Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

This short essay was originally published on The Daily Censored on August 11, 2011. It would seem that all of the old works on that site are gone. That's unfortunate because I published a lot of work there. I had a teaser here linking to it, a practice I stopped doing precisely because I've learned from harsh experience that websites die and all the content is lost (like my At The Chalkface works). I was able to track down a reprint on Susan Ohanian's site, but her site is having issues as well. Ultimately, I was able to retrieve a copy of the reprint from the Wayback Machine.

I want to reproduce this last sentence from Ohanian's introduction, since she had such insight into why the essay was important:

“The hardline right wing may well love the vacuous phrase “soft bigotry of low expectations,” but let’s remember that education deform democrats love it just as much. It is mostly used to put progressive activists on the defensive.” — Susan Ohanian

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Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

“We address the soft bigotry of low expectations so that we may ignore the hard racism of inequity.” — John Kuhn

Although this footage isn't new and commentators have already discussed it, it deserves reexamination since it illuminates one of the core false tenets of the corporate education reform canon.

Amidst the bizarre assertion that Sesame Street is indoctrinating children in some sort of insidious left wing plot, reactionary Ben Shapiro says that:

"I talked to one of the guys who's at Children's Television Workshop originally and he said the whole purpose of Sesame Street was cater to black and hispanic youths who, quote unquote, did not have reading literature in the house, there kind of this soft bigotry of low expectations that's automatically associated with Sesame Street."

Ahhh — the chimerical "soft bigotry of low expectations." As opposed to the hard bigotry of the pervasive institutional racism underpinning our economic system, which facilitates the division of workers and submerses a majority in abject poverty in order to make a small minority obscenely rich. The very same minority, by the way, that supports privatizing public education via charters and vouchers.

The dubious phrase is beloved by the hardline right. The Birchers at the Heartland Institute [1] use the phrase with reckless abandon. Cato, Manhattan, Hoover, and all the other reactionary right wing think tanks repeat the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" as if it's the mantra necessary to permanently bring back the gilded age they all pine for.

Of course the nonsensical phrase isn't limited to fringe right-wing kooks that also think John Galt and Howard Rourke are historical figures. Many supposed-liberals, or at the very least Democratic Leadership Council party operatives, use the phrase as often, if not more often than their teabagging counterparts.

The vile billionaire hedge fund shyster Whitney Tilson uses the phrase incessantly. Remember too that the ever obtuse Tilson helped form two of the most virulent corporate reform and privatization pushing organizations in existence: Teach for America (TFA) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). The latter, DFER, uses the phrase in its privatization propaganda. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has used the phrase. TFA's Wendy Kopp has had a lucrative career peddling the phrase. The snarling queen of Erasuregate, Michelle Rhee, cherishes such phrases. Los Angeles' poverty pimping opportunist Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proudly plasters the phrase on twitter.

The unprincipled construction "soft bigotry of low expectations" is typically credited to the Council on Foreign Relations's arch-reactionary Michael Gerson, who was the speechwriter for fraudulent Rod Paige's Texas Education Miracle co-fraud, George W. Bush.

Like all the philosophically threadbare propaganda from the right, the expression is vapid and vacuous, without any real meaning whatsoever, putting it right along with "no excuses," and "working hard and being nice." Professor Noam Chomsky best addresses these types of phrases:

"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?" [2]

The policy in question is to ignore poverty and demand a false accountability from all of poverty's victims. While there are countless works discussing this, a recent pair of essays by my Schools Matter colleague Professor P. L. Thomas, EdD, really get to the heart of this issue: Poverty and Testing in Education: "The Present Scientifico-legal Complex" part 1 and part 2.

Humane Expectations Devoid of any Bigotry

In my many years I've never come across an educator that had anything but "realistic expectations tempered with compassion and empathy" for their students, regardless of where they taught. Moreover, for right wing reactionaries to accuse hard working women and men that have dedicated their lives to educating inner city students of bigotry of any sort smacks of hypocrisy of the highest order. It's laughable on its face.

Of course compassion and empathy are foreign words to the rogues gallery discuss above, none of whom have ever taught in their lives. Well, with the exceptions of Wendy Kopp and Michelle Malkin — I mean, Michele Bachmann, er, — I mean Michelle Rhee (sorry it's so easy to confuse those three). Rhee is so devoid of empathy and compassion that one of the most enduring stories from her short stint as a TFA missionary is when she taped her students mouths shut with masking tape and then walked them to the lunchroom, bleeding lips and all. Kopp is seemingly less of a sociopath than Rhee, but it's clear her passion for fame and fortune outweigh any compassion she might have once had.

Access To Books

The other thing reactionary Shapiro gets entirely wrong before employing the hackneyed "soft bigotry of low expectations" nonsense, was to dismiss the Children's Television Workshop's catering to children that "did not have reading literature in the house." Access to books in the home is a major indicator of academic achievement and impoverished families have very limited access to books. This is a fact, and not something to be dismissed by a sniveling right winger threatening to "take them [Elmo and Big Bird] out back and cap them."

Another one of my Schools Matter colleagues, the distinguished Professor Stephen Krashen, PhD, has researched and written extensively on the subject of access to books. Here are a small sampling of his available short articles linking to longer works on the subject.

