Rotten Apples - Time Magazine article on Silicon Valley's war on teachers

On a warm day in early June, a Los Angeles County trial-court judge, Rolf M. Treu, pink-cheeked beneath a trim white beard, dropped a bombshell on the American public-school system. Ruling in Vergara v. California, Treu struck down five decades-old California laws governing teacher tenure and other job protections on the grounds that they violate the state’s constitution.

In his 4,000-word decision, he bounded through an unusually short explanation of what was an unprecedented interpretation of the law. Step 1: Tenure and other job protections make it harder to fire teachers and therefore effectively work to keep bad ones in the classroom. Step 2: Bad teachers “substantially undermine” a child’s education. That, Treu wrote, not only “shocks the conscience” but also violates the students’ right to a “basic equality of educational opportunity” as enshrined in California’s constitution.

...the lawsuit was launched and underwritten by a Silicon Valley muckety-muck who lives in one of the fanciest ZIP codes in America. Others painted Treu, who was appointed by Republican Governor Pete Wilson, as a brazen partisan. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and former D.C. chancellor of schools Michelle Rhee praised the decision for challenging the “broken status quo.”

The reform movement today is led not by grassroots activists or union leaders but by Silicon Valley business types and billionaires. It is fought not through ballot boxes or on the floors of hamstrung state legislatures but in closed-door meetings and at courthouses. And it will not be won incrementally, through painstaking compromise with multiple stakeholders, but through sweeping decisions–judicial and otherwise–made possible by the tactical application of vast personal fortunes. (read more at the link)

http://time.com/3533556/the-war-on-teacher-tenure/

After reading this article about the war on teachers by Silicon Valley and other billionaires, I wondered why they're spending fortunes and are so hell bent on joining hands with Republicans to destroy teachers. I mean, they obviously have nothing to do with education. They are into coding, right? They come up with new phones, with new programs, yada yada. Right? Then suddenly it hit me why they're spending so much money trying to destroy and weaken teachers and re-invent education: If they manage to destroy teachers and teachers' unions, if they manage to re-invent education, they'll strike gold. Just think - how much coding, how many programs, how many computers can these individuals sell to states' education? Taking over schools and weakening teachers, they can reshape schools into places where all that exists is standardized test after standardized test, computer learning, and a monitor sitting by helping the kids get on and learn to how to manage the computer that does the teaching.

Silicon Valley and Republican billionaires can make literally FORTUNES, BILLIONS. Even Bill Gates is in on it! These people aren't stupid. They know how much money they can gain from taking over the entire education system. Which is why they're spending millions destroying the current, teacher-based education system in courts and through propaganda.

While the rest of us are sitting around like total idiots thinking of the kindness of Silicon Valley and other Republican billionaires because of their interest in students, THEY are busy counting their future dollars which they envision as part of their destruction of schools as we know them.

There are 3 important issues these billionaires don't want discussed, but we need to discuss, and need to discuss them widely:

1. One of the biggest problems with schools today is not the educational system, but the influence of the COMPUTER CULTURE itself on kids, which damages the way children think (or rather, renders them unable to think), how they are influenced by the images and constant connection to computerized systems. Kids exposed to phone computers and other computers 24/7 can barely reason. They can't use logic. They can't memorize. They have no originality. Computers themselves have caused students to fall behind. There are ample studies being done on this, which of course, Silicon Valley doesn't want discussed. But oh yes, kids are experts at Tweeting, posting a dialog and sexting nude photos.

2. Also, studies have shown that if you take any subject (except coding or googling) and teach it to one group via teachers, and to another group via computer, the group taught by teachers will learn it well, while the group learning it from computers will NOT learn it properly.

3. The more time a person spends in front of any sort of computer, the less efficiently they are able to use their brain. This does not mean that they cannot use the computer better. In fact, they become addicted to the computer because on their own they can't calculate anything, remember anything, or have inventiveness.

We need to start discussing in the public sphere why exactly Silicon Valley wants to destroy teachers, and just how much they stand to gain monetarily by turning schools into robotic places where kids will truly learn almost nothing.

