NC Charter Wars: Public Policy Interests vs. Personal Profits

According to the News and Observer, NC Superintendent June Atkinson was singing the praises of one Joel Medley last week.  Medley is about to take over the K-12 Online Charter School System.  As quoted by the News and Observer, Atkinson says Medley is an “extremely ethical and straightforward” guy:

“I found him to be extremely ethical and straightforward,” said state Superintendent June Atkinson. “Those are two important skills to have as a charter school director. He certainly was respected by the State Board of Education and all of us at the state Department of Public Instruction.”

As head of the charter office, Medley was deeply involved in working with the online applicants and their contracts.

Medley said he could not provide a date when he was contacted about going to work for the online charter.

“When I resigned, I made 100 percent sure that everything was done above board and done correctly,” he said.

Hmm, seems kinda too good to be true, right?

This afternoon during the update on the digital learning special committee of the State Board of Education might get interesting. Will we see the salary of Joel Medley, the former director of the office of charter schools, will be released along with that of his staff, as he and Phillip Price demanded of all charter schools earlier this year?  He’s “extremely ethical and straightforward”, right?

Furthermore, I wonder if Medley’s amnesia has lapsed, so that he can now remember when he was approached and negotiations started for him to jump ship from a cushy job at DPI with a state pension to run a virtual school — something he has apparently never done before. Shockingly,the News Observer article says he couldn’t remember last week. Seriously?!

Medley has been known to be a strident opponent of virtual charters, to the point where he reportedly excoriated Rebecca Taylor and Helen Nance after the bizarre and frankly freakish meeting that involved reviewing the virtual charter applications for Connect Academy and NC Virtual Academy. The applications were ultimately approved and sent to the State Board of Education for a final vote, demanding of them “how could you let that happen?”

It’s obvious why Medley became a sudden, and well-compensated believer in the cause, but I wonder if Nance and Taylor are as thrilled with his new role, which could be a potential threat to their livelihoods.

Taylor apparently makes a fortune every year from over half a dozen tutoring centers filled with students from failing public schools. Additionally, she is the watchdog for the State Board of Education over the Charter School Advisory Board, which is the one sector of public education that threatens the status quo and may actually improve it.  Brick-and-mortar or virtual, Charter schools have the potential of reducing her client base.

Nance apparently didn’t like the thought of virtual schools on the charter landscape either. Sources tell me that her husband’s company finances charter school facilities and operates in the shadows and that this has never been disclosed to the public. Nance’s husband is therefore financing and make a profit off of cyber classrooms??

Should Medley, Nance, and Taylor be able to make a buck? Absolutely, that’s the American way. The problem is that buck may be made as a direct result of actions taken while acting in the capacity of a policy maker or administrator. Picture that problem, literally:

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Charter Schools, EDUCATION, NC DPI | 3 Comments

Common Core Aligned: Southern Poverty Law Ctr’s ‘Teaching Tolerance’

CommonCoreAligned“…to create just these kinds of tests—next-generation assessments aligned to the common core. 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.”
Bill Gates, 2009 Speech To Natl. Conf. of State Legislatures

The goal is to align everything so that students and the money have nowhere to go but Common Core.

This is only part one. There will be multiple editions of Common Core Aligned covering the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Teaching Tolerance”.


For-profit app creators, textbook publishers and technology moguls like Bill Gates are not the only ones aligning everything in sight to the Common Core.

Now social issues are being aligned as well, courtesy of “Teaching Tolerance” via the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The same SPLC whose “hate map” was used by Floyd Corkins to attempt a mass shooting at the Family Research Council headquarters. The same SPLC who called parents questioning or opposing Common Core “extremists“.

That’s right, little Johnny and Susie can be given arguably skewed lessons on racial justice, social justice, feminism, LGBT, bullying, immigration and how to be an activist based on materials this outfit provides — beginning in Kindergarten.  All of this can happen without your consent or knowledge.

Today, we’ll look at the basics of what “Teaching Tolerance” is about.

The Mission” from the SPLC site itself:

“We know we won’t achieve equality and justice through the courts and investigative reporting alone. The future of our great country lies in the hands of today’s young people.

That’s why we aim to put our legal work and Intelligence Project out of business: We’re reaching into schools across the nation with lessons to counter the bigotry and extremism that children hear in the media and even from people who are supposed to be role models. The SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance program works through educators to nurture a new generation that is more accepting of difference and more engaged in social justice than those that preceded it. We want kids to get along with each other and, just as important, see themselves as global citizens in a diverse society with the capacity to work together for a fairer world.” (Also See the section, “About Us” for more, including UNESCO ties.)

