April Posts from WordPress

Guess Which Nevada Politicians Made the Time List?

April 30, 2010 at 5:08 PM (Uncategorized) (Jim Gibbons, John Ensign, politics) · Edit

The list of “least influential people of 2010″ list, that is.

Disgrace is not a four-letter word in Nevada:

Jim Gibbons
Governor of Nevada
He had a 10% approval rating. He had too many scandals for Nevada to handle.

John Ensign
Nevada Senator
His sex scandal is so confusing — he gave a job to the husband of the woman he was cheating on his wife with (I think) — that it’s taking forever for him to be thrown out of office.

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It’s Time to Keep a Close Watch on What Congress Does

April 30, 2010 at 1:33 PM (Uncategorized) (extended unemployment compensation) · Edit

about Tier V EUI;

Huffington Post:

Both the House and Senate have passed measures extended eligibility for existing benefits through the end of the year, but the measures need to be reconciled and voted on again in each chamber. Reid’s office has said that that will happen before the end of May, which is when the current stopgap extension will expire. When asked about adding a Tier 5, members of Congress typically say they need to focus on getting the the full-year extension finished before adding extra weeks.

Aside from Baucus’s insistence that it shouldn’t be done, the most definitive statement about Tier 5 has come from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who in the name of deficit reduction obstructed the most recent effort to reauthorize the existing 99 weeks of benefits.

“We have 99 weeks of unemployment compensation out there right now — and we’re gonna move that to 103, and then we’re going to move it even further,” Coburn said in March. Congressional leaders declined to comment on adding weeks.

Every utterance about Tier 5 is closely tracked by the unemployed, who have formed several communities online where they analyze what’s happening in Washington — and discuss how they might influence it. One enterprising layoff victim has been encouraging her fellow unemployed to bombard D.C. offices with faxed resumes.

“The number of people exhausting all levels of benefits is increasing every single week,” said Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the National Employment Law Project. “This is a highly motivated group of people who are making their political and financial needs known to their representatives.”

Things are truly desperate out here. Congress needs to quit playings games with our lives.

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Good for the Central Falls, Rhode Island, Teachers

April 30, 2010 at 1:18 PM (Uncategorized) (education) · Edit

to file a lawsuit against their superintendent who speared their firings to be effective after the end of the school year:

The teachers union filed suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court to block the mass firing of high school teachers ordered by School Supt. Frances Gallo.

Her action violates constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process and freedom of speech, as well as federal education law that prohibits states or local school districts from altering collective-bargaining agreements, according to the complaint filed by Marc Gursky, lawyer for the Central Falls Teachers Union.

The lawsuit alleges that Gallo conspired with Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist to violate the teachers’ rights. Gist, who approved the action, was named as a defendant with Gallo and the Central Falls School District.

Union president Jane Sessums said late Wednesday afternoon that the union turned to the courts only after Gallo began accepting applications on Monday from high school teachers who want to be rehired in the fall.

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More Than a Million Jobless, Including Yours Truly,

April 30, 2010 at 10:41 AM (Uncategorized) (extended unemployment compensation, joblessness) · Edit

are on the verge of losing the maximum of 99 weeks if they haven’t exhausted all of their alloted UI already. Congress, however, prefers to sweep this growing problem under the rug because of phony concerns about the “deficit.” Providing EUI as long as the economy remains crappy helps infuse MORE money into the economy, which helps to CREATE jobs. Not that Congress understands simple economics or logic.

BusinessWeek:

Since the U.S. recession began in December 2007, Congress has extended the length of unemployment benefits for the jobless three times. Now, the lawmakers may have reached their limit.

They are quietly drawing the line at 99 weeks of aid, a mark that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already reached. In coming months, the number of those who will receive their final government check is projected to top 1 million.

It’s a deadline that has rarely been mentioned in recent debates over jobless benefits, in which Republicans have delayed aid because of cost concerns. The deadline hasn’t been lost on Teauna Stephney, a 39-year-old single mother from Bothell, Washington, who said she could become homeless once her $407 weekly checks stop in June.

“What are people like me supposed to do?” said Stephney, who said almost two years of benefits haven’t proved long enough for her to find work after she lost her last job in August 2008. Referring to lawmakers, she said, “I would like them to come and talk to me and spend a day in my shoes.”

Since she and the other unemployed don’t contribute to these corrupt politicians’ campaigns, why should they care she is suffering?

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The Draconian Legislation Against Illegal Immigration

April 30, 2010 at 10:37 AM (Uncategorized) (immigration, joblessness) · Edit

in Arizona is just a response, no matter how ill-advised, to the worsening economic plight in this country. Nobody in Washington wants to seriously deal with the problem; after all, why should they since they are bought off by the very interests profiting from high unemployment.

Lawsuits and boycotts against Arizona may or may not work, but our elected officials need to take our worsening economy seriously.

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Congress Fiddles While the Long-Term Unemployed

April 30, 2010 at 10:19 AM (Uncategorized) (extended unemployment compensation, joblessness) · Edit

go without.

Even so-called Democrats appear to be heartless, joining the Republicans in their fake concern for the deficit the Republicans created:

The first news from main stream media about extending unemployment benefits past the 99 week current maximum is not good news. Bloomberg is out with a report More Than a Million May Lose Jobless Aid Due to Deficit Concern

That story indicates senators and congressional representatives from both parties, as well as a Goldman Sachs economist believe that capping the total number of weeks at 99 is a given.

“You can’t go on forever,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, of Montana, whose panel oversees the benefits program. “I think 99 weeks is sufficient,” he said.

“There’s just been no discussion to go beyond that,” said Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat….

Here you have two senators from two states with a population less than the metro area of Rochester, NY telling those on long term unemployment that they are finished dealing with the issue of long term unemployment. They might as well say “we don’t care about the millions of people who will suffer the consequences of our actions.” I’m sure the Democrats used Dorgan and Baucus as point men to see what kind of reaction their statements will bring. You don’t hear senators from high unemployment states saying that right now. Don’t give these small state (and small minded) senators your silence; make sure you blast them with emails, faxes and phone calls as soon as you can. These guys are carrying the torch for those who would rather bail out incompetent and corrupted banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses than the working American. You didn’t hear these “cut them off and damn them all” when those banks and insurance companies came begging for relief. You, the taxpayer, put up $180 billion dollars to bailout one insurance company – AIG. Yet when it’s time to help the unemployed, your representatives say “too bad” tell them to get a job that doesn’t exist. Both parties, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, are more concerned about campaign contributions than saving millions of Americans from financial disaster.

Where was all of that concern when they gave bailouts to Wall Street? Oh, I forgot: Those crooks provide them with plenty of money in campaign contributions so they can continue to do these crooks’ bidding.

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Public School “Tenure”

April 30, 2010 at 8:55 AM (Uncategorized) (education) · Edit

is under attack, and NPR is pushing the privatizer talking points about how “shitty” teachers are protected from being “fired,” even though it is laughably easy for districts to get rid of teachers they don’t want, especially those who are too old or cost too much money.

The problem isn’t with “tenure” but with a system that doesn’t hold principals accountable for their actions. Teachers can easily have their careers destroyed, they can lose EVERYTHING, because of an asshole or negligent principal.

It’s ISN’T “hard” to get rid of teachers–it is EASY–but the way school districts typically get rid of them is to force them to “voluntarily” resign, with the teachers thinking this helps them in future job searches. It doesn’t. All resigning does is save the districts money on hearings and unemployment insurance.

Teacher resignations in lieu of firings are FAR more common than outright firings. Or they simply deny tenure to probationary teachers, which is another form of firing. School districts typically lie and say they very rarely “fire” teachers, thus creating more outrage from the public, who in turn have NO idea the office politics of public education.

Just think if “tenure” didn’t exist–teachers would be at the total mercy of not only principals, but parents who try to throw their weight around to principals and other administrators. Working conditions, already horrible in public schools, would be worse.

Abolishing or “reforming” “tenure” is just another way to deskill the teaching profession.

