Eli Broad 'alum' John Deasy, Jaime Aquino & Matt Hill ran #LAUSD iPad project http://t.co/8QRhG7bBVq @RepairsNotIPads pic.twitter.com/sXM5s4iYVA
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) May 18, 2015
On Tuesday there will be an election for three LAUSD Board of Education members. These candidates are Kayser v. Rodriguez, Galatzan v. Schmerelson, and Vladovic v. Gutierrez.
The most highly funded race by the billionaires who wish to privatize all of America's public schools (with the goal of making public schools Free Market Wall Street opportunities for vast profit) is that of Rodriguez. They have poured over $2,000,000 into the coffers of Refugio Rodriguez who is the multi millionaire PUC charter school chain organizer, owner, CEO, treasurer...and other titles he chose over the years. A forced internal audit of his PUC charter chain was finally exposed only weeks ago despite his (and his ally on the Board, the notorious charter supporter, Monica Garcia, the clone of Tamar Galatzan and John Deasy) great efforts to hide it from public view until after the election. It showed repeated violations at many of his schools over a long period of time. Most were financial and some leading to his own enrichment.
Last week, the LA Progressive published the article linked below, showing his insider dirty dealings with his own Board leadership in contracting for food services from companies they actually owned, to provide all school meals. This was a very profitable, though probably illegal, enterprise for Rodriguez.
The LA Times, which endorsed Rodriguez (and Galatzan who is also a Deasy and charter supporter), has not backed down from their ill advised endorsement even though they published a similar story on his potential illegal and ostensibly fraudulent behaviors.
How come with this audit evidence and the facts on the food services contracts which are possibly indictable, Rodriguez has not resigned as a School Board candidate, after running one of the dirtiest campaigns in history? And why is he allowed to join with the Latino SouthWest Voters program to now bribe inner city Latino voters to come the polls for a payoff of $25,000? An LASR article lauds them for getting out the vote with 2700 first time Latino student voters, who also are given the payoff motive to go to the polls. What a message for new voters, to sell their vote for cash and prizes! Of course, the 'wink wink' is to vote for the Latino surnamed candidate.
https://www.laprogressive.com/ref-rodriguez/
It would seem that the LA Times and their billionaire publisher Austin Beutner, and billionaire advisors Eli Broad and Richard Riordan, have learned nothing from the entire LAUSD/Deasy four year fiasco which cost the District over $167,000,000 in losses from the inept and possibly fraudulent dealings of former Superintendent John Deasy who is now being investigated by the FBI and the SEC, with his Apple and Pearson early emails indicating he gave them insider information on how to be the low bidders for $1.3 Billion for iPads and for Common Core Software curricula not even designed at that point of contractual assignment. Also with Deasy's poor judgement insisting on using the MiSiS software which he knew was flawed for many years, and at the point he insisted on using it in LAUSD, was still not viable. It failed, and it hurt students and schools immeasurably. Now LAUSD is trying to get some of the public's money back from these rotten deals. Do not forget that this huge amount of $1.3 billion in probable sweetheart deals, was snatched from the Construction Bond Fund that LA voters and taxpayers approved to build new public schools and to repair old schools which are falling apart. Taxpayers were 'snookered' by these machinations of the billionaires and their puppets.
Only yesterday did the public learn that the BoE, once again in secret, was influenced to hire interim Superintendent Cortines back for another year despite his rancor with and against teachers and their unions, and despite the second sexual harassment law suit filed against him. He also recently named charter school supporter, Thelma de Melendez, as his second in charge.
At Beaudry, Cortines and the Board of Education evidently never did start a national search for a better superintendent than Deasy (who trained to be their "CEO" at the Broad Academy, and who has now been hired full time to work for Eli Broad), and they seem to have no intention of doing so in the near future. Is this more of Broad's intrusion into the affairs of LAUSD?
Why are voters once again exposed to all this brouhaha and the buying of elections by these wildly wealthy Wall Street profiteers and non-educators who seek to bring all public services into the Free Market to expand their greed in forcing the direction of even more redistribution of American's wealth upward, to themselves?
