school vouchers

Few Kids in the World Can Pass America’s Common Core Tests, According to New Study

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Could you jump through a hoop?

 

 

Probably if it were lying on the ground.

 

 

But what if it were held slightly higher? Let’s say waist high? Sure.

 

 

Shoulder height? Maybe with some practice.

 

How about if we raised the hoop to the rafters of a three story auditorium? Could you jump through THAT?

 

 

No. Of course not.

 

 

You could train with the world’s greatest coach, with the best equipment, 24-hours a day and you still couldn’t jump that high.

 

 

Yet that’s kind of what the U.S. has been expecting of its public school students – minus the resources.

 

 

We hold the hoop ridiculously out of reach and then blame them when they can’t jump through it.

 

 

But don’t take my word for it.

 

 

This is the conclusion of a new study that came out in January called “How High the Bar?” by the National Superintendents Roundtable and the Horace Mann League.

 

 

They found the benchmarks for passing the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and American Common Core tests put success out of reach for most students the world over.

 

To do so, they linked the performance of foreign students on international tests of reading, mathematics, and science to the proficiency benchmarks of NAEP and thus Common Core aligned tests which use NAEP benchmarks to determine passing or failure.

 

The difference is the NAEP is only meant to compare how students in various states stack up against each other. Common Core tests, on the other hand, apply exclusively to kids within states.

 

 

No one’s actually expected to pass the NAEP. It’s only given to a sample of kids in each state and used to rank state education systems. The U.S. government, however, gives almost all its students Common Core tests and expects them all to pass – in fact, failure to do so could result in your public school being closed and replaced with a charter or voucher institution.

 

 

However, in both cases, the study concluded the score needed to meet the bare minimum of passing was absurdly too high – so much so that hardly any group of children in the entire world met it.

 

 

It’s important to note that these aren’t standardized testing skeptics.

 

 

They believe in the assessments. They even believe in Common Core. What they don’t believe in is the benchmarks we’re expecting our kids to meet to consider them having passed.

 

 

And this has massive consequences for the entire education system.

 

 

The media has uncritically repeated the lie that American public schools are failing based almost exclusively on test scores that show only one third of our students passing.

 

 

But if the same tests were given to students the world over with the same standard for success, even less would pass it, according to the study. If we drew the red line on international tests at the same place we draw it on the NAEP and  Common Core tests, almost every child in the world would be a dunce.

 

 

Kids from Singapore would fail. Kids from South Korea would fail. Kids from Japan would fail. You name a country where kids do nothing but study for high stakes standardized tests, and even they couldn’t meet our uniquely American criterion for passing.

 

 

In fact, the percentage of our students who do pass under these ridiculous benchmarks often exceeds that of other countries.

 

 

So when you hold kids up to impossible standards a few actually make it – and more of our kids do than our international peers.

 

 

That doesn’t mean the benchmarks are good. But it doesn’t mean the American education system is failing either. In fact, just the opposite.

 

 

We have a high stakes standardized testing system that not only does not assess kids fairly, but it actually hides their success!

 

 

In the words of the study’s authors, “…the analysis suggest the U.S. has established benchmarks that are neither useful nor credible.”

 

 

How did this happen?

 

 

It comes down to one word – proficient.

 

 

If you’re proficient, it’s thought you’re competent, you are able to do something. You might not be incredible at it, but you can get the job done.

 

 

Kind of like this:

 

 

Hey. Did you hear about my leaky faucet? The plumber fixed it after three tries because he’s proficient at his job.

 

 

Oh really? My plumber fixed my leaky faucet in only one try and didn’t even charge me because she’s advanced at her job.

 

 

That sort of thing.

 

 

There are only four scores you can achieve on most standardized assessments: Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic. The first two are considered passing and the last two are failing.

 

 

However, this doesn’t line up with the five general grades most public schools give in core subjects:

 

 

A – Excellent

B – Very good

C – Average

D – Poor

F – Failing

 

 

A-D is usually considered passing. Only F is failing.

 

 

So you might expect them to line up like this:

 

 

Advanced – A and B

Proficient – C

Basic – D

Below Basic – F

 

 

However, that’s not how they line up on NAEP. According to Diane Ravitch, who served on the National Assessment Governing Board, the federal agency that supervises NAEP, they line up like this:

 

 

Advanced – A+

Proficient – A

Basic – B and C

Below Basic – D and F

 

 

This is important, because saying someone scored a proficient on the NAEP doesn’t mean they’re just okay at it. It means they’re excellent but have room to improve.

 

 

The problem is that when developers of Common Core tests set their benchmarks, they used almost the same ones as the NAEP. Yet the NAEP benchmarks were never meant to be the same as grade level ones. Confounding the two puts mere passing out of reach for most students.

 

And that’s not just out of reach for most American students. It’s out of reach for international students!

 

In short, American students are doing B work on their Common Core tests and failing with a Basic. Yet in other countries, this would be passing with room to spare.

 

Moreover, when you hear that only one third of American students are Proficient or above, that means only one third are doing A or A+ work on their Common Core tests. That’s actually rather impressive!

 

According to the study:

 

“National judgments about student proficiency and many state Common 
Core judgments about “career and college readiness” are defective and misleading… 
According to NAEP officials, Proficient does not mean grade level performance. The misuse of the term confuses the public. The effects of this misuse are reflected in most Common Core assessments…

 

NAEP’s term “Proficient” does not even mean proficient. “Students who may be proficient in a subject, given the common usage of the term, might not satisfy the requirements for performance at the NAEP achievement level.”

 

The report even cites other independent analysts that have come to similar conclusions such as the U.S. General Accounting Office, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Brookings Institution.

 

In short:

 

“Advocates who push for school improvement on the grounds of questionable benchmarks are not strengthening education and advancing American interests, but undermining public schools and weakening the United States.”

 

Some specifics.

 

 

The study was conducted by comparing performance of foreign students on international tests of reading, mathematics, and science with the NAEP and American Common Core tests.

 

 

Very few foreign students were able to score high enough to meet what is considered proficiency on the NAEP and Common Core tests.

 

 

 

In fact, in 4th grade reading, not a single nation was able to meet the benchmark.

 

 

In 8th grade math, only three nations (Singapore, South Korea and Japan) had 50 percent or more students who could meet the criterion.

 

 

In 8th grade science, only one nation (Singapore) had 50 percent or more students meeting the benchmark.

 

 

But wait.

 

 

Even though the benchmarks are unfair and few nations children could meet them, the percentage of U.S. children who did meet them was higher than most other nations.

 

 

Take 4th grade reading.

 

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No one had 50% or more of its kids scoring a proficient or advanced. But 31% of U.S. kids actually met the benchmark, putting us fifth behind only Singapore, the Russian Federation, Finland, and England.

 

 

Only 31% of our kids could do it, but only four other nations out of 40 could do better.

 

 

That’s kind of impressive. Yet judging our scores in abstraction solely on this unrealistic proficiency standard, we’re failures. The whole process hides how well our kids actually do.

 

 

Bottom line, Common Core benchmarks are too high and paint an unfair picture of our education system, according to the study:

 

 

“When citizens read that “only one-third” or “less than half” of the students in their local schools are proficient in mathematics, science, or reading, they can rest assured that the same judgments can be applied to students throughout most of the world…

 

Globally, in just about every nation where it is possible to compare student performance with our national benchmarks, the vast majority of students cannot demonstrate their competence because the bars are set unreasonably high.”

 

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At very least, this invalidates the scores of the NAEP and every Common Core test yet given in this country. It demands we set new benchmarks that are in line with grade level performance.

 

At most, it casts doubt on the entire process of high stakes standardized testing.

 

It demonstrates how the data can be manipulated to show whatever testing corporations or other interested parties want.

 

Standardized testing is a gun, and we have been demanding schools shoot themselves in the foot with it.

 

Instead of trying to hold our schools to impossible standards, we should be holding our lawmakers to standards of common decency. We should concentrate on equitable funding, reintegration, and supporting our public school system and public school teachers. Not enriching private testing corporations so they’ll paint a misleading picture of student performance to justify pro-privatization schemes.

 

When will our policymakers rise to meet the benchmarks of honesty, empathy and caring about the well-being of children?

 

In the final analysis, that may be bar they are simply incapable of reaching.

The Further You Get From Public Schools, the Greater the Chance of Child Abuse

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A California home-school where parents shackled, starved and abused their children is a symptom of a larger disease.

 

 

And that disease is privatization.

 

 

David Allen Turpin and his wife, Louise Anna Turpin, were arrested after police found the couple’s 13 children living in deplorable conditions in their Perris, California, home.

 

 

Some of the children were actually young adults but were so malnourished investigators at first mistook them for minors.

 

 

It is a situation that just could not have happened had those children been in the public school system.

 

 

Someone would have seen something and reported it to Child Protective Services. But school privatization shields child predators from the light and enables a system where minors become the means to every adult end imaginable.

 

 

Let me be clear. Privatization is defined as the transfer of a service from public to private ownership and control.

 

 

In education circles, that means home-schools, charter schools and voucher schools – all educational providers that operate without adequate accountability.

 

 

We are taking our most precious population – our children – and allowing them to be educated behind closed doors, out of sight from those tasked with ensuring they are getting the best opportunities to learn and are free from abuse.

 

 

And since home-schooling operates with almost zero oversight, it is the most susceptible to child neglect and mistreatment.

 

 

Children who in traditional public schools would have a whole plethora of people from teachers to counselors to principals to cafeteria workers who can observe the danger signs of abuse are completely removed from the home-school environment.

