Opt Out Poses Serious Threat To Elites

You can hear how threatened the elites are by the Opt Out movement in the shrillness of this NY Times editorial attacking opt out as "an alarming...ill-conceived boycott."

The shriller the elites get in their pushback against ordinary citizens stepping up to protect themselves against the abuses of the state, the more you know how threatening that movement really is

The elites know they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the Opt Out movement.

They have paid lip service to parent and teacher concerns over the Endless Testing regime but in the end have gone full steam ahead with it anyway.

Numerous complaints have been made about the badly designed Common Core tests based upon the fundamentally flawed Common Core "State" (Sic) Standards tied to the irrationality of the APPR teacher evaluation system, but the response from the elites has been "Shut up and take your tests - we know what is best for you!"

With the opt out numbers hitting the 20% benchmark (reformers love benchmarks) from 5% the year before, the elites know this "Shut up and take your test!" response isn't playing anymore, so they trot out the race card (the Opt Out movement is racist because it deprives children of color their civil right to a standardized test), they trot out the class card (they attack the movement as mostly white and affluent, though the opt out numbers from this year show that many of the districts where opt out was greatest were middle class) - anything to attack the movement and put an end to it.

Again, the elites know they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the Opt Out movement.

They used to ignore the movement, then mock it, as small and marginal, but that's hard to do now that the opt out rate has hit 20% and threatens to go higher next year.

They can try and hit districts with high opt out rates with sanctions, taking resources away from schools and children, but that doesn't seem like a politically palatable thing to do.

One thing they are loathe to do - actually listen to the criticism of parents and teachers and come to some real and legitimate compromise on education policy (not one of those phony Arne Duncan compromises that work like this - agree with Arne and now we have compromise!)

It will be interesting to see where the elites go now.

The threat is real, the threat is growing and shrillness in response isn't going to put an end to it, that's for sure.

Bill Gates Exposed For All To See As An Arrogant, Whiny Elitist

Okay, it's official:

We're onto a new phase of the fight against the CCSS.

News media outlets are no longer buying and using pro-Common Core boilerplate rhetoric in stories on the Common Core, they're no longer framing the CCSS the way CCSS proponents want the standards framed, and they're no longer buying into the marginalization of proponents strategies that CCSS proponents and supporters have used over the last few years to dismiss criticism and opposition to the Core.

Most importantly, they're beginning to report on the man behind the curtain who pushed and promoted the CCSS and brought about a revolution in public education - Bill Gates - and some of that reporting isn't so complimentary.

Today's front page Washington Post story entitled "How Bill Gates Pulled Off The Swift Common Core Revolution" is a devastating expose of how one arrogant elitist/monopolist bribed every major stakeholder organization involved in public education to accept an untested, un-piloted idea that standardized learning standards, tests and teacher evaluations across the nation would improve public education.

Gates is on the defensive in much of the article and comes across as an arrogant, whiny jerk:

In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans. It’s up to the government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation, he said.

“The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get,” Gates said. “And that is a huge challenge. . . . Education can get better. Some people may not believe that. Education can change. We can do better.”

“There’s a lot of work that’s gone into making these [standards] good,” Gates continued. “I wish there was a lot of competition, in terms of [other] people who put tens of millions of dollars into how reading and writing could be improved, how math could be improved.”

Referring to opinion polls, he noted that most teachers like the Common Core standards and that those who are most familiar with them are the most positive.

Gates grew irritated in the interview when the political backlash against the standards was mentioned.

“These are not political things,” he said. “These are where people are trying to apply expertise to say, ‘Is this a way of making education better?’ ”

“At the end of the day, I don’t think wanting education to be better is a right-wing or left-wing thing,” Gates said. “We fund people to look into things. We don’t fund people to say, ‘Okay, we’ll pay you this if you say you like the Common Core.’ ”

Two things to note here - first, the writer uses Gates statements that make him sound illiterate ( “The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get..."), something that's already been noted and mocked on the Internet:

.@BillGates @carolburris Yup - "less good." Kinda like Windows 8.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) June 8, 2014

.@perdidostschool @BillGates I think Clippy was even lesser good.
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

Also, Gates' irritation at being challenged comes across in this part of the story, something that we see again later in the piece:

Now six years into his quest, Gates finds himself in an uncomfortable place — countering critics on the left and right who question whether the Common Core will have any impact or negative effects, whether it represents government intrusion, and whether the new policy will benefit technology firms such as Microsoft.

