Common Core

an 8 23 $

no lnx

For the next time some idiot tries to tell you the GOP is 'The Party of Business'

Nikki Haley is ‘whitewashing’ her record on Putin while hypocritically attacking Democrats: conservative

Thom Hartmann

August 30, 2023

As predictably as the sun rises and sets, every Sunday sees a commentator or politician on one of the Sunday political talk shows say — without being challenged — words to the effect that the Republican Party understands and supports business better than Democrats. This weekend, as I recall, it was CNN‘s turn.

All my life, in fact, I’ve been told by the media that the GOP is the “party of business.”

It may have once been true when I was a very young child, but today it’s a lie — and has been so in a huge way since the neoliberal Reagan Revolution.

Between 1933 and 2020 there were 14 American presidents, 7 Democratic and 7 Republican.

The economy during this time grew at an average rate of 4.6% under the Democratic presidents, but only an anemic 2.4% under Republican presidents. For example, the economy has grown three times faster under Biden than under Trump.

Ten of the past 11 recessions began under Republican presidents,although lifelong Republican and Trump Fed appointee Jerome Powell seems hell-bent on producing one for Joe Biden, just in time for the 2024 election.

Republican presidents have exploded the national debt, while the only balanced budgets out of the past 60 years have been presented by Democratic presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama.

Bill Clinton left George W. Bush a $128 billion surplus (after 4 consecutive years of budget surpluses): Bush immediately squandered it with a massive tax cut for billionaires and two criminal wars.

Just last year, President Biden decreased federal spending by $550 billion and reduced the deficit by $1.4 trillion — the largest one-year deficit drop in American history — all while creating five times more jobs in 2 years than the last three Republican presidents combined.

If not for the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts for billionaires and the two wars George W. Bush lied us into, our national debt would today be zero instead of over $30 trillion.

The core of American business and thus the livelihood of American communities before Reagan was small- and medium-sized companies.

We enforced anti-trust lawsso aggressively that when Buster Brown and Kinney shoe companies wanted to merge in the 1960s the Supreme Court blocked the merger because the combined company would control about 5 percent of the US shoe market.Nike alone today controls around 20 percent of that market.

Small- and medium-sized companies built America and brought us the American middle class, the first and largest middle class in the world. But in 1983, when Reagan ordered the DOJ, FTC, and SEC to stop enforcing anti-trust laws dating back to the Sherman Act of 1890, giant corporations began a relentless campaign to destroy locally-owned companies.

Strip malls and small-town downtowns that were once mostly home to local retailers are now dominated by giant monopolistic national chains. Big Box stores, spreading across the country unconstrained since Reagan, have been wiping out small towns and rural communities.

One study found, as Reuters reported:

“[T]he closer a store was to the Walmart location, the greater the likelihood it would close. Persky and his colleagues found that for every mile closer to the Walmart, 6 percent more stores closed. Close in around the store's location, between 35 and 60 percent of stores closed.”

For most American businesses and the communities they serve, Republican governance has been a disaster since the Reagan 1980s.

In the 1950s, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower championed building tens of thousands of new public schools all across America, an effort supported by the business community because an educated workforce is a productive workforce.

From the early days of the Industrial Revolution, Americans were proud that we had one of the best-educated workforces in the world, and that itself was a huge boost to business.

In 2010, though, when fossil fuel billionaires bankrolled the Tea Party and were looking for an issue to beat up on Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 elections, they seized on the national standards for education program conceived and legislatively initiated by both Republicans and Democrats called “Common Core.”

Although it had been endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce and GOP presidential front-runner Jeb Bush (among others) and was in place in 45 states, word went out that it was an effort to “indoctrinate” American students.

The story ran day after day on Fox “News” and rightwing hate radio. Hysteria followed, and Red state after Red state outlawed these new high standards for high-school graduation. Republican grandstanding for political gain actually dumbed down America.

The 2020 version of this was Critical Race Theory, another equally bogus attack on public education. Between this, “Don’t Say Gay,” and banning thousands of books, the Republican war on public education has blossomed into full flower.

Now, Republican states are trying to shut down their public schools altogether via state-wide voucher programs, replacing Eisenhower’s AAA+ education system with state-funded religious and rightwing for-profit schools that refuse to teach actual science, civics, or American history.

Arizona was the first to go statewide with vouchers, and Republican legislators in Texas, Florida, Kansas, and a dozen other GOP-run states are considering the same.It’s quite simply an all-out effort to destroy public education and subsidize religious schools and private all-white academies for upper-middle-class people who can take advantage of a voucher that only covers part of the cost of tuition.

The only option left for the very poorest people will be the few remaining public schools, essentially turning them into ghettos.

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower ran for re-election in the 1956 election by bragging that he’d expanded Social Security across America, and his 1952 election was mostly powered by his enthusiastic endorsement of unionization.

At a speech before the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1952, Eisenhower noted that the first national legalization of unions in America was signed by Republican President Calvin Coolidge, the 1926 Railway Labor Act.

“Only a handful of unreconstructed reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions,” he told the union group now known as the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest. “Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.”

Similarly, in September of 1970 President Richard Nixon hosted labor leaders from across America, praising the movement. As The New York Times noted on September 8, 1970:

“When the ‘great issue’ has been whether to support the President and to meet the nation’s responsibilities ‘for defending and protecting the forces of freedom in the world,’ he said, ‘American labor has never been found wanting. It has always been the first in war and in peace.’”

As a result of combined Democratic and Republican support of unions, by Reagan’s election in 1980 about two-thirds of all American workers had a union job or it’s equivalent,with great pay, benefits, and retirement plans, because a third of workers were union members and that set the pay and benefits floor for the non-union employers to compete for another third of workers.

But, following Nixon putting Lewis Powell on the Supreme Court in 1971, the GOP began to adopt the positions in thePowell Memo, which included gutting labor unions so the morbidly rich could become even richer.

Their rationale was that workers having a say in the workplace had “destabilized” America, a point first made in 1951 by Russell Kirkin his book The Conservative Mind that I detailed two years ago here.

President Reagan, however, declared war on organized labor with his attack on the PATCO union. Ever since, the GOP has been fighting efforts to expand unionization.

