In the land of old school global MERCHANTS OF VENICE and KINGS AND QUEENS====today's global 1% and their 2%-----only they consume---only they decide culture, media, information, religious practice------and especially our education structures. WE THE PEOPLE are citizens because we had REVOLUTIONS in the 1700s-----WE THE PEOPLE are citizens every time we get rid of global rich from our local economies. We know what to do.
We will end this week on education policy by looking at media and arts-----know what far-right wing global Wall Street thinks about arts for the 99%? They think that is a big waste of time for human capital working 15-18 hours a day. We have shouted earlier about the goals of art schools---like our Baltimore MICA becoming simply ARTISAN WORKSHOPS producing designer crafts that only the global 1% and their 2% can consume. Very talented people toiling away as free labor given only enough for a meal and a bed. This is to where MICA IN BALTIMORE is going. It will seek the BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD CRAFTS PEOPLE-----and everyone else will be tied by the same pre-K testing and tracking for our sales people, our dye and garment factory workers----only they will be apprenticed to high design corporations. PRADA RULES.
All this policy was put into action under Clinton-----Bush/Obama MOVED IT FORWARD and yes, Trump will do the same because WE THE PEOPLE simply allowed massive election frauds YET AGAIN.
Let's speak to two our our strong left social democratic institutions-----public media and public funding for the arts. The National Arts Endowment was created to allow a 99% of citizens have their own voices in culture realized-----to have spaces to create those voices----to grow in creative voice enough to create a business, sell product, and have a career----as an ORDINARY CITIZEN. Global Wall Street does not want that----arts and culture are to be consumed by only the global rich. That is why Trump and Congress will kill this and yes, if Hillary was installed she would be doing the same.
WE THE PEOPLE ARE LOSING OUR 99% VOICES IN ALL THAT IS ARTS, MUSIC, CULTURAL VENUES, AND MEDIA as ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES MOVE FORWARD.
HELLO! THE GOAL OF RACE TO THE TOP WHERE STEM EDUCATION TAKES ALL OUR PUBLIC K-12 AND UNIVERSITIES WAS JUST THIS----TO END LIBERAL ARTS AND HUMANITIES TO THE 99%. CLINTON/OBAMA DID THIS---TRUMP WILL CONTINUE.
News Trump Reportedly Plans to Eliminate National Endowments for the Arts, Humanities
The cuts would represent 0.006 percent of 2016’s federal spending.
Alex Kasprak
Jan 19, 2017
On 19 January 2017, The Hill, citing unnamed sources from inside President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, reported that (among other cuts) Trump plans to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities:
The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
According to their website, the National Endowment of the Arts is:
an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.
The National Endowment for the Humanities describes their mission in the following way:
Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers.
Both groups confer grants to individuals and organizations. Ken Burns' documentary about the Civil War, for example, was funded in part by the NEH.
The Hill noted that Trump's budget cuts closely mirror a document (titled “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017”) that was produced in February 2016 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. That document calls for the elimination of both endowments as well, arguing that they are unnecessary because private donations to the arts and humanities far exceed what is distributed by the endowments:
Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly journals, regardless of the works’ attraction or merit. In the words of Citizens Against Government Waste, “actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them.
As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump illustrated, removing these programs would make a remarkably small dent in federal spending (each received $148 million — 0.003 percent of the federal budget — in 2016):
If you were at Thanksgiving and demanded a slice of pecan pie proportionate to 2016 NEA spending relative to the federal budget, you'd end up with a piece of pie that would need to be sliced off with a finely-tuned laser. Put another way, if you make $50,000 a year, spending the equivalent of what the government spends on these three [NEA, NEH, and and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which The Hill reports is slated to be privatized] programs would be like spending less than $10.
For comparison, the proposed border wall (which would be, of course, in addition to the wall that already exists) between Mexico and the United States could potentially add up to $38 billion to the debt, according to an MIT Technology Review report — assuming Mexico continues to refuse to fund it.
Originally published: 19 January 2017
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Even citizens living in caves in central Asia know Race to the TOP with STEM emphasis pushed by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA had a goal of ending liberal arts and humanities from our public education for 99%----PRETENDING this was not happening by funding NON-PROFIT AFTER SCHOOL---WRAP-AROUND---all kinds of fake attempts to make WE THE PEOPLE think global corporate campus schools were really going to keep our strong, broad education and arts in schools.
STREEP knows this-----as do all the global stars who support a HILLARY-----they do that because they see old world patronage of the rich as the source for deciding who the really talented are.
IF MONEY FUNDS TALENT----THEN GLOBAL 1% WEALTH FUNDS MORE TALENT even if it does become more EXCLUSIVE.
But we really are busing low-income students to a BALTIMORE SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS to help these students not to simply PRETEND they are to be included says Baltimore's Wall Street 5% to the 1% players.
These WRAP-AROUND ARTS AND HUMANITIES are really meant to stay in global corporate campus schools say far-right global Wall Street CLINTON/OBAMA neo-liberals---PROMISE!
Oh, The Humanities!
Why STEM shouldn't take Precedence over the Arts
As much trouble as the education industry is in, every state continues to witness the dissolving of the very funds intended to help it. Major cuts in education have been directed toward the arts and humanities where millions of students are being deprived of these subjects and outlets. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nearly 1.5 million elementary students are without music, nearly 4 million are without the visual arts, and almost 100% of them, more than 23 million, are educated without dance and theatre.
Government Push for STEM
While the Department of Education (DoE) attempts to find a one-size-fits-all solution for more than 14,000 public school districts through its Common Core Standards, the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) have been placed as the focal point for education, well ahead of arts and humanities.
Dave Csintyan, CEO of the educational non-profit organization See the Change USA, feels taking away from the arts and humanities programs is the wrong answer but said the push for STEM may actually have a positive effect on arts and humanities students who are exposed to STEM learning.
"Rigorous STEM exposure is equally applicable to professional success no matter the field of choice," he said.
Education reform has been a major part of Barack Obama’s presidency, who has proposed a bill called the STAPLE Act, which would provide immigrant PhD students in STEM fields a green card upon graduation. The argument is that these students, who commonly return to their home country to develop companies and businesses, should be given the option to remain in America and help boost the economy.
This potential law is a major player in the push for STEM. It voices the government’s insistence that the education system is not producing enough Master’s and PhD STEM graduates.
But the major push for STEM education in America may, in fact, not be that necessary after all. A Georgetown University, Rutgers University, and Urban Institute-collaborated study found that "U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever before…[and the] findings indicate that STEM retention along the pipeline shows strong and even increasing rates of retention from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Over the past decade, U.S. colleges and universities graduated roughly three times more scientists and engineers than were employed in the growing science and engineering workforce."
It seems the great migration toward STEM by the government will indeed have adverse effects and not solely in regards to the cuts in education funds. There is the economic impact to consider, as well.
The Americans for the Arts Arts and Economic Prosperity IV study showed that the nonprofit arts and culture industry accounts for more than four million full-time jobs and more than $135 billion in economic activity. It also generates over $22 billion in revenue for local, state, and federal governments each year.
But access to the arts for students of all ages continues to shrink as more government officials continue to solely invest in STEM, forcing the arts and humanities to fend for themselves.
According to Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, picking a degree shouldn’t be up to the student. It should be up to what is best for the student, or at least what he thinks is best for the student.
"I want to spend our money getting people science, technology, engineering and math degrees," he said in a radio interview on WNDB-AM in Daytona Beach. "That’s what our kids need to focus all of their time and attention on: those type of degrees that when they get out of school, they can get a job."
Stronger Together Than Apart
Eric Darr, president of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, said he doesn’t think arts and humanities students are being turned off from pursuing those particular degrees, although some of the recent press may help sway some of their decisions – in particular articles about salary comparisons.
"The social sciences — communications, pre-law, journalism — continue to be very popular," he said.
As much as the DoE encourages the increase in STEM, it is aware that education needs the influence of the arts and humanities.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences formed its Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) at the request of Congress. The group, comprised of scientists, engineers, leading business executives, philanthropists, jurists, artists, and journalists, were asked to find the answers to a question posed by Congress: What actions should government officials take to maintain national excellence in humanities and social science education in order to better improve the economy and civil society?
