Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts

Bill Gates Proves his Monetary Goals for Common Core?



The comments on this video that I've seen on YouTube as well as personal - even company blogs, boarder on a level of  ignorance not often encountered in modern times. I'm most disappointed in the statements I've read which are reportedly from Teachers. 

The Rants, on the whole, explode out from this paragraph:

When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. [Emphasis added.]


So, let's start with Perspective since no one seems to have any and their paranoia appears to love its absence.

1. Bill Gates current monetary worth is estimated at $50 BILLION (caps used to draw attention to this amazingly large number). Actually if rises and falls between 50-100 billion

2. Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, in 2006 turned away from Corporate life and invested all of their time and money into their Foundation which hemorrhages money every year so that people around the globe can have things like water, food, shelter, and education.

3. Bill Gates plunged over $200 Million into the NYC school system -- with the idea that smaller schools would work better than the goliaths they had at the time. Afterwards and for some years he felt that this was a mistake -- that there was very little change or benefit derived from the smaller schools. Between 2002 and 2008, the number of high schools in
NYC increased from just over 250 to nearly 450. Many saw this as a huge disruption for the kids of that time, with no positive outcome. A great deal of both professional and general publications criticizing Gates for "messing with things he doesn't understand" came out on the Internet and media venues like Fox News.
     a) Gates never lashed back
     b) Gate continued to seek out professional educators and educational scientists and move forward
*Note: it has now been ascertained that not only have the smaller schools helped the students, that graduation is markedly up and dropout rates notably down.

4. Bill Gates has --as many Billionaires before and since -- signed a commitment on the Giving Pledge to donate half of his monetary worth to charities and projects which improve lives and promote education.
*Note: that is, roughly $25 BILLION he plans on putting into educational efforts across the nation.

Clarity: I've made a passion out of hating Gates during my life.. I was a programmer and system administrator for more than 20years, and deeply into the OpenSource movement-- which was at direct and vicious odds with Micro$oft. If my cat had diarrhea, it was Gate's fault.  -- Since that time, paying attention to what and how he has done things, I've forgiven him for Windows ME, ... but not for Win 2k.

Vocabulary:

Common Standards -- mean to Bill Gates the same thing they would mean to anyone who creates systems or programs computers. A Common platform in which a community of programmers and developers can created widely different modules and libraries from, which will all work together, and indeed be able to enhance one another because they are all developed using this Common Stadard. Equal terms would equal API, Protocal etc.

Market: the Population of available, and interested users. Does not need to equate to money, only investment (such as time and effort investment into learning how to use a new thing).

Buy: As with Market, this does not necessarily refer to money, but can and does refer to time, money and space expenditures. Buy can also have a intelligence or mental meaning as in "Sure, I buy that" to express understanding or belief.

Now.. curriculum lining up to tests...  may or may not be accurate in the way that both Bill and myself understand it, but from observation over the last 12 years with NCLB it certainly appears to be the natural tendency demonstrated by thousands of teachers across the nation. This tendency has been criticized at many levels and from various degrees of experts, however Bill Gates and people like him, do not base development on "what should be" but rather "what is" and "what is" equals "Teachers teach to the tests.

Hopefully that will change in the coming years if Obama can ever get Congress to do their damn job and alter the ESEA as he has requested them to do over 50 times since 2008. Obama's requested alterations are :

Obama's Plan -- A fair accountability system that shares responsibility for improvement and rewards excellence, and that is based on high standards and is informed by sophisticated assessments that measure individual student growth;  A flexible system that empowers principals and teachers, and supports reform and innovation at the state and local level; And a system focused on the schools and the students most at risk -- that targets resources to persistently low-performing schools and ensures the most effective teachers serve students most in need.

NCLB Status Quo: Rely on unsophisticated bubble tests to grade students and schools.

The Obama Plan: Support better tests. The Obama Administration has invested $350 million to support states in their efforts to create more sophisticated assessment systems that measure problem solving and other 21st century skills and that will provide teachers will timely information to help them improve instruction.