 

 

Home-schooled children receive their educations almost exclusively from parents.

 

 

While most moms and dads would never dream of abusing their kids, home-schooling provides the perfect cover for abusers like the Turpins to isolate children and mistreat them with impunity.

 

 

It is a situation that at least demands additional oversight. And at most it requires we rethink the entire enterprise as dangerous and wrongheaded.

 

 

Charter and voucher schools at least utilize whole staffs of people to educate children. The chances of something like this happening at these institutions is much smaller. However, both types of school also are much less accountable for their actions than traditional public schools.

 

 

And that is the common factor – responsibility. Who is being held answerable when things go wrong? At traditional public schools, there is a whole chain of adults who are culpable for children. At these other institutions, the number of people in the hot seat shrinks to zero.

 

 

Much of that has to do with the regulations each state puts on privatized schools.

 

 

Just look at the regulations governing home-schooling.

 

 

In 14 states including Delaware, California and Wisconsin, parents don’t have to do anything but let the school district know they’re home-schooling. That’s it! And in 10 states including Texas, Illinois and New Jersey, you don’t even have to do that!

 

 

Kids just disappear without a trace. If no one reports them missing, we assume they’re being home-schooled.

 

 

But even in states that appear to be more exacting on paper, the reality is a virtual free-for-all.

 

 

Take my home state of Pennsylvania. To begin home-schooling, parents must notify the superintendent, have obtained a high school degree themselves, provide at least 180 days of instruction in certain subjects and maintain a portfolio of their child’s test results and academic records.

 

 

That sounds impressive. However, this doesn’t really amount to much in practice because these regulations have few teeth. Hardly anyone ever checks up to make sure these regulations are being met – and they’re only allowed to check up under certain circumstances and only in certain ways and at certain times!

 

 

Even when it comes to charter and voucher schools, most states, including Pennsylvania, go little further than that.  

 

 

Frankly, most of the time we don’t know what happens in charter and voucher schools, because few state governments insist on audits, unscheduled visits or reports.

 

 

For instance, though few charter or voucher schools starve, lock up or torture students, many have zero tolerance discipline policies. Few would claim even these controversial behavior management systems sink to the level of some home-school parents who have allegedly withheld food and bound children’s hands with zip ties. But adolescents being forced to sit silently with their eyes looking forward, hands on the table or else receive loud rebukes – as they are in many charter or voucher schools – may qualify as another kind of abuse.

 

 

Moreover, all privatized schools can withhold providing a proper education. Home-school parents can refuse to teach their children not just truths about science and history but the basics of reading, writing and math. Likewise, charter and voucher schools can cut student services and pocket the savings as profit. And no one is the wiser because the state has abrogated its responsibility to check up on students or even require they be taught much of anything at all.

 

 

Meanwhile, none of this is possible in the traditional public school setting because it must operate in the light of day. It is fully accountable to the public. Its documents are public record. Decisions about how it should be run and how tax dollars are spent are made at open meetings by duly-elected members of the community.

 

 

Some, including myself, would argue that the regulations required of public schools by the state and federal government are sometimes too onerous, unnecessary or even just plain dumb. But that doesn’t change the fact that regulations are necessary. It just leaves open the question of which ones.

 

 

The bottom line is this: Public school is the equivalent of teaching children in an open room with qualified educators that have proven and continue to prove they have no criminal record and are able and ready to educate.

 

 

Privatized schools are the equivalent of teaching children in a closed room with educators who may not deserve the name and may or may not have deplorable criminal pasts.

 

 

Looked at in the abstract, no one in their right mind would conceivably suggest the latter is a better educational environment than the former. However, we have been subjected to an expensive propaganda campaign to make us think otherwise.

 

 

Look. I’m not saying public schools are perfect. Certainly students can be abused there, too. The media salaciously reports every doe-eyed teacher who stupidly has a sexual relationship with a student – whether it be at a public or privatized school. But in comparison with the worst that can and often does happen at privatized schools, these incidents at public schools are extremely rare (1 in 800,000) and of much less severity.

 

 

Though both are bad, there is a world of difference between the infinitesimal chance of being propositioned by your high school teacher and the much more likely outcome of being treated like a prison inmate at 13 by the charter school corporation or being starved, shackled and beaten by your parents!

 

 

Human beings aren’t going to stop being human anytime soon. Wouldn’t it be better to entrust our children to an environment with regulations and accountability than letting them go off in some locked room and just trusting that everything will be alright?

 

 

Our posterity deserves better than privatization.

 

 

They deserve the best we can give them – and that means fully responsible, fully regulated, fully accountable public schools.

Public Schools Best Fulfill Dr. King’s “Purpose of Education”

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What is the purpose of education?

 

Is it to train the next generation of workers?

 

Or is it to empower the next generation of citizens?

 

Is it to give children the skills necessary to meet the needs of business and industry?

 

Or is it to provide them the tools to self-actualize and become the best people they can be?

 

In today’s world, our leaders continue to insist that the answer to the question is the former corporate training model. Knowledge is only valuable if it translates to a job and thus a salary.

 

But we didn’t always think that way.

 

As another Martin Luther King Day is about to dawn this week, I’m reminded of the man behind the myth, a person who clearly would deny this materialistic view of learning.

 

When we think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we usually think of the towering figure of the Civil Rights Movement who gave the “I have a dream” speech during the March on Washington in 1963.

 

However, as a teacher, I find myself turning to something he wrote in 1947 when he was just an 18-year-old student at Morehouse College.

 

While finishing his undergraduate studies in sociology, he published an essay in the student paper called “The Purpose of Education.”

 

Two sections immediately jump off the page. The first is this:

 

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.”

 

So for King it wasn’t enough for schools to teach facts. It wasn’t enough to teach skills, math, writing, reading, history and science. The schools are also responsible for teaching children character – how to be good people, how to get along with each other.

 

It’s a worthy goal.

 

But 2018 contains a far different educational landscape than 1947.

 

When King wrote, there were basically two kinds of school – public and private. Today there is a whole spectrum of public and private each with its own degree of self-governance, fiscal accountability and academic freedom.

 

On the one side we have traditional public schools. On the other we have fully private schools. And in the middle we have charter, voucher and home schools.

 

So which schools today are best equipped to meet King’s ideal?

 

Private schools are by their very nature exclusionary. They attract and accept only certain students. These may be those with the highest academics, parental legacies, religious beliefs, or – most often – families that can afford the high tuition. As such, their student bodies are mostly white and affluent.

 

That is not King’s ideal. That is not the best environment to form character, the best environment in which to learn about people who are different than you and to develop mutual understanding.

 

Voucher schools are the same. They are, in fact, nothing but private schools that are subsidized in part by public tax dollars.

 

Charter schools model themselves on private schools so they are likewise discriminatory. The businesses who run these institutions – often for a profit – don’t have to enroll whoever applies. Even though they are fully funded by public tax dollars, they can choose who to let in and who to turn away. Often this is done behind the cloak of a lottery, but with no transparency and no one checking to ensure it is done fairly, there is no reason to believe operators are doing anything but selecting the easiest (read: cheapest) students to educate.

 

Charter schools have been shown to increase segregation having student bodies that are more monochrome than those districts from which they cherry pick students. This is clearly not King’s ideal.

 

Homeschooling is hard to generalize. There is such a wide variety of experiences that can be described under this moniker. However, they often include this feature – children are taught at home by their parent or parents. They may or may not interact with their academic peers and the degree to which they meet and understand different cultures is variable to say the least. They may meet King’s ideal, but frankly the majority of them probably do not.

 

So we’re left with traditional public schools. Do they instill “intelligence plus character”?

 

Answer: it depends.

 

There are many public schools where children of different races, nationalities, religions, and creeds meet, interact and learn together side-by-side.

 

Students wearing hajibs learn next to those wearing yarmulkes. Students with black skin and white skin partner with each other to complete class projects. Students with parents who emigrated to this country as refugees become friends with those whose parents can trace their ancestors back to the Revolutionary War.

 

These schools are true melting pots where children learn to become adults who value each other because of their differences not fear each other due to them. These are children who not only learn their academics as well – if not often better – than those at competing kinds of schools, but they also learn the true face of America and they learn to cherish it.

 

This is the true purpose of education. This is the realization of King’s academic ideal and his civil rights dream.

 

However, this is not the case at every public school.

 

While there are many like this, there are too many that are increasingly segregated. In fact, in some areas our schools today are more segregated than they were at the time of Dr. King’s assassination.

 

These are schools that get the lion’s share of resources, that have the newest facilities, the widest curriculum, the most affluent clientele.

 

So, no, not even all public schools meet this ideal. But those that don’t at least contain the possibility of change.

 

We could integrate all public schools. We could never integrate our charter, voucher and private schools. That goes against their essential mission. They are schools made to discriminate. Public schools are meant to be all inclusive. Every one could meet King’s ideal, if we only cared enough to do it.

 

Which brings me to the second section of King’s early essay that pops off the page:

 

“The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”

 

Seventy one years ago, King was warning us about the situation we suffer today.

 

When we allow academics to be distinct from character and understanding, we put ourselves at the mercy of leaders with “reason, but with no morals.”

 

We put ourselves and our posterity in the hands of those like President Donald Trump, the fruit of a fully private education.

 

Racism and privilege become the defining characteristics of a class without character, in King’s sense.

 

If we want to reclaim what it means to be an American, if we want to redefine ourselves as those who celebrate difference and defend civil rights, that begins with understanding the purpose of education.