Gates is disdainful of the rhetoric from opponents. He sees himself as a technocrat trying to foster solutions to a profound social problem — gaping inequalities in U.S. public education — by investing in promising new ideas.

Education lacks research and development, compared with other areas such as medicine and computer science. As a result, there is a paucity of information about methods of instruction that work.

“The guys who search for oil, they spend a lot of money researching new tools,” Gates said. “Medicine — they spend a lot of money finding new tools. Software is a very R and D-oriented industry. The funding, in general, of what works in education . . . is tiny. It’s the lowest in this field than any field of human endeavor. Yet you could argue it should be the highest.”

Many CCSS proponents show disdain and scorn for critics and opponents (think Arne Duncan saying critics are just suburban moms shocked to find out their kids aren't as smart as they thought they were), but the head guy in showing disdain and scorn for critics and opponents is Gates.

He's never been much interested in hearing from anybody else when he's been promoting his education initiatives (Gates Foundation people didn't want to hear from small schools critics who pointed out smaller schools often mean fewer class and after school choices for students either) and he's still not interested.

Interestingly, he laments that nobody is putting the kind of money into education R & D that he is, but when it came time to pushing his CCSS, his hundreds of millions of dollars in "philanthropy" ensured that no other ideas about reform would get through.

Carol Burris noted the irony:

"I wish there was a lot of competition" said the man who got in trouble for crushing Microsoft competition :)
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

Indeed, Gates is a guy who literally made his fortune by crushing all competition and running his computer empire as a monopoly - his call for "competition" in education R & D rings hollow and phony.

As does his defense for why he doesn't send his kids to schools that use CCSS:

 Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama and Arne Duncan are parents of school-age children, although none of those children attend schools that use the Common Core standards. The Gates and Obama children attend private schools, while Duncan’s children go to public school in Virginia, one of four states that never adopted the Common Core.

Still, Gates said he wants his children to know a “superset” of the Common Core standards — everything in the standards and beyond.

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.”

But Bill, if the CCSS are so good, you ought to be sending your kids to schools that are using the CCSS - that's called putting your money where your mouth is.

But of course like so many CCSS proponents - from Gates to Duncan to Obama to our own NYSED Commissioner King - the CCSS is all about experimenting on "Other People's Children," not their own.

That hypocrisy comes through loud and clear in this Post piece.

As does the danger of having a country where one filthy rich "philanthropist" can fund his pipe dreams:

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.

Sure it is, Bill.

It has nothing to do with your own ego and messianic complex, your need to control everything you see or the money that rolls in to Microsoft as a consequence of the "technocratic" revolution in public education.

Carol Burris also pointed out how defensive Gates looked in the video of the interview that was posted:

.@LyndseyLayton does a tough interview w/ an intimidating bill gates . Watch body language in video http://t.co/3U9N1hm3yy
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

Gates isn't used to being put on the defensive by anybody - he's using to hearing "Yes, Bill!" and "You're a genius, Bill!"

That Gates the elitist subjected himself to this interview lets you know just how much trouble the Common Core is in - Gates wouldn't put himself in this position, shilling for the Core, unless he and his minions were truly worried about what was happening to their Common Core agenda.

Three states have dumped the standards, one more is flirting with it, even more states have dumped the common "assessments" that the Gates people wanted to ensure the CCSS would be taught throughout the country and they lost their data tracking program when parent activists were able to kill InBloom Inc.
 

The counterrevolution against Common Core is in full swing and its coming from both right and left - something I bet Billion Dollar Bill and his CCSS proponents never thought they'd see.

This Washington Post article by Lyndsey Layton is an extraordinarily important one - it's where Bill Gates and his operations are subject to "rigorous" scrutiny in the mainstream media and put on the defensive.

You can bet that CCSS proponents and education reformers saw the Post cover this morning and thought, "Oh shit - we've got trouble!"

this will be quite something on the anti-cc list servs and sites pic.twitter.com/FxAoBxvct8
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 8, 2014

And they do have trouble - lots of it.

Students, parents and educators are rebelling all over the country over Bill Gates' CCSS revolution, the Endless Testing regime that came with it, and the data tracking programs they wanted to use to ensure it all went off as planned.

