From the Talking Points Memo
by Brian Beutler
Two of the top Democrats in Congress are calling out their Republican counterparts for abandoning high-stakes debt talks, and have provided new details about the tax proposals that sent the GOP packing.
"To paraphrase speaker Boehner, this was not an adult moment," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on a conference call with reporters. "There needs to be revenues in any deal."
Schumer was not a member of the bipartisan debt discussion group led by Vice President Joe Biden. But Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) was, and on the call he explained the tax proposals Democrats tried to put on the table that the GOP rejected.
In essence, Van Hollen said, Republicans chose to "protect taxpayer subsidies for big oil companies, tax breaks for corporate jets, and tax breaks for millionaires."
Democrats want to close tax loopholes that benefit oil companies, and eliminate a tax preference that gives corporate aircraft a friendlier depreciation schedule than commercial aircraft. Additionally, Van Hollen said, Democrats were proposing to phase out tax deductions and certain credits for people making more than $500,000 a year. These would be paired with a reduction in the tax burden on lower earners, by eliminating existing limitations on their deductions.
"Folks with over $500,000, we're going to phase out your deductions and some of your tax credit," Van Hollen said.
Brad Dayspring, spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor suggest this is only part of the story -- it wasn't just loopholes that blew up the talks, but broad rate hikes.
"While Congressman Van Hollen's selective memory is amusing, the bottom line is that the proposals pushed by Democrats would increase taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars on individuals, small businesses, and employers at a time when we need to focus on job growth," Dayspring said -- language Republicans often use to describe previous Dem proposals to create a new tax bracket for millionaires, or let the Bush tax cuts for high-income earners expire.
The full extent of the proposals Dems brought to the table thus remain unclear. But in any event, Republicans balked.
"The message Republicans sent was...unless we accept their lopsided approach...they're prepared to tank the economy," Van Hollen said.
Democrats, Schumer noted, had agreed to extensive spending cuts painful to their interests, but "when it comes time to talk about things that are painful to them, they walk away."
The new Democratic demands come as Republicans re-up their insistence that tax increases are completely off the table. "The president and his party may want a debt limit increase that includes tax hikes, but such a proposal cannot pass the House," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in a press statement. "The president and his party may want a debt limit increase without spending cuts that exceed the amount of the debt limit hike, but such a proposal cannot pass the House. The president and his party may want a debt limit increase without budget reforms that will restrict Washington's ability to spend in the future, but such a proposal cannot pass the House. These are the realities of the situation."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/top-dems-provide-fresh-detail-on-high-income-tax-proposal-that-led-gop-to-abandon-debt-talks.php
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Arne Duncan, worst Secretary of Education of all time?
From Failing Schools
by Mark Friedmen
After having returned to FS after an intense few weeks of campaigning, organizing, and of course standardized tests & finals, I came across some political news worthy of attention. Due to stalled negotiations and discussions of revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in Congress, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has made a predictably flawed announcement that he is willing to unilaterally take autocratic action and amend the law himself. As stated in US News, “A clause in the law permits the secretary of education to waive certain parts of the act—a power Duncan said he would consider use [sic] if states agree to enact reforms”.
Arne Duncan in Congress
As states desperately clamor to obtain relief from the ominous “accountability” provisions of the federal school accountability law (ESEA), Duncan continues the extortion routine. As Diane Ravitch stated in response to Race to the Top, “What if the carrot feels like the stick?” (Speaking of Ravitch, let’s not forget Duncan and Jonathan Alter’s grossly unjustified attacks on Ravitch for merely speaking truth to power in response to their corporate reform agenda)
There shouldn’t be great levels of surprise regarding Duncan’s back door dealing. After all, Duncan is planning to offer regulatory relief only if states adopt reforms that are utterly absent in the relevant legislation. This was the same extortion and black mailing technique that was employed from the first stages of Race to the Top which has become part of the disturbingly familiar political reality we find ourselves trapped inside in public education.
To take a step back, this makes serious engagement in the growing struggle that much more necessary, as the stakes continually get raised. I keep thinking of the powerful point Sabrina raised in her piece Reclaiming the Table: We need to stop asking for a place at the table in discussing and implementing education reforms, policy, and practice. We need to organize, educate and motivate against complacency, hopelessness, and powerlessness as challenging as it may be at times. As such, I’m energetically anticipating the opportunity to build relationships with educators, parents, students and organizers, at the Save our Schools March and National Call to Action. In order to build, and connect the many budding grassroots education efforts underway, we must communicate and enter into processes by which we find our common intersections. By linking and building solidarity between the many corners of this struggle, we must develop agreed-upon compelling alternatives to the elite corporate vision that has become the status quo in education.
http://failingschools.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/more-bullying-from-sec-of-ed-duncan/
by Mark Friedmen
After having returned to FS after an intense few weeks of campaigning, organizing, and of course standardized tests & finals, I came across some political news worthy of attention. Due to stalled negotiations and discussions of revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in Congress, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has made a predictably flawed announcement that he is willing to unilaterally take autocratic action and amend the law himself. As stated in US News, “A clause in the law permits the secretary of education to waive certain parts of the act—a power Duncan said he would consider use [sic] if states agree to enact reforms”.
Arne Duncan in Congress
As states desperately clamor to obtain relief from the ominous “accountability” provisions of the federal school accountability law (ESEA), Duncan continues the extortion routine. As Diane Ravitch stated in response to Race to the Top, “What if the carrot feels like the stick?” (Speaking of Ravitch, let’s not forget Duncan and Jonathan Alter’s grossly unjustified attacks on Ravitch for merely speaking truth to power in response to their corporate reform agenda)
There shouldn’t be great levels of surprise regarding Duncan’s back door dealing. After all, Duncan is planning to offer regulatory relief only if states adopt reforms that are utterly absent in the relevant legislation. This was the same extortion and black mailing technique that was employed from the first stages of Race to the Top which has become part of the disturbingly familiar political reality we find ourselves trapped inside in public education.
To take a step back, this makes serious engagement in the growing struggle that much more necessary, as the stakes continually get raised. I keep thinking of the powerful point Sabrina raised in her piece Reclaiming the Table: We need to stop asking for a place at the table in discussing and implementing education reforms, policy, and practice. We need to organize, educate and motivate against complacency, hopelessness, and powerlessness as challenging as it may be at times. As such, I’m energetically anticipating the opportunity to build relationships with educators, parents, students and organizers, at the Save our Schools March and National Call to Action. In order to build, and connect the many budding grassroots education efforts underway, we must communicate and enter into processes by which we find our common intersections. By linking and building solidarity between the many corners of this struggle, we must develop agreed-upon compelling alternatives to the elite corporate vision that has become the status quo in education.
http://failingschools.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/more-bullying-from-sec-of-ed-duncan/
Times Union says North Side schools are hopeless
Just look at the headline; KIPP school gives hope to North side. Was that side of town hopeless before? Does the Times Union think everybody north of Beaver street is in trouble?