 

It demands we defend public schools against privatization. And it demands that we transform our public schools into the integrated, equitable institutions we dreamed they could all be.

When You Mistreat Teachers, Beware the Unintended Lessons for Students

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We’ve all seen the shocking video from Vermillion Parish in Louisiana this week where a teacher is tackled to the ground and arrested because she asked a question to the school board.

 

 

 

It’s a gross abuse of power that brings up many issues:

 

  • Public servants responding to the public with violence.

 

  • Elected representatives refusing to hear from their constituents and – in fact – taking action to silence them.

 

  • Leaders who are supposed to oversee children’s educations unconcerned with the lesson local kids will be taking home from the actions of adults who are supposed to set a better example.

 

The case is simple.

 

The eight-member board had been deadlocked 4-4 on whether or not to give Superintendent Jerome Puyau a raise. Then one of the members died. Instead of his wife filling in until a new election could be held, board president Anthony Fontana , who was in favor of the raise, appointed a like-minded replacement and tried to force a vote.

 

So Deyshia Hargrave, a district teacher and parent, asked why the superintendent should get a raise while the teachers haven’t had one in several years.

 

It was a reasonable question, asked at the proper time, in a respectful tone, when comments were directed specifically at her.

 

However, Reggie Hilts, the Abbeville city marshal who also serves as a school resource officer, told her she was being disruptive and asked her to leave – which she did. When she got out in the hall, he forced her to the ground, put her in handcuffs and pushed her out of the building.

 

It was completely unjustified, a horrific violation of Hargrave’s rights and goes counter to the very purpose of public school.

 

Local control is the great strength of our education system.

 

It is the idea that district wide decisions about our children’s learning should be made by duly-elected members of the community in the full light of day. Except where doing so would violate an individual’s personal rights, all school documents are public. They are voted on in public. And they are subject to question and comment by the public.

 

If the taxpayers – the people who foot the bill for the majority of the district costs – don’t approve of what their representatives are doing, they can take steps to replace them.

 

These are the very foundation of public schooling and one of the major reasons the public school system is superior to charter or voucher schools, which typically do not have them. Even when privatized systems retain the vestiges of democratic rule, they are optional and can be stripped away at the whim of the businesses and/or corporations that run them.

 

Vermillion Parish School Board would do well to remember this.

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The actions taken by City Marshall Hilts were either done at the behest of the board or certainly without any public dissent among the members.

 

They stomped on Hargrave’s First Amendment rights and ignored their responsibility to the community they serve.

 

If my description of how a public school is supposed to work sounds like a lecture, that’s intentional. These representatives could do with a lesson in how democracy works.

 

Our actions have consequences and those consequences only become more consequential when we become public servants. The board, the superintendent and certainly Hilts may very well have opened themselves up to legal action.

 

But beyond putting themselves in danger from having to pay punitive damages to Hargrave – that I hope they pay out of the superintendent’s bloated salary – they have betrayed a dangerous attitude toward the very concept of self-rule.

 

Whether they meant to or not, they have given the children of Vermillion Parish a lesson in government and community values.

 

Make no mistake. The children are watching. They get the TV news and status updates on Facebook and Twitter. They have access to YouTube. Doubtless, they have seen this video countless times. They have probably played it over and over again.

 

They saw their teacher brutally manhandled by a supposed law enforcement officer. And they heard the deafening silence from the school board about it.

 

They know now that this kind of behavior is deemed acceptable in Vermillion Parish. Beware the kind of behavior adults can expect from children who are given such a disgraceful example!

 

Moreover, these children are well aware of the matter in dispute.

 

The board is fighting to give the superintendent a $38,000 raise. Yet they refuse to give another penny to teachers – all while class sizes have jumped from 21 to 29 students, according to Hargrave.

 

That is not what leaders do who care about the well-being of students. It is a result of backroom deals and the good ol’ boys network.

 

 

The lesson is that hard work doesn’t matter. The only thing you should worry about is making a deal no matter whom it hurts. Just look out for numero uno.

 

After all, the board could give the teachers something – some token of appreciation to show that they value their continued commitment to the children of the community. But they don’t. Yet they fight tooth and nail to do so for one individual who has in no way proven himself indispensable.

 

It is the teachers who come in every day and give their all to help students learn. Not a superintendent who demands they jump through an increasingly complex set of irrelevant hoops.

 

But there’s always money for the person at the top. Never anything for the people who do the real work.

 

Critics complain that teachers don’t deserve a raise because they already earn more money than the majority of the people who live in the community. (An argument which – by the way – would also apply to the superintendent.)

 

But even beyond basic logic, it’s a bogus line of reasoning!

 

Doctors attend patients in poor communities. They still earn high salaries – maybe not as high as they would serving the wealthy, but they have to be able to survive, to pay back the loans they took out to go through medical school, etc. So do lawyers, accountants and specialists of all kinds. That’s just capitalism. If you want someone to provide a good or service, you have to pay them a competitive wage. Otherwise, they’ll move on to greener pastures.

 

The kids see you pinching pennies. They know what that means – you don’t think they’re worth the investment.

 

The lessons of Vermillion Parish go far beyond Louisiana.

 

Anytime people mistreat teachers, they’re really mistreating the children those educators serve.

 

An attack on teachers is an attack on students.

 

When Hilt wrestled a woman half his size to the ground and placed her under arrest for the crime of exercising her rights, he put the entire community in jail.

 

When the board directed him to act – or at very least neglected to stop him – they made themselves culpable in the crime.

 

It is something we have been guilty of in nearly every state of the union. We have neglected our children, abused our teachers and injured the democratic principles on which our country was founded.

 

Class dismissed.

 

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Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Dear Donald Trump, Please Try to Block Publication of My Book, Too

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Screen shot 2018-01-07 at 1.14.14 AM

 

Dear Donald Trump,

 

May I just say, Wow, Sir? You are really very impressive.

 

I know some people say you’re a stupid overgrown man child, but you really had an amazing comeback when you tweeted you were actually a “very stable genius.”

 

I mean “very stable genius”!

 

Well done, sir.

 

How could anyone ever come back from that devastating response?

 

Oh, and your answer to Michael Wolff was likewise inspiring.

 

He is such an ingrate.

 

You invited this guy, this reporter, into the White House – the Summer Mar-a-Lago – so he could conduct candid interviews and observe you and your staff for the express purpose of writing a book. Now that the book, “Fire and Fury,” is coming out, you see that it paints an unflattering picture of you. So you have your lawyers send Wolff a cease and desist letter attempting to stop its publication.

 

That is ballsy, sir.

 

Obama wouldn’t have done that. Neither would either of the Bushes, or Reagan or even your hero Andrew Jackson. They had too much respect for the First Amendment – whatever that is.

 

I hear it won’t work though. Wolff’s book was released early and it’s already a best seller, but I’ve got to take my hat off to you, sir, for your sheer bigly courage.

 

Wolff’s book’s already sold more than 250,000 copies and the author attributes much of that to your attempts to block publication.

 

But what does he know? He’s not President. You are, sir. And as you once said, “I’m like a smart person.”

 

That you are, sir. Not actually smart, but very much LIKE a smart person.

 

You know you’re so smart that I think you might want to consider blocking the publication of some other books, too.

 

Why should someone as YUGE and important as you focus all your energy on people like Wolff… and Kim Jong-un?

 

You know the other day I was walking by my local book store – yes, they still exist. Believe me! – and I saw another book you should really think about coming down on.

 

It’s called “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.”

 

It’s by this total nerd Steven Singer. He’s one of those liberal elites, an educator spending his whole day with little children most of whom are poor, black and brown.

 

Disgusting, right?

 

And his book’s all about how racism drives the movement to destroy public education through high stakes standardized testing, charter and voucher schools.

 

Wait. Did I just lose you there? I haven’t mentioned you in a few paragraphs.

 

Hold on.

 

Trump! Trump! TRUMP!

 

Is that better?

 

Good.

 

Anyway, you might not think his book has anything to do with you, sir, but if you take a look inside, you’ll see he slams you and your administration again and again.

 

The introduction, alone, contains these disrespectful zingers:

 

“…behold the glass menagerie of fools Trump has assembled to populate his administration…”

 

“…the tired rhetoric of Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South coming out of his [Trump’s] mouth…”

 

“…Trump is a monster and he’s assembled a cabinet of monstrosities to back him up. But that doesn’t make him scary. The best way to fight monsters is to turn on the light. And we have the brightest light of all – the light of knowledge, experience and wisdom.”

 

“We can take Tiny Hands, the Bankruptcy King any day! This is a guy who couldn’t make a profit running casinos – you know, a business where the house always wins! You expect us to cower in fear that he’s going to take away our schools. Son, we’ve fought better than you!”

 

“Trump represents a clear and present danger to our nation, our people and our schools. But we represent a clear and present danger to him. He hasn’t even been sworn in yet and the clock is already ticking. He’ll be lucky to last four years in the ring with us.”

 

Ah! Such a nasty man!

 

It probably makes you want to grab this guy by his pussy!

 

Could you imagine the look on this dude’s face if you were to send him a cease and desist letter? If you offered a criticism of his failing school at a press conference? Even if you just sent out a withering tweet about this sad loser?

 

Can you imagine how something like that might affect the sale of his book?

 

It’s selling pretty well for a book about education, but a comment from you would have a huge effect.

 

It would sell like hotcakes – by which I mean sell badly because who eats hotcakes, anymore, just McDonalds and KFC and well done steak with ketchup, Am-I-Right?

