The Truth About Teacher "Tenure" and Dismissals

There is no such thing as "tenure" in K-12 education anyway. This piece involves North Carolina, but the story is true all over the country.

By the way, just because you are sacked doesn't mean you are a shitty teacher. Administrators flout the law all the time:

n 2011-12 in North Carolina, 17 teachers were dismissed, according to a state Department of Public Instruction report on reasons teachers leave employment.

“I was shocked at the small number who were actually dismissed through the current procedure,” Berger said.

But Richard Schwartz, a Raleigh lawyer who represents school boards in cases of teacher dismissals, said the numbers are misleading. Dismissal is extremely rare, he said, but there’s a good explanation for that.

“Instead, what happens is teachers resign rather than go through that,” Schwartz said. “School systems have gotten very, very good at effectively removing poorly performing teachers. ... The overwhelming majority of these cases get resolved without going to a hearing.”

The DPI report said 147 teachers reported resigning to avoid being dismissed. An additional 1,018 resigned without saying why.

Those who didn't report why they resigned did so in lieu of dismissal, but they were too embarrassed to say why. It is what it is. If you are faced with termination and you don't go through the sham hearings, you resigned in lieu of (instead of) being dismissed, i.e., fired.

Teachers take the "settlements" believing resigning is better than being terminated, but given the fact they have to disclose resignations in lieu of dismissals on job applications, it doesn't help them at all. It's rightfully seen by employers as an admission of guilt. After all, if you are innocent of the allegations, why not go through the administrative process?

School districts are "good at" getting rid of unwanted teachers (most aren't "poor performing," whatever that means) by simply suspending them without pay in an effort to starve them into separation agreements paying little but help screw teachers out of UI, and to save money on wrongful termination lawsuits. Once a teacher resigns in lieu of a dismissal, he or she CANNOT sue a school district. That is one of the main reasons I went through the joke of a hearing. I didn't realize I needed to file a claim with EEOC right away, so I was screwed over in that realm.

ALEC is behind the movement to gut civil service protections for teachers.

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Etc.

As I have mentioned here on the blog, occasionally I will miss an obituary of somebody worthy of inclusion here. One such person was author Caroline Bird, who died in January of 2011 at the age of 95. She got only a little mention in the New York Times, but her works were highly influential back in the 1960s and 1970s, for both good and bad.

Good because she recognized the need for women to have careers, but bad in that she tended to denigrate women's more traditional choices.

Among her books were Born Female, The Two-Paycheck Marriage, Everything a Woman Needs to Know to Get Paid What She's Worth, and The Case Against College.
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Ed Etc.

The Seattle teachers will not be punished for protesting against standardized tests.
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The Atlanta cheating scandal is what happens when dictators are running--and ruining--schools.
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The New York Times continues on its crusade to peddle anti-teacher bullshit.

So does the Reno Gazette-Journal in its ignorant series of articles trying to blame everything on teachers while downplaying poverty, ESL students, and transience.
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Etc.

It could be the beginning of the end for the prosecution in the Jodi Arias case thanks to the discussion of the emails on Thursday.

They further cast light on what kind of person Travis Alexander really was in his relationships with women:

The memo line, LaViolette said, was, "You crossed the Line." Written Jan. 29, 2007, the emails expressed Alexander's anger that the Hugheses had talked to Arias to discourage her from pursuing Alexander because he was abusive to women. He called her a "skank," only saw her secretly and tended to treat her coldly in public, according to LaViolette.

What was not mentioned in court Thursday was the history of the emails. A defense filing from January 2011 details the efforts Arias' attorneys went to obtain them. Initially the prosecution told the defense attorneys that there were no available text messages sent or received by Alexander and then was ordered to turn over several hundred.

Furthermore, according to the filing, the case agent, Mesa police Detective Esteban Flores, told the defense attorneys that there was nothing "out of the ordinary" among Alexander's emails; about 8,000 were turned over to the defense in June 2010, including the Hughes emails.

The 2011 filing details the email contents, including "A response from Mr. Hughes ... wherein he asserts that he believes Jodi would be his (Travis') next victim and that Jodi was just another girl that he (Travis) was playing." Alexander allegedly replied by saying "I am a bit of a sociopath."

I'd say they are damning. Let 'em all in.
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Cut off funding for private schools called "charters" and put the money back into the inner city public schools.
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More evidence Obama is a piece of shit president out to destroy the Democratic Party and help those who he really cares about.
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2011 Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom has won the Dubai World Cup:

Joel Rosario rode the 2011 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) victor to a 2 1/2-length triumph in the $10 million event—the world's richest horse race —for trainer Graham Motion and owners Arrowfield Stud and Team Valor International.

Australia also shares in this World Cup victory as a majority interest in the 5-year-old son of Leroidesanimaux, who was purchased by John Messara's Aussie-based Arrowfield from Barry Irwin's Team Valor last December. Animal Kingdom is to begin his stud career later this year in Australia.

Since 2010, when the World Cup relocated to Meydan and its Tapeta racing surface, no American-based horse had been in the top three finishers in the international event.

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Obituary: Famed music producer Phil Ramone, 79, has died.

