Report High Stakes Testing in Schools: Who’s Cheating Whom?
Corporate school privatizers feign disgust with teachers that cheat the standardized tests. But big business theft of public education is by far the greater sin.
by Glen Ford
Published on Commondreams.org September 16, 2011
The school privatizers now headquartered in the Obama administration are all pitching a morality fit over teachers that cheat by altering answers on standardized tests. Corporate privatizers, of course, have no real sense of morality beyond profit and loss: their own profit, and to hell with those that lose. But, when attacking institutions so historically revered as public education and the teaching profession, one must play dirty. You’ve got to get them on a morals charge.
The assault on public schools began with the blanket assertion that teachers – or, more precisely, teachers unions – are out for themselves; that they are sinfully selfish. Strange words, from the lips of corporate executives and free marketeers who preach that the highest virtues are revealed in the cutthroat corridors of commerce. Then again, pots and kettles are always calling everybody else black.
So, they slimed the teachers as the root of all that ails public education, teachers whose moral deficits could be corrected by rigorous competition regulated by standardized testing of students. If the students failed the tests, then the teachers would fail and be discharged, and the schools they worked in would also fail, and be replaced by privatized charters. High stakes testing was designed as a Trojan Horse for a corporate educational takeover, but packaged as a public good. Bad teachers and bad schools would come to a well-deserved bad end.
This morality play was always based on a lie. The standardized tests were bombs, designed to explode the public schools and the teaching profession. Everyone involved knew that inner city kids would fail the tests in huge numbers, setting the infernal machine in motion for the closing of schools and the wholesale firing of teachers. In their place would be recruited a new workforce that would either view teaching as a temporary job or cut every other teacher's throat in order to stay – neither of which redounds to the benefit of students or anyone else but the bosses. This is the substance of education “reform” in the Age of Obama.
“Everyone involved knew that inner city kids would fail the tests in huge numbers, setting the infernal machine in motion for the closing of schools and the wholesale firing of teachers.”
Faced with extinction of their jobs and their very profession, and with a teacher’s learned certainty that many of their students would be pushed into marginality by the testing juggernaut, teachers turned to cheating the test. They have been caught and shamed and may face prosecution in Atlanta and Philadelphia and elsewhere, but cheating the test surely occurs in virtually every inner city. I don’t think it’s cheating, in a moral sense, at all. The cheats are those that pushed high stakes testing under the false pretexts of reform, when the actual goal was union busting and privatization. Teachers are fighting for their lives, and all of us would cheat death, if we could.
The school privatizers are determined, not just to bust the teachers unions, but to remake teachers as corporate citizens. A schools superintendent in New Jersey said part of the difficulty for teachers under the new order is that they “are more concerned about relationships than about achieving more than one another.” When he gives teachers awards, he says, they won't display them because “they don't want to outshine one another.” His teachers would rather collaborate and cooperate to achieve a common goal. And that's why they've got to change, or go.
© 2011 Black Agenda Report
Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
One Betrayal Too Many by Robert Scheer on TruthDig.com
Robert Scheer's Columns
One Betrayal Too Many
Posted on Sep 14, 2011
By Robert Scheer
It’s getting too late to give President Barack Obama a pass on the economy. Sure, he inherited an enormous mess from George W., who whistled “Dixie” while the banking system imploded. But it’s time for Democrats to admit that their guy bears considerable responsibility for not turning things around.
He blindly followed President Bush’s would-be remedy of throwing money at the banks and getting nothing in return for beleaguered homeowners. Sadly, Obama has proved to be nothing more than a Bill Clinton clone triangulating with the Wall Street lobbyists at the expense of ordinary folks.
That fatal arc of betrayal was captured by a headline in Tuesday’s New York Times: “Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade.’ ” The Census Bureau reported that there are now 46.2 million Americans living below the official poverty line—the highest number in the 52 years since that statistic was first measured—and median household income has fallen back to the 1996 level. As Harvard economist Lawrence Katz summarized this dreary news: “This is truly a lost decade. We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”
The late 1990s, it should be noted, is when President Clinton, working with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through two critical pieces of legislation ending effective regulation of the banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act smashed the wall between high-flying Wall Street investment firms and the once staid commercial banks entrusted with the deposits and mortgages of America’s innocent souls. The next year Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, banning any effective regulation of the rapidly expanded trade in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that have since haunted the world’s economy.