 

When you say something, people listen.

 

When you said, “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed,” you boosted sales of his 1845 “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” through the roof. It’s almost like people wanted to check to see if you really mentioned someone who died in 1895 like he was a contemporary figure walking around, going on TV and giving interviews.

 

Since you took office, you got the cash registers ringing with increased sales of “1984” by George Orwell, “March: Book One” by John Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis, and “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood.

 

Everything you touch just turns to gold!

 

Or perhaps it already was gold, since you take your morning constitutional on a gold throne.

 

Take out your smart phone, sir, and give this Steven Singer and his book a good spanking.

 

Call your lawyers into the bathroom and have them draft a letter.

 

The book is called “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.”

 

You want to make sure to include that in the tweet or letter.

 

It’s available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Books-A-Million and as an E-book on Amazon.

 

Make sure everyone can see that is the book you’re criticizing.

 

You’ll have an incredible impact on the author.

 

After a smack from you, his life – and pocketbook – will never be the same.

 

So get out your tweeter, sir. And let’s sell some books!

 

I mean teach this guy a lesson. Then enjoy a steaming cup of covfefe.

 

Please.

Funny How School Closings Are Merely Accidental Racism. Never Intentional.

stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Detroit Schools, Donald Trump, Education, Local Control, New Orleans, New York, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, Rahm, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers , , , , , , , , , , ,

Students Protest School Closings At Chicago Public Schools Headquarters

 

It’s funny. When you close schools serving minority students, they tend to move away.

 

That’s what’s happening in Chicago.

 

In the last seven years, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 49 schools serving mostly students of color. And from 2015 to 2016, alone, the city lost 12,000 black residents.

 

Huh.

 

Who would have ever thought that cutting funding to services for minorities might make them get up and leave?

 

But God forbid you suggest this is intentional!

 

These are just disparate facts. There is no conceivable causal link between making life intolerable for people and their leaving.

 

When has that ever happened before?

 

The Great Migration (1919-1950) when hundreds of thousands of blacks moved from the deep south to the shores of Lake Michigan looking for better opportunities?

 

Well, sure, but when else has that ever happened?

 

You can’t connect one dot to another.

 

That would just be rude.

 

Yet that’s just what Chris Kennedy, a candidate vying to run against Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on the Democratic ticket, did this week.

 

He said that Emanuel is running a “strategic gentrification plan” to intentionally push black residents out of the city.

 

“My belief is they’re being pushed out. This is involuntary. That we’re cutting off funding for schools, cutting off funding for police, allowing people to be forced to live in food deserts, closing hospitals, closing access to mental health facilities. What choice do people have but to move, to leave?” Kennedy said at a press conference.

 

“And I think that’s part of a strategic gentrification plan being implemented by the city of Chicago to push people of color out of the city. The city is becoming smaller and as it becomes smaller, it’s become whiter.”

 

 

The establishment immediately pushed back against him.

 

The Chicago Sun-Times couldn’t find any fault with Kennedy’s facts, but they called his interpretation “irresponsible.”

 

Emanuel’s office likewise issued a press release likening Kennedy’s claims with those of Republicans like Rauner and President Donald Trump, even though both of those individuals would be more likely to champion a plan to kick blacks out of Chicago than criticize it.

 

Kennedy’s remarks simply echo what black Chicagoans have been saying for years.

 

FACT: Since 2001, 72 Chicago schools have been closed or phased out. Ninety percent of the students affected are black.

 

And now Emanuel is suggesting closing four additional schools – all from the predominantly African American Englewood community.

 

Sure, eventually they’ll be replaced by one new school, but only after at least a year without any high school in the area.

 

When the new school finally opens, the neighborhood will be less black and better suited to what? Gentrification!

 

Jitu Brown, National Director for a broad based collective of civil rights organizations called Journey 4 Justice, estimates that more than 30,000 people of color have fled Chicago since Emanuel took office.

 

Brown led a group of community members to sit in at the Chicago Board of Education today to protest the proposed closings.

 

“Rahm wants to close successful black grammar school to make room for upper income families! We have proof! That’s why we sit-in,” he tweeted.

 

Back in 2013, Brown broke down his argument at a hearing before the US Department of Education:

 

“To deny us the right to improve our schools as community institutions is a violation of our human rights. To destabilize schools in our community is a violation of our human rights. To have communities with no neighborhood schools is a violation of our human rights.  . . . We are America’s mirror. Do you have the courage to accept what you see?”

 

Kennedy really isn’t saying anything different. He’s just echoing the concerns of the community he wants to represent.

 

“I don’t know what you can say when the strategic plan for Chicago Public Schools suggest that the entire community of Englewood can go an entire year without access to a high school,” Kennedy said this week.

 

“What are you saying to the people there? No one’s going to move there who’s got a high school kid. And anybody with a high school kid has to think about what they’re going to do. It’s just a device to empty out the community.”

 

The problem is not limited to Chicago. It’s emblematic of public school policy nationwide.

 

From 2003-2012, in New York City, 117 schools were closed. Sixty-three percent of the students affected were black.

 

In 2008, 23 schools were closed in Washington, DC. Ninety-nine percent of the students affected were black, Latino or Hispanic.

 

Since 2005, in Detroit, 130 schools have been closed. Ninety-three percent of the students affected were children of color.

 

And one and on.

 

We intentionally segregate students based on race and class, then allocate funds accordingly. Richer whiter students get all the resources they need. Poorer blacker students get crumbling schools, narrowed curriculum until their schools are shuttered and they’re forced to either move away or put up with fly by night charter schools.

 

Look at what happened in New Orleans.

 

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the state took over 107 of the city’s then-128 public schools, removing them from local control of the residents. The majority of these schools were turned into charters, closed or simply never reopened – a move affecting 90 percent of black students and only 1 percent of white students.

 

Karran Harper-Royal, a New Orleans parent and cofounder of the national group Parents Across America, argued at the same hearing in 2013 before the US Department of Education that the result was racist.

 

They call it school choice, but parents don’t have choice when 80 percent attend charter schools – some of which run a lottery enrollment process, she said. As a result, parents are forced to apply to multiple charter schools to ensure their children have somewhere to go to learn.

 

Your choice is between charter schools – 79 percent of which are rated “D” or “F” – and 15 state run public schools that are all rated “D” or “F,” she said.

 

“African-American students are more likely than their white counterparts to experience schools that are at risk of being closed down, phased-out, turned around or co-located,” Harper-Royal said. “To guarantee me a seat in a failing school system is not ‘choice.’ It’s racist is what it is.”

 

This is the reality for poor and minority students across the country.

 

It’s refreshing to hear a Democrat brave enough to actually speak the truth about it – especially since Democrats have been as apt to preside over these corporate education reform policies as Republicans.

 

Closing black schools and keeping white ones open is not an accident.

 

Neither is continuing school segregation, the proliferation of charter and voucher schools and the continued insistence that the only way to hold educators accountable for actually educating is high stakes standardized testing.

 

These are all choices that result in winners and losers.

 

It’s time we recognized that. If we really want to champion civil rights and equity for all, we need to stop promoting racism as school policy and pretending to be surprised at the results.

The Different Flavors of School Segregation

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lollipop-flavor

 

The most salient feature of the United States Public School System – both yesterday and today – is naked, unapologetic segregation.

 

Whether it be in 1954 when the Supreme Court with Brown v. Board made it illegal in word or today when our schools have continued to practice it in deed. In many places, our schools at this very moment are more segregated than they were before the Civil Rights movement.

 

That’s just a fact.

 

But what’s worse is that we don’t seem to care.

 

And what’s worse than that is we just finished two terms under our first African American President – and HE didn’t care. Barack Obama didn’t make desegregation a priority. In fact, he supported legislation to make it worse.

 

Charter schools, voucher schools, high stakes standardized testing, strategic disinvestment – all go hand-in-hand to keep America Separate and Unequal.

 

In this article, I’m going to try to explain in the most simple terms I know the reality of segregation in our schools, how it got there and the various forms it takes.

 

I do this not because I am against public education. On the contrary, I am a public school teacher and consider myself a champion of what our system strives to be but has never yet realized. I do this because until we recognize what we are doing and what many in power are working hard to ensure we will continue doing and in fact exacerbate doing, we will never be able to rid ourselves of a racist, classist disease we are inflicting on ourselves and on our posterity.

 

America, the Segregated

 

It’s never been one monolithic program. It’s always been several co-existing parallel social structures functioning together in tandem that create the society in which we live.

 

Social segregation leads to institutional segregation which leads to generational, systematic white supremacy.

 

This is as true today as it was 50 years ago.

 

I’m reminded of possibly the best description of American segregation on record, the words of the late great African American author James Baldwin who said the following on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968:

 

 

“I don’t know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don’t know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church that is white and a Christian church that is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday.

 

That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. It means I can’t afford to trust most white Christians, and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church.

 

“I don’t know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me — that doesn’t matter — but I know I’m not in their union. I don’t know whether the real estate lobby has anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. I don’t know if the board of education hates black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read and the schools we have to go to.

 

“Now this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.”

 

 

As Baldwin states, there are many different ways to keep black people segregated. There are many different flavors of the same dish, many different strains of the same disease.

 

 

We can say we’re against it, but what we say doesn’t matter unless it is tied to action.

 

 

You can say you’re in favor of equity between black and white people all day long, but if the policies you support don’t accomplish these things, you might as well wear a white hood and burn a cross on a black person’s lawn. It would at least be more honest.

