The Frustrated Teacher

American Maps

2009-11-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

More Truth Comes Out On School Reform

2009-11-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

Education Reform: Wrong Diagnosis, So Wrong Cure
...

If Congress and the administration are wise, they'll use their levers of power not to tighten but to loosen the rigor screws and end the innovation-stifling role of Carnegie Units, course distribution requirements, mandated instructional programs, and other curriculum-standardizing measures. They'll do what enlightened school boards have always done and say to educators, "We want you to unleash creativity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, imagination and enthusiasm, and send the young off with a lasting love of learning. Tell us what you need in order to make that happen, and we'll do our best to provide the necessary support."

Even the suggestion of such a policy will appall many. We say we're big on freedom, democracy, individualism, autonomy, choice and so on, but advocating aligning our schools with our political rhetoric invites being labeled as too radical to be taken seriously. Such a policy, most are likely to believe, would trigger chaos, pandemonium, anarchy.

Not so. Two things would happen. In most schools, institutional inertia, entrenched bureaucracy and pressure from powerful corporate interests would maintain the status quo.

In most schools, but not all. A few would point the way to a better-than-world-class education by demonstrating what experienced teachers have always known, that the traditional curriculum barely scratches the surface of kids' intellectual potential.

Thursday Cartoon Bonus Fun: End Game Edition

2009-11-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Votes Are Pouring In!

2009-11-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Only two votes?! We can do better than that!! Click here and vote (please).

We Should Quit Dinking Around

2009-11-12T14:51:00.000-08:00

Jay McDonough on Afghanistan:

More simply put: the U.S. can only accomplish its stated objectives in Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands more troops. That's not gonna happen. Therefore, the U.S. will be unable to accomplish its stated objectives. Dinking around like we are only wastes lives and money.

Thursday Cartoon Fun: The Party Of ??? Edition

2009-11-12T11:26:00.001-08:00

Dan Savage On Marriage

2009-11-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

I really like Dan Savage. He is a very bright, take-no-prisoners advocate for gay rights. He pulls no punches, and I respect that.

The Weblog Awards

2009-11-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

I have been nominated for Best Education blog by a far superior blogger than I.

Jay McDonough at swimming freestyle nominated me. He is a brilliant blogger who dissects the news for us and often finds great, obscure music and art to post as well. Jay also blogs at Newshoggers.

To vote for swimming freestyle for Best Political blog, click here and find the comment where he has been nominated, then, just under the comment is a little green + sign you click to vote!

Click here to vote for me (follow the same procedure above, but look for me!).

Go look around the Weblog Awards site and vote/nominate away!

I post-dated this post so it would post at the top for a bit...

Charter Food Fight = Jail

2009-11-11T10:50:00.000-08:00

I am sure when Chip and Buffy get into it at their school they don't end up in jail. But in a Chicago reform school, you shape up or go to jail!

CHICAGO — The food fight here started the way such bouts do in school lunchrooms most anywhere: an apple was tossed, a cookie turned into a torpedo, and an orange plunked someone in the head. Within minutes, dozens of middle-school students had joined in the ruckus, and spattered adults were ducking for cover.

By the end of the day, 25 of the students, ages 11 to 15, had been rounded up, arrested, taken from school and put in jail. A spokesman for the Chicago police said the charges were reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.

Lester Cohen: A Quiet Hero This Veterans Day

2009-11-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine, who happens to be Lester's son, sent this to me this Veterans Day. Lester is a sweet, funny man who, with his wife Honey, raised a couple of fantastic kids. One grew up to be my friend and then go on to found the Global Pediatric Alliance, which you should find at the bottom of this blog and to which you should donate all the money you have left!

Lester Cohen. Son. Soldier. Husband. Father. Grandfather. Hero.

WWII veteran breaks silence

Lester Cohen poses at his Bangor home on Monday with a picture of his three brothers
(from left), Sam, Bernard, Lester and George,
in uniform during WWII.

BANGOR, Maine — The scars of war are not always visible.

Many World War II veterans, including Bangor resident Lester Cohen, have kept quiet about their wartime experiences during the 64 years since the war in Europe ended, attempting to hide their invisible scars.

Those veterans, now in their 80s, endeavored to protect themselves and the ones they love from the pain and grief that is associated with death and injury, and the knowledge that their innocence was lost forever.

“Growing up we were taught to be good, and the Army taught us to kill,” Cohen said last week as he sat in his Chickadee Lane home.

Cohen was 19 when he led a group of eight soldiers up the steep banks of Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day and later fought against the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and other major confrontations in the European theater.

As he reminisced last week, he held in his lap a thin envelope of memorabilia from WWII, including a few letters he wrote home to his mom in Biddeford, his discharge papers, newspaper clippings, photos of his brothers-in-arms and one of him in his youth with his three brothers in uniform.

“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve even seen this stuff,” he said.

Cohen’s story is not unlike others from his youth. He was the youngest of seven children and all three of his older brothers and his brothers-in-law were serving this country in the military during WWII. Cohen was enrolled at the University of Maine in Orono, “and everyday I’d go to class there would be less and less boys,” he said.

Halfway through his second semester, he hitchhiked home to Biddeford to tell his mom, who raised him and siblings alone after his father died when he was 14, that he could wait no longer and that he was enlisting.

He joined the U.S. Army in March 1943. After basic training in Massachusetts he was sent to Europe with Battery B of the 110th Infantry Gunnery Battalion, which was attached to the 1st Army.

Cohen has kept the secrets of war quietly locked away for six decades, and only in the last few years has he been able to speak about his experiences.

“To say they don’t talk — that’s an understatement,” said Honey Cohen, who married him on Feb. 15, 1959.

By the time Cohen enlisted to fight along with his brothers and many others in the United States and Europe to defeat Hitler and the Nazis, millions of Jews already had died by the hands of those who followed the German dictator.

To be Jewish was a dangerous thing, and having an obviously Jewish given name placed a target on Cohen who decided to crush and throw away his military dog tags, just in case he was captured.

“I hated the Germans” for what they did, he said, anger still in his voice.

As he quietly recalled stories of the battles he fought in Europe — tales of the carnage of war — there were some good memories, of the people that he and his fellow soldiers helped to liberate.

“Have you ever seen people who were crazy with happiness?” he wrote in an Aug. 30, 1944, letter to his mother, Celia. “That is the way people are here” in France.

He recalled the French people shouted “the liberators” in their native tongue, when he and his battalion — the first Americans to arrive — made their way into Paris.
“They all tried to touch you. To kiss you,” he said, his eyes wet and far away in thought.

The fact that many were Jewish lifted his heart.

“I have met quite a few Jewish people since arriving here” in Paris, his letter states. “Many have been hiding in cellars and houses and other places for four years and many have kept their nationality a secret for fear of being harmed.”

A few of the stories, the ones that cut the deepest, Cohen just could not finish. He left them hanging in the air as silence permeated the room. Then he would gather his composure and, using a diversion technique that is well oiled, tell a story about the beautiful European women he met while traveling from town to town.

Cohen was shipped home to the U.S. before many of his fellow soldiers because his mother was seriously ill with brittle diabetes.

When he arrived home in Biddeford it was around midnight and his mother was already asleep.

The next morning, using her walker, she made her way into his room and Cohen pretended to be asleep. “She lifted up my shirt and checked me all over,” he said. “She knew if I got hurt I’d never tell her.”

Cohen has no physical scars from the war he served in so many years ago, but the emotional scars remain. They run so deep that he said he is not participating in today’s Veterans Day activities.

“It’s too tough.”

Quote Of The Day: Lemonade Edition

2009-11-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

From The Edge of the American West:

Not that anyone involved in these transactions is a war profiteer, mind you—they’re merely taking a lemon (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and learning how to make extremely profitable lemonade (the first Gulf War).

Tuesday Cartoon Fun: Army Of Dicks Edition

2009-11-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

The 2009 Bracey Report

2009-11-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

BRACEY-2009

Monday Cartoon Fun: Perspective Edition

2009-11-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

That Was Not the Health Care Bill We Were Looking For

2009-11-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

From Open Source comes an interview snippet with dear old Ralph Nader. He is still fighting the good fight. I forgive him:

RN: The problem is the nature of power, and the corporate entity controlling government, which Franklin Roosevelt, in 1938, called fascism… The global corporate model is all powerful, has no competition in terms of a model… They have nationalized the savings of the American people. They are too big to fail, so that they are bailed out, as Wall Street is bailed out. They have monetized elections, nullifying effectively people’s votes. They select the politicians, put them in office, and when they retire they hire them and give them a half a million dollars or more a year as lobbyists. It is the most clever, dynamic, creative system of controlling power in the history of the world. And they give people entertainment, and they allow people to confuse personal freedom with civic freedom. So you’ve got a lot of people in this country who say, “what do you mean we don’t live in a free country?” That’s right, you have personal freedom, you can eat what you want, buy whatever clothes you want, date who you want, divorce who you want, choose the friends you want, pick the music you want, get the bicycle you want, get into a five-thousand pound vehicle and go three blocks and buy chiclets if you want. That is personal freedom. It’s not civic freedom. Civic freedom is what’s been shredded. As Cicero said “freedom is participation in power.” What kind of freedom do we have by that standard?

