School's Out For Summer... And Fall?

I don't have any school-aged kids who I need to think about sending back to school next month. But my closest friend is an elementary school teacher in Compton. I'm worried about him, although neither the school district nor his union has said anything definitive about preparing for school. Yesterday, reporters Howard Blume, David Lauter and Nina Agrawal reported for the L.A. Times about the whole reopening idea. It strikes me as odd that people think they can plan that far in advance with the pandemic totally out of control in California, particularly in Los Angeles. On Thursday California reported new 7,248 cases. The total on Friday was 312,098 after another 8,775 new cases. There are now 7,898 cases per Californian. And it's almost all in Southern California-- L.A. worst of all. The half dozen worst hit counties in the state are all in southern California, which paid attention to the corrupt imbecile governor while the northern California mayors and county executives laughed this go-slow strategy towards shutting down. Friday's numbers:

• Los Angeles- 127,358 (+2,620)
• Riverside- 24,980 (+938)
• Orange- 22,960 (+872)
• San Diego- 18,863 (+461)
• San Bernardino- 18,275 (+861)
• Imperial- 7,759 (105)

Meanwhile San Francisco has just 4,316 cases and Santa Clara (San Jose) just 5,863 cases-- San Francisco with 171 new cases Friday and Santa Clara 185.

The L.A. school district-- different from Compton-- is supposed to start in 3 weeks but we don't think it's going to. For one thing, the teachers' unions are not buying it. "Californians," wrote the 3 reporters, "are deeply split over whether campuses can safely reopen amid the ongoing coronavirus surge-- caught in a collective moment of uncertainty and anxiety also reflected among teachers and education leaders."

Bangkok schools have reopened. This looks like a good idea. Will Trump pay?

T

My friend's union recommends that the first quarter should be 100% remote/online and the second quarter, depending circumstances, back in school with much fewer students-- maybe half the kids one day and half the next day.

Parents, as indicated in a new statewide poll, are grappling with the prospect of stressful, less effective learning at home-- not to mention continued child care woes-- and fears that children exposed at school could bring COVID-19 and its potentially deadly risks into their home.

Similar concerns among school workers are expected to crystallize in Los Angeles on Friday morning when the teachers union will recommend a delay in reopening campuses tentatively planned for Aug. 18. For now, learning from home-- in place since mid-March-- should continue, union leaders said.

The California Teachers Assn. on Thursday made a similar but less explicit statement, saying that conditions for keeping students safe have not been satisfied statewide.

L.A. school officials have not yet made a final decision other than to say that instruction will begin on the first day of school, one way or another.

...Overall, Californians are closely split on whether to continue with distance learning or go ahead with a limited reopening, according to the poll, which was conducted in consultation with The Times.

About 4 in 10 California adults want to stick with full-time distance learning this fall. A similarly sized group favors a limited reopening with students in school on alternating days or on half-day schedules. The staggered schedule would allow schools to comply with social distancing requirements, which typically require students to remain six feet apart.

Fewer than 2 in 10 support having students attend classes full time in person on a daily basis-- even if they follow social distancing guidelines, the poll found.

Respondents took part online in the California Community Poll from June 26 through July 6. The survey was commissioned by the Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality and the Los Angeles Urban League. Strategies 360, a California-based polling and political strategy firm, polled 1,184 adult citizens. The margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points.

The question of when and how to reopen campuses has divided experts and roiled politics up to the White House, with President Trump this week threatening to withhold funding for schools that don't open and challenging the advice of his own experts. He questioned the need for social distancing and labeled the safety guidelines from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as too tough, expensive and impractical. The CDC on Thursday refused to change its guidance.

"It’s clear that most Americans are much more conflicted about how to proceed-- whether it’s about wearing a mask or sending their children to school-- given the wide range of messages they’re hearing from their elected leaders," poll director Dan Schnur said.

California officials are contemplating, at best, a hybrid format, with students combining online sessions and work-at-home materials with part-time classes on campuses in small groups.

...In the poll, undertaken before Trump began touting reopening schools, residents of Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties-- where the toll from COVID-19 has been heaviest-- were significantly more in favor of keeping students off campus than residents of other parts of the state.

The poll found only small differences between parents and non-parents on the issue, but significant differences among different groups of parents. Among parents earning more than $75,000, about 3 in 10 supported a full reopening this fall. Among parents earning less than $75,000, only half as many supported reopening.

Black and Asian Pacific American parents were especially supportive of sticking with distance learning, with half or more in those groups in favor. Latino parents were most in favor of a partial reopening, with nearly half supporting that option. Whites, who have been less likely than Black people or Latinos to be hit by the virus, were the most evenly divided, with about 1 in 5 backing a full reopening.

Moreover, the political polarization that has divided Americans on nearly everything in recent years reinforces an urban-rural split, the poll found. Self-identified Republicans and conservatives, who are more likely to live in non-urban parts of the state, were much more likely to back reopening than were Democrats and liberals.

"These poll numbers show that Trump's call for a full reopening is most popular with men, seniors and rural white voters," Schnur said. "Trump will almost certainly not win California in November, but the demographic groups that are most supportive of opening the schools are the voters he needs to win in more competitive states."

But for most-- including education leaders-- the issues are more pragmatic than political.

"It seems to me that we are ill-prepared for the reopening of schools," said Lynwood Supt. Gudiel R. Crosthwaite. "Given the increase in rates not only in Southern California but throughout the country, it seems almost irresponsible for schools to open."

Lennox School District Supt. Scott Price said he's been involved in discussions with leaders of other school systems and some expect they'll be ready with some form of hybrid learning, while others say they probably will need to start the school year using distance learning. His school system is working out its strategy for the fall.