 

 

Segregated Schools

 

 

In terms of public education, which is the area I know most about and am most concerned with here, our schools are indeed set up to be segregated.

 

 

If there is one unstated axiom of our American Public School System it is this: the worst thing in the world would be black and white children learning together side-by-side.

 

 

I’m not saying that anyone goes around saying this. As Baldwin might say, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how we act, and judging by our laws and practices, this is the evidence.

 

 

The sentiment seems to be: Black kids should learn here, white kids should learn there, and never the two should meet.

 

 

Our laws are explicitly structured to allow such practices. And that’s exactly what we do in almost every instance.

 

 

It’s just who we are.

 

 

So, you may ask, how can a public school teacher like myself support such a system.

 

 

The answer is that I don’t.

 

 

I support the ideals behind the system. I support the idea of a public system that treats everyone equitably.

 

 

That’s what it means to have a public system and not a private one. And that’s an ideal we would be wise to keep – even if we’ve never yet lived up to it.

 

 

Many people today are trying to destroy those ideals by attacking what exists. And they’re trying to do it, by acts of sabotage.

 

 

They point to inequalities they, themselves, helped create and use them to push for a system that would create even worse inequality. They point to the segregation that they, themselves, helped install and use it as an excuse to push even more segregation.

 

 

And they do so by controlling the media and the narrative. They call themselves reformers when they’re really vandals and obstructionists looking to subvert the best in our system in order to maximize the worst.

 

 

School Segregation Today

 

Sure we don’t have very many all white or all black schools like we did before Brown v. Board. Instead we have schools that are just predominantly one race or another.

 

ALL kids are not divided by race. Just MOST of them.

 

The reason?

 

Legally and morally absolute segregation has become repugnant and impracticable. We can’t say segregation is the law of the land and then segregate. But we can set up the dominoes that spell S-E-G-R-E-G-A-T-I-O-N and then shrug when that just happens to be the result.

 

 

Partially it has to do with housing.

 

 

White people and black people tend to live in different neighborhoods. Some of this is a choice. After a history of white oppression and racial strife, people on both sides of the divide would rather live among those with whom they identify.

 

 

Black people don’t want to deal with the possibility of further deprivations. White people fear retaliation.

 

 

However, white people generally enjoy a higher socio-economic status than black people, so there is some push back from black folks who can afford to live in whiter neighborhoods and thus enjoy the benefits of integration – bigger homes, less crowding, less crime, access to more green spaces, etc. But even when there is a desire, moving to a white neighborhood can be almost impossible.

 

State and federal laws, local ordinances, banking policies and persistent prejudice stand in the way.

 

 

In short, red lining still exists.

 

 

Real estate agents and landlords still divide up communities based on whom they’re willing to sell or rent to.

 

 

And this is just how white people want it.

 

They’re socialized to fear and despise blackness and to cherish a certain level of white privilege for themselves and their families.

 

 

And if we live apart, it follows that we learn apart.

 

 

The system is set up to make this easy. Yet it is not uncomplicated. There is more than one way to sort and separate children along racial and class lines in a school system.

 

 

There are several ways to accomplish school segregation. It comes in multiple varieties, a diversity of flavors, all of which achieve the same ends, just in different ways.

 

 

By my reckoning, there are at least three distinct paths to effectively segregate students. We shall look at each in turn:

 

 

1) Segregated Districts and Schools

 

 

When you draw district lines, you have the power to determine their racial makeup.

 

 

Put the white neighborhoods in District A and the black ones in District B. It’s kind of like gerrymandering, but instead of hording political power for partisan lawmakers, you’re putting your finger on the scale to enable academic inequality.

 

 

However, sometimes you can’t do that. Sometimes you don’t have the power to determine the makeup for entire districts. Instead, you can do almost the same thing for schools within a single district.

 

 

You just send most of the black kids to School A and most of the white kids to School B. This is easy to justify if they’re already stratified by neighborhood. In this way, geographical segregation becomes the determination for the academic variety.

 

 

In fact, this is what we usually think of when we think of school segregation. And it has certain benefits for white students and costs for black ones.

 

 

Foremost, it allows white students to horde resources.

 

 

In the first case where you have segregated districts, legislation including explicit funding formulas can be devised to make sure the whiter districts get more financial support than the blacker ones. The state provides more support and the higher socio-economics of the whiter neighborhoods provides a more robust tax base to meet the needs of white children.

 

 

That means the whiter districts get higher paid and more experienced teachers. It means they have broader curriculum, more extracurricular activities, a more robust library, more well-trained nursing staff, more advanced placement courses, etc.

 

 

And – this is important – the blacker districts don’t.

 

 

Fewer funds mean fewer resources, fewer opportunities, more challenges to achieve at the same level that white students take for granted. A budget is often the strongest support for white supremacy in a given community or society as a whole. In fact, if you want to know how racist your community is, read its school budget. You want accountability? Start there.

 

 

The same holds even when segregation is instituted not at the district level but at the level of the school building.

 

 

When the people making the decisions are mostly white, they tend to steer resources to their own kids at the expense of others. Appointed state recovery bureaucrats, school boards, and administrators can provide more resources to the white schools than the black ones.

 

 

It may sound ridiculous but this is exactly what happens much of the time. You have gorgeous new buildings with first class facilities in the suburban areas and run down crumbling facilities in the urban ones – even if the two are only separated geographically by a few miles.

 

 

This is not accidental. It’s by choice.

 

 

 

2) Charter and Voucher Schools

 

 

And speaking of choice, we come to one of the most pernicious euphemisms in the public school arena – school choice.

 

 

It’s not really about academics or options. It’s about permitting racism.

 

 

It’s funny. When schools are properly funded and include an overabundance of resources, few people want another alternative. But when schools are underfunded and there is a black majority, that’s when white parents look for an escape for their children.

 

 

Like any parasite, charter and voucher schools only survive in the proper environment. It usually looks like this.

 

 

Sometimes no matter how you draw the district lines or how you appropriate the buildings, you end up with a black majority and a white minority. That’s a situation white parents find simply intolerable.

 

 

White children must be kept separate and given all the best opportunities even if that means taking away the same for black children.

 

 

That’s where “school choice” comes in.

 

 

It’s not a pedagogical philosophy of how to best provide an education. It’s big business meeting the demand for parental prejudice and white supremacy.

 

 

In summary, charter and voucher schools are the mechanisms of white flight. Period.

 

 

This is why the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Movement for Black Lives have condemned school privatization. It is racism as a business model. It increases segregation and destroys even the possibility of integration.

 

 

This works in two ways.

 

 

First, it allows white kids to enter new learning environments where they can be in the majority and get all the resources they need.

 

 

White parents look for any opportunity to remove their children from the black majority public school. This creates a market for charter or voucher schools to suck up the white kids and leave the black kids in their neighborhood schools.

 

 

Once again, this creates the opportunity for a resource gap. The charter and voucher schools suck away needed funds from the public schools and then are subsidized even further by white parents.

 

 

The quality of education provided at these institutions is sometimes better – it’s often worse. But that’s beside the point. It’s not about quality. It’s about kind. It’s about keeping the white kids separate and privileged. It’s about saving them from the taint of black culture and too close of an association with black people.

 

 

Second, the situation can work in reverse. Instead of dividing the whites from the blacks, it divides the blacks from the whites.

 

 

This happens most often in districts where the divide is closer to equal – let’s say 60% one race and 40% another. Charter and voucher schools often end up gobbling up the minority students and leaving the white ones in the public school. So instead of white privatized and black public schools, you get the opposite.

 

 

And make no mistake – this is a precarious position for minority students to be in. Well meaning black parents looking to escape an underfunded public school system jump to an even more underfunded privatized system that is just waiting to prey on their children.

 

 

Unlike public schools, charter and voucher institutions are allowed to pocket some of their funding as profit. That means they can reduce services and spending on children anytime they like and to any degree. Moreover, as businesses, their motives are not student centered but economically driven. They cherry pick only the best and brightest students because they cost less to educate. They often enact zero tolerance discipline policies and run themselves more like prisons than schools. And at any time unscrupulous administrators who are under much less scrutiny than those at public schools can more easily steal student funding, close the school and run, leaving children with no where to turn but the public school they fled from in the first place and weakened by letting privatized schools gobble up the money.

 

 

The result is a public school system unnaturally bleached of color and a privatized system where minority parents are tricked into putting their children at the mercy of big business.

 

 

3) Tracking

 

 

But that’s not all. There is still another way to racially segregate children. Instead of putting them in different districts or different schools, you can just ensure they’ll be in different classes in the same school.

 

 

It’s called tracking – a controversial pedagogical practice of separating the highest achieving students from the lowest so that teachers can better meet their needs.

 

 

However, it most often results in further stratifying students socially, economically and racially.

 

 

Here’s how it works.

 

 

Often times when you have a large enough black minority in your school or district, the white majority does things to further horde resources even within an individual school building or academic department.

 

 

In such cases, the majority of the white population is miraculously given a “gifted” designation and enrolled in the advanced placement classes while the black children are left in the academic or remedial track.

 

 

This is not because of any inherent academic deficit among black students, nor is it because of a racial intellectual superiority among white students. It’s because the game has been rigged to favor white students over black ones.

 

 

Often the excuse given is test scores. Standardized tests have always been biased assessments that tend to select white and affluent students over poor black ones. Using them as the basis for class placement increases segregation in school buildings.