Darr believes it is a mistake to try to separate STEM and the social sciences. He said they are both stronger together.
Recent moves by government officials looking to improve education, however, have done just that via budget cuts.
One of the more obvious statements in the STEM push is the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top initiative, which places all 50 states in an academic competition to be the best and be eligible for additional education funding, has STEM emphasis as one of its seven point factors. Arts and humanities, however, is not on the list.
Many have gravitated to the idea that STEM is the best source for innovation and job creation. But according to the Americans for the Arts organization, their studies show that children involved in the arts are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement and four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair.
These same students are also three times more likely to be elected to class office in their school, giving them early leadership skills and making them more apt to become leaders in the business world.
Karl Eikenberry, a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, former ambassador to Afghanistan and a retired general was reported saying during a CHSS discussion at Stanford that knowledge of history, foreign languages and cultures can help America more successfully navigate the increasing number of multinational issues that need multinational solutions.
The need for advancements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics will never cease, as will the need for the study of social sciences like human behavior, languages, linguistics, and philosophy. The answer is the continual interworking of both.
"The new economy requires that we continue to improve and encourage STEM education because mastering existing and new technologies is vital," said Edward Abeyta, director of K-16 Programs at the University of California-San Diego Extension. "It also requires that arts be included in the curricula to capture the full potential of the whole-brain."
He said the education industry needs to take a STEAM approach.
"It is using the combination of all these capabilities that drives creativity and innovation," he said of STEAM. "The future economic cost of not having a whole brain education system that fosters creativity and innovation is immense. It requires retraining instructors to teach how to deal with ambiguities and nuances – how to think creatively and how to construct or deal with abstract issues instead of so much of the emphasis being on teaching facts. Teachers will need to teach our students to ‘think’ – not memorize."
One of the major components of STEM is rote memorization which can hinder a student’s ability to think freely on subjects. When social sciences and arts are provided, students are able to understand problems rather than simply accepting solutions.
Even if the STEAM approach is best, funding cuts to arts and humanities programs remain an inescapable reality. In the face of such cuts, arts and humanities students will have less career counseling and professional guidance in school than their STEM peers. As such, these students need to become their own career coaches and figure out for themselves how to convince employers of the relevance and value of their degrees.
How Humanities Students Can Help Themselves
Humanities students need to educate themselves on how to communicate their abilities and ideas. Also, having a firm business foundation along with understanding the importance of their own craft is essential to impressing an employer and landing a job.
Darr said students must place themselves in the best position to secure a job coming out of college and gave some tips on how to do it:
"The idea that we must choose between science and humanities," Abeyta said, "is false."
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Anyone supporting COMMON CORE knows these goals------STEM ONLY as job training. If a global citizen taking a pre-K test evaluation shows creative arts ability they will be tracked into that very narrow field of arts for which they show promise. It will only be that 1-3% EXCEPTIONALLY GIFTED creative people who MOVE FORWARD to performing for GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2%.
So even our creative citizens will see their exposure to broad liberal arts and humanities curtailed. The only folks having that complete exposure MOVING FORWARD are those same one having that exposure in 500-1500 AD.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT GLOBAL COMMON CORE will do----it will erase and revise our modern US history
'Fortunately, some educators see the big picture and have stepped in to reverse the trend. In the depths of an earlier financial crisis in 1979, Chicago schools furloughed virtually all of its arts teachers'.
Chicago has led in the breakdown of public education because of its tie to UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO neo-liberal economics which is why it furloughed all its arts teachers in 1980 with REAGAN neo-liberalism in Republican Party going to Clinton neo-liberalism in the Democratic Party
'Terminology----NEO-LIBERALISM--
The term was coined in the 1950s to refer to economists teaching in the Economics Department at the University of Chicago, and closely related academic areas at the University such as the Booth School of Business and the Law School. They met together in frequent intense discussions that helped set a group outlook on economic issues, based on price theory. The 1950s saw the height of popularity of the Keynesian school of economics, so the members of the University of Chicago were considered outside the mainstream'.
This is how long we have known this attack on our liberal arts and humanities has been in play by global Wall Street pols----it has nothing to do with a TRUMP. People supporting the Clintons these few decades have never supported arts and humanities access for the 99%-----including STREEP.
The Orphaned Subjects of Common Core
By Alex Thomas
If you liked reading War and Peace, you’ll love the saga of Common Core standards. Of course War and Peace is only 1,400 pages or so, while legislation for Common Core and its related programs – No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Every Student Succeeds, and the supporting legal framework – is vastly longer…and far more confusing.
It all started in 1965 when Congress, under President Lyndon Johnson, enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA – brace yourself for a lot of these abbreviations). This marked the beginning of high-profile federal involvement in public education. Until then the feds’ role was mostly to gather and disseminate information, analyze and suggest policy, and identify goals and objectives. Now, for the first time, the government tied major monetary grants to school operations and performance, authorizing more than $1 billion to help districts with a disproportionate number of poor or otherwise disadvantaged students. The Act has been reauthorized several times since then, each time with a few tweaks here and there.
Anatomy of a Disaster
Then came No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a 2001 reauthorization of ESEA that completely reconfigured the relationship between the federal government and local schools. The legislation, championed by politicians as diverse as John Boehner (R-Okla.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), was approved overwhelmingly and signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. Like many government regulatory laws, it didn’t actually require the states to do anything. It only required their compliance if they wanted any money from the federal government. Since local districts are scrambling frantically for every dollar they can get their hands on, the practical effect was that schools had to comply to survive. Again technically, NCLB was not a universal set of standards for all states. Rather it was left up to the states to set their own standards and assess yearly progress in ways that satisfied the government overseers.
Under NCLB each school had to make “adequate yearly progress,” meaning that based on a statewide standardized test, this year’s eighth graders had to perform better than last year’s eighth graders. States also had to measure improvement for individual students broken down into categories such as those with limited English and students with disabilities. Schools that failed faced increasingly severe consequences, ending with the possibility of closure or conversion into a charter school after six consecutive years of inadequate performance.
Looking back after fifteen years—despite its worthy goals and near-universal support—NCLB was a disaster. Teachers and school administrators desperate to meet federal guidelines for improvement jettisoned subjects not covered by standardized state tests. Teaching to the test became the order of the day. Out went art, music, theater, history, geography, foreign language, and other “enrichment” courses in favor of more time spent on math and English, testing of which directly impacted both school budget the professional trajectory of teachers.
And yet the schools had an impossible task. Children with limited English background or learning disabilities struggled to meet standard requirements. More important, as teachers well know, this year’s eighth graders may be brighter than last year’s or they may not. They may in fact be behind their predecessors. One class may have an unusual concentration of gifted students (whose unique academic needs were often also overlooked under NCLB), while the next is filled with troublemakers. Students are not data points on a chart. All classes are not created equal and will not rise to the same level regardless of the curriculum or the skill and dedication of the teacher.
Common Core to the Rescue?
Within a few years, teachers, parents, administrators, politicians, advocates for poor, minority, and disabled children were clamoring for change. The law required schools in every state to rise to their own self-determined rate of acceptable proficiency by 2015. Not one state made it. Acknowledging that NCLB required states to achieve a standard that was simply not possible, the government gave states the option of ditching NCLB mandates in exchange for adapting other standards that adequately prepared students for college or a career.
Meanwhile in the summer of 2009, during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Obama Administration announced Race to the Top (R2T). This was, in effect, a contest among schools to come up with successful innovations for educational improvement. Winners would receive government cash and the others would be encouraged to adapt policies that had achieved top results. One criterion for competing was that states adopt their own common standards.
Enter Common Core
Because the U.S. Department of Education is technically prohibited from influencing school curriculum, Common Core standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, both of which, despite their names, are Washington-based nonprofit corporations. The work was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, and others. Their objective has been the source of lively debate. Some say it was to find a workable combination of standardization and flexibility where NCLB had failed, while others saw it as an end run around local public control of education by murky special interest groups determined to force their own agenda upon America’s schools.
