First up, this public school is brought to you by… NYT

Facing another potential round of huge budget cuts, the Los Angeles school board unanimously approved a plan on Tuesday night to allow the district to seek corporate sponsorships as a way to get money to the schools.

Contrary to what you might have heard on talk radio, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 was brought to you by the private sector… The Big Picture

- More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
- Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
- Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that’s being lambasted by conservative critics.

Why Bill Gates is the Devil: Reason #2068 – Billy Boy is funding yet another faux media outlet to pollute public discourse and debate over education policy… Schools Matter

The Center for Education Reform is seeking a top-notch Managing Editor as it prepares for the launch of The Media Bullpen, a groundbreaking journalistic media/policy platform dedicated to dedicated to: a) correcting the record on K-12 education issues and; b) improving the media/public understanding of topics in K-12 education and education reform.

China is the new Japan… The Krug-man

These days, China seems to play the same role in much of our discourse that Japan did two decades ago. We look at our own follies — which are immense — and then look at the Chinese, and ascribe to them all the virtues of foresight and determination we lack.

But just like the Japanese, the Chinese are human, and their policy makers are subject to the same kinds of confusion and inability to make hard choices that are part of the human condition. And Chinese macroeconomic policy is in the process of becoming a cautionary tale.

Looking for a reason why we’ve [re]entered an era of bubbles and crashes…? How about extreme inequality? Naked Capitalism

First, the rich spend a smaller proportion of their wealth than the less-affluent, and so when more and more wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the wealth, there is less overall spending and less overall manufacturing to meet consumer needs.

Second, in both the Roaring 20s and 2000-2007 period, the middle class incurred a lot of debt to pay for the things they wanted, as their real wages were stagnating and they were getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. In other words, they had less and less wealth, and so they borrowed more and more to make up the difference.

Reuters makes up its own case for structural unemployment without bothering with that whole evidence thing… Beat the Press

Reuters decided to abandon evidence-based reporting in a news story that told readers that the United States is suffering from “structural” unemployment. The use of the term “structural” is important because it implies that the main reason that people are unemployed is that there is a mismatch between skills and the available jobs. The alternative explanation, is that we just need more demand in the economy to drastically increase employment levels.

I applaud and am thankful for those who share their great wealth to improve the lives of children. Beneficence of wealthy foundations, companies and individuals will always make a positive, lasting difference in our communities. This is not an attack on business, the private sector or our market-based economy. In fact, school districts benefit from private-sector best practices in areas like operations, management, construction and maintenance…

This powerful club, however altruistic members may be, are creating a shadow bureaucracy and shadow army of unelected policymakers built around a shadow goal to heavily privatize public education. (In that last phrase lies the basic contradiction, and even a violation of something dear to our democratic values.) And it’s not lost on the education community that few (or is it none?) in the club enroll their own children in public schools, traditional or charter, and most dismiss research that does not support their agenda. It has essentially become a grand experiment on other people’s children.

Learn a Second Language: EdWeek

Recent studies on how language learning occurs are beginning to chip away at some long-held notions about second-language acquisition and point to potential learning benefits for students who speak more than one language.

Mirror, mirror: Grist [h/t]

While France clearly represents the gold standard for school lunch programs, it’s unclear whether we can manage even the mildest reforms here at home. Yet it’s still worth watching this report if only to remember that there is nothing “natural,” “rational,” or “inevitable” about our school lunch program. We made it the way it is. And just as the French school lunch program says something important about the French national character, so too does our failing system say something important about ours.

Discipline Wall Street: The Big Picture

Banks: We don’t have to live with them in their corrupt, incompetent form, but we can’t live without them. So we best clean up the mess before these bastards cost taxpayers yet another trillion dollars . .  .

The Next Economic Headwind: Commercial Real Estate [w/ extra chart porn!]

The facts are that hundreds of billions in commercial loans are coming due, with a peak not being reached until 2013. If banks were to properly account for the true value of these loans, hundreds of regional banks would be forced to fail. This is unacceptable to government authorities. They will insist that the fantasy continue. Banks and real estate developers will pretend to be solvent, hoping the economy will miraculously repair itself and eventually make them whole. I understand these bank CEOs and delusional developers also believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Efficient Market theory. It seems our entire financial system is based upon debt, fantasy, fraud, and delusion.

