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==Patch — School Leaders Hoping For Update==
==Education Budget Cuts, Collective Bargaining, Curriculum==
===May 05, 2011===
• [http://rochester.patch.com/articles/mcmillin-we-made-tough-choice-to-bring-excellence-back-to-classrooms McMillin : “We Made Tough Choice to Bring Excellence Back to Classrooms”]
====Comment 1====
Anyone with a working long-term memory knows where this agenda to Starve Public Schools Out Of Existence is coming from.
Good thing there's web search for the rest of us —
# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fTAhc4QC4
# http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos-outlines-stealth-plot-against-Public-Education
# http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/3/12515/58655/Front_Page/Strategy_for_Privatizing_Public_Schools_Spelled_out_by_Dick_DeVos_in_2002_Heritage_Foundation_Speech
====Comment 2====
If you are on Facebook, there are several groups who are tracking the corporate feudalism agenda of the ALEC, DeVos, Koch, Heritage Foundation, Mackinac Center axis. Here are just a few that come to mind:
# http://www.facebook.com/KochBrothers
# http://www.facebook.com/wearredforpubliced
# http://www.facebook.com/democracy.watchdog.action.network
# http://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Bill-Cronon/163419837045434
===May 23, 2011===
• [http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight School Leaders Hoping for Update, Feedback During Forum Tonight]
===May 24, 2011===
• [http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools Marleau, McMillin Update School Audience on State Budget Cuts]
===May 31, 2011===
• [http://rochester.patch.com/articles/mcmillin-mentioned-in-cnn-blog-about-school-funding McMillin Mentioned in CNN Blog About School Funding]
===June 07, 2011===
• [http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today Rochester Teachers to Demonstrate After School Today]
• [http://rochester.patch.com/articles/teachers-across-rochester-protest-state-budget-cuts Teachers Across Rochester Protest State Budget Cuts]
==May 23, 2011 — School Leaders Hoping For Update==
<pre>
<pre>
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School Leaders Hoping For Update, Feedback During Forum Tonight
School Leaders Hoping For Update, Feedback During Forum Tonight (May 23, 2011)
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight
Virg Bernero on the GOP Agenda for Education
Virg Bernero on the GOP Agenda for Education
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7vhjTiqpX0
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7vhjTiqpX0
The United Gates of America
The United Gates of America
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/22/978218/-The-United-Gates-of-America
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/22/978218/-The-United-Gates-of-America
Rupert Murdoch, “Education Software Provider”
Rupert Murdoch, “Education Software Provider”
• http://www.businessinsider.com/rupert-murdoch-news-corp-education-2012-presidential-campaign-2011-5
• http://www.businessinsider.com/rupert-murdoch-news-corp-education-2012-presidential-campaign-2011-5
Richard DeVos Advocates “Stealth” Strategy Against Public Education
Richard DeVos Advocates “Stealth” Strategy Against Public Education
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fTAhc4QC4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fTAhc4QC4
Blackwater In-Law DeVos Outlines “Stealth” Plot Against Public Education
Blackwater In-Law DeVos Outlines “Stealth” Plot Against Public Education
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos-outlines-stealth-plot-against-Public-Education
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos-outlines-stealth-plot-against-Public-Education
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech
• http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/3/12515/58655/Front_Page/Strategy_for_Privatizing_Public_Schools_Spelled_out_by_Dick_D
• http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/3/12515/58655/Front_Page/Strategy_for_Privatizing_Public_Schools_Spelled_out_by_Dick_DeVos_in_2002_Heritage_Foundation_Speech
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_770258
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_770258
Wealthy Families, Corporate-Backed Foundations Behind Push for School Vouchers
Wealthy Families, Corporate-Backed Foundations Behind Push for School Vouchers
• http://www.prwatch.org/spin/2011/05/10778/wealthy-families-corporate-backed-foundations-behind-push-school-vouchers
• http://www.prwatch.org/spin/2011/05/10778/wealthy-families-corporate-backed-foundations-behind-push-school-vouchers
Diane Ravitch • “Waiting for a School Miracle”
Diane Ravitch • “Waiting for a School Miracle”
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01ravitch.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01ravitch.html
Mackinac Center For Public Policy • “State Needs Privatization”
Mackinac Center For Public Policy • “State Needs Privatization”
• http://www.educationreport.org/15050
• http://www.educationreport.org/15050
Lansing State Journal • “Going Private? — Snyder, Republicans Put New Focus On Merits Of Privatization”
Lansing State Journal • “Going Private? — Snyder, Republicans Put New Focus On Merits Of Privatization”
• http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20110515/NEWS04/105150528/GOING-PRIVATE-Snyder-Republicans-put-new-focus-merits-privatization
• http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20110515/NEWS04/105150528/GOING-PRIVATE-Snyder-Republicans-put-new-focus-merits-privatization
A culture that represents reality, a people who make reality their friend — that culture and people will live. A culture that fails to represent reality, a people who make reality their enemy — that culture and people will die.
A culture that represents reality, a people who make reality their friend — that culture and people will live. A culture that fails to represent reality, a people who make reality their enemy — that culture and people will die.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_846126
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_837832
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And when it comes to choosing what ideas to bet our lives on, we have to “Consider The Source”.
And when it comes to choosing what ideas to bet our lives on, we have to “Consider The Source”.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_837832
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_846126
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http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_862825
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_862825
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Note 30
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Here's a good article on the ongoing program by ALEC, DeVos, Koch, et al. to destroy public education:
Jim Hightower • “Billionaires' Front Groups Attack Workers, Public Schools, and Young Voters”
• http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2680
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_872726
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Note 31
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This just in …
ALEC | Publicopoly
• http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=publicopoly
At least they are starting to be a little more blatant about *some* of their agenda …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_878716
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Thank You West Bloomfield Teachers For Stepping Up To Put Kids And Communities First !
We'll be sure to remember your Self-Sacrificing Public Spirit next year when the Sacrifice-Sharing State comes back again for more cuts and concessions in its annual round-up of Sacrificial Goats.
Well, some of us will …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_880569
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Note 33
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Here's a good update on some of the things that educators, parent activists, and others will be doing over the Summer to protect our system of democratic education from hostile takeover by corporations, ideologues, and other private interests.
Frustrated Educators Aim To Build Grassroots Movement
• http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/06/15/35activists_ep.h30.html
<quote>
Thousands of educators, parent activists, and others are expected to convene in the heat and humidity of Washington next month for a march protesting the current thrust of education policy in the United States, especially the strong emphasis on test-based accountability.
Organizers say the effort aims to galvanize and give voice to those who believe policymakers, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and state governors, have gone astray in their remedies for improving American schools.
</quote>
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_902617
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Oh Noes !!! More Homework !!!
Michael T. Martin • “Waiting For SuperFraud”
http://ksdcitizens.org/2010/12/22/waiting-for-superfraud/
<quote>
Public schools have to fail. There is no alternative. So give up trying to argue otherwise with facts and logic.
The mockumentary Waiting For Superman made this clear. Funded by millionaires, the movie told the story of some privatized schools in Harlem portrayed as saviors of children otherwise condemned to public schools. Privatized schools mostly funded by hedge fund millionaires on Wall Street. They spent two million dollars to promote the film nationally. Another major film titled “The Lottery” told a similar tale: children in Harlem desperate to escape public schools. Funded by more millionaires.
State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents the people of Harlem, tried to put profit restrictions on these privatized schools. So the millionaires spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to run an opponent against him in the November, 2010, election. The people of Harlem voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Perkins.
One of the supposed heroes in the mockumentary was Michele Rhee, the caustic head of Washington, D.C., schools. She subsequently was the focus of the November, 2010, mayor’s election in D.C., campaigning for the existing mayor who appointed her, promising to resign if he lost. The people of D.C. voted him and her out.