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Hard Times

April 30, 2010 at 8:41 AM (Uncategorized) (joblessness) · Edit

Money magazine took a look at seven people who have exhausted all of their unemployment insurance to see how they are coping.

Short story is they are not coping very well at all.

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Of Course Millions of People Will Be Destitute

April 29, 2010 at 7:26 PM (Uncategorized) (extended unemployment compensation) · Edit

because this fucking Congress, and note the L.A. Times makes excuses for their inaction and quotes some asshole from the Cato Institute, which would LOVE for there to be millions of people on the street, won’t do shit about adding more tiers to unemployment benefits.

Will people put pressure on these assholes:

The “deficit” “argument” is a bunch of bullshit. The Republicans created this mess with the deficit and the economy, and now they are bitching about money for extended UI compensation? And people believe this shit?

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Oklahoma is NOT O.K.

April 29, 2010 at 1:46 PM (Uncategorized) (abortion) · Edit

The state is getting a lot of criticism over a law passed which tries to make it more difficult for women to go through with abortions. There are two provisions of this legislation:

The first provision has to do with forcing women to view an ultrasound so as to scare them into thinking they are “killing a baby” if they opt for abortion.

The second provision says doctors are immune from lawsuits if they deliberately don’t tell pregnant women the fetus they are carrying is deformed in some manner.

While the governor vetoed these bills, the legislature, by huge margins, have overruled the vetoes.

I don’t think the legislators are losing any sleep over their actions.

Snip from opinion piece:

But a woman in Oklahoma no longer gets to exhale. Because now, when a doctor says, “Everything looks fine,” she has to wonder; does it really? Oklahoma politicians have now said that she can no longer count on the sacred trust that always existed between her and her doctor. A doctor may now lie to her face and, in doing so, deny a woman what is quite possibly the most important piece of information she will ever receive in her life.

The very thought makes my breath catch even now. The information you get on those visits matters to every woman getting prenatal care, regardless of what she decides to do based upon the results. The legislators have decided that a woman, when she becomes pregnant, loses the right to full, honest information from her doctor.

It is her right to know this information. It is how she and her family determine what to do next, not only to decide if they want to continue a pregnancy, but also to consider how they will prepare to care for a special needs child.

What specialist will they turn to? What support will they require? Who will hold their hand in the delivery room if a child is born who will only live an hour, or a day? Does she want to call her own mom in from across the country or does she want to grieve silently with her partner? What will they tell the children they already have?

Only Two

of the eleven on the CREW list of worst governors in the country are Democrats (Richardson and Paterson). And guess who else is on the list?

• Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS);
• Gov. Donald Carcieri (R-RI);
• Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV);
• Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA);
• Gov. David Paterson (D-NY);
• Gov. Sonny Perdue (R-GA);
• Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX);
• Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM);
• Gov. Mike Rounds (R-SD);
• Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC); and
• Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA).

Here is the report on Gibbons.

A "highlight":

CHARGE FOUR: MISUSE OF STATE RESOURCES TO PURSUE AN AFFAIR
In the course of divorce proceedings, Nevada First Lady Dawn Gibbons revealed her suspicions that Gov. Gibbons was carrying on an affair with the wife of a Reno doctor.22 In June 2008, The Reno Gazette-Journal found documents that showed Gov. Gibbons had text-messaged his alleged mistress, Kathy Karrasch, 867 times over six weeks in 2007, racking up nearly $130 in charges on his state-owned cell phone.23 The marathon texting sessions included 91 texts sent between midnight and 2 a.m. one morning.24 The governor was forced to reimburse the state for the charges.25 He also made 42 calls on the state-issued phone to his alleged mistress, including
“two lengthy phone calls” during business hours.26 Gov. Gibbons denied having an
inappropriate relationship with Ms. Karrasch.27

In February 2010, Gov. Gibbons claimed Ms. Karrasch had not accompanied him to
Washington, D.C. for a conference, even though video evidence and a local news team showed the pair returning to the Reno airport together and leaving in the same car.28 When asked by a reporter, Gov. Gibbons claimed that he was giving Ms. Karrasch a ride home because they lived near each other, and not because she was returning from Washington, D.C. with him.29 The next day, the governor admitted that Ms. Karrasch had accompanied him but said she had paid her
own way.30

News

Casino mogul Steve Wynn demonstrates he has as much loyalty to the United States, Las Vegas, and his employees as he does to his wife Elaine:

Wynn Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn told cable business network CNBC he was considering moving the company's corporate headquarters from Las Vegas to Macau.

Wynn is in Macau for today's opening of the $600 million Encore at Wynn Macau, a 414-room, all-suite expansion to Wynn Macau, the company's Chinese casino.

More Deskilling of Education

NY state regents "approve" phony master's degrees for TFA "teachers" who aren't going to be in the profession more than a couple of years. At least ostensibly.

This is nothing more than legalizing degree mills:

Currently, programs like Teach for America, which recruits heavily among recent college graduates, and New York City Teaching Fellows, which attracts young professionals seeking to change careers, must become partners with education schools. Participants begin teaching almost immediately, pursing a master’s degree in their free time at the education schools.

Under the pilot, the Board of Regents will invite groups like Teach for America to create their own master’s programs. The programs would need to have a strong emphasis on practical teaching skills, a nod to criticisms that traditional education schools spend too much time on theory. The Board of Regents would actually award the degree to the teacher, who would commit to a high-needs school for four years.

But some deans of education schools expressed caution about the board’s vote. “I have serious concerns about separating the craft of teaching from the knowledge base of teaching, and I think the regents are making a mistake in allowing the craft to be more important,” said James J. Hennessy, dean of the graduate school of education at Fordham, which has partnerships with both Teach for America and New York City Teaching Fellows.

link

I suspect a lot of these phony "graduates" will be public school principals. God forbid.

Maryland Tries to Do a Contortion Act

in order to be considered for Arne's blackmail money.

What's funny is there is NO evidence whatsoever these schemes he proposes would be effective, since schools can do little to alleviate poverty.

But the World Bank doesn't care. It's all about deprofessionalizing teaching so that teachers are little more than minimum wage technicians who spew nonsense out of scripts. The wealthy, though, will have their little hoity-toity private schools and "better" education the ignorant masses have no right to expect.

Welcome to What is Now Known as the "Kleenex Workforce"

Use them, abuse them, and then throw them away:

The notion that the nature of work is changing — becoming more temporary and project-based, with workers increasingly functioning as free agents and no longer being governed by traditional long-term employer-employee relationships — first gained momentum in the 1990s. But it has acquired new currency in this recession, especially among white-collar job seekers, as they cast about for work of any kind and companies remain cautious about permanent hiring.

No benefits, no nothing. Really cute.

News

Alicia Parlette, who chronicled her battle against a rare cancer in a series of articles for the San Francisco Chronicle, is now near the end of her long ordeal:

Alicia Parlette has finally found comfort in her own story.

Parlette, 28, a 2004 University of Nevada, Reno graduate and a promising young journalist has spent the last week saying goodbye to friends and family after a five-year battle with cancer. She is remembered by thousands who read her San Francisco Chronicle series, “Alicia’s story,” a frank first-person account of cancer.

This Picture

is one of many spectacular pictures, many of which are posted here, of the volcano eruptions in Iceland.

Wall Street Mess

According to Robert Reich, the Dodd bill is a step in the right direction but it leaves some important things out in order to prevent another Wall Street meltdown. Reich names three critical reforms that are necessary:

1. Require that trading of all derivatives be done on open exchanges where parties have to disclose what they’re buying and selling and have enough capital to pay up if their bets go wrong. The exception in the current bill for so-called “unique” derivatives opens up a loophole big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through.

2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act in its entirety so commercial banks are separated from investment banks. The current bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. Commercial banks should take deposits and lend money. Investment banks should be limited to the casino we call the stock market, helping companies issue new issues and making bets. Nothing good comes of mixing the two. We learned this after the Great Crash of 1929, and then forgot it in 1999 when Congress allowed financial supermarkets to do both.

