We are seeing much research and organizing against Race to the Top and the intent to privatize all of K-college to Wall Street. If you listen to corporate NPR/WYPR you hear that their sponsors are in fact these corporate education businesses having the goal of being handed our public schools. As I said, Wall Street is using cities to build the charter structures that will then be expanded across the states and the absurd categorization of charters as 'public' will disappear to the private category in which they now fall.
Unlike what Maryland media and neo-liberals present, teacher's unions across the country as well as university academics are fighting Race to the Top and are succeeding in stopping this Wall Street funded policy. It will be reversed as will the corporatization of our universities.
IN MARYLAND, BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZEUR ALL SUPPORT RACE TO THE TOP AND THE PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP THAT IS EDUCATION PRIVATIZATION. THEY WILL CONTINUE O'MALLEY'S KILLING OF PUBLIC EDUCATION BECAUSE THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS.
CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR WILL REVERSE THESE POLICIES BY APPOINTING PEOPLE WHO VALUE STRONG PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
Parent 'Manhandled', Arrested While Speaking Out Against Common Core At Meeting
www.youtube.comhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSodYYlYu0
Good for YOU...Cindy Walsh!!!
Please watch this video of a public forum on education by Maryland Department of Education. The Maryland media passed this protest off as a fringe group of republican voters, but if you look there I am-------as progressive democratic voter can be shouting that the public must have voices in these public policies and not be threatened with jailing for demanding this right. I told you people in the audience actually said to me that the procedure now was to stand up and shout your views as you walk to the door so security does not throw you out. THIS IS CRAZY STUFF FOLKS!
Thanks to the AFT for getting in the stop privatization protest. Please shout out in Maryland as Baltimore is building a template for the
state! Whether it is Parents Across America or PURE in Chicago, these parent groups are helping teachers and academics fight this dismantling of what makes the US a democratic nation. Why do we not see these groups in Maryland and Baltimore? The leadership is silent and fearful. If they had a governor that supported them and not Wall Street-----they would be just as active.
CORPORATE POLS IN MARYLAND USE THE MARYLAND STATE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION AS AN EXAMPLE OF TEACHERS SUPPORTING RACE TO THE TOP. YET, BELOW YOU SEE THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS----THE LARGEST UNION HAS NOW SAID ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Check out
Cashing in on Kids
and help us spread the word by sharing with your social networks.
American Federation of Teachers
For-profit charter schools that operate in the dark without basic public transparency and without strong public control too often put their bottom line ahead of the public interest
and high-quality public education.
Is the rapid expansion of charter schools about helping kids learn or about enabling for-profit operators to rake in millions in tax dollars? Find out.
So, last week, in partnership
with In the Public Interest, the AFT launched the
website Cashing in on
Kids—a one-stop shop for the facts about for-profit
education in
America.
While we are working to reclaim the promise of public education, these for-profit charters are cashing in on kids. Help us call them out.
The site profiles five for-profit charter school operators:
K12 Inc., Imagine Schools, White Hat Management, Academica and Charter
Schools USA.
It identifies several issues that need to be addressed in charter school policy, including public control, equity, transparency and accountability, and it analyzes the impact of profit-taking and privatization in charter schools, where student results are mixed and mismanagement is widespread.
Curious to see how Jeb Bush’s friends are cashing in on kids? Check it out.
We built this site because we want parents, educators and policymakers to be better
informed about the impact of profit, money and private interests in education,
particularly charter schools.
Check out Cashing in on Kids, and help us
spread the word by sharing with your social networks.
In unity,
Randi
Weingarten
AFT President
P.S. Don’t forget to “like” Cashing
in on Kids on Facebook and to follow it on Twitter.
____________________________________________
Chicago is home of these Race to the Top privatizers from Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to Obama's Education Secretary of privatizing all that is public education Arne Duncan. So, these brave teacher's unions, parents, and justice groups are fighting for all public education and schools across America......we thank them for their activism!
Baltimore is the Maryland center for building this same platform for privatizing and if left to continue will be expanded across Maryland. Don't think it will remain in the urban centers!
Monday, Mar 3, 2014, 7:19 pm
CPS Threatens Teachers Over Standardized Test Boycott
BY Yana Kunichoff Email Print Sarah Chambers, a teacher at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy, will not be administering the Illinois Standard Achievement Test this year—nor will any of her colleagues at Saucedo. (Chicago Teachers Union)
Beginning Monday, teachers in schools all across Chicago are expected to sit their third- through eighth-graders down for two weeks of standardized testing. On students’ desks will be the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT), a state-level assessment that, thanks to the nationwide move to Common Core, won’t have any bearings on school ratings, grade advancement or instructor evaluations this year.
But teachers at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy and Drummond Thomas Montessori School, which joined the educator-led boycott of the ISAT last week, have declined to participate. Teachers from both schools say they are willing to risk disciplinary action so their students can get two weeks of teaching, not testing.
In response to their decision, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in a letter this week that teachers who "advocate against the ISAT on work time"—referring, the Chicago Teachers Union believes, to an instructor boycott—risk disciplinary action. Although teachers say they have not encouraged any students to opt out of the test outright, Byrd-Bennett also wrote, "The State Certification Board may take action to revoke the certification of any employee who encourages a student to boycott the ISAT."
And some administrators have taken part in the pushback, too. In a letter distributed to teachers last week, the principal of Saucedo, Isamar Vargas Colón, wrote, “Failure to conduct yourself in a manner befitting your profession will subject you to serious disciplinary consequences up to and including termination of your employment and possible action by ISBE [Illinois State Board of Education] with respect to your educator’s license.”
In an email to Saucedo teachers sent over the weekend, Colón said she would ask each individual teacher Monday morning whether they would or would not be administering the test. Colón did not respond to requests for comment.
A teacher at Saucedo, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, says the warnings are particularly concerning for the handful of untenured educators at the school.
