Lawsuit against The Accelerated Schools corporate charter chain

This action against The Accelerated Schools (TAS) corporation, on behalf of Michael Kohlhaas dot org, is my second lawsuit against a charter school. My first was against the Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) corporation as third chair at the amazing education law firm that I clerk part-time at. We won that one back in October on behalf of a student of color that was wrongfully expelled — look for a blogpost on the Law Offices of Hirji & Chau, LLP regarding that major victory soon. I'm so fortunate to have the esteemed Rosa K. Hirji and others at her firm as my mentors.

Back to the TAS suit, which is my first for the Michael Kohlhaas dot org activists. They gave me a choice of several to pick from, but I felt like starting with the corporate charter that wronged Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman was the right thing to do. My motivation to suffer through law school at night while working during the day, and then to pass the bar exam on the first attempt despite having no time off from work and no commercial bar prep class, was the prospect at becoming a threat to these vile, discriminatory charter school corporations that steal from children and our communities. I'm glad that I'm finally able to threaten the one thing charter corporations care about— their revenue streams.

New Court Details on KIPP Founder and Sexual Predator, Mike Feinberg

Recent revelations from a lawsuit brought by Mike Feinberg against KIPP have given a whole new meaning to KIPP's concept, "KIPP through college."  In what has to be the sleaziest example of a quid pro quo, it seems Feinberg offered ongoing financial help to an 18-year-old KIPP graduate for sex in return:

. . . Feinberg offered her financial support in exchange for sex, calling it a “tradition in the North,” according to KIPP lawyers. The proposition occurred in the early 2000s, at a time when the then-18-year-old worked for the charter network before enrolling in college, according to the motion.

Other details uncovered in court filings show Feinberg playing doctor, you might say, with a 12-year-old KIPPSTER whom he fondled repeatedly in his office on the excuse of providing physical examinations.

Other details to emerge: Feinberg used his school computer at least 30 times to access porn sites.

But nothing can stop a dedicated "stallion" educator like Mike Feinberg from fulfilling his moral calling.  Today he is helping run a charter school founded by (irony alert) his original patron and Gallery Furniture owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale.   

Philadelphia Poverty Committee: Jobs and Education Hearing 120519

Facebook is “the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

Latest Grades on School Funding

Tennessee has been at or near the forefront of education reformers' thirty-year crusade to come up with a cheap and easily-measured scheme to gauge education productivity.  In 1992, Tennessee formalized its chosen "accountability" strategy by writing into state statute Bill Sanders' value-added algorithms, which the wizened tobacco-chewing agricultural statistician had sold to the State as a "good and cheap" way to convince taxpayers that schools, teachers, and students were being held accountable for the millions of pennies that state politicians were demanding for K-12 education.  

The incredible story of value-added modeling (VAM), first researched by Dr. Denise Wilburn, was a core part of The Mismeasure of Education, our historical survey of American educational malpractice in the 20th Century. 

In being focused solely on educational improvements that required the State to do nothing whatsoever about the vast structural inequity and inequalities that influence educational opportunity or lack thereof, Tennessee became the darling of the U.S. Dept. of Education when it came time to try out the latest miseducative reform thought disorder for bribing and extorting better school performance as measured by racist and classist standardized tests.  

As a result, Tennessee has come to depend upon a continuing stream of federal grants to keep the state's school doors open.  It is this diseased kind of symbiosis that led Sen. Marsha Blackburn to step forward and offer a new home for the U. S. Department of Education in Tennessee, if Republicans can finagle a way to dismantle federal departments and move them out of DC.

For the past few years, the Education Law Center in Newark, NJ has published research on state levels of education funding fairness.  Having done next to nothing over the past 30 years to establish state accountability for school finance, Tennessee, which has a student poverty rate of 19 percent, remains near the bottom in school funding.  

Below are two snapshots that illustrate the vast differences among states.  I highly recommend reading MAKING THE GRADE 2019: HOW FAIR IS SCHOOL FUNDING IN YOUR STATE?

See p. 4 for everything between "A" and "F."

