It’s interesting how the biggest proponents of Choice! are the ones now against it. Then again, anyone who understands how Choice came to be and the reasons behind it knows it never had anything to do with giving parents options. Choice was simply the stepping stone to privatizing our public schools. Choice is what has hurt our public schools; it’s what opened the door to charters and privatization (as well as magnet schools). What we’re dealing with now in education wouldn’t be possible if we hadn’t implemented a system designed to create high poverty schools – schools no one has seriously tried to help.
But the point has never been to help high poverty, struggling schools. The point, and one I’ve been making for over a decade, is to privatize/charterize our public schools. It’s no coincidence that the privateers started with the poorest among us – the ones with the least influence and voice. It’s how they got their foot in the door. Take a good long look at the city of Wilmington. That’s the plan for everyone. Yep, all this will spread outward (and is spreading) to suburbia. No one actually thinks that Ed Reformers are going to let all that education money slip through their hands, do they? Of course not. What they’ve done/are doing to our struggling schools sets the precedent. And once that precedent is set it will spread like wildfire.
Which brings me to the point of this post and Mike Matthews’ Delaware Voice column. The Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) is the tool to implement this agenda. This test isn’t about helping children learn; it’s about labeling schools and teachers as failing so the next step in the Ed reformer’s agenda can be implemented. Remember Priority Schools? Remember how ALL roads in that plan led to privatization and charterizatiion? Out of everything in that plan only private/charter conversion was carved in stone. The reason it was carved in stone was because it was the end game.
I’m a little late with this post, but this story needs to be heard. Of all the police shootings the case of Tamir Rice – a twelve year old boy playing with a toy gun only to be shot dead by police in less than two seconds of their arrival on the scene – stands out. This incident was so straightforward that not indicting the officers sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Obviously, there’s no line to cross if you’re a police officer. Fire away.
But what really bothers me is how the police always seem to lie about what happened. Then the video tape is released. Let’s look at what the police claimed happened before the Tamir Rice video was released…..
It’s time to call “hate crimes” what they really are – Terrorism. There really is no difference. Here’s a list of reported incidents against Muslims and Mosques since the San Bernardino attack….
I have no idea why this case is back in the hands of the Supreme Court. Okay, I do have an idea, and, if I doubted my initial reaction, the Conservative Justices cleared that up for me.
Antonin Scalia:
There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.
One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re — that they’re being pushed ahead in — in classes that are too — too fast for them.
That statement is stunning with its sweeping assumptions, especially when you consider the woman, Abigail Fisher, was a mediocre student with mediocre SAT scores.
Everyone knew the Republican hysteria over President Obama (and others) not using the exact words “Radical Islamic Terrorists” was the stepping stone to condemning all Muslims. They needed those words to be said in order to morph Radical Islamic Terrorist into Muslim. Donald Trump just sped up the morphing process. Via TPM: GOP frontrunner Donald […]
A reporter on the scene for The Gazette, the city’s local newspaper, tweeted confirmation from the Colorado Springs Police Department that at least three officers were wounded in the shooting, along with multiple civilians. It was not immediately clear if there were any fatalities.
Me? I think I might be juggling a bit too many. But let’s face it, television series have become really, really, good. And there’s a lot of them. The problem in the pandora household is that I’m a binge watcher. Mr. Pandora is not. Which means… either I go at his pace (which is ridiculously […]
Via Deadspin:
The University of Missouri’s Legion of Black Collegians released a statement tonight from the collective athletes of color on the Tigers football team stating they are on strike from football-related activities until the school president steps down in the wake of several racist acts on campus.
Many Missouri students believe school president Tim Wolfe has failed to act in response to several months’ worth of alleged racism on the Columbia campus—the most recent and controversial of which was a swastika of human feces found in a residence hall. The debate is mostly happening over on Facebook, where views both nuanced and not can be found under the #concernedstudent1950 hashtag.
A graduate student has also embarked on a hunger strike.
No way. No how.
