As we saw in articles yesterday what RACE TO THE TOP does as a far-right wing global Wall Street corporate education policy is break down equal opportunity---equal access-----goals of giving all US citizens as much education as will benefit them---and brings public education to the LOWEST DENOMINATOR---CHEAPEST PLATFORM. So now global Wall Street Clinton/Obama 5% players are touting more high school graduates----poor citizens with more degrees as these pathways to achieving these common goals have been lowered and assure students graduating with those certificates will remain in that global labor pool lowest wage employment. These young citizens tracked to online lessons sitting in front of computers all day are as well DE-SOCIALIZED. We are not helping to bring these children to better socialization and main streaming----we are pushing them to the margins.
We said back in 2010 when RACE TO THE TOP was in national news that these online and virtual courses and schools would be THE MAIN STREAM PUBLIC SCHOOL STRUCTURE FOR 99% OF CITIZENS-----BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN CITIZENS. Why do we see over and over news media and academic research highlighting ONLY BLACK AND BROWN STUDENTS in these structures?
BECAUSE WHITE CITIZENS NEED TO THINK ----THIS IS NOT HAPPENING TO MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN----JUST GLOBAL LABOR POOL POOR.
Global Wall Street would really be in trouble if white middle-class parents realized their children are going to go to these corporate schools being built for today's poor ------
We have made clear years ago that in Baltimore---city center public schools K-12 are already being tiered to accept only EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS. Today they are filled with our low-income students still living in city center----then they move those families out and we see a middle-class student ----then it will be the BEST OF THE BEST GLOBAL PRE-K -CAREER STUDENT. What we see in city center today are average middle-class families ----they will be those moved to NW AND NE BALTIMORE AND THOSE ONLINE CORPORATE CAMPUS SCHOOLS.
Office of Specialized Services-Department of Multiple Pathways
The Re-engagement Center
Learn more about the
Re-engagement Center
The Re-engagement Center (REC) is a new service available to Baltimore City residents. The REC serves as the outreach vehicle to bring students, who have previously dropped out of Baltimore City Public Schools , are at high-risk of dropping out, or have been previously incarcerated, back to the school system and also support students who are in acute crisis. The priority of the center is to help students identify the most appropriate support and educational environment in order to minimize the likelihood of dropping out, as well as, decrease multiple transfers due to significant lack of progress towards high school graduation. The Re-engagement Center provides students and young and adults with information and placement services in a consolidated location ultimately leading to the attainment of a high school diploma or equivalent. It also links students to variety of school based and community resources.
Re-engagement Center Intake Path
Sample Intake Process
If you're interested in receiving a High School Diploma or equivalent, then the Re-engagement Center is the place to start. Please feel free to call or visit the Re-engagement Center during business hours, Monday through Friday; an appointment is not necessary, however, you can always call to make sure they have staff awaiting your arrival. Baltimore City Public Schools
Re-engagement Center
200 E. North Ave
Baltimore, MD 21202
(443) 642-4220
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If we look at news media of all kinds----we see BALTIMORE IS IN CRISIS-----across the board in every aspect-----Baltimore is becoming that third world city. It started during SCHMOKE ----grew during O'Malley----soared during Rawlings-Blake ----and PUGH will be the one taking this US CITY DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE to WORLD BANK/IMF bailout.
The crisis is ECONOMIC STAGNATION deliberately created to create THIS CRISIS. The economics of Baltimore controlled by Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins during SCHMOKE -----became the economic crisis caused by GLOBAL WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND GREATER BALTIMORE AND GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS.
See the transition? What was a local Baltimore Development and a local Johns Hopkins grew to GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND GLOBAL WALL STREET all from steering any Federal funding meant for low-income communities to growing these few institutions globally.
THIS INCLUDED ALL FEDERAL FUNDING FOR K-12----ERGO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN DECAY. THIS IS THE CRISIS IN BLACK EDUCATION ----THE 5% TO THE 1% POLS AND PLAYERS CREATED POLICY THAT ALLOWED THIS TO OCCUR.
If we look to our rural areas----if we look to our poor white urban communities----THAT EDUCATION CRISIS is there as well---yet we call this a BLACK EDUCATION CRISIS IN OUR US CITIES.
What black citizens in low-income communities will tell us----we have to get rid of parents and children that have no discipline-----that do not care about education. KNOW WHAT? This coming economic crash and deepening and broad Depression will take 99% of citizens to this state of poverty and parental fights just to survive and keep their children alive and safe.
IF WE ARE BUILDING A STRUCTURE THAT REMOVES THOSE STRUGGLING TODAY----WE CREATE A STRUCTURE HAVING ONLY THAT FOR 99% OF CITIZENS.
Because our urban poor are vulnerable to global Wall Street players-----we see this privatization of K-12 soaring with black-owned education businesses----whether a MAGIC JOHNSON/CONGRESS WOMAN WATERS national charter chains or local small business education structures like these SPECIALTY DESIGNER INSTRUCTION STRUCTURES. Global Wall Street is pushing all this-----these corporate education structures fill Foreign Economic Zones in Asia---as in South Korea and China-----and all of what looks like local professionals building education structures for our low-income students will be taken by those global education corporations.
Life in Baltimore: A look at the Crisis in Black Education, Part I
Brenda Bowe Johnson | 6/16/2017, 6 a.m.
Mary Chavis Radcliffe, retired Baltimore City Public School System administrator, and president of the Julian Chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History addresses the current crisis in black education, which is the organization’s theme for 2017. Courtesy Photo
BALTIMORE — This is Part 1 of three part series about the current crisis in black education.
The 2017 theme for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is The Crisis In Black Education." Guided by a vision to study and acknowledge the significance of the historical and cultural experiences of people of African descent, the founder, Dr. Carter G. Woodson crafted a plan of action that not only remains relevant in today's challenging environment but essential to our successful continuation and growth.
With the current political environment and the tainted vision of the secretary of education, it is imperative that we address the education of our children.
Across the nation school districts are under siege, especially in urban districts with limited resources, high dropout rates and low graduation outcomes. We have the capabilities to ensure that all students succeed.
This discussion is to provide commentary, which should lead to an immediate call to action.
In the coming months, educators will be interviewed for their perspective on the state of black education. At the conclusion of the series, a community panel discussion will take place addressing these issues.
The first educator to address the questions is Mary Chavis Radcliffe, retired administrator, Baltimore City Public School System and president of the Julian Chapter of ASALH.
BBJ: Do you think that there is a crisis in black education? If so or if not, why?
MCR: Yes, there is a crisis in black education that has its roots in the rationale that was used by Europeans asserting that one’s skin color reduced him to a position of being less than a human being. This notion led to the abduction and inhumane treatment of Africans as they were transported across the Atlantic and forced into involuntary servitude.
Once in America, the founding father of this nation used every vehicle available to keep Africans in slavery. One such strategy was creating laws making it illegal for slaves to learn to read and write. The denial of literacy to slaves set the groundwork for centuries of inequality in this nation that still exist today.
Even after the end of slavery, the establishment of schools for African Americans, the repealing of Jim Crow Laws via Supreme Court Decisions, and the passage of the Civil Right Legislation of the 60s and 70s, there is [still] a disparity between the education available to the majority of African American children and their caucasian counterparts that must be classified as a “crisis.” In this nation, every child has the right to a free, equal education. There is an inequity in the funding of schools across the nation. The monies appropriated for the funding of urban schools are not adequate to meet the needs of the student populations, while rural and suburban schools have sufficient resources to meet the students needs. The quality of the education provided for children should not be based on the socio-economic background or the zip code in which a family lives.
BBJ: What are the main issues facing the education system especially in urban areas?
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Baltimore totally ignored EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS education AMENDMENTS TO US CONSTITUTION and pretended that because the Maryland Assembly played fast and loose with getting state and Federal funds to our US city schools----that BALTIMORE CITY did not have that revenue source---when Baltimore has always had a revenue source enough to fund public schools.
Now we see that crisis in violence coming from several years of continuous lay-offs of local employees replaced by global corporations bringing workers from other states---our from global labor pools. The few remaining middle-class jobs held by black citizens often tied to public sector are gutted----all public teachers have been laid off-----and replaced by PRIVATE TEACH FOR AMERICA-----VISTAS----ANYONE UNEMPLOYED WITH A PULSE----as long as it is not the current public school teachers and their unions.
