Live Long and Prosper...

NPE 2015 NATIONAL CONFERENCE


Three quotes from the Network for Public Education 2015 National Conference. See the videos at www.networkforpubliceducation.org.

From Jitu Brown, one of the directors of the Network for Public Education and the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance.

"They look at our students as instruments of profit" -- Jitu Brown

From Yong Zhao, Presidential Chair and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he is also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership.

We are in the U.S. one of the very, very few systems that allow everyone to "play in the system" for twelve years. That's something amazing. We do not select. We do not judge, and that preserves the diversity of talents. Once we privatize...once we allow people to select...you exclude people, normally too early. You don't know who they might become...any privatized entity has the right to reject. We are not running a country club. We're running a public education system...that is for the prosperity of the nation and the community and the individuals. -- Yong Zhao

From Lily Eskelsen Garcia, President of the National Education Association.

"What is wrong with the world where testing has become so absurd and so harmful to children that parents are protecting their children from a test [by opting out]...The solution has to be changing the world so we do not have toxic testing..." -- Lily Eskelsen Garcia

The Resistance Meets on Weekends

Peter Greene covered the Network for Public Education 2015 National Conference (as did many other bloggers...see here, here, here, here and here, for example) in an article about how many who support public education are busy with the actual work of education, while "reformers" are full time, anti-public education, privatizers.

At the close of the NPE conference, Diane Ravitch called on pubic education supporters to engage parents and grandparents, students (especially high school students) and retired educators...in other words, folks who can't be fired for standing up for public education.

From Peter Greene, Curmudgucation.

...the irony here is that while [educators] are amateurs in the field of shaping, twisting, and spinning policy, ["reformers"] are the amateurs in the actual field of education. They may have the tools, the money, the hired manpower, and the paths of power on their side, but we are the one who know the territory.

ATLANTA CHEATING SCANDAL

Demonizing Teachers, Privatizing Schools: The Big Lies and Big Plans Behind the Atlanta School Cheating Scandal

More about the Atlanta trial which sent public educators to jail.

From Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report

The one-percenters need us to believe public education in our communities is some new kind of sewer infested with incompetent teachers who are cheating children and the public every week they draw paychecks. The long, long crisis of public education has been designed, engineered and provoked by powerful bipartisan forces to justify their long game, which is the privatization of public education. That's the Big Plan.

Jon Stewart: Cheating teachers go to jail. Cheating Wall Streeters don’t. What’s up with that?

Jon Stewart, who is leaving The Daily Show late this summer, will be missed. Valerie Strauss analyzed his review of the Atlanta cheating scandal. The entire segment of The Daily Show follows.

From Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet

Jon Stewart on Wednesday night made the inevitable comparison between the former teachers and administrators in Atlanta who were sentenced for cheating on standardized tests — a few for as much as seven years — with Wall Street denizens who in 2008 connived in a way that nearly brought down the country’s financial system. Only one was sentenced to 12 months in jail.

POVERTY

Indiana superintendents rail against proposed school funding changes

Under the guise of "equalizing school funding" the Indiana legislature is threatening to reduce funding for large, high poverty urban areas and increase funding for low poverty suburban areas.

From Wendy Robinson, Superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools, quoted in Chalkbeat.

“The state is trying to act as if I don’t need different resources for that high school in the high-poverty area,” Robinson said. “The standards I set for the students I receive is the same. We treat our kids in poverty like it’s their fault. … That’s the fallacy of the (state funding) formula.”

TESTING

The One about Bullying, Threats and Arne Duncan...

The justification for annual testing is "parents need to know how their students are doing." Most teachers could provide the same information during any week of the school year, more quickly, and with more accuracy.

The real justification for annual testing, and test prep, and every other expense accompanying annual testing, is money...plain and simple.

From Mitchell Robinson, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair of Music Education at Michigan State University, quoted in Badass Teachers Association.

...no teacher needs yearly standardized tests to know if their students are "making progress or growth." Just as parents don't need these tests to know if their children are growing. The people that teach and love these children are well aware of what they are learning, what challenges and successes they are encountering, and what strategies will work best to help them continue to grow and learn. Let's not pretend that a once-per-year multiple choice test will somehow magically provide some special sauce that will reveal what kids know and are able to do.

Report: Big education firms spend millions lobbying for pro-testing policies

How much of our national treasure, some of which used to go to helping students, is now going to testing companies? Imagine how much they're making in profits if they can afford to spend in excess of $20 million in lobbying...

From Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet

..four companies — Pearson Education, ETS (Educational Testing Service), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and McGraw-Hill— collectively spent more than $20 million lobbying in states and on Capitol Hill from 2009 to 2014.

Computerized Testing Problems: 2013 -2015

When you give a test before students are ready they often do poorly on it. The same is true when you give a test before the test is ready. The technical failures of the "new" computer based tests has added to the failure of the tests themselves. The testing companies still get their billions, though. FairTest has a list...

From FairTest.org.

The ongoing litany of computer exam administration failures reinforces the conclusion that the technologies rushed into the marketplace by political mandates and the companies paid to implement them are not ready for prime time. It makes no sense to attach high-stakes consequences to such deeply flawed tools

PRIVATIZATION

At the Network for Public Education 2015 National Conference, one of the speakers commented that privatization is more than just an "education problem." It's occurring in various places in America's economy. The most recent post of Privatization Watch covers much more than just education. It includes articles about a Senate cafeteria worker, a growing movement to transfer federal land to state control in Western states, the military pension system, the privatization of the state-run charity hospital system in Louisiana, and various toll road privatizations (because toll road privatization worked so well in Indiana).

Today's Privatization Watch post includes a link to an Atlanta blog article about privatization of public education...

GA: Opinion: Why competitive model fails schools. No one should lose in education

From Maureen Downey, Atlanta-Journal Consititution (AJC.com)

The Texas Miracle used to design No Child Left Behind was a case of cooking the books; the Atlanta Miracle included systemic cheating to save jobs and schools from being closed and educators are now sentenced to serve time behind bars; the New Orleans Miracle continues to be an embarrassment with the retraction of research reports indicating success and criticisms about bad data; and in 2013 there was confirmed test cheating in 37 states and Washington D.C., but surely it is more widespread than that given the high-stakes of the very tests that have been criticized for their bias, invalidity, very high cost, and damaging effects on what schooling has become. Not everything is a competition, not everything should be designed as a competition, and education – especially – should not be treated as a competition where there are guaranteed winners and losers. No one should lose in education. [emphasis added]

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

ON TEACHING

The process of deprofessionalizing public education continues. The number of teacher candidates at colleges and universities continues to decline. Secretary Arne Duncan is now getting ready to blame colleges of education for students' low test scores.

Why are college students choosing not to enter teacher training programs? Could it have anything to do with how teachers are portrayed in the media? Could it have anything to do with how Duncan and those like him blame teachers and their unions for everything?

Even the privatizers and "reformers" are going to need teachers for their children and grandchildren. "Reformers" constantly call for more "great teachers" in the classroom. Where will they come from?

School reform pushing potential teachers away from profession

Over the last decade, teacher salaries in constant dollars in Indiana have decreased by more than 10 percent. Outpaced only by North Carolina, which experienced teacher salary decreases of 14 percent, Indiana had the second largest decrease in the country.

...The only clear winners so far are the test companies making billions of dollars in profit from the standardized test accountability craze in an experiment never before tried anywhere in the world, especially not in countries that have attained the highest levels of achievement in international comparisons of student performance.

...In Indiana, enrollment in teacher education programs has decreased by more than 30 percent over the last decade, and the rate of decrease recently has accelerated. Indiana is not unique in experiencing a drop in teacher education enrollment fueled by disinvestment in public education and contentious public policies that discourage talented students from going into teaching as well as encourage experienced teachers to leave the field. It is happening nationwide.

...If Indiana continues down the "education reform" path, Hoosiers will soon face the same problems bigger states are already experiencing. The research is incontrovertible that regardless of the type of institution a student attends, the single most important school-based factor for improving student achievement is the quality of the classroom teachers and school leaders.

[Ball State University] Teachers College enrollment declines

“I think kids in schools nowadays they say, ‘Why would I be a teacher? This is not an exciting thing,’” Jacobson said. “There’s a lot of challenges to classroom management, to authority, so the respect is not there. And of course young people want to choose a profession that they feel is respected.”

He said the respect for teachers has diminished over time.

Across all races, teacher education losing students

Illinois teaching institutions aren’t the only ones losing students. According to a national survey by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the number of full-time undergraduates enrolled in education degree programs fell by 6 percent between 2006 and 2011 – even though overall enrollment at the 581 institutions surveyed grew by more than 7 percent during that time period.

