Whole Schooling Consortium: 2006 Conference (Portland)

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WHOLE SCHOOLING
Changing the World One School at a Time!

Portland, Oregon
May 12 -13, 2006

The Annual Whole Schooling Conference this year is being co-sponsored with the Parkrose School District in Portland, a district working to implement the Six Principles of Whole Schooling including movement to become a fully inclusive district. The conference will include opportunities for site visits to exemplary classrooms in Parkrose schools. The conference itself will occur in Parkrose High School, a new state-of-the-art facility designed as a community resource.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

The conference will be an intense, interactive 2 day learning experience combining presentations, group dialogue, keynote speakers with art, music, and poetry. Activities will be organized around the SIX PRINCIPLES OF WHOLE SCHOOLING, a framework aimed at creating effective schools for all students learning together. (See www.wholeschooling.net):

1. Empowering citizens for democracy.
2. Including ALL in learning together.
3. Providing authentic, multi-level instruction.
4. Building community.
5. Supporting learning.
6. Partnering with parents and the community.

Presenters will include practicing teachers, researchers, parents, advocates, and students.

Come join us in an engaging, interactive conference of best practices for all students!!

Download the Call for Papers here.

Unions, democracy and the US in Haiti

The following is an edited version of a post to the Working Class Studies listserv by Kim Scipes:

January 29, 2006–

…In today’s [New York Times], there is a quite interesting article on the US operations in Haiti. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PIECE–PLEASE READ. …

The article is titled “Democracy Undone: Mixed US Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos” and is written by Walt Bogdanitch and Jenny Nordberg. (As I mention below, I don’t think the “US signals” were “mixed,” but this is a case where the two different “wings” of US foreign policy came into conflict, and now has been exposed, with some very interesting information included.)

Despite straight journalism’s approaches to something, what you get here in an incredibly detailed look at US policy in Haiti. But, crucially, what these journalists show is not only official policy, but also the activities of the International Republican Institute (IRI). I cannot remember such a detailed accounting in the straight press about IRI operations. (And while minor, there are references to Venezuela included.) US Senator John McCain, the darling of many for being a “maverick,” is the head of the IRI, and refused to comment on this article.

The important thing about the IRI is that it is one of the four core “institutes” of the NED, the National Endowment for Democracy. The others are the International Democratic Institute, the International Wing of the US Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center. (Go to www.ned.org for information.)This article ties in the IRI, NED and the Bush Administration, including those like Otto Reich, who I believe, and Elliot Abrams who I know, were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. Reich has played a key role re US policy in Venezuela.

Now, there is no mention of the Solidarity Center or the AFL-CIO in this article. (FYI, the formal name of the Solidarity Center is the American Center on International Labor Solidarity or ACILS.)

However, Jeb Sprague has been doing research on the Solidarity Center’s activities in Haiti, and just reported that the Solidarity Center had channeled $100,000 from the NED to the Batay Ouvriye Labor Federation. And I just included that information in a piece that I wrote that ran on January 25, 2006 on MRZine, the Web Zine of Monthly Review, titlted “Worker Rights ARE Human Rights–Not Just in USA, but around World” (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/scipes250106.html –links to Sprague’s work as well as many other things is included in this article. (And I also reported the amounts to the Solidarity Center from the NED in FY 2005 for the Solidarity Center’s work across Latin America, information that was provided by Anthony Fenton, who has also done some fine writing on Haiti.)

Further, at the end of my article, there are links to three recent articles that I have written on the AFL-CIO foreign policy program. The most important, in connection with this, is “An Unholy Alliance: The AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Venezuela” that ran on ZNet on July 10, 2005 at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?sectionID=19&itemID=8268. What I did in this piece is detail the connection of the AFL-CIO and the NED. If you don’t know this material, I suggest you read this piece.

What I’m trying to bring together is this excellent report on IRI and the NED, and draw attention to those of you interested in Labor that at least some of the work of the Solidarity Center is very similar to what the IRI has been doing in Haiti, although in the local labor movements. And, apparently, even in the labor movement in Haiti.

