Steven Singer: Selling Segregation to Blacks and Hispanics

Diane Ravitch's blog

Steven Singer says that the charter school idea has been a massive swindle. It results in increased racial and ethnic segregation, yet its promoters have stealthily sold the idea to black and Hispanic parents.

He writes:

In Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is Unconstitutional to have “separate but equal” schools because when they’re separate, they’re rarely equal. Having two parallel systems of education makes it too easy to provide more resources to some kids and less to others.

Who would have ever thought that some minority parents would actually choose this outcome, themselves, for their own children!?

After Bloody Sunday, Freedom Rides, bus boycotts and countless other battles, a portion of minority people today somehow want more segregation!?

It’s hard to determine the extent of this odd phenomena. Charter advocates flood money into traditional civil rights organizations that until yesterday opposed school privatization…

View original post 87 more words

A Quiet Exit

This is Another Story

Most people would consider me a tolerant person because I don’t get angry easily, because no matter how much I hurt, I hold it in, and because I never unleash my anger on anyone.

View original post 761 more words

Sunday Meditations

The Swains lined the third pew from the front on the right side of the church.  Daddy insisted on it.  I might be a better person today if I’d gotten to sit on the back pew and write notes and giggle with my friends.  I had a lot of time over the years to study those in front of me, the only thing that kept me from going bonkers during the long service.

Brother Deck, an ancient deacon sat in the middle of the front pew, wearing ancient suits, heavy black, wool in winter and gray gabardine in summer.  The gabardine had been pressed so much it was thin and shiny.  Should it be hot enough for him to remove his jacket, we were treated to a view of a gray, gabardine wedgie, which somehow, he never seemed to notice, though I was always puzzled at how he could tolerate…

View original post 464 more words

Kenya: Relationship ends in tragedy – Man poisons wife, child before committing suicide over affair

African Press International (API)

STEVE NJUGUNA -1 | Jumamosi, Agosti 27, 2016

A man committed suicide on Thursday evening at Kwa-Kibathi Village in Nyandarua County after he found his wife with a man he suspected she was carrying an affair with.

Mr Daniel Kihara Macharia is said to have assaulted and forced his wife and four-year-old daughter to take poison before killing himself.

The man is said to have seen his wife with another man in Nyahururu town on Thursday and later found the same man in his house when he went home.

Neighbours said they heard commotion in his house and rushed there only to find the door locked from inside.

“I forced myself into the house only to find his wife and child lying on the ground unconscious while his body was dangling from the roof,” said Mr Solomon Maina, a neighbour.

Neighbours rushed the woman and her daughter to the Nyahururu…

View original post 344 more words

Why a Civil War, The Voting Rights Act and the Presidential Defeat of a Carnival Barker Did Not End America’s Race Dance

Levi Cavener: Cronyism in Idaho Charter World…and the Death of Local Control of Schools

Diane Ravitch's blog

Levi B. Cavener teaches in Caldwell, Idaho. He blogs at Idahospromise.org.

Coming soon to a town near you Idaho: Charter school cronyism

In the wake of financial scandals in the Gem State’s education world including the multimillion dollar broadband fiasco, citizens have a right to be leery about cozy relationships between government entities and their business partners.

Take, for example, the recent charter school petition Caldwell School District received from Pathways in Education (PIE). From a public records request, that petition stated that PIE would pay California based Pathways Management Group (PMG), operated by charter entrepreneur Mr. John Hall, to the tune of $127 per student per month for “charter management.”

With a desired enrollment of 300 students and a flexible year-round schedule, that creates a significant contract of $450k for PMG per year. It is unclear what services would be provided for this fee as many of the services…

View original post 473 more words

Framed On Lamu

Tish Farrell

I said in my last post that we seem only to go to the seaside at Christmas. It was a habit begun when we lived in Kenya through the 1990s: December is the high holiday season, and heading for some Indian Ocean beach cottage was what all Aid-industry wazungu did.  Coral beaches glistened. The sea was warm, and fresh fish, mangos, papaya, eggs and sun-baked tomatoes arrived daily at your cottage door courtesy of the local Digo traders.

We have of course been repatriated for many years, but somehow we still have not re-shaped ourselves for northern latitudes. Perhaps being blown inside out on a midwinter Welsh or Cornish beach only serves to burnish memories filled with clattering leaves of coconut palms, the roar of surf on reef, and the ‘ding-ding’ of the vegetable seller’s bicycle bell. Oh yes, and of a Christmas Dinner that only involves a barbecued lobster…

View original post 1,068 more words

Even the National Charter School Association Says California’s Charter Oversight is Deficient

Diane Ravitch's blog

Greg Richmond, president and chief executive of the National Association of Charter Authorizers, wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calling on the state to overhaul the selection of those that can authorize charter schools. At present, the process is a free-for-all, and almost anyone can open a charter school. Local boards are authorizers; county boards are authorizers; if both of them turn down an applicant, the applicant can appeal to the state board and overturn the local and county boards.

California is awash in charter schools. According to a recent report by the ACLU, at least 20% of them engage in illegal discrimination to keep out the students they don’t want.

California also has had a steady parade of scandals, of charter owners who line their pockets with taxpayers’ money.

Will the state clean up the sector? Will it establish accountability and transparency, both for authorizers and for…

View original post 31 more words

The Difference Between What Women and Men Read

A Writer's Path

by Ariel Kusby

When it comes to the difference between the reading habits of women and men, study after study has shown that females generally tend to complete more books per year, regardless of genre. While there is no definitive answer as to why this is true, female readership has undoubtedly increased over the past century.

Though women read more in general, they also tend to read more of certain genres and less of others. A 2007 NPR article reported that women account for eighty percent of the fiction market. Men, in contrast, have been reported to read more nonfiction, the most popular topics being history, politics, and business. Men are also more likely to read science fiction.

View original post 625 more words

SOURCE ENERGY: Raising Your Vibration Through Less Dense And Lighter Foods – By Vermeir Hannelore

RIELPOLITIK

Source – in5d.com

– “…Kirlian photography made it already possible, by capturing energy patterns, to visualize subtle energy fields around living and non living objects: e.g. the differences between organic and mainstream foods. Because every pasteurized, processed or cooked food has a diminished or deformed energy field, it points out visible evidence to the science of ‘living foods”:

(Fruit On Top – Raising Your Vibration Through Less Dense And Lighter Foods – By Vermeir Hannelore)

Is our common energy source, namely food, draining our energy? How can an optimal diet lift our frequency and alter our awareness?

Quantum physics teaches us that our physical world is not solid, but in fact a vast field of differentiating energy. It is our consciousness and attention that manifests and holds together fluctuating energy, letting us perceive things the way we see them. Corresponding, food is also a form of…

View original post 993 more words