</quote>
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_903258
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Note 35
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Re: http://www.socialistalternative.org/publications/education/
Thanks for the reading. It's past my bedtime now, but I bookmarked it for tomorrow.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_903457
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Here's a few updates on the ALEC-MCPP Front that just came out:
The Michigan Citizen • “ACLU Probes EM Law’s Origins”
• http://michigancitizen.com/aclu-probes-em-laws-origins-p9713-1.htm
Daily Kos • “Exposing ALEC — June Update On ALEC Activities, Articles, And Links”
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/09/983573/-Exposing-ALECJune-Update-on-ALEC-Activities,-Articles-and-Links
Huff Post • “Parent ‘Trigger Law’ In New York Would Allow Parents To Fire Teachers, Principals”
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/14/parent-trigger-law_n_876863.html
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_904581
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The first step toward any real solution is — Recall Governor Rick Snyder.
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Recall-Governor-Rick-Snyder/113418962065885
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/community/all-events-list
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/
Only then can our communities begin to repair the damage that he and his pet legislators have already done to our public education system and our democracy in Michigan.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_904732
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Mr. Reno,
You're welcome to the information. Those links were partly in follow-up to questions about specific examples of ALEC's so-called “model legislation” — what various other people have been calling “boilerplate bills”, “cookie cutter laws”, “copycat acts”, “cut-&-paste legislation”, “ghost-written bills”, and even “Mad-Lib Laws”.
You may have noticed what happens if you attempt to read any of the specific titles on ALEC's Model Legislation Pages, for instance, the Education Page:
• http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Education
What you get, well, what I get, is this message:
❝
The page you have attempted to access is restricted to our members.
If you are an existing member, please log in to gain access to the protected areas of our site.
You are not currently logged in, please click here to do so.
❞
That naturally makes it very difficult for We the Peons to find out what kind of Hob-Nobbing our elected representatives are carrying on with the agents of this corporate ideology group.
Tanks, But No Thinks — maybe some people are copacetic with that, but lots and lots of us peasants think it's revolting.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_905195
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“The Chickens Are Revolting”
Another one of my all-time favorite movies …
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120630/
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/school-leaders-hoping-for-updates-feedback-and-solutions-during-budget-forum-tonight#comment_905412
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</pre>
</pre>
==Patch — McMillin Mentioned In CNN Blog==
==May 24, 2011 — Marleau, McMillin Update School Audience==
<pre>
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Patch -- Marleau, McMillin Update School Audience
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Marleau, McMillin Update School Audience on State Budget Cuts (May 24, 2011)
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools
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Note 1
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Here's a good article on the ongoing program by ALEC, DeVos, Koch, et al. to destroy public education:
Jim Hightower • “Billionaires' Front Groups Attack Workers, Public Schools, and Young Voters”
• http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2680
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools#comment_875001
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You can link a horse to whatever, but you can't make him think.
Thass okay, I'll keep trying …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools#comment_876817
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Thank You West Bloomfield Teachers For Stepping Up To Put Kids And Communities First !
We'll be sure to remember your Self-Sacrificing Public Spirit next year when the Sacrifice-Sharing State comes back again for more cuts and concessions in its annual round-up of Sacrificial Goats.
Well, some of us will …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools#comment_880548
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Thank You Walled Lake Teachers For Stepping Up To Put Kids And Communities First !
We'll be sure to remember your Self-Sacrificing Public Spirit next year when the Sacrifice-Sharing State comes back again for more cuts and concessions in its annual round-up of Sacrificial Goats.
Well, some of us will …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools#comment_880550
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ALEC's Restaurant
More information is coming to light about the move by ALEC, DeVos, Koch, the Mackinac Center, and related entities to co-opt our elected officials into serving their corporate ends, namely, to privatize not only public education, but all current public services, indeed, our very government itself.
Here is an article that came out today:
Amanda Terkel • “Privatization At The Heart Of Divisive Battles In Wisconsin”
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/17/privatization-wisconsin_n_873871.html
<quote>
The American Legislative Exchange Council is one of the groups most actively advocating privatization nationwide. It has 2500 legislative members, which is about a third of all state lawmakers around the country. One of its most valuable functions is crafting model legislation that lawmakers can then use to propose real bills in their own states. In the past few years, ALEC-inspired legislation has been popping up with increased frequency around the country.
The group just launched “Publicopoly”, a Monopoly-like board game as part of an “initiative to provide solutions for a more effective, efficient government, and a thriving economy”. Visitors to Publicopoly are able to learn about privatizing seven sectors: government operations, education, transportation and infrastructure, public safety, environment, health, and telecommunications.
</quote>
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools#comment_915272
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There are now several sites where readers can begin getting up to speed on the “starve and supplant” tactics that the ALEC Axis is bringing to bear on several States at once. Here's 3 for starters:
Democracy Watchdog Action Network
• https://www.facebook.com/democracy.watchdog.action.network
Wear Red For Public Ed
• https://www.facebook.com/wearredforpubliced
Support Bill Cronon
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Bill-Cronon/163419837045434
Bill Cronon is a distinguished history professor who came under attack when he wrote an article about ALEC and the Mackinac Center, so the people who came to his defense began collecting data about these issues.
Related tags at the Daily Kos —
• http://www.dailykos.com/news/ALEC
• http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Exposing%20ALEC
Current updates at the Daily Kos —
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/09/983573/-Exposing-ALECJune-Update-on-ALEC-Activities,-Articles-and-Links
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/15/985433/-EXPOSING-ALEC2nd-Update-with-important-news-and-links
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/marleau-mcmillin-and-mull-speak-about-funding-cuts-to-rochester-community-schools#comment_915291
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</pre>
==May 31, 2011 — McMillin Mentioned In CNN Blog==
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</pre>
==Patch — Rochester Teachers To Demonstrate==
==Jun 07, 2011 — Rochester Teachers To Demonstrate==
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Rochester Teachers To Demonstrate After School Today
Rochester Teachers To Demonstrate After School Today (June 7, 2011)
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today
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Mr./Ms. Legislature,
Here is the story from The Rochester Citizen that went with the clip you posted:
Here is the story from The Rochester Citizen that went with the clip you posted:
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_876049
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_876049
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Mr./Ms. Unbelievable Acts of Our Legislature,
Thanks for posting that video clip of Representative McMillin's town hall meeting. I followed the links from YouTube back to the story from The Rochester Citizen that went with it, and here it is:
“Copy and Paste Legislator” Tries To Disavow Legislation He Sponsored
• http://therochestercitizen.com/copy-and-paste-legislator-tries-to-disavow-legislation-he-sponsored-p568-1.htm
The questions raised by several citizens at this town hall meeting, along with others that I have attended, seen clips of, or read reports of, are very pertinent to the community discussion on this and other threads, on this and other sites, even if we do not have all the answers to those questions yet. That is why we must keep looking for the answers.
Those are questions of who writes our laws, and who they copy their homework from, so to speak. Our representatives are elected to represent our concerns, our interests, our voice, our very will to the Legislature. That is their job, and we have the right to hold them accountable. In that representation each of us has an equal voice, an equal vote — we live by the rule of one citizen one vote, not one dollar one vote — and we have the right to demand respect for that rule.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_878603
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Thank You West Bloomfield Teachers For Stepping Up To Put Kids And Communities First !
We'll be sure to remember your Self-Sacrificing Public Spirit next year when the Sacrifice-Sharing State comes back again for more cuts and concessions in its annual round-up of Sacrificial Goats.
Well, some of us will …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_880485
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Thank You Walled Lake Teachers For Stepping Up To Put Kids And Communities First !
We'll be sure to remember your Self-Sacrificing Public Spirit next year when the Sacrifice-Sharing State comes back again for more cuts and concessions in its annual round-up of Sacrificial Goats.
Well, some of us will …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_880498
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Ms. T,
I get the feeling that you don't actually know many teachers and also that you don't actually know many people who happen to belong to unions. Oh sure, some of your best friends probably fall into those categories, but I can vouch for the fact, if you'll excuse the expression, that your overall picture of such people is far too warped to be based on a wide experience.