The collapse of those toxic securities led to the housing crisis and resulted in 15.1 percent of Americans now living in poverty, the same level as when Bill Clinton took office. But thanks to another one of Clinton’s grand triangulation strategies, the one he called “welfare reform,” the impoverished are now denied the safety net that existed before the Clinton presidency. Although 22 percent of U.S. children are now below the poverty line, the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program no longer exists.
Some of us who voted for Obama thought he was no Clinton, but he was and is, as was demonstrated in his first days in office when he appointed two key veterans of the Clinton Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, to head up the Obama economic team. Geithner, as treasury secretary, is the point man for the administration’s push to pass the so-called American Jobs Act, which the president hyped in his Sept. 8 speech to Congress and the nation. It was pure Clinton bull: I feel your pain while I help the superrich pick your pocket.
Space permits only one example, that of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom Obama selected to head his “Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs.” Was that some cruel joke? GE under Immelt has grown and created jobs, but they are abroad rather than in our own troubled country. As a result, by the end of last year, only 134,000 of GE’s workforce of 304,000 were based in the United States; the remainder—and 82 percent of the company’s profit—were sheltered abroad.
Ironically, GE’s ability to avoid taxes was restricted by President Ronald Reagan, who had once been a spokesman for GE but was outraged by the company’s use of tax loopholes. It remained for President Clinton to offer GE some new tax breaks. As a result of being able to shelter profit abroad last year, GE had profits of $14.2 billion but claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Immelt was the elephant in the room when Obama said in his speech last week: “Our tax code should not give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs right here in the United States of America.”
It has been a long time since GE was creating jobs here during its “better light bulb” days, and the last spurt of GE participation in the U.S. economy came through its unit GE Capital, which specialized in toxic mortgage lending that once produced more than half of the company’s profits but ultimately led to a taxpayer bailout.
Someone who knows a great deal about that sort of scam is Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard law professor pushed out of Obama’s inner circle. In launching her campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts this week, Warren posted a video that clearly defined the enemy:
“Washington is rigged for big corporations. A big company, like GE, pays nothing in taxes, and we’re asking college students to take on even more debt to get an education?”
Obama in appointing Immelt last January praised him as a business leader who “understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.” Apparently, what Immelt understands is that what it takes to satisfy corporate interests instead of national needs is conning a president into looking the other way while you send jobs abroad.
One Betrayal Too Many
Posted on Sep 14, 2011
By Robert Scheer
It’s getting too late to give President Barack Obama a pass on the economy. Sure, he inherited an enormous mess from George W., who whistled “Dixie” while the banking system imploded. But it’s time for Democrats to admit that their guy bears considerable responsibility for not turning things around.
He blindly followed President Bush’s would-be remedy of throwing money at the banks and getting nothing in return for beleaguered homeowners. Sadly, Obama has proved to be nothing more than a Bill Clinton clone triangulating with the Wall Street lobbyists at the expense of ordinary folks.
That fatal arc of betrayal was captured by a headline in Tuesday’s New York Times: “Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade.’ ” The Census Bureau reported that there are now 46.2 million Americans living below the official poverty line—the highest number in the 52 years since that statistic was first measured—and median household income has fallen back to the 1996 level. As Harvard economist Lawrence Katz summarized this dreary news: “This is truly a lost decade. We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”
The late 1990s, it should be noted, is when President Clinton, working with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through two critical pieces of legislation ending effective regulation of the banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act smashed the wall between high-flying Wall Street investment firms and the once staid commercial banks entrusted with the deposits and mortgages of America’s innocent souls. The next year Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, banning any effective regulation of the rapidly expanded trade in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that have since haunted the world’s economy.
