President Obama's American Jobs Act will help modernize schools. Because to SOME people schools still matter.

I thought this might give you a lift this Sunday morning as well.

(Image courtesy of The Obama Diary.)

As if you needed ANOTHER reason to keep Michele Bachmann out of the White House!

Courtesy of CNN:

Painting herself as a "constitutional conservative" Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told Sen. Jim DeMint's forum Monday that if elected president she would look to get rid of the Department of Education, among other things."Because the Constitution does not specifically enumerate nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education that historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state governments," she said, responding to a question by DeMint, a popular figure among the tea party movement.

So there you go voters, a vote for Michele Bachmann is a vote against providing your children with the same access to a free public education that you took for granted as citizens of the "greatest country on earth".  Try competing with China with a nation full of chronically undereducated video game addicts.

In a completely unrelated story, by no means connected to his candidate trotting out her bucket of batshit for all of America to see, Bachmann campaign manger Ed Rollins got a note from his doctor excusing him from having to work for her campaign: 

Ed Rollins is going to be stepping back from day-to-day management of the Michele Bachmann campaign, and moving into a senior advisory role, he said in an interview. 

Rollins said the reason for the change is personal — his health and the rigors of a campaign. 

“I wish I was 40 years old, but I’m not,” he told POLITICO. “I’m 68 years old, I had a stroke a year and a half ago. I’m worn out.”

Yeah I don't blame him.

I have only listened to her speak a handful of times and I am pretty "worn out" too.

The most important editorial on NCLB that I have ever read. And I urge you to do the same.

Courtesy of AJC: 

By Jim Arnold 

We’ve done it now. Eleven years we had to educate the public, to register our protests and do everything in our power to warn people what was coming, and we blew it. We knew the moment would eventually come and we hem-hawed, looked at the ground, kicked at the dirt with our shoes and failed to look the opposition in the eye and face them down. All of us saw this coming, but very few took a stand and now we – and our students – are paying the price. We could have been prophets but failed the test. 

We allowed the proponents of NCLB to control the discussion from the beginning. They wrote the language, sent out the media notices and explanations, wrote the definitions of AYP, Highly Qualified and leaned heavily on the fact that none of us would dare protest anything to do with a name that implies we would be providing a high quality education for every single child in America. They were right. We chose not to speak out, not to fight against a system we knew from the beginning would set us all up for failure, and instead, in our best Dudley DoRight impersonations we set about to change the way we taught and measured and tested and graded and thought. 

We knew from the outset that NCLB and its goal of 100 percent – every child proficient in every area as determined by a single test on a single day each year – was patently, blatantly and insidiously absurd, but we took no concerted action. We knew Adequate Yearly Progress was a sham, and we literally and figuratively rolled over and tried our best to meet whatever impossible goals they set for us and our students. We knew that Federal law in NCLB was a violation of Federal law in IDEA but we went along with the insanity of testing Students with Disabilities based on chronological age rather than by IEP. 

We learned very quickly and much to our chagrin that some student scores – usually the lowest ones – were counted not once, not twice, but often as many as three times, but we went along to get along. All of us were aware that Highly Qualified, for all the high rhetoric that went along with it, only served to make certification as much of a barrier as humanly possible for Special Education teachers regardless of degree or experience. It seems the teachers we needed most were subjected to the greatest roadblocks to reaching the nirvana of HiQ certification.

We tried our best to play the game but the game was rigged from the start. When the AMO’s were low it was pretty easy for most schools. When the AMO’s went up and more and more schools were labeled “failing” we looked around in a panic for help. Surely nobody believed a school deserved the failing label because two or three kids in a subgroup didn’t pass a test? Yes they did. Yes they still do. We let them make the definitions and apply the labels, even when we realized the absurdity of it all. 

We actually pretended to believe that it was important for us to make sure that every child was tested on those all important test days so none could escape the trauma we inflicted upon them. We even learned in some places to game the system and hold back those kids we feared might not pass the test or might raise those student numbers to create a subgroup in areas we really didn’t want to see a subgroup or, God help us, to cheat or to make sure that we could hold out two or three or four of “those kids” on test days so their poor scores wouldn’t have a negative effect. 

Oh sure, some of you stuck your necks out and said something to the effect of “NCLB forced us to take a closer look at ourselves, and we are better off for that” in spite of the fact that it was our students that were suffering the consequences. What balderdash. What hubris. Our kids were the ones whose education was stilted by our submission to the belief that one test could effectively distill and determine the depth and extent of an entire year of a child’s education. They are the ones whose time was wasted by “academic pep rallies” and “test prep” and by the subtle and insidious ways we told them the test was “important” and put pressure on them to “do their best because our school is counting on you.”They were the ones that did without art and music and chorus and drama because we increased the amount of time they spent in ELA and Math. 