I also get the feeling that you don't know much about the history of academic freedom and why things like peer review and tenure are essential factors in maintaining that.
Finally, I get the sense that you don't know much about the history of unions and the struggles for the rights of workers in general.
That's okay, everyone doesn't know much about something or other. That's what we have education for, and, yes, it's a lifelong endeavor for everyone.
But it's finally cool outside, and my roses are dying, literally, for long overdue attention.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_883570
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Note 13
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“Public Education is a Monopoly”
“Public Education is Totalitarianism”
“Your Local Police Force is a Monopoly”
“Your Department of Corrections is a Monopoly”
“{{Insert Your Favorite Public Institution Here}} is a Monopoly”
“Asking your elected representative to account for his contact with lobbyists is McCarthyism”
We've been hearing those comedy routines so often lately from certain players that I'm beginning to suspect they all come straight out of the same script. They are, of course, the sheerest nonsense.
(Patchbot says my comment is too long. I will break it here and continue below.)
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_885840
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Note 14
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Let's examine the last of those howlers on our stage.
We must respect the offices of our public servants. Those offices are the vehicles of sacred duties, and that is true whether or not the people holding those offices are fully cognizant of their real obligations or not. At any rate, the public office-holders work for us. When the offices are those of our elected representatives, their job is to represent our concerns and our interests to the Legislature, not to act as PR agents for the interests of some corporation in Kansas or the wildest dreams of some crypto-lobby in Washington.
So don't be fooled by that McCarthyism dodge.
No one is calling some Hollywood producer on the carpet for the alleged “pinkness” of his last film. That is what Joe McCarthy did — and that was not his right.
What we can do is call our employees to account for the quality of their job performances, including how and where they spend their time while supposedly working on our clock and payroll. That is all anyone is doing here — and that is our right.
They call that “accountability”, “responsibility”, or “transparency”, and they say it's good thing. I would have to agree, but only when it's a two-way street.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/rochester-teachers-to-demonstrate-after-school-today#comment_885846
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</pre>
</pre>
==Patch — Teachers Across Rochester Protest==
==Jun 07, 2011 — Teachers Across Rochester Protest==
<pre>
<pre>
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Teachers Across Rochester Protest State Budget Cuts
Teachers Across Rochester Protest State Budget Cuts (07 Jun 2011)
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/teachers-across-rochester-protest-state-budget-cuts
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/teachers-across-rochester-protest-state-budget-cuts
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/teachers-across-rochester-protest-state-budget-cuts#comment_864287
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/teachers-across-rochester-protest-state-budget-cuts#comment_864287
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</pre>
==Jun 13, 2011 — Union Concessions Not Enough To Save Jobs==
<pre>
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Patch -- Union Concessions Not Enough To Save Jobs
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Union Concessions Not Enough To Save 48 Teaching Jobs (June 13, 2011)
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs
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Comment 1
The Governor and his Privateers are starving the Public Sector in Michigan out of existence for a reason, so that private corporations can complete their hostile takeover of all public services. They stopped being content with tax abatements, bailouts, bribes, incentives, kickbacks, and worker concessions a long time ago — they want nothing less than the automatic funneling of tax dollars directly into their private corporate bankrolls without the annoying interference of all us pesky commoners.
Mackinac Center For Public Policy • “State Needs Privatization”
• http://www.educationreport.org/15050
Lansing State Journal • “Going Private? — Snyder, Republicans Put New Focus On Merits Of Privatization”
• http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20110515/NEWS04/105150528/GOING-PRIVATE-Snyder-Republicans-put-new-focus-merits-privatization
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_890808
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Comment 2
Here's a good update on some of the things that educators, parent activists, and others will be doing over the Summer to protect our system of democratic education from hostile takeover by corporations, ideologues, and other private interests.
Frustrated Educators Aim To Build Grassroots Movement
• http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/06/15/35activists_ep.h30.html
<quote>
Thousands of educators, parent activists, and others are expected to convene in the heat and humidity of Washington next month for a march protesting the current thrust of education policy in the United States, especially the strong emphasis on test-based accountability.
Organizers say the effort aims to galvanize and give voice to those who believe policymakers, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and state governors, have gone astray in their remedies for improving American schools.
</quote>
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_903384
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Comment 3
Lee,
You have just recited all the favorite advertizing slogans that a particular school of thought likes to spin about itself.
Actually, considering the circumstances, the promoters of that line of thinking would probably take offense at being called a “school of thought”, unless it could be a private for-profit school of thought. So maybe I should call it a “company of thought”, and give it a catchy name like “Private Enterprise Does Everything Better” (PEDEB.com). We can create a contest for the logo, later.
Like any good company of thought, PEDEB.com does a bang-up job at advertizing the virtues of its products and services. In that enterprise it has the able and willing services of the entire advertizing industry, an industry devoted to putting the virtues of its clients in the best possible light.
But if you believe everything that PEDEB.com is trying to sell you — well, I can get you a fantastic deal on a Bridge to Canada.
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_906057
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Comment 4
What we are seeing in this country is not really
Austerity or an Economic Downturn, but a
Vastly Unequal Distribution Of Wealth
(VUDOW Economics).
Anyone who looks around can see that there is an obscene amount of excess cash floating around, but it's all been sucked up to float the yachts of the One Per Centers while leaving the frog ponds of the peons low-down, dry, and dirty.
But if you need sadistics, here's the latest couple of items hot off my newsfeed —
Bloomberg.com • “High-Income, No-Tax Returns Jumped in 2008”
• http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-14/high-income-no-tax-returns-almost-doubled-in-2008-irs-says.html
<quote>
The number of people who reported incomes of at least $200,000 and paid no U.S. taxes jumped 79.5 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to an Internal Revenue Service study released today in Washington.
</quote>
The Feral Conservative • “Teachers and CEOs”
• http://open.salon.com/blog/the_feral_conservative/2011/03/12/teachers_and_ceos
<quote>
What about merit pay for teachers — just like the private sector?
Jeffery Immelt was CEO of General Electric and in a ten year period, Jeffery managed to drive the value of the stock so low that his shareholders (the equivalent of a teacher's students), suffered a 58% loss of their investment. What was Jeffery's merit pay for this ten year period? He took home a handsome $125 million dollars. Yeah, old Jeffery is really making sacrifices, just like the rest of us in these hard times.
</quote>
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_908860
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Comment 5
Lee,
If all the ads were true …
You have wrapped yourself in a fantasy bubble of wishful thinking, and I'll just have to leave you to it for now.
When you talk about things like the blessings of Right to Work laws, it is clear that you are reciting some jingle you read on a blog and that you have no real experience with what you are talking about.
I grew up in a State where unions were weak. My father worked in an industry where unions where non-existent. So we lived in a sector of the economy that had a top and a bottom but no middle class. When I came to Michigan on a scholarship 44 years ago, I got to see, for a space of time, what it was like for the kids who grew up in union families.
The universities understood back then that their phenomenal growth and strength was due in large part to the union families who were sending their kids to college for the very first time in their genealogies. But at least my childhood experiences in a non-union State prepared me for what I see Michigan becoming today, yet another State Gone South, as they say, with a middle class that is quickly evaporating.
Welcome to Michissippi !!!
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_908997
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Comment 6
Lee,
I have the greatest admiration for people who create businesses that produce goods, provide services, and create jobs with decent living wages. If a business can improve our quality of life without wrecking the world over the long haul to do it, then more power to it.
Some of my best and oldest friends have run small businesses, and what you say echoes their stories about the State of Michigan getting in their hair to the point where they pulled most of it out.
No one wants to keep people from engaging in productive enterprise. But productive enterprise depends on maintaining a common environment of public services that everyone can trust will be available on an equal opportunity basis. That means things like applied and basic scientific knowledge, civil and criminal justice, communication, education, public safety, transportation, and the like. Those are essential services. They cannot be maintained on a pay-for-play basis without turning America into a different kind of country than we espouse it to be. It may be one of the failings of human nature to want something for nothing, but no one who stops to think about the consequences of everyone trying to get away with that will want anything other than to pay a fair share.