Overall, it is unclear to what degree CPS will discipline teachers. But the union contract negotiated following the Chicago teachers’ strike in fall 2012 includes a progressive discipline clause, which, among other requirements, forbids an employer from going to the harshest disciplinary action without probation and mandates warnings from employers.
The CTU has said it doesn’t consider the district’s reaction to be an “idle threat,” and is working with lawyers on the best ways to support boycotting teachers. Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the union, called the proposed disciplinary actions “really absurd and harmful.”
Nationwide, there are few precedents for the testing boycott, and none incurred any discipline against participating teachers.
Around the same time last year, teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle—alma mater of Jimi Hendricks and Macklemore—voted unanimously not to administer the standardized Measures of Academic Progress test. Like in Chicago, Garfield teachers had the support of the many parents who had also chosen to opt out their children.
Though teachers at Garfield were initially threatened with a ten-day suspension, the Seattle Public Schools superintendent eventually backed down when several other schools joined the boycott.
In 2002, a group of teachers in Chicago at Curie Metropolitan High School boycotted the Chicago Academic Standards Exam (CASE), despite the risk of losing their jobs, because, they argued, the test took away valuable instruction time.
The test had been an issue of contention for years, and even led to the firing of one teacher who published the test in its entirety in Substance News, a teacher-run education newspaper. Eventually, district administrators, including now-Education Secretary Arne Duncan, agreed to drop the CASE and develop a new test.
Even at schools where the test is still being administered, many students and parents decided to join the boycott. More Than a Score, a national anti-high-stakes-testing group of parents and community groups, says that more than 1,000 students across the city have opted out of the ISAT tests this year. A spokeswoman for CPS confirmed that students who opted out of the test wouldn’t have to take it, but was not able to give a definitive number of opt-outs.
Teachers, for their part, say the opt-out process was rife with disinformation and confusing signals for students, parents and instructors. In a voicemail message directed to parents and obtained by In These Times, Saucedo principal Colón said, “ISAT testing doesn’t take away two weeks of instruction … [it] will prepare out students to take next year’s Common Core-aligned questions … also helps our school tailor better instructions.”
These claims have been refuted by Saucedo teachers in their arguments against administering the ISAT: They say the test takes more than two weeks, because teachers must help students prepare for it, and that it does not assist in educational planning in any way.
Zerlina Smith, a Saucedo parent, says she believes the teachers have the students’ best interests at heart; she hopes the ISAT boycott will go down in history as a successful one. “We send our kids to school to learn,” she says. “We put our kids in the hands of these educators, and we have to trust their decisions.”
___________________________________________
NEO-LIBERALS AND REPUBLICANS MAKE A GAME OF FLIPPING BLAME TO EACH OTHER AS BOTH PUSH THE SAME POLICIES OF HANDING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC TO WALL STREET. DO YOU HEAR ON YOUR MEDIA OUTLET THAT PROTESTS ARE GROWING LARGER AND PROTESTORS ARE NOT THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS......NOT THE FAR LEFT DEMOCRATS......IT IS EVERYONE.
PLEASE REMEMBER, RACE TO THE TOP IS A REPUBLICAN POLICY WRITTEN BY CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS AND CORPORATIONS. SO, HATING RACE TO THE TOP UNDER NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS AND OBAMA IS NOT HATING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BECAUSE THESE POLS ARE NOT DEMOCRATS....THEY ARE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS. DO NOT VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN BECAUSE YOU HATE RACE TO THE TOP.
GEORGE BUSH AND DICK CHENEY WROTE MOST OF COMMON CORE AS A CAPTURE OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION. CHENEY FAMOUSLY SAID HE THOUGHT HISTORY WOULD TREAT HIS ADMINISTRATION KINDLY-----WELL, THAT IS BECAUSE CHENEY AND BUSH WROTE THAT COMMON CORE HISTORY LESSON!
Below you see the groups organizing against this kind of education involve all socioeconomic groups and political leaning. As this article tells------THIS EDUCATION POLICY SHOULD DECIDE WHO YOU ELECT AS GOVERNOR AND IT IS GOVERNORS PUSHING THESE REFORMS FOR WALL STREET.
You will hear none of this on Maryland media because Maryland media is captured by Wall Street as are all of the democratic party by neo-liberals.
Education Spring ‘Year Of Action’ Revs Up
When President Barak Obama, in his State of the Union address, called for a “year of action,” he probably didn’t have this in mind.
An extensive and diverse coalition of forces opposed to the education policies pushed by his administration, and many state governors, is organizing on an unprecedented scale to spur a variety of protest actions, including street rallies, sit-ins, walk-outs, strikes, boycotts, and disruptive legislative actions and lawsuits.
It’s clear, last year’s emerging Education Spring that revealed a nationwide movement of diverse factions opposed to unpopular education policies has now developed substantial new organizational capacity and a more powerful voice.
The “new populism,” as my colleague Robert Borosage reveals, that is defining the economic debate in 2014 is also firing a new populist movement to reject failed education policy mandates and call for new reforms of our public education system.
“Movements grow,” Borosage reminds us, “only when harsh reality is combined with dedicated organizers and teachers.” Well, the “dedicated organizers and teachers” for a populist education movement have arrived.
Meet The Organizers And Teachers
This week, hundreds of activists are gathering in Austin, Texas for the first annual meeting of the Network for Public Education, a group with a stated opposition to the status quo education policies pushed by federal and state governments, including “high-stakes testing, privatization of public education, mass school closures,” and “for-profit management of schools.”
Headlining the meeting are prominent critics of the nation’s current education policies, including education historian Diane Ravitch, Texas superintendent John Kuhn, and Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis. A contingency is expected from a group calling themselves the Bad Ass Teachers Association that has the expressed “aim to reduce excess testing, increase teacher autonomy, and include teacher-family voices in legislative processes.”
