The Ongoing Resistance to Trump, Neoliberals & Anyone Else Trying to Destroy Our Schools

December 21, 2016December 22, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, John King, Obama, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Republican, School Choice, school closings, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Teachers, White Privilege Barack Obama, Betsy DeVos, children, Corporate Education Reform, Donald Trump, education, neoliberal, plutocracy, Politics, Rex Tillerson, Steve Bannon, Students, teaching, Trump

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.” —Dale Carnegie

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

-Nelson Mandela

Buck up, Education Activists.

I see that hopeless look on your faces. I see it because it’s the same look reflected back at me in the mirror every morning.

Donald Trump will be our next President, and he’s filling his cabinet with people who are determined to destroy the very offices where he’s putting them in charge.

His Education Secretary doesn’t believe in public schools. His Labor Secretary doesn’t believe in worker’s rights. His Housing chief doesn’t believe in public housing. His head of Environmental Protection doesn’t believe in protecting the environment. Heck! You pick a department and he’s found someone to lead it who doesn’t believe in doing that job!

And to top it all off, he’s got a literal white supremacist as his chief strategist.

But you know what? I’m not scared.

You know why? Because I’m still here.

Seriously.

The forces of greed and ignorance have been salivating all over the prospect of destroying public education for decades, and they haven’t been able to do it.

We’re still here. In almost every municipality, district or borough, our public schools remain open.

Sure, they’re a bit worse for wear in some neighborhoods. But despite billions of dollars being spent to crush them under foot, we survive to fight another day.

And that day is today.

Why should we despair when we behold the glass menagerie of fools Trump has assembled to populate his administration? Glass breaks.

Why despair when hearing the tired rhetoric of Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South coming out of his mouth? We defeated both! We can do so again.

Take Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Education Secretary. She’s a religious fanatic who’s dedicated her life to destroying public schools.

I’m not scared of her. We just fought off Arne Duncan and John King – two of the Democrats Ivy League privateers who actually knew what they were doing! If we can stop those jackholes from giving away community schools to rich corporations, we can take this rich Republican lady who never held down a real job and only knows how to get her way by bribing people to do her bidding.

Sorry, Miss Betsy, but your school vouchers aren’t driving my family out of our neighborhood school so my kid can be taken advantage of by multinational corporations and Christian Cult madrasas. We’re wise to your B.S. “School Choice” fantasies.

Then there’s Rex Tillerson, another corporate vampire who’d like to suck our classrooms dry. The Exxon CEO and Trump’s pick for Secretary of State is a climate denying gasoline peddler who’s dimwitted enough to think he knows everything. Drawing on his zero years of experience with children, he actually said aloud that struggling students were “defective products” as if they were irregular widgets being pressed out on the assembly line and unfit for service at his service stations.

I’m not worried about that gashole. He’ll be too busy enriching himself in backroom deals with foreign leaders to pay much attention to our schools. He’s no threat.

Okay. I’ll admit Steve Bannon makes my skin crawl. Trump’s picked a literal neo-Nazi propagandist as chief strategist, an alleged wife beater who apparently thinks black people don’t necessarily deserve the right to vote. Well, my grandfathers taught me how to deal with jackbooted Eurocentric thugs. Bannon can goosestep his way back to Brietbart and take his orange-faced Reality TV star Commander in Chief with him.

Look, Trump is a monster and he’s assembling 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’ve been doing it for the past 8 years with the Democrats, people who were supposed to be our friends and allies. You think it’ll be harder with GOP nitwits declaring themselves our enemies!?

For all the cosmetic ways the Obama Administration was better, they were almost as enthusiastic about boosting privatization and making sure every child had a standardized test that was written above their level and biased towards rich white kids. All their talk about championing civil rights didn’t stop them from closing poor black kids schools and forcing them into unaccountable charter operations that often provided fewer services, achieved dismal academic results and boosted racial segregation. All their talk about equity didn’t result in any more funding for minority children – only more Common Core, unqualified Teach for America temps and testing, testing, testing. Yet their donors in the standardized testing, publishing and privatization industry raked in obscene profits.

I’m sorry if this hurts some people’s rosy-eyed view of politics, but Obama was no friend to education. Plutocracy isn’t just a practice on the other side of the aisle. The Democrats are almost as beholden to their corporate masters, and like good servants, they do what their rich donors tell them to do.

This isn’t news to us. We’ve been on the outs before. In fact, we’ve never been on the ins.

Donald Trump? Shit! We lived through an administration that wanted to destroy us and actually knew how to do it! 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!

We just need to stop, take a deep breath and re-energize ourselves.

We need a moment of rededication, time to size up our newest antagonists, and prepare for the battles ahead.

Yes, we’re surrounded on all sides. But it’s never been any different.

Yes, we don’t have any political party that supports us. So we’ll either take over the Democrats or build our own legislative network.

I don’t mean to minimize the threat. 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.

So in that spirit, I offer the following advice. And not just to you, my brothers and sisters at arms. I’m speaking to that broken down father, teacher and activist in myself, too.

Chin up, Bucko. We aren’t done yet. Not even close.

Together we can win this fight. We’ve been doing just that for years.

We have nothing to fear from Trump. He and the neoliberals have much to fear from us.

“Fate whispers to the warrior ‘You cannot withstand the storm.’ The warrior whispers back ‘I am the storm.’ ”

– unknown

“If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!”

–T. Harv Eker

Four Practical and Four Moral Reasons to Make Your City a Sanctuary City

December 18, 2016 stevenmsinger Budget, California, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Donald Trump, immigration, Local Control, Mexico, Philadelphia, Politics, Prejudice, President, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Refugees, Republican, Schools, Social Justice, Whiteness deportation, federal, homeland security, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, moral, Politics, practical, racist dog whistle, Sanctuary Cities

There’s an entire underclass of people living among us.

These are people like you or me who have no choice but to do the most menial jobs for meager pay under the table. And when reality-TV-stars-turned-politicians like Donald Trump come around offering to solve all our problems with magic, you know who they blame for everything? THEM!

They’re illegal immigrants. They had the gumption to flee countries with worse economies than ours for the privilege of being our construction workers, housekeepers, gardeners and janitors. They are the fruit and vegetable pickers and the restaurant workers putting food on our tables.

They don’t collect social security, they don’t have health benefits or retirement plans and employers can pay them less than minimum wage. Heck! We can do almost whatever we want to them because who are they going to complain to – the police? If they do anything to get noticed by the law, they could be deported. So they keep a low profile doing the work no one else wants while the rest of us allow ourselves to be fooled into accepting them as easy scapegoats for all our ills.

What we need are sensible immigration laws that offer these people a path to citizenship, a way for them to climb out of perpetual servitude and fear. But that would cost us too much money, so it will never happen.

The least we can do – literally the least – is allow them some moderate amount of safety. We can let them partake in the minimum advantages of our society – protection from crime, a safe place to live, schools for their children, and an end to the fear that at any moment they could be kidnapped and taken away.

It’s called being a sanctuary city and more than 300 urban centers across the country have officially or unofficially adopted it as their local policy.

Though there’s no clear legal definition of sanctuary cities, in places like New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Houston, it goes something like this – if someone questions a person’s immigration status, local police don’t investigate it. You arrest someone for a non-violent crime, he does his time, then you let him free. If he has a long rap sheet, all bets are off, but in general you don’t hold him past his sentence for the feds to come and drag him away unless he’s got a substantial criminal record.

These sanctuary policies came under fire after the July 2015 death of Kate Steinle, a woman who was shot and killed in San Francisco, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant and repeat felon who had been deported five times to Mexico. He was being held by police but was released when drug charges were dropped. Police clearly made a mistake. Most law enforcement – even in sanctuary cities – would have contacted Homeland Security about someone like Lopez Sanchez. Moreover, deportation isn’t an answer either because Sanchez had already been given the boot multiple times. Unfortunately, the case has become the poster child for everything that’s supposedly wrong with these policies.

Trump became President on the backs of a promise to deport up to 3 million illegal immigrants because he said they are more violent and sanctuary cities result in increased crime. However, as are most things that come out of his mouth, it’s simply not true. These people are less likely to commit serious crimes than those born in the U.S. They can’t attract attention to themselves. Even in sanctuary cities, going on a crime spree is a sure way to get yourself deported.

On average, between 2011 and 2013 immigration courts ordered about 414,650 people removed from the country. Adding to those numbers won’t solve the problem, but there is something we can do.

If you live in a sanctuary city, protect that status. If you don’t, lobby to make your city a place of sanctuary. There are plenty of good reasons to do this – some practical, some moral. Here are four examples of each:

Practical

1) Holding Suspected Illegal Immigrants Drains Resources

Local and state police departments are not made of money. Like most public services these days, law enforcement agencies are cash-strapped. They only have so much funding to spend protecting and serving communities. Holding people in jail who are suspected of being in the country illegally costs money -money we don’t have to waste.

Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security has refused to even prioritize deporting convicted illegal immigrants. Suspects can spend days, weeks or longer in lock up waiting for the feds to get in gear.