3. Cap the size of big banks at $100 billion in assets. The current bill doesn’t limit the size of banks at all. It creates a process for winding down the operations of any bank that gets into trouble. But if several big banks are threatened, as they were when the housing bubble burst, their failure would pose a risk to the whole financial system, and Congress and the Fed would surely have to bail them out. The only way to ensure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big, period. Nobody has been able to show any scale efficiencies over $100 billion in assets, so that should be the limit.

Despite Bankruptcy "Reform"

trying to help crack down on "deadbeat" debtors while giving more goodies to credit card companies and the like by making it more difficult to file, more bankruptcies than ever are occurring. Northern Nevada is one such example. Nevada in general is number one in the number of bankruptcies filed.

Chart:

Update on REAL Extended Unemployment Benefits

This is an email I received from Change.org:

The petition is now at 15,206!

This is long letter, but stay with me. I have a lot of information to share.



Good news. The 99ers were actually talked about on the Senate floor last week. I don't think it's a coincidence that this and some other 'chatter' started when we

reached 10,000. This is a link to Senator Shaheen's speech to the Senate: /www.c-spanvideo.org/congress/?q=node/77531&appid=597991845



Numbers do count! We're finally getting a little attention, and we have to keep it. I started this petition because I was told by several Senate staffers that there was no political will to create a Tier 5. They said they weren't hearing from us that there was a need for one. They weren't receiving many calls or emails. I guessed that maybe we were each separately depressed and overwhelmed. My dad was a union organizer, and I learned from him that we only have strength and energy when we join together. I don't believe for a minute that it was a coincidence that Sen. Shaheen chose to speak to the Senate just after we tied up the senate switchboard on Monday. (Next comes the fax machines!)



Many petitioners have sent me messages about how they're afraid their calls aren't listened to or don't count. Well, they are listened to, but not right then by the 18 year old intern answering the phone who isn't allowed to say anything useful for fear of foot-in-mouth disease. All the calls, emails, and faxes are counted every day by issue, and the numbers sent to the D.C. offices. Each office staff meets everyday in D.C. and discusses them. The messages you leave and write are discussed every day. It would be political suicide not to do this regularly.



Sen. Shaheen chose one such message to read to the Senate, and that poor woman may well have been shocked to learn she counted. So, a call, email, or fax where you say you support a real extension of benefit weeks for the 99ers gets tallied. If you specifically ask to leave a message or write one like, 'this should extend to the end of the year because I'm going crazy with the continuous uncertainty,' the intern writes it down and passes it up to the aide working on the unemployment issue to be discussed at the meetings. (You often have to ask for them to write the message down, but they will.) Messages left on answering systems are also listened to.



And, if you write in an email or fax how not having the benefits is affecting you and your family, it will get the most attention. It will be read for sure and probably brought up at the meeting. This is the only way they have of finding out what's going on because they're not mind readers.



We have to keep the Senate's attention while Senator Baucus is drafting the next unemployment bill that was mentioned in Sen. Shaheen's speech. I believe that the amount and number of weeks of benefits he writes into this bill will have a lot to do with how 'persuasive' we are in next few weeks with calls, emails, and faxes.





Here's the plan:

1. We have to continue to remind the Senate that we are large in numbers because they lose focus easily. However, their nightmare is that we've become organized.

Put on your calendar that Friday, April 30 and Monday, May 3 is FAX YOUR RESUME TO CONGRESS DAY. The free fax numbers you can use, the targeted senators' names and fax numbers, and the rest of the information is here:

http://joblessunite.yolasite.com/m-a-y-d-a-y.php



2. Many people have never sent a fax this way so we should all prepare for the big day by testing it out this week and sending our personal messages to those listed on the M.A.Y.D.A.Y. site. Faxing on this day is best, but f you can't figure out the fax by Resume Day, paste your resume to an email. You can't add attachments to the senators' emails. You have to go to each of their sites to email them. (google them).



3. You don't have to be a 99er to sign. Get your family and friends to sign, too. Tack a note with the link on bulletin boards, grocery stores, etc. Not everyone knows how to surf the net, so they don't find us. If everyone finds 1 person, we'll have 30,000 next week!

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/the_99ers_need_a_tier_v_added_to_unemployment_benefits



NOTE: Some newer people who haven't received an email like this from me have asked when the petition gets sent out. It is sent to the signers' senators and representatives and those I designated EVERY time someone signs the petition!



EVERYONE: Fax, emails, calls. We have to keep reminding them of how many there are of us.

REMEMBER THE SUMMER RECESS FOR CONGRESS BEGINS IN JUNE. We need to get this passed before they leave, and the Republicans are sure to filibuster again. This is the "fierce urgency of now."



Free number to Senate switchboard: 1 888 245-0215

The Democrat leaders to ask for are: Senators Reid, Durbin, and Shumer

The Republican leaders are: Senators Mitch McConnell, Kyl, and E. Canter

Also ask for your own senators. You can find out their names by typing in your zip code here: www.opencongress.org/people/senators



We're going to get these additional benefits!



Issa

Senator Shaheen's remarks excerpted:

As important as this short-term extension is, the Senate must do more to address the long-term challenge of joblessness. Of the 15 million Americans who are out of work today, nearly 6 million--so more than 1 in 3--have run through the 6 months of benefits provided by their States. In fact, the average period of unemployment currently stands at a record high of nearly 8 months. We need to pass a longer term extension to provide some stability for the millions of people who are going to need unemployment
benefits in the months to come. I applaud Senator Baucus who has been working to try to bridge this gap.

While some people may think it is no big deal to wait a week or two, even short-term expirations have damaging results. When State workforce agencies are forced to shut down and restart complicated Federal benefits programs, they experience huge backlogs in their systems that delay getting checks out the door, even to people who are not affected by the expiration.

Phone lines at call centers are jammed with claimants holding up others from filing for benefits while lines at one-stop centers get longer and longer. In the best of circumstances, individuals who lost their benefits during this expiration will have to wait weeks before they begin receiving checks again. That is a very long time when you are supporting a family on an unemployment check.

There is also the uncertainty and the fear that comes when parents open the mail to find a notice that, although their benefits are supposed to last for months to come, this is the last check they are going to receive. Families cannot afford to make the responsible choices to budget and plan for the future when we cannot guarantee the future of their benefits and of their safety net.

The fact is, when somebody is unemployed, it is an emergency in their family. We need to treat this situation, extending benefits, as an emergency in our Federal programs as well.

I want to conclude by sharing a letter I got from one of my constituents named Jo Ellen, who is from Canterbury, NH. She wrote:



On April 3, my State unemployment benefits maxed out. I am in my 60s, a nurse and psychotherapist who has been out of work since the end of December 2009. Seeking work constantly, I am getting no responses from employers, probably due to my age. I have worked my entire life caring for others. My husband's salary is much lower than what I brought in, but I have never had to rely on others. Unemployment checks are allowing us to at least pay our bills. It plays havoc with one's body and psyche,
affecting one's health and causing monumental anxiety when a vote is taken on a monthly basis to extend benefits. It is the never knowing for sure. Those of us who are in this situation are hard-working citizens who have come upon bad times. I cannot believe you won't take care of this horrendous situation immediately.



Unfortunately, like so many in this Chamber, I have received dozens of e-mails and letters and phone calls in the last 2 weeks from Granite Staters such as Jo Ellen. Unemployment benefits allow them to take care of their families, to fill up their gas tanks so they can go out and look for work. But the obstructionism that has kept us from passing meaningful long-term extension of unemployment benefits is having real effects on the financial, physical, and mental health of our communities. Jo
Ellen is right; it is horrendous.

I am hopeful we are finally going to see agreement from the other side of the aisle that we can move this legislation forward, that we can extend unemployment benefits for those thousands of people who are losing them every single day.

CSPAN

Diane Ravitch

writes of the lessons of what happened in Florida last week.