Stigler, Schumpeter, and Milton Friedman, with their Ayn Rand parroted theories of the Invisible Hand, and Creative Destruction, have long been proven false by modern Nobel Prize winner economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, looking at a Free Market that is anything but FREE.
Please use good judgement and vote for Bennett Kayser and Scott Schmerelson when you go to the polls, without being bribed, on Tuesday, May 19.
Ellen Lubic, Director, Joining Forces for Education, Public Policy educator/writer
First published on Schools Matter on March 14, 2015
"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer
United Way Greater Los Angeles' (UWGLA) role as a tax deductible lobbying and public relations firm for plutocrats like Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Carrie Walton Penner, and Casey Wasserman is expanding. They are now apparently functioning as adjunct to the deep pocketed California Charter School Association (CCSA). To wit, compare this email from the "non-partisan charity" UWGLA to that of the CCSA trade association's 501c4 wing, CCSA Advocates:
Notice any similarities?
In a discussion with several other social justice activists, we were trying to decide why UWGLA's well paid political consultants didn't have the good sense to at least change the precise order of the candidates that they and their fellow special interest group, the CCSA, feature on their propaganda pieces. UWGLA could argue, unconvincingly, that they put the names in the same order as candidates received votes in the primary election. However, it's far more likely that they used CCSA's billionaire backed candidates' existing information and then tacked on the other candidate information on as a grudging afterthought.
The first clue that UWGLA has absolutely no respect for the candidates outside of the CCSA privatization pushers like Galatzan and Rodriguez? They misspelled the Honorable Bennett Kayser's name as "BENNET KAYSER" in every occurrence of both the image and text of the communication they sent out. This is the seated school board member, and UWGLA has a mind-blowing multi-million dollar budget, but they get everything else correct except the school board member's name? Moreover, notice how all of the head shots are proportional, but they use the old political trick of making one candidate look abnormal by using a disproportional photo crop. A nasty little Fox News style play probably drawn up by CCSA's arch-reactionary political director Carlos Marquez.
We frequently look to UWGLA's plutocrat funding sources and the neoliberal pay-to-advocate paradigm that UWGLA and other members of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) operate under. Nothing is more telling of UWGLA's complete allegiance to the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda than this 2013 photo of privatizer Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, millionaire Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and UWGLA's Elise Buik. What we typically don't look at is the staff members UWGLA employs to promulgate their donors' agenda.
UWGLA's current Education Program Officer is Elmer G. Roldan. Prior to his UWGLA stint, Roldan worked for the Camino Nuevo Corporate Charter Chain—known for its unelected board of bankers, finance capitalists, and hedge fund managers. Before cashing in on the charter industry, Roldan worked for former Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board member Monica Garcia, who has ties to the shadowy Gülenist cult. He also worked for the anti-public education NPIC Community Coalition. It's a safe bet that Roldan's whole two years of community college prepared him to deal with the broad range of topics on education policy and pedagogy.
Until recently (namely when they were exposed for their role in UWGLA's massive public deception campaign) Roldan worked alongside Ryan Smith and Jason Mandell. Before joining UWGLA, Smith worked for the notorious Green Dot Corporate Charter Chain and the so-called Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS) with Marshall Tuck (whose wife, Mae Tuck, also works at UWGLA). After the UWGLA astroturf incident, Smith went to work for the reactionary EdTrust. Mandell worked with fellow poverty pimp Yolie Flores at the The Gates Foundation funded Communities for Teaching Excellence. Mandell now works for the California Charter Schools Association, although that was sort of his function when his paychecks read UWGLA as well.
The candidate forums run by UWGLA mentioned in the mailer were addressed in Statement on Gates and Broad Foundation funded United Way Greater Los Angeles running LAUSD forums. Candidates opposing the CCSA funded ones had myriad complaints about the heavy handed manner in which the UWGLA treated them durring the forums. LAUSD District 3 candidate Carl J. Petersen submitted the following account. His complaints have been corroborated by other District 3 candidates, who wished to remain anonymous.
