First to understand the headline, Go here…

https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/the-doe-state-board-superintendents-want-to-get-opt-out-punishment-into-state-code-before-january/

Through minutes buried on the DOE website, Keven shows us their game plan for the future…  It is all about coming up with an arbitrary way of rating schools…

If they like your school’s principal… They will give it a good rating… (There, there, you did exactly as we said, Mr. Principal. Thanks for forwarding OUR agenda OVER those of parents… here is your good rating…..)

If they don’t like your school’s principal… They give your school a bad rating… (Sorry, Mr. Principal.. you did not fully support the bogus fake test we rolled out called the Smarter Balanced Assessment and therefore you get a fail……)

And one can’t complain back, because this rating system cherry picks ratings for each school … For example, Charters get let off the hook, their neighborhood public school gets pummeled even though all old data shows the charters failed as did Moyer, REACH, and Pencader, and neighboring public schools improved greatly (from a 45% to 72%).

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What this is like,… is ‘New Coke’ being forced upon you (for those old enough to remember it)… One marketing person thinks that ‘New Coke’ is better and convinces everyone in the company to go forward with it, though employees are shaking their head as they take their orders from on high…

What happened was… no one liked it; no one bought it.. It just sat on the shelves… Coke rushed to get the old coke back on shelves calling it Coca-Cola Classic and in their absence literally everyone switched to Pepsi…  This became “the classic” example of epic marketing FAIL…

Now for us, one person thinks this Smarter Balanced Assessment is better, and has used their power to convince a majority in politics that we need to go forward.  The employees closest to the action are all shaking their heads saying “it is crazy”, but would lose their jobs if they didn’t comply and since they have no other way to make income, they do what they are told, just as would you or I…  And just like ‘New Coke’, this gets forced on the public.. Just like ‘New Coke’, the public obligingly takes their first curious sip……

Just like ‘New Coke’:   EWWWWWWWWW… they all say.

What is the equivalent of Pepsi (opposite of Coke) to Delaware’s public schools?   Yes, charters and private schools… And it is no secret that those in charge of formulating this policy were all former Charter Nazi’s at their former jobs.

So IS this just a misguided attempt to better a product, one that no one except its creators want to buy?… Or is it an attempt to fool the public into thinking their public schools are failing and that only charters can save and help their child get properly trained for adulthood?…

The sad thing is as more and more children go to charters, the public schools implode from lack of funding, and eventually serve only as a collective receptacle of all those unable to meet the high bar of charter entry, and yes,  it does indeed becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So is this deliberate swipe at demeaning public schools (not the first time tried by this administration) indeed a sinister plot to springboard huge corporate interests into the Delaware Market?… KIPP and Great Oaks are just two.

If so, why would Penny Marshal want to destroy public schools and go with charters?  

Answer as always, is money.

Here is how it works.  In the waning years of the Clinton presidency a tax credit was passed to allow free- enterprise-zones in our blighted inner cities.  Made sense to do so..   That offers a 39% tax credit…   yes.. 39%.

This allows a charter schools more than any other business, (charter schools incomes are set; other businesses are determinant on fluctuations.) to double their investment in 7 years...

Works like this…

You are Charlie Copeland  and you put up $5 million up for your charter schools…  the tax credits are designated by percentages for each year and they go like this for seven of them…. 5%, 5%, 5%, 6%, 6%, 6%, 6%……..  You are allowed to take that percentage off your original investment.   So add the $5 million times either 5% or 6%…. $250,000, $250,000, $250,000, $300,000, $300,000, $300,000, $300,000….. for a total of $1,950,000 which is often rounded up to $2 million. Which makes your total investment in those schools come down to a net of $3 million…  To double your investment (2 X 3) in 7 years, you would need to hit the $6 million mark by that time frame….

Doing math here….. $6,000,000 divided by 7 years gives your yearly target requirement, $857,000… or rounded up to $860,000.  To double your money you would need to hit that per annum…..

When a child moves from public school to a charter, roughly $3700 follows him… The best charters (profit wise) skim 33% off the top… therefore to meet this doubling guideline, they would need…[ (x)  X .33($3700) = $860,000 ]  so x = 704 students….  How can you get 704 students to go to the former Bank of America charter schools?  Simple… Close down city schools all around it.