Combined with Reagan’s massive tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations, this loss of union representation has led to a$50 trillion transfer of wealthfrom the homes and retirement accounts of working-class people straight into the money bins of the morbidly rich.

Instead of two-thirds of Americans having a middle-class lifestyle like in 1980, today that number is down to around 45 percent of us. As a result, both poverty and homelessness have exploded across the land. And poor and homeless people can’t afford to support a strong economy — and thus American business — the way a prosperous middle class can.

Dwight Eisenhower created the Small Business Administration to “aid, counsel, assist, and protect insofar as is possible the interests of small-business concerns.”

He signed a massive expansion of Social Security to take the pension/retirement onus off small- and medium-sized employers, increased the minimum wage so a prospering working class could purchase the products of American manufacturers, and built low-income housing across the nation to end the homeless “hobo” problem left over from the Republican Great Depression.

Eisenhower created from scratch the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to build a healthy and well-educated workforce, while Richard Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Agency into law to save the lives of American workers being killed by toxic pesticides and other chemicals (the agency’s creation was provoked by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring).

Today’s GOP opposes all of these programs and agencies. They only support the largest American companies and the richest citizens.

When Trump was president, he rolled back regulation of toxic pesticides known to cause brain damage to children, and one of his first official acts in office was to end the prohibition of coal mines dumping their toxic waste and tailings into America’s rivers, polluting downstream water supplies with cancer-causing chemicals.

Arguably, the best policy possible for American businesses of all sizes is the Medicare For All program promoted for decades by progressive Democrats.

Back in 2004, Toyota announced they’d be opening a new factory in North America. Three southern US states offered them billions in tax advantages and free land, with the Republican governor of Alabama openly bragging about how cheaply his citizens would work for the company.

But in the end, in 2005, Toyota announced they’d be building the factory in Ontario, Canada because US healthcare costs are nearly twice those of Canada, which has had a successful Medicare For All system in place for more than a half-century (as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich).

Since then, as Republicans (and a few bought-off Democrats) continue to fight any effort to establish a national healthcare or health insurance system, the company has built two more North American factories in Canada.

If it wasn’t for Republican obstruction, they would’ve been built here and the jobs would be here.

The simple reality is that Republicans have no coherent plans for the American economy beyond more tax cuts for their morbidly rich donors and more deregulation of the very largest and most polluting corporations.

To compensate for this deficiency, they push hate against queer people, public school teachers, women, and dark-skinned immigrants. DeSantis has gone so far as to attack Disney, Florida’s largest employer and source of tax revenues, because they had the temerity to respect their gay, lesbian, and trans employees and customers.

Republicans have banned hundreds of books from public schools and libraries, saturated our towns and cities with weapons of war, banned women’s access to reproductive healthcare, and packed our courts with judges who’d be comfortable with the American Nazi movement, the Federalist Society, and the John Birch Society.

Not only are these policies and positions bad for America, they’re also destructive of most American businesses.

So, the next time some idiot tries to tell you that the GOP is “the party of business,” let them know the real facts.

The only businesses Republicans actually support are gun sellers, megachurches, corrupt defense contractors, and giant monopolies. And none of those are good for average Americans, locally-owned businesses, or the US economy.

===

BS blog

May 24 2014

Common Core’s Global Warming Agenda

Vicki E. Alger

http://www.iwf.org/blog/2794034/Common-Core%E2%80%99s-Global-Warming-Agenda

viki alger

Earlier this month, Wyoming became the first state to reject Common Core “Next Generation” Science Standards because they push man-made global warming as a settled fact. Also a growing number of scientists have been issuing scathing rebuttals against reputedly “scientific” findings on global warming, including the White House’s National Climate Assessment. Moreover, a majority of scientists believe that global warming is largely nature-made, not man-made (see here, here, here, and here).

TheHeartland Institute’s James Rust, a retired professor of nuclear engineering, takes the standards to task, suggesting Wyoming and other states are right to question adoption of politicized standards:

The coverage mentions computer modelsare used for predicting future climate and weather conditions for the planet. The report claimed, “However, it is clear not only that human activities play a major role in climate change but also that impacts of climate change—for example, increased frequency of severe storms due to ocean warming—have begun to influence human activities . The prospect of future impacts of climate change due to further increases in atmospheric carbon is prompting consideration of how to avoid or restrict such increases.” There is insufficient coverage that computer models fail to replicate what happens in the future when data for comparisons are available. In my opinion climate models should not be included in K-12 education because our understanding of forces influencing climate is incomplete and model’s failure to be validated. Material in the book does not make this clear. …

Our science programs should stimulate students to be adept in analysis and have an inquiring mind. Never be exposed to ideas of “the science is settled”. It is my opinion the science portion of Common Core is dangerous for the country. Damage from its implementation for a few decades could harm the country for many years.

Abandoning basic elements of scientific inquiry in favor of politicized agendas is bad enough. But Rust goes on to note that worst of all:

It is easy for teachers to be caught up in promoting teachings of the catastrophic climate change movement because of “warm feelings” from working to save the planet. Over-zealous teachers, perhaps in concert with environmental groups, may wish to develop slogans, songs, T-shirts, and even arm bands for students to use to help spread the gospel of human-caused global warming. … Potentials for mischief to the country over teachings of perverted science are enormous. …

The entire Common Core program provides opportunities to instill propaganda in our young people ages 5 to 18. Common Core should be discarded from an intellectual point of view.

And that’s saying something, considering that Common Core national standards are intended to make American students college- and career-ready.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/betsy-devos-education-secretary

commies?

Arthur Miller Foundation was founded to honor the legacy of Miller and his New York City Public School Education. The mission of the foundation is: "Promoting increased access and equity to theater arts education in our schools and increasing the number of students receiving theater arts education as an integral part of their academic curriculum."^[85] Other initiatives include certification of new theater teachers and their placement in public schools; increasing the number of theater teachers in the system from the current estimate of 180 teachers in 1800 schools; supporting professional development of all certified theater teachers; providing teaching artists, cultural partners, physical spaces, and theater ticket allocations for students. The foundation's primary purpose is to provide arts education in the New York City school system. The current chancellor of the foundation is Carmen Farina, a large proponent of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Alec Baldwin, Ellen Barkin, Katori Hall, Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Kushner, Michael Mayer, Jim McElhinney, Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Lynn Nottage, David O. Russell, Liev Schreiber all serve on the Master Arts Council. Son-in-law Daniel Day-Lewis serves on the current board of directors.^[86]

[i may have jumped gun linking cc to charters, but gates favors both]

Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy

Today’s multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders.

