Etc.

Obama will probably do better tonight than two weeks ago in the "debate" or glorified press conference or whatever you want to call it. His worst trait is his narcissism and thinking his ideas are better than everybody else's and disregards any criticism. He isn't a Joe Biden and doesn't have to prep much at all because he is knowledgeable. Obama just isn't that bright or has the ability to think quickly on his feet.

I can't argue with the criticism by the WSWS. Everything Obama did on the economy was to benefit the financial elites, NOT the masses.
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Obituary: Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodian leader, died at the age of 89.

From another report:

A pre-eminent figure in Cambodia's history for seven decades, Sihanouk however will also be remembered as a puppet kept by the Khmer Rouge during their 1970s reign of terror that killed almost a quarter of the Cambodian population.

The quixotic ruler held considerable power in the 1950s and 1960s when the young, flamboyant leader came to symbolize Cambodia's liberation from French rule in what is now seen as a golden age for an impoverished country long scarred by war.

His close aide, Prince Sisowath Thomico, said Sihanouk had died of heart failure.

"This is not just mourning by the royal family but for all Cambodians. He is the father of the nation," he said.

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Dinesh: 2012:

D’Souza’s speech earned him a standing ovation and a long line at the book-signing table immediately afterward. Although D’Souza has been married for 20 years to his wife, Dixie, in South Carolina he was with a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée.

Finally, near 11 p.m., event organizer Tony Beam escorted D’Souza and Joseph to the nearby Comfort Suites. Beam noted that they checked in together and were apparently sharing a room for the night in the sold-out hotel. The next morning, around 6 a.m., Beam arrived back at the hotel and called up to D’Souza’s room. “We’ll be down in 10 minutes,” D’Souza told Beam. D’Souza and Joseph came down together, and Beam took them to the airport.

The next day another conference organizer, Alex McFarland, distressed by D’Souza’s behavior, confronted him in a telephone conversation. D’Souza admitted he shared a room with his fiancée but said “nothing happened.” When I called D’Souza, he confirmed that he was indeed engaged to Joseph, but did not explain how he could be engaged to one woman while still married to another. When asked when he had filed for divorce from his wife, Dixie, D’Souza answered, “Recently.”

Dinesh filed for divorce a few days ago.

I will say one thing about him: Even though he is politically full of shit, he is polite.
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It's called highway robbery:

By the time he completes his packing and blows town, Jean-Claude Brizard, the undercompetent and overpaid (we said it a long time ago here, but it's worth repeating) will have taken Chicago for a million dollars himself for less than 18 months of servitude to Rahm Emanuel's scripted dog-and-pony shows and left behind about $10 million in patronage flunkies (also, mercenaries) now perched atop the nation's third largest school system. Yet to read the Chicago newspapers on October 14, 2012, you'd think that Chicago has just gone from one triumph to another, thanks to the Miracle Man at City Hall, Rahm Emanuel.

Failed administrators always do better than ever.
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Reason 2,893 Why NOT to Hire a Broad Academy "Graduate"

Look no further than the mess in Chicago and the mess of a superintendent by the name of Jean-Claude Brizard. He is openly favorable to privatizing the district.

I don't think he will succeed given how strong the union is is.

Charters are far more often than not worse than traditional public schools, so they are a waste of money and shouldn't even exist. You want to form a school, fine. Just don't use taxpayer dollars and provide no accountability to voters on how the money is spent.

But critics — prominent among them the Chicago Teachers Union — say the growth of charters signals the decline of CPS-run neighborhood schools. Additionally, state report card data released last fall suggested many charters in Chicago are performing no better than some of the same neighborhood schools. More than two dozen charters scored below district averages.

Despite the truth, the privatizers continue on their mission because they want to make money by ripping off taxpayers.

I Fully Expect Defined Benefit Pensions for Teachers

and other public employees will be a thing of the past, while these crooks keep pushing worthless defined contribution plans.

Again, the whole idea of complaining about teacher pensions, which aren't that great for anybody who cannot get the fully 30 years in (and Illinois I believe is another state which "opted out" of Social Security), is just another divide-and-conquer tactic.

Then Ron Huberman was named the "Chief Executive Officer" of the Chicago Public Schools to replace Arne Duncan who left for Washington D.C. to be the Education Secretary. Huberman had just served as head of the Chicago Transit Authority where he did exactly what the state legislature passed - created a two-tier pension for the CTA workers where the young workers no longer are entitled to the same defined pension benefits and the retirement age increased.

Many believed Huberman was hired at the Board of Education to do the same thing - gut the Chicago Teachers's Pension Fund, which Huberman kept saying was one of the big reasons for the enormous $1 billion current budget deficit.