 

 

It enables bleaching the advanced courses and melanin-izing the others. This means administration can justify giving more resources to white students than blacks – more field trips, more speakers, more STEAM programs, more extracurriculars, etc.

 

 

And if a white parent complains to the principal that her child has not been included in the gifted program, if her child has even a modicum of ability in the given subject, more often than not that white child is advanced forward to the preferential class.

 

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

 

Segregation is a deep problem in our public school system. But it cannot be solved by privatization.

 

 

In fact, privatization exacerbates it.

 

 

Nor is public education, itself, a panacea. Like any democratic practice, it requires participation and the economic and social mobility to be able to participate as equals.

 

 

Schools are the product of the societies that create them. An inequitable society will create inequitable schools.

 

 

Segregation has haunted us since before the foundation of our nation.

 

 

The only way to solve it is by first calling it out and recognizing it in all its forms. Then white people have to own their role in spreading it and take steps to end it.

 

 

Segregation doesn’t just happen. It exists because white people – especially white parents – want it to exist.

 

 

They don’t want their children to be educated among black students – maybe SOME black students, maybe the best of the best black students, but certainly not the average run of the mill brown-skinned child.

 

 

This has to stop.

 

 

There are plenty of benefits even for white students in an integrated education. It provides them a more accurate world-view and helps them become empathetic and prize difference.

 

 

Moreover, nothing helps inoculate a child against racism more than a truly integrated education.

 

 

If we want our children to be better people, we should provide them with this kind of school environment.

 

 

But instead, too many of us would rather give them an unfair edge so they can do better than those around them.

 

 

Racism is not just ideological; it is economic. In a dog-eat-dog-world, we want our kids to be the wolves with their teeth in the weaker pups necks.

 

 

We need to dispel this ideal.

 

 

Our society does not need to be a zero-sum game.

 

 

We can all flourish together. We can achieve a better world for all our children when we not only realize that but prize it.

 

 

As Baldwin put it in 1989’s “The Price of a Ticket”:

 

 

“It is not a romantic matter. It is the unutterable truth: all men are brothers. That’s the bottom line.”

 

 

When that becomes a shared vision of our best selves, only then will segregation be completely vanquished.

Hidden Gadfly – Top 5 Stories (By Me) You May Have Missed in 2017

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, LGBT, Media, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, Sexism, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, voter suppression, voting, White Allies, White Privilege , , , , , , , , ,

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So that was 2017.

 

It was a year that frankly I wasn’t sure I’d survive.

 

But I did. We did. Together.

 

I think if there’s any lesson from the last 365 days, it’s that: We can endure anything if we stay united.

 

We’ve taken down titans of industry simply by acts of belief. When women came forward with credible tales of abuse, for the first time we – as a society – actually believed them.

 

 

We’ve taken down the most morally repugnant child abusers with designs on national office simply by supporting the black vote. And no matter how much power tried to disenfranchise our brothers and sisters of color, we stood by them and made sure their voices were heard.

 

We’ve taken down the authors of some of the most backward legislation in the country by supporting the very people who were targeted – I’m talking about Danica Roem the first transgender state legislator in the country taking down the author of Virginia’s bigoted bathroom bill! Absolutely amazing!

 

These are the kinds of things we need more of in the New Year.

 

If you take all the “minorities” in this country – minorities of gender, race, sexuality, creed, religion, etc. – if you add us all together, we actually are the majority!

 

When you add white people of conscience with black people, Latinos and Hispanics, LGBTs, women, Muslims, and every other historically disenfranchised group, we have the upper hand. And when you compare economic disparities of the 99% vs the 1% or poor vs rich, it’s not even close!

 

And I’m not talking about some time in the future. I’m talking about right now!

 

All we need to do is stand together and fight for each other.

 

Our democracy is in tatters, but not much needs to remain to empower our overwhelming supermajority.

 

So as 2018 is about to dawn, I am filled with hope for the future. A truly amazing year may be about to dawn. It’s all up to us.

 

In the meantime, I take my last look over my shoulder at the year that was.

 

As an education blogger, I write an awful lot of articles, 119 articles so far this year. In fact, this piece – which will probably be my last of the year – brings me to 120!

 

I’ve already published a countdown of my most popular articles. If you missed it, you can still read it here.

 

However, as is my custom, I like to do one final sweep of my annual output counting down honorable mentions. These are the top five articles that maybe didn’t get as many readers, but that I think deserve a second look.

 

I hope you enjoy my top 5 hidden gems before I place them in the Gadfly vault and begin the hard work of making 2018 a better tomorrow:

 

 

5) Standardized Testing Creates Captive Markets

 

Published: April 8 thumbnail_Screen Shot 2017-04-07 at 10.41.23 AM

 

 

Views: 4,301

 

 

Description: Standardized testing is often championed by people who claim to be free market capitalists. Yet it struck me that there was nothing free about the market being perpetrated on public schools when it comes to high stakes tests. Schools don’t give these tests because anyone in these districts actually thinks they help students learn. We do it because we’re forced by federal and state governments. It’s a racket, and in this article I explain exactly how and why.

 

 

Fun Fact: This article was well received, but I thought it might deserve to be even more so. Education writer and classroom teacher Frank Stepnowski wrote about it in his most recent book “RETRIBUTION: A scathing story of mandatory minutiae, softening students, pretentious parents, too much testing, common core conundrums, and the slow death of a noble profession.” He was so taken by it he even taught my piece to his high school composition students. In addition, education historian Diane Ravitch probably liked this article more than any single work I’ve ever written. She positively beamed on her blog calling it, “One of the best articles you will ever read about standardized testing.” I guess it’s no wonder that I included it in my first book published just a few months ago, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.” In particular, Ravitch wrote:

 

“When I read this post by Steven Singer, I was so excited that I thought about devoting an entire day to it. Like posting it and posting nothing else for the entire day. Or posting this piece over and over all day to make sure you read it. It is that important.

 

Steven’s post explains two different phenomena. First, why is standardized testing so ubiquitous? What does it have a death grip on public education?

 

Second, in the late 1990s, when I was often in D.C., I noticed that the big testing companies had ever-present lobbyists to represent their interests. Why? Wasn’t the adoption of tests a state and local matter? NCLB changed all that, Race to the Top made testing even more consequential, and the new ESSA keeps up the mandate to test every child every year from grades 3-8. No other country does this? Why do we?”

 

 

4) I Am Not A Hero Teacher

 

Published: Aug. 1 Screen Shot 2017-08-01 at 10.53.52 AM

 

 

Views: 2,137

 

 

Description: According to landmark research by Dan Goldhaber and James Coleman, only about 9 percent of student achievement is attributable to teachers. The entire school experience only accounts for 20%. By far, the largest variable is out of school factors, which accounts for 60% of a student’s success. Yet we insist on holding teachers accountable for nearly 100% of it. We demand our teachers be superhuman, give them next to zero support, and then get indignant when they can’t do it all alone. Sorry, folks, I’m just a human being.

 

 

Fun Fact: Our expectations for teachers are ridiculous. We want them to do everything and then we blame them for acting like saviors. I think it’s vital that people acknowledge this impossible situation we put educators in and start to take more social responsibility. Your schools won’t get better until you do something about it. Stop complaining and get to work. That means voting for lawmakers who support public education. That means attending school board meetings. That means holding the decision makers responsible. Not just taking advantage of an easy scapegoat.

 

 

3) A Teacher’s Dilemma: Take a Stand Against Testing or Keep Abusing Children

 

Published: Sept 8 AJGE5E_2026469c

 

 

Views: 1,262

 

 

Description: What does a teacher think about when he or she is forced to give a standardized test? This article is my attempt to capture the no-win situation that our society forces on teachers every year. Apparently we must choose between doing things that we know are harmful to our students or taking a stand and possibly losing our jobs. You become a teacher to help children and then find that harming them is in the job description. Is this really what society wants of us?

 

 

Fun Fact: This article resonated deeply with some readers. In fact, a theater group in Ithaca, NY, Civic Ensemble, was so inspired by it that they used my article as the basis for a scene in a play made up of teacher’s real life stories about the profession. The play was called “The Class Divide.” You can watch a video of a practice performance of my scene here.

 

 

 

2) Top 10 Reasons Public Schools are the BEST Choice for Children, Parents & Communities

 

Published: Sept. 15 thumbsup

 

 

Views: 734:

 

Description: A lot has been written about why charter and voucher schools are bad for parents, students and society. Less has been written about the ways that public schools do better than privatized education. This was my attempt to illuminate the ways public schools are better. They attract better teachers, have a more robust sense of community, have more educational options, have greater diversity, are more fiscally responsible – and that’s just the first five!

 

Fun Fact: When you list all the ways public schools are better than privatized ones, it becomes hard to imagine why they’re struggling. Public schools are clearly the best choice. The fact that they are being sabotaged by the privatization industry and their creatures in government is inescapable.

 

 

1) Black Progress Does Not Come At White Expense

 

Published: Nov. 14

People of different races hold hands as they gather on the Arthur Ravenel Jr. bridge in Charleston

 

 

Views: 219

 

 

Description: When you ask racists why they oppose racial equity, the number one reason they give is the feeling that equity is a zero sum game. If black people are put on an equal footing with white people, then white people will ultimately lose out. This is patently untrue. White people will lose supremacy over other races, but they need not become subservient or lose their own rights. We can champion fairness for all without doing ourselves harm.

 

 

Fun Fact: This article kind of died on the vine, but I’m still proud of it. I think it is one of my best this year expressing my own thoughts and feelings about antiracism. I just wish more people had read it, because it sounds like this is an idea that more white people need to hear. We can only build a better world hand-in-hand.