• Children of poverty and access to books
• IRA President: Access to books makes a difference
• Heroic First Book Marketplace Can't Do It All Get caught reading month?
• Policy: protect children from poverty before we discuss pedagogy

Given the staunch anti-intellectualism, lack of knowledge about all thing pedagogical, and academic aversion that whiny right wingers like Shapiro are known for, it's no wonder that he didn't get the whole importance of providing additional educational resources for children that "did not have reading literature in the house" like the prescient folks at Children's Television Workshop always have.

"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity." [3]

Now that we're discussing these things, let's talk about the stark racism and classism stemming from the corporate education reform movement, which is orchestrated by the same plutocrats that aired Shapiro's television program. After all, those are the sort of things that vacuous phrases like "soft bigotry of low expectations" are supposed to distract us from.

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NOTES

[1] Heartland Institute is none other than Parent Revolution's sister organization. Word is that in addition to co-hosting school privatization forums that Ben Austin and Ben Boychuck formulate policy together.

[2] Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Second Edition. New York: Seven Stories Press., 1991. pp. 25-26.

[3] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 2009. p. 45.

Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

More evidence corroborating Professor Krashen and exposing the contrived skills and STEM crises

First published on Schools Matter on December 26, 2012.

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"...the impending shortage of scientists and engineers is one of the longest running hoaxes in the country" — Gerald W. Bracey

Schools Matter's Professor Stephen Krashen has been a long time critic of the media promulgated mythology that there's a shortage of qualified workers, particularly those in the Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) fields. A quick survey of his posts here reveal his ongoing work to counter the skills/STEM propaganda that is most often used to justify some of the most pernicious corporate education reforms.

Whenever I see more evidence proving these skills/STEM myths wrong, I'm quick to forward them to Dr. Krashen for him to add to his burgeoning catalog of documentation. NPR's recent Are There Too Many Ph.D.s And Not Enough Jobs? is an example of the evidence contradicting all the outrageous lies by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, David Welch, Reed Hastings, Arne Duncan, et al. The NPR piece, which cites The Atlantic, contains gems such as:

"numbers released by the National Science Foundation show that people with doctoral degrees in those technical fields are struggling to find work in their industries."

and

"Worse yet, as of 2011, approximately one-third of people graduating with a doctoral degree in science, technology, math or engineering had no job or post-doctoral offer of any kind."

Krashen posted the above piece on his facebook page, and several of us commented. Still exhausted from the LAUSD election, I had forgotten what I wrote until I saw myself quoted by Peggy Robertson and Patsy Bain Wolf. Looking at the quote, I'm sure glad they preserved it, since it gets to the heart of the matter:

The manufactured STEM crisis. Robert D. Skeels states "The manufactured STEM 'crises' has from the onset been a means to drive down the salaries of those professionals who often don't see themselves as being working class. Starting with Bill Gates' drive to grant more H1B visas to certain workers under the guise of "not enough qualified candidates." What this really means is not enough candidates willing to work on the cheap. Ultimately the same market forces that allow the owners of the means of production drive wages down are at work. Sadly, since many professionals aren't class conscious, the only things that could reverse this trend — working class push-back and unionization — aren't being discussed."

Another recent article by In These Times entitled Study Demolishes the Myth That U.S. Workers Lack Skills further puts the lie to the notion that U.S. workers are lacking in the education or skills department. The piece, which discusses a paper by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Professor Marc Levine, contains powerful quotes like: "There are still three unemployed people for every possible job opening."

The article proper enumerates the points of Levine’s report, only the headings of which are reproduced here.

• False: The skills of the workforce somehow dropped sharply between 2007 and 2009.
• False: There is a vast pool of high-skilled jobs waiting to be filled.
• False: Employers are trying in vain to attract skilled workers.
• False: Understaffed employers must make do with the skilled workers they have.
• False: New high-skill jobs have been created.
• False: Workers with advanced degrees are more highly sought-after.
• False: The American job market will increasingly demand higher-skilled workers.

Globalization has allowed the ownership class to increasingly pit workers against each other in ways the Robber Barons could have only dreamed of. When workers compete, their boses win! A major part of the impetus behind corporate education reform is the same momentum that's created a job market were workers are increasingly expected to work harder and harder for less and less, while being required to have ever more education and training (at their own expense, of course). Nearly all of Silicon Valley's plutocratic elites' whining about a skills shortage is part and parcel a cry to drive down wages and squeeze ever more profit out of workers who are expected to "lean in."

This race to the bottom for workers is accelerated by those same forces turning teaching into an act of Taylorism as well. Race to the Top and Common Core State Standards are part of a corporate consensus intended to create compliant workers ready to accept ever more abject working conditions. The daily experience in schools today is a grim reminder of what student's adult life will most likely look like. Brian Jones' recent commentary looks at this in depth and provides inescapable analysis. The byline, which couldn't be more apropos, reads 'When Karl Marx described the despotism of the modern workplace, he could have been describing schools in the era of education "reform."' Jones' essay is replete with insights like:

"The bourgeoisie," Marx noted, "cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society."

In those words, Marx put his finger on precisely what's happening in education--the relationship between teacher and student is being revolutionized. The student is, increasingly, evaluated not by the human being he or she speaks to every day, but by a harried, low-wage test scorer (sometimes hundreds of miles away) paid per test or worse, by a machine that scans the student's bubble sheet.

It's no small irony that the selfsame students whose tests are being graded by "harried, low-wage test scorer[s]" are being prepared for such futures as well.

