Call Out The Press On Your Social Media Pages

In 8 short months, Americans have gone from trusting their press 44% of the time, to trusting them 17% of the time.

Undoubtedly their coverage of this election cycle is responsible.   There has never been an election in recent living people’s memory where the entire press corp has focused on supporting one candidate, who then drops out, then focused on another, who then drops out, etc.  Jeb Bush was the favorite until people actually started voting. It was him and Hillary said all the pundits… Jeb Bush is gone, gone, gone… Then it was Marco Rubio… He was the one all voters would elect in the end… Gone, gone, gone…  And so now… it is Hillary…

Which means that Bernie is about to be smeared no doubt…

First this is a good thing… Why?  Because it is better than being ignored which what has happened for so long.  For when a candidate gets smeared, he gets elevated in prominence and people pay attention to him…

Usually that is bad for a candidate, such as with Chris Christie, who once he put himself in the limelight of New Hampshire, couldn’t pass muster.  But when you have a prophetically good candidate who gets smeared, people look closer at that candidate and if they like what they see, they say, “wow, I didn’t know all these details about him.  Why was no one telling us all these great things?”

Then it becomes the smearers who are the ones who look bad… How many people today still have a good positive opinions regarding the Sanhedrin during the time of Pontius Pilate?

So today I saw a headline that Sanders Concedes Defeat.... Intrigued, I looked to see, since with Bernie having earned more campaign money than Hillary across the last three months in a row, I knew that was nothing close to the truth.  Upon reading the article, the headlines premised false.  The article quoted no one who said Sanders was done. Instead, it was twisted from the articles we have already seen about how Sanders didn’t attack Hillary strong on her emails and her Wall Street paid speeches… To be honest, most of us normal people see that as a good saintly thing in Sanders’ character:  choosing to base his campaign strictly on our needs and not on whether he by primary day stands a micro-inch taller than his opponent so he gets a “win”.

So I went to the comments on the social media sight  (It was “recommended” for me, not a real friend’s posting I later found out) and added to the hundreds of others, how the headline lied about the article it tops… “Click Bait” I posted. “This whole post is nothing but bullshit.”

I am asking you to not pass by these anonymous sites, but to do the same.. Just type in the comments: “Click Bait” and some type of warning…

I warn of this malfeasance every election year and since suckers indeed are born every year, new fish are always entering the pond, here is how these things are played….

A major paper, one of the top 5, runs a story with a headline that is very misleading.  They send it out on their multiple feeds…

 

The news is that the Wall Street Journal is reporting (the lie).. All those papers reprinting the lie are legally then telling the truth, and cannot be sued for liable (though they could with deep enough pockets), because they are reporting not the lie itself, but that the Wall Street Journal was reporting it…

The story’s instigators are hoping that the credibility behind the Wall Street Journal, spreads the story wide enough so it becomes belief and every new reporter focuses anew on trying to one-up the story to a higher level, instead of reporting on it being bull.

So news outlets are very careful at first, to make the distinction that they are reporting the accusation itself… not its validity;”the news” is that a certain outlet made such an accusation.  Nowhere is there any detail giving creedence to whether the claim is true.  And if anyone goes to the original article making the accusation, they immediately find no evidence. It is bunk.

In the past it was called Swift Boating where unanswerable accusations are thrown out, no rebuttals allowed to air, and massive proliferation ensues.  Such may have thrown a close 2004 election in the one state that made all thedifference.  All’s fair in war I guess.

It also was used by the Washington Post, to sink Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential run, as detailed here in 2007.  Here, when one combed that Washington Post article for proof, it came down to this single printed sentence… “that some on the editorial board “felt” Biden thought Blacks were poorer students than whites showing he must be prejudiced…”  In today’s  world, we have terrible corporate polices enforced on every state to close that very gap.  That was truth back then, not prejudice.  But the headline ran something like: “Biden Thinks Blacks Can’t Be Educated.”  Yeah, it was pure race baiting.

