The Storify Account of the Rouge Forum Conference\u00a0https:\/\/storify.com\/EWayneRoss\/rouge-forum-2014-denver<\/strong><\/p>\n Keynote From Rouge Forum Conference\u00a0http:\/\/richgibson.com\/RF\/<\/strong><\/p>\n Some pics from the RF Conference\u00a0<\/strong>plus.google.com\/photos\/115165989850727705944\/albums\/6025004376438403793<\/a><\/p>\n Corporate State Seeks to Smash PA Transit Strike\u00a0<\/strong>Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett sought emergency action from President Obama to put an end to a workers’ strike that shut down regional rail service around Philadelphia.<\/p>\n More than 400 engineers and electrical workers at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority on Saturday morning began picketing after demands for pay increases were not met. The action left travelers to turn to long bus trips, taxi rides or their cars. The ride-share service Uber was offering discounts. But by afternoon, Corbett announced he was asking Obama to require the workers to immediately resume their duties for up to 240 days. \u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/touch.latimes.com\/#section\/1780\/article\/p2p-80506159\/<\/p>\n Guns Kept People Alive During the Civil Rights Movement \u00a0<\/strong>I’m very much concerned with how the history of the southern freedom movement or civil rights movement is portrayed. And, I’m very conscious of the gaps in the history, and one important gap in the history, in the portrayal of the movement, is the role of guns in the movement. I worked in the South, I lived with families in the South. There was never a family I stayed with that didn’t have a gun. I know from personal experience and the experiences of others, that guns kept people alive, kept communities safe and all you have to do to understand this is simply think of black people as human beings and they’re gonna respond to terrorism the way anybody else would. …The southern freedom movement has become so defined, the narrative of the movement has become so defined by non-violence that anything presented outside that narrative framework really isn’t paid that much attention to. I like the quip that Julian Bond made…that really the way the public understands the civil rights movement can be boiled down to one sentence: Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, then the white folks saw the light and saved the day.<\/p>\n On Martin Luther King Jr.’s attitude about weapons…<\/p>\n If you look at the early period of his leadership in the civil rights movement, particularly the period of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his household, as one person noted, was an arsenal, with guns all over the place. William Worthy, who was a journalist…tried to sit down in an armchair in Martin King’s house and was warned by Bayard Rustin, who was with him, that he was about to sit down on a couple of guns. King was a man of the South, after all, and he responded to terrorism, he responded to violence the way most people in the South would be inclined to respond. So when the Klan…bombed his house in 1956, he went to the sheriff’s office and applied for a gun permit to carry a concealed weapon. Now, he didn’t get the permit…but Martin King always acknowledged \u2014 if you read his writings \u2014 the right to self-defense, armed self-defense. \u00a0http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/06\/05\/319072156\/guns-kept-people-alive-during-the-civil-rights-movement<\/p>\n Brit Columbia School Workers to Walk out \u00a0<\/strong>Over 80 per cent of union members, or 33,387 teachers, cast votes, which BCTF President Jim Iker called “one of the highest turnouts we’ve ever had in [union] history.” In total, 86 per cent voted in favour of walking out of schools to strike.<\/p>\n Almost as many teachers voted in favour of this strike as bothered to vote at all during the union’s initial three-phase strike vote in March. \u00a0http:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2014\/06\/11\/Teacher-Vote\/?utm_source=daily<\/p>\n The Little Red Schoolhouse<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Incompetence and Corruption Reign in Detroit’s Capitalist Schools \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>DPS blames technical difficulties after failing to apply for $4M in Head Start funds \u00a0…On Tuesday, DPS spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said the application problem stemmed from \u201ctechnical difficulties with uploading the information.\u201d When faced with the loss, the district regrouped and focused on finding a solution to the funding gap, she said. \u201cWe understand that we are in error,\u201d she said. \u201cWe admit our mistake, but have put plans into place to ensure that no qualified student will be excluded from receiving a quality pre-K education.\u201d<\/p>\n In a news release issued late Monday, the district said it was expanding the number of preschool spots in the district this fall. It did not mention the loss of Head Start funding, saying only that \u201cDPS will no longer be including Head Start, which qualifies children based solely on their meeting poverty level requirements, in its early childhood education program offerings.\u201d From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20140610\/SCHOOLS\/306100103#ixzz34JBZndcO<\/a>\\<\/p>\n Stealing from the Poor in Detroit Schools \u00a0<\/strong>A former high-level Detroit Public Schools administrator who started her own tutoring company to serve low-income students has been accused of federal program fraud and money laundering in an alleged scheme involving $6.17 million in federal funds for students in DPS and Highland Park schools.