A native of South Africa who at age 10 performed as a violinist for Queen Elizabeth II, Ramone spent years working as a songwriter, engineer and acoustics expert in New York before charting a path that would make him a trusted studio partner in the eyes (and ears) of the industry’s biggest stars.

Among the albums on which he worked were Streisand’s 1967 live A Happening in Central Park; Paul & Linda McCartney’s Ram (1971), sandwiched between the Beatles and Wings eras; Dylan’s aching Blood on the Tracks (1975); Simon’s pop classic Still Crazy After All These Years (1975); Joel’s critical and commercial breakthrough The Stranger (1977); Sinatra’s last-gasp Duets (1993), a model of technical wizardry; and Charles’ final album, the mega-selling Genius Loves Company (2004).

Ramone served as a songwriter in New York’s famed Brill Building music factory and worked early on with Quincy Jones, Tom Dowd, Creed Taylor, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller and Burt Bacharach & Hal David, among others. In 1959, he launched the A&R Recording studios on Seventh Avenue in New York, where Blood on the Tracks and so many other classics were recorded.

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Fall Into Disgrace

Former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall has been indicted in the Atlanta cheating scandal:

A grand jury Friday indicted Beverly L. Hall, the former superintendent powerhouse of the Atlanta School District, on racketeering and other charges, bringing a dramatic new chapter to one of the largest cheating scandals in the country.

The grand jury also indicted 34 teachers and administrators in addition to Dr. Hall, who resigned in 2011 just before results of an investigation into the scandal was released. It recommended $7.5 million bond for Dr. Hall, who could face up to 45 years in prison.

In a list of 65 charges against the educators that include influencing witnesses, theft by taking, conspiracy and making false statements, Fulton County prosecutors painted a picture of a decade-long conspiracy that involved awarding bonuses connected to improving scores on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, the state’s main test of core academic subjects for elementary and middle schools, and a culture where, in some schools, cheating was an acceptable way to get them.

I don't think Nancy Grace will cover this case at all. Not sexy enough or bloody enough.

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Great News for Nevada's Teachers

as long as James W. Guthrie doesn't have health problems, which I don't wish on anybody.

Announcement:

Dr. James Guthrie today tendered his resignation as Superintendent of Public Instruction, effective immediately.

“Dr. Guthrie moved to Nevada and helped the state transition from an elected to an appointed Superintendent,” Governor Brian Sandoval said. “I thank him for his service to our great state and I wish him the best.”

Rorie Fitzpatrick, currently Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, has been appointed Interim Superintendent. Additional details regarding the process for appointment of the next Superintendent will be forthcoming.

It appears his health wasn't an issue. He is 76 years old:

Guthrie, 76, told the Associated Press he told the governor he was “honored to have had a chance to hold this position, and I regret that I must resign, and that I appreciate his giving me a chance to serve.”

Guthrie said he couldn’t say why he resigned, but Sandoval’s education proposals were on the right track and he has no plans to retire.

“I will be seeking a position in which I can continue to make American education better for the children,” he said in a phone interview about two hours after his resignation.

Guthrie told the Reno Gazette-Journal he turned in his resignation at 2:30 p.m. and had no plans.

Of course there might be health issues or some other emergency in his family.



Regardless of the reason for Guthrie's departure, unfortunately the governor is likely to pick somebody just like him, if not worse.

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Hunger in America

It might as well be that as some 47 MILLION people, including millions and millions who are employed, are having to resort to getting food stamps to supplement their food budget.

Remember, food stamps are not intended to be the total allotment for people but supplement it. Yours truly does not get the full benefit of $200 a month as a single person because of a pension and no real expenses for rent and utilities (can't afford to even get my own place).

In 2008, at the onset of the recession, 28.2 million people were enrolled in SNAP. While the official jobless rate, which peaked at 10 percent in 2009, had dipped slightly to 7.7 percent as of February this year, the SNAP program has continued to grow. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that food stamp usage will drop only marginally, to 43.3 million people, by 2017. Even this estimate is predicated on the unemployment rate dropping to 5.6 percent over the next four years.

The number of people using food stamps roughly corresponds to the number of Americans living in poverty, which rose to just below 50 million people in 2011. Utilizing the Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), which factors in expenses for food, clothing, shelter, health care and other essentials, the US Census Bureau estimates that nearly one in six people in the US is living in poverty.

The average monthly benefit per person receiving SNAP benefits was only $133 last year. In order to qualify, a household’s income cannot be more than 130 percent of the poverty level, which is about $25,000 for a family of three, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

The assholes in Congress want to cut this necessary program even more while they don't do jack shit about restoring the economy.

That's because their ideology says a desperate population is a desirable population in order to destroy living standards to third world levels.

Our "Democratic" president also believes in this philosophy as well despite flowery language to the contrary.

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Etc.

Obituary: Actor Richard Griffiths, 65, has died. He died of complications from heart surgery:

Griffiths won a Tony Award for “The History Boys” and appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows. But he will be most widely remembered as a pair of contrasting uncles — Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon Dursley and Uncle Monty in cult film “Withnail and I.”

Griffiths was among a huge roster of British acting talent to appear in the “Harry Potter” series of films released between 2001 and 2011.