By Joanne Barkan / Nonprofit Quarterly

April 27, 2016

article was first published in the Nonprofit Quarterly (spring 2016; vol. 23, no. 1).

Once upon a time, the super-wealthy endowed their tax-exempt charitable foundations and then turned them over to boards of trustees to run. The trustees would spend the earnings of the endowment to pursue a typically grand but wide-open mission written into the foundation’s charter—like The Rockefeller Foundation’s 1913 mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Today’s multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders—think Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They aim to do good in the world, but each defines “good” idiosyncratically in terms of specific public policies and political goals. They translate their wealth, the work of their foundations, and their celebrity as doers-of-good into influence in the public sphere—much more influence than most citizens have.

Call it charitable plutocracy—a peculiarly American phenomenon, increasingly problematic and in need of greater scrutiny. Like all forms of plutocracy, this one conflicts with democracy, and exactly how these philanthropists coordinate tax-exempt grantmaking with political funding for maximum effect remains largely obscure. What follows is a case study of the way charitable plutocracy operates on the ground. It’s a textbook example of the tug-of-war between government by the people and uber-philanthropists as social engineers.

The Case of Bill Gates and Washington State

This story begins in 1995, when the Washington State House of Representatives first considered legislation that would enable private individuals and organizations to obtain charters to create their own K–12 schools. These were to be taxpayer-funded schools, but privately run and exempt from many of the regulations governing district (regular) public schools. The funding would come from the resources of regular public schools: each student would “carry” his or her per-child funding out of the district system to a charter school.

The bill died in the state senate, so supporters went directly to voters with a ballot initiative to enable charter schools. The campaign attracted little money on either side, but turnout was high because the vote took place on the same day as the 1996 presidential election. Washingtonians rejected charter schools decisively: 64.4 percent against, 35.6 percent in favor.1

State representatives kept trying. They proposed new bills in 1997, 1998, and 1999, but got the same results: success in the lower chamber, failure in the senate.2

Wariness of charter schools didn’t mean that Washingtonians were completely satisfied with existing schools or feared change. Voters had legitimate concerns. Charter schools, they worried, would divert tax revenue from already underfunded district schools, especially those serving low-income and minority students. In addition, schools under private management might be less transparent and less accountable to the public than Washington’s district schools, which were overseen by locally elected boards.

Charter supporters tried another ballot initiative in 2000, and, for the first time, attracted the backing of a multi-billionaire philanthropist. Paul Allen had cofounded Microsoft in 1975 and The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation in 1988.3 The state places no limits on individual campaign contributions for ballot measures, so Allen was able to give $3.275 million of the total $3.4 million raised by the pro-charter side. Opponents raised only about $11,000. Outspent 309 to 1, they still defeated the initiative, although the millions given in support of charters shrank the margin of victory. The vote was 51.8 percent against charters and 48.2 percent in favor.4

In the next four years, the national context shifted. The debate around public education intensified as a controversial market-based education-reform movement grew stronger. “Ed-reformers” claimed that U.S. public schools were failing; that the culprits were bad teachers, teachers unions, and government bureaucracy; and that the private sector, using public resources, could run better schools. They promoted competition among schools to force out the weakest and measuring educational success via students’ standardized test scores.

The education-reform movement in general, and charter schools in particular, attracted a new wave of philanthropists, many of whom had made fortunes in high-tech industries and finance. Although they had no experience as educators, they aimed to “disrupt” and rebuild public schooling for urban low-income and minority children. They embraced the idea that giving grants to K–12 reform projects corresponded with investing capital in a business. They described their philanthropy in terms of strategic investments to maximize returns and data collection to verify results. Having succeeded in business, they reasoned, they would succeed in education. They came to see funding education-reform candidates and ballot initiatives as part of the same effort.

The Washington legislature finally passed a charter school law in 2004. Opponents responded by petitioning for a ballot measure to repeal the law. Mobilized by the teachers unions, League of Women Voters, state Democratic Party, and the Seattle School Board, they raised $1.3 million for the campaign. The unions contributed the most: the Washington Education Association gave $601,000, and the National Education Association gave $500,000.5

Charter school supporters raised three times as much—$3.9 million. Most of it came from three education-reform political funder-philanthropists, who donated about $1 million each: Bill Gates, who had recently made education reform the main focus of his domestic philanthropy; Walmart heir John T. Walton (from Wyoming), who advocated charters and tax-funded vouchers for parents to use for private-school tuition; and Donald Fisher (from California), founder of Gap and a major donor to the KIPP chain of charter schools.6

When philanthropists finance political campaigns, they act as individual citizens spending their personal wealth, not as the heads of tax-exempt, charitable foundations. Federal and state laws bar private foundations from political activity. Although the regulations have ambiguities and loopholes, high-profile philanthropists are usually careful about keeping foundation and personal monies separate and using only the latter to fund political campaigns.

Although outspent three to one, charter school opponents in Washington won an impressive victory in 2004. The law was repealed by a vote of 58.3 percent to 41.7 percent.7

This big-money face-off—multibillionaire philanthropists against teachers unions—turned out to be a prototype repeated across the country in scores of education-reform campaigns in the last decade. Millions of dollars regularly pour into races for local and state school boards and for district and state school superintendents, as well as for education ballot initiatives. The money comes from both in state and out of state. Twenty years ago, these contests cost little to run; the stakes were limited. Now, the money is huge, and the ramifications are national: the nature and control of public education is being decided.

Education-reform philanthropists justify their massive political spending as a necessary counterweight to the teachers unions;8 yet, the philanthropists can, and consistently do, far outspend the unions. In 2004, Paul Allen had a net worth of $21 billion, Bill Gates had a net worth of $46.6 billion, and John T. Walton (who died in 2005) had a net worth of $20 billion.9 Donald Fisher’s net worth was $1.3 billion in 2005.10 In 2015, Allen had a net worth of $17.8 billion, Gates had a net worth of $76 billion, and Doris Fisher (Donald Fisher’s widow and a charter school donor) had a net worth of $2.9 billion.11 And the unions? According to the 2015 reports filed with the Office of Labor-Management Standards, the National Education Association had $388.8 million in total receipts; the American Federation of Teachers had $327.6 million in total receipts.12 As political rivals, the education-reform philanthropists and the teachers unions have never competed on a level playing field.