The neoliberal project encroaches from every side and can only be defeated by collective resistance. My heart goes out to all those at the Occupy the Department of Education 2.0: The Battle for Public Schools event right now. I am there with you in spirit. We must continue organizing against these seemingly unstoppable forces, in hopes that eventually we can get our fellows in struggle to realize the meaning of Rosa Luxemburg's famous passage "those who do not move, do not notice their chains."

More evidence corroborating Professor Krashen and exposing the contrived skills and STEM crises

Thoughts on Matthew Di Carlo's recent Shanker Blog piece on the 'parent tricker'

Barr's parent organization gave... a grass-roots visual... And his paid staffers hit the right rhetorical notes... while identifying themselves to reporters and officials only as parents. — Howard Blume (Los Angeles Times)

Matthew Di Carlo recently penned a thoughtful and somewhat nuanced piece on the vile so-called "parent trigger" legislation being pushed by the school privatization industry. In When Push Comes To Pull In The Parent Trigger Debate he suggests that support for or against anti-democratic triggers is often dependent on an individual's stance on charter schools to begin with.

Interestingly, he posits that if triggers were associated with authentic reforms like class size reduction as opposed to seizing property for the lucrative charter industry, that there might be less opposition to parent triggers and other shock doctrine style swindles. I for one think that's the point. Triggers were not devised as a way to improve or help public education. They have always been a way of increasing market share for the charter sector, union busting, and have been widely embraced by the fringe-right as a pathway to vouchers and other forms of plunder and poverty pimping.

Had trigger laws been a means for democratically engaging entire communities in the improvement of their schools, I would have become their biggest supporter. Instead, they are simply another way to stuff more money into the pockets of charter executives and their wealthy associates. Here are my comments posted to the Shanker Blog, which still apparently hasn't made it through the moderation process:

I'd agree that some perspective on corporate charter trigger laws is influenced by an individual's views on school privatization and the neoliberal project in general. However, that doesn't mean that the overarching problem with triggers is the fact that they are entirely anti-democratic to put the fate of a public resource into the hands of a minority of the community. More than that, the huge amounts of money and resources expended to sway parents to triggering their school into private hands has been seen repeatedly, with corporate charter advocacy groups like the so-called Parent Revolution with it's multi-million dollar budget from nefarious funders like the Walton Family Foundation.

We can learn much about the origins and motives of groups pushing the corporate charter "parent" trigger by where the majority of its support comes from—fringe right wing groups like The Heartland Institute and The American Legislative Exchange Council.

Parent Revolution can deny their ties to ALEC and other reactionaries all they want, but they can't hide the fact that they have had deep and long-standing partnerships with ALEC members, including fringe right-wing The Heartland Institute. In addition to constant collaboration with Heartland, Parent Revolution hosts forums with them. See the following flyer from one of their events and an article discussing it:

The Heartland Institute and Parent Revolution panel on the Trigger Law

Parent Revolution's mendacious minions to appear with The Heartland Institute reactionaries

For the actual ALEC legislation crafted from Governor Schwartzenegger, Ben Austin, Gloria Romero's original bill, see:

Ben Austin, Gloria Romero and ALEC's Parent Trigger Act

Gloria J. Romero, who along with former Governor Schwartzenegger's staff, and Parent Revolution's Ben Austin, drafted the parent trigger (more aptly, tricker), is also known to work hand and hand with the most extreme forces of reaction on education issues. She works closely with members of the Koret Foundation and The Hoover Institution. Shunned by her own party, she works with teabaggers and other right-wing politicians.

Peas in a pod: Koret Foundation, The Hoover Institution, and Democrats for Education Reform

Senators Romero and Huff to Hold Education Summit

The evidence is damning, and their claims that they don't represent right-wing interests ring hollow. Bear in mind Parent Revolution was originally the Los Angeles Parents Union, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Green Dot Charter School Corporation. Parent Revolution's sole reason for existence is to build market share for the lucrative charter school sector. This is born out both by the comments of their funders, and by the privatization policies of their funders.

See this piece for a statement by Eli Broad on why he funds Parent Revolution:

Eli Broad pays Parent Revolution to champion charters not to empower parents!

See these documents to see the names right-wing plutocrats who fund Parent Revolution and the staggering amounts they contribute. Tops on the list, the privatization reactionaries at the Walton Family Foundation. 

Los Angeles Parents Union DBA LAPU or Parent Revolution 2010 Form 990

To be sure, "school choice" was the clarion call of segregationists. It still is. Why the Racist History of the Charter School Movement Is Never Discussed

Quick look at the "there's no money" in charters deception

I was recently asked on facebook to explain how charters make money. This is important since the charter industry has recently been trying to convince the public that they're nothing more than a charitable exercise. Here's what I wrote back to them:

Here's just a taste, but it should be enough for you to answer such inquires.

Operators like Edison make profit directly, as do most EMOs, from the difference between "services rendered" and ADA money. CMOs don't make profit per se, but they pay their executives exorbitant (confer Petruzzi or Ponce to Deasy versus number of schools and students) salaries and make additional money from special relationships with vendors (look up companies like ExED and charter operator Judy Burton's very special relationship with them). Many charter executives set up these sweet vendor deals and then go on to work for the vendors. Another big money maker is charter financing and financial services by corporations like Charter School Capital, pushed by local CMO executive Ricardo Mireles.