The De Facto Standard
Whatever their aim, Common Core standards gave states a way to escape the unworkable mandates of NCLB. To get a waiver from NCLB, and to gain points in the R2T competition, states had to develop their own standards and procedures that state institutions of higher learning approved or – and this is a big “or” – they could adapt the pre-approved structure of Common Core as a basis for their state assessment programs. States didn’t have to go with Common Core, but the alternative was to develop and implement programs acceptable to the feds out of their own pockets.
Guess which path almost all of them (42 at last count) decided to take in order to keep the federal dollars flowing? Common Core became the de facto standard nationwide.
The result, according to education historian Diane Ravitch, was to exchange one educational policy disaster for another. In a speech to the Modern Language Association in 2014, Ravitch said that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, both relying on standardized testing, “produced a massive demoralization of educators” and “an unprecedented exodus of experienced educators” along with “the closure of many public schools, especially in poor and minority districts” and many other maladies. Common Core standards were developed, Ravitch continued, in order to cut costs, standardize the delivery of education, and transition away from teachers and toward less expensive technology.
On the other hand, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President Obama, and others saw Common Core as “a way to raise test scores by making sure that students everywhere in every grade were taught using the same standard,” with rigorous new benchmarks that would improve student performance nationwide. Along with ExxonMobil and other major companies, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce also cheered the advent of Common Core.
Adjusting to Reality
Ravitch reports that wherever they have been implemented, Common Core tests “have caused a dramatic collapse of test scores. In state after state, the passing rates dropped by about 30%.” In the spring of 2013, three percent of English language learners in New York passed. And the costs of cranking up Common Core will run into the billions; Los Angeles alone will spend about one billion dollars to enable online testing and assessment that is integral to the program.
In conclusion, Ravitch advises, “Those who like [Common Core standards] should use them, but they should be revised continually to adjust to reality. Stop the testing. Stop the rating and ranking….Use them to enrich instruction, but not to standardize it.”
In 2015 Congress passed and President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the latest reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. As with NCLB, the bill received strong bipartisan support, including praise from the president and from senator and former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). States still have to test students, but not as often. Though the emphasis on testing will be reduced and the measure of “adequate yearly progress” is gone, states have to measure other markers of improvement such as graduation rates. This will eventually reduce the influence of Common Core.
The Washington Examiner reports that previously under NCLB waivers, “the Department of Education has been pressuring states into adapting the controversial Common Core education standards. Most, but not all, of the states operating under Department of Education waivers have adopted Common Core. Now that the Secretary of Education cannot incentivize or punish states based on their academic standards, the pressure to adopt Common Core is gone.”
This does not mean that Common Core is disappearing any time soon. As the Examiner notes, “Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act doesn’t mean Common Core is instantly repealed in all the states that adopted it under pressure from the Department of Education. States will still have to go through their own processes to repeal or revise their standards.”
Current waivers remain in place until August 1, 2016. After that, it’s unclear how Common Core or any other standard will fit into ESSA enforcement. There will still be standards for performance and improvement. And districts will be hesitant to toss out billions of dollars worth of testing hardware and software along with curriculum and textbooks purchased for their Common Core-based programs.
One question looming large is what happens now to the flute lessons, theater presentations, world history, penmanship, and other subjects that have been abandoned in the name of emphasizing math, science, and English to the detriment of everything else? How does their continued absence affect the education landscape and our culture in general?
We take a look at those questions in our series on valuable academic disciplines that have been orphaned by Common Core. And don’t worry – we won’t need anywhere close to a thousand pages to do it.
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LET'S SEE---CLOSE ALL OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS BUT THROW A FEW MILLIONS AT FAKE ARTS PROGRAMS.
As Chicago leads the nation in closing public schools----followed closely by Baltimore-----it has these few decades seen all liberal arts and humanities staff and resources disappear because of REAGAN/CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM. Chicago being home of University of Chicago and its NEO-LIBERAL SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS has felt it early and hard.
Those who educated on public policy back in those 1960s----1990s years knew Clinton was a far-right REAGAN neo-liberal and we knew our public education was going to be attacked. When Chicago lost all its liberal arts and humanities in 1980s----we knew why.
WE THE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE BEEN PROACTIVE IN GETTING CLINTON OUT OF OUR PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY BACK IN THE 1990S----
If the same global Wall Street pols are in control of our Democratic Party today ----only even more far-right extreme wealth than in the 1990s----we know they are POSING SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE with CORPORATIONS DONATING to fund our public school liberal arts and humanities. Global corporations didn't want to pay taxes to see all this in place for decades----but will pretend to do so now as US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE policies are installed.
Baltimore as all other US cities are seeing these policies installed as separate wrap-around after school programs because they do not intend to keep funding them.
KEEPING THAT 99% BELIEVING SOMETHING GOOD IS HAPPENING IN PUBLIC EDUCATION IS GETTING HARDER FOR THE GLOBAL 1%.
Arts Education on the Rise in CPS
This blog was authored by Paul Sznewajs, Executive Director of Ingenuity, a national leader in arts data collection and mapping that has partnered with CPS to track the quality of arts education in our schools.
This week, Ingenuity released its 4th annual State of the Arts in Chicago Public Schools report, with data covering more than 90 percent of CPS students.
Since we began collecting data in 2013—the year CPS created its first comprehensive Arts Education Plan—there have been significant improvements in arts education throughout the District. Each of the past four years has seen a steady increase in elementary schools meeting weekly instructional minutes, and in the number of schools ranked Strong or Excelling in the arts.
The fourth year of data finds that:
CPS, Ingenuity, and more than 1,000 community arts partners—from major cultural institutions to small community arts providers—use this report to measure the progress of the arts plan, identify areas of improvement, and work with school leaders to expand programming. Findings are also used by network chiefs and principals to encourage strategic choices when planning for the arts.
The progress we’ve seen is promising. Four years ago, three out of ten CPS schools were rated Strong or Excelling in the arts. Today it’s six out of ten schools. That’s laudable growth, progress that reaffirms an underlying commitment to the arts by many CPS principals.
How do we know that arts education is important? National research shows that in schools with rich arts programs, students have increased attendance and graduation rates, lower discipline rates, and higher test scores, and teachers report higher job satisfaction. Recognizing this, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has championed the arts in schools, calling them “as critical as math and sciences to a 21st century education,” and “a core component of the school day.” We agree and appreciate that vision.
Ingenuity works hard each year to improve our data collection, one outcome of which is www.artlookMap.com, which gives schools and community providers data on partnership opportunities, and parents a guide to arts programming across the district.
Chicago’s success in expanding access to the arts has garnered national attention over the past four years. So, what if we challenge ourselves to achieve the same growth in the next four years?
We have an opportunity to create a lasting legacy for our public school children. When we started this work, there was a vision that saw children in every school and neighborhood enjoying the arts as part of their education. If we can achieve similar growth in the next four years, we may very well realize that goal, and see every child in every CPS school have equitable access to a quality education in the arts.
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This is the INNOVATOR in Chicago for these several years of arts in our public schools as the goal of STEM RACE TO THE TOP is -----no arts in schools for the 99%.
This is one of those PACKAGED NON-PROFITS ---he is trying to make a living off of reading public school data to make sure schools have art. BIG DATA meets GLOBAL INNOVATIVE ARTS TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION. Since we need NONE OF THE ABOVE to have arts in each school available to all students----we see a global Wall Street player pretending something good is happening in schools.
I have watched Mr Sznewais these several years and never does he advocate against global Wall Street----a Mayor Rahm Emanuel-----he always allows people to think corporate donors are actually doing something real. THAT'S HIS JOB.
It is global 5% to the 1% and this continuous promotion of POSING LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC that needs to stop and WE THE PEOPLE should not allow these posers to have voice----our social media becomes filled with POSERS-----while real left social Democrats who know where RACE TO THE TOP LEADS----have no voice-----the 99% of citizens need to reverse this----make left social Democrats---or if you are a right conservative----make media outlets that education on REAL policy policy goals.