That description seems a bit… lacking.

Let’s try the profile at Discover the Networks, emphasis and links added:

Teaching Tolerance”

One of SPLC’s most highly touted initiatives is its Teaching Tolerance program, which works to “foster school environments that are inclusive and nurturing,” and to help teachers “prepare a new generation to live in a diverse world.” The program produces a biannual publication, Teaching Tolerance magazine, which reaches more than 400,000 educators nationwide, as well as multimedia teaching kits, online curricula, and professional development resources. All of these are provided to educators at no cost. The Teaching Tolerance lesson kits contain reading materials and suggested classroom activities designed to steer K-12 students toward the conclusion that America is an inequitable, racist, and sexist society. As such, they bear the unmistakable imprint of Morris DeesClick here for examples of Teaching Tolerance’s classroom lessons.

The Spring 1998 edition of Teaching Tolerance magazine featured an interview with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, under the title “An Unconditional Embrace.” In the prologue to that interview, Ayers, who had become a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was described variously as “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education”; a man who “has developed a rich vision of teaching that interweaves passion, responsibility and self-reflection”; a professor who “helps aspiring teachers recognize and tap the potential of every child”; and someone who believes that “challenging stereotypes and reforming inner-city schools is as much about fighting for social justice as about improving the quality of teaching and learning.”

Nothing says ‘Tolerance’ like a guy who was named a domestic terrorist by the FBI for his love of attacking those who disagreed with him by setting bombs.

Group Snoop gives us this snippet, which seems to be the most straightforward description of what ‘Teaching Tolerance’ really is about:

The SPLC states that its Teaching Tolerance program “is working to foster school environments that are inclusive and nurturing – classrooms where equality and justice are not just taught, but lived.”[38] According to Jacob Laksin of Discover the Networks, however, “the program, far from a good-faith effort to instruct schoolchildren in the merits of tolerance, is designed to spread the virtues of political correctness among pupils while promoting liberal pieties among their teachers.”[39] 

Shorter: This arguably is a straight-up pipeline method and means for indoctrination and production of future activists.

This article is just part one. In part two, we’ll delve into how ‘Teaching Tolerance’ is aligning their content to the Common Core.

Many of the texts ‘Teaching Tolerance’ advocates are already on the Common Core Standards list of suggested reading.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, EDUCATION, Poltical Correctness, Racial Justice, Social Justice | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

DOJ ‘Lord of The Flies’ Style ‘Courts’ and Common Core Tied WestEd

Wait-whatWell, someone at the DOJ has never read Lord of the Flies.

The DOJ wants to try ‘courts’ run by teenagers because.. bullying.

Oh, and our Common Core pal, WestEd is in the mix with the grant for these ‘courts’. A grant that is  over $1.8 million dollars.

Washington Free Beacon:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is spending nearly $2 million to see if courts run by teenagers can be a viable tool to fight school bullying.

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) tasked WestEd, a San Francisco-based education research group, late last year to study the effectiveness of “youth courts,” where the roles of judge, jury, defense, and prosecution are filled by students, who can then administer punishment in middle and high schools.

“Reports of violence, bullying, and other offenses have resulted in concerns about school safety,” according to the NIJ grant. “Administrators, anxious to restore order, have adopted policies focusing on punishment that often results in removing students from school. Research indicates that such punishments do not increase school safety, but push youth, particularly minority students, out from mainstream education.”

The grant argues that rather than adult administrators disciplining students, the students should punish each other.

I really am at a loss as to where to start with this $1.8 million dollar pile of unmitigated stupid.  Kids presiding over other kids in a ‘court’– literally. GEE, what could possibly go wrong?

Reminder: WestEd sent a guy to testify in front of the NC Common Core Commission. Back in March, WestEd sent in a guy named Kevin Perks to talk to the commission in the capacity of being some kind of counter-balance to the only two Common Core critics brought to testify in North Carolina to date.

Not only does WestEd get fat off of government contracts, they pull in a healthy amount from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Read more about WestEd at the bottom of this previous article.


Related:

 

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#DM7 Article: Hillary Made $225K Off Jeb Bush Tied Ed Group

This is a repost of my weekly Da Tech Guy Column:  Hillary Made $225K Off Jeb Bush Tied Ed Group


By A.P. Dillon

Well, it would appear that an education outfit threw over $225k to Hillary Clinton for a speaking engagement back in March, 2014.

The article is short, go read it.

 

The outfit is called Academic Partnerships.  Their mission is the ‘globalization’ of everything Higher Education related.

