APRIL 20, 21 AND 22, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


I GUESS IT’S ALL IN WHAT YOU CONSIDER TO BE “GREAT,” RIGHT? SIGH!

http://abcnews.go.com/US/man-wearing-maga-hat-trump-shirt-attacks-hispanic/story?id=54642028
Man wearing 'MAGA' hat, Trump shirt attacks Hispanic subway rider in New York, police say
By MARK OSBORNE Apr 22, 2018, 11:54 AM

SKETCH -- NYC tourist robbed at knifepoint of 'Make America Great Again' hat


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-antonio-texas-teacher-asks-8th-grade-students-to-list-positives-of-slavery/
CBS/AP April 21, 2018, 5:54 PM
Teacher asks 8th-grade students to list positives of slavery

SAN ANTONIO -- A San Antonio charter school has apologized after a teacher asked students in an eighth grade American history class to list the positive and negative aspects of slavery. The teacher at Great Hearts Monte Vista who distributed a worksheet titled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View" has been placed on leave

SAN ANTONIO -- A San Antonio charter school has apologized after a teacher asked students in an eighth grade American history class to list the positive and negative aspects of slavery. The teacher at Great Hearts Monte Vista who distributed a worksheet titled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View" has been placed on leave.

Aaron Kindel, the superintendent of Great Hearts Texas, said in a statement the school would audit the textbook associated with the lesson.

"To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity," Kindel said in a statement posted Thursday on the Great Hearts Facebook page. He said the school's headmaster plans to explain the mistake to the history class.

Scott Overland, a spokesman for Pearson, which published the textbook, said the company didn't create and doesn't endorse the worksheet assigned to the students, CBS affiliate KENS-TV reports.

"We do not support the point of view represented in the worksheet and strongly condemn the implication that there was any positive aspect to slavery," Overland said.

A parent of one of the students in the class posted the worksheet Wednesday on Facebook. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, drew attention to the issue on Thursday when the Democrat tweeted that the worksheet was "absolutely unacceptable."

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Joaquin Castro
✔
@JoaquinCastrotx
This is absolutely unacceptable. A @GreatHeartsTX charter school in San Antonio asked students to complete a “balanced view” assignment about slavery, requiring them to list the “positive aspects” of slave life. The teacher worked from a @pearson textbook.

1:02 PM - Apr 19, 2018
1,067
1,194 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

"Asking students to complete such an assignment challenges the reality that slavery was utterly dehumanizing," Castro said in a statement. He also called on the charter school network to review its history curriculum.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

COMMENTS, BACKGROUND, AND LINKS

Joaquin Castro
‏
Verified account

@JoaquinCastrotx
Follow Follow @JoaquinCastrotx
This is absolutely unacceptable. A @GreatHeartsTX charter school in San Antonio asked students to complete a “balanced view” assignment about slavery, requiring them to list the “positive aspects” of slave life. The teacher worked from a @pearson textbook.


Pearson Education - ePub & PDF eBooks
www.pearsoned.co.uk/bookshop/article.asp?item=1929

Buying an eBook. To buy from Pearson, find the relevant ePub eBook or PDF eBook format title you want to read on our website and complete the payment process. A download link for the eBook will be sent to your registered email address and can also be found within the order details in the MyAccount area of this website ... THE BLOG 09/02/2014 01:16 pm ET Updated Nov 02, 2014
Pearson: Inside the Belly of a Very Troubled Beast
By Alan Singer

“And the noise was in the beast’s belly like unto the questing of thirty couple hounds.” -Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, Book 1, chapter XIX, c. 14769

Being trapped in the belly of the beast is scary. In the Old Testament, Jonah was trapped in the belly of a great fish. In modern urban slang, the “belly of the beast” means being incarcerated.

But beasts can also be vulnerable. Jonah escaped. In medieval lore, knights slayed dragons. In the folk tale, Jack defeated the giant. Harry Potter bested Voldemort. The sun never set on the British Empire, until it withered away. The Soviet Union suddenly collapsed. In the same way Pearson, the publishing mega-giant, is looking more and more like it is vulnerable and its time dominating education in the United States and around the world may be coming to an end. Beasts are scary, but they can be brought down.

