Seth Mason for Wealth Daily
_____________________________________________


Having a policy that brings more foreign students into the US with the goal of green cards and employment in high-skilled jobs does nothing for the American people, the high unemployment, or creating quality education and higher achievement in our US students.  It is purely a profit-making scheme that continues to consolidate the wealth at the top.

Maryland pols are all neo-liberals so whether Milkulsi and Cardin working in the Senate on legislation to build corporate universities and send trillions of dollars to expand overseas as corporations-----or the Governor of Maryland O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly appointing these corporate university heads and building the corporate structures in our universities-----

THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLY REBUILD THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN MARYLAND BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE.



Currency February 21, 2014

Should Universities Profit From Student Research?
By John Bringardner  The New Yorker





In 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Cornell University and Israel’s Technion would jointly open a new school on Roosevelt Island to help boost New York’s tech sector. The first buildings of the new campus won’t open until 2017, but classes are already under way in borrowed space on the third floor of Google’s New York office. And, on Monday, Cornell Tech, as the school is called, plans to announce that it has enrolled its first batch of post-doctoral researchers in a one-year “Runway” program, designed to launch them into business ventures based on their specialties: urban planning, e-commerce, health care. In an unusual twist, the school will invest in the companies founded through the program, but also allow students to keep ownership of the intellectual property they create on campus; typically, universities profit by keeping the rights to such property.



Cornell Tech isn’t the only institution to invest in student startups. Stanford announced last year that it would invest in companies founded by its students. M.I.T. also takes an equity stake in companies developed on campus. But Stanford and M.I.T. both require those companies to pay royalties on any technologies the students patent while in school.
Rather than negotiate complex patent-licensing rights with their researchers, Cornell Tech will treat the value of each post-doc position it awards—about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars—as an angel investment in any business spun out of the program; in exchange, Cornell Tech expects to get an average of a five-per-cent stake in each business. The Runway program echoes the accelerators and incubators popular among venture capitalists—three- or four-month programs in which entrepreneurs get resources to build new startups in exchange for a stake in their companies.

Universities didn’t always have the right to the spoils of the research they sponsored. The government spent heavily on research and development at U.S. universities during the Cold War, but new technologies developed with federal cash became government property. By 1980, the federal government had amassed twenty-eight thousand patents but licensed fewer than five per cent to companies that could turn them into products. That year, Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to keep and profit from the patents their students and researchers developed on campus using federal funds. The Economist called it “perhaps the most inspired piece of legislation in America over the past half-century.”

Soon, offices focussed on “technology transfer” opened up in schools around the country, staffed with lawyers who poked around campus research labs and flipped through student notebooks to suss out patentable research that they could license to corporations. A new chemical combination might become a blockbuster drug; a technological breakthrough could lead to smaller, faster semiconductors.

In 2012, American universities earned $2.6 billion from patent royalties, according to the Association of University Technology Managers. The tech-transfer model is entrenched in medical schools and in biotech development. But its usefulness in the software world has been less clear. The success of a software startup often depends less on any particular innovation than on how several pieces of technology fit together and appeal to users. A company’s value usually becomes apparent years after it has developed and refined its business model, not at the moment it files a patent application. Plus, the very concept of a software patent hangs in the balance: in December, the Supreme Court agreed to review a case that could eliminate them altogether.

Cornell Tech’s approach—taking an equity stake in each company instead of licensing rights to a handful of patents—may be a more straightforward way for the school to profit from spin-offs. “Universities look to place a value on technology at its inception, finding a fair rate for splitting royalties between the school and the inventor, but that’s not the way digital startups work,” Cornell Tech’s Dean, Daniel Huttenlocher, said. “I think intellectual-property protection, especially in software and digital tech, is a very small piece of commercialization, one that becomes too big a part of the conversation when universities are involved.”

The Runway program is designed to turn deep academic research into a marketable product; its first post-docs have already spent years in the lab, sometimes running into dead ends and starting over in a way that pure academic research allows but investors don’t. “A principal mission of Cornell University is the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit and use of society,” the school’s existing intellectual-property policy reads. Whether society benefits most when knowledge is turned into an I.P.O. is an open question.

“The entire Bay Area is enamored with these notions of innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, mega-success,” the historian and Stanford professor David Kennedy told Ken Auletta in 2012, in a report from Stanford. “It’s in the air we breathe out here. It’s an atmosphere that can be toxic to the mission of the university as a place of refuge, contemplation, and investigation for its own sake.” And when students showed up for their first classes at the temporary campus, in January, 2013, Isaac Kramnick, a professor of government at Cornell in Ithaca, told the Times, “The university has been at the forefront of big science since the 1940s and 1950s. Now it’s entering an era in which it seems to be interested in for-profit science, and that does require some thinking as to what the fundamental purpose of a university is.” (“Such potential for conflicts is quite manageable with the appropriate procedures in place, enabling this very effective interaction between students, faculty, and companies,” Huttenlocher told me.)

Yet universities are forging ahead with more business-oriented models. Over the past decade, angel investors, the main source of capital for startups, have made high-risk bets, providing money for startups to get off the ground in exchange for the right to a piece of the company’s equity if it succeeds. Most never do. Venture capitalists call their strategy “spray and pray,” sinking money into lots of different startups in the hope that at least one will be the next Facebook. It’s a gamble, but it could be a better way for universities to take advantage of the work their students are doing. The amount of revenue schools generate from patent licensing is small compared with over-all university budgets. Alumni philanthropy brings in far more money. “What would happen if schools gave up rights to their students’ intellectual property?” Adam Shwartz, the director of Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, which runs the Runway program, asked. “Their patent revenue goes to zero, but down the line the successful alumni give back far more money. Here we have the first controlled experiment of this nature.”

Rendering of Cornell Tech by Kilograph.
____________________________________________

Below you see how bad the success rate of this model is for the student /school so a corporation directs the research it wants to fund----gets free labor and a taxpayer funded research facility----and VOILA all the failures are paid for by you and me.  No need for corporate R and D.  In lieu of corporate taxes these investment firms just send there money to these university projects and we are told this is the best mechanism for funding universities.

All work on campus is now product-driven-----professors are judged on patenting rather than academics or teaching.  Tenure is tied to being this corporate executive.  Students are engaged only in what will pay off and not with a broad education limiting their futures.  As this article shows it is the student that loses and graduates with the tuition debt and limited focus degrees.


What is sad is that the student's future success with whatever they create requires handing a percentage of future earnings to these university/venture capitalist and the few that do create successful businesses simply hand them to these global investment firms.  This is all simply universities as corporate facilities.

THE ENTIRE ACADEMIC MODEL HAS BEEN RUINED AND THE US IS AGAIN ON THE BOTTOM ACADEMICALLY IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS.  THIS IS WHAT MIKULSKI AND KIRWAN ARE SITTING DOWN TO BOLSTER.

DEAR ENTREPRENEURS: Here's How Bad Your Odds Of Success Are
  • Henry Blodget  Business Insider

  • May 28, 2013, 11:03 AM

As a wise investor puts it: "Many turtles hatch. Few make it to the sea."


Everyone knows that starting companies — and investing in startups — is a risky way to earn a living. But few people appreciate just how risky it is.

Thanks to a recent tweet from Paul Graham, the founder of "startup school" Y Combinator, we now have a better idea.

Graham says that 37 of the 511 companies that have gone through the Y Combinator program over the past 5 years have either sold for, or are now worth, more than $40 million.

Most entrepreneurs would probably view creating a company worth more than $40 million as a success (unless the company raised more capital than that). And, on its face, the "37 companies" number seems relatively impressive.

In fact, however, the number tells a scary and depressing story.

This number suggests that a startling 93% of the companies that get accepted by Y Combinator eventually fail.

(Not all companies that sell for less than $40 million are "failures," obviously. Assuming a company hasn't raised much capital, a sale between $5 million and $40 million could be considered a success. But a high percentage of Y Combinator companies likely end up being worth zero. And for companies that are hand-picked by very smart investors, the 93%-below-$40 million rate is still surprisingly low). 

A company accepted by Y Combinator, therefore, has less than a 1-in-10 chance of being a big success.

More alarmingly, the companies accepted by Y Combinator are only a tiny fraction of the companies that apply.

Some have estimated that Y Combinator's acceptance rate is 3-5%.

If we use the 5% rate, we can estimate that Y Combinator has received about 10,000 applications for the ~500 companies it has chosen over the years.

Assuming Y Combinator has even a modest ability to pick winners, therefore, the odds that a company applying to Y Combinator will be a success are significantly lower than the odds of success of the companies accepted into the program.

If only 37 of the companies that have applied to Y Combinator over the years have succeeded, this is a staggeringly low 0.4% success rate.

Put differently, only one in every 200 companies that applies to Y Combinator will succeed.

The reality is that Y Combinator probably misses a few winners, so the actual odds are probably slightly higher.

But in case any entrepreneur or angel investor is deluding themselves into thinking that startups are an easy way to cash in, they might want to think again.









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July 22nd, 2014

7/22/2014

0 Comments

 
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.

_______________________________________
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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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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March 31st, 2014

3/31/2014

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DO YOU HEAR ANY OF MARYLAND CANDIDATES FOR STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND CITY ATTORNEY SHOUTING ABOUT ALL OF THE ISSUES AROUND DISMANTLING PUBLIC JUSTICE?  DO YOU HEAR THE MARYLAND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR SHOUTING ABOUT ANY OF THESE ISSUES?

THAT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL PART OF A CRONY AND NEO-LIBERAL POLITICAL MACHINE

Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP gives a global corporate tribunal the rights to write law and the enforcement of law will be international and corporate as well if neo-liberals are left to their ways.  This hits poor and people of color hardest but it will bring all Americans down to third world standards very quickly.  Remember, doctors, lawyers, and Indian Chiefs in third world countries are just as poor as everyone else.



As I stated my last blog, it is reinstating Rule of Law and rebuilding oversight and accountability that will address all state and local structural budget deficits created by losing much wealth to fraud and corruption.  Having a governor keen to do this starts with the appointments to committees and with using the bully-pulpit to get public agencies to do their jobs.  The next step is bringing in the employees to do this job.  This means a legal team that looks to public justice and not corporate justice and protecting profit and wealth. 

I have searched under all rocks in Maryland to find a lawyer to support political and social justice.  If there are any they are buried deep in the mud no doubt because of the hostile environment for people looking for a little public justice.  So it appears the answer to rebuilding Maryland's public justice and oversight and accountability comes with the one outsourcing my administration will do -----albeit reluctantly.  Bringing law students and legal teams from other states willing to work for public justice to do the job.  One thing we know, law school grads are high among college grads today in unemployment because the intent to dismantle all of public justice leads to no lawyers available to public interest.  Only international law and corporate law need apply say neo-liberals and neo-cons.

ALL OF MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS HENCE THIS COMPLETE CAPTURE OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC JUSTICE.

Corporate NPR loves to let us know where we are in the move to third world autocracy and indeed gave us the stat that there are less than I think it was 35,000 lawyers graduating across the country today.  It made the point that Ivy League schools will provide the legal grads since Ivy League schools only focus on International and corporate law.  This should have people out in the street as they are saying------citizens of the US will have no legal recourse-----exactly what Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP says.  The Ivy League schools said over a decade ago in anticipation to writing TPP that there is no American politics or law, only international and corporate law.  So, when you have Obama from Harvard Law, Anthony Brown from Harvard Law, and Doug Gansler from Yale Law all not able to see massive corporate fraud against the American people and government coffers, this is why.  So, why would citizens vote for these guys?  Do you hear your pundit/medi outlet or politicians shouting this? 

SEE WHY PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DYNAMICS OF WHO THEY ARE VOTING?


Doug Gansler and Anthony Brown are so Wall Street and global empire as to be blinded to any motivation other than maximizing profit and US corporate power.  That is all they see.  Running for governor these two get most of the campaign funding because of this, they get all the media coverage, and they have endorsement from all of the labor and justice organizations in Maryland.

WAIT!  LABOR UNIONS AND BLACK MINISTERS AND UNIVERSITIES BACKING BROWN OR GANSLER?

Why would labor and justice back two pols dedicated to pushing labor and justice into ever deeper poverty?  That's the question we need to answer here in Maryland.  Much of it has to do with the fact Maryland has no public justice and these organizations are being forced to support candidates in the hope of getting a few progressive bones rather than having control of these decisions. 


WORKING FOR PROGRESSIVE BONES WHEN RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE WINS THE HONOR OF MAKING THE DECISIONS.


Gansler and Brown are perfect images of this neo-liberal vision of justice in America after TPP-----SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL AND I SEE NO FRAUD.

Let's look nationally, statewide, and locally to see justice dismantled and know we can reverse this EASY PEASY!


Below you see the mechanism for killing the public justice department----high tuition.  Think to yourself the costs of running a law school:

THERE ARE NO COSTS IN LAW SCHOOL.  MOST WORK IS DONE FROM DOCUMENTS AND IN DEVELOPING DISCOURSE IN COURTROOMS

I'm sure I will be hit with accusations of bias but this is the truth.  The costs for tuition in law schools are only driven by the intent to make law degrees elite.  As I was told just a few weeks ago in Baltimore------all lawyers are rich.

This is a continuation of corporatization of university campuses and part of the costs have to do with the focus on international law.  The need to intern in corporate settings provides the ability of those corporations to be paid to accept these law students.  Meanwhile, public justice from government oversight, to civil rights and liberties, to consumer protections, and white collar crime represent affordable programs and are disappearing.


Keep in mind the reason there are no jobs for lawyers is that the entire white collar criminal justice system/government oversight has been dismantled and criminal/public justice is now settled by plea deals by prosecutors. 


ALL VERY, VERY, VERY BAD FOR ALL PEOPLE NEEDING PUBLIC JUSTICE.

Law Schools’ Applications Fall as Costs Rise and Jobs Are Cut

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press The law school at Stanford University has increased its attention to hands-on training.

By ETHAN BRONNER Published: January 30, 2013

Law school applications are headed for a 30-year low, reflecting increased concern over soaring tuition, crushing student debt and diminishing prospects of lucrative employment upon graduation.

The New York Times

As of this month, there were 30,000 applicants to law schools for the fall, a 20 percent decrease from the same time last year and a 38 percent decline from 2010, according to the Law School Admission Council. Of some 200 law schools nationwide, only 4 have seen increases in applications this year. In 2004 there were 100,000 applicants to law schools; this year there are likely to be 54,000.

Such startling numbers have plunged law school administrations into soul-searching debate about the future of legal education and the profession over all.

“We are going through a revolution in law with a time bomb on our admissions books,” said William D. Henderson, a professor of law at Indiana University, who has written extensively on the issue. “Thirty years ago if you were looking to get on the escalator to upward mobility, you went to business or law school. Today, the law school escalator is broken.”

Responding to the new environment, schools are planning cutbacks and accepting students they would not have admitted before.

A few schools, like the Vermont Law School, have started layoffs and buyouts of staff. Others, like at the University of Illinois, have offered across-the-board tuition discounts to keep up enrollments. Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago Law School, who runs a blog on the topic, said he expected as many as 10 schools to close over the coming decade, and half to three-quarters of all schools to reduce class size, faculty and staff.

After the normal dropout of some applicants, the number of those matriculating in the fall will be about 38,000, the lowest since 1977, when there were two dozen fewer law schools, according to Brian Z. Tamanaha of Washington University Law School, the author of “Failing Law Schools.”

The drop in applications is widely viewed as directly linked to perceptions of the declining job market. Many of the reasons that law jobs are disappearing are similar to those for disruptions in other knowledge-based professions, namely the growth of the Internet. Research is faster and easier, requiring fewer lawyers, and is being outsourced to less expensive locales, including West Virginia and overseas.

In addition, legal forms are now available online and require training well below a lawyer’s to fill them out.

In recent years there has also been publicity about the debt load and declining job prospects for law graduates, especially of schools that do not generally provide employees to elite firms in major cities. Last spring, the American Bar Association released a study showing that within nine months of graduation in 2011, only 55 percent of those who finished law school found full-time jobs that required passage of the bar exam.

“Students are doing the math,” said Michelle J. Anderson, dean of the City University of New York School of Law. “Most law schools are too expensive, the debt coming out is too high and the prospect of attaining a six-figure-income job is limited.”

Mr. Tamanaha of Washington University said the rise in tuition and debt was central to the decrease in applications. In 2001, he said, the average tuition for private law school was $23,000; in 2012 it was $40,500 (for public law schools the figures were $8,500 and $23,600). He said that 90 percent of law students finance their education by taking on debt. And among private law school graduates, the average debt in 2001 was $70,000; in 2011 it was $125,000.

“We have been sharply increasing tuition during a low-inflation period,” he said of law schools collectively, noting that a year at a New York City law school can run to more than $80,000 including lodging and food. “And we have been maximizing our revenue. There is no other way to describe it. We will continue to need lawyers, but we need to bring the price down.”

Some argue that the drop is an indictment of the legal training itself — a failure to keep up with the profession’s needs.

“We have a significant mismatch between demand and supply,” said Gillian K. Hadfield, professor of law and economics at the University of Southern California. “It’s not a problem of producing too many lawyers. Actually, we have an exploding demand for both ordinary folk lawyers and big corporate ones.”

She said that, given the structure of the legal profession, it was hard to make a living dealing with matters like mortgage and divorce, and that big corporations were dissatisfied with what they see as the overly academic training at elite law schools.

The drop in law school applications is unlike what is happening in almost any other graduate or professional training, except perhaps to veterinarians. Medical school applications have been rising steadily for the past decade.

Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said first-time enrollments to master of business degree programs were steady — a 0.8 percent increase among Americans in 2011 after a decade of substantial growth. But growth in first-time foreign student enrollments — 13 percent over the same period — made up the difference, something from which law schools cannot benefit, since foreigners have less interest in American legal training.

In the legal academy, there has been discussion about how to make training less costly and more relevant, with special emphasis on the last year of law school. A number of schools, including elite ones like Stanford, have increased their attention to clinics, where students get hands-on training. Northeastern Law School in Boston, which has long emphasized in-the-field training, has had one of the smallest decreases in its applicant pool this year, according to Jeremy R. Paul, the new dean.

There is also discussion about permitting students to take the bar after only two years rather than three, a decision that would have to be made by the highest officials of a state court system. In New York, the proposal is under active consideration largely because of a desire to reduce student debt.

Some, including Professor Hadfield of the University of Southern California, have called for one- or two-year training programs to create nonlawyer specialists for many tasks currently done by lawyers. Whether or not such changes occur, for now the decline is creating what many see as a cultural shift.

“In the ’80s and ’90s, a liberal arts graduate who didn’t know what to do went to law school,” Professor Henderson of Indiana said. “Now you get $120,000 in debt and a default plan of last resort whose value is just too speculative. Students are voting with their feet. There are going to be massive layoffs in law schools this fall. We won’t have the bodies we need to meet the payroll.”
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Below you see a comment from a national public justice organization calling the US Department of Justice on its deliberate mechanisms for ending public justice.  All of these bank fraud settlements have been unconstitutional as the public has been taken out of the entire process under the guise that the US Department of Justice is the agency for public justice.  Only, when it is run by corporate lawyers......not so much.

Better Markets sues Justice Department over JPMorgan dealwww.reuters.com


'The Justice Department cannot act as prosecutor, jury and judge and extract $13 billion in exchange for blanket civil immunity to the largest, richest, most politically connected bank on Wall Street," he said'.
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Remember when people were told to get a health care degree like nursing and you will have no trouble getting a job.  Now, nursing has one of the highest unemployment.  This has to do with a type of outsourcing------immigrants brought to the US to take health care jobs but it is also the effect of downsizing health care staff to maximize profit according to the Affordable Care Act.  The same thing is happening in the legal profession.  Besides all public sector justice being dismantled, law is now outsourced all over the world.  So, the idea of elite schools having all the lawyers extends beyond the US to Ivy League Schools all over the world.  This is what Immigration reform was about-----bringing the Best of the Best in the world to the US and leaving American citizens unemployed.  We all know Best of the Best does not mean smarter or best qualified to do the job......it means having connections and working in a system rife with fraud and corruption and being quiet about it.

Imagine these law students sitting on the sidelines when the entire government and corporate system is full of fraud and corruption.   Then think what will happen when coming school admissions fall as people feel there is not future in law for most.  That is how you get a legal system run by only graduates of Ivy League schools......the Brown/Obama's from Harvard and the Gansler's from Yale.  Both having absolutely no talent except kissing the boots of Wall Street.



Inside the Law School Scam

Friday, June 8, 2012


Two out of three 2011 law school graduates did not get real legal jobs

NALP has released preliminary employment statistics for the class of 2011 as of nine months after graduation. They are, unsurprisingly, terrible.
12% of 2011 graduates were completely unemployed in February 2012, and another three per cent had re-enrolled in further graduate study, which can be treated as the functional equivalent to post-law school unemployment.  So the first takeaway from these numbers is the nearly 15% unemployment rate for people who got law degrees from ABA-accredited schools last year.  This compares with an 8.2% overall national unemployment rate, which, to my surprise at least, is also the unemployment rate among 25 to 34 year-olds (see Table A-10).  So getting a law degree correlates with a doubling of the risk that a young adult will be unemployed nine months after receiving it.
But of course this 85.6% “employment” rate includes every kind of job law graduates obtained: legal, non-legal, full-time, part-time, long-term, and temporary.   Let’s work with this preliminary data to make an estimate regarding how many 2011 graduates of ABA law schools had real legal jobs nine months after graduation, with a real legal job defined as a full-time non-temporary paying position requiring a law degree.
We can begin by eliminating jobs for which a law degree was not required.   24% of employed law graduates fell into this category, including the large majority of the 18.1% of all graduates who reported being employed in “business” (For most law graduates getting a job in “business” is short hand for either a low-paying service sector job that the graduate could have gotten more easily before going to law school, or in a smaller number of cases a good job that the graduate was qualified for prior to getting a law degree – indeed often literally the same job the graduate left in order to get a law degree).
What about those graduates of the 2011 class who had a job for which a law degree was required? Note that only 60% of graduates whose employment status was known were working full-time in a job requiring bar admission.  (Since it appears the status of somewhere around 7% of graduates was unknown, and since those graduates surely had far worse outcomes than average, this suggests that perhaps 56% to 58% of graduates had full time jobs requiring bar admission. 12% of all jobs, legal and non-legal, obtained by graduates were part-time).  Now consider how many jobs in this category have to be tossed out if we are limiting ourselves to real legal jobs, even liberally defined.  The 5% of all “jobs” funded by law schools themselves for their own graduates must be excluded, as should the 6% of all private practice jobs which consisted of graduates reduced to the desperate expedient of attempting the start a solo practice straight out of law school.  