It is just a tiny blip in a huge battle against the profession of teaching and of the institution of public education:

Teachers, parents, and friends of public education understand that the Crist veto is not the end of the battle. The struggle is now engaged, as misinformed legislators seek to impose punitive measures on educators, thinking that such actions will help them win Race to the Top funding.

I tell my audiences that Race to the Top will turn out to be a poison pill for American education. It is based on the same "measure and punish" philosophy as No Child Left Behind.

The one bright aspect to the events in Florida is that teachers and parents there HAVE shown what can happen when people organize and take concerted political action. Despite the powerful, well-funded forces ready to destroy the teaching profession, the teachers and parents of Florida prevailed.

The friends of public education in Florida provided people a powerful lesson: united we stand, divided we fall. The education deformers have behind them the resources of hedge-fund managers and financial titans, but the friends of public education have something even more potent: they have people power.

At Least Teachers In Other Countries

aren't shy about exercising their professional judgment. I wish they were as vocal here instead of always, always siding with districts.

Hundreds of thousands of children face classroom disruption after head teachers backed an unprecedented boycott of national tests for 11-year-olds.

Primary heads voted to take industrial action for only the second time in their union's 112-year history.

Members of the National Association of Head Teachers voted decisively to ' frustrate the administration' of compulsory tests due to be taken by 600,000 11-year-olds between May 10 and May 13. Sixty-one per cent backed the action.

More is here.

It appears the government isn't taking the teachers' attempts lying down.

Principals

like this "hero" should be kicked out of education instead of pushing kids out who are being taught inappropriate curriculum.

This isn't about a concern for the kids but instead is a way to pump up the test scores.

More:

So I was surprised when Charlie Thomas, principal of Crossland High School in Prince George's County, began sending me emails. His school has been one of the worst in a low-performing district for a long time. But Thomas, who arrived in 2004, was trying to improve his school and was willing even to deal with a fault-finding columnist if it would help. Nearly 66 percent of his students were low-income, but he was not going to let that slow him down.

I confess he has gotten my attention with some unusual moves. For instance, he quickly discovered that close to 800 of his 1,800 students were still in the ninth grade. "I asked for a list of every ninth grade student that was 16 years old or older with a grade point average of less than 1.0 [a D average]," he told me. The list had 330 names. Some had been there four or five years.

"As soon as the school year began we met with each of these students and informed them that they were being placed on academic probation," he said. "They were informed that they had one quarter to raise their grade point average to at least 1.0. If they failed to do so they would be withdrawn from the school due to lack of interest or transferred to the evening school program. . . . At the end of the first quarter, only fifty students remained on the list."

Ohanian:

This edict of withdrawing students from school "for lack of interest" sounds an alarm to anyone familiar with the World of Opportunity in Birmingham, Alabama. When the late Steve Orel noticed lots of 16-year-olds showing up at the WOO, he asked why they weren't in high school. They all showed him the same termination papers. Reason for withdrawal: lack of interest.

Steve wondered how much "lack of interest" there could be when kids immediately tried to get into another school. As he talked to them, he heard stories of family troubles, students taking care of fatally ill relatives, working to put food on the table, students ill themselves, and so on. They said nobody at their high schools had ever asked them why their attendance was so poor, why they never did the homework, and so on.

Steve believed in second chances. And third. And fourth. . . . Steve knew that poor students lack many things; he didn't believe in "lack of interest."

The World of Opportunity continues to show another way. Steve's widow struggles to keep it going, and reports that those 16-year-olds are still being terminated by the local district.

Looking good at any cost is some districts' motto. The easiest way to do that is get rid of the really low kids.

This is all about the principal's ego and delusions of grandeur, not about "high standards" or kids.

Washoe County School District's Bigwig

"worries" about even more budget cuts are possible.

As if one can EVER trust a Broadie:

Superintendent Heath Morrison told about 50 people at a town hall meeting at North Valleys High School that the district learned last week that money given to school districts through the Distributive Student Account — based on enrollment — might be lower than estimated.

“That means $33 million could become $37 million,” Morrison said.

If You Look Long Enough and Hard Enough,

you will find schemes such as charter schools, TFA, alternative certification, and other such schemes to deprofessionalize education are nothing new.

Here is another one that was tried about a century ago called the "Gary: Plan":

The Gary Plan, highly developed by World War I, quickly attracted national publicity because of its apparent efficiency and diversified curriculum. By 1929, now promoted by the National Association for the Study of the Platoon or Work-Study-Play School Organization, 202 cities had over 1,000 platoon schools. It also generated much controversy, with New York City, for example, rejecting it in 1917 after a three-year experiment. While the Gary schools, in many ways, captured the positive spirit of Progressive education, they also incorporated some troubling aspects. There was the perception in New York and elsewhere that the inclusion of manual training classes was designed to channel the working classes (the majority of Gary's students) into vocational trades; while the high school enrollment increased, most students did not graduate. The schools were also racially segregated, closely following the northern urban model. The 2,759 black children in 1930 mostly attended all-black elementary schools or the integrated (but internally segregated) Froebel School. The situation worsened as black enrollment increased to 6,700 by 1949 (34% of the student population), despite the school board's attempt in 1946 to promote building integration. By 1960, 97 percent of the 23,055 black pupils (over half of the 41,000 students) were in eighteen predominantly or exclusively black schools, with primarily black teachers and administrators, and the trend would continue as the black population increased and the white population decreased over the following decades.

No matter what the reformers try, they almost always fail, but like bad pennies they always return.

Noam Chomsky is Worried

about what might happen in the very near future, and the "tea party" people who are being riled up can create a lot of horrible trouble if people don't wake up.

It's almost like history is repeating itself:

“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”

“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

I don't know the answer--well, I do, but our elected officials are so bought off, they won't do one damned thing to really help people. And so the far right exploits this rage for their own purposes.

News

In the understatement of the 21st century, Ben R. has some serious problems with self control:

The state of Georgia's monthlong investigation into a rape accusation leveled against Ben Roethlisberger uncovered an allegation by a second woman that the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback forced himself upon her.

The incident allegedly occurred during a party at Roethlisberger's house in central Georgia.

A young woman not interviewed by authorities claims the quarterback pulled his pants down and told her she could "do whatever she wants," according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation report.

A week later, the woman attended another party thrown by Roethlisberger. She claims the 28-year-old quarterback was drunk and forced his hand up her skirt.

He's now said to have violated the NFL's "conduct" policy according to the commissioner.

While NYC's Rubber Rooms are Closing,

it doesn't necessarily mean the process will be more fair to teachers; it could well be the same or even worse:

Unfair Investigations:

There are no changes to how investigations are done. When a Principal goes after a teacher the final result is the teacher is removed. I have previously wrote about these unfair investigations Here, Here, and Here. An independent investigator would make this a fairer investigation and would require the teacher to fully participate in it.

No Consequences For "False Accusations":

The agreement does nothing to ensure that either the DOE or UFT go after administrators or students that were found to have given "false accusations" against a teacher, despite language to do just that in the previous "rubber room agreement". To date, no Administrator has been disciplined for giving "false accusations" against a teacher.

The Expansion Of The Hated & Unfair "Probable Cause" Provisions:

The awful "probable cause" provision was expanded to include violent assault. Despite Leo Casey's advocacy for this provision, mere hearsay is enough to get a teacher offline for up to three months. Now we are adding another accusation to remove more innocent teachers.

Shortening The 3020-a Hearing Process:

You might think that this is a good thing. However, there is real concern that the hearings, with their stringent timelines could pressure Arbitrators from hearing character witnesses for the teacher because of the requirement of meeting the timelines (teacher witnesses go last). The hasty hearing process may turn out to be unfair to the teacher.

It Should Be Absolutely Illegal

for retired teachers to be double dipping into the education system when there are so many other teachers out of work.

As people of this blog know, I was replaced by one such double dipper, which makes my termination even more suspect.