Via TPM:
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Monday morning said that the committee still has control over the Republican presidential debate process despite reports that the Republican campaigns want to reduce the RNC’s role.[…]
Stephanopoulos asked if the RNC expects candidates to propose changes other than demands for opening and closing statements, equal number of questions for candidates, and approval of graphics.
In response, Priebus said that the RNC won’t make changes to the debate contracts or schedules going forward.
“The ability to sanction or de-sanction a debate is with the RNC. And the candidates want that to be with the RNC because we’ve got the leverage to make that happen,” he said.
He said that he will communicate with the campaigns and “fight for what the candidates want” when they reach a consensus.
“When we started this process, we only wanted to do a few things: One, we wanted to set a reasonable calendar. We didn’t want 23 debates,” Priebus added. “We wanted some say over who the moderators were. And we did all that.”
Which is it? The RNC won’t make changes to the debate contracts or schedules, or the RNC will “fight for what the candidates want” for the debates? Or is he saying that the RNC won’t make any more changes once these yet unknown candidate conditions are implemented?
Good luck with that. This appears to be the shiny new thing in GOPland. Contest everything and whine about how everything is a plot to make you look bad. Remember the skewed polls. This is the skewed debates.
Secretary of Finance Tom Cook’s recent op-ed epitomizes the strategy of hiding things in plain sight. Secretary Cook and Governor Jack Markell’s revenue review panel has concealed among its recommendations for making Delaware tax revenues more “elastic” an ideologically driven agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and out-of-state corporations at the expense of our state’s middle class, senior citizens and local business owners. That our governor could sanction such recommendations is a prime example of how politics in Delaware has been hollowed out in favor of profit taking.
Let’s first notice that in a era of declining revenues and increasingly challenging budgets to balance Governor Markell’s instructions forbade raising new revenue: “if a recommendation was made that could be expected to generate additional revenue for the state, then a corresponding revenue reduction would also be proposed to offset it.” This means (in English) that Cook’s panel was not interested in providing more money to balance our budget, but in changing who pays the bills.
There is no excuse. Not one. And if you think there is an excuse for Officer Field’s behavior then you really are part of the problem. Know who else is part of the problem? The teacher and the administrator. Not one of the adults involved demonstrated skill in deescalation. All of them demonstrated the art of escalation. Talk about an adult pissing contest. And I’m fine with all of them being fired. No loss there.
Not kidding. If you think kids don’t pull out their phones during class then you don’t know kids. (My daughter was so guilty of this in high school and yet no one laid a hand on her. They. Wouldn’t. Dare. And that is what privilege looks like.) Hell, this isn’t even a kid problem. Mostly everyone is guilty of this behavior. If you’re okay with Officer Field’s behavior, hope you’re okay if you’re flipped out of your chair and thrown across the room at a restaurant that doesn’t allow cell phone use. That’s okay, right?
The truth is this would never have happened to a white, middle class girl. Not. Ever. It’s why white boys accused of crimes are shown in their yearbook pictures while Tamir Rice (a 12 year old) is portrayed, not only as a potential criminal threat, but far older than his years.
And this incident is a flippin’ pattern that those parsing this horrendous video ignore.
11 hours. That’s how long the Republicans took to question Hillary Clinton on Benghazi. And what did they walk away with? Let’s let Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the chair of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, tell us:
“I think some of Jimmy Jordan’s questioning — well, when you say new today, we knew some of that already. We knew about the emails,” Gowdy said in response. “In terms of her testimony? I don’t know that she testified that much differently today than she has the previous time she testified.”
Shorter answer: They got nothing.
But Hillary Clinton got something. In fact, she got a lot. I watched the last three hours of the hearings last night. Talk about keeping your cool and looking Presidential. In the end, Republicans basically gave Hillary 11 hours of free press. Their hope was to bring her down, instead they strengthened her.
Can’t. Make. This. Stuff. Up. During an address Tuesday to delegates at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu posited that the Nazi fuehrer did not initially intend to annihilate the Jews, but rather sought to expel them from Europe. According to the prime minister’s version of the events, Hitler changed his mind after meeting […]
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