SUCKERS - Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Feinstein and Other "Democrats" Supporting DC Vouchers

Got this email from Pete Farruggio:

Just got this letter from California senator Dianne Feinstein (below) defending her support for vouchers, and revealing that she intends to interfere with the school system in Washington DC by co-sponsoring a voucher bill with a Republican. With her billionaire husband, she represents to me the state of the Democratic Party as the biggest obstacle to real change in the US political/economic system, as long as so many misinformed Americans support it.

Here's a local DC story about charter schools:

A charter school chain is trying to open a middle school Washington, D.C.'s Ward 8 and has enraged nearby residents in the process. 

https://tinyurl.com/yx8mm79h

Dear Dr. Farruggio:

Thank you for writing to me to express your concerns about vouchers.  I  appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

I understand that you do not support the reauthorization of the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act (Public Law 112-10), which provides funding to the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (DC OSP).  DC OSP provides scholarships for students to attend private schools and provides funding for D.C. Charter Schools and D.C. Public Schools that serve students from K-12th grade.

Like you, I believe that all students deserve access to high-quality education.  However, I believe that a one-size fits all approach to our children’s education does not always work and that different school models may work better for different students.  Parents should have an informed and meaningful choice in their children’s education.  

On January 24, 2019, I, along with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the “SOAR Reauthorization Act of 2019” (S. 213), which would allow families in the District of Columbia to continue to be able to choose their educational experience through the DC OSP program.  S. 213 would reauthorize funding for DC public schools, public charter schools, and DCOSP schools through Fiscal Year 2024.  The bill would also require an assessment of student growth and progress each year a child participates in the program.  S. 213 is currently awaiting consideration by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, of which I am not a member.

It is worth noting that I do not believe that our educational system should promote school choice at the expense of federal funding for students who attend public K-12 public schools.  You may be interested to know that when considering education reform through the Every Student Succeeds Act (Public Law 114-95), I voted against amendments that would have allowed federal funding to be used at private schools.

While we may have to agree to disagree on this issue, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate considers S. 213.  I will continue to fight to ensure that students have all the resources they need to succeed in school and beyond.

Once again, thank you for writing.  Should you have any other questions or comments, please call my Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at feinstein.senate.gov.  You can also follow me online at YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can sign up for my email newsletter at feinstein.senate.gov/newsletter.

Best regards.

College Board Is Selling Student Data to Selective Colleges

As a reward for his devotion to corporate power during the creation of Common Core, David Coleman was handed the plum job as CEO for the College Board, where his work to shape college applicants in the image desired by Bill Gates could continue, unimpeded.  

Now Coleman's greed has joined forces with the greed of America's richest universities and colleges to misuse student SAT data to enrich all participating parties. For just 47 cents each (payable to the College Board), colleges and universities can buy SAT records of Ivy League aspirants and invite them to apply, whether or not the students ever had a chance in hell to get in.

More applicants to say no to makes selective colleges look even more selective, thus raising the prominence of their brand, and it gives the College Board a half-buck per head, plus all the extra dough that rolls in from kids retaking the SAT when they find out that, oh, Columbia is interested in me??  

Diabolical? You bet. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Jori Johnson took the practice SAT test as a high-school student outside Chicago. Brochures later arrived from Vanderbilt, Stanford, Northwestern and the University of Chicago.

The universities’ solicitations piqued her interest, and she eventually applied. A few months later, she was rejected by those and three other schools that had sought her application, she said. The high-school valedictorian’s test scores, while strong by most standards, were well below those of most students admitted to the several schools that had contacted her.

“A lot of the rejections came on the same day,” said Ms. Johnson, a 21-year-old senior film major at New York University, one of three schools that accepted her out of 10 applications. “I just stared at my computer and cried.”

The recruitment pitches didn’t help Ms. Johnson, but they did benefit the universities that sent them. Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing pawns.

Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the college-admissions playing field.

The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to universities. . . .

Again, NAEP Shows Failure of Testing Reforms

The new NAEP scores are just out, and, per always, the hand-wringing has already begun.  Compared to 2017, scores disappoint, especially for reading.  

Below are charts showing the trajectory of scores over time for 4th and 8th grade students in Math and Reading.  Below the charts are a few observations.

When we look at these NAEP scores over time, one thing that stands out is the general tendency for scores to improve, however gradually.  When you look at the NAEP scores beginning in the early 70s to early 19990s through today, that trend is consistent--a gradual improvement over time, with bursts of punctuated improvement or decline.

