Fiscal Cliff Created by Republican Irresponsibility

This article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

 If your tax bill goes up $2,200 a year, or you're one of the millions who would stop receiving unemployment benefits, the cause of your economic pain is not some a natural disaster, or a major structural flaw in the economy. The cause is Republican fear of being beaten in a primary by people like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angel or Richard Mourdock - funded by far Right Wing oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers. It's that simple.

Most normal Americans will have very little patience with Republicans as they begin to realize that GOP Members of Congress are willing to risk throwing the country back into a recession because they are worried about being beaten in low turn out primaries by people who do a better job than they do appealing to the extreme right fringe of the American electorate - and to the far Right plutocrats that are all too willing to stoke right wing passion and anger.

Share My Lessons

www.sharemylesson.com Share My Lesson

Singapore's 21st-Century Teaching Strategies (Education Everywhere Series)

NAME Conference for teachers and communities

First Nations - Hunger Strike for justice

Chief Theresa Spence on 14th day of hunger
strike - Craig Brown, staff writer


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/24-1

The 'Idle No More' movement, a campaign of grassroots
First Nations protests, has spread like wildfire over
the past week in response to bills passed by the
conservative Canadian government.

First Nations protesters march towards Parliament Hill
during a demonstration as part of the spreading 'Idle
No More' movement in Ottawa, Canada, December 21,
2012. REUTERS/Chris Wattie Anger to the recently
passed C-45, the Harper government omnibus budget
bill, has fueled the growing movement.

Bil C-45 includes changes to the Canadian Indian Act
regarding how reserve lands are managed, making them
easier to develop and be taken away from the First
Nation people.

The bill also removes thousands of lakes and streams
from the list of federally protected bodies of water.

NRA position "irresponsible and dangerous" - Teachers' Union head

Two leading teachers unions came out strongly against a proposal Friday by the National Rifle Association to place armed police officers at the nation's schools.

The suggestion by Wayne LaPierre, the chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, came in an eagerly anticipated news conference that broke the organization's week-long silence since the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that took the lives of 26 people at the school.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," LaPierre said, in an appearance that many pundits quickly declared a disaster.

Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.5 million-member American Federation of Teachers, immediately called LaPierre's proposal "irresponsible and dangerous."

What schools need. ( hint. not armed police)

Greg Kaufmann on December 19, 2012 - 11:37 AM ET

A Broader, Bolder Christmas: Top Ten “Gifts” for Under the (Education Policy) Tree

Co-authored with Elaine Weiss

10. A Roof Over Every Student’s Head: Children who lack stable homes are more anxious and less focused than their peers who have adequate housing. They are also at higher risk for poor health and developmental problems, and have lower educational attainment. There is no reason why any child in the United States should not enjoy stable housing. Moreover, we end up paying more for children to sleep in cars or in shelters than we would to provide their families with apartments. It’s time to fund the National Housing Trust Fund that was signed into law by President George W. Bush but never funded.

9. School Breakfast and Lunch for All Eligible Students: Children who are hungry have difficulty concentrating and an impaired learning ability. The recession raised already unacceptable levels of child food insecurity to crisis levels. In Ohio, one in four children was at risk of going hungry in 2012. More than half of surveyed teachers told Share our Strength that they buy food to feed their hungry students. Eating school breakfasts is associated with increased math and reading scores, improved speed and memory in cognitive tests, stronger academic performance, and improved attendance and punctuality.  It’s time for schools to adopt policies like universal breakfast and breakfast in the classroom.

School alternatives to suspension.

New state law as of Jan.1, schools must seek alternatives to suspension.  One alternative is called Restorative Justice.
Teachers, administrators, FYI

What Does AB 1729 Do And How Does It Help Students?

1.     Sets out the legislature’s intent that alternatives to suspension and expulsion should be used and school exclusion should be avoided and recognizes that vulnerable student groups are receiving the brunt of all discipline removals in California!  This is important because it tells school districts who are using harsh and punitive out-of-school discipline and giving more punishments to students of color and others that state law does not support this and that they need to change their practices.  Here are a few things that the legislature said:

—  “The overuse of school suspension and expulsion undermines the public policy of this state and does not result in safer school environments or improved pupil behavior.”