This is just how it works….  In those days when Facebook was something only college kids used, there was no way to combat the newspapers and medias reach. Today there is…. if you use it…

When you see a lie on your social media,  read the article, comment it is nothing but click bait and if you feel the Bern, put it up on your site ridiculing the perpetrators…  People don’t read junk.  They read what you wrote….

It is hard to convince anyone not to like Bernie… If enough of us call out the media where they get hurt the most, on social media, then we have fought a small part in the ongoing war to keep America in the hands of Americans… and not the hands of some Australian news conglomerate owner…

 

 

 

 

 

Burning Out The Black Man

Lynchings still take place. Chip Flowers is stepping down. It is time to consider his legacy, and boy, what a great legacy it was…

Chip Flowers is the first and only treasurer to take on the Cash Management Board, a select group of appointees who can get their position by donating large amounts of cash to the successful Governor candidates, even when one has a record for making investments on the fly without informing the investors trusting you with their money, of your personal conflict of interest against making money for them. Even if you were fined and had to pay over $976,000 for your illegal activity?

David Marvin of the Cash Management Board did just that. Paid $976,980 in a fine to the SEC. Through his generous PAC donation to Jack Markell, he now sits on the Cash Management Board, and who knows what conflict of interests are in play with Delaware’s Treasury’s monies?

Do you know? Don’t you think we should at least find out? Why then is it against the law for the public to even find out what their conflicts of interests are?

Before anyone diminishes Chip Flowers’ achievement, let us remember the legacies left by those former Treasurers, including our current Governor, Jack Markell..

If you remember, the legacy he touted when running for governor, was that he computerized the Treasury Department. Hell, the entire government was computerized during the 2000’s, as well as the entire corporate world. Former Treasure Markell’s legacy was nothing more than being in the Treasurer’s office at the right time when computers came into being…

Prior to that, former treasure Rzewnicki. Her legacy was her attempt to bash Carper with a domestic abuse case. That is her lasting memory.

And before that, Tom Carper. lucklily happened to be in when Pete Dupont rewired Delaware’s laws and investment environment. Delaware was able to increase the rating of its bonds, but it wasn’t done as a result of decisions made in the Treasury. The decisions were made by the General Assembly and put into practice by Pete duPont.

So when it comes to legacies, the Treasury department by the very low level of duties alloted to it, is hard to make a lasting legacy. But that is what has been done by Flowers. We had an engaged treasurer, who actually made many of our sleep-walking members of the Delaware General Assembly aware there even was even a Cash Management board… There must be something very wrong with having a former guilty procedure breaker, handling the monies of the state in ways no one knows, and who is protected against anyone finding out.

That we know this, will be how the future views Chip’s legacy. This is huge.

Reflecting upon today’s news, it is best that he step down. It is unlikely that any second term could do more to add to what he has accomplished. It is best to “get-‘er-done” and move one, and not let the dilution process that naturally happens when one is in office too long, to occur on one’s second shift minimizing ones accomplishments and action.

At least now for the future, when anyone says “Chip Flowers”, we will always have the image of Delaware’s First Black Treasurer, who ran on the platform that it was the “People’s Treasury”, and was the first treasurer to ever do anything to return the Treasury back to the people whose money it handles. He and all of Delaware can be proud of that.

I agree with his decision. It is smart to move on and it is now up to us, “We, The People”, to arrest and hang the lyncher. David Marvin needs to be pulled off the board, even if it takes a bill originating in the General Assembly, and all the state gets to watch the next Speaker of the House twist in the wind between either supporting his “boss”, or all those thousands of citizens who voted him into office. Secondly, we need to know who and how this sickness ever got so close to Delaware’s people’s Treasury….

Ericka in today’s world, is a distraction. The real problem has always been that crook who was fined over $976,000 and now sits, at the discretion of the governor, where he can pass his hands through the state’s money at will… and no one is even allowed to look over his shoulder.

We need to know why he is still there….

HB 167, HB 167, HB 167

Actual conversation:;;;;

 

So hey, did you hear that HB 167 passed?  How do you feel?

HB 167? What da f*** is that?