The first thing that hit me upon entering the venue was Ms. Galatzan had set up a table in the courtyard with her election paraphernalia, including yard signs. This clearly broke the rules which stated that only one piece of literature could be distributed and this would be at a table that the United Way would set up for all of the participants. Elizabeth Badger and I both immediately complained to the person in charge (I believe that his name was Elmer), who confirmed that Ms. Galatzan had broken the rules and promised that it would be taken care of. When the signs remained up I filed another complaint and was again assured that the signs would be taken down. Once on stage, the moderator announced a rule that each candidate was allowed one sign in the courtyard. The fact that this was a rule change was not conveyed to the audience.
The next inconsistency with the rules occurred during the debate itself. After a round that did not go well for Ms. Galatzan (I believe the subject was iPads), the moderator decided to break format and allowed Ms. Galatzan to go out of turn to defend herself. The moderator felt that this was fair because we had all attacked the incumbent.
To me, the strangest part of the night happened when I went to collect my unused literature. I had provided 200 flyers to be distributed at the appointed table, but the actual turnout was much less. I think the estimated attendance was 100 people. My flyers must have been in great demand because none were left and the volunteers said that they had not seen them. I wish I knew when in the evening they had been removed.
I think that it is telling that the United Way was the only candidate forum that Ms. Galatzan attended during the entire campaign. She skipped the second debate, a meet and greet at the Northridge West Neighborhood Council and a final Q&A at the Encino Neighborhood Council. I would like to know what assurances the United Way provided her that made her feel their event was a safe one for her.
Eli Broad and Carrie Walton Penner will stop at nothing to turn the entire public education system over to the private sector, where corruption and greed rule supreme. UWGLA's ability to remain a tax exempt organization is testament to how much power and influence the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate have.
Some of United Way of Greater Los Angeles and United Way Worldwide's other "education" related activities:
* Emperor Broad is quoted in the New York Times
First published on K12NN Wire on March 14, 2015
Sent to the Los Angeles Times on March 14, 2015
Re: Teachers at Alliance charter group push to form union http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-alliance-charter-story.html
The author here calls the Alliance's corporate chain a "high-performing charter group". I'm curious if that inaccurate designation came directly from either Alliance's or the California Charter Schools Association's marketing departments?
Despite claiming that their schools produce top college prospects, Alliance College "Ready" Schools boast 6 of the 80 lowest SAT performers in Los Angeles County, and 5 of the 75 lowest in LAUSD. (Source: "California Schools Guide." Lowest Average SAT Scores in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles Times, 01 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.). Those numbers have not significantly changed in two years.
Moreover, Alliance routinely produces "graduates" with astronomical remediation rates. Take their Gertz-Ressler campus' figures for 2008-2012. The California State University (CSU) makes remediation data available (Source: www.asd.calstate.edu) for all schools sending them students.
* 2008 Alliance's CSU proficiency 7% in math and 13% in English.
* 2009 Alliance's CSU proficiency 29% in math and 29% in English.
* 2010 Alliance's CSU proficiency 29% in math and 17% in English.
* 2011 Alliance's CSU proficiency 50% in math and 33% in English.
* 2012 Alliance's CSU proficiency 57% in math and 50% in English.
Alliance has made their "CEO" Judy Burton insanely wealthy though. In 2013, aside from the $139K+ she was making from CalSTRS and CalPERS, she was skimming another $315K+ in taxpayer money through her corporate charter pyramid scheme. (Source: California Pensions Database and Alliance 2010 Form 990 Part VII§A).
Robert D. Skeels
*********@ucla.edu
First published on Schools Matter on February 06, 2015
"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer
If anyone is interested, I can forward them the press release email for this. United Way is essentially marketing Scholastic Corporation products through their "Club Connect Reading Oasis" project (www.unitedwayclubconnect.org). Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL) was noticeably excited by the announcement, and they claim they generate approximately $2 billion in annual revenues. I wonder if United Way Greater Los Angeles' Elise Buik will invite President and CEO of Scholastic, Dick Robinson, to join her at her next "education" round-table with Eli Broad, Casey Wasserman, and the discredited John Deasy?
Left to right: Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and Elise Buik. Five of the greatest enemies to public education in Los Angeles under the aegis of the United Way Greater Los Angeles.