Here is the truth about the KIPP School that was left out of the story. Kids are attending a state of the art school, where their parents are required to be involved and the children receive about a nine weeks worth of extra instruction throughout the course of the year and despite all this they performed worse than their poor hopeless public school counterparts.
The headline should be, public schools are a much better value than KIPP schools. Imagine how great our public schools would be if we put the same resources into them that we do the KIPP schools.
Charters even the ones who get extra resources like the KIPP school, who can choose who they take and keep and who can put requirements on their students parents do not perform better than their poor hopeless public school counterparts who have to take whoever shows up at their doors. I wonder when that editorial will be written.
Here is the truth about the KIPP School that was left out of the story. Kids are attending a state of the art school, where their parents are required to be involved and the children receive about a nine weeks worth of extra instruction throughout the course of the year and despite all this they performed worse than their poor hopeless public school counterparts.
The headline should be, public schools are a much better value than KIPP schools. Imagine how great our public schools would be if we put the same resources into them that we do the KIPP schools.
Charters even the ones who get extra resources like the KIPP school, who can choose who they take and keep and who can put requirements on their students parents do not perform better than their poor hopeless public school counterparts who have to take whoever shows up at their doors. I wonder when that editorial will be written.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Florida balances budget on the backs of teachers
Public education, schools and teachers, lost 3 billion dollars in Florida's latest budget. The same budget is only one billion less that last years' -cpg
Dear Editors,
We usually call it 'class warfare' when politicians raise the prospect of levying or increasing taxes. This is because we, as a society tend to shy away from confiscating others' wages under the guise of solving a revenue shortfall. In these political times, it's petty 'class envy' that spurs our desire to penalize those who work hard for the sake of contributing to the greater good. Most of all, our most recent statewide elections were predicated on making sure that Floridians kept more of their own income. Why, then, have we recently ganged up on state workers by forcing them to contribute into their pension plan?
Truth be told, there is no pension crisis in our state. The real issue is that we needed to find a way to plug a hole in the budget deficit and we needed a scapegoat. Much like liberals supposedly like to 'soak the rich,' the conservatives in Tallahassee need their own villain to justify their political actions. They choose to pick on those 'greedy' labor unions and state workers by imposing a three percent pay cut. We will have police officers, fire fighters and educators who will be making three percent less than they were making in the previous budget year.
To distract from the fact of a three percent pay cut, state leaders successfully argued that so-called fat cat public employees' greed and selfishness were standing between us and fiscal solvency. This begs the question of why our state's leaders can decide what is acceptable class warfare. State workers did not pilfer or steal their benefits. The non-contributory pension system was in place since 1974 and was a system into which current workers entered into in good faith. Today, the state is reneging on this agreement for the sake of scoring political points.
If it is weak logic to suggest that we can balance our books by punishing the 'rich,' it is equally lame to strike out against working Floridians under the premise of a sound fiscal policy but through the guise of an invisible income tax. Conservatives, of all people, should know that envy is a poor means to solving our state's problems.
John Louis Meeks, Jr.
Educator
Dear Editors,
We usually call it 'class warfare' when politicians raise the prospect of levying or increasing taxes. This is because we, as a society tend to shy away from confiscating others' wages under the guise of solving a revenue shortfall. In these political times, it's petty 'class envy' that spurs our desire to penalize those who work hard for the sake of contributing to the greater good. Most of all, our most recent statewide elections were predicated on making sure that Floridians kept more of their own income. Why, then, have we recently ganged up on state workers by forcing them to contribute into their pension plan?
Truth be told, there is no pension crisis in our state. The real issue is that we needed to find a way to plug a hole in the budget deficit and we needed a scapegoat. Much like liberals supposedly like to 'soak the rich,' the conservatives in Tallahassee need their own villain to justify their political actions. They choose to pick on those 'greedy' labor unions and state workers by imposing a three percent pay cut. We will have police officers, fire fighters and educators who will be making three percent less than they were making in the previous budget year.
To distract from the fact of a three percent pay cut, state leaders successfully argued that so-called fat cat public employees' greed and selfishness were standing between us and fiscal solvency. This begs the question of why our state's leaders can decide what is acceptable class warfare. State workers did not pilfer or steal their benefits. The non-contributory pension system was in place since 1974 and was a system into which current workers entered into in good faith. Today, the state is reneging on this agreement for the sake of scoring political points.
If it is weak logic to suggest that we can balance our books by punishing the 'rich,' it is equally lame to strike out against working Floridians under the premise of a sound fiscal policy but through the guise of an invisible income tax. Conservatives, of all people, should know that envy is a poor means to solving our state's problems.
John Louis Meeks, Jr.
Educator
Friday, June 24, 2011
Are Republicans America's greatest threat?
From the Huffington Post
by Sandy Goodman
The single greatest threat to the United States is not joblessness, foreclosures, another recession or skyrocketing debt or health care costs. Nor is it terrorism, China or declining influence abroad. No, the single greatest threat to our country is today's Republican Party.
That's because the GOP is relentlessly pursuing a policy of the American public be damned, so that next year Republicans can regain the national political dominance they held from 2001 to 2006. Their sole, selfish aim is to complete the transformation of the U.S. to a government of, by and for the rich and the far-right.
Veteran reporter Robert Parry, a retired correspondent for the Associated Press and Newsweek, accurately summed up that policy this way:
Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using any means available... Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent's government, economically and politically; blame it for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power...
Republicans and the Right... are well positioned to roll the U.S. economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama. Indeed, that may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.
George W. Bush's presidency, with Congressional Republicans in lockstep behind him, made an excellent start on the destructive transformation of this country: two unpaid-for wars (one based on lies); failure to prevent the worst terrorist attack on the homeland or punish its instigators; waste of tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign lives, and worldwide diplomatic failure.
At home, approval of torture, warrantless wiretapping and ineptness and indifference in the face of Hurricane Katrina created a permanent stain. Economically, Republican tax cuts created few jobs and increased the national debt by 75 percent. What the Washington Post dubbed "executive grandeur" made income inequality the worst since the 1930s Depression. Finally, the GOP's failed stewardship of the economy resulted in a crisis that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified was even worse than the Depression.
