Tag Archives: Detroit

Education for Revolution special issue of Works & Days + Cultural Logic launched

Education for Revolution a special issue collaboration of the journals Works & Days and Cultural Logic has just been launched.

Check out the great cover image (Monument to Joe Louis in Detroit) and the equally great stuff on the inside. Hard copies of the issue available from worksanddays.net and Cultural Logic will be publishing and expanded online version of the issue in the coming months.

Rich and I want to thank David B. Downing and his staff at Works & Days for the fabulous work they did on this issue, which is the second collaboration between the two journals. Read Downing’s foreword to the issue here.

Works & Days + Cultural Logic
Special Issue: Education for Revolution
E. Wayne Ross & Rich Gibson (Editors)
Table of Contents

Barbarism Rising: Detroit, Michigan, and the International War of the Rich on the Poor
Rich Gibson, San Diego State University

Resisting Neoliberal Education Reform: Insurrectionist Pedagogies and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia
Kevin D. Vinson, University of The West Indies

Reimaging Solidarity: Hip-Hop as Revolutionary Pedagogy
Julie Gorlewski, State University of New York, New Paltz
Brad Porfilio, Lewis University

Learning to be Fast Capitalists on a Flat World
Timothy Patrick Shannon, The Ohio State University
Patrick Shannon, Penn State University

Contesting Production: Youth Participatory Action Research in the Struggle to Produce Knowledge
Brian Lozenski, Zachary A. Casey, Shannon K. McManimon, University of Minnesota

Schooling for Capitalism or Education for Twenty-First Century Socialism?
Mike Cole, University of East London

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context
Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

The Pedagogy of Excess
Deborah P. Kelsh, The College of Saint Rose

Undermining Capitalist Pedagogy: Takiji Kobayashi’s Tōseikatsusha and the Ideology of the World Literature Paradigm
John Maerhofer, Roger Williams University

Marxist Sociology of Education and the Problem of Naturalism: An Historical Sketch
Grant Banfield, Flinders University of South Australia

The Illegitimacy of Student Debt
David Blacker, University of Delaware

Hacking Away at the Corporate Octopus
Alan J. Singer, Hofstra University

A Tale of Two Cities ¬– and States
Richard Brosio, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

SDS, The 1960s, and Education for Revolution
Alan J. Spector, Purdue University, Calumet

Rouge Forum 2013: Join Us at Wayne State University (May 16-19)

Rouge Forum 2013: Winning the Class Struggle Against Corporate Education Reform

See links below for Rouge Forum 2013 Conference details:

Conference Registration (click here)

Conference Housing Options (click here)

Conference program overview and keynote speakers (click here)

RF2013posterV3

Download Rouge Forum 2013 Posters: here.

Rouge Forum Update: Happy Labor Day and Back to School Edition

Rouge Forum Update: Happy Labor Day and Back to School Edition

Reminder: Nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee go to Community Coordinator Adam Renner at by September 15th.

Mayday Is the Real Labor Day! Here’s a Fine Poem Anyway:

Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We’ll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers’ Commonwealth

ABC News “Crisis in the Classroom” with Arne, Michell Rhee, and AFT’s Weingarten Sucking up

Let’s Leash Arne and Barack

Putting a Noose on the Core (Regimented/Nationalist) Curriculum–States Take Bribe to Push More Tests: The Department of Education on Thursday awarded $330 million to two groups of states to design new standardized tests to replace the end-of-year reading and math exams used over the past decade to measure achievement under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The new tests, which are to be aligned with the common academic standards that nearly 40 states have adopted in recent months, are to be ready for the 2014-15 school year, the department said.

In Detroit, School Will Open but Where are the Teachers to Be? Hundreds of teachers without job assignments for the fall converged at a Detroit hotel Monday seeking a classroom spot before students return to school next week.Detroit Public Schools issued layoff notices to about 2,000 teachers earlier this year as it grapples with a $363 million budget deficit and declining enrollment. While some teachers had already been brought back, hundreds without assignments were asked to report to the Hotel St. Regis on Monday, the first day of school for teachers.

But Who Gets Laid off And How if, predictably, The Kids Don’t Show Up for the DPS Mess? The “Special Authority” provision of the contract allows the district to protect itself from incurring a deficit in the event student enrollment drops significantly, resulting in the district having more teachers than it needs to staff classrooms.