House Bill 167, it bans the box… Isn’t that great?

Well, then, what are the going to do with all the homeless then?

What Kind Of Attorney General Would Block Legislation To Have All School Boards Recorded For Freedom Of Information?

 

This kind…

Doesn’t he have an election coming up soon?  If so, how can anyone expect to make a credible run for Attorney General IN THIS STATE, AFTER BEAU BIDEN’S TERM,  and be guilty of keeping a tiny little bill, which has no harm but opens all board meetings to being recorded and accessible on line?

Only Simon Barsinister could be against something so inane… Or…. Hmmmmm…. Somebody … With… Something…. To …. Hide….

Three lines of simple code: All boards of education of public school districts, vocational-technical high school districts, and all boards of directors of charter schools shall digitally record all of their public meetings and shall make the recordings available to the public on the districts’ or charter schools’ websites within seven (7) business days of each meeting.  These recordings are not official board minutes, but are a means to enhance communication to the public and to State legislators.…….

Hmmm.  Now… Why would the surprise future attorney general, be sooooo adamant, even to the point of losing an election over blocking legislation so inane, that all it does is open school boards of all things, open to the public as a service… Anyone can walk into a school board and hear exactly the same thing they’d hear on tape… But sometimes… a diaper needs changed.  But sometimes, a family meal needs prepared.   Sometimes extra work for the office must be done for deadline the next day…. Darn we say now….I guess we won’t get to know what happened…

So why?  Why is HB 23 being put on ice as my compatriot Kilroy is found of saying.  Who is soooooo scared someone will find out what is really going on in school board meetings?  Is it Charlie Copeland?   Is it Mark Murphy?  Is it… Darryl Scott?   Is it Pete Schwartzkoph?

Hmmm.  I wonder if it has any sponsors in the General Assembly right now?

HOLY MOLY!!!!!!  LOOK AT THIS!!!   Sponsors:  Hudson, Sen. Peterson, Reps. Dukes, D. Short, Miro, Peterman, Wilson, Baumbach, Bennett, Mitchell, K. Williams; Sens. Hocker, Lavelle, Simpson, Townsend….

Is Pete Schwartzkoph there?….. No…… Is Bryon Short there?  ….. No……  Is Melanie George Smith there?….. No……  Is Valarie Longhurst there?……. No…… Is Darryl Scott there?  … No….Is Earl Jacques there?…… No  Is Patty Blevins there? …… No……  Is Quentin Johnson there? …. No….   is John Viola there?…… No….  Is Ernie Lopez there?….. No?

Hmmmmmm…   What do those all have in common…… 🙂   Hmmmmmmmmmmmm….  Do they all drink their coconut milk imbibed with lime?  …. No…..   Do they all call each other up and wear the same color of underwear each daily session?…… No……  Ummm.   Do they all have the same Delaware extension tatoo’d to their buttocks?….. Ummmm…..M a y… b e…….

It is someone with a lot to hide; that is for sure…  And it is nobody from here:

Red Clay, Christina, Capital, Delmar, Brandywine and Colonial currently already voluntarily record their board meetings! As well as the Delaware State Board of Education records their meetings!

So why is this something that has to be kept secret, and never brought to pass?….. Because we are not talking about individuals  VOTING on a bill…They could vote YEA or NEA and it wouldn’t matter!  What concerns us and you, is the pure morality of  KEEPING A BILL FROM BEING VOTED FOR YOU BECAUSE IT WILL PASS….

So according to its sponsor, Deborah Hudson,  Matt Denn is sitting on this bill….  He is doing it to protect someone else, to whom perhaps he is loyal….  How seriously then, were a procedural crime to be committed requiring a judicial investigation, can he be trusted to dig and search for the truth instead of whitewashing the whole affair to protect this same someone, when he can’t even be trusted to get a vote for heaven’s sakes….on  a voice recording of  school board meetings,  out on to the floor for a vote?   Let that sink in for a second….  Really?

Put all else aside…..  Really?

IS that really the kind of attorney general we want after Beau Biden….  a crony?