It has become increasingly common for law enforcement to let these people go instead of taking responsibility for what is, after all, a federal job. Between January 2014 and September 2015, local and state law enforcement agencies declined 18,646 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers, the Texas Tribune found. The majority were from California, where the notion of sanctuary cities first took root.

2) Holding Suspects Without a Warrant Can Get Your City Sued

Not all sanctuary cities lean left like Los Angeles. Many are deep in the red states and deeply conservative. In 2014, sheriff’s departments across the country announced that they would no longer honor detainer requests from the federal government. Instead, they would require ICE to get a formal warrant or court order before they would jail someone longer than they would otherwise.

The reason explicitly laid out in policy memos and press releases in places like rural Oregon, eastern Washington, and Kansas was to avoid expensive lawsuits. Federal courts in Pennsylvania and Oregon ruled in 2014 that detainer requests are not legally binding. In other words, counties jailing people based solely on those detainers could be violating individuals’ rights.

So these cities are trying to shield taxpayers from potential lawsuits. Residents may not consider themselves to be in sanctuary cities. Officials and sheriffs in these areas may even object to the label, but they are effectively doing the same thing.

3) Complying with the Feds Infringes on Local Autonomy

No one likes to be told how to do their job – especially police. Some law enforcement experts claim that the federal government is overstepping its authority by demanding state and local police to comply with requests for detention.

When Louisiana was considering a state law banning sanctuary cities, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand, a Republican, gave legislators an earful at a senate hearing on the matter: “Don’t come down here with some overarching bullshit Republican philosophy from Washington, DC…. and tell me how to do my business!” he said. “This bill goes down to discretion of a frontline officer and usurps my authority as a manager in how I’m going to deal with my officers… Give me a break!”

4) Holding Detainees Makes Law Enforcement’s Job Harder

Being a police officer is hard enough. If the people in the community you’re trying to protect and serve are afraid you’ll detain them for suspicion about their immigration status, they’ll be less likely to co-operate in the everyday business of policing.

People will flee from police on sight because they’re afraid some minor incident is going to get them deported. This is exactly what happened in North Carolina after the state passed a law requiring officers to fully comply with ICE, according to Jose Lopez, the Durham police chief.

Some agencies say it leads to mistrust between the community and the police, because victims and potential witnesses don’t come forward to report crimes. The fear of being deported is too strong. That is a real threat to public safety.

Moral

1) Violations of Human Rights/Unconstitutional

Detaining a person in jail for unspecified periods of time simply on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant is certainly of dubious legality, but it may also be immoral.

It certainly creates a situation ripe for corruption and graft. From 2004 – 2012, it was common for law enforcement agencies to enter into agreements to help federal authorities with immigration enforcement. These agreements allowed local jails to house undocumented immigrants after they had served time on state charges and then bill the federal government for this service.

Unfortunately, this turned detainees from suspects into sources of revenue and profit. The program was widely criticized because it incentivized detentions in the same way that for-profit prisons incentivize convictions. Local jails made money from detaining suspected illegal immigrants, so detentions skyrocketed. Suddenly every brown skinned person walking the streets was a potential payday.

People disappeared without warning, explanation or recourse. Inmates sometimes were passed along to jails in other municipalities without any formal notice to family members, then into the immigration court system for an expedited removal hearing. In some cases, people were returned to their home countries in weeks. Detainees were unable to communicate with embassy officials from their countries of origin or notify family members of their arrests. They were simply gone.

At very least, it was a potential violation of international human rights accords. Civil liberties groups called it a vehicle for racial and ethnic profiling. One Tennessee sheriff said it allowed him to “stack these violators like cordwood.” The system was out of control. More than one analysis of who was deported and what happened during that process showed that most were people initially arrested for minor traffic violations and who had no criminal record.

This is not how you should treat people no matter how they may or may not have entered the country. Disappearing people is the mark of a fascist state, not the land of the free, home of the brave.

2) Historical/ Biblical Precedent

Offering sanctuary has a long and respected history.

The concept derives from the ancient imperative to provide hospitality to strangers. In Greek cities, slaves and thieves took sanctuary at the shrines of the gods. In Biblical times, people who committed accidental murder could escape to sanctuary cities where they could remain in safety. These cities of refuge were places for wrongdoers who did not merit the fullest sanction of the law but were instead supposed to be kept separate from the community for a certain period.

In the Middle Ages, accused felons were allowed to seek sanctuary in any church. They could stay there, fed by neighbors for up to 40 days. When they emerged, they could confess, give up all their belongings and go into exile. This delayed prosecution so the community could cool off and not make judgements in haste. It gave the community time to determine the facts and come to a fair sentence.

Even in America, sanctuary is not a new concept. Though we have been criticized for not doing more, we have continually offered safe harbor to thousands of refugees fleeing violence in other parts of the world from Central America to Africa to central Europe. This is why some municipalities use the term “sanctuary city,” – to connect with this long history. Their morality demands they protect immigrants.

3) Immigration Law is Broken, Unfair and Unjust

Sanctuary cities aren’t the problem. Our immigration laws are. Allowing rampant deportation does nothing to solve the very real issues we have with citizenship. We are, after all, a country of immigrants. It makes little sense to kick out people many of whom have longer ancestral ties to these shores than the white majority. This is our land? Actually, many illegal immigrants could make a stronger case for ownership.

In addition, illegal immigration is a breach of civil law, not criminal. Therefore, violators don’t deserve to be deported. They deserve a chance to make things right, to become full citizens. Our laws don’t adequately protect the needs of the strangers who, for the most part, have crossed the border to take work that is eagerly offered them. Deportation is purely a bureaucratic enforcement system, which can include long detainment and judgment without judge or jury. It’s an arbitrary prejudicial policy, not just law.

4) Deportation can be a Death Sentence

Some asylum seekers don’t come to this country just to find work. They’re fleeing incredible violence in their home countries. If we simply deport them, we may be sending them to their deaths.

Officially, asylum is limited to individuals who can provide evidence that they have faced persecution or might be killed if they return to their home country. And U.S. law says that most people caught inside the United States should be given a chance to prove those claims in an immigration court. However, there are more than 445,000 people awaiting immigration hearings. Most of these people cannot make a successful asylum claim but might have some other legal defense such as proof of a U.S. citizen parent or grandparent.

Even so, mistakes have been made. Expediting deportation, holding hearings in secret, etc. increase the potential that we’ll have blood on our hands. Many would rather err on the side of caution especially when the stakes are this high.

As we see, there are many reasons to make your city a sanctuary city. It’s a bipartisan decision that’s being politicized. The Trump administration is using the worst kind of racist dog whistles and proto-facist propaganda to convince the public that deportations must increase and sanctuary cities must be abolished.

However, there are plenty of practical and moral reasons to think otherwise.

The best argument against sanctuary cities is Trump’s threats to use the federal government against states and local municipalities.

Losing Federal Funding?

Trump has threatened to take away federal tax dollars from sanctuary cities. Last year, a proposal to defund sanctuary cities, introduced by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), was blocked by Senate Democrats. Yet at least 18 states, including Iowa, Kansas, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, have considered comparable bills.

If these measures pass, they could cost municipalities billions of dollars.

But doing so would have drastic consequences for the federal government as well. It would be tantamount to declaring war on states and local governments. These monies that they’re threatening to withhold come from taxes. It’s our money!

The political fallout of such a decision would be disastrous for any administration foolhardy enough to go through with it. At very least it would destroy the Republican brand as being against federal intrusion and for states rights. Libertarians, alone, could flee the party in droves. And when the next election cycle came, the administration would find itself quickly out of office.

Becoming a sanctuary city is not without risk. However, it is the right thing to do. It protects your community financially, legally and morally. And it forces us to confront the real issue that no one wants to face – we need rational immigration policy. We can’t continue to live as a society with an underclass.

If we really want to make America great, that may be the first thing to do.

What Diane Ravitch Means To Me

December 6, 2016 stevenmsinger Badass Teachers Association, bloggers, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Diane Ravitch, Education, privatization, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions badass teachers association, Diane Ravich, education, schools, teaching

Am I crazy?

That’s what many of us had been wondering before we read Diane Ravitch.

As teachers, parents and students, we noticed there was something terribly wrong with our national education policy. The Emperor has no clothes, but no one dared speak up.

Until Diane Ravitch.

We were told our public schools are failing – yet we could see they had never done better than they were doing now.

We were told we should individualize our lessons – but standardize our tests!? We were told teachers are the most important factor in a child’s education – so we need to fire more of them!? We were told the best way to save a struggling school – was to close it!? We were told every child has a right to a quality education – yet we should run our schools like businesses with winners and losers!?

It was absurd, and the first person to question it was Diane Ravitch.

In doing so, she saved many people’s sanity, she saved a generation of students and educators, gave parents clarity and direction, and she started a social movement fighting against the preposterous policies being handed down from clueless businessmen and bureaucrats.

This weekend the Network for Public Education will honor Dr. Ravitch at a dinner on Long Island for her tireless work fighting against this corporate school reform.

I wish I could be there in person to tell her what she means to me and others like me. Instead I offer this modest tribute to a person who changed my life and the lives of so many others.

I was a different person when I read “Life and Death of the American School System” back in 2010.