A second aspect that stands out is that the rate that NAEP scores increased was greater before testing accountability became mandated by federal law than it was after.  From 1990 to 2002, before NCLB's testing accountability regime was passed or took hold, the rate of NAEP score growth for almost all grade levels and percentile rankings was higher than it was after 2002, when the NCLB testing madness began in earnest.

Also note that the longer that NCLB remained in effect, NAEP score growth slowed or even declined for some categories.  

NAEP score growth during the first 7 years of NCLB was greater than the last seven years of NCLB.

And when we look at the struggling students (10th and 25th percentiles) who were specifically targeted by NCLB testing accountability reforms, we see even more graphic examples of NCLB ineffectiveness in raising academic performance as measured by test scores.  

Without exception, 10th and 25th percentile students in 4th and 8th grade Math and Reading show declining NAEP scores from 2009 to 2019.  In fact, scores for 8th grade Reading students in the 10th and 25th percentiles actually declined over the past 20 years, from 1999 to 2019.  

We cannot forget that these sharp declines in Reading accompanied a growing focus on direct instruction and phonics as the officially sanctioned approach to reading.  We should not forget, either, the decline of school libraries in public schools during the past 20s and the near total absence of libraries and, certainly, of librarians in the 7,000+ charter chain gang schools across the U. S.

Judge Finds Contemptible Betsy DeVos Guilty of Contempt

from Salon:

A federal judge on Thursday held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education in contempt of court for violating an order on student loans. 

The judge had previously ordered the Department of Education to stop collecting on loans owed by students of a now-defunct for-profit college. But, despite the order, the department admitted it had erroneously collected on the loans of more than 16,000 borrowers — and many of those payments garnered from borrowers' federal tax refunds or wages, according to a court document obtained by Politico. . . . .

Warren Releases Solid New Education Plan

Spoiler Alert: Unlike in 2016, DFER is not happy!  We shall see what the Dem platform eventually looks like, but if Warren is the candidate, it will look nothing like 2016.

I am going to do several posts on Warren's new education plan, which kicks in the ass anything released so far by the other candidates.  

The first thing I checked out in the new plan was the charter school section.  Among the best news is the promise to eliminate the half-billion federal dollars a year being handed out to corporate charter operators under the Charter Schools Program (CSP).

From The Intercept:

Warren’s new education plan sends a strong signal of how her administration would think about not only charter schools but also other forms of school privatization. 

Her plan calls to end the diversion of tax dollars from traditional public schools through vouchers and voucher-like tax credits. A campaign spokesperson clarified that this means both working to stop the expansion of voucher programs and working towards ending existing ones. 

Biden and Sanders’s plans do not mention vouchers or tuition tax credits, though Sanders told The Washington Post that he would not support using public money in the form of vouchers or tax credits for private or religious school education, which he has a long record of opposing. Biden did not answer the same question when he was asked. 

In her plan, Warren frames her opposition to the 2016 charter school ballot initiative as an example of “fight[ing] back against the privatization, corporatization, and profiteering in our nation’s schools.” 

She pledges to “go further” and now calls for eliminating a federal grant program used to promote new charter schools. She pledges to see if there are any other federal programs that subsidize new charters and would “seek to limit the use of those programs for that purpose.”

From Huffington Post:

Warren pledges to fight to ban for-profit charter schools, which represent around 15% of the sector. But she also goes after nonprofit ones, promising to end a federal program that provides funding for new schools and opposing provisions that allow them to sometimes evade the same level of transparency and accountability as traditional public schools. The plan seeks to ban nonprofit charters that employ or outsource operations to for-profit service providers and calls for the IRS to investigate these schools’ nonprofit tax status.

From the Warren Plan:

To keep our traditional public school systems strong, we must resist efforts to divert public funds out of traditional public schools. Efforts to expand the footprint of charter schools, often without even ensuring that charters are subject to the same transparency requirements and safeguards as traditional public schools, strain the resources of school districts and leave students behind, primarily students of color. Further, inadequate funding and a growing education technology industry have opened the door to the privatization and corruption of our traditional public schools. More than half of the states allow public schools to be run by for-profit companies, and corporations are leveraging their market power and schools’ desire to keep pace with rapidly changing technology to extract profits at the expense of vulnerable students. 