There's still much work to be done, including making sure every politician who continues to push CCSS and the Endless Testing regime pays politically for that support, getting the standards pulled from all the states, killing off the testing regime, and forging a new era for public education where all stakeholders get a say in what gets taught and tested - not just the plutocrats and their paid shills.

The plutocrats still have the money and the politicians in their pockets - but as we see with this Gates piece today, the tone of the conversation has turned and where once critics and opponents were mocked in the media as crazies, now it's Gates, his corporate education reformers and their reforms that are on the defensive.

It's a new phase in the fight against corporate education reform.

Message To Alexander Nazaryan: Teachers Held In Much Higher Esteem Than Journalists

An insult tweet from Newsweek journalist Alexander Nazaryan was sent Arthur Goldstein's way after Arthur jumped into the fray between Nazaryan and Louis C.K. over Common Core:

@TeacherArthurG People like you are the reason teaching isn't respected more.
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

Nazaryan's been getting beaten up for a few days now after he insulted Louis C.K. for criticizing the Common Core while not being an "expert" on education.

Louis C.K. has dispensed with Nazaryan's criticism prettily handily, as is to be expected from a guy who's worked stand-up and knows how to handle drunks, idiots and hecklers in an audience.

Arthur's not worked the stand-up mike that I know of, but he's handled his share of Internet trolls over the years, so he doesn't need me to defend him against Alexander Nazaryan, but something about Nazaryan's statement really stuck in my craw, so I jumped in anyway:

@alexnazaryan @TeacherArthurG Actually poll after poll shows people still respect teachers.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) May 3, 2014

@alexnazaryan @TeacherArthurG Should add that journalists rank well below teachers in respect - http://t.co/JtmuTEWuxi
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) May 3, 2014

@alexnazaryan @TeacherArthurG 72% say teachers add a lot to society, only 28% say same about journalists.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) May 3, 2014

And here's the Pew poll results backing up that Americans overwhelmingly still respect teachers and think they add a lot to society as compared to journalists, who rank low on the respect and value-added list:

Americans continue to hold the military in high regard, with more than three-quarters of U.S. adults (78%) saying that members of the armed services contribute “a lot” to society’s well-being. That’s a modest decline from 84% four years ago, the last time the Pew Research Center asked the public to rate various professions. But the military still tops the list of 10 occupational groups, followed closely by teachers, medical doctors, scientists and engineers. A solid majority of the public says each of those occupations contributes a lot to society.

...

 Compared with the ratings four years ago, journalists have dropped the most in public esteem. The share of the public saying that journalists contribute a lot to society is down 10 percentage points, from 38% in 2009 to 28% in 2013. The drop is particularly pronounced among women (down 17 points). About as many U.S. adults now say journalists contribute “not very much” or “nothing at all” to society (27%) as say they contribute a lot (28%).

Pew is polling the American public at large, not the elite media and political circles journalists like Nazaryan run in, so he might be surprised to find out that the public at large doesn't share the elite's disdain and contempt for teachers.

He might also be surprised to find out that only 28% of the American public believe he and his journalism colleagues add anything of value to society.

When you live and work in an insular circle the way many of these elitist journalists do, it's difficult to understand that the people you chat with while sipping cucumber martinis do not share the same values as the public at large.

You can apply Nazaryan's tunnel vision over the respect the American public feels for teachers to his esteem for the Common Core as well - it's informed as much by the insular world he lives and works in as it is by anything else.

Common Core Developers - A Private Club You Are Not In

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a story today about who makes money off the Common Core. 

The main article is behind a paywall, but AJC.com does have a snippet and I found this part particularly interesting:

Achieve Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that has been heavily involved in writing the standards, receives funding from corporate titans such as Microsoft, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Chevron and DuPont.

Achieve’s five highest-paid executives received an average annual salary of $198,916 in 2011, tax records show. The company’s president, former Clinton administration official Michael Cohen, had a salary of $263,800 in 2011.

Two national consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced, having gotten a combined $346 million in federal education grants to create a pair of new standardized tests tied to Common Core.

“These people all know each other,” said Michael T. Moore, a literacy professor at Georgia Southern University who has written extensively about Common Core. “It is a private club.”

Of course there is this chart that shows the connections between all the players in the Common Core tragicomedy:

It's a private club and you are not invited.