In Los Angeles investigators from the school district’s inspector general’s office uncovered a questionable email exchange on May 22, 2012 between John Deasy, the Superintendent of Los Angeles schools, and Marjorie Scardino, who at the time was the CEO of Pearson. They also had a lunch meeting prior to the awarding of a contract to Apple and Pearson to provide Apple iPads with Pearson software to L.A. students. Deasy emailed Scartdino, “Looking forward to further work together for our youth in Los Angeles!” Scardino replied, “Dear John, It’s I who should thank you, really can’t wait to work with you.”

There were also email exchanges between Jaime Aquino, the head of instruction for the district and Pearson officials. After a series of newspaper exposes, L.A. schools Superintendent John Deasy suspended the contract which was potentially worth $1 billion.

Contacts between school officials, Apple, and Pearson may have been going on for nearly a year before bidding was opened. According to the Los Angeles Times, the entire process was “beset by inadequate planning, a lack of transparency and a flawed bidding process.” Ties between Deasy and Apple and previous ties between Aquino and a Pearson affiliate gave an appearance of impropriety, initial rules for securing the contract may have actually been written to favor Apple and Pearson, and rules were then changed after most competitors were eliminated. I will have details from these emails in my next blog.

In New York State, college faculty rallied on the steps of the state capitol in Albany demanding that the State Education Department “stop sabotaging student teachers” and cancel contracts with Pearson. Pearson designs, administers, and grades the state’s teacher certification exams including the video and portfolio assessment of student teachers. Karen Magee, President of New York State United Teachers, “shook a copy of the state’s contract with Pearson in the air before tearing out a page and running it through a paper shredder.” Magee and other speakers accused Pearson of being a “privateer” making a “buck off of students.” Weeks later the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) passed a resolution supporting the New York state college faculty seriously criticizing the edTPA teacher certification process administered by Pearson. According to the resolution, “The AFT believes that neither edTPA nor any other performance assessment should be tied to a high-stakes testing regime and the outsourcing of evaluation, especially to for-profit corporations such as Pearson, as it is not an appropriate assessment of teacher education programs and teacher performance.”

At Teachers College - Columbia in New York City, University President Susan Fuhrman, under pressure from faculty and students to resign as a member of the Pearson Board of Directors, left the Pearson board when her term expired in May 2014.

In Atlanta, Georgia, twelve former 12 former public school employees are facing trial for conspiring to alter and boost student standardized test scores. The conspiracy accusation is especially serious because it exposes the accused teachers and administrators to racketeering changers [sic] that bring sentences of up to twenty years in prison. In 2011, Georgia state investigators concluded that as many as 178 principals and teachers in the Atlanta school district had cheated on the tests. Dozens of district employees have already been fired, forced to resign or retired and twenty-one pleaded guilty to lesser crimes like obstruction of justice and making false statements while agreeing to cooperate with investigators in return for probation.

Pearson has not been implicated in the cheating scandal but it may have some economic vulnerability here. Pearson designs and administers a number of standardized tests in Georgia and ran school improvement programs in Atlanta schools during the years under investigation through its Achievement Solutions division. At least three of the schools where personnel are charged with cheating, Grove Park, East Lake, and Walter White, were named Pearson Achievement Solutions National Demonstration Schools for 2006-2007.

Pearson’s program in Atlanta was especially important to its marketing efforts because the 51,000 students in the Atlanta public schools are 92% Black and Latino and 70% received free or reduced price lunch, a designation for poverty. These are the groups that both the federal No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs are targeting for academic improvement. Essentially, Pearson argued that success in Atlanta with these student populations could be translated into success anywhere. Now it appears the success was based on cheating.

In addition to these problems, disgruntled Pearson employees are starting to lambast the company online at http://www.glassdoor.com, a website that posts company reviews. Many of their complaints stem from a restructuring Pearson starting in May 2013 to focus on digital services and emerging (Third Word) (sic)markets. The “restructuring” led to a steep decline in net profits in 2012.