Las Virgenes Unified, which straddles the border of Ventura and L.A. counties, announced Thursday that it would offer both a hybrid schedule and online-only instruction-- not that it will be easy. The district already has spent $850,000 on safety and health enhancements, while cutting its districtwide budget.

"We're still running about 70% to 30% in favor of being on campus." Supt. Dan Stepenosky said. "Schools are critical for both public health and the economy... If we don't open or don't do it right, both the public health and economy will struggle."

Antonio Mendez can attest to the economic hardship.

An independent trucker who lives in the San Diego area, Mendez took on responsibility for supervising his children's studies while his wife holds onto her credit union job. He doesn’t have anyone besides his mother to watch his sons, ages 7 and 12, and he doesn’t want to risk exposing her.

“I don’t want to send my kids to school if there’s any threat of them catching this,” Mendez said.

For now, he wouldn’t feel comfortable even with a partial reopening of schools: “When I go pick up the groceries, I see people outside with no masks on. Those people might have kids. If they’re acting that irresponsibly... and I’ve gotta send my kids to school with those children, I’m not doing that.”

But Danielle Simmons, of San Bernardino, says her children, ages 7 and 10, need to get back to something as close to normal as possible.

“The distance learning," Simmons said, "it really is a headache.”

Though Del Rosa Elementary provided a laptop and iPad, the family had problems signing into Google Classroom and muting microphones, eating up time and causing frustration.

Besides, her children "need that interaction... They need to get out of the house and go back to what they’re familiar to,” she said.

But she will also consider whether the school is operating safely and will keep watch for spikes in the virus, she said.

"Remote education doesn’t work very well for very many kids," especially for young children and low-income families, said Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at UC Berkeley, who's had to help manage schoolwork for his own children at home. All the same, "you can’t go to schools if it’s not safe."

And when it comes to the coronavirus, "there’s a lot of science that we don’t understand."

Rating The 2020 Presidential Candidates On Their Education Stands

We wrote a post on Saturday-- published Sunday-- Are Democrats Going To Finally Get Behind Public Education For Real-- And Leave Charter Schools To The Republicans? that needs some updating. The education forum in Pittsburgh that the Democratic presidential candidates took part in has led to a valuable evaluation published by ElectraBlog. Mitchell Robinson wrote that "In the spirit of our country’s current rather draconian approach to 'accountability' in public education," he would describe each of the candidates’ performances "by rating them on the Danielson teacher evaluation rubric, a common teacher evaluation system used by many school districts across the nation." Each candidate was "graded on a simplistic, reductionist, atomistic, 4-point scale of the sort loved by corporate education reformers, as though it makes sense to distill the entirety of an individual’s performance on a complicated set of tasks to a single number between 1 and 4:

Highly Effective = 4
Effective = 3
Developing = 2
Ineffective = 1

The short version: the two progressives in the room, Bernie and Elizabeth, scored best. Charter school shill Michael Bennet did worst, although another charter school shill, Cory Booker, backed out of the forum at the last minute. Steyer was also rated "ineffective." Here are the scores, from best to worst:

• Bernie- 4
• Elizabeth- 4
• Klobuchar- 3
• Status Quo Joe- 3
• Mayo Pete- 3 (with a terrible caveat)
• Bennet- 1

Robinson wrote that Bernie was "an obvious favorite with the teachers in the house, Sanders entered the stage to a hero’s welcome. He was his usual garrulous self, alternately grousing and charming. Rumpled and tousled, Sanders is in many ways the anti-politician, and is unique in American politics. And teachers love him... As expected, Sanders’ best moments have to do with economic and labor issues: canceling college debt, making public colleges tuition-free, eliminating right-to-work laws, and strengthening unions. His best education response was on his opposition to No Child Left Behind because of its reliance on standardized testing. Sanders may be the most consistent political leader in the field, if not our nation’s history, and nothing he said at the Public Education Forum changed that record. The teachers in the hall loved Bernie, and his support among the members of the profession remains strong... HIGHLY EFFECTIVE."

Elizabeth Warren did just as well and "received one of the two strongest and most enthusiastic receptions from the crowd of public school teachers, students, and union officials in the hall. She used her two-minute opening spiel to describe how she would pay for the ambitious agenda outlined in her education plan (a 2 cent tax on high wealth individuals; 3 cents for billionaires), promised to get rid of high stakes testing (loud applause), and a lot more very specific policy ideas... HIGHLY EFFECTIVE."

Robinson was taken by Klobuchar and called her "the surprise star of the forum." He wrote that he "knew going in that Sanders and Warren were good on education, but Klobuchar was every bit as well prepared, thorough in her understanding of the issues, and communicated with skill, clarity, and grace. Klobuchar’s first words to the audience were about making the firing of Betsy DeVos her first act as president-- an idea that the crowd embraced with obvious enthusiasm... EFFECTIVE."

Status Quo Joe did better than I would have imagined he could. Robinson: "In the span of about 5 minutes, Biden reversed course on two of the major planks of the Obama era’s education policy platform: support for charter schools and standardized testing. If true, and not merely another instance of Biden-esque verbal imprecision, these are major reversals that signal a return to traditional Democratic policy positions." Yes, if true indeed. Biden is a compulsive liar on a near Trumpian scale and, like Trump, says whatever he needs to say depending on the audience's speaking to. I'd love to see him speak on the same topic to a bunch of charter school donors. Biden is full of shit and his words are worthless. Robinson generously gave him a 3 (EFFECTIVE) and added "Joe is an old-school politician, and knows how to work a room-- his support and respect for the profession of education is clear and honest-- he says that if he is president, teachers will have a friend in the White House, and I think teachers believe him; the concern is whether his apparent reversals of course on charters and testing are lasting, or fleeting." ( I would have rated him a 2 (DEVELOPING) by the standard being used.