More Corruption in Detroit Schools–a Principal, an Accountant, and a Cop: A former principal, former school accountant and a former police officer will face felony charges in connection with embezzling nearly $150,000 from the Detroit Public Schools, officials announced today.

Connecting the War/Education Lies: As schools began to open for the 2010-11 year, two lies that need to be connected were kept apart in the for-profit media. On August 30, 2010, ABC News “This week,” chaired by Christiane Amanpour offered the usual tripe about educational reform, virtually praising the White House Race to the Top (RaTT) project. Washington D.C.’s school tyrant, Michelle Rhee, joined Obama errand-boy Arne Duncan and the American Federation of Teacher’s boss Randi Weingarten in a celebration of reform under the guise that “We are all in this together for the children.”

Read full update here.

Rouge Forum Update: Joy vs Organized Decay!

Check out the full Rouge Forum update here.

Reminder: Nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee go to Community Coordinator

Little Red Schoolhouse:

Alfie on Assessments, Goals, and Big Tests: What is its basic conception of assessment? To get a sense of how well things are going and where help is needed, we ought to focus on the actual learning that students do over a period of time—ideally, deep learning that consists of more than practicing skills and memorizing facts. If you agree, then you’d be very skeptical about a program that relies on discrete, contrived, testlike assessments. You’d object to any procedure that seems mechanical, in which standardized protocols like rubrics supplant teachers’ professional judgments based on personal interaction with their students. And the only thing worse than “benchmark” tests (tests in between the tests) would be computerized monitoring tools, which the reading expert Richard Allington has succinctly characterized as “idiotic.”

The Bottomless Pit of Evidence vs High-Stakes Tests (does evidence matter?): Children perform best in exams when teachers are not overly concerned about their test results, according to research published today. Pupils show greater motivation, are better behaved and are more likely to be independent and strategic thinkers when teachers are not obsessed by grades, the study by the Institute of Education found.

Krashen on VAT: Value-added evaluations of teachers assume that higher test scores are always the result of teaching. Not so. Test scores are influenced by other factors. We can generate higher scores by teaching “test preparation” strategies for getting higher scores without students learning anything. We can generate higher scores by testing selectively, making sure that low scorers are not in school the day of the test. And of course we can generate higher scores by direct cheating, sharing information about specific test questions with students. Teachers who prepare students for higher scores on tests of specific procedures and facts are not teaching; they are simply drilling students with information that is often soon forgotten. Moreover, research shows that value-added evaluations are not stable year to year for individual teachers, and that different reading tests will give you different value-added scores for the same teacher. If The Times is serious about helping children, don’t bash teachers, address poverty. American children from high-income families do very well on international tests, but our children of poverty do much worse.

The One-Sided Truth About Value Added Teaching: From the LA Times owner’s perspective, they tell the truth on behalf of important sections of the ruling class, and occasionally those sections fight it out both on the editorial pages and in the rest of the paper too. Within that context of what is really their truth, the value added research “works,” in that it sees school workers (who have always been workers and have been professionals almost only when bosses want educators to make sacrifices) as people whose minds must be stripped; their minds and creativity replaced with the minds of managers as in the common (bourgeoisie) core standards, in other regulated curricula, in high-stakes exams (production quotas), and who must be won to this alienation as a necessity for, on one hand, the chance to keep a job, and on the other hand, for the good of the nation’s kids (future workers and warriors)…

The Lines of Influence in Education Reform (check the link to the draft/chart): Another example is the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, where Bill Gates gave AFT $3.4M for “teacher quality initiatives” and $217, 200 for AFT conference expenses. See: Did Bill Gates Buy His Podium at the AFT Convention? Sometimes a breakdown of the numbers provides a more clear picture of the power and influence of money. Then there is money “with stipulations” that the Gates Foundation provided to NPR. The purpose of that money is “to support coverage of education issues on NPR programs, including the Morning Edition and All Things Considered”. The amount provided was $750,000. I don’t feel comfortable with that on many levels.