They were the ones that had time in their Social Studies and Science classes cut back more and more so schools could focus on the “really important areas” of ELA and Math. They were the ELL’s that couldn’t speak English but still had to take the test. Their teachers were the ones that were told “your grading of the children in your classes doesn’t count any more because standardization is more important to us that the individual grades you provide.” This told them in effect that their efforts at teaching were important but only if they taught using “this” methodology or “this” curriculum, then, when things started to go badly, they were the first to be blamed for the failure of public education. They were told to teach every child the same way with the same material but make sure to individualize while you’re at it. Hogwash. 

After a couple of years of this insanity, the “NI” status began to take its toll. Someone somewhere invented the term “failing schools” and, unsurprisingly, the label stuck. Students were given the opportunity to transfer to more test-successful schools, but at a price. Schools that did not meet AYP standards, oddly enough, were often those with high minority populations and high poverty. Nobody seemed to notice the zip code effect that left predominantly white schools meeting AYP standards and minority schools caught by the “failing” label. Oh surely, we reasoned, our government would not want to put public education in a situation it could not win………..or would they? 

I struggled with the rest of you as to why NCLB would go to such great lengths to make public education appear to be such a failure, to set up a system that would guarantee failure for practically every public school as we advanced toward that magical 100 percent level and provide no tangible rewards for success and such punitive actions for not meeting arbitrary goals. On top of all of that, I failed to recognize why our nation’s legislators so nimbly avoided even the discussion of reauthorization to change what everyone knew was a failed policy. One day it finally hit me. 

They didn’t want to change the policy, because the policy was designed in theory and in fact not to aid education but to create an image of a failed public school system in order to further the implementation of vouchers and the diversion of public education funds to private schools. 

I am not usually a conspiracy theory guy, but this was no theory. These were cold hard facts slapping me in the face. We failed in our obligations to protect our students from one of the most destructive educational policies since “separate but equal.” We did not educate the public on the myth and misdirection of Adequate Yearly Progress, and we allowed closet segregationists to direct the implementation of policies that we knew would result in our being the guys in the black hats responsible for “the failure of public education.” 

Now we are paying the price. AYP is here to stay in one form or another, and the vast majority of our parents and public really believe the propaganda that it actually measures a school’s educational progress. If we try to convince them otherwise we are “making excuses.” 

Vouchers – especially for private and charter schools exempt from the same restrictive, destructive policies we are forced to endure – are a part of every legislative session in almost every state. High stakes testing for all public education students is considered a necessary reality and teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Student test scores will soon determine teacher pay in some places even with no data to support the correlation. Students that do not graduate high school in four years are labeled as dropouts, even if they graduate in nine or 10 semesters. 

Only first-time test takers are considered in the grading system for schools regardless of how many students ultimately pass the test. It will take years to undo the damage done to science, social studies, fine arts, foreign languages and other academic electives. Generations will not be enough to rid ourselves and our students of the testing mania neuroses created by our attempts to quantify the unquantifiable. 

I hope the generation of teachers and administrators that follows has learned something from the failure of our generation to ward off those determined to destroy public education. We didn’t stand up to be counted, we didn’t stand in the schoolhouse door and tell them they couldn’t do that to our kids, and we didn’t educate the public about what a gigantic failure another one size fits all education policy would be. In the words of that great educator and philosopher Jimmy Buffet: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” 

We have all been left behind. 

There is no more that I can add to this amazing, and extremely honest portrayal of what has happened to public education in this country.

However I urge you to spread far and wide these very important words from Mr. Jim Arnold, who served as both a Principal and Superintendent of schools in Georgia, and is sadly very well educated on the terrible damage that No Child Left Behind has inflicted on our country, our education system, and our children.

(H/T to Alaska Dispatch.)

Operatives backed by the Koch Brothers are attempting to destroy public education in America.

Make no mistake, be it the voucher system, charter schools, or the promoting of home schooling, the underlying purpose is to undermine, and eventually do away with, the public school system.

The video shows what happened in just one county, but tactics like this are being used all over the country.

Just like recognizing Dominionism when it rears its ugly head we also have to recognize the agenda of those who are attacking our public schools and fight them at every turn. (Different tactics, with a similar agenda, are currently being used right here in Anchorage, Alaska.)

Make no mistake my friends, we are in a battle. And we have to first recognize our enemies, and then be prepared to stop them before they can gain a foothold and begin to deconstruct the very foundation on which this great nation was built.  Our public education system.

