Calls for a State of Emergency in Grand Rapids elicits no response from City Officials

Members of the Latino/a community also spoke about being harassed by the GRPD and that they came to mostly stand in solidarity with their Black brothers and sisters in the struggle.

Other people addressed issues around the lack of response from City officials on these matters and were “shocked” that the city has taken no concrete action based upon the demands the community has made over the past 6 weeks.

Another speaker addressed the fact that the police department consumes a full third of the City’s budget and that instead of allowing the GRPD to use so much of the taxpayers money, it should instead be diverted to providing job opportunities and to fund many of the youth-based programs that many of the African American men who were in attendance, were involved in.

In the end the Mayor said that they heard people’s concerns and thanked them for speaking. However, no verbal commitment was made by city officials last night, which this writer finds unacceptable. How can you hear community member after community member address such crucial issues and collectively call for a State of Emergency and not make some sort of commitment to take action?

One thing that the Micah Center, LINC, the NAACP=GR and MOBB United is doing is hosting meetings to discuss the 12-point plan the city has been working on since the summer of 2015. The first meeting will be held at LINC on Tuesday, May 23 from 5:30 – 8pm in the LINC Gallery, 1167 Madison Ave. SE in Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

Last night about 40 people gathered outside of city hall for a Prayer Rally for Change. The Micah Center and mothers of the 5 Grand Rapids boys who were held at gunpoint by the GRPD organized the event as a way to respond to the recent examples of oppressive behavior from the police – holding 5 African American boys at gunpoint, the traffic study and the police shooting and killing an African American man.

The who spoke and offered up prayers were from the Black and Latino/a communities and was a moving display of solidarity between the two communities. One of the mothers who’s son was held at gunpoint by the GRPD on March 24, also spoke briefly and expressed disappointment and frustration at the lack of action being taken by city officials.

After the prayer rally, people were invited to attend the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting. The room…

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CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12

The slightly-cranky voice navigating the world of educational “reform” while trying to still pursue the mission of providing quality education.

Pearson May Quit US K-12

The world’s biggest 800 pound corporate education gorilla, Pearson, has announced that they’re considering the sale of their US K-12 digital and print curriculum business (the US Learning Services wing of the British-based giant).

We should have taken a virtual trip instead

The move comes at the end of yet another bad period for the previously unstoppable education-flavored mostrosity. The big feature of their latest meeting was supposed to be a showdown over a hefty raise (or “rise” as the Brits call them) in CEO John Fallon’s pay, which seemed a bit out of kilter after what has been called a “disastrous” profit warning and the company’s worst year on the stock market in fifty years.

How did they end up in such a mess? Last November the Wall Street Journal reported that Pearson had “bet big” on Common Core as well as failing to deliver on its digital teaching materials, despite Fallon’s gushing baloney about Pearson’s imminent awesomeness as recently as last May. But in January of this year, the word started going out that Pearson was a lousy investment.

The decision to cut loose the US curriculum business is not a small thing. Despite being a UK based biz, Pearson gets a reported 63% of its sales from the US.

Not that the education behemoth is backing quietly away. Last Friday they also announced “it has made a number of strides in its transition to digital products and services,” with a particular emphasis on post-secondary initiatives. Their online degree initiative announced a partnership with Duquesne University on top of their ongoing work with University of Nevada-Reno, Regis College, and Maryville University. Pearson proudly touts 300,000 online course starts.

Watch next year for the “next generation” of digital courseware “in development for full commercial launch” next year, including the IBM Watson cognitive tutor, which sounds… alarming. Plus a few other developments signalling that it’s college and university students who can expect to feel the sweet, sweet embrace of the Pearson profit-squeezing edu-machine.

Meanwhile, that US K-12 thing– that’s just a “strategic review” because of the “slow pace of digital adoption.” What will be getting Pearson’s K-12 attention in the US? Their cyber-school division (Connections Education) which is Pearson’s “fastest growing” business; no word in the news release on how Pearson plans to address the general crappiness of cyber-schools. Pearson also hopes to build on its leadership in school assessment, so look for that to drive some regulation as states work out their ESSA plans. And they still think that online learning has promise: “This market is still in its infancy but, in time, it will grow as schools finally realize the full digital potential of personalized learning.”

So Pearson’s dream of a “digital assessment renaissance” have not died. Of course, a year ago, they were announcing peaches and cream and wine and roses and the ensuing year was more skittle and beer and furballs and empty popsicle sticks. And in case you forgot, their Chief Education Advisor Michael Barber announced last November that he would be leaving the company sometime this year. He may or may not have steered policy a great corporate policy a great deal, but he was a master at stringing together pretty words about Pearson’s global digital aspirations.

So don’t count the ravenous corporate beats out just yet, and in the mean time, note that this is a signal about where corporate education thinks the next big profit centers will be– Common Core is out, and personalized digitized learning is in. Of course, they were totally wrong about Common Core before; let’s hope they’re about to be totally wrong again.

Posted by Peter Greene at Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Source: CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12