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No surprise here.
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Barack Obama is trying very hard to be the worst president in the history of the United States.

Is there any doubt at all his lamebrained attempts to screw over people on "entitlements" shows he is in the pocket of crook Peter J. Peterson?
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Another obituary: Paul Williams, founder of the music magazine Crawdaddy, has died at the age of 64.

He died from complications of a 1995 bike accident.
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Etc.

Singer Gordon Stoker, who is best known for having sang for the Jordanaires, the backup group for Elvis Presley, has died at the age of 88:

Alan Stoker said his father was just 15 when he started playing professionally. He joined the Jordanaires as a piano player, but then became tenor vocalist. The group was already well known for their gospel singing when Presley recruited them to perform on his recording of "Hound Dog," in 1956.

The Jordanaires originated in Missouri and came to Nashville, where they backed Red Foley on a segment of the Opry called the "Prince Albert Show," according to John Rumble, senior historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

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Education Etc.

This crazy idea should give the lie that charter schools are "public schools."

Background checks wouldn't even be required of charter school operators and staff even though the schools would steal taxpayer money in order to operate?

This would literally risk students' lives.
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Somebody writes about how awful "cyberschools" are.

The working conditions and pay are awful, and, in all honesty, these teachers are reduced to being little more than call center operators who merely have customer service duties.

The curriculum is touted as first class material, designed by experts. In truth our school purchases whatever it can get from third party vendors. There isn’t much stuff out there. Most cyber schools get their curriculum from K12, a company started by William Bennett, a former federal Secretary of Education. My school gets the majority of its high school material from a mail order company called Aventa.

The person forgot to mention junk bond crook Michael Milken, who would NEVER be allowed in the classroom given his criminal history, also co-owns and co-founded K-12.
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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 38

The defense's domestic violence expert, Alyce LaViolette, will continue with her testimony today. Trial will resume at 9:30 PDT, and it will run only three hours because of Easter break. Trial will then resume on Tuesday.

While Dr. Samuels cannot say much because the trial is still ongoing, he does appreciate the many emails of support for his testmony. He was very good explaining PTSD and why Jodi Arias's behavior was the way it was following the killing of Travis Alexander. I believe at this point, barring any new evidence, she should be acquitted of the charges. That doesn't mean the jury will agree, and I think there will be a hung jury in this case.

LaViolette, in an absolutely damning moment for the prosecution, discussed emails that Travis Alexander had exchanged with his friends Chris and Sky Hughes, where the Hugheses were highly critical of the way he was treating Jodi and discussed his pattern of abusive relationships with other women. She couldn't directly quote them, and prosecutor Juan Martinez kept trying to thwart the damning email series by raising objections it seemed every five seconds. The Hugheses felt that Travis never fully got past his horrible childhood, and that he needed counseling to deal with his issues. Sky Hughes even indicated she would not let him date her sister. The Hugheses also indicated to Jodi in emails that she needed to move on with her life with somebody else. Of course when you are in a relationship like they had, it's very hard to break away.

The last part of the testimony, with the emails discussed at about the 17-minute mark:



The defense decided it was a good time to stop the questioning, which will resume at 9:00 or 9:30 Tuesday morning.

The judge was also planning to question each juror to find out if they have been watching television "coverage" of the trial, probably, or have witnessed Juan Martinez's rather unethical behavior outside of the court building with a "Dr. Drew" groupie, called a juror for his program in Pinsky's attempt to twist public opinion. This woman was not only in the courtroom today, but she had her picture taken with the prosecutor a few days ago, and it was posted all over the internet. This issue was discussed in a hearing this morning where HLN/CNN correspondent Jean Casarez was put under oath to answer defense questions regarding the conduct of Juan Martinez with the Pinsky "juror" and other "fans" and whether a trial juror saw this behavior.


Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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Miscellaneous News

It's absolutely illegal to do it, but some Russian idiots climbed the Great Pyramids of Giza and got some terrific photographs from the experience.

And, I hope, some jail time for the adventure.
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More proof that public education in this country is being killed from within.

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Obituary: Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, 85, has died. He had suffered from Parkinson's disease for a number of years.

I used to read his columns on a regular basis. He was always worth reading.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Trial Cancelled

Alyce LaViolette's direct testimony will continue tomorrow, starting at around 9:30 PDT. She will continue talking about domestic violence and the dynamics that go on in abusive relationships.

Today was a hearing about the defense's request for a protective order sealing information that is supposed to be confidential between defendant and attorney. The media, of course, wants to get their filthy hands on any confidential information to further contaminate the jury.

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Value Subtracted

The mole who calls herself a protector of teachers' rights continues to brazenly collude with the "reformers" and billionaires out to destroy public education in the good ole U.S.A..

Randi goes way back with the privatizers, even having worked with ol' Eli Broad in the early days of his superintendent "academy."

This woman, an attorney, is totally unqualified to run a teachers' union; she taught only five or six months as an actual teacher some twenty years ago.

In both cases, we have union presidents signing their names to documents alongside people who represent the antithesis of teachers' interests.