When national revulsion against Republican misrule drove Democrats into power in 2008, the GOP resorted to today's strategy. It became evident even before the new Democratic president took office when the Republican Party's de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, declared: "I hope Obama fails." And since the inauguration, Republicans have done everything in their power to assure that failure, although it's meant misery for millions of Americans.
"I wish we had been able to obstruct more," says Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell who succeeded brilliantly in keeping his members in line in opposing every important measure that's good for this country including presidential initiatives for health care, financial regulation, economic stimulus and a dozen executive appointments and even more judicial ones needed to keep government functioning.
Given the frightening record of business and financial deception and fraud that led to the economic crisis, who in their right mind could possibly oppose increased regulation of business and enhanced protection for consumers? The answer: almost all Republicans. Elizabeth Warren is too committed to consumer protection to win the votes of Senate Republicans acting for their paymasters at the chambers of commerce.
President Obama's new law extending health insurance to 30 million more people is too good for working Americans. Beaten in their attempt to vote it down, Republicans are now suing to kill it. Remember the GOP plan? It proposed health insurance for one-tenth as many people. Is it any wonder that people in all other industrial countries, where health care is a right, laugh at us.
American business hates government -- except when it needs government help. Which is just about all the time. And it's just fine with Republicans whenever business goes to the government for help. In fact, GOPers are almost always corporate-friendly, as opposed to people-friendly. And they have a right-wing Supreme Court majority that helps them buy legislation by equating money with speech and corporations with human beings.
But heaven forbid the average citizen should try to get a government benefit, or a job or more unemployment insurance or aid in taking back a home seized (often illegally) by the bank, or getting health care for a gravely ill child with a pre-existing condition. Republicans are happy to vote overwhelmingly against him, ignoring the Constitutional command that government "promote the general welfare."
Ronald Reagan, a president with rich friends and poor instincts, did this country an unforgiveable disservice by encouraging Americans to hate and distrust their government. Remember when he declared: "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem," and joked that: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Contrast that with Reagan's almost religious reverence for "the magic of the marketplace."
But my own life experience, like that of millions of Americans, tells me that in important ways the government is more reliable than the marketplace. I spent a good part of my career working for one of the largest, most triumphant examples of American capitalism: General Electric. When I retired late in 1997, GE shares were selling for $68.56; when GE CEO Jack Welch, the greatest corporate genius of them all, quit 11 months later, those shares had dropped to $39.66. In 2009, under his successor genius, they fell as low as $6.66. And they closed the other day at $18.49 -- only about a quarter of what they were when I retired. Needless to say, those shares formed a large part of my now badly-depleted retirement assets. Fortunately for me, GE was one of a declining number of companies that still provided an additional defined benefit pension plan for employes like me -- something the company is now proposing to drop for new union hires.
In contrast to my GE stock disaster, Social Security hasn't missed a monthly payment to me for more than 13 years, or to my wife in nine (imagine the value of our Social Security stock portfolios if Republicans had succeeded in their privatization scheme). Medicare enabled me to have spinal surgery, a hip replacement, cataract operations in both eyes and radiation that cured my prostate cancer; and my wife to have a hip and knee replaced, without breaking us financially.
Maybe that's why I call Reagan a liar and a fool for his denunciations of those benefits from our government to me and millions of others. And you should, too. But Republicans regard him almost as a saint. And those same Republicans just voted almost unanimously in Congress to kill Medicare and replace it with Rep. Ryan's pathetic plan to replace single payer with cut-rate vouchers for money-hungry private insurers. And they're now holding a critically important increase in the debt ceiling hostage to measures that would weaken the recovery.
The Republican Bush administration destroyed our standing abroad and our economy at home, and killed and maimed thousands of our young men and women for no good reason. Since 2009, Democrats have done their best to clean up the Republican mess -- something that unfortunately takes time. Republicans have fought those national cleanup efforts -- and the vast majority of the American people -- every day. And they say they're proud of their obstruction. As for solutions, they offer none, except for tax cuts like those that created record-low jobs under Bush, and spending cuts that would cripple the government.
These policies failed before and would inevitably fail again, and might well drive us into a real Depression. That's why the Republican Party is the single greatest threat to the United States of America. It cannot be allowed to win in 2012.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-goodman/republicans-the-single-gr_b_881444.html
by Sandy Goodman
The single greatest threat to the United States is not joblessness, foreclosures, another recession or skyrocketing debt or health care costs. Nor is it terrorism, China or declining influence abroad. No, the single greatest threat to our country is today's Republican Party.
That's because the GOP is relentlessly pursuing a policy of the American public be damned, so that next year Republicans can regain the national political dominance they held from 2001 to 2006. Their sole, selfish aim is to complete the transformation of the U.S. to a government of, by and for the rich and the far-right.
Veteran reporter Robert Parry, a retired correspondent for the Associated Press and Newsweek, accurately summed up that policy this way:
Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using any means available... Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent's government, economically and politically; blame it for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power...
Republicans and the Right... are well positioned to roll the U.S. economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama. Indeed, that may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.
George W. Bush's presidency, with Congressional Republicans in lockstep behind him, made an excellent start on the destructive transformation of this country: two unpaid-for wars (one based on lies); failure to prevent the worst terrorist attack on the homeland or punish its instigators; waste of tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign lives, and worldwide diplomatic failure.
At home, approval of torture, warrantless wiretapping and ineptness and indifference in the face of Hurricane Katrina created a permanent stain. Economically, Republican tax cuts created few jobs and increased the national debt by 75 percent. What the Washington Post dubbed "executive grandeur" made income inequality the worst since the 1930s Depression. Finally, the GOP's failed stewardship of the economy resulted in a crisis that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified was even worse than the Depression.
When national revulsion against Republican misrule drove Democrats into power in 2008, the GOP resorted to today's strategy. It became evident even before the new Democratic president took office when the Republican Party's de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, declared: "I hope Obama fails." And since the inauguration, Republicans have done everything in their power to assure that failure, although it's meant misery for millions of Americans.
"I wish we had been able to obstruct more," says Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell who succeeded brilliantly in keeping his members in line in opposing every important measure that's good for this country including presidential initiatives for health care, financial regulation, economic stimulus and a dozen executive appointments and even more judicial ones needed to keep government functioning.
Given the frightening record of business and financial deception and fraud that led to the economic crisis, who in their right mind could possibly oppose increased regulation of business and enhanced protection for consumers? The answer: almost all Republicans. Elizabeth Warren is too committed to consumer protection to win the votes of Senate Republicans acting for their paymasters at the chambers of commerce.
President Obama's new law extending health insurance to 30 million more people is too good for working Americans. Beaten in their attempt to vote it down, Republicans are now suing to kill it. Remember the GOP plan? It proposed health insurance for one-tenth as many people. Is it any wonder that people in all other industrial countries, where health care is a right, laugh at us.