Mayo Pete, as usual, was a sweet-talking consultant-schooled bullshitter. He's another one whose words are meaningless and says whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear. Robinson seemed surprised about something anyone who follows Mayo could have predicted: "Buttigieg’s time on the stage was curiously devoid of much in the way of, well…policy... Buttigieg finished his session by recycling the worn-out reformster argument from Raj Chetty, that 'a good kindergarten teacher is worth $300,000 to a kindergarten student’s earnings over time,' an idea that’s just…well…silly. What it does do is align with Buttigieg’s technocratic world view: that things are only valuable when they can be measured, preferably in dollars and cents. It’s the way that a McKinsey consultant whose number crunching results in firing nearly a thousand employees at a Michigan health insurance company might think about making education seem 'valuable,' by reducing the quality of one’s educational experience to a simple cost-benefit analysis–but it’s not how students, teachers, or parents value the education offered in their community’s schools." Robinson gave him a 3 (EFFECTIVE) but then reduced it a 1 (INEFFECTIVE)... "backdoor TFA?"





Also predictable was that Colorado Senator Michael Bennet would be the worst of the candidates who showed up. "Bennet began by claiming to be the 'first superintendent ever to run for president,' a boast that might have gone over better with this crowd if Bennet had ever studied education (he did not), or taught (he did not) before beginning his career in education as superintendent of Denver’s schools. Bennet then moved on to one his favorite talking points-- setting up the false choice that free preschool would be a better use of tax dollars than free public college and university tuition. As if this was an episode of Highlander instead of a serious policy discussion, and 'there can be only one.' He then pivoted to what would become a common theme among the candidates, the need for better teacher pay…but Bennet’s suggestion to pay teachers more came with some pretty shocking strings attached: a call for a 6 day school week, and year-round schools-- especially for urban schools. Neither of these ideas gained much traction with a room full of students and teachers–none of whom, it should be pointed out, would have been able to attend this Saturday forum if Bennet’s ideas were put into policy... For Bennet, equity is a beard for charters and privatization... Bennet followed up his performance at the Public Education Forum with a visit to a group of charter school activists who were protesting outside of the venue... INEFFECTIVE... Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Presidential Candidate."

And of course, never expect to see Michael Buy-The-Election Bloomberg at any kind of a free-wheeling policy forum like this.

Are Democrats Going To Finally Get Behind Public Education For Real-- And Leave Charter Schools To The Republicans?

This week I left my house for something that isn't part of my normal routine. While I braved rush-hour freeway traffic-- something I have avoided for at least a decade-- my friend drove straight from work to meet me at the Broad in downtown Los Angeles (DTLA), where it costs $8 to park-- every 15 minutes. My friend had to drive from Compton where he teaches elementary school. When we got to the imposing building that multi-billionaire Eli Broad built to house his contemporary art collection, my friend stopped for a moment. He's a teacher's union activist and he wanted to remind me that Broad has given nearly $700 million to fund the anti-union charter school movement. "Im only going to this because it's free," he said. I wouldn't give that asshole a dime." Yeah, me neither, but he's 86 and sick and soon God will be asking him why he spent so much time and effort trying to destroy public education. That photo up top is me at the Broad. So is this:

Yesterday, Moriah Balingit, writing for the Washington Post, reported that the Democrats are finally on the verge of leaving support for charter schools to the GOP, where it belongs. Yesterday, seven Democratic presidential candidates attended an education forum in Pittsburgh organized by teachers unions and civil rights groups, where they were asked about charter schools. "Teachers unions,"wrote Balingit, "have led the opposition to charter schools because they say the privately run but publicly funded campuses lack accountability and take critical resources away from traditional public schools."

Charter schools long enjoyed bipartisan support. They were championed by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who picked Arne Duncan, a reliable charter school ally, as his education secretary.

That era has ended. Near the end of Obama’s term, the NAACP called for a moratorium on charters. And President Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who poured her fortune into expanding charter schools and school voucher programs, has galvanized public education advocates fighting charter school expansion.

Last year, three Democratic governors campaigning on pledges to halt the expansion of charter schools won elections. Among the original eight candidates who were to speak Saturday, only Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) is an outspoken supporter of charters. Booker canceled late Friday because of the flu, his campaign manager said.

There are few places where school districts have felt the growing pains of charters more acutely than in Pennsylvania, a state that is among the most inequitable when it comes to funding among districts. Critics say charters, which often set up shop in low-income districts, exacerbate the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

...Under state law, school districts are required to pay tuition for children who decamp to charter schools, cutting monthly checks. The tuition is based on a rough calculation of what districts spend on their own students, but public schools say the amount is exorbitant, and beyond what charter schools need to operate. Cyber charter schools, with little in the way of facility costs, are paid just like bricks-and-mortar campuses.

Clairton, where more than 90 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, sends nearly 15 percent of its budget-- about $2.2 million-- to charter schools. That does not include transportation costs the district is required to cover for charter students-- even though the district cannot afford buses for its own students. Poor districts such as Clairton bear the brunt of charter school expenses, because students from wealthier districts have little incentive to leave their schools.

“What’s going to happen? We’ll be out of money in a year or so,” said Superintendent Ginny Hunt. “I’ve been able to keep us solvent by cutting everything. There’s nothing left to cut.”

The district has attempted to merge with neighboring systems, including West Jefferson Hills, where the median household income is more than double that in Clairton. The difference in school spending between the districts is so vast that it caught the attention of researchers, who concluded that the funding gap was the fourth largest among contiguous school districts in the country.