The above Scholastic deal was struck in conjunction with United Way Worldwide. Not all United Way organizations are active participants in the neoliberal corporate education reform project. On the other hand, some of them serve as a tax deductible public relations and lobbying firms for the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate. The most egregious offender is United Way Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA). Some of UWGLA's other "education" related activities:
""Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs [NPIC] form a sort of buffer between the government and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among." — Arundhati Roy
Recently I wrote a piece on neoliberal corporate education reform operative Caprice Young. It discussed an exchange I had where I informed California Badass Teacher Association (BATs) members of some of Young's activities since she left ICEF: "…after she [Caprice Young] left ICEF she was doing consulting and working with her fellow right-wing CORO alum, Bill Jackson, at the disgusting "Great Schools" #NPIC". I then needed to add Jackson's name to the list of Coro operatives known to be working to eliminate public education in Los Angeles. I maintained a running list in a footnote of a 2011 Schools Matter piece, but realized that was becoming too unwieldy. Therefore, I've begun this new list. It's of Coro acolytes that have inflicted considerable damage on Los Angeles schools. It isn't intended to be a list of all known Coro operatives. When I get time I'll try to fill in backgrounds and details on those listed here.
Ultimately @CoroSoCal is far more shadowy and cultish than Gülen's network itself #LAUSD #NPIC http://t.co/50W67agg1g pic.twitter.com/jD8H4DYcqN
— RDSkeels4Schoolboard (@RDSkeels4LAUSD) February 4, 2015Information on Coro is hard to come by. Activists rarely get Coro operatives to talk about their organization, and when they do, there's nothing said of substance. During my last quarter at UCLA I reached out to them as a prospective fellow. They encouraged me to apply, but wouldn't provide any details without applying and committing first. I suppose that's like not learning about Xenu until one achieves OTIII (perhaps John Deasy's friend Megan Chernin can confirm that). You can't learn much about them by reading their literature either. The philosophically threadbare propaganda of neoliberalism is typically littered with vapid and vacuous prose, and Coro's explanation of who they are and what they do is no different. To wit:
Coro contributes a group of trained individuals whose personal skills and civic involvement promote broader civic engagement and expand the social capital of the community. By developing a network of local and regional organizations willing to create internship and project opportunities for program participants, Coro creates a safe space in which diverse organizations and leaders enter into dialogue with program participants and with each other.
That's sixty-five words of prose with no meaning whatsoever, putting it right along with "no excuses," or "work hard and be nice." Professor Noam Chomsky addresses these types of phrases best:
It doesn't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? [1]
NOTES
[1] Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Second Edition. New York: Seven Stories Press., 1991. pp. 25-26.
For more on anti-public-education extremist David F. Welch, see Capital & Main's David Welch: The Man Behind Vergara v. California. For updates on the appeal, and information from experts like Professors Linda Darling-Hammond and Jesse Rothstein refuting the groundless premises of Vergara, see CTA's site.
Millionaire David F. Welch's reactionary lawsuit hurts kids, educators, and sticks CA taxpayers with his bills #LAUSD pic.twitter.com/U9LvZkvaac
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) February 5, 2015Reactionary millionaire David F. Welch's vile move hurt kids, educators and taxpayers by Robert D. Skeels
Friends,
I wrote a letter for the Action Network letter campaign "Urge Senator Lamar Alexander and the members of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to put an end to annual standardized testing".
Network for Public Education (NPE) is calling on Congress to support the adoption of Option 1 in Senator Lamar Alexander’s “Every Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015”, which has been slated for discussion in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on January 21, 2015. NPE supports the proposal to allow states to adopt their own State-designed academic assessment system. More specifically, we are calling for the end of the federal mandate for annual testing. We believe that every child in the United States deserves a sound education. Every child deserves a full curriculum in a school with adequate resources. We are deeply concerned that the current overemphasis on standardized testing is harming children, public schools, and our nation’s economic and civic future. It’s our conclusion that the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized tests now warrants federal intervention. NPE believes a return to grade span testing (once in elementary, middle and high school) is an important first step toward restoring standardized testing to its appropriate use in education, while still giving policy makers and elected officials a valid snapshot of what is happening in schools. If you agree, now is the time to act! A few minutes of your time today could bring about the end of standardized testing as we know it.