Meanwhile, black contractors removed from Baltimore Board of Estimates going to Asian and Latino immigrant contractors----means more and more of our US city black citizens have lost not only businesses and jobs----but those once middle-class black citizens who used to support extended families no longer can.
ALL THESE POLICIES WERE IMPLEMENTED BY BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL----AND MAYOR----BALTIMORE MARYLAND ASSEMBLY POLS----ECONOMIC POLICY WRITTEN BY GLOBAL WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS.
Yes, Baltimore Education Coalition-----Baltimore URBAN LEAGUE-----Baltimore NAACP-----our Historically Black Colleges have been tied to ROBBER BARON FEW DECADES OF Clinton/Bush/Obama and now these very, very, very bad corporate education policies.
This is to where 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE need to look as to why US cities are so violent.
Chicago's homicide crisis gets national attention, but Baltimore's is much worse
Chicago's homicide crisis gets national attention, but Baltimore's is much worse
Chicago saw 762 murders in 2016, according to police there, the highest total in 20 years and enough to spark national outrage. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted on Monday that "If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help!" The TV news program 60 Minutes aired a segment on Sunday titled "Crisis in Chicago," calling conditions there like a "war zone" and noting "a drop in the kind of police work that law enforcement says is critical to preventing crime." The report found that morale in the department had plummeted after the killing of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a police officer while moving away from him, and activity like arrests and citizen stops had dropped drastically. Mayor Rahm Emanuel this fall outlined a plan to address the problem by filling vacancies and adding new officers in patrol and supervisory positions to expand the force to 13,500, a costly step at a time when the city is facing severe budget problems but one he says is necessary to protect public safety.
But if the violence in Chicago is a crisis demanding an all-hands-on-deck approach, what would you call the situation in Baltimore?
We ended 2016 with 318 killings. Extrapolate that to a population the size of Chicago's, and you'd get 1,390 — nearly double the number that has sparked national outrage. Meanwhile, the police force in Chicago that Mayor Emanuel and others believe is stretched unconscionably thin is, proportionally, larger than Baltimore's is today. Before Mr. Emanuel's hiring surge, Chicago had about 45 officers per 10,000 people; if he succeeds in bringing the force to 13,500, the ratio will be about 50 per 10,000. In Baltimore, the sworn staff now stands at 2,528, or about 41 per 10,000 residents.
The size of the police force isn't everything. The quality of the officers in terms of training and experience matters. So do deployment strategies and efforts to engage the community. But consider this: According to the Department of Justice, Baltimore had substantially more officers — 2,861 — in 1990, and more than 3,000 by 2000, numbers that increased even further during the O'Malley era. The number of officers now is historically low at a time when rates of murder and other violence are historically high. We doubt this is a coincidence.
The Sun's Kevin Rector reported Monday on the department's annual community policing report, which the legislature required it to compile after the rioting following Freddie Gray's death shone a spotlight on the poor relations between officers and those they are sworn to protect. It showed not only a drop in the overall size of the force in the last year — from 2,646 to 2,528 — but also in the number of officers working "sector patrol" or neighborhood beats. Fewer than 1,000 officers were doing those jobs, down from 1,102 a year before, despite what the report describes as the department's renewed commitment to such patrols as a key component to efforts at improving police-community relations.
Meanwhile, homicide detectives are swamped with unsolved murders from 2016 and 2015. They cleared less than 40 percent of cases last year, a slight improvement over the year before but calamitous by historical standards; city police used to clear in excess of 80 percent of cases. Clearance rates in the United States have been in decline for years, but the national average is still better than 20 points higher than Baltimore's rate. Johns Hopkins gun violence expert Daniel Webster says there isn't much good data on the relationship between unsolved homicide and non-fatal shooting cases and additional violence, but it stands to reason that there would be one. Cases that aren't cleared by police are too often cleared by the streets, leading to the type of reciprocal killings that plague Baltimore.
The city has deliberately reduced the size of the police force in the last two years as a budget cutting measure, both by eliminating positions and holding vacancies open. Mayor Catherine Pugh clearly needs to rethink that policy, but it may take more than that. The decline in the department's staffing comes at a time when officials are redoubling their recruitment efforts, particularly with an aim to get more city residents on the force. The department held 29 recruiting events in the city in 2016, up from 12 in 2015, though less than 20 percent of the force currently lives in Baltimore, down slightly from the previous year. Mayor Pugh has suggested added incentives to get people to join the force and live in the city, and we certainly support those efforts. But the department also needs to consider its advancement and retention policies so it doesn't continually serve as a training ground for officers who decamp for the suburbs when they gain some experience.
And there's a lot more to the department's staffing than just the raw numbers. How many officers are on light duty, medical leave or military leave? How many officers are nearing retirement? Has the department been able to staff its new patrol schedule effectively, given the declines in the sworn force? The City Council needs to dig into the details. Baltimore is in the midst of a homicide crisis. It should start acting like it.
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These few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ROBBER BARON FRAUD and government corruptions tied to that 5% to the 1% -----stem from these same few decades of our US IVY LEAGUE admittance becoming crony-----rather than admitting the BEST OF THE BEST----these Ivy Leagues wanted the BEST CONNECTED and that included our political players. As politics became crony so too did the pathway to entering an IVY LEAGUE. This is why we shout all the time----Ivy League campuses do not KNOW BEST----THEY ARE NOT MORE INTELLIGENT----the US did these few centuries have our IVY LEAGUES interested in the best----but admissions during ROBBER BARON DECADES brought PLAYERS.
This is how our IVY LEAGUES are capturing government at local, state, and Federal level with 5% to the 1% players often tied to GREEKS AND FREEMASONS doing ANYTHING THEY ARE TOLD.
This is of course from where RACE TO THE TOP corporate education policy comes------taking GLOBAL IVY LEAGUE CAMPUSES out of US city government-----as Stanford, Berkeley----as Johns Hopkins---as Princeton, Columbia----as Harvard, Yale----University of Chicago, Northwestern ====
These are the sources of the 5% FOR THE MOST PART----let's get rid of these global Wall Street players to rebuild our strongest in the world PUBLIC EDUCATION K-UNIVERSITY with equal opportunity and access for all!!
The revolution of 1960s-70s for civil rights and civil liberties was not only women and black citizens----it was all labor----it was veterans---it was disabled---EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL was that 99% ----rather than the old 1% landed gentry ESPECIALLY AS REGARDS EDUCATION POLICY!
This article written in 2004---Bush era simply recognizes what soared during Clinton era 1990s-----this is the swing from strong capable leadership coming from our Ivy Leagues---to simply
LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, NO MORALS, NO ETHICS, NO US RULE OF LAW, NO GOD'S NATURAL LAW----PRAGMATIC NIHILISM----GLOBAL WALL STREET NEO-LIBERALS.
Lexington
The curse of nepotism
A helping hand for those who least need it
Jan 8th 2004
AMERICA likes to think of itself as the very embodiment of the spirit of meritocracy: a country where all people are judged on their individual abilities rather than their family connections. The American Revolution swept away the flummery of feudal titles. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of creating a “natural aristocracy”. Benjamin Franklin sniped that “a man who makes boast of his ancestors doth but advertise his own insignificance.”
The Founding Fathers had a rather narrow view of who should be admitted to their meritocratic republic, to be sure. But today most Americans believe that their country has done a reasonable job of getting rid of the most blatant forms of discrimination towards blacks and women and building a ladder of educational opportunity. Americans are far more confident than Europeans that people deserve what they get in life.
REALLY????
But are they right? The more you look at modern America, the more you are struck by how frequently it departs from the meritocratic ideal. George Bush's Washington is a study in family influence: look at the Powells, the Chao/McConnells, the Scalias and the Cheneys, not to mention the Shrub himself.
The biggest insult to meritocracy, however, is found in the country's top universities. These institutions, which control access to the country's most impressive jobs, consider themselves far above Washington and its grubby spoils system. Yet they continue to operate a system of “legacy preferences”—affirmative action for the children of alumni.