UC Boss Lives Like Czar (Flees Lease): Mr. Yudof, 65, moved with his wife into a 10,000-square-foot, four-story house with 16 rooms, 8 bathrooms and panoramic views. He said he needed the house, which rented for $13,365 a month by the end of the lease and was paid for by U.C., to fulfill his obligation to host functions for staff members, donors and visiting dignitaries.

Mr. Yudof held 23 such functions over a two-year period, according to the university. He also ordered a list of improvements and repairs — including air conditioning and 12 phones — that drove up costs and, according to staff members, tied up university officials in meetings and lengthy negotiations on issues ranging from water bills to gopher eradication.

After the Yudofs vacated the property at the end of June, Brennan Mulligan, the landlord, informed university officials that he intended to keep the U.C.’s $32,100 security deposit. Mr. Mulligan requested an additional $45,000 to cover the repairs for hundreds of holes left from hanging art, a scratched marble bathtub, a broken $2,000 Sivoia window shade and other claims.

WSU’s Tragic Detroit Trajectory–Falls to 4th Tier, then This: Wayne State University is failing its African-American students, graduating fewer than one in 10 while success for their white counterparts is four times higher, according to a report issued this month. The graduation gap between white and black students at WSU is the worst in the nation among public universities, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust.

After Painting School Doors Blue (closing 40, laying off hundreds of teachers) Detroit PS sends 62 page Homework Packages to Students 2 Weeks Before School Opens but 2000 teachers and Dozens of Principals Have No Assignments: Detroit elementary and middle-school students don’t resume classes for two weeks, but they already have homework. Detroit Public Schools announced Monday it will mail 62-page packets of homework this week to 28,650 students in grades three through eight. The packets, which must be finished and turned in the first day of classes, focus on areas in which DPS students have tested poorly.
The initiative is the first time DPS students have been given homework before the start of school, said DPS spokeswoman Kisha Verdusco.

Detroit Foundations Release List of Worst Schools in Detroit (August 25): The first-ever ranking of the city’s public, charter and private schools is being released today in an effort to help parents choose good schools and pressure failing schools to shut down…
listing of schools in the city is produced by Excellent Schools Detroit, a broad coalition that includes Detroit Public Schools, charter school leaders and several foundations. The list is divided in three categories — elementary, middle and high schools — and the schools are ranked based on test scores and other data averaged over a three-year period.

What if There Was a Parade for Schools and Only Fools and Crooks Came? (Cosby pops up waiving his bogus doctorate): Waving from the final float were Mayor Dave Bing, activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, comedian and activist Bill Cosby, and Robert Bobb, the district’s emergency financial manager under whose watch the parade was launched last year…The crowd was fairly thin.

California–No School Funds for September: California will delay paying $2.9 billion of subsidies to schools and counties in September, a month earlier than projected, to save cash amid an impasse that has left the state without a budget for 54 days.

RaTT Saps: The department chose nine states – Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island – and the District of Columbia for the grants (which means that teachers in the “winner states” will suffer, but so will education workers in the “sucker states” which entered the shell game, and lost–States that did not apply are: Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. Delaware and Tennessee, as Round 1 winners, were not eligible to apply). USE RATT MAP

Obamagogue’s Errand Boy, Duncan, Wants More Data For Merit Pay and Firings: U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will call for all states and school districts to make public whether their instructors are doing enough to raise students’ test scores and to share other school-level information with parents, according to a text of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday.

SoCal Bans Literature With Help of Teachers and Profs: “The Old Man and the Sea,” “The House on Mango Street,” and “The Great Gatsby” are so last century when it comes to high school English classes in Chula Vista and National City. Once literature-based, English classes throughout the Sweetwater Union High School District — and elsewhere in California — have been revamped in an attempt to better prepare students for college and the real world.

That means reading lists once dominated by the classics now consist of newspaper editorials, historic documents, advertisements and some nonfiction. Assignments no longer dwell on the symbolism in a poem or focus on an entire novel. Instead, they emphasize expository, analytical and argumentative writing.

Developed by professors from the California State University system with help from high school teachers, the new “rhetorical approach” to English was designed to curb the growing number of high school graduates who need remedial instruction in college…the district saw a jump in scores on statewide English tests.
Vita For Professor McClish

Secrets of the Wag-the-Dog CSU Foundations Begin to Leak: California State University officials are concerned that they have erroneously mixed public and private funds in accounting for the foundations that support the system’s 23 campuses, according to a report the California Faculty Association is releasing today.