The Republican voters I know hate COMMON CORE----they WANT arts and humanities in their classrooms----they need to out these far-right wing policies in education as being just that FAR-RIGHT WING NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS extreme wealth and extreme poverty will not have liberal arts and humanities in 99% of global labor pool corporate education.
Paul Sznewajs of Ingenuity | Bootstrapping in America
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Published on Aug 22, 2014https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/
Tom and Tony talk with Paul Sznewais of Ingenuity. Paul Sznewajs is the Director of Ingenuity, the only organization designing and operating data tracking systems focused on arts instruction within Chicago Public System. They use data to inform and fuel strategies to expand arts programming across the District.
It was a pleasure having Paul on the show!
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Again, if a citizen is tied to race and class ---they are going to fall YET AGAIN----for these same IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THEM AND NOT ME----that got Republican voters into being angry over COMMON CORE and CORPORATE CHARTERS taking over what they always wanted to be community parent-controlled schools. WE THE PEOPLE are today at this point of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE NO CITIZENS----because of RACE AND CLASS issues.
We all know the systematic closing of all public schools in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones have hit black and brown citizens hardest----these several years now include our white citizens----now we are moving from it hitting only poor to hitting middle-class schools. So, all this is coming to 99% of American citizens. As global Wall Street sends in its 5% players to pretend our 99% schools are going to have neat arts and media remember just who will occupy our US city centers------THE GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2%----what is being built today is for the global rich being brought to our US cities these coming few decades. They are attempting to attract global rich to our US cities. No 99% need apply---they will be in global labor pool distribution systems working 15-18 hours a day and being child labor apprentices in corporate schools.
WBEZ News
Schools on South, West sides left behind in CPS arts plan
Becky Vevea
July 9, 2014A map from Ingenuity Incorporated's report on the arts in Chicago Public Schools highlights which schools are getting the most arts education and which are getting the least.
A sobering map on page 17 of the 44-page report highlights which Chicago communities are getting the most arts programming and which are getting the least. Most of the majority African American neighborhoods in the city are essentially arts education deserts.
A map from Ingenuity's report on the arts in Chicago Public Schools highlights where community arts partners provided arts programs throughout the district in 2012-13.In all, fewer than a quarter of all of the district’s elementary schools reported meeting the district’s recommended two hours of arts instruction per week.
Download the full report
Paul Sznewajs, the executive director of Ingenuity Incorporated, the arts-advocacy nonprofit that put out the report, stressed that it’s meant to serve as a baseline for future years as his group begins to track the state of arts education. Ingenuity launched three years ago in tandem with the city’s cultural plan by Mayor Rahm Emanuel shortly after he took office.
The biggest test, Sznewajs said, is making sure the school district’s arts education plan is fully implemented, even in the face of steep budget cuts.
“Everyone always asks me, well, is it just about staffing, or is it just about partnerships, or is it just about the money? And the way we answer that truthfully is to say, it’s about all of them,” Sznewajs said. “It’s not about any one piece of the pie, it’s about making the whole pie bigger.”
CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said the report provides valuable data for district leaders to better direct resources.
For example, she said, CPS is adding 84 arts teachers and 84 physical education over the next two years with the help of $21 million in Tax-Increment Financing (TIF) money. Byrd-Bennett told reporters Tuesday that 89 of those positions are going to schools on the South Side, 54 are going to schools on the West Side and 32 will go to schools on the North Side. CPS officials have yet to release the list of specific schools benefiting from those positions, despite multiple requests by reporters.
John Perryman, an art teacher at Ortiz Elementary in South Lawndale, sits on the Chicago Teachers Union arts education committee and said he’s troubled by the move to use more arts partners, like the Lyric Opera or the Merit School of Music, in place of teachers.
The report found that in the 2012-2013 school year, four percent of schools had an arts partnership, but no certified teacher. Perryman said that number likely rose in the most recent school year, with budget cuts and the switch to student-based budgeting forcing principals to make choices about every position and program they buy.
He also said the way CPS has added and then subsequently cut arts positions in recent years doesn’t make much sense.
“(For the longer school day), there were 100 positions created, then 100 positions cut and now for next year, they’re adding 84 positions,” Perryman said. “This has created great instability in the field of arts education because teachers are getting fired and rehired.”
The head of CPS’s Department of Arts Education, Mario Rossero, stressed that the report only looks at about half of the district’s schools. Many did not report their data in the first year, 2012-2013, the year the report is based on. Rossero said the most recent year saw an 89 percent response rate.
Wendy Katten of the parent group Raise Your Hand echoed what Rossero said and noted that in her group’s tracking of budget cuts last year, 170 arts positions were lost.
“It’ll be interesting to see what these numbers look like for this year,” Katten said.
Ingenuity is expected to put out an updated dataset with numbers from the most recent school year (2013-2014) sometime in November.
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For those not understanding the end of US sovereignty and the ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE -------TED X was created in 2010 to be that global 'public media' to replace a national NPR-----if there is no America there is no national radio. TED X is that United Nations global media. Also, Obama and Clinton neo-liberals sold off our national airwaves to global corporations including all lower frequency for global telecommunications-----this takes out our TV and radio signals. This was all done these several years by our Clinton neo-liberals in Congress and Obama's Federal agency heads.
So, Trump will of course now simply defund what was the best in the world public broadcasting that used to be left social Democratic------
Published on
Thursday, January 19, 2017
by
Common Dreams
'Horrifying' Trump Budget Plan Would Privatize PBS and Destroy National Arts Endowment
The proposal would gut several federal departments and eliminate certain programs entirely
by
Nadia Prupis, staff writer
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), would be targeted for massive budget cuts under Trump's new proposal. (Photo: melanie.phung/flickr/cc)
President-elect Donald Trump is aiming to slash government spending across the board, with numerous public services in the crosshairs, according to staffers on his transition team who spoke to The Hill on Thursday.
The proposals, The Hill's Alexander Bolton writes, "are dramatic."
The departments of Justice, State, Energy, Transportation, and Commerce are all targeted for massive budget cuts, with some programs under their jurisdiction slated entirely for elimination. Certain projects overseen by the Commerce and Energy agencies would also be transferred to other bureaus.
Meanwhile, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—which funds, among other things, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)—would be privatized.
The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Bolton reports:
At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation, and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.
At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Under the State Department's jurisdiction, funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.
"The federal investment in public media is vital seed money—especially for stations located in rural America, and those serving underserved populations," the Corporation for Public Broadcasting said in an email to Common Dreams. "The loss of this seed money would have a devastating effect."
"Moreover, the entire public media service would be severely debilitated," the corporation wrote. "There is no viable private substitute for the federal funding that ensures universal access to public broadcasting' programming and services."
As Bolton notes, Trump's proposal aligns with a blueprint published in 2016 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has aided the Trump transition. It also echoes similar cuts included in the 2017 budget adopted by the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus of House conservatives.
Several members of Trump's transition team also previously worked for the Heritage Foundation.
A full budget is expected to be released in April after the team finalizes its cuts. As ThinkProgress noted, it "looks like it will be far more extreme than anything the Republican Party has proposed so far."
Observers took the dire plan as a call to action.
"Nothing is lost. Nothing is inevitable. They are a few, we are many. We just need to make our voices heard. It is NOT too late," wrote one. "[The] probability of budget making its way to Congress in this form is high...But that's where we come in. We protest 24/7 to stop it."
We will end this week on education policy by looking at media and arts-----know what far-right wing global Wall Street thinks about arts for the 99%? They think that is a big waste of time for human capital working 15-18 hours a day. We have shouted earlier about the goals of art schools---like our Baltimore MICA becoming simply ARTISAN WORKSHOPS producing designer crafts that only the global 1% and their 2% can consume. Very talented people toiling away as free labor given only enough for a meal and a bed. This is to where MICA IN BALTIMORE is going. It will seek the BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD CRAFTS PEOPLE-----and everyone else will be tied by the same pre-K testing and tracking for our sales people, our dye and garment factory workers----only they will be apprenticed to high design corporations. PRADA RULES.