These preferences are surprisingly widespread. In most Ivy League institutions, “legacies” make up between 10% and 15% of every freshman class. At Notre Dame they make up 23%. They are also common in good public universities such as the University of Virginia. Legatees are two to four times more likely to be admitted to the best universities than non-legatees.
America's universities are probably the most politically correct places on the planet. So what are they doing pandering to the (overwhelmingly white) children of the overclass? University administrators offer two justifications. The first may be crudely characterised as fund-raising. Universities are always asking their alumni for a helping hand and for money. The least the alumni can expect in return is that the universities will take a careful look at their college-age offspring.
But is it reasonable for universities to use their admissions systems as tools of alumni management—let alone fund-raising? Universities are supposed to be guardians of objective standards. They are also the recipients of huge amounts of public money as well as private donations. In short, there is no need to.
The second justification is that alumni preferences aren't really preferences at all. William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard College, considers them simply an “ever so slight tip”. He admits that 40% of the children of alumni get into Harvard compared with only 11% of ordinary applicants, but says that is mainly because of self-selection. Successful legatees have almost the same test scores as successful non-legatees.
Given the secrecy of the admissions process, this argument is hard to verify. It is worrying that a Department of Education report in 1990 concluded that the average Harvard legacy student is “significantly less qualified” than the average non-legacy student in every area except sports. But even if you give Harvard the benefit of the doubt, the system is still a disgrace. This is a university that has to turn down more than 2,000 high-school valedictorians every year. If you are going to offer a “slight tip” to anyone, why offer it to people who are already on the inside track—who not only come from privileged homes, but also have an insider's knowledge of how the admissions system works?
There are signs that patience with this practice is wearing thin. John Edwards has made it a theme of his presidential campaign, denouncing it as “a birthright out of 18th-century British aristocracy, not 21st-century American democracy”. Teddy Kennedy has drafted a bill that will force universities to publish data on the racial and socio-economic make-up of their legatees.
Political inbreeding
But there are two big obstacles to the Democrats rallying around the banner of meritocracy. The first is that the left overwhelmingly supports affirmative action for minorities, a policy far more acceptable than affirmative action for the rich, but which rests on the same belief that people should be judged on something other than their individual abilities. If the Supreme Court had ruled against affirmative action earlier this year, the legacy system would have been next in the firing line; but in reprieving affirmative action, the court also reprieved the legacy system.
The second reason is that much of the Democratic establishment is also riddled with nepotism. Howard Dean was a legatee at Yale University, just like George Bush. The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 is Hillary Clinton. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' leader in the House, is the daughter of a five-term Maryland congressman turned Baltimore mayor—and one of her chief challengers for the job was Harold Ford, who succeeded his father in a Tennessee seat.
Perhaps Teddy Kennedy's name-and-shame strategy will have the desired effect. Perhaps an infusion of new blood will make American politics a little less inbred. Perhaps an improvement in inner-city schools will mean that affirmative action can be allowed to wither on the vine. But none of this seems very likely. For most of its life, America has usually been marching towards the meritocratic ideal. Now it is getting harder to ignore the accusation that it is slouching in the opposite direction.
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Here is that right wing think tank writing RACE TO THE TOP with global Wall Street------HERITAGE/CATO-----the Federalist ---are all behind this global corporate vocational pre-K to career global labor pool replacing our strong US public school education. They are COMMONER CORE-----
Here we see that SCHOOL CHOICE policy that is simply THAT CORPORATE SCHOOL CHOOSES YOU-----and no one will be more exposed to ONLINE LESSONS----VIRTUAL SCHOOLS---as in our US cities---than our rural citizens. Yes, many white communities.
The same corporate charter pre-K - career education policies being installed in US cities low-income schools is being installed in our rural communities----as Maryland Eastern Shore----Maryland western counties. This links our rural students into the same GLOBAL LABOR POOL VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT tied to INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION tied to United Nations tied to global Foreign Economic Zones.
ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ON COMMONER CORE FOR 99% OF GLOBAL CITIZENS INCLUDING WE THE PEOPLE BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN US CITIZENS.
Kids In Rural Areas Need School Choice, Too
Particularly in America’s rural areas and small towns, student performance is often as bad as it is in urban centers.
By Collin Roth and Will Flanders
May 31, 2017
When someone mentions the phrase “failing school,” what image comes to mind? For most, it will be an urban school with a significant population of disadvantaged, minority kids. While this image is no doubt reasonable—many of the worst school districts in the country are urban—the problems of poor schools in other areas are too often forgotten. Particularly in America’s rural areas and small towns, performance doesn’t look all that different from central cities.
For instance, the lowest-performing school district in the state of Wisconsin is not Milwaukee. It’s tiny Cambria-Friesland, population 767. Nevertheless, the story of education reform in the state of Wisconsin, like most areas around the country, has overwhelmingly focused on the challenges of urban education.
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first private school voucher program, was started 25 years ago with the goal of providing low-income, mostly minority students with options other than a public school system that was failing them. And with good reason. Thousands of poor, mostly black students were desperate for options.
But an unintended byproduct of this urban focus has been an education reform movement that has largely ignored the plight of rural communities. While charter schools and voucher programs marched ahead in city after city, rural areas were left behind. These communities are smaller, less concentrated, and often out of view. In other words, they are easier to ignore.
Many Rural Kids Are Being Shortchanged
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) conducted a recent study of education in rural Wisconsin. We found that, once factors like economic status are taken into account, rural schools are some of the worst performers in the Badger State. Relative to their peers at urban and suburban schools, students in rural school districts have the lowest ACT scores, are more likely to need remedial classes if they attend college, and perform equally poorly on statewide tests as urban schools.
This is a crisis. It deserves a response as serious and urgent as the response to the crisis in urban education. But it hasn’t. Despite challenges like declining enrollment, high poverty, and poor student outcomes, the preferred response from lawmakers is tired and familiar: increased spending on K-12 public schools. This, despite studies and experience that have shown no correlation between increases in per-pupil spending and student outcomes.
So why is it that with a crisis in urban education, reformers have recognized that the key to improving student outcomes is expanding education options, often in the form of charter schools and private school choice, but for rural and small-town communities they give a collective shoulder shrug?
Study after study has shown a boost in education outcomes for students who are given the option of attending a school that fits their needs. Whether it is increased test scores, increased graduation rates, or lower incarceration rates, school choice has a proven track record that gets results. In addition, it’s popular. In Milwaukee, more than 27,000 students have elected to attend a private school through the voucher program.
Nevertheless, expanding options to our rural communities has met excessive regulation, arbitrary enrollment and income caps, and a disappointing amount of skepticism. In Texas, rural legislators have consistently torpedoed school choice legislation, yet another time just last week, failing to see the benefits of expanding options to their communities. In Wisconsin, lawmakers placed severe limitations on the nascent statewide voucher program that hinder growth.
Three Ways to Boost Rural School Choice
Rural school choice deserves a chance to succeed. Here’s how.
Reduce Red Tape
Of the 800 private schools in Wisconsin, 1 out of 5 have addresses in rural counties. But of that group, just 1 out of 7 private rural schools are participating in Wisconsin’s parental choice program. That’s because the statewide voucher program is significantly more restrictive than those available in urban areas like Milwaukee and Racine.
Currently, only 1 percent of students in a particular school district are allowed to enroll, and income caps cut out families who would qualify in the state’s urban programs. This has created waitlists of more than 500 in the last year due to enrollment caps. School leaders see the excessive regulation and hamstrung growth as a reason to pass up participation or expansion.
Trust Parents
Wherever it has been tried, school choice is popular. Even with a lower population density, rural parents have been willing to commute longer distances to provide their children with a better educational opportunity. For example, Notre Dame La Baie is a private school in the choice program located in Green Bay. While Green Bay is a larger city (at least by Wisconsin standards!), many small-town and rural areas are within driving distance.
More than 40 percent of the students enrolled in Notre Dame La Baie travel more than eight miles to school each day. When an opportunity for a better education exists, many rural parents are willing to make the effort to provide it to their child.
Rural School Choice Can Look Different
Expanding school choice to rural and small-town communities won’t necessarily look the same as it does in urban centers. But it doesn’t make the task any less urgent. While it would be naïve to expect a sudden explosion of new schools in rural America, long-established parochial schools are mainstays in many communities. Supply does exist.