Can you join me and write a letter? Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/485051f3bf076fafe126447ee4c553073ef2cfe8?source=email&referrer=darcie-cimarusti
Thanks!
"Philanthropy is not progressive and never has been."— Tiffany Lethabo King and Ewuare Osayande
"The United Way of LA is chief enforcer of Eli Broad’s corporate takeover of public Ed agenda. He’s the reason why I created the term “weaponized philanthropy” to describe how lefty-liberal groups in this city are under his sway. There’s NO good reason on earth the ACLU or LGBT Youth groups would support John Deasy except for the fact that they get money from UWGLA and much of that money comes from Broad."—Cynthia Liu, PhD
Left to right: Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and Elise Buik. Five of the greatest enemies to public education in Los Angeles under the aegis of the United Way Greater Los Angeles.
The Nonprofit Industrial Complex in Los Angeles are using their unlimited resources to sway our schoolboard elections again. Here's a tweet linking to the Occupy United Way page that first pointed out the issue.
Statement on @gatesfoundation & @BroadFoundation funded @LAUnitedWay running #LAUSD forums https://t.co/HmsVewlJzQ pic.twitter.com/rpCUti4bE7
— RDSkeels4Schoolboard (@RDSkeels4LAUSD) January 22, 2015My slightly edited statement from that page.
With the possible exceptions of Public Counsel and CHIRLA, could the United Way of Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA) have gathered a more vile coalition of revenue hungry corporate charter chains and billionaire foundation funded Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC) members? KIPP, Coro, Eli Broad's Dan Chang's GPS:LA, E4E, ICS, and more. It's a rogues gallery of organizations on the dole of the Koch's, Bloomberg's, Broad's, Gates', and Walton Family Foundations. How is it that these organizations with the clear-cut political agendas of their funders are allowed to host forums like this?
Just in case there's any doubt that this entire event has been orchestrated by the UWGLA, here's the text from the registration form. See the email address?
Please fill out this brief form to let us know you will attend a Candidate Forum.
Childcare, translation, refreshments, voter registration and ballot information will be provided free of cost.
For more information and media inquires, contact Sara Mooney at smooney@unitedwayla.org or 213-808-6290
UWGLA runs these events so that they have complete control over what questions get asked, the tone and content of the conversations, the composition of audience, etc. These so-called forums end up being informercials for their favored (read charter school industry connected) candidates, and more importantly, their neoliberal corporate education reform agenda. Remember, UWGLA is the same organization that pays for fake "research" papers from less-than-credible fellow neoliberal NPIC like National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). There is no depth too low for the UWGLA to plumb, evidenced by their now infamous April 2014 astroturf stunt.
United Way Greater Los Angeles is the best public relations firm that Eli Broad has ever hired.
Ref Rodriguez and his fellow well paid PUC executives squander tax payer money for advertising instead of the classroom. Rodriguez is wrong for LAUSD and wrong for our students! Because there's essentially no oversight or financial transparency for these privately managed corporate charter schools, there's a dearth of information on how they're spending our funds. Rodriguez's glossy, four-color ads could have paid for a lot of supplies for public school students. Bright Star Charter School Corporation also uses money for advertising instead for kids in the classroom. These revenue hungry charter chains also claim "waiting lists." If that's true, then why the need to advertise?
Stop corporate charter school greed, stop Ref Rodriguez!
Bill Gates: An infographic: http://t.co/gUCbdK2Cs0 via @writernthesky @BadassTeachersA @NetworkPublicEd @NEAToday pic.twitter.com/NMKIeAlypc
— Clyde Gaw (@campak14) October 4, 2014
Charter Corp. #CWC Mar Vista doled out 8 out of school suspensions last year—they serve Kindergarten/1st Grade #LAUSD pic.twitter.com/CV66RraOeT
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) August 4, 2014First published on Schools Matter on July 26, 2014
"While value-added models are intended estimate teacher effects on student achievement growth, they fail to do so in any accurate or precise way. — Professor Bruce Baker"
Back in early April I penned a piece for K12NN on The American Statistical Association's (ASA) paper on Value Added Methodologies [1]. In it I asserted that the "document provides strong support to those who oppose this wrongheaded use of statistics to make high stakes decisions effecting the lives of students, educators, and our school communities." This week I noticed a trackback to a reprint of the article. What caught my eye was the title, which seemingly was entirely out of keeping with the spirit of the ASA's stance: Advocating for a robust value-added implementation.