One of those who challenged Huberman's statements to the media attacking the teachers' pension was Jay Rehak, who along with Lois Ashford scored a surprising upset last fall by winning two seats on the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund Board on the CORE slate, an activist caucus that will be challenging the current CTU leadership in the upcoming May elections.

Meanwhile, the CTU in Chicago is Being Assaulted

by Republicans hellbent on breaking the union's back:

The Chicago Board of Education is trying to get legislation (HB 5596) introduced by Illinois State Republican House representatives to allow the school board to to reopen the Chicago Teachers Union contract without the agreement of the union.

The bill seeks to prohibit any educational employee from going on strike during the time when the contract would be opened by the school board because it does not want to fulfill the contractual agreement for salary increases. In addition to the prohibition on striking when the employer breaks the contract for not wanting to pay the negotiated pay raises, there would be significant penalties for striking: the exclusive bargaining agent shall be removed and declared ineligible for representation for 2 years; employer cannot deduct dues for the exclusive bargaining agent for 2 years; fines may be imposed on the bargaining rep and officers.

The pending legislation is even more of an attack on the Chicago Teachers Union than was the Amendatory Act of 1995, which gave Mayor Richard M. Daley dictatorial control over Chicago's schools and barred the Chicago Teachers Union and the Cook County College Teachers Union from several traditional rights. The 1995 legislation was supported by Daley, a large number of Democrats and most Republicans, including then governor Jim Edgar. After it was signed into law, the myth was created that Daley had courageously offered to take over the failing Chicago school system, when in fact that provisions of the 1995 law, including the abolition of the Chicago School Finance Authority and the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in additional money to Chicago's schools, made Daley's first years in power over the schools a walk in the park, when compared with the tight-fisted approach to the schools during the previous 15 years (following the school financial crisis of 1979 - 1982).

Yesterday I Posted a Link to an Article

from the Chicago Sun-Times about Arne Duncan's sleazy tactics in Chicago regarding student admissions into "elite" schools. Now the New York Times has picked up what the Chicago papers printed:

A spokesman for the Department of Education said Tuesday that the log was a record of those who asked for help, and that neither Mr. Duncan nor the aide who maintained the list, David Pickens, ever pressured principals to accept a child. Rather, he said, the creation of the list was an effort to reduce pressure on principals.

“Arne Duncan asked David Pickens to respond to all of these requests, some of which came from him, some from lots of other people, as a way to try to manage a process that was putting a lot of pressure on principals,” said Peter Cunningham, who handled communications for Mr. Duncan in Chicago and is now assistant secretary of the Department of Education. “This was an attempt to buffer principals from all the outside pressure, to get our arms around something that was burdensome to them. It was always up to the principal to make the decision. Arne never ever picked up the phone.”

Mr. Pickens was not available for comment Tuesday, said Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the Chicago schools.

According to The Chicago Tribune, about three-quarters of those in the log had political connections. The log noted “AD” as the person requesting help for 10 students, and as a co-requester about 40 times, according to The Tribune. Mr. Duncan’s mother and wife also appeared to have requested help for students.

Sure, Arne is squeaky clean. This is Chicago, for cryin' out loud.

The Chicago Tribune went into even more detail about this sleazy process:

While many Chicago parents took formal routes to land their children in the best schools, the well-connected also sought help through a shadowy appeals system created in recent years under former schools chief Arne Duncan.

Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city's premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan's office and obtained by the Tribune lends further evidence to those charges. Duncan is now secretary of education under President Barack Obama.

The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan's tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley's office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

Non-connected parents, such as those who sought spots for their special-needs child or who were new to the city, also appear on the log. But the politically connected make up about three-quarters of those making requests in the documents obtained by the Tribune.

Often a sponsor's request was rejected. Principals responded that a student's scores were too low, or that the school was full. In other cases, the student hadn't even taken the required admissions test, and therefore could not be considered, according to the documents.

The list surfaced amid a federal probe and an internal investigation into admissions practices at the city's top high schools. Until Monday, the district had not revealed it had kept such a list.

The Education Wars: "Turnaround" at Chicago Public Schools

Central Falls, Rhode Island, isn't the only school district pushing mass firings of teachers:

"This is a sad day for public education," said Alderman Pat Dowell, who sponsored a one-year moratorium resolution in the City Council. "I don't think neighborhood schools should be punished." Although one school in Pat Dowell's third ward (Mollison Elementary) had been removed from what critics called the 'Hit List', two others, McCorkle Elementary School and Phillips High School were still on the agenda when the vote came in late afternoon.





Bradwell, Curtis, and Deneen Elementary schools and Phillips and Marshall High Schools will fire their entire staff under "turnaround." Although the original agenda called for all of the schools facing "turnaround" except Marshall High School to go to the controversial "Academy for Urban School Leadership" (AUSL), the Board deferred consideration of the Board Reports that would have given the schools to AUSL. All the turnaround schools except Marshall were supposed to be outsourced to the AUSL management company to run the schools.