In January 2012, charter school supporters in the Washington State legislature introduced another bill. By then, the state was one of only nine that didn’t permit charter schools. Some states had bowed to pressure from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program (2009–2011): by committing to a list of specific reforms, including charter schools, they had a chance to win additional federal funds. Despite resistance to the reforms, resource-starved states were willing to sign on to almost anything to get more funding.

More than five thousand charter schools were operating in the United States in 2012, and researchers were finding some serious problems. Charter schools were diverting funds from district schools while also enrolling a smaller proportion of the most at-risk children (for example, children with disabilities and English-language learners). These children remained at or returned to district schools just as the districts were losing resources. In addition, the quality of charter schools was extremely uneven, according to the education reformers’ own criterion: student scores on standardized tests. A large-scale study, published in 2013 by the pro-education-reform Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, concluded that about 27 percent of charters performed better than district schools serving equivalent student populations; about 25 percent performed worse; the rest were about the same.13

Despite the problems with charter schools, education-reform philanthropists had no second thoughts about their drive to replace as many district schools as possible. They had various motivations: the conviction that market competition among schools could not fail to improve the quality of public education; the desire to get government out of the business of running schools (although taxpayers would still fund them); and determination to weaken the teachers unions (only about 7 percent of charter schools are unionized).14 Charter advocates also argued that low-income parents should have a choice of schools for their children just as wealthier parents did—no matter that most charters were no better than district schools and some were worse, and that charters were weakening district schools and that high-performing charters accommodated few students.

Meanwhile, the leadership of both houses of the Washington legislature opposed the 2012 charter bill.15 When it died in committee, the activist billionaires stepped in, with Gates in the lead: they would finance yet another charter school ballot initiative—the state’s fourth.

In the first phase of Washington’s initiative process, citizen sponsors draft their legislation, and the Office of the Code Reviser certifies the text. Thus, citizens, not legislators, write the proposed law. In phase two, supporters collect a sufficient number of valid signatures to place the measure on the ballot in the next state general election. Phase three is the campaign and vote.16

Once the thirty-nine-page charter school measure was certified, the state’s Attorney General’s office issued an official title, subject, and “concise description” to be printed on the ballot. Here they are:

Initiative Measure No. 1240 concerns creation of a public charter school system. This measure would authorize up to forty publicly-funded charter schools open to all students, operated through approved, nonreligious, nonprofit organizations, with government oversight; and modify certain laws applicable to them as public schools.

Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]17

The coalition of advocates behind the 2012 initiative included some well-known grantees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: for example, Stand for Children (about $9 million in grants from 2005 through 2012)18 and the League of Education Voters, a subgrantee of the Alliance for Education ($733,285 in grants for 2011 and 2012).19

To collect the signatures, the coalition hired PCI Consultants, Inc., of Calabasas, California, a “full service petition and field management firm” with experience in Washington State.20 The drive began in mid-June, which left just twenty-one days to collect 241,153 valid signatures—the shortest drive in state history (except for one in 1973).21 Success depended on quick access to millions of dollars for an all-out effort.

The drive raised $2.3 million and delivered about 350,000 signatures by the July 6 deadline.22 One signature gatherer from California told the Seattle Times that he was among about four hundred out-of-staters who had been hired. Coalition spokespeople declined to confirm or deny the information.23

According to the Public Disclosure Commission in Washington State, funders for the signature drive included Gates ($1 million), Alice Walton (from Arkansas, $600,000), Mike and Jackie Bezos (parents of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, $500,000), venture capitalist Nicolas Hanauer ($450,000), Katherine Binder (chair of EMFCO Holdings, $200,000), Paul Allen’s Vulcan, Inc. ($100,000), and Reed Hastings, from California (Netflix cofounder and KIPP charter schools board member, $100,000).24

As soon as Initiative 1240 was certified for the November vote, the race to stockpile more money began.

The pro-charter side collected another $9.1 million for the fall campaign. More than 70 percent of the additional money came from just six donors: Gates ($2.075 million), Vulcan, Inc. ($1.5 million), Alice Walton ($1.1 million), Mike and Jackie Bezos ($600,000), Hanauer ($600,000), and Connie Ballmer (wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, $500,000).25

Opposition to the charter initiative was broad but not deep-pocketed. The organizations calling for a “no” vote included the Seattle King County NAACP, El Centro de la Raza, the Japanese American Citizens League Board, the League of Women Voters, the Washington State PTA, local elected school boards, the Association of Washington School Principals, the Washington Association of School Administrators, many district and county Democratic Party organizations, the Washington State Labor Council, the Washington Education Association, and other state and local unions.26

The “no” coalition raised just over $727,400.27 The largest donations came from the National Education Association ($250,000) and the Washington Education Association ($200,000).28 According to KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio’s blog, “Teachers’ union officials say…when it comes to the big money behind the charter school initiative, they just can’t compete.”29

No one disputes that big money sways voting outcomes or that superwealthy philanthropists regularly spend millions to get the outcomes they want. The vote on Washington’s Initiative 1240 stands out for this reason: despite outspending their opponents more than 12 to 1, the philanthropists barely eked out a victory. The final tally was 50.69 percent in favor, 49.31 percent opposed.30 Citizens might well have asked whether the advent of charter schools in their state expressed the will of the people.

Once the initiative was law, the backing for charter schools switched from political contributions to tax-exempt philanthropy. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation went into high gear for the next phase of the project. The foundation disbursed more than $31 million in less than three years “to give public charter schools in Washington State a strong start.”31 In practice, this meant selecting and financing individuals and organizations to start schools, advise charter boards, and develop education programs.

