All Entries Tagged With: "education"

Michigan Democrats Unveil Plan To Finance Free College Tuition By Eliminating Corporate Tax Credits

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) spent his first year in office trading in the welfare of thousands of vulnerable Michiganders in order to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Hoping to refocus priorities in 2012, the state’s Senate Democrats have released a new plan that puts Michigan students ahead of wealthy corporations.

Under the Michigan 2020 Plan, Michigan’s high school graduates will be eligible for free tuition at one of Michigan’s community colleges or universities, where the median tuition level is currently around $9,575 per year. The program will be funded entirely by eliminating $3.5 billion in tax credits and loopholes and putting that money towards students:

“Study after study after study has emphasized the importance of a highly educated workforce in the economic vitality of any state in the 21st century,” said Senate Democratic leader Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing.

Full Story Here: Michigan Democrats Unveil Plan To Finance Free College Tuition By Eliminating Corporate Tax Credits | ThinkProgress.

Forced Military Testing in America’s Schools

The invasion of student privacy associated with military testing in U.S. high schools has been well documented by mainstream media sources, like USA Today and NPR Radio. The practice of mandatory testing, however, continues largely unnoticed.

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB is the military’s entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is also used as a recruiting tool in 12,000 high schools across the country. The 3 hour test is used by military recruiting services to gain sensitive, personal information on more than 660,000 high school students across the country every year, the vast majority of whom are under the age of 18. Students typically are given the test at school without parental knowledge or consent. The school-based ASVAB Career Exploration Program is among the military’s most effective recruiting tools.

In roughly 11,000 high schools where the ASVAB is administered, students are strongly encouraged to take the test for its alleged value as a career exploration tool, but in more than 1,000 schools, according to information received from the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command through a Freedom of Information Act request, tens of thousands of students are required to take it. It is a particularly egregious violation of civil liberties that has been going on almost entirely unnoticed since the late 1960′s.

Full Story Here: Forced Military Testing in America’s Schools | Common Dreams.

11 States Seek Relief From ‘No Child’ Provisions, in Return for Raising Standards

Eleven states applied for waivers exempting them from key provisions of the No Child Left Behind law by the federal government’s first deadline, promising in return to adopt higher standards and carry out other elements of the Obama administration’s school improvement agenda, the Department of Education said on Tuesday.

Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee asked the department for relief from some No Child provisions, including the requirement that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014. In their applications, the states outlined plans to develop their own locally designed school accountability systems, create new educator-evaluation systems and overhaul their lowest-performing schools, the department said.

President Obama said in announcing the waiver program in September that it was necessary because many states had already adopted new common academic standards and were taking other steps that were in conflict with the requirements of the 2002 No Child law. Since Congress had made little progress in rewriting the law, Mr. Obama said, his administration felt obligated to offer states relief.

Full Story Here: 11 States Seek Relief From ‘No Child’ Provisions, in Return for Raising Standards – NYTimes.com.

IQ Blackout: Why Did Studying Intelligence Become Taboo?

Somewhere along the way, the very idea of intelligence became politicized. An IQ blackout descended.

Scholars used to avidly study human intelligence. They measured cranial capacity. They administered IQ tests. They sought to define what intelligence was and who had more or less of it and why.

These days, not so much. Somewhere along the way, the very idea of intelligence became politicized. Its legitimacy as a field of study, as a measurable quality — on par with height, eyesight and hand-and-eye coordination — and as a concept came under fire. Talk of “brainpower” and “smarts” ebbed as scholars proposed “multiple intelligences” — such as musical, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal — rather than whatever had hitherto been called IQ. An IQ blackout has descended. When researchers talk about IQ at all, the big question is whether it’s inherited, and if so, how much. IQ now faces fierce competition from SQ and EQ, social and emotional intelligence, two burgeoning theories.

Why are our minds and their capabilities among the most taboo topics in 21st-century academia?

Full Story Here: IQ Blackout: Why Did Studying Intelligence Become Taboo? | Education | AlterNet.

“We are the 99 Percent”

This photo and story is not selected because this 29-year old woman’s story is one of the worst stories of suffering. She probably could have written “I am one of the lucky ones.” I have selected this because the ultimate conclusion she draws is reasonable: not selling your soul to the corporate state is likely to put you in debt.

I’m 29 years old. I went to a good state college and got lots of scholarships.

$30,000 in DEBT

I listened to my parents’ advice and followed the American Dream to a Top-5 law school. I got a FULL TUITION SCHOLARSHIP but still had to pay for rent in NYC, books, non-tuition school expenses, health insurance.

$100,000 in DEBT

I got SICK and had to have surgery to remove a tumor. I had health insurance through work – but it didn’t cover everything.

$120,000 in DEBT

I chose to work as a lawyer for the PEOPLE and not for the CORPORATIONS.

I WILL NEVER be OUT of DEBT.

I played by the rules and succeeded. Because I want to work to make the world a better place, I may never be able to buy a house, support children and pay off my debt.

This is not the future I want: I WANT CHANGE.

I AM the 99%

On the Tumblr site, she adds:

Full Story Here: “We are the 99 Percent” Photo of the Day | The Dissenter.

Video: Joel Klein Refuses To Say If There Is A Firewall Between Fox News And News Corp’s New K-12 Education Business

Last year, just as Republicans swept state legislatures across the country and became poised to implement an education privatization agenda, New York City school chancellor Joel Klein announced he was moving to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. As the New York Times reported, his move signaled News Corp.’s aggressive bid to enter the for-profit education business. The company even purchased a digital learning company called Wireless Generation to buttress its K-12 product line.

This worried some education advocates, who are concerned that the conservative politics of News Corp. will bleed into its education services. For instance, News Corp.’s Fox News subsidiary is well known for its revisionist history, smears campaigns against scientists, and ignorance of basic math.

So, at former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s education privatization conference, held today and yesterday in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, ThinkProgress approached Klein to ask if there are any internal firewalls between the executives at Fox News and News Corp’s education business.

Full Story Here: Video: Joel Klein Refuses To Say If There Is A Firewall Between Fox News And News Corp’s New K-12 Education Business | ThinkProgress.

Whatever happened to civics?

I’m a teacher. I don’t formally teach social studies, or political science, or history, or government. But in order for my students to understand what I do teach—cultural anthropology and women’s studies—they have to have a basic understanding of how political systems work—especially ours—and need to know the basics about legislation, politics, civil rights and social change and how they are affected by political and social systems.

They don’t.

I teach college students at a working class state university. My entry level classes have students who are fresh out of mostly public high schools. Last week, once again, as I do each semester, I faced the challenge of explaining not only why they should vote, but what that vote means to them, in real life terms, and how their activism, or lack of it, will affect their lives, now and in the future.

I’m in New York. Not one student could name both of our U.S. senators. Only one student could name their Congressperson. None had a clue about their state assembly persons or senators.

Full Story Here: Daily Kos: Whatever happened to civics?.

Rick Perry Pushes ALEC-Backed Education Policies To Turn Texas Universities Into Businesses

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), a potential presidential candidate, has been quietly pushing initiatives that would transform the state’s public university system into a business-style model driven by “efficiency and profitability,” The Washington Post reported today. The reforms Perry is seeking to implement are favored by one of his top campaign donors and the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an affiliate of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC is a conservative public policy organization that often drafts model legislation for use in state legislatures across the country, and Republicans in several states have used its model legislation directly.

Perry’s push to turn the university system into profit-driven business centers began in 2008 with a higher-education summit led by oilman Jeff Sandefer — a long-time Perry family friend, a consistent top contributor to his campaigns and a TPPF board member. The proposals, based on “Seven Breakthrough Solutions” offered by TPPF, including measuring professors as “profit or loss centers,” separating research and teachers budgets to avoid wasting time on “esoteric, unproductive research” and basing professor pay, in part, on anonymous student evaluations. Perry’s alma mater, in fact, has already begun implementing some of these policies, the Post reports:

Full Story Here: Rick Perry Pushes ALEC-Backed Education Policies To Turn Texas Universities Into Businesses | ThinkProgress.

Day 1: Thousands of Texas Teachers Losing Jobs

DAY 1: Thousands of Texas teachers will not have jobs to return to in the fall.

Just a month before the end of the school year, Bryan McClintock, a special education teacher with the Little Elm Independent School District, was told that his contract would not be renewed in the fall. McClintock had anticipated he might be laid off because he has only taught for two years. He saw the writing on the wall during the special legislative session, when lawmakers passed a school finance plan that cut $4 billion from districts statewide.

Though legislators encouraged administrators to keep as much money as possible in classrooms, the majority of public education dollars are spent on personnel — meaning job cuts can’t be avoided. During the legislative session, The Associated Press reported that up to 100,000 of the state’s 330,000 teachers might lose their positions. Officials at the Texas State Teachers Association estimate that about 12,000 teachers have lost their jobs so far, and they warn more teachers could be laid off in the second year of budget cuts. The Austin Independent School District has already given pink slips to nearly 500 employees.

Full Story Here: Day 1: Thousands of Texas Teachers Losing Jobs — Public Education | The Texas Tribune.

The Religious Right and GOP Escalate Battle to Destroy Public Schools

The push for vouchers is not about “education reform,” but part of a national drive to radically privatize education.

America’s public school system and the constitutional separation of church and state are under relentless assault.

In late April, the Indiana legislature approved House Bill 1003, a measure that broadly funds religious and other private schools. The multi-million-dollar program sets up a new school voucher scheme, expands a tax credit program and offers tax deductions for the costs of private education and homeschooling.

Gov. Mitch Daniels was a chief promoter of the package, and he clearly means to force taxpayers to fund religious education. He is the founder and driving force behind The Oaks Academy, a “Christ-centered” private school in Indianapolis. Daniels sometimes poses as a moderate, but his education plan is anything but.

Full Story Here: The Religious Right and GOP Escalate Battle to Destroy Public Schools | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet.

Education as Crime Prevention

It has become a truism among criminologists that there is an inverse correlation between education and crime: as the level of education increases the likelihood of committing crime decreases. One theory that helps explain this is known as “strain” theory.

This theory was originally articulated by sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1930s and has since become one of the most popular theories of crime. The basic thesis of strain theory is this: Crime stems from the lack of articulation or “fit” between two of the most basic components of society: culture and social structure. Here we refer to culture as consisting of (1) the main value and goal orientations of a society and (2) the institutionalized or legitimate means for attaining these goals. Social structure, as used here, consists of the basic social institutions of society, especially the economy, but also such institutions as the family, education, and politics, all of which are responsible for distributing access to the legitimate means for obtaining goals.