This is just another example why we in the labor movement must break the link between the Solidarity Center and the NED–it is a toxic relationship.

This information needs the widest dissemination, so please spread widely in your networks in North America and around the world. If we do this, and build on this information, we can have an even greater impact on breaking the link between the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center and the NED. And have a major impact on US foreign policy.

In international solidarity–

Kim Scipes

Rouge Forum Update (January 18, 2006)

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web site has been updated. Remember you can download those beautiful (and probably good for our lifetimes) posters free, or order them from us, below cost.

This week, however, we draw your attention to the threatened closure of the Oakland, CA, elementary charter school, Growing Children, where one of the leading test resisters in the US, Susan Harman, is principal.

Randolph Ward, the appointed boss of Oakland schools following the virtual abolition of the elected school board (similar to Detroit) has notified Susan Harman that Growing Children is going to be closed in June because (a) test scores are low and (b) instructional methods are not sufficiently “constructivist.”

In fact, Randolph Ward is a front man for multimillionaire Eli Broad, a key backer for the racist and anti-working class standardization/high-stakes-test attack on public schooling. As part of an effort to deepen the use of public schools as centers of social control, and a parallel scheme to privatize parts of public education, Broad profits from closing schools—and opening his own—as in the Aspire schools in Oakland.

In addition, millions of dollars in Oakland real estate now owned by the public schools are up for grabs and part of Ward’s plan appears to be to turn over public land to private developers to lay off a falsely construed school debt—as is happening in San Diego now.

For his work, Randolph Ward is being paid $240,000. His 24 hour bodyguard service is paid over $100,000. Behind every takeover of this sort is, not reason, but force and violence.

Test scores at Growing Children are indeed predictably low, among the lowest in the district. The school has 93 percent of its 150 kids, k-6, on free and reduced lunch. Throughout the country, scores on high-stakes tests reflect little but race, class, and subservience.

The charge that the school is not sufficiently constructivist, and has low scores, is really a pincer move. Good constructivism may well not produce rapid boosts in test scores. And, after all, if test scores went up markedly for masses of poor kids, the tests would be changed. The game is clearly rigged.

Susan Harman has been banned from the Oakland Schools building, and threatened by Ward’s bodyguard, because she has been a consistent critic of the tests—and of him. Clearly, Ward set out to silence her. Her example as a principal (paying herself far less than other principals in order to pass the money along to staff and kids), is hardly one that school bosses like Ward want emulated.

If we can learn nothing else from the last decade of test-fever, it is that an injury to one only goes before an injury to all. This attack on Growing Children and Susan Harman will only be duplicated elsewhere, soon.

What can you do? For starters, you can write a hard-copy letter of support to Susan Harman, Growing Children, at:

8000 International Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94621
Alameda County
Phone: (510) 568-0500
Fax: (510) 568-0505

Include your email address so she can contact you if necessary.

For a short look at Randolph Ward’s career and his connection to Eli Broad, see here.

For a more nuanced and resourced take, see, Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Schools, by Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian.

UCLA Alumni Group Is Tracking ‘Radical’ Faculty

L. A. Times: UCLA Alumni Group Is Tracking ‘Radical’ Faculty

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are “abusive, one-sided or off-topic” in advocating political ideologies.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its “Exposing UCLA’s Radical Professors” initiative takes aim at faculty “actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic.” Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial “Dirty 30” of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.

Some of the instructors mentioned accuse the association of conducting a witch hunt that threatens to harm the teaching atmosphere, and at least one of the group’s advisory board members has resigned because he considers the bounty offers inappropriate. The university said it will warn the association that selling copies of professors’ lectures would violate campus rules and raise copyright issues.

The Bruin Alumni Assn. is headed by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old who graduated in June 2003 and was chairman of UCLA’s Bruin Republicans student group. He said his organization, which is registered with the state as a nonprofit, does not charge dues and has no official members, but has raised a total of $22,000 from 100 donors. Jones said the biggest contribution to the group, $5,000, came from a foundation endowed by Arthur N. Rupe, 88, a Santa Barbara resident and former Los Angeles record producer.