American business hates government -- except when it needs government help. Which is just about all the time. And it's just fine with Republicans whenever business goes to the government for help. In fact, GOPers are almost always corporate-friendly, as opposed to people-friendly. And they have a right-wing Supreme Court majority that helps them buy legislation by equating money with speech and corporations with human beings.
But heaven forbid the average citizen should try to get a government benefit, or a job or more unemployment insurance or aid in taking back a home seized (often illegally) by the bank, or getting health care for a gravely ill child with a pre-existing condition. Republicans are happy to vote overwhelmingly against him, ignoring the Constitutional command that government "promote the general welfare."
Ronald Reagan, a president with rich friends and poor instincts, did this country an unforgiveable disservice by encouraging Americans to hate and distrust their government. Remember when he declared: "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem," and joked that: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Contrast that with Reagan's almost religious reverence for "the magic of the marketplace."
But my own life experience, like that of millions of Americans, tells me that in important ways the government is more reliable than the marketplace. I spent a good part of my career working for one of the largest, most triumphant examples of American capitalism: General Electric. When I retired late in 1997, GE shares were selling for $68.56; when GE CEO Jack Welch, the greatest corporate genius of them all, quit 11 months later, those shares had dropped to $39.66. In 2009, under his successor genius, they fell as low as $6.66. And they closed the other day at $18.49 -- only about a quarter of what they were when I retired. Needless to say, those shares formed a large part of my now badly-depleted retirement assets. Fortunately for me, GE was one of a declining number of companies that still provided an additional defined benefit pension plan for employes like me -- something the company is now proposing to drop for new union hires.
In contrast to my GE stock disaster, Social Security hasn't missed a monthly payment to me for more than 13 years, or to my wife in nine (imagine the value of our Social Security stock portfolios if Republicans had succeeded in their privatization scheme). Medicare enabled me to have spinal surgery, a hip replacement, cataract operations in both eyes and radiation that cured my prostate cancer; and my wife to have a hip and knee replaced, without breaking us financially.
Maybe that's why I call Reagan a liar and a fool for his denunciations of those benefits from our government to me and millions of others. And you should, too. But Republicans regard him almost as a saint. And those same Republicans just voted almost unanimously in Congress to kill Medicare and replace it with Rep. Ryan's pathetic plan to replace single payer with cut-rate vouchers for money-hungry private insurers. And they're now holding a critically important increase in the debt ceiling hostage to measures that would weaken the recovery.
The Republican Bush administration destroyed our standing abroad and our economy at home, and killed and maimed thousands of our young men and women for no good reason. Since 2009, Democrats have done their best to clean up the Republican mess -- something that unfortunately takes time. Republicans have fought those national cleanup efforts -- and the vast majority of the American people -- every day. And they say they're proud of their obstruction. As for solutions, they offer none, except for tax cuts like those that created record-low jobs under Bush, and spending cuts that would cripple the government.
These policies failed before and would inevitably fail again, and might well drive us into a real Depression. That's why the Republican Party is the single greatest threat to the United States of America. It cannot be allowed to win in 2012.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-goodman/republicans-the-single-gr_b_881444.html
Duval Partners gets it wrong
When the Duval County School Board backed themselves into a corner and needed to find an Education Management Organization (EMO) to take over their struggling schools, they turned to newly created Duval Partners for an Excellent Education. This group was originally created to fund raise and find mentors for the struggling schools. For this original purpose I thought with them being a group of concerned local citizens they were very qualified. However as a group put together to run schools I wasn’t optimistic.
That’s not to say they didn’t have some attractive qualities, the first of being is that they are local. I think somebody from Jacksonville would be better suited to put their finger on the problem. Then even though they are a newly formed EMO they are a non-profit group, which means all the money they received would go into the running of the schools, not to some CEO thousands of miles away. So you can imagine my surprise when it was revealed they are actively looking for another management company to run the schools. Well friends, doesn’t this then make them redundant? What is there purpose going to be, to manage the managers?
Then their final candidates to be executive director further dismayed me.
There is Jarik Conrad an author and human behavior expert. Well friends where is the education expert.
Brenda Priestly Jackson, former school board member. Excuse me wasn’t she on the school board while those schools were on their roads to ruin. During her 8 years on the board just exactly how did those schools improve? The answer is they didn’t.
Brenda Simmons works for Florida State college and is a local but there is a huge difference in working for a school that people pay to go to and want to attend and working for schools that are failing.
Ron Baker is a former chief executive for the Jacksonville Port authority. Hiring him would be like hiring a general to run your school district. Oh wait never mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t question these individuals, work ethic or intelligence, I question their depth as in I feel like they would be out of theirs.
I wonder if they even considered long time Raines Principal George Maxey for the job. He not only is a respected community fixture but he is an actual educator who would have a much better understanding of the issues those schools are facing.
I also wonder why they haven’t started meeting with the faculties at those schools in order to get a finger on the pulse of the problem. Who better than them would know what the kids and the schools need. Instead it seems like they have spent their time, and in secrecy I might add, interviewing candidates who are bad fits and looking for somebody to do the job they have been tasked in doing.
Furthermore where is the “Come on Back Home” campaign to convince the thousands of kids who have chosen to go to other schools to come back to those schools? This is important because unless Duval Partners suddenly develops magic powers, that is the only chance those schools have to fix their issues. Even then it would just stop the bleeding.
I am not very optimistic about Duval Partners. In fact I am down right pessimistic. They seem well in over their head and then their actions have befuddled me.
Unless things change, if I were a parent I would rappidly be coming to the conclusion the best chance my child has was to go somwhere else.
That’s not to say they didn’t have some attractive qualities, the first of being is that they are local. I think somebody from Jacksonville would be better suited to put their finger on the problem. Then even though they are a newly formed EMO they are a non-profit group, which means all the money they received would go into the running of the schools, not to some CEO thousands of miles away. So you can imagine my surprise when it was revealed they are actively looking for another management company to run the schools. Well friends, doesn’t this then make them redundant? What is there purpose going to be, to manage the managers?
Then their final candidates to be executive director further dismayed me.
There is Jarik Conrad an author and human behavior expert. Well friends where is the education expert.
Brenda Priestly Jackson, former school board member. Excuse me wasn’t she on the school board while those schools were on their roads to ruin. During her 8 years on the board just exactly how did those schools improve? The answer is they didn’t.
Brenda Simmons works for Florida State college and is a local but there is a huge difference in working for a school that people pay to go to and want to attend and working for schools that are failing.