NALP has not yet reported what overall percentage of jobs were temporary -- defined as being for a term of less than one year – but for the class of 2010 26.9% of all jobs were defined as temporary (To be conservative I’m going to treat all judicial clerkships as full-time long-term legal jobs, even though many state court clerkships are one-year way stations on the road to legal unemployment).  We do know that 7% of all jobs obtained by 2011 graduates were reported as both part time and temporary.


Then we have the always tricky category of jobs with law firms of two to ten attorneys.  A remarkable 42.9% of all graduates who obtained jobs in private practice (49.5% of all graduates went into private practice) were listed in this category.  Many of these positions are of course real, if generally low-paying, associate jobs with established several-lawyer firms.  But some are of a much more tenuous nature, including transient law clerk positions with solo practitioners, eat what you kill arrangements, in which people are given office space in return for a percentage of whatever they manage to bill, and basically fictional “law firms” consisting of two or three graduates banding together in a last-ditch attempt to avoid formal unemployment. But let’s be optimistic and assume that 80% of new graduates who were reported as obtaining jobs with firms of two to ten lawyers were in fact getting real legal jobs, liberally defined.
Thus once we exclude jobs that don’t require law degrees, law school-funded jobs, other temporary jobs, and part time jobs, and then make a generous estimate of how many private practice positions with very small firms were real legal jobs, the numbers look like this:
60% of all graduates whose employment status was known were in full-time jobs requiring bar admission.
Minus the 4% of all graduates in law school-funded temporary jobs.
Minus the approximately 15% of all graduates in temporary (less than one year) legal positions other than law school-funded jobs.
Minus an estimated 4.25% of all graduates in fictional “firm” jobs.
Minus the 3% of all graduates working as solo practitioners. 
This leaves us with 33.75% of all 2011 ABA law school graduates in real legal jobs nine months after graduation.   This is, in my view, a conservative estimate of the scope of the disaster that has overtaken America’s law school graduates.  It counts almost all positions with law firms and with government agencies as real legal jobs, even though we know some of these “jobs” are actually one-year unpaid internships.  (See for example these). Indeed it counts whole classes of time-limited jobs that are likely to leave graduates with no legal employment at their conclusion, such as most state judicial clerkships, as long-term rather than temporary employment.  Most of all, it makes what by now must be considered the questionable assumption that law schools are reporting these numbers accurately, rather than misreporting them to their advantage. 
Yet even this generous estimate of how many 2011 graduates of ABA-accredited law schools managed to get real legal jobs leads to the conclusion that two-thirds did not.

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This is why many US law school graduates are unemployed and unlike customer service call centers, losing our law students and graduates essentially ends the public's ability to access legal recourse which is what is happening today.

What happens when people stop going to law school in America?  Ivy League schools are the only ones graduating lawyers and indeed, as my local Baltimore commenter said-----LAWYERS ARE ALWAYS RICH.



U.S. firms outsource legal services to India

By Cynthia Cotts and Liane Kufchock Published: Tuesday, August 21, 2007

NEW YORK — Bruce Masterson, the chief operating officer of Socrates Media, asked his outside counsel to customize a residential lease for all 50 U.S. states in 2003. About $400,000 was the firm's estimate. He rejected that cost and hired QuisLex, a firm in Hyderabad, India, that did the work for $45,000.

"It was good quality," said Masterson, whose company, which is based in Chicago, publishes legal forms on the Internet. "We've been working together ever since."

Clients are pushing law firms like Jones Day and Kirkland & Ellis to send basic legal tasks to India, where lawyers tag documents and investigate takeover targets for as little as $20 an hour. The firms are part of a trend that will move about 50,000 U.S. legal jobs overseas by 2015, according to Forrester Research in Boston.


"The objective is to have only the most valuable people in London or New York, and the others in India, China or Columbus, Ohio," said Robert Profusek, co-head of the mergers and acquisitions practice at Jones Day in New York.

Profusek sends low-end work to the cheapest locations and plans to open a document center in India.

"Lawyers are service providers," he said. "We are not gods."

Companies with in-house legal departments in India include DuPont, Cisco Systems, and Morgan Stanley, according to ValueNotes Database, which is based in Maharashtra, India.

The Indian legal services industry will more than quadruple to $640 million by 2010 from $146 million in 2006, ValueNotes said.

General Electric sends about $3 million a year in routine legal work to its Indian affiliate, said Janine Dascenzo, the GE managing counsel for legal operations.

"India has very talented lawyers," she said. "But it's a misconception that you can just send work there and it gets done. You need proper supervision and security."

Kirkland & Ellis, a major U.S. law firm based in Chicago, works with offshore lawyers at clients' request, said Gregg Kirchhoefer, a senior partner in the firm's outsourcing and technology transaction practice.

"I'm not an advocate of offshoring legal services," Kirchhoefer said. "But having worked in this area for so long, I understand the value of the model."

Typically, he said, clients hire a provider and Kirkland helps manage the laywers.

One incentive for corporations to send legal work overseas is that ethics rules compel law firms to disclose their profit margins. Traditionally, law firms charge clients markups of as much as three times what they pay associates and contract attorneys.

"Law firms can earn more by using labor they can mark up without disclosure," said Stephen Gillers, professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law. "Clients are knowledgeable about costs, and they want to negotiate the markup on these charges."

But not every law firm has accepted the trend.

"Some firms are spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt," said David Perla, co-chief executive of Pangea3, an offshore legal-services company based in New York and Mumbai. "They see any competition as bad and they'll raise any issues as to why you shouldn't go offshore."

Of the 10 highest-grossing U.S. law firms, 7 declined to comment on outsourcing. Only one, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, also based in Chicago, said it did not use the practice.

Perla added: "I don't think law firms are ashamed of offshoring. The firms that are having success with it aren't talking because they view it as a competitive advantage."

Of about 100 third-party legal services providers in India, clients give top marks to Pangea3 and Integreon Managed Solutions, which is based in New York according to "The Black Book of Outsourcing," a survey published in July by Brown-Wilson Group, which is based in Clearwater, Florida.

About 80 percent of Pangea3's clients are corporations and 20 percent are law firms, Perla said.

"Some firms are coming to us because in-house clients suggested it or pressured them," Perla said. "Others want to come to the client first and offer a solution."

Integreon, which provides legal services in India, the Philippines and Fargo, North Dakota, has long-term contracts with about 45 companies and 15 law firms, said Liam Brown, the company's chief executive.

Law firms contribute 45 percent to offshore revenue, while corporate law departments contribute 36 percent, ValueNotes said.

Integreon recruits lawyers from second-tier law schools in India and managers from the litigation practices of firms like Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Brown said. After training in India, managers relocate to New York or Los Angeles.

In India, legal education is based on common law and conducted in English, requiring two or three years of classes. The country produces about 80,000 law school graduates a year, according to ValueNotes, compared with about 44,000 in the United States.

Offshore companies charge $10 to $25 an hour on low-end work and $25 to $90 an hour on advanced jobs. Junior Indian lawyers might earn as much as $8,160 a year, according to ValueNotes, compared with the $160,000 average salary for associates in major U.S. cities.

Janice D'souza, a 26-year-old lawyer in Pangea3's litigation and research department in Mumbai, said her pay was three times as much as she would get at an Indian law firm.

"At an Indian law firm, generally your potential is not recognized at an early stage," D'souza said. "Here it's talent-based. In the near future, I think I will be a department manager.

________________________________________
Keep in mind this national budget deficit and debt is all manufactured by Wall Street and allowed to be used by Congress as an excuse to dismantle all that is public.  Tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud can easily pay the entire national debt but as you can see, we have no public justice employees.

With Eric Holder simply using settlements as justice, the state and local prosecutors cutting plea deals for everything, and class action lawsuits being disallowed by the Supreme Court....there are no avenues for public justice.  When I asked a Law School professor what the US citizens do when the highest public justice in the land, the US Justice Department becomes captured and corrupt his answer was PEOPLE WITH POWER MAKE THE LAWS.

Well, I disagree because we have a US Constitution that says WE THE PEOPLE MAKE THE LAWS!


IN ORDER TO REMAIN CITIZENS WE MUST DEMAND THAT PUBLIC JUSTICE STAY IN PLACE!

Keep in mind public justice is not always urban youth being shuffled through an unjust criminal justice system.  It means you and I have no one to recover fraud, no one to protect election laws, no one protecting community zoning issues for example.
IT HAS AN EFFECT ON EVERYONE!!!

The Impact of Federal Budget Cuts on State and Local Public Safety

An anonymous respondent wrote, “As federal funds have declined and will obviously continue to do so it reduces our means to leverage and/or diversify funding to sustain discretionary programs and programming. In the business of juvenile and adult detention, we are losing and stand to lose more alternatives to incarceration and programs that provide evidence based and/or treatment pro-gramming. These are the less costly programs to avoid more costly and lengthy stays in detention. And these are the programs that help to reduce recidivism. For example, cutting residential community corrections beds that serve as a last chance to avoid prison for probation violators has resulted in a dramatic increase in prison admission and more jail time. Bottom line, the less costly and more effective alternatives to incarceration are closed and demand for prisons and jails goes up. It is a bad deal for taxpayers but the more progressive alternatives are discretionary and jails and prisons are all that is left...Sustaining prevention and early intervention programming for juveniles as well as effective rehabilitative programming is critical to public safety. Evidence based programming changes lives away from a criminal behavior. It is not costly but without encouragement through shared funding we are losing the means to sustain it.”• An anonymous respondent from New York wrote, “The real impact over time will be the lack of funding to support new approaches in criminal justice. The reductions in crime over the past 20 years have resulted from new approaches and research that was supported with federal grant dollars. Lack of funding will seriously curtail these efforts and diminish local communities’ ability to respond to new crime problems.”• An anonymous respondent wrote, “[We have] served 50 less at risk youth since budget cuts in 2010. This puts youth at higher risk of entering the juvenile justice system dropping out of school or abusing substances. The cost of treating youth is 10 times the cost of the prevention services lost for these youth. Reductions in federal funding greatly impact our ability to serve at-risk youth in the community. These reductions, coupled with reductions in local public funding have an impact well into the future for our community. Less youth served in diversion and prevention programming will only serve to dramatically increase the cost of providing more intensive and more expensive out of home services in the future. Federal funds directed at diverting youth from formal court processing and out of home placement pay significant dividends both financially and practically in reducing crime. Federal reductions now will only increase costs to federal entities and other public organizations in the future. Short sighted budget cuts now will cost governments more, by a factor of ten, in coming years.”• An anonymous respondent from Pennsylvania wrote, “The reduced funds have also taken their toll on our partnering and community outreach. In a couple of instances, we have needed to expand or enhance community services to juveniles and adults and the local non-profits have not partnered with us - stating that they simply do not have the resources to bring new/improved services to our target population. This means many of our juveniles and needy adults remain unserved and are unable to attain self-sufficiency and are at high-risk of returning to the criminal justice system... We anticipate our recidivism rates would increase greatly and, without any services or support to offer juveniles and adults, we fear the prison cycle will spiral out of control - impacting not only the offender, but also their family.

The Vera Institute of Justice is a research and policy organization that combines expertise in research, demonstration projects, and technical assistance to help leaders in government and civil society improve the systems people rely on for justice and safety.The National Criminal Justice Association represents state, tribal, and local governments on crime prevention and crime control issues. Its members represent all facets of the criminal and juvenile justice community, from law enforcement, corrections, prosecution, defense courts, victim-witness services and education institutions to federal, state, and local elected officials. As the representative of state, tribal, and local criminal and juvenile justice practitioners, the NCJA works to promote a balanced approach to communities’ complex public safety problems.In the summer of 2012, the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA) and the Vera Institute of Justice conducted an in-formal nationwide online survey of 714 state and local criminal justice stakeholder organizations. The questionnaire’s purpose was to gather information from a wide range of jurisdictions about the impact of budget cuts, both already enacted, and anticipated cuts that would result from sequestration. This document is a summary of self-reported responses


_____________________________________________

Sandra Day O'Connor famously made all these observations over a decade ago as she was leaving the Supreme Court.  She shouted out against plea deals and settlements, arbitration and loss of public justice and judicial funding.  So, this has been happening throughout Reagan/Clinton/Bush.  Obama has now decided to pretend this transition is official and not recognize any US Constitutional law and Rule of Law.  That's what they teach in Harvard after all!

Sandra has a wonderful solution.  We need all communities to follow her lead.  We know Race to the Top is taking all social studies lessons out and civics is one of those subjects.  Baltimore is the worst in making sure public school students do not receive social studies at most schools. 

THIS IS A MUST-------PARENTS AND COMMUNITIES MUST DO THIS AS WE WORK TO REBUILD OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND CURRICULA!





Sandra Day O’Connor champions civics education
by Donna Krache, CNN  
July 19th, 2012 06:18 AM ET

(CNN) - The retired Supreme Court justice is all business as she walks into our meeting room.

But inside, she’s got the heart of an educator.

Of course, Sandra Day O’Connor will always be associated with her historic “first,” as the first woman justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Prior to that appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, she also served as a judge and a state senator.

Since her retirement from the high court in 2006, she has found a new passion – civics education.

How did she decide to become a champion of that cause?  O’Connor says that in her last year on the bench, she was “very much aware of the major issues and debates” being brought before the high court.  There were lots of complaints about the decisions, she says, and many were directed at the judicial branch – with some blaming the justices for certain outcomes.

“As you analyzed it, it appeared to show in many cases that the concerns were misdirected:  There was a tendency to blame the courts for things that were really not a judicial matter,” she told CNN.

The solution to that misunderstanding, she believes, is civics education – a subject she notes has changed through the years.  She remembers her own schooling in El Paso, Texas, and how she learned about Texas government.  Civics knowledge was helpful to her later in life, O’Connor says, and she’s disappointed that today, many schools have stopped teaching the subject.


But she believes young people do have a desire to learn civics because they want to participate in their government, to change things and better their lives. “There is an increasing appreciation that we do need to know how our government works:  national, state and local,” says O’Connor. “And that this is part and parcel of the things that every young person wants to know because they want to have an effect.”



It’s not just about learning facts and the processes, says O’Connor.  It’s about learning how to make a difference in one’s community, state, or nation. But, she adds, “Sometimes people don’t know what government entity is equipped to deal with the problem.”

“You can make a difference if you know how to bring a particular area of concern to the attention of people who can make a change. Then you’re learning to be in a position where you can cause public bodies to take action, the public bodies that have jurisdiction over that particular area. Maybe it’s a city council, maybe it’s a town planning and zoning commission… maybe it’s a state legislature… You have to be knowledgeable.”

“To understand how to define the issue, find out what level of government can have the biggest impact on it, where should you go with this problem.  Lastly, how to best approach that body and make your case - but that takes some knowledge and experience to get that far,” she says.

O’Connor advocates an analytical approach to an understanding of government that includes defining the problem or issue, identifying the government entity that is best able to address it, then determining a course of citizen action to effect change.

Identifying the problem, she says, is the first step toward change.

“We need to learn how to define a problem then tackle it as a local issue, a state issue, a national issue.”

O’Connor was in Atlanta to address the Education Commission of the States  and promote awareness for her project,  iCivics. iCivics aims to generate civic interest and knowledge among young people and is available to all teachers, free of charge.

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor helps a student learn as she plays a game on iCivics.

Students can play games and simulations on iCivics focusing on each of the three branches of government as well as individual rights and responsibilities.  For example, students can test their powers of persuasion in “Argument Wars” as they argue cases before the Supreme Court.  They can run for president in “Win the White House” while they learn about real campaigning, including raising funds, polling voters and crafting media campaigns. In “Immigration Nation,” students can guide newcomers through the path to citizenship.

The games are engaging and offer some opportunities for critical thinking.  All the while, students are learning about the Constitution and the branches of government.  There are about 70 lesson plans available for teachers, in addition to the games.

O’Connor and her team launched iCivics in 2009. She’s extremely proud of the site, and says teachers and students are “raving” about it.

O’Connor says she has always been interested in public service and wants to see young people engaged in it, too.  But in an age of social media and lots of distractions, what advice does she offer to parents who want their kids to be interested in civic participation and current events?

“Encourage kids to be involved in projects that get them to interact at some government level,” she told CNN.

Parents should “engage them in projects they care about, get them to interact in ways that illustrate as a practical matter how things can work and how you can be effective in creating change or adopting some policy that matters. Get them involved!”

After all, says O’Connor, “That’s what civics is all about.”

0 Comments

March 18th, 2014

3/18/2014

0 Comments

 
LISTEN TO THE CANDIDATES FOR DEMOCRATIC OFFICES.  DO THEY EDUCATE YOU AS TO THE PROBLEMS OF MAKING OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION PRIVATE, OR DO THEY TALK OF SMALL 'PROGRESSIVE' BONES THAT GO WITH THIS CORPORATIZED SYSTEM?

NEO-LIBERALS ARE PRIVATIZING PUBLIC EDUCATION AS FAST AS REPUBLICANS AND IT KILLS DEMOCRACY AND WILL MAKE OUR NATION THIRD WORLD.


Efficient and effective workers make US global corporations more competitive they say!  Well, that has nothing to do with citizens and their quality of life since these corporations are stealing everything that is public!

Regarding corporate NPR/APM calling higher education funding 'entitlements that are history':

Isn't it LOL when corporate media describes as entitlement the higher education funding taxpayers receive for spending their entire working life paying taxes?  Education funding is of course a citizen's decision to use the tax revenue they pay in a way they want.  On the other hand, corporate NPR/APM taking taxpayer money while working as corporate media are receiving corporate welfare.  See the difference?

Let's talk about the state of higher education funding.  I have pointed out more than once the cost of higher education is too high because of the corporatization of universities these few decades.  It is the administrative structures around this corporatization that American taxpayers and students paying high tuition are supporting.  So, dismantling this corporate structure is the solution to lower student tuition not to mention getting back to rebuilding higher education in America.  We are ranked second world in higher education because of this corporatization.  So, policies offered by Maryland democratic candidate for governor Anthony Brown in 'capping higher education tuition' are of course not the answer.  What Brown is saying is that it is fine to corporatize our universities and charge what are already too high tuition prices.  Brown will also continue O'Malley's defunding of higher education grants and financial aid with the goal of sending most Maryland students to this cheapened vocational track education path.  THAT'S NOT VERY DEMOCRATIC IS IT?  INDEED, NONE OF THIS MEETS THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM.  Only neo-liberals would take education policy in favor of corporations at the expense of public interest.

Maryland just passed a budget funding that provides scholarships for KIPP charter chain students only.  KIPP is a national charter chain that will become the private charter structure that takes public schools and the Maryland Assembly place bias in this system to encourage more students to attend KIPP for example.  You keep hearing from WYPR how Maryland colleges are in high gear with corporatized campuses full of free labor and taxpayer-funded start-ups

BUT YOU DO NOT HEAR THAT MARYLAND UNEMPLOYMENT IS 36% AND THE LABOR MARKET IN MARYLAND IS BUILT FOR CONSTANT LABOR TURNOVER.

All across America citizens are protesting, shouting, and demanding these policies stop.  Haven't heard about all this?  You must be listening to corporate media.  You know more about Ukraine then you do events in your own country.  THE OUTPOURING OF AMERICANS AGAINST THE CORPORATIZATION OF PUBLIC K-COLLEGE IS HUGE!!!!!!  IT'S THE LARGEST MOVEMENT SINCE THE CIVIL/LABOR RIGHTS MOVEMENTS IN THE 1960s and yet, Maryland moves along with the same corporate policies.  That's when you know the politics in your state are crony and neo-liberal.

AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION IS PROTECTED IN THE CONSTITUTION AND IS THE CORNERSTONE OF OUR DEMOCRACY.  WE EDUCATE TO GIVE ALL CITIZENS THE ABILITY TO BE LEADERS OF BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT AND TO BE CITIZENS WHO EXERCISE THEIR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS.

Using Federal higher education money to build corporate structures within universities and state using state higher education funds to market overseas for foreign students and to build a tiered structure of online degrees to track most students is a very, very, very bad policy for democracy.  The first thing an autocratic society does when it represses its citizens is take control of education and media.  SOUND FAMILIAR??????  YOU BETCHA!



Marjorie Elizabeth Wood

  Op-Ed Published: Friday 14 March 2014

Once hailed as the “Great Equalizer,” public higher education today has arguably become a driver of inequality.

Striking for the Public University

Earlier this year, hundreds of faculty members at the University of Illinois-Chicago canceled their classes and went on strike. In the first faculty walkout in UIC history, they picketed the campus for two days.

What could professors possibly have to complain about?

Nearly everything. And it might not be what you think.

Today, more than half of all faculty are part-time, or adjunct, instructors. Many of them lack employer-provided health insurance coverage and job security. When accounting for temporary, full-time positions such as lecturers and visiting faculty, a whopping 76 percent of all instruction in American higher education is provided by contingent, temporary, or part-time educators.


