Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda

Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman has been doing research on the Center for American Progress, which the media views as the voice of the Democratic Party. This may be the most depressing thing you read today. It calls for a return to the principles of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Both failed. CAP wants to resuscitate the worst features of both. Maybe CAP can persuade Arne Duncan to return as Secretary of Education. Then the disaster would be complete.

And here we go with the new progressive agenda for schools.

Almost every week Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress (CAP) appears on television to opine about the presidential elections. Tanden is a former aide to Hillary Clinton. CAP is supposed to function as a think tank for Progressives, especially Democrats. On July 2, 2019, CAP published: A Quality Education for Every Child: A New Agenda for…

View original post 1,916 more words

Force and Flunk, Tougher Kindergarten Lead to Parental Dissatisfaction with Public Schools

by Nancy Bailey

When children aren’t reading according to the corporate time frame set by Jeb Bush and his ilk (non-educators who want to privatize public education), parents become dissatisfied, even angry with public school officials and teachers when their children fail. The goal of many corporations is to end public education. They want privatization. To do this, […]

Read more of this post

via Force and Flunk, Tougher Kindergarten Lead to Parental Dissatisfaction with Public Schools

Reforming California’s Dysfunctional Charter School Law

tultican

By T. Ultican 7/17/2019

Members of the California legislature have engaged in an internecine battle over charter schools. Even the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) has expressed concern over lawless cyber charters and filed the first known complaint with the California Department of Education over A3 Education and Valiant Prep which were recently charged with stealing a stunning $50 million. California State Sen. John Moorlach (R) is warning that 85% of school districts in California are running deficits. Governor Gavin Newsom has stated “rising charter school enrollments in some urban districts are having real impacts on those districts’ ability to provide essential support and services for their students.”

The drive to privatize schools in Oakland, San Diego and Los Angeles has been fueled by enormous sums of money spent on elections. Billionaires led by Eli Broad and Richard Riordan have successfully installed a former investment banker – a…

View original post 2,339 more words

America is Dead by John Pavlovitz

America is dead. Not the America that I idealized as a boy; not the glittering beacon of equality I imagined it to be through the vaseline-covered lenses of my maleness and straightness and whiteness; not the star-spangled stuff of towering billboards, celluloid dreams, and black and white movie reels—promising every human being open-armed welcome and […]

Read more of this post

Source: America is Dead

3rd Congressional candidate Lynn Afendoulis tours US Border Detention facilities, praises law enforcement officials who feel hurt by criticisms over treatment of detainees

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

US Congressional candidate, Lynn Afendoulis, who is running for the 3rd Congressional District, just came back from touring some of the US detention facilities in Texas, near the US/Mexican Border.

Afendoulis, who is currently serving as a State Representative in Michigan, had several posts on her Lynn Afendoulis for Congress Facebook page. One post has her in a picture in front of one of the detention facilities with two unidentified men. Here is what Afendoulis wrote, with the accompanying photo:

I’m touring intake and detention facilities in El Paso, Texas today. No one drinks from toilets. That’s not even close to the truth and is a cruel representation of the work being done here by good, hardworking people. Shame on politicians who use these circumstances for their own political gain.

These comments are meant to contradict the well documented horrid conditions at border detention facilities and to criticize politicians like…

View original post 431 more words

Ohio Budget Sets Moratorium on New State Takeovers of School Districts, Fails to Resolve Lorain Crisis

janresseger

State budgets outline what sort of public investment is possible within the revenue constraints of any state government. They also outline the spending priorities of the majority.  Sometimes, despite laws that prohibit logrolling, they also contain a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with fiscal matters.

Ohio’s new biennial budget reflects a priority for tax cutting.  Ohio’s legislators—despite the 17 day extension required because even the huge Republican majorities in both chambers couldn’t agree on a lot of things—reached consensus that taxes should be further reduced instead of investing in services needed by the must vulnerable Ohioans.  For example, the Legislature did not raise basic formula funding for 3 school districts already designated in Academic Distress or for the ten additional public school districts teetering on the edge of that categorization.

The Ohio budget conference committee, mercifully, did not insert into the state budget the Senate Education Committee’s…

View original post 1,077 more words