This is wrong. We have a responsibility to provide great neighborhood schools for every student. We should stop the diversion of public dollars from traditional public schools through vouchers or tuition tax credits - which are vouchers by another name. We should fight back against the privatization, corporatization, and profiteering in our nation’s schools. I did that when I opposed a ballot question in Massachusetts to raise the cap on the number of charter schools, even as dark money groups spent millions in support of the measure. And as president, I will go further: 

• Ensure existing charter schools are subject to at least the same level of transparency and accountability as traditional public schools: Many existing charter schools aren’t subject to the same transparency and accountability requirements as traditional public schools. That’s wrong. That’s why I support the NAACP’s recommendations to only allow school districts to serve as charter authorizers, and to empower school districts to reject applications that do not meet transparency and accountability standards, consider the fiscal impact and strain on district resources, and establish policies for aggressive oversight of charter schools. Certain states are already starting to take action along these lines to address the diversion of public funds from traditional public schools. My administration will oppose the authorization of new charter schools that do not meet these standards. My administration also will crack down on union-busting and discriminatory enrollment, suspension, and expulsion practices in charter schools, and require boards to be made up of parents and members of the public, not just founders, family members, or profit-seeking service providers.
• End federal funding for the expansion of charter schools: The Federal Charter School Program (CSP), a series of federal grants established to promote new charter schools, has been an abject failure. A recent reportshowed that the federal government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never even opened, or opened and then closed because of mismanagement and other reasons. The Department of Education’s own watchdog has even criticized the Department’s oversight of the CSP. As President, I would eliminate this charter school program and end federal funding for the expansion of charter schools. I would also examine whether other federal programs or tax credits subsidize the creation of new charter schools and seek to limit the use of those programs for that purpose. 
• Ban for-profit charter schools: Our public schools should benefit students, not the financial or ideological interests of wealthy patrons like the DeVos and Walton families. I will fight to ban for-profit charter schools and charter schools that outsource their operations to for-profit companies.
• Direct the IRS to investigate so-called nonprofit schools that are violating the statutory requirements for nonprofits: Many so-called nonprofit schools – including charter schools – operate alongside closely held, for-profit service providers. Others are run by for-profit companies that siphon off profits from students and taxpayers. The IRS should investigate the nonprofit status of these schools and refer cases to the Tax Fraud Division of the Department of Justice when appropriate. I would also apply my plan’s ban on for-profit charter schools to any of these so-called “nonprofit” schools that actually serve for-profit interests. And my plan would ban self-dealing in nonprofit schools to prevent founders and administrators from funneling resources to service providers owned or managed by their family members. 
• Expand enforcement of whistleblower actions against schools that commit fraud against taxpayers: Our federal laws allow whistleblowers to bring actions to expose fraud and retrieve stolen federal money. The Department of Justice should expand its enforcement of these whistleblower actions to address fraud that appears all too common in certain charter schools, including online charter schools that falsify or inflate their enrollment numbers.

The Naked Truth about the National Reading Panel Reading Panel Report

From 2012 Schools Matter: The Naked Truth about the National Reading Panel R...: Stephen Krashen's letter to Ed Week in the previous post has motivated me to post the following review here for all those young teachers who are reading the deceptive, revisionist crap by those who want to impose another generation of the mind-scrubbing literacy tactics based on ideology rather than pragmatic practice grounded within good research and sound principles. ...

When Artificial Intelligence Equals Real Stupidity

Algorithms grading student essays?  What could go wrong?

“The algorithms are prone to a couple of flaws. One is that they can be fooled by any kind of nonsense gibberish sophisticated words. It looks good from afar but it doesn’t actually mean anything. And the other problem is that some of the algorithms have been proven by the testing vendors themselves to be biased against people from certain language backgrounds.”

Chicago Teachers Strike!

In support of all the teachers, parents, and kids in Chicago who are marching, striking, and honking their horns for public schools.  And in special memory of George Schmidt, who gave me this shirt when I was in Chicago in 2013 promoting my first book.

Carry on!