I had been in the classroom for about seven years, but I was just starting to feel like a real teacher.

I had just completed my National Boards Certification and felt like I wasn’t just surviving with my students anymore but could actually make intelligent decisions about how best to educate them.

And a big part of that was Dr. Ravitch’s book.

For a long time I had noticed that things weren’t as they should be in public schools.

I had put in a great deal of work to get my masters in teaching, to engage in hundreds of hours of professional development, not to mention three to four extra hours every day at the school passed dismissal time doing tutoring, leading extracurricular activities, grading and planning for the next day. I spent hundreds of dollars every month buying books, pencils, erasers, even snacks and meals for my students. Yet the school still treated me – it treated all of us – like greeters at WalMart.

We were highly educated, highly dedicated professionals but our opinions were rarely sought on policy matters. We were the experts in our fields and in our students who we saw everyday more than many of their own parents. Yet we were told where to be and when, what to teach and how long to teach it. We were told how to assess the success of our students and ourselves. And we were told how to best remediate and what else we should be doing that we never had time to do.

Was I really such a failure, I remember thinking. I work hard with my students everyday, see them make tremendous strides and still the standardized tests say it isn’t enough. What was I doing wrong?

Then I read Diane’s book and saw the whole thing from a different perspective.

It wasn’t me that was wrong. It was the system.

It wasn’t the students that were failing. It was the tests that didn’t assess fairly.

It wasn’t the schools that were deficient. It was the way they were resourced, valued and set up to fail by government and industry.

That book and its 2013 sequel, “Reign of Error,” really opened my eyes. They did for many people. Without them, I’m not sure I would still be a teacher today. I’m not sure I could have kept at it thinking that my best efforts could never be enough, that my exhaustion, my fire, my skills would never bridge the gap.

Diane Ravitch put it all in context of the social and historical struggle I had learned about, myself, in high school. I was engaged in the good fight for the civil rights of my students. Brown vs. Board wasn’t just a story in some textbook. I could see how the outmoded excuse of “separate but equal” was still being given today in my own increasingly segregated school and segregated workplace. Why was it that most of my academic students were poor and black? Why was it that the honors kids were mostly upper middle class and white? Why was it that my school situated in a poorer neighborhood was crumbling and the school a few blocks over in the richer neighborhood looked like the Taj Mahal by comparison? And why was it that teachers in my district got $10-20,000 less in their paychecks with the same experience than those in the wealthier community?

Dr. Ravitch made sense of all of that for me. And it made me very angry.

When colleagues came to me to discuss how they wished we had merit pay, I could turn to her books and see how it was a trap. When students came into my classroom after being kicked out of the local charter school, I had an explanation for why they were so academically behind their peers. And when contrarians complained about our union dues and wondered what they were getting in return for their money, I could give them an intelligent answer.

Diane Ravitch gave me the light that made sense of my whole professional world. I had been living and working in it for years, but I never really understood it before. And that gave me the courage to act.

When my state legislature cut almost $1 billion from K-12 education, armed with her books and blogs, I volunteered to lead educators in social actions against them. I sat down with legislators asking them to help. And when they refused, I knew we could protest outside their offices, make noise and the story would get to the media.

Ultimately it didn’t convince the legislature to heal all the cuts, but it helped minimize them, and when the next election cycle came around, we sent the governor packing.

I read Diane’s blog religiously and through her found so many other teachers, professors, parents, and students whose stories weren’t being told by the mainstream media. In fact, whenever so-called journalists deigned to talk about education at all, they rarely even included us in the conversation. So I started my own blog to give voice to what I was seeing.

Through Diane I found a community of likeminded people. I found other teachers on social media who were standing up for their students and communities. I found the Badass Teachers Association and joined and acted and was invited into leadership. We all loved Diane Ravitch and apparently she loved us, too. She became a member, herself, and encouraged us to keep fighting.

Then with Anthony Cody she started the Network for Public Education where even more educators from around the country joined forces. I went to the second annual conference in Chicago and got to meet her in person.

I’ll never forget it. There were hundreds of people gathered together, and she was just standing in the hall talking with a small group. I said to myself, “Oh my God! That’s Diane Ravitch! She’s right there! I could go up and talk to her!”

I looked around and everyone else standing with me had the same look like we’d all been thinking the same thing. Somehow I mustered the courage to walk up to her.

They say you should never meet your idols, but I’m infinitely thankful I didn’t listen to that advice. Diane was eminently approachable. Here I found that same voice I had read so many times, but also a generosity and a goodwill you couldn’t get from the page alone.

She knew who I was, had read my blog and asked me to send her more of my writing. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she was just being polite, but she gave me her email address. I sent her a few articles and she published them on her own site.

Since that day I’ve talked with Diane a few times and she’s always the same. Her intelligence is combined with a boundless empathy and insatiable curiosity about people and ideas. She really cares to know you, to hear your story and to help if she can.

When I had a heart attack about a month ago, she sent me an email telling me to take care of myself. She suggested I change my diet and exercise before confiding that she was having trouble doing this, herself.

Who does that? I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ve read authors before and maybe written to them, maybe even had them write back. But I’ve never met someone like her who’s actually cared enough to relate to me as an equal, as someone who is important enough to be taken seriously.

In the media, talking heads will sometimes criticize her for changing her mind, because she did do an about face. She had once been Assistance Secretary of Education under President George H. W. Bush where she advocated for standardized testing and the corporate model in education. But when she saw what that really meant, she changed her mind.

To the media, that’s a defect, but to me, it’s a strength. It’s how we learn. We come up with a theory, we test it and if it doesn’t work, we come up with another one. Her philosophy of education is a response to the real world.

That’s what teachers do everyday. We try to reach our students one way and if that doesn’t work, we try something else.

Perhaps that’s really why so many educators have embraced her. She’s like us – a passionate, compassionate empiricist.

I can’t say enough good things about her. I can’t put into words how important Diane Ravitch is to my life. Her ideas changed me. Her ethics invigorated me. Her friendship humbles me.

I’d love to be there this weekend to say all this to her, but I really don’t need to make the trip. Diane Ravitch is always with me. She is in my heart every day.

I love you, Diane.

Truth Bomb: Democrats Need to Embrace Progressivism or Else Move Out of the Way

December 3, 2016December 4, 2016 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, Chuy Garcia, Civil Rights, Common Core, Compassion, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, Dr. Jill Stein, Education, Election, Election Reform, Feminism, Gerrymandering, Green Party, Hate Crimes, Hillary Clinton, LGBT, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, Schools, Social Justice, Teach for America, Unions, voter suppression, voting, White Allies education, Healthcare, history, Politics

“Democrats: Are we the party of the donor class or the working class? This is value clarification time. It’s now or never!”

–Nina Turner, former OH State Senator

Democrats, liberals and progressives of every stripe – you’re not going to want to hear this, but hear it you must.

We’ve gone around for too long thinking we’ve got all the answers, but obviously we don’t.

Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump won. There’s something seriously wrong with what we’ve been doing to get that kind of result.

There are some hard truths we’ve got to understand, that we’ve got to learn from. Hearing them may be painful. Many of us will fight against it. But we can’t keep fooling ourselves anymore. All that “hope” and “change” we’ve been waiting for – it has to start with us, first.
We’re stuck in a loop and we’ve got to break ourselves out of it. And the only way to get there is to break the track wide open.

It’s time to stop mourning.

Trump is President-elect.

Yeah, that sucks. Hard.

He’s going to protect us by enacting policies to hurt brown people. He’s going to make it harder to get healthcare. He’s going to trample the Constitution. He’s going to offer up our schools to private companies to do with as they please in secret using our tax dollars. He’s going to legitimize white nationalism and embolden racists, bigots, sexist, xenophobes, homophobes and every kind of hate group imaginable. He’s going to hand out tax cuts to his megarich campaign contributors and tax us with the loss of government services. He’s going to use the office as an opportunity to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies and then go on social media and tweet about how he’s fighting for working people.

I don’t like it any better than you. But it’s time to face it.

Sure, Clinton won the popular vote. Sure, there’s a recount going on in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I’d love for it to overturn Trump’s victory. But I have zero confidence that it will. And I refuse to let it blind me to the urgent need for change.

The first thing we have to do is own up to one essential thing: Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate.

The people were crying out for a populist champion. We had one in Bernie Sanders. He would have destroyed Trump, but we blew it.

I’m not going to rehash it all again, but there’s no way you can honestly say the Democratic primary process was fair. Party leaders were clearly in the bag for Clinton. They ignored her negatives and what their constituency were trying to tell them.

This loss belongs squarely on the shoulders of establishment Democrats. It’s not the fault of the electorate. It was the party’s job to convince people to vote for their candidate. They didn’t do that. Instead they told people who to vote for – or more accurately who NOT to vote for. It was clearly a losing strategy. It lost us the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. Own it.

Next we have to acknowledge that this problem is not new. The Democrats haven’t been what they were or what they could be for a long time.

Since at least President Bill Clinton, many Democrats have traded in their progressive principles for neoliberal ones. They have sold out their concern for social justice, labor and equity in favor of slavish devotion to the same market-driven principles that used to characterize the other side.