All of the people in that flow chart, all of the entities, the "non-profits," the government agencies, the corporations, stand to profit from the Common Core - some by extending their power over others, most by cashing in on the billions in education spending.

The next time you see Bill Keller or Paul Krugman or Charles Blow or Jeb Bush or Chris Christie tell you how good these standards are for America and how there was no conspiracy to put these together and foist them on the country, remember the flow chart, remember the back rooms where the private club met to develop the Common Core standards and the assessments tied to the CC.

Can anything developed in secret by a bunch of elites who stand to profit from it by enlarging their power and enriching themselves really be good for America?

Why Wasn't Mulgrew Rubber-Roomed For The Grady Woodshed Allegations?

On an earlier post about the NY Post report that UFT President Michael Mulgrew's sister just received a $75,828 a year management position at the DOE after being on child care leave for 11 years (during which time she worked for a tutoring services company that received almost $11 million dollars worth of business from the NYCDOE in 2011), a commenter wrote this:

Well, this is a lot like the Mulgrew at Grady woodshed story.

If he were a mere mortal, he'd be in a rubber room. If we're going to let Mulgrew slide, we should extend the same to the two Horndog High ladies and say that they were consenting adults.

The problem is that there is a double-standard that the higher-ups benefit from connections. How Mulgrew-Daretany got this far suggests that some connections were pulled. Other mothers would be terminated a lot earlier, as rules are extremely stringent on maternity leave in NYC.

The commenter makes two great points here.

I'll deal with the maternity/child care leave point in another post, it's the Grady woodshed story I want to deal with here.

First, let me remind you what the Grady woodshed story was.

A lawsuit filed by a disgruntled teacher claims the powerful head of New York City's teachers union was caught having sex with a teacher in a high school wood shop.

Andrew Ostrowsky says the United Federation of Teachers covered up the scandal to protect Mike Mulgrew, who became president in 2009, and that the union traded key concessions with New York schools officials in order to keep the alleged misconduct quiet.

The lawsuit further claims that the teacher allegedly having sex with Mr Mulgrew, Emma Camacho-Mendez, was rewarded with a cushy union job paying her $22,000 a year, in addition to her $85,000 teaching salary.

 The New York Post reports that former teachers at William E Grady High School in Brooklyn had also heard the rumors about Mr Mulgrew's tryst on a drafting table with Ms Camacho-Mendez in 2005.

 According to the lawsuit, a janitor discovered the pair having sex. New York school officials used that knowledge to 'extort' concessions from the union in exchange for the the city's silence on the matter.

Both Mr Mulgrew and Ms Camacho-Mendez, who is now married, denied the allegations and said they had never heard of the accusations before.

 Additionally, Mulgrew allegedly used his clout to get Ms Camacho-Mendez, a guidance counselor, a job as union liaison for special education.

In 2010, Mulgrew gave Ms Camacho-Mendez an award at a union banquet attended by 1,200 teachers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

 Union insiders told the Post they aren't sure how Ms Camacho-Mendez received so much attention from union.

 'No one ever heard of this woman until Mr Mulgrew brought her on board,' a union representative told the Post.

She has no union credentials.' 

Now this is the sort of tabloid story that, if Mulgrew were an ordinary teacher at, say James Madison High School, and this showed up in the papers, he would have been immediately pulled from the classroom, placed in a rubber room and maybe even fired.

You know, like these two teachers:

The two "Horndog High" teachers who were sacked after an alleged lesbian sex romp in a Brooklyn classroom are slapping the city with a $2 million lawsuit for trashing their good names.

The Department of Education last month fired Alini Brito and Cindy Mauro, following a state arbitrator's report that said they engaged in a topless tryst at James Madison High School after ducking out of a student song-and-dance show.

A two-page summons with notice, filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, says the two romance language teachers are victims of "wrongful termination, libel and slander."

"They've had to deal with these false allegations of engaging in lesbian sex," said Michael Valentine, a lawyer for the classroom cuties. "It's been painful.

"Aside from losing their jobs, their reputations have been ruined."

Brito and Mauro, who have previously filed suit in an attempt to overturn their firings, got yanked from their teaching jobs in November 2009 after a janitor reported barging in on their steamy session in Room 337.

But the formerly tenured teachers contend the janitor simply let his imagination get very overheated.

