{"id":8510,"date":"2012-10-20T22:08:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T06:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=8510"},"modified":"2012-10-21T08:53:39","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T16:53:39","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-missile-crisis-special-kablooey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-missile-crisis-special-kablooey\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: Missile Crisis Special. Kablooey!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back! <\/strong><\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n


\nSusan Ohanian: Against Obedience <\/strong>This article was originally delivered as the Second Annual Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lecture at the Rouge Forum’s Occupy Education! Class Conscious Pedagogies and SocialChange Conference held at Miami University in Oxford, OH, June 22-24, 2012. Starting with a personal journey in learning that political activism isn’t as scary as many teachers believe, the article highlights the highly political nature of press coverage of Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards initiative, zeroing in on the quisling nature of teacher union and professional organization antics to keep a seat at the political table. Questioning the silence on critical issues of higher education providers of educational products to consumers\u2014aka professors\u2014the author insists that whining isn’t the same as doing. The article concludes withseveral points on how educators can take action.\u00a0 ojs.library.ubc.ca\/index.php\/criticaled\/article\/download\/183270\/183511<\/a><\/p>\n

Mexico: Students and Workers Rise <\/strong> A tense raid took place yesterday in Mexico’s Michoacan state, as student protesters faced off against police after repeated hijackings and more than a week of protests against curriculum changes.
\nPolice stormed three campuses, where students held buses and delivery trucks hostage, according to the BBC. Over 100 people were arrested and both protesters and police were injured.
\nAccording to the Latin American Herald Tribune, students also set 13 vehicles on fire in the latest and most violent of the many protests sweeping across Mexico since late September.
\nThe students were protesting a planned change in the curriculum of their schools, known as normal schools, which prepare students for careers in teaching. They say learning English and computer science shouldn’t be priorities for the rural areas they’ll be working in, and had taken control of three sister campuses earlier this month.\u00a0Yesterday’s events included the arrest of teachers union head Secretary General Juan Jose Ortega Madrigal, of CNTE Local 18, the union representing most of the teachers in the area. In response to the police action, most of the elementary schools in the state were closed today.
\nThe teachers unions have also joined the ongoing protests against a labor reform bill that debuted in the Senate this week, that would allow more hiring flexibility for employers and mandate unions to be more transparent about their finances. \u00a0 www.globalpost.com\/dispatches\/globalpost-blogs\/rights\/protests-mexico-labor-reform-bill<\/a><\/p>\n

www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ByOKZmQ72m4<\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa: Fight Still on! <\/strong>The National Union of Mineworkers has informed us that workers organising their own strikes are being covertly ‘manipulated’ and their strikes and protests ‘orchestrated’ by ‘dark forces’ and other ‘elements’ that amount, of course, to another manifestation of the infamous ‘third force’. ‘Backward’ and even ‘sinister’ beliefs in magic consequent to the rural origin of many of the workers are, we’ve been told by an array of elite actors, including the Communist Party, central to this manipulation. Frans Baleni, horrified at the insurgent power of self-organisation, has not just informed us that his union is trying to \u201cnarrow the demands\u201d and persuade workers to \u201creturn to work\u201d. He has also called for \u201cthe real force behind the upheavals\u201d to be \u201cunearthed\u201d by the state on the grounds that \u201cIt is completely untrue [that] the workers are responsible\u201d for the ongoing revolt.
\nNeither Baleni nor anyone else demanding a witch-hunt to penetrate the depths of an elaborate conspiracy and dig up the real source of the miners’ rebellion seems able to realise that they’re on a hunt for nothing other than their own paranoid fantasies. And we’ve yet to see a statement pointing out that there is no part of society in which people don’t look towards some sort of magic to strengthen themselves against the vicissitudes of life. Middle class people are, for instance, often fanatically wedded to all kinds of belief in magic ranging from prosperity cults organised, oddly enough, in the name of a Palestinian carpenter who scorned wealth to various kinds of quackery, the fantasy that the possession of commodities can miraculously transform us at the level of our essential being and actual belief in concepts as entirely divorced from reality as the fiction that we inhabit an ongoing ‘national democratic revolution’, that there could be a ‘Zuma moment’ to match the ‘Lula moment’ or that ‘the free market’ could liberate us all. \u00a0\u00a0 sacsis.org.za\/site\/article\/1456<\/a><\/p>\n

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www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7rKVwtiwSgY<\/a><\/p>\n

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Tens of thousands of Greeks joined a second nationwide strike in three weeks on Thursday, moving to bring the country to a near standstill in a bid to show European Union leaders meeting in Brussels that new austerity cuts being demanded by Greece\u2019s lenders would cripple society and further depress the economy. \u00a0Protest rallies began peacefully but were disrupted when demonstrators broke away from the crowd near Syntagma Square outside Parliament and threw rocks, bottles and firebombs at the police, who responded with tear gas.
\nA police spokesman said 40,000 people joined rallies in central Athens, while organizers said the figure was around double that. Smaller rallies were held in other cities, including the ports of Salonika and Patra, in northern and western Greece. \u00a0\u00a0 www.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/19\/world\/europe\/greek-workers-hold-national-strike-to-protest-austerity.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y<\/a><\/p>\n

The Little Red Schoolhouse<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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On to the National Standards and Tests with Teachers as Bureaucrat Desk Nazis <\/strong>These Common Core State Standards, which spell out what students need to know to graduate ready for college or careers, provide, for the first time, a common barometer of what students in the participating states should learn. Tests to be implemented in the 2014-15 school year will make it easier to compare students from state to state.
\n“We’re not in the 19th Century anymore, where you live your life in your own community and everything you need to learn and know, your local school board can determine. We’re in a global economy,” said John Austin, president of the state Board of Education.
\nAnd that global economy, Austin said, dictates that there be consistent, common expectations for all students.
\nAdoption of the standards means some math concepts are being introduced a grade or two earlier or later than usual. In English language arts, there will be more focus on informational text — such as nonfiction writing and explanatory writing — and on requiring students to interpret that text, as well as more emphasis on writing.
\nThe standards will test students and teachers in ways they’ve rarely been tested. That’s because there’s a heavier emphasis on critical thinking, students having a deeper understanding of the material, and students being able to demonstrate that knowledge. \u00a0\u00a0 www.freep.com\/article\/20121015\/NEWS06\/310150046\/Controversial-standards-place-more-emphasis-on-students-critical-thinking-skills<\/a><\/p>\n

Noosing The National Standards (surprise), School Worker Evaluations = Test Scores (merit pay) <\/strong> Fueled in part by efforts to qualify for the Obama administration\u2019s Race to the Top federal grant program or waivers from the toughest conditions of No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era education law, 36 states and the District of Columbia have introduced new teacher evaluation policies in the past three years, according to the National Center on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. An increasing number of states are directing districts to use these evaluations in decisions about how teachers are granted tenure, promoted or fired.
\nProponents say that current performance reviews are superficial and label virtually all teachers \u201csatisfactory.\u201d \u201cWhen everyone is treated the same, I can\u2019t think of a more demeaning way of treating people,\u201d Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, said in a telephone interview. \u201cFar, far too few teachers receive honest feedback on what they\u2019re doing.\u201d
\nSo far, attention has focused mainly on one element of the new evaluation systems, the requirement that districts derive a portion of a teacher\u2019s rating from student performance on standardized tests. Anger over the use of test results exploded during the strike by the Chicago Teachers\u2019 Union last month. But most of the new state policies also include a component based on classroom observations by principals, peers or outside evaluators. \u00a0\u00a0 www.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/16\/education\/seeking-aid-more-districts-change-teacher-evaluations.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=1&amp<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Chicago: Old Boss Out, with full years salary extension; New Boss in, Worse than the Old Boss <\/strong>Departing Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard will get a full year’s salary as part of his severance package, district officials said today.
\nThe school board gave Brizard a two-year contract at $250,000 a year when it hired him in April 2011. The contract was set to expire next May.
\nThat news came as Mayor Rahm Emanuel formally introduced Barbara Byrd-Bennett as the district’s new CEO. \u00a0Byrd-Bennett, who was the interim chief education officer, takes control following a seven-school-day strike.
\nByrd-Bennett said she had a “very, incredibly productive conversation” with Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis Thursday night.
\n“I’m looking forward to two things: a collaborative and productive relationship with Karen and the members of the CTU, as well as the rank and file teachers,” Byrd-Bennett said.
\nEmanuel called Bennett’s strong working relationship with Lewis “an aspect” of why he thinks Bennett will be successful as CPS considers closing schools. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/politics\/clout\/chi-departing-brizard-to-get-full-years-salary-20121012,0,804291.story<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>above, Lorenzo Garcia, Jailed Test Pimp and Boss<\/p>\n

More School Cheaters–Test Pimp Garcia off to Hoosegow (El Paso’s Desaparecidos ) <\/strong> It sounded at first like a familiar story: school administrators, seeking to meet state and federal standards, fraudulently raised students\u2019 scores on crucial exams. \u00a0But in the cheating scandal that has shaken the 64,000-student school district in this border city, administrators manipulated more than numbers. They are accused of keeping low-performing students out of classrooms altogether by improperly holding some back, accelerating others and preventing many from showing up for the tests or enrolling in school at all.
\nIt led to a dramatic moment at the federal courthouse this month, when a former schools superintendent, Lorenzo Garcia, was sentenced to prison for his role in orchestrating the testing scandal. But for students and parents, the case did not end there. A federal investigation continues, with the likelihood of more arrests of administrators who helped Mr. Garcia.
\nFederal prosecutors charged Mr. Garcia, 57, with devising an elaborate program to inflate test scores to improve the performance of struggling schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act and to allow him to collect annual bonuses for meeting district goals. \u00a0… Students identified as low-performing were transferred to charter schools,<\/em><\/strong> discouraged from enrolling in school or were visited at home by truant officers and told not to go to school on the test day. For some, credits were deleted from transcripts or grades were changed from passing to failing or from failing to passing so they could be reclassified as freshmen or juniors. www.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/14\/education\/el-paso-rattled-by-scandal-of-disappeared-students.html?ref=education&_r=0<\/a><\/p>\n

Corruption is Systematic within Capital and its Schools <\/strong> The director of a Los Angeles recreation center is facing felony charges after allegedly stealing up to $15,000 from the facility, including lunch money from children in her care.
\nCarol Brandt, who served as the director of the Montecito Heights Recreation Center, was arrested Tuesday and charged with embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds, according to Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Dana Aratani. Brandt was released without having to post bail Wednesday afternoon.
\nShe is accused of pocketing more than $10,000 from members of several basketball and soccer teams who paid to use the recreation facility’s courts and fields between 2009 and 2010. She also is accused of stealing from the facility’s snack bar and from young participants in a summer day camp. \u00a0\u00a0 latimesblogs.latimes.com\/lanow\/2012\/10\/los-angeles-recreation-and-parks.html<\/a><\/p>\n