CPS communications officials confirmed at the time of the vote that some of the AUSL turnarounds had been postponed but had no explanation. Not all of the schools are facing "turnaround." Schneider Elementary School will be phased out, and McCorkle Elementary School will be consolidated into Beethoven school. The De Las Casas Occupational High School will be closed and the students sent to private operators.

Seventh Ward Alderman Sandi Jackson (above) asked the Chicago Board of Education not to subject Bradwell Elementary School, in her ward, to "turnaround." Alderman Jackson had earlier joined teachers, parents, students and the principal of Bradwell in presenting a case that the school should not be subjected to "turnaround" based on the Board's own criteria. Nevertheless, the Board of Education ignored Alderman Jackson's plea and voted unanimously and without debate to approve Ron Huberman's "turnaround" proposal. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

...

In January 2009, Huberman announced a list of 22 schools facing various kinds of termination. That list had been prepared by Huberman's predecessor, Arne Duncan, who had been selected by President Barack Obama to become U.S. Secretary of Education. After hearings, Huberman reduced the number of schools on the 2009 Hit List to 16. Schools that protested loudly and effectively last year include Holmes Elementary School, Peabody Elementary School, and Las Casas Occuptational High School. Holmes and Peabody were still off the 2010 list, but Las Casas was back on this list, this time with a different reason for being closed.

I don't see any reversal of this evil trend to destroy public education and thus democracy.

More

The Education Wars: CPS

Special education students are about to get the shaft in Chicago because a school designed for sped students is being sabotaged:

Supporters of one of the most unique public schools in Chicago, Montefiore, held a press conference on February 18, 2010, at the school, to outline their growing concern that Chicago Schools Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman and his administrative staff are continuing a sabotage of the school leading to what a growing number suspect will be a CPS attempt to give the building away to one of Chicago's charter schools.

The Montefiore special school, at 1310 S. Ashland Ave., has been in operation for 80 years, serving some of the most challenging students in Chicago. For its entire history, Montefiore's specialty has been students who are facing extreme emotional and behavioral challenges. The school, which has been recognized for the better part of a century, has found itself struggling for its very existence under a regime at both City Hall and the Chicago Board of Education that has been trying to privatize as many public services as possible, even though privatization is more costly and much less effective than well organized professional public services.

Speaker after speaker at the press conference listed the reasons why the community now believes that top officials at the Chicago Board of Education are deliberately undermining the school so that its building can be vacated. In the eyes of some at the school, former Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan had already promised the unique facility to a west side charter school, and that the current policies of CEO Ron Huberman, who succeeded Duncan after Duncan became U.S. Secretary of Education in January 2009, are simply a continuation of those policies.

I suspect these kids will be eventually dumped into regular schools.

The Education Wars: Putting Teacher Pension Money into "Good Use"

Words fail me, so I will let this article describe it:

The Chicago Teacher’s Pension Fund (CTPF) wants to hire the best money managers to make the Fund money so that teachers can retire with a nice pension. But what if the head of one of those investment firms they hired also sits on the Board of Directors of a notoriously anti-union charter school — created as part of Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 Plan — which is destroying the Chicago Teachers Union and other unions by replacing unionized schools with non-union charter or contract schools?

Thanks to the election of at least two new trustees to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF) last October, that question has now been brought to the center of the debate about how Chicago's teacher pension fund invests the nearly $10 billion it is managing on behalf of Chicago teachers.

Teacher Trustee Jay Rehak, said the issue is one that needs to be addressed by the Board of Trustees.

Will this outrageous conflict-of-interest even be dealt with?

The Education Wars: Oh, Those Administrators

This site asks a good question about why Chicago's public school system hired a former superintendent who was embroiled in a testing scandal:

Between August (or September) 2009 and early February 2010, Middleton served as one of the most powerful school officials in Chicago. As a result, she got to be part of the Board of Education's team that presented the "data" arrayed against Gillespie. According to her testimony, she was testifying on behalf of CEO Ron Huberman, who has yet to attend any of the hearings being conducted in his name.





Because the hearings on school turnarounds are one-sided to a shameful degree, nobody got to ask Geraldine Middleton how she could possibly know anything about Gillespie — or any other school in Chicago — since she was only hired by CEO Ron Huberman under a secret but now highly controversial change in decades-old Chicago policies that allowed the CEO to hire "Area Officers" who had no Chicago or Illinois teaching or administrative training or experience.




There is more. When Middleton was hired by Huberman and the Chicago Board of Education in August 2009, Middleton was in the middle of a scandal back in North Caroline involving a common but unsavory response to "data driven management" — cheating to raise scores on standardized tests. One of Middleton's principals had been accused of cheating on the North Caroline PACT tests to provide Middleton with "data" to show how much things were improving. Middleton had been hired to hear the Halifax County school system in order to raise test scores, and she had done so — until the scandal called into question some of the methods used.