In addition, school choice can come in the form of course choice, whereby a local private school and a local public school can provide students in a given community new options in the form of different courses. This will benefit students with different interests, ambitions, and needs. A robust voucher program can open these doors.
It’s increasingly urgent to change the perception of school choice away from something that is only reserved for the disadvantaged kids in downtown Milwaukee or Washington DC to something that will provide new opportunities for students wherever they might live.
Wisconsin legislators can make a difference by lifting the impediments to growth by eliminating stifling enrollment and income caps. Around the country, policymakers and the education reform movement ought to apply their principles consistently, recognizing that education choice can work for all families. School choice has been found to increase test scores and graduation rates, and even to reduce the risk that children will become involved in the criminal justice system.
Fighting for more and better education options should be a goal for all of our communities.
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'Education for Sustainable Development
With a world population of 7 billion people and limited natural resources, we, as individuals and societies need to learn to live together sustainably'.
Having a global 1% and their 2% teaching a global 99% what SUSTAINABILITY will look like as an Earth spins to LEVEL 5 CLIMATE CHANGE is not what WE THE PEOPLE want as leadership. All the NGOs in our US cities are tied to UNITED NATIONS---controlled by global banking 1% neo-liberals. They are NOT MAKING GOOD DECISIONS FOR GLOBAL 99%.
What we are seeing built is that INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION----ILO----installing GLOBAL COMMONER CORE and these same testing and evaluation structures as in US -----in all developing nation schools. The goal is to identify the BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD----that global 1-3% of children ----with a mad rush of global corporations to recruit them to their Foreign Economic Zones campuses. As we see in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones----already that next tier---those global children above average tracked into white collar professional training -----sent into the global labor pool where Foreign Economic Zone campuses will bring these workers----then those average and below average students will be tracked into global factory and computer coding. This is what we have been seeing these several years as global labor pool expansion in US cities begins to FLOOD.
Remember, global technology is killing most employment platforms so what happens to those 90% of global citizens being average or below---or those not able to navigate these COMMONER CORE structures at all? THEY ARE THE SUSTAINABILITY LOSERS. These United Nations websites and videos make it seem GLOBAL BANKING WANTS TO HELP ALL GLOBAL CITIZENS -----that is BUNK.
Please fight for local control of education-----building local economies keeping global corporate campuses at bay----this is what REAL sustainability and REAL full free market business and employment will look like for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.
Global Wall Street has built a stock market platform for all these global education corporations able to market their wares to these developing nations in profiteering----nothing to do with what is good for our children.
World Bank this past decade funded the drilling of the deepest connection to an African water aquifer all done with a goal of providing water for a Foreign Economic Zone global corporate campus and factory-----this aquifer is one of the last remaining fresh water aquifers in Africa and global 1% say----OH, IT WILL LAST MAYBE 40 years ---the life of that newly built global factory. This is SUSTAINABILITY to United Nations and these African citizens will be taught to be frugal with water ----will be told water is becoming scarce---will tell these children WATER IS GONE.
This is exactly what far-right global Wall Street GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION is teaching US citizens----
Leading Education 2030
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an ambitious, aspirational and universal agenda to wipe out poverty through sustainable development by 2030.
When it adopted the new Agenda in September 2015, the international community recognized that education was essential for the success of all 17 of its goals. Ambitions for education are essentially captured in Sustainable Development Goal 4 which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
Through the Incheon Declaration adopted at the World Education Forum in May 2015, UNESCO, as the United Nations’ specialized agency for education, was entrusted to lead and coordinate the Education 2030 agenda with its partners. The roadmap to achieve the ten targets of the education goal is the Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted in November 2015, which provides guidance to governments and partners on how to turn commitments into action.
Education 2030 goes beyond past attempts to ensure access to basic education, as set out in the Education For All goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goal 2 of 2000-2015.
The Global Education 2030 Agenda new expanded scope:
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We shouted several years ago to our AFRICAN friends that a WORLD BANK/IMF---BILL GATES is not investing millions of dollars to secure the deepest of fresh water for citizens of Africa---they are attaining the water needed for AFRICAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with global factories building BILL GATES' TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS.
If we had leaders who were not SOCIOPATHS----they would be accessing that water and building SMALL BUSINESS LOCAL ECONOMIES that would REALLY be sustainable. That fresh water aquifer system would last African citizens living simply for CENTURIES-----but UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION will teach African citizens ----these global corporations are GREEN TECHNOLOGY saving your fresh water ----while 99% of African citizens are told to use water sparingly and then ---in a few decades---VOILA---UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATIONS SAYS----FRESH WATER IN AFRICA IS GONE.
'Money on its own, however, will not solve drinking-water problems. About 30 percent of Africa’s water wells are no longer operational, so donors like the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development need to get serious about maintenance and sustainability of services'.
This is what GLOBAL COMMONER CORE and allowing all our public schools and education taken by global Wall Street does---it hands all power of information to SOCIOPATHS not working in the interest of WE THE PEOPLE THE 99%. Same thing with fresh water policy happening in US----
It is not helping to lift citizens out of poverty---it will employ them in global sweat shop enslavement for a few decades and then BYE BYE SAY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS SORRY THERE IS NO FRESH WATER.
Africa’s Hidden Water Wealth
By ALAN MacDONALDJUNE 17, 2012
Edinburgh
FOR a continent where more than 300 million people lack access to safe drinking water, Africa is sitting on a lot of it.
The journal Environmental Research Letters recently published a set of maps of groundwater resources in Africa, the results of two years of research led by the British Geological Survey and financed by the British Department for International Development. The research showed that in Africa the volume of water naturally stored underground within the cracks and pores of rocks is much larger (possibly 20 times more) than the 8,000 cubic miles of water visible in lakes and rivers. This water holds enormous potential to help people and nations move out of poverty, produce more food and better adapt to climate change. But it also could lead to tensions between neighboring countries.
At least 45 transboundary aquifers have been identified in Africa so far, and competition sometimes leads to serious tensions. However, since groundwater moves very slowly (usually less than three feet per day), shared aquifers should be seen as vehicles for cooperation, rather than competition, and identifying and characterizing the aquifers is the first step.
Recognizing this, in December 2011 the United Nations General Assembly called upon its members to begin working toward a common goal: the effective management of their shared groundwater resources.
At the moment, the main constraint on supplying safe drinking water is lack of money. If there is sufficient investment in investigating groundwater, and water wells are carefully sited, it is usually possible to drill a well that can provide enough safe water for communities at a reasonable cost. Groundwater responds slowly to droughts and floods and, as a result, is much more resilient to climate variability than water supplies drawn from rivers or ponds. Therefore, serious and sustained investment in water wells and pumps will help provide a reliable and secure water supply to a significant number of those without safe drinking water.
Money on its own, however, will not solve drinking-water problems. About 30 percent of Africa’s water wells are no longer operational, so donors like the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development need to get serious about maintenance and sustainability of services. New water supplies tend to gravitate to the better off, so investment in new services should be aimed at more remote areas where many of the poorest live; and with increased groundwater use comes the need for more qualified and experienced people to develop and manage the resource.
A major concern is that people may use the groundwater for whatever seems like a good idea at the time in a way that is unsustainable. There is much discussion about food insecurity in Africa, and at first glance irrigation based on groundwater seems like the perfect answer. However, it is not that simple. Our maps show that away from the large aquifers under the Sahara there are not many places where you can drill a water well and expect to pump out enough water to sustain center pivot irrigators like those in Nebraska. A potential compromise may be to encourage small-scale irrigation using lower yielding water wells. This approach will also require significant investment in expertise within Africa in groundwater development and governance and in reducing the costs of drilling and pumps.
And what about all that water under the Sahara? As inviting as it is, unfortunately this fossil water is not that easy to get at, requiring expensive, deep water wells and large pipelines to move the water to where people need it. Libya is the one country to have invested heavily in using Saharan groundwater, having spent some $20 billion to supply water to the coastal cities and for irrigation.
We should not be distracted by the large aquifers below the Sahara and dreams of cross-continental pipelines. The priority must be to serve those who still have to take unsafe drinking water from ponds and holes in dry riverbeds — and to do this sensibly and sustainably. We should get on with the job of getting drilling costs down and construction standards up and supporting and developing groundwater professionals in Africa. Then we can concentrate on helping communities, small towns and whole nations to sustainably develop and protect the groundwater under their feet.