But professors are not only worried about income and job security. The UIC faculty strikers, for instance, have broader concerns about a trend of declining investment in American public universities and a related rise in crippling student debt. Nationwide, public investment in state universities — previously made possible by progressive taxation — has declined sharply over the last 30 years. To make up for lost state funds, universities raised tuition. What used to be a collective burden borne by taxpayers was transferred onto the backs of students. Now at a staggering $1.1 trillion, student loan debt has surpassed Americans’ total credit card debt.

Meanwhile, the richest 1 percent of public university employees are doing better than ever. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, there has been a sea change in executive compensation, with pay packages for some public university presidents surpassing $2 million. Hiring of administrative staff has exploded, growing more than three times the rate of faculty hires.

UIC’s Dr. John Casey, a lecturer and leader in the faculty union, has witnessed these developments firsthand since he started as a UIC graduate student 13 years ago.

“There is a sense that the school is being taken away from us,” Casey said. As he described it, a build-up of administrative staff at UIC has led to “corporate management” making unilateral decisions about the welfare of faculty and students, usually to the detriment of both.

Not surprisingly, the faculty members who went on strike are demanding higher pay and better working conditions. But as Casey explained, they also feel that something bigger is at stake. “This is not just about the money,” he said. “We want the entire city to understand that this is their school.”

The sense that public higher education itself is under attack has led to remarkable unity among  among both permanent and temporary faculty. They’ve become so unified that the faculty members created a localized union for the cause. A unique aspect of UIC United Faculty is that it is evenly comprised of both groups. “This aspect of our union is special to us,” said Casey. “We know what we’re fighting for.”

While the rise of inequality has become a familiar story, inequality in the university is a lesser-known — and more ironic — tale. Once hailed as the “Great Equalizer,” public higher education today has arguably become a perpetuator of inequality. This stark reality at UIC fueled the rise of the faculty union. Underlying their demands is a collective sense of urgency to save a great public university.

UIC professors have set a powerful example. Other faculty around the country should follow their lead. The rest of us must stand behind them. Together, we can take back our public universities.

_______________________________________________

This will become the rule as almost no regulation and no public method of accountability or way to seek justice just opens this category of education to the same for-profit frauds last decade. This move to give accreditation to these online schools seeks to dismantle a long-proven and strong public higher education model of accreditation. We did not have a problem of graduates not being prepared to work, we have corporations telling us we will vocationalize our public education so that those newly hired will be ready for work day one. THAT IS THE FUNCTION OF HUMAN RESOURCES AND NOT OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM.

MARYLAND WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO ADOPT ALL OF THE ONLINE EDUCATION POLICIES AND NOW ACCREDITATION. THE QUALITY IS NOT THERE!


We could fully fund education grants and financial aid by simply recovering trillions of dollars in for-profit education industry fraud.  Rather than seeking justice, neo-liberals are simply building more private/public structures that will continue to defraud students and taxpayers while giving no results.  We do not have a broken system, we have neo-liberals working to end the first world public education that made this nation great.

STOP VOTING FOR NEO-LIBERALS.  RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AGAINST NEO-LIBERALS.



Induced to Fail?


 February 24, 2014 By Carl Straumsheim


A group of former Excelsior College students have sued the institution over its online associate degree program in nursing, claiming the self-paced, competency-based curriculum clashes with an expensive and "subjective" clinical exam.

In the complaint, filed in a federal district court in New York, 17 former students in Excelsior’s associate degree program in nursing from 11 different states say the college sold them “
an
 ‘educational’
 program
 that
 was
 devoid
 of
 any
 education,
 and
 ... an
 ‘objective’
 test,
 which
 was
 anything
 but
 objective.” The students, many of whom have decades of experience in the medical field, are suing Excelsior for breach of contract and deceptive
 or
 misleading
 practices.

The nursing program’s curriculum can be accessed online or, for students without Internet access, as a set of CD-ROMs. Once students have passed several nursing theory exams, completed 21 out of the 31 required credits and taken a computer-based clinical assessment test, they take the college's Clinical Performance in Nursing Examination. The 17 students, however, say the coursework did not prepare them for the CPNE, and that Excelsior withheld information about the test until they “had
 expended
 resources
 and
 were
 irreversibly
 committed
 to
 completing
 the
 program.”

“Excelsior
 did 
not 
provide 
consumers 
with
 the
 clinical 
education
 that
 it 
promises,” the complaint reads. “
Instead, 
it 
provides 
a 
test.”

Competency-based education has attracted considerable interest lately, but the learning approach is not new territory to Excelsior. The college has been in the field for a long time, and has in fact been cited by some as evidence of the potential for competency-based education.

Still, several states have in recent years raised questions about the preparedness of Excelsior’s graduates. California does not allow recent graduates to apply for registered nurse licenses, for example, and 14 other states require those who have passed the CPNE to log hundreds of hours of experience before becoming eligible.

Some studies have challenged those claims about competency-based education. In one example, the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning in 2012 found Excelsior’s graduates and students from other programs pass licensing exams at the same rate.

In a January 2013 exit survey, several recent graduates of the nursing program at Excelsior singled out the CPNE as the one aspect of the program they would change. Some recommended more practice materials and changing the test from a pass-fail system to a percentage score, while others called it “traumatic” and said it “ruined the [Excelsior College] experience.”

The CPNE costs $2,225 per attempt, and students are given a test date between three and eight months after signing up.

One of the 17 students, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not sign up to retake the test after failing it the first time. The student described being subjected to “psychological tricks,” such as facing constant interruptions and having to whisper the reasoning behind each step of the clinical process. At one point during the test, the student said a registered nurse walked up and said “I feel really sorry for you guys.”

“They were trying to induce you to fail,” the student said. “When you’re playing against a stacked deck, you don’t stand much of a chance of winning.”

The group of plaintiffs also includes Jillian Phelan, who passed the CPNE “solely 
because 
of
 the
 Examiner’s
 discretion.” In Phelan’s case, the complaint says her examiner “assisted
 [Phelan] on
 six
 (6)
 different
 occasions
 during
 her
 examination” and “informed
 [Phelan] that 
she
 felt
 that
 the 
program 
was
 ‘unfair.’”

John
 Hermina, who represents the 17 students, declined to speak on the record, as the complaint was filed as recently as Wednesday.

William M. Stewart, assistant vice president at Excelsior, also said the college is not yet in a position to comment. He pointed out that the nursing program has been accredited since 1975, and that more than 42,000 students have earned associate degrees from the college and are working as registered nurses.

John F. Ebersole, Excelsior's president, also highlighted the college's experience in the field. "Facts are that this is a 40-year-old program that has produced more than 50,000 graduates and has been designated a Center of Excellence in Nursing Education by the National League of Nursing for the past 7 years," he wrote in an email. "We are proud of what we do and what we have achieved."
______________________________________
I have already shown on a number of occasions that the propaganda of a failing US public school system is bogus.  Indeed, urban schools were defunded with few resources and this does lower achievement.  The solution is to fund them and give them resources not to closed schools down and replace schools with charters that do nothing better.  Temporarily using private funding to skew results hides the long-term goals of ending equal opportunity and access to education.

Consider that currently over 70% of Americans have been brought to poverty and another 20% are not far above poverty.  The goal will be to have 90% of Americans in this captured tiered vocationally tracked system.  Add to that the goal of neo-liberalism's BEST OF THE BEST OF THE WORLD outreach to immigrants from around the world and you see that most leadership will go to a select few while the people who are citizens are largely impoverished.  THIS IS THE SOCIETAL STRUCTURE OF THIRD WORLD NATIONS. 

EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO DEMOCRATIC AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND PROTECTION UNDER LAW!


Understanding the Propaganda Campaign Against Public Education

March 15th, 2014 by admin |

by Diane Ravitch

Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post

Marcj 12, 2014 – A few years ago, when I was blogging at Education Week with Deborah Meier, a reader introduced the term FUD. I had never heard of it. It is a marketing technique used in business and politics to harm your competition. The term and its history can be found on Wikipedia. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The reader said that those who were trying to create a market-based system to replace public education were using FUD to undermine public confidence in public education. They were selling the false narrative that our public schools are obsolete and failing.

This insight inspired me to write Reign of Error to show that the "reform" narrative is a fraud. Test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history for white students, black students, Hispanic students, and Asian students. Graduation rates are the highest in history for these groups. The dropout rate is at an historic low point.

Why the FUD campaign against one of our nation’s most treasured democratic institutions? It helps the competition. It makes people so desperate that they will seek out unproven alternatives. It makes the public gullible when they hear phony claims about miracle schools, where everyone graduates and everyone gets high test scores, and everyone goes to a four-year college. No such school exists. The "miracle school" usually has a high suspension rate, a high expulsion rate, a high attrition rate, and such schools usually do not replace the kids they somehow got rid of. Some "miracle schools" have never graduated anyone because they have only elementary schools, but that doesn’t stop the claims and boasting.

It turns out that there is actually a scholar studying the phenomenon of the "the cultural production of ignorance."

He hasn’t looked at the attack on public schools, but his work shows how propaganda may be skillfully deployed to confuse and mislead the public. Michael Hiltzik of theLos Angeles Times writes about the work of Robert Proctor of Stanford University:

Robert Proctor doesn’t think ignorance is bliss. He thinks that what you don’t know can hurt you. And that there’s more ignorance around than there used to be, and that its purveyors have gotten much better at filling our heads with nonsense.

Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, is one of the world’s leading experts in agnotology, a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance. It’s a rich field, especially today when whole industries devote themselves to sowing public misinformation and doubt about their products and activities.

The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson’s files, "Doubt is our product." Big Tobacco’s method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo’s author wrote, but to establish a "controversy."

When this sort of manipulation of information is done for profit, or to confound the development of beneficial public policy, it becomes a threat to health and to democratic society.
Big Tobacco’s program has been carefully studied by the sugar industry, which has become a major target of public health advocates.

FUD was pioneered decades ago. Now public education is the target, and privatizing it is the goal. I hope Professor Proctor turns his attention to this issue, where a well-funded propaganda campaign seeks to spread enough doubt to destroy an essential Democratic institution.

There is no evidence from any other nation that replacing a public system with a privatized choice system produces anything but social, economic, and racial segregation.

______________________________________________

WELL, IF PENNY PRITZER LIKES IT IT MUST BE BAD POLICY!  NO ONE HATES LABOR AND JUSTICE MORE THAN THIS HYATT HEIRESS.


ALL ACADEMICS AND EDUCATION ADVOCATES SAY THERE IS NO SKILLS DEFICIT-----ONLY CORPORATIONS WANTING THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM TO BE THEIR HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENTS


This is a great article that shows how neo-liberals are moving all government agencies towards working for corporations and ending Federal agencies working to protect the public interest.

We saw Obama and Arne Duncan privatize the Department of Education....it is run by Wall Street.  Race to the Top privatizes K-12.  This gives a good look at how the Department of Labor is now being redesigned to work for corporations.  That is why Maryland's Perez was placed into this position.....Maryland is well on its was to privatization of K-college.

We see here that Labor is now about preparing workers for jobs.  Corporations say they want workers ready to work day one and neo-liberals are giving it to them.  This is what privatizing all of our community colleges is about.  Each time a person changes jobs they will have to go back to community college to start the next job and we know in this environment, job assignments are short.  So, over and over and over people will come to community colleges just as they used to go to Human Resources and go through a few weeks of job orientation.  Only now, it is all paid by taxpayers.  The funding for training all employees for all jobs will be tens of billions of dollars.  See why there will be no money for student aid to stronger 4 year universities?  All education help will go to job training and career certificates.  Bye Bye equal opportunity and access to education.  So, with corporate business structures at colleges you have students working for free while paying tuition with no guarantees of a job.  Remember, the social democratic structure had students graduating from school and entering union apprenticeships paid for by unions and businesses hiring and the employee was paid for the work done.  See how that maximizes profits?


THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL FOR YOU----KILLING DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURES TO MAXIMIZE CORPORATE PROFIT.  SEE RAWLINGS-BLAKE STANDING WITH THE GROUP?  SHE IS THERE BECAUSE SHE DOES WHATEVER A CORPORATION TELLS HER TO DO.

Below you see Chicago is ground zero for these schools as job training policies and guess what?  Obama and Rahm Emanuel are from Chicago!  GO GUESS!  Also from Chicago-----the strongest protest organization of community groups against these education policies handing our schools to corporations.

Feds to Mayors: Work with Industry on Workforce Development Officials from the departments of Labor and Commerce told city leaders at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting to take a hands-on approach with their area businesses to match workers with jobs.

by Chris Kardish | January 23, 2014  Governing

Mayor Scott Smith, of Mesa, Ariz., speaks during the opening press conference of the 82nd winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. AP/Evan Vucci 17  35  2  18  0         Labor economists may be divided over how much the gap between employer needs and employee skills is driving long-term unemployment, but there’s no shortage of anecdotes at the ground level about businesses that can’t fill job openings. The country’s mayors are in a position to do something about it, federal officials told an audience at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C.

Representatives of both the departments of Commerce and Labor offered sobering statistics on the nation’s unemployment problem, activities at the federal level to alleviate joblessness and highlights of innovative programs at the city level.

About 10.4 million people are unemployed, with another 2.4 million not counted as unemployed because they’ve given up their search. Job openings are up 66 percent since the end of the recession, but hiring rates are up only a quarter since that time.  Sometimes those unfilled vacancies require businesses to raise wages, review the skills needed for the job or take other steps, but government also needs to reassess how it invests in workforce development, said Kate McAdams, senior advisor to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.  

“We need to bring everyone together in partnership to ensure training responds to industry needs,” she said.

There's considerable debate about the seriousness of the so-called skills gap, with some economists blaming corporations for low pay and others insisting labor markets show no difference in demand between low-skilled and high-skilled jobs .
But employer surveys show that, at least among the minds of business leaders, a gap does exist. In an Adecco survey of 500 executives last fall, 92 percent said there's a serious skills gap in the U.S. workforce, though 44 percent of respondents said "soft skills" such as communication and critical thinking are the most serious deficits.

The skills gap has also dominated state-level policy, appearing again and again in gubernatorial State of the State speeches opening 2014.
In Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal wants to expand tuition-free technical training to more high-demand fields, low-interest loans at community colleges and launch a task force with businesses to better understand how to align educational offerings with the needs of private industry. In Idaho, where state leaders are rebranding K-12 education “K-through-career,” Gov. “Butch” Otter is calling for more instructors in high-demand programs to reduce the time needed to graduate.

But McAdams noted many cities are taking proactive steps, forming public-private organizations that work as job recruiters and trainers. Skills for Chicagoland’s Future, launched in 2012, is one such initiative. The nonprofit provides free recruitment, placement and training services to employers. A Chicago-based health care technology company called GoHealth recently announced it’s on pace to hire more than 650 new employees this year with Chicagoland’s help, well above initial forecasts of 250. More than 140 of those employees so far have come through the organization’s “train-to-hire” program as licensed insurance advisors and sales representatives.

Chicago has also worked aggressively to revamp training through its community college system by partnering with more than 100 businesses for direct input on curricula, course offerings and job placements. In Chicago's community colleges, associate degrees are now built around occupational certifications that offer better jobs and pay. Students can earn credentials that offer employment but continue working toward a full degree.

Tying class offerings to workforce needs also extends to K-12 education, said Mayor Christopher Cabaldon of West Sacramento. That means finding ways to give subjects real-world applications, forging relationships with businesses to encourage youth “apprenticeships” and encouraging all paths to training, he said. In a city with the highest number of job openings per capita in the region but one of the worst unemployment rates, the leadership needs to try something new in the area of economic development, Calbadon said.  

“As a mayor, much of my focus is finding new companies and building around those we have. That strategy has diminishing returns and is not addressing in really deep ways…our long-term political responsibilities,” he said.

______________________________________


Thanks to the AFT for getting in
the stop privatization protest.  Please shout out in Maryland as Baltimore is building a template for the state!


Check out Cashing in on
Kids and help us spread the word by sharing with your social networks.


American Federation of Teachers


For-profit charter schools that operate in the dark without basic public transparency and without strong public control too often put their bottom line ahead of the public interest
and high-quality public education.

  Is the rapid expansion of charter schools about helping kids learn or about enabling for-profit operators to rake in millions in tax dollars?   Find out.

So, last week, in partnership
with In the Public Interest, the AFT launched the
website Cashing in on
Kids—a one-stop shop for the facts about for-profit
education in
America.

While we are working to reclaim the promise of public education, these for-profit charters are cashing in on kids. Help us call them out.

The site profiles five for-profit charter school operators:

K12 Inc., Imagine Schools, White Hat Management, Academica and Charter Schools USA.

It identifies several issues that need to be addressed in charter school policy, including public control, equity, transparency and accountability, and it analyzes the impact of profit-taking and privatization in charter schools, where student results are mixed and mismanagement is widespread.

Curious to see how Jeb Bush’s friends are cashing in on kids? Check it out.

We built this site because we want parents, educators and policymakers to be better informed about the impact of profit, money and private interests in education, particularly charter schools.

Check out Cashing in on Kids, and help us
spread the word by sharing with your social networks.

In unity,

Randi
Weingarten
AFT President

P.S. Don’t forget to “like” Cashing
in on Kids on Facebook and to follow it on Twitter.

___________________________________________

As the American people shout 'WE DO NOT WANT THIS EDUCATION REFORM' neo-liberals working for global corporations push harder and faster to get this in place.  Please note that when education is taken out of your communities and privatized you will be losing the last public place of community cohesion.  Having individual students locked into computer lessons and worst, virtual classrooms deliberately disconnects people from their communities.

All of this would not be happening without Race to the Top.  Obama and neo-liberals pressed this republican education policy by holding states hostage to Federal education funding and in the process gave states the right to choose educational platforms.....ending Federal control of public education.  While Common Core and testing seek to centralize, the structure of public schools is being deliberately torn apart.

MARYLAND NEO-LIBERALS SAY 'WE ARE MOVING FORWARD NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK'!




Teachers Union Launching Massive Campaign Against Education Reform Movement



Posted: 12/05/2013 5:03 pm EST  |  Updated: 12/05/2013 6:37 pm EST

  The American Federation of Teachers union is unveiling a seven-figure advertisement campaign ahead of Dec. 9, a day that the group has billed as a "national day of action" against the education reform movement and push alternative solutions.

“Public education is under attack and underfunded throughout our country," the advertisements read, according to materials AFT, the nation's second-largest teachers union, provided to The Huffington Post. "Now, communities are coming together for our schools and our children to champion great public schools as the heart of our neighborhoods. … Together, we can make sure our schools are places where all kids can thrive and the voices of those closest to the classroom are heard.”

In an interview, AFT President Randi Weingarten said the AFT is spending about $1.2 million on the push. The radio, online and print advertisements, including a full-page ad in USA Today, are running through Dec. 9 in 30 cities, including New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia. The messaging is framed around the idea of "reclaiming the promise" of public education, according to AFT materials.

Weingarten said various protests are expected to take place in at least 60 cities on Dec. 9. For the day of action, AFT has collaborated with the National Education Association, America's biggest teachers union, groups like the Schott Foundation, and community organizations like the Chicago-based Journey for Justice Alliance. The groups are circulating a document, "the principles that unite us," to outline their cause: making sure public schools "are public institutions"; fostering the creation of community schools; fighting so-called privateers; respect for teachers; and schools that are "welcoming and respectful places for all" and fully funded. The document says the groups do not entirely oppose charter schools, but that those schools must be regulated and accountable to the public.

The unions are calling the movement a groundswell of organic support against the usurping of public schools by "corporate interests" that want to make a "market-based system of schooling" involving high-stakes testing and attacks on collective bargaining. An AFT one-pager obtained by HuffPost lists the day's purpose as "to begin to create a national echo chamber for our vision and narrative." The memo calls on groups to "mobilize large numbers of parents, students, community residents and union members" to "tell stories of the impact of the corporate agenda on students," and, in some cases, "target an agent of the corporate agenda."

Weingarten said the idea behind the campaign came from a human rights conference in Los Angeles and through town halls AFT held in different cities. "We want to fight austerity, but we also want to come up with a proactive way of trying to change public education," she said. "You see a grassroots movement that says no -- not just no we have enough, no we're critical -- but these are the kind of reforms we need to help kids succeed in life, college and career. We thought it was important to have one day to mark that."

In Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union is expecting 500 teachers, students and residents to hold a press conference near City Hall and march to the State of Illinois building to deliver a wish list to the governor.

Friday, in advance of the Day of Action, activists in Austin, Texas, are slated to march from the Capitol South Steps to the Federal Building to rally with unions and advocate for their agenda. In Boise, Idaho, teachers and unions plan to advocate outside the Capitol for more funding.

Weingarten acknowledged that the effort is a sort of rehash of previous campaigns. "People have been engaged in this effort for awhile. This is bringing people together like we have never done before in a thoughtful and deliberative process that is also about action," she said. "It's the growing of a movement."

Others took a different view. "The kinds of things that they have been against -- more options for families in low-performing schools, higher standards for students and stronger accountability for results -- those are all things that the public is strongly in favor of," argued Tim Daly, who oversees TNTP, an alternative teacher certification group. "Instead of being against things that the public is in favor of, there have been efforts to shift attention to red herring issues like privatization."
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March 12th, 2014

3/12/2014

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Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland stands for strong public, private libraries, and research institutions  


NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND CONTROL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!  HEATHER MIZEUR SAYS SHE IS PROGRESSIVE?  HAVE YOU HEARD HER SHOUT AGAINST ALL OF THIS? SHE SUPPORTS PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND WALL STREET CREDIT BOND LEVERAGE FOR THESE KINDS OF THINGS!



MOVING ALL FEDERAL AND STATE FUNDING OF EDUCATION TO PRIVATE CORPORATE NON-PROFITS AND EDUCATION BUSINESSES IS DELIBERATELY MEANT TO PRIVATIZE AND CLOSE PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS DEDICATED TO PUBLIC INTEREST.  THIS SHOULD HAVE EVERYONE ON THE STREETS.