The most lucrative part of the charter industry however, is real estate. How big is the charter-voucher school real estate bubble? Big enough to attract big names like Goldman Sachs, Andre Agassi, Citibank, and Richard Riordan to the lucrative land grab ventures. Big enough that Gloria Romero was rewarded with a cushy six-figure job as CEO at Democrats for Education Reform in California for her servile gift the privately managed charter industry called SB 592, which hands public school property over to privately managed charter corporations. New York based vultures, like Gideon Stein, are making a fortune in brokering charter real estate (and the raising of property values via gentrification of neighborhoods through those charters).

There's also all the lucrative "distance learning," "online charters," and "blended learning" cash cows. Bill Gates and Tom Vander Ark are never far from the picture when those money making scams are at hand. In fact, the vile Vander Ark was very recently on the all white (sans one) Board of Directors from LA's Promise that is now firing all of their hard working educators, so they can hire cheaper ones. Sure that has nothing to do with profits though.

Thoughts on Matthew Di Carlo's recent Shanker Blog piece on the 'parent tricker'

Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) Annual Fundraiser Party December 10, 2011

UCLA Community School ASGE multi-purpose room
3201 W. 8th St. Los Angeles, CA 90005
Saturday, December 10, 2011 from 6:00 — 10:00 PM

FLYER FOR THIS EVENT


C E J MASQUERADE fundraising party!
CEJ parents, students and teachers invite you to our annual end of the year party. Please come celebrate a successful year with us.
Dinner, child care, games, performances, translation and DJ/dancing
Teachers and other professionals - $25 donation
Students, Parents and Community Members - $5 donation
NO MASKS OR COSTUMES REQUIRED

C J E ¡MASCARADA! Fiesta para recaudar fondos
Padres, alumnos y maestros de CJE les invitan a nuestra fiesta anual del fin del año. Por favor vengan a celebrar un año de éxito con nosotros.
Cena, cuidado de niños, juegos, representaciones, traducción y DJ/bailar
maestros - donación $25
alumnos, padres y miembros de la comunidad - donación $5
LAS MASCARAS Y LOS DISFRASES NO ESTAN NECESARIOS

Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) Annual Fundraiser Party December 10, 2011

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation

"It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them." — Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone speaking at Socialism 2011 on July 01, 2011 — Chicago, Illinois.



[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation

Schools Matter: Occupation of Logan Street School Rooms by a Corporate Charter Continues

"[C]reating a 'separate and unequal' education system through the co-locations of charter schools in public school buildings." — NYC Parents' Lawsuit

Photo by Lisa Baca-Sigala

A day after the Echo Parque community learned that Gabriella Charter Corporation had ended their week long occupation of Logan Street Elementary School's auditorium, evidence that Gabriella had merely taken over another room and moved their furniture into that room once they had emptied it of its existing contents came to light. Moreover, it looks like wealthy white Wendy Kopp's Teach for America (TFA) missionary corps is establishing a beachhead in our neighborhood. For the whole sordid story see: Occupation of Logan Street School Rooms by a Corporate Charter Continues.

For a background on this story please see: Gabriella Charter Corporation further encroaches Logan Street Public Elementary School. There is a gallery of photos related to these articles.

Schools Matter: Occupation of Logan Street School Rooms by a Corporate Charter Continues

On Democracy Now! "Poverty Is the Problem": Efforts to Cut Education Funding, Expand Standardized Testing Assailed

The Democracy Now! team discusses recent developments in New York's assessment plans, the U.S. Department of Education's controversial No Child Left Behind waiver extortion scheme, and other topics with celebrated education professor and author Dr. Diane Ravitch and New York City schoolteacher Brian Jones (The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman).



[click here if can't view this video]

I first posted the above on Schools Matter, but want to add that I just got done reading the transcript on Susan Ohanian's site, and was struck by the fact that the following exchange sums up the entire corporation education reform thrust in a nutshell:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Brian Jones, you're a teacher in the trenches. Can you talk about the pressures on teachers these days with this emphasis on standardized testing and what it means actually to the kind of work that you do?

BRIAN JONES: Well, to me, the students are cheated even before the test is taken. Look, the cheating, the real social cheating, happens in the way that the high-stakes standardized testing distorts school itself.

Let me tell one story. I was doing a science experiment with a group of fourth graders. We were in the middle of a week-long science experiment, and we had--everyone had trays out on their tables, and they were pouring and mixing and investigating. We were having all kinds of rich discussions. And an administrator came in and said, "You have to stop what you’re doing right now," handed—put down a pile of workbooks and said, "You have to begin doing this right now." I begged her, in front of the students, "Please, let us just finish this experiment right now, in the next few minutes, and then we’ll do that." She said, "No, you have to put all this away right now and get working on the workbooks." So, the kids are cheated ahead of time. It teaches teachers to jump through these hoops, to not encourage critical thinking. It teaches all of us that knowledge is somewhere produced by Pearson or by one of these test companies, and you can’t create it, you can't investigate it, you can't do any of that. All you have to do is, more or less, remember it.