We said back in 2010 when RACE TO THE TOP was in national news that these online and virtual courses and schools would be THE MAIN STREAM PUBLIC SCHOOL STRUCTURE FOR 99% OF CITIZENS-----BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN CITIZENS. Why do we see over and over news media and academic research highlighting ONLY BLACK AND BROWN STUDENTS in these structures?
BECAUSE WHITE CITIZENS NEED TO THINK ----THIS IS NOT HAPPENING TO MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN----JUST GLOBAL LABOR POOL POOR.
Global Wall Street would really be in trouble if white middle-class parents realized their children are going to go to these corporate schools being built for today's poor ------
We have made clear years ago that in Baltimore---city center public schools K-12 are already being tiered to accept only EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS. Today they are filled with our low-income students still living in city center----then they move those families out and we see a middle-class student ----then it will be the BEST OF THE BEST GLOBAL PRE-K -CAREER STUDENT. What we see in city center today are average middle-class families ----they will be those moved to NW AND NE BALTIMORE AND THOSE ONLINE CORPORATE CAMPUS SCHOOLS.
Office of Specialized Services-Department of Multiple Pathways
The Re-engagement Center
Learn more about the
Re-engagement Center
The Re-engagement Center (REC) is a new service available to Baltimore City residents. The REC serves as the outreach vehicle to bring students, who have previously dropped out of Baltimore City Public Schools , are at high-risk of dropping out, or have been previously incarcerated, back to the school system and also support students who are in acute crisis. The priority of the center is to help students identify the most appropriate support and educational environment in order to minimize the likelihood of dropping out, as well as, decrease multiple transfers due to significant lack of progress towards high school graduation. The Re-engagement Center provides students and young and adults with information and placement services in a consolidated location ultimately leading to the attainment of a high school diploma or equivalent. It also links students to variety of school based and community resources.
Re-engagement Center Intake Path
Sample Intake Process
If you're interested in receiving a High School Diploma or equivalent, then the Re-engagement Center is the place to start. Please feel free to call or visit the Re-engagement Center during business hours, Monday through Friday; an appointment is not necessary, however, you can always call to make sure they have staff awaiting your arrival. Baltimore City Public Schools
Re-engagement Center
200 E. North Ave
Baltimore, MD 21202
(443) 642-4220
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If we look at news media of all kinds----we see BALTIMORE IS IN CRISIS-----across the board in every aspect-----Baltimore is becoming that third world city. It started during SCHMOKE ----grew during O'Malley----soared during Rawlings-Blake ----and PUGH will be the one taking this US CITY DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE to WORLD BANK/IMF bailout.
The crisis is ECONOMIC STAGNATION deliberately created to create THIS CRISIS. The economics of Baltimore controlled by Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins during SCHMOKE -----became the economic crisis caused by GLOBAL WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND GREATER BALTIMORE AND GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS.
See the transition? What was a local Baltimore Development and a local Johns Hopkins grew to GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND GLOBAL WALL STREET all from steering any Federal funding meant for low-income communities to growing these few institutions globally.
THIS INCLUDED ALL FEDERAL FUNDING FOR K-12----ERGO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN DECAY. THIS IS THE CRISIS IN BLACK EDUCATION ----THE 5% TO THE 1% POLS AND PLAYERS CREATED POLICY THAT ALLOWED THIS TO OCCUR.
If we look to our rural areas----if we look to our poor white urban communities----THAT EDUCATION CRISIS is there as well---yet we call this a BLACK EDUCATION CRISIS IN OUR US CITIES.
What black citizens in low-income communities will tell us----we have to get rid of parents and children that have no discipline-----that do not care about education. KNOW WHAT? This coming economic crash and deepening and broad Depression will take 99% of citizens to this state of poverty and parental fights just to survive and keep their children alive and safe.
IF WE ARE BUILDING A STRUCTURE THAT REMOVES THOSE STRUGGLING TODAY----WE CREATE A STRUCTURE HAVING ONLY THAT FOR 99% OF CITIZENS.
Because our urban poor are vulnerable to global Wall Street players-----we see this privatization of K-12 soaring with black-owned education businesses----whether a MAGIC JOHNSON/CONGRESS WOMAN WATERS national charter chains or local small business education structures like these SPECIALTY DESIGNER INSTRUCTION STRUCTURES. Global Wall Street is pushing all this-----these corporate education structures fill Foreign Economic Zones in Asia---as in South Korea and China-----and all of what looks like local professionals building education structures for our low-income students will be taken by those global education corporations.
Life in Baltimore: A look at the Crisis in Black Education, Part I
Brenda Bowe Johnson | 6/16/2017, 6 a.m.
Mary Chavis Radcliffe, retired Baltimore City Public School System administrator, and president of the Julian Chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History addresses the current crisis in black education, which is the organization’s theme for 2017. Courtesy Photo
BALTIMORE — This is Part 1 of three part series about the current crisis in black education.
The 2017 theme for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is The Crisis In Black Education." Guided by a vision to study and acknowledge the significance of the historical and cultural experiences of people of African descent, the founder, Dr. Carter G. Woodson crafted a plan of action that not only remains relevant in today's challenging environment but essential to our successful continuation and growth.
With the current political environment and the tainted vision of the secretary of education, it is imperative that we address the education of our children.
Across the nation school districts are under siege, especially in urban districts with limited resources, high dropout rates and low graduation outcomes. We have the capabilities to ensure that all students succeed.
This discussion is to provide commentary, which should lead to an immediate call to action.
In the coming months, educators will be interviewed for their perspective on the state of black education. At the conclusion of the series, a community panel discussion will take place addressing these issues.
The first educator to address the questions is Mary Chavis Radcliffe, retired administrator, Baltimore City Public School System and president of the Julian Chapter of ASALH.
BBJ: Do you think that there is a crisis in black education? If so or if not, why?
MCR: Yes, there is a crisis in black education that has its roots in the rationale that was used by Europeans asserting that one’s skin color reduced him to a position of being less than a human being. This notion led to the abduction and inhumane treatment of Africans as they were transported across the Atlantic and forced into involuntary servitude.
Once in America, the founding father of this nation used every vehicle available to keep Africans in slavery. One such strategy was creating laws making it illegal for slaves to learn to read and write. The denial of literacy to slaves set the groundwork for centuries of inequality in this nation that still exist today.
Even after the end of slavery, the establishment of schools for African Americans, the repealing of Jim Crow Laws via Supreme Court Decisions, and the passage of the Civil Right Legislation of the 60s and 70s, there is [still] a disparity between the education available to the majority of African American children and their caucasian counterparts that must be classified as a “crisis.” In this nation, every child has the right to a free, equal education. There is an inequity in the funding of schools across the nation. The monies appropriated for the funding of urban schools are not adequate to meet the needs of the student populations, while rural and suburban schools have sufficient resources to meet the students needs. The quality of the education provided for children should not be based on the socio-economic background or the zip code in which a family lives.
BBJ: What are the main issues facing the education system especially in urban areas?
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Baltimore totally ignored EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS education AMENDMENTS TO US CONSTITUTION and pretended that because the Maryland Assembly played fast and loose with getting state and Federal funds to our US city schools----that BALTIMORE CITY did not have that revenue source---when Baltimore has always had a revenue source enough to fund public schools.
Now we see that crisis in violence coming from several years of continuous lay-offs of local employees replaced by global corporations bringing workers from other states---our from global labor pools. The few remaining middle-class jobs held by black citizens often tied to public sector are gutted----all public teachers have been laid off-----and replaced by PRIVATE TEACH FOR AMERICA-----VISTAS----ANYONE UNEMPLOYED WITH A PULSE----as long as it is not the current public school teachers and their unions.
Meanwhile, black contractors removed from Baltimore Board of Estimates going to Asian and Latino immigrant contractors----means more and more of our US city black citizens have lost not only businesses and jobs----but those once middle-class black citizens who used to support extended families no longer can.