—  “School suspension and expulsion are disproportionately imposed on pupils of color, pupils with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pupils, and other vulnerable pupil populations.”

—  “Research has found that nonpunitive classroom discipline . . . are more effective and efficient than suspension and expulsion for addressing the majority of pupil misconduct.”

—  “The public policy of this state is to provide effective interventions for pupils . . .  avoid exclusion from school.”

2.     Requires other means of correction be used and FAIL prior to “in-school suspension” in addition to “out-of-school suspension”.  This is important because we want to be sure that schools are working to teach students how to correct their behavior and re-integrate into the school community before they lose valuable instruction time.

The Teachers of Newtown

The Hero Teachers of Newtown

by Diane Ravitch

This much is clear: the teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook
Elementary School reacted with astonishing courage to the
unthinkable, the terrifying intrusion of a man intent on
murdering them and their students. With no thought of
their own safety, they defended their children..

Vicki  Soto.

Everyone of them is a hero, those who died and those who
survived.   Six of them died protecting the children.

We don't know the names of the survivors, but we know who made
the ultimate sacrifice. For their courage and selflessness,
they are heroes of American education.

The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and the school
psychologist, Mary Sherlach, 52, ran towards the intruder to
try to stop him. They both were killed.

The killer went in search of defenseless babies and teachers.
The teachers heard the gunfire, tried to hide their children,
hid them in closets and cabinets.

Vicki Soto, 27, put herself between the killer and her
children. He killed her. Somehow some of them escaped. Six ran
to a nearby house. They told the surprised homeowner,, "We
can't go back to our school. Our teacher is dead. We don't
have a teacher."

America's Teachers: Heroes or Greedy Moochers ?

America’s Teachers: Heroes or Greedy Moochers at the Public Trough?

by: 

Dave Lindorff

I’ll be brief here. Let’s just note that the heroic teachers who died while courageously trying to protect their kids at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and the others who survived but stayed to protect the kids, were all part of a school system where the employees are members of the American Federation of Teachers.

Let’s just let that sink in for a moment. Those teachers, who are routinely being accused by our politicians of being drones and selfish, incompetent money grubbers worried more about their pensions than about teaching our children (though most, even after 10 years, earn less than $55,000 a year for doing a very difficult job that involves at least 12-14 hours a day of work and prep time counting meetings with parents), stood their ground when confronted with a psychotic assailant armed with semi-automatic pistols and an automatic rifle, and protected their kids. The principal too, a veteran teacher herself, stood her ground, reportedly suicidally charging at the assailant along with the school’s psychologist in a doomed effort to tackle him and stop the carnage.

How many of us would have had to the courage to stand in front of a closet door to keep an armed madman from finding the kids hidden behind it, as one slain young teacher, Vicki Soto, died doing? How many of us would charge at an armed shooter, to almost certain death, in an effort top stop him from further killing? How many would bravely hide in a bathroom with a class of kids when we could have run away and saved ourselves?

And this: How many of the politicians in Washington and in state capitals and how many conservative think-tank “researchers” who attack teachers as leeches and drones would have shown such heroism under fire?

School to Prison Pipeline

Susan Feriss,

The so-called “school to prison pipeline” — which has been the subject of several Center for Public Integrity stories —was the focus of new attention on Capitol Hill Wednesday.  Sen. Dick Durbin presided over the first Congressional hearing on schools suspending students and sending them to juvenile-justice authorities for minor discipline problems.

“For many young people, our schools are increasingly a gateway to the criminal justice system,” Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and assistant majority leader, said in his introductory remarks. “This phenomenon is a consequence of a culture of ‘zero tolerance’ that is widespread in our schools and is depriving many children of their fundamental right to an education.”

Durbin said he hoped the hearing, archived here, would highlight the troubling consequences of sending  kids to court and placing them in the juvenile system for relatively minor reasons. He also called on speakers who testified that it’s possible to keep schools safe – and boost kids’ engagement in school – by cutting referrals to the justice system and instead employing counseling and innovative discipline methods.  

Explaining the Economic Crisis - Ed Asner

Tax the Rich. Ed Asner. 