The collapse of those toxic securities led to the housing crisis and resulted in 15.1 percent of Americans now living in poverty, the same level as when Bill Clinton took office. But thanks to another one of Clinton’s grand triangulation strategies, the one he called “welfare reform,” the impoverished are now denied the safety net that existed before the Clinton presidency. Although 22 percent of U.S. children are now below the poverty line, the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program no longer exists.
Some of us who voted for Obama thought he was no Clinton, but he was and is, as was demonstrated in his first days in office when he appointed two key veterans of the Clinton Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, to head up the Obama economic team. Geithner, as treasury secretary, is the point man for the administration’s push to pass the so-called American Jobs Act, which the president hyped in his Sept. 8 speech to Congress and the nation. It was pure Clinton bull: I feel your pain while I help the superrich pick your pocket.
Space permits only one example, that of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom Obama selected to head his “Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs.” Was that some cruel joke? GE under Immelt has grown and created jobs, but they are abroad rather than in our own troubled country. As a result, by the end of last year, only 134,000 of GE’s workforce of 304,000 were based in the United States; the remainder—and 82 percent of the company’s profit—were sheltered abroad.
Ironically, GE’s ability to avoid taxes was restricted by President Ronald Reagan, who had once been a spokesman for GE but was outraged by the company’s use of tax loopholes. It remained for President Clinton to offer GE some new tax breaks. As a result of being able to shelter profit abroad last year, GE had profits of $14.2 billion but claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Immelt was the elephant in the room when Obama said in his speech last week: “Our tax code should not give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs right here in the United States of America.”
It has been a long time since GE was creating jobs here during its “better light bulb” days, and the last spurt of GE participation in the U.S. economy came through its unit GE Capital, which specialized in toxic mortgage lending that once produced more than half of the company’s profits but ultimately led to a taxpayer bailout.
Someone who knows a great deal about that sort of scam is Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard law professor pushed out of Obama’s inner circle. In launching her campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts this week, Warren posted a video that clearly defined the enemy:
“Washington is rigged for big corporations. A big company, like GE, pays nothing in taxes, and we’re asking college students to take on even more debt to get an education?”
Obama in appointing Immelt last January praised him as a business leader who “understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.” Apparently, what Immelt understands is that what it takes to satisfy corporate interests instead of national needs is conning a president into looking the other way while you send jobs abroad.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Activist Tells the World: "So Much Crime; So Little Time"
.Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org Anti-Nuclear Activist, Bonnie Urfer, Fights Crime in Sentencing Statement
by John LaForge
Bonnie Urfer, 59, of Luck, Wis., is being sentenced in federal court in Knoxville, Tenn., today, even though she’s been in federal custody ever since her May 11 trespassing conviction. A long-time nuclear weapons resister and nonviolence trainer, she’s spent most of the last four months in a private, for-profit jail in southeast Georgia.
Bonnie Urfer (Nuke Watch.org)
After working for Nukewatch for 25 years, Bonnie’s learned something about nuclear weapons and she’s done more than four years in jail for peacefully resisting them. She joined 12 others in walking onto the property of the Y12 nuclear weapons fabrication complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 2010. Convicted of the federal misdemeanor with the others, she could get a year in prison.
A gifted graphic artist, Bonnie always says, “I are not a writer.” But her sentencing statement, written for presiding Magistrate Bruce Guyton is worth repeating. She titled it, “So Many Crimes, So Little Time":
“To the Court: One of the most unpleasant things in life is to go to jail. But because they are places with some of the worst human rights violations in one of the most unjust systems, it is important that people know what happens in them. We need people in jails who have a voice, and people who know to tell the truth.
“In the past 126 days I have been booked into three different jails. The hardest part of the experience is being just one person in the midst of so much systematic crime.
“I have a decision to make.
“Do I refocus and put my energy into exposing the on-going crime of medical negligence in these jails? Do I begin a campaign to highlight the illegal starvation diet in the Blount County jail, for which no one has been arrested? Do I join the effort to condemn the practice of overcharging mostly dirt poor inmates for phone calls, and commissary, so that corporations and counties receive greater kickbacks? Should I add my voice to those in this courthouse who show up protesting unjust sentences for nonviolent conspiracy charges? Or should I spend all of my time researching how many prosecutors, judges, attorneys, court clerks and law enforcement personnel who hold stock in the private prison industry, commissary companies, phone providers or medical contractors in these human warehouses? I see so many literal and moral crimes, and I’m just one person.
