Bayh is back — with a bulging war chest | from the OpenSecrets Blog

When former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) retired from politics at the end of 2010, more than $10 million sat in his campaign account. Now, after five years of work as a partner in a lobbying firm and an adviser for a private equity group, Bayh is mounting a bid to return to the Senate. News that he planned to run began spreading Monday, and Bayh made it official with an announcement Wednesday morning. And that $10 million? Almost all of it is available … read more: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/bayh-is-back-with-a-bulging-war-chest/

 

One “Dinner with Donald” contest leads to another — and one for Hillary, too | OpenSecrets Blog

One PAC offering a dinner with Donald Trump has risen from the dirty dishes of another — and spawned a Hillary Clinton copycat in its wake. American Horizons has spent the past month advertising a contest for two individuals to win a dinner with Trump, including a flight and hotel stay. But while the organization, which is a hybrid of a conventional PAC and a super PAC, wasn’t … read more: One “Dinner with Donald” contest leads to another — and one for Hillary, too | OpenSecrets Blog

Pence’s pay-to-play problem | from the OpenSecrets Blog

When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, he dealt a potentially serious blow to his fundraising prospects, lawyers are saying. Pence is a sitting governor. That means contributions to the ticket will be limited by the SEC’s 2010 pay to play rule, also known as Rule 206(4)-5 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended. The rule prevents “SEC registered investment advisers” from … read more: Pence’s pay-to-play problem | OpenSecrets Blog

Clinton and Wall Street: What’s the deal, really? | from the OpenSecrets Blog

In May, Wall Streeters donated more than any other industry to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and pro-Clinton super PACs – nearly $4.45 million out of her total $314 million raised. Retired people and the printing & publishing industry took the Nos. 2 and 3 spots.

This news tracks with one of the major critiques of Clinton: that she’s been bought and paid for by Wall Street bankers. Clinton’s election, this storyline goes, could result in greater access for financial powerbrokers and a field day for the industry — and what’s good for Wall Street often is not good for Main Street.

The pattern is a repetition of what we’ve seen throughout Clinton’s campaign: The securities & investment industry (our term for what most think of as Wall Street), leads in overall donations to the Clinton effort, according to our numbers. Citing that same data, CNBC said recently that Clinton has had a “love affair” with Wall Street. Her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), has accused Hillary Clinton of being “funded by Wall Street.”

Click here to read the full article: Clinton and Wall Street: What’s the deal, really? | OpenSecrets Blog

Small Classes Narrow Achievement Gaps: William Mathis Presents the Research

Small Classes Narrow Achievement Gaps: William Mathis Presents the Research

Posted on July 8, 2016 by janresseger
For two decades the promoters of public school accountability have been preaching a doctrine that demands better outcomes as measured in students’ test scores. These accountability hawks leave any consideration of resource inputs out of the conversation and profess that an excellent teacher can raise achievement by holding higher expectations in spite of adverse circumstances.

In a short, readable brief from the National Education Policy Center, The Effectiveness of Class Size Reduction, William Mathis summarizes decades’ of research on class size to demonstrate the truth of what parents intuitively know: small classes help children. Mathis reminds us that the school “reformers” who have pretended class size doesn’t matter may have found such an argument convenient because hiring enough teachers to staff very small classes is expensive: “Teacher pay and benefits are the largest single school expenditure, representing 80% of the nation’s school budgets. Thus, small class size is a costly, important, contentious and perennial issue.” Mathis rejects the conclusions of Erik Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, the primary critic of reducing class size, who claimed—in a meta-analysis of the research literature—that class size reduction is ineffective for improving students’ achievement. Hanushek’s analysis, explains Mathis, has been widely “criticized on methodological grounds in that he gave more weight to studies that showed no impact from lowering class size, while also treating weak studies as equivalent to those that were experimental and/or of much higher quality.”

janresseger

For two decades the promoters of public school accountability have been preaching a doctrine that demands better outcomes as measured in students’ test scores.  These accountability hawks leave any consideration of resource inputs out of the conversation and profess that an excellent teacher can raise achievement by holding higher expectations in spite of adverse circumstances.

In a short, readable brief from the National Education Policy Center, The Effectiveness of Class Size Reduction, William Mathis summarizes decades’ of research on class size to demonstrate the truth of what parents intuitively know: small classes help children.  Mathis reminds us that the school “reformers” who have pretended class size doesn’t matter may have found such an argument convenient because hiring enough teachers to staff very small classes is expensive: “Teacher pay and benefits are the largest single school expenditure, representing 80% of the nation’s school budgets.  Thus, small class size is a…

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My Public Education Platform

My Public Education Platform

Posted on July 5, 2016 by janresseger
The two major political parties are drafting their platforms. Here is my platform, based on the ideas I believe our society has forgotten after fifteen years of test-and-punish accountability. I believe we have been traveling down the wrong road for such a long time that we have lost our way.

janresseger

The two major political parties are drafting their platforms.  Here is my platform, based on the ideas I believe our society has forgotten after fifteen years of test-and-punish accountability.   I believe we have been traveling down the wrong road for such a long time that we have lost our way.

Introduction    A comprehensive system of public education, that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public, is central to the common good. Historically it has been the role of the 50 states to establish and implement a fair system of funding and regulating public education; of local school districts to share the responsibility for funding and to administer the schools in their localities; and of the federal government to protect the civil rights of our nation’s children by ensuring that schools serve all groups of children—children of every race, ethnicity…

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Please Be Kind

Tonight opens the Republican Convention in Cleveland… The agenda for the convention is as follows…

Before you read through this, I would like you to keep something in mind I once saw on Mom blog somewhere deep back in my past….

