http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/13/charter-schools-officially-win-in-washington Comments On: Charter Schools Officially Win in Washington by Bethany Jean Clement en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Sat, 18 May 2013 10:00:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
However, in a bad economy where many people are out of work, or underemployed, seeing Chicago teachers strike because they do not want their performance reviewed, and they want a bigger automatic raise pisses a lot of people off. A lot of voting people.
Posted by Theodore Gorath]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 05:55:54 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Will in Seattle]]> Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:01:12 -0800 The Stranger
Seriously, I find this so depressing. If you have enough money, much of the time you can eventually buy your way to an election win. What was this? the 4th vote on this in the last 15 years? The publics view on this hadn't changed at the outset. What changed was the money poured into this by billionaire union busting slime like Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Bezos and the rest...

With those guys buying the airwaves and the rest of us putting our energy trying to hold the line on Romney, McKenna, and anti-gay bigotry, its hard to muster a response in the information war, or in their case, the DISinformation war, rather.
Posted by cracked]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:16:45 -0800 The Stranger Charters are ideology-driven, not research-driven. Darwinism (as in survival of the fittest) and capitalism do not make a good base for public education when the intent is to educate all to provide for an educated citizenry in a democracy. But that's been the right-wing plan all along - since A Nation At Risk came out - if you repeat something enough, people will believe it. If you continually say the public education system is failing - even though the most reliable test we have, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) has data that shows a pretty steady upward trend until No Child Left Behind really took a strong hold in schools - people will believe it. Soon the R wing will have the schools they desire - full of rich white children- while the minority children, special needs children and those of poverty will attend poorly funded schools that teach with a military-like curriculum, focusing only on basic skills using skill and drill/repeat-after-me pedagogies (see KIPP, for example). They'll have their caste-like system that so many of them dream of. The irony here is, there's all this focus on data, yet NCLB and Race to the Top/Bottom are not based in data. Again, they are based in ideology. Data schmata. It only matters when they think they can evaluate teachers and schools with it. /soapbox
Posted by StuckInUtah]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:47:15 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Moe stash]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:39:23 -0800 The Stranger
As for the No on 1240 campaign? They had no Walton family donors. They had no Bill Gates sugar daddy. They had a bunch of motivated parents who educated themselves on the fallacies and pitfalls of charters and sought to spread the word as best they could on a very small budget. Unfortunately the citizens of Washington who voted for them either chose to be uninformed, or have this grudge against unions and see charters as a way to union bust, or serve to make a profit off charters coming to Washington. Just wait. Soon Washington can have as much fun as Utah and Arizona with the sudden school closures mid-year (oops we're all out of money!), with the selective admissions (we're open to all students, but since we don't provide transportation, there goes all you po' folk who might pollute our school with dark skin and low test scores), or the "recommended donation" to the school (Great Hearts charter chain out of AZ "requests" a $1500 donation).
Enjoy, those of you who voted them in. I can guarantee you'll be complaining soon, and you won't be able to blame the union. You'll have to find a new scapegoat to blame for poor test scores.
(oh and as for the DFER people and Stand On Children? They're nothing more the DINOs, and if you voted yes, you fell for their BS).
Posted by StuckInUtah]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:05:11 -0800 The Stranger
Second, I think the information was out there for those who looked. If you didn't see an tv ad against charters, well, that's because there wasn't the money. But The Stranger did a notable job on info that was easily available.

Third, kids, it's not an experiment. It's a law and undoing a law that creates schools will be almost impossible to overturn but yes, it can be done.

That and the coming lawsuits.

Posted by westello]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:51:23 -0800 The Stranger Posted by urn]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:15:37 -0800 The Stranger
Of course, neither of those are true. But the lie is so appealing to people in so many ways and media reports have a bias that plays right into those myths and affirms them that it is difficult to combat these lies with the truth. It gets even harder when there's millions of dollars out there flogging the message and the media that is supposed to be telling us the truth is on the side of the mythmakers.

We will have a very hard time reversing this no matter how much a disaster it proves to be. And it is not likely to prove a grave disaster. Most likely it will result in no significant change at all - other than squandering a lot of time, money, attention, and trouble to realize no net change to speak of.
Posted by Charlie Mas]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:46:47 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Will in Seattle]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:26:05 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Doctor Memory]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:12:36 -0800 The Stranger
I'm "afraid" of this experiment because charter schools under-perform public schools, and I'm not eager to fuck with the education of current students to benefit a private company's bottom line.
Posted by keshmeshi]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:02:23 -0800 The Stranger
I am not sure why anyone is surprised. A teacher's union is by definition not concerned with educations or children. It is concerned with teachers, and will gladly harm the education of children if it will get teachers more pay, more time off, lowered standards, etc.