Bill Clinton approved NAFTA. He deregulated Wall Street paving the way for the economic implosion. He expanded the failing war on drugs, increased the use of the death penalty, used the Lincoln bedroom as a fundraising condo, ignored the genocide in Rwanda while escalating conflicts abroad in Russia and the middle east. He dramatically and unfairly increased the prison population. He pushed poor families off welfare and into permanent minimum wage jobs. And when people had clearly had enough of it and wanted a change, we gave them Al Gore a.k.a. Bill Clinton part 2.

THAT’S why an idiot like George W. Bush won in 2000. It wasn’t because of Green Party challenger Ralph Nader. It was because people were sick of the Democrats not being real progressives.

But we clearly didn’t learn that lesson, because we did the same damn thing in 2016.

President Barack Obama is just as neoliberal as Bill. He gets credit for bringing back 16 million jobs lost under Bush. But we haven’t forgotten that they’re mostly minimum wage jobs. He gets credit for reducing unemployment to only 4.7%. But we haven’t forgotten that nearly 50 million Americans aren’t included in those statistics because they haven’t been able to find a job in two years and have given up even looking for one.

Obama rolled back legal protections that used to stop the government from spying on civilians, that used to stop the military from being used as a police force against civilians, that used to stop the military from assassinating U.S. citizens, that used to protect whisteblowers, that guaranteed free speech everywhere in the country not just in designated “free speech zones.” Not only did he fail to close Guantanamo Bay, his administration opened new black sites inside the U.S. to torture citizens.

Obama continued the endless wars in the middle east. Sure, he had fewer boots on the ground, but infinite drone strikes are still a continuation of Bush’s counterproductive and unethical War on Terror.

And when it comes to our schools, Obama continued the same corporate education reform policies of Bush – even increasing them. He pushed for more standardized testing, more Common Core, more privatization, more attacks on unions, more hiring unqualified Teach for America temps instead of authentic educators.

Voters clearly wanted a change. We wanted a real progressive champion who would roll back these neoliberal policies. Instead we got Hillary Clinton a.k.a. Obama part 2.

The Democrats didn’t learn a thing from 2000. We just repeated the same damn mistake. And some of us still want to blame third party candidates like Jill Stein.

It wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t voters faults. It was the Democratic establishment that refused to listen to their constituency.

So here’s the question: will we do it again? Will we let party insiders continue in the same neoliberal direction or will we change course?

Re-electing Nancy Pelosi to House Democratic leadership isn’t a good sign. She represents the same failed administration. But we’ve kept her in place for another term, repeating our mistakes.

Maybe we’ll make a change with U.S. Rep Keith Ellison as DNC chair. It would certainly be a good start to put a real progressive in charge of the party. What better way to challenge Trump’s anti-Muslim propaganda than by promoting the only Muslim representative in the House to the head of our movement! That’s a sure way of showing that Democrats include all peoples, creeds and religions in contrast to the Republicans insularity. But there’s no guarantee we’re going to do it, and even if we did, it would only be a start.

It’s time to clean house.

We need to take back what it means to be a Democrat. We can’t have organizations funded by hedge fund managers and the wealthy elite pretending to be in our camp while espousing all the beliefs of Republicans. We can’t have Democrats for Education Reform, a group promoting the policies of George W. Bush, the economics of Milton Friedman and prescribing laws crafted by the American Legislative Exchange council. We don’t need Cory Booker going on Meet the Press to defend Mitt Romney against income inequality and then pretending to champion working people while taking in contributions from the financial sector. The brand needs to mean something again.

The party needs to move in an authentic progressive direction. So we need to get rid of all the neoliberals. They can go become Republicans. All it would take is exchanging in their blue ties for red ones. They’re functional Republicans already.

We’ve got leaders who can take their place. We’ve got longtime progressives like Bernie and sometime progressives like Elizabeth Warren. We’ve got younger statesmen like Nina Turner, Tulsi Gabbard, Jeff Merkley, John Fetterman, and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, to name a few. But we need new blood.

Of course none of this matters if we don’t take steps to secure the validity of our elections in the first place.

We need to reform our entire electoral process. Ancient and hackable voting machines, voter suppression laws and efforts, rampant gerrymandering and, yes, that stupid relic of the slave states, the Electoral College – all of it must go. We’ve got to ensure that people can vote, people do vote and it actually counts. And if something goes wrong, we need a way to double check. Recounts in close races should be standard and automatic.

We’ve got to fight Citizens United and other Supreme Court rulings equating money with speech. We’ve got to run people-powered campaigns like Sanders did so our politicians aren’t so beholden to corporate and wealthy interests. We’ve got to make it easier for third parties to be part of the process, to include their candidates in debates, etc.

These are some of the many challenges ahead.

Sure, we have to fight Trump. But the best way to do that is to reinvent ourselves.

If the Democrats aren’t willing to do that, many of us will go elsewhere. The party cannot continue to exists if it continually ignores its base. It’s not enough to give us a charismatic leader to latch onto – we need real progressive policies.

The next four years are going to be hard. Trump is going to make things very difficult for the people we love. But in a way that’s a blessing.

We have a real opportunity to create an authentic resistance. People will be untied in their dissatisfaction and anger at what Trump is doing to the country. They’ll be looking for somewhere to turn, for a revolutionary movement to lead them through it.

We can give them another fake insurgency as we did against Bush. Or we can learn the lessons of history.

We can move forward. We can change. We can become a party of real progressives.

Or if we need – we can start a new one from the ground up.

The Essential Selfishness of School Choice

November 28, 2016November 30, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Student Mobility, Teachers Betsy DeVos, children, education, Politics, public schools, pumpkin pie, selfishness, Students, teaching

Say your friend Sheila invites you over to her house.

Sheila has just made a fresh pumpkin pie.

She offers you a slice.

You politely refuse, but she insists. She hands you the knife so you can take as big a piece as you like.

You start to cut and then ask, “Does it matter where I cut from?”

Sheila says, “No. Take whatever you want.”

You don’t like crust, so you cut a perfect triangle piece from the middle of the pie.

Sheila’s face reddens.

This wasn’t exactly what she meant, but what is she going to do? You took your slice, and now the rest of the pie is ruined. No one else can take a whole piece. Your choice has limited everyone else’s.

That’s what school choice does to public education.

It privileges the choice of some and limits the choices of others.

Advocates say parents should be able to choose the school their children attend.

And parents today do have many choices. About 90% send their kids to traditional public schools. Others home school, pay for private schools or opt for charter or voucher schools.

The problem comes with these last two options. In both cases, tax money meant to help all children is siphoned off for just one child. In the case of vouchers, tax money goes to pay part of the tuition at a private or parochial school. In the case of charters, we’re diverting tax money to a school that’s public in name but privately run.

That means less money for traditional public schools and more money for privately run institutions. That’s really what school choice is – a way to further privatize public schools.

Why is that bad?

First, it increases the cost and reduces the services for everyone.

Public schools pool all the funding for a given community in one place. By doing so, they can reduce the cost and maximize the services provided. One building costs less than two. The same goes for one staff, one electric bill, one infrastructure, etc.

When you start adding additional layers of parallel schools, you increase the costs even if you somehow divided the children evenly between the two systems (which hardly ever happens). You buy less with the same money. That translates to fewer services for the same kids, larger class sizes, narrowed curriculum, etc. Why? So that parents could choose School A or School B. So that privatizers get a bigger slice of the pie – right from the middle.

Second, each type of school has different goals.

Public schools are designed to educate. Corporate schools are designed to profit. Those are their very reasons for existing. It’s built into their DNA and is reflected in the way they’re administrated.

By law, public schools are not for-profit. They pay for goods and services, but at the end of the day, they aren’t beholden to shareholders or investors. They don’t need to bring in more money than they spend. All they have to do is educate children, and if they somehow end up with extra money at the end of that process, that money is bound by law to be reinvested as savings for next year.

Charter and voucher schools are not so constrained. Their reason for being is not education – it is profit. Where they can, they will cut services for children and reduce quality so that they can increase the bottom line. Even a casual glance at the news will show you a plethora of charter and voucher school scandals where privateers have stolen millions of dollars of taxpayer money instead of educating. To return to the dessert metaphor, they don’t care what their slice does to everyone else – they only care about the size of the slice.

Third, charter and voucher schools aren’t as accountable as traditional public schools.

Each type of school is supported by tax money. Therefore, each school should be held accountable for spending that money wisely. But the rules are radically different for public schools vs. choice schools.

Public schools have elected school boards made up of taxpayers from the community. Choice schools often do not. They are run by appointed boards who are only accountable to investors. Public schools are required to be transparent. Their documentation, budgets and meetings must be available to the media and community for review. This is not true of privatized choice schools.

If taxpayers are unhappy with the way a traditional public school is being run, they have multiple options for changing it. With choice schools, their only option is to withdraw their child. And in the case of taxpayers who do not have children in the system at all, they have no recourse at all. This is fiscally irresponsible and amounts to taxation without representation. This alone should be enough to make any true conservative withdraw support – however ideology has trumped logic and reason. Not only do they ruin the pie, they get to do so in secret.