Ron Baker is a former chief executive for the Jacksonville Port authority. Hiring him would be like hiring a general to run your school district. Oh wait never mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t question these individuals, work ethic or intelligence, I question their depth as in I feel like they would be out of theirs.
I wonder if they even considered long time Raines Principal George Maxey for the job. He not only is a respected community fixture but he is an actual educator who would have a much better understanding of the issues those schools are facing.
I also wonder why they haven’t started meeting with the faculties at those schools in order to get a finger on the pulse of the problem. Who better than them would know what the kids and the schools need. Instead it seems like they have spent their time, and in secrecy I might add, interviewing candidates who are bad fits and looking for somebody to do the job they have been tasked in doing.
Furthermore where is the “Come on Back Home” campaign to convince the thousands of kids who have chosen to go to other schools to come back to those schools? This is important because unless Duval Partners suddenly develops magic powers, that is the only chance those schools have to fix their issues. Even then it would just stop the bleeding.
I am not very optimistic about Duval Partners. In fact I am down right pessimistic. They seem well in over their head and then their actions have befuddled me.
Unless things change, if I were a parent I would rappidly be coming to the conclusion the best chance my child has was to go somwhere else.
Millionaires verses Teachers
From the Star Ledger and staff
TRENTON — A new political action group started by two New Jersey hedge-fund financiers aims to put money — a lot of money — behind an education reform agenda shared by Gov. Chirs Christie and reviled by the state’s largest teachers union.
Formed in March, Better Education for Kids promotes teacher evaluations based on student test scores and tenure that is harder to get and harder to keep, issues the New Jersey Education Association has been spending millions to battle against.
The group’s founders, David Tepper and Alan Fournier, first met as co-workers at Appaloosa Management, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund started by Tepper. Fournier now has his own fund, Pennant Capital Management, but the two are partnering once again in a bid to improve New Jersey’s public schools.
They say now is the right time and Christie is a dynamic leader.
"My mother was a public school teacher in Pittsburgh, and I attended public school in Pittsburgh," Tepper said. "I know as well as anyone that having a good education system is vitally important to the future of our country."
Better Education for Kids is entering the fray as private organizations are poised to play a larger role in education in New Jersey. Christie wants more charter schools, and he’s pushing legislation that would allow private companies to take over struggling public schools.
Last week, the fledgling group launched a $1 million campaign to advertise its mission and solicit donations. Unlike traditional non-profits, Better Education for Kids is a type of non-profit not required to disclose its donors.
Though the group cannot formally coordinate its work with lawmakers, it will be advised by two of the state’s top political consultants: Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist with close ties to Christie, and Jaime Fox, a Democrat who served as former Gov. James E. McGreevey’s chief of staff.
DuHaime and Fox declined to comment.
Derrell Bradford, the group’s executive director, said Better Education for Kids will push for policy changes that "put students first" and take on what it considers the biggest opponent to those types of changes – the New Jersey Education Association.
Bradford previously served as executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone, a traditional non-profit that advocated for the Opportunity Scholarship Act, a bill that would give students in failing public schools vouchers to attend private schools.
"In the past, the NJEA has been more organized and had more money to spend on messaging and candidate support than any other player," Bradford said. "We aim to change that, and we are in it for the long haul."
The teachers union and the governor have been locked in a bitter battle over the types of reforms Better Education for Kids and the governor both support since he took office. Christie has called the union leadership greedy and intractable, and in response, the union spent $6.6 million last year attacking the governor’s state aid cuts.
The union has launched several ad campaigns this year whose total cost tops $7 million, said NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer, including one campaign accusing Christie of supporting millionaires while shafting public schools,
Wollmer said Better Education for Kids is part of a national movement to "push corporate education reform that aims not to improve education, but to attack unions."
The group is not the first to advocate an agenda aligned with Christie’s. Last year, Reform Jersey Now, a group run by Christie’s top advisers, used mailings, phone calls and radio ads to promote the governor’s proposal to cap the annual growth of property taxes.
Bradford said Better Education for Kids has no formal budget yet.
Rutgers Newark law professor Paul Tractenberg said organizations not required to disclose their financial backers are dangerous for the future of New Jersey’s public schools, especially when the group appears to have an unlimited amount of money to spend on its advocacy.
"I’m increasingly alarmed by the many ways the line between public and private education decision making and reform efforts seems to be a line that’s blurring," Tractenberg said. "The more big, private money is brought to bear on public opinion regarding these issues, the more problematic that is."
By Jessica Calefati and Chris Megerian/The Star-Ledger
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/06/nj_hedge_fund_leaders_create_g.html
TRENTON — A new political action group started by two New Jersey hedge-fund financiers aims to put money — a lot of money — behind an education reform agenda shared by Gov. Chirs Christie and reviled by the state’s largest teachers union.
Formed in March, Better Education for Kids promotes teacher evaluations based on student test scores and tenure that is harder to get and harder to keep, issues the New Jersey Education Association has been spending millions to battle against.
The group’s founders, David Tepper and Alan Fournier, first met as co-workers at Appaloosa Management, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund started by Tepper. Fournier now has his own fund, Pennant Capital Management, but the two are partnering once again in a bid to improve New Jersey’s public schools.
They say now is the right time and Christie is a dynamic leader.
"My mother was a public school teacher in Pittsburgh, and I attended public school in Pittsburgh," Tepper said. "I know as well as anyone that having a good education system is vitally important to the future of our country."
Better Education for Kids is entering the fray as private organizations are poised to play a larger role in education in New Jersey. Christie wants more charter schools, and he’s pushing legislation that would allow private companies to take over struggling public schools.
Last week, the fledgling group launched a $1 million campaign to advertise its mission and solicit donations. Unlike traditional non-profits, Better Education for Kids is a type of non-profit not required to disclose its donors.
Though the group cannot formally coordinate its work with lawmakers, it will be advised by two of the state’s top political consultants: Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist with close ties to Christie, and Jaime Fox, a Democrat who served as former Gov. James E. McGreevey’s chief of staff.
DuHaime and Fox declined to comment.
Derrell Bradford, the group’s executive director, said Better Education for Kids will push for policy changes that "put students first" and take on what it considers the biggest opponent to those types of changes – the New Jersey Education Association.
Bradford previously served as executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone, a traditional non-profit that advocated for the Opportunity Scholarship Act, a bill that would give students in failing public schools vouchers to attend private schools.
"In the past, the NJEA has been more organized and had more money to spend on messaging and candidate support than any other player," Bradford said. "We aim to change that, and we are in it for the long haul."
The teachers union and the governor have been locked in a bitter battle over the types of reforms Better Education for Kids and the governor both support since he took office. Christie has called the union leadership greedy and intractable, and in response, the union spent $6.6 million last year attacking the governor’s state aid cuts.