Judge Astounded by Betsy DeVos

DeVos is the perfect Secretary of ED for Traitor Trump--she's incompetent, corrupt, and contemptuous of the law:

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faces potential sanctions or a finding she’s in contempt of court for continuing to collect on the debt of former students at bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc., going so far as seizing their tax refunds and wages.

“I’m not sure if this is contempt or sanctions,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim told lawyers for the Education Department at a hearing Monday in San Francisco. “I’m not sending anyone to jail yet but it’s good to know I have that ability.” . . .

Rick Hess's Apologia for Child Abuser, Mike Feinberg

KIPP, Inc. would like to forget that Mike Feinberg is co-founder of KIPP, a corporate "no excuses" charter school chain made infamous by a weird macho management style that exhibits sadistic and masochistic excesses toward both students and teachers.  Adults and children are commonly worked to the point of physical and mental collapse and then discarded without any signs of empathy or concern by KIPP CEOs.  

KIPP's discarded victims are most often brainwashed to self-blame for their failure to meet KIPP's expectations, which keeps negative PR to a minimum while insulating the perpetrators from any sense of responsibility for their corrosive and cruel treatment of other humans.  It's a cult technique that continues to be well-funded, as corporate and federal support make the KIPP Model of total compliance schooling the dominant mode of segregating and culturally sterilizing economically disadvantaged black and brown children.

If we have historians a hundred years from now, KIPP Model practices will be viewed the same way we, today, view the eugenics ideology and practices of the 1920s.

While KIPP students are mostly poor and almost entirely black or brown, management is largely white male, and the teacher corps is majority white female.  The KIPP Model is the 21st Century version of the black industrial model of schooling for ex-slaves in the late 19th Century, a theory and practice that was perfected at Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute.  

At Hampton, the future black teachers were indoctrinated to accept their social subjugation and moral inferiority as their just due and to work their fingers to the bone in order to gain acceptance as second class citizens among the white elite. The 80 percent of students who were dismissed from Hampton before earning teaching certificates were viewed as victims of their own recalcitrance and/or laziness.

Last spring Mike Feinberg found himself being dismissed from KIPP, and just as KIPP students or teachers who are viewed as liabilities are disposed of without a second thought, so was Feinberg fired when his sexual dalliances with a middle school student and employees could not be covered up any longer and, thus, became a threat to the KIPP brand. 

Now corporate ed reformer and think tank denizen, Rick Hess, has offered another take on to the unfairness of Feinberg's firing.  Hess doesn't blame KIPP, Inc. nearly so much as he does 1) the timing of Feinberg's public outing, coming as it did during the peak of the Me Too movement, and 2) the "emotionally immature, impetuous, and impressionable" qualities of Feinberg's child accuser. Here's the most disgusting part of Hess's dissembling dissing of the accusations:

Educators work intimately and forge powerful bonds with emotionally immature, impetuous, and impressionable minors. A teacher can’t do their job whole-heartedly or well if asked to live in constant fear that unsupported allegations can ruin their professional lives and public reputations.

Trump's Privatization Plan for Medicare

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 3rd, 2019

Contact:
Linda Benesch, lbenesch@socialsecurityworks.org

Trump’s Executive Order is Backdoor Privatization of Medicare

(Washington, DC) — The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, on the Medicare executive order Donald Trump is signed today:

“Medicare Advantage is a hustle designed to allow for-profit corporations to suck up public dollars. For years, Republicans have shoveled money into Medicare Advantage plans and allowed them to offer benefits that traditional Medicare is forbidden from covering. This is a ploy to push seniors into Medicare Advantage plans instead of traditional Medicare. Medicare Advantage is stealth privatization intended to undermine traditional Medicare, which is an effective, popular government program and therefore loathed by Republican ideologues.

Under the Trump Administration, the thumb on the scale has turned into an entire arm. They’ve been flooding seniors’ inboxes with advertisements for Medicare Advantage. What these emails don’t mention is that Medicare Advantage plans often have narrow networks, restricting which doctors and hospitals patients are allowed to use. Worse, a recent government report found that Medicare Advantage plans improperly deny care “in an attempt to increase their profits.” It’s no surprise that older, sicker seniors are more likely to drop Medicare Advantage plans.

Medicare Advantage plans are also a terrible waste of public dollars. They have overcharged Medicare by $30 billion in the past three years alone.

