This is the charter school system that has received 11 million dollars this year from Arne Duncan's Race to the Top stimulus money. More on the email sent by Dennis Bakke, the CEO below, but first a look at all the money they are getting. From Schools Matter: Sylvia Smith, the Journal Gazette's Washington editor, has been doing a little digging of her own. Dennis Bakke, who has the lead role in the investigative piece reported below by Soderland and Stockman is getting fabulously wealthy f...

A change in Louisiana law last year is forcing local school systems to pay for many new charter schools whether they like them or not. The battles are heating up in many states as public schools see their money disappearing. School superintendents are starting to fight back. Last month, superintendents flooded the state with letters of complaint directed at three proposals to create strictly online charter schools that in two cases would draw students from all over Louisiana. The superinten...

I think that is wrong. I notice they are doing about the same thing on the issues of women's rights. That is wrong also. We need to draw some lines in the sand about some things, some times. "The Executive Director of Organizing for America sent an email to Mainers telling them to vote. Someone I know just got it: "Tomorrow is Election Day once again in Maine. It's as important as ever for you to get out to vote. And just like you did last year, bring friends, family, and co-workers with...

 
There always has to be someone they are going after, someone who does not meet their purity standards. From PFAW: In the video you can watch Joseph Welch take on McCarthy in that famous 1954 exchange. McCarthyism is back. Let's call it what it is. We are seeing one witch hunt after another led by right-wing opinion leaders, media outlets, organizations and even members of Congress. They pursue personal smear campaigns, grasping at straws to create "guilt by association" and challenge t...

Americans United is starting to speak up some on this issue of the various ways that public money is going to religious schools. From Rob Boston at AU. Religious Right leaders often heap abuse on public schools, calling them “godless” and recommending that fundamentalists put their kids in private academies or educate them at home. At the same time, the Religious Right lusts for influence over public schools, seeing them as a “mission field” for new recruits. Most public school officials ...

They will get public taxpayer money to continue their schools as non-religious schools. Since they, like the 7 Catholic schools that now get public money, are keeping their faculty and personnel...I wonder just how secular they will be with that money from taxpayers. Barry Lynn of American United wonders also. "This is problematic particularly if you have the same personnel as when it was a private religious school," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Ch...

There's still room under the bus. In spite of all the people we have thrown under the bus here, there is still room for more. This week we have thrown Jane Hamsher under the bus...one of our most powerful health care voices. After her 3 bouts with cancer, I would say she is an authority on the reality of cancer drugs and their cost. Sure Eshoo's response was powerful, and she was not thrown under the bus. Just Jane. Recently we have thrown Paul Krugman under the wheels of the bus for say...

From Down With Tyranny: (Link) "Nevertheless CNSNews reported on Friday-- more out of faith than fact-- that Stupak has 40 Democrats to vote to kill health care reform. The original 19 Democrats (not 40 Democrats) who signed onto Stupak's threatening anti-choice letter to Pelosi were: Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK); Bart Stupak (D-MI); Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN); Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA); Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS); Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN); Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC) Solomon Ortiz (D-TX); Mi...

The right wing extremists in the GOP are trying to bring down Charlie Crist and put in Marco Rubio, Jeb's one-time puppet in the state legislature. Why, you may wonder, would Marco Rubio be closely watching a Congressional race in upstate New York, when his hands are more than full trying to beat Charlie Crist for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination? Because that special election 1,300 miles away has real implications for his underdog campaign. The New York race was the latest Battle For ...

It is about more than just stopping federal funds from paying for abortion...it is about stopping even private insurance from paying for it. I am not okay with 40 in my own party using their religious beliefs to affect medical treatment. From RH Reality Blog: Is anyone else as confused and irritated as I am about the obfuscation of the facts regarding abortion care coverage in health care reform legislation? According to CQ Politics yesterday, a "showdown" is shaping up over abortion servi...

I think of her often. In fact it will be 3 years in January that she left us. I see how we are fearful of including abortion rights in health care, how we are allowing public tax dollars to go to failing religious schools which become charters instead of our strengthening our public schools. She would have a lot to say. I wrote this in January, but it is true today. I wrote it at that time because the appointment of a party chairman who thinks we need to speak openly and publicly about our ...

 
Think Progress covered this very well. From October 8 on Fox. This morning on Fox News, the Fox and Friends hosts and former Florida governor Jeb Bush joined together to gripe about the fact that the country won’t forget what President Bush did to the country for eight years. They said that since it’s already been a whopping 10 months, everything that’s happening is now basically the fault of the Democrats: KILMEADE: It’s been 10 months. Should Leader Hoyer be looking backwards, and i...

The more I read that latest report about how he was doing it for attention, the angrier I become. It's so easy to blame the deceased 7 year old boy rather than get to the source of the problem. (Image) Weeks before his death, Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old Broward boy who hanged himself in the shower of his foster home, had been prescribed a powerful mind-altering drug linked by federal regulators to an increased risk of suicide in children. In all, Gabriel had been prescribed four psychi...

It has been over six months since Gabriel Myers was found dead in a foster home. The head of DCF George Shelton formed a group to study the situation....but still no real answers. He was found with numerous psychotropic drugs in his system. His guardians say they had not signed off on them. From the Miami Herald today: Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old foster child whose death sparked a statewide inquiry, died of asphyxiation after hanging himself, the Broward medical examiner's office has r...

I was really surprised when I learned about how very similar Joseph Goebbels' view of the role of women was to that held by many religious groups today. This is from a speech in 1933 when he was in charge of the The modern age, with all its vast revolutionary transformations in government, politics, economics, and social relations has not left women and their role in public life untouched. Things we thought impossible several years or decades ago are now everyday reality. Some good, noble, an...