Here's another way students are cheated. In elementary school, which I teach, we tend to go through genre studies. We take a genre of literature at a time and go through it. Well, now what more and more schools are doing is teaching the test itself as a genre--that is, studying the features of a test, as you would a novel, or as you would historical fiction or mysteries. You’re laughing, but this is very serious. Any teacher watching this knows what I'm talking about, that you, in elementary school, in many schools, especially the schools where that gun to the head is already cocked--in the poorest schools, in the schools that teach the most disadvantaged students, students of color, in schools in Harlem--you have to teach students how to take a test. You have to tell eight-year-olds about multiple choice, right? And the thing that gets me is that the, you know, wealthy individuals who promote these policies send their own kids to schools that look nothing like that, where inquiry is promoted, where they don't spend all day obsessing about how they’re going to do on someone else's test.

The entire transcript is worth reading, but both Ohanian and I were struck by Jones' powerful words.

On Democracy Now! "Poverty Is the Problem": Efforts to Cut Education Funding, Expand Standardized Testing Assailed

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

"This book is a breath of fresh air! The chapters take on central issues in education with a clear vision of what could be. Class, race, language and culture become not just educational 'problems,' but tools with which to rethink the future. A stellar addition to books in our field." — Jean Anyon, author of Marx and Education

"At a time when the capitalist class and their corporate allies in the media have waged an all-out assault on teachers, students, and public education, Education and Capitalismr esponds by speaking truth to power.... Drawing from the lived experiences of the editors and their students, and informed by cutting edge sociopolitical critique, Education and Capitalism clears the path for new understanding of the current assault on public schooling and points towards important directions if we are to save it." — Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution


EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

EDITED BY JEFF BALE AND SARAH KNOPP

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a conservative, bipartisan consensus dominates about what's wrong with our schools and how to fix them. In each case, those solutions scapegoat teachers, vilify our unions, and promise more private control and market mentality as the answer. In each case, students lose--especially students of color and the children of the working class and the poor.

This book, written by teacher activists, speaks back to that elite consensus. It draws on the ideas and experiences of social justice educators concerned with fighting against racism and for equality, and those of activists oriented on recapturing the radical roots of the labor movement. Informed by a revolutionary vision of pedagogy, schools, and education, it paints a radical critique of education in Corporate America, past and present, and contributes to a vision of alternatives for education and liberation. Inside are essays that trace Marxist theories of education under capitalism; outline the historical educational experiences of emergent bilingual and African American students; recap the history of teachers' unions; analyze the neoliberal attack on public schools under Obama; critically appraise Paolo Freire's legacy; and make the historical link between social revolution and struggles for literacy.

Sarah Knopp is a public high school teacher in Los Angeles and an activist with United Teachers Los Angeles.

Jeff Bale is assistant professor of second language education at Michigan State University. Their work has appeared in Rethinking Schools, International Socialist Review, and CounterPunch.


Available Fall 2011 | Trade paper | $17.00 | 220 pages | ISBN: 9781608461646
Published by Haymarket Books | www.haymarketbooks.org | info@haymarketbooks.org | 773-583-7884
For review or desk copies, contact Sarah Macaraeg, sarah@haymarketbooks.org

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

Matt Damon speaks truth to power and advocates for authentic reform

[click here if you can't view this video]

Valerie Strauss posted a transcript of this cogent and inspiring speech.

Matt Damon speaks truth to power and advocates for authentic reform

Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

This seemed worthy of publicizing.

What if we could get the oil companies to give schools kindergarten through universities 3 billion dollars a year? We can, if we get Proposition 1481 on the ballot. Authored by Cypress College Professor Peter Mathews, Prop 1481 is the ballot initiative that would tax oil extraction to fund education. California is the only state that does not tax oil extraction.

We can:

• Make higher education affordable to all
• Improve funding for K-12, reduce class size and prevent layoffs of teachers and staff
• improve quality of education

To help with the signature gathering effort here in Los Angeles, Economic Justice L.A. is asking folks to participate in one of two major mobilizations:

1. Saturday, August 27th 10 am-3pm the L.A. Sports Arena: 13th annual Family Back to School Health Festival Mothers in Action, and the Watts Times are some of the sponsors of this annual gathering where children can receive free hair cuts, immunizations, health screenings and school supplies. Thousands of working class families are expected to attend.
2. Monday August 29th: Back to School at Community Colleges all over L.A. As students return to their community colleges, they will be facing the most recent rounds of fee increases and class reductions: let's help them do something about it by signing the petition and circulating it among their friends. Students (or non students with free time that day) are needed at L.A.C.C., Trade Tech, Pasadena College, Harbor College, Southwest College, West L.A. College and others.

Here's how you can help: contact Economic Justice L.A. at 310-568-9622 and let us know which event you'd like to help out with. Or come to the next meeting of Economic Justice L.A. Sunday August 21 at 3p.m.

2617 S. Hauser Blvd.
Los Angeles 90016
(Between La Brea and Fairfax, 4 doors S. of Adams)

Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

Gabriella Charter Corporation further encroaches Logan Street Public Elementary School

"Colocation is eviction... It doesn't mean sharing, it means displacement." — NY State Sen. Bill Perkins


Gabriella Charter School Corporation continues to blatantly disregard the rights of the public school community at Echo Park's Logan Street Elementary School. Not content with having exceeded their allotment of space by several rooms, last week the well heeled executives of the corporate charter decided to forcibly annex Logan's entire auditorium. Here's an excerpt from one of the witnesses:

[We] looked into the school auditorium to discover that the Gabriella Charter School had moved its entire front office into the Logan auditorium. That includes desks, sofas, file cabinets, end tables and other various office paraphernalia. It was not there for storage. It was set up for business.