West Jefferson Hills said no. This year, when students in Clairton returned to a century-old building not renovated since the 1980s, high school students in the neighboring district began classes in a $95 million building. The new Thomas Jefferson High was designed to evoke Monticello, Jefferson’s mansion.

Across the river, in Mc­Keesport, schools Superintendent Mark P. Holtzman Jr. has viewed the two charter schools in his city with increasing trepidation, including Young Scholars, which attempted to buy an abandoned school building from the district. Officials rejected the offer, even though Young Scholars promised far above the asking price.

“If, in fact, they got their hands on this property, it would really sink us financially,” Holtzman said.

Holtzman, a McKeesport graduate, said rising charter expenses have forced the school board to repeatedly raise taxes on residents and businesses. His district educates some of the county’s neediest students, including those from a residential center that houses foster children and students in trouble with the law.

But rising charter school expenses have meant the delay of important maintenance projects, like repairing the middle school’s foundation or upgrading the stadium, which sprouts worrisome leaks when it rains. The high school has had to cut so many electives that many seniors leave school early because there are no classes for them.

Students at McKeesport Area High are keenly aware of what school would be like if the city were wealthier-- they see what it looks like when they pass through affluent schools for activities. Their school does not have enough laptops, and existing computers are outdated, making it difficult to access online class materials.

Even so, they struggle to understand why people would not want to attend their school, which they describe as welcoming, warm and close-knit. For students grappling with difficult upbringings, it’s a refuge.

“School is more a safe haven for some people,” said Aundre Robinson, a junior and the highest-ranked member of the school’s ROTC program. “It’s the only place where some kids eat throughout the day. It’s the only place where they don’t get yelled at and screamed at for something.”

One of the most important planks in Bernie's platform is about re-investing in public education. Recently, he wrote, "Every human being has the fundamental right to a good education. On this 65th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, we are committed to creating an education system that works for all people, not just the wealthy and powerful." There are 8 main goals he wants to achieve:

• Combat racial discrimination and school segregation
• End the unaccountable profit-motive of charter schools
• Provide equitable funding for public schools
• Give teachers a much-deserved raise by setting a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000, expanding collective bargaining rights and teacher tenure, and funding out-of-pocket expenses for classroom materials.
• Strengthens the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by ensuring that the federal government provides at least 50 percent of the funding for special education and giving special education teachers the support they need.
• Provide year-round, free universal school meals, and incentivizes locally sourced food.
• Make schools safe and inclusive by protecting the rights of all students from harassment, discrimination, and violence and enacting comprehensive gun violence prevention laws.
• Rebuild, modernize, and green our nation’s schools.

Bernie: "The United States, as the wealthiest country in history, should have the best education system in the world. Today, in a highly competitive global economy, if we are going to have the kind of standard of living that the people of this country deserve, we need to have the best educated workforce. But let me be very honest with you, and tell you that, sadly, that is not the case today. Our nation used to lead the world in the percentage of young Americans with college degrees. We were number one. Today, we are number 11, behind countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Australia-- and that is not acceptable. And here is the simple truth: 40 or 50 years ago, in California and Vermont, virtually any place in America, if you received a high school degree, the odds were pretty good that you would be able to get a decent paying job, raise a family, buy a house, buy a car, all on one income. That was the world 40 or 50 years ago. But that is not the world we live in today. The world has changed, the global economy has changed, technology has changed, and education has changed. Over the past decade, states all over America have made savage cuts to education, while, at the same time, providing massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations in America. Our kids and our students are too important to cut back on education, especially when those cuts reduce educational opportunities for underserved students, students of color, low income students, LGBTQ students and students with disabilities... In the twenty-first century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. If we are to succeed as a nation, public colleges and universities must be tuition free. Higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few. That means we have got to make public colleges and universities tuition free and we must substantially reduce student debt. Each and every year, hundreds of thousands of bright and qualified young people do not get a higher education for one reason and one reason alone: their family lacks the income. That is unfair to those families; and it is it is unfair to the future of this country."

Bernie’s education plan addresses the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for students in our K-12 schools. This plan calls for a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools and a fundamental re-thinking of the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system.

...Recognizing the problems in a one-size-fits-all model of education, teachers’ unions and parent activists established alternative, experimental “charter” schools to better serve kids struggling within the traditional system. But few charter schools have lived up to their promise. Instead, billionaires like DeVos and the Waltons, together with private equity and hedge fund executives, have bankrolled their expansion and poured tens of millions into school board and other local elections with the hope of privatizing public schools. Charter schools are led by unaccountable, private bodies, and their growth has drained funding from the public school system.

Moreover, the proliferation of charter schools has disproportionately affected communities of color-- 17 percent of charter schools are 99 percent minority, compared to 4 percent of traditional public schools. This has led the NAACP, the NEA, AFT and others to criticize the charter movement for intensifying racial segregation.

The damage to communities caused by unregulated charter school growth must be stopped and reversed.

As president, Bernie Sanders will fight to:

• Ban for-profit charter schools and support the NAACP’s moratorium on public funds for charter school expansion until a national audit has been completed to determine the impact of charter growth in each state. That means halting the use of public funds to underwrite new charter schools.
• We do not need two schools systems; we need to invest in our public schools system. That said, existing charter schools must be made accountable by:

◦ Mandating that charter schools comply with the same oversight requirements as public schools.
◦ Mandating that at least half of all charter school boards are teachers and parents.
◦ Disclosing student attrition rates, non-public funding sources, financial interests and other relevant data.
◦ Matching employment practices at charters with neighboring district schools, including standards set by collective bargaining agreements and restrictions on exorbitant CEO pay.
◦ Supporting the efforts of charter school teachers to unionize and bringing charter schools to the negotiating table.