The Gates Foundation has absolutely zero credibility on the subject of teacher evaluation due to the pervasive role they have played in promoting the terrible policies now sweeping the nation. I entered my dialogue with them last year hoping they were prepared to shift their views in meaningful ways. When it ended, they gave little reason to believe they had done so. To co-author anything with their representative means you are lending credibility and standing to them.

She's a fraud who needs to be run out of the AFT.

Diane Ravitch also weighs in on Weingarten's treachery.

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Etc.

Obituary: Actor Malachi Throne, 84, who was seen everywhere in 1960s television, has died of lung cancer.

Mr. Throne was a brawny, deep-voiced mainstay on television for nearly 50 years. He appeared on everything from “The Untouchables” in the early 1960s to “The West Wing” in 2002, and was one of the few actors seen on both Gene Roddenberry’s original “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

On “Batman,” in a two-part episode in 1966, he played False-Face, a criminal master of disguise whose visage is never fully revealed. For a time, Mr. Throne’s own identity remained a mystery; a question mark, rather than his name, appeared in the credits after Part 1, leading to wide speculation among fans.

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The first thing K-12 teachers need to understand is they don't have anything called "tenure." What they have, if they still have it in their states, are civil service protections that are identical to other civil service workers including police and fire personnel.

I think K-12 teachers wanted to call these protections "tenure" to try to make it sound like they are on the same level as college and university professors, who can get or do have "tenure," but "tenure" exists in both public and private universities and is strongly tied in with the concept of "academic freedom."

K-12 teachers do NOT have "academic freedom," and they have NEVER had anything resembling "tenure."
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Indiana is going down the shitter thanks to a court legalizing school vouchers, a pet project of the Friedamanites and neolibs. "Common core" bullshit is also being promoted there and is heavily financed by the billionaire foundations.

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Thank God We Don't Have Italian "Justice"

It is absolutely unreal that the country's supreme court has said Amanda Knox will be retried for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

I hope Raffaeli Sollecito has left the country.

Knox can't be compelled to return to Italy, and even if she is convicted, I seriously doubt she would be extradited.

Maybe the U.S. can extradite Juan Martinez to prosecute the case and yank him off the Arias case; his behavior has gotten more and more erratic over the course of the trial.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 37

The defense's domestic violence expert, Alyce LaViolette, will continue with her testimony today. Trial will resume at 10:30 PDT.


Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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Randi the Mole

AFT's Randi Weingarten continues to cavort with the enemy, but that is because she is one of them herself.

She shoehorned her way into the AFT in order to kill it from within.

How in the hell did somebody this unqualified ever head a major union in the first place?

From the comments following the post is this description of her background which explains a lot:

I know people with lots of classroom experience who have spent decades analyzing what children need to learn to be successful in the long term, what good teaching looks like and how to support teachers. I am disappointed that Randi continues to be the voice for teachers when she is a lawyer, not an educator. I found some information on a blog called Linking and Thinking on Education by Joanne Jacobs. She writes this: ” How long did Weingarten teach? EDUCATION REFORMERS WOULDN'T LAST 10 MINUTES IN A CLASSROOM, SAID AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS PRESIDENT RANDI WEINGARTEN THIS WEEK. A lawyer turned union leader, Weingarten's classroom time was limited, counters Education Action Group. Weingarten's AFT bio claims she taught history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn from 1991 to 1997. EAG obtained her personnel file via a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Weingarten was hired as a substitute teacher in 1991 and received a provisional license in 1993. In 1994, she received a certificate to serve as a substitute. A 1997 letter indicates Weingarten didn't submit documentation showing she'd met requirements for licensure. No record indicates she ever served as a full-time teacher or was evaluated by a principal or other school official. When Weingarten ran for president of New York's United Federation of Teachers in 1998, her opponent, Michael Shulman, suggested that she was not a "real teacher." "She worked five months full-time that I've been aware of, in 1992, at Clara Barton High School," Shulman was quoted as saying in the New York Times. Since then she taught maybe one class for 40 minutes a day. An education reformer with two years as a Teach for America teacher apparently has more classroom experience than the AFT leader.” When will the educators who have spent their professional lives learning about teaching be heard?

As I mentioned in the comments there, she was put in AFT to kill it from within.

Kind of like Obama was put in the Democratic Party to destroy it and further the elites' neoliberal agenda.

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The Goal of Education "Reform"

If somebody with advanced degrees can fail a standardized test for high school students, to say nothing of students with disabilities who cannot pass those tests, what does that say about what "reformers" really want?

I will tell you: They are using age-inappropriate curriculum and tests as a weeding tool to keep huge segments of the population out of getting any kind of advanced education and to deny them any chance for upward mobility.

What I mean by "advanced education" is high school. That's what the goal is of the World Bank's education agenda, since neoliberals think education is a waste of money for the vast majority of people.

Higher education will be just an exclusive club for the rich and a handful of people willing to serve the rich.
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Television News Was Dead and Buried LONG Before

Phil Donahue, who was nothing but a talk show host anyway and not a journalist, was sacked by MSNBC over his opposition to the Iraq War.

Yes, Donahue was presenting opinion, but opinion was infecting regular news broadcasts long before Donahue got sacked, and that was much more worrisome than anything done to talking heads.