The Humane Society of the United States

needs to be outed as the extremist organization that it is. It is an animal "rights" organization, not a "humane" or animal welfare organization at all, but it has conned a lot of people, including celebrities, to give money to further its anti-animal domestication agenda.

I am glad somebody is pointing this out. I don't care if this guy is connected with the Moonie Times. A broken clock is right twice a day:

When King alleges the group is run by vegetarians intent on taking meat off America's tables, he is just taking Humane Society honcho Wayne Pacelle at his word. Pacelle is a vegan - a vegetarian who not only doesn't eat meat but also refuses cheese, milk and eggs. In a long interview with Vegan.com, Pacelle says he wants to bring people along to "as compassionate a diet as they can handle." His own vegan diet being the most compassionate.

And then, of course, there is the fact that the Humane Society funds People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, according to its most recent IRS disclosure forms posted on the group's Web site. PETA openly campaigns to stop the consumption of meat. "Meat is Murder," you know.

...

The latest data publicly available show that the Humane Society spent $24 million on fundraising expenses, roughly a quarter of its budget and more than the $20 million it claims to directly spend on animals. This is one reason that this year Charity Navigator downgraded both the Humane Society of the United States and its international affiliate. According to the group's IRS disclosures, only 40 cents on the dollar from telemarketing actually went to the Humane Society of the United States. The group raised $1.2 million from public events, but none of that money went to charitable work because the fundraising events cost even more to put on.

They're not the ASPCA.

I Have Written That It Takes an Act of God

to remove a principal, but sometimes people take matters into their own hands, as what happened to a highly regarded principal in the D.C. schools.

Washington Post article about this principal. He was one of Michelle Rhee's hires:

Until Brian Betts mysteriously failed to appear at work Thursday morning, this is what his many admirers knew about him: He was the energetic new principal of a long-troubled urban school and, within a D.C. school system desperate for heroes, a superstar.

...

Betts, 42, worked on the front lines of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's campaign to reform the D.C. schools. In only his second year on the job, he was emerging as one of the school system's most innovative principals. Lured away in 2008 from the better-performing school system in the suburbs of Montgomery, Betts was given a new staff at a reconfigured school and unusual freedom to hire and fire, train and teach.

Betts hired a group of inexperienced teachers at Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson. He eliminated homeroom and recess, deeming them a waste of time, a bold pronouncement from a former physical education teacher. Students liked him so much that Rhee approved an unprecedented request for 100 of them to remain at his middle school for ninth grade.

It makes one wonder if somebody decided to retaliate against HIM. In any case, 48 Hours or Dateline will have this in the near future.


Video report from the WP:

The NYT Continues to Push the Anti-Public School Line

by publishing an article about how stupid it is to have colleges of education and how it is better for education in general to have "alternative" ways to licensure, which translated means deskilling the teaching profession.

Which dovetails nicely with what the World Bank wants. Why have college graduates at all teaching kids? That's where it is headed if people don't wake the hell up:

In an ever-tightening job market, their graduates are competing with the products of alternative programs like Teach for America, which puts recent college graduates into teaching jobs without previous teaching experience or education coursework.

And this week, the New York State Board of Regents could deliver the biggest blow. It will vote on whether to greatly expand the role of the alternative organizations by allowing them to create their own master’s degree programs. At the extreme, the proposal could make education schools extraneous.

“In a lot of respects, what the Regents have done is the ghost of Christmas future,” said Arthur Levine, a former president of Teachers College at Columbia University and now president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. “Education schools are on the verge of losing their franchise.”

While alternative programs now operate in most states, only a few, including Rhode Island and Louisiana, allow these programs to effectively certify their own teachers.

It's the deliberate deskilling of teaching, and it is unacceptable given how many people with REAL backgrounds in education can't find jobs. This is all about hiring cheapo, replaceable teachers who have "careers" of no more than two to five years.

Why You Cannot Run Schools on Business Models

and therefore No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top bribery scheme are destined to fail:

Free-market solutions to problems in education are not new. What seems to be absent from public discussion and media treatment is the fact that business models applied to education have a record of misrepresenting the goals of education as well as the relationship between schooling and the economic and military success of the nation. Exclusive focus on standardized test scores also promotes a perception that the goals of education in a democracy are captured in reading and math test scores. Unfortunately, the arguments and data presented by those with a business perspective are often accepted as factual, if not obvious, by media. Such thinking is corrosive to the education of the very children we say we care about.

The suggestion that education is responsible for the success or failure of American business and our economy has never been true, but using fear of economic or military domination by other countries has long fed the myth that schools were the critical factor. The Russian Sputnik satellite was used to argue Russian schools produced better scientists. The threat of economic dominance by Japan was credited to better test scores on the part of Japanese students. More recently, economic recovery from a toxic and shady financial system created by bankers is laid at the feet of school reform. Over and over, the story gets told and people believe it, despite the fact that the United States has dominated the world economically and militarily ever since the end of WWII. Schools never are credited with producing upswings in the economy, but invariably saddled with blame for possible threats to continued dominance.

Business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also claim that most of the future jobs will require "21st century" skills and advanced knowledge and preparation for all students. Labor statistics and job projections are misrepresented to support the illusion that most students will need a college education to survive economically. While it is true that some of the fastest-growing jobs require higher levels of training and education, these tend to be small in terms of number. Current Iowa and federal projections for future jobs indicate these claims are not accurate. We have far more workers who are underemployed for the skills they possess than we have deficits of skilled workers. Pushing all students into college-prep curricula does not match the real needs of a service economy.

Public education was seen by the founders of our country as critical to democracy.

Which is one of the reasons why the USCC and the World Bank are against public education. The other is that education is one of two means of upward economic mobility for the vast majority of people. The other one is the existence of unions.

I suspect the USCC KNOWS few jobs require anything beyond a high school diploma; the World Bank recognizes this. And of course one of the "reforms" the "reformers" are pushing is ever increasing knowledge of subjects at earlier and earlier ages, such as pre-albegra in sixth grade, LONG before many if not most kids can cognitively handle subject matter appropriate for grades ten and above. The reason they push it is not to help students better "compete" for jobs in the 21st century. It's to PUSH KIDS out of school altogether by branding special ed when they can't do the work or they drop out of school altogether.

An educated workforce is a threat to the privatizers.

The Problem With TFA is It is Designed

to deskill and deprofessionalize teaching into something like the Peace Corps, when teaching is SUPPOSE to be a profession made up of professionals not dabblers who are looking for the experience of "teaching" so it looks good on a resume.

Again, TFA is one piece of a larger puzzle in the attempt to destroy public education once and for all.

This writer's take:

My interview with Kevin Huffman, TFA’s vice-president in charge of public affairs, was equally frustrating. I asked where TFA saw itself and its priorities in five years. Huffman explained how TFA has consistently improved over the years, from training and support to growing in scale and diversity. “Every year we learn new things that we should be doing better, and I think this is going to continue,” he said.

The same could be applied to classroom teaching, I noted. Might TFA consider changing its mission, and ask teachers to commit to, say, five years in the classroom?

No, Huffman made clear. Sticking to the two-year commitment “is critical to our theory of change.”

That's because it plays right into school districts' desire to hire on the cheap by hiring these cheapo bimbos with only a few weeks' of training.

NOT everybody can teach, and the theory behind TFA is that anybody can. That's World Bank/neoliberal-style nonsense.

Not to mention these people are all corrupt peas in the same corrupt pod:

Marcello Stroud sent me TFA’s 990 for fiscal 2008. It shows that TFA had revenues of $159 million in fiscal year 2008 and expenses of $124.5 million. CEO and founder Wendy Kopp made $265,585, with an additional $17,027 in benefits and deferred compensation. She also made an additional $71,021 in compensation and benefits through the TFA-related organization Teach for All. Seven other TFA staffers are listed as making more than $200,000 in pay and benefits, with another four approaching that amount.

