This Won't Deter Them

Here is the LA Times analysis of the school board elections on Tuesday:

Outside interests poured money into Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's war chest for this week's school board elections in an attempt to influence education reform here and nationwide. But when the votes were tallied, the group could count only one clear winner.

The mayor's political action committee, which amassed more than $3.9 million on behalf of three candidates, secured just incumbent Monica Garcia's seat.

In the other two races, the Coalition for School Reform lost its bid to unseat incumbent Steve Zimmer, who was backed by the teachers union. The group's other favored candidate, Antonio Sanchez, is headed for a May 21 runoff.

The results were "a loss for the mayor and the future of reform in the district," said former state Sen. Gloria Romero, who is generally allied with Villaraigosa's education agenda.

But American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten summed up Tuesday's election this way: "Big monied interests — most of whom live far away from Los Angeles and virtually none of whom have children in LAUSD schools — were rebuked by parents, teachers and the community."

Leaving aside the audacity of Weingarten bragging about parents, teachers and a local community beating back monied interests from outside the district when she often helicopters into districts from her DC home to try and influence policy and contract negotiations in places like Baltimore, Newark, New Haven and Philadelphia, let's just assume that the losses suffered by the ed deformers in the LA school board race will not deter them from trying to buy the next school board elections.

Let us assume that the lesson they will take from this is throw more money into the race - or circumvent the democratic process completely and engineer backroom deals that disenfranchise parents, teachers and the local community from having a say in the process.

Isn't that what ALEC is all about?

Isn't that what the Common Core Federal Standards movement was all about?

Isn't that what the Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation and Bloomberg's political PAC all about?

Bloomberg in particular has a few scalps in his PAC belt.

You can bet a couple of percentage points loss in this school board race won't deter him from trying to buy future school board races or simply force through his policy preferences in some backroom deal.

Bloomberg's Legacy

Here it is:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is reportedly $5 billion richer this year than he was last year, good for the number 13 spot on a Forbes list of billionaires.

According to a new report being released today and previewed in the Wall Street Journal, "More than 21,000 children—an unprecedented 1% of the city's youth—slept each night in a city shelter in January, an increase of 22% in the past year."

Really says it all.

1% of the city's youth slept each night in a shelter in January.

Bloomberg has $5 billion more than he had the year before.

These two stories are not unrelated.

Bloomberg and his fellow oligarchs are gobbling up more and more of the wealth and leaving less and less for the rest of us

Common Core Kindergarten Homework

Via @ The Chalk Face, here is a piece of Common Core homework brought to you by Pearson:

Kindergarten homework?

What the hell happened to afterschool play?

@ The Chalk Face describes how one little boy reacts to his Pearson work:

Sara Wottawa is a parent in New York who is highly conscientious of her kids’ school work and progress.  Today, she posted the following on Facebook:

Today I am very emotional and upset. My son, who is in kindergarten, is very cooperative in school but when he comes home he emotionally falls apart. Today after trying to assist him with his developmentally inappropriate homework I reached my breaking point. I decided for the remainder of the year he will no longer take part in completing developmentally inappropriate homework.

What damage is being done to this generation of children by the Best and Brightest who have brought us the untested, unpiloted, developmentally inappropriate Common Core Federal Standards?

As we saw last month, the Common Core work is already driving up the anxiety level of kindergarteners by giving them work they are not ready for (and shouldn't be ready for!)

These standards have been rammed through by the oligarchy to try and show the peons how "stupid" our children are, how "failing" our schools are, how "we" are at fault for the economy because we and our kids are just not smart enough to handle the work needed for the 21st century economy, why "we" are the reason why the American Experiment in democracy is failing.

None of this is true, of course.

Our children are NOT stupid, our schools are NOT failing, we are NOT at fault for the economy collapse, we are NOT at fault for the failures of government and the political classes.

The problems the country is facing quite simply come from the oligarchy looking to steal every bit of wealth in this country and leave nothing for the rest of us.

They're scapegoating the working and middle classes ("You're not working hard enough to succeed in the 21st Century economy"), they're blaming the school system ("Children are not receiving the 21st Century skills they need to succeed in the global economy"), they're promoting education reform and Common Core and school choice as the solution for these problems.

But they're the ones causing all of the income inequality and poverty with their economic policies and tax policies meant to distribute ALL of the wealth upward.

Of course education reform, Common Core, and school choice are not meant to solve the problems of income inequality, poverty and the like.

They are meant to be used as a bludgeon against what little is left of the Liberal Project as the Shock Doctrinaires strip every bit of the "public" and the "commons" from American life, privatize every public institution in sight, and gobble up all the wealth (NOTE: Dow at all time high - unemployment, income stagnation, social mobility remain HUGE problems for all but the 1%.)

The American Experiment is coming to an end.  We are now fully in the American Empire where the powers that be subvert democracy by spending billions to buy the offices they want (see here), where the powers that be ram through education programs that are meant to further exacerbate the problems (NOTE: Not one oligarch is sending his/her kid to a school run under the education reforms the oligarchs are pushing for other people's kids), where they steal all the money and get government bailouts and run up the government debt and then blame us for the problem and look to cut what little is left of the social safety net as the solution.

It's a rough time to be a kid here in America.

It's a rough time to be a teacher.

With labor leaders like Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew supporting the oligarchy in their attempts to destroy the working and middle classes, to implement a privatization program for schools, and to bust the unions and break what little power is left with working people, the future looks quite dim.

But the resistance to Common Core and reform and privatization is growing.

They've got the money and the media.

But the resistance has the numbers.

99%, in fact.

Time to use that against the oligarchy.

We can start by boycotting the Pearson kindergarten homework.