Now, this next part you are probably unfamilier with, but Bill Gates is also very aware of, and influenced by the culture of OpenSource. He has invested a serious amount of money into attracting the OpenSource community to the Educational world.

However, this effort to attract the OSs has been extremely difficult because in the Educational community there have been no standards, no sameness -- everyone does their own thing across state lines and sometimes across district lines. 

Because of this there is very little intrinsic reward (being that good feeling you get when you have developed something that thousands of people enjoyed and used to improve their lives.. you know that feeling? Probably not.. but it is an amazing high... just take my word for it).  

So the talent and the willingness was there, but it has always been stunted by knowing that no matter how good your program or project was, the market base for it was atrophied by lack of population -- and next year, all of the standards you based your project on might be removed and replaced by something completely different -- so project lifetime was volatile as well.

Now.. looking at his "malicious and suspect" statement pulled out from Bill's speech..  Turn your attention to the wonder his foresight has created..

OER (Open Educational Resources)
https://www.oercommons.org/realizing-the-promise-of-the-common-core-together

Gates gave it a push, but then let it go. The community was hesitate for a long time, but it is growing by leaps and bounds now. There are 1000s of OER CCSS compatible lessons, books, modules, resources and even full curriculum available for teachers and schools across the nation -- 90% of them absolutely free. 

These projects are developed by PhDs, Educators, Scientists -- but also by hobbyist and novelist and artists. They are all peer reviewed, and critiqued for conformity to the Standards and effectiveness. Teachers who use them can post their own critiques, offer suggestions, make requests for changes, or additions. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

That is just one site.

https://www.graphite.org/

There are at least twelve other huge hubs with 1000s of resources listed: Photos, recorded speeches, video, graphics, full software programs -- the list is growing even while I'm typing this.

This is the vision that Bill Gates had when David Coleman sat in his living room in 2007 and told Bill and Melinda about CCSS. This is what he is talking about, and if you watch him, in that video, he can barely contain his excitement,.. but at that time, the OSs haven't really invested into the idea yet so he is refraining from getting into this.

Bill Gates is a man, who if he finds $100 on the ground, loses money by stopping to pick it up, and people -- who seem oddly intelligent in other matters, are accusing him of Taking Over the Public School System for Profit. 

The  Money Market value of CCSS will have little meaning in five years -- how exactly did you believe Gates might make a profit off his $800 million current investment into the schools of the US? This premise is seriously flawed. For one thing, he has several other venues which deluge him daily with capital he can't spend fast enough now... he doesn't need to go after children's lunch money. Alright? 

If you (reader) are a teacher,  you might want to compose a thank you letter to Bill Gates, and Obama -- because Congress was just fine with letting you all go down in flames.  

If CCSS wasn't in place right now, last Tuesday (the 12th year mark of  ESEA) all of you teachers would have been fired, and the schools closed.. in every state. .. All of them. CCSS isn't a new way of teaching.. it is a reform for NCLB that qualifies and meets the requirements of the ESEA law, allowing Obama to keep the schools to continue for a few more years.

Think about that the next time you want to STOP CCSS from corrupting the schools...

.. just saying.





What's the trouble with the GOP?

The Reason I don't trust this man, is that nothing is ever on him.
The trouble with the GOP is just like the man says, "Here's the attitude. Ohhhh. Don't make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard," Boehner whined before a luncheon crowd at Brown's Run County Club in Madison Township.

"We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems and it's remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don't want to ... They'll take the path of least resistance."

Boehner said he's been working for 16 or 17 months trying to push Congress to deal with immigration reform.

Their one and only agenda for the last six years is to create a culture of obstruction. If it moves, they try to stop it. If it looks like it is going to work, they do everything in their power to shut it down. Never mind that most people want their Healthcare, and that the GOP has no idea what to replace Obamacare with, 33 times is still not enough challenges to rape the taxpayers with. There must be more.