The Gates Foundation spent more than $13.5 million to set up and run the Washington State Charter Schools Association—a private group whose work includes awarding “fellowships” to educators who want to open schools. Green Dot Public Schools, a charter management organization founded in Los Angeles, received $8 million in 2013 to expand into Washington. Green Dot has received about $24 million from Gates since 2006. Another charter management organization, the Bay Area’s Summit Public Schools, also received $8 million in 2013 to branch into Washington. Charter Board Partners, a D.C.-based nonprofit consultancy for charter school governance, received more than $1.2 million to open a Washington office. The Gates Foundation gave California’s Seneca Family of Agencies almost $1 million to develop support for at-risk students in Washington’s charter schools.32

Thus, the schools were to be public in name and receive public funding for each student, but the Gates Foundation, with no public oversight, stepped in to shape the charter system.

Washington’s first charter school opened in 2014 and was on probation for compliance problems in the summer of 2015, when eight more charters were about to launch.33 But on September 4, 2015, the Washington Supreme Court halted the entire charter program by declaring the 2012 law unconstitutional. This was the first time any court had struck down a charter school law in its entirety.

The reasoning in the 6-3 decision is straightforward: The state constitution stipulates that only common (public) schools can receive government funding, and all common schools in the state must be subject to local voter control. Because charter schools are run by appointed boards or private organizations, they are not common schools and do not qualify for government funding.34

Charter school supporters blamed the ruling on the bias of liberal activist justices, but as Michael J. Fox, a retired superior court judge, wrote in a letter to the Seattle Times, “I voted for the charter schools initiative. […] But I’ve read the court’s decision thoroughly and am convinced it is well-grounded and based on the pertinent constitutional provisions. Any other decision could only have been based on political ideology and not our supreme law.”35

Charter activists—some with Gates money—filed motions asking the court to reconsider its decision, but the court refused. Undeterred, three Gates grantees—the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Stand for Children, and League of Education Voters—partnered to create a PAC to channel money to legislators willing to vote for a modified charter law. When the PAC was announced, in December 2015, checks had already gone out to twenty-four lawmakers.36 On March 10, 2016, the legislature passed a new bill that would fund charter schools with state lottery revenue. Supporters believe this will pass constitutional muster because lottery proceeds go into an account that is separate from the state’s general fund and the lottery account is not restricted to common schools. Opponents argue that the bill does nothing more than shift money from one account to another.37 Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, who is running for reelection against a pro-charter Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, at the end of a special legislative session on April 2. A union coalition plans to sue the state over the law. Meanwhile, the state remains under a contempt order from the Washington Supreme Court, which ruled in 2012 that the state isn’t meeting its constitutional duty to fully fund basic education. There’s no end in sight.

The Nuisance of Democracy

The Washington charter saga highlights the workings of charitable plutocracy. Multibillionaire philanthropists use their personal wealth, their tax-exempt private foundations, and their high-profile identities as philanthropists to mold public policy to a degree not possible for other citizens. They exert this excessive influence without public input or accountability. As for the charitable donors who are trying to reshape public education according to their favorite theories or ideological preferences, they are intervening with too heavy a hand in a critical institution that belongs to the public and requires democratic control. But in any public domain, the philanthropist’s will and democratic control are often at odds.

Voters, their elected representatives, grass-roots activists, civic groups, unions, public opinion—all can thwart an uber-philanthropist’s effort to impose his or her vision of the common good on everyone else. Democracy can be a nuisance for the multibillionaire—a fact of life that Bill Gates has often lamented.

In a CNBC panel, aired on May 4, 2015, and titled “If I were education czar…,” Bill Gates discussed the problems he’s had in spreading the “best practices” of charter schools throughout the United States: “It’s not easy. School boards have a lot of power, so they have to be convinced. Unions have a lot of power, so teachers need to see the models that are working.” Asked about his broader goal to redo all of public education, Gates said, “We’re not making as much progress as I’d like. In fact, of all the foundation areas we work in, I’d say this has proven to be the most difficult.” The interviewer followed up: “Why do you think that is?” Gates replied, “It’s a very big system…very resistant to change. The best results have come in cities where the mayor is in charge of the school system. So you have one executive, and the school board isn’t as powerful.”38

Gates has been making this point for years. During a CNN appearance in 2009, according to the New York Post, Gates said, “The cities where our foundation has put the most money is [sic] where there is a single person responsible.”39

During the Gates Foundation’s U.S. Education Learning Forum in October 2015, journalist Gwen Ifill asked Bill and Melinda Gates to name “the least pleasant surprise” during their previous fifteen years of education-reform work. Bill answered, “For me the most disappointing is that the work can go backwards. In the other areas we work, if we come up with a new malaria drug or a new malaria vaccine, nobody votes to uninvent our malaria vaccine.”40 This was an effective laugh line for Gates, but it’s also a telling formulation; no one has ever voted to “uninvent” a Gates offering. But, on occasion, voters or their representatives have rejected a Gates plan. That’s ordinary democratic policy-making, not uninventing one of his creations.

At times, democracy seems to flummox Gates. In the same interview, he reflected on why there’s been strong opposition to the Common Core State Standards—a detailed set of K–12 benchmarks in math and language arts that the Gates Foundation developed and marketed around the country at a cost of about $263 million.41 “It’s not like somebody’s got some great alternative in terms of the benefits to students,” he said. “It’s more about ‘Oh, we’ll show our autonomy’ than it is about having something better for learning.”

Gates, who has no training as an educator or researcher, easily dismisses the work of professionals in the field, but it’s never been clear how well, or even if, he knows their work. He appears continually in the media promoting his chosen policies, but he doesn’t engage in depth—at least not publicly—with experienced educators or scholars who disagree with him. His entrée into policy-making is money, not expertise. Talking to Ifill, he brushes off opponents as obstructionists who merely want to flaunt their autonomy—as if disagreeing with him were an exercise in peskiness rather than part of a necessary substantive debate. As for entering the fray as a candidate and asking voters to endorse his ideas, Gates wants no part of it. Questioned at the 2012 Abu Dhabi Media Summit about running for president, he said his current job with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was “a very nice office” and that it didn’t require him to raise funds to “try to get elected,” nor does it “have term limits of eight years…I actually think, maybe I’m wrong, that I can have as much impact in that [philanthropic] role as I could in any political role. In any case, I would never run for political office.”42

Multibillionaires who play the dual role of philanthropist and political bankroller range ideologically from progressive to far right, and they spend on myriad causes in addition to public education. At the progressive end are George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. On the far right are the Koch brothers and their David H. Koch Charitable Foundation and Charles Koch Foundation. In addition to Gates, the most aggressive philanthropies in market-based education reform are the Walton Family Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. (Walton supports publicly funded vouchers for private school tuition but otherwise the major education-reform financiers back similar policies.)