It’s also interesting to look at the 990 for the KIPP Foundation, the charter school chain led by Richard Barth, a former Edison vice president and TFA staffer who also happens to be Kopp’s husband. Barth made more than $300,000 in pay and benefits, bringing the Kopp/Barth household income to almost $600,000 for their work with TFA and KIPP. (In a 2008 article, the New York Times dubbed Kopp and Barth as “a power couple in the world of education, emblematic of a new class of young social entrepreneurs seeking to reshape the United States’ educational landscape.”)

Two Words

describes what happened to not only California's university system, once the best public system of higher education in the world, but to the whole state: Proposition 13.

It was the WORST thing that state ever passed into law, and, over 30 years after it became law, the state is still suffering the consequences.

Peter Schrag years ago, in his book Paradise Lost, described the whole sorry story in gruesome detail.

Detroit School Closures

As Susan Ohanian notes, this ruling isn't necessarily a good thing given the makeup of the school board:

Parents and students upset over school closings found some hope Friday that their neighborhood buildings won't close in June after a Wayne Circuit Court judge put the brakes on a plan to close a quarter of them.

The ruling by Wayne Circuit Judge Wendy Baxter also blocks the Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb from implementing his academic plan without consulting the school board and bans him from testing students every quarter, ending social promotion and changing grade levels in schools.

Baxter's preliminary injunction is in response to a lawsuit the Detroit Board of Education filed against Bobb, alleging he overstepped his authority by making academic decisions and by failing to consult with the 11-member board.

The ruling is the latest chapter in a public power struggle between the board and Bobb. Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed Bobb last year and ordered him to turn around the district's finances, but opponents say he has been making academic decisions without obvious authority outlined in state law.

Detroit News

News

If only people had the kind of loyalty and devotion dogs have:

A golden retriever named "Lady" was a good and loyal dog until the end.


Police and an investigator with the Stark County Coroner's Office believe that Lady stayed by her owner's side in a field just outside of Hartville for almost a week.

Parley Nichols, 81, was found dead there Wednesday night, about a mile from his home.

Nichols had dementia and was reported missing on April 8.

Dogs love you so much, they will be devoted to you even after you die, such as the legendary Greyfriars Bobby:

In 1858, a man named John Gray was buried in old Greyfriars Churchyard. His grave levelled by the hand of time, and unmarked by any stone, became scarcely discernible; but, although no human interest seemed to attach to it.

The sacred spot was not wholly disregarded or forgotten. For fourteen years the dead man's faithful dog kept constant watch and guard over the grave until his own death in 1872.

The famous Skye Terrier, Greyfriars Bobby was so devoted to his master John Gray, even in death, for fourteen years Bobby lay on the grave only leaving for food.

It is reported that a daily occurance of people from all walks of life would stand at the entrance of the Kirkyard waiting for the one o'clock gun and the appearance of Bobby leaving the grave for his midday meal.

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So is taking estrogen at perimenopause actually beneficial to women in the long run, especially when it comes to heart disease and Alzheimer's? This writer seems to think so.
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Not that it wasn't obvious all the time which side the GOP is on when it comes to any kind of business regulations.

They are pandering to their base, which isn't really the Tea Party types, but instead they are pandering to their donors.
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When I Mentioned the Other Day the June 2nd

UI "extension," date for filing, but some other report still had the May 5th cutoff as actually being the last date to file, the last filing date IS June 2, according to my state employment department:

Please note: On April 15, 2010, the President signed a bill that extended the date to file a new EUC claim until June 2, 2010. New EUC claims can be filed either by telephone or on the Internet at this page by clicking below on "I Agree", then clicking, "I would like to restart an Existing Claim/File an Emergency Unemployment Claim". If you already have an EUC claim established, continue to file your weekly claims either by telephone or on-line. The agency will update this message as further information is received.

So I have three months left on my claim before I run out of ALL money, until or unless Congress puts in a Tier V.

Iceland Volcano

I am always interested in what happens in nature, and the current story of volcanic eruptions in Iceland is no different:




All of the ash coming from the eruptions is making flying hell for people:

Around 17,000 flights were cancelled on Friday, with warnings that up to six million passengers around the world could be affected if the shutdown continues into Sunday.

Transatlantic flights have slowed to a trickle, while flights into Europe from the Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East have also been badly disrupted.

The BBC has a report here.

Misc

There are a lot of myths floating around about what you should and should not feed dogs:

5. Commercial dog foods are bad. While there are commercial products that vary in ingredients and overall nutrition, research has shown that the quality of commercial dog foods is more than adequate to meet proper nutritional requirements for most if not all breeds of dogs. Most vets would recommend a commercial food over trying to make your own dog food at home.

6. Diet must be tailored to breed and age. A good diet for a dog is good throughout his entire lifespan. The only thing that will change is the amount of food and the kinds of supplements your dog needs. Puppies require more food than seniors. And seniors often need an extra boost of vitamins and minerals to replace vital nutrients that they have stopped making naturally due to the aging process.

This "Rubber Room" Graduate Isn't Holding His Breath

the process will be faster.

He ended up in "detention" because he was doing his job:

Brown says he reported problems with the school's special needs program to the state. And after a state visit, he was reassigned to the rubber room in May 2008 on insubordination and misconduct charges.

But in November of last year, he was cleared of all the misconduct and incompetence charges, except one - calling his principal a liar, he said.

As a result, he had to take anger management classes and was not allowed to return to his school, but he did become a permanent substitute just blocks away at Middle School 534.

More from here:

Bowden often clashed with staff over budget, safety and contractual issues.

In mid-year she canceled all per-session activities and advised staff that they could volunteer to continue to perform them for free. This was reversed a month later. Although the principal knew that Brown was coaching basketball as an authorized per-session activity, she tried to eliminate his compensation for it.

When he was removed, Brown had started raising questions about whether Bowden was misusing school funds. Brown noticed that the principal was selectively and seemingly improperly paying per-session wages to some individuals for administrative work, while simultaneously precluding other teachers from participating in proper per-session employment.

After repeatedly being rebuffed by Bowden in his attempts to confer with her, Brown contacted the DOE’s Office of Special Investigation about the spending irregularities. Then, on May 21, Bowden dispatched Brown to the temporary reassignment center on Chapel Street and, for the duration of the term, assaulted his personal and professional reputation.

That's what districts do to teachers; it's a blood sport.

Brown doesn't even have a classroom of his own. This isn't much of a victory unless he will be put back in the classroom next year.

Meanwhile, his lousy principal is STILL at the school where Kimani taught.

OF COURSE It is Not "Normal"

for there to be a high rate of unemployment even if the neoliberals love it:

While the fragile U.S. economy is on the way to recovery, it's still far from back to normal, one of President Obama's top economic advisers said Saturday.

"By almost every indicator, the U.S. economy is finally on the road to recovery," said Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers at an event held at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

But she cautioned, "When it comes to the economy, we are very far from normal," noting the U.S. unemployment rate is 9.7 percent.

There are now roughly 6.5 million workers who have been unemployed more than 26 weeks, and those workers represent 44 percent of the unemployed, she said.

"Long-term unemployment is cause for serious concern," Romer said. But she disagreed with those that say high unemployment is "the new normal."

Morning Joe Had the Makers of the "Rubber Room" Documentary

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The filmmakers barely got a word in. All I heard was bullshit about if this was a business, these people would be fired, blah, blah, blah. Teaching is totally different from private businesses, and never mind most of the allegations against teachers are bullshit.

Teachers are put on administrative leave, paid or unpaid, for one reason only and that's to force them to resign (or retire), thus saving money on lawyers and unemployment compensation. That was the reason the union's executive director LIED to me about my eligibility; since she was figuratively kissing the ass of her soon-to-be boss in human resources, she felt it would benefit her to lie about it so I would be desperate and settle. Thank God I didn't.

But of course these filmmakers, being young it appears, didn't state the obvious. Meanwhile, crappy principals are allowed to keep their jobs.

Ten Cents Says the District Will Keep This Principal

It doesn't matter if she is being "investigated," in the end she will keep her job at that particular school.