<\/p>\n The FBI seized multiple bank accounts belonging to Carolyn Starkey-Darden and her husband, Anthony Darden, after launching an investigation in 2011 into the couple and three of their businesses. The companies were formed to provide after-school tutoring to students who attended schools targeted for improvement on federal progress goals.<\/p>\n In the 39-page civilcomplaintfiled in U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors allege Starkey-Darden ordered the falsification of documents, including inputting false pre-test scores, creating fake individualized learning plans for students, forging parental signatures on monthly attendance records and submitting inflated invoices for unperformed services.<\/p>\n Student progress reports were doctored, FBI agents allege, and Starkey-Darden\u2019s company billed for students who weren\u2019t in class, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office filed a forfeiture action in April after seizing more than $282,800 in accounts that belonged to Starkey-Darden, her husband and their companies. \u00a0From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20140612\/METRO01\/306120042#ixzz34SJ2JKUj<\/a><\/p>\n above, recently refurbished Detroit school abandoned and stripped.<\/p>\n Vultures In Detoit schools \u00a0<\/strong>keep spending thousands per month on travel, new records show \u00a0<\/strong>The cash-strapped Education Achievement Authority continues to spend tens of thousands of dollars per month on travel, using money that could be spent on computers or hiring teachers, newly released documents show. \u00a0In March and April, the EAA spent $52,000 sending school administrators and teachers to conferences in a number of cities, including San Francisco; Atlanta; Los Angeles; New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; and Portland, Ore. That\u2019s atop $178,000 charged on credit cards for travel since the authority was formed in 2012 to take over Detroit\u2019s 15 lowest performing schools.<\/p>\n The latest figures follow a Detroit News investigation into EAA spending in May and were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act to secure credit card bills issued to Chancellor John Covington and high school principals. Combined with $56,000 in checks written to hotels and airlines since 2012, the new charges push the travel tally to at least $286,000 in two years. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20140613\/SCHOOLS\/306130081#ixzz34atob8nb<\/a><\/p>\n John Covington, a Failure (but enriched) in KC, takes his Money and prepares to flee ruined Detroit PS \u00a0<\/strong>John Covington is in talks to leave as chancellor of the embattled Education Achievement Authority. Covington, who is less than three years into his tenure as head of the turnaround school district, has told Gov. Rick Snyder he will be resigning, according to two sources familiar with his plans. Although the departure deal is not finalized, the announcement is expected to come this month.<\/p>\n A source close to the governor said Covington is leaving voluntarily to take another job, and is not being forced out. EAA spokesman Bob Berg would not discuss the matter, and Covington couldn\u2019t be reached. \u00a0From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20140614\/SCHOOLS\/306140026#ixzz34asbq8mM<\/a><\/p>\n![\"renner](\"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/renner-adam.jpg\")
<\/a>Remembering Adam Renner at the Rouge Forum Conference, Denver, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Missionaries for Capitalism not Unhappy with NCLB \u00a0<\/strong>(do me, beat me, make me write bad checks!) \u00a0Several recent studies have examined the impacts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on school operations and student achievement. We complement that work by investigating the law\u2019s impacts on teachers\u2019 perceptions of their work environments and related job attitudes, including satisfaction and commitment to remain in teaching. Using four waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey, which cover the period from 1994 to 2008, we document overall trends in teacher attitudes across this time period and take advantage of differences in the presence and strength of prior state accountability systems and differences in likely impacts on high- and low-poverty schools to isolate NCLB effects. Perhaps surprisingly, we show positive trends in many work environment measures, job satisfaction, and commitment across the time period coinciding with the implementation of NCLB. We find, however, relatively modest evidence of an impact of NCLB accountability itself. There is some evidence that the law has negatively affected perceptions of teacher cooperation but positively affected feelings of classroom control and administrator support. We find little evidence that teacher job satisfaction or commitment has changed in response to NCLB<\/strong><\/em> .www.aera.net\/Newsroom\/RecentAERAResearch\/EstimatingtheEffectsofNoChildLeftBehindonTeachersandTheirWorkEnvironment\/tabid\/15549\/Default.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Rouge Forum Steering Committee Member and Detroiter Bill Boyer in Stripped Detroit School<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n