There's the rub — What is fair? There are no easy ways to compute the answer. Heaven knows we have tried all sorts of different formulas over the years. But it's a question we can't avoid — so we have to keep trying to work it out.
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_918445
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Comment 7
Lee,
If you will stop channeling “The Rand, Reagan, Rick, Rush, and Ryan Road Show” for a while maybe we can have a real discussion. I've heard these very same lines about “The Government Monopoly” being repeated often enough lately that I can probably pinpoint exactly where they are coming from, to wit, or not, Michigan's own Madison Avenue doublethink tank and all round corporate ideology group for privatizing everything in sight, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, not to mention their fellow travelers in the massive complex of crypto-lobbies that are run by ALEC, the DeVos family, and the Koch brothers.
I know a lot of people are fond of repeating the slogans of PEDEB.com. There is indeed a very large and lucrative advertising industry dedicated to designing hooks that will stick in our brains and trip off our lips before we have a chance to chew on them or give them a second thought. But, like a lot of commercial jingles that rule the air these days, we need to pull our heads out and Consider the Source, we need to apply a healthy dose of critical thinking to the Bill of Goods they are trying to sell us. That means we have to do our own research and we need to think for ourselves. There is no patent medicine artificial substitute for that.
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_919503
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Comment 8
ALEC's Restaurant
More information is coming to light about the move by ALEC, DeVos, Koch, the Mackinac Center, and related entities to co-opt our elected officials into serving their corporate ends, namely, to privatize not only public education, but all current public services, indeed, our very government itself.
Here is an article that came out this week —
Amanda Terkel • “Privatization At The Heart Of Divisive Battles In Wisconsin”
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/17/privatization-wisconsin_n_873871.html
<quote>
The American Legislative Exchange Council is one of the groups most actively advocating privatization nationwide. It has 2500 legislative members, which is about a third of all state lawmakers around the country. One of its most valuable functions is crafting model legislation that lawmakers can then use to propose real bills in their own states. In the past few years, ALEC-inspired legislation has been popping up with increased frequency around the country.
The group just launched “Publicopoly”, a Monopoly-like board game as part of an “initiative to provide solutions for a more effective, efficient government, and a thriving economy”. Visitors to Publicopoly are able to learn about privatizing seven sectors: government operations, education, transportation and infrastructure, public safety, environment, health, and telecommunications.
</quote>
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_919649
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Comment 9
There are now several sites where readers can begin getting up to speed on the “starve and supplant” tactics that the ALEC Axis is bringing to bear on several States at once. Here's 3 for starters:
Democracy Watchdog Action Network
• https://www.facebook.com/democracy.watchdog.action.network
Wear Red For Public Ed
• https://www.facebook.com/wearredforpubliced
Support Bill Cronon
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Bill-Cronon/163419837045434
Bill Cronon is a distinguished history professor who came under attack when he wrote an article about ALEC and the Mackinac Center, so the people who came to his defense began collecting data about these issues.
Related tags at the Daily Kos —
• http://www.dailykos.com/news/ALEC
• http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Exposing%20ALEC
Current updates at the Daily Kos —
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/09/983573/-Exposing-ALECJune-Update-on-ALEC-Activities,-Articles-and-Links
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/15/985433/-EXPOSING-ALEC2nd-Update-with-important-news-and-links
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_919675
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Comment 10
PEDEB.com always *says* Private Enterprise Does Everything Better. Of course it does. That's its main advertizing line and it sells that advertizing line better than it sells anything else. But is that really true? Are most advertising lines really true? I don't think so.
Maybe you should investigate how much PEDEB.com spends on advertising compared to what it spends on the fundamentals of actually producing goods and delivering services.
Maybe you should investigate how much PEDEB.com pays its CEO and its higher level executives compared to what it pays its other employees, its subcontractors, and its shareholders.
Maybe you should investigate how much PEDEB.com spends on hostile takeovers of businesses that it neither knows nor cares anything about maintaining on an even keel, but merely takes over for the sake of driving them into the ground and cashing in on the liquidation of their assets.
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_923253
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Comment 11
In other news …
Global Corporations Crush Small Businesses And Then Blame It On The Government
• http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12789
Small Firms Scrape By, But Big Businesses Continue Growing
• http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/print-edition/2011/06/17/big-businesses-continue-growing.html
<quote>
As the Portland Business Journal reports,
“Corporate profits may be at a record high, but businesses on Main Street are still scraping by,” said NFIB [National Federation of Independent Business] Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. “Washington is throwing misdirected policies at the problem, offering tax breaks for hiring and equipment investment, but acting surprised when they don't bear any fruit.”
</quote>
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_925831
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Comment 12
What can you do about it?
Recall —
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/community/all-events-list
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Recall-Governor-Rick-Snyder/113418962065885
Repeal —
• http://repealpa4.org/
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Repeal-PA4-Emergency-Managers-Washtenaw-Area/137390633002568
• http://sites.google.com/site/rejectemergencymanagers/
• http://www.facebook.com/rejectemergencymanagers
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_973574
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Comment 13
Lee,
I can see you have a lot of reading to catch up on this Summer ...
First thing off, let's get you up to speed on the facts of life about the “Emergency Mangling” of Detroit Public Schools. Here's a couple of introductory articles from the Huffington Post —
Detroit Announces New Authority For Failing Schools (June 20, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/detroit-announces-new-authority_n_880757.html
Michigan Groups Sue Governor Snyder Over Emergency Manager Law (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/michigan-groups-sue-gov-s_n_882442.html
And here's a couple of reports on the Broad Foundation, that we find behind the scenes of so many current raids on public education and so prominently mentioned in the Governerd's plans, not just for Detroit, but for Michigan at large —
Seattle Education Blog • “The Broad Foundation”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/race-to-the-top/the-broad-foundation/
Seattle Education Blog • “Eli Broad’s Last Hurrah In Detroit?”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/eli-broad’s-last-hurrah-in-detroit/
Yes, it will all be on the test …
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/union-concessions-not-enough-to-save-48-teaching-jobs#comment_974911
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</pre>
==Jun 14, 2011 — Sea Of Green Opposes Paraeducator Cuts==
<pre>
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Patch -- Sea Of Green Opposes Paraeducator Cuts
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In School Board Audience, Sea Of Green Opposes Paraeducator Cuts (June 14, 2011)
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/in-school-board-audience-sea-of-green-opposes-paraeducator-cuts
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Note 1
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Mr. Rowen,
You are saying that the prospect of gaining or losing a financial incentive skews a person's beliefs and thus a person's decisions in the direction of self-interest and at the expense of public interests.
Hold that thought …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/in-school-board-audience-sea-of-green-opposes-paraeducator-cuts#comment_893629
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Note 2
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Version 1
Incidentally, the following Facebook page is a good resource for learning how communities across the nation are dealing with the ongoing degradation of their public education systems.
Wear Red For Public Ed
• https://www.facebook.com/wearredforpubliced
Many people across the country are beginning to realize that there is a coordinated campaign by many State governments and corporate interests to turn back the clock on American education to something more like the systems of private privilege we once had the good sense to revolt against.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/in-school-board-audience-sea-of-green-opposes-paraeducator-cuts#comment_895651
Version 2
Incidentally, the following Facebook page is a good resource for learning how communities across the nation are dealing with the ongoing degradation of their public education systems.
Wear Red For Public Ed
• https://www.facebook.com/wearredforpubliced
Many people across the country are beginning to realize that there is a coordinated campaign by GOP-TEA-dominated State governments and corporate interests to turn back the clock on American education to something more like the systems of private privilege we once had the good sense to revolt against.
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Note 3
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What we are seeing in this country is not really
Austerity or an Economic Downturn, but a
Vastly Unequal Distribution Of Wealth
(VUDOW Economics).