All this policy was put into action under Clinton-----Bush/Obama MOVED IT FORWARD and yes, Trump will do the same because WE THE PEOPLE simply allowed massive election frauds YET AGAIN.
Let's speak to two our our strong left social democratic institutions-----public media and public funding for the arts. The National Arts Endowment was created to allow a 99% of citizens have their own voices in culture realized-----to have spaces to create those voices----to grow in creative voice enough to create a business, sell product, and have a career----as an ORDINARY CITIZEN. Global Wall Street does not want that----arts and culture are to be consumed by only the global rich. That is why Trump and Congress will kill this and yes, if Hillary was installed she would be doing the same.
WE THE PEOPLE ARE LOSING OUR 99% VOICES IN ALL THAT IS ARTS, MUSIC, CULTURAL VENUES, AND MEDIA as ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES MOVE FORWARD.
HELLO! THE GOAL OF RACE TO THE TOP WHERE STEM EDUCATION TAKES ALL OUR PUBLIC K-12 AND UNIVERSITIES WAS JUST THIS----TO END LIBERAL ARTS AND HUMANITIES TO THE 99%. CLINTON/OBAMA DID THIS---TRUMP WILL CONTINUE.
News Trump Reportedly Plans to Eliminate National Endowments for the Arts, Humanities
The cuts would represent 0.006 percent of 2016’s federal spending.
Alex Kasprak
Jan 19, 2017
On 19 January 2017, The Hill, citing unnamed sources from inside President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, reported that (among other cuts) Trump plans to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities:
The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
According to their website, the National Endowment of the Arts is:
an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.
The National Endowment for the Humanities describes their mission in the following way:
Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers.
Both groups confer grants to individuals and organizations. Ken Burns' documentary about the Civil War, for example, was funded in part by the NEH.
The Hill noted that Trump's budget cuts closely mirror a document (titled “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017”) that was produced in February 2016 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. That document calls for the elimination of both endowments as well, arguing that they are unnecessary because private donations to the arts and humanities far exceed what is distributed by the endowments:
Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly journals, regardless of the works’ attraction or merit. In the words of Citizens Against Government Waste, “actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them.
As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump illustrated, removing these programs would make a remarkably small dent in federal spending (each received $148 million — 0.003 percent of the federal budget — in 2016):
If you were at Thanksgiving and demanded a slice of pecan pie proportionate to 2016 NEA spending relative to the federal budget, you'd end up with a piece of pie that would need to be sliced off with a finely-tuned laser. Put another way, if you make $50,000 a year, spending the equivalent of what the government spends on these three [NEA, NEH, and and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which The Hill reports is slated to be privatized] programs would be like spending less than $10.
For comparison, the proposed border wall (which would be, of course, in addition to the wall that already exists) between Mexico and the United States could potentially add up to $38 billion to the debt, according to an MIT Technology Review report — assuming Mexico continues to refuse to fund it.
Originally published: 19 January 2017
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Even citizens living in caves in central Asia know Race to the TOP with STEM emphasis pushed by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA had a goal of ending liberal arts and humanities from our public education for 99%----PRETENDING this was not happening by funding NON-PROFIT AFTER SCHOOL---WRAP-AROUND---all kinds of fake attempts to make WE THE PEOPLE think global corporate campus schools were really going to keep our strong, broad education and arts in schools.
STREEP knows this-----as do all the global stars who support a HILLARY-----they do that because they see old world patronage of the rich as the source for deciding who the really talented are.
IF MONEY FUNDS TALENT----THEN GLOBAL 1% WEALTH FUNDS MORE TALENT even if it does become more EXCLUSIVE.
But we really are busing low-income students to a BALTIMORE SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS to help these students not to simply PRETEND they are to be included says Baltimore's Wall Street 5% to the 1% players.
These WRAP-AROUND ARTS AND HUMANITIES are really meant to stay in global corporate campus schools say far-right global Wall Street CLINTON/OBAMA neo-liberals---PROMISE!
Oh, The Humanities!
Why STEM shouldn't take Precedence over the Arts
As much trouble as the education industry is in, every state continues to witness the dissolving of the very funds intended to help it. Major cuts in education have been directed toward the arts and humanities where millions of students are being deprived of these subjects and outlets. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nearly 1.5 million elementary students are without music, nearly 4 million are without the visual arts, and almost 100% of them, more than 23 million, are educated without dance and theatre.
Government Push for STEM
While the Department of Education (DoE) attempts to find a one-size-fits-all solution for more than 14,000 public school districts through its Common Core Standards, the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) have been placed as the focal point for education, well ahead of arts and humanities.
Dave Csintyan, CEO of the educational non-profit organization See the Change USA, feels taking away from the arts and humanities programs is the wrong answer but said the push for STEM may actually have a positive effect on arts and humanities students who are exposed to STEM learning.
"Rigorous STEM exposure is equally applicable to professional success no matter the field of choice," he said.
Education reform has been a major part of Barack Obama’s presidency, who has proposed a bill called the STAPLE Act, which would provide immigrant PhD students in STEM fields a green card upon graduation. The argument is that these students, who commonly return to their home country to develop companies and businesses, should be given the option to remain in America and help boost the economy.
This potential law is a major player in the push for STEM. It voices the government’s insistence that the education system is not producing enough Master’s and PhD STEM graduates.
But the major push for STEM education in America may, in fact, not be that necessary after all. A Georgetown University, Rutgers University, and Urban Institute-collaborated study found that "U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever before…[and the] findings indicate that STEM retention along the pipeline shows strong and even increasing rates of retention from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Over the past decade, U.S. colleges and universities graduated roughly three times more scientists and engineers than were employed in the growing science and engineering workforce."
It seems the great migration toward STEM by the government will indeed have adverse effects and not solely in regards to the cuts in education funds. There is the economic impact to consider, as well.
The Americans for the Arts Arts and Economic Prosperity IV study showed that the nonprofit arts and culture industry accounts for more than four million full-time jobs and more than $135 billion in economic activity. It also generates over $22 billion in revenue for local, state, and federal governments each year.
But access to the arts for students of all ages continues to shrink as more government officials continue to solely invest in STEM, forcing the arts and humanities to fend for themselves.
According to Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, picking a degree shouldn’t be up to the student. It should be up to what is best for the student, or at least what he thinks is best for the student.
"I want to spend our money getting people science, technology, engineering and math degrees," he said in a radio interview on WNDB-AM in Daytona Beach. "That’s what our kids need to focus all of their time and attention on: those type of degrees that when they get out of school, they can get a job."
Stronger Together Than Apart
Eric Darr, president of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, said he doesn’t think arts and humanities students are being turned off from pursuing those particular degrees, although some of the recent press may help sway some of their decisions – in particular articles about salary comparisons.
"The social sciences — communications, pre-law, journalism — continue to be very popular," he said.
As much as the DoE encourages the increase in STEM, it is aware that education needs the influence of the arts and humanities.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences formed its Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) at the request of Congress. The group, comprised of scientists, engineers, leading business executives, philanthropists, jurists, artists, and journalists, were asked to find the answers to a question posed by Congress: What actions should government officials take to maintain national excellence in humanities and social science education in order to better improve the economy and civil society?
Darr believes it is a mistake to try to separate STEM and the social sciences. He said they are both stronger together.
Recent moves by government officials looking to improve education, however, have done just that via budget cuts.
One of the more obvious statements in the STEM push is the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top initiative, which places all 50 states in an academic competition to be the best and be eligible for additional education funding, has STEM emphasis as one of its seven point factors. Arts and humanities, however, is not on the list.
Many have gravitated to the idea that STEM is the best source for innovation and job creation. But according to the Americans for the Arts organization, their studies show that children involved in the arts are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement and four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair.
These same students are also three times more likely to be elected to class office in their school, giving them early leadership skills and making them more apt to become leaders in the business world.
