yurbud
yurbud's JournalTell teachers' retirement fund to DIVEST from standardized testing companies
If you aren't a teacher, but know someone who is, please forward this to them.
The retirement fund just recently set a precedent by divesting from gun companies, but corporate backed education reform is threatening the very existence of public education by buying politicians and policies that benefit Wall Street at the expense of our kids.
We need to make sure they aren't using our money to kill our jobs and our schools. I'm providing contact information for California, but if you post other states in the comments, I'll be glad to add that to the post itself in updates.
In California, you can contact CALSTRS, our retirement system at http://www.calstrs.com/contact-us
800-228-5453 916-414-5040 (Fax)
P. O. Box 15275
Sacramento, CA 95851-0275
Feel free to use or modify this brief message:
As a member of CalSTRS, I ask that since you have divested from companies whose guns kill students and teachers, you also divest from the corporations pushing education "reform" that are killing public education so they can cannibalize the corpse.
Start with those pushing endless repetitive high stakes testing, like Pearson, ETS, and McGraw Hill.
As an educator, I do not want to invest in businesses that corrupt our public education policy for the financial gain of a few.
I look forward to hearing your plan of action on this.
You can also tell your union to demand that CalSTRS divest from corporate education reform companies, starting with testing companies. Just change the message slightly:
As a member of CFT (or CTA) I ask that since CalSTRS has divested from companies whose guns kill students and teachers, I ask that you direct CalSTRS to also divest from the corporations pushing education "reform" that are killing public education so they can cannibalize the corpse.
Start with those pushing endless repetitive high stakes testing, like Pearson, ETS, and McGraw Hill.
As an educator, I do not want to invest in businesses that corrupt our public education policy for the financial gain of a few.
I look forward to hearing your plan of action on this.
In the AFT, you can contact:
Gary Ravani
K-12 Council President
cfteck12@aol.com
Administrative Office
California Federation of Teachers
2550 North Hollywood Way, Suite 400
Burbank, CA 91505
818-843-8226, Fax 818-843-4662
If you are in CFT but not a K-12 teacher, contact:
Joshua Pechthalt, President
jpechthalt@cft.org
In the CTA:
President Dean Vogel
E-mail: dvogel@cta.org
P.O. Box 921
1705 Murchison Drive
Burlingame, CA 94011-0921
Phone: (650) 552-5307
FAX: (650) 552-5007
Check back later for a proposal on what we could do WITHOUT testing companies that would also save states a lot of money.
http://equalpayforequalwork.blogspot.com/2013/02/tell-teachers-retirement-fund-to-divest.html
Rahm's DLC, neoliberal, corrupt policies tank him in the polls
Rahm is as close to a pure DLC corporate Democrat as you can get. He is to those who have the reins of Democratic Party what Dick Cheney was to the GOP in the Bush years: the ugly heart of coal that no amount of PR and propaganda can pretty up.
Democrats like Rahm are why the GOP is still alive instead of long dead and buried. He reinforces the stereotype that all politicians are alike and will do pretty much the same thing on the big issues because in his case, it's essentially true.
We need more choice than one party that gives away our country to corporations while shredding the social safety net and another that gives us a sleeping pill and then shreds quietly.
***
Specifically, just 2 percent of Chicagoans surveyed said they strongly approve of the mayor's job performance, with 12 percent somewhat approving and 5 percent leaning that way. At the opposite end, 13 percent strongly disapprove, 9 percent somewhat disapprove and 13 percent lean toward disapproval.
In Chicago, that gives Mr. Emanuel a net minus 16 rating, down from the plus 4 he had in September, when 37 percent approved and 33 percent disapproved.
Notably, the share of those disapproving of Mr. Emanuel's job performance hasn't moved much, going from 33 percent to 35 percent. The big shift has occurred in the mixed feelings category up from 21 percent to 30 percent and the not sure category, which went from 12 percent in September to 16 percent from Feb. 12 to 15, when the survey was conducted.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130221/BLOGS02/130229963/emanuels-poll-rating-turns-negative
RAVITCH: How charter schools exclude kids they don't want & shake down parents of those they do
Charter schools are public schools run by private, mostly for-profit contractors with taxpayer money.
To try to goose their test scores, they exclude kids who are difficult to educate and skim the cream of the crop. In a Reuters investigative report, one of the ways they do this is requiring a fifteen page research paper to get in. If a kid could do that, they should be done with K-12 and applying to colleges.
If this is how they filter applicants, it makes the charters performance even less impressive: only 17% do better than regular public schools, and 37% do worse.
How Charter Schools Exclude the Kids They Dont Want
by dianerav
Stephanie B. Simon, investigative reporter for Reuters, has written a stunning exposé of the many ways that charter exclude kids who might drag down their test scores.
Getting in to a charter school, she writes, can be a "grueling experience."
Examples: "Students may be asked to submit a 15-page typed research paper, an original short story, or a handwritten essay on the historical figure they would most like to meet. There are interviews. Exams. And pages of questions for parents to answer, including: How do you intend to help this school if we admit your son or daughter?"
And this:
"Thousands of charter schools don't provide subsidized lunches, putting them out of reach for families in poverty. Hundreds mandate that parents spend hours doing "volunteer" work for the school or risk losing their child's seat. In one extreme example the Cambridge Lakes Charter School in Pingree Grove, Illinois, mandates that each student's family invest in the company that built the school - a practice the state said it would investigate after inquiries from Reuters."
And there is much more. Read it. Then ask, are these public schools or private schools subsidized with public money?
URL: http://wp.me/p2odLa-3YA
Will our democracy ever look like the internet?
With far less government secrecy, more people participating in more decision-making, and even wikilegislation?
I suspect that fear of those kind of changes, not for specific crimes they have committed, is why the government has come down so hard on Bradley Manning, Aaron Schwartz, and are so eager to get their hands on Julian Assange.
And they fear it because when information can no longer be the exclusive property of a few, to dribble out or hide to their own advantage, money and power are not far behind.
Will we have the government that the few fear so much in our lifetime?
I hope they select that African bishop as the new pope, just to see Republican Catholics
heads explode like in the Dave Chappelle blind black Klansman skit:
Sorry for the low video quality--I don't have time to fix it up pretty.
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Member since: Sun Jul 11, 2004, 07:58 PMNumber of posts: 39,405