Television news impartiality died long ago, with the Reagan administration's gutting of the Fairness Doctrine. Not only did talk radio do away with any duty at all in using the public airwaves to present opposing points of view (the rise of Rush Limbaugh is a direct result of the end of the Fairness Doctrine), but network news gradually dispensed with any notion of impartiality. The ultimate outrage was Rupert Murdoch's entry into the American news market with his blatantly propagandistic "Fox News Channel." He brought to America the British form of reporting (although he was Australian himself) that always presented a certain point of view, the opposite of what traditional American news organizations which at least had as their goal fairness. The British media would editorialize everywhere in its coverage, whereas American news organizations left opinion on the opinion page in newspapers or commentary segments on television that were clearly marked as such (examples for television would be Eric Severeid's or Howard K. Smith's commentaries). Murdoch, however, went further than anybody when he put a political operative, Roger Ailes, in charge of his news network. This was nothing short of an attempt to buy and shape opinion by creating a propaganda organization.

This would NEVER have happened when the Fairness Doctrine was in place.

We have been suffering from the effects of propaganda ever since.

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A Confederacy of Dunces--NOT Reformers

That's what I would title this brilliant piece referred to by Diane Ravitch explaining what in the HELL is going on in education, especially with the "reform" movement.

Oh, sure, it's Louisiana, but Louisiana is currently being used as a laboratory experiment that will ultimately be used to destroy public education and thus democracy throughout the country, thanks to the prodding by "Democrats" Barack Obama and Arne Duncan.

Virtual education is where all of this is headed, with "outsourcing" of all teaching staff to India or China where they make pennies a day if this insanity isn't stopped in its tracks:

In every study I’ve seen, Virtual school students do worse than their demographic equivalents in physical settings. Virtual school classes have been known reported having in excess of 500 students per teacher. These schools are being offered to students of all grade levels (k thru 12). It is clear that these schools are money makers as in most states they earn a sizeable portion of the funding that goes to a traditional student (in Louisiana it ranges from 90% to 100% of MFP) with less than a tenth of the cost. Often these students withdraw and return to a traditional setting, but the virtual school gets to keep the entire funding for the year, and the traditional school has not only the uncompensated cost of the student to cover, but also takes a hit on their “scores” (in Louisiana it’s called an SPS or School Performance Score) as well as the additional cost of trying to get that student caught up. Many of these students enroll in virtual schools simply to dropout without getting hassled. They get a free computer and internet connection and never have to log into school or complete an assignment. This is especially true in Louisiana where virtual school operators are forbidden by the Louisiana State Department of Education from exiting students that stop logging in, or fail to ever log in.

Obama and Duncan cheer this shit on, which betrays their political party labels.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 36

The defense will continue presenting its case at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

At this point, I believe the trial will result in a hung jury although I now have arrived at the conclusion she should be acquitted of all charges. The prosecution hasn't proven premeditation or motive and has only offered speculation. This simply isn't enough for a conviction of any kind, let alone murder one with a possibility of death.

All of the evidence supports Jodi Arias's account of what happened when she killed Travis Alexander, or, at the very least, there is a massive amount of reasonable doubt.

ANY member of the jury who arrives at murder one has been watching media accounts, especially those of HLN, which truly should not be allowed since the "facts" that network presents are totally at odds with what has actually been presented at trial.

Edit: Dr. Richard Samuels was still being grilled by prosecutor/persecutor Juan Martinez despite the fact cross-examination of this witness finished some days ago. Martinez is clearly abusing the legal system here, and Judge Stephens is allowing him to do it.

Lots and lots of issues to present on appeal if it comes to that.

Martinez needs to make an appointment with Samuels after trial so he can be treated for extreme generalized anxiety disorder. He has had a major meltdown in court today, and the judge has lost total control of her courtroom.

Edit 2: At about 3:30 this afternoon, Dr. Samuels was finally finished. Now domestic violence expert and psychotherapist Alyce LaViolette is on the stand.


Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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"Pay for Performance" is Utter GARBAGE in Education

Schools. are. not. businesses. Good for the school districts in Nevada for dragging their feet on unworkable, bullshit "reforms" which only exacerbate the problem by further scapegoating teachers.

Of course it's not that they didn't want to implement teacher-hating "reforms" in that shithole of a state.

"Merit pay" schemes will result in principals being even more insane than they are now since favoritism will become more rampant, provided there is any money at all to pay "bonuses" to teachers:

School district officials said the state did not put any money into funding the performance-pay programs, so some school districts assumed that they didn’t have to create the system.

“Statewide, the resources have not been set aside,” said Pedro Martinez, Washoe County School District superintendent.

Washoe implemented a limited pay-for-performance model via a federal grant, but Smith said the district still didn’t follow mandates to get a state-level plan in place so that money could neatly transition when a performance-pay council established under another 2011 law finished its work.

Clark County School District also has a district-sponsored pay-for-performance model at some schools, but its administrators did not submit any report to the Legislature pursuant to the 2011 law.

“It was a matter of miscommunication,” said Joyce Haldeman, associate superintendent for the district.