Rouge Forum Update: Rouge Forum Update: Censored News From NEA and AFT Assemblies

Rouge Forum Update: Censored News From NEA and AFT Assemblies

Report from NEA Rep Assembly: The Education Agenda is a War Agenda

NEA RA Photos (All banned on the Rethinking Schools and other Liberal listserves).

The NEA 2010 Rep Assembly: The Longer Version

George Schmidt on the Totalitarian Welcome to Bill Gates at AFT Convention

Bill Gates Speaks to AFT while Some Walkout and Most Cheer the Convicted Monopolist:
YouTube Preview Image

Ohanian on Broad Foundation Impact on Schools and the Demagogue, Obama

1/3 of Detroit Principals are New Hires: More than a third of Detroit Public Schools will have new principals when school begins in September after a wave of retirements and reassignments.

Touchy-Feely DPS Boss Arraigned: Former Detroit School Board President Otis Mathis III stood mute Tuesday at his 36th District Court arraignment on charges of misconduct in office and obscene conduct.

Who’s Running For Detroit School Board? Nobody: Nobody wants to run for two available seats on the Detroit Public Schools board. The deadline to get on the Aug. 3 primary ballot passed May 11 without anyone filing, meaning only a write-in candidate can be elected this fall.

Detroit Boss Bobb Already Reneges on Vile DFT Contract: In his outline for the 2010-11 budget, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb stated that he will raise class size for grades 4-12 beyond the negotiated limits in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the School District and the DFT. The EFM has stated that the contract allows for teachers to receive compensation for oversized classes.

Detroit Snooze Editorializes vs Tenure and Seniority: “ Spurred by a growing body of research that shows teacher quality is the No. 1 in-school predictor of student achievement, states and cities from New York City to Colorado are moving to ensure school districts consider other factors — such as performance and attendance — when staffing the nation’s classrooms, despite enormous political hurdles and risks.

Another Look at the AFT Convention (alt site)

Rouge Forum Update: Toward a Nationwide School Strike October 7th

Toward a Nationwide School Strike October 7th

Rouge Forum Flyer [For Nationwide School Strike (2 pages easy PDF download for meetings, caucuses, etc.]

Aging Pole Dancer Hides Fee At CSU School: “In preparation for Ms. Palin’s arrival, workers had transformed the cafeteria’s dining hall. It was draped with crimson tablecloths, festooned with orchids and surrounded by chain-link fences.”

Strange Bedfellows (save the hankies): Bamn represents DPS: “The board is asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent the layoffs and outsourcing while the case is in court. The board’s attorney, George Washington, said the motion for an injunction will be filed this afternoon.”

Schoolbrary: Library and School Fittingly Covered with a Prophylactic: “The San Diego City Council voted Monday to start building a downtown library with a school on two upper floors. The plan passed despite a downturn that has cut back on library hours across the city and the fact that fundraisers still have to scrounge up more than $30 million in donations.” See the unforgettable image here.

Ohanian on College of Ed Review of Her Site: “This just confirms my view that in schools of education, critical thinking skills are nothing more than reheated mashed potatoes. And as far as “difficult to integrate” the material on my site into “most curriculum and pedagogy for teacher education,” are these people out of their minds? My site only concerns the daily life’s blood of practicing teachers. If this weren’t true, why would the Bank Street College of Education be invited me to launch their new season?”

Detroit School Budget Deficit Booms:The budget deficit for Detroit Public Schools has ballooned from $219 million last year to $363 million, according to budget documents released Tuesday by the district.The 66-percent spike in the debt occurred during the first full year of leadership under Robert Bobb, the state-appointed emergency financial manager. Bobb was appointed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm to help eliminate the district’s deficit. His term expires in March. A year ago Bobb pledged to end overspending and expected a $17 million surplus that would help whittle the $219 million deficit accumulated from previous years.

Read the complete June 30, 2010 update here.

Rouge Forum Update: People vs Union Bosses plus Dunkirk and Matewan! And wait! There’s More!