Really?  He’s going to throw his whole career away …. on that?

Really?  Why would he do that?   But it is definite a campaign issue, like blocking the GW bridge, one that resonates and will stick, because EVERY parent has a child in school….Whether they would ever listen themselves or not, this concerns them now… They too will question:  why is Matt Denn, who is running for Attorney General, trying so hard to keep information regarding my kid and his friends, from ever being made public??? Hmmmmm….

Seriously, this blemishes his entire pro-family  image he developed while serving as our insurance commissioner.  This makes him one of the snakes…..  with those evil eyes…..

He Da’ Ho

What happens to elected officials when turned out of office?  They become lobbyists.   Prostitutes for hire.  The higher bidder, the better.  With so much money currently floating among the top 1%, there is currently a very high demand for those former elected officials, who can ply their skills, prestige, and contacts, into pushing “special” legislation down the corridors of change……

Based on his actions back in his twenties, I was expecting more out of the former Mayor Baker. But I guess, everyone has got to eat… And if you are staving badly enough, there is nothing to which you won’t stoop, to get a free meal…..

The check is in the mail, Mr. Baker…    Obviously in your new position, facts don’t play a role. Though those were important in your old job, they are the opposite of what your new one entails…  We understand that… You are forgiven….

The one factor you forgot to mention;  is poverty.   Poverty determines proficiency levels; not skin color… and brains do come out of the womb pretty much all the same.

The second factor you forgot to mention, is charter schools under-perform  public schools.  Of course one can compare a top white basketball player to a poor black one, and say… “see we need more whites on the basketball court”… But there is something missing in your argument. That is all the white basketball players who shoot under 20% under the basket.  You failed to mention the proficiency rates of every other charter in the state.  And cherry picked only the best two. and cherry picked the worst two public schools….

We understand your concern for black males. Your cause is noble.  However there are white males out there who are poor too and they have similar scores.  Maine and Delaware both test almost all their students on the SAT… Whereas Delaware is mixed with a high urban percentage, Maine is all white and rural. Delaware scores are higher than Maine’s   Both states are poor, with Maine being poorer than Delaware. So you see, it is poverty that is the problem, not the melanin in one’s skin….  It is extremely hard to educate a child who leaves school, doesn’t eat, has no electricity, and has to be wary of being attacked 24/7.  To them, classroom is a vacation, and anything said there, is irrelevant to the jungle which is his/her real world. …..

You mentioned Warner.  and the figures you quoted were accurate.  What you failed to cover was that children in 3rd grade tested at 33,31 and in fourth grade rose to 41,35.  Not bad for a poverty level of 93.5%.   And they held those gains in 5th grade as well. Net gains?  +7 ELA, -6 Math.  This comes from the same DOE chart you looked at.

Kuumba which you praise, BEGINS third grade at astronomical levels… Wow… Do they only select rocket scientists and don’t have to take everyone that comes in?…. Their third graders tested at 82,83… then rose only in ELA, while dropping in math at fourth grade to…. 92,76…… then  DROPPED both ELA and math in 5th Grade… 85, 61.… Net gain for Kuumba was +3 points ELA, -22 for Math..…

All you did in this piece was the equivalent of taking the Philly 76’rs that are highly selective, and compare it to the pick-up teams on the worn down courts in East Side, who have to take whoever comes on in their pickup games… You further failed to mention the equivalent of the 76r’s track record this year, or that the pickup team elevated itself into a championship round on the intramural courts…. So which team’s structure is better? Tthe team that improves over its tenure? Or the team that falls apart?

It doesn’t take a basketball coach to see that all those smart children in Kuumba, would do much, much better if they had the quality teachers of Warner, instead of being pulled out of class to dance in the streets every time a state official comes by to give their headmaster a plaque….

If the failure rate of Kuumba was applied across all of Wilmington’s children, the negativity would be catastrophic.  Which is why, all our smart legislators are saying we need full control over charters…. And mind you, I did this presentation with the very best charter, Kuumba.  I could have used Pencader, REACH, or Moyer, (but the performance of those charters would embarrass you too much…).  Can you imagine if every black child was placed in a Pencader?

