Alabama governor appoints man to the Board of Education who never attended public schools and claims his children will never attend one either. Sounds reasonable.

Matthew Brown

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

What message is a governor sending to the public with an appointment like this? 

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has tapped someone to your state’s Board of Education who never attended public schools, publicly declared that his children never will either, and actively supported a successful effort to defeat a vote on a school tax in a divisive campaign in his home county? 

Bentley, a Republican, named Matthew Brown, a 28-year-old design engineer at the Baldwin County Highway Department, to the Alabama State Board of Education. Brown graduated in 2007 from Pensacola Christian College and attended Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, graduating in 2011. 

Bentley hasn’t been what you’d call a friend to public schools, given his support for tax credits, vouchers and charter schools. This year he signed into law legislation that amended the 2013 Alabama Accountability Act and that diverts up to $30 million a year from the Education Trust Fund for “opportunity scholarships” (vouchers). He also recently signed a law allowing charter schools to open in Alabama and giving a new state commission the right to overturn a local school district’s rejection of specific charter applications. 

So it looks like Alabama is going to challenge Kansas and Texas for the most screwed up state education system in the country.

Bold move Alabama, if successful perhaps someday students can read about your efforts to undermine their education in textbooks.

Wait, what am I saying? If successful future students will have to have the textbooks read to them by somebody who went to school in another state.

Republican, dumbing down future voters in order to stay in office since....well since forever.

Private school advocates in Wisconsin go on a full frontal assault against public schools.

Courtesy of The Progressive:  

Parents whose children attend the public schools in Wisconsin have been getting a barrage of phone calls lately offering "free tuition to send your child to a private or religious school." 

"We at School Choice Wisconsin are proud to pay for this call, because we want the very best for you and your child," a woman's voice intones. 

The friendly voice directs parents to a website: chooseyourschoolwi.org. 

A little online digging reveals that the School Choice Wisconsin website address is registered to the American Education Reform Council -- a group funded by John Walton, of Walmart, to the tune of $1 million between 1999 and 2000, and also funded in part by grants worth hundreds of millions from the rightwing Bradley Foundation. 

The American Education Reform Council's political arm has been heavily involved in pushing voucher legislation in Colorado and Michigan; "paycheck protection" (to limit unions' ability to spend money in elections) in California; and a failed Washington, D.C., voucher initiative designed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. 

Why is this group calling parents in Wisconsin now? 

The calls happen to coincide with the application process for the statewide voucher program created in the last budget, also known as the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program. The application period runs through April 21. Even if school vouchers are not available in a particular district, if enough people respond to these robocalls, voucher advocates can use the responses to demonstrate demand. 

Ginning up demand for vouchers helps the people who want to expand the program -- which is why the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity is holding pro-voucher events around the state during application season.

As if that were not troubling enough, it is only one strategy being used to undermine public education in Wisconsin.

Right on the heels of those school-choice robocalls, Wisconsin parents are now receiving postcards in the mail from "eAchieve Academy," "Wisconsin's Leading Online Middle and High School."

This is one of many virtual school programs that offer online classes and will be paid for with school vouchers. Of course with no need to maintain class sizes for each teacher, and no need of janitors to clean non-existing hallways or cafeterias, there is plenty of money left over for the owners of these websites to pocket.

And this is happening, not just in Wisconsin, but all over the country.  

K12, Inc., the huge, nationwide virtual school operator that runs the McFarland online academy, raked in $848.2 million in profits in 2013 as a publicly traded company, almost entirely out of the public trough.

These schools are often NOT performing at anywhere near the standard set for public schools, and their test scores are often far from impressive.

Make no mistake, this has NOTHING to do with improving education, and EVERYTHING to do with undermining public education and sucking tax dollars away and putting into the private sector.

And we are losing this battle every day.

Voucher systems allow private schools to promote religion, attack science, and undermine public education. And all with YOUR tax dollars.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies. 

Now a major push to expand these voucher programs is under way from Alaska to New York, a development that seems certain to sharply increase the investment. 

Public debate about science education tends to center on bills like one in Missouri, which would allow public school parents to pull their kids from science class whenever the topic of evolution comes up. But the more striking shift in public policy has flown largely under the radar, as a well-funded political campaign has pushed to open the spigot for tax dollars to flow to private schools. Among them are Bible-based schools that train students to reject and rebut the cornerstones of modern science. 