Today’s executive order is yet another giveaway to the corporations that run Medicare Advantage plans. Ironically, the Trump Administration is framing the executive order as an attack on Medicare for All. In fact, the massive flaws of Medicare Advantage epitomize the need to get for-profit greed out of health care by improving Medicare and expanding it to cover all Americans.

Medicare, like Social Security, works. Republicans want to privatize both of them. We have to stop them and instead, expand both.”

New Definition of Sustainability: To Save Life on Earth

From Common Dreams:

A landmark United Nations climate report published Wednesday details the observed and anticipated future impacts of planet-heating emissions from human activity on the world's oceans and frozen zones—and warns of the emerging consequences for humanity, marine ecosystems, and the global environment.

The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) is a product of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. body that assesses the latest science related to the human-caused climate crisis. It follows recent IPCC reports on the consequences of 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels and the necessity of reforming land use practices worldwide.

Although a draft of the SROCC leaked to the press last month, the final version was released Wednesday after the world governments approved its Summary for Policymakers (pdf) at a meeting in Monaco Tuesday. For the new report, more than 100 experts from 36 countries examined research on the ocean and cryosphere, which includes Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, and areas of snow and permafrost as well as frozen lakes, rivers, and parts of the ocean.

The report presents projections for the future based on both low- and high-emissions scenarios, underscoring the urgent need for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by overhauling human practices, particularly the use of fossil fuels, on a global scale.

"We will only be able to keep global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels if we effect unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society, including energy, land and ecosystems, urban and infrastructure as well as industry," Debra Roberts, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II, said Wednesday. "The ambitious climate policies and emissions reductions required to deliver the Paris agreement will also protect the ocean and cryosphere—and ultimately sustain all life on Earth."

The SROCC features chapters on high mountain areas; polar regions; sea level rise and implications for low lying islands, coasts, and communities; changing ocean, marine ecosystems, and dependent communities; and extremes, abrupt changes, and managing risks.

"The open sea, the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the high mountains may seem far away to many people. But we depend on them and are influenced by them directly and indirectly in many ways—for weather and climate, for food and water, for energy, trade, transport, recreation and tourism, for health and well-being, for culture and identity," noted IPCC chair Hoesung Lee. "If we reduce emissions sharply, consequences for people and their livelihoods will still be challenging, but potentially more manageable for those who are most vulnerable." . . .

Read on.

Greta Thunberg Has a Promise for Traitors to Life on Earth

Greta's message is quite clear:  If "leaders" of the world are to impose a mass extinction with their grotesque inaction and half-measures, the young citizens of the Earth know where that extinction shall begin.

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

You say you “hear” us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that. Because if you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And I refuse to believe that.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C degrees, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Maybe 50% is acceptable to you. But those numbers don’t include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of justice and equity. They also rely on my and my children’s generation sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences. 

To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5C global temperature rise – the best odds given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world had 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to emit back on 1 January 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatonnes. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone in less than eight and a half years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

• This is the speech Greta Thunberg delivered to the UN Climate Action summit in New York on Monday.

PA Senator and Charter Booster Busted on Child Porn Charges

Based on charges outlined in a criminal complaint alleging possession of child pornography depicting an adult male and a "very young female child," State Senator Michael Folmer has resigned. 

Biloxi, MS School Decides to Censor "To Kill a Mockingbird"

"To Kill a Mockingbird" has been removed from a school curriculum in a Mississippi school district because it "makes people uncomfortable."  

Let's make the censorious, racist asses who run the Biloxi schools uncomfortable until they decide differently.

Dr. Larry Drawdy Interim Superintendent P.O. Box 168, Biloxi, MS 39533 160 St. Peter Ave. Biloxi, MS 39530 Secretary: Mrs. Lee Ann Dubaz Telephone: (228) 374-1810, X-1118 FAX: (228) 436-5171   Ms. Pamela Manners Interim Assistant Superintendent   Secondary Programs and TestingP.O. Box 168, Biloxi, MS 39533160 St. Peter Ave. Biloxi, MS 39530 Secretary: Mrs. Michelle Johnson Telephone: (228) 374-1810, X-1134 FAX: (228) 435-6289

The Sun Herald reports that Biloxi administrators pulled the novel from the 8th-grade curriculum this week. School board vice president Kenny Holloway says the district received complaints that some of the book's language "makes people uncomfortable." Published in 1960, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee deals with racial inequality in a small Alabama town. A message on the school's website says "To Kill A Mockingbird" teaches students that compassion and empathy don't depend upon race or education. Holloway says other books can teach the same lessons. The book remains in Biloxi school libraries.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) Spawns Learning Rebellion (LR)

XR Educators: Learning Rebellion sign up page.