Set up for business indeed. As one can see from the photograph taken by a witness, this isn't furniture placed temporarily as if being rearranged, these desks are set up for use with lamps plugged in, papers and such at the ready. Moreover, none of Logan's administrators had been notified that their school's auditorium was appropriated by the adversarial charter corporation.

This egregious act by the corporate charter currently leaves Logan Street ES with no assembly space for their students or parents, and is part of a pattern of encroachment and disregard for the public school community that Gabriella occupies. Gabriella Corporation already caused Logan ES to cease offering any pre-school program because the charter took the two pre-kindergarden rooms. While LAUSD's legal department did contact the corporate charter and told them they needed to move their "office" out of Logan's auditorium, such notifications haven't done much in the past, as Gabriella has systematically violated its space cap several times in the past.

Shockingly, when Los Angeles Unified School Board President Monica Garcia was contacted regarding Gabriella Corporation's latest violation, she claimed she:

"Had to stay neutral in a case like this."

Community members and social justice activists are curious as to why our LAUSD trustee, whose district encompasses both Gabriella Charter Corporation and the public school it occupies would need to remain neutral when the charter is clearly violating the civil rights of all the public school families at Logan Street Elementary School. Echo Parque community members are encouraged to contact President Garcia at (213) 241-6180 or monica.garcia@lausd.net and discuss this incident with her.

Gabriella Charter School Corporation originally was able to gain a foothold on our neighborhood public school's campus under the insidious colocation provisions of Prop 39. Prop 39's colocation provisions were created by the deep pocketed California Charter Schools Association and their plutocrat backers in order to help undermine public schools and saddle taxpayers with the expenses of privately run charter schools over which they have negligible say or oversight.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Gabriella Corporation's governing board (Gabriella Axelrad Education Foundation) sports several dubious non-educators with some experience with displacing the public commons in favor of private interests. Anyone familiar with the tragic tale of urban farm destruction documented in the Academy Award nominated film The Garden, will recognize the names of those board members responsible.

While Los Angeles communities and social justice activists are just beginning to learn how to fight back against charter school colocations (read occupations), in other cities there are established movements actively doing so. In New York City, groups like the Grassroots Education Movement engage in this struggle, and there have even been lawsuits against charter encroachments. Some of these struggles are documented in the inspiring film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, a must see for public school supporters. In our local struggles, we need to place political pressure on Gabriella Charter School Corporation to stop encroaching on our public school, and to pressure LAUSD to enforce the civil rights of all the families enrolled at Logan Street Elementary School.

Gabriella Charter Corporation further encroaches Logan Street Public Elementary School

Daily Censored: Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

We address the soft bigotry of low expectations so that we may ignore the hard racism of inequity. — John Kuhn


What do Ben Shapiro, Whitney Tilson, The Heartland Institute, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, The Hoover Institution, Wendy Kopp, The Manhattan Institute, and Democrats for Education Reform all have in common? They all shamelessly use the meaningless and hackneyed phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations looks at the far right's bizarre assertions that Sesame Street is indoctrinating children in some sort of insidious left wing plot and that Children's Television Workshop's providing additional educational resources for children that "did not have reading literature in the house" is somehow tantamount to bigotry.

In the end, we know that access to books in the home is a major indicator of academic achievement and impoverished families have very limited access to books. That is where we should focus our efforts.

Published 2011-08-11 on The Daily Censored, please read it there and share widely.

Daily Censored: Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies

"Hedge funds and bankers have become the Sugar Daddies of charter schools." — Glen Ford

Black Agenda Report's executive editor Glen Ford speaks truth to corporate charter power!



[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

In addition to listening to the radio show, check out the full transcript of Ford's incredible commentary: Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies


Excerpt:

When it comes to the public schools, the Obama administration is allied with the most rapacious sectors of Wall Street and far-right foundations. That political reality is most evident in  the administration's campaign to establish a parallel national network of charter schools, with a heavy emphasis on inner cities. Obama and his education chief, Arne Duncan, have spent their first year and a half in office coercing states to expand charters or lose out on more than $4 billion in federal education moneys. Obama's allies on Wall Street invest heavily in charter schools, tapping into the public money stream to build their own vision of corporate education.

Black Agenda Report's coverage of the corporate onslaught against public education has been peerless. Simply searching for the word charter on their site produces a wealth of articles in which they name names and call things what they really are.

Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies

John Kuhn at SOS March

[Click here if you can't view this video]

Speaking truth to power.

John Kuhn at SOS March

Stand up for Obama and Clay Middle Schools!

LAUSD continues is top-down reform efforts of pouncing on the will of the community and educators of local schools.


Take a stand for Educational Justice.

Stand up for Obama and Clay Middle Schools!

Join the South L.A. Coalition to Defend Public Schools press conference and rally!

We need supporters to attend the press conference on Wednesday, July 27 12pm at Obama Middle School, 1700 West 46th St. (by corner of Vernon & Western).