Rouge Forum Update: People vs Union Bosses plus Dunkirk and Matewan! And wait! There’s More!

The Little Red Schoolhouse Front:

Company Town: by Carl Sandburg

You live in a company house
You go to a company school
You work for this company
According to the company’s rules
You all drink company water
And all use company lights
The company preacher teaches us
What the company thinks is right….

Half of Detroit Kids Poisoned by Lead–Not Good For High-Stakes Tests: “the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP. Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested — 22,755 children — had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.”

Students as Money–Michigan Districts Pay Bribe for Best School Status: “he districts did not make the cut because of test scores or graduation rates but instead because they paid a marketing firm $25,000.”

Too Many Teachers; Not Enough Wars, Too Many Kiddies: “Michigan State University has pushed its 500 graduating teachers to look out of state. As local jobs have dried up, it started an internship program in Chicago, which is a four-hour drive from the East Lansing, Mich., campus. Professors now go with students to the annual campus job fair to make sure they do not hover around the Michigan tables, but walk over to, say, North Carolina, Virginia or Texas.”

The Ongoing Failure of Racist Capitalist Schooling in Detroit: “Detroit Public Schools fourth- and eighth-graders performed worst in the nation on a national reading test whose results were released this morning. Like math scores unveiled in December from the National Assessment of Education Progress, Detroit children’s reading scores are the worst in the 40-year history of the test.

Detroit Mayor Can’t Halt Barbarism: “Detroit Mayor Dave Bing acknowledged that police and city officials don’t know how to stop the crime wave.”

Who is Lying in this PBS Newshour Broadcast On Detroit Schools? Everybody. As Usual.

Bribe? What Bribe? Payoffs to Bobb Ok in Michigan Court: “Wayne Circuit Court Judge Susan Borman indicated today Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb is entitled to receive part of his pay from private foundations. The issue — challenged by the district’s school board, a civil rights group and a coalition of teachers who oppose charter schools — was whether Bobb was in conflict of interest for accepting $89,000 of his salary from a foundation that supports private and charter schools. Bobb receives $280,000 in salary and $145,000 in supplemental income from foundations for fixing the school district’s finances.”

Duncan Lies About Texas Textbook Standards Adopted May 21: “”Whatever Texas decides, I do not think there will be large ripple effects around the country,” Duncan said to CNN. “Textbook companies today have a real ability to customize textbooks.”

We Say Fightback! Front:

Puerto Rico Universities Occupied, Struck, and Shut for A Month+: “The students here have hunkered down, bringing the academic calendar to a halt. They are a month into a strike that has crippled an 11-campus system with more than 62,000 students, intent on persuading the administration to revoke austerity measures that they believe will unfairly hamper low-income students. Only one campus, for medical sciences, is operational.”

BBC on the Brit Teachers’ Test Boycott (watch the short video): “Tens of thousands of children in England are missing their Sats tests as head teachers in hundreds of schools stage a boycott. About 600,000 10 and 11-year-olds were due to take the national schools tests from Monday. But heads and deputies from two big teaching unions voted for a boycott…”

Bangkok is Burning–Tweetphotos (Rick Parkany photo)

IVAW Confronts Recruiters–War is not a Game!

Read more here.

Rouge Forum Update: March on March 20 and Mayday! Here’s to the Bogus Health Care Bill Met By Endless War!

Remember Proposals are Due, April 15, for the Rouge Forum Conference

Send Your Articles, Photos, Cartoons, for the RF News to Community Coordinator Adam Renner.

Links to Classic Rouge Forum Flyers:
“Got War?”
Justice or Barbarism
Shoot Moneybags, Not People

Always be sure you are right, then go ahead

On the Little Rouge School Front:

Colbert vs Foner: This was passed along by social studies good-guy Tony Whitson.
My favorite line (Colbert to Eric Foner): “They say that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But, if you change what history was, doesn’t that solve that problem?”