… Right now we have a dystopia on the ground. It’s called the liberal progressive intelligentsia and their flock. They think if they keep writing more books (the way Bill Greider and Bob Kuttner and Jim Hightower and Ralph Nader and others keep writing, exposing, proposing, diagnosing, denouncing and suggesting) that something is going to happen. We have hit a stone wall — one reason I ran for President three times. Congress has shut down. Washington is corporate-occupied territory. That’s the dystopia on the ground… Between that real life dystopia of the progressive liberal intelligentsia and their world, and their least-worst voting for the Democrats over the Republicans and never pulling the Democrats in their direction — between that and my practical utopia I’ll take my proposal as more realistic.

CL: That’s a very serious question you’re talking about. And we all know it intuitively around health care. We all know that what Congress is doing has almost nothing to do with what people want, or even what the wonks say are the best provisions of the best policy. it’s about what the healthcare industry will let us have.

RN: That’s been documented in books from A to Z. Here’s where this book kicks in. Let’s say ten elderly super-billionaries get together and they say look, enough is enough. 45,000 Americans are dying every year because they can’t afford health insurance. Trillions of dollars lost, claims denied, anxiety, grieving, it’s an incredible mess, a pay or die system in the richest country in the world. Suppose these guys get together at the Four Seasons. They’re on their third martini. They say, “you know, I met a couple of great organizers… and they said if they had a billion dollars they could organize every congressional district and move the thirty-percent of congress who’s already privately for single-payer health insurance to a majority. Obama will sign it because he’s for single-payer, but wasn’t willing to take on the drug and health-insurance companies. That’ll happen in eighteen months.”

You wanna argue that with me? A billion dollars organizing the congressional districts the way Donald Ross and others know how to do it. Eighteen months, we’d have single-payer. Eighteen months. No one will die in America because they can’t afford health insurance. Just like no one dies in England, Germany, France, Sweden or Canada because they’re insured from day one when they’re born. That’s what I mean about money. You’ve got people all over the country — the majority support single payer; a majority of doctors support it; even larger majority of nurses support it. And it’s going nowhere because there isn’t one full-time lobbyist on Capitol Hill for single payer, and there are 2000 corporate lobbyists for the drug companies and the Aetnas and the hospital chains. When are we going to face up to the money issue? Money is not enough. You have to have smarts, strategy, determination, humanity, time, diligence — but you can have all those, and if you do not have money it goes nowhere.

Ralph Nader with Chris Lydon in Cambridge, October 30, 2009.

Kucinich Explains His "No" Vote On Health Care

2009-11-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

“We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies — a bailout under a blue cross.

“By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress’ blog, Think Progress, states “since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.” Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that “money will start flowing in again” to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

“During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The “robust public option” which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

“Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks’ hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy -- in which most Americans live -- the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

“This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America’s manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

“Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America’s businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.” [emphasis mine]

The Cleveland Leader

What We Got Tonight In Health Care Reform

2009-11-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

Here is the breakdown of what we got and the price we paid:

It’s like winning a huge battle, but half of your friends were killed or wounded.

36 million more people will be insured or become eligible for Medicaid
There will be a trillion dollars raised to help subsidize this.
There will be multiple measures to help control the costs of Medicare
We will stop subsidizing private insurers in Medicare Advantage
Closes the donut hole
Allows Medicare negotiation for drugs
Includes the seeds of a public option
Prohibits denials based on prior conditions; ends rescissions except for fraud
funds more education for doctors/nurses
Begins dozens of health prevention programs, pilots, surveys
Creates entities to evaluate and recommend better treatment, cost saving
And on and on.

It’s a massive achievement, but women, mostly poor, paid a price.

h/t FDL

Update:

Tonight was the opposite of a "bold progressive" night. With a huge majority in the House, a vote with only 219 Dems should have been because progressives pushed this bill to the limit. Instead, it was watered-down, watered-down, watered-down. And still, only 219 Dems. This is why we fight. We need to change this.

Charter School CEO Makes $400K

2009-11-07T11:31:00.000-08:00

Yes, charter schools make money. That's why so many rich people want to get on board. Like the CEO's pay above shows (picture is link).

h/t Ken Libby

Delphi: Home To Broad And Gates

2009-11-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

The Broad Foundation’s philanthropic interests extend well beyond art: health and education have been at the heart of what he calls his “venture philanthropy” model. He explains it to me: “We have three tests – one, if we don’t do it, will it happen anyway? Two, will it make a difference 20 or 30 years from now? And thirdly, the people we invest in, do they really have the ability to make it happen?