Compelling description of real school reform

Working Within Constraints to Transform Schools

by Pedro Noguera

Public schools, especially those that serve a disproportionate percentage of low-income students of color, are confronted by a number of constraints that make the job of educating children, well, difficult. These constraints include, but are not limited to:

•                The political—particularly those created by the NCLB related to the inappropriate and excessive reliance on high-stakes assessments to judge students, teachers, and schools. This often leads to a narrowing of the focus of the curriculum, and a narrow focus on achievement without sufficient attention to academic performance and child development;

•                The economic—caused by the shortage of resources (especially in poor communities) that compel schools to do more with less. The financial pressures experienced by low-income families also make it difficult for them to provide the support children need; and

•                The social—which might include everything from concerns about safety, nutrition, health, crime, drugs, and a lack of parental guidance and support.

I describe these as constraints because I reject the "no excuses" position typically offered by the group I called the naïve optimists.

California budget spends less on education

by Laura Rosenhall

California budget spends less than U.S. average on education

Education may be the largest single segment of California's budget, but the state proportionately spends less of its money on elementary and high schools and colleges than the national average, according to a new Census Bureau report.

The statistic is gleaned from the bureau's annual report on state government finances, the latest of which covers 2011.

The report tallies California's "general expenditures" last year at just under $225 billion -- spending from both the state's own taxes and other resources as well as $64.5 billion in federal funds. Education is almost $75 billion of that, according to the report -- or exactly one-third, somewhat below the national average of 35.8 percent.

California's level of education spending in 2011 was fractionally lower than in 2010. Other states ranged from a high of 46.6 percent in Georgia to a low of 24.9 percent in Alaska.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/#storylink=cpy

Defending Teachers and Teaching: Standardized Testing Cons | California Progress Report

Defending Teachers and Teaching: Standardized Testing Cons | California Progress Report

WalMart Schools and Kevin Johnson

WalMart schools in Sacramento

A fine by the California Fair Political Practices Committee (FFPC) against Mayor Kevin Johnson revealed that the Mayor has received  $500,000 dollars from the Walton Family – the owners of WalMart- for his advocacy through the organization StandUP. 

The money did not go to the public schools but to advocacy for specific positions. Mayor Johnson has a number of well known positions on “school reform” starting with his initial role in privatizing Sacramento High School as a charter.   He serves as Chair of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Education Reform Task Force.

Applying the WalMart perspective to schools would privatize  the public institutions.  WalMart is notoriously anti union and exploits its workers for the family’s own gains.  Low wages; pushing wage scales down: few benefits; passing  costs such as  adequate food and health care of workers off to the public programs; and an authoritarian even totalitarian management environment  are mainstays of WalMart stores.  I don’t think they will be able to import the teachers from China, but they will be able to cut wages, benefits, and job security. See http://forrespect.org.

One way you could improve schools would be to adequately fund them, however during the recent vital election to  fund the schools through California Prop. 30, Mayor Johnson and his wife Michelle Rhee were occupied in campaign events in other states. http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/11/what-was-kevin-johnson-doing-during.html

Kevin Johnson’s approach to school change is consistent with the anti teacher  efforts of Democrats for Educational Reform (see prior posts). Also see https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/

Foundations and school reform

One of the things the right wing does is keep organizing.  While we rest and recover from an election such as California Prop. 30, they are off on their next campaign.  They do this by having hundreds of advocates. So that while some recover, others launch their next campaign.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education’s annual conference was held  Nov 26-27   in Washington, D.C. The agenda hits most of the main policies former Gov. Jeb Bush has supported: How to make teachers more effective; school district accountability; charter school accountability; the parent trigger and funding; and what to expect from new Common Core assessments.

The agenda of the agenda of the right and of the Obama administration has focused on Common Core Standards.  To date there has been no evidence that common standards actually change what happens in classrooms.  This is the kind of reform that the well funded foundations like because they can go out and advocate and raise funds without having to get their hands dirty by talking with teachers, students or parents.

Major donors such as the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and others  are increasingly driving education agendas and that influence just continues to grow. These foundations  have no public accountability, but they  been successful in capturing the policy agenda from local school boards, state legislatures, in the press  and  in Congress  despite their lack of evidence of  success.

BMED Graduate - Principal puts struggling school on new path

dlambert@sacbee.com

PUBLISHED SUNDAY, DEC. 02, 2012

This is the third in an occasional series on principals who are turning around local schools.