...As president, Bernie Sanders will fight to equitably fund our schools. He will:

• Rethink the link between property taxes and education funding.
• Establish a national per-pupil spending floor.
• Eliminate barriers to college-readiness exams by ensuring states cover fees for the ACT, SAT and other college preparatory exams for all students.
• Triple Title I funding to ensure at-risk schools get the funding they need and end funding penalties for schools that attempt to desegregate.
• Provide schools with the resources needed to shrink class sizes.
• Provide $5 billion annually for career and technical education to give our students the skills they need to thrive once they graduate.
• Ensure schools in rural communities, indigenous communities, Puerto Rico and other U.S. Territories receive equitable funding.
• Give schools the funding needed to support arts, foreign language and music education to provide all students with important learning opportunities.

Bernie: "The historic teacher strikes of the past few years has brought national attention to the fact that teachers are paid totally inadequate wages. As a result of low pay and other inequities, 20 percent of teachers now leave the profession within five years-- a 40 percent increase from the historical average. This high rate of turnover is more pronounced in low-income communities of color." He promises, among other things, to fight to "significantly increase teacher pay by working with states to set a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000 tied to cost of living, years of service, and other qualifications; and allowing states to go beyond that floor based on geographic cost of living; to protect and expand collective bargaining rights and teacher tenure; and to triple the above-the-line tax deduction for educator expenses and index it to inflation to reimburse teachers for the nearly $500 on average they spend on out of pocket classroom expenses each year."

UPDATE

A friend of mine, uncredentialed, works at a charter school near my home. I asked him what it's like working there. He told me that "Like most workers these days, the oppression of the staff manifests itself in job precarity, inadequate compensation and poor working conditions. Despite its non-profit status the charter school functions like any business; there is even a multimillion dollar property building equity with each mortgage payment. And like any business, there is a bottom line placing downward pressure on the wage and benefits of its employees. Every employee hired by the administration, from the teachers to the custodial staff, is an 'at will employee', meaning their contract can be terminated at any point for any reason. This system of employment leaves us little room to bargain individually for better pay and was recently weaponized against us in our attempts to unionize. This past year teachers organizing with UTLA were met with a series of reactionary tactics by the administration including intimidation and spying. In one of the most disturbing cases a particularly outspoken teacher organizer had her hours cut in half once her yearly 'at will' contract ended."

 

AOC And Pramila Take On Mayo Pete And Status Quo Joe And Their Slick Conservative Talking Points

If the Democratic primary is about picking the slickest, smoothest liar, there's no contest. Well... Status Quo Joe is certainly the biggest liar among Democrats, but Mayo Pete is the slickest and smoothest. That's what working as a McKinsey consultant teaches you. If you can't look someone straight in the eye and persuade them that up is down, the moon is made of green cheese and 2 + 2 = 5, you don't last as long as Mayo Pete did at McKinsey.

When Mayo began his p.r.-driven campaign, he hadn't yet decided which lane to run in. Not having much of a record, and with no values or principles-- other than personal careerism-- weighing him down, he flip-flopped between running as a progressive reformer and as a conservative establishment defender. For him is was deciding on which tie to wear on any given day. In the end, the flood of cash was just too much for him to resist and he's now in it as a full-fledged advocate of the status quo establishment, every bit as much as decrepit class warriors Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg.

One of the crucial debates in the 1940's over Social Security-- rabidly opposed by conservatives on both sides of the aisle-- was over including rich people. After all, the super-wealthy didn't need Social Security payments, why include them in? It was a shrewd move by the conservatives, but progressives understood how excluding people based on any factor would guarantee that there would always be a class of people-- and the rich are a powerful class of people-- dedicated to destroying the system and repealing it. In the end, Social Security is so successful-- despite what conservatives predicted so hysterically and vehemently-- because it is universal. Mayo is using the same old divisive conservative talking points to try to undermine Medicare-for-All and undermine reinstating free state colleges. He's slick but he isn't fooling everyone. He sure isn't fooling AOC.

Thursday, Congress' most popular member let loose a twitter storm against Mayo Pete's sneaky elitism. This is it-- AOC sounding like FDR-- in narrative form:

Universal public systems are designed to benefit EVERYBODY! Everyone contributes and everyone enjoys. We don’t ban the rich from public schools, firefighters, or libraries becauce they are public goods. Universal systems that benefit everyone are stronger because everyone’s invested! When you start carving people out and adding asterisks to who can benefit from goods that should be available to all, cracks in the system develop. Many children of the elite want to go to private, Ivyesque schools anyway, which aren’t covered by tuition-free public college! Lastly, and I can’t believe we have to remind people of this, but it’s GOOD to have classrooms (from pre-k through college!) to be socioeconomically integrated. Having students from different incomes & backgrounds in the same classroom is good for society & economic mobility.

Is Mayo using GOP talking points? Well... to be fair, his talking points are more conservative, neo-liberal and corporatist than specifically Republican. Mayo is a Democrat, maybe a Democratic from the Republican wing of the party but, still, a Democrat. His kind of Democrat doesn't have to turn to the GOP for talking points when they can get them from the Blue Dogs, New Dems, Third Way, the DCCC, the DSCC, Forward Center, Problem Solvers, etc. And, remember, the 3 B's-- Biden, Bloomberg and Buttigieg-- are all packaging these same conservative talking points to undermine the progressive agenda that appeals to the working class whose interests each is essentially running against.

Should We Re-Examine The Right To Vote?

I recall a high school teacher of mine-- at James Madison High School, the same Brooklyn high school where Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bernie Sanders, Cousin Brucie, Chris Rock, Chuck Schumer and Carol King went-- telling me-- or maybe the whole class-- that democracy pretty much sucked... but was better than any alternative system of government.