  To:  Citizens for Maryland Libraries

I would like to share my views of policy that will concern the vision and mission of Maryland libraries.  As an academic currently working as a research professional I live in libraries and archives so I am one of the most frequent users of the institutions for which you advocate.  I would be a real friend to public and private libraries and research institutions. 

First, let me clarify a policy stance that drives my policies on education and by extension how libraries fit into education at all levels.  We have watched these few years of Governor O’Malley’s term the embracing of a Federal policy advanced by the Obama Administration under the direction of his Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Race to the Top and this policy guides any questions regarding libraries and Common Core materials.  As a progressive labor and justice candidate I see Race to the Top as an assault on public education K-12 and with it Common Core.  I will work hard to restore rigor and accountability in all public schools as I too agree that we have failed to assure these standards in public schools these few decades.  I think Race to the Top and Common Core are not the best approach for doing this.  Indeed, I feel these policies work against the very goal stated by politicians pushing this agenda.  The method of implementation of Race to the Top shows what I feel is a desperate attempt to move education policy that Federal officials know the public does not want and they are doing as quickly as possible with such a lack of transparency as to have no avenue for public comment and input in what is the cornerstone to our democratic society-------democratic education and equal opportunity and access to all education.  Common Core sold as a standardization of curricula is not progressive but regressive.  It is not even about making sure there is consistency across America in subject content and rigor.  As anyone who has a background in science and education as I do knows……STEM courses are already standardized.  Facts are facts and courses from science, technology, engineering, and math are fact based.  Now, some people may say that areas like evolution and environment have prejudice in political beliefs, but if students are required to know science standards for existing national tests, those requirements will continue to drive course content.  My concern with Common Core is more with the humanities and liberal arts where standardization greatly jeopardizes democratic freedom of thought and speech as each region of this nation has its own experiences with socio-economic evaluation, civics, history, music, literature, etc.  We do not want to standardize that which makes a nation a plurality.  As a progressive I do not like conservative states writing out the labor and civil rights era every opportunity they get, but I also would not like having the Bush Administration writing the Common Core history lesson on their administration’s foreign policies on War and torture.  Standardization never works well at a time when government is controlled by what we all know to be corporate culture that does not have the public interest in mind in writing policy.  So, just as a general statement on education policy I will open with my intent to fight Race to the Top implementation in Maryland.  My appointments would be strong public education advocates and my bully-pulpit as governor would address the Maryland Assembly as regards the movement of policy that has so little research showing its legitimacy in creating the achievements it states and the unwise decision to move forward so quickly with policy that has not had public comment, development of core materials to be used, and the discussions as to where these policies lead the state in the long-term.  I believe the majority of citizens in Maryland, both democrat and republican are not comfortable with these policies and particularly their being implemented without discussion and thought.     Please see my website Citizens Oversight Maryland.com for very clearly written policy stances on this education policy.  Keep in mind I am an activist and this site is written to be populist.  Accountability and public oversight is the passion of my campaign.  

Now, on to  three specific questions directed at libraries: 

1.        One of the greatest achievements of our last economic revolution, the Industrial Revolution, was philanthropy that gave us the public institutions of learning and the public library system we have today.  The idea that all people living in America were to be educated in a way that prepares them to be leaders and to be citizens is central to our Founding Father’s writing of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.  Public places were key to the American people being both.  The legal case of Brown vs Board of Education was successful in that the dictate of equal opportunity and access to public education was already a given; it was simply the acknowledgement, as if this needed to be acknowledged, that all men are created equal includes people of color.  So, simply having this philosophy of education identifies me as someone who by extension values the library system in providing that access and opportunity to all.  If we look at the future as regards digitization of all information and the ability of citizens here in America to afford the tools needed to access this digital information we know that libraries will be even more necessary to open access to many people.  Right now, for many it is libraries that offer the only access to the internet and as public schools become more wired and computers become integrated in lessons, access to computers outside the classroom is critical.  Funding for this transition in classrooms is a good thing and we need to see that libraries and community centers are viewed as equally needing of funding to meet these changes.   We are seeing a movement in Maryland of using private education non-profits to serve in providing after-school programs and even in-school programs.  Libraries on the other hand are being left to feel that budgets could be slashed or branches closed at any time.  The movement of these educational outlets from the public to these private non-profits shows a desire to privatize our public sources and services.  I write extensively on the negative impact of public-private partnerships and where I do see good coming from some of these partnerships the goal is clearly to make these relationships the rule and not the exception.  This will not end well for libraries whether public or private.  As a researcher I know that access to research is becoming limited as even universities are making research protected from public view through patents and by extension librarians are now having to tell consumers of the library sources that once accessible data is now proprietary.  This also limits what librarians can say in the course of their duties while on the clock and as we all know, Federal rules regarding surveillance of public records has librarians forced to operate in ways they may find disagreeable.  We see this as an assault on free speech and freedom of information.  All of this falls into policy that attempts to privatize our public spaces.    In order for an education policy to be dynamic and promote success for all Marylanders, we cannot restrict our public spaces and the flow of public information with these categorization of quasi-governmental or public private.  It is repressive and it hurts everyone.  We want to build community educational programs, we want to make libraries center of these communities and a vital part of each school’s structure.  This requires strong funding to public schools and I will say that the current policy of allowing corporations to donate rather than pay taxes skews all attempts at making educational opportunities equal.  Tiered-per-pupil funding in Baltimore for example with the desire to run individual schools as businesses has some schools pressed to buy toilet paper for the children’s bathrooms so whether that school has a good library falls to the whim of private donation.  This is not democratic and public education.  It does not meet the US Constitutional requirement of democratic and equal opportunity.  Libraries that are tied to private donation rather than by public funding are then under the restrictions that come with that donation and, indeed, that is the point of this policy.  Libraries whether private or public will not serve their consumers if policy is dictated by private donation only.  I know, Carnegie was one big private donation but he had the foresight of placing them in the hands of public operation.   We must continue the public funding of library resources of all kinds and with it public access and programming developed with the public in mind.  In Baltimore, small libraries have been defunded and public access ended because of cuts to library budgets and branches are in fear each budget season that the axe may fall.  Politicians thinking all information is online will be the ones who view physical buildings for libraries as extraneous.   In conclusion, I value private non-profits operating as a source for after-school programs.  I feel that libraries are already in the position of providing these programs as well.  A well-resourced library already in a community is necessary for any well-developed education mission.  In this age of technology we would want our libraries to have the same resources as our classrooms so the connection to after-school consumers is there.  

2.        Since I am not a supporter of all of the testing and evaluation policy I do not see a need to expand preparation for testing to libraries more than what exists right now.  Education that is broad and experiential needs to have more opportunity in group projects and exposure to any number of learning skill development tools.  Classroom teachers are not able to do the level of educational skills development needed for achievement and this is where libraries can be an excellent source for parents and students in their after-school choices.  We desperately need all hands on deck with skills development and I do not feel that private non-profits are the only avenue for this.  Our Pratt Central Library has wonderful programs for children and with a bigger budget would have the space to expand as a meeting place for after-school programs.  Having library staff coming to public community centers to help build and implement these programs, funding of mobile library buses all are extremely valuable in attaining educational goals in Maryland.  The upside down education policy of having students going online after school to prepare for classroom lessons is an excellent opportunity for libraries so having the software and materials used in the classrooms at the library is a must.  Parents have never needed more resources than now in learning how to help their children meet these new classroom requirements.   I cannot begin to share the importance for every student in having a library to which to retreat for all kinds of reasons.  Libraries are not only about classroom K-college.  They have as a mission to be the sight of Lifelong Learning.  To be able to meet this mission libraries must be well-resourced.  It is expensive to outfit a library for those with disabilities or to make sure the library collections cater to all kinds of tastes and cultural backgrounds.  All attempts to cut budgets makes the libraries less able to do this and in turn make them attractive to fewer people.  If your goal was to be rid of libraries, that would be the mechanism.  Look to the US Post Office to see this strategy for dismantling a national public treasure!  

3.       I will say as Governor of Maryland my responsibilities to move forward policies regarding Race to the Top will remain until a time comes that this policy can be changed.  It is my intent to push for this.  That said, as State Executive it will be my responsibility to move forward policy dictated by past legislation and indeed, MCC-RS and Common Core are those policies.  That said, I will be sure to see that libraries have what is needed to make them central in implementing this policy and support public school teachers in their classrooms and with promoting the success of students in achievement on these tests.  The amount of education funding going into implementing these Race to the Top policies is outrageous for people knowing all our public schools need are resources and rigor.  So, it would be my job to look carefully at all of the private consultants, all of the private educational businesses tied with this Race to the Top and assess how we might better implement these policies by using the resources such as libraries already in our community.  Since Race to the Top is mostly about growing an education business industry, corporate politicians working for these corporations are no doubt bringing the state into lots of business deals that may not be needed or effective.  I would look at these contracts to see how we can bring libraries and public community centers into the loop in assuring student readiness for these tests.  As a former classroom teacher I know these teachers are overwhelmed and really have little ability to accomplish all that is being placed upon them so quickly.  I would make it my goal to give relief to these classroom teachers in whatever way I can and that would extend to bringing in existing educational sources like libraries and librarians.     


WALSH FOR GOVERNOR IS A GREAT BIG FAN OF LIBRARIES AND ALL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS AND IN PROTECTING US CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF FREE SPEECH, CIVIL LIBERTIES, AND CIVIL RIGHTS THAT GO WITH EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS! 


Update: Vermont Library Lays Off Whole Staff; Librarians Protest

By Meredith Schwartz on January 8, 2013 This article has been updated to include video footage of the “Hug” of the Athenaeum on January 12.

On December 3rd, 2012, the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum Board of Trustees announced it would lay off its entire library, docent, and information technology staff, then “ask them to consider applying for the newly formed Athenaeum positions,” Bill Marshall, chair of the Athenaeum Board of Trustees, said in a letter.

The first goal of the radical restructuring is to reduce costs: the library is eating into its endowment. It could be depleted in as little as seven years if spending continues at the current rate, which the Athenaeum’s Executive Director, Matthew Powers, said was between 10 and 20 percent per year, rather than the recommended 4.5 percent. The plan will cut personnel spending by eight percent, or about $40,000. Powers told LJ that personnel is the “single highest line” in the library-cum-museum’s budget. “Last year personnel costs were roughly $340,000 out of a total budget roughly of $500,000, and that doesn’t take into account the deficit,” he explained.

Although it is the staff restructuring that is raising the most controversy, Powers told LJ it’s far from the only cut. “Within the overall budget we reduced about $150,000; so we didn’t just look at the personnel budget,” said Powers. Other cutbacks affected general expenses and facilities. “No stone was unturned,” Power continued.

The other stated goal of the restructuring is to gear the Athenaeum up to meet the challenges of the rapidly changing world of librarianship, including a new focus on digitization, research and technical assistance, super-broadband Internet access, and off-site services, as well as more emphasis on programs and collaboration with other institutions. However, it is not entirely clear how the restructuring would place more emphasis on technology use and support, since it replaces a dedicated employee with an IT contractor.

According to Laurel Stanley, a retired academic library director, public library trustee, Athenaeum member and donor, and member of the Vermont Library Association Board, a new focus on these goals isn’t necessary. “They’re saying that the Athenaeum is behind in new services and technology and that’s just not true,” said Stanley. “The Athenaeum is definitely a leader in the Northeast Kingdom [section of Vermont], and measures well compared to other libraries in the state.”

According to a second letter from the Board, the Athenaeum is moving from a team of eight people working in the library—most part-time—to a team of four people, two of whom are full time. (Plus a new curatorial position which requires museum, not library, expertise, and a full time development position.) The letter compared the decision to the also-controversial restructuring at Harvard University, and also includes a Q&A section describing some background:

Q: Is there a future for public libraries?

A: Yes! Absolutely yes! There is an important role for public libraries, but it’s going to be different. Preparing for this new role for our library is the fundamental reason we are restructuring. Moreover, this change is occurring with great speed and we have some catching up to do. This is the reason we felt we needed to take a bold step forward, instead of small, incremental changes.

The Athenaeum’s new library positions include a full time librarian and assistant librarian, a part time assistant librarian, and a part time youth services librarian. Although the Board’s letter stated that the people hired into the four new positions will be qualified librarians, according to the job posting, an MLS is not required for any of the positions. While Vermont considers someone with a department of library certification to be a qualified librarian, Stanley told LJ, “it is highly unusual that a library the size of the Athenaeum would not have at least one MLS. You can’t tell me you’re going to do catching up and then say you don’t need an MLS.”

While the Athenaeum says the restructuring does not result in any significant cut in staffing, Stanley disagrees, saying the 130 hours of library staffing that the new positions provide will be insufficient to both staff the Athenaeum’s two service desks and children’s room for the library’s current 42-43 open hours per week, and provide the additional outreach services and programming called for by the plan. Likewise, expanding non-library positions such as a curator, a development director, a book keeper, and a custodian, while reducing library staff hours, is not focusing on library services, claims Stanley.

Stanley agrees that the budget must be balanced, but feels that “they’ve put far too much money into this art gallery, and library services has been far down” on the list of priorities.

Rural Librarians Unite (RuLU), a newly formed volunteer group, is organizing opposition to the cuts in the form of a “hug” for the library. On Saturday, January 12 at noon, the group will join with the Vermont Library Association and citizens of St. Johnsbury to hold hands around the library.

The demonstration is similar to that organized by 2012 LJ Mover & Shaker Christian Zabriskie in 2011. Zabriskie, founder of Urban Librarians Unite, coordinated a “hug” of the New York Public Library’s main branch, and Lydia Willoughby, spokersperson for RuLU, says that’s not a coincidence. “We contacted ULU before starting anything up here, and got their blessing. The ‘hug’ event was definitely influenced by their work at NYPL.”

The Vermont Library Association (VLA) said in a statement, “While the Vermont Library Association understands the Board’s responsibility for setting direction for their library during a time of financial stress, now, more than ever, Vermonters need libraries–and librarians. The Vermont Library Association feels that the board’s actions demonstrate a devaluation of libraries and the library professionals capable of leading them through a time of intense change in information resources and society.  Librarians are not replaced by the Internet–their skills and training enrich the Internet and facilitate access for all Vermonters.”

Both RuLU and VLA also called on supporters to contact the Athenaeum directly, as well as their elected representatives.

Willoughby told LJ, “While the timing of Rural Librarians Unite was definitely in response to the Athenaeum situation, the story was never about just the Athenaeum library staff…RuLU will serve as an activist force that libraries and librarians can go to whenever they want to get a campaign off the ground for any reason.”

RuLU’s future plans include building library and literacy services for correctional facilities and reentry programs in Vermont, an alternative email listserv for rural librarians to make action plans and share resources, support for safe physical spaces for vulnerable learners and library users, meet ups at independent bookstores, unconferences, collaboration with Every Library on State-wide advocacy, and reaching out to ARSL and other peer organizations. While RuLU is focused on Vermont right now, Willoughby doesn’t rule out expanding nationally/or and working with nearby Canadian libraries.


__


The “Hug” drew a crowd of about 200 people, according to RuLU. Video of the event can be seen below:



HUG the Athenaeum - The People Make the Library

- Jan 12, 2013 RuralLibrariansUnite·1 video
2 864 views 16     0 Published on Jan 13, 2013

In December 2012, the board of trustees at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum laid off 11 library staff and invited them to reapply for 3.25 positions. Rural Librarians Unite organized a rally in response. Here is some footage! We love libraries!

Find out more on our website: rurallibrariansunite.org
facebook: facebook.com/rurallibrariansunite
twitter: @rurallibrarians


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This article shows the same happening in Maryland.  While I do fault union leadership for not shouting and using labor lawyers to fight worker wealth lost to fraud and corruption,these unions need the citizens of the state to come out in support of labor and public services.  When neo-liberals partner with republicans to privatize all that is public.......labor and justice must have public support.

PLEASE MOBILIZE AND SHOUT, PROTEST, PETITION AND RUN FOR OFFICE AT ALL LEVELS!  WE NEED TO TAKE BACK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE.

Remember, budget shortfalls come from failure to recover tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud at the national level and tens of billions at the state and local levels.  IT IS ALL ABOUT REINSTATING RULE OF LAW AND ACCOUNTABILITY!




SCOD Public Blog
Sustainable Cooperative for Organic Development

Maryland Budget Cuts = Drastic Library Layoffs Maryland State Budget Cuts Public Services




County library workers in unions, pay more than $500 a year in dues. What have all those dues done for them? That is the sum total effect that paying all those union dues has done for thousands of workers in 21st Century Maryland. Luxurious Legislators have waited until the State deficit is almost $800 million, before they decided to radically chop down the life-long careers of countless loyal State workers and their families.

Montgomery County Executive Dictator Isiah Leggett is calling for a reduction in government spending for the first time in more than 40 years. Regardless of political party, there is nothing “democratic” about his legacy. He spent all the County’s money on bullet-proofing his personal security, and a gold-leaf bathroom in his office. Now in his $4.3 billion budget Monday, he calls for cuts across the state, including libraries and other services. The plan also gives schools $137 million LESS than required by the state. Leggett is calling for an energy tax that would cost about $3 per month for the average household. He has called for a $62 million ambulance fee that was rejected by the county council in the past.

All of these drastic cuts are his attempts to address his own political follies that have aggregated into one of the largest budget deficits in the region. Leggett is proposing no pay increase for county employees. He would eliminate hundreds of currently filled jobs and impose 10 days of furloughs for non-public-safety employees. The overall job reduction amounts to well over 750 work years.

This massive reduction in much needed public service, is almost as bad as the General Assembly cuts to Baltimore’s highway aid from the state. The evidence is clear that the public demands more access to these services, yet the wrong decisions are made. There are many ways to cut budgets over a period of years, without forcing a mass exodus.

The future of civilization in Maryland does not look good. Already homeless and people without internet access clamor at the doors of the libraries. What will all those thousands of people do? Get a job with all these cuts? Yeah, right.


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Libraries are now one of the last places for the public to meet in a public space especially in Maryland.  The intent is to take that away as well.  With loss of net neutrality and consolidation of the communications industry, prices will soar and content standardized across the nation in the hands of global corporations.  THE INTENT IS TO CONTROL INFORMATION AND ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION.  Libraries are and will become the only outlet for people to computers and content online. 

Meanwhile, librarians are being threatened by Federal Security agencies against making public illegal searches, illegal blocking of information, and privacy issues libraries have always protected.  Free speech and free flow of information is threatened by neo-liberals.



Librarians Protest Against Budget Cuts At City Hall October 31, 2011 1:32 PM Library Generic (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

CHICAGO (CBS) – It was reading time and protest time for more than 100 city librarians and supporters Monday morning at a rally outside Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office at City Hall.

WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports that one librarian read to children at City Hall about a “big green monster,” but what librarians found even scarier were the mayor’s planned cuts to the library system.

LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports




“At a time we’re taking more and more things away from our kids, we need to give them something to expand their imaginations,” said Beverly Cook, who has been with the library system for more than 25 years.

The mayor plans to trim $11 million from the budget for public libraries next year by eliminating 268 vacant positions and laying off 284 workers – including two dozen various librarians, 112 clerks and all 146 pages charged with shelving books.

Library student Megan Russell said, “The effect will be horrendous for both children and people that cannot afford Internet and cannot afford books.”

Library supporters arrived at City Hall with more than 4,000 petition signatures backing up their opposition of the library cuts.

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You may not understand the outrage over issues with Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) like intellectual property protections and IT protections but the article below shows the problem.  Since universities are being made into corporations and patenting their research, what was free and open sharing of all academic research internationally will now be threatened.  Proprietary means that the decades of building an international system of sharing academic information to cut the costs of taxpayer funding of costly research will be closed to the public.  Librarians used to be the experts on finding all of this information to share with the public and now those resources are mostly accessible to only university personnel.



Bill Clinton placed privatization of universities on the fast track once he and Reagan tag-teamed global corporate rule.  Obama has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to build these university research centers that are now simply corporations while sending relatively small funding connected to Race to the Top to fund K-12.  Most of that too attached to building private education structures.  Meanwhile, researchers like myself cannot access what Federal, state, and local taxes fund in research because patented research is proprietary.

Why have library staff when most of what libraries did is now being lost.....the public does not need to know!  'Innovation startup' is just a political phrase for spending all taxpayer money on the R and D costs for new product development.  All these startups that are successful are simply folded into global corporations and the university department heads are paid as if they are manufacturing executives. 

NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND CONTROL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!  HEATHER MIZEUR SAYS SHE IS PROGRESSIVE?  HAVE YOU HEARD HER SHOUT AGAINST ALL OF THIS? SHE SUPPORTS PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND WALL STREET CREDIT BOND LEVERAGE FOR THESE KINDS OF THINGS!


Academic Patenting: How universities and public research organizations are using their intellectual property to boost research and spur innovative start-ups

Mario Cervantes, Economist, Science and Technology Policy Division, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD1

Introduction Universities and other public research organizations are increasingly protecting their inventions – from genetic inventions to software – helping raise additional funding for research and spurring new start ups. The rise in university patenting has occurred against a broader policy framework aimed at fostering a greater interaction between public research and industry in order to increase the social and private returns from public support to R&D. The general strengthening of intellectual property protection world-wide as well as the passage of legislation aimed at improving technology transfer are additional factors that have facilitated the expansion of patenting in academia in OECD countries.

Indeed, in 1980, the United States passed what is widely considered landmark legislation, the Bayh-Dole Act, which granted recipients of federal R&D funds the right to patent inventions and license them to firms. The main motivation for this legislation was to facilitate the exploitation of government-funded research results by transferring ownership from the government to universities and other contractors who could then license the IP to firms. Although patenting in US universities did occur prior to the passage of Bayh-Dole Act, it was far from systematic.