Karl Eikenberry, a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, former ambassador to Afghanistan and a retired general was reported saying during a CHSS discussion at Stanford that knowledge of history, foreign languages and cultures can help America more successfully navigate the increasing number of multinational issues that need multinational solutions.
The need for advancements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics will never cease, as will the need for the study of social sciences like human behavior, languages, linguistics, and philosophy. The answer is the continual interworking of both.
"The new economy requires that we continue to improve and encourage STEM education because mastering existing and new technologies is vital," said Edward Abeyta, director of K-16 Programs at the University of California-San Diego Extension. "It also requires that arts be included in the curricula to capture the full potential of the whole-brain."
He said the education industry needs to take a STEAM approach.
"It is using the combination of all these capabilities that drives creativity and innovation," he said of STEAM. "The future economic cost of not having a whole brain education system that fosters creativity and innovation is immense. It requires retraining instructors to teach how to deal with ambiguities and nuances – how to think creatively and how to construct or deal with abstract issues instead of so much of the emphasis being on teaching facts. Teachers will need to teach our students to ‘think’ – not memorize."
One of the major components of STEM is rote memorization which can hinder a student’s ability to think freely on subjects. When social sciences and arts are provided, students are able to understand problems rather than simply accepting solutions.
Even if the STEAM approach is best, funding cuts to arts and humanities programs remain an inescapable reality. In the face of such cuts, arts and humanities students will have less career counseling and professional guidance in school than their STEM peers. As such, these students need to become their own career coaches and figure out for themselves how to convince employers of the relevance and value of their degrees.
How Humanities Students Can Help Themselves
Humanities students need to educate themselves on how to communicate their abilities and ideas. Also, having a firm business foundation along with understanding the importance of their own craft is essential to impressing an employer and landing a job.
Darr said students must place themselves in the best position to secure a job coming out of college and gave some tips on how to do it:
- Keep a portfolio of your work. Through your education, internships, and early career, continue to catalog documents, audio and video recorded projects, and any other materials showing your work. Not having proof that you are talented in your field can be costly.
- For those in the arts field, creating a portfolio of your work – whether art, music, film – gives employers an insight into your established work and where you are headed in your field. The portfolio needs to show the quality and complexity of your work and how it has progressed over time. A portfolio should mimic a timeline providing visual evidence of professional growth.
- Get an internship – at all costs. Earning a degree is a must, but obtaining internship work related to your industry is vital. When applying for a job, nearly every professional opening requires some experience. It is very important to have on a resume to show that you have some idea of what it is to work in your area. Even a short history of understanding how to conduct social science research or working in an arts industry is steps ahead of someone who only has a degree. A philosophy major may consider interning with a law firm or a consulting firm to become comfortable in a business environment.
- Take classes that help you become a good communicator. At the end of your college career, take a course on communication, preferably one that will count toward your degree. Most degree programs give students the ability to take upper level courses of their choosing. For example, a student studying philanthropy may consider taking a business course to help them understand the business side of non-profit work.
- To fully participate in today’s society, you need to have some knowledge of technology – even if you’re a fine arts student. Most schools offer courses in social media. Knowing how to use and manage social networking sites will go a long way in helping you land a career job.
"The idea that we must choose between science and humanities," Abeyta said, "is false."
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Anyone supporting COMMON CORE knows these goals------STEM ONLY as job training. If a global citizen taking a pre-K test evaluation shows creative arts ability they will be tracked into that very narrow field of arts for which they show promise. It will only be that 1-3% EXCEPTIONALLY GIFTED creative people who MOVE FORWARD to performing for GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2%.
So even our creative citizens will see their exposure to broad liberal arts and humanities curtailed. The only folks having that complete exposure MOVING FORWARD are those same one having that exposure in 500-1500 AD.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT GLOBAL COMMON CORE will do----it will erase and revise our modern US history
'Fortunately, some educators see the big picture and have stepped in to reverse the trend. In the depths of an earlier financial crisis in 1979, Chicago schools furloughed virtually all of its arts teachers'.
Chicago has led in the breakdown of public education because of its tie to UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO neo-liberal economics which is why it furloughed all its arts teachers in 1980 with REAGAN neo-liberalism in Republican Party going to Clinton neo-liberalism in the Democratic Party
'Terminology----NEO-LIBERALISM--
The term was coined in the 1950s to refer to economists teaching in the Economics Department at the University of Chicago, and closely related academic areas at the University such as the Booth School of Business and the Law School. They met together in frequent intense discussions that helped set a group outlook on economic issues, based on price theory. The 1950s saw the height of popularity of the Keynesian school of economics, so the members of the University of Chicago were considered outside the mainstream'.
This is how long we have known this attack on our liberal arts and humanities has been in play by global Wall Street pols----it has nothing to do with a TRUMP. People supporting the Clintons these few decades have never supported arts and humanities access for the 99%-----including STREEP.
The Orphaned Subjects of Common Core
By Alex Thomas
If you liked reading War and Peace, you’ll love the saga of Common Core standards. Of course War and Peace is only 1,400 pages or so, while legislation for Common Core and its related programs – No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Every Student Succeeds, and the supporting legal framework – is vastly longer…and far more confusing.
It all started in 1965 when Congress, under President Lyndon Johnson, enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA – brace yourself for a lot of these abbreviations). This marked the beginning of high-profile federal involvement in public education. Until then the feds’ role was mostly to gather and disseminate information, analyze and suggest policy, and identify goals and objectives. Now, for the first time, the government tied major monetary grants to school operations and performance, authorizing more than $1 billion to help districts with a disproportionate number of poor or otherwise disadvantaged students. The Act has been reauthorized several times since then, each time with a few tweaks here and there.
Anatomy of a Disaster
Then came No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a 2001 reauthorization of ESEA that completely reconfigured the relationship between the federal government and local schools. The legislation, championed by politicians as diverse as John Boehner (R-Okla.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), was approved overwhelmingly and signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. Like many government regulatory laws, it didn’t actually require the states to do anything. It only required their compliance if they wanted any money from the federal government. Since local districts are scrambling frantically for every dollar they can get their hands on, the practical effect was that schools had to comply to survive. Again technically, NCLB was not a universal set of standards for all states. Rather it was left up to the states to set their own standards and assess yearly progress in ways that satisfied the government overseers.
Under NCLB each school had to make “adequate yearly progress,” meaning that based on a statewide standardized test, this year’s eighth graders had to perform better than last year’s eighth graders. States also had to measure improvement for individual students broken down into categories such as those with limited English and students with disabilities. Schools that failed faced increasingly severe consequences, ending with the possibility of closure or conversion into a charter school after six consecutive years of inadequate performance.
Looking back after fifteen years—despite its worthy goals and near-universal support—NCLB was a disaster. Teachers and school administrators desperate to meet federal guidelines for improvement jettisoned subjects not covered by standardized state tests. Teaching to the test became the order of the day. Out went art, music, theater, history, geography, foreign language, and other “enrichment” courses in favor of more time spent on math and English, testing of which directly impacted both school budget the professional trajectory of teachers.
And yet the schools had an impossible task. Children with limited English background or learning disabilities struggled to meet standard requirements. More important, as teachers well know, this year’s eighth graders may be brighter than last year’s or they may not. They may in fact be behind their predecessors. One class may have an unusual concentration of gifted students (whose unique academic needs were often also overlooked under NCLB), while the next is filled with troublemakers. Students are not data points on a chart. All classes are not created equal and will not rise to the same level regardless of the curriculum or the skill and dedication of the teacher.
Common Core to the Rescue?
Within a few years, teachers, parents, administrators, politicians, advocates for poor, minority, and disabled children were clamoring for change. The law required schools in every state to rise to their own self-determined rate of acceptable proficiency by 2015. Not one state made it. Acknowledging that NCLB required states to achieve a standard that was simply not possible, the government gave states the option of ditching NCLB mandates in exchange for adapting other standards that adequately prepared students for college or a career.
Meanwhile in the summer of 2009, during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Obama Administration announced Race to the Top (R2T). This was, in effect, a contest among schools to come up with successful innovations for educational improvement. Winners would receive government cash and the others would be encouraged to adapt policies that had achieved top results. One criterion for competing was that states adopt their own common standards.