Lawrence O'Donnell disusses the heart wrenching number of LGBT teen suicides in Michele Bachmann's district.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There is no excuse for children to feel isolated because of their sexuality any more than it is okay to do so in response to their skin color or their gender.

Adults should understand that, and take great pains to be accessible to the students who are reaching out for help.

Perhaps all is not lost for Texas after all.

Courtesy of the National Center for Science Education:

Pop the champagne corks. The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In an 8-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers--and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC.

"This is a huge victory for Texas students and teachers," said Josh Rosenau, NCSE programs and policy director, who testified at the hearings this week. In his testimony, Rosenau urged the board to approve the supplements--recommended by a review panel largely composed of scientists and science educators--without amendments, and to reject International Database's creationist submission. The board did just that, and asked for only minimal changes to the approved supplements.

In hearings yesterday, NCSE members and allies showed up in force. At least four times as many people testified in favor of the supplements as written, versus those opposing the supplements or demanding significant changes.

Ultimately, the board approved the Holt supplement, and directed Commissioner of Education Robert Scott to review the list of supposed errors, and to develop amended language for Holt to incorporate. NCSE and Texas education groups are confident Scott's revisions will reflect the current state of evolutionary biology, and not any creationist alternatives.

Dr. Eugenie Scott, NCSE's Executive Director is celebrating the decision. "These supplements reflect the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution is the core of modern biology, and is a central and vital concept in any biology class. That these supplements were adopted unanimously reflects a long overdue change in the board. I commend the board for its refusal to politicize science education."

Well I guess this is a glimmer of sanity in a state which still has Rick Perry as it Governor and whose abstinence only sex education program causes it to have the highest teen birth rate in the nation.


Oh well, at least now that Texans understand that evolution is fact they might soon realize that Rick Perry is somewhat further down that evolutionary trail than one might expect for the Governor of their state.

I mean seriously, is this guy even able to use rudimentary stone tools yet?

Teabaggers let the cat out of the bag concerning ultimate goal for our public schools.

Courtesy of Think Progress:

In a series of e-mails and interviews, Teri Adams, the president of the Idependence Hall Tea Party Association, explains that her organization is involved in its voucher advocacy because it believes “public schools should go away.” Adams said that their ultimate goal is to “shut down public schools and have private schools only“:

“We think public schools should go away,’’ says Teri Adams, the head of the Independence Hall Tea Party and a leading advocate — both in New Jersey and Pennsylvania — of passage of school voucher bills. The tea party operates in those two states and Delaware. They should “go away,” she says, because “they are hurting our children.’’ [...] Adams says the current voucher program “discriminates” against wealthier students by providing public subsidies only to inner-city children in allegedly failing schools. Her group’s e-mails pushing vouchers caught the attention of James Kovalcin of South Brunswick, a retired public school teacher who asked Adams for clarification. She responded via email: “Our ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only, eventually returning responsibility for payment to parents and private charities. It’s going to happen piecemeal and not overnight. It took us years to get into this mess and it’s going to take years to get out of it.”

Well there you go, any questions about the motives of the radical right wing now?


These people are willing to completely dismantle the American public school system, which has leveled the playing field to allow those who come from humble beginnings to rise to the top through hard work and access to a good education, in exchange for ONLY providing an adequate education for those that can afford it.

Essentially they are trying to gut the very foundation of the American dream, and attempting to impose a class system in this country, where only those who are born with means can achieve success. That is certainly NOT what the founders envisioned for this country:

After the Declaration of Independence, 14 states had their own constitutions by 1791, and out of the 14, 7 states had specific provisions for education. Jefferson believed that education should be under the control of the government, free from religious biases, and available to all people irrespective of their status in society. Others who vouched for public education around the same time were Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, Robert Coram and George Washington.

And these Teabaggers dare to call themselves "patriots?"

How the Republicans are destroying our public school system, right before our eyes.

This amazing article comes to us from Cassandra Vert, writing for Politicususa:

The conservative argument hinges on convincing us that private education is somehow better than aggregated public education. It’s not. The best students in the world come from state-run schools. When we had the best students in the world, it was because we made a philosophical and financial commitment that every student deserved access to the best education that we as a nation could provide. That is what has changed, and that is what we must reclaim.

I simply cannot urge you enough to read what Cassandra has written.


I have tried multiple times to write how important I find this issue, but have never distilled it down to its main points, nor defined the importance of doing something to stop the privatization of our education system, anywhere near as well as was accomplished in this article.

The picture you see above is my alma mater, A.J. Dimond High School. It is no exaggeration to say that THAT public school changed my life forever and taught me valuable lessons which STILL inform the way I conduct myself to this very day.