At the end of the 1990s, emulating the US policy change, many other OECD countries reformed research funding regulations and/or employment laws to allow research institutions to file, own and license the IP generated with government research funds. In Austria, Denmark, Germany and Japan, the main effect of these changes has been the abolishment of the so-called “professor’s privilege” that granted academics the right to own patents. The right to ownership has now been transferred to the universities while academic inventors are given a share of royalty revenue in exchange. There has also been debate in Sweden on whether to follow a similar path and transfer ownership to institutions. For now at least, the status quo remains and policy efforts are focusing on developing the ability of universities to provide professors with support for patenting. 

In Canada, where rules on IP ownership by universities vary across Provinces, efforts have nevertheless been made to harmonize policies at least with respect to R&D funded by federal government Crown Contracts. In Ireland and France, where institutions normally but not always retain title, the government has chosen an alternate path: issuing guidelines for IP management at institutions in order to foster more consistent practices. Such reforms are not only confined to the OECD countries. China has recently made legislative reforms to allow universities to protect and claim IP, but implementation of such reforms remains a challenge. One lesson from all this is that despite the importance of patent legislation in fostering technology transfer, different national systems may require different solutions.

Institutional ownership of IP is not sufficient Encouraging universities to commercialize research results by granting them title to IP can be useful but it is not sufficient to get researchers to become inventors. The key is that institutions and individual researchers have incentives to disclose, protect and exploit their inventions. Incentives can be “sticks” such as legal or administrative requirements for researchers to disclose inventions. Such regulations are often lacking in many countries, even in those where institutions can claim patents. Government rules that prevent universities from keeping royalty income from licenses are another disincentive to institutions. Incentives can also be “carrots” such as royalty sharing agreements or equity participation in academic start-ups. Recognition of patent activity in the evaluation and recruitment of faculty can also provide incentives for young researchers. Tsinghua University in China offers its young researchers prizes for inventions that are commercialized. 

Given the diversity of research institutions and traditions, it is important that incentives are set at the institution level, but national guidelines can help bring about coherence and the sharing of good practices. As important as incentives is the need for research institutions to clarify IP rules and disseminate them among faculty, staff as well as graduate students- who are increasingly involved in public research activities.

Building critical mass in IP management To bridge the gap between invention and commercialization, universities have established "technology transfer offices" (TTOs), on campus or off-campus intermediaries that carry out a wide range of functions, from licensing patents to companies to managing research contracts. Results from an OECD report on patenting and licensing at public research organizations2 show that there is a large diversity in the structure and organization of TTOs within and across countries (e.g. on or off -campus offices, arm’s length intermediaries, industry sector-based TTOs, and regional TTOs) but the majority appear to be dedicated on-site institutions and integrated into the university or research institution. Many of the TTOs are in their infancy; most are less than 10 years old and have less than five full-time staff. Still, the number of new TTOs is growing, to the order of 1 per year per institution.

In terms of performance, the report also found enormous variations in terms of the size of patent portfolios as well as revenues obtained from licensing. In 2000 the United States had a huge lead over other OECD countries in academic patenting: universities and federal labs received over 8 000 patents (5% of total patenting, rising to 15% in biotechnology). Academic patenting in other countries, as measured by the number of patents granted to public research institutions, ranged from the low hundreds in Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland, to close to 1 000 at German public labs and Korean research institutions in 2000-2001. While leading universities and public research organizations in countries such as the United States, Germany and Switzerland may earn millions of dollars or euros in licensing revenue, the gains are highly skewed – a few blockbuster inventions account for most revenue. Furthermore, income from licensing academic inventions remains quite small in comparison to overall research budgets. Academic patenting is thus more about boosting research and transferring technology to industry than about making a profit. In fact, evidence from the US show that the break even point for TTOs is between 5 to 7 years.

A main barrier to the development of TTOs is access to experienced technology transfer professionals. Not only are the skills sets of such professionals in short supply but sometimes government employment rules and pay-scales prevent public institutions from being able to provide competitive salaries to such professionals. Governments are nevertheless trying to help universities build IP management capacity. Denmark and Germany have both invested several millions of euro to spur the development of technology transfer offices clustered around certain regions or sectors such as biotechnology. The UK government has increased expenditures on the training of intellectual property management at universities. Even in the United States and Japan, universities pay reduced patent application fees. National patent offices are also involved in reaching out to universities to provide training in intellectual property.

Start-ups versus licensing to other firms One of the questions facing technology transfer managers and inventors is whether to license a technology or to create a start-up firm to commercialize it. Governments and university managers, especially in some European countries, have tended to favour start-ups as opposed to licensing strategies. Part of this stems from the rise in government funded venture funds that aim to promote new firm creation. The key question, however, is: which is the best channel for transferring the technology to the marketplace? The answer in fact depends on the technology in question, the market for such a technology, the skills set of the staff and researchers involved the invention, access to venture capital, and finally the mission of the institution. Certain “platform” technologies with a wide range of applications may be commercialized via a start-up company for example while others may be licensed to larger firms with the business capacity to develop the invention further and integrate it into its R&D and business strategy.

Balancing IP protection with the need to maintain public access Despite the relatively small amount of (formal) academic patenting activity that takes place, the increased focus on patenting academic inventions and licensing them to companies has raised a number of concerns common to countries throughout the OECD area and beyond. These concerns range from the impact of patenting on the traditional missions of universities, the effect on the direction of research, on the actual costs and benefits of patenting and licensing, to the effects on the diffusion of and access to publicly funded research results.

What has been the impact of IP and technology transfer activities on the direction of research? Quantitative studies tend to show that patenting has led universities to conduct more applied research. By making university research more responsive to the economy, is there a danger that basic research will suffer? On the one hand, several studies in the United States have found that universities and individual researchers that have seen the largest increases in patenting are also those which experienced the greatest gains in academic publications. On the other hand, the rate at which academic patents are cited in other patents fell (relative to the average) between the early 1980s and late 1990s in the United States and is now lower than the citation rate of patents granted to business. This could suggest a possible drop in the quality of public research – or at least of its patented component. Alternatively, it may reflect the inexperience of newly founded technology transfer offices.

Exclusive versus non-exclusive licensing Should universities and other public research organizations grant exclusive licenses to firms for inventions that have benefited from public funds? Licensees often require exclusive licenses as they offer more protection for the necessary development to be conducted before a university-provided invention can become a marketed product. The issue is particularly crucial for start-ups which have few assets other than their IP. On the other hand, by definition, exclusive licenses limit the diffusion of technologies. The OECD report has found that the mix of exclusive and non-exclusive licenses granted by public research organizations is fairly balanced, and that exclusivity is often granted with restrictions on the licensee side. Research institutions often include clauses in license agreements to protect public interests and access to the IP for future research and discovery. Licensing agreements in many institutions include a commitment to exploit the invention on the part of the licensee, particularly if the license is exclusive, and to agree on milestones in order to assure that commercialization will take place. Such safeguards can be used to ensure that technology is transferred and that licensed patents are not used simply to block competitors.

As academic inventions arise in areas closer to basic research, scientists and policy makers are also concerned that patenting certain inventions could block downstream research. One example is that of research tools, in which granting a patent could inhibit diffusion by increasing the costs and difficulty of using such tools in applied research. In response, the National Institutes of Health in the United States (NIH) have espoused a policy that discourages unnecessary patenting and encourages non-exclusive licensing (see link). Such guidelines are now being emulated by funding agencies and research institutions in other countries.

Research exemption Another area of debate concerns the use of the so-called “exemption for research use” that has been in use in universities in both the United States and in EU countries, either formally or informally. Traditionally, universities have been exempted from paying fees for patented inventions they use in their own research. The rationale is that universities fulfill a public mission. As more public research is carried out with business and generates monetary rewards, the divide between public mission and commercial aims becomes less stark. The extent and status of this exemption differs across countries and is often ill-defined. This research exemption – or rather its interpretation – has recently been the subject of policy debate and litigation: recent court decisions in the United States have restricted its meaning.

Conclusions Making universities and other public research organizations more active in protecting and exploiting their IP means not only actively promoting faculty and student research, but also determining how best to pursue any relationship with business clients while protecting the public interest. Many of the concerns or issues related to balancing IP protection with public access will take time to resolve. The growing reliance of public research institutions on various sources of funding, including from industry and contract research, as well as demands by society for greater economic and social returns on investment in public R&D, have made academic patenting a reality that is more likely to increase than decrease. At the same time, it should be recalled that intellectual property is but one of several channels for transferring knowledge and technology from publicly funded research which include publication, the movement of graduates, conferences as well as informal channels. While research institutions and firms are working to find solutions to problems as they arise, governments and research funding agencies have a role to play in providing guidelines on academic patenting and licensing and in fostering debate.





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Keep in mind that Maryland and especially Baltimore are ranked at the bottom for fraud, corruption, and the lack of transparency.......billions of dollars are lost in Baltimore alone to the richest.  This is the structural deficit for all government budgets and it is being used to privatize and close all that is public.

Neo-liberals are doing to the US what Gorbachev did to USSR during Perestroika......privatizing all public wealth to create Oligarchs.  The US has a Constitution and Equal Protection under law that protects Americans from these actions. 

WE SIMPLY NEED PEOPLE IN OFFICE THAT ARE NOT COMPLICIT



Maryland Historical Society cuts operating hours, staff

Budget gap of $670,000 to blamemuseum, library open on Thursdays, Saturdays onlyDecember 03, 2009|By Liz F. Kay | liz.kay@baltsun.com

A $670,000 budget shortfall caused by the dismal economic climate has prompted the Maryland Historical Society to cut hours at its Baltimore museum and library and to eliminate several staff positions, according to the president of its trustee board.


In addition, Wednesday was director Robert Rogers' last day with the society, board president Alex G. Fisher said. Rogers' departure is unrelated to the 165-year-old organization's budget problems, according to Fisher. The board will name an interim director until it can conduct a search for a new leader.

The society was able to close nearly half of its budget gap by cutting the equivalent of seven full-time positions. To make up the rest, it also limited operating hours at the museum and library to noon to 8 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, and the 28 trustees agreed to double their gifts to the society's annual fund.

Many charitable organizations have been struggling to remain solvent during the economic downturn.

"It's no secret that all nonprofits are suffering as a result of the economy," Fisher said.

Although financial markets have recovered somewhat, they are still lower than they were several years ago, which affects the income drawn from the historical society's endowment, as well as the confidence of supporters who make contributions, Fisher said. State funding for the society has also decreased by $450,000 in the past three years, according to Fisher.

He described the decrease in hours as "regrettable." However, "if you're going to be fiscally responsible, you just have to do that," Fisher said. The library and museum were formerly open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, though the library would close during lunch.

Scholars and historians worry that the decision to reduce hours will make it difficult for researchers to conduct their work.


"If you're an out-of-town researcher, you can't even go back-to-back days," said Jessica Elfenbein, an associate provost and professor of history at the University of Baltimore. "It's going to be very hard for any researcher to do justice to Baltimore if you can't get to the collections it supports."

Said Robert Brugger, senior editor at the Johns Hopkins University Press: "That means that people who would like to be doing research are not going to do it, or need to find more money than would otherwise be needed to get work done."


Fisher acknowledged that was a legitimate concern. The society is hoping to restore some operating hours at its Mount Vernon facilities by relying on volunteers.

"But it will take time to get that accomplished," Fisher said.

The society is also revamping its Web site.

"Once that's done, access to library material will expand dramatically to anyone off-site," courtesy of the Web, Fisher said.

Education programs in Maryland schools will also be curtailed through the remainder of the school year, according to Fisher. As student tours of the museum have dwindled in recent years, outreach in schools has filled that void, he said, and the society would send staff to train teachers to use replicas of museum holdings for Maryland history lessons. But next summer, the society will transition to offering more Web-based resources.

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February 25th, 2014

2/25/2014

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FIGHTING FOR AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION VS A MEDIEVAL CLASS-BASED ASSIGNMENT----CLASSICAL EDUCATION VS TRADES IS WHAT IS HAPPENING.  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND FOUNDING FATHERS ALL INVOLVED THE CHOICE OF ENLIGHTENED DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION.

THERE IS NOTHING THE MATTER WITH TRADE EDUCATION.....WE DO NOT WANT IT PRE-K-COLLEGE WITH A COMMITTEE DECIDING HOW CHILDREN ARE TRACKED ACCORDING TO TESTING!


This is my last post for now on education.  I want to contrast the South Korean model I shared last with the Finnish (modeled from US public education before Reagan).


Regarding Maryland's education reform taking the Korean model and not the Finnish model:

I showed in my last few posts that Race to the Top is modeled from the Korean/China model of education and that US universities have already been taken by corporate interests. This is what education privatizers have been working towards this past decade or two. Clinton became the first pol running as a democrat to advance this-----because he was the first to take the democratic party neo-liberal by starting the privatized universities. Now Obama is placing privatization of K-12 on steroids with Race to the Top.

As I showed earlier, South Koreans have been trying to shake this education reform for decades and they are shouting just as US teachers are for the sake of educators, students, and parents for a strong democratic education as we see with the Finland model.

REMEMBER, THE FINNISH MODEL WAS MODELED AFTER THE AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM BEFORE REAGAN/CLINTON DISMANTLING!

All of Baltimore's appointed School Supervisors are in place because they support this school privatization. Alonzo from NYC/Bloomberg's crew of privatizers and now Milwaukee's school privatizer under the likes of Scott Walker.

Let's look at what Americans see as a strong public education model that worked in the US for decades! The Finnish model values equality, equal access, places teaching as a prestigious profession that is well-paid and autonomous......AND IT HATES THE WORD COMPETITION, TESTING, and privatization.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success


Anu Partanen Dec 29 2011, 3:00 PM ET

The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

* * *

During the afternoon that Sahlberg spent at the Dwight School, a photographer from the New York Times jockeyed for position with Dan Rather's TV crew as Sahlberg participated in a roundtable chat with students. The subsequent article in the Times about the event would focus on Finland as an "intriguing school-reform model."

Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."

This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not.

Sahlberg knows what Americans like to talk about when it comes to education, because he's become their go-to guy in Finland. The son of two teachers, he grew up in a Finnish school. He taught mathematics and physics in a junior high school in Helsinki, worked his way through a variety of positions in the Finnish Ministry of Education, and spent years as an education expert at the OECD, the World Bank, and other international organizations.

Now, in addition to his other duties, Sahlberg hosts about a hundred visits a year by foreign educators, including many Americans, who want to know the secret of Finland's success. Sahlberg's new book is partly an attempt to help answer the questions he always gets asked.

From his point of view, Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice?

The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America's school reformers are trying to do.

For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.

Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Paronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.

Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't exist in Finland.

"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."

Herein lay the real shocker. As Sahlberg continued, his core message emerged, whether or not anyone in his American audience heard it.

Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

* * *

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.

In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.

That this point is almost always ignored or brushed aside in the U.S. seems especially poignant at the moment, after the financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street movement have brought the problems of inequality in America into such sharp focus. The chasm between those who can afford $35,000 in tuition per child per year -- or even just the price of a house in a good public school district -- and the other "99 percent" is painfully plain to see.

* * *

Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. All countries are different, and as many Americans point out, Finland is a small nation with a much more homogeneous population than the United States.

Yet Sahlberg doesn't think that questions of size or homogeneity should give Americans reason to dismiss the Finnish example. Finland is a relatively homogeneous country -- as of 2010, just 4.6 percent of Finnish residents had been born in another country, compared with 12.7 percent in the United States. But the number of foreign-born residents in Finland doubled during the decade leading up to 2010, and the country didn't lose its edge in education. Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period.

Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Teachers College, has addressed the effects of size and homogeneity on a nation's education performance by comparing Finland with another Nordic country: Norway. Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.

Indeed, Finland's population of 5.4 million can be compared to many an American state -- after all, most American education is managed at the state level. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland.

What's more, despite their many differences, Finland and the U.S. have an educational goal in common. When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy.

With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind.

Is that an impossible goal? Sahlberg says that while his book isn't meant to be a how-to manual, it is meant to be a "pamphlet of hope."

"When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's, many said it couldn't be done," Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. "But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."

Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.
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If the Supreme Court want to 'interpret' Constitutional Law then they need to go back to the time in which it was written and by whom. Jefferson and many of those former American Revolutionary leaders had strong public and democratic education in mind. Equality is the founding principal in America and education has always been seen as central. Brown vs Board of Education simply extended this Constitutional right to all people.

We know strong public education when we see it. Building all citizens ready to lead in business and government. Collecting taxes to fund that goal. This is the model in the mid-1900s that had the US ranked #1 in the world.

REMEMBER, NEO-LIBERALS WILL HAVE YOU BELIEVE WE NEED THE BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD TO BE COMPETITIVE IN GLOBAL MARKETS....BUT WHAT WE NEED IS TO GIVE ALL CITIZENS WHAT THEY NEED TO MAKE THEIR OWN WAY THROUGH LIFE WITH A STRONG DOMESTIC ECONOMY!

The idea of parents being in charge of their community schools goes without saying in a democracy. We have our local school boards that are voted into place by voters until recently. We have vigorous discussion of education policy in all schools and extended to communities until recently.


JEFFERSON AND AMERICA'S FOUNDING FATHERS WOULD SEE FINLAND AS THE SUCCESS AND SOUTH KOREA AS AN OPPRESSOR FROM WHICH THEY ESCAPED TO AMERICA.

18th Century Advice: Thomas Jefferson on Education Reform

Elena Segarra

April 14, 2013 at 2:10 pm

The original “Man of the People,” Thomas Jefferson, was born on April 13 in 1743.

Jefferson is best known for drafting the Declaration of Independence, but he also wrote prolifically and prophetically on education. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” he wrote in a letter to a friend.

Jefferson understood that freedom depends on self-government: the cultivation of self-reliance, courage, responsibility, and moderation. Education contributes to both the knowledge and virtues that form a self-governing citizen. By proposing a bill in Virginia that would have established free schools every five to six square miles, Jefferson sought to teach “all children of the state reading, writing, and common arithmetic.” With these skills, a child would become a citizen able to “calculate for himself,” “express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts,” and “improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.”

Jefferson viewed this basic education as instrumental to securing “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” for Americans because it helps an individual “understand his duties” and “know his rights.”

Once taught reading and history, people can follow the news and judge the best way to vote. If the government infringes on their liberties, educated citizens can express themselves adequately to fight against it.

By providing equal access to primary schools, Jefferson hoped to teach children “to work out their own greatest happiness, by showing them that it does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”

While Jefferson supported the idea of public education, he would not have placed schools under government supervision. Instead, he argued for the placement of “each school at once under the care of those most interested in its conduct.” He would put parents in charge.

But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by…[any] general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.… No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

Taxpayers would provide the resources for public education; the community would arrange the schooling. Although we today face a very different set of challenges than Jefferson, his reasoning remains relevant: Those most concerned with the school’s performance, i.e., parents, will best manage education.

We spend more than enough on our struggling education system. Empowering parents with control over dollars, instead of increasing the amount spent on schools, will improve educational outcomes.


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Why Finland's Unorthodox Education System Is The Best In The World

Adam Taylor

Nov. 27, 2012, 8:45 AM



A new global league table, produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Pearson, has found Finland to be the best education system in the world.

The rankings combined international test results and data such as graduation rates between 2006 and 2010, the BBC reports.

For Finland, this is no fluke. Since it implemented huge education reforms 40 years ago, the country's school system has consistently come in at the top for the international rankings for education systems.

But how do they do it?

It's simple — by going against the evaluation-driven, centralized model that much of the Western world uses.

Finnish children don't start school until they are 7.

They rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens.

The children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.

There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.

All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms.

Finland spends around 30 percent less per student than the United States.

30 percent of children receive extra help during their first nine years of school.

66 percent of students go to college.
The highest rate in Europe.

The difference between weakest and strongest students is the smallest in the World.

Science classes are capped at 16 students so that they may perform practical experiments in every class.

93 percent of Finns graduate from high school.
17.5 percent higher than the US.

.
43 percent of Finnish high-school students go to vocational schools.

Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.

Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for "professional development."

Finland has the same amount of teachers as New York City, but far fewer students.

600,000 students compared to 1.1 million in NYC.

The school system is 100% state funded.

All teachers in Finland must have a masters degree, which is fully subsidized.

The national curriculum is only broad guidelines.
Teachers are selected from the top 10% of graduates.

In 2010, 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots

The average starting salary for a Finnish teacher was $29,000 in 2008

However, high school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what other college graduates make.

In the US, this figure is 62%.

There is no merit pay for teachers

Teachers are given the same status as doctors and lawyers

In an international standardized measurement in 2001, Finnish children came in at the top, or very close to the top, for science, reading and mathematics.

It's consistently come in at the top or very near every time since.

And despite the differences between Finland and the US, it easily beats countries with a similar demographic

Neighbor Norway, of a similar size and featuring a similar homogeneous culture, follows the same strategies as the USA and achieves similar rankings in international studies.

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We want to be clear.....America's champions of industry throughout the late 1900s mostly attended public schools so we know they were not as dismal as corporations are making them to be. They taught citizens and corporations wanted students ready to work day one. This article does not include Clinton in on this Reagan turn towards privatization, but we know university privatization soared in Clinton's terms.

WE SIMPLY NEED TO GO BACK TO THE MODEL IN THE 1900s THAT MADE US #1 AND MAKE A FEW REFORMS TO ALLOW FOR THE COMPUTER AGE. NOT MAKE SCHOOLS COMPUTER-BOUND!


The Myth Behind Public School Failure


Monday, 24 February 2014 09:46 By Dean Paton, Yes! Magazine | News Analysis



Until about 1980, America’s public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina—generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society. Such teachers made possible at least the idea of a vibrant democracy.

Since then, what a turnaround: We’re now told, relentlessly, that bad-apple schoolteachers have wrecked K-12 education; that their unions keep legions of incompetent educators in classrooms; that part of the solution is more private charter schools; and that teachers as well as entire schools lack accountability, which can best be remedied by more and more standardized “bubble” tests.