The "coordinator" of the "performance pay" plan via TIF grant for WCSD is none other than the shitbag who illegally fired me to cover her ass when she didn't do her goddamned job.

I'll say that much for former WCSD sup Heath Morrison who put her in that job before he left Nevada for the greener pastures of Charlotte, North Carolina: He had one sick sense of humor.

James Guthrie is pushing for this "merit pay" shit, and he is a completely unqualified dolt.

Love these comments following the article:

What did they say? "School district officials said the state did not put any money into funding the performance-pay programs, so some school districts assumed that they didn't have to create the system."

All the position shuffling has left education in Nevada a mess! High turnover rates due to those either leaving a position for a higher (paying) position, or leaving the state or profession, due to the Nevada Lawmakers not funding education in this state in a SUSTAINABLE AND CONSISTENT manner. All this does have a "trickle down effect" into our Nevada classrooms, with lower academic and social performance. How's that working out?

All this chaos kills motivation and morale with school employees. Programs get started (at great expense, resources, and effort), only to be cancelled for the next school year. The top down management system has virtually alienated parent involvement at schools, whereas parents don't feel any kind of ownership with their neighborhood school their child attends.

These are NOT "growing pains" as the Governor suggests, these are real problems of politically legislating laws that were NOT thought through, nor funded! Come on, take some responsibility on that and not dismiss the problem!

The Citizens of Nevada should be outraged over this, but half of them aren't literate enough to follow such events in the news. Educators simply throw their hands in the air and say, "There's nothing we can do about the students' homes/parents" and keep hitting their heads on the wall, doing the same worthless solution over and over and getting the same results (what? the definition of insanity?).

If we want Nevada education to work, we ALL must participate and make it happen.

A parent is a child's first and lifelong teacher.

Blessings and Peace,
Star


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Half the state board only won because Elaine Wynn endorsed and bank rolled their campaign with obscene amounts of money. That doesn't create a "half elected board," it creates a "half bought board," with the other half being appointed by even more elected officials that big business has bank rolled.
Even Guthrie isn't qualified or experienced to run things. He is a highly partisan economist not an education expert.

Hey, Arne Duncan has only a B.A. in sociology from Harvard and is totally unqualified, but there he is dictating education policy from Washington at Obama's request. What is good for Arne should be good for no-good James W. Guthrie.

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Etc.

North Carolina teachers are about to get the shit kicked out of them if an asshole legislator has his way and scapegoats them while stealing all of what few rights they already possess:

Ravitch’s criticism extended beyond conservative Republicans. She doesn’t like the “Race to the Top” program pushed by the Obama administration because it relies on standardized testing. She doesn’t care for reforms pushed by philanthropists who know little about teaching, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad or New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Ravitch said the hot ideas in education – vouchers, charters, virtual charters, merit pay, standardized testing, school A-to-F grades – have not improved education but have distracted the nation from improving the basic dynamic of learning, a process as old as Socrates: teachers teaching.

It wasn’t a debate this week, but Ravitch’s views must win the argument. We should back teachers with better pay and public support. If we want children to learn, we must enable and entrust their teachers not to teach to tests or compete for bonuses but to do what they love and, particularly in pay-stingy North Carolina, what they do out of love – teach.

All true, of course, but it is hard for lawmakers to say no to the gangsters out to pilfer the public treasury.
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Why are civil rights lawyers asleep at the switch at the obvious class war being waged on public education?
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It's nothing short of sadism for companies to string desperate job applicants along by forcing them through a series of interviews and tests only to not bother to fill the jobs at all.

This is the NYT article Hightower is referring to:

The hiring delays are part of the vicious cycle the economy has yet to escape: jobless and financially stretched Americans are reluctant to spend, which holds back demand, which in turn frays employers’ confidence that sales will firm up and justify committing to a new hire. Job creation over the last two years has been steady but too slow to put a major dent in the backlog of unemployed workers, and the February jobs report due out on Friday is expected to be equally mediocre. Uncertainty about the effect of fiscal policy in Washington is not helping expectations for the rest of the year, either.

“If you have an opening and are not sure about the economy, it’s pretty cheap to wait for a month or two,” said Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University. But in the aggregate, those little delays, coupled with fiscal uncertainty, are stretching out the recovery process. “It’s like one of those horror movies, an economic Friday the 13th, where this recession never seems to die.”

Employers might be making candidates jump through so many hoops partly because so many workers have been jobless for months or years, and hiring managers want to make sure the candidates’ skills are up to date, said Robert Shimer, an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

But there’s also little pressure to hire right now, so long as candidates are abundant and existing staff members are afraid to refuse the extra workload created by an unfilled position. Employers can keep dragging out the hiring process until they’re more confident about their business — or at least until they find the superstar candidate.

Translation: Employers are being sadistic assholes because they can.
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Some nitwits in North Dakota think they can ban abortion by putting in a declaration that "life begins at conception" when in fact any proposal would have no teeth. Roe v. Wade, after all, is still the law of the land.

Texas is pulling a similar idiotic stunt:

The bill would require abortions, including those induced by drugs, to be performed in so-called ambulatory surgical centers. The regulations for such facilities include specific sizes for rooms and doorways, and additional infrastructure like pipelines for general anesthesia and large sterilization equipment.