Apparently privatization has created an increase in incarcerations.

I've been watching Secret Prisons on the History Channel, and they were discussing HOW the privatization of prisons caused the population of incarcerated to increase. They gave one example of judges who were accepting $$$$ from the builder of a detention facility to make his business successful. I looked it up on Wiki, and here's what it said:

Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of inmates in the detention centers.[1][2]
For example, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, or shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Apparently this is not unusual since privatization.

How come I feel like I'm always the last one to find out these things? Still, it affirms my belief that privatization of government SUCKS.

What if those making education decisions for public schools, had to be public school grads??

Someone else posted a great blog about education, and it helped me to find a GREAT blog titled, Children Are More Than Test Scores.

Within the blog, I found an article titled:

What if? What if the education reformers had to send their children to public school?

What if only elected officials who send their children to public schools were allowed to vote on education issues?

What if only Ed Reformers who send their children to public schools could talk about education reform?

What if only education policy makers who send their children to public schools could be appointed Commissioners of Education?

What if Ed Reformers had to be public school graduates themselves?

Something makes me think things would be different.

if that were the case, then the issues we would be talking about now would be:

Equity,

Class sizes,

An army of reading and math tutors,

More art teachers,

More music teachers,

More school field trips,

More after school programs,

More play time for young children,

Inquiry,

Innovative, creative, imaginative Saturday and summer school programs,

Our school would stay open in the evenings for family activities, and adult education program,

If only these Public School Education Reformers had public schools education.

http://childrenaremorethantestscores.blogspot.com/2014/04/what-if-what-if-ed-reformers-had-to.html


Instead, the ones deciding what shall happen to public schools, are the graduates of private schools, the graduates of ivy league "legacy" schools, and the members of the 1% or their lackeys. And the only damned thing they've come up with is: TEST THE KIDS MORE!

Ayn Rand - Her mentally ill world where good consists of worshiping the one percenters

Why are these wealthy, politically involved businesses exempt from paying taxes?

Flip on Daystar television at any hour of the day and you'll likely see the elements of modern televangelism: a stylish set, an emotional spiritual message and a phone number on the screen soliciting donations.

Based in a studio complex between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, and broadcasting to a potential audience of 2 billion people around the globe, Daystar calls itself the fastest growing Christian television network in the world.

The Internal Revenue Service considers Daystar something else: a church.

Televangelists have a choice when they deal with the IRS. Some, like Pat Robertson and Billy Graham, register as religious organizations. They're exempt from most taxes but still must file disclosure reports showing how they make and spend their money.

Daystar and dozens of others call themselves churches, which enjoy the greatest protection and privacy of all nonprofit organizations in America.

Churches avoid not only taxes, but any requirement to disclose their finances. And, as NPR has learned, for the last five years churches have avoided virtually any scrutiny whatsoever from the federal government's tax authority.

Today, television evangelists are larger, more numerous, more complex, richer, with bigger audiences than ever before and yet they are the least transparent of all nonprofits.

The top three religious broadcasters — Christian Broadcast Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network and Daystar Television — are worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars combined, according to available records.

With $233 million in assets, Daystar is the largest religious TV network in America that calls itself a church. As such, there's no objective way for viewers — who annually give an average of $35 million to Daystar — to be certain how their money is spent.

But NPR found hundreds of pages of court records filed as part of a 2011 employee lawsuit in Texas that has since been dismissed. In them were six years of audited financial statements from Daystar, including balance sheets, income and expense records and detailed accounting of donations.

Those records offer a deep and unprecedented look at the inner workings of a modern religious empire, and they raise issues as basic as the definition of "church" and as a grand as the role of government in religion.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/04/01/43211/can-a-television-network-be-a-church-the-irs-says/

George Clooney storms out of heated dinner after Steve Wynn calls President Barack Obama an 'a--hole

"I said the President was my longtime friend and then he said, 'Your friend is an a--hole,'" he continued. "At that point I told Steve that HE was an a--hole and I wasn't going to sit at his table while he was being such a jacka--. And I walked out."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/george-clooney-storms-dinner-obama-called-a-hole-article-1.1766406#ixzz2zkmLKOdd

Steve Wynn *IS* a jackass - an aged jackass with frizzy, excessively-dyed corrosion-colored hair and a doofus fake-tooth smile, who thinks only of money and acquisition.