Regardless of politic

...

altern

Leading progressive voices are warning that President Obama’s choice for education secretary could be a disaster.

An open letter to the U.S. Senate, published in the Washington Post on Thursday, asks lawmakers to reject the confirmation of John King as the new secretary of education.

King, the acting secretary of education, has a long history of supporting corporate-friendly education reforms, and has pushed for unpopular policies like more standardized testing and Common Core, which critics say are ineffective.

The letter is signed by world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky, along with journalist Naomi Klein, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and a host of other prominent scholars and activists, including some of the most established pro-public education voices.

A variety of teachers’ and public education organizations signed the letter as well, including New York for Public Education, Save Our Schools and Time Out From Testing.

The signatories warn King’s policies “have been ineffective and destructive to schools, educators, and most importantly students.”

“The American public deserves a Secretary of Education who will advocate for their interests, not those of the testing corporations who profit from the Common Core,” the letter reads.

As former education commissioner for New York state, King strongly supported Common Core and inBloom, an organization that collected sensitive private information of students (in Bloom has since been shut down).

The Washington Post notes that, during his time as New York’s education chief, King led extreme standardized testing-heavy reforms that, for instance, made art teachers responsible for students’ math test scores.

In fact, King’s push for Common Core and standardizing testing designed by the corporate education giant Pearson — which has been widely criticized for putting profit over effective policy — “was considered such a disaster that New York. Gov Andrew Cuomo wrote in a letter to top state education officials that ‘Common Core’s implementation in New York has been flawed and mismanaged from the start,'” the Post reports.

Because of King’s policies, 20 percent of test-takers across New York refused to take the tests in protest.

King stepped down from the position in December 2014, after years of protests, and moved to D.C. to serve under Education Secretary Arne Duncan. When Duncan stepped down in late 2015, King was next in line.

The signatories of the open letter, which is included below, insists King “is the wrong choice for the position.”

http://www.alternet.org/education/report-40-percent-nyc-high-schools-do-not-offer-advanced-math-and-science-courses

pearson spying on kids

http://www.breitbart.com/author/dr-susan-berry/

http://www.alternet.org/education/hundreds-high-schoolers-walk-out-protest-conservative-takeover-history-standards

AlterNet [1] / By Zaid Jilani [2]

Hundreds of High Schoolers Walk Out to Protest Conservative Takeover of History Standards

September 24, 2014 |

As part of the long-running textbook wars over American school curricula, the Jefferson County Colorado Board of Education moved earlier this month to alter AP U.S. history standards to meet a more right-wing view of the world, emphasizing “patriotism” and the “free enterprise system” and downplaying “social strife.” Its proposal reads as follows[3]:

Review criteria shall include the following: instructional materials should present the most current factual information accurately and objectively. Theories should be distinguished from fact. Materials should promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights. Materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law. Instructional materials should present positive aspects of the United States and its heritage. Content pertaining to political and social movements in history should present balanced and factual treatment of the positions.

What Board Chairman Ken Witt probably didn't expect is what happened next. Yesterday, hundreds of students [4] from five high schools marched out of their classrooms and into the streets to reject the conservative board's proposal. Carrying signs such as “people didn't die so we could erase them,” the students demanded that the proposal be withdrawn.

To get a sense of the size of the protests, the local CBS station reported [4] that 500 students walked out at a single high school, Arvada West High. That is about a third [5] of the students at the school.

In addition to the mass student protests, teachers have been leading actions as well. Last week, as many as 50 teachers at Standley Lake and Conifer high schools staged a sickout to protest the new standards, forcing classes to be canceled [6].

As both teachers and students continue to speak out, it appears that by attempting to suppress history curriculum that includes information about social strife and protest, Witt is ironically creating it, and teaching an entire nation of its value.

jindal:

8/14

First he sued his own school board. Now he's suing the federal government.

Buffeted by a state judge who initially struck down his suspension of Common Core testing and said his actions hurt the state's parents, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) is now turning to the federal courts in the crusade against the Common Core, a cause he once backed wholeheartedly.

“The federal government has hijacked and destroyed the Common Core initiative. Common Core is the latest effort by big government disciples to strip away state rights and put Washington, D.C. in control of everything," Jindal, widely considered a 2016 presidential contender, said in a statement. "What started out as an innovative idea to create a set of base-line standards that could be ‘voluntarily’ used by the states has turned into a scheme by the federal government to nationalize curriculum."

kansas, florida defect?

===

They were for Common Core before they were against it.

The most recent and possibly silliest about-face of the modern conservative movement has to be the turnaround on Common Core, a program initiated by the National Governors Association to standardize and elevate educational standards across the country. Originally, conservatives were indifferent to outright supportive of the program—many Republican governors considered themselves fans—and pretty much all the criticism came from people on the left, who were concerned that it would be used as cover for attacks on teacher’s unions and would favor “teach the test”-style memorization over actual education.

Then President Obama endorsed it in 2012. Immediately, the right decided that Common Core was a sinister conspiracy to shove liberal ideology down children’s throats (never mind that many educational experts on the left are against it). Liberals make measured criticisms of Common Core, saying it might squelch imagination and writing skills. Conservatives, on the other hand, have taken to accusing the Obama administration of using Common Core to steal children away and teach them to have sex and get divorced so they’ll vote for Democrats. A calm, rational discussion of the program is basically impossible, because the entire debate has been taken over by right-wing nuts who have forgotten that, a mere two years ago, they were cool with a program they.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of "It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments."

===

Wyoming has become the first state to reject new national science education standards, a decision based in part on some Wyoming lawmakers’ concerns that the standards teach climate change as a scientifically-accepted phenomenon.

Wyoming’s rejection of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) came in the form of a footnote to the state’s budget, which stipulated that “neither the state board of education nor the department shall expend any amount appropriated under this section for any review or adoption of the next generation science standards.”