It described an elementary school concert….

It described the wincing over sour notes, awkward silences, and unplayed stanzas…. it describes the torture taking place inside, as you felt embarrassment over all the miscues. It described the cacophony of instruments almost going off on their own.

Then at some point you realize: these musicians are only 8 years old… they don’t know how bad they are, they are just learning everything about music and bravely, they are attempting their first concert in public…

At that realization, one relaxes. Realizing it wasn’t supposed to be something worthy of recording but was instead, something far greater; we were seeing the unadulterated love of music or more so, the seeds to a future love of music being sown… And then, sitting back , the wincing stopped, and you could capture their spirit, and actually begin to enjoy the music…….

I was reminded of that while reading the below agenda for the next 4 days… These are amateurs we will be watching. It will be their first time pulling something like this off and of course there will be miscues. But look instead at the spirit of America, the spirit of politics, and realized there is something uniquely American in our political process that drives us forward, even as amateurs. It is driven by a love of country… Those are trying their best up there…Bashing them for any mistakes is like bashing an 8 year old for playing his violin….

Enjoy the mistakes; but realize they are just learning and don’t drag their miscues through the dirt as they go onward.. Like little children, they are doing the best they can and it is not easy to run a convention without any experience…..

I will hereby turn you over to their concert program:

kavips

Tonight opens the Republican Convention in Cleveland… The agenda for the convention is as follows…

Before you read through this, I would like you to keep something in mind I once saw on Mom blog somewhere deep back in my past….

It described an elementary school concert….

It described the wincing over sour notes, awkward silences, and unplayed stanzas…. it describes the torture taking place inside, as you felt embarrassment over all the miscues. It described the cacophony of instruments almost going off on their own.

Then at some point you realize:  these musicians are only 8 years old… they don’t know how bad they are, they are just learning everything about music and bravely, they are attempting their first concert in public…

At that realization, one relaxes.  Realizing it wasn’t supposed to be something worthy of recording but was instead, something far greater;  we were seeing the unadulterated love of music or more…

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How Hillary Can Win

But will she?

kavips

By announcing that she will write off ALL student loan debt.  Student debt was a big factor behind Bernie’s ascension.  Much of his money came as a result of those donating who looked to him to solve their financial nightmare they inherited after finishing 4 years of college…

Hillary can capitalize on that and bring in those youth still suspicious of her past motives. But she should add the punch line,”but if there is anything we learned from Obama’s 8 years,  it will take an entire Democratic Congress for me to accomplish that…”

And if she were to do this, she really wouldn’t have to do anything else during her tenure to address current inequality, since this one issue would be enough to right all wrongs..

Write off $1 trillion and let that money get spent in our economy instead of being sucked out.

In one fell swoop, it would transfer future…

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Baton Rouge II: One More Reason To Ban Guns

Let me explain the rational behind actively banning all guns…. If you say nothing and the gun owners scream 2nd Amendment rights, nothing will change; guns stay the same… And the exact opposite would occur if you scream BAN ALL GUNS and the NRA stays silent, which is why gun laws do get passed in crime ridden inner cities….So what has to happen is that you work to ban all guns, yet are willing to accept any compromise that allows some to remain safely in hands of people who will never use them in anger… If it appears that having guns banned is really about to happen, the NRA will modify their stance into a compromising position, instead of losing the right for anyone to own a gun forever.

We will have success, in fact both sides will win… But that achievement can ONLY happen if political pressure far great than the NRA’s, lines up to BAN ALL GUNS…..

Saying you want all guns banned is not really to ban all guns….. but to make the NRA believe it is about to happen so they un-harden their hearts and compromise….

On one hand you proclaim noisily that you want to ban all guns, and with the other you craft legislation that compromises your principles and allows some guns, but puts restrictions strong enough to keep guns out of the hands of all but the most trustworthy of collectors…

Instead of posting on social media you stand with the blue, like and share, you should be protecting the blue from being shot by posting you are against all guns… Get it? ALL GUNS…. (but really you aren’t: wink, wink)…”

kavips

Why is this happening I hear as the news is announced.  Social Media explodes with “what is this world coming to…”

The answer is that the world is no different than it ever was… Except that today, it is just awash in guns thanks to the NRA….

The NRA’s campaign of madness drove everyone to buy a gun. Whether mentally stable or not…they now have guns and are itching to use them… Seeing a cop kill someone needlessly on YouTube, is a good reason as any….

Extreme passions will always exist.  But the caliber of weapons in their hands, don’t have to.. WE chose to allow that, and now, finally, it is our policemen who are dying for it…

Ban guns like Australia, and let’s fight with bows and arrows instead… Though crimes of passion may remain, our death toll will go down and that is what we all want..

Right now…

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Jersey Jazzman: What We DON’T KNOW about Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen Network

Diane Ravitch's blog

Jersey Jazzman has pulled together many of the questions that have been raised about the Gulen network of charter schools.

We know that there are many of them, at least 160. That makes it the second largest chain in the nation, behind KIPP.

We know that Gulen charter schools typically deny that they are part of the Gulen network, even though their board is composed primarily of Turkish men, and many if not most of their staff is Turkish.

We know that they operate in many states under different names. In California, they are the Magnolia Science Academy charter schools. In Arkansas, they are LISA Academies. In Indiana, they are the Indiana Math & Science Academies. In Nevada, they are CORAL Academies of Math & Science. In Ohio, they are the Horizon Science Academies, also the Noble Academies. In Texas, they are the Horizon Science Academies. In these and other…

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