Word of the Day - Amorphous

a·mor·phous
əˈmôrfəs/
adjective
  1. without a clearly defined shape or form.
    "amorphous blue forms and straight black lines"
    synonyms:shapelessformless, structureless, indeterminateMore
    • vague; ill-organized; unclassifiable.
      "make explicit the amorphous statements"
    • (of a group of people or an organization) lacking a clear structure or focus.
      "an amorphous and leaderless legislature"

A perfect example of amorphous projects is the current GOP attacks on President Obama. There is no real goal to them, and they seem to be based on the erroneous idea that if Obama is weak, then they are strong -- which is absurd. The President is the First man. He is US, the citizens of the United States. He is the Commander and Chief of every Military Service man, and Veteran who have fought to keep this country free. To attack him, is to attack everyone in this country -- it is to make you resented and the target of animosity. We may not like what the President is doing, or what he says all the time. We may not agree on some of his agendas -- but no matter what, he is still the President. The office is important, even sacred. 

So, the GOP (whose approval rating is currently 12% and falling) doesn't really have a firm plan or goal on why they attack or why they obstruct instead of supporting the president. It is an amorphous  objective that they tend not to look at too closely. 

Our GOP - Drugs, Alienation, Obstruction. -- RANT

GOP Congress has a 12% Approval Rating. Obama is 40% and Boehner thinks Obama needs  help.
“The biggest impediment we have in moving immigration reform is the American people don’t trust the president to enforce or implement the law that we may or may not pass,” Boehner said. “He’s got to show the American people and show the Congress that he can be trusted to implement the law the way it may be passed.”
No Boehner, we don't trust you. In fact we haven't trusted you since you shutdown the Government last year -- nothing you have done since then has changed anyone's mind about you either. 
Trey Radel, Busted On Cocaine Charge, Voted For Drug Testing Food Stamp Recipients
"Why don't we drug test all the members of Congress here," McGovern said shortly before the drug-testing measure passed. "Force everybody to go urinate in a cup or see whether or not anybody is on drugs? Maybe that will explain why some of these amendments are coming up or why some of the votes are turning out the way they are."
And to further their Culture of Obstruction, House Speaker is ready to Shut Down again.. for same reason. 
WASHINGTON -- Less than a year after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the 2013 government shutdown over funding for Obamacare a “predictable disaster,” Republicans are hinting they might be willing to do it again in a few months.
A group of 14 Republicans, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote to Boehner on Wednesday identifying a provision of the Affordable Care Act that a Government Accountability Office report concluded would require an additional appropriation from Congress in the next fiscal year
To which any sane person should say "So F%#king What?"  53 Times? Is that how many times they have tried to take our Healthcare away from us? Over 53? I loose track. The idea has reached the level of Ludicrous. 65% Approval rating for the Healthcare program. Congress only has a 12% approval rating right now. 
Senator Says Obama Is Only Fighting ISIS To Help Democrats
New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) argued on Sunday that President Obama has declared war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in order to help Democrats win the midterm elections in November and expressed concern that he would abandon the fight in the new year.
“I think we have a problem where the president’s foreign policy is being trapped by his campaign rhetoric,” Ayotte began during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “I’m very fearful as we look at the current military strategy that it is surrounding the November elections and he won’t have the resolve to follow through with what needs to be done in a sustained effort to destroy ISIS, and we’re about to repeat the same thing with Afghanistan,” she added, referring to the effort to withdraw American troops from that country.
It is stuff like this which powers the 80% disapproval rating America has given the GOP. There is no reason for this comment. It has no bases except for personal opinion. Even if it is true, so what? Seriously. He is the Commander and Chief. Her only purpose is to throw out into the media confusion, controversy while attempting to garner distrust. The GOP is a Culture of Obstruction. It would be nice if they would just do their damn job.
That drug testing thing is sounding Really Good.

Why Is This So Hard To Understand? AP US History

From The AP US History Webpage 

-- READ ME -- 

First Lines of Content


The AP® Program unequivocally supports the principle that each individual school must develop its own curriculum for courses labeled “AP.” Rather than mandating any one curriculum for AP courses, the AP Course Audit instead provides each AP teacher with a set of expectations that college and secondary school faculty nationwide have established for college-level courses.