What led to such an ignoble fall for teachers and schools? Did public education really become so irreversibly terrible in three decades? Is there so little that’s redeemable in today’s schoolhouses?

The Beginning of “Reform”

To truly understand how we came to believe our educational system is broken, we need a history lesson. Rewind to 1980—when Milton Friedman, the high priest of laissez-faire economics, partnered with PBS to produce a ten-part television series called Free to Choose. He devoted one episode to the idea of school vouchers, a plan to allow families what amounted to publicly funded scholarships so their children could leave the public schools and attend private ones.

You could make a strong argument that the current campaign against public schools started with that single TV episode. To make the case for vouchers, free-market conservatives, corporate strategists, and opportunistic politicians looked for any way to build a myth that public schools were failing, that teachers (and of course their unions) were at fault, and that the cure was vouchers and privatization.

Jonathan Kozol, the author and tireless advocate for public schools, called vouchers the “single worst, most dangerous idea to have entered education discourse in my adult life.”

Armed with Friedman’s ideas, President Reagan began calling for vouchers. In 1983, his National Commission on Excellence in Education issued “A Nation At Risk,” a report that declared, “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

It also said, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

For a document that’s had such lasting impact, “A Nation At Risk” is remarkably free of facts and solid data. Not so the Sandia Report, a little-known follow-up study commissioned by Admiral James Watkins, Reagan’s secretary of energy; it discovered that the falling test scores which caused such an uproar were really a matter of an expansion in the number of students taking the tests. In truth, standardized-test scores were going up for every economic and ethnic segment of students—it’s just that, as more and more students began taking these tests over the 20-year period of the study, this more representative sample of America’s youth better reflected the true national average. It wasn’t a teacher problem. It was a statistical misread.

The government never officially released the Sandia Report. It languished in peer-review purgatory until the Journal of Educational Research published it in 1993. Despite its hyperbole (or perhaps because of it), “A Nation At Risk” became a timely cudgel for the larger privatization movement. With Reagan and Friedman, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist, preaching that salvation would come once most government services were turned over to private entrepreneurs, the privatizers began proselytizing to get government out of everything from the post office to the public schools.

Corporations recognized privatization as a euphemism for profits. “Our schools are failing” became the slogan for those who wanted public-treasury vouchers to move money into private schools. These cries continue today.

The Era of Accountability

In 2001, less than a year into the presidency of George W. Bush, the federal government enacted sweeping legislation called “No Child Left Behind.” Supporters described it as a new era of accountability—based on standardized testing. The act tied federal funding for public schools to student scores on standardized tests. It also guaranteed millions in profits to corporations such as Pearson PLC, the curriculum and testing juggernaut, which made more than $1 billion in 2012 selling textbooks and bubble tests.

In 2008, the economy collapsed. State budgets were eviscerated. Schools were desperate for funding. In 2009, President Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, created a program they called “Race to the Top.”

It didn’t replace No Child Left Behind; it did step in with grants to individual states for their public schools. Obama and Duncan put desperate states in competition with each other. Who got the money was determined by several factors, including which states did the best job of improving the performance of failing schools—which, in practice, frequently means replacing public schools with for-profit charter schools—and by a measure of school success based on students’ standardized-test scores that allegedly measured “progress.”

Since 2001 and No Child Left Behind, the focus of education policy makers and corporate-funded reformers has been to insist on more testing—more ways to quantify and measure the kind of education our children are getting, as well as more ways to purportedly quantify and measure the effectiveness of teachers and schools.
For a dozen or so years, this “accountability movement” was pretty much the only game in town. It used questionable, even draconian, interpretations of standardized-test results to brand schools as failures, close them, and replace them with for-profit charter schools.

Resistance

Finally, in early 2012, then-Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott kindled a revolt of sorts, saying publicly that high-stakes exams are a “perversion.” His sentiments quickly spread to Texas school boards, whose resolution stating that tests were “strangling education” gained support from more than 875 school districts representing more than 4.4 million Texas public-school students. Similar, if smaller, resistance to testing percolated in other communities nationally.

Then, in January 2013, teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School announced they would refuse to give their students the Measures of Academic Progress Test—the MAP test. Despite threats of retaliation by their district, they held steadfast. By May, the district caved, telling its high schools the test was no longer mandatory.

Garfield’s boycott triggered a nationwide backlash to the “reform” that began with Friedman and the privatizers in 1980. At last, Americans from coast to coast have begun redefining the problem for what it really is: not an education crisis but a manufactured catastrophe, a facet of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.”

Look closely—you’ll recognize the formula: Underfund schools. Overcrowd classrooms. Mandate standardized tests sold by private-sector firms that “prove” these schools are failures. Blame teachers and their unions for awful test scores. In the bargain, weaken those unions, the largest labor organizations remaining in the United States. Push nonunion, profit-oriented charter schools as a solution.

If a Hurricane Katrina or a Great Recession comes along, all the better. Opportunities for plunder increase as schools go deeper into crisis, whether genuine or ginned up.

The Reason for Privatization

Chris Hedges, the former New York Times correspondent, appeared on Democracy Now! in 2012 and told host Amy Goodman the federal government spends some $600 billion a year on education—“and the corporations want it. That’s what’s happening.

And that comes through charter schools. It comes through standardized testing. And it comes through breaking teachers’ unions and essentially hiring temp workers, people who have very little skills.”

If you doubt Hedges, at least trust Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul and capitalist extraordinaire whose Amplify corporation already is growing at a 20 percent rate, thanks to its education contracts. “When it comes to K through 12 education,” Murdoch said in a November 2010 press release, “we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

Corporate-speak for, “Privatize the public schools. Now, please.”

In a land where the free market has near-religious status, that’s been the answer for a long time. And it’s always been the wrong answer. The problem with education is not bad teachers making little Johnny into a dolt. It’s about Johnny making big corporations a bundle—at the expense of the well-educated citizenry essential to democracy.

And, of course, it’s about the people and ideas now reclaiming and rejuvenating our public schools and how we all can join the uprising against the faux reformers.

____________________________________

For those not minding academic research and history, this article shows from where our American leaders came at the time of writing the US Constitution. The Age of Enlightenment was in full swing and it saw education and access for all people central to society. It is from these philosophies that US education thought derived. Indeed, it is why the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown vs Board of Education and why Jefferson and founders writing the US Constitution created the public structures to provide for this.

What neo-liberals are trying to create in America is an education system that existed before this Age of Enlightenment when classical education was only for the rich and most people only learned what was needed for a trade.

Education in the Age of Enlightenment

The educational system played an important role in the transmission of ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment. The educational system in Europe was continuously being developed and this process continued throughout the period of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. During the period of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the development of the educational system began to really take off. The improvement in the educational system produced a larger reading public combined with the explosion of print culture which supplied the increase in demand from readers in a broader span of social classes.

Before the Enlightenment, the educational system was not yet greatly influenced by the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution broke the traditional views at that time, religion and superstition was replaced by reasoning and scientific facts. During the scientific revolution, it promoted the advancement of science and technology. People do not just accept opinions and views that the majority agrees on but they can do their own critical thinking and reasoning in order to determine the difference between what is right and wrong. This is mainly because everything has a reason behind its existence, the promotion of education helps the people to develop the ability to think on their own so that they are capable of judging things on their own instead of being bounded by religion and superstition. Philosophers such as John Locke proposed the idea that knowledge is obtained through sensation and reflection.

This leads into Locke’s idea that everyone has the same capacity of sensation and that education should not be restricted to a certain class or gender. Prior to the 17th and 18th century, literacy was generally restricted to males whom belong in the categories of nobles, mercantile, and professional classes.
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Growth of the education system

Universal education was once considered a privilege for only the upper class. However, during the 17th and the 18th century, education was provided to all classes. The literacy rate in Europe from the 17th century to the 18th century grew significantly. The definition of the term literacy used to describe the 17th and 18th century is different from our definition of literacy now. Historians measure the literacy rate during 17th and 18th century by people’s ability to sign their names. However, this method did not reflect people’s ability to read and this affected the women’s literacy rate most of all because most women during this period could not write but could read to a certain extent. In general, the literacy rate in Europe during 18th century has almost doubled compare to the 17th century. The rate of literacy increased more significantly in more populated areas and areas where there was mixture of religious schools. The literacy rate in England in 1640s was around 30 percent for males and rose to 60 percent in mid-18th century. In France, the rate of literacy in 1686-90 was around 29 percent for men and 14 percent for women and it increased to 48 percent for men and 27 percent for women. The increase in literacy rate was likely due to religious influence since most of the schools and colleges were organized by clergy, missionaries, or other religious organizations. The reason which motivated religions to help to increase the literacy rate among the general public was because literacy was the key to understanding the word of God. In the 18th century, the state was also paying more attention to the educational system because the state recognized that their subjects are more useful to the state if they are well educated. The conflict between the crown and the church helped the expansion of the educational system. In the eyes of the church and the state, universities and colleges were institutions that are there to maintain the dominance over the other. The downside of this conflict was the freedom on the subjects taught in these institutions was restricted. An educational institution was either a supporter of the monarchy or the religion, never both. Also, due to the changes in criteria for high income careers, it helped increases the number of students attending universities and colleges. The job criteria during this period of time became stricter, professions such as lawyers and physicians were required to have license and doctorate to prove that they had significant knowledge in the field.
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Print Culture

The explosion of the print culture in the 18th century was both the result and cause of the increase in literacy. The number of books being published in the period of Enlightenment increased dramatically due to the increase in literacy rate and the increase in demand for books. There was a shift in interest in the categories of books, in the 17th century, religious books had comprised around half of all books published in Paris. However, throughout the century, the percentage of traditional genres such as religion has dropped to one-tenth by 1790 and there was an increase in popularity for the almanacs. The scientific literature in French might have increase slightly but mostly it remained fairly constant throughout the 18th century. However, contemporary literature seems to have increased as the century progressed. Also, there was a change in the language that books were printed in. Before 18th century, a large percentage of the books were published in Latin but as time progressed, there had been a decline in the percentage of books published in Latin. Similarly, with the spread of the French language, demands for books published in French increased throughout Europe.
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Public Libraries

In the Enlightenment period, there were changes in the public cultural institution such as libraries and museums. The system of public libraries was the product of the Enlightenment. The public libraries were funded by the state and were accessible to everyone and were free. Prior to the Enlightenment, libraries in Europe were restricted mostly to academies, aristocratic, and private owners. With the beginning of public libraries, it became a place where the general public could study topics of interest and self-educate themselves. During the 18th century, the prices of books were not affordable for everyone especially the most popular works such as encyclopedias. Therefore, the public libraries offers commoners a chance of reading literates that could only are affordable by the wealthier classes.
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Coffeehouses and Sites of intellectual Exchange

During the 18th century, the increase in coffeehouses, clubs, academies, and Masonic Lodges became alternative places where people could become educated. In England, coffeehouses became a new public space where political, philosophical and scientific discourses were being discussed. The first coffeehouse in Britain was established in Oxford in 1650 and the number of coffeehouses expanded around Oxford. The coffeehouse was a place for people to congregate, to read, and learn and debate with each other. Another name for the coffeehouse is the Penny University because the coffeehouse has a reputation as a center for informal learning. Even though the coffeehouses were generally accessible to everyone, most of the coffeehouses did not allow women to participate. Clubs, academies, and Lodges, although not entirely open to the public, established venues of intellectual exchange that functioned as de facto institutions of education.
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Rise of Feminism in Education

The overall literacy for the general public had increase for both men and women during the 18th century. However, there was a difference in the type of education that each gender received. During the 17th century, there were number of schools dedicated to girls but the cultural norm during this period for women was mainly based on informal education at home. During the 18th century, there was an increase in the number of girls being sent to schools to be educated, especially the daughters of middle class families whom wanted to provide their daughters with aristocratic education. In France, one of the most famous schools for girls was the Saint-Cyr which was founded by Madame de Maintenon. Although, the school Saint-Cyr was meant to educate women, it did not dare to challenge the traditional views at that point of time such as sexual inequality and destined roles of women. Therefore, the fact that there were schools for women did not bring about a social change where there was sexual equality because the schools itself did not challenge the social ideals. Moreover, the education that women received in schools was much more restricted than that of males. Women were excluded from learning categories such as science and politics. In d’Epinay’s recollection of her childhood education, she pointed out that girls were not taught much of anything and that proper education were consider to be inappropriate for the female sex. The main issue about female education is mainly because the traditional view women’s weakness as being due to nature and there are those like John Locke and d’Epinay who argue that women’s weakness was due to faulty education.

During the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, there was a rise in number of publications made by women writers. The number of women who published their works in French during the 18th century remained constant around 55- 78 published works. Also, during the years after the French revolution from 1789–1800, the numbers increased to 329 published works. The reason for this increase in publication is most likely because the restrictions in publication were looser during this period. However, the increase in number of publication suggests that there was an increase in women’s education which allows more women to become writers.
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February 20th, 2014

2/20/2014

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I am going to stay with education a day or so more as I listen to corporate WYPR tell us that this education reform...Race to the Top WILL CONTINUE even as most citizens in Maryland do not want it.  Again, we had to listen to Maryland State Education Association say that its union supports these policies and yet, every county I know of is shouting they do not want this kind of reform.  MSEA is like NEA......they are made up of appointed education officials who then hire like minded people.  They are bureaucrats for the Maryland State Department of Education.  So, if you have a neo-liberal President like Obama who appoints a raging corporate education-privatizer like Arne Duncan as US Education Secretary, Duncan then fills his department heads with education privatizers and all of them are Federal union employees.  The same happens at the state level.  Neo-liberal O'Malley, Maryland's governor, appoints all of the heads of Maryland State Education and he appoints education-privatizers too.  Those department heads hire people who want to implement privatization policy.  These people are state union employees and indeed, there may be 17,000 of them.  They are bureaucrats.......

Meanwhile, rank and file teachers all across the state are saying that this education union does not speak for them....and it doesn't.  It works for O'Malley and Bill Gates/Wall Street.  So, from Montgomery County to republican counties to Baltimore City and County......teachers and parents are shouting and it is growing as fear of retaliation is overcome by the shear ignorance of these Race to the Top policies.  WHEN WYPR SAYS THAT THESE POLICES WILL BE IMPLEMENTED, WHAT THEY ARE SAYING IS THAT WITH THE CURRENT CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR.....ALL OF THEM WILL CONTINUE THESE REFORMS BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL NEO-LIBERALS------BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZEUR.  It is the Executive office of governor and mayor/county executive that decides if these reforms continue----NOT WYPR OR THE 1%.

The answer is running and voting for labor and justice to boot neo-liberals out of the democratic party-----they are not democrats.  Then, that labor and justice governor will appoint leaders to state education that are democratic education policy-makers and the MSEA will then shout out for strong public schools and not privatized schools that kill teachers.
I will email the MSEA to take a look at my website to know what is happening in education since many of them are probably simply business people.

I showed a good piece on corporatization of education so let's look some more at research that says none of this is worth the money, time, and effort and again, what the end-goal looks like.

There are two world leaders today in educating their citizens....Finland and South Korea.  WE THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA WANT THE FINLAND MODEL AND neo-liberals/Brookings Institution want the South Korean model.


IN FACT......NEO-LIBERALS CREATED THIS SOUTH KOREAN MODEL AFTER THE WAR EVEN AS THEY DISMANTLED THE #1 RANKED PUBLIC EDUCATION MODEL IN THE US TAKING AMERICA FROM THE RIGOR AND RESOURCES THAT MADE IT #1.  THEY DID THAT BECAUSE THE US MODEL IN THE MID-1950s WAS THE SAME AS THE FINLAND MODEL TODAY.  FINLAND IS #1 TODAY BECAUSE IT USES THE MODEL AMERICA USED TO HAVE.

Confusing yeah?  Not really.  Finland's model is a social democratic model full of public revenue supported public schools and lots of resources for these schools and well-paid and well-protected teachers as employees.....just as the US had before Reagan/Clinton dismantled it.


FINLAND'S MODEL CAME FROM THE US EDUCATION SYSTEM WHEN WE HAD A SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.  REAGAN AND CLINTON KILLED THIS BECAUSE THEY WANTED PRIVATIZED SCHOOLS WITH NO PUBLIC FUNDING SINCE CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH DO NOT PAY TAXES AND WHAT IS LEFT IS SENT FOR CORPORATE SUBSIDY.

So, the US has this model for success in public education that existed before neo-liberals got hold of our government.


Today I wanted to look at South Korea to show where neo-liberals are wanting to take the US......and tomorrow I will show Finland and how its school system mirrors what America had when it was a social democracy!  Note below the article that shows Korean citizens want to move towards the Finland model and Korean teachers are shouting against the same policies of Race to the Top as US teachers are!

KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS KOREAN MODEL WAS POLICY FROM THE SAME NEO-LIBERAL THINK TANKS FORCING THESE POLICIES ON AMERICA RIGHT NOW!

S. Korean teacher earns $4M a year, but isn't proud of success

Posted: Wed 8:38 PM, Feb 19, 2014 Local 8 NOW TV

SEOUL -- He commutes in a chauffeured Mercedes, makes more than $4 million a year -- and he's an English teacher.

Forty-four-year-old Kim Ki-Hoon is a private tutor who is thriving in South Korea's test-score-obsessed, academic-crazed culture. Kim teaches in a "hagwon," or "cram school," part of the $17 billion after-school learning industry.

CBS News was with Kim at the school on a Saturday afternoon; he says studying on weekends is typical.

Kim appears on TV shows featuring "star teachers." His students say his teaching is more engaging -- and practical -- than most. And to show his human -- almost geeky -- side, he'll bust out the guitar.

"I was inspired about his lectures," says 22-year-old Seung Jun-Yang. Seung says a typical school day starts at 7 a.m. and kept him studying past 1 a.m.

Students cheer on classmates before big exams, in this country where more than 70 percent of kids go to college. Competition is so fierce that parents can be seen praying for their kids' success.

But when asked what the long hours of schooling mean for students, Seung says, "Personally, I think, depression time."

Kim agreed.

"I'm not actually proud of my success," he says. "The other side of the coin is the inefficiency of Korean education."

While an international educational poll ranks Korean students at the top for academics, they're at the bottom for happiness. Kim is trying to change that.

"This is my favorite place to be, and I am happiest when I'm teaching," he says.

If we had to guess, going to the bank isn’t too bad, either.


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If you listen to Obama he is using the same hype that Koreans use to support their education.  COMPETITION---BEST OF THE BEST---LIMITED SPACES IN TOP SCHOOLS.

Sadly, Obama is one big corporate hawker.


Obama Praises Korean Education System?

by Robert Koehler on March 12, 2009 in Korean Society

As you all already know, US President Barack Obama praised the Korean education system yesterday:

“Our children _ listen to this _ our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year,” Obama told a gathering at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. “That’s no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy.”

As the KT points out, this comes as a shock to many in Korea, land of the “goose father,” international school controversies, constant bitching about private tutoring and never-ending talk of public education reform.


____________________________________

While neo-liberals in the US try to force this Race to the Top privatization model they used in South Korea on Americans......Koreans are saying they do not like or want it as it takes all the quality of life and choice from life.....not very democratic!

Please keep in mind.....it is a neo-liberal policy that America must compete in global markets to be #1 and all of this is to make the rich richer.  It has nothing to do with what is good for the country or you and I.

OECD education report: Korea’s school system a pressure cooker for children South Korea's education system is so controversial hundreds of thousands of pupils seek education overseas South Korea's education system is highly focused on examination results

 Photo: Alamy By Andrew Salmon, Seoul

1:36PM GMT 03 Dec 2013


It has been praised by President Barack Obama and delivered top-five results for South Korea in global literacy and numeracy tests, but among Koreans themselves, the education system is so controversial that hundreds of thousands become educational emigrants.

he regimented by-the-book teaching system leaves nothing to chance.

“I have a friend in the US who is a swimming instructor and she guides her students to learn the best personalized swimming techniques for themselves, but this takes a long time to develop,” said Kim Won-sook, headmistress of central Seoul’s Jangwon Middle School. “In Korea, educators teach everything: The methods, the techniques - even how to practice.”

Teaching is egalitarian, but by favoring the average student, she added, does not cater well to slow or advanced learners.

“Korean education cannot produce geniuses,” added Sue Kim, an educational reporter at Korea’s leading daily, The Chosun Ilbo. “We don’t have any Nobel laureates, but we can produce a lot of Samsung mid-level managers.”


The system is highly focused on examination results.

The modern equivalent of the old state-run Confucian exams is the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test, or KSAT, which streams students for universities. In a society burdened with nepotism, cronyism and corruption, it is one of the few areas of Korean society that is scrupulously fair.

But intense focus on exam scores creates an irony: knowledge is often eschewed in favor of test preparation. “I have a nephew who is very literate but his mother says, “I don’t want him to read, as he won’t pass his tests,’” said Emanuel Pastreich, a Harvard professor of Asian Studies teaching at Seoul’s Kyunghee University. “In Korea you have to know the right answer to every question, but in the US or Europe, the process of getting to the answer is much more important,” added education journalist Kim.

Likewise, Koreans often consider skill less important than qualification. A Japanese chef working in Seoul noted that after graduating from a cooking institute in Italy, he decided to gain real experience working in Italian kitchens. Meanwhile, his Korean counterparts at the institute, having gained their certificates, flew home and opened restaurants.

Egalitarian school teaching, combined with pressure to ace exams and enter prestige universities, has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry of cram schools that offer children a chance to get ahead; Kim the reporter noted that when her daughter entered elementary school, every single new student could already read.

“Parents prepare their children before school, so what is happening is that everyone in the classroom is equally prepared,” she said. “They are equally far advanced of the curriculum - and that is happening at every level.”   THIS IS THE TIGER MOM APPROACH THAT IS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.....

Hakwon are as notable in Korean towns as pubs are in British, but British children might quail at the hours their Korean counterparts spend in them: Teens commonly leave school and attend hakwon until midnight.