ALL THESE POLICIES WERE IMPLEMENTED BY BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL----AND MAYOR----BALTIMORE MARYLAND ASSEMBLY POLS----ECONOMIC POLICY WRITTEN BY GLOBAL WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS.
Yes, Baltimore Education Coalition-----Baltimore URBAN LEAGUE-----Baltimore NAACP-----our Historically Black Colleges have been tied to ROBBER BARON FEW DECADES OF Clinton/Bush/Obama and now these very, very, very bad corporate education policies.
This is to where 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE need to look as to why US cities are so violent.
Chicago's homicide crisis gets national attention, but Baltimore's is much worse
Chicago's homicide crisis gets national attention, but Baltimore's is much worse
Chicago saw 762 murders in 2016, according to police there, the highest total in 20 years and enough to spark national outrage. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted on Monday that "If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help!" The TV news program 60 Minutes aired a segment on Sunday titled "Crisis in Chicago," calling conditions there like a "war zone" and noting "a drop in the kind of police work that law enforcement says is critical to preventing crime." The report found that morale in the department had plummeted after the killing of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a police officer while moving away from him, and activity like arrests and citizen stops had dropped drastically. Mayor Rahm Emanuel this fall outlined a plan to address the problem by filling vacancies and adding new officers in patrol and supervisory positions to expand the force to 13,500, a costly step at a time when the city is facing severe budget problems but one he says is necessary to protect public safety.
But if the violence in Chicago is a crisis demanding an all-hands-on-deck approach, what would you call the situation in Baltimore?
We ended 2016 with 318 killings. Extrapolate that to a population the size of Chicago's, and you'd get 1,390 — nearly double the number that has sparked national outrage. Meanwhile, the police force in Chicago that Mayor Emanuel and others believe is stretched unconscionably thin is, proportionally, larger than Baltimore's is today. Before Mr. Emanuel's hiring surge, Chicago had about 45 officers per 10,000 people; if he succeeds in bringing the force to 13,500, the ratio will be about 50 per 10,000. In Baltimore, the sworn staff now stands at 2,528, or about 41 per 10,000 residents.
The size of the police force isn't everything. The quality of the officers in terms of training and experience matters. So do deployment strategies and efforts to engage the community. But consider this: According to the Department of Justice, Baltimore had substantially more officers — 2,861 — in 1990, and more than 3,000 by 2000, numbers that increased even further during the O'Malley era. The number of officers now is historically low at a time when rates of murder and other violence are historically high. We doubt this is a coincidence.
The Sun's Kevin Rector reported Monday on the department's annual community policing report, which the legislature required it to compile after the rioting following Freddie Gray's death shone a spotlight on the poor relations between officers and those they are sworn to protect. It showed not only a drop in the overall size of the force in the last year — from 2,646 to 2,528 — but also in the number of officers working "sector patrol" or neighborhood beats. Fewer than 1,000 officers were doing those jobs, down from 1,102 a year before, despite what the report describes as the department's renewed commitment to such patrols as a key component to efforts at improving police-community relations.
Meanwhile, homicide detectives are swamped with unsolved murders from 2016 and 2015. They cleared less than 40 percent of cases last year, a slight improvement over the year before but calamitous by historical standards; city police used to clear in excess of 80 percent of cases. Clearance rates in the United States have been in decline for years, but the national average is still better than 20 points higher than Baltimore's rate. Johns Hopkins gun violence expert Daniel Webster says there isn't much good data on the relationship between unsolved homicide and non-fatal shooting cases and additional violence, but it stands to reason that there would be one. Cases that aren't cleared by police are too often cleared by the streets, leading to the type of reciprocal killings that plague Baltimore.
The city has deliberately reduced the size of the police force in the last two years as a budget cutting measure, both by eliminating positions and holding vacancies open. Mayor Catherine Pugh clearly needs to rethink that policy, but it may take more than that. The decline in the department's staffing comes at a time when officials are redoubling their recruitment efforts, particularly with an aim to get more city residents on the force. The department held 29 recruiting events in the city in 2016, up from 12 in 2015, though less than 20 percent of the force currently lives in Baltimore, down slightly from the previous year. Mayor Pugh has suggested added incentives to get people to join the force and live in the city, and we certainly support those efforts. But the department also needs to consider its advancement and retention policies so it doesn't continually serve as a training ground for officers who decamp for the suburbs when they gain some experience.
And there's a lot more to the department's staffing than just the raw numbers. How many officers are on light duty, medical leave or military leave? How many officers are nearing retirement? Has the department been able to staff its new patrol schedule effectively, given the declines in the sworn force? The City Council needs to dig into the details. Baltimore is in the midst of a homicide crisis. It should start acting like it.
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These few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ROBBER BARON FRAUD and government corruptions tied to that 5% to the 1% -----stem from these same few decades of our US IVY LEAGUE admittance becoming crony-----rather than admitting the BEST OF THE BEST----these Ivy Leagues wanted the BEST CONNECTED and that included our political players. As politics became crony so too did the pathway to entering an IVY LEAGUE. This is why we shout all the time----Ivy League campuses do not KNOW BEST----THEY ARE NOT MORE INTELLIGENT----the US did these few centuries have our IVY LEAGUES interested in the best----but admissions during ROBBER BARON DECADES brought PLAYERS.
This is how our IVY LEAGUES are capturing government at local, state, and Federal level with 5% to the 1% players often tied to GREEKS AND FREEMASONS doing ANYTHING THEY ARE TOLD.
This is of course from where RACE TO THE TOP corporate education policy comes------taking GLOBAL IVY LEAGUE CAMPUSES out of US city government-----as Stanford, Berkeley----as Johns Hopkins---as Princeton, Columbia----as Harvard, Yale----University of Chicago, Northwestern ====
These are the sources of the 5% FOR THE MOST PART----let's get rid of these global Wall Street players to rebuild our strongest in the world PUBLIC EDUCATION K-UNIVERSITY with equal opportunity and access for all!!
The revolution of 1960s-70s for civil rights and civil liberties was not only women and black citizens----it was all labor----it was veterans---it was disabled---EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL was that 99% ----rather than the old 1% landed gentry ESPECIALLY AS REGARDS EDUCATION POLICY!
This article written in 2004---Bush era simply recognizes what soared during Clinton era 1990s-----this is the swing from strong capable leadership coming from our Ivy Leagues---to simply
LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, NO MORALS, NO ETHICS, NO US RULE OF LAW, NO GOD'S NATURAL LAW----PRAGMATIC NIHILISM----GLOBAL WALL STREET NEO-LIBERALS.
Lexington
The curse of nepotism
A helping hand for those who least need it
Jan 8th 2004
AMERICA likes to think of itself as the very embodiment of the spirit of meritocracy: a country where all people are judged on their individual abilities rather than their family connections. The American Revolution swept away the flummery of feudal titles. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of creating a “natural aristocracy”. Benjamin Franklin sniped that “a man who makes boast of his ancestors doth but advertise his own insignificance.”
The Founding Fathers had a rather narrow view of who should be admitted to their meritocratic republic, to be sure. But today most Americans believe that their country has done a reasonable job of getting rid of the most blatant forms of discrimination towards blacks and women and building a ladder of educational opportunity. Americans are far more confident than Europeans that people deserve what they get in life.
REALLY????
But are they right? The more you look at modern America, the more you are struck by how frequently it departs from the meritocratic ideal. George Bush's Washington is a study in family influence: look at the Powells, the Chao/McConnells, the Scalias and the Cheneys, not to mention the Shrub himself.
The biggest insult to meritocracy, however, is found in the country's top universities. These institutions, which control access to the country's most impressive jobs, consider themselves far above Washington and its grubby spoils system. Yet they continue to operate a system of “legacy preferences”—affirmative action for the children of alumni.
These preferences are surprisingly widespread. In most Ivy League institutions, “legacies” make up between 10% and 15% of every freshman class. At Notre Dame they make up 23%. They are also common in good public universities such as the University of Virginia. Legatees are two to four times more likely to be admitted to the best universities than non-legatees.
America's universities are probably the most politically correct places on the planet. So what are they doing pandering to the (overwhelmingly white) children of the overclass? University administrators offer two justifications. The first may be crudely characterised as fund-raising. Universities are always asking their alumni for a helping hand and for money. The least the alumni can expect in return is that the universities will take a careful look at their college-age offspring.