AP teachers are encouraged to develop or maintain their own curriculum that either includes or exceeds each of these expectations; such courses will be authorized to use the “AP” designation. Credit for the success of AP courses belongs to the individual schools and teachers that create powerful, locally designed AP curricula.

The AP U.S. History course should be designed by your school to provide students with a learning experience equivalent to that of an introductory college course sequence in United States history. Your course should provide students with the analytic skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the topics and materials in U.S. history.

There are no specific curricular prerequisites for students taking AP U.S. History.

All students who are willing and academically prepared to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be considered for admission to AP courses. The College Board encourages the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP courses for students from ethnic, racial and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the AP Program. Schools should make every effort to ensure that their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population.

High schools offering this exam must provide the exam administration resources described in the AP Coordinator’s Manual.

http://www.collegeboard.com/html/apcourseaudit/courses/us_history.html


So I have to ask -- exactly what is the District Board and Williams going to Investigate?  THERE ARE NO LESSONS TO APPROVE OF!  Schools/Teachers using the Manual, following the EXAMPLES create their own lessons, and tests for their students. 

Julie Williams started this mess with the Kids, solely on the baisis of what she read about the AP USHistory posted by extremists on the Internet. She didn't check her facts. She didn't care about the Kids, her Schools, she only cared about her agenda. So, she incited a walk-out over nothing.  Please... Do something about this. 

The New York Times -- The New History


Board Violations -- Of the Repeated Type






%5.9 Unemployment rate... Sweet

Obama managed to do this with the Worse Congress is US History doing everything they could to stop him. Mitt Romney by the way, said he could only get us to 6% by the end of the 4 year term. .

In an interview with Time magazine, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney pledged six percent unemployment by the end of his first term in office. 
 “I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we’d put in place, we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, and perhaps a little lower,” he told Mark Halperin.
Unemployment currently stands at 8.1 percent.
Romney first pledged 5.9 percent unemployment when he released his economic plan in September of 2011, but he has not repeated the number since. -- WP Interview 
 05/23/2012

Something needs to be done about the GOP Culture of Obstruction. It's a damn shame that the Nation has missed out on the ability of our President because of racial and party hate agendas.

GOP should have to refund the American people their salaries this term for complete failure of expectations and moral damage which may last generations. To think we have to depend on a congress, which not only calls the man in the Oval Office a 'tar-baby' .. in public But commits treason during wartime to under cut his position and office. 53 appeal attempts on a healthcare system with 64 percent of Americans supporting it outright  Clearly GOP doesn't care what the public wants which is why 80% of Americans have no confidence in them.

Representative Doug Lamborn who is being accused of racism for his comments on a radio show in the wake of the debt ceiling debacle: 
[T]hey will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t even want to be associated with him, it's like touching a, a tar baby and you get it ... you know you’re stuck and you’re part of the problem and you can’t get away. [emphasis added]
Lamborn has apologized, but the word around the blogosphere, most articulately phrased by David Sirota at Salon, is that Lamborn was using coded language: “[T]he comment reveals how various forms of racism are still being mainstreamed by the fringe right,” 
Lamborn is also the one that approached Generals after the strikes against ISIS began, in an attempt to coerce them in to resigning -- basically treason.
On the Health Care front, even with all of the repeal attempts hitting Epic Fail -- 
If Republicans win the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the likely majority leader, is expected to hold a symbolic repeal vote early in the new Congress.
So, looking forward we can expect more of the same from the GOP Congress.I love the Symbolic Repeal phasing... doesn't matter to them that they are knowingly waisting time, money and resources on something the American People DO NOT WANT and that they don't have anything to replace it with -- screw it, we're going to do it anyway!  If they keep this up, they'll be at 100% disapproval in no time. 