“Kids sleep in school and stay up for the hakwons,” said Pastreich.

Scholastic pressures are so great that suicide is the number-one killer of South Koreans under 40 (compared to traffic accidents in other developed nations), while educational cost burdens are so colossal, they are cited as a factor in the declining national birth rate.

As a result, many Koreans are opting out and studying abroad. In 2012, 154,100 Koreans were enrolled in foreign universities and 85,000 were doing overseas language courses, according to ICEF Monitor, an educational data provider. And in November, Seoul’s Kyungyang Shinmun newspaper estimated that 5 percent of Korean families live apart, with the husband working in Korea, while the wife accompanies children studying overseas:


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Obama and neo-liberals follow Brookings Institution/neo-liberal policy and as such......choose a South Korean/Chinese model for education. Both are very autocratic and have intense competition with children frazzled with constant testing, study, and winners and losers. China has the model of tracking children into vocational schools according to how the state makes the assessment. THIS IS THE MODEL BEING USED BY NEO-LIBERALS IN STATES ACROSS THE COUNTRY....PHILLY AND BALTIMORE FIRST AND FOREMOST.

Below you see South Korean teachers shouting out 'enough is enough' as they reject the very model being forced on Americans right now.


DID YOU KNOW THE SAME NEO-LIBERAL INSTITUTIONS BEHIND RACE TO THE TOP INSTALLED THIS EDUCATION SYSTEM IN SOUTH KOREA AFTER THE WAR?

South Korea: Education union challenges standardised testing
(20 June 2012)The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU) has challenged the South Korean Government to eliminate Korean Standardised Testing. The KTU, an EI affiliate, argues that the measurement of a teacher’s worth should not rely on standardised testing.

Members of KTU and education civic organizations protest in front of the building of the Ministry of Education in Seoul on 12 June The KTU held a press conference to raise this demand together with education related civic organizations in front of the Ministry of Education in Seoul on 12 June.

Schools in South Korea’s 16 provincial education offices have their budgets allocated according to the Standardised Testing Results (so-called Ilje-gosa), which are made available to the public.

Schools with the highest scores receive more money than those with lower scores. This, explained KTU President Jang Seok-woong, “puts a strong pressure on the schools to get a high grade on the testing by fair means or foul”.

Teaching to the test

“Implementing standardised testing since 2008, the Government has driven teachers and students into cutthroat competition and spread the philosophy of teaching only to the test, narrowing the school curriculum,” he added.

When the tests were initially imposed on public schools in 2008, the Ministry of Education dismissed 14 KTU teachers who exercised their right to opt out of the test, after conferring with students and parents regarding whether or not they wanted to participate in the standardised exam.

The Lee Myung-bak administration has undertaken a brutal attack against unionised teachers over the last five-year period. This has included the dismissal of 16 KTU executive members, the suspension of 67 union staff members, suppression of teachers' freedom of speech, and restriction of teachers' trade union rights and freedoms.

Educators at heart of debate

EI supports South Korean educators, parents and students in their struggle against test-driven education and the misuse of standardised testing to gauge teaching standards. EI firmly believes that educators and education unions should lead the debate about defining quality and excellence in teaching.


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Neo-liberals in the US are trying to install the same education model as they did in South Korea after the Korean War. As you can see below.....the citizens of Korea do not want it. As neo-liberals installed this model in Korea.....they dismantled the US model now shown with the Finland education system. This model was ranked #1 when America used it and it is now #1 with Finland and uses social democracy.....while Korea's is autocratic and cruel....neo-liberalism.



Neoliberal Ideology And The Restructuring Of Education In South Korea: The Continued Struggle For Democratic Social Reform, Workers’ Rights And Cham

Elizabeth Goggin, SIT Graduate InstituteFollow


Publication Date 2009

Degree Name MA in Social Justice in Intercultural Relations

First Advisor Janaki Natarajan

Abstract The history of South Korean education has been turbulent and contentious among its citizenry in the six decades since the country’s inception. Following Japanese colonial rule the political and governmental affairs of the country remained largely in the hands of the Japanese sympathizers making up South Korea’s ruling class at the time, which included the formation and administration of the education system. The United States, having had an integral role in the creation and development of the South Korean state, also influenced the trends and design models used to enact education reform, especially since military rule ended in 1993. This political transition in South Korea signaled the arrival of neoliberal economic policies and the evolution of the school reform movement from the previously promoted standard of equal education for students to a system valuing competition above all else. This paper examines the particular role of neoliberal political ideology in schools and how it has impacted education for students and professional freedom for teachers. In doing so, it attempts to answer the question: How have the legacy of a colonial education system and more recent neoliberal reforms in South Korea affected teachers and students? Through a series of interviews with members of the Korean Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union (KTU) and students in a private girls high school in Seoul, it deals with themes of hierarchy in schools, heightened competition, the loss of labor rights, political rifts and the increasing disparity in educational opportunity. It is argued that neoliberal reform policies, heightened under the Lee Myung-bak administration, have been detrimental to the formation of an independent and egalitarian South Korean education system and have damaged the teachers’ movement for democratic control of schools.

Disciplines Curriculum and Social Inquiry | International and Comparative Education

Recommended Citation Goggin, Elizabeth, "Neoliberal Ideology And The Restructuring Of Education In South Korea: The Continued Struggle For Democratic Social Reform, Workers’ Rights And Cham" (2009). Capstone Collection. Paper 1316.
http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/capstones/1316



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As you see this reform is being forced on all Western nations by neo-liberals who have temporary control of our government.  As this article shows, the goal is to make education about job training and less about educating for a democracy.....building citizens.  Remember, the only reason jobs are scarce and the economy is stagnant is that Wall Street made it that way with massive fraud and corruption and wants to keep it that way because a desperate labor force can be exploited.  Global markets allow these corporations to consolidate all business into one ownership and then to seek profits overseas even as they keep the domestic economy stagnant.  THIS WAS THE GOAL OF REAGAN, CLINTON, BUSH, AND NOW OBAMA AS NEO-LIBERALS/NEO-CONS.

So, students should not have to feel pressured by competition to get into schools.....to obtain and compete for jobs.....all of which this education reform pretends is necessary.

STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DNC CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES.  RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE AND TAKE BACK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FROM THESE CORPORATE POLS.  WE SIMPLY NEED TO REVERSE TH


Neoliberalism and the commercialization of higher education

By Holly Brentnall

SUNDAY JULY 28, 2013  The International

  With neoliberalization university students are becoming increasingly career driven rather than critically engaging with their education. Cuts in spending and the replacement of academic staff by technology are not the only pressures faced by British academia. Increasingly, education is fashioning students into a productive labor force rather than teaching them more traditional academic ideals.

Last year’s plans to raise tuition fees in Britain to a maximum of £9000, $13,731 at today’s exchange rate, were coterminous with cuts of £2 billion in funding for education. Universities’ lack of funding caused them to compensate for lost income by hiking up tuition fees. This is perceived as disastrous for Britain’s progression up the global league tables, which, conducted by the Times educational supplement, rank universities by teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. With increasing competition from universities around the world, the UK’s University and College Union warns that Britain is at risk of being left behind.

The neoliberal turn to privatization and the commercialization of education is an area of concern for British universities. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been expressing itself in university syllabi. Abandoning previous values of critical-thinking and challenging basic assumptions, the focus leans towards teaching vaguely defined “skills” such as “teamwork,” “communication” and “leadership.”

Such effects are evident in the recently “enhanced” course guides at the London School of Economics (LSE). The LSE is a private university that specializes in the social sciences and ranks third in the university league tables for the UK. The university’s new course guides include ‘skills’-sets that lecturers have to tick off as they incorporate them into their lessons. Such an approach propounds an entrepreneurial attitude over the goals previously associated with the social sciences. As sociologist Stephen Ball claims, in such institutions students as commodities transforms education into a “big business” rather than education for education’s sake.

What is neoliberalism?

In the 1970s, responding to a period of stagflation (inflation with rising unemployment), former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan were the first to advocate the creeds of neoliberalism. This involved political-economic practices of privatization and deregulation besides the promotion of free markets and free trade. Neoliberalism rapidly spread across all G7 countries (the seven wealthiest countries on earth, the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan) before being imposed via violent military coups onto many countries in the ‘developing’ world, including Iraq, Poland and most of South America.

According to geographer and anthropologist, David Harvey, proponents of neoliberalism hold positions of incredible power in university think-tanks as well as in financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The main intent of neoliberalism is to generate wealth by opening up countries to free trade, trade between countries that is not regulated by the government, allowing for deviance from ethical practices. However, studies such as those by economists Duménil and Lévy indicate that the primary effect of neoliberal strategies across the world has been for wealth to become increasingly concentrated within the richest strata of society. According to these studies, neoliberalism does not even improve economic growth, with global growth falling by almost 3% last year. In contrast, countries such as India and South Korea, spared from certain aspects of neoliberalism, saw rapid growth thanks to investment in industry.

Other implications of neoliberalism include the reduced power of organized labor, increased productivity paralleled by declining wages in order to extract more value, and most poignantly, as analysts such as David Harvey have found, the pumping of wealth from the poorest to the richest members of society via transfer pricing and cheap migrant labour.

Neoliberalism and higher education

Many academics are against the reforms in education taking place, whilst others argue that it is a necessity in a time of economic crisis. Doctor Jason Hickel, lecturer in Economic Anthropology at the LSE explains, “This seems like a relatively innocuous change, but to me it’s a sign that the way we think about higher education is changing for the worse.” Some might reject this, claiming that teaching career-orientated skills are crucial in order to bolster students against the current economic climate. “Of course, students need to get jobs upon graduating. I am sensitive to that.

The proponents of the New Enhanced Course Guides argue that students will be able to use the language from the skills section to fill out their CVs and to convince employers to hire them.” Nevertheless, as Hickel argues, “The kinds of skills that the New Enhanced Course Guides [at the LSE] include, reflect the language of the corporate world and the ethic of entrepreneurial self-management. Even if they didn’t, they would still send students the wrong message, namely, that education is designed to equip individuals with marketable skills, and that the ultimate end goal is productivity.”

Furthermore, the way people are taught will have transformative effects on the world as a whole, as generations of students progress into the jobs market and foreign students return to their countries of origin, carrying with them the neoliberal articles of faith. After coming home with neoliberal values, many American-educated students led military coups in which the pursuit of commercial ideals implicated the death of hundreds of thousands. This was the case for Chile in 1973, where the insurgent government was led by US-educated graduates. More recently, in 2009, a coup in Honduras was led by graduates taught at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a US training ground based in Georgia, which has been linked to to torture cases, dictatorships and military coups. Countries that experienced such coups, according to data gathered by the CIA, are among the most economically unequal in the world. With an intake of students from 145 different countries, spanning from South America to the South East Asia, the global impact of education at universities such as the LSE will be equally significant.

Besides the circulation of powerful neoliberal ideologies throughout academia, tuition hikes also become subject to marketization, the treatment of education as a business and students as a future labour force. Evidencing this, one year into its term in office, the British Conservative Party held meetings to discuss how universities could help contribute to growth in the economy.

In this process of marketization, austerity measures have led to increased tuition fees, which students find increasingly difficult to pay and applications to universities are declining. In 2011, there was a decrease of 20,000 applications. This implicates the bursting of the tuition bubble which has led to a further neoliberal assault on education through managerial-imposed readjustments of academic faculties as well as closures of poorly achieving departments. This in turn has led to declining moral and increased strategic competition between academic staff.

Education has also become increasingly quantified via standardized testing, as universities and departments are ranked by performance in a way that brushes over divergences in opinion, steering the control of curriculum and organization of departments. With layoffs as well as cessations of entire disciplines in certain universities, underachievement is blamed upon the teachers rather than the effects of reduced funding.

For example, the closure of Exeter University’s chemistry department in 2006, determined principally by financial motives, was met by vociferous resentment on the part of the chemists as well as students, academic unions and the Royal Society of Chemistry. The department was shut down due to its low position in the university ranking, the high cost of running its laboratories and in order to attract further grants. Students and teachers alike responded with letters and emails of complaint. Nevertheless, the university’s director, Steven Smith, persisted in this profit-making tactic.

What are the viable alternatives?

Neoliberal techniques involve the commercialization of education, focusing principally on preparing students for the world of work. As Hickel argues, “Those of us who teach in the liberal arts and social sciences generally reject this approach. We encourage our students to value learning for its own sake, and we try to sow in them a passion for asking difficult questions about the world and equip them to think critically about taken-for-granted assumptions.”

From the start of the 21st century, academics and institutions have started calling for a revival of the cosmopolitan ethic (‘an injury to one is an injury to all’), which provides tangible alternatives to neoliberalism. Others advocate Democratic Learning, which, in drawing on the views of the educator, John Dewey, provides a framework for teachers, involving methods influenced by the students themselves and, takes a humanist approach to teaching, concerned with human welfare. So doing, lecturers will supply students with the tools necessary to become fully active democratic citizens. As Hickel claims, “We need to be empowering students to resist this kind of commodification of everything rather than encouraging it, especially given that all indicators seem to suggest that it’s leading our society down a dead-end road. For us, higher education is more about learning how to challenge the status quo rather than simply learning how to climb the ladder.”

On the other hand, some take a less optimistic view of British education. As Tarak Barkawi, lecturer in Politics at the New School for Social Research explains, “For many years now in the UK, faculty have been forced to put things on their syllabi (like learning aims and outcomes) so that battle was lost some time ago.” Barkawi also introduces yet another side of the debate: “For what it is worth, the neoliberal modernizers are bad, but so too are those who cite traditional academic values to protect cosy jobs, or to not do their jobs, or to carry on doing what they always have done. So you have to be a little careful at taking everything at face value.”

As broached by Barkawi, the commercialization of British education is not a black and white issue but a more nuanced matter of much contention. There are those who advocate a profit-orientated education, others such as Hickel who plead for a return to critical engagement and a humanist outlook, and finally, those such as Barkawi who have a more tentative view. However, as the league tables demonstrate, for British universities not to lag behind the rest of the world there must be a reassessment of the purpose of education.

Holly Brentnall is a freelancer for The International.

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February 19th, 2014

2/19/2014

0 Comments

 
NEO-LIBERALS ARE KILLING PUBLIC EDUCATION FROM K-UNIVERSITY MAKING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC PRIVATE AND CORPORATE WELFARE AS PROFIT.  DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION IS THE CORNERSTONE OF OUR DEMOCRACY AND IT IS CENTER OF FOUNDING FATHERS PRINCIPLES.

DO NOT ALLOW NEO-LIBERAL PUSH TO END ALL CORPORATE AND WEALTH TAXATION TO STARVE GOVERNMENT COFFERS END ALL THAT IS PUBLIC!

SIMPLY RECOVERING FOR -PROFIT EDUCATION FRAUD NOW A TRILLION AND MORE DOLLARS WILL FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION ITSELF.

Regarding Basu's assessment of closing Historically Black Colleges:

If Basu simply shared the goal of Maryland neo-liberal policy then people would see what the individual policies add up to be.  Since NO ONE WANTS THE POLICIES OR GOALS.....ALL OF THIS HAS TO BE 'SECRET'.  So, Basu gives us a number of reasons that Historically Black Colleges are in decline and none of them are the real reason.......

THEY ARE BEING DEFUNDED SO THEY WILL FAIL.  THIS IS THE NEO-LIBERAL APPROACH TO ENDING ALL PUBLIC SERVICES AND PROGRAMS....DEFUND THEM UNTIL THE FAIL.

Let's talk first about the goal of higher education policy for neo-liberals.....ALL MARLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS....  The goal is to consolidate higher education just as with banks to build a corporate complex and call it a university.  They are corporatizing our public universities and building with the same model as a global corporation.  This means you close all the state colleges and universities except the designated corporate complex-----and you redirect their operations to that of corporate job training/human resources.  UNIVERSITY AS GLOBAL CORPORATION FUNDED WITH PUBLIC MONEY WITH THE INTENT TO CREATE PRODUCTS TO SELL FOR PROFIT.

THIS IS THE NEO-LIBERAL POLICY THAT HAS MADE OUR PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES INTO CORPORATIONS AND IT IS WHAT FUELS THE COSTS OF TUITION AND IMPOVERISHMENT OF STAFF.  You have the CEO and executives earning far more than necessary because that is what corporations do.....and you have the impoverished staff as you do with all corporations.  

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AND JOHNS HOPKINS ARE CORPORATIONS ABOVE BEING A UNIVERSITY.  THIS IS YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF PRIVATIZATION OF A PUBLIC ASSET TO HAVE TAXPAYERS SUPPORT THE COSTS OF OPERATION WHILE THE CORPORATION MAXIMIZES PROFIT.

Below you see an article that does a good job in stating this goal.  I want to emphasize, this is not an issue for an Historically Black College only,......it is an issue for all public universities and students wanting a liberal arts and humanities education.  Because neo-liberals are killing all that is public...there are no need for history, civics, literature, psychology, sociology except in Ivy League schools.....public universities are about job training and corporate profit.  INNOVATION = PRODUCT TO SELL = PROFIT FOR PARTNERING CORPORATIONS.  So, if people are saying-----WE DO NOT NEED BLACK COLLEGES YOU NEED TO THINK THIS ISSUE IS ABOUT DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC EDUCATION THAT OFFERS EQUAL ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO LEARN.  Democratic education is about developing citizens who have a broad exposure to education that allows them to move between occupations.  Job training colleges are simply corporate Human Resources that take the place of specific training for a specific job.....A CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY.

So, what neo-liberals as Maryland are doing is ending public funding of education and making schools partner with corporations for financial support.  This is because corporations and the rich are no longer paying taxes and massive corporate fraud steals billions from state and local coffers every year.  So, they say----public revenue goes to corporate subsidy and there's no money to fund the public services and programs.  This is the logic behind making public universities operate as corporations with patented products sold to existing global corporations as subsidized R & D.  So, University of Maryland Baltimore has its Biotech research building with its corporate partners and profit off of research as does Johns Hopkins.  Both using taxpayer money to do this and both isolating the profit to individual departments run by what used to be department heads who are now simply corporate executives.

The consolidation is necessary because there is a limit to how much a state or city can tax its citizens to fuel these two corporate universities.  It is not only Black colleges that are being dismantled....all public community colleges are simply job training centers......there are very few opportunities to move to strong 4 year universities.  So, all of our community colleges are now geared to train us for a specific job and not to give us the education needed to move us through different careers throughout life.  Even these community colleges are called McDonald's University and MedStar University....THIS IS NOT PUBLIC EDUCATION.  We listen as St Mary's College, a public liberal arts college has one of the highest tuition in the country for this kind of school because state funding is not bringing the cost of tuition down.  All public funding is going to the two corporate universities.  Neo-liberals are deliberately defunding public liberal arts and humanities colleges because they do not earn a profit and there is no needs for the public to learn what Ivy League schools are teaching.

Remember, liberal arts and humanities are a cornerstone to democratic and public as citizens education.  It has its origin in the founding of our country.  Neo-liberals are trying to make 90% of Americans into peasants with the few attending Ivy League schools taught skills needed for leadership and statesmanship.  If you look at University of Maryland College Park an average of 3.9 grade point average for a public university with marketing overseas for wealthy foreign students taking its public budget.....IS NOT A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY.

So, when people like Basu pretend the decline in attendance or standing in public universities comes from simple competition and there is no competition with two corporate universities getting all the public funding for development and marketing......YOU HAVE PROPAGANDA AND NOT COMMENTARY!



    

Paul Buchheit
NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Monday 17 February 2014


Compared to other developed countries, equal education has been a low priority in America, with less spending on poor children than rich ones and with repeated cutbacks in state funding.


How Privatization Perverts Education



Profit-seeking in the banking and health care industries has victimized Americans. Now it's beginning to happen in education, with our children as the products.

There are good reasons—powerful reasons—to stop the privatization efforts before the winner-take-all free market creates a new vehicle for inequality. At the very least, we need the good sense to slow it down while we examine the evidence about charters and vouchers.

1. Charter Schools Have Not Improved Education

The recently updated CREDO study at Stanford revealed that while charters have made progress since 2009, their performance is about the same as that of public schools. The differences are, in the words of the National Education Policy Center, "so small as to be regarded, without hyperbole, as trivial." Furthermore, the four-year improvement demonstrated by charters may have been due to the closing of schools that underperformed in the earlier study, and also by a variety of means to discourage the attendance of lower-performing students.

Ample evidence exists beyond CREDO to question the effectiveness of charter schools (although they continue to have both supporters and detractors). In Ohio, charters were deemed inferior to traditional schools in all grade/subject combinations. Texas charters had a much lower graduation rate in 2012 than traditional schools. In Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal proudly announced that "we're doing something about [failing schools]," about two-thirds of charters received a D or an F  from the Louisiana State Department of Education in 2013. Furthermore, charters in New Orleans rely heavily on inexperienced teachers and even its model charter school Sci Academy has experienced a skyrocketing suspension rate, which is the second highest in the city. More trouble looms for the over-chartered city in a lawsuit filed by families of disabled students contending that equal educational access has not been provided for their children.

2. The Profit Motive Perverts the Goals of Education
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Forbes notes: "The charter school movement began as a grassroots attempt to improve public education. It’s quickly becoming a backdoor for corporate profit." A McKinsey report estimates that education can be a $1.1 trillion business in the U.S. Meanwhile, state educational funding continues to be cut and budget imbalances are worsened by the transfer of public tax money to charter schools.

Education funding continues to be cut largely because corporations aren't paying their state taxes.

Join NationofChange today by making a generous tax-deductible contribution and take a stand against the status quo.
So philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos and the Walton family, who have little educational experience among them and, who have little accountability to the public, are riding the free-market wave and promoting "education reform" with lots of standardized testing.