But is it reasonable for universities to use their admissions systems as tools of alumni management—let alone fund-raising? Universities are supposed to be guardians of objective standards. They are also the recipients of huge amounts of public money as well as private donations. In short, there is no need to.
The second justification is that alumni preferences aren't really preferences at all. William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard College, considers them simply an “ever so slight tip”. He admits that 40% of the children of alumni get into Harvard compared with only 11% of ordinary applicants, but says that is mainly because of self-selection. Successful legatees have almost the same test scores as successful non-legatees.
Given the secrecy of the admissions process, this argument is hard to verify. It is worrying that a Department of Education report in 1990 concluded that the average Harvard legacy student is “significantly less qualified” than the average non-legacy student in every area except sports. But even if you give Harvard the benefit of the doubt, the system is still a disgrace. This is a university that has to turn down more than 2,000 high-school valedictorians every year. If you are going to offer a “slight tip” to anyone, why offer it to people who are already on the inside track—who not only come from privileged homes, but also have an insider's knowledge of how the admissions system works?
There are signs that patience with this practice is wearing thin. John Edwards has made it a theme of his presidential campaign, denouncing it as “a birthright out of 18th-century British aristocracy, not 21st-century American democracy”. Teddy Kennedy has drafted a bill that will force universities to publish data on the racial and socio-economic make-up of their legatees.
Political inbreeding
But there are two big obstacles to the Democrats rallying around the banner of meritocracy. The first is that the left overwhelmingly supports affirmative action for minorities, a policy far more acceptable than affirmative action for the rich, but which rests on the same belief that people should be judged on something other than their individual abilities. If the Supreme Court had ruled against affirmative action earlier this year, the legacy system would have been next in the firing line; but in reprieving affirmative action, the court also reprieved the legacy system.
The second reason is that much of the Democratic establishment is also riddled with nepotism. Howard Dean was a legatee at Yale University, just like George Bush. The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 is Hillary Clinton. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' leader in the House, is the daughter of a five-term Maryland congressman turned Baltimore mayor—and one of her chief challengers for the job was Harold Ford, who succeeded his father in a Tennessee seat.
Perhaps Teddy Kennedy's name-and-shame strategy will have the desired effect. Perhaps an infusion of new blood will make American politics a little less inbred. Perhaps an improvement in inner-city schools will mean that affirmative action can be allowed to wither on the vine. But none of this seems very likely. For most of its life, America has usually been marching towards the meritocratic ideal. Now it is getting harder to ignore the accusation that it is slouching in the opposite direction.
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Here is that right wing think tank writing RACE TO THE TOP with global Wall Street------HERITAGE/CATO-----the Federalist ---are all behind this global corporate vocational pre-K to career global labor pool replacing our strong US public school education. They are COMMONER CORE-----
Here we see that SCHOOL CHOICE policy that is simply THAT CORPORATE SCHOOL CHOOSES YOU-----and no one will be more exposed to ONLINE LESSONS----VIRTUAL SCHOOLS---as in our US cities---than our rural citizens. Yes, many white communities.
The same corporate charter pre-K - career education policies being installed in US cities low-income schools is being installed in our rural communities----as Maryland Eastern Shore----Maryland western counties. This links our rural students into the same GLOBAL LABOR POOL VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT tied to INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION tied to United Nations tied to global Foreign Economic Zones.
ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ON COMMONER CORE FOR 99% OF GLOBAL CITIZENS INCLUDING WE THE PEOPLE BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN US CITIZENS.
Kids In Rural Areas Need School Choice, Too
Particularly in America’s rural areas and small towns, student performance is often as bad as it is in urban centers.
By Collin Roth and Will Flanders
May 31, 2017
When someone mentions the phrase “failing school,” what image comes to mind? For most, it will be an urban school with a significant population of disadvantaged, minority kids. While this image is no doubt reasonable—many of the worst school districts in the country are urban—the problems of poor schools in other areas are too often forgotten. Particularly in America’s rural areas and small towns, performance doesn’t look all that different from central cities.
For instance, the lowest-performing school district in the state of Wisconsin is not Milwaukee. It’s tiny Cambria-Friesland, population 767. Nevertheless, the story of education reform in the state of Wisconsin, like most areas around the country, has overwhelmingly focused on the challenges of urban education.
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first private school voucher program, was started 25 years ago with the goal of providing low-income, mostly minority students with options other than a public school system that was failing them. And with good reason. Thousands of poor, mostly black students were desperate for options.
But an unintended byproduct of this urban focus has been an education reform movement that has largely ignored the plight of rural communities. While charter schools and voucher programs marched ahead in city after city, rural areas were left behind. These communities are smaller, less concentrated, and often out of view. In other words, they are easier to ignore.
Many Rural Kids Are Being Shortchanged
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) conducted a recent study of education in rural Wisconsin. We found that, once factors like economic status are taken into account, rural schools are some of the worst performers in the Badger State. Relative to their peers at urban and suburban schools, students in rural school districts have the lowest ACT scores, are more likely to need remedial classes if they attend college, and perform equally poorly on statewide tests as urban schools.
This is a crisis. It deserves a response as serious and urgent as the response to the crisis in urban education. But it hasn’t. Despite challenges like declining enrollment, high poverty, and poor student outcomes, the preferred response from lawmakers is tired and familiar: increased spending on K-12 public schools. This, despite studies and experience that have shown no correlation between increases in per-pupil spending and student outcomes.
So why is it that with a crisis in urban education, reformers have recognized that the key to improving student outcomes is expanding education options, often in the form of charter schools and private school choice, but for rural and small-town communities they give a collective shoulder shrug?
Study after study has shown a boost in education outcomes for students who are given the option of attending a school that fits their needs. Whether it is increased test scores, increased graduation rates, or lower incarceration rates, school choice has a proven track record that gets results. In addition, it’s popular. In Milwaukee, more than 27,000 students have elected to attend a private school through the voucher program.
Nevertheless, expanding options to our rural communities has met excessive regulation, arbitrary enrollment and income caps, and a disappointing amount of skepticism. In Texas, rural legislators have consistently torpedoed school choice legislation, yet another time just last week, failing to see the benefits of expanding options to their communities. In Wisconsin, lawmakers placed severe limitations on the nascent statewide voucher program that hinder growth.
Three Ways to Boost Rural School Choice
Rural school choice deserves a chance to succeed. Here’s how.
Reduce Red Tape
Of the 800 private schools in Wisconsin, 1 out of 5 have addresses in rural counties. But of that group, just 1 out of 7 private rural schools are participating in Wisconsin’s parental choice program. That’s because the statewide voucher program is significantly more restrictive than those available in urban areas like Milwaukee and Racine.
Currently, only 1 percent of students in a particular school district are allowed to enroll, and income caps cut out families who would qualify in the state’s urban programs. This has created waitlists of more than 500 in the last year due to enrollment caps. School leaders see the excessive regulation and hamstrung growth as a reason to pass up participation or expansion.
Trust Parents
Wherever it has been tried, school choice is popular. Even with a lower population density, rural parents have been willing to commute longer distances to provide their children with a better educational opportunity. For example, Notre Dame La Baie is a private school in the choice program located in Green Bay. While Green Bay is a larger city (at least by Wisconsin standards!), many small-town and rural areas are within driving distance.
More than 40 percent of the students enrolled in Notre Dame La Baie travel more than eight miles to school each day. When an opportunity for a better education exists, many rural parents are willing to make the effort to provide it to their child.
Rural School Choice Can Look Different
Expanding school choice to rural and small-town communities won’t necessarily look the same as it does in urban centers. But it doesn’t make the task any less urgent. While it would be naïve to expect a sudden explosion of new schools in rural America, long-established parochial schools are mainstays in many communities. Supply does exist.
In addition, school choice can come in the form of course choice, whereby a local private school and a local public school can provide students in a given community new options in the form of different courses. This will benefit students with different interests, ambitions, and needs. A robust voucher program can open these doors.
It’s increasingly urgent to change the perception of school choice away from something that is only reserved for the disadvantaged kids in downtown Milwaukee or Washington DC to something that will provide new opportunities for students wherever they might live.