Instead of remaining in North Carolina as she had promised to clear the record, Middleton answered the call of Ron Huberman and arrived in Chicago to take one of the higest-paid and most powerful jobs in the Chicago Public Schools.

The Education Wars

Here is more about the Louisiana class-action lawsuit of teachers who were wrongfully terminated following Hurricane Katrina:

Eleven months after New Orleans Civil District Court Judge Ethel Simms-Julien certified a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 8,500 former employees of Orleans Parish Public Schools who were terminated after the State of Louisiana seized control of more than 100 public schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal has affirmed the decision of the trial court. The three-judge panel was comprised of Judge Edwin A. Lombard, Judge Terri F. Love and Judge Paul A. Bonin.

"After reviewing the record before us, including the petitions, the arguments of the parties, the testimony at the certification hearing and the trial court's reasons for judgement, we find that there was a sufficient factual basis for the trial court to certify this class," Judge Lombard said Thursday.

The case began on October 28, 2005, just two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orlans and the Gulf Coast when three employees filed a Petition for Injunctive Relief to prevent the Orleans Parish School Board from terminating their employment, claiming a violation of their state-mandated due process and property rights as certified and/or permanent public school employees. The initial plaintiffs included Eddy Loiver, a public school principal; Oscarlene Nixon, a paraprofessional/teacher's aide; and Mildred Goodwin, a custodian. The lawsuit was amended to include the State of Louisiana following the state's takeover of more than 100 New Orleans public schools effective November 30, 2005. Other "State defendants" include the Louisiana Department of Education and its Recovery School District, and the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

This was an underhanded way to get charter schools and other privatization schemes through. What a dirty thing to do in light of this horrendous tragedy.
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Michael Scott, president of the Chicago Public Schools school board, has committed suicide, it was reported:

The death of Chicago school board president Michael Scott has been ruled a suicide by the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Scott was found with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the office. His body was found early this morning at the water's edge of the Chicago River behind the Chicago Apparel Center at 350 N. Orleans along the north branch of the river, police said.

He apparently fell forward after shooting himself, and the gun was found under the body, police sources say.


Scott's family had contacted police Sunday night when he didn't show up after visiting his sister at a South Loop care facility. The relative said he visited his sister regularly on Sundays and described him as a creature of habit. He was last seen about 6 p.m.

The Education Wars III

The filthy regime of D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee gets only worse.
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It's great Arne Duncan found a way to ruin the continuity of children's lives by having revolving door faculty.

More about this horrible trend.

That was one of the reasons in the past teachers were dismissed for only the most egregious of offenses. Children need stability in public education.
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Miscellaneous News

It isn't enough employers check your criminal history, your references, and even your credit history; at least one employer now wants to know whether you are a member of internet social groups and the like, such as Facebook.

This can't be constitutional.
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So much for the Chicago Public Schools idea of bribing, er, paying students for good grades.
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James Auchincloss, half-brother to the late Jackie O., has canceled his Ashland, Oregon, Family YMCA membership.

Associated Press has a somewhat long piece about Auchincloss's travails and his connection to the Kennedy family:

Friends and supporters doubt the accusations. They describe Auchincloss as a quiet, friendly man who regularly attends plays and stage productions, compiles video and film history of past presidents, and generally keeps a low profile despite his famous family ties.

...

According to some people who know the distinguished Auchincloss family, who made their money in oil and financing, James Auchincloss was considered something of a pariah by his half-sister, Jackie.

Various reasons have been given.

Kitty Kelley, who wrote a racy biography of Jackie titled "Jackie, Oh," believes Auchincloss was ostracized for serving as one of the better sources for the book.

In an e-mail, Kelley said Auchincloss was in the audience of a talk show a few years after the biography was published and Kelley was promoting another book.

"Jamie stood up, said he believed everything I had written was true" and "as a result of that book and everything he had told me, his sister never spoke to him again," Kelley said.

McManus offers another explanation for any ill will that may have existed between Jackie and her half brother.

He said Auchincloss confided that his fascination with young boys went back to his teenage years, and that Jackie banned Auchincloss from having contact with her son, John F. Kennedy Jr.

However, he does have a lot of support of friends and associates who discount the child porn accusations.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

The New York Post had a piece a few days ago claiming Auchincloss had a fixation on a very young JFK Jr..

Gawd,

what a crock of shit.

It's all the teachers' fault.

Miscellaneous.

It appears Chicago Public Schools officials have something else in mind other than the "underutilizaton" of various schools for their closure scheme.
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L.A. Mayor Antonio V. and his sister are targets of animal rights nutjobs.
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