The footnote was co-authored by Wyoming Rep. Matt Teeters (R), who clarified that it was the standards’ inclusion of climate change in curriculums that worried him most.

“[The standards] handle global warming as settled science,” he told the Casper Star Tribune. “There’s all kind of social implications involved in that that I don’t think would be good for Wyoming.”

State Board of Education Chariman Ron Micheli agreed.

“I don’t accept, personally, that [climate change] is a fact,” Micheli said. “[The standards are] very prejudiced in my opinion against fossil-fuel development.”

The standards were developed by 26 states and multiple science and education organizations and provide guidelines for science education that include the teaching of climate science and evolution. These topics are sometimes only taught in specialized classes like Earth Science that aren’t required of all students — the NGSS recommends they beincorporated into general curricula, with climate change education starting in middle school. Proponents of the standards are pushing back against Wyoming’s budget footnote, which became law when Gov. Matt Mead — who has proudly referred to himself as a climate skeptic — signed the budget into law earlier this month. Climate Parents, a group that’s fought for the adoption of the standards in several states, is planning a campaign in Wyoming urging Gov. Mead to adopt science standards that are as thorough as the NGSS and that include climate change in the curriculum.

“Rep. Teeter is clearly willing to prevent Wyoming students from getting a 21st century science education because he’s concerned that kids learning climate science would be harmful to the fossil fuel industry,” Lisa Hoyos, director and co-founder of Climate Parents told ThinkProgress in an email. “It’s clear that his priorities are out of sync with ensuring kids get a strong foundation in science, including the climate science they’ll need to navigate their future.”

The standards, which represent the first major overhaul of science education in the U.S. in more than a decade, have been adopted in 10 states so far, as well as D.C. The standards ran into some opposition in Kentucky, where a review committee in September voted down the state’s plan to incorporate them into its curriculum. But Gov. Steve Beshear intervened, saying he would implement the standards, which were approved by the state last June, “under his own authority.” Texas has also voiced its disapproval of the standards — in 2012, Texas Board of Education Chair Barbara Cargill said there was a “zero percent chance” Texas would approve the guidelines.

Tags:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/17/3412131/wyoming-rejects-ngss/

===

http://www.alternet.org/print/education/diane-ravitch-defends-louis-ck-takes-down-newsweek-piece-your-beliefhas-no-research

DianeRavitch.net [1] / By Diane Ravitch [2]

Diane Ravitch Backs Louis C.K., Blasts Newsweek Piece: 'Your Belief...Has No Research to Support It.'

May 9, 2014 |

I received a tweet from Alexander Nazaryan, the author of the Newsweek piece rebuking Louis C.K [3]. and defending the Common Core standards, asking me for a substantive critique of his article.

OK, here goes.

He begins by saying that Louis C.K. has a professional habit of being angry, which I suppose is meant to scoff at his anger and say that he should not be taken seriously.

But then we get into Alexander’s views about Common Core.

The Common Core is “loathed” by Left and Right alike, for different reasons. This is true.

Then he makes the claim that the teachers’ unions oppose the Common Core, which is untrue. Both the NEA and the AFT accepted millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to promote Common Core, and both have been steadfast supporters. The leaders began to complain about poor implementation only after they heard large numbers of complaints from their members about lack of resources, lack of professional development, lack of curriculum, etc.

Alexander goes on to say that educators oppose the Common Core because they fear they “will be judged (and fired) if their students don’t perform adequately on the more difficult standardized tests that are a crucial component of Common Core.” Here is where Alexander betrays an ignorance of research and evidence. Surely he should know that theAmerican Statistical Association issued a report [4] a few weeks ago warning that “value-added-measurement” (that is, judging teachers by the scores of their students) is fraught with error, inaccurate, and unstable. The ratings may change if a different test is used, for example. The ASA report said:

Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.

Alexander also seems never to have read the joint report by the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education [5], which spelled out why it is wrong to judge teachers by student test scores because of the many factors affecting test scores that are beyond their control.

Alexander says that some critics of Common Core are “conspiracy theorists who deem the whole project a massive payout to test maker Pearson.” That may or may not be true, but Common Core is certainly creating a huge national marketplace for Pearson and McGraw-Hill, as well as vendors of software and hardware (all Common Core testing is done online, which is diverting billions of dollars from school budgets). Perhaps Alexander has heard of the regular conferences for entrepreneurs devoted to the subject of monetizing the education industry and cashing in on the opportunities presented by Common Core. One such conference was held just last week by Global Silicon Valley in Scottsdale. The purpose of national standards was to build a national marketplace for entrepreneurs. Joanne Weiss, who directed Race to the Top and then became Secretary Duncan’s chief of staff, predicted that this would be the outcome of national standards when she wrote on the Harvard Business Review blog [6]: “The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.” As a historian of education, I can say that this is the first time to my knowledge that the U.S. Department of Education encouraged the development of national standards in order to increase the involvement of the private sector in supplying goods and services to the schools.

I am a supporter of national health insurance, so I don’t accept the analogy between the Affordable Care Act and Common Core. The difference between them, which may be unknown to Alexander, is that the U.S. government, including the U.S. Department of Education, is prohibited by law from taking any action that would direct, control, or supervise curriculum or instruction. Now we know that Arne Duncan regularly says he is doing none of the above, but it would be hard to find a teacher who would agree that neither Common Core nor the federally funded online tests has any effect on curriculum and instruction. Common Core and the related testing has had a dramatic effect on both. And, so, at risk of being called a name by Alexander, I would say (having worked for two years in the U.S. Department of Education) that the federal encouragement of Common Core and the federal funding of the Common Core tests directly conflicts with federal law.

You are right that it is far too soon to judge Common Core’s efficacy. But that is the fault of those who wrote it. In 2009, when I met at the Aspen Institute with the authors of the Common Core, I urged them to field test it so they would find out how it works in real classrooms. They didn’t. In 2010, I was invited to the White House to meet with Melody Barnes, the director of domestic policy; Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff; and Ricardo Rodriguez, the President’s education advisor, and they asked me what I thought of Common Core. I urged them to field test it. I suggested that they invite three to five states to give it a trial of three-five years. See how it works. See if it narrows the achievement gap or widens the achievement gap. They quickly dismissed the idea. They were in a hurry. They wanted Common Core to be rolled out as quickly as possible, without checking out how it works in real classrooms with real teachers and real children.