This “lack of fit” creates strain within individuals, who respond with various forms of deviance. People who find themselves at a disadvantage relative to legitimate economic activities are motivated to engage in illegitimate activities (perhaps because of unavailability of jobs, lack of job skills, education, and other factors). Within a capitalist society like the United States, the main emphasis is on success; there is less emphasis on the legitimate means to achieve that success. Moreover, success goals have become institutionalized—they are deeply embedded in the psyches of everyone. At the same time, the legitimate means are not as well defined or as strongly ingrained. In other words, there is a lot of discretion and a lot of tolerance for deviance from the means but not the goals. One result of such a system is high levels of crime, including white collar and corporate crime.

Full Story Here: Education as Crime Prevention | Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

REPORT: Meet The Billionaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools And Kill Public Education

A tight-knit group of right-wing millionaires and billionaires, bankers, industrialists, lobby shops, and hardcore ideologues has been plotting this war on public education, quietly setting up front group after front group to promote the idea that the only way to save public education is to destroy it — disguising their movement with the innocent-sounding moniker of “school choice.”

Two weeks ago, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) marked “a new era for education in Indiana” when he signed into law one of the most expansive school voucher laws in the country, opening up a huge fund of tax dollars for private schools. A few days later, the Wisconsin state Assembly vastly expanded school vouchers, freeing up tax dollars even for private religious schools. GOP legislators in the Pennsylvania Senate say they have the votes to pass a sweeping voucher bill of their own. And on Capitol Hill, House Republicans successfully revived Washington, D.C.’s voucher system after it was killed off two years ago.

This rapid expansion of voucher programs — which undermine and undercut public education by funnelling taxpayer money to private schools — is remarkable. After all, vouchers have been unpopular with the American public. Between 1966 and 2000, vouchers were put up for a vote in states 25 times, and voters rejected the program 24 of those times.

Yet if one looks behind the curtain — at the foundations, non-profits, Political Action Committees (PAC) — into the workings of the voucher movement, it’s apparent why it has gained strength in recent years. A tight-knit group of right-wing millionaires and billionaires, bankers, industrialists, lobby shops, and hardcore ideologues has been plotting this war on public education, quietly setting up front group after front group to promote the idea that the only way to save public education is to destroy it — disguising their movement with the innocent-sounding moniker of “school choice.”

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » REPORT: Meet The Billionaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools And Kill Public Education.

FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom

Charles Koch, the billionaire libertarian who has funded front-groups and lobbying efforts to expand his anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda under the guise of “free enterprise,” has now widened his reach into another key public policy area: academics. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation entered into an agreement with Florida State University in 2008 in which the foundation would provide millions of dollars in funds for the school’s economics department.

The funds were marked to add multiple faculty positions in the economics department. But the money came with multiple strings attached, including a demand that Koch have the ability to directly approve who ultimately filled the positions. As the St. Petersburg Times reports, the agreement is now raising questions across the board about academic freedom and integrity at public colleges and universities:

Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it’s not happy with the faculty’s choice or if the hires don’t meet “objectives” set by Koch during annual evaluations.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom.

OPS: The first openly Fascist College?

Can you pass an 8th grade civics test?

Only 20 percent of students who took last year’s NAEP were “proficient” in civics. See how you’d have done

“Responsible citizens of a constitutional democracy such as the United States should have adequate knowledge of the country’s principles and institutions, skills in applying this knowledge to civic life, and dispositions to protect individual rights and promote the common good.”

So begins the introduction to the summary report for 2010′s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which was released this morning. However, it turns out that, where civic knowledge is concerned, “the nation’s report card” does not actually look very encouraging. In fact, the average score for 8th graders on the NAEP was 151 out of 300 points — and only around 20 percent of students performed at or above the “proficient” level.

How well would you do if you took the test yourself? We’ve chosen 10 sample questions from the 8th-grade section of the NAEP’s website — some harder than others. Grab a pencil and get going! (Answers are below.)

Full Story Here: Can you pass an 8th grade civics test? – Education – Salon.com.

| Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech

Right-wing think tanks have determined that school vouchers are key to eradicating public education and Dick and Betsy DeVos lead the way in execution of the well-funded plan. The money is tracked in two extensive reports on Talk2action [1 and 2]. DeVos video excerpt below fold.

“We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,” Dick DeVos warned in a December 2002 speech at the Heritage Foundation. DeVos was introduced by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and then proposed a stealth strategy for promoting school vouchers in state legislatures. DeVos and his wife Betsy had already spent millions promoting voucher initiatives that were soundly rejected by voters. Pro-privatization think tanks had concluded that vouchers were the most politically viable way to “dismantle” public schools; the DeVoses persevered. Dick DeVos introduced his 2002 Heritage Foundation audience to a covert strategy to provide “rewards or consequences” to state legislators, learning from the activities of the Great Lake Education Project (GLEP) initiated by Betsy DeVos. Vouchers should be promoted by local “grass roots” entities and could not be “viewed as only a conservative idea.” DeVos added, “This has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible.”

Ten years later, the DeVos stealth strategy has been implemented and is winning the voucher war in several states. As recommended to the Heritage Foundation in 2002, the public face of the movement is bipartisan and grass roots, and millions of dollars are poured into media firms to reinforce that image. However, behind the scenes the movement continues to be led by the DeVoses, and the funding used to provide “rewards or consequences” for state legislators continues to be raised from a small group of mega-donors.

Full Story Here: | Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech.

Detroit sends layoff notices to all public teachers

The emergency manager appointed to put Detroit’s troubled public school system on a firmer financial footing said on Thursday he was sending layoff notices to all of the district’s 5,466 unionized employees.

In a statement posted on the website of Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb, the district’s temporary head, said notices were being sent to every member of the Detroit Federation of Teachers “in anticipation of a workforce reduction to match the district’s declining student enrollment.”

Bobb said nearly 250 administrators were receiving the notices, too.

Full Story Here: Detroit sends layoff notices to all public teachers | Reuters.

Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.” According to environmentalist Bill McKibben, unless we immediately begin to change course and dramatically reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we may “lose forever the basic architecture of our planet,” with unimaginable consequences.

How well are schools equipping our students to confront the climate emergency?

Unfortunately, major social studies and science textbooks are, at best, inadequate and often propagandistic. For example, the widely used Physical Science: Concepts in Action (Prentice Hall) fails to address global warming until page 782. The few paragraphs Physical Science offers seem designed more to sow doubt than to alert students to the urgency of the issue. The section begins: “Human activities may also change climate over time.” In bold face, as the key to the section, the text tells students: “One possible climate change is caused by the addition of carbon dioxide and certain other gases into the atmosphere.” Possible? This line could have been written by the coal industry. The section continues in language dripping with equivocation: “Carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other sources may contribute to global warming.”

Full Story Here: Editorial 25_03.

With New ‘Monkey Bill,’ Tennessee Takes Evolution Education Back To Scopes

Eighty six years after the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial opened Tennessee classrooms to the teaching of evolution, the state House is trying to slam the door shut again. Tennessee’s House Education Committee approved a bill Tuesday in the name of “academic freedom,” but in reality, it is a thinly veiled attempt to curtail the teaching of evolution. House Speaker Emeritus Jimmy Naifeh (D) has even taken to calling it “the monkey bill.” From the bill’s summary:

This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming.

Should this bill pass, Tennessee teachers will have official sanction to teach about evolutionary “controversies” that simply do not exist. Furthermore, it will allow teachers to teach pseudo-scientific ideas — such as creationism or intelligent design — as legitimate scientific theories comparable to evolution.

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » With New ‘Monkey Bill,’ Tennessee Takes Evolution Education Back To Scopes.

Detroit Schools Closing: Michigan Officials Order Robert Bobb To Shut Half The City’s Schools

State education officials have ordered the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools to immediately implement a plan that balances the district’s books by closing half its schools.

The Detroit News says the financial restructuring plan will increase high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidate operations.

State superintendent of public instruction Mike Flanagan says in a Feb. 8 letter that the state plans to install another financial manager who must continue to implement Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s plan after he leaves June 30. Flanagan’s said approval of Bobb’s plan means the district can’t declare bankruptcy.

Full Story Here: Detroit Schools Closing: Michigan Officials Order Robert Bobb To Shut Half The City’s Schools.

Obama to seek changes in Pell Grants

President Barack Obama’s budget plan would cut $100 billion from Pell Grants and other higher education programs over a decade through belt-tightening and use the savings to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550, an administration official said.

Nearly $90 billion of the projected savings would be achieved through two changes, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Monday’s release of Obama’s 2012 budget. The spending plan applies to the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Congress would have to approve both changes.

The first proposal would end the “year-round Pell” policy that let students collect two grants in a calendar year, with the second grant used for summer school. The official said the costs exceeded expectations and there was little evidence that students earn their degrees any faster.

Full Story Here: AP Source: Obama to seek changes in Pell Grants – Yahoo! News.

OPS: Obama, moving farther to the right

Oklahoma Lawmaker Sally Kern Proposes Bill That Forces Teachers To Question Evolution

State Rep. Sally Kern (R) has proposed the second anti-evolution bill this year in Oklahoma. Entitled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” the bill, which will be first considered next month, would require the state and local authorities to “assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies” and permit teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review” the scientific strengths and weaknesses of “existing theories.” But the only topics mentioned in the bill as contestable are “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

In an attempt to legitimize the bill, Kern said, “It’s a simple fact that the presentation of some issues in science classes can lead to controversy, which can discourage teachers from engaging students in an open discussion of the issues.” However,

Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education previously released a critique against a similar bill, SB 320 — which died in committee in February 2009 and only differs slightly from Kern’s bill — that said, “promoting the notion that there is some scientific controversy is just plain dishonest”:

Full Story Here: ThinkProgress » Oklahoma Lawmaker Sally Kern Proposes Bill That Forces Teachers To Question Evolution.

U.S. students not proficient in science

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the results are not good enough to ensure future American competitiveness

Very few students have the advanced skills that could lead to careers in science and technology, according to results of a national exam released Tuesday that education leaders called alarming.

Only 1 percent of fourth-grade and 12th-grade students, and 2 percent of eighth-graders scored in the highest group on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test known as the Nation’s Report Card. Less than half were considered proficient, with many more showing minimal science knowledge.