“My final answer is none of the above. I will continue to resist the ultimate crime of nuclear weapons and their production here and around the world.
“I heartily disagree with this court that Y12’s production of nuclear bombs does not equate to imminent nuclear war. I can tell you about the women I met in the jails who lost family members from cancer after exposure to radiation while working at Y12. The government pays $150,000 to those with cancer or to their family after a death, if they can prove Y12’s liability. Thousands of people are dead or dying from weapons production. How many deaths does it take to convince the courts that Y12 is killing its own in a nuclear war? How many does it take to name it a crime? In my mind — just one.
“I have just one life and there is so much to do.
“It doesn’t matter what my sentence is. If I am returned to jail, I’ll expose more crimes. If I am set free, I’ll expose more crimes.
“Now, it is your decision.” — Bonnie Urfer, Ocilla, Georgia
by John LaForge
Bonnie Urfer, 59, of Luck, Wis., is being sentenced in federal court in Knoxville, Tenn., today, even though she’s been in federal custody ever since her May 11 trespassing conviction. A long-time nuclear weapons resister and nonviolence trainer, she’s spent most of the last four months in a private, for-profit jail in southeast Georgia.
Bonnie Urfer (Nuke Watch.org)
After working for Nukewatch for 25 years, Bonnie’s learned something about nuclear weapons and she’s done more than four years in jail for peacefully resisting them. She joined 12 others in walking onto the property of the Y12 nuclear weapons fabrication complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 2010. Convicted of the federal misdemeanor with the others, she could get a year in prison.
A gifted graphic artist, Bonnie always says, “I are not a writer.” But her sentencing statement, written for presiding Magistrate Bruce Guyton is worth repeating. She titled it, “So Many Crimes, So Little Time":
“To the Court: One of the most unpleasant things in life is to go to jail. But because they are places with some of the worst human rights violations in one of the most unjust systems, it is important that people know what happens in them. We need people in jails who have a voice, and people who know to tell the truth.
“In the past 126 days I have been booked into three different jails. The hardest part of the experience is being just one person in the midst of so much systematic crime.
“I have a decision to make.
“Do I refocus and put my energy into exposing the on-going crime of medical negligence in these jails? Do I begin a campaign to highlight the illegal starvation diet in the Blount County jail, for which no one has been arrested? Do I join the effort to condemn the practice of overcharging mostly dirt poor inmates for phone calls, and commissary, so that corporations and counties receive greater kickbacks? Should I add my voice to those in this courthouse who show up protesting unjust sentences for nonviolent conspiracy charges? Or should I spend all of my time researching how many prosecutors, judges, attorneys, court clerks and law enforcement personnel who hold stock in the private prison industry, commissary companies, phone providers or medical contractors in these human warehouses? I see so many literal and moral crimes, and I’m just one person.
“My final answer is none of the above. I will continue to resist the ultimate crime of nuclear weapons and their production here and around the world.
“I heartily disagree with this court that Y12’s production of nuclear bombs does not equate to imminent nuclear war. I can tell you about the women I met in the jails who lost family members from cancer after exposure to radiation while working at Y12. The government pays $150,000 to those with cancer or to their family after a death, if they can prove Y12’s liability. Thousands of people are dead or dying from weapons production. How many deaths does it take to convince the courts that Y12 is killing its own in a nuclear war? How many does it take to name it a crime? In my mind — just one.
“I have just one life and there is so much to do.
“It doesn’t matter what my sentence is. If I am returned to jail, I’ll expose more crimes. If I am set free, I’ll expose more crimes.
“Now, it is your decision.” — Bonnie Urfer, Ocilla, Georgia
Monday, September 12, 2011
Today, September 12, 2011
Today was a big day in the life of k8longstory, the activist for social change. It started out the same as any other day: Axi (the dog) wanted me to wake up and feed her breakfast. I obliged; the cat was appreciative,too.