Are we judging Common Core too quickly and too harshly? Consider the first Common Core test results last year in New York. The passing mark was set so high (artificially high) that 97% of English learners failed; 95% of children with disabilities failed; more than 80% of black and Hispanic children failed; statewide, 69% of all students failed. Maybe there wasn’t enough time for teachers to learn and teach the secrets of Common Core, but why set the bar so high that children were doomed to fail? Is this supposed to increase equity?

Are our kids left behind by China, South Korea and Germany? Not really. Maybe not at all. It is true that we get mediocre scores on international tests, but we have been getting mediocre scores on international tests since the first such test was offered in 1964. We were never a world leader on the international tests. Most years, our scores were at the median or even in the bottom quartile. Yet in the intervening fifty years, we have far surpassed all those nations–economically, technologically, and on every other dimension– whose students got higher test scores. Basically, the test scores don’t predict anything about the future of the economy. Should we worry that Estonia might surpass us? The fact is that our international scores reflect the very high proportion of kids who live in poverty, whose scores are lowest. We are No. 1 among the rich nations of the world in child poverty; nearly one-quarter of our children live in poverty. Our kids who live in affluent communities do very well indeed on the international tests. If we reduced the proportion of children living in poverty, our international test scores would go up. But in the end, as I said, the international scores don’t predict anything other than an emphasis on test-taking in the schools or the general socio-economic well-being of the society. We would be far better off investing more money in providing direct services to children–small classes for struggling students, experienced teachers, social workers, counselors, psychologists, and a full curriculum–rather than investing in more test preparation.

Alexander, I frankly do not understand your faith in national standards. There is no evidence that national standards produces higher achievement, nor that they reduce achievement gaps. They certainly do not overcome the burdens of homelessness, hunger, lack of medical care, or overcrowded classrooms. You express contempt for public school educators, so it is hard to understand why you think that they will magically be transformed into great teachers by national standards. This may come as a surprise, but most nations in the world–without regard to their standing on international tests–have national standards. When I visited Finland, which has an excellent school system, I read its national standards, but I also saw well-prepared teachers who shaped the curriculum in their classrooms and schools and who had a wide degree of professional autonomy about how they taught. I did not see or hear anyone express the hostility that you feel towards classroom teachers; teaching is a highly selective and highly respected profession, unlike here, where every legislator and pundit is considered an expert because they went to school.

I actually wrote a book about national standards, but I saw them as aspirational, not as a common script for teachers across the nation. I saw them first of all as voluntary, not mandatory. I saw them as standards for states and districts, requiring them to provide the resources for students to aim for standards. I never thought that standards meant that everyone would meet them (a la NCLB and RTTT). Example: for male runners, a four-minute mile is the standard. But very few male runners have ever reached that standard. It inspires all runners, but some will never come close. Education is not a race. It is about full human development of every human being. Education is not about winning or losing. It is about having the chance to develop one’s talents and abilities to the fullest.

Unlike you, Alexander, I see no advantage in “having a teacher in Alaska teach more or less the same thing as a teacher in Alabama.” What’s the point of that? If the teacher in Alabama is passionate about the work of Flannery O’Connor, let him or her teach it with passion. If the teacher in Alaska is fascinated with the arctic tundra, teach it. I assume you have not read the study by Tom Loveless of Brookings [7], who pointed out that the Common Core standards were likely to make little or no difference in achievement. After all, states with high standards have wide variations in achievement, as do states with low standards.

I see no value in the arbitrary division between literature and informational text prescribed in the Common Core. I know where the numbers come from. They were instructions to assessment developers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (I served on its governing board for seven years). The ratios were not intended as instructions to teachers. This is balderdash. English teachers should teach what they know and love. If they love fiction, teach it. If they love nonfiction, teach it. Why should a committee with no classroom teachers on it in 2009 tell reading teachers how to apportion their reading time? I doubt that teachers of math and science will spend any time on fiction anyway.

Your belief in using test scores to hold teachers accountable has no research to support it, nor is there any real-world evidence. Many districts have tried this for four or five years and there is no evidence–none–that it produces better teachers or better education. The ratings, as noted above, are arbitrary, and say more about classroom composition than about teacher quality. Nor is there any evidence that education gets better if teachers everywhere are using a common script. Doing well in school depends on family support, student motivation, community support, adequate resources, class sizes appropriate to the needs of the children, experienced teachers, wise leadership, and students who arrive in school healthy and well-fed.

Frankly, I don’t understand why you oppose “joy” in the classroom. Why should school be so “hard” that it makes children cry? It is true that some assignments are hard; some books are hard to read; some math problems are hard to solve. We learn from doing things that are not necessarily joyful, but that engage us in work that stimulates us to think harder, try harder, persist. When we are done with hard work, yes, it is a joyful feeling. Maybe it is because I am a grandmother, but I want my grandchildren to approach their school work with earnestness and to sense the joy of accomplishment, the joy of learning. I want my grandchildren to love learning. I want them to read books even when they are not assigned. I want them to go to the Internet to find things out because they are curious.

And, yes, Alexander, I agree that kids like yours and Louis’s and my grandchildren will be fine. We will read to them, we will talk with them and introduce them to vocabulary, we will take them on trips to the museum and the library, we will listen to them as they read the stories they wrote for school. Other kids are not so lucky. But why should they be punished by being deprived of joy? Why should they be subject to endless testing and test prep? Will that free them from poverty and homelessness? Will that vault them into the middle-class?

Alexander, you assume that national standards, holding teachers accountable for test scores, more high-stakes testing, more rigor, and privately-managed charter schools will cure poverty. There is no evidence for what you believe. The Common Core has some good ideas in it; I doubt that it will do harm, although I believe that subjecting little children to 6-8 hours of testing to see if they can read and do math is harmful, physically and mentally, to them. Long ago, educators were able to find out in tests lasting 50 minutes how well a student could read or do math. Why is it now an ordeal that lasts as long as some professional examinations? For heaven’s sake, we are talking about little children, not candidates for college or a profession!

See more stories tagged with:

common core [9],

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