The Daily Bruin: Alumni group pushes right: New association hopes to air conservative voice in guiding UCLA’s direction

Andrew Jones didn’t want to be part of the official UCLA Alumni Association. So the recent UCLA graduate started his own.

Enter the Bruin Alumni Association.

The local non-profit organization, founded and run by Jones, wants to tackle what Jones alleges is a strong liberal bias ñ he calls it a “cancer of political radicalism” ñ at UCLA by soliciting donations from alumni, then using the money to campaign against activist professors, the UCLA Alumni Association and administrators in Murphy Hall.

Allegations of political bias are nothing new at UCLA, or even in higher education in general. But many prior attempts at addressing it have focused on what can or cannot be said in the classroom.

Jones is taking aim at two areas UCLA is considered strongest: outside fundraising and alumni.

Also check out The Daily Kos on the Bruin Alumni Association’s offer to pay students for monitoring “radical” professors, an act that would be in violation of the UCLA Student Conduct Code, which prohibits “selling, preparing, or distributing for any commercial purpose course lecture notes or video or audio recordings of any course unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course instructor in writing.”

W.Va. Capitol Housed Piracy Studio

From Dave Marsh’s Rock and Rap Confidential

In the notoriously corrupt state government of West Virginia, someone has finally made good use of stolen taxpayer money….

W.Va. Capitol Housed Piracy Studio
By LAWRENCE MESSINA
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Tucked away in the basement of West Virginia’s gold-domed Capitol, state officials say, an office was secretly transformed into a taxpayer-funded studio that may have been used to pirate DVD videos and music CDs.

Administration Secretary Robert Ferguson said his staff stumbled across the office after finding evidence that government purchase cards were used to buy $88,000 worth of computers and related equipment over three years.

The office contained hundreds of blank DVDs, CDs and jacket covers as well as numerous recorders for both mediums and more than one computer, according to a Jan. 5 memo written by state Chief Technology Officer Kyle Schafer. The memo was obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.

“Specifically, one hard drive contained approximately 40 full-length motion videos,” Schafer wrote. “Two other hard drives contained over 3,500 MP3 music files.”

One computer had hacking software commonly used to crack header codes on copyrighted materials, Schafer said.

Ferguson said the FBI is investigating and has seized some of the hardware.

He cited personnel regulations in declining to identify who made the purchases or whose office contained the makeshift audio-video studio, located off a corridor near a boiler room.

“We will hold accountable those people who have abused the letter and the spirit of the law,” Ferguson said.

www.rockrap.com

“Capitalism no longer needs democracy” and democracy doesn’t need capitalism

Writing for The American Prospect, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, makes an important distinction between capitalism and democracy.

In “The China Path”, Reich argues that:

China shows that when it comes to economics, the dividing line among the world’s nations is no longer between communism and capitalism. Capitalism has won hands down. The real dividing line is no longer economic. It’s political. And that divide is between democracy and authoritarianism. China is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian government.

But he certainly errs by clinging to a the one-sided idea that democracy needs capitalism. Reich says that “for democracy to function there must be centers of power outside of government.” Certainly this is true, but despite the evidence he points to in China (as well as the huge wealth gap in the USA), Reich continues to hold on to the fiction that “capitalism decentralizes economic power, and thereby provides the private ground in which democracy can take root.”

How exactly is that working in the USA right now?

Take for example a study released last week by Stalling the Dream—People of color less likely to own cars, less able to escape hurricanes & poverty

The report finds that people of color are considerably more likely to be left behind in a natural disaster, since fewer of them own cars compared to whites. In addition, lower rates of car ownership put them at an economic disadvantage.