... “Amongst people of color, becoming a teacher has zoomed down to [no] more than 8th place in their interest level,” says Dominic Belmonte, president and CEO of Golden Apple, a non-profit organization dedicated to recruiting and developing good teachers in Illinois. “There is a sense out there that teaching is a difficult task that has a limited payoff as far as salary, as far as prestige, as far as challenge. Trying to make teaching cool again with all of these obstacles is a tad difficult.”

Fewer NC college students aspire to teach

...since 2010, fewer young people seem to be interested in the teaching profession in North Carolina. Even as overall enrollment at UNC schools has grown, enrollment in teacher education programs has declined, according to figures provided by the UNC system.

..."I think people are saying I don't want that job because it has a reputation of being a job that doesn't pay well and doesn't pay well enough to be able to support you for just an average living," said Dawn Rookey, an Owen High School teacher. "I think also there's been a lot of low teacher morale over the past three years with a lot of the legislative changes that have impacted the profession."

Young people may not see enough incentives to go into education, she said.

TESTING

NEA Survey: Nearly Half Of Teachers Consider Leaving Profession Due to Standardized Testing

Arne Duncan finally admits that there's too much testing. Since 2001 and the passage of No Child Left Behind, the U.S. public education system has been wasting billions of dollars on excessive testing. Everyone has known it. Candidate Barack Obama knew it when he spoke to teachers in 2007. President Obama knew it when he talked to HS students in 2011 and when he spoke to the Congress in 2014. But the money flowing into, around, and through the test creation industry is too much for a politician to ignore.

Teachers and their students are the "innocent bystanders" in this corporate feeding frenzy. The misuse and overuse of testing is excessive, inappropriate, and educational malpractice, but the voices crying out against it don't have the billions of dollars that the Gates, Broad or Walton Family Foundations have. Teachers don't have anything to match the economic volume of Pearson's corporate voice.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently conceded that too much standardized testing was “sucking the oxygen out of the room” and causing “undue stress.” Although the nation’s educators may have been encouraged by Duncan’s words, they have been calling for an end to the high stakes testing culture for more than a decade. “As experts in educational practice, we know that the current system of standardized tests does not provide educators or students with the feedback or accountability any of us need to promote the success and learning of students,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

VOUCHERS

True cost of school vouchers 

Dumping millions of dollars of state tax money into parochial education is just wrong. Public tax money should go to public schools. American's United for Separation of Church and State says, "Ninety percent of American children attend public schools. Our focus should be on fully funding and improving this system, not siphoning money into private systems."

With voucher numbers escalating, an accounting of their effectiveness and their effect on public schools should be required.

Figures released recently by Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, show the number of voucher students this fall increased more than 47 percent, from 19,809 to 29,146.

“If we continue to see this kind of explosive growth in vouchers over the next few years, how is that going to help make our public schools whole again?” asked Porter, ranking minority member on the House Ways and Means Committee. “If more funding is provided for education, how much will have to be siphoned off to pay for vouchers?”

...Parents of public school students know the increased funding claims are bogus. With new attention to public school funding, taxpayers statewide might finally have a say in where their dollars are directed. Those discussions should begin with a detailed report on voucher funding and accountability. What is the real cost to students and Indiana schools?

NO TIME

There's a Big Problem With Time's Teacher-Bashing Cover Story

I don't miss Michelle Rhee's pontifications about public education, her complaints about how terrible unions are, or how "bad teachers" are destroying the country. On the other hand, others have stepped up in her absence and have focused their educationally-inexperienced attention on teachers. It seems every legislator, retired news caster, frustrated basketball player, and corporate billionaire knows how to evaluate teachers. You do it by looking at their students' test scores. If students don't have test scores in the teacher's subject (music for example) you make something up.

Time magazine has glorified California's Vergara case through it's November 4 cover. It seems that the editors of Time, whose covers have bashed teachers for decades, also know all about evaluating teachers...

Except that they don't.

So the whole foundation of this approach to "fixing" American public schools could very well be bogus? If that's the argument–which, it should be stressed, is not new (Extra!, 4/11)–then why is this at the end of the piece? And why doesn't the cover advertise the fact that the millionaires "saving" public education could very well be relying on a highly flawed method of sorting out the "bad apples"?

When you're profiling millionaires who prefer "concrete facts" to "taking sides" in their drive to "repair" public schools, it seems like you might want to do more to emphasize what the facts are.