Words Counted in the Ratt (Race to the Top) Literacy Plan:
-standards: 48
-assessment: 37
-reward: 34
-literacy: 19
-rigor: 16
-challenge: 15 (including new buzz phrase “challenge schools”)
-accountable/accountability: 14
-math: 11
-science: 10
-history: 7
-poverty: 7
-language arts: 5
-compete/competition: 4
-thinking: 2
-library: 1
-reading: 0
-writing: 0
-book: 0

Broad’s Bobb Named as Detroit Mayor by NPR on March 17th, Issues Plan to Close 45 Detroit Schools, Spend $70 million on Construction

Broad’s Errand Boy Bobb Demagogics it Up for Parents: Still, he said, he expects to eliminate approximately 2,100 jobs, continue to reduce health care costs and outsource as many options as possible in fiscal year 2010-11. There was a noticeable air of displeasure in the audience as Bobb said he plans to announce on Wednesday which 45 schools will close at the end of this school year.

Detroit Federation of Teachers Refuses to Join Suit Against Broad’s Bobb: “The Detroit Federation of Teachers voted Thursday against joining the lawsuit, with leadership calling it frivolous. However, the union did vote to file a complaint with the state ethics commission against Bobb for accepting the funds, said Keith Johnson, the president.”

The Official Program for the Gutting of Chicago Public Schools: Class Size to 37!

UTLA Boss Favors Revamping Tenure, Certification–Eats Breakfast With Broad: “I would have no problem with changing the tenure rules and extending probation. We should not take tenure away once you get it but [have] some form of recertification.”

Michigan Education Association Moves to Smother Direct Action Resistance—A Three Phase Action Plan to—vote (surprise)

NY Times OpEd–National Socialism for the Schools

The They Say Cut Back; We Say Fight Back Front:

March On March 30 Against the Empires Wars and Mayday Too: The Traditional Rouge Forum Mayday Flyer

On the Perpetual War Front: March on March 20th, Anniversary of the Invasion:

Key Data on the Iraq War Since the Invasion

Read more the Rouge Forum Update here.

Rouge Forum Update: Up the Rebels!

Remember Proposals are Due, April 15, for the Rouge Forum Conference

Send Your Articles, Photos, Cartoons, for the Rouge Forum News to Community Coordinator Adam Renner.

On the Little Rouge School Front:

CTA is the Biggest Campaign Spender in California: “ $211,849,298″

“Fire All the Teachers” Demagogue Becomes Good Cop on NCLB: “The new proposals would require states to use annual tests, along with other indicators, to divide the nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools into three groups: some 10,000 to 15,000 high-performing schools that would receive rewards or recognition, some 5,000 chronically failing schools requiring vigorous state intervention, and 80,000 or so schools in the middle that would be encouraged to figure out on their own how to improve.”

AFT Welcomes Common National Standards (ya cannot make this stuff up): “The new standards released on March 10 by the Common Core State Standards Initiative represent the best effort so far to transform today’s patchwork quilt of 50 sets of state standards into one set of strong, consistent expectations for what all students should know and learn, AFT president Randi Weingarten says.”

WashPost: National Regimented Curricula Require Racist Tests: “We will need tests—they will likely evolve into national tests—that are aligned with the new standards. That means changing the annual tests already used in some states, and overcoming the still widespread view that national testing undercuts states rights.”

Emily Alpert on Apartheid U. That is, UCSD: Black students are a rarity at UCSD. Only 1.6 percent of its undergraduate students are black, a stat that has become a rallying cry after an escalating series of racially offensive events around the university…

Paul Moore: “Letter: I teach at the ‘Central Falls High School’ of Miami, Florida, and we won’t let you scapegoat us for your problems.”

Detroit Board Joins George Washington (yes) In Lawsuit Against Bobb: “The Detroit Public School Board unanimously voted Monday night to file a second lawsuit against Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, saying $145,000 in private foundation support he receives under his new contract is unlawful.”

On March 12th the Detroit Federation of Teachers leadership announced on their web site that they would join the lawsuit against Broad’s Bobb while the community began to respond to the Skillman plan to abolish the Detroit School Board. “Union and community activists at a school board meeting Thursday night said they were outraged by the plan to get rid of the board, while many parents were divided, and Mayor Dave Bing said he’d only take on the responsibility if voters agreed.”