Wisconsin legislators can make a difference by lifting the impediments to growth by eliminating stifling enrollment and income caps. Around the country, policymakers and the education reform movement ought to apply their principles consistently, recognizing that education choice can work for all families. School choice has been found to increase test scores and graduation rates, and even to reduce the risk that children will become involved in the criminal justice system.
Fighting for more and better education options should be a goal for all of our communities.
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'Education for Sustainable Development
With a world population of 7 billion people and limited natural resources, we, as individuals and societies need to learn to live together sustainably'.
Having a global 1% and their 2% teaching a global 99% what SUSTAINABILITY will look like as an Earth spins to LEVEL 5 CLIMATE CHANGE is not what WE THE PEOPLE want as leadership. All the NGOs in our US cities are tied to UNITED NATIONS---controlled by global banking 1% neo-liberals. They are NOT MAKING GOOD DECISIONS FOR GLOBAL 99%.
What we are seeing built is that INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION----ILO----installing GLOBAL COMMONER CORE and these same testing and evaluation structures as in US -----in all developing nation schools. The goal is to identify the BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD----that global 1-3% of children ----with a mad rush of global corporations to recruit them to their Foreign Economic Zones campuses. As we see in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones----already that next tier---those global children above average tracked into white collar professional training -----sent into the global labor pool where Foreign Economic Zone campuses will bring these workers----then those average and below average students will be tracked into global factory and computer coding. This is what we have been seeing these several years as global labor pool expansion in US cities begins to FLOOD.
Remember, global technology is killing most employment platforms so what happens to those 90% of global citizens being average or below---or those not able to navigate these COMMONER CORE structures at all? THEY ARE THE SUSTAINABILITY LOSERS. These United Nations websites and videos make it seem GLOBAL BANKING WANTS TO HELP ALL GLOBAL CITIZENS -----that is BUNK.
Please fight for local control of education-----building local economies keeping global corporate campuses at bay----this is what REAL sustainability and REAL full free market business and employment will look like for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.
Global Wall Street has built a stock market platform for all these global education corporations able to market their wares to these developing nations in profiteering----nothing to do with what is good for our children.
World Bank this past decade funded the drilling of the deepest connection to an African water aquifer all done with a goal of providing water for a Foreign Economic Zone global corporate campus and factory-----this aquifer is one of the last remaining fresh water aquifers in Africa and global 1% say----OH, IT WILL LAST MAYBE 40 years ---the life of that newly built global factory. This is SUSTAINABILITY to United Nations and these African citizens will be taught to be frugal with water ----will be told water is becoming scarce---will tell these children WATER IS GONE.
This is exactly what far-right global Wall Street GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION is teaching US citizens----
Leading Education 2030
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an ambitious, aspirational and universal agenda to wipe out poverty through sustainable development by 2030.
When it adopted the new Agenda in September 2015, the international community recognized that education was essential for the success of all 17 of its goals. Ambitions for education are essentially captured in Sustainable Development Goal 4 which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
Through the Incheon Declaration adopted at the World Education Forum in May 2015, UNESCO, as the United Nations’ specialized agency for education, was entrusted to lead and coordinate the Education 2030 agenda with its partners. The roadmap to achieve the ten targets of the education goal is the Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted in November 2015, which provides guidance to governments and partners on how to turn commitments into action.
Education 2030 goes beyond past attempts to ensure access to basic education, as set out in the Education For All goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goal 2 of 2000-2015.
The Global Education 2030 Agenda new expanded scope:
- reaches from early childhood learning to youth and adult education and training;
- emphasises the acquisition of skills for work;
- underlines the importance of citizenship education in a plural and interdependent world;
- focuses on inclusion, equity and gender equality;
- and aims to ensure quality learning outcomes for all, throughout their lives.
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We shouted several years ago to our AFRICAN friends that a WORLD BANK/IMF---BILL GATES is not investing millions of dollars to secure the deepest of fresh water for citizens of Africa---they are attaining the water needed for AFRICAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with global factories building BILL GATES' TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS.
If we had leaders who were not SOCIOPATHS----they would be accessing that water and building SMALL BUSINESS LOCAL ECONOMIES that would REALLY be sustainable. That fresh water aquifer system would last African citizens living simply for CENTURIES-----but UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION will teach African citizens ----these global corporations are GREEN TECHNOLOGY saving your fresh water ----while 99% of African citizens are told to use water sparingly and then ---in a few decades---VOILA---UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATIONS SAYS----FRESH WATER IN AFRICA IS GONE.
'Money on its own, however, will not solve drinking-water problems. About 30 percent of Africa’s water wells are no longer operational, so donors like the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development need to get serious about maintenance and sustainability of services'.
This is what GLOBAL COMMONER CORE and allowing all our public schools and education taken by global Wall Street does---it hands all power of information to SOCIOPATHS not working in the interest of WE THE PEOPLE THE 99%. Same thing with fresh water policy happening in US----
It is not helping to lift citizens out of poverty---it will employ them in global sweat shop enslavement for a few decades and then BYE BYE SAY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS SORRY THERE IS NO FRESH WATER.
Africa’s Hidden Water Wealth
By ALAN MacDONALDJUNE 17, 2012
Edinburgh
FOR a continent where more than 300 million people lack access to safe drinking water, Africa is sitting on a lot of it.
The journal Environmental Research Letters recently published a set of maps of groundwater resources in Africa, the results of two years of research led by the British Geological Survey and financed by the British Department for International Development. The research showed that in Africa the volume of water naturally stored underground within the cracks and pores of rocks is much larger (possibly 20 times more) than the 8,000 cubic miles of water visible in lakes and rivers. This water holds enormous potential to help people and nations move out of poverty, produce more food and better adapt to climate change. But it also could lead to tensions between neighboring countries.
At least 45 transboundary aquifers have been identified in Africa so far, and competition sometimes leads to serious tensions. However, since groundwater moves very slowly (usually less than three feet per day), shared aquifers should be seen as vehicles for cooperation, rather than competition, and identifying and characterizing the aquifers is the first step.
Recognizing this, in December 2011 the United Nations General Assembly called upon its members to begin working toward a common goal: the effective management of their shared groundwater resources.
At the moment, the main constraint on supplying safe drinking water is lack of money. If there is sufficient investment in investigating groundwater, and water wells are carefully sited, it is usually possible to drill a well that can provide enough safe water for communities at a reasonable cost. Groundwater responds slowly to droughts and floods and, as a result, is much more resilient to climate variability than water supplies drawn from rivers or ponds. Therefore, serious and sustained investment in water wells and pumps will help provide a reliable and secure water supply to a significant number of those without safe drinking water.
Money on its own, however, will not solve drinking-water problems. About 30 percent of Africa’s water wells are no longer operational, so donors like the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development need to get serious about maintenance and sustainability of services. New water supplies tend to gravitate to the better off, so investment in new services should be aimed at more remote areas where many of the poorest live; and with increased groundwater use comes the need for more qualified and experienced people to develop and manage the resource.
A major concern is that people may use the groundwater for whatever seems like a good idea at the time in a way that is unsustainable. There is much discussion about food insecurity in Africa, and at first glance irrigation based on groundwater seems like the perfect answer. However, it is not that simple. Our maps show that away from the large aquifers under the Sahara there are not many places where you can drill a water well and expect to pump out enough water to sustain center pivot irrigators like those in Nebraska. A potential compromise may be to encourage small-scale irrigation using lower yielding water wells. This approach will also require significant investment in expertise within Africa in groundwater development and governance and in reducing the costs of drilling and pumps.
And what about all that water under the Sahara? As inviting as it is, unfortunately this fossil water is not that easy to get at, requiring expensive, deep water wells and large pipelines to move the water to where people need it. Libya is the one country to have invested heavily in using Saharan groundwater, having spent some $20 billion to supply water to the coastal cities and for irrigation.
We should not be distracted by the large aquifers below the Sahara and dreams of cross-continental pipelines. The priority must be to serve those who still have to take unsafe drinking water from ponds and holes in dry riverbeds — and to do this sensibly and sustainably. We should get on with the job of getting drilling costs down and construction standards up and supporting and developing groundwater professionals in Africa. Then we can concentrate on helping communities, small towns and whole nations to sustainably develop and protect the groundwater under their feet.
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