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Saturday, May 24, 2014

How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities | The Nation

How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities | The Nation:



Classroom
(Photo Courtesy of Don Harder, CC2.0)
A new secessionist movement, anchored in the South, provides yet another reminder that “separate” still means “unequal” when it comes to the racial dynamics of the nation’s public schools.
The small middle-class town of Gardendale, Alabama, outside Birmingham, voted on November 12 to secede from the Jefferson County school district and then to raise taxes on themselves to finance the solo venture. Then, in March, Gardendale’s 14,000 residents finally got their own Board of Education. Soon after his appointment, one new board member, Clayton “Dick” Lee III, a banker and father of two, said he aspires to build a “best in class” school system “which exceeds the capabilities of the system which we are exiting.”
As Gardendale officials try to construct that “best in class” system in their prosperous community, they’ve relied on advice from their neighbors to the east in Trussville, a wealthy white suburb that broke away from the county schools in 2005. Gardendale, where about 86 percent of residents are white, is the fourth district since the late 1980s to secede from Jefferson County’s schools. About half the students in Jefferson County’s schools are either African-American or Latino, and 57 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch, the standard marker for poverty in public education.
With 36,000 students, Jefferson County’s shrinking catchment area is emblematic of a new secessionism in which cities, towns, even unincorporated areas renounce membership in a larger school district to strike out on their own. A trend befitting our individualistic times, secessionism, in many cases, cracks apart well-established, broadly defined educational communities into ever more narrow and ever more racially homogeneous ones. Sixty years afterBrown v. Board of Education, new break away districts threaten to exacerbate resource disparities between wealthy and poor communities and sweep away any remnants of desegregation.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an organized group of residents from an unincorporated, predominantly white, relatively affluent area with a strong tax base are trying to form an entirely new eighty-five-square-mile city for the express purpose of separating from the East Baton Rouge Parish Schools, which, by the way, enroll a majority of black and economically disadvantaged students. At the same time, a bill that would create four semi-autonomous school districts in this same southern section of Baton Rouge is being considered by the Louisiana legislature. The proposed new city, St. George, would not be the first secession from East Baton Rouge Parish schools. In recent years, three municipalities have created their own school districts, though not all were particularly affluent or predominantly white.
Next fall, the rapidly growing, predominantly white Alabama community Pike Road, with only 6,500 residents, will open its first K-8 school post-divorce from Montgomery County Public Schools, where 83 percent of its some 32,000 students are either African-American or Latino and 76 percent qualify for free and reduced lunch. Since the mid-2000s, six suburban, How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities | The Nation:

The Ripple Effects of Rising Student Debt - NYTimes.com

The Ripple Effects of Rising Student Debt - NYTimes.com:



The Ripple Effects of Rising Student Debt


What are the roads not taken because students must take out loans for college? A collection of studies shows that the burden of student debt may well cause people to make different decisions than they would otherwise — affecting not just individual lives but also the entire economy.
For one thing, it appears that people with student loans are less likely to start businesses of their own. A new study has found that areas with higher relative growth in student debt show lower growth in the formation of small businesses (in this case, firms with one to four employees).  
The correlation makes sense. People normally have only a certain amount of “debt capacity,” said Brent W. Ambrose, a professor of risk management at Pennsylvania State University and a co-author of a preliminary paper on the research along with Larry Cordell and Shuwei Ma of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
When students use up their debt capacity on student loans, they can’t commit it elsewhere. “Given the importance of an entrepreneur’s personal debt capacity in financing a start-up business, student loan debt, which cannot be discharged via bankruptcy, can have lasting effects later in life and may impact the ability of future small-business owners to raise capital,” the study says.
Considering that 60 percent of jobs are created by small business, “if you shut down the ability to create new businesses, you’re going to harm the economy,” Professor Ambrose said.
Student loan debt also appears to be affectinghomeownership trends. According to research by the The Ripple Effects of Rising Student Debt - NYTimes.com:

Why are Common Core math problems like this? $$$$$$$$$$ | Reclaim Reform

Why are Common Core math problems like this? $$$$$$$$$$ | Reclaim Reform:



Why are Common Core math problems like this? $$$$$$$$$$

Why are Common Core math problems like this? $$$$$$$$$$
2+2=4 cannot be copyrighted, sold, and re-sold.
The CCSS formatted math being published in print and online is copyrighted, sold and re-sold.
It’s not about kids, parents, teachers or schools. It’s all about the money.
As a matter of fact making and copyrighting lousy CCSS products online or in print is much more lucrative than producing good ones. Next year school districts nationwide will have to upgrade to the “improved” products – lots of money for an update. (Sound familiar?)
Of course next year the product may have a different label on it – FCAT, FLAT, ISAT, USAT, Pearson, Beersome, etc. It doesn’t matter. It’s all profit to the multinational investors and the fund managers. And it’s all poison for our children.
CCSS reason
Even affluent and middle class parents are being scapegoated for the Common Core math that children are having trouble with. Obviously, scapegoating children, teachers, principals, schools, textbooks and “white suburban moms” (who think their kids are smarter than they really are – as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan so famously proclaimed) and other assorted targets isn’t enough. Scapegoats are like that. You can never have too may scapegoats if you are a hedge fund manager for billionaire investorsWhy are Common Core math problems like this? $$$$$$$$$$ | Reclaim Reform: 

Looks Like Oklahoma Could Be First to Really Dump Common Core | deutsch29

Looks Like Oklahoma Could Be First to Really Dump Common Core | deutsch29:



Looks Like Oklahoma Could Be First to ReallyDump Common Core

May 24, 2014




On May 23, 2014, both the Oklahoma House (71-18) and Senate (31-10) voted to dump the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
All that is left is for Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin to sign the legislation, HB 3399, into law. (Fallin was not governor when Oklahoma signed on for CCSS as part of Race to the Top {RTTT} in 2010.)
In December 2013, Fallin issued an executive order that included absorbing the term Common Core into the broader term, Oklahoma Academic Standards.
Fallin also noted that the Oklahoma legislature aligned its education legislation with CCSS and even included the language to align Oklahoma’s English Language Arts (ELA) and math standards “with the K-12 Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative.”
The Oklahoma legislature might have approved CCSS effective August 1, 2010, but it has apparently reversed its decision on May 23, 2014.
This is no “rebrand,” folks. HB 3399 appears to be a genuine rejection of CCSS.
Here is some of the language from the bill:
Section 11-103.6a B.1. …To be considered college- and career-ready, the standards shall be evaluated by the State Department of Education, the State Regents for Higher Education, the State Board of Career and Technology Education and the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and be determined to be such that the standards will address the goals of reducing the need for remedial coursework at the postsecondary level and increasing successful completion of postsecondary education. The subject matter standards and corresponding student assessments for English Language Arts and Mathematics shall be solely approved and controlled by the state through the State Board of Education.
2. Upon the effective date of this act, the State Board of Education shall begin the process of adopting the English Language Arts and Mathematics standards and shall provide reasonable opportunity, consistent with best practices, for public comment on the revision of the standards, including but not limited to Looks Like Oklahoma Could Be First to Really Dump Common Core | deutsch29:







Nite Cap 5-24-14 #BATsACT #RealEdTalk #EDCHAT #P2



James Baldwin said it best: 

"For these are all our children, and we will profit by or pay for whatever they become."


A BIG EDUCATION APE NITE CAP




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