In States Which Like Gun Violence, They Also Like Trump.

The map below appeared on the Gallup website at the end of July when Trump’s national job ratings were about where they are right now; i.e., pretty damn bad. But the point of this map was to demonstrate that the Whiner-in-Chief still had significant support in most of the really red states. The darker the state, the higher Trump’s support.

Map 1

            And this map, when all is said and done, isn’t terribly different from how the electoral map played out on November 8, 2016, because even in the ‘swing’ states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan whose shift from blue to red put Trump out in front, his support is still much greater than in the blue corridors on each coast. In other words, as long as the popular vote doesn’t determine who sits in the Oval office, right now (I hate to say it) looking towards 2020, the…

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Trump’s War on Science

Diane Ravitch's blog

We need science more than ever, as our world is rocked by natural and people-made disasters.

Yet two words are banned the Trump administration: climate change.

Read the editorial that appeared in today’s’ New York Times.

The government is controlled by men (mostly) who are contemptuous of science and knowledge. Maybe this explains their war on education. They have reached the top without brains, why pay to develop them in young children?

The Times’ editorial reads:

“The news was hard to digest until one realized it was part of a much larger and increasingly disturbing pattern in the Trump administration. On Aug. 18, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine received an order from the Interior Department that it stop work on what seemed a useful and overdue study of the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining.

“The $1 million study had been requested by two West Virginia health…

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Moms Not Welcome.

Is the Purpose of Public Education No Longer Self-Evident?

Excellent post!

janresseger

Here are words from the beginning of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”

Busy working, maintaining house and yard, swimming in an ocean of information in our media-driven, consumer society, most of us aren’t, perhaps, likely to spend a lot of time considering these principles, but it would certainly be wonderful if the officials we have chosen as our leaders were to demonstrate that, for them, at least, these truths are self-evident.

After all, we’ve spent two and a half centuries making some progress by ensuring that our laws protect more than just the rights of men. And we have defined more precisely the meaning of “life, liberty…

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Making Sense of the Student Debt Crisis: Education Reform is Robbing Us Blind and Helping No One

Making Sense of the Student Debt Crisis: Education Reform is Robbing Us Blind and Helping No One
by seattleducation2010
It’s not just the tech industries, the testing and text book industries and the data crunchers and education reform managers and cheerleaders and edu-investors making billions of dollars. The U.S. student debt market is growing whereby student debt is packaged and sold to investors, like the mortgage backed securities that landed us into the […]

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Seattle Education

It’s not just the tech industries, the testing and text book industries and the data crunchers and education reform managers and cheerleaders and edu-investors making billions of dollars. The U.S. student debt market is growing whereby student debt is packaged and sold to investors, like the mortgage backed securities that landed us into the 2009 financial crisis were. These investments are known as SLABS – Student Loan Asset Backed Securities. Sallie Mae is the biggest private provider of student loans AND they also sell SLABS, a $200 billion market.

Since 1983, the United States has supposedly been a Nation at Risk when a report (A Nation at Risk) was written comparing our students’ performance on international tests to the performance of students in other countries. In this report we were warned that we would fall behind economically if we couldn’t better prepare young people for the future…

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Walking and Writing Toward Wisdom

Live to Write - Write to Live

WRITING

My colleagues here have written eloquently about the value of journaling. Lisa describes journaling as A Method for Creative Discoveries, and Jamie lists 10 Ways Journaling Makes You a Better Writer.

Like both of them, I’ve been journaling since I was quite young. As an only girl in a household of boys, writing was sometimes the only way I could make myself heard. It’s still sometimes the only way I can hear myself.

WALKING

But now that I’m a professional writer, I sometimes need a break from my desk; that’s when I walk.

Walking is a lot like journaling. Instead of unspooling my thoughts in ink, I hike over the uneven terrain of my mental uncertainty. Before long, my footsteps shake my ideas into place, and I return to my desk with mental clarity.

Sometimes, it’s emotional upset that blocks the words, and walking helps calm me. Being…

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Dear Teachers, Don’t Be Good Soldiers for the EdTech Industry

Dear fellow teachers,

Thank you for coming to this meeting on such short notice.

I know you have plenty more important matters to attend to this morning. I, myself, left a pile of ungraded papers on my desk so I could get here. Not to mention I urgently need to fix my seating charts now that I’ve finally met my students and know who can sit with whom.

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Source: Dear Teachers, Don’t Be Good Soldiers for the EdTech Industry

MLive, Betsy DeVos and White Savior Politics

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

Last Wednesday, MLive ran an article that was based on a segment in a recent NPR edition of This American Life, entitled Vouching Toward Bethlehem.

The headline of the MLive article reads: Betsy DeVos’ history volunteering in Grand Rapids school featured on This American Life. One question to ask ourselves is, why did the MLive reporter use this particular headline? There were numerous themes within the 30 minute NPR piece. Producer Susan Burton talks a bit about the history of Betsy DeVos and school policies around Charter Schools and School Vouchers. The NPR segment also discussed the function and role that Kids Hope USA played in Betsy DeVos deciding to become a volunteer within the Grand Rapids Public Schools.

Kids Hope USA was created to provide an opportunity for Christians to “live out their faith. The mission statement of the group says, “KHUSA offers churches and schools…

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