The report finds that:

  • Only 7% of white households, but 24% of black households and 17% of Latino (Hispanic) households owned no vehicle in 2000.
  • In all 11 major cities that have had five or more hurricanes in the last 100 years (Houston, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg, Tampa, New York City, Providence, Boston, and New Orleans), people without cars are disproportionately people of color.
  • In the case of a mandatory evacuation order during a disaster, of those who say they would not evacuate immediately, 33% of Latinos, 27% of African Americans, and 23% of whites say that lack of transportation would be an obstacle preventing them from evacuating.
  • Evacuation planning tends to focus on traffic management for those with cars and on institutionalized people, not on non-institutionalized people without vehicles. New Orleans had only one-quarter the number of buses that would have been needed to evacuate all carless residents.
  • In the counties affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005, only 7% of white households have no car, compared with 24% of black, 12% of Native American and 14% of Latino households.
  • The stereotype that black people own expensive cars is inaccurate. In fact, their median car value is half (or less) of whites, according to the Federal Reserve.
  • Eleven percent of African-American families and 21 percent of Latino families have missed out on medical care because of transportation issues, compared to only 2 percent of white families, according to the Children’s Health Fund.
  • The median net worth of white families increased about 6% after inflation from 2001 to 2004, to $136,000, while the black median stayed unchanged at $20,000, according to the Federal Reserve.
  • Transportation is the second biggest expense for American households, after housing, according to the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

Overall, there is a correlation between vehicle ownership and economic prosperity. Cars give access to wider choices of jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities and healthcare. Many small businesses require a vehicle, such as gardening and catering.

The report concludes that car ownership is a vital part of the American Dream. However, the solution is not simply to provide all residents with their own cars. The report suggests improvements in public transportation and disaster planning, as well as narrowing the racial wealth divide to enable more car purchases.

One of the report’s co-authors, Emma Dixon, went without electricity in her Louisiana home for a week after Hurricane Katrina. The others, Meizhu Lui and Betsy Leondar-Wright, are also co-authors of the forthcoming book The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide (New Press, 2006). All work for United for a Fair Economy.

Stalling the Dream is the third annual Martin Luther King Day report from United for a Fair Economy, following State of the Dream 2004 and 2005.

United for a Fair Economy is a national non-partisan, non-profit organization that raises awareness of the dangers of growing economic inequality.

SDS: Why Now (Again)?

In MR Zine Paul Buhle argues for a renewal of Students for a Democratic Society. Why?

The reasons should be pretty obvious. The empire has overextended itself again. The Democrats have never changed much (and, for the most part, didn’t really want those idealists brought in with George McGovern and afterward — at least not to challenge the basic tenets and power centers), certainly not at the top. If individuals can sometimes be brought over to useful positions, on various issues, it will happen only through building a movement not dependent upon them.

That movement has advantages now that none has had since the sixties, and not only in the fact of imperial overreach. To take an obvious example, the movements in Central America of the eighties were drowned in blood, but the new movements percolating out from Venezuela will not so easily be overwhelmed. Nor has the US economy been up to its eyeballs in global debt until our current era.

Buhle admits that there are lots of obstacles to a successful new SDS, but points to (a) currently a political vacuum on campuses and (b) the escalating crisis of imperialism as conditions that might foster success.

The key, he notes, if following the lead of the I.W.W. and emphasizing:

Decentralized democracy, democratic decision-making at all levels, is the most radical idea ever hatched in North America and the only one with real lasting appeal. It makes sense to demand more democracy on campus, including transparency of where the money comes from and what the corporations or government agencies get in return. It makes sense to resist the re-militarization of campus. It makes sense to reach out to a multitude of others, including antiwar GIs, who come from a different place but share a lot of resentments and positive values.

But students need to speak for themselves, their generation, the world they are already inhabiting and will continue to inhabit. That’s the vision that made SDS great and made it most useful to liberation movements elsewhere on earth.

Piracy party

From Billboard: Anti-IP Party Launches in Sweden

“A group of Swedish file sharers announced Jan. 1 that it is starting a new political party, the Piracy Party, to provide a legal environment for exchanging copyrighted property for free.