Now you asked, why would anyone want to limit charter and impede growth?

Charters take money away from public schools.  If a school like Warner which is forced to take in the lowest of the low, allows a charter to skim off all it’s top students, it loses $3700 for each of those students, and depresses its proficiency level… Which means it has to make do on 85% of what it did prior to the influx of charter, and do so with a higher percentage of its students in special ed and high risk…. Across this state there are 92% of Delaware’s children in Public schools…Only 8% are in charters… Next year it has been approved to jump by 2300 more students with four new charters opening or an 22% jump in the number of Charter students…. That means that even if those charters are performing as well as the current public schools do now, (which they won’t; look at Kuumba above), 90% of the rest of Delaware’s students will have their schools underfunded.…..  Now if you are having trouble paying your bills now, how are you going to do it on 15% less?  Huh?

You can’t, so you cut back essential goods and services…  And those 93.5% of Warner’s children listed as low income, are now given even  less of an opportunity to succeed in a world that is so inordinately stacked against them….

What is sad, Mr. Baker, is that you know better.  As a young man you stood on the courthouse steps and wagged your finger and demanded equal opportunity for the black folk, (I think that is the nice term we all called them back then… )

So why are you selling them out now,  for a paycheck?   Of all things?

Instead, what you should be saying is that we need more funding in public schools, that we need higher taxes on our top one percenters to pay for it, that we need charter schools funded as are vocational schools by a line item in the state budget as a luxury, and not a necessity stealing funds away from public schools that currently show more growth than Kuumba… You should be crusadeing for an 11:1 student teacher ration, in every k-5 school with over 50% levels of low income students!

You should be demanding that no charters open and take public money, until ALL the problems are first fixed in the public schools. Because public schools perform better than charters…. when you look at the growth in each child…

If we had your way, we would mediocritize all the best potential the African American community has to offer, and then completely destroy the other 90% of all the rest…Your plan will make us into a Chester,  Camden, or Philadelphia.  We are better than that.

You are selling the black man out.  With your amazing history, that is heartbreakingly sad… sort of like Brutus who fought along Caesar all those years, turning and  stabbing Caesar in the back…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oddly Parallel?

I was talking to someone who was in favor of Common Core, and yet a vehemently against a power plant going up in her back yard. I was able to show them that both processes were similar, and that she was at different points of the curve on the two separate topics, but they were both curves that were parallel and would end the same……

I got this great idea off of Norquist and pulled out a napkin where we were eating…….

The x axis stands for truth… as in what we know about a topic goes from zero to infinity, and the y axis represents our feelings of favorability towards the project as we learn more…..

As you can see,  when someone says… “a data center” we have no opinion at first…  We are at (0,0)  As we learn of jobs,  taking up a brownfield spot,  helping out the university by educating engineers,  putting topmost technology into our home, Newark Delaware, as well as selling power to the grid, our favorability towards it rises….  Yeah we could use all those things.

But then as we learn more, our favorability sours.   WHAT!  248 MEGAWATTS!!!!!  Excessive pollution.  Dangerous pollution,  for 75 years, very loud noise.  Huge cancer signatures around gas turbines. poisoning water, digging new gas lines through wildlife areas from Hockessin. A 24/7 operation.  The TDC was to sell the power plant, not the power plant being there for the TDC.  We sour. Something else, almost anything else could still give us the positives, without the negatives.   All those negatives were hidden and still would be, if citizens hadn’t ferreted them out.  There was never any plan to mention them if at all, until absolutely necessary…..

We lose favorability based on how much we know…  So those still supporting it, even Al Mascitti (unless he changes his mind while on vacation), aren’t more stupid than the rest of us… in fact, they are exactly like us, back when we were at that same point on the learning curve… Instead of bemoaning that TDC supporters are jack-stupid, educate them…  Then, after they’ve been educated, if they didn’t change their mind, it was not because they are jack-stupid.  It’s because they are sinister.  But really, when it comes to dying, very few people are really sinister. It’s really all about knowledge…..