PENCE'S PREFERENCES

Pence at Lighthouse Christian Academy on Veterans Day (behind pay wall)

Indiana Governor Mike Pence doesn't even try to hide his preference for private education over public education.

“I find it very telling that Gov. Pence would come to our area and only choose to stop at the private religious school. It is in keeping with his policies that benefit private schools over public schools,” said Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, chairwoman of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education of Monroe County and South Central Indiana.

“Gov. Pence should have come to our MCCSC public schools and seen the magic that goes on in each of the buildings, regardless of his stigmatizing letter grade labels,” she said.

From her point of view, Pence’s choice emphasized his support of schools like Lighthouse Christian that accept students with school-of-choice scholarships or vouchers.

“Voucher schools get to choose which kids come through their doors or stay,” she said. “Public education is dedicated to all children.”

DAILY SHOW RERUN

This is from a while ago, but still worth watching...

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

Jon Stewart discusses which constitutional amendments we should "delete" with some help from Fox News.

Maybe it's time for some education about the constitution. The bill of rights, as I understand it, is meant for all of us. The government -- police, military, executive, legislative, judicial -- is not allowed to pick and choose who gets certain rights among us.

Michelle Rhee, the former DC Chancellor and 3 year TFA teacher was a guest on the Daily Show last night to plug her new book, Radical (see the interview in 3 parts, below). "Effective teachers" and "Failing Schools" were her go to buzz words. Beginning sentences with "So..." (a pet peeve of mine) happened frequently, too.

Rhee's definition of "effective teacher" however wasn't apparent as she waffled back and forth between "must have a way to measure student achievement" and "teachers are disrespected." She never answered the objection that the tests weren't appropriate to evaluate teachers -- or maybe it never got asked. The point is, though, that standardized tests for students are NOT valid measures to evaluate teachers. Just because we may not have something which is better (which I don't believe is true) doesn't mean we should use something invalid.

[NOTE: Maryland has just forced Montgomery County Schools to quit using their effective evaluation plan because it doesn't include evaluating teachers using student test scores. Read about the excellent plan they had in this article by Michael Winrip, Helping Teachers Help Themselves. The plan can be found HERE.]

Failing schools was another phrase that she kept repeating. No matter how good a teacher is, they can't make up for students who are suffering from the effects of poverty -- lead poisoning, community violence, poor nutrition and health care, lack of access to books. A good teacher is the most important IN-SCHOOL factor in achievement. Out of school factors, however, account for a larger percentage of a child's achievement. See Poverty and Potential by David Berliner.

In addition, she mentioned that it was "common sense" to close "failing" schools. No, it's not. If we were using common sense we would improve the schools in which children were struggling by providing them with MORE resources and MORE support.

Jon Stewart was too polite, I think (though she might have not stayed if he wasn't). Rhee has very little experience in education and she wasn't all that successful at what little she had. Like many TFA teachers she wasn't prepared for what greeted her in a real classroom...she quit after 3 years. As chancellor, she threw the DC Public Schools into chaos and the voters couldn't get rid of her and the mayor who appointed her fast enough.

I don't know what her motivation is...money, glory, whatever...but her participation in the privatization movement is not in the best interest of students.

The Daily Show Interview with Michelle Rhee

Valerie Strauss posted this on her Answer Sheet Blog...Thanks to Jon Stewart for bringing this to the public attention. Intermediate School 318...

On “The Daily Show” Thursday night, Jon Stewart did a segment that focused on public education — the impact of budget cuts, how kids learn, teachers. This was all in his discussion with director Katie Dellamaggiore and student Pobo Efekoro about their documentary film “Brooklyn Castle,” which details how budget cuts affected a highly successful chess program at a New York City middle school.

Stewart notes the illogic of axing the chess program, the heart of the school, while money for standardized tests was not in jeopardy because of the budget cuts. Efekoro, who was a student at the school, says: “The teachers were fabulous. A lot of my teachers that I had, according to the city they are bad, but the fact of the matter is that I loved them.” And Stewart said: “Because they are being graded on a criterion that is much more mathematic….”

Here are a few of my favorite blog entries of 2011 from a few my favorite education bloggers (including two of my own). The most important one is the last one. If you missed it before, don't miss it this time. It's a must read for every American citizen who has an interest in public education (aka everyone).

••• From It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, October 19, 2011

I Think It's Called "Having A Chip On Your Shoulder"

Mrs. Mimi (now aka, Dr. Mimi) is the author of It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, a collection of her early blog posts. Mrs. Mimi is a teacher...a real one. She works with real live children in real live classrooms. You can tell.