People working crappy jobs in the private sector see that teachers are once again threatening a boycott because they do not want their performance reviewed or want bigger raises, and it pisses them off. Because for most workers, every day is a performance review, raises have to be earned, and they actually have to worry about job security.

I support teachers wholeheartedly, but a lot of people only see the union making more and more demands, while the quality of their children's education stagnates. When it comes to voting, perception is often more important than facts.
Posted by Theodore Gorath]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:58:22 -0800 The Stranger
It's worth an experiment. And if we've seen anything in the last week, it's that we're pretty good at changing laws we don't like in this state.

Posted by bleedingheartlibertarian]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:47:48 -0800 The Stranger
In the end, I voted against. I think my friends did, too. But we really could have used some decent info.
Posted by originalcinner]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:18:42 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Doctor Memory]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:15:34 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Chicago Carrie]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:13:47 -0800 The Stranger @9, --- you can't read? Is that your significant mental handicap?

There is and was no significant differences between Romney's and Obama's platforms --- how can anyone be so bloody ignorant?????

http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/ceo-campai…

(Read the above, jackhole!)
Posted by sgt_doom]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:03:43 -0800 The Stranger Fourty schools over the whole State.

Watch 'em like a hawk and if there is doing something untoward, stop the program.

Are you afraid of this experiment because you think it might work?
Posted by David Sucher]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:58:53 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Seattle14]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:56:38 -0800 The Stranger Posted by theophrastus]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:55:53 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Seattle14]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:54:03 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:41:49 -0800 The Stranger Privatize Everything) while the 'tards of California voted for Monsanto (against GMO labeling, etc.).

Hurrah for the 'tards of America, also known as Ameritards!!!!

The Media? What Effing Media ? ? ?

The other day Goldy criticized a submediocre Seattle Times’ columnist, coinciding with a CNN hit job on American citizens who think critically (i.e., have zero confidence in the so-called American media --- better known as the Skank News Network).

A perfect case in point illustrates why there should be zero confidence: the New York Times' hiring of Mark Thompson, former director-general of BBC, as their chief executive, who was at the BBC during the spiking of the special exposing the pedophile former BBC personality, Jimmy Savile (chronically molesting underage girls, who actually bragged about it in his autobiography, and former victims recounted how Savile used girls' reform schools as his personal rape preserves).

George Entwhistle, who had been BBC director-general for less than two months, just resigned --- although Entwhistle really wasn't involved in the matter, it was Thompson who should have suffered the consequences, instead of being hired at the NY Times!

This is still an evolving situation at the BBC; reports vary on certain aspects. Evidently, after the exposé of Jimmy Savile was quashed, another pedophile special was rushed into production, but facts weren't verified and "gross libel" was televised instead (to quote one accurate commentary). The uncertain facts concern whether several other editors/BBC employees, who were suspended actually had anything to do with the original spiking, but due to their removal, fact checking apparently was also suspended on the second sloppy pedophile special?

So, Thompson, the New York Times' new chief executive, who should be held accountable for spiking that Jimmy Savile exposé of his many years of pedophile crimes while at the BBC, will now be responsible for who-knows-what at the Times --- definitely not a bastion of veracity where the news is concerned!

During the Bush administration, when the Council on Foreign Relations, the US Chamber of Commerce (USCoC) and individual state chambers of commerce (smaller CoCs) and business forums were promoting the North American Transnational Highway (the NAFTA superhighway, leading from a deep-water port on the Pacific coast of Mexico, built by China, through America and into Canada, circumventing American unions such as the Teamsters and ILWU, etc. --- the cheapest transportation and shipping system possible to destroy the workers and enrich the super-rich and their executives), an Australian multinational involved, the Macquarie Group, purchased over forty independent American newspapers in the central region of the USA, in order to halt criticism of that project.

This is what corporate so-called "media" looks like and why CNN finds it necessary to label any critics as "conspiracy theorists" --- no theory here, it's all easily verifiable fact, and facts can be pesky things to the criminal class.

http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/cn…

Posted by sgt_doom]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:38:29 -0800 The Stranger
On the down side, get ready for your neighborhood school to become a charter. I bet, out of the "forty" charter schools (and we all know it'll be a hell of a lot more than that), maybe as many as two will be schools which were "failing" in some sense to start with. The rest will be perfectly fine or even excellent schools to begin with, but now, they'll be private schools, paid for by the public. Isn't it fun living in an oligarchy?
Posted by Catherwood]]> Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:36:25 -0800 The Stranger