It takes an act of God to remove a principal--REALLY remove them, not reassign them--from a school district:

An angry Brooklyn principal was caught on tape berating teachers after they trashed her on a crucial school survey, the Daily News has learned.

Public School 38 Principal Yolanda Ramirez is under investigation for threatening teachers after she received harsh reviews on last year's survey.

The News obtained a secret recording of Ramirez lashing out at her teachers for nearly 40 minutes, telling them their brutal answers could cost the school - and all of them.

"If you don't trust me, you air that in the school," Ramirez is heard saying in the tape from June 2009, just after she learned the survey's results.

"You don't put that out there for the public because if I were to begin putting out some of your dirty laundry, a lot of you wouldn't be here."

Lots of good stuff in this article. Gotham Schools presents the survey and its results.

The worst "punishment" a principal will receive is reassignment to another job; a teacher wrongfully fired loses EVERYTHING.

Video:

Good for AFT Massachusetts

for basically telling Obama and Arne to shove it:

The state’s second-largest teachers union organization, which represents teachers in Boston and other big cities, has decided to boycott Massachusetts’ application for the Obama administration’s innovative educational fund, possibly jeopardizing $250 million in grants.

The move, approved Saturday by the board of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, stunned state education leaders, key legislators, and charitable organizations that work on education issues.

Word of the vote began circulating yesterday after the teachers federation sent an e-mail late Monday night to state education officials saying that both the statewide organization and its locals would not sign the application for the Race to the Top program, established by the Obama administration to reward states pursuing classroom innovations and aggressive overhauls of failing schools.

In addition to Boston, the federation represents teachers in some of the most distressed districts, such as Lawrence, Lynn, and Lowell.

Author and Professor Lois Weiner

spoke the other day about the need for teachers and others to rise up against the movement toward privatization of education, which is an uphill battle in my view for two reasons: One, most people have no idea about the worldwide agenda to privatize public education, and two, that Obama and Duncan are putting forward the World Bank's agenda of limiting higher education (anything beyond middle school) for the vast majority of people.

It is a truly EVIL agenda.

Substance News:

The gist of Dr. Weiner's talk centered on a World Bank report that claimed teacher unions represent the "biggest threat to global prosperity" in the world. Weiner asserted that the World Bank’s assertion was an excuse to de-professionalize teachers: “they want a revolving door because a revolving door is cheaper.” Ultimately, she stated, “the World Bank’s aim is to make schools no different from Wallmart.”


She also explained that standardized testing, as a means to gauge achievement and accountability, is now largely tied to teacher evaluation. Race to the Top, the federal initiative led by the U.S. Department of Education under former Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan, aims to tie test scores to teacher evaluation. Weiner insisted that the true aim is not student excellence but a way to “get rid of a salary schedule based on experience and education,” so as to not “put other money into the salary schedule.”

"Global prosperity" for whom, world banksters? For the multinationals and the few hundred billionaires in the world, that's who.

News

Nevada's unemployment rate continues at near depression levels:

Nevada unemployment reached a new record high of 13.4 percent in March, while the jobless rate in the Las Vegas area dipped slightly to 13.8 percent.

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UI filings and foreclosures continue to rise.
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Some Video Reports on Crist and SB 6

Another report is at this link:

WPBF

Hold the Celebration Over the Rubber Rooms

as the devil is in the details over the agreement to get rid of them. Education Notes notes:

NBC reports the following:

* A teacher will only be able to be removed from a classroom for 60 days. If by then the teacher has not been charged, he or she can return to the classroom unless there are serious accusations involved.
* The deal gives the city greater ability to suspend teachers without pay in more severe cases, and saves taxpayers from spending $30 million a year to pay teachers to essentially do nothing.
* The hearing process will be expedited in part by hiring more hearing officers to adjudicate. In less serious cases, there will be an expedited hearing processs in which the case will be resolved in three hearings over a period of two weeks.



The key is who doesn't get paid in the more "severe" cases. Look for these to be expanded to a wide level - like anything having to do with a child. I'm not talking things like sexual charges (which is already a reason to not get paid - and teachers have been exonerated based on false charges). I'm thinking things like ANY physical confrontation. Who knows what else? Will there be enough ambiguity to give the DOE wide latitude not to pay people?

And what are "serious" accusations? Does anyone trust the UFT to assure bullet proof protections? Will they tell you to file a useless grievance? Expect a report from experts Jeff K and James E on the ICE blog soon.

Ed Notes

Hell, I wasn't paid while I was "suspended" for eight months because those bastards at WCSD wanted me to settle. Mind you, this was over a fucking clerical error on an FMLA form, which the principal lied and said I committed "dishonesty," "negligent of duty," "inefficient," and a host of other slanders resulting from my having been so seriously ill.

The Report About the Senate Extending UI Filing Date to June is Wrong

It's still only May 5, which means Congress is going to have to extend the benefit filing date again and again.

The Senate late Thursday approved a short-term extension of unemployment benefits, ending an impasse that had dragged on for weeks.

But the issue could come up again in less than a month. The Senate voted 59-38 to extend the benefits until May 5, when they might have to be extended again. The measure now moves to the House.

The Senate moved to a final vote after breaking a GOP procedural objection in a 60-38 vote.

Could This Be True?

Congress may actually be closer to moving the filing date back to June 2 (not May), and at the meantime there is a possibility for a Tier V of additional weeks:

Yesterday, a single Republican, George Voinovich of Ohio, joined Democrats to defeat a challenge from Republicans that would have required the $18 billion legislation to be paid for.

That key vote has set the stage for passage of the measure in the Senate today. The extension, which is retroactive to April 5, would then return to the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote, possibly this week as well.

The temporary extension through June 2 will give House and Senate Democrats time to reconcile a bill that would extend benefits through the rest of the year.

The full-year jobless benefits measure also contains tax cuts for individuals and businesses that have also expired. That measure is more complicated because the tax provisions require offsetting revenue increases and those used last month when passing it through the Senate were subsequently snatched up to help pay for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

For the first time, rumors of adding additional weeks of benefits (a Tier V) to that bill are being heard, reports allyourtv.com.

We will see about the Tier V and whether that becomes a reality.

At Least One Senator Cares About the Unemployed

unlike that propagandist who claims UI is a "disincentive" for looking for work. There's no work to be found, idiot, when there is an average of 5 or 6 people per job applying:

Not This Shit Again with Coburn

If I get my Tier IV extension in May, it will be a fucking miracle.

This is only about moving the fucking filing date, not adding another tier, which needs to be done.

The senators don't care--they fucking don't care.

Tell Me, Who Has Been Unemployed for TWO Years,

how rough it is for the long-term unemployed.

I don't expect to ever recover from what the school district did to me. In past layoffs, I always did better than before. Not this time:

But there is no sign yet of a surge in the kinds of stable, above-average-income jobs that have been the backbone of the nation's prosperity in the past. Healthcare and temporary jobs have been leading the pack, but many of the jobs come with relatively modest wages.

The problem has another, less direct effect as well: Because many of the long-term unemployed are older workers, some have little choice but to retire earlier than planned. That means more people will be drawing Social Security and Medicare, and fewer will be contributing to those programs through payroll taxes.

As in previous downturns, a large share of the long-term unemployed are in manufacturing and construction.

But most of today's workers who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more are in sales, office and other service industry jobs, including more than 1 million in management and professional occupations.

Some economists doubt that workers in general would lose skills after just six months or even a year or two out of work.

But there is widespread agreement that, for whatever reasons, long periods of unemployment tend to make it tougher to get reemployed.

More Good News for Teachers as Governor Crist Vetoes the Horrible "Reform" Bill

in Florida, the infamous SB 6. He might care about teachers in addition to his future political ambitions:

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Charlie Crist has vetoed merit-pay for teachers legislation. Crist said at a noon news conference today that it is "contrary to the best interests of the people of Florida."

The governor said he vetoed the legislation, in part, "because of the process by which it passed. This … sped through committees without meaningful imput" from teachers, parents and administrators.