“Spokesman Sebastian Sjalin claims Piracy Party represents Sweden’s 800,000 file sharers who are ‘tired of being called criminals.’

“The manifesto promises to alter existing intellectual property legislation and prevent implementation of the December 2005 European Union Data Retention directive.”

The Piracy Party needs only 1500 signatures to become a formally recognized political party.

From The Inquirer: Swedish pirates form political party

By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 03 January 2006, 06:55

A BUNCH of Swedish file sharers have got together to form their own political party.
The Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) said that it is tired of being deemed a criminals and terrorists by the system for sharing a few measly files for no financial gain or loss to anyone.

In its manifesto, here, which is in Swedish, the party says that it is against seeing the developing world starve because the developed world refuses to share its intellectual property.

Its massage is that corporations are engaging in racketeering in the developing world and a few power hungry individuals and greedy corporate entities are infringing on privacy and integrity. Piratpartiet says that it will strike out immaterial law, ignore WIPO and WT, and annul any further treaties or policies that hinder the free flow of information. They will refuse to allow data retention nonsense based on terrorism claims or failed RIAA business models.

The new party, wants to break the four per cent barrier (225 000 votes) this autumn to take up seats in parliament.

Even if they the party gets no-one elected, it is clear that it does represent a backlash against copyright protection laws and the antics of the RIAA and its ilk.

Gerald Bracey’s “Rotten Apple Awards” for 2005

Gerald W. Bracey is an independent researcher and writer living in Alexandria, VA, author of a numerous of articles and books, including Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered (which will appear from Heinemann next month), and he runs the website of the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency.

As Bracey explains, “The Rotten Apple Awards used to be part of the annual “Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education” (so named by the editors of Phi Delta Kappan where it has appeared each October since 1991). They were the counterweight to the Golden Apple Awards which remain part of the report.

In 2000, the Board of Directors of Phi Delta Kappa decided that the ridicule dispensed in the Rotten Apples was not appropriate to their house organ. That they decided this shortly after one recipient (Willard Daggett) threatened to sue is no doubt coincidental. Just as well. The Rotten Apples havegrown and, alas, this year are the same length as the Bracey Report itself. Make of that what you will.”

And the Rotten Apple winners are:

The “Jimmy Carter Amphibious Killer Rabbit” Award: Margaret Spellings.
The “This Turntable for Hire” Award: Armstrong Williams and the U. S. Department of Education.
The “Co-Mingling of Science With Comparative Religion” Award: The Dover (PA) School Board and the Kansas State School Board.
The “Yes, You Really Can Gather Empirical Evidence to Support or Refute Intelligent Design” Award: Pat Robertson.
The “Chutzpah Only a New Yorker Could Love” Award: Joan Mahon-Powell.
The “Game the System? Moi?” Award: Jeb Bush.
The “Notes From a Distant Planet” Award: Human Events.
The “Big Brother Wants to Watch You Even More” Award: Walter Jones, Dennis Baxley.
The “I’m Not a Researcher” Award: Diane Ravitch.
The “The Enemy of My Enemy Might Still Not Be My Buddy” Award: United Federation of Teachers.
The “Delusions Die Hard” Award: Amy Wilkins.
The “Mike Cohen and Matt Gandal Memorial Confusion of Rates with Scores Award:” The Achievement Alliance.
The “George W. Bush-Style Accountability” Award: Chester E. “Checker” Finn, Jr.
The “Literacy is Vastly Overrated” Award: The State of California.
The “Arbeit Macht Frei” Award: Dan Doerhoff.
The “This is What’s the Matter With Kansas” Award, or, “Prima Emienda Derecho? En Kansas, No” Award, Jennifer Watts.
The “Our Lousy Public Schools Really Do Turn Out People So Dumb We Can Skunk the Pubic With Any Story We Want” Award: The Bush Administration.

Get the full report on The Rotten Apples in Education Awards for 2005 website of the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency