GR Chamber endorsements for the 2018 Election: Pro-Business Candidates who get money from Grand Rapids Power Structure members

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

Over the past 48 hours, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce has sent out media advisories with their endorsements for candidates running in the 2018 Election.

On June 5, the GR Chamber formally endorsed Brian Calley for Governor. Their media advisory stated:

“Michigan’s economic growth and business climate transformation over the last eight years has been tremendous,” said Rick Baker, President & CEO of the Grand Rapids Chamber. “We must maintain this trajectory, and we believe Lieutenant Governor Calley is well positioned and qualified to continue the Michigan comeback.

Of course, there is nothing surprising about this endorsement, since the GR Chamber looks out for the interests of its members, which is the business community. However, this does affirm our analysis about the Grand Rapids Power Structure, in that the GR Chamber of Commerce supports policies and candidates that benefit those who already have tremendous economic power in our…

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Mike Rose: How “School Failure” Narrative of “A Nation at Risk” Has Undermined Public Schools

“1. Proficient on NAEP does not mean grade level performance. It’s significantly above that.
2. Using NAEP’s proficient level as a basis for education policy is a bad idea.”
Tom Loveless, senior fellow in Governance Studies and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. He authored 16 volumes of The Brown Center Report on American Education, an annual report analyzing important trends in education. A former sixth-grade teacher and Harvard policy professor, Loveless is an expert on student achievement, education policy, and reform in K-12 schools.

janresseger

I can’t bring myself to think of Naomi Klein in the same category as Mike Rose, one of my favorite education writers. They are important but very different writers.  There is one similarity, however.  In 2007, Klein responded to Hurricane Katrina and other natural catastrophes around the world with the publication of a blockbuster, thesis-driven social science analysis, The Shock Doctrine, in which she highlighted the swift takeover of New Orleans’ public schools after the hurricane as the very definition of her idea that a crisis from a natural disaster will often be grabbed as an opportunity by business interests looking for a profit. And this week, Rose explains in a new blog post, that his extraordinary book, Possible Lives, was his own response to a “shock doctrine” crisis created by the inflammatory language of the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk.

Klein explains “the shock doctrine”…

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