I can't count the number of times I've seen a Trump voter talking, when I've had to bite my tongue rather than go down a path that leads to... these morons shouldn't be allowed to vote. Should someone insisting the word is flat be able to vote? How about that Global Warming is a hoax? They're going to help decide whether mankind deals with it or not?

The part of the Socrates anti-democracy spiel in the video above that gives some hope is his idea that democracy among educated people was a good idea. Then the question becomes, "how educated?" And, with education increasingly a perk for wealthy people, we start running into a sticky-wicket. Conservatives have always opposed free public education-- and still do. Why should they, the reasoning went, pay for poor peoples' children to go to school.

Conservatives went bonkers over land grant colleges and opposed the two Morrill Acts (1862 and 1890). This was the beginning of state colleges and universities, publicly funded schools. It took a few years but the first Morrill Act was passed by Congress in 1859 and vetoed by worthless conservative shit-bag James Buchanan. It passed again in 1861-- the secessionist/conservative states having no say this time-- and Abraham Lincoln signed it. The first states to accept were Iowa, Kansas and New Jersey (Iowa State University, Kansas State University and Rutgers). The second Morrill Act (1890) was aimed at the former Confederate States but the twist is that-- each state had to prove there was no racism involved in admissions. The grants established several of what we called today historically Black colleges.

According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research at SUNY, Buffalo, "technically it was the faster growth rate of the U.S. economy that led to its overtaking the United Kingdom as economic superpower." The study, published in 2018 by the Journal of Human Capital, explored the contributing factors. "Identifying the land-grant college system triggered by the 1862/1890 Morrill Acts (MAs) as a major contributor, we develop this hypothesis theoretically and test it via difference-in-differences regression analyses viewing the MAs as the experiment, the United States or U.S. states as treatment groups, and the United Kingdom as the chief control group in the country-level comparisons. Using national and state-level data, we estimate that the MAs produced sizeable educational and economic returns that catapulted the United States into its leading status."

An educated citizenry is one of the most powerful planks in Bernie's 2020 platform. He introduces his idea for free public colleges (basically the land grant colleges-- minus MIT and Cornell) and college debt cancellation by pointing out that "just 30 years ago, tuition and fees at a public, four-year university totaled $3,360 per year in today’s dollars. That same degree today costs more than $10,000 per year in tuition and fees and more than $21,000 per year including room and board. Meanwhile, median hourly wages for college graduates have risen by less than $1 since 2001, when adjusted for inflation. The promise of higher pay has not materialized for recent college graduates, who have been taking out more and more in student loans to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of tuition. This has led to a generation of young people unable to start families, buy homes, and follow their dreams. We have failed a generation of our young people... You are not truly free when you graduate college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt. You are not truly free when you cannot pursue your dream of becoming a teacher, environmentalist, journalist or nurse because you cannot make enough money to cover your monthly student loan payments. And you are not truly free when the vast majority of good-paying jobs require a degree that requires taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to obtain. We are going to end the racial and class disparities that persist throughout higher education. We will close these gaps and ensure all Americans, no matter their race, income, zip code, or immigration status receive a high quality education. Not only will we guarantee the right to a good, public education for all-- from childcare and pre-kindergarten through college-- we will free generations of Americans from the outrageous burden of student loans by canceling all existing student debt. When we are in the White House, we will:

Make Public Colleges, Universities, and Trade Schools Free for All

Attending some of the best public colleges and universities was essentially free for students 50 years ago. Now, students are forced to pay upwards of $21,000 each year to attend those same schools.

Every young person, regardless of their family income, the color of their skin, disability, or immigration status should have the opportunity to attend college.

When Bernie is in the White House, he will pass the College for All Act to provide at least $48 billion per year to eliminate tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities, tribal colleges, community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs. Everyone deserves the right to a good higher education if they choose to pursue it, no matter their income.

Cancel All Existing Student Debt

Today in our country, 45 million people hold some $1.6 trillion in student debt. The average college student in the U.S. graduates with close to $30,000 in student loans and one in six college students will be stuck with over $50,000 in student loan debt after graduation. The reality we face is that more than half of students who enroll in college don’t complete a degree. Millions are leaving school with no degree and thousands of dollars in debt. Nearly forty percent of college students would consider dropping out to avoid incurring more student loan debt. And this isn’t a crisis just for young students and graduates. More than three million older Americans still have student loan debt, and thousands are currently having their Social Security checks garnished to pay them off. Bernie believes this is an unacceptable and untenable situation.

Almost two-thirds of all student debt-- nearly $929 billion as of 2019-- in the U.S. is held by women. One-third of Latino borrowers do not complete their degrees, compared to only one-fourth of white borrowers. 35 percent of Latino student loan borrowers who started college in 2003-2004 defaulted on their loans, compared to only 20 percent of white borrowers. Black students take out loans at a higher rate to pay for school, graduate with more student debt than white counterparts and, because of income disparities, take longer to pay it off while paying more interest. This proposal would cut the racial wealth gap for young Americans by more than half-- from 12:1 to 5:1. Bernie believes our country is morally bound to close the racial wealth divide. In order to do that we are going to cancel all student debt.

Seventy-three percent of the benefits of cancelling all student debt will go to the bottom 80 percent of Americans, who are making less than $127,000 a year. President Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations cost more than $2 trillion, 83 percent of which will end up going to the top 1 percent. Bernie believes that money would be better spent on freeing millions of hardworking people from the burden of student debt,  boosting the economy by $1 trillion over the next ten years, and creating up to 1.5 million new jobs every year. By canceling student debt, we will save the average student loan borrower around $3,000 a year in student loan payments. That money will be freed up to spend on everything from housing to starting a business.