Just Like the Fast-Food Industry: Profits for CEOs, Low Wages for the Servers

Our nation's impulsive experiment with privatization is causing our schools to look more like boardrooms than classrooms. Charter administrators make a lot more money than their public school counterparts and their numbers are rapidly increasing. Teachers, on the other hand, are paid less and they have fewer years of experience and a higher turnover rate. The patriotic-sounding "Teach for America" charges public school districts $3,000 to $5,000 per instructor per year. Teachers don't get that money, the business owners do.

Good Business Strategy: Cut Employees, Use Machines to Teach

Article image
The profit motive also leads to shortcuts in the educational methods practiced on our children. Like "virtual" instruction. The video-game-named Rocketship Schools have $15/hour instructors monitoring up to 130 kids at a time as they work on computers. In Wisconsin, half the students in virtual settings are attending schools that are not meeting performance expectations. Only one out of twelve "cyber schools" met state standards in Pennsylvania. In Los Angeles public money goes for computers instead of needed infrastructure repair.

K12 Inc., the largest online, for-profit Educational Management Organization in the U.S., is a good example of what the Center for Media and Democracy calls "America’s Highest Paid Government Workers" -- that is, the CEOs of corporations that make billions by taking control of public services. While over 86 percent of K12's profits came from taxpayers, and while the salaries of K12's eight executives went from $10 million to over $21 million in one year, only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc. online schools met state standards in 2010-2011, compared to 52 percent of public schools.

It gets worse with the Common Core Standards, an unproven Gates-funded initiative that requires computers many schools don't have. The Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that "Next year, K-12 schools across the United States will begin implementing Common Core State Standards, an education initiative that will drive schools to adopt technology in the classroom as never before...Apple, Google, Cisco and a swarm of startups are elbowing in to secure market share." States are being hit with unexpected new costs, partly for curriculum changes, but also for technology upgrades, testing, and assessment.

Banker's Ethics in the Principal's Office

Finally, the profit motive leads to questionable ethics among school operators, if not outright fraud. After a Los Angeles charter school manager misused funds, the California Charter Schools Association insisted that charter schools be exempt from criminal laws because they are private. The same argument was used in a Chicago case. Charters employ the privatization defense to justify their generous salaries while demanding instructional space as public entities. States around the country are being attracted to the money, as, for example, in Texas and Ohio, where charter-affiliated campaign contributions have led to increased funding and licenses for charter schools.

3. Advanced Profit-Making: Higher Education

At the college level, for-profit schools eagerly clamor for low-income students and military veterans, who conveniently arrive with public money in the form of federal financial aid. For-profit colleges get up to 90 percent of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers. Less incentive remains for these schools after tuition is received, as evidenced by the fact that more than half of the students enrolled in for-profit colleges in 2008-9 left without a degree or diploma.

As with K-12 education, the driving need for profit directs our students to computer screens rather than to skilled human communicators. A Columbia University study found that "failure and withdrawal rates were significantly higher for online courses than for face-to-face courses." The University of Phoenix has a 60 percent dropout rate.

The newest money-maker is the MOOC (Massively Open Online Course). Thanks to such sweeping high-tech strategies, higher ed is increasingly becoming a network of diploma processors, with up to a 90 percent dropout rate, and with the largest business operations losing the most students. For a 2012 bioelectricity class at Duke, for example, 12,725 students enrolled, 3,658 attempted a quiz, and 313 passed. Yet “schools” like edX are charging universities $250,000 per course, then $50,000 for each re-offering of the course, along with a cut of any revenue generated by the course.

4. Lower-Performing Children Left Behind

The greatest perversion of educational principles is the threat to equal opportunity, a mandate that was eloquently expressed by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1954 Supreme Court decision on Brown vs. the Board of Education: "Education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments...Such an opportunity...is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." But we're turning away from that important message. The National Education Policy Center notes that "Charter schools...can shape their student enrollment in surprising ways," through practices that often exclude "students with special needs, those with low test scores, English learners, or students in poverty."

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), perhaps the most acclaimed charter organization, says it doesn't do that. KIPP has its supporters and it proudly displays the results of an independent study by Mathematica Policy Research, which concluded that "The average impact of KIPP on student achievement is positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial."

But funding for the Mathematica study was provided by Atlantic Philanthropies, the same organization that provided $10-25 million in funding to KIPP.

According to a 2011 study by Western Michigan University, KIPP schools enrolled a lower percentage of students with disabilities (5.9 percent) than their local school districts (12.1 percent), enrolled a lower percentage of students classified as English Language Learners (11.5 percent) than their local school districts (19.2 percent), and experienced substantially higher levels of attrition than their local school districts. For charters in general, the CREDO study found that fewer special education students and fewer English language learners are served than in traditional public schools. And charter schools serve fewer disabled students. According to a Center on Education Policy report, 98 percent of disabled students are educated in public schools, while only 1 percent are educated in private schools.

In New York City, special-needs students and English-language learners are enrolled at a much lower rate in charter schools than in public schools; and Over the Counter students—those not participating in the choice process—are disproportionately assigned to high schools with higher percentages of low-performing students. Special education students also leave charters at a much higher rate than special education students in traditional New York public schools. In Nashville, low-performing students are leaving KIPP Academy and other charters just in time for their test scores to be transferred to the public schools. And Milwaukee's voucher program, which has been praised as a model of privatization success, has had up to a 75 percent attrition rate.

Equal Access to Education?

It's been 60 years since Chief Justice Warren declared education "a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Belief in the American Dream means that anyone can move up the ladder. But today, only 4 percent of those raised in the bottom quintile make it all the way to the top as adults. Two-thirds of those raised in the bottom of the wealth ladder remain on the bottom two rungs.

Compared to other developed countries, equal education has been a low priority in America, with less spending on poor children than rich ones, and with repeated cutbacks in state funding. But there's no market-based reform where children are involved. Education can't be reduced to a lottery, or a testing app, or a business plan. Equal opportunity in education ensures that every child is encouraged and challenged and nurtured from the earliest age, as we expect for our own children.


______________________________________


EDUCATION IS NOT A MARKET.....IS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE AND IS FUNDED BY FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL TAX REVENUE.  The problem is that there is no collection of corporate and wealth taxes and massive corporate fraud steals public money so the government coffers are empty.

Now that neo-liberalism is dead and global markets dying on the vine, WE THE PEOPLE are rebuilding our democracy.  Strong public sector supported by taxation of all entities using public services with corporations using the most means corporations pay the most.  Strong public education is needed to keep WE THE PEOPLE ready to lead and serve in public office.



Public liberal arts colleges seek to exploit niche in turbulent market

View Photo Gallery — At St. Mary’s College, a push to recruit students: Declining enrollment at St. Mary’s College of Maryland has led the school to intensify its outreach to qualified students.

   
By Nick Anderson, Published: November 22

They occupy a tiny but significant niche in higher education: Public liberal arts colleges.

A Washington Post article on the scramble this fall at St. Mary’s College of Maryland to raise its enrollment underscores the unusual market position of these schools. They aim to be selective and intimate, like private liberal arts colleges, but with enough public funding to make them more affordable. That’s the theory.

Fewer high school graduates and price concerns cause upheaval for Maryland’s St. Mary’s, other schools.

At St. Mary’s, a well-regarded public institution about 70 miles southeast of Washington, tuition and fees have risen significantly in recent years. The list price, not counting room and board, now stands at $14,865 for Maryland residents. That is much higher than the in-state tuition and fees for the University of Maryland at College Park, which total $9,161.

The payoff for St. Mary’s students is lower class sizes and closer relationships with professors. The student-faculty ratio at St. Mary’s was 11 to 1 as of 2011, according to federal data. At College Park it was 18 to 1.

The catch is that St. Mary’s has posted two straight years of dwindling freshman enrollment. Its first-year class of 384 this fall is the lowest at the college since 377 students matriculated in fall 2000, according to federal data.

The college is pushing hard to reverse the slide. One key factor, in an increasingly competitive admissions world, is price.

St. Mary’s belongs to the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, which has 26 members in the United States and one from Canada. The Post analyzed information on tuition and fees at the 26 U.S. schools that was included by the nonprofit College Board in its 2013 annual survey of colleges.

The data showed that the in-state list price at St. Mary’s was the highest in the group, followed by $13,388 for Ramapo College of New Jersey and $12,776 for Keene State College of New Hampshire.

The lowest in-state price for the public liberal arts group was $5,790 for the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, at $5,790, followed by Southern Utah University ($5,924), and the University of North Carolina at Asheville ($6,241).

Other members include University of Mary Washington ($9,660) and the University of Virginia’s College at Wise ($8,508).

St. Mary’s also had the second-highest list price for out-of-state students among schools in the group: $28,665 in tuition and fees. Only at New College of Florida was the out-of-state price higher: $29,812.

Trustees of St. Mary’s froze in-state tuition this year in an effort to help the college stay competitive. (Fees rose modestly.)

List prices don’t tell the whole story. St. Mary’s, like many other colleges, offers discounts to lure students. It plans to revise its financial aid tactics this year to get more admitted students to enroll.

But it is probably not an accident that UNC-Asheville has a pretty low list price, relative to this group, and has had strong recruiting results lately.

Anne Ponder, the university’s chancellor, said the school has 596 first-year students this fall, its largest incoming class in four years. “Our tuition is a breathtaking bargain whatever your comparison is,” Ponder said of the $6,241 listed price. “Students and their families are looking very discerningly at the value proposition.”

In general, Ponder said, public liberal arts colleges are “very well positioned to respond and to flourish in an environment which is pretty turbulent and difficult in terms of enrollment planning.”


________________________________________________

As I said with the status of University of Maryland as a quasi-governmental organization or with the lack of transparency with patented research that was funded with public money because this research is now proprietary........WHEN UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS ARE WORKING FOR PROFIT AND PRODUCT....there is no academic freedom and academic freedom is yet another cornerstone of democracy.

Johns Hopkins has a small university with a large corporate complex.  It is a corporation.  Hopkins receives a trillion dollars over a few decades in public money to grow its presence into a global corporation while Morgan State University....A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY.... is defunded and left not even getting the public funding due.

 PRIVATE UNIVERSITY USES PUBLIC MONEY TO BECOME GLOBAL CORPORATION WHILE MARYLAND PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES DIE ON THE VINE FROM LACK OF FUNDING.

The neo-liberals in Congress and Obama sent hundreds of billions of dollars to build research facilities for these corporate universities and these funds were then used to expand global reach with development and marketing.  THEY DID IT BECAUSE THEY ARE MAKING CORPORATIONS OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Tuitions are high because public universities are now corporate R and D......Human Resources.....and send tons in administration in doing this along with marketing and expansion.  WE DO NOT NEED MARYLAND PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES FIGHTING FOR FOREIGN MARKET OF STUDENTS WHEN WE HAVE A WHOLE STATE FULL OF CITIZENS.  The concept of needing the Best of the Best in the World or that we need to BE PREPARED TO COMPETE GLOBALLY IS TOTAL BULL!



Academic Freedom and the Corporatization of Universities


Noam Chomsky
University of Toronto, Scarborough, April 6, 2011

[NB: This is a partial transcript. For video of the lecture, click here: http://www.youtube.com/user/uoftscarborough#p/c/0/Q97tFyqHVLs]


A couple of months ago, I went to Mexico to give talks at the National University in Mexico, UNAM. It's quite an impressive university -- hundreds of thousands of students, high-quality and engaged students, excellent faculty. It's free. Actually, the government ten years ago did try to add a little tuition, but there was a national student strike, and the government backed off. And, in fact, there's still an administrative building on campus that is still occupied by students and used as a center for activism throughout the city. There's also, in the city itself, another university, which is not only free but has open admissions. It has compensatory options for those who need them. I was there, too; it's also quite an impressive level, students, faculty, and so on. That's Mexico, a poor country.

Right after that I happened to go to California, maybe the richest place in the world. I was giving talks at the universities there. In California, the main universities -- Berkeley and UCLA -- they're essentially Ivy League private universities -- colossal tuition, tens of thousands of dollars, huge endowment. General assumption is they are pretty soon going to be privatized, and the rest of the system will be, which was a very good system -- best public system in the world -- that's probably going to be reduced to technical training or something like that. The privatization, of course, means privatization for the rich [and a] lower level of mostly technical training for the rest. And that is happening across the country. Next year, for the first time ever, the California system, which was a really great system, best anywhere, is getting more funding from tuition than from the state of California. And that is happening across the country. In most states, tuition covers more than half of the college budget. It's also most of the public research universities. Pretty soon only the community colleges -- you know, the lowest level of the system -- will be state-financed in any serious sense. And even they're under attack. And analysts generally agree, I'm quoting, "The era of affordable four-year public universities heavily subsidized by the state may be over."

Now that's one important way to implement the policy of indoctrination of the young. People who are in a debt trap have very few options. Now that is true of social control generally; that is also a regular feature of international policy -- those of you who study the IMF and the World Bank and others are well aware. As the Mexico-California example illustrates, the reasons for conscious destruction of the greatest public education system in the world are not economic. Economist Doug Henwood points out that it would be quite easy to make higher education completely free. In the U.S., it accounts for less than 2 percent of gross domestic product. The personal share, about 1 percent of gross domestic product, is a third of the income of the richest 10,000 households. That's the same as three months of Pentagon spending. It's less than four months of wasted administrative costs of the privatized healthcare system, which is an international scandal.

It's about twice the per capita cost of comparable countries, has some of the worst outcomes, and in fact it's the basis for the famous deficit. If the U.S. had the same kind of healthcare system as other industrial countries, not only would there be no deficit, but there would be a surplus. However, to introduce these facts into an electoral campaign would be suicidally insane, Henwood points out. Now he's correct. In a democracy where elections are essentially bought by concentrations of private capital, it doesn't matter what the public wants. The public has actually been in favor of that for a long of time, but they are irrelevant in a properly run democracy.

We should recall that the great growth period in the economy -- the U.S. economy -- was in the several decades after WWII, commonly called the "Golden Age" by economists. It was substantially fueled by affordable public education and by university research. Affordable public education includes the GI Bill, which provided free education for veterans -- and remember, that was a much poorer country than today. Extremely low tuition was found even at private colleges. Actually, I went to an Ivy League college, and it cost $100 a year; that's more now, but it's not that high, it's not 30 or 40,000, you know.

What about university-based research? Well, as I mentioned, that is the core of the modern high-tech economy. That includes computers, the Internet -- in fact, the whole IT revolution -- and a whole lot more.

The dismantling of this system since the 1970s is among the many moves toward a very sharply two-tiered society, a very narrow concentration of wealth and stagnation for most everyone else. It also has direct economic consequences. Take, say, California. What they are doing to the public education system is going to undermine the economy that relies on a skilled work force and creative innovation, Silicon Valley and so on. Well, apart from the enormous human cost of depriving most people of decent educational opportunities, these policies undermine U.S. competitive capacity. That's very harmful to the mass of the population, but it doesn't matter to the tiny percent of concentrated wealth and power. In fact, in the years since the Powell Memorandum, we've entered into a new stage in state capitalism in which the future just doesn't amount to much. Profit comes increasingly from financial manipulations. The corporate policies are geared toward short-term profit, and that reduces the concern for loyalty to a firm over a longer stretch. We'll talk about this more tomorrow, but right now let me talk about the consequences for education, which are quite significant.

Suppose, as is increasingly happening -- not only in the United States, incidentally -- that universities are not funded by the state, meaning the general community. So how are the universities going to survive? Universities are parasitic institutions; they don't produce commodities for profit, thankfully. They may one of these days. The funding issue raises many troubling questions, which would not arise if fostering independent thought and inquiry were regarded as a public good, having intrinsic value. That's the traditional ideal of the universities, although there are major efforts to change that. Take Britain. According to the British press, the Arts and Humanities Research Council was just ordered to spend a significant amount of funding on the prime minister's vision for the country. His so-called "Big Society," which means big corporate profits, and the rest look out for themselves. The government produced what they call a clarification of the famous Haldane Principle. That's the century-old principle that barred such government intrusion into academic research. If this stands, which I think is kind of hard to believe, but if it stands, the hand of Big Brother will rest quite heavily on inquiry and innovation in the arts and humanities as the "masters of mankind" follow the advice of the Powell Memorandum -- of course, defending academic freedom in ways that would receive nods of approval from Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, borrowing my grandchildren's rhetoric. Cameron's Britain is seeking to take the lead on the assault on public education. The rest of the Western world is not very far behind. In some ways the U.S. is ahead.

More generally, in a corporate-run culture, the traditional ideal of free and independent thought may be given lip service, but other values tend to rank higher. Defending authentic institutional freedom is no small task. However, it is not hopeless by any means. I'll talk about the case I know best, at my own university. It is a very striking case, because of the nature of its funding. Technically, it's a private university, but it has vast state funding, overwhelming, particularly since the Second World War. When joined the faculty over 55 years ago, there were military labs. Since then, they've been technically severed. The academic programs, too, at that time, the 1950s, were almost entirely funded by the Pentagon. Under student pressure in the "time of troubles," the 1960s, there were protests about this and calls for investigation. A faculty-student commission was formed in 1969 to investigate the matter. I was a member, thanks in part to student pressure. The commission was interesting. It found that despite the funding source, the Pentagon, almost the entire academic program, there was no military-related work on campus, except in the sense that virtually anything can have some military application. Actually, there was an exception to this. The political science department was deeply engaged in the Vietnam War under the guise of peace research. Since that time, Pentagon funding has been declining, and funding from health-related state institutions -- National Institute of Health and so on -- that's been increasing. There's a reason for that. It's reflecting changes in the economy.

In the 1950s and 1960s the cutting edge of the economy was electronics-based. The Pentagon was a natural way to steal money from the taxpayers, making them think they're being protected from the Russians or somebody, and to direct it to eventual corporate profits. That was done very effectively. It includes computers, the Internet, the IT revolution. In fact most of the modern high-tech economy comes from that. In more recent years, the economy is becoming more biology-based. Therefore state funding is shifting. Fifty years ago, if you looked around MIT, you found small electronics startups from the faculty. They were drawing on Pentagon funding for research, and if they were successful, they were bought up by major corporations. Those of you who know something about the high-tech economy will know that that's the famous Route 128. That was 50 years ago. Now, if you go around the campus, the startups are biology-based, and the same process continues -- genetic engineering, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals. A the big buildings going up are Novartis and so on. That's the way the so-called free enterprise economy works. There's also been a shift to more short-term applied work. The Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health are concerned with the long-term future of the advanced economy. In contrast, a business firm typically wants something that it can use -- it can use and not its competitors, and tomorrow. I don't actually know of a careful study, but it seems pretty clear that the shift toward corporate funding is leading towards more short-term applied research and less exploration of what might turn out to be interesting and important down the road.

Another consequence of corporate funding is more secrecy. This surprises a lot of people, but during the period of Pentagon funding, there was no secrecy. There was also no security on campus. You may remember this. You could walk into the Pentagon-funded labs 24 hours a day, and no cards to stick into things and so on. No secrecy; it was all entirely open. There is secrecy today. A corporation can't compel secrecy, but they can make it very clear that you're not going to get your contract renewed if your work leaks to others. That has happened. In fact, it's lead to some scandals, some big enough to appear on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Outside funding has other effects on the university, unless it's free and unconstrained, observing the Haldane Principle. Indeed, it has been true to a significant degree of funding from the Pentagon and the other national institutions. However, any kind of outside funding [has effects], even keeping to the Haldane Principle. Suppose it establishes a teaching or research facility. That automatically shifts the balance of academic activity, and that can threaten the independence and integrity of the institution. And in the case of corporate funding, quite severely.

Corporatization can have considerable influence in other ways. Corporate managers have a duty. They have to focus on profit making and seeking to convert as much of life as possible into commodities. It's not because they're bad people; it's their task. Under Anglo-American law, it's their legal obligation as well. There's a lot to say about this topic, but one element of it concerns the universities and much else. One particular consequence is the focus on what's called efficiency. It's an interesting concept. It's not strictly an economic concept. It has crucial ideological dimensions. If a business reduces personnel, it might become more efficient by standard measures with lower costs. Typically, that shifts the burden to the public, a very familiar phenomenon we see all the time. Costs to the public are not counted, and they're colossal. That's a choice that's not based on economic theory. That's based on an ideological decision, which applies directly to the "business models," as they're called, of the universities. Increasing class-size or employing cheap temporary labor, say graduate students instead of full-time faculty, may look good on a university budget, but there are significant costs. They're transferred and not measured. They're transferred to students and to the society generally as the quality of education, the quality of instruction is lowered.

There's, furthermore, no way to measure the human and social costs of converting schools and universities into facilities that produce commodities for the job market, abandoning the traditional ideal of the universities: fostering creative and independent thought and inquiry, challenging perceived beliefs, exploring new horizons and forgetting external constraints. That's an ideal that's no doubt been flawed in practice, but to the extent that it's realized is a good measure of the level of civilization achieved.

That idea is being challenged very openly by Adam Smith's "principal architects of policy" in the state-corporate complex, the direct attack on the Haldane Principle in Britain. That's an extreme case; in fact so extreme I assume it may be beaten back. There are less blatant examples. Many of them are just inherent in the reliance on outside funding, state or private. These are two sources that are not easy to distinguish given the control of the state by private interest. So what's the right reaction to outside funding that threatens the ideal of a free university? Well one choice is just to reject it in principle, in which case the university would go down the tubes. It's a parasitic institution. Another choice is just to recognize it as a fact of life that when I'm at work, I have to walk past the Lockheed Martin Lecture Hall, and I have to look out my office window at the Koch building, which is named after the multibillionaires who are the major funders of the Tea Party and a leading force in ongoing campaigns to wipe out the remnants of the labor movement and to institute a kind of corporate tyranny.

Now, if that outside funding seeks to [influence] teaching, research and other activities, then there's a strong argument that it should simply be resisted or rejected outright no matter what the costs. Such influences are not inevitable, and that's worth bearing in mind.

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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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