Check out their advisory board.  As a Tarheel state resident, I noted former Governor and Common Core peddler, Jim Hunt, being on the list.

Bush and Hunt were also involved in a 2011 conference called, ‘Future of State Universities‘. Do not miss the video from Dr. Dick Ferguson (Former CEO of ACT) on ‘College Readiness’, with an introduction by Hunt touting the amazing Common Core.

Going back to the Hillary/Jeb Ed fest in 2014, Hunt helped put together this conference where Hillary raked in the cash. Note the creepy ‘one-world-order‘ type title of the conference:

The Globalization of Higher Education conference was put together by Bush and former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, who’s worked with Clinton in the past
Politico, 3/24/2014

Not only was Clinton a speaker, Jeb Bush was too — and he invited her.

Former Republican Gov. of Florida Jeb Bush invited the former Democratic senator to the two-day event, marking their third appearance together this year. More than 250 leaders of both U.S. and international universities will continue to meet through Tuesday to discuss the potential American higher education has to serve millions of students around the world. Clinton was among the 15 speakers, who also include former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
MSNBC, 3/24/14

We know what Hillary was paid. Was Jeb paid too?  Also, where does the money for all of these high priced speakers come from? How does Academic Partnerships make their money? Academic Partnerships appears to be a for-profit company.

Jeb and Hillary are more alike than not. They are certainly arm in arm on Education, ‘globalization’ and Common Core.

DM7 small LL1885A.P. Dillon resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina and is the founder of LadyLiberty1885.com.
Her current and past writing can also be found at IJ Review, StopCommonCoreNC.org and Watchdog Wire NC.
Catch her on Twitter: @LadyLiberty1885

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, EDUCATION, ELECTIONS | Tagged , , | Comments Off on #DM7 Article: Hillary Made $225K Off Jeb Bush Tied Ed Group

#NCED Legislative Update (WE 5/29)

The following education related bills have been passed and sent to Governor McCrory for signature:

HB 237  – Repeal Personal Ed Plans/Modify Trans Plans. (This means “PEPS”. This may have ramifications for policy on promotion; see WCPSS R&P promotion & intervention)
Summary text:

AN ACT TO REPEAL PERSONAL EDUCATION PLANS AND MODIFY TRANSITION PLANS

HB 113 – Protect Our Students Act.
Summary text:

AN ACT TO PROTECT NORTH CAROLINA’S STUDENTS BY INCREASING THE CRIMINAL PENALTY FOR THE COMMISSION OF CERTAIN SEX OFFENSES COMMITTED AGAINST A STUDENT BY A PERSON WHO IS SCHOOL PERSONNEL AND TO ESTABLISH A PROCEDURE FOR INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION TO OBTAIN A LIST OF STUDENTS AND EMPLOYEES AT THE INSTITUTION WHO ARE REGISTERED AS SEX OFFENDER

Posted in EDUCATION, NCGA | Comments Off on #NCED Legislative Update (WE 5/29)

Baldwin Continues To Fight For Parental Rights, Appeals Kite Runner Decision

In Buncombe county, Lisa Baldwin is a one woman army for parental rights.

After taking issue with the book, The Kite Runner, that given to one of her children that contained explicit and graphic scenes of rape as well as violent scenes throughout, Baldwin took her complaints to the school.

The Kite Runner inexplicably replaced the book that was used for years,  All Quiet on the Western Front.

From there, the complaint went to the Reynolds High Media/Technology Advisory Committee (MTAC) for review. MTAC approved the use of the book.

MTAC’s meeting was held behind closed doors.  Baldwin has told me her public information requests for the MTAC meeting minutes and vote count have been denied.

So much for transparency in our schools?

Baldwin is not giving up, instead, she’s appealing the decision and it will go to another committee, according to Citizen-Times:

The appeal now goes to a Community Media/Technology Advisory Committee, which will re-examine the issue and make a recommendation to the Buncombe County Board of Education, according to board policy.

Will this committee also meet behind closed doors?

Parents, take note of what your child is reading — at any grade level. Pay attention to what is going on in your child’s school.

Were you informed of potentially controversial assignments? Did you have objections that were summarily swept under the rug? Did you have to meet with a panel of staff just to get your questions answered?

Are your parental rights being trumped by the school system that your tax dollars fund?


Related:

MORE Controversial Reading Assignments In NC…and Beyond

Another NC Reading Assignment Questioned

Follow-Up: Another NC Reading Assignment Questioned

About Teacher Omar Currie’s Claim About Bullying…

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION | 1 Comment