Maria Lewis spends much of her day on bent knee. The 44-year-old principal bends down to give direction to bigger kids and to soothe the smallest. But mostly she bends down to listen.

It's clear that kids come first on the T.L. Whitehead Elementary campus in Woodland.

"Every child can learn," Lewis said. "They may be lacking some skills. So what? Let's try to build on prior knowledge."

She must be right. The school's Academic Performance Index has grown from 704 to 793 in the two years since she took the reins of the school. On a scale of 200 to 1,000, the statewide benchmark is 800 for each school.

The increase was enough to make Whitehead Elementary the only traditional school in the four-county region to come out of program improvement this year, a designation Title 1 schools receive if state officials don't think they are improving their scores quickly enough.

"We are really proud" of Whitehead Elementary, Debra Calvin, an associate superintendent at Woodland Unified, told The Bee in October. "It's an incredibly difficult thing to do to pull a school out of Program Improvement."

Mrs. Lewis is a graduate of the Sac State BMED program. Like hundreds of other graduates she has done a great job.  The program has now been terminated.  For details see, The Chicano / Mexican American Digital History project. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/history-of-bilingual-education-dept-at-sac-state

read the entire piece on Mrs. Lewis at the Bee. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/02/v-print/5024345/principal-put-struggling-school.html

Post-election, Push for Changes in Education Policy | California Progress Report

Post-election, Push for Changes in Education Policy | California Progress Report

New drop out /graduation rates posted

The U.S. Department of Education released data on Monday  detailing state four-year high school graduation rates in 2010-11 – the first year for which all states used a common, rigorous measure. The varying methods formerly used by states to report graduation rates made comparisons between states unreliable, while the new, common metric can be used by states, districts and schools to promote greater accountability and to develop strategies that will reduce dropout rates and increase graduation rates in schools nationwide.

California graduation  rates are

American Indian, 68%; Asian Pacific Islander 89%; Black 63%; Latino 70%, White 85%, LEP ( Limited English)  60%.

The new, uniform rate calculation is not comparable in absolute terms to previously reported rates.

School Vouchers and Jeb Bush

One of the things the right wing does is keep organizing.  While we rest and recover from an election, they are off on their next campaign.  They do this by having hundreds of advocates. So, while some recover, others launch their next campaign.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education’s annual conference starting this morning in Washington, D.C.

The agenda hits most of the main policies former Gov. Jeb Bush has supported: How to make teachers more effective; school district accountability; charter school accountability; the parent trigger and funding; and what to expect from new Common Core assessments.

The conference also features a number of keynote speakers, including Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The full schedule is here. You can watch the keynote speeches online here.

C-SPAN is also streaming some of the conference online.

Obama Administration and Republican Right on school "reform", Vouchers, etc.

by Diane Ravitch,

If ever evidence was needed about the bizarre mind meld between the Obama administration and the far-right of the Republican party, here it is.

Secretary Arne Duncan is giving the keynote to Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Education summit in Washington, D.C. on November 28. Another keynote will be delivered to the same gathering of the leaders of the privatization movement by John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, who headed the Obama transition team in 2008. This is sickening.

Jeb Bush’s organization supports vouchers, charters, online virtual charters, and for-profit organizations that run schools. It also supports evaluating teachers by student test scores and eliminating collective bargaining. Jeb Bush believes in grading schools, grading teachers, grading students, closing schools, and letting everyone “escape” from public schools to privately-run establishments. The free market is his ideal of excellence, not public responsibility, not the public school as the anchor of the community, but privatization.

Here is the press release (Podesta’s keynote was announced earlier):

Arne Duncan to Give Keynote at the
2012 National Summit on Education Reform
WASHINGTON – The Foundation for Excellence in Education today announced U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will deliver a breakfast keynote address for the fifth annual Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform. This keynote will take place at the JW Marriott in Washington, DC, Nov. 28.

Prior to becoming the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan served as the chief executive officer of  Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country. Among his most significant accomplishments during his tenure as CEO, an all-time high of the district’s elementary school students met or exceeded state reading standards, and their math scores also reached a record high. At high schools, Chicago Public Schools students posted gains on the ACT at three times the rate of national gains and nearly twice that of the state’s. Also, the number of CPS high school students taking Advanced Placement courses tripled, and the number of students passing AP classes more than doubled.
Unfortunately, we have reached maximum capacity for the Summit, and registration is closed. However, you can enjoy this exciting event from the comfort of your own computer. All keynote speeches and general sessions will be streamed live at www.ExcelinEd.org/Everywhere, and all strategy sessions will be filmed and available after the event. Click here to view this year’s agenda.