 

NOTE: Special thanks to my fellow education blogger, Russ Walsh, who originally gave me the idea to write a countdown of under-read articles. He does it, himself, every year at his own excellent blog. If you’re new to the fight against corporate education reform, Russ has written an excellent primer on the subject – A Parent’s Guide to Public Education in the 21st Century: Navigating Education Reform to Get the Best Education for My Child.

Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups

This wasn’t the first year I’ve done a countdown of the year’s greatest hits. I usually write one counting down my most popular articles (like the one you just read from 2017) and one listing articles that I thought deserved a second look. Here are all my end of the year articles since I began this crazy journey in 2014:

2017

What’s the Buzz? A Crown of Gadflies! Top 10 Articles (by Me) in 2017

thumbnail_Screen shot 2017-12-26 at 3.44.17 PM

2016

Worse Than Fake News – Ignored News. Top 5 Education Stories You May Have Missed in 2016

ignoring-wisdom

Goodbye, 2016, and Good Riddance – Top 10 Blog Post by Me From a Crappy Year

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 2015

Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015

Screen shot 2016-01-02 at 11.01.09 PM

 

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

Screen shot 2015-12-30 at 12.57.49 AM

2014

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

Wonderfull illusion art painting

Top 10 Education Blog Posts (By Me) You Should Be Reading Right Now!

computer-people-png-300x202

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

book-4

 

What’s the Buzz? A Crown of Gadflies! Top 10 Articles (by Me) in 2017

stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Campbell Brown, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Data Mining, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Facebook, Journalism, Media, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Toxic Testing, White Privilege , , , , ,

thumbnail_Screen shot 2017-12-26 at 3.44.17 PM

 

We made it, Readers.

 

Somehow we survived 2017 – the first year of the Trump Presidency.

 

What a monstrosity that has been so far!

 

Republicans have stolen more than $1 trillion from our pockets to give to their mega-wealthy donors in the form of tax cuts. A 3-2 GOP majority on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed Net Neutrality. And the party of Lincoln endorsed and funded a child molester for US Senate – though he thankfully lost.

 

 

We’re in new territory. Politics has always appealed to the best and worst of our natures: Good people who really want to make a difference and sniveling cowards willing to do whatever their sugar daddies tell them. But unfortunately our world has increasingly rewarded the latter and almost extinguished the former.

 

However, don’t lose heart. The cockroaches are all out in the open. They’ve become so emboldened by the words “President” and “Trump” voiced together that they no longer feel the need to hug a wall.

 

All it would take is a good boot and a series of stomps to crush them forever.

 

Someone get me my shoes.

 

In the meantime, I sit here at my kitchen table recovering from a turkey coma preparing for a nostalgic look back at everything that’s happened here at Gadfly on the Wall in the past year.

 

It was quite a 365 days! Most amazing was the publication of my book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform” from Garn Press. It’s a thorough reworking and “Best Of” this blog over the last three years.

 

Sales have been strong and reviews are starting to come in. I am absolutely floored when I get messages from people I admire telling me they got the book and appreciate this or that. It’s been my lifelong dream to publish a book, and now I’ve done it. The New Year will involve lots of promotion – hopefully I can get decision makers to read it!

 

Other than that, it’s been a busy year blogging. I wrote 118 articles! That’s about one every three days!

 

And people have been reading them.

 

I’ve had more than 364,000 hits – about the same as in 2016. This puts the total views over the 1 million mark at more than 1,216,000! That’s quite a landmark for a blog that’s only been around since July, 2014. And it doesn’t count all the readers I get from articles reposted on the Badass Teachers Association Blog, Huffington Post, Commondreams.org, the LA Progressive, Alternet, BillMoyers.com or other sites.

 

I’ve also gotten 1,510 more people to follow me for a total of 12,845.

 

I’m so honored that readers still like coming to this site for news and commentary. As long as you care to enter those virtual doors, I’ll be here, hunched over my computer, pounding away at the keys.

 

So without further ado, let’s take a look back at the top 10 articles from this blog that got the Inter-webs humming:

10) Teacher Appreciation Week is a Pathetic Joke!

Published: May 10, 2017 Screen Shot 2017-05-10 at 3.38.28 PM

 

 

Views: 4,320

 

 

Description: At the end of every school year we get Teacher Appreciation Week. It’s nice. Educators get free donuts and cookies, a pat on the head and then the rest of the year we get all the blame for society’s problems without any additional funding, repealing terrible policies or even acknowledgement of what the real issues are in our schools. It’s a sham. Someone had to say it, so I did. Thanks for the snack, but it takes a village, folks! Get off your butts and take some responsibility!

 

 

Fun Fact: Some people, even teachers, were really upset by this article. They thought it was ungrateful. Don’t get me wrong, I am truly appreciative for any crumb the public wants to give us, teachers, but I’m not going to let it pass as if that counts as true support. Salving your conscience isn’t enough. We need true allies to get down in the mud and fight with us. Otherwise, it’s just an empty gesture.

 

 

 

9) White Privilege, Public Schools and Ugly Christmas Sweaters

 

Published: Dec 22 Screen Shot 2017-12-22 at 1.02.56 PM

 

 

Views: 4,324

 

 

Description: This one’s hot off the press! It describes a situation at one of the schools were I’ve taught over the years and how dress code policies can support white privilege. They’re the broken windows policing of academia, and we need to put much more thought into them before laying down blanket restrictions.

 

 

Fun Fact: Some readers took exception to this piece because they thought I didn’t do enough to stop a wayward administrator despite the fact that I never said what I did or didn’t do. Some even complained that it was dumb to simply acknowledge racism and racist policies and actions. I don’t know what world they’re living in. White folks voted for Donald J. Trump to be President. We’ve got a long way to go, and acknowledging everyday prejudice seems a worthy goal to me.

 

 

 

8) America’s Founding Fathers Were Against School Choice

Published: Feb 16 3551131_f520

 

 

Views: 4,483

 

 

Description: The entire premise of school privatization goes against the founding principles of our nation. We were born out of the Enlightenment, not the profit motive. Our founders would look on in horror at charter and voucher schools. Though they aren’t perfect, only truly public schools embody the ideals of the Revolution. True conservatives and true patriots would support that system, not strive to blow it up for personal financial gain.

 

 

Fun Fact: Some people took issue with an appeal to the founders who were not exactly perfect. It’s true. In practice many of them did not live up to their own high ideals. However, who does? It is the ideal that matters, not the clay feet of our forebears.

 

 

 

7) Middle School Suicides Double As Common Core Testing Intensifies

 

Published: July 24 Screen Shot 2017-07-24 at 10.35.30 AM

 

 

Views: 5,800

 

 

Description: Teen suicides are up – especially among middle school age children. At the same time, we’ve been testing these kids into the ground. More standardized assessments – and these are unnecessarily more difficult to pass Common Core assessments. This is exactly what happens in countries that put such emphasis on testing – they have a higher suicide rate. It’s no wonder that this is happening here, too. Policymakers want us to be more like Asian countries? Be careful what you wish for!

 

 

Fun Fact: This article infuriated the good folks at the Education Post. Peter Cunningham had his flunkies attack me on Twitter complaining that I was an angry white dude making undue correlations. Yet every other explanation for the fact of increased middle school suicides was merely a correlation, too. Proving causation is almost impossible. It is just as reasonable – even more so – to conclude that testing is having an impact on the suicide rate as to intuit the cause being increased reliance on social media. The big money folks don’t want us making the connection I made here. All the more reason to believe there is truth behind it.

 

 

 

6) School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less.

 

Published: Oct. 6 fake1

 

 

Views: 7,880

 

 

 

Description: School choice is a misnomer. It’s school privatization. It has very little to do with providing more options for parents or students. It’s about allowing big corporations to avoid public school regulations and profit off your child swiping your tax dollars. School choice is merely a marketing term.

 

 

Fun Fact: I must have really pissed someone off when I wrote this one because it caused Facebook to block me for a week. No matter. Readers liked this one so much they shared it for me all over. Why was I targeted? It could be personal since charter school cheerleader Campbell Brown is literally the arbiter of truth at Facebook. Or it could be the social media site’s attempt to bully me into spending money on advertising. Either way, their attempted censorship didn’t work.

 

 

5) Dear Teachers, Don’t Be Good Soldiers for the EdTech Industry

 

Published: Sept 3 FullSizeRender

 

 

Views: 8,358

 

 

Description: As teachers, we’re often expected to use new technology in our classrooms. However, we’re rarely involved in the decision making process. We’re rarely allowed to decide which technology to use and sometimes even how to use it. Software packages are just handed down from administration or school board. However, the EdTech Industry is not our friend. More often than not it is unscrupulous in the ways it is willing to profit off of our students through data mining, competency based learning and a variety of privacy threatening schemes. It’s up to us to be brave enough to say, “No.”

 

 

Fun Fact: I was surprised by how much the piece resonated with readers. So many other educators said they felt they were being bullied into using apps or programs that they thought were of low quality or downright harmful. Sure, there were some who called me a luddite, but the fact remains: we shouldn’t be using technology for technology’s sake. We should be doing so only to help students learn. That requires us to use our best judgment, not follow orders like good soldiers.