However, I do love George Clooney. That man has got it all, heart, soul, intelligence, and beauty.

Simply beautiful - it made me cry

The Reagan deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the incredible increase of crime in the US

Increased numbers of jail and prison inmates with severe mental illness have been inversely associated with public hospital bed numbers since the initiation of deinstitutionalization.

The proportion of mentally ill individuals within the homeless population is typically estimated at roughly one-third of all males and two-thirds of all females.

Staff in emergency departments in some states complain that psychiatric patients can be boarded in EDs for 24 to 48 hours. As remarkably long as that may sound, ED workers in other states scoff at this figure, reporting that they have psychiatric patients stuck in emergency departments as long as four weeks

....mental illness-related calls outnumbered calls for routine larceny, traffic accidents and domestic disputes.

http://tacreports.org/consequences

ALSO:

http://tacreports.org/tables <-- this allows you to see where your state ranks. Also, look at beds per 100,000

Right wing religion: The legal complaint filed against Douglas Phillips & Vision Forum

I know! I think it boils down to racism.

The ones voting against their own self interests are poor Southern whites. Poor non-whites are wiser in that regard and don't have to vote against themselves.

We think of the Civil War as being something long past. However, it is still quite fresh in the minds and hearts of poor Southern whites. They inherited that "sense" of white superiority from their poor white families and ancestors, ancestors who might have gone hungry, but by golly gee at least they felt superior compared with non-whites. They could boss around non-whites, they could go hungry but saw that non-whites went even hungrier than they did, and they felt special because there was that group that had less of everything, and which had once been considered not to be human, but property. Southern poor whites felt that if they had nothing else in this world, at least they had that - they were considered "superior" to non-whites. They long for that. It's what they've grown up around. It's the only thing they had that made their suffering tolerable, a superiority over non-whites.

Nowadays, as the U.S. hobbles and limps toward full racial equality, that superiority and sense of importance is being stripped away bit by bit from them, and they are forced to face that they truly have nothing. That must feel hellish to Southern poor whites. They learned racism on their ancestors' knees and clung to that because it was the only thing that made them feel special.

In the absence of exposure to a higher education (not necessarily schooling - I think most of what we learn we learn, we learn from people we are exposed to, not from books and teachers), all they are stuck with is a very limited world and world view, which struggles to cling to the vestiges of that sense of "white superiority" their ancestors once felt, and that disdain for non-whites which still gets passed on from poor Southern white family to family. That sense of importance for being white can even be found in their small churches, where they worship their white Jesus among other poor whites, and grasp desperately at proof that they are still as important as they were when at least they were more "important" than non-whites. Otherwise, all they will be able to see in the mirror is poverty and ignorance.

Of the two parties in the U.S., the one that is indisputably racist in every imaginable way, also happens to be the one that has been working overtime for 33 years to tear to shreds the very programs that Southern poor whites depend on and need to survive. It's the party that fights tooth and nail to destroy any public education, because the GOP is terrified of the poor having access to good education. But Southern poor whites are single-minded and have never known much else but their pride in their white skin, so they hang on to their wish that the world were still a world of slavery, when they could feel important for having white skin, even if they barely had anything to put on the table for their families. Even those Southern poor whites who might realize that Republicans are out to destroy any lifeline they might now have, can't help themselves in voting for the savagely racist political party. It's an itch they just need to scratch.

Basically, the South is chronically ill with a deep-set racism that I had never witnessed before until I moved from Miami to North Florida, near Georgia. It is truly something to behold! I could write a book about the shit I've heard from Southern poor whites near here. As crazy a place as Miami is, nothing, nothing beats this for sheer insanity.