The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services approved the bill on Tuesday, sending it to the full Senate for approval.

“There’s no recent spike in risk or safety incidents that this regulation is responding to. It’s pure politics,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four abortion clinics throughout the state and an ambulatory surgical center that performs abortions. “The thing we need to worry about is, when you take away women’s access to safe abortion, then what’s going to happen?”

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I forgot to play the Powerball lottery last night.

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Obituaries

A few deaths to catch up on before I kick off:

The 97-pound weakling has died: Famous bodybuilder and a mentor of sorts to a future weightlifter, actor, politician, and cad, Joe Weider, passed away at the age of 93.

The cause of death was heart failure:

Weider brought Schwarzenegger to the United States early in his career, where he helped train the future governor of California as well as aided him in getting into business. Schwarzenegger also said Weider helped land him his first movie role, in the forgettable film "Hercules in New York," by passing off the Austrian-born weightlifter to the producers as a German Shakespearean actor.

"Joe didn't just inspire my earliest dreams; he made them come true the day he invited me to move to America to pursue my bodybuilding career," the actor said in his statement. "I will never forget his generosity. One of Joe's greatest qualities is that he wasn't just generous with his money; he freely gave of his time and expertise and became a father figure for me."

Weider also mentored numerous other bodybuilders.

Born in Canada in 1919, Weider recalled growing up in a tough section of Montreal.

Just like the apocryphal tale of the skinny kid who starts working out after a bully kicks sand in his face, Weider said he was indeed a small, skinny teenager picked on by bullies when he came across the magazine Strength.

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Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, 82, following a brief illness.
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Mountaineer George Lowe, 89, the last surviving member of the team that was the first to summit Mount Everest, died in a nursing home.
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Italian sprinter and Olympian Pietro Mennea, 60, of undisclosed causes.

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Big band-era singer Fran Warren, 87, of natural causes.
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Former lead singer of the Spinners, Bobbie Smith, 76, of lung cancer.
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Former Washington state Democratic governor Booth Gardner, 76, of Parkinson's disease:

In November 1984, Gardner beat Republican Gov. John Spellman, and since his first election victory, Democrats have won the governor's race seven times.

During his two terms, Gardner pushed for standards-based education reform, issued an executive order banning discrimination against gay and lesbian state workers, banned smoking in state workplaces, and appointed the first minority to the state Supreme Court. The state's Basic Health Care program for the poor was launched in 1987 and was the first of its kind in the country.

Toward the end of his first term, he appointed Chris Gregoire, then an assistant attorney general, as head of the Department of Ecology. Gregoire went on to be attorney general, and then governor. Gardner was easily re-elected in 1988. In his second term, he and Gregoire, then attorney general, secured an agreement with the federal government that the nuclear waste at Hanford nuclear site would be cleaned up in the coming decades, and Gardner banned any further shipments of radioactive waste to Hanford from other states.

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We're in the Money

Life is as rotten as can be if you are in the bottom of the income spectrum.

It's change we can all believe in, even when we have utterly no change in our pockets:

The survey revealed that many people at the lowest rung in the workplace view their jobs as a dead end. Half were “not too” or “not at all” confident that their jobs would help them achieve long-term career goals. And only 41 percent of workers at the same place for more than a decade reported ever receiving a promotion.

Yet 44 percent of employers surveyed said it’s hard to recruit people with appropriate skills or experiences to do lower-wage jobs, particularly in manufacturing (54 percent). While 88 percent of employers said they were investing in training and education for employee advancement, awareness and use of such programs among the lower-wage workers was only modest.

Employers are so full of shit. They want people to have all of these "skills," but they want to pay people 10 bucks an hour, part-time, with no benefits.

You pay trash, you will get trash or very desperate people who will quit at the first opportunity to better themselves.

And for those who have ambitions to make poverty-level pay for the rest of their lives, here are the eight lowest-paying jobs in the country:

1. Food preparation and serving workers, including fast food

2. Dishwashers

3. Cashiers

4. Hosts and hostesses

5. Amusement park attendants

6. Movie theater ushers, ticket takers

7. Farm workers

8. Personal and home care aides


These are some of the hardest jobs in the economy and necessary jobs, but they pay absolute shit.

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"Democrats" Against Public Education

At this point that is what Rahm Emanuel is. The much-ballyhooed Chicago teachers' strike turns out to not have stopped the "reform" wrecking ball of mostly minority neighborhoods:

The nation’s third largest school district, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has a total of 681 schools. The announcement follows the plans to shut 26 public schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and 15 public schools in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Detroit, Michigan has closed 130 schools since 2005, including 40 in 2010, and has plans to close another 28.

These closings are part of Obama’s administration’s program of “school reform,” which is aimed at victimizing teachers, shutting down public schools and privatizing education through the expansion of charter schools.

Thursday’s announcement was made by CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's former chief of staff. A total of 54 elementary and middle schools will be closed outright. A number of other schools will be “co-located,” meaning that multiple schools will be combined under one roof.

This while all of the evidence points to charter schools being completely ineffective and are nothing but schemes to rob taxpayers of money to further enrich the billionaire class like the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and others by basically selling off public assets.