The union has launched several ad campaigns this year whose total cost tops $7 million, said NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer, including one campaign accusing Christie of supporting millionaires while shafting public schools,
Wollmer said Better Education for Kids is part of a national movement to "push corporate education reform that aims not to improve education, but to attack unions."
The group is not the first to advocate an agenda aligned with Christie’s. Last year, Reform Jersey Now, a group run by Christie’s top advisers, used mailings, phone calls and radio ads to promote the governor’s proposal to cap the annual growth of property taxes.
Bradford said Better Education for Kids has no formal budget yet.
Rutgers Newark law professor Paul Tractenberg said organizations not required to disclose their financial backers are dangerous for the future of New Jersey’s public schools, especially when the group appears to have an unlimited amount of money to spend on its advocacy.
"I’m increasingly alarmed by the many ways the line between public and private education decision making and reform efforts seems to be a line that’s blurring," Tractenberg said. "The more big, private money is brought to bear on public opinion regarding these issues, the more problematic that is."
By Jessica Calefati and Chris Megerian/The Star-Ledger
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/06/nj_hedge_fund_leaders_create_g.html
Republicans in love with No Child Left Behind
From the NY Times
by Sam Dillon
In a sharp rebuke to the Obama administration, the Republican chairman of the House education committee on Thursday challenged plans by the education secretary to override provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, and he said he would use a House rewrite of it this year to rein in the secretary’s influence on America’s schools.
Responding to Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s promise to grant states waivers to the education law’s most onerous provisions if Congress failed to rewrite it, the committee chairman, Representative John Kline of Minnesota, sent Mr. Duncan a letter on Thursday demanding that he explain by July 1 the legal authority that he believed he had to issue the waivers.
Mr. Kline went further in a conference call with reporters, criticizing the administration’s use of the $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition to get states to adopt its reform agenda.
“He’s not the nation’s superintendent,” Mr. Kline said of Mr. Duncan, who assumed powers greater than any of his predecessors when, in 2009, Congress voted $100 billion in economic stimulus money for the nation’s school systems and allowed the secretary to decide how much of it should be spent.
“Unquestionably, Congress gave the secretary way too much authority in the stimulus bill when it said, ‘Here’s $5 billion, go do good things for education,’ ” Mr. Kline said.
Also, Mr. Kline for the first time outlined publicly a timetable for rewriting the sprawling school accountability law, President George W. Bush’s signature education initiative, saying he would move five bills to the House floor by year’s end.
A bill stripping several dozen federal educational programs from the No Child law, and another tweaking its provisions on charter schools, moved out of the education committee recently. A third bill, which would allow school districts new flexibility in how they spend federal education dollars, could be approved by Mr. Kline’s committee before Congress’s summer break, he said.
The fourth and fifth bills — one outlining new federal teacher effectiveness requirements and another rewriting the law’s school accountability provisions — will dominate the committee’s fall agenda, Mr. Kline said.
The Senate, led by Democrats, is working to rewrite the law with a single comprehensive bill, and experts said profound partisan disagreements could make a single rewrite difficult.
Still, Mr. Kline defended his legislative timetable and sought to undercut the argument underpinning Mr. Duncan’s waiver plans: that Congressional inaction had forced the administration to give states immediate relief from provisions like its accountability system, which requires that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
Mr. Duncan has predicted that unless the law is rewritten quickly, 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be declared failing this fall, demoralizing educators and paralyzing administrators with red tape. This month, Mr. Duncan said that if Congress failed to rewrite these and other provisions by September, he would use his executive powers to waive them — but only for states that agreed to embrace the administration’s education priorities. He used that formula in the Race to the Top grant competition, awarding money to states that opened new space for charter schools, for instance.
In his letter, Mr. Kline asked Mr. Duncan to explain how the Department of Education had the authority to grant waivers “in exchange for reforms not authorized by Congress.”
Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Mr. Duncan, reiterated the administration’s plan to negotiate with states over waivers. “The best way to fix this broken law is for Congress to send a bipartisan bill for the president to sign by the start of the school year,” Mr. Hamilton said. “As a Plan B, we’ll be prepared to use the authority Congress has given us to grant relief in exchange for reforms that boost student achievement.”
The law itself clearly empowers Mr. Duncan to grant states waivers, but several experts have challenged his plan to demand that states undertake policies he favors to get the waivers.
“If you read the waiver language in the law, the secretary absolutely does not have the right to arbitrarily think up good reform ideas and require that states do them in return for waivers,” said Frederick Hess, a director at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group. “That’s a violation of constitutional design.”
Meanwhile, some states are taking matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Idaho’s superintendent, Tom Luna, said his state would not lift its mandated testing targets this year, as required under the federal law. “If Congress and the administration will not act, states like Idaho will,” Mr. Luna wrote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/education/24educ.html?_r=1
by Sam Dillon
In a sharp rebuke to the Obama administration, the Republican chairman of the House education committee on Thursday challenged plans by the education secretary to override provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, and he said he would use a House rewrite of it this year to rein in the secretary’s influence on America’s schools.
Responding to Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s promise to grant states waivers to the education law’s most onerous provisions if Congress failed to rewrite it, the committee chairman, Representative John Kline of Minnesota, sent Mr. Duncan a letter on Thursday demanding that he explain by July 1 the legal authority that he believed he had to issue the waivers.
Mr. Kline went further in a conference call with reporters, criticizing the administration’s use of the $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition to get states to adopt its reform agenda.
“He’s not the nation’s superintendent,” Mr. Kline said of Mr. Duncan, who assumed powers greater than any of his predecessors when, in 2009, Congress voted $100 billion in economic stimulus money for the nation’s school systems and allowed the secretary to decide how much of it should be spent.
“Unquestionably, Congress gave the secretary way too much authority in the stimulus bill when it said, ‘Here’s $5 billion, go do good things for education,’ ” Mr. Kline said.
Also, Mr. Kline for the first time outlined publicly a timetable for rewriting the sprawling school accountability law, President George W. Bush’s signature education initiative, saying he would move five bills to the House floor by year’s end.
A bill stripping several dozen federal educational programs from the No Child law, and another tweaking its provisions on charter schools, moved out of the education committee recently. A third bill, which would allow school districts new flexibility in how they spend federal education dollars, could be approved by Mr. Kline’s committee before Congress’s summer break, he said.
The fourth and fifth bills — one outlining new federal teacher effectiveness requirements and another rewriting the law’s school accountability provisions — will dominate the committee’s fall agenda, Mr. Kline said.