I guess these days I just assume people are going to shit on teachers. I assume they are going to complain without pausing to recognize what is working. I assume they will be all critique and no constructive thought. I assume they're going to blame it all on the teacher.

••• From Parents Across America, December 31, 2011.

The worst and the best education events of 2011

The list from Parents Across America lists events from other sources, not their own blog.

Hundreds of millions of dollars from the Billionaire Boys Club of Gates, Broad, the Walton family, and the Koch brothers are funneled into creating and expanding numerous Astroturf organizations like Stand for Children, Students First, Teach Plus, 50Can, etc. all devoted towards spreading their tentacles into both political parties, to choke off democracy, demonize teachers, mandate more high-stakes testing, and privatize our public schools.

••• From An Urban Teacher's Education, December 31, 2011

Life Learnings: 2011

A teacher near Seattle, WA (formerly of New York City; Washington, DC; Renton, WA; and Knoxville, TN) writes about the challenges he faces daily in his classroom, as well as national issues. His reports on the SOS Conference in Washington DC from July were especially interesting. This excerpt is from his end of the year post. Click the link embedded below to read his "Day One" entry.

5) The importance of working together

In July (July 28, 2011) I went to the SOS Conference in Washington, DC. I met hundreds of amazing educators there, all rallying together to fight the stubbornness of corporate reform, and I learned the impact that people can have when they come together. My experience there in combination with what I've read over the past year about the Arab Spring and similar protests across the world has reminded me that for all the reasons so many have to complain about this world that we live in, I am happy to remember that it truly is the people who have the power, and that we really do have the government we deserve. Perhaps we might soon deserve something better...

••• From The Answer Sheet, December 12, 2011

A Superintendent Calls School Reformers’ Bluff

Every public school teacher in the United States should read and/or listen to John Kuhn. Thanks to Valerie Strauss and her valuable Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post.

By John Kuhn

Today some 22 percent of American children live in poverty. Are we going to pretend forever that it is acceptable to ignore the needs of children outside the schoolhouse and blame teachers and principals for everything that happens inside?

As soon as the data shows that the average black student has the same opportunity to live and learn and hope and dream in America as the average white student, and as soon as the data shows that the average poor kid drinks water just as clean and breathes air just as pure as the average rich kid, then educators like me will no longer cry foul when this society sends us children and says: Get them all over the same hurdle.

And so I as an educator now say to a nation exactly what it has said to me for years: No excuses! Just get results.

••• From Walt Gardners Reality Check, November 18, 2011

Teaching is no Longer Fun

For teachers who started their careers before the accountability movement gained traction, the transformation has been traumatic. No longer can they rely on their professional judgment in preparing lessons, nor are they likely to experience the satisfaction of having opened the eyes of their students to knowledge for its own sake. They now have to treat their lessons as part of an assembly line, where instruction is evaluated strictly on the basis of how much value it adds. The rationale is that the real world operates accordingly.

Reformers maintain that teaching and learning can't always be fun. They say that discipline is an indispensable part of the educational process. That is certainly true. But the way things are unfolding in classrooms across the country means that even if students perform adequately on standardized tests, we run the risk of forever turning them off to further learning in the same subjects. As I wrote before, you can teach a subject well but teach students to hate the subject in the process. When that happens, it's a Pyrrhic victory.

••• From Bridging Differences, October 27, 2011

There Are No Quick Fixes

The Bridging Differences Blog is written by Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch. I spent a lot of time this year quoting Dr. Ravitch (and did again at the end of this post), but one of the most important entries in their blog was this one from October by Deborah Meier. Make sure you take 10 minutes to watch the chalk talk by Daniel Pink.

By Deborah Meier

Why suddenly does the common-sense fact that teachers (and unions) fight for contracts that give them less onerous workloads, more job security, and more pay turn into a crime? Does Wall Street live by another code? (Educators and Wall Street'ers both need to watch Daniel Pink's chalk talk on motivation to consider his counter-intuitive findings—that rewards are counterproductive when it comes to honesty and doing good work.)

••• From Living In Dialogue, July 6, 2011

The Brooks/Ravitch Dialogue Expands

Anthony Cody is a powerful voice for public education. He was instrumental in organizing the SOS Conference in Washington DC last summer and has continued to speak out for public education in the United States. Here he comments about the single most important factor which the so-called corporate "reformers" refuse to discuss, the level of poverty afflicting our nation's children.