Now don’t forget “the” rents.   The Longwood Trust got this for free but don’t think they won’t charge rent… Since a charter can do what it wants (it is in their charter) they can pay rent.. The National Charter School Network recommends that rent stay under 20% of all earnings. But that is unenforceable and there are Charter Schools in Rick Scott’s Florida paying 43% rent… but they are non profits being run by real estate companies who hold the properties they are on…. So a large part of the cost of that child’s education goes to the rent… (normally one fifth, but sometimes two fifths)…

I bring this up so you understand why this is happening…  I’ve been just as guilty as others of using speech tactics to amp up the audience and for the most part, almost everyone else has likewise chimed in and has said… WTF are they doing… all this is crazy!

No, it is not crazy.. It is pretty smart actually. It is a way to go around existing law and privatize public education which is perfectly legal.  We set these rules up for good reasons and they are being used to make people wealthy which was their intention… So these guys are not crazy in the least….

What is crazy, is that this is being sold as being good for children.. And it all ties together..  Common Core, Charter Schools, Race To The Top, Data Mining, Privatization of Education, Smarter Balanced Assessments.

Charter Schools would be dying out now based on their overall performance, but for the Smarter Balanced Assessment which as you see from Kevin’s revelation above, …. will be used to rate them higher and public schools lower.  The Smarter Balanced would not exist if not for the Common Core initiatives.  And no one would have paid Common Core any mind, if not for the free money attached to the Race To The Top initiatives.   Data mining fits in.  Your child will be refused entry if there is any previous problem and we track those now and no child is ever forgiven.

It all ties together and it works its way out whether you do anything or not…

For you see, we’ve really come down to a war for your child…  Is your child a commodity to be used at investor’s discretion, and thanks for your property tax dollars btw, but no, sorry,  you have no accountability over them……

Or is your child a human being, one you are charged with making the best choice for and for which you hold the responsibility over how he turns out?

Bottom line…. either way it is always going to be your responsibility… If charter schools fail… they blame it on you.  If test scores are low, they blame it on you. How many times have you read… “it’s these dumb parents’ fault?  Too many I suspect.

The question you need to face now, is… a),  whether you want to turn over your child to someone who cares nothing for them and is not accountable ( never forget the closings of 3 Delaware schools)….

Or b), do you want to be able to go to a school board and make your points directly. have them discussed and enacted, and then vote those people out who want to ruin your child’s future so their friend can double his investment in 7 years……

You see… this is war… for your child.  It is as if someone marched into Delaware and imposed martial law, It is as if an invading army used all your resources for their benefit.. As history will tell, you have only two options… The first is to bribe them… and that is always temporal… They raise the demands until eventually you can’t pay the ransom and by then, you are too broke to fight their invading armies….

Or you can fight them from the get-go..  War is a term which means you fight to the death because there is no other way to resolve the fact that you both want possession of something, and the winner is the one who has the fewest causalities and all who survive accept him as the winner.

We are in one now and most of Delaware is asleep. When they wake up and the invaders are here, that’s when they first realize what the night-watchmen on the parapets were yelling about in the dark…

Occasionally in life, you really have to call things as they are… make your choice and then take the consequences… Our forefathers did so when they called out the king of Great Britain; they won, but primarily because they won over the French…. Likewise our Southern section did so when they fired on Fort Sumter… but they wound up losing because of Lincoln’s overwhelming will to keep the union together, and greater numbers of men and supplies which the North had over its Southern counterparts. In both cases, war settled the issue in the US’s favor.

What we see here instead, is very similar to the conquest of the Old West by speculative money and investment.   We, The People, are the Indians… If we wait until we see their full cavalries arrayed against us… we’ve lost.  just look at Indian reservation children today to see what’s coming… But if we wipe them out first… as they struggle to get their toeholds, we end the onslaught. No longer for them, is the business deal worth pursuing.

But there is a difference between the Indians and us, though our plights are now similar. The Indians didn’t have a Constitution. The Indians didn’t have elected officials. The Indians didn’t have voting power…. and they couldn’t just stop the advancement, by opting out.

That is why,…. what Kevin shows us in their own words,  is deeply troubling.  A wake up call really.  In closed door sessions, they are trying  to take away those rights and turn us into Indians…..

What you need to ponder is:……. Are you just going to do nothing and let them?….

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