 

This will sign you up to the XR Educators newsletter, including further information about getting involved in actions inside and outside of educational institutions. Read more at http://learningrebellion.earth

Follow at: http://twitter.com/XRLearningrebel https://www.facebook.com/XRLearningRebellion/

"No Excuses" Realities Remain As KIPP Makes Rhetorical Retreat

This may be remembered as the summer that "No Excuses" became too toxic for charters to admit that they are still clinging to the abusive reality.  

The rhetorical retreat from "No Excuses" began with a New York Times piece in July, "Why Some of the Country’s Best Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning."
In it, I found so little to substantiate the claim that New York's "no excuses" charter schools are actually implementing any policies that would negate their brutal discipline systems that I read the piece a second time, looking for something that might justify a delay in these punitive charters' well-deserved day of reckoning. At the risk of dating myself, I could only ask, "Where's the beef!?" 

The discipline changes noted at the Ascend charter schools was covered in a bit more detail in a Times piece from 2017, even though that piece, too, doesn't say much. The other big change at Ascend appears to be a new school that lumps disabled students into one school, a practice that lost pedagogical credibility decades ago and one that cripples efforts to create inclusive learning environments. It's hard to say why Success Academy is even mentioned in this piece, since its management is staying the course on its total compliance penal variety of schools. 

As for KIPP, there seems to a kinder, gentler change in rhetoric from the top, but in terms of policy change, I can't find it. There seems to a belief that more black and brown teachers will be enough to humanize the zero tolerance "no excuses" approach. Sadly, KIPP seems to have put most of its black and brown New York teachers in a single school. In the end, KIPP teachers follow school policy, or else, and there is nothing in the NYTimes article to indicate a change of practices that demean and humiliate both students and teachers.

What is clear is that KIPP Model hell school operators would like to mold the media in order to convince politicians that the brutality of "no excuses" charter school has changed.  With growing numbers of citizens now realizing that these racist penal-style KIPP Model schools are emptying public school coffers while making policymakers complicit in crimes against children, PR campaigns now abound to present these cultural sterilization charter schools in the best possible light.  

Enter Jay Mathews, who has remains a tireless mouthpiece for corporate charter hell schools for the past 25 years. Jay's August 2 column, ‘No-excuses schools’ make no excuse for updating their approach, is devoted to downplaying the punishing practices and policies that have earned KIPP the reputation of "Kids in Prison Program." 

A formidable propagandist, Mathews cherry-picks individual policies from the Big Five "no excuses" chains (Achievement First, Success Academy, KIPP, YES Prep, and Uncommon Schools) to make it sound as if universal changes are happening to make these educational sweatshops less inhumane.  

Jay mixes in some plain old lying, too.  A couple of examples:

Sitting straight in class with hands folded on the table and eyes continuously on the teacher: Those were the rules when I started visiting KIPP schools in 2001, but no longer. . . .Walking silently through the halls in single-file lines: That is no longer the rule in these networks.

I did a cursory search on the web and found many examples of KIPP networks with these student contract elements still in place.  Here is just one: 

I will SLANT during instruction· 
I will track whomever is speaking· 
I will greet and respond to greetings from others in the hallway· 
I will raise my hand to speak and share· 
I will enter and exit rooms silently and close doors carefully· 
I will say please, thank you, and excuse me· 
I will walk quietly on the right side of the hallway· 
I will hold doors for people behind me· 
I will be team and family and include others· 
I will speak like a scholar and friend to all· 
I will keep hands, feet, and objects to myself· 
I will communicate with my parents by providing them with flyers from school

Jay says that "No-excuses is so 20th century. Let’s talk about something new."  That will only be possible, Jay, when realities in these lock-down schools actually change to match the misleading rhetoric that you continue to propagate.