Anyone who looks around can see that there is an obscene amount of excess cash floating around, but it's all been sucked up to float the yachts of the One Per Centers while leaving the frog ponds of the peons low-down, dry, and dirty.
But if you need sadistics, here's the latest couple of items hot off my newsfeed —
Bloomberg.com • “High-Income, No-Tax Returns Jumped in 2008”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-14/high-income-no-tax-returns-almost-doubled-in-2008-irs-says.html
<quote>
The number of people who reported incomes of at least $200,000 and paid no U.S. taxes jumped 79.5 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to an Internal Revenue Service study released today in Washington.
</quote>
The Feral Conservative • “Teachers and CEOs”
http://open.salon.com/blog/the_feral_conservative/2011/03/12/teachers_and_ceos
<quote>
What about merit pay for teachers — just like the private sector?
Jeffery Immelt was CEO of General Electric and in a ten year period, Jeffery managed to drive the value of the stock so low that his shareholders (the equivalent of a teacher's students), suffered a 58% loss of their investment. What was Jeffery's merit pay for this ten year period? He took home a handsome $125 million dollars. Yeah, old Jeffery is really making sacrifices, just like the rest of us in these hard times.
</quote>
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/in-school-board-audience-sea-of-green-opposes-paraeducator-cuts#comment_896181
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Now, now, if you knew me better, you'd know I'm a natural born criticizer of just about everything, and I spent the last twentieth of the second millennium criticizing all things that smacked of the Establishment and the Status Quo. Every POTUS that comes down the pike will gradually turn into the very model of a modern major authority figure, so I could hardly absent my post of challenging the passing Presider with the required qui vive.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/in-school-board-audience-sea-of-green-opposes-paraeducator-cuts#comment_896837
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</pre>
==Jun 27, 2011 — Dearborn Schools Calling For Education Funding==
<pre>
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Patch -- Dearborn Schools Calling For Education Funding
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Rep. Darany, Dearborn Schools Still Calling for Education Funding Reforms (June 27, 2011)
• http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/rep-darany-dearborn-schools-still-calling-for-education-funding-reforms
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Comment 1
What can you do about it?
Recall —
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/community/all-events-list
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Recall-Governor-Rick-Snyder/113418962065885
Repeal —
• http://repealpa4.org/
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Repeal-PA4-Emergency-Managers-Washtenaw-Area/137390633002568
• http://sites.google.com/site/rejectemergencymanagers/
• http://www.facebook.com/rejectemergencymanagers
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/rep-darany-dearborn-schools-still-calling-for-education-funding-reforms#comment_969900
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Comment 2
Looking to the future, the main thing we need to understand is this — What we see happening in Benton Harbor, Detroit, and Pontiac, not to mention States from Florida to Wisconsin, will be coming our way sooner or later if not already here. It has nothing to do with black vs. white, left vs. right, liberal vs. libertarian, or any of those old-fangled diversions. It goes beyond education, public safety, public services, and even beyond the public sector workplace to the very ideas of community and the common good.
Getting up to speed on that will take looking into the corporate ideology groups that now and then fly under the banners of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Broad Foundation, the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (MCPP), and the whole bulk of the iceberg that threatens our democratic ship of state.
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/rep-darany-dearborn-schools-still-calling-for-education-funding-reforms#comment_970172
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Comment 3
For the benefit of readers who haven't been following the “Emergency Mangling” of Detroit Public Schools all that closely, here's a couple of articles from the Huffington Post —
Detroit Announces New Authority For Failing Schools (June 20, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/detroit-announces-new-authority_n_880757.html
Michigan Groups Sue Governor Snyder Over Emergency Manager Law (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/michigan-groups-sue-gov-s_n_882442.html
And here's a couple of reports on the Broad Foundation, that we find behind the scenes of so many current raids on public education and so prominently mentioned in the Governerd's plans, not just for Detroit, but for Michigan at large —
Seattle Education Blog • “The Broad Foundation”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/race-to-the-top/the-broad-foundation/
Seattle Education Blog • “Eli Broad’s Last Hurrah In Detroit?”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/eli-broad’s-last-hurrah-in-detroit/
Yes, it will all be on the test …
http://dearborn.patch.com/articles/rep-darany-dearborn-schools-still-calling-for-education-funding-reforms#comment_973696
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</pre>
==Jun 28, 2011 — Not A Proud Moment For Education, Board Says==
<pre>
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Patch -- Not A Proud Moment For Education, Board Says
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Not A Proud Moment For Education, Board Says Before Budget Approval (June 28, 2011)
• http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval
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Comment 1
What can you do about it?
Recall —
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/
• http://www.firericksnyder.org/community/all-events-list
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Recall-Governor-Rick-Snyder/113418962065885
Repeal —
• http://repealpa4.org/
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Repeal-PA4-Emergency-Managers-Washtenaw-Area/137390633002568
• http://sites.google.com/site/rejectemergencymanagers/
• http://www.facebook.com/rejectemergencymanagers
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_969895
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Comment 2
Looking to the future, the main thing we need to understand is this — What we see happening in Benton Harbor, Detroit, and Pontiac, not to mention States from Florida to Wisconsin, will be coming our way sooner or later if not already here. It has nothing to do with black vs. white, left vs. right, liberal vs. libertarian, or any of those old-fangled diversions. It goes beyond education, public safety, public services, and even beyond the public sector workplace to the very ideas of community and the common good.
Getting up to speed on that will take looking into the corporate ideology groups that now and then fly under the banners of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Broad Foundation, the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (MCPP), and the whole bulk of the iceberg that threatens our democratic ship of state.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_970082
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Comment 3 (Reply)
<quote>
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation 17.
• http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/meditation17.php
</quote>
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_970338
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Comment 4
I realize that it serves particular ends to keep the fish biting each other. It keeps them from asking who built the barrel until the angler get ready to spear them. But if your school ever taught you to think outside the think-tank, you will have learned Lesson Number One in critical thinking, which is to keep looking around at the context of discussion and question the assumptions that some would have you take for granted.
In that spirit, if you've been following what's going on with the takeover of the Detroit Public Schools by an ever more dictatorial series of Emergency Managers, and how the Broad Foundation and other reform schoolers are playing into that, you may have many questions about what that means for the future of education in Michigan, and, yes, eventually in our neck of the woods.
Here's a good article that will help Michiganders understand the brand of Billionaire Boys' Club financed PR campaign that we can expect to see spreading from Detroit to the rest of the State over the coming year — unless we put a stop to it —
Michael T. Martin • “Waiting For SuperFraud”
• http://ksdcitizens.org/2010/12/22/waiting-for-superfraud/
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_971513
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Comment 5 (Reply)
Que?
I think it's spelled “cue”, but I'll be happy to put a few items on the queue, anyway.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_972416
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Comment 6
For the benefit of readers who haven't been following the “Emergency Mangling” of Detroit Public Schools all that closely, here's a couple of articles from the Huffington Post —
Detroit Announces New Authority For Failing Schools (June 20, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/detroit-announces-new-authority_n_880757.html
Michigan Groups Sue Governor Snyder Over Emergency Manager Law (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/michigan-groups-sue-gov-s_n_882442.html
And here's a couple of reports on the Broad Foundation, that we find behind the scenes of so many current raids on public education and so prominently mentioned in the Governerd's plans, not just for Detroit, but for Michigan at large —
Seattle Education Blog • “The Broad Foundation”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/race-to-the-top/the-broad-foundation/
Seattle Education Blog • “Eli Broad’s Last Hurrah In Detroit?”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/eli-broad’s-last-hurrah-in-detroit/
Yes, it will all be on the test …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_972808
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Comment 7
By popular request, here's a recent article on the way that the Walton Family is helping themselves to new investment opportunities by helping to convert public education into a martable, er, marketable private commodity.
Walton Family Foundation Gives $157 Million Toward Education Reform
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/28/walton-family-foundation-_n_886112.html
I apologize for the fact that the article reads a little bit like it was written by the Walton's PR Agency, but the comments from the readers are rather more clueful.