I read through the VAM cheerleading piece and was gobsmacked by the deliberate manipulation of the ASA document's tenor and tone. This VAM apologetic read less like a legitimate blog posting and more like a corporate press release. Without doing much more research, I typed the following comments:
This quotation from the ASA document sums up the entire issue best: "The majority of the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control". To, as the author above has, try and frame ASA's position as supportive of VAM phrenology takes mendaciousness to breathtaking heights. Rather than considering students as empty receptacles for "knowledge" deposited by a method that can be "measured," perhaps we can start talking about students as agents in their own pedagogical experiences—something that doesn't exist in the current regime of the profitable testing-industrial-complex.
The author's response displayed the same blatant avoidance of issues as the original piece. In fact, it stated some of the long discredited claims of the VAM camp, including Professor Bruce Baker's favorite trope about how "more sophisticated" VAMs address the issues people have with VAMs.
Thanks for your comment. The ASA statement seems to discuss primary drivers of student test scores, not student growth. It is well known that there is a strong relationship between students’ achievement (or test scores) and their socioeconomic/demographic background. However, there is typically little or no relationship between students’ growth and their socioeconomic/demographic background.
Another way to see this is that the most important factor of “current” test scores is prior tests scores and, once enough prior test scores are included in the model, the socioeconomic/demographic factors become relatively small or even non-significant, despite enormous sample sizes.
That said and to your concern about considering students in the context of their own experiences, more sophisticated value-added/growth models, like EVAAS, can follow the progress of individual students over time, so that each student serves as his or her own control.
Aside from being patently wrong, the whole thing smacked of being boilerplate text written in the bowels of a corporate public relations department. That's when I decided to look into this dubious Jennifer Facciolini was and who she wrote for. I should have done that in the first place.
As of 2012, Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Institute Inc., is one of the largest privately owned software companies in the world with revenue $3.02 billion USD (2013). They are the developers of the wildly inaccurate, but highly profitable Education Value-Added Assessment System, (AKA SAS EVAAS) — a VAM implementation used in many districts. Money chasing SAS is all about big fish government contracts, to wit an excerpt from a recent Businessweek piece:
SAS Institute Inc. won a $6,479,583.96 federal contract from the Defense Information Systems Agency, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, for Statistical Analysis System software licenses and support renewal.
When a huge firm like SAS pulling down big dollar defense contracts makes the education "market" their priority, you can believe that they won't let things like facts and evidence discrediting VAM get in the way of them selling and supporting their EVAAS phrenology kit to any and all districts infected by the neoliberal corporate reform virus.
Hiring several white, well educated former-teachers like Nadja Young and Jennifer Facciolini to shill for your product is a smart public relations investment for the VAM behemoth. Given that they were teachers in the south, the chances are that they are making a great deal more money at SAS by simply selling out their former profession to corporate interests. Whether the boilerplate prose in their gushing blog posts is written by them or not isn't all that important. What's important is the appearance that professional teachers actually might think that phrenology and VAM are legitimate sciences. I can only hope that that the prose in these mindless corporate posts isn't written by these former teachers. Students should never be exposed to such nonsensical drivel. A selection of some of their titles should serve to numb the mind of any sentient being:
I'll spare readers further torment. As the preponderance of evidence against VAM pseudoscience like the watershed ASA paper grows, expect profit hungry firms like SAS to keep doubling down on the duplicity and deception. Having an army of former teachers shilling for your defective product is a small expense compared to losing those highly profitable contracts with districts.
[1] In its various permutations we've seen the "M" in VAM stand for Modeling, Measures, Methodologies, and others. The only honest word for last member of the acronym would be "Mendaciousness," since phrenology by any other name is…