Witness the latest cheating scandal in Atlanta. We have leaders intent on proving that poverty is no obstacle to student success. After 24 years of teaching in Oakland, I can tell you that it is. Poverty and the social and environmental phenomena that are its companions: hunger, violence, PTSD, chemical pollution, lack of access high quality daycare in early years, lack of access to vision, dental and medical care, and lack of access to books. Addressing ANY of these would yield better results than the policies underway that attach ever higher stakes to standardized tests, and continually expand the variety and frequency of tests.

••• From Live Long and Prosper, March 4, 2011.

The Daily Show: Diane Ravitch - Teachers vs. Wall Street

Click HERE to see this entry. No one highlights the hypocrisy of the so-called "reformers" better than Jon Stewart of the Daily Show.

••• From Live Long and Prosper, December 11, 2011.

The Most Important Speech on Education in Years

This year, the OTL Summit featured Diane Ravitch as one of the keynote speakers. Dr. Ravitch's presentation was titled Whose children have been left behind? The Daily Kos calls it the "most important speech on education in years." I agree. It is important. The Daily Kos blogger (teacherken) wrote:

You can read the entire text here (pdf).
You should.
You should pass it on.

Ravitch wrote:

Surely the greatest nation in the world can mobilize the will to do what is right for the children. It won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, and it won’t be fast. Doing the right thing never is. The only simple part is to recognize that what we are doing now is not working and will never work. What we need is a vision of a good education for every child. We should start now. Today.

I usually avoid political issues which don't have anything to do with education, but sometimes there are things which (in my opinion) transcend politics.

Last December The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had a panel discussion of 9-11 first responders discussing why it is taking the US Congress so long to pass a bill which would provide medical care to first responders of the 9-11 attacks who developed illnesses because of their exposure to toxins.

You can see the original panel discussion HERE. It is about 9 minutes long and it's important to give you a background into this issue.

Last night, again on the daily show, Stewart discussed an amendment to the House version of the bill which requires that first responders prove they are not terrorists before they can get any money for their health care. It's in two parts...both below.

It's worth the 10 minutes it will take you to watch this. Be aware that The Daily Show is adult fare...and some language may be offensive. In my opinion, though, Jon Stewart's language is not as offensive as the language in the amendment....

Thanks to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show for this clip...

Last night Diane Ravitch was a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Some of her points included:

• Our schools as Test Prep Factories.
• Finland's successful schools without standardized tests, and with fully unionized teachers.
• Low poverty schools are succeeding...the high poverty and racially isolated schools are the ones with poor performance. If you're homeless and hungry learning is more difficult.
• The whole public monologue has been blame the teachers for everything. The focus has been on how to find bad teachers. America is not overrun with bad teachers - it's overrun with children living in poverty.
• We need to make sure that our children all have adequate health care, food, shelter and access to literacy.

Earlier in the show Stewart had a segment showing the hypocrisy in the media which claimed that teachers are overpaid, while Wall Street companies bailed out by the taxpayers still needed to give their CEOs and Execs bonuses. One of the contrasts was between the $50,000 (plus about $30,000 in benefits) salary of teachers in Wisconsin - which was presented as excessive, and the reasons why the "poor folks" making $250,000 a year should continue to reap the benefits of the Bush tax cuts.


According to what Stewart presented, Governor Walker (R-Wisconsin) is going to cut $800 million over the next two years...from the education budget in the state. Meanwhile he is pushing for more tax breaks for wealthy people.

I can see the result now...

• Lower taxes have resulted in
• Drastic cuts in education funding, which will result in
• Lower test scores, especially from children in poverty, which will result in
• More public school and teacher bashing which will result in
• Less support, politically and economically, for public schools which will result in
• The continued destruction of Public Education in Wisconsin, and by extension (since similar scenarios are being played out all over the country), America.

Here's a link to Ravitch's book...The Death and Life of the Great American School System

Jon Stewart on Monday's (February 28) Daily Show took on the teacher-bashers.


In an earlier portion of the show, he admitted that his mother was a teacher. Maybe he could be the next US Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan's mother was a teacher, too...apparently that's a sufficient background to lead the nation's public schools.

You can see the whole episode (contains language some might find offensive) at:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-28-2011-howard-stern

Be sure to watch Thursday night when his guest is Diane Ravitch.