Fourth, school vouchers rarely cover the entire cost of attending private schools.

They end up subsidizing costs for rich and upper middle class students while keeping away the poor. As such they create a system of cultural and racial education segregation. They create tiers of schools – the public schools being only for the poor, cheaper private schools for the middle class and expensive private schools for the rich.

This is not the best way to educate children. It is not the best way to organize a society. It entrenches social and class differences and builds in entitlements and racism for the wealthy. Surely our public schools have become more segregated even without vouchers, but that is no reason to make the situation exponentially worse. The size and placement of one’s slice shouldn’t depend on the color of your skin or the size of your bank account.

Fifth, all schools are not equally successful.

Though the media would have you believe otherwise, traditional public schools do a much better job of educating children than charter or voucher schools. Some choice schools have better outcomes, but the majority do no better and often much worse than traditional public schools. Moreover, children who continually move from school-to-school regardless of its type almost always suffer academically.

So when parents engage in these choice schemes, they often end up hurting their own children. The chances of children benefiting from charter or voucher schools is minimal. You can cut a slice from the center of the pie, but it’s likely to fall apart before you get it on a plate.

So in summary, school choice is essentially selfish. Even in cases where kids do benefit from choice, they have weakened the chances of everyone else in the public school system. They have increased the expense and lowered the services of children at both types of school. They have allowed unscrupulous profiteers to make away with taxpayer money while taxpayers and fiscal watchdogs are blindfolded. And when students return to their traditional public school after having lost years of academic progress at a substandard privatized institution, it is up to the taxpayers to pay for remediation to get these kids back up to speed.

Choice advocates talk about children being trapped in failing schools, but they never examine what it is about them that is failing.

Almost all public schools that are struggling serve impoverished students. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the cause. Schools have difficulty educating the poorest children. Impoverished children have greater needs. We should be adding tutoring, counseling and mentor programs. We should be helping their parents find jobs, providing daycare, healthcare and giving these struggling people a helping hand to get them back on their feet.

But instead we’re abandoning them. Most impoverished schools serving poor children receive less funding than those serving middle class or wealthy populations. In other western countries, it’s just the opposite. They provide more funding and resources for poor students to meet their greater needs.

School choice ignores all of this. If I may momentarily switch metaphors, instead of fixing the leak in our public school system, advocates prescribe running for the lifeboats. We could all be sailing on a strong central cruise-liner able to meet the demands of a sometimes harsh and uncaring ocean together. Instead we’re told to get into often leaky escape craft that even under the best of circumstances aren’t as strong as the system we’re abandoning.

And the reason is profits.

Have you ever noticed that the overwhelming majority of school choice proponents are rich white people?

Many of them own charter school companies or otherwise invest in the field. They aren’t advocating a policy to help children learn. They’re enriching themselves at public expense. Sure they point their fingers at union teachers making a middle class wage. Meanwhile these choice advocates rake in public money to buy yachts, condos and jewelry.

Make no mistake – school choice is essentially about selfishness. At every level it’s about securing something for yourself at the expense of others. Advocates call that competition, but it’s really just grift.

Public education is essentially the opposite. It’s about ensuring that every child gets the best education possible. Yes, it’s not perfect, and there are things we could be doing to improve it. But it is inherently an altruistic endeavor coming from the best of what it means to be an American.

We’ve all got choices in life. The question is what kind of person do you want to be? A person who takes only for his or herself? Or someone who tries to find an option that helps everyone?

MythBuster: Do We Have a “Government-Run Education Monopoly”?

November 23, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Politics, President, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice education, Politics, Students, teaching, transparency

“There’s no failed policy more in need of change than our government-run education monopoly, and you know that’s exactly what it is.”

With these words, candidate Donald Trump unleashed his K-12 education policy at a campaign stop in September, two months before winning the general election.

In the speech, the former reality TV star and current President-elect vowed to spend $20 billion in federal tax dollars to encourage more charter and voucher schools nationwide.

It remains his most concrete executive policy offering to date. Yet it’s based on this characterization of public schools as a “government-run education monopoly.”

One wonders – is it true? Do we really have such a thing here in the U.S. or is it just propaganda to boost an unpopular education scheme?

The devil, it seems, is in the details.

The answer is both yes and no: Yes, public schools are government-run. No, they’re not a monopoly.

First, let’s consider “government-run.” Everything the government does from paving the roads, to delivering mail, to protecting us from invaders is “government-run.” The military is government-run. Would you rather a foreign power tell our soldiers what to do? Congress is government run. Would you rather big business come in and decide all our laws?

In that same spirit, yes, our public schools are indeed government run. But who else should run them? Russia!? The Mafia!? A media cabal?

In emphasizing the role of government in education, Trump appears to be trying to stoke the fires of anti-government sentiment. There is certainly a lot of that going around, deservedly so given the way the federal government has encroached on the states, the states have encroached on local government, etc.

However, public schools are not essentially federally-run schools, nor are they state-run schools. They are subject to federal and state mandates, but the major decisions about what happens in your neighborhood schools are made by your duly elected school board. They are not controlled by some nameless, faceless government bureaucracy. They’re controlled by you, your friends and neighbors – people you voted for and who are held accountable every few weeks at open meetings.

That, too, is government.

It’s not Big Brother. It’s Howdy Neighbor.

Let’s turn now to the “Monopoly” part.

A monopoly is the complete control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. To put it in terms of the titular Parker Brothers board game, you have a monopoly when you own both Boardwalk and Park Place – you’re in control of what happens to all the dark blue properties. However, if you don’t have titles to BOTH, you don’t have a monopoly, and therefore can’t buy houses, hotels or charge double the normal rent.

Therefore, there is no education monopoly – no one has complete control of all the various kinds of schools. There are private schools, home schools, magnet schools, charter schools, even voucher schools. No one owns them all, no one tells them all what to do.

Yes, you could say that the overwhelming majority of them are public schools, but so what? That’s not a monopoly. There are far more personal computers out there than Macs. That doesn’t mean PCs have a monopoly on the field.

Once again, the term “monopoly” is meant to stir anti-government sentiment. We are meant to balk at the degree to which government – local government – is in control of our education system.
I’m sorry, but there is nothing objectionable about schools being controlled at the local level.

Are you upset by federal intrusions in school policy? Me, too.

Are you reeling about unfunded federal mandates? Me, too.

Are you angry about states sweeping in and stealing local control from impoverished inner city parents? Me, too.

But I’m just not one bit upset about being allowed a say in how my tax dollars are spent at my community school district. If you ask me, that how things SHOULD BE.

But Trump is proposing we change it. He’s proposing exactly the same kind of federal intrusion that drove many of us up the wall when it was done by President Barack Obama.

Obama used the Department of Education to bribe cash-strapped states into adopting Common Core. And now Trump wants to do the same thing with charters and voucher schools.

Excuse me, but it’s not the federal government’s job to dangle money in front of state legislatures with strings attached. The Department of Education is supposed to ensure all schools have adequate funding. It’s not supposed to tell us how we should be running our schools unless we’re breaking the law or violating students civil rights.

But what about parental rights? Shouldn’t parents be allowed to choose a school for their own children?

Heck no.

Hear me out. When you fall down the steps in your home alone, do you get to choose which governmental service comes to help you, or do you just call 9-1-1? When you need the police, do you get to choose officers from halfway across the state or make do with your local boys in blue? When your house catches on fire, do you shop around or call the nearest fire station?

It’s called a community for a reason. You’re a part of it, for better or for worse.

Our grandparents never thought they were so entitled they could pick and choose what governmental service should meet their needs. They joined the army, not Blackwater. They called the fire department where they volunteered. And they sent their kids to the local public school.

Yes, some public schools are better than others – which is just another way of saying that some are better funded. THAT is a problem we need to fix at the local, state and federal level. That’s something the President and Congress and our Governors and our state legislatures should actually be working on. But instead of meeting the real needs of their constituents, they’re too busy with all this choice nonsense.

Why? It’s a scam.

We’re talking Donald Trump here – founder of Trump University. He just settled out of court for $25 million for a fake business school that defrauded students out of hundreds of millions of dollars. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s a good scam.

Think about it.

Expanding charter and voucher schools, reduces accountability to taxpayers. These “choice” schools rarely are governed by elected school boards. They don’t have to abide by the same kinds of transparency standards as traditional public schools. They can spend our tax dollars in almost anyway they want behind closed doors, and there’s nothing we can do about it. In fact, there have been a rash of high profile scandals where charter and voucher operators have defrauded the public out of millions of dollars.

Who wants to expand that? Criminals!

Not me. I’m a taxpayer. I want a full account of how my money is spent, and most voters are with me.

We didn’t just vote for President a few weeks ago. Many states held referendums on whether to expand charter schools or not. In every case, voters decided against it.

But does Trump care? No way. This proposed school choice policy is yet another example of the federal government ignoring the will of the people in favor of wealthy donors hoping to further enrich themselves at public expense. It opens the door for profiteers to keep stealing our money.

And they justify it by offering a false choice:

Hey parents, they say. Want to enroll your children in a school with little to no accountability, a school you may not be able to afford unless you spend some of your own money in addition to the tuition you get from the state, a school that can turn you down for whatever reason including race, religion or nationality, a school that may very well be no better and often much worse than a traditional public school?

But they spin it, offering slick commercials and preying on the ignorant and hopeless. That weakens the traditional public schools because it means a loss in revenues. Therefore, the public schools get worse, which is a reason for more parents to try the ‘choice’ schools, etc. It’s an endless cycle where students lose but investors in for-profit schools win.

Invariably, it leads to a further social stratification of schools. The rich go to the best schools, the middle class to the middling schools and the poor to the substandard ones. You think we’ve got segregated schools now, wait until Trump’s school choice policies! It’ll benefit the Nazis of the alt-right who want more white flight, but most kids will lose.

Such a policy does not represent the best of America. This country was founded on the principles of working together. We haven’t always lived up to it, but our ideals are ones of shared sacrifice, community and brotherhood. Trump’s education policy is about selfishness and greed.

That’s your real choice. Which will it be?

The Real Power Behind Trump is White Fear

November 15, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Democrat, Donald Trump, Election, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, Republican, Social Justice, voting, White Allies, White Fragility, White Privilege, Whiteness anti-racism, Donald Trump, Politics

White people are terrified.

Shaken, panicked, scared beyond our capacity for logical thinking.

We’re so apprehensive, we elected Donald Trump, a reality show clown, to the White House.

Yeah, I know. Hillary Clinton wasn’t exactly inspiring. And the Democrats dropped the ball ignoring the populist mood of the country and the needs of middle class workers.

But 58% of white folks supported Trump. He only got 21% of nonwhite voters. In fact, Whites is the only major group he won – not black people, not Hispanics, not any other race or nationality.

Just white folks.

Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women – and yet 53% of white females voted for him.

Trump is an admitted serial monogamist who cheated on various ex-wives – and yet 65% of white Christians voted for him.

Trump promised to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs while his own clothing line is foreign made – and yet 67% of white laborers voted for him.

That’s how panic-stricken we, Caucasians, are.

We held our hands over our eyes and ears and loudly proclaimed our loyalty to a charlatan.

Oh, we’ll pay for it. He’ll break campaign promises, disappoint us with retrograde policies and perhaps even hurt the people we love.

But in the meantime, many of us are in denial.

“Let’s give him a chance,” white folks say.

Yet Trump has already appointed a wife-beating, Jew-hating, white supremacist, Stephen Bannon, to be his chief White House strategist.

Just stop, white people. You’re embarrassing yourselves.

So why are we so damn scared?

Answer: we’ve been pricks throughout American history.

Yeah, I know. None of us were around for slavery. Many of us weren’t even on the scene for Jim Crow. But all of us have benefited from the society these institutions built up.

The 13th Amendment ended forced bondage except as a punishment for crime. And ever since then our justice system has found ways to unfairly accuse, sentence and enslave black people into the prison industrial complex. We live in the wealthiest country in the world, and much of that wealth is a direct result of laws that raise up white folks and crush black and brown people under our heels.

And we know it.

Don’t give me some story about how you never asked for it. You’ve got it. If you do nothing to fight it, you’re a member in good standing of the white supremacy board of directors.

White folks don’t talk about this stuff. We ignore and deny and whistle past the graves of millions of lynched and murdered people of color. What do you think the fascination is with zombie movies? It’s just another manifestation of white fear – fear that we’ll be overrun by the countless have-nots and devoured.

Few of us have articulated it, but we know our time is running out. The black and brown population is increasing faster than ours. We’re letting in too many dark skinned immigrants and too few light skinned ones. In three short decades, we won’t even be the numerical majority anymore.

Every year we find it increasingly more difficult to enforce this racial caste system. Our police gun down more unarmed black folks in the street. Our prisons can’t swallow them all.

Even now our majority is so slim that if just a few of us side with the dark underclass, we can elect a black President – well multiracial but who’s counting?

That infuriated a lot of us. How dare they pretend like THEY can run the country? After Obama, we were rushing to the gun store in our soiled pants afraid that the time for justice had finally come. Black folks were finally going to come for us because of the centuries of oppression.

That’s really the fear. Black people will seek justice.

At best we’ll lose our exalted positions in society. At worst, WE’LL be the ones crushed under the boot. And turnabout will be fair play.

That’s why we elected such an obviously unqualified blowhard as Donald Trump.

We want him to make America great again – and by “great” we know exactly what we mean.

It’s a sad reflection on white society.

We could admit the truth. We could take a deep breath and help our oppressed brothers and sisters take their places as equals among us.

After more than two centuries, we could throw off our denial.

But that’s not what most of us did.

History will judge us harshly for this election. We did nothing to turn back time. We’ve only engaged in a tantrum – this, the last gasp of white supremacy.

My Election Day Heart Attack: Lessons for Moving Forward

November 12, 2016November 12, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, AFT, Bernie Sanders, Civil Rights, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Labor, NEA, Politics, Prejudice, President, Racism, Republican, Social Justice, Teachers, Unions, White Privilege

I had a heart attack on Election Day.

This is not hyperbole.

I literally went to the polls, went to my doctor and then went to the hospital.

I didn’t know Donald Trump would win. Like most of us, I thought the nation would heave a big sigh, eat its vegetables and vote for Hillary Clinton.

But the election had been weighing on my mind (and apparently my body) for a long time.

How can we have narrowed it down to these two candidates nobody wants? How can these really be the only choices we get here in America? If either one of them wins, we all lose just in different ways.

So as I write this from my hospital bed, I’m left pondering lifestyle changes. I’ve got to start eating healthy. I need to exercise. I need to start taking care of myself.

But this kind of introspection is also what we need as a nation. After a disastrous election like the one we just had, the country is at least as sick as my ailing heart. We need to sit down with each other and decide how we’re going to move forward, how we’re going to prevent a national disaster like this from ever happening again.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1) Admit Who’s to Blame

Donald Trump was just elected President of the United States. That is unbelievable! This clown, this buffoon is now the “leader of the free world.” How did this happen?

There are many factors leading up to this, but politically the blame must be placed with the Democratic Party.

They put up a candidate – Hillary Clinton – who could not beat someone as odious as Trump. The people made it clear during the primary that they wanted a populous candidate, someone who wasn’t part of the establishment, yet the DNC ignored them. In fact, party elites did everything they could to tip the scales in Clinton’s favor.

We must always remember this lesson: when you rig the primary, you lose the general.

Bernie Sanders packed stadiums while Clinton could barely pull together rallies. He polled double digits ahead of Trump while Clinton was much less competitive. He would have beaten Trump in a landslide.

So if you want someone to blame, blame the DNC. Every party leader should immediately be fired. We must regain control of the party. If the Democrats refuse to be a real progressive institution, they will continue to lose and we will have to look elsewhere for political affiliation.

So admit the truth, it wasn’t third party voters with 3-4% of the vote, it wasn’t 45% of registered voters who didn’t show up at the polls because we gave them no one to vote for. It was the DNC. Period.

2) Understand the relationship between Race and Class

There are lots of folks out there blaming the election results on the racism of Trump voters. There are lots of folks blaming it on working class people choosing Trump over Hillary.

They’re both right.

Racism has always been a tool of the rich in this country. It’s a way of throwing a bone to poor whites so they will support the 1%.

Don’t go after us as we cheat you out of a living wage, they say. We’ll give you whole swaths of people you can lord it over.

White privilege is the grease that keeps our economy running. Without it, poor whites might look to the rich and see how much they’re being swindled.

Heck yeah Trump ran as a racist. Heck yeah he ran as a populist. But the only thing poor whites will get from him is a license to be racist. No jobs. No better wages. No better education. Just go ahead and subjugate brown people.

We must understand this relationship. As anti-racists we must also fight for the middle class. As activists for the middle class we must also fight racism. These are two sides of the same coin, and we must address both if we are ever to achieve real positive change.

3) Acknowledge Sexism

That a nation of grown adults would pick a boorish misogynist against an educated, intelligent woman speaks wonders. Hillary Clinton was far from my first choice, but compared to Trump she was obviously less odious.

There is no doubt that sexism played a part in this. Even white women chose Trump over Clinton. So many of Trump’s policies were anti-woman. He was an admitted serial groper. He’s on trial for child rape!

And if that’s not enough, I can’t even recall how many times I heard women tell me that a person of their gender doesn’t belong in the Oval Office.

This is something we have to overcome, and frankly I think we are. Millennials are not nearly as sexist as the rest of us. As the population ages and today’s kids become tomorrow’s adults, I think sexism will be left behind. Trump’s election is the last gasp of this antiquated prejudice. But we must recognize it for what it is.

4) Unions need to represent the rank and file

I’m a big supporter of labor unions, but in many cases they let us down in this election. Trump was no champion of the working stiff, but he got an awful lot of union votes. Why?

Many of our unions prematurely endorsed Clinton even though she has a spotty relationship with them and didn’t support many natural union initiatives like the fight for 15.