The Senate, led by Democrats, is working to rewrite the law with a single comprehensive bill, and experts said profound partisan disagreements could make a single rewrite difficult.
Still, Mr. Kline defended his legislative timetable and sought to undercut the argument underpinning Mr. Duncan’s waiver plans: that Congressional inaction had forced the administration to give states immediate relief from provisions like its accountability system, which requires that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
Mr. Duncan has predicted that unless the law is rewritten quickly, 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be declared failing this fall, demoralizing educators and paralyzing administrators with red tape. This month, Mr. Duncan said that if Congress failed to rewrite these and other provisions by September, he would use his executive powers to waive them — but only for states that agreed to embrace the administration’s education priorities. He used that formula in the Race to the Top grant competition, awarding money to states that opened new space for charter schools, for instance.
In his letter, Mr. Kline asked Mr. Duncan to explain how the Department of Education had the authority to grant waivers “in exchange for reforms not authorized by Congress.”
Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Mr. Duncan, reiterated the administration’s plan to negotiate with states over waivers. “The best way to fix this broken law is for Congress to send a bipartisan bill for the president to sign by the start of the school year,” Mr. Hamilton said. “As a Plan B, we’ll be prepared to use the authority Congress has given us to grant relief in exchange for reforms that boost student achievement.”
The law itself clearly empowers Mr. Duncan to grant states waivers, but several experts have challenged his plan to demand that states undertake policies he favors to get the waivers.
“If you read the waiver language in the law, the secretary absolutely does not have the right to arbitrarily think up good reform ideas and require that states do them in return for waivers,” said Frederick Hess, a director at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group. “That’s a violation of constitutional design.”
Meanwhile, some states are taking matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Idaho’s superintendent, Tom Luna, said his state would not lift its mandated testing targets this year, as required under the federal law. “If Congress and the administration will not act, states like Idaho will,” Mr. Luna wrote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/education/24educ.html?_r=1
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Times Union attacks teachers
Gee Times Union why don't you just refer to teachers as moochers or parasites like a few of your posters on the message baord do? -cpg
From the Times Union 's editorial page
Everybody understands that unions try to get the best possible financial deal for their members, regardless of the consequences.
But, even given that, the Florida Education Association's lawsuit against the state is surprising.
The Legislature, facing a $4 billion budget deficit, voted earlier this year to make public employees pay 3 percent of their salaries toward their pensions.
That hardly seems unreasonable. Very few private-sector businesses provide free pensions.
Not many, in fact, provide defined benefit pensions at all.
Many have 401(k) plans but, in the depth of this Great Recession, no longer provide matching funds.
Under the circumstances, it hardly seems unreasonable to make state employees pay a small portion of their own pension costs.
The union's lawsuit claims that violates both state law and the Florida Constitution. Gov. Rick Scott insists they're wrong.
Time will tell what the courts decide. But with all of the suffering in the private sector - layoffs, pay cuts and lost benefits - the union seems callous and self-absorbed.
With revenues down sharply on all levels of government, it isn't reasonable for unions to demand that their members be exempt from the pain felt by others.
And the litigants' rhetoric has been outlandish.
One, for example, told The Tampa Tribune that mandatory pension contributions amounted to an "income tax" levied on government workers.
If so, it's a tax that private sector employees also pay, at a much higher rate.
Another said members of the Legislature should cut their own pay and benefits instead.
Maybe they should cut their own pay and benefits. But not instead.
There are 160 members of the Legislature and 170,000 teachers. There simply are not enough legislators to make much of a difference.
Here's something for the union to consider: Florida's state retirement system, the Tampa paper says, "is among the last in the nation that does not require its members to contribute toward their pensions."
The union needs to think about the consequences of what it is doing.
Good will, once squandered, is hard to get back.
Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2011-06-23/story/state-pensions-pedestal-next-unions-state#ixzz1Q4NGfY3Q
From the Times Union 's editorial page
Everybody understands that unions try to get the best possible financial deal for their members, regardless of the consequences.
But, even given that, the Florida Education Association's lawsuit against the state is surprising.
The Legislature, facing a $4 billion budget deficit, voted earlier this year to make public employees pay 3 percent of their salaries toward their pensions.
That hardly seems unreasonable. Very few private-sector businesses provide free pensions.
Not many, in fact, provide defined benefit pensions at all.
Many have 401(k) plans but, in the depth of this Great Recession, no longer provide matching funds.
Under the circumstances, it hardly seems unreasonable to make state employees pay a small portion of their own pension costs.
The union's lawsuit claims that violates both state law and the Florida Constitution. Gov. Rick Scott insists they're wrong.
Time will tell what the courts decide. But with all of the suffering in the private sector - layoffs, pay cuts and lost benefits - the union seems callous and self-absorbed.
With revenues down sharply on all levels of government, it isn't reasonable for unions to demand that their members be exempt from the pain felt by others.
And the litigants' rhetoric has been outlandish.
One, for example, told The Tampa Tribune that mandatory pension contributions amounted to an "income tax" levied on government workers.
If so, it's a tax that private sector employees also pay, at a much higher rate.
Another said members of the Legislature should cut their own pay and benefits instead.
Maybe they should cut their own pay and benefits. But not instead.
There are 160 members of the Legislature and 170,000 teachers. There simply are not enough legislators to make much of a difference.
Here's something for the union to consider: Florida's state retirement system, the Tampa paper says, "is among the last in the nation that does not require its members to contribute toward their pensions."
The union needs to think about the consequences of what it is doing.
Good will, once squandered, is hard to get back.
Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2011-06-23/story/state-pensions-pedestal-next-unions-state#ixzz1Q4NGfY3Q
School Board members Betty Burney and Paula Wright play politics with our intervening schools.
I attended a meeting put on by school board members Betty Burney and Paula Wright to discuss the intervene schools, schools in danger of being closed or taken over and I have to say from the moment I walked I the door I was disappointed. They started by showing statistics comparing our three intervene high schools, Raines, Ribault and Jackson and compared them with other intervene high schools throughout the state and they did quite well in that comparison. Sadly that just meant those schools were doing the best of the worse.
They then alternated bashing the state and the Education Management Organization that they themselves practically handpicked, Duval Partners. They did so to get the crowd fired up and on their side but not because those two deserved it.
Whoa Chris wait a minute, don’t you often talk about how the state is misguided and how the Duval Partners are unqualified? Yes, yes I do but that has nothing to do with where those schools find themselves. Those schools are in trouble because much of their communities have abandoned them and because the policies of the school district have handicapped them.
Kids don’t suddenly arrive at those schools (and Lee, Ed White, Forrest and First Coast too) and suddenly forget the skills they need, on the contrary they never learned them. The kids at those schools are not dumb they just know what they know and sadly the school system hasn’t taught them much ,only how to pass a test.
