Reading First scandal just keeps on getting worse.
Randy BestI just keep wondering when will be the First Indictments for Reading First? Are there date certains, time-lines or just bench marks?
It just keeps getting more sordid.
ABC reports the riches to riches story of Randy Best. Randy was a Bush “pioneer.” That means he donated more than $100K to the Bush campaign.
In return what did Randy get?
After receiving the Reading First contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded Learning, for $360 million. According to his critics, the company was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier, a figure Best disputes.
“Their friends and cronies, and they ended up not designing the best program for America’s schoolchildren,” said Congressman George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
In a congressional report the inspector general for the Department of Education found gross and repeated examples of conflict of interest in the Reading First program.
Edward Kame’enui, was receiving consultant fees from Best’s company and also received $400,000 in royalties from publisher Scott Foresman, which produced reading programs.
A spokesmen for Margaret Spellings, head of the DOE, was quoted by ABC as saying that the department was, “committed to results.”
I wonder if that’s true about the Department of Justice?
“Have a nice day,” says Senator Kotowski.
After we returned from Springfield, many of our PREA members wrote to Senator Kotowski, asking his views on school funding.
In one form or another, they recieved this answer:
Sorry that it has taken some time to return your email. As you can imagine, I received hundreds of emails per week, and it is difficult to respond to everyone in a timely manner. I appreciate your understanding and your patience.
I support increased, fair and sustained funding for Illinois Schools. I believe that state can better make this case for funding to taxpayers by first paying for its unfunded Medicaid liability, addressing the $41 billion pension obligation due teachers, state police officers and other state employees, and shining the line on contracts awarded in the State of Illinois (SB 767 passed the Senate last week).
I appreciate your contacting my office. Please get back to me if you have any additional thoughts or questions.
Have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Dan
So, much like he said in our phone conversation, he says he’s not doing anything about school funding until medicaid, pensions or whatever are fixed.
Keep writing. He’s wrong about this.
Green Dot.
We were eating chicken tacos with my own recipe for refried beans, switching back and forth between American Idol (Melinda is technically perfect at every musical style but has very little character or uniqeness) and the Bulls Pistons game (Bulls took game five in Detroit).
We got into a discussion about the Green Dot controversy in LA. If you don’t know about the Green Dot thing, it has been covered by every ed blogger and ed pundit in America. I think there are now 9 pages of links on technorati.
Green Dot is a non-profit charter school corporation founded by Steve Barr, a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser and founder of Rock the Vote.
According to their web site:
Green Dot has opened ten high performing public charter high schools in Los Angeles. We serve neighborhoods where the traditional public schools are overcrowded and underperforming. Our schools provide all students with a college-preparatory education, in a safe, personalized, small school environment. Students and parents love the Green Dot school experience.
“So you’re a union guy. What do you think?”
The union question got asked because of the rest of the story. The LA Unified School District is not friendly to Green Dot and neither is the UTLA, the LA teachers’ union. The UTLA is suspicious that Green Dot is not friendly to collective bargaining. There is evidence. The most recent controversy involving Green Dot has focused on Locke High School in Watts.
Says the LA Times:
Amid dozens of poor-performing middle and high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Locke has long languished as one of the worst. At least one of every two students drops out, while the majority who remain score at or near the bottom on standardized tests.
More than half of the school’s 73 tenured teachers signed petitions this week expressing interest in converting Locke into Green Dot charters. Once verified, the petitions — copies of which were obtained by The Times and checked against a roster of the Locke faculty — would legally allow Green Dot to petition the board for control of the school. Many un-tenured teachers also signed the petitions.
With school district and union leaders quickly catching wind of the hostile-takeover plan and scrambling to counter it with a reform plan of their own, Green Dot founder Steve Barr returned early from a conference in New Orleans to hold a news conference this morning with Locke teachers and parents outside the school.
The tenured, many veteran teachers at Locke, and non-tenured teachers, have signed papers to quit the UTLA (there is a nominal union at Green Dot, but no one takes it seriously).
So, these are the issues. A system that has failed the neediest of its students. Teachers who are willing to give up any union protection to work at a school that is not supported by the district so they can work with kids who are succeeding in school for the first time. Parents who see Green Dot’s take-over as perhaps their last best hope. UTLA, which sees Green Dot as a threat to collective bargaining rights throughout the district. Anti- teacher union zealots who are wringing their hands with joy over the situation. A wealthy liberal Democrat who has an agenda that in many ways mirrors the most conservative critics of public schools and teacher unions.
What do I think?
I think Melinda will win and the Bulls will lose in seven.
More Ash Grove memories.
I’m not sure I intended to go off on an Ash Grove riff. But, since I already claimed it as the main location for my secondary education, here’s a memory received from fellow alum and great musician, Steve F’dor.
I remember sitting in at the Ash Grove in the early 70s, as well as having seen Freddy King, Johnny Otis, T-Bone Walker, etc. Great place. About 10 years ago, Ed Pearl tried to reopen it on the Santa Monica Pier, but it didn’t survive very long. It then became - I think - “Arcadia” and I had a gig there one night. The original Ash Grove became the Improv and Lester Chambers ran a weekly blues jam that was a lot of fun. There was a near brawl one night when a young white James Brown wanabee was making a fool of himself onstage. Bill Bateman of the Blasters couldn’t take anymore of it and went up to the stage and pulled out the guy’s microphone cord. Turns out the guy’s manager was apparently Lester Chambers and one thing led to another and the whole affair emptied out onto the street. I know Ed Pearl’s brother Bernie very well and have played in his band from time to time, backing singers like Barbara Morrison and Harmonica Fats. Bernie used to play behind Ash Grove performers in the 60s.
Teachers of the Year say, “change NCLB.”
Would you be shocked to know that 50 of the 56 winners of Teacher of the Year awards call for a “seat at the table” when reauthorization of NCLB is discussed?
They have a list of 10 big changes they would make.
They commend the teachers’ unions for their role in combating the worst aspects of the Bush/Kennedy law, but they say as teachers they bring real-life experience.