80% of US Citizens Have No Confidence in GOP

I love how the Republicans are so clueless that they believe a weaker Obama means that they are growing in strength. The two do not equate Congress. Poll after Poll has shown this to you. The two effects don't even cross paths in the same realm of reality. Congress GOP is weak because -- you are weak. You don't act. You don't work. You do even less than the 112 did. And the polls show this to you day after day. Even other Republicans are giving you a vote of no confidence.

"The House has continued to listen to the American people and to focus on their concerns," Boehner told reporters. "Whether it's the economy, whether it's jobs, whether it's protecting the American people from Obamacare -- we've done our work."
You do realize that we all have the Internet now, right? That we can all look back with a few keystrokes and bring up everything you have done and said with absolute clarity and zero propaganda tampering. Like this for instance Boehner. We do not see your ads. We do not see your TV Interviews. We see your track-record of lies, propaganda and disloyalty to the people of the United States. We have FACTS now, not FOX
112th Congress Republicans proposed: 44 bills on abortion
99 bills on religion
36 bills on marriage
113th Congress Republicans added 69 bills on abortion
42 bills  on marriage
75 bills on religion

Praises for Court Justice Scalia when he declared his Religious agenda proposed for use at on the bench -- Really? You believe that backing someone's insane ideas to discredit the Constitution makes anyone in the middle class comfortable?. Even republican voters are saying "what?"

Several bills brought up under the abortion heading suggest that the mother's life is forfeit. Actions and voting against education, The Constant attacks on Common Core, Welfare, healthcare give the impression that once the baby is born, the Republican Congress could care less if it starves to death, or dies from lack of medical attention -- that is just part of the will of God, right?

THESE ARE CITIZENS you silly people!

Maybe Obama is aloof, maybe he does have a distance about it -- but the actions of this Republican Congress are inhuman, uncaring, inept, disloyal, and they [GOP members] praise all of these things with each other. Actions which are treason have been accepted. A congressman calls the President of the United States a "tar baby" -- publicly! And he is still given a warm hand shake.

It is obvious that you stand for nothing except the failure of the Presidency -- Everyone sees this. It is plain in everything you do -- and all the things you do not do with your culture of obstruction.

No. The weaker Obama is at this point, the weaker you become as well Congress. Continuing to attack him in office  - only demonstrates how you do not back anyone else in this country.  Do you really think that we want to put a Republican in the White House, or in Congress, and risk losing our health care? Losing our kids education? Losing the jobs that have been building? That we would trust you with out future?

You have it all so twisted up and backwards you can't even see that the rope you are holding is hanging you.

Rick Perry - Neutered Koch Drone


I'm seriously appalled that a Republican candidate for President whose platform includes doing away with the Department of Education was at the top of the polls last month. Rick Perry wants to do away with Commerce, Education and Energy. Could it be possible that he is a Mouth Piece Drone for the Koch brothers? He deferentially acts like a mouth piece drone. Cracks under pressure too.
Other frightening aspects of Perry include - he is for the idea of people beating children. He sees a world where everyone is free to pray to his god in school. In fact that should be mandatory. His state (TX) has the worst school performance in the country and he cut huge amounts away from the schools. Then he turned down $700 Million in Federal aid for the schools of his state, because he didn't want to bring his schools up to the standards set by the Federal Education.. like getting the right books for kids to learn from and stuff.
This man.. this man who is a direct adversary against your child's ability to gain a basic education in public schools was at the TOP OF THE POLLS last month.
I'm not sure what TV Ads are telling you about Perry, or Obama or any candidate, but I'm very sure, they are lying to you. Find Facts! It's not that hard on the Internet. Seriously. Websites like the one I have above are very easy to locate and deal with direct quotes about the issues. I have several good research web sites listed on the side bar of this blog. Check them out. 

FACTS Not Fox

*NOTE : This was written before I realized that TEKS was already in place, and the State Board of Education had already fallen into the hands of extremist. My reaction to Perry at the time of this writing was Deep Concern and Caution. Now that I've learned more about his actions, goals and about the current status of his State, my reaction has leveled out at Horrified. 

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