This is exactly the same with Common Core!… This person with whom I was in this discussion,  is a member of the Delaware Chamber of Commerce and she was at the milktoast breakfast thrown at the Hotel Dupont where the Grand Poobah of the national Chamber of Commerce came in to elevate support for Common Core.  One assumes the Grand Poobah would know what he is talking about… Alas, he is a common man. He is no expert.   Because really, very few people there are privy to the facts.  You readers happen to be  far more privy to what Common Core is really about, because you have seen it here, with your very eyes, and are certainly quite capable to make up your mind yourselves…

I assured my friend, that when I knew as little about Common Core as she did, I too believed in it. Of course it makes sense to have standards the same across the country.  Of course it makes sense to raise the bar so students can’t loaf as much as they do now I thought… Of course it makes sense that if we don’t teach our children well, then the jobs will go to those nations which do teach their children well.  Of course it makes sense to pay those teachers who do well more, and to weed out those who’s real calling is obviously not teaching…   of course it makes sense to train teachers better, instead of throwing them into a classroom and saying:  Good luck, here you go…

But none of those are true I found out as I learned more… I learned that poverty is what makes students not perform well, otherwise we are all born equal… I learned that if you give someone a harder test who is relatively impoverished, they will flunk it worse than they flunked an easier test their society wouldn’t provide the necessary safety net to  enable them to study.  I learned that Common Core was all about money and politics.  I learned that Common Core was the brainchild of a mad scientist, David Coleman. Not a group of top educators.  I learned that Common Core actually shut out teachers, and was made with one goal: to make more money. When teachers objected, they were summarily dismissed.  I learned that it was getting rid of Shakespeare, and subbing in text on how to install a ceiling fan.  I learned that students in all of Delaware’s pilot programs were tuning out of Common Core subjects, saying they learned that stuff 5 years earlier.   I learned from inside the DOE that in the Common Core pilot classes of 2013, every pilot class had depressed scores.  I learned that this administration, co-oped the favor of the teacher’s union, whose leadership jumped in with both feet, and now the rank and file who see Common Core up close, have said loud and clear, they have no confidence in this administration’s roll out..  I learned that grown up professional adults, most of America’s leadership, could not pass a third grade math test.  IT is that hard!…  I learned that though the test is impossibly hard, but the standards will not even include 8th grade algebra, or trigonometry, or geometry, or pre-calculus, or calculus, all of which are offered now.  I learned the meat of Common Core is a crock of shit. Basically.

My friend is looking at me now with a dumb-ass deer expression…  sort of like… “Gee, I’m a dumb-ass deer…. I wonder what I should do now….”

“But, but, but, none of that can be true,”  she blurted out.. ” I was at the meeting with the Grand Poobah..  None of this stuff was mentioned. Common Core is our future… It is good, It is necessary for this nation……”

All I simply said was this:  “And on the power plant they didn’t tell you about the carcinogenic radon and sulfuric acid that would be dropping on your lawns, pets and cars, or the horrendous noise that never stops, or the amount of cancer rares that go up because of a power plant in your back yard, did they?…  And… when did you find out how big the 248 MW power plant really was?  That didn’t grow on you, you know… That was planned from day one… And…You only found out because other people told you.  Just like with Common Core, you need to see what other people are saying about it instead of taking the official side, and then make up your own mind…”

“I need to learn more about Common Core”, she said….

And if you dear reader still think Common Core is all good, then so do you……

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As an after thought, it struck me how this pattern has played out rather often since Markell’s second term began…..   Kinder-Morgan, Common Core, Delaware City expansion, Coastal Zone eradication, Charter School expansion.   Always a very dark undercurrent that only benefits the top 1% at the expense of 99% of the rest of us… It is sugar coated, given the Editorial Board approval, rushed in secret through the GA, where any dissent is squashed by Pete Schwartzkoph and Valerie Longhurst, and the signature gets applied, and commemorative pens are then handed out….   And it bears mentioning that in the first term there was also Fisker…. and Bloom… How much are we paying for Bloom right now with each electric bill?  How much did we pay for Fisker?