When Bernie is in the White House, he will cancel the entire $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt for the 45 million borrowers who are weighed down by the crushing burden of student debt. This will save around $3,000 a year for the average student loan borrower.





Make College Debt-Free for All

Unbelievably, 45 percent of college students report struggling with hunger, 56 percent report struggling with the cost of housing, and 17 percent say they experienced homelessness. In the richest country in the history of the world, students should not have to starve in order to get an education.

Low-income students who receive Pell Grants graduate with an average of $31,000 in student loan debt-- $4,500 more than their peers who did not receive Pell Grants.

When Bernie is in the White House, he will provide Pell Grants to low-income students to cover the non-tuition and fee costs of school, including: housing, books, supplies, transportation, and other costs of living; require participating states and tribes to cover the full cost of obtaining  a degree for low-income students (normally those with a family income of less than $25,000) by covering any gap that may still exist after we eliminate tuition, fees, and grants; place a cap on student loan interest rates going forward. The federal government shouldn’t make billions of dollars in profit off of student loans while students are drowning in debt. We should invest in young Americans-- not leverage their futures. Today, the average interest rate on undergraduate student loans is more than 5 percent. Under this proposal, we will cap student loan interest rates at 1.88 percent. In addition to eliminating tuition and fees, we will match any additional spending from states and tribes which reduces the cost of attending school at a dollar for dollar rate. This funding goes beyond closing the cost gap-- participating states and tribes could use this money to hire additional faculty, ensure professors get professional development opportunities, and increase students’ access to educational opportunities."

His platform also call for "Triple funding for the Work-Study Program. By tripling funding for this program, we can build valuable career experiences for students that will help them after they graduate.Today, this program provides about $1,760 per year to some 700,000 students. When we are in the White House, we will expand the program to reach at least 2.1 million students-- a 1.4 million student increase. And we will ensure that funding targets schools that have large low-income student enrollment.

Invest in Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions

Established as institutions to educate African Americans during segregation, HBCUs continue to fill an important role in providing access to quality higher educational opportunities for African Americans. We must address the persistent racial disparities that still exist in higher education by investing in the institutions that consistently demonstrate the most effective pathway to a degree for African-American students. Black students are nearly 16 percent more likely to graduate from an HBCU in six years than similar black students at predominantly white institutions. We must ensure adequate federal support for these institutions and work to eliminate tuition and fees at private HBCUs and MSIs.

When Bernie is in the White House, he will provide $1.3 billion to private, nonprofit HBCUs and MSIs every year to eliminate or significantly reduce tuition and fees for low-income students. This funding would support some 200 schools which serve at least 35 percent low-income students.

End Equity Gaps in Higher Education Attainment

In the 21st century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. Higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few. According to a recent report, “14.3 percent of people with disabilities (ages 25-34) attained a bachelor’s degree or more, compared to 37.2 percent of their peers without disabilities, reflecting a 22.9 percentage point gap.” The Washington Post reports that you have a 1 in 2 chance of earning an undergraduate degree by age 24 if your family makes above $90,000, but just a 1 in 17 chance to do the same if your family makes less than $35,000. Twenty-three percent of first-generation college students defaulted on their student loans within 12 years.

To address these inequities, we must make a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools and fundamentally rethink the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system. Part of that is ensuring all our students get the help they need so they are ready for college and receive the support they need when they are in college.

When we are in the White House, we will double funding for the TRIO Programs and increases funding for the GEAR UP Program so more low-income students, students with disabilities, and first-generation students can attend and graduate college with a degree. By increasing our investment in these programs, we will reach 1.5 million students through TRIO programs and more than 100,000 additional students through GEAR UP than the program reaches today.

Tax Wall Street Gambling to Cancel All Student Debt and Pay for College for All

We can guarantee higher education as a right for all and cancel all student debt for an estimated $2.2 trillion. To pay for this, we will impose a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy a decade ago. This Wall Street speculation tax will raise $2.4 trillion over the next ten years.  It works by placing a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades-- 50 cents on every $100 of stock--  a 0.1 percent fee on bond trades, and a 0.005 percent fee on derivative trades.

If Wall Street can be bailed out for several trillion dollars, 45 million Americans can and will be bailed out of the $1.6 trillion burden of student loan debt and we can provide free college for all. Some 40 countries throughout the world have imposed a similar tax, including Britain, South Korea, Hong Kong, Brazil, Germany, France, Switzerland and China.

Bernie Calls For Banning For-Profit Charter Schools-- Strengthening Public Schools

Lara Trump isn't supposed to be the brightest of the Trump menagerie and she's certainly always welcome at Fox. Yesterday she was babbling some incoherent nonsense about how sad it is that Democrats want to beat her father-in-law, almost universally recognized as the worst"president"-- if history will even remember him as a president-- on history. "Shouldn’t you want someone that you think can run the country well, that’s gonna do the best job at being president, not just beat Donald Trump? But I think it actually speaks to the fact that there are still a lot of people who out there that are very upset that Hillary Clinton did not win in 2016." There may be, but the only people I know who pine for Hillary are people who recognize how much better she would have been than Trump. Anyone-- even Status Quo Joe, the worst of the Democratic alternatives, would be better than Trump.

Author and Princeton history professor Julian Zelizer reported how Trump is trying to be king. He singled out 4 precedents:

• Delegitimating oversight
• Using the bully pulpit for disinformation
• Legitimating conflict of interest
• Using national emergency power to replace legislating

The Worst. Ever. So... according to Newton's third law of physics, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." That suggests that following Trump-- the worst-- the U.S. is ready for-- not some mediocrity like Status Quo Joe Biden-- for someone as good as Trump is bad-- a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or-- better yet-- the two of them on a unity ticket.