A former educational specialist at Pearson based in Oregon wrote: “There are still a few decent, intelligent, caring people at Pearson. They’re just few and far between and too scared for their own jobs to call attention to themselves . . . Many, many good people left or were fired and in their place you have lots of managers and executives who have no idea what their jobs entail or what products Pearson sells. It would be comical if it weren’t so sad.” This employee recommended to anyone working at Pearson, “Don’t Let the Door Hit You on Your Way Out.”

A current employee who not surprisingly wanted to remain anonymous wrote: “Too many chiefs and not enough team work . . . No concern with Pearson employees anymore.” A former Senior Sales Representative who left the company wrote: “If you are too fond of your neck, don’t join Pearson.” Still another wrote: “It was a very, very toxic environment to work in. At Pearson, especially in the corporate office levels, there is rampant nepotism and fairly shady insider business dealings.” And a Vice-President from New Jersey wrote: “Let’s not kid ourselves - the Pearson play is about standardized testing at the global level, and that includes in Higher Ed as well as K-12/Schools. They also want to become the school itself in many parts of the world. So they are riding the wave of privatization, and following the money. But can they survive the negative press they increasingly generate? And their own incompetence?”

Katrina Bass, a long-time employee in the Pearson higher education division contacted me via email and gave me permission to use her name in this post. According to Bass, she was one of a number of over-40 employees eliminated in Pearson’s recent “restructuring.” Her story echoes the comments on the “glassdoor” website. Most of these employees had “delivered clean profits for Pearson for decades only to endure several years of harassment leading up to dismissal.”

Bass believes Pearson’s “current state of desperation transitioning to digital was partly a result of their failure to innovate early (especially between 2007- 2012) instead relying on unethical business practices.”

According to Bass, “management regularly dumped product into the wholesale channel at year-end which meant shipping new textbooks to wholesale distributors at grossly discounted rates who then resold them as ‘used’ textbooks. Although representatives were given an annual ‘adjustment’ for these sales, it undermined field sales efforts and in no way reflected the increasing hours of support needed to train faculty and students on emerging technology.”

In addition, Bass believes “managers who were highly skilled at negotiating obscene over-ordering at college bookstores were rewarded and promoted.” She claims that Pearson, one of the few (if not only) publishing companies that compensate its sales force on gross sales, “it allowed unethical managers to be rewarded for what was ultimately unprofitable activity. Many remained at the helm despite missing their sales targets for up to four years in a row.”

According to Bass, the “Pearson Solutions Division dedicated a large sales force to poaching existing Pearson business by either customizing a print or web-based product. Pearson awarded dual sales credit when a Pearson Solutions representative built a custom web-portal to access Pearson content that was already in use and supported by a local sales representative. In many cases, media customization was a work-around to address a technological deficiency inherent in Pearson’s design. Adding to the confusion was the break-neck pace of acquisitions and the subsequent challenge of merging multiple platforms into student and faculty friendly interfaces.”

The Pearson Solution Division has grown rapidly and Bass claims it likes to boast that it is “building an airplane while it is in the air.” Bass feels that “Pearson is no longer a content provider.” Instead, it has become a “technology company that is heavily invested in data. It is disturbing to consider the amount of data they collect, own, interpret and disseminate that influence policies and practices in education.”

Since April 2014, when its price on the London Stock Exchange had dropped to 1008, down from a 2014 high of 1365, Pearson stock has bounced back and is now selling at 1128, which is still more than a 17% decline in value. On the New York Stock Exchange, Pearson is selling at $18.73, which is also down approximately 17% from its 52 week high of $22.40.

Pearson is trying to salvage the situation in the United States with new ventures in the “developing world.” Sir Michael Barber, who somehow combined being Great Britain’s Department for International Development’s special representative on education with his role as Pearson’s chief education advisor, is spear-heading Pearson efforts in India and Pakistan, a designated “growth“ market. Pearson has also been working through an organization called the Global Partnership for Education that includes representatives on UNESCO, UNICEF and government ministers and has been able to get its head of international affairs appointed to the Board of Directors as the only representative of a private for-profit corporation.

Hopefully Third World governments in the “developing world” and international organizations will look at Pearson’s problems in the United States and rethink whether they want to be involved with this company.