Share My Lesson Plans

  

Share My Lesson: The Imperative Of Our Profession

Posted by Leo Casey on July 5, 2012. From Shanker Institute web site.

Leo Casey, UFT vice president for academic high schools, will succeed Eugenia Kemble as executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, effective this fall.

“You want me to teach this stuff, but I don’t have the stuff to teach.” So opens “Lost at Sea: New Teachers’ Experiences with Curriculum and Assessment,” a 2002 paper by Harvard University researchers about the plight of new teachers trying to learn the craft of teaching in the face of insubstantial curriculum frameworks and inadequate instructional materials.

David Kauffman, Susan Moore Johnson and colleagues interviewed a diverse collection of first- and second-year teachers in Massachusetts who reported that, despite state academic standards widely acknowledged to be some of the best in the country, they received “little or no guidance about what to teach or how to teach it. Left to their own devices they struggled day to day to prepare content and materials. The standards and accountability environment created a sense of urgency for these teachers but did not provide them with the support they needed.”

I found myself thinking about this recently when I realized that, with the advent of the Common Core State Standards, new teachers won’t be the only ones in this boat. Much of the country is on a fast-track toward implementation, but with little thought about how to provide teachers with the “stuff” – aligned professional development, curriculum frameworks, model lesson plans, quality student materials, formative assessments, and so on – that they will need to implement the standards well.

Many veteran educators will make do by stitching together tried and true lessons in new and different ways. Others will be scrambling to find quality materials with which to plug holes, as well as rethinking approaches to old content in order to meet new learning objectives. And many, as the article says, will be “lost at sea.”

Teaching Chicano/Latino history in schools

The Democracy and Education Institute has again submitted a proposal for support of efforts to update the California History Social Science Framework so that California students would study Chicano/Latino history as a part of their k-12 education.

https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project.

Explanation of why new legislation is needed.

https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/why-california-students-do-not-know-chicano-history

African American history and Women’s History ( White women) has been included since 1986. 

Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid- Bernie Sanders

We are not broke. We were robbed !

DSA is a part of the Coalition on Human Needs. ( See list at end of post).  We ask that each of you contact your Senators and Congress people to preserve essential  human needs from Republican budget cuts.   Sample letter below.  Do not allow the Corporate CEO's who are funding the Fix the Debt campaign to cut the budgets for poor and working people.

1. NO tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans.

2. NO benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare or

Medicaid.

SAVE for All

Strengthening America’s Values and Economy for All

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear (Representative or Senator):

Last year, organizations from across the country came together to endorse basic principles to address America’s short- and long-term economic and budgetary problems. These are the imperatives of Strengthening America’s Values and Economy (SAVE) for All: to protect low-income and vulnerable people; promote job creation to strengthen the economy; increase revenues from fair sources; and seek responsible savings by targeting wasteful spending in the Pentagon and in other areas that do not serve the public interest.

We call on you to follow these principles as you face budgetary decisions of immediate and long-lasting national consequence. To achieve sustained growth, fiscal stability, and economic security for all our people we must invest in job creation, ensure that job seekers have the opportunity to work, and protect vulnerable people from hardship. We cannot promote the common good by cutting more and more services and jobs. But we can meet our nation’s needs responsibly by ending tax reductions benefiting the wealthiest two percent and by seeking savings that do not compromise human or military security.

Putting the most vulnerable people at risk is the wrong response to our nation’s fiscal situation. Automatic cuts to domestic programs that are scheduled to take effect in January 2013 under the sequestration provisions of the Budget Control Act will inflict devastating harm. Estimated conservatively, a year of sequestration cuts1 will deny WIC nutrition aid to 750,000 mothers and young children, prevent more than 413,000 adults and youth from getting job training and deny education and training to more than 51,000 veterans, eliminate reading and math help to more than 1.8 million low-income public school children, deny child care to the low- to moderate-income families of 80,000 children, stop nearly 34,000 women from being screened for breast and cervical cancer, prevent nearly 27,000 infants and toddlers from benefiting from special education early intervention services, force 185,000 households to lose rental assistance vouchers, and stop 734,000 households from receiving home heating and cooling aid. These are only a few examples of the impact of the scheduled cuts. They threaten children’s healthy development, deny security to seniors, throw roadblocks in the way of a competitive labor force, and allow preventable disabilities to hold back our children.