“I don’t worry about getting fired, nor does Bill Gates. So we’re going to take risks. Some things are not going to work out. And if they don’t work out, we move on.”

As Ken Libby said, Broad is not accountable, as his statement proves, because he can't get fired. Of course his entire philosophy of school reform is to fire everyone, especially risk takers. Bastard!

This is the guy [Eli Broad] who is funding the takeover of public education. With his billions and Gates' billions, he decides whether "it" will "happen anyway" and goes on to predict that "it" will be successful, or not in 30 years based on Broad's, what? A guess? A gut feeling? Who is he, the Oracle at Delphi?

This guy has lots of money to play with. He really shouldn't be playing with an entire country's vulnerable, impoverished, needy, underfed, uninsured youth, should he?

Keep your greedy hands off public education. It's not a fucking toy!

Michele Bachman Owes Us An Apology

2009-11-06T15:44:00.000-08:00

By now you've all seen Michele Bachman's "press conference" yesterday that was really a racist rally. There were the typical stupid signs and chants and the screams of "Patriots!!" as if they were all on the set of 300, replacing "Spartans!" with "Patriots!"

Then there were the incredibly distasteful signs with pictures of dead Jews. I say, F*ck You to these people. Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) decided to be a bit more respectful.

Friday Cartoon Fun: Sick Edition

2009-11-06T15:15:00.000-08:00

Robert Reich: We Need A 21st Century WPA (Updated)

2009-11-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

Update: Paul Krugman agrees.

Update II: I gave a response to an email a reader sent me about the military being our version of WPA, as was mentioned in a comment on the Krugman post:

I think we need a CCC or WPA right now. Young kids have no idea what hard work is, how to use a hammer or plumb. The CCC was run by the military, and lots of members claim they became "men" under the guidance of the CCC and all the work they did and were proud of. They also sent most of their money home, as was required, creating stimulus. And they got fat. Literally put on weight. It was nothing but good.

There is nothing like that anymore, and there should be. That is partly my motivation for the draft; either the draft or making some kind of service mandatory would go a long way toward creating a sense of ownership of our country and reduce the perceived separation between the governed and the government.

Update III: Watch the American Experience-The Civilian Conservation Corps. It will cause you to realize the need is now for a similar program, for many, many reasons.

Charter Schools: The Privatization Agenda Exposed

2009-11-05T20:48:00.000-08:00

From Our Global Education comes this memo indicating Bush's agenda of privatizing the public schools:

From the Vault

This is part of an essay written in early 2008 by AEI/Fordham's Andy Smarick, a former Bush II Domestic Policy Council member tasked with K-12 and higher education issues (my bolds):

Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering's way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). For example, in New York a concerted effort could be made to site in Albany or Buffalo a large percentage of the 100 new charters allowed under the raised cap. Other potentially fertile districts include Denver, Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.
Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas. Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundations to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed. Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.
In total, these strategies should lead to rapid, high-quality charter growth and the development of a public school marketplace marked by parental choice, the regular startup of new schools, the improvement of middling schools, the replication of high-performing schools, and the shuttering of low-performing schools.
As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket.
At some point along the district's path from monopoly provider to financially unsustainable marginal player, the city's investors and stakeholders--taxpayers, foundations, business leaders, elected officials, and editorial boards--are likely to demand fundamental change. That is, eventually the financial crisis will become a political crisis. If the district has progressive leadership, one of two best-case scenarios may result. The district could voluntarily begin the shift to an authorizer, developing a new relationship with its schools and reworking its administrative structure to meet the new conditions. Or, believing the organization is unable to make this change, the district could gradually transfer its schools to an established authorizer.

You can practically check off each of Smarick's suggestions for a pro-charter policy environment, particularly in places like Los Angeles. The general silence of Right-wing education "reformers" (hell-bent, in reality, on destroying and privatizing public education) is not a coincidence - they're largely happy with Obama/Duncan's education agenda.

Welcome to "third way" centrism.

Kucinich On Health Care Bill: "It's Killing The American People"

2009-11-05T14:35:00.001-08:00

Evidence? We Don't Need No Stinking Evidence!

2009-11-05T11:55:00.000-08:00

I sure wish the rigor Duncan expects of teachers and students were also expected of him and his data. But, alas, no amount of data is ever enough to sway those who are well funded. Here is a quote from Jim Horn's latest on the nonsense:

This is just a sampling of the hard data that should give pause to Duncan and Obama's capitulation to the corporate ed reform oligarchs, whose ideological agendas are driving education policy, evidence be damned. The question faced by states: is it worth it to jeopardize public schools for what amounts to chump change, just to expand the education industry and to create a new unaccountable and unregulated corporate bureaucracy to be in charge of the children we have essentially thrown away?