"He just assumed it was two women having sex," said Valentine of Altman Schochet. "Then he went and told everybody he could tell."

Brito, who has diabetes, defended herself against the sizzling allegations by saying Mauro was giving her candy and sugar to help treat her medical condition.

But a state arbitrator's report countered that the sexy Spanish teacher was topless while a naked Mauro kneeled between her legs.

The women deny that that there was any sex - though their supposed X-rated hijinks at the Midwood school turned them into a punchline and Daily News covergirls.

"There wasn't one person who testified seeing either one of them involved in a sexual act," Valentine said.

The city destroyed school surveillance tape that one of the teachers claimed would have exonerated them both.

 

As a result, a judge reinstated Brito to her job.

Meanwhile Mulgrew, who may or may not have had sex with Camacho-Mendez at the Grady woodshed, nevertheless did put this woman in a union position she had no experience or skills to be in, yet was never called to account for either the sex allegation or the patronage job.

Just another example of how there are two codes of justice - one for the elites and one for the rest of us.

Michael Mulgrew received the elite, kid glove treatment while the two teachers from James Madison High School received the treatment the rest of us get:

Guilty as charged unless you can prove your innocence.

Post Editors Wring Their Hands Over Stuyvesant Cheaters

The NY Post editors work for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation - you know, the company embroiled in a hacking/corruption scandal that has seen over 60 of its current and former employees arrested on hacking, bribery, conspiracy and/or corruption charges. The latest arrested was a Sun journalist on suspicion of corruption on August 7th. This followed another Sun journalist who was arrested on July 20th on computer hacking charges and made "Employee of the Month" a day after his arrest.

News Corporation is currently enjoying not one, not two, but three different police investigations into its criminal activities in Britain as well as a Parliamentary investigation. The SEC and the FBI are looking into allegations of corruption here in the U.S. and could bring charges against the company for breaking the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bloomberg News reported on August 1 that News Corp. is also facing corporate hacking offenses over phone hacking.

In addition, the company faces numerous lawsuits from hacking victims in Britain and will soon face at least three suits brought by victims allegedly hacked by News Corp. reporters here on U.S. soil.

The former head of News International (Rebekah Brooks) and the former News of the World editor and aide to Prime Minister David Cameron (Andy Coulson) are both set to face hacking and corruption charges in the case. Brooks also faces charges of corruption and cover-up in the bribery case and Coulson faces conspiracy charges in Scotland relating the case.

News Corporation paid out over $315 million in costs related to the hacking scandal and faces hundreds of millions more the next fiscal year.

The scandal has been so damaging to the company that they have been forced to split into two, relegating the damaged newspaper properties to a smaller corporate entity while the more lucrative entertainment properties will go it on their own.

I give this context as background to note that the Post editors decry the culture of cheating at Stuyvesant high school and are - shocked, shocked - to find out that neither the new interim principal at Stuyvesant nor the NYCDOE brain trust seem all that concerned about the cheating:

Good news, Stuyvesant HS cheaters: Your new principal sees nothing amiss at your school — despite a massive cheating scandal recently that involved 71 students.

And despite reports in The Post from Stuyvesant sources, including students, of a serious “culture of cheating” at the school.

No, obviously, this is terrible news — even for the cheaters. Because if new principal Jie Zhang doesn’t end that twisted mindset fast, she won’t be doing the kids, the school or anyone else any favors.

First, as they say, she needs to recognize the problem. “I have not been made aware or have a reason to believe there is ongoing cheating there,” she says.

Willful blindness? As one source told The Post, “Everybody cheats all the time — on homework, on tests, on everything.”

As recent Stuyvesant grad Daniel Solomon reported on these pages, a school-newspaper survey found some 90 percent of seniors had advance knowledge of test questions and 5 percent ’fess up to cheating on SATs and AP exams.

Either Zhang has some quick learning to do — or she finds the scams tolerable.

Neither bodes well for the school.

Or perhaps she’s just taking cues from the Department of Education, which let off six of the 71 cheaters with just suspensions and the other 65 with no penalties at all.

The DOE wouldn’t even expel ringleader Nayeem Ahsan, who used his cellphone to photograph and distribute a Spanish exam.

It was encouraging that long-time principal Stanley Teitel left after the scandal broke. But what will that have accomplished if Zhang carries on his tradition?