These and other cuts have steep costs, among them hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, lagging productivity, and escalating medical expenditures in the years to come. Coming on top of cuts written into law through FY 2021 they will drop domestic and non-military international appropriations to their lowest levels in 50 years as a share of the economy. Allowing such a wholesale abandonment of investments in education, preventive health, housing, public infrastructure, and nutrition is an affront both to conscience and to common sense. We urge you to avert these sequestration cuts.

Crenshaw School Community (Los Angeles) fights for real school improvement

Crenshaw School Community Fights For Real Improvement and Against LAUSD Superintendent’s Scorched-Earth Approach

By:

Christina Lewis, Crenshaw High Special Education Teacher

Irvin Alvarado, Crenshaw High Alumni, Coalition for Educational Justice Organizer

Alex Caputo-Pearl, Crenshaw High Social Justice Lead Teacher, UTLA Board of Directors

Eunice Grigsby, Crenshaw High Parent, Crenshaw High Alumna

On October 23, LAUSD Superintendent Deasy announced he intends to reconstitute Crenshaw High School.  This scorched earth “reform” that is destructive for students, communities, and employees has been used at Fremont, Clinton, Manual Arts, and more in LAUSD, despite courageous push-backs at those schools.

The Crenshaw school community is determined to fight back.  The slogan that permeated the emergency 150-person Crenshaw Town Hall Meeting at the African-American Cultural Center on October 4 crystallizes the struggle -- “Keep Crenshaw: Our School, Our Children, Our Community.”

In an attempt to disarm the push back and win public support, Deasy is combining the reconstitution with a full-school magnet conversion.  Crenshaw stakeholders are, of course,  open to conversations about changes that will improve conditions and outcomes for our students -- but those must be collaborative, well-resourced, and must serve all students.  That said, it is clear that Deasy’s main objective is not magnet conversion – it is to take top-down control of the school and reconstitute (which means removing all faculty and staff from the school, with an “opportunity to re-apply”). 

The school community says NO to any form of reconstitution, and YES to school improvement that includes stakeholders and holds LAUSD accountable for its years of neglect and mismanagement. 

Teachers' Unions and School Reform - Diane Ravitch

How Teachers Unions Lead the Way to Better Schools

    Diane Ravitch upends the "bad teachers" narrative.

By Amy Dean

I have a concern: Teachers are getting pummeled. Too often,
they are being demonized in the media and blamed by
politicians for being the cause of bad schools. Right-wing
governors, power-hungry mayors and corporate "reformers" -
all ignoring root issues such as poverty and inequality -
have scapegoated the people who have devoted their lives to
educating our children. Moreover, these forces are seeking
to destroy the collective organizations formed by educators:
teachers unions.

The stakes for our country could not be more profound. The
labor movement and the public education system are two
critical institutions of American democracy. And they are
two that go hand in hand. Teachers unions have played a
critical role in advocating for public education, but you'd
never know it from mainstream media coverage. Therefore,
there is a great need to lift up this tradition and
highlight the efforts of teachers to collectively push for
top-notch public schools.

To figure out how we can push forward on this issue, I
talked with Diane Ravitch, one of the country's leading
education historians and public school advocates. A
professor at New York University, Ravitch is a former
Assistant Secretary of Education and the author of several
books, including 2010's The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing and Choice Are
Undermining Education.

What was Kevin Johnson doing during the recent election ?

In this case the News and Review covers what the Sacramento Bee ignores.

Speaking of that whole Waiting for ‘Superman’ cult: What was Sacramento’s first couple doing this election season while hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line for Sacramento schools? Roving the country, trying to screw up other people’s school systems, of course.

Michelle Rhee, patron saint of the teacher-bashing movement, has been using her Sacramento-based StudentsFirst organization—a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, of course—to funnel money into ballot measures in several states.