On the other hand, Sanders was the union candidate. He was the natural fit, yet union leadership like the American Federation of Teacher’s Randi Weingarten offered to attack other unions that didn’t fall in line behind Clinton. Both big teachers unions, the AFT and the National Education Association endorsed Clinton early in the primary without truly democratically polling membership. It doesn’t matter if they broke by-laws or not. If unions really represent the rank and file, these leaders should be held responsible.

In short, we should fire leaders like Weingarten and the NEA’s Lily Eskelsen Garcia immediately. Our union leaders must show a healthier respect for the rank and file or else they jeopardize the entire enterprise of workers’ rights.

These are just some of the ways we can move forward in the days and weeks ahead. It will be a rough road but I’m sure we can come out of it together.

Just like my aging body, our nation is ill. For me, the result was a heart attack. For us, the result is President Trump.

Will we turn it around?

I’m sure going to try.

*****************

FULL DISCLOSURE: I didn’t vote for either Clinton or Trump. I happily voted for Jill Stein.

Voting Third Party is Not a Wasted Vote – Voting First Party Is

November 4, 2016November 4, 2016 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, Democrat, Donald Trump, Dr. Jill Stein, Election, Election Reform, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, Politics, President, Propaganda, Republican, Social Justice, voter suppression, voting #JillnotHill, JillStein2016, Politics, sanity, spoiler, third party

For the first time in American history, the two least popular candidates have been nominated by the two major parties for President.

Think about that for a moment.

Voters don’t want Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Yet somehow the Democrats and Republicans put them both up, anyway.

How is that possible? Don’t people have to vote for these candidates in the primaries? If they’re so unpopular, how did enough people choose them over other more popular politicians?

The answer is simple: the system has failed.

On the Democratic side, the process has been co-opted by party elites. When a populous wave lifts a candidate like Bernie Sanders, the people at the top crush him with media collusion, voter suppression and other tactics of dubious legality. On the Republican side, the primaries draw such a disproportionate number of radicalized voters that only the furthest right demagogues have a chance. Moderates become radicals just to stay competitive, and with each cycle they move further right until they’ve morphed into outright fascists.

To cope, voters have begun internalizing the dysfunction as if they could somehow fix it through the sheer power of their own conformity. Republican moderates go along with the most radical candidate because he’s leading in the polls. Democrats, likewise, go along with the party’s favorite daughter for the same reason. It has little to do with either candidates’ merits, it’s just that no one wants to back a loser.

The result is an entrenched status quo. Democratic party leaders aren’t reprimanded or replaced for coopting the primary – they’re empowered. Republican extremists aren’t shunned or ostracized – they’re legitimized.

And all of this is because of the tendency of voters on both sides of the aisle to shut their eyes and go along with the perceived majority like lemmings running at full speed toward a cliff.

It’s football mentality as democracy. It’s pragmatism as suicide pact.

When we were children, our parents told us not to blindly follow the crowd. “I want a lollipop because Billy has a lollipop!” we wailed. And our folks said something like this: “Would you jump off a bridge if Billy was doing it?”

As adults that’s exactly what we’re doing – jumping off a bridge, arm-in-arm, congratulating ourselves for being so politically savvy.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are other candidates running. We don’t have to vote for Clinton or Trump. The only reason more people don’t take advantage of this option is their perceived notion that few people will take advantage of it.

As a Republican, you really don’t have a lot of options. Gary Johnson has some things to recommend him, especially when compared to a demagogue like Trump, but he isn’t really a serious candidate. He doesn’t have the knowledge needed to actually do the job.

However, as a Democrat, you have quite an excellent alternative to accepting four more years of neoliberal rule. Jill Stein is running for President under the Green Party banner. Her policies are light years ahead of Clinton’s – maybe even better than Sanders’. In our schools, she promises to stop endless high stakes standardized testing, end school privatization and fairly fund all public schools. She’s vows to provide free college and end all student debt. She’s in favor of single payer healthcare paid for by cutting our bloated military budget with no raise in taxes. She wants to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, stop giving weapons to Israel, freeze terrorist-funder’s bank accounts, end the War on Terror and engage in a policy of peace. Moreover, Stein plans to use the savings from slashing our biggest federal expenditure to fund a New Green Deal, creating full employment and a living wage all while transitioning to 100% clean energy by 2030!

Regardless of your personal politics, enacting this platform would be incredibly positive for the nation. It would give us a new lease on life. But we’re afraid to vote for it in case it hurts Clinton and boosts Trump.

It’s ridiculous.

Imagine if the two major parties nominated wolves one of which claimed “I’m going to eat you now,” and the other claimed, “I’m going to eat you later.” Would it be crazy to vote for the candidate who said, “I’m not going to eat you – ever”?

Yet so-called progressives will foam and rave at me because I’m promoting a “spoiler candidate.”

If people do as I suggest, they say, it will steal votes from Clinton thereby possibly giving Trump the lead.

Wait a moment. Why are those votes assumed to belong to Clinton? If the Democrats don’t put up a real progressive candidate, why are you assuming progressives will vote for her? Because of the brand underwhich she’s running?

This may be hard to understand, but take a deep breath and consider it. I know you’ve been told it’s impossible, but a third party candidate can actually win a Presidential election.

I know. It’s inconceivable, but close your eyes for a minute and let’s conduct a thought experiment.

Let’s say Jill Stein gets a majority of the vote. She’ll win, right?

No, she has to get a clear majority of electoral votes. She needs 270 out of 538 electoral votes to win. And, yes, there are a handful of states where she’s not even on the ballot. Is it then impossible for her to achieve the requisite 270?

No, it’s not. We’re told it’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible. So if enough people in the right states vote for Stein, she’ll win. It’s a statistical possibility.

You say my vote for Stein spoils Clinton’s chances. But who’s really the spoiler here? From my point of view, when you vote for Clinton, you’re spoiling the chances of MY candidate winning.

Why should I give up my vote to increase the chances of your candidate winning – especially when so few of you would choose her if she wasn’t running against Trump? If you’re honest and you knew who Stein was and what she stands for, you’d rather have her win and her platform enacted!

But you refuse to even consider there is any choice except dumb and dumber.

It’s a media-fostered mental illness. We’ve been told this spoiler propaganda story for so long, we’ve internalized it, and the result is this nasty, demoralizing election that everyone just wants to end. We just want to vote for a person we don’t really want and then go take a shower.

We have painted ourselves into a corner. If we keep voting for the lesser evil, the choices will only continue to get worse. The Democrats will pick further right neoliberals. The Republicans will pick further right neofascists. And there will be no stopping it because if you don’t vote against the one that is slightly less nauseating, you’ll be empowering the truly execrable one – as they each get worse and worse every devolving election cycle.

As a nation, we need benevolent aliens to descend on us in their flying saucers and give us all a strong dose of psychoanalysis. We need a way out of the mental mouse trap.

Hear me: as a single voter, you are not responsible for the entire election. You are responsible for your own vote. Don’t give it away because of a perceived notion of what others are going to do. Have the courage of your convictions. Vote for the best candidate.

And if in the end that means Trump gets into office, rise up and overthrow him. Because otherwise the course you’re running will eventually and inevitably lead to fascism. We can fight a weak petty fascist like Trump today or a strong dictator in the Nazi mold somewhere down the line.

However, why dwell on the worst case scenario? Just imagine if everyone threw off the shackles of the two-party system! Imagine if the best candidate actually won! Imagine voting and not feeling dirty afterwards! Imagine living in a functioning democracy again!

As John Lennon might say:

You may say I’m a spoiler.
But I’m not the only one.
Why don’t you come and join me
And we can live together as one.

Standardizing Whiteness: the Essential Racism of Standardized Testing

October 26, 2016October 27, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, ESEA, Eugenics, Every Student Succeeds Act, Junk science, No Child Left Behind, Opt Out, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, standards, Teach for America, Teachers, Toxic Testing, Value Added Measures, VAM, White Privilege, Whiteness charter schools, common core, culture, education, normalization, Race, racism, standardization, standardized testing, Students, Teach for America, teacher shortage, teachers, teaching

“As a method of social production, as well as social reproduction, standardized testing has had serious cultural implications, not the least of which has been the eternal question of American identity. Consistent with notions of American identity, standardized testing, as an opposition to a cultural other, represents the normalization of whiteness, richness, and maleness.”
-Andrew Hartman

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
-Toni Morrison

We talk about standardized testing as if we don’t really understand what it is.

We say we want No child left behind!

And then we pass a law named after that very sentiment that ensures some students MUST be left behind.

We say we want Every student to succeed!

And then we pass a law named after that very sentiment that ensures every student will NOT succeed.

It would be absurd if not for the millions of children being forced to endure the harsh reality behind our pretty words.

It’s not these ideals that are the problem. It’s standardized testing.

Researchers, statisticians, and academics of every stripe have called for an end to high stakes testing in education policy. Parents, students and teachers have written letters, testified before congressional committees, protested in the streets, even refused to take or give the tests. All to deaf ears.

The federal government still requires all students in 3-8th grade and once in high school to take standardized tests.

But these assessments are graded on a curve. A certain amount of students are at the bottom, a certain amount are at the top, and most are clustered in the middle. This would be true if you were testing all geniuses or all people with traumatic brain injuries.