Follow Alan Singer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ReecesPieces8

Alan Singer
Social studies educator, Hofstra University, my opinions, of course, are my own


I WONDER WHO’S MAKING MONEY OFF THESE SICK VIDEOS. THE LAST TIME I SAW THIS, BOTH WERE GIRLS. “ARRESTED” IS A GOOD ENDING TO THIS STORY, IN MY VIEW. ASSAULT IS A CRIME, AND SHOULD BE PUNISHED ACCORDINGLY.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-administrators-arrested-in-student-fight-club-case/
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS/AP April 20, 2018, 12:06 PM
School administrators arrested in student "fight club" case

image -- Screengrab from a cell video showing students at Montville High School, who were allegedly encouraged to organize fights in the classroom WFSB

MONTVILLE, Conn. — A school superintendent, principal and assistant principal were arrested for not telling authorities about a student "fight club" at their Connecticut high school, state police said Thursday.

Several organized fights took place inside a math classroom at Montville High School during school hours with the encouragement of a substitute teacher, according to the police investigation. Many of the "slap boxing" fights were video recorded by students and shown to other students.

Video obtained by CBS affiliate WFSB shows two boys punching, hitting and slapping each other in a classroom. Someone in the background can be hear laughing, while another person appears to encourage the fight, yelling "Get him, get him, get him!"

The former substitute teacher, Ryan Fish, was arrested last week and charged with overseeing the "fight club." Fish, 23, has pleaded not guilty to charges including reckless endangerment and risk of injury to a minor. Fish was fired from the school in October, but police were not notified until two months later.

State police said Thursday that Montville Superintendent Brian Levesque, Montville High School Principal Jeffrey Theodoss and Assistant Principal Tatiana Patten are all charged with failing to report abuse.

ryan-fish.jpg
Ryan Fish is seen in photo provided by Connecticut State Police CONNECTICUT STATE POLICE / WFSB-TV

Levesque and Theodoss did not immediately return messages left at their homes. A working number for Patten could not immediately be located.

The three administrators have been placed on leave pending the outcome of the police investigation and an internal school probe, Assistant Superintendent Laurie Pallin said.

"The incident that occurred in a high school classroom was unacceptable but it is an exception to how Montville Public Schools operate — it does not illustrate the priority we place on student safety," Pallin said in a prepared statement.

The investigation began in December after a social worker said a 15-year-old student had appeared in court with signs of having been traumatized, according to a warrant. The teen said three other students had beaten him at school.

wfsb.jpg
From left, Superintendent Brian Levesque, assistant principal Tatiana Patten and principal Jeffrey Theodoss were arrested in for not reporting a fight club in Montville High School. CONNECTICUT STATE POLICE VIA WFSB

Patten told investigators in January that a guidance counselor told her on Oct. 6 that an anonymous parent reported a "slap boxing" incident with Fish's involvement but at the time there was no evidence that anything happened. Two days later, Theodoss sent her an email with a video. Patten said she received a text message from Theodoss instructing her not to say anything to anyone, according to a police warrant.

Theodoss said he informed Levesque of a video showing two boys fighting and asked whether police should be notified, and Levesque said "no," according to the warrant. In an interview with police, Levesque said he did not think about contacting police because he felt the issue was resolved after he fired Fish for failing to protect the safety of students and the students involved in the fight were disciplined.

"Levesque stated that he did not think it was criminal and thought it was a one time incident and thought that it was maybe a mistake," the officer wrote.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.


COMEY’S BOOK – SOUNDS LIKE A MUST READ. WATCH THIS INTERVIEW WITH THE BBC.

James Comey on Donald Trump and the FBI
Jump to media player
19 Apr
Video duration 1:35
Comey: 'No-one around Trump to contain him'
Jump to media player
20 Apr
Video duration 0:46
Comey: Trump tweets like 'a bad breakup'
Jump to media player
18 Apr
Video duration 1:24
Three takeaways from James Comey's memoir
Jump to media player
16 Apr
Video duration 1:16
Some Republicans irked by Comey firing
Jump to media player
10 May 17
Video duration 1:34
What we learned from FBI director Comey
Jump to media player
20 Mar 17
Video duration 1:11
Trump voters' verdict on Comey firing
Jump to media player
11 May 17
Video duration 1:12



http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/bernie-sanders-is-quietly-building-a-digital-media-empire.html
April 22, 2018 9:05 pm
Bernie Sanders Is Quietly Building a Digital Media Empire
By Gabriel Debenedetti