In Michigan, StudentsFirst funded anti-union groups trying to defeat a ballot measure that would put the right to organize unions for private and public employees into the state’s constitution. It’s a right that is recognized in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but apparently not one that Rhee thinks Michigan teachers (or any other workers) should have.

“I love teachers. Effective teachers,” she told members of the Michigan state Legislature while lobbying against the measure. By “effective” Rhee means teachers with high test scores: exactly the kind of evaluation system she instituted as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools before her boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, was unelected and Rhee had to follow. The same kind of system that Raymond was warning about in his critique of Race to the Top.

An Open Letter to President Obama on School Reform

From: Bill Ayers

Dear President Obama: Congratulations!

I’m sure this is a moment you want to savor, a time to take a deep breath, get some rest, hydrate, regain your balance, and take a long walk in the sunshine. It might be as well a good time to reflect, rethink, recharge, and perhaps reignite. I sincerely hope that it is, and I urge you to put education on your reflective agenda.

The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.

Whether inept or clueless or malevolent—who’s to say?—these titans have worked relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, promoting, and, when all else fails, spreading around massive amounts of cash to promote their particular brand of school change as common sense. You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.

A significant role for Democrats for Educational Reform

Democrats for Educational Reform.

Gloria Romero -- The former Senate leader  remains bitter from her loss in the Supt. of Public Instruction race two years ago. Formerly favored by labor, a member of CFA. Her harsh videos and ads against Prop 32 joined with others in the anti union effort. She actively campaigned for Prop.38, the anti teacher union effort on school funding.  Prop. 38 – the Munger Inititative- was qualified and funded substantially to take resources and votes away from the effort to fund education in Prop.30.  She lost.

Former California State Senator Gloria Romero is the State Director of Democrats for Education Reform. 

CFT On Prop. 30 Victory

CFT president Pechthalt on Prop 30 victory, Prop 32 defeat

November 7, Sacramento—CFT president Joshua Pechthalt issued the following statement this morning:  "Educators are overjoyed that Proposition 30 passed.  In standing up for public education and social services, a majority of Californians declared that we can turn the Golden State around.  The huge blizzard of deceptive and scary political advertising couldn’t obscure the reality that our schools are underfunded. "The people have spoken:  the best way to build a better education system is to properly fund it by asking those who can most afford it, the wealthy, to pay their fair share in taxes.  As a result, educators will be in a better position to help the students of the state achieve their dreams. "The decisive victory of Prop 30 reveals an important shift in California’s orientation.  For more than thirty years it has been common wisdom that “Californians don’t like taxes.”  No more.  Prop 30 shows voters once more understand what Oliver Wendell Holmes said a century ago:  “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.”  Prop 30 is a sign we can create a fair tax system to accomplish California’s priorities.

Victory for California's Students

 Voters Protect Schools, Pass Prop. 30, Defeat 32

Contact: Claudia Briggs at 916-296-4087 or Mike Myslinski, 408-921-5769

SACRAMENTO—California students and working families won a clear victory today as voters clearly demonstrated their willingness to invest in our public schools and colleges and also rejected a deceptive ballot measure aimed at silencing educators, other workers and their unions.

“Today’s vote signaled that Californians believe in the value of public education and investing in our students and schools,” said Dean E. Vogel, president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association. “They want to see funding restored to our schools and colleges. They want to stop the tuition hikes and class size increases. They want to see students have music, and art, and libraries and access to counselors and nurses. They want to see our schools flourish and our students succeed.”

Passage of Proposition 30 will stop $6 billion in midyear cuts to our schools and colleges. In addition, local communities will receive funding to keep police on the street and our state can begin to pay down the wall of debt it’s amassed over recent years.

Big win for schools as Prop 30 defies polls

Big win for schools as Prop 30 defies polls  Ed Source

Thank you.

Thank you.  Every vote was important.

Great victories in California.

We defeated the billionaires efforts to  crush organized labor and to continue the anti tax radicalism.

We defeated the anti labor proposition 32.

We passed Prop. 30, to fund schools, universities and social services.  The schools will be funded this year and next year.  This is a floor under austerity.   It raises taxes on the rich to pay for services.  It does raise income tax by ¼ of  percent – but 90% of the tax increases are on the rich . A tax of 1-3 % on those who make over $250,000 per year.

My own Congressional district is so close that it can not be called yet.