Today, Bernie, basically ignoring the ugly and demeaning Trumpism that almost defines everything in our world, delivered an important education policy speech in Orangeburg, South Carolina-- as if Trump didn't exist. He called for a ban on all for-profit charter schools-- pretty much the opposite of what both corporate Democrats and the Republican Party have been working for-- and a moratorium on the funding of all public charter school expansion until after a national audit, a policy suggestion that comes from the NAACP.

California already has a new ban on for-profit charter schools. This will immediately put Bernie at odds with more corporate Democrats-- particularly Beto, Cory Booker, Tim Ryan and McKinsey Pete all of whom have admitted to being for charter schools, No other Democratic candidate has called for a ban on for-profit charter schools yet, but probably will now that Bernie has. These are the positions he laid out today:

• Mandating that charter schools comply with the same oversight requirements as public schools
• Mandating that at least half of all charter school boards are teachers and parents
• Disclosing student attrition rates, non-public funding sources, financial interests and other relevant data
• Matching employment practices at charters with neighboring district schools, including standards set by collective bargaining agreements and restrictions on exorbitant CEO pay
• Supporting the efforts of charter school teachers to unionize and bringing charter schools to the negotiating table

Watch who lauds Bernie's position and who unmasks themselves as the corporate whores being paid off to go on the warpath against him. I wonder how long Biden can keep quiet on the subject and not take a stand one way or the other. See if you can identify the corporate whore below (hint: she's completely in sync with both Betsy DeVos and that wretched Trumpanzee daughter-in-law).

Sanders will concede that the initial goal of charter schools-- to help kids with unique learning needs-- was admirable. But he will argue the system has been corrupted by wealthy activists who spent millions to privatize these schools, leaving them unaccountable and draining funds from the public school system.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, lauded the Sanders plan. In a statement to CNN, she called the proposal "vitally important" and said that it would provide real checks and balances for the charter school system.

"For the last several decades, the unregulated growth of private charter schools has siphoned off money from public schools, with little protection against fraud, and little attention paid to equity or quality when it comes to educating kids," Weingarten said. "The senator's plan takes tangible steps toward making the charter school industry accountable to parents and the public."

Those who operate these schools feel differently. Amy Wilkins, senior vice president of advocacy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, points out that three California branches of the NAACP broke with the national organization's call for a moratorium on funding. She noted that there was evidence that charter schools have helped thousands of children in at-risk situations.

"Sanders' call is out of touch-- as usual-- with what African Americans want," Wilkins said in a statement to CNN. "More disturbing, the senator-- for personal political gain-- would literally lock African American students into schools that have failed them for generations."

Really? Out of touch? Here's Bernie's plan; please read it and decide if he's out of touch, the way the charter school shills-- like Jonathan Chait-- are saying he is. "Our nation," he wrote, "used to lead the world in the percentage of young Americans with college degrees. We were number one. Today, we are number 11, behind countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Australia-- and that is not acceptable. And here is the simple truth: 40 or 50 years ago, in California and Vermont, virtually any place in America, if you received a high school degree, the odds were pretty good that you would be able to get a decent paying job, raise a family, buy a house, buy a car, all on one income. That was the world 40 or 50 years ago. But that is not the world we live in today. The world has changed, the global economy has changed, technology has changed, and education has changed. Over the past decade, states all over America have made savage cuts to education, while, at the same time, providing massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations in America. Our kids and our students are too important to cut back on education, especially when those cuts reduce educational opportunities for underserved students, students of color, low income students, LGBTQ students and students with disabilities."

In the twenty-first century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. If we are to succeed as a nation, public colleges and universities must be tuition free. Higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few. That means we have got to make public colleges and universities tuition free and we must substantially reduce student debt. Each and every year, hundreds of thousands of bright and qualified young people do not get a higher education for one reason and one reason alone: their family lacks the income. That is unfair to those families; and it is it is unfair to the future of this country.

Instead of pursuing their dreams of being an environmentalist, a teacher, a social worker, or an artist, too many Americans end up taking higher-paying jobs on Wall Street or as accountants or as corporate managers simply to pay back their student loans. We need environmentalists. We need people to take care of the poor. We need health care providers to choose to work in community health centers. We need good teachers. Each and every American must be able to get the education they need to match their skills and fulfill their dreams.

In fulfilling those dreams, we must make teaching a highly attractive profession again. Teachers have one of the toughest and most demanding jobs in America. Teachers have been the leaders in the fight to improve public schools, reduce class sizes, and provide every student with books, computers and safe, high quality schools. What encourages me and gives me so much hope about the future is that teachers across the country are standing up and saying enough is enough! The wealthiest people in America cannot have it all, while public schools all over America are falling apart.

Over the past year, tens of thousands of teachers across the country have gone on strike to demand greater investment in public education. The wave of teacher strikes throughout the country provides an historic opportunity to make the investments we desperately need to make our public education system the best in the industrialized world, not one of the poorest.

Bernie’s education plan addresses the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for students in our K-12 schools. This plan calls for a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools and a fundamental re-thinking of the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system.

Universal school lunches and a $60,000 floor on teachers salaries, which Bernie proposed in his South Carolina speech today-- seem like a pretty good straight-forward idea too. Right? Where do you think the opposition to those two proposals will come from? Come on, take a guess. It's not a trick question. On a macro-level, it hasn't changed since the debate in the colonies on whether or not we should declare our independence. A third of the population opposed that. Many fought on the side of the colonial occupiers. Don't remember? Starts with con...