Decades of litigation have established that public schools cannot teach creationism or intelligent design. But private schools receiving public subsidies can — and do. A POLITICO review of hundreds of pages of course outlines, textbooks and school websites found that many of these faith-based schools go beyond teaching the biblical story of the six days of creation as literal fact. Their course materials nurture disdain of the secular world, distrust of momentous discoveries and hostility toward mainstream scientists. They often distort basic facts about the scientific method — teaching, for instance, that theories such as evolution are by definition highly speculative because they haven’t been elevated to the status of “scientific law.” 

And this approach isn’t confined to high school biology class; it is typically threaded through all grades and all subjects. 

One set of books popular in Christian schools calls evolution “a wicked and vain philosophy.” Another derides “modern math theorists” who fail to view mathematics as absolute laws ordained by God. The publisher notes that its textbooks shun “modern” breakthroughs — even those, like set theory, developed back in the 19th century. Math teachers often set aside time each week — even in geometry and algebra — to explore numbers in the Bible. Students learn vocabulary with sentences like, “Many scientists today are Creationists.”

That last sentence sent a chill up my spine at the same time that it made my hands clench in anger.

THIS is the kind of garbage that is spoon fed to impressionable children in some of these schools.

Yesterday my mother came by to visit and the topic turned to the rash of religiously themed movies coming out this year. 

My mom thought that was a weird coincidence, but I told her it is no coincidence and that it is part of an overall master plan that was first put into place during the 80's with the Moral Majority, and which has only expanded today, for Christians to slowly take over the 7 mountains of influence that they believe will allow them to once again regain control of the country.

One of those mountains, of course, is education. And with the school voucher system it allows the fundamentalists to sabotage the public school system, while providing religious based education, which relies on faith, rather than a secular education, which relies on critical and rational thinking.

We have to recognize that we are in a war for the future of this country, and sadly the progressive side of the battle lines are woefully unprepared for what is to come.

And please if you think I am putting forth some sort of conspiracy theory, then research for yourself. Because believe me, I only wish it was a conspiracy theory.

Tennessee Republican lawmakers all for school vouchers until they realize that Islamic schools can apply for them as well. Uh oh!

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are threatening to block Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s school voucher bill over fears that Muslim schools could receive funding. 

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported on Monday that Haslam hinted that he would withdraw his bill after objections from Republican lawmakers that it was not broad enough and that the vouchers could be used by Islamic schools. 

Over the weekend, state Sen. Jim Tracy (R) had told The Murfreesboro Post that he had “considerable concern” that tax dollars could go to schools that teach principles from the Quran. 

Tracy, who is on the Senate Education Committee and identifies himself as a member of the Church of Christ, insisted that Islamic school funding was an “an issue we must address” before the voucher bill can go forward. 

“I don’t know whether we can simply amend the bill in such a way that will fix the issue at this point,” he said. 

On Monday, Tracy told the News Sentinel that his staff had determined that there was at least one Muslim-oriented school — Pleasant View School in Memphis — that would be eligible for vouchers under the governor’s plan. 

And state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris (R) worried that an attempt by Sen. Brian Kelsey (R) to broaden Haslam’s bill from the bottom 5 percent of schools to every school in the state would only make more tax dollars available to Islamic educators.

So to be clear, schools that ignore science and indoctrinate your children into the Christian religion are fine, but if they ignore science and indoctrinate your children into Islam? Not so much!

"I don’t know whether we can simply amend the bill in such a way that will fix the issue at this point." Not without exposing your agenda to the world, and stomping on the Muslim communities 1st Amendment rights you can't.

These morons simply did not think through their plan to undermine the public school system and implement a plan to indoctrinate children. If they push through this voucher system they may soon have Islamic schools, Hindu schools, and even Scientology schools, vying for their state dollars.

But if they amend the program to block those other faiths from being able to participate they invite criticism, and undoubtedly very expensive lawsuits, which would most likely undermine the e3ntire program.

Damn I love karma!

The truth behind the push for "School Choice."

Courtesy of Salon:  

To still relatively scant notice, the call for “School Choice” or Vouchers continues to play out in state capitols across the nation in an effort to increase Biblically based education through a redirection of tax dollars from public to private religious schools. In order to accomplish the end goal of Christianizing all students, stealth remains largely the rule of the day. In 2002, Dick DeVos told The Heritage Foundation.