It was critical to put a "Democratic" fraud in the White House to allow the destruction of democracy.

Obama and his ilk can go to fucking hell.

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The Case of the Missing WCSD Principal(s)

In this article, we are introduced to a pair of veteran, retired principals who are replacing, at least on a temporary basis, the two Washoe County School District principals who are currently on administrative leave. I know the acting Lemmon Valley E.S. principal, but not well, but she seems to be okay; in other words, she is one of the old guard principals who retired before the dregs and dirtbags infected the system on a greater basis than in the past. I don't know the other acting principal, the one at Double Diamond, at all.

As we know, the DDES principal has already come out publicly and explained why he is on leave. Apparently the parent's trial got pushed back to April. As we also know, the story surrounding the LVES principal has been kept quiet by WCSD, but my belief, and it is based on very, very, very solid information, is that the LVES principal was suspended from the district in a disciplinary action resulting from an investigation following the lawsuit linked above. In other words, this principal got in trouble for treating LVES teachers like shit, trying to railroad them out of their careers on the most flimsy and bogus of charges simply because she didn't like them or thought they were disloyal to her.

In fairness to this principal, her behavior was no worse than that of the asshole principals who worked at Sparks Middle School and Sun Valley Elementary School and the asshole chief officer in human resources before they were all moved/demoted, with two of them directly involved in the apparent destruction of my career and ruination of my finances. ALL should have been fired, but the regimes of Paul Dugan and Heath Morrison were much more lax in their treatment of wayward principals and senior administrators than apparently Pedro Martinez's. I guess it helps to have four sisters who are teachers even if you are unqualified to be superintendent yourself. The disciplinary actions against administrators are inconsistent and even capricious, while teachers are tossed out for the most petty of reasons. Teachers have NO real rights to due process AT ALL in Nevada (and pretty much everywhere else).

A local Reno TV station had more about this LVES case and asks why the district is stonewalling (my answer: privacy laws). I sent the station a link to the court case because it solicited information regarding anything about this particular principal:




The latest report, and now the focus is on why WCSD is stonewalling about whether a person is still working at the school district. It's all for nothing, for the information will NEVER be made public by the district:

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Note to Robert Reich: Obama Doesn't Care

All Obama cares about is his place in history, and he will destroy the legacy of the Democratic Party in order to do it.

My utter hatred and contempt for Obama in terms of his policies knows no bounds. Just when you think he scrapes bottom, he does some other outrage to outdo himself.

He really is the worst president in American history, bar none.

Reich:

For over thirty years Republicans have pitted the middle class against the poor, preying on the frustrations and racial biases of average working people who can’t get ahead no matter how hard they try. In the Republican narrative, government takes from the hard-working middle and gives to the undeserving and dependent needy.

In reality, average working people have been stymied because almost all the economic gains of the last three decades have gone to the very top. The middle has lost bargaining power as unions have shriveled. American politics has been flooded with campaign contributions from corporations and the wealthy, which have used their clout to reduce marginal tax rates, widen loopholes, loosen regulations, gain subsidies, and obtain government bailouts when their bets turn sour.

Obama hasn't done shit, and WON'T do shit, about this situation because he is really one of them.

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The Parasitical Class

is destroying the country by taking all of the wealth and buying off almost all of the politicians.

Michael Lind is almost always right in his analysis:

Low taxes on rentiers. In the late 20th century, the U.S. and a number of other capitalist countries made tax rates on capital gains lower than tax rates on wage income. This was supposed to encourage investment in productive enterprises, but in fact it merely provided the super-rich with windfall fortunes that have often been used for stock market and real estate speculation. Thanks to privileged tax treatment of capital gains, Warren Buffett complains that he pays lower taxes than his secretary, and Mitt Romney — the poster boy of rentier financial capitalism — paid 13.9 percent in taxes in 2010, lower than the combined employee and employer payroll taxes paid by low-income workers who pay no federal income tax (and not counting the state and local taxes that they pay). America’s rentier plutocracy has deployed campaign contributions to intimidate Congress into keeping taxes extremely low on those who make most of their income from investments, whether the investments enhance the American economy’s productive capacity or not.

Privatizing natural monopolies. The classic productive capitalist wants to found a company to provide a new, socially useful good or service and make money by sales. In contrast, the classic parasitic rentier wants to bribe the state legislature into privatizing and selling state roads so that he or she can make money without effort or innovation every time somebody drives and pays a toll. Not only progressives but mainstream conservatives used to agree that natural monopolies, such as many infrastructure services—water, electricity, transportation — should be either publicly owned or publicly regulated utilities. Today, however, some plutocrats, seeking guaranteed, recurrent streams of money for little or no effort, fund politicians and ideologues who favor privatizing or deregulating infrastructure and public utilities and cutting or voucherizing Social Security and Medicare, to force the elderly to buy financial products and costly health insurance from the rentier sector.

It's all about the greed.

As with parasites in the animal kingdom, they eventually kill off the host and eventually die themselves.

These greedheads, however, have politicians in their hip pocket and an ideology called "neoliberalism" that provides "intellectual" cover for their sociopathic behavior.

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