I asked a question, if they want us to give them one more year I needed to know what their plan was, that after a decade of mismanagement why should I trust them. Mrs. Burney went on to talk about how each of the schools had advanced academic programs and they would be pairing up with middle schools to make continuity of program. That’s a fabulous idea; the problem is at those schools the kids in the advanced academic programs only represent about five percent of the student bodies. I wanted to know what is their plan was for the other ninety-five percent of the students? If they had one they did not mention it.
The two school board members came off as if they were more upset about not being consulted and their ideas being rejected rather than where the schools found themselves. Then worse they used disingenuous information to bolster their points. They told one parent that A schools get more money, while ignoring the title one funds and the school improvement grants that bring in hundreds of thousands of extra dollars to the schools in question. They made a list about why the Duval Partners would be ineffective and about how it would cost more, a list that seemed like it was written by a fairly bright eleventh grader brainstorming. Duval Partners is a non-profit unlike most EMOs and any money given to them (and I am sue it wouldn’t be much) would be put back into the running of the schools. They mentioned, whom would you talk to if you had a problem because it wouldn’t be the school board. Well ladies and gentlemen have you ever tried to contact the school board? Its not like they are returning calls or e-mails in bulk now. Then they blamed the FCAT 2.0 and believe me this test is about as flawed as it gets. The problem is the increases the schools made were negligible which doesn’t inspire much faith that is they would have taken the regular FCAT that the schools would have done much better.
These schools will never improve, never, as long as the county has a policy of promoting kids without the skills they need but regardless I am not sure if much of the community cares. 3000 kids parents have chosen to send their kids elsewhere and at the meeting last night we had 150 adults show up representing another 3000 kids families. The community has lost faith in those schools and until the community regains that faith they won’t improve. It is that simple.
The sad thing is, there are a lot of good things going on at those schools and not just with the advanced academic programs. Regular kids are learning and teachers are working hard and that is the base either the district or Duval Partners should be starting with to get the community to return. They should be working with their partners in the media to get the word out and get the kids who live in the community but go to school elsewhere to come back home. Paula Wright kept repeating. Let your voice be your power, well how about come home families these schools will now be safe and rigorous.
Betty Burney has been on the school board for almost seven years. Paula Wright has been in the system for a lot longer. I find this last minute appeal to save the schools from the evil Duval Partners, you know people that live in the neighborhood and were concerned enough to give up their time and the state who only gave them about a half decades notice disingenuous at best and like a child having a temper tantrum when they don’t get their way at worse.
Nobody wants to se these schools fail but putting an advanced academic program in them isn’t going to save them either. Nobody should be excited about the EMO but it’s where we find ourselves and with the next year rapidly approaching it is whom we should throw our support behind. But nobody should have confidence in Mrs. Burney and Mrs. Wright is last night is an example of their leadership, they had their chance and now it’s time to give somebody else one.
In a bit of good news it’s hard to imagine Duval partners doing any worse.
They then alternated bashing the state and the Education Management Organization that they themselves practically handpicked, Duval Partners. They did so to get the crowd fired up and on their side but not because those two deserved it.
Whoa Chris wait a minute, don’t you often talk about how the state is misguided and how the Duval Partners are unqualified? Yes, yes I do but that has nothing to do with where those schools find themselves. Those schools are in trouble because much of their communities have abandoned them and because the policies of the school district have handicapped them.
Kids don’t suddenly arrive at those schools (and Lee, Ed White, Forrest and First Coast too) and suddenly forget the skills they need, on the contrary they never learned them. The kids at those schools are not dumb they just know what they know and sadly the school system hasn’t taught them much ,only how to pass a test.
I asked a question, if they want us to give them one more year I needed to know what their plan was, that after a decade of mismanagement why should I trust them. Mrs. Burney went on to talk about how each of the schools had advanced academic programs and they would be pairing up with middle schools to make continuity of program. That’s a fabulous idea; the problem is at those schools the kids in the advanced academic programs only represent about five percent of the student bodies. I wanted to know what is their plan was for the other ninety-five percent of the students? If they had one they did not mention it.
The two school board members came off as if they were more upset about not being consulted and their ideas being rejected rather than where the schools found themselves. Then worse they used disingenuous information to bolster their points. They told one parent that A schools get more money, while ignoring the title one funds and the school improvement grants that bring in hundreds of thousands of extra dollars to the schools in question. They made a list about why the Duval Partners would be ineffective and about how it would cost more, a list that seemed like it was written by a fairly bright eleventh grader brainstorming. Duval Partners is a non-profit unlike most EMOs and any money given to them (and I am sue it wouldn’t be much) would be put back into the running of the schools. They mentioned, whom would you talk to if you had a problem because it wouldn’t be the school board. Well ladies and gentlemen have you ever tried to contact the school board? Its not like they are returning calls or e-mails in bulk now. Then they blamed the FCAT 2.0 and believe me this test is about as flawed as it gets. The problem is the increases the schools made were negligible which doesn’t inspire much faith that is they would have taken the regular FCAT that the schools would have done much better.
These schools will never improve, never, as long as the county has a policy of promoting kids without the skills they need but regardless I am not sure if much of the community cares. 3000 kids parents have chosen to send their kids elsewhere and at the meeting last night we had 150 adults show up representing another 3000 kids families. The community has lost faith in those schools and until the community regains that faith they won’t improve. It is that simple.
The sad thing is, there are a lot of good things going on at those schools and not just with the advanced academic programs. Regular kids are learning and teachers are working hard and that is the base either the district or Duval Partners should be starting with to get the community to return. They should be working with their partners in the media to get the word out and get the kids who live in the community but go to school elsewhere to come back home. Paula Wright kept repeating. Let your voice be your power, well how about come home families these schools will now be safe and rigorous.
Betty Burney has been on the school board for almost seven years. Paula Wright has been in the system for a lot longer. I find this last minute appeal to save the schools from the evil Duval Partners, you know people that live in the neighborhood and were concerned enough to give up their time and the state who only gave them about a half decades notice disingenuous at best and like a child having a temper tantrum when they don’t get their way at worse.
Nobody wants to se these schools fail but putting an advanced academic program in them isn’t going to save them either. Nobody should be excited about the EMO but it’s where we find ourselves and with the next year rapidly approaching it is whom we should throw our support behind. But nobody should have confidence in Mrs. Burney and Mrs. Wright is last night is an example of their leadership, they had their chance and now it’s time to give somebody else one.
In a bit of good news it’s hard to imagine Duval partners doing any worse.
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