Financial Manager Bobb Throws DPS into Deepest Debt Ever: “• Instead of a $17 million surplus Bobb projected for this fiscal year, spending has increased so much Bobb is projecting a $98 million deficit for the budget year that ends June 30…(and proves concessions don’t save jobs)…The financial situation will be managed, Bobb said, if a number of measures take place for the fiscal year that begins this summer. Among them: eliminating 2,100 positions to save $128.8 million; reducing health care costs by $47 million; saving $8 million through outsourcing transportation; and closing an estimated 41 schools.”

Detroit News Editorial: Back the Tyrant; Fire the Teachers and Let the Union Help! “Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson says his leadership team will hold a review today to decide whether to eject Conn and other such teachers from the union for their actions. That seems appropriate. It’s not up to individual teachers to decide what policies they’ll abide by. The union has agreed to some of the changes the dissidents are trying to block. Bobb should fire educators who are actively working to undermine district policies during school hours.

Bobb, Skillman, Broad, et al, Plan to Seize Detroit Schools–Close 40: “A coalition of education leaders and foundations will unveil today a sweeping academic reform agenda that targets failing schools, calls for 70 new programs and launches a national effort to recruit principals. The $200 million plan also aims to build community support this year to eliminate the Detroit Board of Education and make the mayor accountable for Detroit Public Schools….Other initiatives include the effort from the Detroit Federation of Teachers, which did not sign off on the plan but was engaged in the talks to develop it, to open its own school,”

Who is Michigan Future Inc?

Could it Be A Pattern? KC to Close Half of its Schools: “The Kansas City Board of Education voted Wednesday night to close almost half of the city’s public schools, accepting a sweeping and contentious plan to shrink the system in the face of dwindling enrollment, budget cuts and a $50 million deficit.In a 5-to-4 vote, the members endorsed the Right-Size plan, proposed by the schools superintendent, John Covington, to close 28 of the city’s 61 schools and cut 700 of 3,000 jobs, including those of 285 teachers.”

Texas Loves Them Textbooks: Tx, Fla, and California set the social studies standards in textbooks because they make huge, state-wide, purchases. ”In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’” ”Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among the conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”) “The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.”

Read the rest of the Rouge Forum Update here.

No Chase Scenes! Mostly Print! Remember March 4th!

hand of Fate 3
Hand of Fate

Rouge Forum Update: No Chase Scenes! Mostly Print! Remember March 4th!

Read the full update here.

On the Little Rouge School Front This Week:

If I Boost Your Grade, Will You Please CARE About the Tests? “They’re bribing them with grades,” said Linman, an educator who helps professors improve their instruction at San Diego State University. “If we can’t make the ethical decision about what’s best for students, we have no choice but to say we’re not going to be involved….”reputations are at stake. Valhalla High Assistant Principal Sam Lund said that education has become a competitive marketplace where schools need good facilities and booming scores to draw families. Like it or not, Lund said, test scores matter. But critics argue they matter for the wrong reasons. “Raising our grades is much too drastic,” said Mitchell Winkie, a junior at Valhalla. “It seems like the point of all this is to make the school look better.”

Detroit Federation of Teachers Reacts to Recall Petition vs DFT President: “In interpreting its governing documents the Executive Board was doing exactly what AFT locals around the country and virtually all other unions regularly do. The membership does not have the authority to reject or overrule the decision of the Executive Board on constitutional questions. If the membership could overrule the Executive Board then the Constitution would have no fixed meaning. Rather it would mean nothing more than what a majority at any membership meeting, however large or small, would decide. The membership has the authority to amend the Constitution in accordance with the terms of that document. It does not have the authority to reject the Executive Board’s interpretation and application of that document.”

Reading Corps on the March in Detroit (Beware of Benevolent Missionaries and Their Books)

Inequality Booms In California Schools: * High-poverty schools were more than four times as likely (65.6% to 15%) as low-poverty schools to experience teacher layoffs.* 70% of principals reported that summer school had been cut back severely or eliminated. High-poverty schools were almost three times as likely (48.7% to 16.7%) as low-poverty schools to eliminate summer school.

San Diego Teachers Asked to Take 8% Pay Cut (can we smell the Detroit Rat?)

NYTimes on the End of Higher Ed (Class Struggle) in California: “In 1960, he added, the state created “the gold standard in high-quality, low-cost public higher education. This year, the California legislature abandoned the gold standard.”

Paul Moore on the Corptocracy of Education and Social Life

Read more here.