Let’s face it. Eventually, cheating is likely to catch up with kids sometime in their lives, and the school’s sterling rep will fade.

That wouldn’t be a mere scandal — but a full-blown tragedy.

OK, before I get to the hypocrisy of the Posties, let's deal with the editorial itself.

The Post is wrong to say that cheating will catch up with these kids sometime in their lives.

In American culture, cheating is a privileged thing.

The guys on Wall Street do it all the time and nothing - I mean nothing - ever happens to them.

The hedge fundies cheat, the big banks rigged LIBOR rates and so far only one has received a slap on the wrist (but promises of no criminal prosecution!), the Obama administration has refused to prosecute even one person responsible for the financial collapse of '08, former NY State attorney general Andrew Cuomo also refused to bring charges against anyone for the same crimes, and current Treasury Secretary Geithner knew 16 Big Banks were fixing LIBOR rates in order to enrich themselves and make their balance sheets look better than they were and did nothing about it - tell me exactly how the culture of cheating the kids at Stuyvesant are learning won't be rewarded in Big Business, especially on Wall Street, in the future?

Seriously, learning how to cheat and get away with it is an indispensable lesson every member of the American elite must learn before adulthood.

Next, let's deal with the allegations of cheating.

The Post is decrying the whitewashing of the Stuyvesant cheating scandal which involved one school and 71 or so students, and rightfully so, but nowhere in the paper (or its sister paper, the Wall Street Journal) do we see any story of the whitewashing of the massive cheating scandal that took place in Washington D.C. under education reform darling Michelle Rhee that involved over 100 schools, more than half of all D.C. schools.

Erasure rates of answers from wrong to right were so frequent at many of these D.C. schools that statisticians say you would have a better chance of winning the Powerball lottery twice than having all of those wrong answers in all of those schools erased and right answers put in their place by real kids.

Yesterday, the Washington D.C. school system exonerated itself by limiting the cheating scandal investigation to one school, the one with the most egregious erasures and the one focused upon by USA Today when they brought this scandal to light back in 2011.

Yesterday USA Today reported that D.C. officials limited the scope of the investigation because

they believed news coverage of the scandal would limit future cheating — and because schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson handed over "no additional evidence" of cheating or "investigative leads to pursue."

There you have it - news reports of a limited, whitewashed investigation of past cheating ought to discourage future cheating and how can we expect to investigate this thing fully when the DCPS chancellor refuses to hand over additional evidence? Gollee, we just have to go with what we have here, folks.

Clearly there is a cover-up going on in the DCPS and city officials in Washington D.C. are helping, along with officials at the USDOE who don't seem to want to get to the bottom of the matter either, perhaps because an investigation of Rhee's D.C. tenure that found widespread cheating would undercut so many of the "Rheeforms" the USDOE is pursuing nationwide, with D.C. as one of the "models" for where these "Rheeforms" have supposedly worked.

It seems to me this is a much bigger scandal than the Stuyvesant scandal, and while I have no problem with the Posties decrying the cover-up at Stuyvesant over cheating, I do take issue with their refusal to call for a wide and "rigorous" investigation into their education reform darling, Michelle Rhee and her tenure of cheating at DCPS. I understand that the DCPS is not in New York, but since the DCPS reforms and evaluation system have been promoted by many education reformers around the country - including those at the Post - I think it is only fair and honest that the Posties decry the whitewashed investigation of Rhee and DCPS while they're decrying the Stuyvesant whitewash.

Finally, let's look at the hypocrisy of the Post editorial writers, decrying what they allege is a culture of cheating and cover-up at Stuyvesant.

Given that the NY Post's parent company is embroiled in a scandal that stems from a culture of cheating (hacking into people's phones for stories, hacking into people's computers for stories, paying public officials for privileged info about people and using that info in stories, threatening to use damaging info against enemies) and a culture of cover-up (even Rupert Murdoch himself has admitted that News Corporation spent more time trying to make the hacking scandal go away than trying to fix it and right the wrongs done), it sees quite hypocritical for the Posties to write so indignantly about the harm done by the Stuyvesant cheating and cover-up.

After all, it seems to me that these kids who engaged in the cheating can grow up to be very successful businessmen or women, very successful hedge fund managers or Big Bank CEO's, real estate moguls, or even - gosh, we can only hope - journalists who work for ethically-challenged News Corporation.