 

 

 

 

4) Teachers Don’t Want All This Useless Data

 

Published: June 23 26948475_l-too-much-data

 

 

Views: 12,459

 

 

Description: Administrators love to gift teachers with tons and tons of data. They bury us under reams of standardized test results and expect us to somehow use that nonsense to inform our teaching. It’s crazy. We already collect authentic data on our students for 180 days a year in the classroom in the course of our teaching. Yet they think these mass produced corporate evaluated snap shots are going to somehow change everything? That’s not how you help educators. It’s how you abdicate any responsibility yourself.

 

 

Fun Fact: This one really took off especially on the Huffington Post. Many readers seemed to be truly surprised that teachers felt this way. No authentic educator gives in to being data driven. We’re data informed but student driven. And if you want us to do something else, you don’t have the best interests of the kids at heart.

 

 

 

3) PA Legislature Plans Taking Away Teachers’ Sick Days

 

Published: Feb 2 thumbnail_teachers-sick-719435

 

 

Views: 17,702

 

 

Description: This was another tone deaf proclamation from the Republican majority in Harrisburg. It was pure meat for the regressive base in gerrymandered districts that if passed they knew would never be signed by our Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. It turns out the backlash was such that they didn’t even have the courage to put it to a vote.

 

 

Fun Fact: I never expected this one to be nearly as popular as it was. Usually articles about Pennsylvania get a few hundred local readers and that’s it. But this one infuriated everyone. How dare lawmakers propose this! Don’t they know how many bacteria teachers are exposed to!? Do they want us to come to school sick and spread the disease to our students!? I’d like to think that the article had something to do with this terrible piece of legislation disappearing, but I have no evidence to support it. However, I can say that it will probably be back when they think no one is looking, and it will still make me sick.

 

 

 

 

2) U.S. Public Schools Are NOT Failing. They’re Among the Best in the World

 

 

Published: Jan 29 surprised-kid-investor-050213

 

 

Views: 23,841

 

 

Description: Everyone says public schools are failing. I call bullshit. It depends on how you’re evaluating them, and – frankly – we’re not being fair to our American education system. Sure. There are plenty of ways we can improve, but there’s a lot we’re doing right, too. In fact, many of the things we get right, few other systems do around the world. We excel in our ideals. If we just had the courage of our convictions, our system would be beyond the moon! Even as it is, we have much to celebrate. And other nations would do well to emulate us in these ways.

 

 

Fun Fact: I’m quite proud of this one. It’s the only article in the Top 10 here that was included in my book. For the definitive version, you’ll have to go there. Some sections received major rewrites and clarifications. I think the published version is much better. But no matter which version you choose, I’m proud to have an answer for all those out there spreading the myth that our education system is an irredeemable mess. They want us to get rid of the good and replace it with more bad. I say we keep the good and build on it.

 

 

 

1) Ignorance and Arrogance – the Defining Characteristics of the Betsy DeVos Hearing

 

Published: Jan 18 betsydevos-png-crop-cq5dam_web_1280_1280_png

 

 

Views: 28,670

 

 

Description: Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing was an absolute horror show. It’s even worse when you consider she was confirmed by the Republican majority in a tie vote that was broken by Vice President Mike Pence (that still sends shivers down my spine). Here was someone who knows next to nothing about public education except that she wants to destroy it. She wouldn’t commit to protecting students rights even those under the umbrella of special education. There’s more I could say but I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Excuse me.

 

 

Fun Fact: I’m honored that so many readers turned to my blog for commentary about this. It was a moment of shared horror that hasn’t weakened much in the subsequent months. We’re all just waiting for sanity to return but at least we can do so together. We’re all in this side-by-side and hand-in-hand. We can defeat the Betsy DeVos’ and the Donald Trump’s of the world if we stay strong. It could happen any day now.

 

 

 

Gadfly’s Other Year End Round Ups

This wasn’t the first year I’ve done a countdown of the year’s greatest hits. I usually write one counting down my most popular articles (like the one you just read from 2017) and one listing articles that I thought deserved a second look. Here are all my end of the year articles since I began this crazy journey in 2014:

 

2016

Worse Than Fake News – Ignored News. Top 5 Education Stories You May Have Missed in 2016

ignoring-wisdom

 

Goodbye, 2016, and Good Riddance – Top 10 Blog Post by Me From a Crappy Year

screen-shot-2016-12-27-at-3-29-49-am

 2015

Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015

 

Screen shot 2016-01-02 at 11.01.09 PM

 

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

Screen shot 2015-12-30 at 12.57.49 AM

2014

Off the Beaten Gadfly – the Best Education Blog Pieces You Never Read in 2014

Wonderfull illusion art painting

 

Top 10 Education Blog Posts (By Me) You Should Be Reading Right Now!

computer-people-png-300x202

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

book-2

There Has Never Been a Better Chance to Defeat Neoliberals and Neofascists: Hopes for 2018

stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Journalism, Media, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Republican, School Choice, school vouchers, Schools, Teachers, voting , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Demonstration against G8 Summit in Le Havre

 

As 2017 chugs and sputters to a well-deserved end, I find myself surprised at the pessimism around me.

 

Yes, I know. Donald Trump is still President.

 

The plutocrats have stolen trillions of dollars from the majority in unnecessary tax cuts that threaten our ability to function as a nation.

 

A slim majority of their sniveling creatures at the FCC have repealed Net Neutrality gifting our free expression to huge corporations.

 

And big business continues to sack and burn our public schools only to replace them with charter and voucher swindles.

 

This is all true.

 

But it does not make me lose heart.

 

These defeats may be fleeting, momentary as political and legal challenges mount against them. As far as the tide has pulled back, a wave is gathering strength at sea, such a prodigious burst of water as to create a new ocean once it hits land.

 

Yes, we endured many scars from the year that was. But we have gained something truly amazing – something that we probably could not have grasped without our sexual predator in chief, a reality TV show conman posing as a political leader.

 

People.

 

Are.

 

Awake.

 

They see the undeniable destruction, the naked power grabs, how our lawmakers are owned by the super-rich and the outright denial of democratic principles.

 

They see and they understand.

 

It is no longer debatable that we have lost control of our government.

 

It is no longer a question whether our lawmakers have our best interests at heart.

 

It is no longer at all uncertain that business interests and public interests are not the same.

 

Everyone knows.

 

Everyone sees.

 

The question is “What will we do about it?”

 

I’m reminded of the ending of John Carpenter’s cult classic “They Live.”

 

In the movie, Earth is conquered by aliens but no one noticed. The aliens took over the media and government using a transmitter to hide their ugly faces so that people couldn’t see what they truly look like. These intergalactic shepherds used the media and advertising to herd us human sheep to focus on naked consumerism and ignore how we’re being consumed by the powers that be.

At the end of the movie, the hero – played by Roddy Piper – sacrifices himself to destroy the transmitter so everyone finally can see the hideous aliens among us.

 

I remember watching the film the first time back in the ‘80s and wondering what people would do once they could see the truth.

 

Would they fight? Or would they try to convince themselves that they weren’t seeing the evidence of their own eyes?

 

(WARNING: The video below is NSFW, contains nudity and sexual situations.)

 

We’re in a similar situation today.

 

Trump did not cause all of this. He certainly made it worse, but the groundwork was laid by years of neoliberals from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama.

 

Reagan and both Bushes started us rolling down into the pit, but it was the Clintons and the Obamas who convinced so many of us that we weren’t headed into oblivion, it was merely a trick of the mind, this was the direction we wanted to go and that if anyone got left behind it was merely their own darn fault.

 

But now the truth is right there before our faces.

 

And that’s thanks to the blunt, unrepentant greed of Donald J. Trump.

 

He steals from us and doesn’t even pretend he’s doing anything else.

 

He hordes our money. He destroys our laws and disregards our values. He raises racists and bigots to respectability while appointing unqualified sycophants with the expressed purpose to run our government into the ground. And if anyone dares proclaim the emperor has no clothes, all he can say is “Fake News.”

 

And though I thoroughly despise him for everything he’s done and continues to do bringing our world to the brink of annihilation – I also have to thank him.

 

There is no longer any denying the truth.

 

It is merely a question of how we fight.

 

Opportunities abound for victory, and on a scale we could not previously have dreamed.

 

It would take such a little push to topple this pathetic toy dictator’s regime.

 

Merely a whisper out of all our mouths could bring it down.

 

The slightest flick of the smallest finger on all our hands could send a shock wave causing this pitiful empire to crumble.

 

If we merely took to the streets at the same time, these dollar store monsters would dissolve in our wake.

 

And in their place – imagine the world we could create.

 

All the socialist ideals of Roosevelt’s New Deal could be realized. We could enact a NEW New Deal where everyone truly had a fair shot at flourishing.

 

As the Rev William Barber says, we could bring about a Third Reconstruction so that our future was firmly built on the foundation of equity and understanding for people of all races, genders, nationalities, religions and creeds.

 

We could forever banish money from the halls of power and force the plutocrats to pay for all they have stolen from us – with interest.

 

We could do all this with the merest flexing of our muscles. Because the conquering power is so weak, so disorganized, so pathetic.

 

And the status quo false flag opposition is just as weak and powerless.

 

There is but one puissant force left in this country of ours, and it is us. The people.

 

We were there at the beginning and we are here still at what might be our end.

 

We, the People.

 

We can take this country back from the sick and stunted and powerful.

 

We can take this country back from the frail and the deranged and prejudiced.

 

We can make America great – if not again then perhaps for the first time. We can make America truly great.

 

That is the promise of the future.

 

As our darkest hour dawns, our brightest light may yet shine.

 

Here’s to igniting that spark.

 

Here’s to a brighter tomorrow.