This gathering comes on the heels of recent news stories about Testing Resistance and Reform Spring, “a new coalition of national groups,” explains a report in Education Week, that “hopes to bring together a growing number of grassroots boycotts, protests, and petitions aimed at reducing and revamping student testing.”
Valerie Strauss on her blog at The Washington Post explains, “The emergence of the alliance represents a maturing of the grassroots testing resistance that has been building for several years locally in states, including Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.” This opposition, notes Strauss, contends that the Obama administration has gone beyond the excesses of high-stakes standardized testing mandated by No Child Left Behind legislation under the administration of President George W. Bush.
Among the first actions promoted by TRRS is an event in Denver Colorado, March 28-30, convened by United Opt Out, an organization “dedicated to the elimination of high stakes testing in public education” by advocating for boycotting standardized tests that are used to make “high-stakes” decisions about students, teachers, and schools.
Other events are being planned across the country.
Not to be left out of this new education populism are the students. Student activist Hannah Nguyen writes, “Students all over the United States, from Portland to Chicago to Providence, are tired of feeling powerless when it comes to decisions that affect their education … They’ve begun to organize together, forming student unions and fighting back against threats to their education, such as budget cuts, high stakes testing, and school closings. From mass walkouts and sit-ins to creative street theatre and flash mobs, these students are demanding that their voices be heard.”
Nguyen is widely known from a video that went viral over the Internet showing her taking on former Washington, DC chancellor Michelle Rhee and saying, “I used to stand by reformers, I will admit it, I did. But after seeing the facts, and the data and everything, and my own lived experience, I cannot – I’m sorry – stand by what you preach if it has to do with high-stakes accountability, this ‘school choice’ … [and] charter schools, and how they push out certain students.”
Nguyen is now involved with the grassroots Students United for Public Education, “a national network of students who are committed to fighting for educational equity in America and to work collectively to organize action that works towards this vision.”
SUPE has worked with other student activists to organize the event EmpowerED: Los Angeles Student Power 2014 on March 29. The meeting claims to be “the first education conference led by students, for students,” drawing student organizers from Chicago, Newark, Portland, Providence, and Baltimore to “work with the student organizers in workshops to build organizing skills, discuss their ideas for education, and collaborate on developing a student power movement in their community.”
This spreading network of activist, organizers, and advocates is accompanied by teacher union activism that pushes the needs of students to the fore.
New Form Of Union Activism Emerges
Along with the grassroots direct action ramping up, a new form of union activism is connecting teachers’ labor grievances to their students’ learning conditions.
Earlier this month, when teachers in Portland, Oregon threatened to strike they made students learning conditions – particularly class sizes – a focal point of their grievances. District administration conceded to “hire 150 teachers to reduce class sizes and teacher workloads,” fewer than the 170 new positions teachers requested, but vastly exceeded the 88 new teacher hires proposed by the district.
When teachers made class size a main rationale for the threatened strike, they drew widespread approval from students and parents in Portland.
Also this month, in St. Paul, Minnesota, when negotiations faltered and the union considered authorizing a strike, the teachers made clear their actions were not over salary and working conditions, but over the students’ learning conditions. Those conditions included, according to a local report, limits on class sizes, less instructional time devoted to testing, increased student-support personnel, and expanded slots in the district’s pre-k program. It’s clear from the report that students and parents vocalized strong support for the teachers’ demands.
When a deal was reached and terms were announced this week, teachers got most of what they wanted: limited class sizes, less time spent on testing, and more consideration of increased student support staff and expanded Pre-k.
Too often in recent times, teacher unions have been portrayed as motivated by the narrow self-interest of their members. But the strategies exemplified by teachers in Portland and St. Paul turned that perception on its head.
Voices Louder, Stakes Higher
A year ago, the nation was roiled by the widespread, unified backlash to top-down education mandates driven by corporate interests, private foundations, and promoters of a market-based philosophy for education. The protests had huge impacts on elections for mayor in New York City and school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
This year, the voices of dissent are louder and the stakes are far higher. More states are pausing education mandates and challenging the status quo of high-stakes testing. “Testing season begins soon in U.S. public schools … But this year is filled with tumult,” reports Lindsey Layton for The Washington Post.
State elections this year will determine the fate of three-dozen governors and more than 6,000 legislators. Education, always a more important issue in these local races, could make or break some political contests. No candidate can afford to ignore the new education populism.
___________________________________________
This article shows how a candidate runs as a progressive and then simply serves as a neo-liberal. Those who follow politics knew de Blasio was a Clinton neo-liberal embracing a few progressive bones to be electable. Indeed he was elected by a landslide showing what the citizens want. But, as with Obama, what we elect and what we get are now two different things as it is now OK to lie about platforms. IT IS GOOD THAT THE OUTPOURING OF VOTERS WAS PROGRESSIVE. WE SIMPLY NEED TO MAKE SURE OUR CANDIDATES ARE TOO! You need to look beyond the standard 'progressive issue of the day' that neo-liberals put out to appease the masses......like minimum wage increases.
Baltimore education reform is controlled by Bloomberg and Wall Street through Johns Hopkins and all of this current public schools building fund leverage has to do with exactly the same issues Diane speaks to in the article. The intent is to hand all of the remodeled schools over to charters having the public paying for the infrastructure for what will become private charter schools run by national chains. Same thing happening with the MTA privatization of public transportation.
Leveraging school reconstruction of one billion dollars at a time government budgets are strained from the massive corporate frauds of last decade still waiting for justice-----at a time when Wall Street is imploding the economy again-----is simply a plan to have these Wall Street contracts in place so at the time of collapse government default will hand all these schools over to the private investors protected against the crash by CDS....credit default swaps. HANDING OVER THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS AS THEY ARE FILLING THE SCHOOLS WITH CORPORATE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS CONTROLLING ALL POLICY IN THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS while parents are told this is what they want.
Remember, what is happening in NYC is happening in Baltimore. You see Cuomo as with O'Malley behind pushing these policies and by no coincidence----they are both running for President in 2016. NEO-LIBERALS GETTING THE PRESS!
DID YOU KNOW THAT BERNIE SANDERS IS AGAINST THIS PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IN FACT VERMONT HAS LITTLE OF THIS POLICY BEING IMPLEMENTED!
THAT IS CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM AS NOAM CHOMSKY SAYS!
Look for you education news at websites of groups fighting this reform!
Diane Ravitch's Blog: The Big Lie about Mayor Bill de Blasio and Charters
A co-location means that a charter, which is operated by a private board of directors, gets public space in a public school. The public school has to surrender “empty” rooms that were previously used for art, music, resource rooms for special education, and any other space that is not considered a classroom. The regular public schools–attended by 94% of all public school children, must be overcrowded to make room for the charters. Because the charters are heavily subsidized by private funding, they typically renovate the space (not good enough for them), and their students have the latest and best of everything. In New York City, the term “academic apartheid” is becoming a reality, in the very same building. In some co-located spaces, the children in the charters have separate entrances, to keep the others out of their space.
De Blasio had to decide what to do with so many co-locations. The city already has 183 charters.
He approved 39 of the 49. He turned down 9, and one is under review.
Let me say that again. He approved 39 of 49. That is hardly anti-charter. In fact, many public school parents are outraged that their schools will now be forced to give up space to a charter that operates under different ownership (private).
Of the 9 that were denied, three were destined for Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain called Success Academy.
But of the 39 that were approved, Eva won three.
Instead of celebrating the addition of three new charter schools to her growing chain (the largest in the city), Eva has gone on the warpath, claiming that de Blasio is anti-charter and wants to hurt the poor black and brown children she serves.
The media do not know that her schools do not serve the same demographic as the children in the public schools. She enrolls fewer children with special needs and fewer English language learners. Her schools have a high suspension and attrition rate.
Her logic seems to be that since she gets high test scores (note the above sentence as one does tend to get high scores by keeping out low-scoring students), she deserves to get whatever space she wants, rent-free.
By that logic, the city should give extra privileges to students with high scores, and should take away space and privileges and programs from those with low scores.
This makes no sense.
Public schools must serve all children, not just those who can get high scores on standardized tests. Public schools must serve children who don’t speak any English. They must serve children who have severe disabilities. They must serve those who have emotional and social problems. They must serve those who have all kinds of problems and who are unwilling or unable to walk in a straight line.
It is sad that Governor Andrew Cuomo threw his political weight on Eva Moskowitz’s side. As governor of the state, he is responsible for all children, not just the precious few in charter schools.
Everyone understands that the hedge fund managers and equity investors are supporting Eva’s fight against de Blasio. He has already annoyed them by saying he wants them to pay a slightly higher tax rate to fund universal pre-kindergarten. The charter school fight gives them a chance to strike back at him, while pretending “it’s all about the kids.” They would like nothing better than to take down New York City’s first progressive mayor in at least 20 years (some one say even longer).
De Blasio has not declared war on charters. He has made a judgment. Many public school parents are angry that he approved 39 out of 49 charter co-locations. Eva and the tabloids think she should have whatever she wants.
The question before the Mayor is whether he will continue to fund a dual school system–one sector able to choose the students it wants–and the other sector serving all. He is trying to have it both ways, and it doesn’t work. He gave the charter lobby almost everything it wanted, and they still came after him as if he had given them nothing at all.
This blog post, which first appeared on the Diane Ravitch's Blog (http://dianeravitch.net) website, has been shared by permission from the author.
Readers wishing to comment on the content are encouraged to do so via the link to the original post.
Find the original post here:
_________________________________________
For those wanting to know the goal of all of this privatization policy look to conservative and neo-liberal think tanks like Fordham Institute and Brookings Institution where all this policy is written. You see the goal is online K-12 which falls with the policy of ending teachers in the classroom and having education techs who just facilitate the classroom connection to these online lessons. Common Core works with this standardization and control of all information content as these few online instructors come to all schools across America.
None of this has to do with quality teachers......what is good for achievement......what is good for developing strong community and business leaders. It is about building the cheapest model to educate children for specific vocations with tracking determined by pre-K testing of children. Businesses will profit off of selling education data. IT IS ALL ABOUT PROFIT AND CORPORATE EXPANSION OF EDUCATION GLOBALLY.
FOR THOSE REPUBLICANS IN MARYLAND PRETENDING AS THOUGH THEY FEEL THEIR CONSERVATIVE VOTER'S PAIN......ALL OF THESE POLICIES ARE WRITTEN BY WALL STREET IN CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS. BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS THE SOURCE OF COMMON CORE AND RACE TO THE TOP.
So, to stop this we need to shake the neo-liberal bugs from the democratic party rug by running and voting for labor and justice!!!!!
NOTICE YOU WILL NOT HEAR CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR TALKING ON MARYLAND MEDIA ABOUT MY PLATFORM ISSUES. YOU WILL ONLY HEAR BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZE
Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning
John E. Chubb Fordham Institute February 14, 2012
Michael K. Barbour March 22, 2012 Press Release → Media Citations →
This fifth and final paper in the Fordham Institute’s series examining digital learning policy is Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning. The purpose of this report is to outline the steps required to move the governance of K-12 online learning from the local district level to the less restrictive state level and to create a free market for corporate innovation in K-12 online learning. Unfortunately, the report is based on an unsupported premise that K-12 online learning will lead to increased student achievement. The body of research to date suggests that there is no learning advantage for virtual schools. Further, no evidence is presented that supports the wisdom or efficacy of centralizing governance at the state level or that moving to a market model is a superior, productive or economical practice. The recommendation that virtual schools should be funded at the same per-pupil amount as traditional public schools raises the question of profiteering, given Fordham’s claim that virtual schools operate more economically (a claim for which there is limited evidence). This report appears to be ideologically motivated and designed to open up the $600 billion market of K-12 education to for-profit corporations.
Unlike what Maryland media and neo-liberals present, teacher's unions across the country as well as university academics are fighting Race to the Top and are succeeding in stopping this Wall Street funded policy. It will be reversed as will the corporatization of our universities.
IN MARYLAND, BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZEUR ALL SUPPORT RACE TO THE TOP AND THE PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP THAT IS EDUCATION PRIVATIZATION. THEY WILL CONTINUE O'MALLEY'S KILLING OF PUBLIC EDUCATION BECAUSE THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS.
CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR WILL REVERSE THESE POLICIES BY APPOINTING PEOPLE WHO VALUE STRONG PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
Parent 'Manhandled', Arrested While Speaking Out Against Common Core At Meeting
www.youtube.comhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSodYYlYu0
Good for YOU...Cindy Walsh!!!
Please watch this video of a public forum on education by Maryland Department of Education. The Maryland media passed this protest off as a fringe group of republican voters, but if you look there I am-------as progressive democratic voter can be shouting that the public must have voices in these public policies and not be threatened with jailing for demanding this right. I told you people in the audience actually said to me that the procedure now was to stand up and shout your views as you walk to the door so security does not throw you out. THIS IS CRAZY STUFF FOLKS!
Thanks to the AFT for getting in the stop privatization protest. Please shout out in Maryland as Baltimore is building a template for the
state! Whether it is Parents Across America or PURE in Chicago, these parent groups are helping teachers and academics fight this dismantling of what makes the US a democratic nation. Why do we not see these groups in Maryland and Baltimore? The leadership is silent and fearful. If they had a governor that supported them and not Wall Street-----they would be just as active.
CORPORATE POLS IN MARYLAND USE THE MARYLAND STATE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION AS AN EXAMPLE OF TEACHERS SUPPORTING RACE TO THE TOP. YET, BELOW YOU SEE THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS----THE LARGEST UNION HAS NOW SAID ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Check out
Cashing in on Kids
and help us spread the word by sharing with your social networks.
American Federation of Teachers
For-profit charter schools that operate in the dark without basic public transparency and without strong public control too often put their bottom line ahead of the public interest
and high-quality public education.
Is the rapid expansion of charter schools about helping kids learn or about enabling for-profit operators to rake in millions in tax dollars? Find out.
So, last week, in partnership
with In the Public Interest, the AFT launched the
website Cashing in on
Kids—a one-stop shop for the facts about for-profit
education in
America.
While we are working to reclaim the promise of public education, these for-profit charters are cashing in on kids. Help us call them out.
The site profiles five for-profit charter school operators:
K12 Inc., Imagine Schools, White Hat Management, Academica and Charter
Schools USA.
It identifies several issues that need to be addressed in charter school policy, including public control, equity, transparency and accountability, and it analyzes the impact of profit-taking and privatization in charter schools, where student results are mixed and mismanagement is widespread.
Curious to see how Jeb Bush’s friends are cashing in on kids? Check it out.
We built this site because we want parents, educators and policymakers to be better
informed about the impact of profit, money and private interests in education,
particularly charter schools.
Check out Cashing in on Kids, and help us
spread the word by sharing with your social networks.
In unity,
Randi
Weingarten
AFT President
P.S. Don’t forget to “like” Cashing
in on Kids on Facebook and to follow it on Twitter.
____________________________________________
Chicago is home of these Race to the Top privatizers from Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to Obama's Education Secretary of privatizing all that is public education Arne Duncan. So, these brave teacher's unions, parents, and justice groups are fighting for all public education and schools across America......we thank them for their activism!
Baltimore is the Maryland center for building this same platform for privatizing and if left to continue will be expanded across Maryland. Don't think it will remain in the urban centers!
Monday, Mar 3, 2014, 7:19 pm
CPS Threatens Teachers Over Standardized Test Boycott
BY Yana Kunichoff Email Print Sarah Chambers, a teacher at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy, will not be administering the Illinois Standard Achievement Test this year—nor will any of her colleagues at Saucedo. (Chicago Teachers Union)
Beginning Monday, teachers in schools all across Chicago are expected to sit their third- through eighth-graders down for two weeks of standardized testing. On students’ desks will be the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT), a state-level assessment that, thanks to the nationwide move to Common Core, won’t have any bearings on school ratings, grade advancement or instructor evaluations this year.
But teachers at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy and Drummond Thomas Montessori School, which joined the educator-led boycott of the ISAT last week, have declined to participate. Teachers from both schools say they are willing to risk disciplinary action so their students can get two weeks of teaching, not testing.
In response to their decision, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in a letter this week that teachers who "advocate against the ISAT on work time"—referring, the Chicago Teachers Union believes, to an instructor boycott—risk disciplinary action. Although teachers say they have not encouraged any students to opt out of the test outright, Byrd-Bennett also wrote, "The State Certification Board may take action to revoke the certification of any employee who encourages a student to boycott the ISAT."
And some administrators have taken part in the pushback, too. In a letter distributed to teachers last week, the principal of Saucedo, Isamar Vargas Colón, wrote, “Failure to conduct yourself in a manner befitting your profession will subject you to serious disciplinary consequences up to and including termination of your employment and possible action by ISBE [Illinois State Board of Education] with respect to your educator’s license.”
In an email to Saucedo teachers sent over the weekend, Colón said she would ask each individual teacher Monday morning whether they would or would not be administering the test. Colón did not respond to requests for comment.
A teacher at Saucedo, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, says the warnings are particularly concerning for the handful of untenured educators at the school.
Overall, it is unclear to what degree CPS will discipline teachers. But the union contract negotiated following the Chicago teachers’ strike in fall 2012 includes a progressive discipline clause, which, among other requirements, forbids an employer from going to the harshest disciplinary action without probation and mandates warnings from employers.
The CTU has said it doesn’t consider the district’s reaction to be an “idle threat,” and is working with lawyers on the best ways to support boycotting teachers. Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the union, called the proposed disciplinary actions “really absurd and harmful.”
Nationwide, there are few precedents for the testing boycott, and none incurred any discipline against participating teachers.
Around the same time last year, teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle—alma mater of Jimi Hendricks and Macklemore—voted unanimously not to administer the standardized Measures of Academic Progress test. Like in Chicago, Garfield teachers had the support of the many parents who had also chosen to opt out their children.
Though teachers at Garfield were initially threatened with a ten-day suspension, the Seattle Public Schools superintendent eventually backed down when several other schools joined the boycott.
In 2002, a group of teachers in Chicago at Curie Metropolitan High School boycotted the Chicago Academic Standards Exam (CASE), despite the risk of losing their jobs, because, they argued, the test took away valuable instruction time.
The test had been an issue of contention for years, and even led to the firing of one teacher who published the test in its entirety in Substance News, a teacher-run education newspaper. Eventually, district administrators, including now-Education Secretary Arne Duncan, agreed to drop the CASE and develop a new test.
Even at schools where the test is still being administered, many students and parents decided to join the boycott. More Than a Score, a national anti-high-stakes-testing group of parents and community groups, says that more than 1,000 students across the city have opted out of the ISAT tests this year. A spokeswoman for CPS confirmed that students who opted out of the test wouldn’t have to take it, but was not able to give a definitive number of opt-outs.
Teachers, for their part, say the opt-out process was rife with disinformation and confusing signals for students, parents and instructors. In a voicemail message directed to parents and obtained by In These Times, Saucedo principal Colón said, “ISAT testing doesn’t take away two weeks of instruction … [it] will prepare out students to take next year’s Common Core-aligned questions … also helps our school tailor better instructions.”
These claims have been refuted by Saucedo teachers in their arguments against administering the ISAT: They say the test takes more than two weeks, because teachers must help students prepare for it, and that it does not assist in educational planning in any way.
Zerlina Smith, a Saucedo parent, says she believes the teachers have the students’ best interests at heart; she hopes the ISAT boycott will go down in history as a successful one. “We send our kids to school to learn,” she says. “We put our kids in the hands of these educators, and we have to trust their decisions.”
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NEO-LIBERALS AND REPUBLICANS MAKE A GAME OF FLIPPING BLAME TO EACH OTHER AS BOTH PUSH THE SAME POLICIES OF HANDING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC TO WALL STREET. DO YOU HEAR ON YOUR MEDIA OUTLET THAT PROTESTS ARE GROWING LARGER AND PROTESTORS ARE NOT THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS......NOT THE FAR LEFT DEMOCRATS......IT IS EVERYONE.
PLEASE REMEMBER, RACE TO THE TOP IS A REPUBLICAN POLICY WRITTEN BY CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS AND CORPORATIONS. SO, HATING RACE TO THE TOP UNDER NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS AND OBAMA IS NOT HATING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BECAUSE THESE POLS ARE NOT DEMOCRATS....THEY ARE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS. DO NOT VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN BECAUSE YOU HATE RACE TO THE TOP.
GEORGE BUSH AND DICK CHENEY WROTE MOST OF COMMON CORE AS A CAPTURE OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION. CHENEY FAMOUSLY SAID HE THOUGHT HISTORY WOULD TREAT HIS ADMINISTRATION KINDLY-----WELL, THAT IS BECAUSE CHENEY AND BUSH WROTE THAT COMMON CORE HISTORY LESSON!
Below you see the groups organizing against this kind of education involve all socioeconomic groups and political leaning. As this article tells------THIS EDUCATION POLICY SHOULD DECIDE WHO YOU ELECT AS GOVERNOR AND IT IS GOVERNORS PUSHING THESE REFORMS FOR WALL STREET.
You will hear none of this on Maryland media because Maryland media is captured by Wall Street as are all of the democratic party by neo-liberals.
Education Spring ‘Year Of Action’ Revs Up
When President Barak Obama, in his State of the Union address, called for a “year of action,” he probably didn’t have this in mind.
An extensive and diverse coalition of forces opposed to the education policies pushed by his administration, and many state governors, is organizing on an unprecedented scale to spur a variety of protest actions, including street rallies, sit-ins, walk-outs, strikes, boycotts, and disruptive legislative actions and lawsuits.
It’s clear, last year’s emerging Education Spring that revealed a nationwide movement of diverse factions opposed to unpopular education policies has now developed substantial new organizational capacity and a more powerful voice.
The “new populism,” as my colleague Robert Borosage reveals, that is defining the economic debate in 2014 is also firing a new populist movement to reject failed education policy mandates and call for new reforms of our public education system.
“Movements grow,” Borosage reminds us, “only when harsh reality is combined with dedicated organizers and teachers.” Well, the “dedicated organizers and teachers” for a populist education movement have arrived.
Meet The Organizers And Teachers
This week, hundreds of activists are gathering in Austin, Texas for the first annual meeting of the Network for Public Education, a group with a stated opposition to the status quo education policies pushed by federal and state governments, including “high-stakes testing, privatization of public education, mass school closures,” and “for-profit management of schools.”
Headlining the meeting are prominent critics of the nation’s current education policies, including education historian Diane Ravitch, Texas superintendent John Kuhn, and Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis. A contingency is expected from a group calling themselves the Bad Ass Teachers Association that has the expressed “aim to reduce excess testing, increase teacher autonomy, and include teacher-family voices in legislative processes.”
This gathering comes on the heels of recent news stories about Testing Resistance and Reform Spring, “a new coalition of national groups,” explains a report in Education Week, that “hopes to bring together a growing number of grassroots boycotts, protests, and petitions aimed at reducing and revamping student testing.”