Barbara Ehrenreich of "Nickled and Dimed" fame has a new book out called "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America." The St Pete Times Robyn Blumner had some interesting takes on the book this last week. Also earlier in October Ehrenreich wrote about it in the New York Times. From the St. Pete Times' Robyn Blumner: There have been times in my life when I had to be positive and keep a cheerful outlook just to get through them. But I know what th...

 
Marco Rubio was Jeb's guy in the state legislature for years. Now he is setting his sights on becoming a US Senator. He is a frequent speaker at tea party events, and setting up a campaign in the primary against Charlie Crist. It appears this is part of a nationwide effort on the part of teabaggers The coming Florida primary is shaping up to be the most brutal of the ideological primaries. Rubio, a 39-year-old Cuban-American who served for eight years in the Florida House — the last two ye...

 
"Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer Former Vermont governor and Chair of the Democratic National Committee discusses his primary area of expertise: medicine. Howard Dean explains what he believes is the best solution to provide better health care to more Americans. The event is at Politics and Prose in Washington, DC." Here is the full video from C-Span 2 (Link) About 50 minutes.

During summer vacation I bought a new broom and a new mop. I bought cleaning supplies in spray bottles to make clean-ups easier. I kept extra rolls of paper towels. I bought chamois cloths to make board cleaning easier. I got estimates from a local printing company on my weekly run-offs for each child. Use of the office equipment was limited to school secretaries and teacher aides specially trained to use the copiers. They did not like teachers using the expensive machines. I never did figu...

The AP today has an interesting story about the impact of the Gates Foundation in pushing merit pay for teachers and other reforms of public education. Though it appears the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have begun to speak out about these issues...the Department of Education is pleased with the involvement of the Gates Foundation. Education Secretary Arne Duncan welcomes the foundation's involvement. "The more all of us are in the game of reform, t...

DUNCAN: Right. We have unprecedented discretionary resources. Again, states can compete for them. And you talked about the $4.35 billion race to the top. We actually have, collectively, more than $10 billion in discretionary resources. (Link) That is from a CBS transcript with Duncan. That is a lot of money.

There is a name for that which I hesitate to use. In reality it is union busting. It is undermining the teachers' unions by offering money to the districts to form charter schools. The Los Angeles area is one of the most heavily hit by takeovers by charter school companies. In fact this year up to One place to start looking at the tremendous growth of these seemingly grass-root groups of parents is in the city of Los Angeles where not only 250 schools have been given the bums rush out of t...

Actually it is easy to see why. Nearly all that young people hear on the topic is from the religious right. Few Democrats have really taken a stand on it. They don't have the background to know what it was like for women before Roe v Wade. They have nothing to which to compare it. It is simply not on the agenda for many young women because they are mostly hearing one side. They do not understand the consequences. There is a blog at Huffington Post telling about a luncheon for the pro-c...

The writer is speaking of the zero or low tolerance model of teaching. "“Anybody with three or four brain cells to rub together knows that charter schools have had an effect on Catholic schools, and it hasn’t always been positive,” said Stanton, even as she defended the conversion of her schools as the only reasonable alternative to their closure. Across the nation, it is difficult to put a number on how many students Catholic schools have lost to new charter schools in their districts, si...

I am thinking the development of this charter school movement under our new Democratic administration is moving along perhaps too quickly. There are so many unasked and unanswered questions about turning over public taxpayer money to deregulated schools. It is reminding me now of a kind of runaway train that no one can stop. Yet no one really understands all the ramifications of what is happening. Charter schools will open this fall where some Catholic schools once stood in the Archdioce...

 
Here is more info from the Taunton Gazatte. (Image) Ann Ringwood/Wicked Local staff photographer Howard Dean gives the opening talk for the annual Concord Festival of Authors. He spoke at the Emerson Umbrella Oct. 21. The Emerson Umbrella was packed with people from all over New England who came to see Dean — the former Vermont governor, physician, Democratic National Committee chairman and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate — discuss his book “Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Health...

Yesterday I read this post by in the education forum. It really upset me to see a library that the librarian and community had worked so hard to expand was now being in effect turned over to 3 charter schools. The students of JHS 126 have to wait their turn, and their time is quite limited. Someone posted a video at They took great pride in it. From New York Daily News. Students and parents at a Brooklyn middle school are fuming after they were pushed out of their newly spruced-up lib...

 
"Former Gov. Howard Dean says that Democrats must enact some sort of healthcare reform to maintain their majorities in the House and Senate. Dean was one of the featured panelists at the Politics magazine Healthcare Roundtable at Charlie Palmer Steak on October 7, 2009. Visit politicsmagazine.com for more." He says they must not wait until 2013 for people to see benefits. Says Medicare is in place, open it up to some other age groups to show real progress being made. Says people need to experi...

in the party. I remember Pelosi and Reid backing him. They did not want Dean because they wanted someone whom congress could control. Here you go.... " Amid strong competition over who will lead the party as the next Democratic National Committee chairman, former Indiana congressman and 9/11 commission member Tim Roemer has emerged as a possible new candidate. He has the strong backing of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, senior party sources tol...

Something is so wrong with that picture. (Link) "Arizona has been awarded a $54 million federal grant to expand top-performing charter schools and foster new ones across the state. The state aims to open as many as 92 new campuses, particularly junior highs and high schools offering advanced academic programs, and others that boost academic achievement among minority children and those from low-income families. State officials said the five-year grant is the first of its kind for Arizona. T...