Enter Common Core
Because the U.S. Department of Education is technically prohibited from influencing school curriculum, Common Core standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, both of which, despite their names, are Washington-based nonprofit corporations. The work was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, and others. Their objective has been the source of lively debate. Some say it was to find a workable combination of standardization and flexibility where NCLB had failed, while others saw it as an end run around local public control of education by murky special interest groups determined to force their own agenda upon America’s schools.
The De Facto Standard
Whatever their aim, Common Core standards gave states a way to escape the unworkable mandates of NCLB. To get a waiver from NCLB, and to gain points in the R2T competition, states had to develop their own standards and procedures that state institutions of higher learning approved or – and this is a big “or” – they could adapt the pre-approved structure of Common Core as a basis for their state assessment programs. States didn’t have to go with Common Core, but the alternative was to develop and implement programs acceptable to the feds out of their own pockets.
Guess which path almost all of them (42 at last count) decided to take in order to keep the federal dollars flowing? Common Core became the de facto standard nationwide.
The result, according to education historian Diane Ravitch, was to exchange one educational policy disaster for another. In a speech to the Modern Language Association in 2014, Ravitch said that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, both relying on standardized testing, “produced a massive demoralization of educators” and “an unprecedented exodus of experienced educators” along with “the closure of many public schools, especially in poor and minority districts” and many other maladies. Common Core standards were developed, Ravitch continued, in order to cut costs, standardize the delivery of education, and transition away from teachers and toward less expensive technology.
On the other hand, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President Obama, and others saw Common Core as “a way to raise test scores by making sure that students everywhere in every grade were taught using the same standard,” with rigorous new benchmarks that would improve student performance nationwide. Along with ExxonMobil and other major companies, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce also cheered the advent of Common Core.
Adjusting to Reality
Ravitch reports that wherever they have been implemented, Common Core tests “have caused a dramatic collapse of test scores. In state after state, the passing rates dropped by about 30%.” In the spring of 2013, three percent of English language learners in New York passed. And the costs of cranking up Common Core will run into the billions; Los Angeles alone will spend about one billion dollars to enable online testing and assessment that is integral to the program.
In conclusion, Ravitch advises, “Those who like [Common Core standards] should use them, but they should be revised continually to adjust to reality. Stop the testing. Stop the rating and ranking….Use them to enrich instruction, but not to standardize it.”
In 2015 Congress passed and President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the latest reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. As with NCLB, the bill received strong bipartisan support, including praise from the president and from senator and former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). States still have to test students, but not as often. Though the emphasis on testing will be reduced and the measure of “adequate yearly progress” is gone, states have to measure other markers of improvement such as graduation rates. This will eventually reduce the influence of Common Core.
The Washington Examiner reports that previously under NCLB waivers, “the Department of Education has been pressuring states into adapting the controversial Common Core education standards. Most, but not all, of the states operating under Department of Education waivers have adopted Common Core. Now that the Secretary of Education cannot incentivize or punish states based on their academic standards, the pressure to adopt Common Core is gone.”
This does not mean that Common Core is disappearing any time soon. As the Examiner notes, “Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act doesn’t mean Common Core is instantly repealed in all the states that adopted it under pressure from the Department of Education. States will still have to go through their own processes to repeal or revise their standards.”
Current waivers remain in place until August 1, 2016. After that, it’s unclear how Common Core or any other standard will fit into ESSA enforcement. There will still be standards for performance and improvement. And districts will be hesitant to toss out billions of dollars worth of testing hardware and software along with curriculum and textbooks purchased for their Common Core-based programs.
One question looming large is what happens now to the flute lessons, theater presentations, world history, penmanship, and other subjects that have been abandoned in the name of emphasizing math, science, and English to the detriment of everything else? How does their continued absence affect the education landscape and our culture in general?
We take a look at those questions in our series on valuable academic disciplines that have been orphaned by Common Core. And don’t worry – we won’t need anywhere close to a thousand pages to do it.
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LET'S SEE---CLOSE ALL OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS BUT THROW A FEW MILLIONS AT FAKE ARTS PROGRAMS.
As Chicago leads the nation in closing public schools----followed closely by Baltimore-----it has these few decades seen all liberal arts and humanities staff and resources disappear because of REAGAN/CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM. Chicago being home of University of Chicago and its NEO-LIBERAL SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS has felt it early and hard.
Those who educated on public policy back in those 1960s----1990s years knew Clinton was a far-right REAGAN neo-liberal and we knew our public education was going to be attacked. When Chicago lost all its liberal arts and humanities in 1980s----we knew why.
WE THE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE BEEN PROACTIVE IN GETTING CLINTON OUT OF OUR PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY BACK IN THE 1990S----
If the same global Wall Street pols are in control of our Democratic Party today ----only even more far-right extreme wealth than in the 1990s----we know they are POSING SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE with CORPORATIONS DONATING to fund our public school liberal arts and humanities. Global corporations didn't want to pay taxes to see all this in place for decades----but will pretend to do so now as US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE policies are installed.
Baltimore as all other US cities are seeing these policies installed as separate wrap-around after school programs because they do not intend to keep funding them.
KEEPING THAT 99% BELIEVING SOMETHING GOOD IS HAPPENING IN PUBLIC EDUCATION IS GETTING HARDER FOR THE GLOBAL 1%.
Arts Education on the Rise in CPS
This blog was authored by Paul Sznewajs, Executive Director of Ingenuity, a national leader in arts data collection and mapping that has partnered with CPS to track the quality of arts education in our schools.
This week, Ingenuity released its 4th annual State of the Arts in Chicago Public Schools report, with data covering more than 90 percent of CPS students.
Since we began collecting data in 2013—the year CPS created its first comprehensive Arts Education Plan—there have been significant improvements in arts education throughout the District. Each of the past four years has seen a steady increase in elementary schools meeting weekly instructional minutes, and in the number of schools ranked Strong or Excelling in the arts.
The fourth year of data finds that:
- Over 2/3 of CPS students attend a school that is Strong or Excelling in the arts
- On average, 96% of elementary school students had access to arts instruction
- 96% of schools collaborated with at least one community arts partner.
CPS, Ingenuity, and more than 1,000 community arts partners—from major cultural institutions to small community arts providers—use this report to measure the progress of the arts plan, identify areas of improvement, and work with school leaders to expand programming. Findings are also used by network chiefs and principals to encourage strategic choices when planning for the arts.
The progress we’ve seen is promising. Four years ago, three out of ten CPS schools were rated Strong or Excelling in the arts. Today it’s six out of ten schools. That’s laudable growth, progress that reaffirms an underlying commitment to the arts by many CPS principals.
How do we know that arts education is important? National research shows that in schools with rich arts programs, students have increased attendance and graduation rates, lower discipline rates, and higher test scores, and teachers report higher job satisfaction. Recognizing this, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has championed the arts in schools, calling them “as critical as math and sciences to a 21st century education,” and “a core component of the school day.” We agree and appreciate that vision.
Ingenuity works hard each year to improve our data collection, one outcome of which is www.artlookMap.com, which gives schools and community providers data on partnership opportunities, and parents a guide to arts programming across the district.
Chicago’s success in expanding access to the arts has garnered national attention over the past four years. So, what if we challenge ourselves to achieve the same growth in the next four years?
We have an opportunity to create a lasting legacy for our public school children. When we started this work, there was a vision that saw children in every school and neighborhood enjoying the arts as part of their education. If we can achieve similar growth in the next four years, we may very well realize that goal, and see every child in every CPS school have equitable access to a quality education in the arts.
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This is the INNOVATOR in Chicago for these several years of arts in our public schools as the goal of STEM RACE TO THE TOP is -----no arts in schools for the 99%.
This is one of those PACKAGED NON-PROFITS ---he is trying to make a living off of reading public school data to make sure schools have art. BIG DATA meets GLOBAL INNOVATIVE ARTS TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION. Since we need NONE OF THE ABOVE to have arts in each school available to all students----we see a global Wall Street player pretending something good is happening in schools.
