From Rich Gibson:<\/p>\n
Dear Friends,<\/p>\n
Responding to some suggestions from our recent survey:<\/p>\n
The Rouge Forum web pages are under a complete reconstruction. Our education and testing pages are revised<\/a>, as is the No Blood for Oil page<\/a>, all much easier to read.<\/p>\n This week, we feature a piece by Patrick Shannon, the IRA Hall of Fame Speech on NCLB<\/a>.<\/p>\n A California judge temporarily halted the use of high school exit exam scores<\/a> to stop more than 47,000 kids from graduating from high school, while California kids just skipped out on the STAR tests<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition, we note that in California, Democrat activist Alan Bersin whose work as the superintendent of San Diego Schools rightly earned him the appellation, “fascist,” as he implemented a top down, test driven, utterly corrupt regime propelled by profits and nepotism (specifically, hundreds of thousands of dollars siphoned off to his pal, Tony Alvarado)—Bersin was appointed State Superintendent of Education by the Republican Governor, demonstrating the unity of the two parties.<\/p>\n When Bersin exited, the San Diego teachers’ union and many others applauded the arrival of a nice boss who promised to be kinder, gentler, more compassionate. Now the new boss has promised to implement a plan of closing access to high schools for kids who fail two middle school classes (a new border, in addition to test scores) and he laid off 216 support workers.<\/a><\/p>\n Here is a link<\/a> to a review of the film Walkout, likely soon to be on HBO again, and a hot topic in schools.<\/p>\n