“It’s very disappointing for all educators to see students performing below the level we’d like them to be,” said Bonnie Embry, an elementary school science lab teacher in Lexington, Ky. “These low scores should send a message to educators across our nation that we’re not spending enough time teaching science.”

Full Story Here: U.S. students not proficient in science – Education – Salon.com.

The Year They Began Calling Poverty and Homelessness an ‘Excuse’

“We don’t use poverty as an excuse for low achievement.” — Springfield, Ill. School District 186 Superintendent Walter Milton, Jr.

2010 wasn’t a very good year for public education — or public anything, for that matter.

A so-far jobless economic recovery has seen a sharp rise in child poverty and with it, new barriers for schools, teachers and learners. It’s a matter of fact that hungry and often homeless children aren’t as successful in the classroom as those who are well fed, clad and housed.

The past year has seen a drying up of stimulus funds along with further erosion and selling off and privatization of public space, more public school closings and consolidations. Schools and classrooms are growing in size. Massive tuition increases at both private and public colleges and universities render a college education less accessible to working class families, cutting off one of the few remaining pathways to class mobility.

Full Story Here: Mike Klonsky: The Year They Began Calling Poverty and Homelessness an ‘Excuse’.

The Attack on American Education

Robert Reich:

Over the long term, the only way we’re going to raise wages, grow the economy, and improve American competitiveness is by investing in our people — especially their educations.

You’ve probably seen the reports. American students rank low on international standards of educational performance. Too many of ours schools are failing. Too few young people who are qualified for college or post-secondary education have the opportunity.

I’m not one of those who thinks the only way to fix what’s wrong with American education is to throw more money at it. We also need to do it much better. Teacher performance has to be squarely on the table. We should experiment with vouchers whose worth is inversely related to family income. Universities have to tame their budgets, especially for student amenities that have nothing to do with education.

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (The Attack on American Education).

Standardized Testing: The New Wild West

Like the maddeningly successful author Diane Ravitch, I, too, have changed my mind about No Child Left Behind. Unlike the estimable Ravitch, however — whose recent bestseller argues in exhausting detail against the very accountability measures that Ravitch long championed — in the great testing debate I’ve gone from “con” to “pro.”

Since 1994, when I first got hired as a lowly temp for measly wages to spend mere seconds glancing at and scoring standardized tests, until the release of my non‐bestselling book last fall, I had steadfastly believed that large‐scale assessment was a lame measure of student learning that really only benefitted the multi‐national corporations paid millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to write and score the tests. I began to see the error of my ways last Thanksgiving, however, just as soon as my huge son popped from his mother’s womb, keening and wailing, demanding massive amounts of food, a closet full of clothing, and the assistance of various costly household staff (baby‐sitter, music teacher, test‐prep tutor, etc.). Only then, as my little boy first began his mantra of “more, more, more,” did I finally see standardized testing for what it really is: a growth industry. In these times of economic recession, it was a lesson I didn’t need to learn twice.

Full Story Here: Todd Farley: Standardized Testing: The New Wild West.

Ten Things Charter Schools Won’t Tell You, and All Ten You Never Expected to Read in the Wall Street Journal

How this piece by Sarah Morgan ever got past the corporate ed cheerleaders on the WSJ editorial board, we probably will never know. But somehow it did, and here it is presented, with only brief interruptions:

1. We’re no better than public schools.

For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general aren’t producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know. See our earlier story, “10 Things Your School District Won’t Tell You,” for more.)

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional public schools, there are great charters – and some that aren’t so great. “There’s a lot of varia

Full Story Here: Schools Matter: Ten Things Charter Schools Won’t Tell You, and All Ten You Never Expected to Read in the Wall Street Journal.

OECD warns West of losing global edge in education

The world’s richest countries risk losing the edge gained by better education as standards rise sharply in for example South Korea and the Chinese city of Shanghai, the OECD said Tuesday.

In a report based on surveys of half a million 15-year-old students in 65 countries, the Paris-based OECD noted a drop in reading skills in the United States and many western European countries in the past decade, most notably Ireland and Sweden.

In contrast, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development signaled marked improvement in reading proficiency in countries such as Peru, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Latvia and Poland, albeit from low starting points in most of those cases.

Full Story Here: OECD warns West of losing global edge in education | Reuters.

The corporate takeover of American schools

The trend for appointing CEOs to the top jobs is symptomatic of a declining commitment to public education and social justice

The top positions in state education across the US – for example, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, recent chancellors Joel Klein (New York) and Michelle Rhee (Washington, DC), and incoming Chancellor Cathleen P Black (New York) – reflect a trust in CEO-style leadership for education management and reform. Along with these new leaders in education, billionaire entrepreneurs have also assumed roles as education saviours: Bill and Melinda Gates, and Geoffrey Canada.

Gates, Canada, Duncan, Klein and Rhee have capitalised on their positions in education to rise to the status of celebrities, as well – praised in the misleading documentary feature Waiting for Superman, on Oprah, and even on Bill Maher’s Real Time.

What do all these professional managers and entrepreneurs have in common?

Full Story: The corporate takeover of American schools | Paul Thomas | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

For-profit colleges can leave you dumb and broke

If you’ve spent any length of time in an urban community in the U.S., I’m sure you’ve seen the ads on public transportation or heard the television commercials from schools where you can train to be a medical assistant or a computer technician. But before you or someone you know signs up for a “promising career” at one of those for-profit colleges, take heed!

For-profit colleges have been around for years. The University of Phoenix, Sanford Brown, DeVry University, and ITT Technical Institute are just a few of the more popular ones. It appears that these schools target minorities, low income individuals and anyone dumb enough to believe their ads. The most memorable are the commercials from ITT Technical Institute: Because you can’t get the jobs of tomorrow until you get the skills today. Start by calling ITT Technical Institute.

But I’m here to tell you these schools are not the answer to a promising career! I think schools like ITT are a money sucking scam! With record unemployment in the U.S. and African Americans making up a large percentage of the unemployed, I fear that more African Americans may be lured into the trap of dishonest for-profit schools only to find themselves with a degree or certificate that they cannot use and loads of debt that they cannot pay.

Full Story: For-profit colleges can leave you dumb and broke | TheLoop21.com.

Camden, New Jersey Preparing To Close All Its Libraries

The library board in Camden, one of the nation’s poorest cities, is preparing to close all three of its libraries by the end of the year, saying its funding has been slashed so drastically that it cannot afford to keep operating.

Library officials are hoping enough money surfaces to save the system, but they’re preparing for a shutdown and say they’re not just threatening it as a ploy.

Budget cuts across the country have caused local officials to close library branches, reduce hours and spend less money on books, computers and other materials. But officials at the American Library Association believe Camden’s library system would be the first in the U.S. with multiple branches to check out entirely.

Full Story: Camden, New Jersey Preparing To Close All Its Libraries.

States slash pre-K programs as budgets bleed

States are cutting hundreds of millions from their prekindergarten budgets, undermining years of working to help young children — particularly poor kids — get ready for school.

States are slashing nearly $350 million from their pre-K programs by next year and more cuts are likely on the horizon once federal stimulus money dries up, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The reductions mean fewer slots for children, teacher layoffs and even fewer services for needy families who can’t afford high-quality private preschool programs.

One state — Arizona — has proposed eliminating its 5,500-child program entirely. Illinois cut $32 million from last fiscal year’s pre-k budget and plans to slash another $48 million this year.

Full Story: States slash pre-K programs as budgets bleed | Raw Story.

Unintelligent By Design: Louisiana School District Considers Teaching Creationism

Members of the Livingston Parish School Board in Louisiana may be on the verge of making a huge mistake – one that could cost their community a lot of money.

During a recent meeting, several board members went off on a tangent about teaching creationism. During this public session, they openly discussed their desire to bring religion into the classroom. It was not a wise move.

The trouble began when Jan Benton, director of curriculum for the parish schools, noted that a new law in Louisiana allows schools to present “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate got excited and said, “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this school board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Full Story: Talk To Action | Unintelligent By Design: Louisiana School District Considers Teaching Creationism.

School Chancellor Fires 241 Teachers in Washington

Michelle Rhee, the reform-minded chancellor who took over the District of Columbia public schools three years ago, on Friday fired 241 teachers, or 5 percent of the district’s total. All but a few of those dismissed had received the lowest rating under a new evaluation system that for the first time held them accountable for their students’ standardized test scores.

“Every child in a District of Columbia public school has a right to a highly effective teacher — in every classroom, of every school, of every neighborhood, of every ward, in this city,” the chancellor said in a statement. “That is our commitment.”

All told, the district terminated 302 employees — 226 for poor performance, and 76 for other problems like not having the licensing required by the No Child Left Behind act. Besides the 241 teachers, those dismissed were librarians, counselors, custodians and other employees.

An additional 737 employees were put on notice that they had been rated “minimally effective,” the second-lowest category, and would have one year to improve their performance or be fired.

Full Story: School Chancellor Fires 241 Teachers in Washington – NYTimes.com.

Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees

Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned Thursday that the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness.

The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.

“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”

While access to college has been the major concern in recent decades, over the last year, college completion, too, has become a leading item on the national agenda. Last July, President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative, calling for five million more college graduates by 2020, to help the United States again lead the world in educational attainment.

Full Story: Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees – NYTimes.com.

Gutting Public Education: Neoliberalism and the Politics of Opportunism

America’s political and economic elites have declared a war on working, middle-class and poor Americans. Now that war is coming to a head with the draconian cuts in education, among other vital services, under the economic recession. Progressive critics of Republicans and Democrats have attacked the return of “Hooverian economics” in recent years – understood as the do-nothing approach to dealing with the economic crisis and declining state budgets. Political officials stubbornly refuse to either raise taxes or increase federal or state spending, so as to stimulate economic demand and fill in annual state deficits, at a time when the private sector is unable to produce an economic recovery. Keynesian government spending – which aims at stimulating economic demand during times of recession and depression – has received support at one level or another from most economists, but has become taboo at a time when officials worship at the altar of “budget cuts” and fiscal austerity. Neoliberal policies have long been known to be extremely destructive in less developed countries where they have been implemented for decades. Now, these same policies are appearing in the US and are set to decimate social services along with any lingering economic vitality.

The Hooverian approach should more accurately be classified, not as a “do nothing” approach to dealing with the economy and budgets, but as a “do much against” American workers policy – one that aims at gutting vital social services such as education, health care, police and public transit services, spending for the disabled, and other areas of state services and employment. Quite cynically, subsidies to corporate elites in the form of the 2008 TARP bailout are given urgent priority, while officials speak of the need to “tighten our belts” when it comes to sacrificing access to quality education.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Gutting Public Education: Neoliberalism and the Politics of Opportunism.

U.S. ‘On A Collision Course With The Future’ In Terms Of Projected Demand For Educated Workers

A landmark report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce forecasts an uneven relationship between colleges and the job market. Although more future jobs will require advanced education, colleges are not doing enough to prepare their students for the projected workforce.

Inside Higher Ed talked to the Georgetown center’s director:

The colleges that most students attend “need to streamline their programs, so they emphasize employability,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center.

Carnevale acknowledged that such a shift would accept “a dual system” in which a select few receive an “academic” college education and most students receive a college education that is career preparation. “We are all offended by tracking,” he said. But the reality, Carnevale said, is that the current system doesn’t do a good job with the career-oriented track, in part by letting many of the colleges on that track “aspire to be Harvard.” He said that educators have a choice: “to be loyal to the purity of your ideas and refuse to build a selective dual system, or make people better off.”

Full Story: U.S. ‘On A Collision Course With The Future’ In Terms Of Projected Demand For Educated Workers.

California passes bill to counteract ‘disturbing’ Texas curriculum

Measure ensures Texas standards don’t ‘creep into our textbooks,’ senator tells Raw Story

texastextbooks California passes bill to counteract disturbing Texas curriculum

The California Senate on Friday approved legislation that sends a clear message to Texas and textbook publishers: don’t mess with our kids’ minds.

“My bill begins the process of ensuring that California students will not end up being taught with Texas standards,” State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), who authored and sponsored the legislation, told Raw Story in an interview. Texas standards had better not “creep into our textbooks,” he said.

The S.B. 1451 measure – approved on a bipartisan vote of 25-5 – requires California’s Board of Education to examine and report any discrepancies between the new Texas standards and California’s standards. “At that point,” Yee told Raw Story, “we will make it very, very clear that we won’t accept textbooks that minimize the contributions of minorities and propagate the close connection between church and state.”

Full Story: California passes bill to counteract ‘disturbing’ Texas curriculum | Raw Story.

Progressive Texas Board Of Education Candidates Promise To Undo Textbook Changes

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has faced national scrutiny and ridicule in recent months for its right-wing revisions to the state’s social studies and history curriculum. Changes have included requiring students to learn the difference between legal and illegal immigration, examine “documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” and study prominent right-wing political figures.

This massacre to the state’s educational system is engineered by the SBOE’s bloc of far-right conservatives, who have little to no background in education policy. Members include Cynthia Dunbar, a Republican who has called public education a “tool of perversion.” There’s also Chairman Don McLeroy, a dentist who has stated, “The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel.”

There’s beginning to be a backlash against these far-right members, however. McLeroy lost his primary to a more moderate Republican candidate, and Dunbar is not running for re-election. Yesterday, ThinkProgress spoke to Judy Jennings and Rebecca Bell-Metereau, two Democrats who are running for SBOE in Districts 10 (Dunbar’s area) and 5, respectively. Both of them stated that the SBOE has lost focus and abandoned other areas of its mission in the quest to politicize the Texas’ curriculum, said that constituents are frustrated with the negative attention, and promised to try to repeal the textbook revisions:

Full Story: Think Progress » Progressive Texas Board Of Education Candidates Promise To Undo Textbook Changes.

Texas State Board Of Education Swamped With Criticism Over New Textbook Guidelines

Conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education were defiant Wednesday as a parade of critics came before them, most urging a fresh rewrite of new classroom social studies guidelines and a delay of a scheduled vote to adopt them.

Critics, including the president of the NAACP, a former U.S. education secretary and the committee that wrote the draft guidelines being edited by the board, complained that the proposal has become a vehicle for political ideology, has watered down the teaching of the civil rights movement and slavery and reveals a lack of historical knowledge from the board.

The standards will guide how history and social studies are taught to some 4.8 million public school students over the next 10 years.

“Of course it’s political,” Republican David Bradley said to one critic who complained that the process was too focused on politics rather than history. “So what’s your solution

? Would you support a benevolent dictator?”

Full Story: Texas State Board Of Education Swamped With Criticism Over New Textbook Guidelines.

NAACP president: Texas curriculum will turn world ‘upside down’ for kids | Raw Story

Previewing the tone of his testimony in Austin on Wednesday ahead of a crucial vote, NAACP president Ben Jealous forcefully condemned the influential Texas State Board of Education’s slew of pending revisions to history and social studies curriculum.

The modified curriculum – approved in March on a party line vote and facing a final motion this Friday – diminishes Thomas Jefferson’s significance and commitment to secularism, tempers criticism of McCarthyism, downplays Darwin’s theory of evolution, and emphasizes the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.”

“It’s outrageous,” Jealous said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters. “It’s going to lock kids into the dark ages, where the whole world’s been turned upside down – where Thomas Jefferson is not a founding father, there’s no good reason to talk about [the first black Justice] Thurgood Marshall, and Joe McCarthy is a hero.”

Full Story: NAACP president: Texas curriculum will turn world ‘upside down’ for kids | Raw Story.

Texas ready for textbook showdown

Is Texas on the verge of rewriting history, or just correcting it?

The answer depends on whom you listen to on the state’s Board of Education, which is poised to vote this week on new social-studies curriculum standards that could significantly shape what Texas children — and perhaps those outside the nation’s second-largest state — are taught in the classroom.

Social conservatives on the 15-member Republican-dominated board are optimistic they will be able to push through curriculum changes that, according to board member and conservative Texas lawyer Cynthia Noland Dunbar, “promote patriotism.”

Full Story: Texas ready for textbook showdown – Life- msnbc.com.

Calif. bill would block Texas textbook changes

California may soon take a stand against proposed changes to social studies textbooks ordered by the Texas school board, as a way to prevent them from being incorporated in California texts.

Legislation by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, seeks to protect the nation’s largest public school population from the revised social studies curriculum approved in March by the Texas Board of Education. Critics say if the changes are incorporated into textbooks, they will be historically inaccurate and dismissive of the contributions of minorities.

The Texas recommendations, which face a final vote by the Republican-dominated board on May 21, include adding language saying the country’s Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and a new section on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.

The amendments to the state’s curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson’s role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state, and require that students learn about “the unintended consequences” of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.

Full Story: Calif. bill would block Texas textbook changes – San Jose Mercury News.

School Districts Plan on Cutting Jobs

Squeezed by budget shortfalls at the state and local level and facing an end to federal stimulus funding, school districts across the country are planning to shed jobs, according to a new survey by the American Association of School Administrators.

“Faced with continued budgetary constraints, school leaders across the nation are forced to consider an unprecedented level of layoffs that would negatively impact economic recovery and deal a devastating blow to public education,” AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech said in a press release.

The survey found that 82 percent of school districts plan on cutting jobs. Another 53 percent of school districts say that they will be forced to implement hiring freezes in the coming school year due to budget concerns.

Full Story: School Districts Plan on Cutting Jobs | Economy In Crisis.

US school for disabled forces students to wear packs that deliver massive electric shocks

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a report and urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled, located in Massachusetts, violates the UN Convention against Torture.

The rights group submitted their report this week, titled “Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center,” after an in-depth investigation revealed use of restraint boards, isolation, food deprivation and electric shocks in efforts to control the behaviors of its disabled and emotionally troubled students.

Findings in the MDRI report include the center’s practice of subjecting children to electric shocks on the legs, arms, soles of feet and torso — in many cases for years — as well as some for more than a decade. Electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child’s back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEI).

Full Story: US school for disabled forces students to wear packs that deliver massive electric shocks | Raw Story.

Profs now outsourcing marking to India

A veteran university professor frustrated with the tedium and time of grading papers has created a company that outsources the job to India.

With a dozen clients in academia and a thick skin, Dr. Chandru Rajam is prepared to weather the outrage EduMetry Inc. of Herndon, Va., has set off.

Virtual-TA, which hires offshore university-educated staff to assess, grade and comment on student assignments, is only one of the EduMetry services. But it is by far the most controversial.

Full Story: Profs now outsourcing marking to India – thestar.com.

OPS:  The lazy bastard should be fired.

Is The Foolproof Law Degree Becoming An Endangered Species?

What if law school is no longer as lucrative as it used to be? And what if procuring funding to obtain a juris doctorate is akin to taking out a subprime loan?

Law firms are cutting salaries and hiring fewer graduates, reports Ameet Sachdev in the Chicago Tribune, which means that a law degree may not be a foolproof way to get a high-paying job after graduation. In addition, ongoing tuition hikes on already-overpriced law school degrees make the prospect of unemployment (and loan repayment) after graduation even more dire. Sachdev writes:

With large numbers of unemployed or underemployed lawyers who borrowed heavily to pay for their educations, legal educators face growing skepticism about the value of a law degree.

Full Story: Is The Foolproof Law Degree Becoming An Endangered Species?.

US warns of “education catastrophe” as up to 300,000 teachers set to lose jobs

School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June. The districts have no choice, they say, because their usual sources of revenue – state money and local property taxes – have been hit hard by the recession. In addition, federal stimulus money earmarked for education has been mostly used up this year.

As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.

“We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider,” said Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year. “This may be our new economic reality.”

Full Story: US warns of “education catastrophe” as up to 300,000 teachers set to lose jobs — Signs of the Times News.

New Barack Obama Green Charter High School is coming to Plainfield | – NJ.com

Plainfield will soon be home to the city’s first charter high school after the zoning Board of Adjustment unanimously approved a variance this week for the educators to set up classrooms at the Plainfield YMCA.

The 120-seat Barack Obama Green Charter High School is slated to open for ninth and tenth graders at the start of the new school year at 530 West Seventh St. It already has approval from the state Department of Education.

The school’s founders tout it as the first charter in New Jersey to implement the philosophy of the nonprofit Green Schools Initiative, which advocates a strategy including a toxin-free campus, sustainable use of resources and a ban on junk food.

Full Story: New Barack Obama Green Charter High School is coming to Plainfield | – NJ.com.

Boston library trustees approve plan to close four branches

The Boston Public Library Board of Trustees this morning approved a plan to close four neighborhood branches as part of an effort to eliminate a $3.3 million budget shortfall.

The plan would shutter the Faneuil branch in Brighton’s Oak Square, along with Lower Mills in Dorchester, Orient Heights in East Boston, and Washington Village in South Boston’s Old Colony Housing Development. The trustees also approved a plan to slash up to 69 jobs at the main library in Copley Square and in administrative offices.

Before the votes, dozens of people spoke at a public meeting of the board, many expressing anger and resignation as they described the value of libraries and urged trustees to keep all branches open. Nick Collins spoke specifically about the Washington Village branch and warned that the trustees were “turning their backs” on children in the city with the greatest need. John McGrath told the board that, “if you close one library, you are going to have to open a prison.”

But Elizabeth Boveroux thanked administrators for their work and reminded the crowd of the difficulty of the decisions, evoking the word “free”carved on the façade of the Copley Square library

Full Story: Boston library trustees approve plan to close four branches – Local News Updates – MetroDesk – The Boston Globe.

The death of public education

Lack of money is killing our schools

Full Story: The death of public education – The Boston Globe.

Fighting School Failure Isn’t Rocket Science — We Know What Works

In the U.S., 30% of youth fail high school every year, and the vast majority come from poor communities and populations of color. We must solve this problem.

In the United States, 30% of youth fail high school every year, and the vast majority come from poor communities and populations of color. We must acknowledge that this is a problem of proportions that cannot be solved with tests or scholarships alone.

Only around 50% of African-American and Hispanic kids ever graduate. And nationwide, only 50% of everyone who is eligible to go to college ever does. Of these few, only 50% ever graduate from college. So we’re not just talking about getting a few more kids into college, but about a serious structural problem that requires a serious structural analysis of the causes. Then we can talk solutions.

Unfortunately, a lot of funders fall short of drawing these conclusions.

Over the past 9 years the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made more than $2 billion in grants to help improve high school graduation rates in the USA. Bill Gates himself acknowledges they continue to fall short of their targets. They, like so many others, set admirable targets. In his “Annual Letter” for 2009 Gates suggests our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80% of students graduate from high school by 2025. The goal has as long a record as the challenge of school failure.

Full Story: Fighting School Failure Isn’t Rocket Science — We Know What Works | Vision | AlterNet.

Polk educators fight bill that ties student performance, teacher pay

Polk County teachers are joining the ranks of thousands of other educators around Florida who oppose state House and Senate bills that would essentially overhaul the way teachers get paid, tying compensation to student testing.

Dozens of Polk educators lined Edgewood Drive outside state Rep. Kelly Stargel’s office this morning to protest the proposed legislation. Armed with signs and wearing red shirts the group chanted, “Don’t hurt teachers.” Stargel was not at the office at the time of the protest.

Marianne Capoziello is the president of Polk’s Education Association, which represents teachers in collective bargaining. She said the law basically devalues an educator’s service and experience while putting all the emphasis on the success of a standardized test.

Full Story: Polk educators fight bill that ties student performance, teacher pay.

Students Saved by Loan Overhaul

What a landmark day in Congress. After years of the government subsidizing banks that give unfortunate interest rates and basically screw over young people we have finally won. Billions of dollars was spent to lobby members of Congress to stop this. Not surprisingly Republican members overwhelmingly refused to take the side of the people over the big banks with a unanimous vote of 56 to 43 in the Senate and 220 to 207 in the house.

According to the NYTimes

“Democrats have long denounced the program, saying it fattened the bottom line for banks at the expense of students and taxpayers.

“Why are we paying people to lend the government’s money and then the government guarantees the loan and the government takes back the loan?” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.

Democrats celebrated the legislation, a centerpiece of President Obama’s education agenda, as a far-reaching overhaul of federal financial aid, providing a huge infusion of money to the Pell grant program and offering new help to lower-income graduates in getting out from under crushing student debt. Still, the final bill is less ambitious than the original proposal.”

The youth community rejoiced particularly those who work tirelessly to engage government about the overwhelming cost of higher education to young people who now graduate with over $22,000 in debt and into a job market with a nearly 20% youth unemployment rate.

Full Story: Students Saved by Loan Overhaul | Future Majority.

Little improvement in 4th-graders’ reading skills

The national report card for reading by fourth-graders was flat for 2009 compared with 2007, leaving Education Secretary Arne Duncan unsatisfied with the trend.

“Today’s results once again show that achievement of American students isn’t growing fast enough,” Duncan said in a written statement.

Eighth-graders performed slightly better overall, scoring 1 point higher than they did on the test in 2007. The gains in this grade were predominantly with students performing at lower and middle levels. Scores for higher-performing students showed no significant change.

Full Story: Little improvement in 4th-graders’ reading skills – CNN.com.

Turning “Texas Education” Into an Oxymoron

Jim Hightower -

In the good-and-good-for-you department, food scientists are now touting the health benefits of enjoying a handful of nuts every day.

I, for one, am glad, because I love nuts — pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, you-name-’em. But my favorite nuts, by far, are the homegrown natives that have taken root in one particularly fertile area of my state: the Texas Board of Education. You just can’t get any nuttier than this bunch!

This board, little-known even to us Texans, has lately risen to national notoriety, making our state’s educational system a punch line for comedians everywhere. That’s because a handful of ultra-right-wing nutcases have taken over this elected overseer of Texas educational policy, and they’re hell-bent to supplant classroom education with their own brand of ideological indoctrination.

Full Story: Turning “Texas Education” Into an Oxymoron by Jim Hightower on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent.

Students push for aid overhaul; lenders lobby against it

College students swarmed Capitol Hill on Tuesday to plead for more financial aid as private lenders made a last push to preserve their endangered role in making federal student loans.

The dueling messages sought to influence potential Senate action this week on a proposal to expand direct government lending by cutting funding for private firms that make federally guaranteed loans. Tens of billions of dollars in projected savings would flow to grants for needy students.

The proposal is attached to a bill approved Sunday by the House — separate from the comprehensive health legislation President Obama signed into law Tuesday — that resolves various differences among congressional Democrats over health-care reform. If the Senate approves the bill without amendment, it also would go to Obama for his signature. But opponents of the student lending overhaul are seeking to revise it in the Senate, which would force another vote in the House.

Full Story: Students push for aid overhaul; lenders lobby against it – washingtonpost.com.

Massive Change in US Student Loans Slipped in to Bill

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Sunday approved President Barack Obama’s bid to implement what would be the biggest overhaul in decades of the federal student loan program.

Under the legislation, federal subsidies to private student loan lenders would stop and the government’s role in lending would increase – creating billions of dollars in projected savings that would go largely in grants to needy students.

The measure, opposed by private lenders and critics of an expanding federal government, was included in a package of proposed changes to an overhaul of the U.S. health care system.

Full Story: Massive Change in US Student Loans Slipped in to Bill | CommonDreams.org.

The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking

Education is moving to domestic policy center stage. The first round of competition for federal “Race to the Top” funds is over, and that competition generated a flurry of school reform activity across the nation. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia were selected and are now preparing for a winnowing round two.

In addition, the Department of Education just released its proposal to revamp the important Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is up for reauthorization. (Its last incarnation brought us No Child Left Behind.) This proposal is already fueling local and national debate about the particulars of school reform: how to assess teacher quality, for example, or the promulgation of charter schools, or how to remedy failing schools.

So far, our discussions and debates about education have been focused on these particulars, frequently sparking more heat than light. But there seems to be little alternative thinking in the approach to school reform itself. And both elite and mainstream media have pretty much fallen in line with the reigning policy talk about the problems with our schools and how to fix them. As well, no one in power is asking the more fundamental questions like: What is the purpose of education in a democracy, and are our reforms enhancing—or possibly restricting—that purpose?

I wrote the following essays to address some of these broader questions.

Part One: Education ‘Miracles’ Don’t Survive Scrutiny

Full Story: Truthdig – The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking.

Many Nations Surpassing U.S. in Education

We were quick to rescue Wall Street from itself, but we have taken no action to stop the bleeding in education

Education has always been the backbone of American productivity, for generations American students were the best and brightest the world had to offer. Unfortunately, for nearly 20 years the state of primary and secondary education in America has fallen off.

It is not that our students are worse than their predecessors, far from it, in fact American students today are ahead of virtually all those who came before them. Instead, our students have not accelerated as fast as students elsewhere in the developed world. By American standards we are getting better but, after having watched much of the world pass us by, much of our student body is falling behind internationally.

[Bored student at her desk Bld018316,jp2005_0002485,adolescent ...] On March 9, The New York Times, published an article detailing how more and more Americans are being passed up by international standards. In the U.S. Senate there has been some movement to take on America’s educational deficiencies.

Full Story: Many Nations Surpassing U.S. in Education | Economy In Crisis.

Unions disappointed by Education bill

Even before President Barack Obama’s plans for a major overhaul of education legislation officially appear Saturday evening, the heads of the two largest teachers unions are signaling their opposition to a bill that calls for increasing federal education spending by more than $3 billion in the new 2011 fiscal year.

In a draft document provided by the administration entitled “ESEA Reauthorization: Before and After NCLB, the administration says it will end the “’race to the bottom’ for state standards,” introduce “real rewards for high-poverty schools, districts and states showing real progress,” and end “exclusive focus on tests, narrowing of curriculum.” It also says the new bill will “include teacher perspective,” “invest in expanded learning time programs,” and introduce a “greater focus on getting great teachers where they are needed most.”

A second Department of Education draft on ESEA reauthorization says the changes mean the system will “treat teachers like the professionals they are,” which is one way of saying it will try to roll back collectively bargained rights the teachers unions are loathe to surrender.

Full Story: Unions disappointed by ed. bill – Harry Siegel and Nia-Malika Henderson – POLITICO.com.

SAFRA First Major Step in Meaningful Ed Reform

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) is by far the greatest step ever taken in Washington to combat the control of giant banking moguls over our country’s youth. Consistently, we have seen the cost of higher education climb pricing many young people out of the opportunity for a better future. At the same time assistance available to young people has actually gone down.

Twenty years ago, 60% of young people who were able to pay for college on Pell Grants today that number has dipped to half of that. The bill is the first meaningful step in a long-term solution to the predatory private lenders who take advantage of students.

Among other things, the bill will

* Invest $40 billion to increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship to $5,550 in 2010 and to $6,900 by 2019. Starting in 2011, the scholarship will be linked to match rising costs-of-living by indexing it to the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percent.

* Strengthen the Perkins Loan program, a campus-based program that provides low-cost federal loans to students, by providing the program with more reliable forms of credit from the federal government and expanding the program to include significantly more college campuses.

* Keep interest rates low on need-based – or subsidized – federal student loans by making the interest rates on these loans variable beginning in 2012. These interest rates are currently set to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in 2012. (This compares to loans that Courtney mentioned whose loans can have a 7.2 percent or even 10 percent interest rate).

* Provide loan forgiveness for members of the military who are called up to duty in the middle of the academic year.

* Convert all new federal student lending to the stable, effective and cost-efficient Direct Loan program. Beginning July 1, 2010, all new federal student loans will be originated through the Direct Loan program, instead of through lenders like Sallie Mae that are subsidized by taxpayers in the federally-guaranteed student loan program. Unlike the current lender-based program, the Direct Loan program is entirely insulated from market swings and can therefore guarantee students access to low-cost federal college loans, in any economy.

Full Story: SAFRA First Major Step in Meaningful Ed Reform | The Seminal.

Texas Education Board Approves Conservative Curriculum Changes By Far-Right

New Curriculum: ‘Democratic’ No More, Gold Standard, MORE Christianity

A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic,” and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

“We have been about conservatism versus liberalism,” said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. “We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it's appropriate.”

Full Story: Texas Education Board Approves Conservative Curriculum Changes By Far-Right.

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

Finland’s teens score extraordinarily high on an international test. American educators are trying to figure out why.

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world’s C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they’re way ahead in math, science and reading — on track to keeping Finns among the world’s most productive workers.

The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland’s students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland’s combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD’s test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.

Full Story: What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart? – WSJ.com.

Breaking the Silence on War

By the Editors of Rethinking Schools -

When the World Trade Center was attacked, the international crisis reverberated in schools all over the United States. In kindergarten through high school classrooms, teachers struggled to figure out age-appropriate ways to talk about the violence.

In that endless month leading up to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and then during the contentious months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the worldwide debate about the war was echoed in classrooms. Teachers searched for curriculum, children expressed fears for relatives in the military, and youth showed anxiety about the possibility of a renewed draft. A month before the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times declared that global antiwar protests were “a new power in the streets.” After the invasion, at first there were demonstrations every day in major cities, then every month, then once a year. There was a flurry of political activity as the first high school alumni were killed, as military recruiters swarmed onto high school campuses.

Today in classrooms, as in the streets, there is too much silence.

Full Story: Editorial – Volume 24 No. 2 – Winter 2010 – Rethinking Schools Online.

Kansas City School Board Closes Almost Half Of City’s Schools In Face Of Bankruptcy

Kansas City School Superintendent John Covington says the decision to close almost half the district’s schools was difficult and painful but “unquestionably the right thing to do.”

The Kansas City school board voted 5-4 Wednesday night to close 29 of the district’s 61 schools in an effort to stave off bankruptcy. The schools will close at the end of the school year.

During a news conference Thursday, Covington thanked the board for its vote. He said the district was spreading itself too thin by educating less than 18,000 students in 61 schools.

Full Story: Kansas City School Board Closes Almost Half Of City’s Schools In Face Of Bankruptcy.

Bail Out Our Schools

Robert Reich -

Any day now, the Obama administration will announce $4.35 billion in extra federal funds for under-performing public schools. That’s fine, but relative to the financial squeeze all the nation’s public schools now face it’s a cruel joke.

The recession has ravaged state and local budgets, most of which aren’t allowed to run deficits. That’s meant major cuts in public schools and universities, and a giant future deficit in the education of our people.

Across America, schools are laying off thousands of teachers. Classrooms that had contained 20 to 25 students are now crammed with 30 or more. School years have been shortened. Some school districts are moving to four-day school weeks. After-school programs have been cancelled; music and art classes, terminated. Even history is being chucked.

Full Story: Robert Reich (Bail Out Our Schools).

The Fight to Save Public Education in America

March 4 was historic. It will be remembered as the day that people began to fight back against the destruction of public education. The student and teacher led offensive took place in cities across the country; teachers, students and school workers demonstrated and marched, showcasing the aggressive methods of the struggle. San Francisco led the way with the biggest numbers. As many as 15,000 people, mostly students, teachers and social service workers attended a Civic Center rally organized by the three teachers unions and the San Francisco Labor Council.

This can only be the beginning. The war on public education has been carefully planned for years, orchestrated by corporate interests and implemented by Republicans and Democrats alike.

The first battle tactic against public education was to starve it. Politicians have consistently lowered taxes on corporations and the rich for the past three decades, thereby lowering state revenues that have created the budget crises in nearly every state. Consequently, public education is in a state of shell shock.

Full Story: The Fight to Save Public Education in America.

Kansas City Public Schools: Bankruptcy May Force 50% Of Missouri City’s Schools To Shut Doors

Kansas City was held up as a national example of bold thinking when it tried to integrate its schools by making them better than the suburban districts where many kids were moving. The result was one school with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and another with recording studios.

Now it’s on the brink of bankruptcy and considering another bold move: closing nearly half its schools to stay afloat.

Schools officials say the cuts are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case.

Full Story: Kansas City Public Schools: Bankruptcy May Force 50% Of Missouri City’s Schools To Shut Doors.

Former GOP insider: Billionaire Boys’ Club dismantling public education

Nationally known education commentator and former privatizer ally Diane Ravitch, a New York-based fellow at the Hoover Institution who was Assistant Secretary of Education in the Bush I administration, has been shifting steadily into the role of resistance leader. Lately Ravitch, an NYU professor, has been calling out New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg over his heavy-handed steamrolling of the city’s school system.

Ravitch now sounds as fiery as the urban parent activists who are popping up around the country to protest the Billionaire Eduphilanthropreneurs’ Club effort to take over our schools. The notion that a former Republican White House insider would all but out-rabble-rouse activists like my colleagues Gina Arlotto in D.C., Sharon Higgins in Oakland or Leonie Haimson in New York has me knocked speechless:

It appears that the Big Money has placed its bets on dismantling public education.

Full Story: Former GOP insider: Billionaire Boys’ Club dismantling public education.

WATCH: Colleges Protest Tuition Hikes, Budget Cuts and Racial Discrimination (VIDEOS)

Growing tuition hikes. Increasing budget cuts. Rising racial tension in campuses during the so-called “post-racial” Age of Obama. It's been a very busy month for student activism in America's colleges — and not just on March 4, when thousands of students took the streets, especially in California.

Here are some of the MUST-SEE videos of student protests.

Full Story: WATCH: Colleges Protest Tuition Hikes, Budget Cuts and Racial Discrimination (VIDEOS).

Top US home-school texts dismiss evolution

Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn’t taken a friend’s advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old’s biology lessons.

Mule’s precocious daughter Elizabeth excels at science and has been studying tarantulas since she was 5. But she watched Elizabeth’s excitement turn to confusion when they reached the evolution section of the book from Apologia Educational Ministries, which disputed Charles Darwin’s theory.

“I thought she was going to have a coronary,” Mule said of her daughter, who is now 16 and taking college courses in Houston. “She’s like, ‘This is not true!’”

Full Story: Top US home-school texts dismiss evolution | Raw Story.

Illinois Joins in the Fray, Marches for Public Education

At a series of protests to celebrate National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, staff, students and faculty marched at public universities in California, Louisiana, Boston, Wisconsin, New York and Detroit to protest the strain on public education caused by the financial crisis.

The event, organized by students in California in response to a proposed 32 percent increase in student fees at its public universities, struck a chord with campuses nationwide facing cutbacks that many say could place affordable public education in jeopardy.

In Illinois, which is suffering from the second-worst budget crisis after California, nearly 200 people picketed at the University of Illinois' Chicago (UIC) campus on Thursday, calling out slogans such as “no contract, no peace” and “they say furlough, we say hell no.”

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Illinois Joins in the Fray, Marches for Public Education.

Teachers Reject Obama’s Punitive School Reform Measures

Obama Backs Rewarding Districts That Police Failing Schools

President Obama said Monday that he favored federal rewards for local school districts that fire underperforming teachers and close failing schools, saying educators needed to be held accountable when they failed to fix chronically troubled classrooms and curb the student dropout rate.

The president outlined his proposal to offer $900 million in federal grants, which would be made available to states and school districts willing to take aggressive steps to turn around struggling institutions or close them.

The president’s proposal, which was included in his 2011 budget request to Congress, is his latest criticism of America’s failing public schools. In a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Obama said federal aid would be available for the districts that are home to the 2,000 schools that produce more than half of the nation’s dropouts.

Full Story: Obama Backs Rewarding Districts That Police Failing Schools – NYTimes.com.

Obama plans to target low-performing schools

President Barack Obama will announce Monday a national effort to reduce the high school dropout rate and better prepare students for successful college careers.

The administration has committed $3.5 billion to fund changes in persistently low-performing schools around the country, with priority given to high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent.

Every day, 7,000 students drop out of school — a total of 1.2 million students each year. In addition, only 70 percent of entering high school freshmen graduate every year, creating a loss of $319 billion in potential earnings.

Full Story: Obama plans to target low-performing schools – TheHill.com.

OPS: And what about the lies, distortions and omissions being engineered into the textbooks by the Republicans, Teabaggers and religious head-cases in Texas?

Berkeley RIOT: Fire, Destruction (video)

Overnight, an impromptu riot to protest budget cuts and tuition increases at the University of California-Berkeley snowballed to include more than 200 students and resulted in flaming dumpsters, broken windows and dancing in the streets.

The Daily Californian reports that the riot emerged from a campus dance party and metastasized into an all-out fiery clash between students and police.

Officers physically pushed the crowd back so that Berkeley fire personnel could extinguish the flames. Sporadic fights broke out within the crowd, causing police to advance their line on the growing mob and use batons to push it back.

Members of the crowd hurled glass bottles, plastic buckets, pizza and other objects at the police line. The crowd's size and intensity fluctuated as the police and protesters clashed and multiple members of the crowd were detained by police.

Full Story: Berkeley RIOT: Fire, Destruction (WATCH) (UPDATED).

OPS:  In the 60′s this sort of thing began in Berkley also

Making a Place for Labor History

When teaching about social movements in America, I ask my students how many of them had to take a U.S. labor history course in high school. For the last twenty-five years the answer has been the same. Not a one.

I ask the question to make a point about how we learn what’s needed for social change to occur. If all we know about social change comes from celebrating the lives of Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King Jr., we may think that change results mainly from individual moral heroism.

The study of labor history teaches a different lesson: change occurs through organized, persistent, collective action by ordinary people. It’s not surprising that those with the biggest stake in preserving the status quo don’t want that lesson taught.

Full Story: Making a Place for Labor History | CommonDreams.org.

College Education, Good Jobs: Why Degrees Are Overrated

Even in these days of partisan rancor, there is a bipartisan consensus on the high value of postsecondary education. That more people should go to college is usually taken as a given. In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama echoed the words of countless high school guidance counselors around the country: “In this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job.” Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who gave the Republican response, concurred: “All Americans agree that a young person needs a world-class education to compete in the global economy.”

The statistics seem to bear him out. People with college degrees make a lot more than people without them, and that difference has been growing. But does that mean that we should help more kids go to college — or that we should make it easier for people who didn't go to college to make a living?

We may be close to maxing out on the first strategy. Our high college drop-out rate — 40% of kids who enroll in college don’t get a degree within six years — may be a sign that we’re trying to push too many people who aren’t suited for college to enroll. It has been estimated that, in 2007, most people in their 20s who had college degrees were not in jobs that required them: another sign that we are pushing kids into college who will not get much

Full Story: College Education, Good Jobs: Why Degrees Are Overrated – TIME.

Panel approves Bible classes for public schools | Raw Story

Angel sent down’ to put Bible on Kentucky school curriculum, legislator says

A Kentucky state Senate committee has approved legislation allowing the Bible to be studied as a literary subject in public schools, a move that means the state will likely follow Tennessee, Texas and a handful of others in bringing the Christian text into the curriculum.

The bill, put forward by three Democratic state senators, orders the Kentucky Board of Education to draw up guidelines for teaching the Bible as a literary work in the context of “literature, art, music, mores, oratory and public policy,” reports the Louisville Courier-Journal. The Bible courses would be elective.

The bill passed the committee 12-0, and is expected to sail smoothly through the legislature. “It’s the kind of legislation that most Kentucky lawmakers dare not vote against, especially in an election year,” reports the Associated Press.

Full Story Panel approves Bible classes for public schools | Raw Story.

Charter Operators Snow the Public

Like the storm that was dumped on the eastern seaboard this past week, charter operators are snowing the public. From padding the pockets of politicians if they agree to lift the caps on charter law to misusing funds to line their own pockets, some charter operators are colder than Jack Frost.

For instance, the Walton Foundation — yes, the people who brought you Wal-Mart — have contributed millions to charter schools. But lately, they have also been contributing to political campaigns like New York Governor Paterson's re-election campaign. Hoping that he would help lift the cap on charter schools in the state, their investment paid off when Paterson sponsored a bill to abolish the charter cap. Charter operators are dying to get into the relatively untapped New York market. Just to give you a sense of the difference, there are 200 charter schools in New York State, and over 500 in Arizona. Over 700 in California.

In operation, charter operators can be just as shady. White Hat, a charter operator out of Ohio, run by David L. Brennan, an Akron industrialist, earns $1 million a year for each of the 34 charter schools, charging anywhere from 3-12% fees to charter schools.

Full Story Charter Operators Snow the Public | Education | Change.org.

The New Economy Challenge: Implications for Higher Education

by David Korten -

A new economy requires a new approach to education. David Korten discusses how we can rethink our goals, reskill ourselves, and teach Spaceship Management 101.

We humans are in the midst of a potentially terminal economic, social, and environmental crisis of our own making. Our economic systems are unstable, extreme inequality is tearing apart the social fabric, and Earth’s critical living systems are collapsing. We have gathered for this conference, not to debate the seriousness of our situation, but rather to explore how our educational institutions can contribute to the solution.

Building an Earth Community

I want to start by quoting from the preamble of The Earth Charter, a document that grew out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It is a summation of conversations over several years involving thousands of persons representing the grand diversity of the world’s people and cultures. Its opening words frame the work at hand:

We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth Community with a common destiny.

Full Story The New Economy Challenge: Implications for Higher Education by David Korten — YES! Magazine.

Texas Education Board Is Trying to Infuse Schoolbooks with Ultraconservative Ideology

“We are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles,” says one board member. “The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel.”

Don McLeroy is a balding, paunchy man with a thick broom-handle mustache who lives in a rambling two-story brick home in a suburb near Bryan, Texas. When he greeted me at the door one evening last October, he was clutching a thin paperback with the skeleton of a seahorse on its cover, a primer on natural selection penned by famed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr. We sat down at his dining table, which was piled high with three-ring binders, and his wife, Nancy, brought us ice water in cut-crystal glasses with matching coasters. Then McLeroy cracked the book open. The margins were littered with stars, exclamation points, and hundreds of yellow Post-its that were brimming with notes scrawled in a microscopic hand. With childlike glee, McLeroy flipped through the pages and explained what he saw as the gaping holes in Darwin’s theory. “I don’t care what the educational political lobby and their allies on the left say,” he declared at one point. “Evolution is hooey.” This bled into a rant about American history. “The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation,” McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan — he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”

Views like these are relatively common in East Texas, a region that prides itself on being the buckle of the Bible Belt. But McLeroy is no ordinary citizen. The jovial creationist sits on the Texas State Board of Education, where he is one of the leaders of an activist bloc that holds enormous sway over the body’s decisions. As the state goes through the once-in-a-decade process of rewriting the standards for its textbooks, the faction is using its clout to infuse them with ultraconservative ideals. Among other things, they aim to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy, bring global-warming denial into science class, and downplay the contributions of the civil rights movement.

Full Story Texas Education Board Is Trying to Infuse Schoolbooks with Ultraconservative Ideology | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

N.Y. Group Mobilizes To Help Girl Prevented From Graduating By Homelessness

New York City bureaucrats won’t let Rosa Bracero graduate from high school because her family is homeless.

The Daily News reported Thursday that Bracero missed her Regents exam two weeks ago because her family was being evicted that day and the city’s intake center requires every family member to show up for to apply for shelter. Bracero took a makeup exam, but the state won’t validate the results.

Now, after the Daily News reported on Bracero’s plight, the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City has launched a campaign to force the city to allow Bracero to graduate, blasting an email to its list of more than 17,000 people.

Full Story N.Y. Group Mobilizes To Help Girl Prevented From Graduating By Homelessness.

students should graduate with a résumé, not a transcript

Consider that title for a moment, at least one moment.

The words are from Arnold Packer, principal author of what is know as the SCANS report, (SCANS = Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, and the Secretary was of the Dept. of Labor). I encountered that phrase in a recent piece by Grant Wiggins, writing for The Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development’s new EDge professional social network project in piece titled Abolish the Diploma.

There is an important message, contrary to most of our discussions about educational policy. What if we totally abandoned the idea of a high school diploma meeting certain common standards, what might that mean for education, for the money we spend on standardized tests? Can we consider the implications, at least for a moment? If you are interested in the idea, please keep reading.

Wiggins is one of the great advocates of Authentic Learning and Authentic Education (you can read about his ideas here, with an undergraduate degree from St. John’s Annapolis and an Ed. D. from Harvard.  But he is not afraid of challenging conventional thinking about education.   Consider how his blog post starts:

Imagine the following HS requirements being recommend to the School Board:
•   3 years of economics and business
•   2 courses in philosophy – one in logic, the other in ethics
•   2 years of psychology, with special emphasis on child development and family relations
•   2 years of mathematics, focusing on probability and statistics
•   4 years of Language Arts, but with a major focus on semiotics and oral proficiency
•   US and World history, taught as Current Events – backwards from the present
•   1 Year of Graphics Design, Desktop Publishing, and Multimedia presentation

Outrageous?  Hardly – if we do an analysis of what most graduates actually need and will use in professional, civic, and personal life.  How odd it is that we do not require oral proficiency when every graduate will need the ability.  How absurd it is in this day and age that students aren’t required to understand the capitalist system. How sad it is that physics is viewed as more important than psychology, as parents struggle to raise children wisely and families work hard to understand one another.  Requirements based on pre-modern academic priorities and schooling predicated on the old view that few people would graduate and fewer still would go on to college make no sense. Ask any adult: how much algebra did you use this past week?

Full Story Daily Kos: students should graduate with a résumé, not a transcript.

OPS: Interesting how even this lefty author left out  a couple of years of Civics.  Learning how to balance a check book would be good to toss in there too

Lobbying Imperils Overhaul of Student Loans

Four months ago, it appeared all but certain that the White House and Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling the student loan business and ending government subsidies to private lenders.

President Obama called the idea a “no-brainer” last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from the profits of private lenders and give it directly to students, and many colleges were already moving to get loans directly from the federal government in anticipation of the next move by Congress.

But an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation’s biggest student lenders has now put one of the White House’s signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business.

Full Story Lobbying Imperils Overhaul of Student Loans – NYTimes.com.

The for-profit Educational Maintenance Organization: Academica, Inc.

The for-profit Educational Maintenance Organization

The first Florida charter school statute was approved in 1996, opening the door for the creation of charter schools as part of the state’s public education system, where they would operate independently. Since that time the race has been on, with Florida, along with other states such as Arizona, Louisiana and Texas, becoming the fasting growing charter school environments in the United States (Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools Website).

One of the first players to jump into the foray of for-profit EMO’s in the quickly transforming charter school climate in Florida, was Academica, Inc., a private corporation founded by entrepreneur and attorney, Fernando Zulueta. Originated in 1999, Academica’s website describes itself as: Academica is one of the nation’s longest-serving and most successful charter school service and support organizations.

The Company was founded in 1999 on the principle that each charter school is a unique educational environment governed by an independent Board of Directors that best knows the right path for its school, and Academica’s mission is to facilitate that Governing Board’s vision. Academica has a proven track-record developing growing networks of high performing charter schools (Academica Schools Website). In speaking about its business plan, the website goes on to claim: Academica’s winning business formula has played a major role in the success of Mater Academy and all charter schools under their management. Academica takes care of administrative duties such as payroll, budgeting, accounting and facility maintenance, which allow school principals and teachers to focus on providing top-notch education for their students Academica is a charter school service and support organization that works with schools in Florida, Utah and Texas. It was founded in 1999 on the principle that each charter school is a unique educational environment governed by an independent board of directors that best knows the right path for its school.

Full Story The for-profit Educational Maintenance Organization: Academica, Inc. | Dailycensored.com.

Administration Proposals Seek Broad Changes to ‘No Child Left Behind’

The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.

Educators who have been briefed by administration officials said the proposals for changes in the main law governing the federal role in public schools would eliminate or rework many of the provisions that teachers’ unions, associations of principals, school boards and other groups have found most objectionable.

Yet the administration is not planning to abandon the law’s commitments to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and to encouraging teacher quality.

Full Story Administration Proposals Seek Broad Changes to ‘No Child Left Behind’ – NYTimes.com.

Academics fight rise of creationism at universities

A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur’an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists.

Earlier this month Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin’s theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution.

In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or “intelligent design” in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society’s event in April.

Full Story Academics fight rise of creationism at universities | World news | The Guardian.

Bloomberg’s 12-Step Method to Close Down Public Schools

There is a method to his madness. Bloomberg and his Chancellor Joel Klein have initiated shut down or initiated the closing of more than 100 public schools, many of which have deep roots in their communities. No two situations are exactly alike. Nonetheless, here is a handy template to go by if you are a mayor who is eager to break up large public schools and hand over their buildings to privately run charter school operations, but don’t want to leave your fingerprints at the scene of the crime:

1 Establish a charter school with selective admissions process and access to more resources inside an existing large school building that you covet — remember that it’s easier to target people-of-color communities, which have less political power.

2 As charter school grows by a grade each year, allow the original large school to become increasingly overcrowded with classes held in the library and auditorium and rooms for special activities like arts and music eliminated.

Full Story The Indypendent » Bloomberg’s 12-Step Method to Close Down Public Schools.

Right-wing Texas Education Board accidentally bans popular children’s book author.

Last week, ThinkProgress reported on the Texas Board of Education’s push to change the state’s social studies curriculum to marginalize progressives. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reveals that the latest to be nixed is actually popular children’s author Bill Martin Jr.:

In its haste to sort out the state’s social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children’s author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.”

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

Full Story Think Progress » Right-wing Texas Education Board accidentally bans popular children’s book author..

Texas State Board of Education puts right-wing swill into children’s textbook’s

The Texas State board of education is our public face of Christian Evangelical Fundamentalist fervor down here in Dumbutt. The 15 members of the board are made up of 7 hardcore Evangelical fundamentalist creationists, 3 conservative Republicans, and 5 Democrats. They not only dictate classroom curriculum but decide how text books for Texas children should be written. Texas being as large as it is, every 10 years the initial buy of these text books is so great that the publishers sell these Texas Taliban influenced editions to many smaller states and school districts.

Last year the board had a shake up! Governor Perry had to come in after they lost the war to insert Intelligent Design into our biology textbooks and classrooms. A change of leadership was needed! Don McLeroy, a dentist and Evangelical fundamentalist creationist now takes second position to their new leader, Gail Lowe who is an Evangelical fundamentalist creationist but not a dentist.

After losing the science battle last year they have decided to win the history/social sciences battle this year by injecting their right-wing swill into our children come Hell or Highwater. Both of which seem to be on the near horizon.

Full Story Texas State Board of Education puts right-wing swill into children’s textbook’s – Kick! Making Politics Funny – A liberal dose of political comedy.

The Jobs Crisis Creating an Education Crisis

According to Economic Policy Institute research associate Richard Rothstein, the high unemployment rate caused by the recession has only exacerbated the nation’s education crisis to the point where the Obama administration‘s education reform efforts may be futile.

While the short-term effects of the economic crisis are plain to see, it is the long-term consequences of the Great Recession that will have the biggest impact on the nation’s future. And one of the most overlooked aspects of the economic crisis is its effect on the nation’s already fragile education system.

According to Economic Policy Institute research associate Richard Rothstein, the high unemployment rate caused by the recession has only exacerbated the nation’s education crisis to the point where the Obama administration‘s education reform efforts may be futile.

“Unemployment at the levels we are now experiencing is not only an inconvenience,” he writes. “It is a tragedy. Its academic effects will likely overwhelm any school reform efforts.”

The current unemployment rate has likely pushed the child poverty rate well past 20 percent, Rothstein says. And for black children, the poverty rate could easily be over 50 percent at this point. Children living in poverty are much more likely to go through the school day hungry, and children that are not properly fed tend to do poorly in school.

“Poverty directly depresses student achievement, as more children come to school hungry, homeless, and from households under severe stress,” he writes.

Beyond increased child poverty, the Great Recession is taking its toll on education at all levels in a myriad of other ways.

Full Story The Jobs Crisis Creating an Education Crisis | Economy In Crisis.

The Grim State of the States: Public Education Under Attack

Economist James Heintz is Associate Director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst.

Heintz has written on a wide range of economic policy issues, including job creation, global labor standards, egalitarian macroeconomic strategies, and investment behavior. He has worked as an international consultant on projects in Ghana and South Africa, sponsored by the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Development Program, that focus on employment-oriented development policy.

In 2000 Heintz co-authored with The Center for Popular Economics and Nancy Folbre The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy: A Compact and Irreverent Guide to Economic Life in America, and is also author of a variety of other books and papers on employment and economics over the past decade or so.

His current work focuses on global labor standards, employment income, and poverty; employment policies for low- and middle-income countries; and the links between macroeconomic policies and distributive outcomes.

Heintz is recently the author of a new research paper: “The Grim State of the States: The Fiscal Crisis Facing State and Local Governments.” (.PDF), which opens with:

via The Grim State of the States: Public Education Under Attack | Antemedius.

In Search of Education Leaders

Bob Herbert –

For me, the greatest national security crisis in the United States is the crisis in education. We are turning out new generations of Americans who are whizzes at video games and may be capable of tweeting 24 hours a day but are nowhere near ready to cope with the great challenges of the 21st century.

An American kid drops out of high school at an average rate of one every 26 seconds. In some large urban districts, only half of the students ever graduate. Of the kids who manage to get through high school, only about a third are ready to move on to a four-year college.

It’s no secret that American youngsters are doing poorly in school at a time when intellectual achievement in an increasingly globalized world is more important than ever. International tests have shown American kids to be falling well behind their peers in many other industrialized countries, and that will only get worse if radical education reforms on a large scale are not put in place soon.

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – In Search of Education Leaders – NYTimes.com.

Dem defends bill that would make Massachusetts colleges insure students

Massachusetts lawmakers will hold a hearing on a unique bill Thursday that requires colleges to make sure all their students have basic health insurance, the Associated Press reports.

The legislation is sponsored by Democratic Sen. Richard Moore of Uxbridge, who is Chairman of the Senate Health Care Financing Committee.

“The purpose of the bill is to make sure there's adequate, affordable coverage for students,” Jared Cain, Moore's communications director, told Raw Story. “They're perhaps the most important parts of society.”

Though most colleges already mandate that all students buy health insurance, this bill is designed to close any gaps, Cain said. Massachusetts colleges will be forced to pay $1 per student for each day they continue to be uninsured.

Full Story Dem defends bill that would make Massachusetts colleges insure students | Raw Story.

Too Fat To Graduate?

Lincoln University’s BMI Requirement Causes Uproar

Lincoln University students now have one more hurdle to pass before they graduate: losing weight. According to a recently instituted requirement, university students with a body mass index (BMI) over 30 will have to take a physical education class in order to receive their diploma.

The program “Fitness for Life” began in 2006, but this is the first year the effects will be felt. This spring, the new requirement will keep over two dozen students — all black — from graduating.

The new rule has been criticized around the blogosphere, and has not been well received by the student body.

“What’s the point of this? What does my BMI have to do with my academic overcome?” asked Dionard Henderson, a freshman. “Some students on campus are just confused why a certain BMI has to be a requirement. Are there not a sufficient amount of prerequisites to complete prior to graduating from college?

Full Story Too Fat To Graduate? Lincoln University’s BMI Requirement Causes Uproar.

California College Tuition Costs To Increase 32 PERCENT Due To State Budget Crisis, Students Protest Hike

As protests resounded outside, the University of California Board of Regents approved a 32 percent fee increase for students attending the state’s premier public schools.

The vote in a windowless University of California, Los Angeles, meeting room took place Thursday as hundreds of students and union members gathered nearby, waving signs, pounding drums and chanting “We’re fired up, can’t take it no more” and “Shame on you.”

The $2,500 increase will push the cost of an undergraduate education to more than $10,000 a year by next fall, about triple the cost of a decade ago. The fees, the equivalent of tuition, do not include the cost of housing, board and books.

“Our hand has been forced,” UC President Mark Yudof told reporters after the vote. “When you don’t have any money, you don’t have any money.”

Full Story California College Tuition Costs To Increase 32 PERCENT Due To State Budget Crisis, Students Protest Hike.

While Law School Tuition Skyrockets, Government Student Loan Limits Remain Stagnant

While law school tuition has skyrocketed over the past 15 years, federal loan limits have remained stagnant, putting more pressure on students to take out higher-cost private loans.

In 1994, students were limited to $18,500 in low-interest loans from the federal government. Fifteen years later, that limit has only increased to $20,500 though the $18,500 available to students in 1994 is worth $26,959.69 today in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Meanwhile, tuition and fees have tripled for in-state students at public law schools, and more than doubled for out-of-state students at public schools and those at private schools.

via While Law School Tuition Skyrockets, Government Student Loan Limits Remain Stagnant.

The Uneducated American

Paul Krugman

If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.

But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.

Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board.

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – The Uneducated American – NYTimes.com.

Texas schools move away from abstinence-only education: We don’t think it’s working.

Think Progress » Texas currently has the third-highest teen birth rate in the country and “the highest rate of repeat teen births.” It also leads the nation in the amount of government money it spends on abstinence-only education. But some school districts in the state are now shifting away from that approach, admitting that it isn’t working:

“We mainly did it because of our pregnancy rate,” said Whitney Self, lead teacher for health and physical education at the Hays Consolidated Independent School District. “We don’t think abstinence-only is working.” [...]

Both approaches to sex education teach that refraining from sexual activity is the safest choice for teens.

Full Story: Think Progress » Texas schools move away from abstinence-only education: We don’t think it’s working..

More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation

Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

Full Story: More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation – Yahoo! News.