Well if you still think Common Core is good… do some reading…   If you don’t do your reading, (and who has time) you should not give it your support, but instead, … say you prefer the current system until you have time to find out more….  Because as the graphs above show, if you state your opinion too early… as you continue to hear more and  learn, you will be forced to change your mind…….

 

 

 

 

 

Waking Up To The Charter School Threat

Charter Schools want to come into Wilmington…  Delaware Charter Schools Network Executive Director Kendall Massett explains it this way:   “When you have an open field, you build a road into it, that is just what you do; when you have a shore line, you haul dump trucks of sand to the ocean’s edge and dump sand it it…Therefore even though we don’t really need one more Charter School, we desperately need 5, simply “… because it makes me look good if I can get them to all go in…. “”

State legislators disagree…  In a letter to Mark Murphy, 20 state legislators (one third) expressed their concerns… Their main concern was that new Charters would deplete financial resources from public schools, particularly Red Clay, costing it $2.6 million…

Delaware Charter Schools Network Executive Director Kendall Massett responded: “2.6 million?  That’s nothing.  That’s only half the number of bacteria living on on human hand …  Spectators noted that Mark Murphy, Delaware’s Superintendent of Education, recently promoted as a Chief of Pocket Change,  nodded approvingly.

However to the north of Delaware, in the district of Philadelphia, Charters have become a nuisance like banana boat roaches. Their infestation has grown faster than the training of exterminators.  In a 2007 analysis of Philadelphia’s persistent deficits, Pennsylvania State Budget Director Michael Masch indicated that reimbursement to charter schools account for the largest growth in Philadelphia school district expenditures over the last five years …

According to state records, Philadelphia’s School District paid $240 million to charter schools per year…..  These costs had to be met in other ways.

Kendall Massett says parents should have the right to choose a school for their child…. She brought up the beach sand analogy to prove its point… “Every year we truck sand in from the Pacific ocean across the nation at very great expense, to give beach goers an option to stand on either Atlantic or Pacific sand if they choose.  Without the great cost and expense, they would only have the sand of one geographical location, and their lives would be severely limited.”  The legislators pulled out a microscope and then challenged Kendall Massett to prove which grains were from the Pacific and which were locally beached.  Kendall Massett was unable to distinguish any difference between the two.

In Philadelphia, they discovered that overall, the results suggests that charter school performance is statistically
indistinguishable from the public school system’s students as neither the math nor the reading coefficient estimates for charter schools were statistically significant. This result is largely consistent with the existing literature that has generally found small negative, small positive, or no effects for charter schools across various locations (Solmon, Paark, and Garcia, 2001; Gronberg and Jansen, 2001; Hanushek, Kain, and Rivikin, 2002; Zimmer et al., 2003; Bifulco and Ladd, 2006; Sass, 2006; Zimmer and Buddin, 2006; Betts et al, 2006; Witte, et al., 2007; Hoxby and Murarka, 2007; Booker, et al, forthcoming)…..

So despite great expense in carting the sand from one side of the country to the other, and despite great expense in getting charters off the ground, as well as in running a public school system on $240 million less,  Kendall Massett insists we continue forward with Charters for the most serious of reasons:  “… because it makes me look good if I can get them to all go in…. ”

The analysis quoted above, further suggests that for students attending a charter school in its first year, charter schools have a negative and statistically significant effect in math….

To this Kendall Massett replied that unless you go forward and put Pacific sand on the beach, many beach goers will never get the opportunity again, to stand on Pacific grains of sand…  ” “We believe these schools will add unique value to Delaware because of their innovative methodology”..

When questioned by legislators what unique methodology Charter Schools could provide… Kendall Massett responded:  “Duh, I said they’re from a different place… So, that means they are different…In the case of two of them, a strong track record of success for kids.” meaning of course that three of the five have no record of success at all. but she insists, we should approve them all, because?