What: Press Conference and Rally
When: Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Time: 12pm (noon)

Who: All honest people who care about creating more socially just education system. Join the South LA Coalition to Defend Public Schools at this action.
Why: Its time we stand up against Charter Schools and the Top-down education "de-form" efforts. Demand community control of our schools!
Contact: John Parker at johnthompsonparker@gmail.com

Background:
LAUSD continues is top-down reform efforts of pouncing on the will of the community and educators of local schools. On June 29th the Principal of Obama Middle School, Veronique Wills, was removed with no consultation with the educators and/or community. Obama is a new campus that was put up for bid during the first round on LAUSD Public School Choice Plan. Through the hard work of teachers, community, and the Local Teachers Union, UTLA, the Obama team wrote a 5-year school-wide plan that was developed on very progressive education ideas and received approval from the reluctant pro-charter School Board majority.

Despite the approval of the school plan, the Local District Superintendent, George McKenna unilaterally and unjustly removed Principal Wills at the end of the first year of the school plan. Principal Wills has built relationships with the surrounding the community and brought in many community groups to work with the school and tried, despite roadblocks from LAUSD and Local Supt. George McKenna, to not only raise test scores, but also develop the "whole child."

At neighboring Clay Middle School, the LAUSD School Board Majority once again, pushing their top down school "de-form" and giveaway agenda, has given away Clay Middle School to Green Dot Charter School Management Company. LAUSD School Board Majority has once again defied the will of the community and educators with this unilateral move and has shown the influence outside charter school companies and other venture philanthropist have on the school board.

LAUSD has shown complete disrespect for the South Central LA community and Educators at both Clay and Obama Middle Schools.

The South LA Coalition to Defend Public Schools demands Clay remain a Public School and the Principal Wills stay at Obama Middle School.

Stand up for Obama and Clay Middle Schools!

Labor Victory - NFL Players Association!

Congratulations to the NFLPA! How inspiring to see the workers' (players) solidarity win out over the insatiable greed of the NFL owners and bosses. We win when we're united, our rulers win when we're divided.

Let's hope the NBPA will also be able to overcome the plantation mentality of their bosses.



[Click here if you can't view this video]

Here's the message from the NFL Players Association.

Dear NFL Fan:

The players of the National Football League want to thank you for your support and patience during the lockout. We worked hard to reach a fair agreement and now that the lockout has been lifted, players and fans can enjoy the game they love.

Please find below an exclusive video featuring several of your favorite players thanking you the fan for rallying around them during this tough time.

We encourage you to share the video with other NFL fans that have supported the players during the lockout:

Forward this email to fellow NFL fans and share the video on your Facebook page
Retweet players using #ThankYouFans hashtag and share the video on your Twitter handle telling us how excited you are for the start of the 2011 season
Be sure to "like" the official NFLPA Facebook page for ongoing updates on all your favorite NFL players
Sincerely,

Players of the National Football League

Also see Dave Zirin's: Against All Odds: NFL Players Association Emerges From Lockout as Bruised, Battered Victors

Labor Victory - NFL Players Association!

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Sneak Peek

[Click here if you can't view the video]

We are trying to organize a public screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" in Echo Parque. The event is to be hosted by local groups. We're most likely going to show the film at the Echo Park Film Center, but haven't chosen a date as of yet. Our intention is to find a date in late August or early September.

"The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" was created in response to the mendacious charter school propaganda film created by Davis Guggenheim with funds from Philip Anschutz and Bill Gates. It counterposes social justice solutions to the corporate reforms proffered by those supporting the charter industry.

As an added bonus, the filmmakers held a lottery when distributing the film for public showings. The prize was a call from Professor Diane Ravitch, which our community won. Our intention is to have Dr. Ravitch on speaker phone or skype following the film.

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Sneak Peek

A reader speaks out on CNCA Corporation's Shannon Leonard's questionable credentials

I pressed the issue and asked, "so was [Mr. Leonard] a professor of education?" LMU's Director of Communications and Media retorted, "No, he was part time faculty."


The essay Camino Nuevo Corporation: A Little Less Than Honest Again? on EchoParkPatch demonstrated again that the well paid business executives running the corporate charter have little respect for the truth, and even less respect for our community. Catching Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Corporation in yet another lie precipitated much feedback, mostly positive, although several right wing privatization fanatics were angry that ordinary people were paying attention to corporate malfeasance.

However, one reader went further and actually did more research than anyone on Mr. Leonard's highly suspect resume. I feel it's worth reproducing here.

I read your blurb about Shannon Leonard, and did a little cyber-digging and found this:
 
"Shannon Leonard '01 selected for Echo Park's new school" Experienced educator Shannon Leonard has been selected to lead Echo Park's new school, Central Region Elementary School (CRES) #14."
 
it's at William & Mary's alumni page: https://www.wmalumni.com/?alumninews
 
My point is... this means that, as an 2001 B.A. Graduate of William & Mary, he should be, at most, 31-32 years of age (i.e. he turn 32 in calendar year 2011);
 
Now, it's a stretch to believe that he has done all of  the following since graduating from William & Mary in May 2001:
 

• Received 1 Master's Degree from UCLA;
• Received a 2nd Master's degree from Loyola Marymount;
• Earned "his California administrative credential from UCLA’s Principal Leadership Institute" (from the Camino Nuevo website... also someone else posted skepticism about the "UCLA's Principal Leadership Institute")
• Then worked "a distinguished educator with over ten years (!!!) of experience as both a teacher and a leader in urban and international school settings." (from the Camino Nuevo website.)
• Worked as a "Professor in Loyola Marymount's Department of Education"

Wow!!! That's a busy ten years!!!