And therein lies the crux of the hypocrisy in this story.

Even as we say we don't tolerate cheating as a culture, the fact of the matter is, we reward it constantly.

America is not some meritocracy where those who work the hardest and the longest, who are the most forward-thinking and most innovative, are the ones who rise to the top.

America is a kleptocracy where those who are the most ruthless, the least ethical, the most willing to act criminally are the ones who rise to the top.

We see this again and again - from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to Michelle Rhee to Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, the most ruthless, the least ethical, the most selfish and (often) the most willing to engage in criminal acts survive and thrive while the rest of us who play by the rules get screwed again and again.

So really, those kids at Stuyvesant have learned the best lesson possible for them.

As members of the elite, they have cheated and gotten away with it.

Just as most members of the American elite cheat and get away with it.

Seems to me this lesson has simply reinforced the reality in 21st Century America.

Accountability Is For Teachers

Not for the Elites who nearly brought down the economy, bankrupted the country with a mix of tax cuts for rich people and wars, and now want to lecture about spending cuts and deficits.

Oh, and Krugman doesn't mention this, but of course these same Elites blame public worker salaries, benefits and pensions for the "crisis".

Meanwhile - BOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!! - there goes another $500,000 million dollar drone missile into Pakistan.

BOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!! - There goes another one into Libya.

How many wars are we in, anyway?

Is GE paying ANY taxes?

How about the rest of the rich people?

Did anybody from Lehman, Bear, Goldman, JP Morgan Chase, et al. go to jail?

But the teachers are the ones who get the value-added assessments in the LA Times.

It's a fucked up world.

Seriously.

Bloomberg Criticized For Saying City Streets Safe For Women

The Mayor of Money is revealed as an out-of-touch elitist once again:

Mayor Bloomberg crowed Monday that city streets have never been safer - day or night - for women, but some skeptical New York ladies suggested he take a walk in their neighborhoods.

At a tour of a Queens school Monday night, the mayor proudly declared: "People don't remember 10 years ago. They've really already forgotten when you couldn't walk the streets."

"Today, a woman could walk in virtually every neighborhood in this city during the day and not look over her shoulder, and most neighborhoods at night," he added.

But Bronx resident Carla Banks, 31, said living on the upper East Side has left the mayor clueless about what women face.

"Bloomberg's trippin'," said Banks, of Kingsbridge Heights. "This isn't the upper East Side. He's definitely out of touch with what women deal with in the Bronx."

Her pal Devon Irving, 29, said he should take a solo stroll down her block. "I know the mayor doesn't have to worry about walking home from the subway, but I sure do," said Irving, of Mount Eden. "If he thinks we don't still have to watch our backs, he's crazy."

Nora Nestor, 32, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said she wouldn't change where she lives, but she never lets her guard down.

"I love my neighborhood. I feel safe in it, but I wouldn't walk anywhere in New York without being aware of what's behind my shoulder," she said. "As a woman, you have to be aware of your surroundings."

Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Elizabeth Truemper, 25, said some parts of Brooklyn are more dangerous for women than men.

"There's no way I'd walk from Bed-Stuy to Bushwick, but I have male friends that walk from Bushwick to Bed-Stuy," she said.

The mayor boasted about female safety after Rabbi Yaakov Bender, the dean of Yeshiva Darchei Torah School in Far Rockaway, thanked him and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly for keeping the streets safe.

But at a community meeting the mayor later attended in Far Rockaway, Beverly Champion didn't second the sentiment.

She complained to the mayor about crime in housing developments, saying, "I've lived here all my life, and I've never seen it as worse." Champion said she doesn't feel safe walking around with her purse and laughed when told what the mayor had said earlier about crime.

"He's not telling the truth," she said. "He just takes the reports that they give him, but he doesn't know."

Even women with tony Manhattan zip codes called the mayor out on his comments.

"He's a bit off the mark," said Carson Demmons, 26, of NoHo. "I've lived in neighborhoods where I wouldn't give it a second thought during the day, but it was a whole different story at night. You still need to keep your wits about you."

Bloomberg's boasts did get some support - from women who live in his neighborhood.

"Yes, it has gotten better," said upper East Sider Theresa Ackerly, 43. "This nabe changed a lot. Back in the '80s, there were a lot of gangs. Mayor Bloomberg is doing all right in terms of crime."