I have watched Mr Sznewais these several years and never does he advocate against global Wall Street----a Mayor Rahm Emanuel-----he always allows people to think corporate donors are actually doing something real. THAT'S HIS JOB.
It is global 5% to the 1% and this continuous promotion of POSING LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC that needs to stop and WE THE PEOPLE should not allow these posers to have voice----our social media becomes filled with POSERS-----while real left social Democrats who know where RACE TO THE TOP LEADS----have no voice-----the 99% of citizens need to reverse this----make left social Democrats---or if you are a right conservative----make media outlets that education on REAL policy policy goals.
The Republican voters I know hate COMMON CORE----they WANT arts and humanities in their classrooms----they need to out these far-right wing policies in education as being just that FAR-RIGHT WING NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS extreme wealth and extreme poverty will not have liberal arts and humanities in 99% of global labor pool corporate education.
Paul Sznewajs of Ingenuity | Bootstrapping in America
tastytrade
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Published on Aug 22, 2014https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/
Tom and Tony talk with Paul Sznewais of Ingenuity. Paul Sznewajs is the Director of Ingenuity, the only organization designing and operating data tracking systems focused on arts instruction within Chicago Public System. They use data to inform and fuel strategies to expand arts programming across the District.
It was a pleasure having Paul on the show!
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Again, if a citizen is tied to race and class ---they are going to fall YET AGAIN----for these same IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THEM AND NOT ME----that got Republican voters into being angry over COMMON CORE and CORPORATE CHARTERS taking over what they always wanted to be community parent-controlled schools. WE THE PEOPLE are today at this point of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE NO CITIZENS----because of RACE AND CLASS issues.
We all know the systematic closing of all public schools in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones have hit black and brown citizens hardest----these several years now include our white citizens----now we are moving from it hitting only poor to hitting middle-class schools. So, all this is coming to 99% of American citizens. As global Wall Street sends in its 5% players to pretend our 99% schools are going to have neat arts and media remember just who will occupy our US city centers------THE GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2%----what is being built today is for the global rich being brought to our US cities these coming few decades. They are attempting to attract global rich to our US cities. No 99% need apply---they will be in global labor pool distribution systems working 15-18 hours a day and being child labor apprentices in corporate schools.
WBEZ News
Schools on South, West sides left behind in CPS arts plan
Becky Vevea
July 9, 2014A map from Ingenuity Incorporated's report on the arts in Chicago Public Schools highlights which schools are getting the most arts education and which are getting the least.
A sobering map on page 17 of the 44-page report highlights which Chicago communities are getting the most arts programming and which are getting the least. Most of the majority African American neighborhoods in the city are essentially arts education deserts.
A map from Ingenuity's report on the arts in Chicago Public Schools highlights where community arts partners provided arts programs throughout the district in 2012-13.In all, fewer than a quarter of all of the district’s elementary schools reported meeting the district’s recommended two hours of arts instruction per week.
Download the full report
Paul Sznewajs, the executive director of Ingenuity Incorporated, the arts-advocacy nonprofit that put out the report, stressed that it’s meant to serve as a baseline for future years as his group begins to track the state of arts education. Ingenuity launched three years ago in tandem with the city’s cultural plan by Mayor Rahm Emanuel shortly after he took office.
The biggest test, Sznewajs said, is making sure the school district’s arts education plan is fully implemented, even in the face of steep budget cuts.
“Everyone always asks me, well, is it just about staffing, or is it just about partnerships, or is it just about the money? And the way we answer that truthfully is to say, it’s about all of them,” Sznewajs said. “It’s not about any one piece of the pie, it’s about making the whole pie bigger.”
CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said the report provides valuable data for district leaders to better direct resources.
For example, she said, CPS is adding 84 arts teachers and 84 physical education over the next two years with the help of $21 million in Tax-Increment Financing (TIF) money. Byrd-Bennett told reporters Tuesday that 89 of those positions are going to schools on the South Side, 54 are going to schools on the West Side and 32 will go to schools on the North Side. CPS officials have yet to release the list of specific schools benefiting from those positions, despite multiple requests by reporters.
John Perryman, an art teacher at Ortiz Elementary in South Lawndale, sits on the Chicago Teachers Union arts education committee and said he’s troubled by the move to use more arts partners, like the Lyric Opera or the Merit School of Music, in place of teachers.
The report found that in the 2012-2013 school year, four percent of schools had an arts partnership, but no certified teacher. Perryman said that number likely rose in the most recent school year, with budget cuts and the switch to student-based budgeting forcing principals to make choices about every position and program they buy.
He also said the way CPS has added and then subsequently cut arts positions in recent years doesn’t make much sense.
“(For the longer school day), there were 100 positions created, then 100 positions cut and now for next year, they’re adding 84 positions,” Perryman said. “This has created great instability in the field of arts education because teachers are getting fired and rehired.”
The head of CPS’s Department of Arts Education, Mario Rossero, stressed that the report only looks at about half of the district’s schools. Many did not report their data in the first year, 2012-2013, the year the report is based on. Rossero said the most recent year saw an 89 percent response rate.
Wendy Katten of the parent group Raise Your Hand echoed what Rossero said and noted that in her group’s tracking of budget cuts last year, 170 arts positions were lost.
“It’ll be interesting to see what these numbers look like for this year,” Katten said.
Ingenuity is expected to put out an updated dataset with numbers from the most recent school year (2013-2014) sometime in November.
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For those not understanding the end of US sovereignty and the ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE -------TED X was created in 2010 to be that global 'public media' to replace a national NPR-----if there is no America there is no national radio. TED X is that United Nations global media. Also, Obama and Clinton neo-liberals sold off our national airwaves to global corporations including all lower frequency for global telecommunications-----this takes out our TV and radio signals. This was all done these several years by our Clinton neo-liberals in Congress and Obama's Federal agency heads.
So, Trump will of course now simply defund what was the best in the world public broadcasting that used to be left social Democratic------
Published on
Thursday, January 19, 2017
by
Common Dreams
'Horrifying' Trump Budget Plan Would Privatize PBS and Destroy National Arts Endowment
The proposal would gut several federal departments and eliminate certain programs entirely
by
Nadia Prupis, staff writer
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), would be targeted for massive budget cuts under Trump's new proposal. (Photo: melanie.phung/flickr/cc)
President-elect Donald Trump is aiming to slash government spending across the board, with numerous public services in the crosshairs, according to staffers on his transition team who spoke to The Hill on Thursday.
The proposals, The Hill's Alexander Bolton writes, "are dramatic."
The departments of Justice, State, Energy, Transportation, and Commerce are all targeted for massive budget cuts, with some programs under their jurisdiction slated entirely for elimination. Certain projects overseen by the Commerce and Energy agencies would also be transferred to other bureaus.
Meanwhile, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—which funds, among other things, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)—would be privatized.
The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Bolton reports:
At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation, and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.
At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Under the State Department's jurisdiction, funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.
"The federal investment in public media is vital seed money—especially for stations located in rural America, and those serving underserved populations," the Corporation for Public Broadcasting said in an email to Common Dreams. "The loss of this seed money would have a devastating effect."
"Moreover, the entire public media service would be severely debilitated," the corporation wrote. "There is no viable private substitute for the federal funding that ensures universal access to public broadcasting' programming and services."
As Bolton notes, Trump's proposal aligns with a blueprint published in 2016 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has aided the Trump transition. It also echoes similar cuts included in the 2017 budget adopted by the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus of House conservatives.
Several members of Trump's transition team also previously worked for the Heritage Foundation.
A full budget is expected to be released in April after the team finalizes its cuts. As ThinkProgress noted, it "looks like it will be far more extreme than anything the Republican Party has proposed so far."
Observers took the dire plan as a call to action.
"Nothing is lost. Nothing is inevitable. They are a few, we are many. We just need to make our voices heard. It is NOT too late," wrote one. "[The] probability of budget making its way to Congress in this form is high...But that's where we come in. We protest 24/7 to stop it."
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