Photograph -- Welcome to Bernie TV

For a brief moment in late October 2016, when Hillary Clinton was surfing on a six-point national lead over Donald Trump and James Comey had yet to dive-bomb the presidential race, the talk of the political class was a set of curious reports suggesting that after losing embarrassingly, Trump could soon pursue his own TV network. The chatter grew loud enough that, just two weeks before Election Day, the candidate had to start publicly fending off rumors about his aspirations of a media venture, for fear that his supporters would lose interest in him just as early voting was getting underway.

“No, I have no interest in Trump TV — I hear it all over the place, I hear it,” he announced to one Cincinnati radio host, clearly reveling in the speculation but straining to get the attention back to the election at hand. “I have a tremendous fan base, I mean, we have a tremendous base, we have the most incredible people. But I just don’t have any interest in that.”

Denials aside, it made some kind of sense. Here was a screw-the-system, longtime student and manipulator of the press who’d just upended one massive institution (a political party) turning his attention to another that he’d spent years rhetorically ripping to shreds (the mass media), just as everyone finally — after all these decades — knew, and would never forget, his name.

The calculation still works. But Donald Trump isn’t the 2016 candidate who’s got a mini-media empire with a dedicated following all figured out. It’s Bernie Sanders.



I’VE SUBSCRIBED TO THE SNOPES PAGE, AND THEY GIVE WHATEVER STORY IS CURRENT ON MANY SUBJECTS, THOUGH MOST ARE SHORT – IT’S AS GOOD AS FACEBOOK FOR THE PURPOSE OF POKING INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES, AND BESIDES, IT IS HOPEFULLY TRUE SINCE SNOPES IS MY FAVORITE FACT CHECKER ACCOUNT. IT’S REALLY INTERESTING, AND SO FAR THEY HAVE ASKED FOR NO MONEY. GOOD DEAL. I DID SEE THIS NEWS CLIP WHEN IT HAPPENED, AND WAS SHOCKED AT THE NAKED EMOTION ON HER FACE. I WOULDN’T LIVE WITH SOMEBODY LIKE THAT MAN FOR ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/melania-trump-relationship-tweet/
Fact Check Politics
Did Melania Trump ‘Like’ a Tweet Lampooning Her Relationship With President Trump?
The personal Twitter account for Melania Trump "liked" (then quickly "unliked") a post speculating about her relationship with her husband

CLAIM
Melania Trump "liked" a tweet that poked fun at her relationship with her husband, President Donald Trump.

RATING
TRUE
ORIGIN
On 2 May 2017, Twitter user Andy Ostroy posted a gif showing First Lady Melania Trump looking sad after smiling at her husband, President Donald Trump, alongside a message about their perceived icy relationship: ....



http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-39866051/chuck-schumer-president-trump-you-re-making-a-big-mistake
Kansas militia men guilty of plot to bomb Somalis' mosque
18 April 2018

(L-R) Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Stein were steeped in "a culture of hatred and violence", said prosecutors Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office

Three men have been found guilty of plotting to bomb Somali immigrants at a mosque and apartment complex in the US state of Kansas.

A federal jury in Wichita convicted Curtis Allen, 50, Gavin Wright, 49, and Patrick Eugene Stein, 49, who belonged to a militia called the Crusaders.

Armed with guns and explosives, the trio planned to strike a day after the November 2016 US elections.

But the Garden City plotters were infiltrated by an FBI informant.

Three accused of plot to bomb US mosque

The suspects, who planned to detonate four vehicles packed with explosives at the corners of the apartment complex, were arrested about a month before election day.

Following a four-week trial, the three were convicted on Wednesday of one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of conspiracy against civil rights.

The defendants' legal team acknowledged their clients had referred to Muslim as "cockroaches", but argued their plot was all talk.

However, Assistant US Attorney Anthony Mattivi, for the prosecution, said in court on Tuesday: "Their ultimate goal was to wake people up and to slaughter every man, woman and child in the building."

Allen, Wright and Stein face life in prison when sentenced in June.