Valerie Strauss on her blog at The Washington Post explains, “The emergence of the alliance represents a maturing of the grassroots testing resistance that has been building for several years locally in states, including Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.” This opposition, notes Strauss, contends that the Obama administration has gone beyond the excesses of high-stakes standardized testing mandated by No Child Left Behind legislation under the administration of President George W. Bush.
Among the first actions promoted by TRRS is an event in Denver Colorado, March 28-30, convened by United Opt Out, an organization “dedicated to the elimination of high stakes testing in public education” by advocating for boycotting standardized tests that are used to make “high-stakes” decisions about students, teachers, and schools.
Other events are being planned across the country.
Not to be left out of this new education populism are the students. Student activist Hannah Nguyen writes, “Students all over the United States, from Portland to Chicago to Providence, are tired of feeling powerless when it comes to decisions that affect their education … They’ve begun to organize together, forming student unions and fighting back against threats to their education, such as budget cuts, high stakes testing, and school closings. From mass walkouts and sit-ins to creative street theatre and flash mobs, these students are demanding that their voices be heard.”
Nguyen is widely known from a video that went viral over the Internet showing her taking on former Washington, DC chancellor Michelle Rhee and saying, “I used to stand by reformers, I will admit it, I did. But after seeing the facts, and the data and everything, and my own lived experience, I cannot – I’m sorry – stand by what you preach if it has to do with high-stakes accountability, this ‘school choice’ … [and] charter schools, and how they push out certain students.”
Nguyen is now involved with the grassroots Students United for Public Education, “a national network of students who are committed to fighting for educational equity in America and to work collectively to organize action that works towards this vision.”
SUPE has worked with other student activists to organize the event EmpowerED: Los Angeles Student Power 2014 on March 29. The meeting claims to be “the first education conference led by students, for students,” drawing student organizers from Chicago, Newark, Portland, Providence, and Baltimore to “work with the student organizers in workshops to build organizing skills, discuss their ideas for education, and collaborate on developing a student power movement in their community.”
This spreading network of activist, organizers, and advocates is accompanied by teacher union activism that pushes the needs of students to the fore.
New Form Of Union Activism Emerges
Along with the grassroots direct action ramping up, a new form of union activism is connecting teachers’ labor grievances to their students’ learning conditions.
Earlier this month, when teachers in Portland, Oregon threatened to strike they made students learning conditions – particularly class sizes – a focal point of their grievances. District administration conceded to “hire 150 teachers to reduce class sizes and teacher workloads,” fewer than the 170 new positions teachers requested, but vastly exceeded the 88 new teacher hires proposed by the district.
When teachers made class size a main rationale for the threatened strike, they drew widespread approval from students and parents in Portland.
Also this month, in St. Paul, Minnesota, when negotiations faltered and the union considered authorizing a strike, the teachers made clear their actions were not over salary and working conditions, but over the students’ learning conditions. Those conditions included, according to a local report, limits on class sizes, less instructional time devoted to testing, increased student-support personnel, and expanded slots in the district’s pre-k program. It’s clear from the report that students and parents vocalized strong support for the teachers’ demands.
When a deal was reached and terms were announced this week, teachers got most of what they wanted: limited class sizes, less time spent on testing, and more consideration of increased student support staff and expanded Pre-k.
Too often in recent times, teacher unions have been portrayed as motivated by the narrow self-interest of their members. But the strategies exemplified by teachers in Portland and St. Paul turned that perception on its head.
Voices Louder, Stakes Higher
A year ago, the nation was roiled by the widespread, unified backlash to top-down education mandates driven by corporate interests, private foundations, and promoters of a market-based philosophy for education. The protests had huge impacts on elections for mayor in New York City and school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
This year, the voices of dissent are louder and the stakes are far higher. More states are pausing education mandates and challenging the status quo of high-stakes testing. “Testing season begins soon in U.S. public schools … But this year is filled with tumult,” reports Lindsey Layton for The Washington Post.
State elections this year will determine the fate of three-dozen governors and more than 6,000 legislators. Education, always a more important issue in these local races, could make or break some political contests. No candidate can afford to ignore the new education populism.
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This article shows how a candidate runs as a progressive and then simply serves as a neo-liberal. Those who follow politics knew de Blasio was a Clinton neo-liberal embracing a few progressive bones to be electable. Indeed he was elected by a landslide showing what the citizens want. But, as with Obama, what we elect and what we get are now two different things as it is now OK to lie about platforms. IT IS GOOD THAT THE OUTPOURING OF VOTERS WAS PROGRESSIVE. WE SIMPLY NEED TO MAKE SURE OUR CANDIDATES ARE TOO! You need to look beyond the standard 'progressive issue of the day' that neo-liberals put out to appease the masses......like minimum wage increases.
Baltimore education reform is controlled by Bloomberg and Wall Street through Johns Hopkins and all of this current public schools building fund leverage has to do with exactly the same issues Diane speaks to in the article. The intent is to hand all of the remodeled schools over to charters having the public paying for the infrastructure for what will become private charter schools run by national chains. Same thing happening with the MTA privatization of public transportation.
Leveraging school reconstruction of one billion dollars at a time government budgets are strained from the massive corporate frauds of last decade still waiting for justice-----at a time when Wall Street is imploding the economy again-----is simply a plan to have these Wall Street contracts in place so at the time of collapse government default will hand all these schools over to the private investors protected against the crash by CDS....credit default swaps. HANDING OVER THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS AS THEY ARE FILLING THE SCHOOLS WITH CORPORATE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS CONTROLLING ALL POLICY IN THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS while parents are told this is what they want.
Remember, what is happening in NYC is happening in Baltimore. You see Cuomo as with O'Malley behind pushing these policies and by no coincidence----they are both running for President in 2016. NEO-LIBERALS GETTING THE PRESS!
DID YOU KNOW THAT BERNIE SANDERS IS AGAINST THIS PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IN FACT VERMONT HAS LITTLE OF THIS POLICY BEING IMPLEMENTED!