It doesn’t matter how smart your test takers are. There will always be this bell curve distribution. That’s how the tests are designed. So to talk about raising test scores is nonsensical. You can raise scores at school A or School B, but the total set of all test takers will always be the same. And some students will always fail.

But that isn’t even the worst part.

Standardization, itself, has certain consequences. We seem to have forgotten what the term even means. It’s defined as the act of evaluating someone or something by reference to a standard.

This socket wrench is a good socket wrench because it most closely resembles some ideal socket wrench. This McDonald’s Big Mac is good because it resembles the ideal McDonald’s Big Mac.

That’s what we’re doing to people – children in fact. We’re evaluating them based on their resemblance to some ideal definition of what a child should know and what a child should be.

But children are not socket wrenches nor are they Big Macs. It is not so easy to reduce them to their component parts and say this is good and that is bad.

When you try to abstract them to that point, it is impossible to remove various essential factors of their identity – race, gender, socio-economic status, etc. Nor would it be admirable if you could, because you would have abstracted to the point where the individual is no longer visible or valued. A child raised in poverty is simply not the same as a child from a privileged upbringing. A child from a culture that values cooperation is not the same as a child from a culture that values individual achievement. And that’s often a good thing.

But when you define a standard, an ideal, you make certain choices – you privilege some attributes and denigrate others. Since the people creating the tests are almost exclusively upper middle class white people, it should come as no surprise that that is the measure by which they assess success.

Is it any wonder then that poor kids and children of color don’t score as well on these tests? Is it any wonder that upper middle class white kids score so well?

We’ve known this for almost a century. Standardized tests do a poor job of assessing intelligence or knowledge. Those things are too complex and the tests are too simple. If you’re evaluating something equally simple like basic addition and subtraction, these tests can work alright. But if you’re trying to get at something complex like critical thinking or creativity, they end up doing little more than prizing the way some people think and not others. In short, they elevate the thought processes most associated with rich white kids.

It doesn’t mean poor and/or black children are any less intelligent. It just means rich white kids have the things for which the test designers are looking. Some of this is due to economic factors like greater access to private tutoring, books in the home, parents with more time to read to their kids, coming to school healthy and more focused. However, a large portion is due to the very act of taking tests that are created to reflect white upper class values and norms.

Think about it. Almost all the questions are field tested before they become a permanent part of the exam. Students are given a question that doesn’t count to their final score, but test makers tabulate how many kids get it right or wrong. So when most white kids answer a field tested question correctly and most black kids get it wrong, it still becomes a permanent test question because there are so few blacks relative to whites. Maybe it’s a question that references sun tan lotion, something with which darker skinned people don’t have as much experience. Imagine if a question referencing the hair care practices of black people became a test item. White people would have difficulty with it because they can’t easily relate. But the field testing process doesn’t allow that because it normalizes whiteness.

So black kids stumble while white kids have an easier time. We even have a name for it: the racial proficiency gap.

Many well-intentioned progressive voices have bemoaned this problem and wondered how to solve it. But it’s not the scores that are the problem. It’s the assessments. They are doing exactly what they were designed to do.

That’s right. You cannot have such obvious, historical problems perpetuated year-after-year, decade-after-decade, and still think they are mere unintended consequences.

This is how the system was designed to work. This is how it’s always been designed to work.

If you were going to create a racist and classist school system from scratch, what would you do? How would you go about it?

You’d need the lower classes to have SOME mediocre education so they are able to do the menial work that keeps society running. But only so much. Education as a social ladder is all well and good as propaganda. But you don’t want that ladder to lead out of the basement for more than a few.

You need something that will create a hierarchy with people of color at the bottom and poor whites only slightly better off so they can feel ennobled compared to their darker subordinates.

You need a biased sorting mechanism – something that allows you to put students into privileged and unprivileged categories but that will look to all the world like it was doing so fairly. It would have to appear like you were choosing students based on merit.

You’d need something like standardized test scores.

This is how these assessments have functioned from their very beginnings.

When Carl Brigham and Robert Yerkes, U.S. Army psychologists during WWI, designed the alpha and beta intelligence tests to determine which soldiers deserved to be officers, they were creating a pseudoscientific justification for white privilege. They used biased and unfair assessments to “prove” that rich white folks were best suited to give orders, and the rest of us belonged in the trenches.

Brigham and Yerkes were drawing upon eugenics, also called “racial hygiene” or “scientific racism.” This was a radical misreading of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin. Eugenicists thought positive traits such as intelligence were widespread in Northwestern European races and almost nonexistent in others. Moreover, negative traits such as laziness and criminality were common in nonwhites and almost absent in those same Northwestern Europeans.

“We should not work primarily for the exclusion of intellectual defectives but rather for the classification of men in order that they may be properly placed,” wrote Yerkes.

THIS is the basis of standardized testing.

After the war, Brigham took the same principles to create the Scholastic Aptitude Test or S.A.T. – in principle the same exam still taken by 2.1 million teenagers every year to ensure they get into their chosen college.

The test was further refined by fellow eugenicist Lewis Terman, Professor of Education at Stanford University and originator of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. Together these three men created the foundations for the modern field of standardized testing. And make no mistake – its axiomatic principle is still that some races are genetically superior and others are inferior.

Or as Terman put it:

“A low level of intelligence is very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among Negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come… They constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding.”

After WWII, the eugenicist brand suffered from comparison to the Nazis who had been inspired by the findings of Brigham, Yerkes and Terman among others. In the post war years, we’ve discarded the overtly racist language but kept the assessments. Yet they still function the same way – sorting out blacks and the poor while prizing the rich and white.

This information is not secret. It is not kept under lock and key in some hidden military base somewhere. It’s accessible to anyone with Internet access or a library card.
We ignore it, because otherwise it would destabilize the current power structure – the corporate education policies that drive school practices in our country. We close our eyes and pretend it isn’t happening.

But it is.

“Standardized tests are the last form of legalized discrimination in the US,” said Education and Psychology Prof. Phil Harris.

With them you can give rich and middle class whites every advantage while withholding the same from students of color. And we don’t call it racism or classism because we pretend the whites earned their privileges by their test scores.

“We are using the testocracy as a proxy for privilege,” said civil rights theorist Lanni Guinier. Test scores are the excuse for prejudicial and unjust practices that would be impossible without them.

For instance, if you really wanted to help someone who’s struggling, you might offer extra help. But low test scores are used as the reason for withholding that help. We actually use these invalid scores as a means of demeaning and firing poor black kids’ teachers – as if anything they could do could completely overcome biased assessments and poverty. In this way, we not only remove those already in place to help these kids, we ensure few people will volunteer to take their place.

And when you have a teacher shortage in these poor urban neighborhoods, you can use that to justify further deprivations. Instead of teachers with 4-year education degrees, you can hire lightly trained Teach for America temps – college grads who’ve taken no coursework in education beyond a six weeks cram session.

And if the parents of these children complain, you can open charter schools to pull a quick bait and switch. Make them feel like they have a choice when really you’re pulling the rug out from under them. You provide them with a school with none of the safeguards of a traditional public institution – no elected school board, no transparency on how tax dollars are spent, little oversight, a right to refuse any student they wish, etc. And when the school goes belly up, these kids will be pushed back to their former traditional public school that has had to make due with less funding and now can provide even fewer services than it could before students jumped ship.

Using standardized test scores to judge not just students but whole schools, you can destabilize the entire system of public education. Charter schools and traditional public schools fight over ever-dwindling funding, one required to prove everything it does, the other able to do whatever it wants until it closes with little to no consequences for charter operators who take the money and run.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs Board that we can’t have “separate but equal” schools because when they’re separate, they’re rarely equal. But somehow that doesn’t apply to charter schools.

Somehow we’ve stopped caring about integration – one of the central victories of the Civil Rights movement! This plays right into the hands of the corporate education reformers. They have done everything they can to increase segregation because it makes it so much easier to privilege rich white kids and crush poor black ones.

They don’t want an equal mix of black and white, rich and poor in our schools. That would make it much harder to select against one class of student while boosting another.

They need to keep the races and classes as separate as possible. Charter schools help in this regard, but they would be insufficient without the help from many white families who flee from these “other” darker complected kids. It’s just another way to send more funding to white kids and less to poor black kids. They say it’s based on local property taxes. That way they can pretend it’s all fair and above board. Rich folks have a right to be able to give their kids the best, and if poor folks can’t afford to do the same, who do you expect to pick up the tab?

Oh! And let’s not forget setting “high academic standards” while all this is going on. They throw out everything that’s been working and come up with a Common Core of knowledge that all kids need to learn. Don’t include black and brown history, culture or the arts – just the stuff the business community thinks is valuable because they know so much about what’s really important in life. And have the whole thing written up by non-educators and non-psychologists and don’t bother testing it out to make sure it works.

Your rich white kids will have no problem jumping through these hoops. But your poor black and brown kids will stumble and fall – just as planned.

This is what has become of our public schools.

This is corporate education reform.

This is our racist, classist school system.

And it’s all based on standardized testing – a perfectly legal system of normalizing rich whiteness.