“We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities. Many of the activities and the political work that needs to go on will go on at the grass roots. It will go on quietly and it will go on in the form that often politics is done – one person at a time, speaking to another person in privacy. And so these issues will not be, maybe, as visible or as noteworthy, but they will set a framework within states for the possibility of action on education reform issues.” 

During the 2011-2012 school year, thirty-two private school choice programs were in place with more than $800 million available for vouchers and scholarship tax credits, money that by all rights should have gone to our public school systems, many of which are in dire need. Groups with heart-warming names like The Alliance for School Choice and American Federation for Children encourage naive donors to support vouchers for reasons that are as deceptive as they are fundamentally non-democratic. 

Additionally, over the years, far too many of these overzealous Christians have quietly insinuated themselves onto School Boards across the country and are hard at work challenging the historical mandate to provide a religion-neutral public education by insuring that the Bible become part of high school curricula. 

In 2007, a piece of legislation backed by the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and the American Family Association, passed in the Texas State House. The bill stated that Texas public schools must offer, as required curriculum the “history and literature of the Old and New Testaments.” Recently, the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) issued a chilling report on a study they coordinated with Mark Chancey, Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University. 

In his report, Chancey stated that “at least 57 (Texas) school districts and three charter schools taught courses about the Bible in 2011-12, a number that more than doubled the districts teaching such courses in the 2006-07 school year.” The oversight spelled out in the bill that should have protected students from religious indoctrination was largely ignored leaving whole districts with Biblically driven curricula. At the time of the bill’s implementation, the bill’s co-author, Rep. Leo Berman, blatantly stated, “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as the separation of church and state.” 

Of particular concern is the textbook-like use of scripture to condone homophobia, to slander blacks and Jews, and to deny basic climate and evolutionary science. And Texas is not alone. According to The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools’ website over a half a million students have already taken these courses nationally for credit. Take a half a million public school minds along with those who are already enrolled in religious schools or who are homeschooled, multiply it by a decade and it’s easy to see why it matters.

This agenda to undermine public education and reintroduce Christianity into the classrooms was the brain child of Jerry Falwell and the so-called Moral Majority, back in the 1980's. And even after Falwell's death it continues apace.

This is why on the local level it is important to keep the Fundamentalists out of our school boards and fight at every turn the idea of charter schools, school vouchers, and "teaching the controversy."

If we are not vigilant these anti-education trolls will destroy the very foundation of America's educational system in the hopes of keeping them ignorant and uninformed enough to continue voting Republican candidates, and continuing to support old fashioned religious faiths that are soon to go the way of the dinosaurs.

And that would be the ACTUAL dinosaurs, not those silly animatronic ones they have hanging out with primitive people at the Creation Museum.

Dinosaurs and humans were NEVER alive at the same time, but you will not learn that in many charter schools.

The election is over Mr. President, so no more pussy footing around, it's time to talk education. You have some explaining to do!

Courtesy of Common Dreams:  

The current wave of school closings is latest result of bipartisan educational policies which began with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and have kicked into overdrive under the Obama administration's Race To The Top. In Chicago, the home town of the president and his Secretary of Education, the percentage of black teachers has dropped from 45% in 1995 to 19% today. After winning a couple skirmishes in federal court over discriminatory firings in a few schools, teachers have now filed a citywide class action lawsuit alleging that the city's policy of school “turnarounds” and “transformations” is racially discriminatory because it's carried out mainly in black neighborhoods and the fired teachers are disproportionately black. 

How did this happen? Where did those policies come from, and exactly what are they? 

Beginning in the 1980s, deep right pockets like the Bradley and Walton Family Foundations spent billions to create and fund fake “grassroots movements.” They churned out academic studies and blizzards of media hype, first for vouchers, later on for charter schools and what’s become a whole panoply of privatization-oriented “education reforms” ranging f rom teacher merit pay to common core curriculum and more. 

Those billions paid off with the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act which made the right wing corporate agenda of undermining and ultimately privatizing public education national policy. Though standardized test scores were long known to prove little aside from student family income, they suddenly became the gold standard for judging teacher & school performance. School districts were required to purchase & give dozens of costly meaningless tests and to publish lists ranking their own schools and teachers as “failing” when test scores were low, which again, was mostly wherever students were poor . 