On Professional Learning Communities & Schools

There is power in groups working together to improve student learning. They can create a school culture where morale is high and teacher and student attrition is low. But with so little time and opportunity for teachers to come together to work on common problems and figure out solutions, teachers analyzing their classroom practices and acting collectively still remains rare. Unstudied by researchers, however, have been those infrequent instances when determined teachers band together to achieve outcomes that many others thought unlikely.

Playing Musical Chair: Team Obama’s Community College Initiative

The problem, of course, is that we can retrain people until the cows come home and it won’t matter because the jobs aren’t there. We keep adding more people to the game of musical chairs, and if the number of chairs doesn’t increase it really doesn’t matter how quick the players are. So when the White House announces the thousandth “job training initiative” of the last 20 years in response to the current levels of unemployment it is hard not to laugh. Retraining for what? The stated goal is to match the unemployed with the needs of the major companies behind the plans, including Gap and McDonald’s. It’s sad that people need to be retrained to reach the level of competence necessary to fold sweaters at Old Navy or supervise high schoolers at McDonald’s. Anyone else wonder if the difficulty in filling those positions, if indeed there is any, has anything to do with the fact that an adult can’t live off of the money they’re paying? Can’t quite “retrain” ourselves around that problem, can we.

People Don’t Know Jack About Wealth Distribution: W/ Chart Porn!

Matthew Yglesias is a hack! Trust none of his false utterances…

Here’s a contrarian idea… Could a divided Congress run by Austerians actually help education policy by killing off federal dollars? Could the edu-philanthropists really keep the ball rolling without a friendly Department of Education and its billion dollar budget? Of course, giving power to the crazies could certainly lead to disasters in other realms that would “blow-back” on education policy. Not saying that I’m endorsing a Republican takeover, but its an interesting question to consider…

Down the Rabbit Hole…

What other profession would have people from the outside come riding to its rescue, with millions of dollars to solve the problems by bringing in people who barely understand the problem?

The paternalistic condescension of the business-minded education reformers is insulting and counterproductive. No matter how many times they display it, and expect us to get used to it, we need to call them out.

Bravely tearing down Men of Straw…

Turning Schools Into Robot Factories: The Answer Sheet

As a teacher educator and educational researcher, I have been visiting classrooms for years, and, for the most part, I don’t like what I see. Many of the once excellent teachers I know have been reduced to automatons reciting scripted lessons, focusing on mechanical skills, and rehearsing students for standardized tests. The school curriculum has become something teachers “deliver” like a pizza and students “swallow” whole, whether or not they like mushrooms.

Kindergartens that used to be places for children to learn social behavior, songs, dances, and poetry; how to build cities with blocks, play store, and express feelings with crayons and paint, are now cheerless cells for memorizing letter sounds and numbers. In one kindergarten I visited last year, children recited all the words in their little books without ever recognizing that they were part of a story.

The History & Future of American Capitalism: Salon

I spend a lot of time reading into the history of Elizabethan England in the first half of the 17th century, both in Europe and in America, and I can see where my politics are coming from. I can see my own fear of modernity — and by that I mean the devouring appetite of capitalist overturning — nothing lasts, everything is made to be obsolete. Everything is made to become a disposable, profit-bearing product.

Does Team Obama Even Know How to Play The Game?: The Plum Line

The call seemed to perfectly capture the tense dynamic that exists between the White House and the online and organized left: Though White House advisers in the past have dumped on the left, anonymously and even on the record, Axelrod repeatedly pleaded with the bloggers on the call for help in pumping up the flagging enthusiasm of rank and file Dems.

Shilling for Wall Street: Beat the Press

It is also worth noting that offering private accounts is not a route toward improving the program’s finances. Private accounts worsen the finances of Social Security by pulling money out of the system. This would be like a family facing budget problems deciding to buy a new car to help the situation. Private accounts may be an effective way to get fee income to Wall Street banks, but they do not help the finances of Social Security.

Pouring Lives and Treasure Down a Hole I: NY Times

The computers — 8,080 in all, worth $1.8 million — were bought for schoolchildren in Babil, modern-day Babylon, a gift of the American taxpayers. Only they became mired for months in customs at the port, Umm Qasr, stalled by bureaucracy or venality, or some combination of the two. And then they were gone.

Pouring Lives and Treasure Down a Hole II: NY Times

Evidence is mounting that fraud in last weekend’s parliamentary election was so widespread that it could affect the results in a third of provinces, calling into question the credibility of a vote that was an important test of the American and Afghan effort to build a stable and legitimate government.