G'night, Jon Boy …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_977122
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Comment 8 (Reply)
John,
You are talking about things that academics and educators have been talking and writing about for a quarter century now, just since I personally started talking and writing about them.
The critical question is whether those systems will be designed and managed by people who comprehend the full depth and scope of what humane education is all about, or whether they will be controlled and marketed by cash cowpokes like Gates, Murdoch, and the Waltons.
P.S. Speaking of funky software, the new version of Patch is acting weird. I'll go ahead and post this again and see what happens.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_977669
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Comment 9 (Aside)
It looks like posting at the top level works okay, but the reply function is busted.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_977534
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Comment 10
By way of review — since we all know how important that is when it comes to learning, recall, and retention — here's a cumulative reading list on our brave new breed of “Venture Philanthropists”, to use the Broad Foundation's own name for their favorite game:
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_978482
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Comment 11
Business Insider • “Rupert Murdoch, Who Bought 90% Of An Education Software Provider, Launches Initiative ‘To Make Education A Top Issue In 2012 Presidential Campaign’”
• http://www.businessinsider.com/rupert-murdoch-news-corp-education-2012-presidential-campaign-2011-5
Daily Kos • “The United Gates Of America” (May 22, 2011)
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/22/978218/-The-United-Gates-of-America
Daily Kos • “The Broad-Way — Fleecing America's Schools” (Jun 25, 2011)
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/25/988664/-The-Broad-way:-Fleecing-Americas-Schools
Jim Hightower • “Billionaires' Front Groups Attack Workers, Public Schools, and Young Voters”
• http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2680
Huffington Post • “Walton Family Foundation Gives $157 Million Toward Education Reform”
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/28/walton-family-foundation-_n_886112.html
Mike Klonsky • “Debunking Jeb Bush's ‘Florida Formula’”
• http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2011/06/debunking-jeb-bushs-florida-formula.html
Rachel Levy • “Teach For America — From Service Group to Industry”
• http://allthingsedu.blogspot.com/2011/05/teach-for-america-from-service-group-to.html
Michael T. Martin • “Waiting For SuperFraud”
• http://ksdcitizens.org/2010/12/22/waiting-for-superfraud/
Mark Naison • “Teach for America and Me — A Failed Courtship”
• http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/06/dr-mark-naison-teach-for-america-and-me.html
Seattle Education Blog • “The Broad Foundation”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/race-to-the-top/the-broad-foundation/
Seattle Education Blog • “Eli Broad’s Last Hurrah In Detroit?”
• http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/eli-broad’s-last-hurrah-in-detroit/
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_978495
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Comment 12
The invasion of cash from so-called “philanthropists” is known in the Biz as a “Loss Leader”. Big bucks are pumped into the system to make it look like the raid is a smashing success. If that strategy works as badly as it has elsewhere, a lot of data will get cooked and lot of Agenda-Driven Statistification (ADS) will get trumpeted all over the Corporate Air Waves to make it look like there was any improvement at all.
Never mind the small stuff, the truth won't matter. More big bucks will be pumped into rah-rah ads and corporate media “documentaries” to cover up the facts. By the time the Public figures out what is really going down, the school system will be so far down the road to privatization for corporate cash, command, and control that it will take the People all they can do to keep any shred of equal opportunity education at all.
These people are not philanthropists — “lovers of humanity” — they are investors. They don't give money away — they invest money for the sake of making more money, acting in tandem with their need to force their personal ideology on the rest of the world. If they destroy the American way of life in the process — that's just collateral damage.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_978501
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Comment 13 (Reply)
Mr. Reno,
Whether you find it convenient to acknowledge it or not, there is an ever increasing number of your fellow citizens, from all walks of life and spread throughout the sphere of otherwise diverse political opinions, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the future of public education in this country, and whether it will even have a future given the raids that are currently being mounted on all sides.
If you do not wish to inform yourself of those developments, you are of course free to do so, but that does not mean they are not occurring, and other people have a need and a right to stay informed about them.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_978997
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Comment 14 (Aside)
I'm still not seeing replies at all, but it looks like posting replies as regular comments will work until they get the bugs out of the system.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_979248
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Comment 15
Speaking as a survivor of the Sputnik era, the New Math, and more curriculum reforms in math and science than I can count since then, let me just share what tuppence of wisdom I have gained on the matter —
The most important factor in learning mathematics is having teachers who are all round solid human beings, who love mathematics and its teaching, and who have the time to find what sparks that same level of fascination in each individual student. Everything else is purely incidental.
Then again, it's pretty much the same with any subject.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_981095
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Comment 16
It is well past time we woke up to the fact that the wool being pulled over our eyes in the realm of public education extends to the entire sphere of public infrastructure and public services, all the things that the American People simply cannot afford to abdicate to the agents of private corporate profit, not to mention foreign national interests. Just by way of a hint, here's a recent article —
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_983138
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Comment 17
Dylan Ratigan • “America for Sale — Is Goldman Sachs Buying Your City?”
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/america-for-sale-is-goldm_b_877285.html
<quote>
In Chicago, it's the sale of parking meters to the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. In Indiana, it's the sale of the northern toll road to a Spanish and Australian joint venture. In Wisconsin it's public health and food programs, in California it's libraries. It's water treatment plants, schools, toll roads, airports, and power plants. It's Amtrak. There are revolving doors of corrupt politicians, big banks, and rating agencies. There are conflicts of interest. It's bipartisan.
And it's coming to a city near you — it may already be there. We're talking about the sale of public assets to private investors. You may have heard of one-off deals, but what we'll be exploring with the Huffington Post is the scale and scope of what is a national and organized campaign to shift the way we govern ourselves. In an era of increasingly stretched local and state budgets, privatization of public assets may be so tempting to local politicians that the trend seems unstoppable. Yet, public outrage has stopped and slowed a number of initiatives.
</quote>
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_983143
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Comment 18
Back on the topic of “Unproud Moments For Education” —
The Answer Sheet • “New Data Reveal The Real Problem In Education”
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/new-data-reveals-the-real-problem-in-education/2011/06/30/AGDuYZtH_blog.html
It's just like what one wag on Facebook said, “It's the poverty, stupid.”
I know, I know, “But what does that have to do with our dale of the hills?”
And the fact that anyone even has to ask that —
But never mind, sufficient unto the day are the unproud moments thereof.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_984558
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Comment 19 (Reply)
Mr. Reno,
I don't know what you think is going on here, but this is not a session of the Legislature, it is not a meeting of the School Board, it is not even a chat in the Faculty Lounge. No one asked you to dictate the agenda, no one elected you Chair, and no one appointed you Moderator. So please try to recall what I am provisionally willing to assume you learned at home or school about what it means to be an equal citizen, a peer among equals.
What I personally see here is a self-selected sample of citizens who are sharing information and opinions bearing on their concerns with the current state and the possible future of education in their neighborhoods. If those are honest and true concerns then they will necessarily involve the consideration of many matters connected with education that go far beyond the boundaries of those neighborhoods.
If your field of vision is so narrow that you cannot or will not see those eminently evident facts, then you are certainly entitled to live your life within those confines, but no one gave you the right to impose your blinkers on your peers.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_986150
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Comment 20 (Reply)
Mr. Reno,
The article at the top of the page is titled “Not a ‘Proud Moment’ for Education, Board Says Before Budget Approval”.
I have read the article several times. The moment is as poignant as the title says, and I sympathize with the frustrations of many that are expressed throughout the article. Maybe the Governor and the Republican dominated legislature are proud of themselves that they misappropriated education funds to corporate interests and left their constituents to fight it out among themselves for the remainder that was left. But how could we be proud of ourselves that we let this happen?
But your first post dismissed the moment of the occasion and set off on a tangent of your own. As for the rest of the thread, all and sundry conducted themselves in the usual manner, raising the topics that engage their several interests in more or less free association with the article or the last subject mentioned.