Amid torrents of “blame the teachers” propaganda, so-called “failing schools” were required to hire expensive contractors with cockeyed “run the school like a business” remedies and more crackpot tests. Thus it was that NCLB s pawned almost overnight an entire industry of jackleg educational consultants and test suppliers guaranteed a market with dollars diverted from already tight public school budgets. Those industries attracted capital investors, and began doing what every other industry does in the US—make big campaign contributions to politicians to get sweeter contracts and more favorable regulation. When test scores still didn’t rise, NCLB required many schools to close, making openings for chains of charter schools, often highly profitable charter schools, bringing the blessings of “choice” and free market competition to the educational “marketplace.” 

It was an unequal sort of “competition” though, because charter schools have always been allowed to pick and choose their students, to turn away those with special needs, and to hire teachers and principals with little or no relevant training.

Now look you all know that I am a huge supporter of President Obama, but instead of doing away with the damaging policies of George Bush he seemed to only make them worse. Something I never thought was even possible.

Part of the problem is that it seems that the President has allowed the Republicans to define the conversation, and keep the focus on standardized test results that do NOT indicate actual student progress nor take into account poverty levels, learning disabilities, or cultural background.

And it has to STOP!

I can hear it now, "But Gryphen don't we WANT to get rid of bad teachers and under performing schools? And don't charter school and school vouchers offer us a viable alternative, and a way to force public schools to clean up their act?"

NO I don't, and NO they don't!

If you are one of the people who thinks like that perhaps you don't fully recognize the REAL agenda behind why the conservatives push for those two options so aggressively.

Here perhaps this report will open your eyes a little:

The six biggest threats to America coming from the Religious Right.

Courtesy of AlterNet:

With most state legislatures starting their annual sessions this month, here is a look at some of the top threats to church-state separation expected in 2013, including school voucher bills, creationism ploys, “conscience” exemptions, anti-shar­iah legislation and so-called “religious freedom” and “prayer” caucuses. 

1. Religious School Voucher Subsidies 

Americans United anticipates proposals that benefit religious and other private schools to surface in many states this year, with major pushes expected in New Jersey, Wisconsin, Texas and Tennessee. 

Many people fail to recognize the REAL motivation behind the introduction of school vouchers, which is to undermine the public school system, render the teacher's unions impotent, and reinsert THEIR version of a conservative and religious philosophy into the classroom.

2. Creationism In Science Class

Every year, legislators attempt to introduce religion into public school science classes. Sen. Dennis Kruse (R-Auburn) proposed a bill last year that would have mandated the teaching of “creation science” alongside evolution in public schools. 

That measure passed the Senate but died in the House after some lawmakers realized that it was blatantly unconstitutional and would have led to lawsuits. 

Kruse is back with a new proposal, and this time he claims his goal is to promote critical inquiry in the classroom. “If a student thinks something isn’t true, then they can question the teacher and the teacher would have to come up with some kind of research to support that what they are teaching is true or not true,” Kruse told the Indianapolis Star. 

Once again a blatant attempt to insert religion into the science classroom.

3. Prayer And Proselytizing In Public Schools 

Legislators regularly come up with new schemes to allow coercive prayer and proselytizing in public schools, and Americans United staffers expect this year to be no exception. 

In Virginia, a proposal was filed just ahead of the 2013 legislative session that would create a state constitutional amendment to “secure further the people’s freedom of speech and right to acknowledge God” on public property and presumably in public schools. This could lead to numerous lawsuits if it passes. 

Advocates of church-state separation said it is somewhat similar to Missouri’s deceptive “right to pray” amendment, a problematic constitutional provision approved by the voters last year. It opens the door for coercive prayer and proselytizing in public schools, allows students to skip homework if it offends their religious beliefs and infringes on the religious liberty rights of prisoners. 

There is of course NO law stopping children from praying in schools. What these people want is to establish a law requiring the school to lead the children in a Christian prayer. With no regard for the religious faiths of other children in attendance. And THAT is unconstitutional.

Louisiana judge finds Bobby Jindal's school voucher program unconstitutional.

"I'm sorry what's unconstitutional?"