Sing the Blues Baby!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lot’s of buzz about the Fenty/Rhee loss but the future doesn’t look much brighter. There’s a whole crop of Broad Academy alumni waiting to fill Rhee’s shoes. Schools Matter

Who is Robert Bobb?  Bonus Bob is a Broad Academy alum (Class of ‘05) who was sent to Detroit to dismantle the public schools there.  He has spent an inordinate amount of time in court trying to hang on a $145,000 in bonus pay from the Broad Foundation for his work in Detroit.  He has six months left on his contract before he is run out of town.  The Michigan Citizen concludes that “he has all but destroyed the district.”

Deborah Gist is another Broad alum (Class of ‘08) who was behind the firing of the teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  She is now State Superintendent in Rhode Island, but she is on the What’s Hot list of the Billionaire Boys’ Club. A replacement for Arne Duncan in an imaginary second term for Obama?

And Barbara Byrd-Bennett?  She is unpopular wherever she goes unless we’re talking about a corporate board room.  She shows such fealty to the education business that she is Superintendent-in-Residence (whatever that means) at Harcourt.  Oh yes, did I say she works for Bonus Bob in Detroit?

The lament of an honest political scientist. Gin and Tacos

Any Ph.D.-level biologist, chemist, or so on could start making a fortune tomorrow by announcing some “research” proving that burning hydrocarbons do not pollute the atmosphere, hydrogenated fats are good for you, or condoms cause AIDS. A sociologist could make a mint with a book about how blacks and Muslims control society to the consistent detriment of white Christian males. A political scientist – and I know a few folks who will almost certainly go this route – can work the right-wing lecture and think tank circuit indefinitely with some ridiculous crap about how Alexander Hamilton believed in mandatory homeschooling or the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply to Mexicans. It’s almost too easy. Just earn the right credentials and proceed to tell the masses that whatever they want to believe is the indisputable truth.

Sometimes I wonder about the choices I’ve made and the potential alternatives to the deadening grind of the academic grist mill. At our recent professional conference the usual suspects on the right – the American Enterprise Institute is particularly active – attend in force but are largely shunned like the lepers they are in the reality-based community. Yet they are doing so much better than the rest of us – more money, higher profiles, and the easiest jobs on the planet. Just churn out scripts for Lindsey Graham in the morning and spend the afternoon golfing. Do the Sunday morning talk show rounds bimonthly and appear on the occasional Blue Ribbon Panel with Bill Kristol.

More on the PR push to convince us that the Elizabeth Warren appointment is actually meaningful. Naked Capitalism

It is increasingly evident that the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to act as special advisor to the President and Treasury for the newly-established Consumer Financial Protection Agency has everything to do with Obama trying to shore up his questionable credentials as a reformer and perilous little with helping ordinary citizens. So the only question that remains is whether her appointment in a peculiar interim role will nevertheless result in a more forceful, effective consumer watchdog.

Nice run-down of who will benefit if the Bush tax cuts are extended. The Big Picture

The graphic shows how much Americans have gotten so far broken down by income groups. And it calculates that extending all of the Bush Tax Cuts for the next decade will cost another $2.7 trillion (through 2020).

Not content with allowing the bio-tech industry to flood our grocery stores with all manner of genetically modified foods the FDA appears more than willing to do the bidding of our masters by not allowing us to even make informed decisions. Washington Post

The labeling matter is further complicated because the FDA has maintained a tough stance for food makers who don’t use genetically engineered ingredients and want to promote their products as an alternative. The agency allows manufacturers to label their products as not genetically engineered as long as those labels are accurate and do not imply that the products are therefore more healthful.

The agency warned the dairy industry in 1994 that it could not use “Hormone Free” labeling on milk from cows that are not given engineered hormones, because all milk contains some hormones.

It has sent a flurry of enforcement letters to food makers, including B&G Foods, which was told it could not use the phrase “GMO-free” on its Polaner All Fruit strawberry spread label because GMO refers to genetically modified organisms and strawberries are produce, not organisms.

It told the maker of Spectrum Canola Oil that it could not use a label that included a red circle with a line through it and the words “GMO,” saying the symbol suggested that there was something wrong with genetically engineered food.

“Let me not mince words, and say that yesterday’s election results were devastating – devastating. Not for me, because I’ll be fine. And not even for Fenty, because he’ll be fine, too. It was devastating for the children of Washington, D.C.”

The problem is that she said it to an audience who watched a one-sided film that adores public charter schools and demonizes traditional public schools, (which still and always will educate the vast majority of the country’s kids).

The audience was packed with people who affect millions of kids and teachers and parents by passing laws, advising the president, shaping public opinion. And those people gave her an ovation.

Ignored was the fact that there is no scientific basis for her reforms, and some evidence to suggest that some of her key initiatives, such as tying teacher pay to standardized test scores, is counterproductive.

Deficit Hawk defined: LGM

Def·i·cit Hawk (adj.) 1. A political figure who favors deeply regressive tax cuts, unlimited defense spending irrespective of efficacy, and high deficits that can be used an excuse to cut (or, better yet, to oppose the enactment of) any program that might possibly help a poor person. 2. A loathsomely pompous fluffer of plutocrats.

Political Independent defined: The Big Picture

I am not a Democrat, because I have no idea what their economic policies are; And I am not a Republican, because I know precisely what their economic policies are.

Blackmail defined: The Krug-man

“Nice middle class you got here,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. “It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Since it has become fashionable for the Faux News crowd to wail about the thuggery of our beleaguered unions, let us take a trip down memory lane to commemorate the Labor Day holiday: Alicublog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, in which Bolshevik operatives suicide-bombed first responders with their own bodies by hurling them out of the upper stories of a useful business owned by wealth producers Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. Some of the operatives set themselves on fire before attacking in an attempt to mask their intentions. Blanck’s and Harris’ worker-incentive program of blocking fire exits was blamed for the operatives’ deaths by the liberal media, as the Bolsheviks had planned.

The obstructionism of Republican senators is crippling all manner of government activity… including educational research: EdWeek

The National Board for Education Sciences, the advisory group which supervises the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences, has announced the agenda for its next meeting, Sept. 29. Now it has to hope members will be confirmed in time to show up.

Know Your Audience… Tuttle SVC

Your Audience is Skynet!

Imagine Inc. and the non-profit scam continues… Schools Matter

Is there an entity – not an Imagine-controlled LLC – that holds the charter and has the capacity to divorce itself from Imagine if it chose to do so? Or, is the governing body just an extension of Imagine, a lame-duck body acting on behalf of the company?

Rahmism… The Krug-Man

This theory led to a strategy of playing it safe: never put forward proposals that might fail to pass, avoid highlighting the philosophical differences between the parties. There was never an appreciation of the risks of having policies too weak to do the job.

How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?

Fiscal Austerity and Third World America… Baseline Scenario

The financial crisis may be behind us, but the link to the likely intense debate this fall regarding fiscal policy is direct — we are told that fiscal austerity requires outright and immediate further cuts in the benefits previously promised to people at the federal, state and local level.

Never mind that this is simply not true – at least in the form currently presented (here are a primer on short-term issues and another on the longer-term perspective). A vocal class of people –  including some at the upper end of the income distribution – incessantly insist that “entitlements must be cut” while refusing to address the real causes of both our recent surge in government debt (the financial crisis, caused by perverse incentives in the financial system) and the genuine longer-term issues we face (which are about controlling the future increase in health-care costs – not cutting the level of benefits today).

The self-described “fiscal conservatives” really cannot be taken seriously – in the financial reform debate, they either didn’t show up or preferred to keep the existing system in place, and they refuse to put serious health cost-control measures on the table…

[T]here is a striking similarity between the longstanding stated intention to “starve the beast” (meaning press for reduction in government by creating binding constraints, like a perceived crisis) and what we are seeing play out today.

Matt Taibbi examines the Tea Party… Rolling Stone

The Fox/Rush/Savage crowd in the last 18 months has taken the anti-Muslim fervor that launched a phony war in Iraq, carried George Bush to re-election, and pushed through the Patriot Act, and re-directed that anger at a domestic nonwhite enemy. In doing so they’ve achieved a perfect storm of political cross-purposes: they’ve almost completely succeeded in distracting the public from the real causes of their economic misfortune (i.e. Wall Street corruption), they’ve re-energized a Republican party that was devastated by eight years of Bush-era corruption and incompetence, and, as usual, they’ve made Rupert Murdoch a shitload of money.

Climate Change Turns 35… Real Climate

To those who even today claim that global warming is not predictable, the anniversary of Broecker’s paper is a reminder that global warming was actually predicted before it became evident in the global temperature records over a decade later (when Jim Hansen in 1988 famously stated that “global warming is here”).

A profile of two of the most active members of the Billionaire Boys Club: the Koch brothers… New Yorker

[T]he advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

Click here to view the embedded video.