I can't imagine why it should be any other way. No resolutions will be passed here. No actions will be taken in anything but tangential relation to what is discussed here.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_986490
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Comment 21 (Reply)
Mr. Reno (cont.),
The teachers will keep trying to do the jobs they were hired to do until they are utterly prevented. Same for the other staff. The school board will keep trying to do the job they were elected to do with the resources they were given. As a general rule, school boards and teachers are more open to input from their clients than any other set of officeholders or professionals I have ever run across, but I can't see any way that folks with real jobs to do could implement the irresolutions of this our beloved but very motley crew. So I can't imagine that being our job.
All we can do here is try to educate ourselves about the current state of things, by sharing our scattered bits of information and opinion, and that may help us do our job as citizens a little better on the next high-stakes test of our civic performance.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_986503
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Comment 22 (Reply)
Ms. T,
Ms. T,
It is something of a paradox to me that people appear to value education, and they appear to understand, if more tangentially, that a lot of what they desire for their own children, whether it be in the arts, athletics, sciences, or specialized services, depends on the education and the experience of the teachers in their schools — and yet they turn around and minimize the value of education and experience in those very teachers.
Any hack journalist or political pundit is regarded as more of an expert on what constitutes a genuine education and how to get it than any of the people who have actually taken the trouble to acquire the requisite education and dedicated their lives to applying that knowledge.
No one who is brought up on the value of critical thinking expects to be accorded unquestioned authority in any matter, even one where they have demonstrated expertise, but that does not diminish the relevance of their education, experience, and expertise to questions about the quality of education. And yet some people appear to think the educator's education counts for nothing.
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1000505
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Comment 23 (Reply)
Mr. Reno,
I was trained as a systems thinker. One thing that means is that I think in terms of whole systems. Another thing that means is that I understand the value of feedback in relation to system objectives. Let us hang onto those thoughts, they have many consequences.
There are people who will try to sell you on the idea that this or that industry or institution is fully capable of regulating itself, without critical feedback from the public whom that industry or institution is formed to serve. I am not one of those people.
So the question is always — What forms of regulation promote the optimal functioning of the whole system?
Well, I have to take my car in for service, so this will have to be continued …
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1001199
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Comment 24
I am most gratified to see that my perspective-broadening influence on this Kaffeeklatsch Patch has led more and more of us Rochester Hillbillies and Hobbits to pay attention to what goes on in the wider world beyond the Shire. I myself spent a couple weeks last month tracking the revolting developments a little closer to home, to wit, the Emerging Corporate Raid on the Detroit Public Schools, and all the revelations about fraud, graft, and misappropriation of funds that occurred under the previous Emergency Magnifier. For those who had trouble telling one Robert Baron from another without a program, here's a bit of the blow by blow as it blew by.
Rick Snyder to announce sweeping DPS reforms Monday (June 19, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110619/NEWS01/110619015/Rick-Snyder-announce-sweeping-DPS-reforms-Monday
Governor Rick Snyder to announce sweeping DPS reforms today (June 20, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110620/NEWS06/106200359/Gov-Rick-Snyder-announce-sweeping-DPS-reforms-today
Sweeping reform plan empowers principals, teachers in low-performing Michigan schools (June 20, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110620/NEWS01/110620027/Sweeping-reform-plan-empowers-principals-teachers-low-performing-Michigan-schools
How new Michigan school district for low-performing schools would work (June 20, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110620/NEWS01/110620033/How-new-Michigan-school-district-low-performing-schools-would-work
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1009950
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Comment 25
Emergency Magnification (cont.)
Snyder had idea for changing DPS even before he was governor (June 21, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/NEWS01/106210388/Snyder-had-idea-changing-DPS-even-before-he-governor
DPS's scholarship promise is short on details and resources (June 21, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/NEWS06/106210390/DPS-s-scholarship-promise-short-details-resources
New start for Detroit's worst schools (June 21, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/NEWS01/106210383/New-start-Detroit-s-worst-schools
Editorial • Stronger medicine for sick schools (June 21, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110621/OPINION01/106210320/Editorial-Stronger-medicine-sick-schools
Eastern Michigan faculty side with teachers' unions, refuse to work in Detroit schools (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/106220413/Eastern-Michigan-faculty-side-teachers-unions-refuse-work-Detroit-schools
Art dealer's trial to begin in DPS corruption case (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/106220383/Art-dealer-s-trial-begin-DPS-corruption-case
Roy Roberts to cut non-teaching jobs, cancel supplier contracts in effort to transform DPS (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/110622024/Roy-Roberts-cut-non-teaching-jobs-cancel-supplier-contracts-effort-transform-DPS
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1009966
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Comment 26
Emergency Magnification (cont.)
Eastern Michigan faculty side with teachers' unions, says they weren't consulted about plan (June 22, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS01/106220413/Eastern-Michigan-faculty-side-teachers-unions-says-they-weren-t-consulted-about-plan
DPS spent $1.6M on travel, gave raises to consultants (June 24, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110624/NEWS01/106240431/DPS-spent-1-6M-consultants-travel
Under Bobb, consultants got raises, perks (June 24, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110624/NEWS01/106240443/Under-Bobb-consultants-got-raises-perks
Michigan Senate OKs teacher tenure changes (July 1, 2011)
• http://www.freep.com/article/20110701/NEWS05/107010436/Michigan-Senate-OKs-teacher-tenure-changes
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1010007
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Comment 27
Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin
Bob Sikes • “The Atlanta Cheating Scandal, the Broad Foundation, NCLB, and the Peril of Attaching Cash to Student Test Scores”
• http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/the-atlanta-cheating-scandal-the-broad-foundation-nclb-and-the-peril-of-attaching-cash-to-student-test-scores/
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Ann Kane and M. Catharine Evans • “Who's Responsible for the Government Schools Cheating Scandals?”
• http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/whos_responsible_for_the_government_schools_cheating_sandals.html
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1012390
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Comment 28
Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin
Bob Sikes • “Detroit Charter Schools Not Getting it Done Either”
• http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/detroit-charter-schools-not-getting-it-done-either/
Mark Gruenberg • “Probe shows union-busting Michelle Rhee wrote Michigan anti-teacher law”
• http://www.peoplesworld.org/probe-shows-union-busting-michelle-rhee-wrote-michigan-anti-teacher-law/
http://rochester.patch.com/articles/not-a-proud-moment-for-education-school-board-says-before-budget-approval#comment_1013227
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</pre>
</pre>
==Jul 08, 2011 — Lansing Visit Offers Time To Reflect And Ponder==
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder 08 Jul 2011 • 5:30 am]
===Comment 1 (Reply to Mike Reno)===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1013715 08 Jul 2011 • 9:50 am]
Welcome to the Reno Casino, where SuperStar Teachers™ who prove themselves Ready 4 Prime Time™ will crush their competitors before cheering hordes of fans in the EduMart SuperBowl™, win Rheebok Shoe™ endorsements, and make a bundle in the Privately Owned States Of America™ Edumachination Industry™.
===Comment 2 (Reply)===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1015253 08 Jul 2011 • 1:30 pm]
Mr. Reno, Ms. T,
If you knew many good teachers, and were actually capable of hearing what they have to say about the realities of teaching, they could tell you how many things are wrong with the things you keep saying. They would know a little — and some would know a lot — about the history of education, especially in the U.S. over the last hundred years, a little from their personal experience of school politics and teaching practice and a little more from their academic courses and professional reading.
But of course you don't know any good teachers who could teach you those things — they quit being good teachers just as soon as they tell you what you don't know. And that is precisely why the history of education in the U.S. over the last hundred years has taught those who are capable of learning from it the critical importance of academic freedom, peer review, seniority, and the tenure system.
===Comment 3 (Reply)===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1015930 08 Jul 2011 • 3:06 pm]
Now, Mr. Reno, you know what he's saying. It is known in logic as “Argumentum ad Squirrelum”. The public begins to smell a Big Greedy Rat stealing their cheese — so our corporate owned politicians and corporate owned media yell “Squirrel !!!” at the top of their well-funded lungs and point their bony fingers at poor public service workers just getting by on peanuts.