Come on, ladies - if the snow is cleared on the UES, the city is cleared.

And if the UES feels safer to the mayor and that other woman the reporter talked to, then the city is safer.

The Bronx? Far Rockaway?

Where the f@#k are those places?

The mayor doesn't know, and he doesn't really care.

The Legacy of No Child Left Behind

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel sums up NCLB:

Nine years ago this week President George Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act that:

A. Stunted the creativity and critical thinking skills of American public school children
B. Prevented teachers from tapping into the full potential of their students
C. Fostered a school environment that values test-taking skills above all others
D. Stole the joy from teaching and learning
E. All of the above

Indeed, NCLB did all of that.

But given what is currently slated to go into law if the Obama administration gets its way on reauthorization, the Obama/Duncan No Child Left Behind Jr. will make Bush's No Child Left Behind look like the unschooling movement.

High stakes standardized test in every subject in every grade.

Teachers graded, paid and evaluated based solely upon those test scores.

5%-10% of the "lowest performing schools" around the country closed every year.

5%-10% of the "lowest performing teachers" around the country fired every year.

Many traditional public schools replaced by nonunionized charter schools. Many of those charters will be operated by for-profit education management organizations.

Title One money no longer distributed according to the number of students living below the poverty line in a given district. Instead, it will be distributed using a Race to the Top competition that will hand the money out to the most "reform-minded" of districts and stiff others who don't pursue policies approved by the USDOE.

Federal standards, federal curriculum and federal tests superseding every bit of local control over schooling that has survived the original NCLB.

Education policy made by a small band of corporate-friendly, Gates- and Broad Foundation-trained "reformers," most of whom have little-to-no actual teaching or classroom experience.

Nine years from now, after the Obama/Duncan/Gates/Broad/Bloomberg/Jeb Bush reforms destroy public education, destroy an entire generation of students and teachers, and dumb the country down even further than it already is, we may look back at George W. Bush's original No Child Left Behind law fondly and with nostalgia.

Scary, but true.

Change we can believe?

Uh, no.

More of the same - only much worse.

Obama Loses The Elites

From one of the deans of conventional wisdom, Mark Halperin:

"With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle."

I sent an email to Halperin telling him that President Obama has also lost educators and teachers. Here is that email:

Mr. Halperin,

I am a veteran NYC teacher with 10 years experience.

I think the Obama administration's education policies are a travesty. He ran his campaign vowing to end the worst excesses of NCLB; but his RttT program has suckered states into adding standardized tests in every subject at every grade level in order to track the stats of students, teachers and schools. He has added NO money to classrooms (I have 170 students this term, no money for new books, a hole in the roof of my classroom that is 3 feet by six feet) but has added plenty to top-down reforms that privilege testing and data tracking over curriculum and resources for schools.

I also want to note that candidate Obama ran against scapegoating teachers for all the ills in public education. But now President Obama has decided, along with much of the media elite, that teachers are THE problem in schools and if we can just find a way to fire many of them, everything will go swimmingly.

The morale among my colleagues is very low. We feel, as Diane Ravitch has been saying most eloquently, that President Obama has decided to double down on failed policies like charter schools (the CREDO study shows only 17% of charter perform better than traditional public schools while 37% perform worse), merit pay (the Vanderbilt study show merit pay does NOT increase performance by either teacher or student), and teacher evaluations tied to test scores (NYU economist Sean Corcoran has shown how value-added analysis of test scores has a MOE of 20%), and scapegoating of teachers and schools that are irreparably damaging our school system.

So as you write about all the people in this country who have lost faith in President Obama, you ought to add educators. I understand that most media elites these days perhaps agree with the Obama administration rather than educators about reform, but as a 10 year vet I can tell you that these policies are doing irreparable harm to students and schools and if they are not stopped soon, you will see a future generation even less educated, less skilled and less emotionally and socially developed than the current ones.

PS: I work in a school that primarily serves students of color. You would be surprised how many of my students have also lost faith and hope in President Obama.

Halperin is one of the Morning Joe crew and regularly bashes teachers and schools.

But I thought it would be good to send him this email anyway.

As for the CW that Obama has lost the elites and most people think the White House is
"over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters, I think that is dead right."

What is it that they say about even a blind squirrel finding an acorn sometimes?

Well, Mark Halperin found an acorn with this statement.