“… because it makes me look good if I can get them to all go in…. ”

Recently, when it was announced that Freire Charter’s application was in jeopardy, 41 parents of students in Freire in Philly, all wrote letters extolling the virtues of Freire, once  it was clearly told them that their child would fail the entire year, if glowing letters of recommendation were not forthcoming immediately…

Waxing eloquently, Massett wrote a letter in large hand printed script to her gym teaching mentor stating, that “It is perplexing that, in a city plagued by violence, charter opponents have criticized Freire’s nonviolence policy, which creates a safe haven in which students can learn and thrive.”

The legislators responded that Massett must have been smoking crack while they were talking.  No one said anything like that at all, they insisted.  If anything their opposition was not against Freire per se, but was instead directed against the loss of money that it would steal from the good existing schools already in place in the four districts surrounding Wilmington….

After the meeting, many legislators expressed amazement at Kendall Massett’s assertions…. Rep, Kim Williams, “the way she was acting, I almost pulled a chunk of green kryptonite I carry in my purse, just to see if she’d wither and collapse in a corner somewhere” she seriously pondered….

Said Charles Potter:  If Kendall Massett wanted to fill her pickup with sand and haul it across country at her own expense, we’d have no problem with that. But to make everyone pay an extraordinary price for sand that is identical to what we already have, is not the best use of taxpayers money at this time….

After all, the only reason Kendall Massett is so rabidly insistent is because?

“… because it makes me look good if I can get them to all go in…. ”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Day This Week The Date Is The Same Forwards As Backwards

One of the benefits of thinking through outragous possible comibinations associated with the math portion of the Smart Balanced Assessments, was that it forces one to look at even the most ridiculous approaches to the most ridiculous possible problems….

So one should not be surprised that a very young child applies that to writing the date down on his homework, and  come up with what for the first time, has been made public….

Every day this week … the date is the same forwards as it is backwards…

Sunday,        4 13 14

Monday        4 14 14

Tuesday        4 15 14

Wednesday  4 16 14

Thursday      4 17 14

Friday            4 18 14

Saturday       4 19  14

 

Others may look to check it out, but we may never see another such a perfect aligned week in our lifetimes…..

 

I’m sure that Dave Sokola, Darryl Scott, Mark Murphy, and Jack Markell are breaking out the champagne and opening the caviar to celebrate something good coming out of Common Core… But did we really have to spend $116 million (Kilory 🙂  ) as a state to achieve this fantastical observation?

Ernie Diana$ta$i$

This was in his editorial:  

“One of the best investments the business community can make is to simply share our knowledge of leadership, goal-setting and time management. “

Business community:  shall we present your knowledge of leadership?

“I don’t care if you do think it’s a really stupid piss poor idea that will destroy my business. It’s my way or the highway… Wait a minute. You’re fired! So it’s the highway. There! I decided it for you!..  Seriously, how about them apples?…”

Business community:  shall we present your knowledge of goal setting…?.

“Um.  If they meet their goal, they will all get lazy afterwards and not want to do anything… I know, I’ll raise the goal 4 gazillion times higher than anyone can possibly achieve in reality!… Then I’ll fire them for not meeting it… That should keep them scared of me and on their toes…”

Business community:  shall we present your knowledge of time management?

“Holy piss!  Grading these motherfvcking papers? I’m not doing them, they can kiss my fvcking a$s.   I don’t have time for that s\it… I gotta tee off at 2:30…..”

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Somehow… I think as far away, as we can keep businesses from our kids while they are growing up…. the better all will be….  Kids have the right to grow up right.

Our children can learn what real assholes are, AFTER college is finished….  like, duh,… when it’s time to enter the…… business world……  heavens.  Who in their screwed-up mind still thinks that businesses are something holy to still be venerated?   Duh… How long has it been since Cheney took over our country?  Fourteen years now?

 

Need Help With This Smarter Balanced Question!

Click to Enlarge

Here is where I’m at so far…. ax + by =  6c + 6d  = 0  is what I come up with… too many variables to be solvable…

Need help on this… can anyone help?