Corbett Frees $45M Philly School Funds He Held Hostage

Another replay another city school closes because no schools helps children.

cheating chancellor Michelle Rhee talks how to fix education, the economy and anything else they care to ask on Meet the GE Press

Growing National Movement Against "High Stakes" Public School Testing

The ALEC -- Teach for America Connection

The ALEC -- Teach for America Connection

Last summer, quite by accident, I met a group of about six young adults on the MAX here in Portland who were traveling from the airport to train for their new jobs.  They were talking about having just finished their teaching jobs and how happy they were to be done with it. Being an unemployed teacher myself,  I listened for a while and then struck up a conversation.  They identified themselves as Teach for America corps members who had just completed their obligatory two year stints in the classroom.  They were headed to the Stand for Children offices to be trained in writing education policy.  Most had been hired to work as legislative assistants in state houses around the country. I asked a few probing questions about their education expertise, especially in policy.  Turns our none of them had any education credentials.  Some had worked on their masters degrees during teaching, but none had studied education or education policy.  They really didn't get my point. The arrogance was palpable.  I finally asked one of them point blank, "Don't you think you should have some education and experience before writing education policy?" They assured me that over the next two weeks (I think, anyway, short time) they would be trained to do it.

I hadn't thought about that encounter much since. But when I read Diane Ravitch's latest article in the Answer Sheet, Ravitch: A Primer on the Group Driving School Reform,  it occurred to me that Stand for Children could be the conduit to the uniformity in education legislation using Teach for America "leaders" as the delivery system. Last summer ALEC was barely a blip on my radar so I hadn't make a connection back then.

Could Stand for Children be training former Teach for America corps members to write ALEC policy for state legislatures? I know Oregon legislators aren't savvy enough to develop language and coordinate ideas that mesh with those in other states, but their Teach for America, Stand for Children trained assistants may well be.  With a little help from a persistent friend, this is what I found out.

Despite Millions of Dollars in ads Scott Walker can't move the dial

Charles Franklin, a political scientist and expert in Wisconsin politics who directs the Marquette poll, sends over some numbers.

In January, Walker’s job approval was 51 percent; in March, it was 50 percent; and this month, it's 47 percent.

In January, Walker was leading Barrett 50-44; in March, 47-45; and this month, he trails 46-47. (Among likely voters, Walker leads by a point; all of these findings suggest a mostly unchanging dead heat.)

“There’s been a great deal of advertising in the state, especially from the Walker campaign and Republican supporters, and we’ve seen virtually no movement in the Walker numbers,” Franklin tells me.

What’s particularly interesting here is that just yesterday, Walker announced he’d raised a staggering $13 million in three months for the recall fight. But even though he’s likely to outspend his Dem opponent in the home stretch, it’s unclear how much that will matter, because the numbers suggest ads are unlikely to move the needle much going forward.

This means the race is all going to come down to turnout — the one area where Dems and unions can match Walker in resources and organization, perhaps neutralizing Walker’s ad spending advantage, Franklin says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/millions-in-tv-ads-but-no-poll-movement-for-scott-walker/2012/05/02/gIQA7vaJxT_blog.html?hpid=z3

The ED Show - Teachers under fire

LP - One of the last businesses you can making money off of is raiding the public treasury and muscling out the kids for the public dollars.

The circle of crooks close ranks. Cheating ex-superintendent of Washington D.C. school took money from phone hacking company. Don't forget then when Murdoch got in trouble he sent for the ex-head of the New York school system to help him out. This is from The Daily Kos

Fri Aug 19, 2011 at 06:00 AM PDT

Rhee's StudentsFirst received Murdoch money

by Laura Clawson

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura ClawsonLast month, as the News Corp. phone hacking scandal spread, reporters started looking into Rupert Murdoch's connections to education "reform." After all, former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein was one of Murdoch's top advisers and News Corp. had been out looking for a profit in selling technology to public schools.
While Klein had gone from the New York City schools to cashing in at News Corp, his Washington, D.C. counterpart, former chancellor Michelle Rhee, was starting up StudentsFirst, an advocacy organization raising piles of money to spread her anti-union, pro-unproven evaluation standards agenda around the country. Rhee, too, was known to have ties to Murdoch, but when asked last month if he had been a StudentsFirst donor, it took two days for a spokesperson to refuse to confirm or deny.
Consider it confirmed:

That's an excerpt from Class Warfare, a book by Steven Brill. Dana Goldstein writes that, in a pair of influential articles written in 2009 and 2010, Brill's:

framing of the education debate, borrowed from reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee—teachers unions vs. poor kids—infiltrated the popular consciousness more deeply than it had before, presaging the September 2010 release of the pro–charter school, anti–teachers union documentary Waiting for Superman.

According to Goldstein, Brill's Class Warfare reflects a somewhat more nuanced take on education than those earlier articles; however, as a Rhee ally, he was certainly in a position to reliably report that Murdoch had been a StudentsFirst donor. So, add Murdoch to the list of Rhee's supporters these days, along with John Kasich, Rick Scott, Chris Christie and a host of other Republican governors.