THAT IS CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM AS NOAM CHOMSKY SAYS!
Look for you education news at websites of groups fighting this reform!
Diane Ravitch's Blog: The Big Lie about Mayor Bill de Blasio and Charters
- Diane Ravitch's Blog
- Andrew Cuomo
- Bill de Blasio
- New York City
- Success Academy
- Charter Schools
- Politics
- Privatization
A co-location means that a charter, which is operated by a private board of directors, gets public space in a public school. The public school has to surrender “empty” rooms that were previously used for art, music, resource rooms for special education, and any other space that is not considered a classroom. The regular public schools–attended by 94% of all public school children, must be overcrowded to make room for the charters. Because the charters are heavily subsidized by private funding, they typically renovate the space (not good enough for them), and their students have the latest and best of everything. In New York City, the term “academic apartheid” is becoming a reality, in the very same building. In some co-located spaces, the children in the charters have separate entrances, to keep the others out of their space.
De Blasio had to decide what to do with so many co-locations. The city already has 183 charters.
He approved 39 of the 49. He turned down 9, and one is under review.
Let me say that again. He approved 39 of 49. That is hardly anti-charter. In fact, many public school parents are outraged that their schools will now be forced to give up space to a charter that operates under different ownership (private).
Of the 9 that were denied, three were destined for Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain called Success Academy.
But of the 39 that were approved, Eva won three.
Instead of celebrating the addition of three new charter schools to her growing chain (the largest in the city), Eva has gone on the warpath, claiming that de Blasio is anti-charter and wants to hurt the poor black and brown children she serves.
The media do not know that her schools do not serve the same demographic as the children in the public schools. She enrolls fewer children with special needs and fewer English language learners. Her schools have a high suspension and attrition rate.
Her logic seems to be that since she gets high test scores (note the above sentence as one does tend to get high scores by keeping out low-scoring students), she deserves to get whatever space she wants, rent-free.
By that logic, the city should give extra privileges to students with high scores, and should take away space and privileges and programs from those with low scores.
This makes no sense.
Public schools must serve all children, not just those who can get high scores on standardized tests. Public schools must serve children who don’t speak any English. They must serve children who have severe disabilities. They must serve those who have emotional and social problems. They must serve those who have all kinds of problems and who are unwilling or unable to walk in a straight line.
It is sad that Governor Andrew Cuomo threw his political weight on Eva Moskowitz’s side. As governor of the state, he is responsible for all children, not just the precious few in charter schools.
Everyone understands that the hedge fund managers and equity investors are supporting Eva’s fight against de Blasio. He has already annoyed them by saying he wants them to pay a slightly higher tax rate to fund universal pre-kindergarten. The charter school fight gives them a chance to strike back at him, while pretending “it’s all about the kids.” They would like nothing better than to take down New York City’s first progressive mayor in at least 20 years (some one say even longer).
De Blasio has not declared war on charters. He has made a judgment. Many public school parents are angry that he approved 39 out of 49 charter co-locations. Eva and the tabloids think she should have whatever she wants.
The question before the Mayor is whether he will continue to fund a dual school system–one sector able to choose the students it wants–and the other sector serving all. He is trying to have it both ways, and it doesn’t work. He gave the charter lobby almost everything it wanted, and they still came after him as if he had given them nothing at all.
This blog post, which first appeared on the Diane Ravitch's Blog (http://dianeravitch.net) website, has been shared by permission from the author.
Readers wishing to comment on the content are encouraged to do so via the link to the original post.
Find the original post here:
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For those wanting to know the goal of all of this privatization policy look to conservative and neo-liberal think tanks like Fordham Institute and Brookings Institution where all this policy is written. You see the goal is online K-12 which falls with the policy of ending teachers in the classroom and having education techs who just facilitate the classroom connection to these online lessons. Common Core works with this standardization and control of all information content as these few online instructors come to all schools across America.
None of this has to do with quality teachers......what is good for achievement......what is good for developing strong community and business leaders. It is about building the cheapest model to educate children for specific vocations with tracking determined by pre-K testing of children. Businesses will profit off of selling education data. IT IS ALL ABOUT PROFIT AND CORPORATE EXPANSION OF EDUCATION GLOBALLY.
FOR THOSE REPUBLICANS IN MARYLAND PRETENDING AS THOUGH THEY FEEL THEIR CONSERVATIVE VOTER'S PAIN......ALL OF THESE POLICIES ARE WRITTEN BY WALL STREET IN CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS. BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS THE SOURCE OF COMMON CORE AND RACE TO THE TOP.
So, to stop this we need to shake the neo-liberal bugs from the democratic party rug by running and voting for labor and justice!!!!!
NOTICE YOU WILL NOT HEAR CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR TALKING ON MARYLAND MEDIA ABOUT MY PLATFORM ISSUES. YOU WILL ONLY HEAR BROWN, GANSLER, AND MIZE
Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning
John E. Chubb Fordham Institute February 14, 2012
Michael K. Barbour March 22, 2012 Press Release → Media Citations →
This fifth and final paper in the Fordham Institute’s series examining digital learning policy is Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning. The purpose of this report is to outline the steps required to move the governance of K-12 online learning from the local district level to the less restrictive state level and to create a free market for corporate innovation in K-12 online learning. Unfortunately, the report is based on an unsupported premise that K-12 online learning will lead to increased student achievement. The body of research to date suggests that there is no learning advantage for virtual schools. Further, no evidence is presented that supports the wisdom or efficacy of centralizing governance at the state level or that moving to a market model is a superior, productive or economical practice. The recommendation that virtual schools should be funded at the same per-pupil amount as traditional public schools raises the question of profiteering, given Fordham’s claim that virtual schools operate more economically (a claim for which there is limited evidence). This report appears to be ideologically motivated and designed to open up the $600 billion market of K-12 education to for-profit corporations.
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