Busy is an understatement, clearly when CNCA Corporation's public relations people were making his resume up, no one had the presence of mind to do the math and see if it added up. Perhaps the reactionary right wing M.V. person that claims that they will "support [Leonard] in any way possible" can explain how someone can have over ten years experience teaching when they have only been a graduate themselves for ten years. It's astonishing that CNCA can get away with such perfidy.

There's lying, and then there's mendaciousness that's nothing short of duplicitous. CNCA Corporation seems to have created a pervasive culture of the latter. No wonder, since their COO Hoa Truong is a graduate of the vile Broad Residency in Urban Education.

My recent Schools Matter piece Los Angeles privatization pushers take second biggest slice of reactionary Walton pie addresses the smug and sullen MBA Truong's Broadyte influence on CNCA Corporation:

Sure enough, in practice CNCA's principles and actions reflect that of their funders. Remember this tidbit from the Broad Residency FAQ:

[P]rivate sector experience is important because there are business best practices which can improve the way the education organizations are operated.

I'm always wondering which of the three core business practices (lying, cheating, and stealing) Broadytes are referring to. Well in this case it's lying.

Given the magnitude and the scope of all the things CNCA Corporation has been dishonest about to this point, we should all have grave concerns about all of their dealings. Every community deserves better than to have corporate charlatans running their schools, but fighting the groundswell of lucrative charter-voucher organizations out to profit off the public commons will take organizing and struggle on a much greater scale than we've seen so far.

A reader speaks out on CNCA Corporation's Shannon Leonard's questionable credentials

EchoParkPatch: A Mother's message to LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez

"If there's one thing I hope comes out of this is that Ms. Martinez thinks about the incident and reflects upon how she and the other board members ignored our community's voices throughout the entire process." — Windy Anne Bunts O'Malley


A Mother's message to LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez contains my interview with Windy O'Malley, the local mother who was wrongly and viciously accosted by LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez at the March 25, 2011 School Board Meeting. Following the interview is analysis of how Martinez was sidestepping issues of removing democracy and ignoring community voices.

The incident further exposes the so-called Public School Choice (PSC) resolution as the farce it is. PSC has always been about privatization, never about "choice" or to respond to communities. We also see in the essay how right wing privatization 501C3 groups, like the vile Families That Can, have unfettered access to LAUSD's halls of power, while actual parents and community members are entirely shut out. Here's a quote from the essay addressing why Martinez was so quick to hurl the hurtful accusations.

What this was about was silencing any dissent against the lucrative privatization of our public schools, and the filtering out any parents or community members that actually represent their constituent communities instead of well funded astroturf 501C3 groups.

Ultimately, Ms. Martinez should consider stepping down from the LAUSD board after she showed that she has nothing but contempt for parents and community members. Sadly, since LAUSD's Board currently serves the interests of plutocrats instead of constituents, she'll be around at least until the end of her term.

Published on EchoParkPatch, please read it there and share widely.

EchoParkPatch: A Mother's message to LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez

Alicia Brossy de Dios Reports Back from First Save Clay MS Community Meeting

"Any vote for Green Dot is a vote for deform... You are playing with the lives of children — not cars, not bicycles." — The Honorable Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte (LAUSD District 1)


Hello, everyone!

Yesterday I attended a great meeting regarding Clay Middle School and LAUSD's give away of Clay to Green Dot Charter. Congresswoman Maxine Waters was there to listen to concerns surrounding the give away. She said she agreed to this meeting because she had received so many phone calls from concerned parents and teachers who felt like their voices were not being heard by LAUSD.

Parents and teachers talked about intimidation and harassment (some regarding Clay MS, some regarding other schools and Public School Choice). They talked about being disrespected and misinformed (or not informed at all) by LAUSD. Teachers at Clay were given flyers to hand out to their students regarding the change from public school to a Charter run by Green Dot. Parents never received official notification via U.S. mail. Congresswoman Waters was not happy about that. Monique Epps from LAUSD's Charter office was in attendance. Waters politely but sternly questioned her about the way parents had not been properly informed about the changes at Clay. She asked what parents could do if they chose not to send their kids to the Green Dot Charter. Epps said parents could fill out an opt out form at her office and she would try to find them another school but that parents would be responsible for their own transportation. Waters was not happy about that either. She said she could think of a whole lot of lawsuits after all she heard at that meeting. At the end of the meeting a mother mentioned that when Locke was turned into a Charter, the district did provide transportation to those who chose not to attend the Charter.

One woman spoke about the Board's decision to do away with the advisory vote. She mentioned that she is in her 50's and was born in the 50's. She made reference to voting rights and African Americans. With the elimination of the advisory vote, she felt disenfranchised and she said it was an attack on the spirit. There was a lot of emotion. At the end of the meeting Waters said "the organizing is on!" She made a reference to any Green Dot or LAUSD people who were in the audience without introducing themselves to make their presence known. She said "there is a new sheriff in town!" She agreed to meet again next Saturday the 25th at 10 am at Clay MS. She asked Epps if that would be a problem (yesterday's meeting was held at a neighborhood church). I will send any information if it turns out to be somewhere else. I think it would be great if some of us could attend to help the Clay community, but also to see what we can learn from them.

Alicia Brossy de Dios is a public school teacher in Los Angeles and a member of the UTLA Board of Directors

Alicia Brossy de Dios Reports Back from First Save Clay MS Community Meeting