I drove downtown around 8:30 am and went to the court to see what time my trial was, since the court was closed (at 3 pm) when I tried to find out on Friday.
So, I learned that my case was set for 1:30 pm and went in to talk to the Americans With Disabilities Advocate, CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS (Stephanie). For the first time, Stephanie Robbins' office was also closed last Friday at 3pm (no chocolate!) so i had to wait until today to figure out how to ask for a continuance, since I have been unable to get Adult Protective Services to release the names of the three people/agencies that lodged a complaint againtst me and I was loathe to subpoena the teacher, Shelly Blau.
I already submitted to Robbins THE RETALIATION TRIANGLE article that discussed the menacing practice of school adminstrators of punishing parents by calling in CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVES.
I submitted the Maureen Graves LETTER TO THE IRS AND FTB, and asked her to xerox the Dr. Caryl Miller LETTER DELINEATING KATE SMITH COMPLAINTS, which detailed the conflict that I was having with the SBSD.
The court appearance was so indescribable that I will just leave that for another day.
God is Good!
I drove downtown around 8:30 am and went to the court to see what time my trial was, since the court was closed (at 3 pm) when I tried to find out on Friday.
So, I learned that my case was set for 1:30 pm and went in to talk to the Americans With Disabilities Advocate, CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS (Stephanie). For the first time, Stephanie Robbins' office was also closed last Friday at 3pm (no chocolate!) so i had to wait until today to figure out how to ask for a continuance, since I have been unable to get Adult Protective Services to release the names of the three people/agencies that lodged a complaint againtst me and I was loathe to subpoena the teacher, Shelly Blau.
I already submitted to Robbins THE RETALIATION TRIANGLE article that discussed the menacing practice of school adminstrators of punishing parents by calling in CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVES.
I submitted the Maureen Graves LETTER TO THE IRS AND FTB, and asked her to xerox the Dr. Caryl Miller LETTER DELINEATING KATE SMITH COMPLAINTS, which detailed the conflict that I was having with the SBSD.
The court appearance was so indescribable that I will just leave that for another day.
God is Good!
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Chris Hedges: We Are What We Loathe
CommonDreams.org
Former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges writes: "It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too."
A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe
www.commondreams.org
I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the to.....
Former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges writes: "It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too."
A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe
www.commondreams.org
I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the to.....
CommonDreams.org
Former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges writes: "It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too."
A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe
www.commondreams.org
I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the to.....
Former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges writes: "It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too."
A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe
www.commondreams.org
I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the to.....
Friday, September 9, 2011
Calm Before the Storm
What an extraordinary time we live in, when we can communicate with our "Dick Tracy" devices (remember the Dick Tracy wrist-watch walkie-talkie?) and change the world.
Santa Barbara is The Perfect Storm of Injustice. Twenty guys wore "I am not a criminal" t-shirts before going in to the SB Admin building to speak about medical marijuana---they knew me but I couldn't go with them to the hearing because I'm restrained from going into the building. (That will change with the appeal ruling---when will that come in, i wonder...)
I spoke to Jim Ferguson this morning. He's presenting a forum on foreclosures tomorrow at the Marjorie Luke Theatre and hopes to take it on the road around the country.
The robo-signing (i found our GMAC deed of reconveyance and it was definitely robo-signed) is just a piece of the program---"it's like we're baking a cake and that's just one of the ingredients," said he.
Santa Barbara is The Perfect Storm of Injustice. Twenty guys wore "I am not a criminal" t-shirts before going in to the SB Admin building to speak about medical marijuana---they knew me but I couldn't go with them to the hearing because I'm restrained from going into the building. (That will change with the appeal ruling---when will that come in, i wonder...)
I spoke to Jim Ferguson this morning. He's presenting a forum on foreclosures tomorrow at the Marjorie Luke Theatre and hopes to take it on the road around the country.
The robo-signing (i found our GMAC deed of reconveyance and it was definitely robo-signed) is just a piece of the program---"it's like we're baking a cake and that's just one of the ingredients," said he.
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