"Sometimes stated goals do not match the words of the bill," Crist said. "I find the content of Senate Bill 6 and the manner of its adoption significantly flawed."

The bill would require school districts develop teacher evaluations that rely mostly on how students perform on standardized tests. Districts would be prohibited from basing teacher pay on advanced degrees or years served. New teachers would be hired under probationary contracts that would allow termination without cause for the first years of service.

Of course teachers all over the country are going to have to be vigilant because somewhere some bill is going to pass and be signed into law, and public education will be a thing of the past if it does. Remember, these attempts to destroy it aren't isolated events; they are part of a plan fostered by the World Bank and others to destroy public services for private profit and to limit higher education for most people.


A message from State Senator Dan Gelber:

While I Mentioned the "Rubber Rooms" in the Previous Post,

apparently in a deal between BloomKlein and the teachers' union, these will be closed as of next fall:

Mayor Bloomberg and the city's teachers' union are set to announce today an agreement that will shutter the controversial teacher reassignment centers known as "rubber rooms," The Post has learned.

The centers won't close until the fall under the deal, sources said.

The centers house more than 600 teachers accused of misbehavior -- ranging from educational incompetence to sexual abuse -- who wait for hearings for months and years on end while doing nothing at full salary.

The Post has campaigned against rubber rooms for months. Columnist Andrea Peyser wrote in February, "Rubber rooms have become the symbol of everything in city government that makes one's head want to explode. These oases of waste and neglect exist in all five boroughs, playing host to a whopping 660 educators who've been accused of everything from sexual abuse and stealing to incompetence."

Under the deal, teachers accused of lesser charges will now report to Department of Education administrative offices or schools to perform clerical duties, sources said.

NY Post


Interesting this deal has been reached right before the premiere of the documentary about the rubber rooms.

What is it Like to Be Assigned to a "Rubber Room"?

This report, including an audio report, gives a little bit of a hint:

“The first day we were reassigned here I fell,” Brandi Scheiner, 57, says, pointing to the gravel path. Scheiner is a former elementary school teacher and is walking toward a compound of red trailers outside George Washington High School in Washington Heights. The security guard’s booth happened to be empty at 7:30 a.m., so it was easy to walk through the chain-link fenced gate. There are at least 120 teachers assigned to the eleven trailers here. Scheiner taught in Manhattan for 21 years and was assigned to Trailer 14 last fall.

“When we got here there were only two tables,” she says, looking around the fluorescent-lit room. She shows me clusters of desks and a bulletin board she decorated. “So I set it up this way, you know like the way you would set it up in a classroom.”

The bulletin board does look like what you would see in an elementary school, only it’s covered with newspaper clippings instead of vocabulary words. Crowded schools often use trailers for extra class space, but this is the first time they’ve been used as rubber rooms. Scheiner wasn’t thrilled with the amenities.

“This is our bathroom,” she says, walking into a room with a stainless steel sink. “When we came here there was no hot water so now we have hot water.” She pushes a lever and the water does flow, but only from one side. “It’s broken. You see it’s broken.”

Scheiner was suspended in 2007 when her principal accused her of incompetence and insubordination. She claims it was really a case of age discrimination.

Of course she was "too expensive," just as I was.

Pathetic

is the only word to describe somebody trying to raise a million dollars for a school district:

Real estate agent Allie Leckie said Wednesday the It Takes a Community effort starting May 15 would seek $20 or more from 50,000 residents, about 12 percent of the county population.

She said even if people don’t have children in school, the donations are “an investment in our future.”

“This impacts all of us greatly,” said Leckie, who has six children — ages 14 to 30 — and two grandchildren. “These are our doctors, these are our attorneys, these are our news writers. Without an education they have no future.”
Children should be proactive in this campaign, she said.

Why doesn't she go to Broad or Gates and beg for the money? But of course they would have strings attached.

Disgusting is the only word for it. Public school districts should not be charity cases.

Video:
http://www.rgj.com/section/videonetwork?bctid=78122354001


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News

Florida teachers and other concerned citizens await Gov. Charlie Crist's decision on whether to veto the ruinous SB 6, which would destroy public education in the state.
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A man delivered his obituary to a local paper, then committed suicide:

A Placerville man apparently wrote and delivered his own obituary to the Mountain Democrat newspaper on Tuesday – then hanged himself from a local bridge.

"An explanation might be in order," Allan Leo Peters II wrote in a suicide note that was posted, in part, on the newspaper's Web site Wednesday.

"Yes, I have hanged myself (At least I hope I did). … I have had emphysema for the past few years, and lately it has been really hard to struggle to even catch a breath. I really cannot convey to you how very hard it was even to try to take a very deep breath. … My life has been drastically altered in the past few years, and I believe in euthanasia."

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This is a Nice Defense of Public Education

although as Lois Weiner would tell us, it is impossible to divorce what is happening in public education with the economy as a whole, and it is impossible to divorce what is happening in American schools with what is happening all over the world, thanks to the World Bank's move to destroy public education worldwide. After all, we can't have an educated workforce for the vast majority of jobs requiring little in the way of education:

If the right-wing educational reforms now being championed by the Obama administration and many state governments continue unchallenged, America will become a society in which a highly trained, largely white elite will continue to command the techno-information revolution, while a vast, low-skilled majority of poor and minority workers will be relegated to filling the McJobs proliferating in the service sector. The children of the rich and privilege will be educated in exclusive private schools and the rest of the population, mostly poor and nonwhite, will be offered bare forms of pedagogy suitable to work in the dead end low skill service sector of society, assuming that these jobs will be available. Teachers will lose most of their rights, protections and dignity and be treated as clerks of the empire. And as more and more young people fail to graduate from high school, they will fill the ranks of those disposable populations now filling up our prisons at a record pace. In contrast to this vision, I strongly believe that genuine, critical education cannot be confused with job training. At the same time, public schools have to be viewed as institutions as crucial to the security and safety of the country as national defense. If educators and others are to prevent this distinction between education and training from becoming blurred, it is crucial to both challenge the ongoing corporatization of public schools, while upholding the promise of the modern social contract in which all youth, guaranteed the necessary protections and opportunities, were a primary source of economic and moral investment, symbolizing the hope for a democratic future. In short, those individuals and groups concerned about the promise of education need to reclaim their commitment to future generations by taking seriously the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's belief that the ultimate test of morality for any democratic society resides in the condition of its children. If public education is to honor this ethical commitment, it will have to not only re-establish its obligation to young people, but reclaim its role as a democratic public sphere and uphold its support for teachers.

This IS the goal of the privatizers, and it is organized.

Here is a "Blog Radio" from Somebody Who is Trying

to get Congress to pass a Tier V EUI extension, which I hope happens:

Askin' Ain't Gettin'

Ensign happens to be Nevada Democrats' best friend right now:

The scandal has marked a stunning fall for a politician who was once a rising conservative star with White House aspirations.

Ensign has said he would not resign because he wanted to help Republicans defeat Reid. Ensign said last year that a resignation would take some of the attention off Reid, split GOP resources and hurt "the conservative cause."

Ensign's office did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment this week.

News--or Gossip

I doubt Ben R.'s problems with women are going to stop his reckless behavior.

There is an attitude widespread among athletes, politicians, the rich, and so on that believes they are entitled to be assholes.
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Speaking of the paragraph immediately above, it appears Tiger and Elin are about to call it quits--for good:

TIGER Woods' marriage to Elin Nordegren is over, with new reports in the US that the golfing superstar and his estranged wife are making the finishing touches to their divorce.

Just days after Woods completed his triumphant return to golf following his cheating scandal, US news show Entertainment Tonight reports that Ms Nordegren, who failed to show at his US Masters Tournament comeback, is close to filing for divorce

I think after the humiliation Elin went through, there was no way she was going to take him back.
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Being a billionaire isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and it doesn't help matters when Kitty Kelley decides to profile you, especially when Kelley has never been successfully sued.
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