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

One of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signature accomplishments, a private school tuition voucher program, was ruled unconstitutional by a Louisiana judge Friday, the Associated Press reports: 

State Judge Tim Kelley said Friday that the program improperly diverts money allocated through Louisiana’s public school funding formula to private schools. He also said it unconstitutionally diverts local tax dollars to private schools. 

Kelley ruled in a lawsuit backed by teacher unions and school boards seeking to shut down the voucher program and other changes that would funnel more money away from traditional public schools.

Well this is good news for the children of Louisiana at least, though of course Jindal is planning to  appeal the ruling, which in my opinion makes this statement of his about the rebranding that Republicans need to do going forward ridiculous:

Stop being the stupid party. It's time for a new Republican party that talks like adults. It's time for us to articulate our plans and visions for America in real terms. We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. Enough of that.

Well I've got news for Jindal, if he wants his party to STOP being the "stupid party" than supporting the teaching of superstitious drivel to schoolchildren in lieu of actual science is certainly NOT the way to accomplish that feat.

Remember THIS was the type of "science" textbooks being offered in some of the schools that would be supported by this voucher system.

Go ahead Governor Jindal, tell me that funny story about how you don't want the Republican party to be the "stupid party" anymore.

That one always cracks me up.

P.S. Just on a personal note I am one of those people who has NO freaking idea why people think that Bobby Jindal is a good politician or even how he got elected Governor in the first place. He ALWAYS seems seems strangely uncomfortable and not terribly bright.

I have heard him give speeches, listened as he answered questions, and watched as others tossed accolades in his direction.  But I simply don't see it.

Mitt Romney to teacher: "I didn't ask you a question."

Courtesy of the Daily Kos:  

When I was asked to speak with Mitt Romney it seemed like a very important thing to me, and I wanted to put a lot of careful thought into what I would say. So, I went to the round table discussion very optimistic and interested in hearing what he had to say. 

When he sat down, one of the first questions he asked was, he said "I understand there is a teacher here today, which one of you is a teacher?" 

So, I raised my hand, thinking that's a good thing, he's interested in education, but it wasn't a good thing. I felt like his view was a little old-fashioned and I was surprised by it. He went on to kind of lecture me about schools and how bad they are. He talked bad about the teacher's union. He was talking about the importance of private schools and voucher systems. 

At one point, I said to him, "I have an answer for that." And he said, "I didn't ask you a question."

So Mitt the Twit makes a bunch of ignorant remarks about the state of education in this country, and a teacher offers to explain what is REALLY going on, and he refuses to allow her to speak.

I think that just about sums up why Romney should never be allowed to have ANY say over the education system in this country.

One of the things I most despise about this current crop of Republicans is their flagrant disdain for our teachers. The idea that these incredibly important public servants have been vilified and mistreated to the point of driving many of them out of education entirely is a national crisis, and want desperately to see it changed in the next four years.

Louisiana lawmaker surprised to learn that Christianity is not the only religion in America.

"Wait, there are HOW many religions?"

Courtesy of Mobile News:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools. 

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday. 

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said. 

Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.” 

HB976, now signed into law as Act 2, proposed, among other things, a voucher program allowing state educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups. 

Other members of the local legislative delegation, including Senator Dale Erdey, Rep. J. Rogers Pope and Rep. Sherman Mack, opposed HB976. They argued that public school funds should stay with the public schools. 

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s staff pushed hard to get the educational bills approved in the early days of the session, which ended June 4. 

Hodges, who represents District 64 on the northwest side of the parish, and another freshman lawmaker in the local delegation, Clay Schexnayder from Dist. 81 in the southwest, voted with the House majority in favor of HB976. 

The school funding mechanism, however, did not come up for a vote until the end of the session. By then, a Muslim-based school had applied for support through the new voucher system. 

During debate over the MFP (Minimum Foundation Program) funding formula, Hodges learned more about the consequences of the educational changes. She voted against the new MFP funding formula; Schexnayder voted for it. 

“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said. “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Don't you love it when a narrow mind is forcefully expanded against its will?

"What, there's more than one type of religious school? But I just wanted to use public school funds to indoctrinate children into MY religious belief. not into one of them primitive Muslin faiths which worship the wrong gosh darn God!"

What is it that it says in the bible again, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

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.