===Comment 4 (Reply)===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1016056 08 Jul 2011 • 3:20 pm]
To my way of thinking, communication is a two-way street. I'm just not seeing any evidence from his statements that Mr. Reno has absorbed anything more than cookies from his tenure on Sesame Street.
===Comment 5 (Reply)===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1016102 08 Jul 2011 • 3:35 pm]
Re: “If they don't represent us, then who are they representing?”
Hint. Go Ask ALEC.
===Comment 6 (Reply)===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1016353 08 Jul 2011 • 4:24 pm]
Mr. Reno,
Mr. Raymond wrote: “I understand the frustrations you are having with legislators not being responsive to their constituents. I've found the same problem in our own school district.”
Mr. Raymond was astute enough to recognize a similar dynamics operating at two levels of government — a top-down, 1-way street, my-way-or-the-highway form of dictation, intended to communicate a pre-fabricated agenda downward to the constituents, as opposed to communicating the concerns and interests of the constituents up the line to those elected to legislate and act. I think many people have been noticing the same pattern pretty much all over the place lately.
I do not think the similarities are purely coincidental.
===Comment 7===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1016565
This just in …
Timothy D. Slekar • “Cheating or Protecting? Depends”
* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-d-slekar/cheating-or-protecting-de_b_892067.html
Sorry, Ms. T, I couldn't find the Wobblie Spin on this, so this Little Libbie Ragtime will have to do for now.
===Comment 8===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1016780
John Kuhn • “Stop Labeling Teachers, Label The Lawmakers”
• http://mineralwellsindex.com/opinion/x1281108295/Letters-to-the-Editor-April-10-2011/
<blockquote>
Did you know that over the next five years, Texas lawmakers will send half a billion dollars to London, to line the pockets of Pearson’s stakeholders. That’s 15,000 teacher salaries, sacrificed at the altar of standardized testing. $500,000,000 for a test! I’m sure it’s a nice test, but it’s just a test. I’ve never seen a test change a kid’s life or dry a kid’s tear. Tests don’t show up at family funerals or junior high basketball games. They don’t chip in to buy a poor girl a prom dress. Only teachers do those things.
</blockquote>
Them Darn Texican Commies …
===Comment 9===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1016893
I've been following these developments just long enough to observe that the same patterns of behavior are coming to light across the spectrum of charter and public “Reform Schools”, from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD, to Atlanta, GA. I think we can expect to see a lot more.
I think that a violence was committed on our educational system when the Bush Administration infected a core function of our democratic society with an alien market dynamics. What we are seeing today is a consequence of that violation.
But it's Fajita & Margarita Time — so Adios for now !!!
===Comment 10===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1017932
For those of you who just joined the program, it appears that the inmates of Stalag 13 did not take Colonel Klink's dictates very seriously.
===Comment 11===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1017992
Susan Ohanian maintains a useful site for following the controversies arising out of NCLB and RT³ —
* http://susanohanian.org/
===Comment 12===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1019984
The point of my little parody is that something has gone seriously wrong with the introduction of market dynamics into the usual routines of evaluation in education.
Education is a public resource, a core component of a democratic society, not a private commodity to be merchandised by private interest corporations.
It is obvious from their own position statements that a number of obscenely well-funded forces are striving to inject market psychology into people's hearts and minds for the express purpose of doing away with universal free public education. Other people may be drawn into the game from a lack of information about its ultimate purpose. As with any astroturf pyramid scheme, it is always hard to draw a hard and fast line between the shills and the marks, but I do not believe the great majority of people would be happy with the consequences if they could see where the con is headed.
===Comment 13===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1021635
Schools Matter • “Jonah Edelman Spills the Oligarchs' Blueprint for Crushing the Teaching Profession”
* http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/07/jonah-edelman-spills-oligarchs.html
<blockquote>
As Lisa Guisbond said, “this is an amazing video from the Aspen Ideas Festival in which Stand For Children’s Jonah Edelman explains how he, with the support of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan’s senior advisor Jo Anderson (former Executive Director of the IEA) out foxed the CTU, the IFT and the IEA’s Ken Swanson and Audrey Soglin into agreeing to Senate Bill 7.”
We do know some of what goes on at the Aspen Ideas Festival besides getting a chance to smell and touch sewer rats like Rupert Murdoch. Here is a great example of massive ego mixed with manipulative glee that was posted and quickly pulled from the Aspen site, but not before Fred Klonsky captured a copy for the world to see and hear.
In this Machiavellian masterpiece, we see Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children infamy describe in great detail how great wads of hedge-fund and other corporate cash came to bear on the last legislative election in Illinois, how all the best lobbyists were bought up by Deform (including minority ones), how unions were outspent and how politicians followed the money, how teacher unions were lured to the table and how they were totally manhandled by the best lawyers and negotiators that money can buy, how union leaders became complicit, scared, weak, groveling.
</blockquote>
===Comment 14===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1029600
Updated Info On ALEC —
Many of the Boilerplate Bills that are coming out of our Nation's Statehouses these days are being written as fill-in-the-blank form-laws by a crypto-lobby known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Several sites are now tracking the ALEC program of ghostwriting bills for the people we elect to represent our concerns and interests, and not the Will of ALEC.
Democracy Watchdog Action Network
* http://www.facebook.com/democracy.watchdog.action.network
Wear Red For Public Ed
* https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wear-Red-for-Ed/221599601212557
Support Bill Cronon
* http://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Bill-Cronon/163419837045434
Bill Cronon is a distinguished history professor who came under attack when he wrote an article about ALEC and the Mackinac Center, so the people who came to his defense began collecting data about these issues.
Related Tags at the Daily Kos —
* http://www.dailykos.com/news/ALEC
* http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Exposing%20ALEC
Current updates at the Daily Kos —
* http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/09/983573/-Exposing-ALECJune-Update-on-ALEC-Activities,-Articles-and-Links
* http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/15/985433/-EXPOSING-ALEC2nd-Update-with-important-news-and-links
* http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/20/986970/-Exposing-ALECupdate-3-+-Petition-for-your-State-Lawmakers
* http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/01/989671/-EXPOSING-ALECALEC-Relationships-and-Update-4
===Comment 15===
* http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/lansing-visit-offers-time-to-reflect-and-ponder#comment_1029691
Finally, a refreshing bit of honesty —
ThinkProgress • “Pro-Voucher Tea Party Group Admits It Wants To ‘Shut Down Public Schools And Have Private Schools Only’”
* http://thinkprogress.org/education/2011/07/11/265663/voucher-tea-party-go-away/
==Nov 05, 2012 — McMillin, VanRaaphorst : Candidate Questionnaire Form==
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/mcmillin-vanraaphorst-candidate-questionnaire-form 04 Nov 2012 • 8:14 pm]
===Comment 1===
* [http://rochester.patch.com/blog_posts/mcmillin-vanraaphorst-candidate-questionnaire-form#comment_5350630 05 Nov 2012 • 1:10 pm]
Since I can't imagine many people will be changing their minds between today and tomorrow, I find my own mind turning toward the day after tomorrow and the challenges ahead for the future of Michigan and the Nation.
Whatever mix of executives, judges, and legislators we elect to each branch and level of government, they will all be charged to represent the People's Will in making one critical choice — the choice between democratic government and corporate government. That is a choice that affects every other — from education, the environment, equality of opportunity and protection under the law, to public safety, public service, and whether we even continue to have a meaningful public sector in the future.
As far as education goes, it is clear that all of us and all of our elected officials need to become better informed about the consequences of the paths we choose — the very viability of our democracy is at stake.
The necessary conversation is not a new one, but it seems necessary to renew it from time to time, and this is certainly one of those times. One of the places the needed conversation is occurring with rather more light than heat these days would have to be on the following site.
* http://dianeravitch.net/
I recommend it to you all. If we don't become better educated about education, I fear we are doomed.