Is there really a STEM shortage? And do we want to emulate China or Korea?

A child attending class ALL day and into the night is not allowed to be a child, for one; and this is a great way to break up the family unit. Why on Earth would we want to model ourselves after a Communist country??

GFBrandenburg's Blog

You have all heard the mantra that we don’t have enough young people studying STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), and that is the reason that so many Americans are doing poorly.  If you agree with this call,this articlein the New York Review of Books might make you think about the subject differently.

A few important points:

(1) The United States graduates way more engineers and scientists every year than can ever hope to get a job in their fields.

(2) As a result, large percentages of STEM graduates do not work in their chosen field

(3) As part of their profit-maximization strategy, tech giants like Microsoft nonetheless encourage this glut of STEM applicants while at the same time complaining that they need to hire foreigners on H1B visas, who earn on average about 57% of what a similarly-qualified American worker makes.

(4) While many, many American high…

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Abandoned NYC: Tour of Dead Horse Bay

I would love to tour “Abandoned NYC”…but this particular tour? I think I’d pass.  I see an old 7UP bottle from the sixties.  And the witch carrying the pumpkin candle is something we had in the 70s, I believe.  I think it was sold through candle sales that were popular at that time to raise funds for scout troops/band.  There’s been some “water under the bridge” since then, but if memory serves…

Ben Folds Five: Brick

Loved this song when it came out and saw they had it on VEVO.  When I first heard it, I thought it was about a first love relationship and how he was scared of being vulnerable to her….but then I realized it was about abortion.  At least, that is how I’m reading it.

It tells the story behind abortion of how it’s not just “some group of cells” (a feminist described as such) that one sweeps from your life — never to be bothered with another thought on it.

“….as weeks went by…it showed that she was not fine…” 

…the realization that it was not so easy to sweep away.

I first heard of abortion regret in college during a composition class, when I read Linda Bird Francke’s essay on her abortion and the lingering feeling of loss for years afterwards.  She thought of the child often after the abortion–seeing a “ghost on the horizon”.  I had never heard of abortion regret from abortion advocates.

When Offered the “Choice,” Who Enrolls in a “Failing School”?

This is just busy work. Keep moving kids around to sever relationships with other kids and their teachers. After all that I have seen this past week, it is clear to me that this is not just profiteering by the hedge funders, but something deeper than that. Destroying the fabric of society where we knew one another and made lifetime friendships from schools and church. It’s more than dumbing kids down.

deutsch29

On June 27, 2015, I posted a piece entitled, 37 Percent of New Orleans Students Attended Excelling Schools in 2014, in which I take the news byte of the dramatic, “67-to-7-percent” drop in “failing schools” in New Orleans and flip it to produce three more modest news bytes regarding the number of students in “excelling schools.” My goal was to confront the potential assumption that “not a failing school” and “excelling school” are one and the same– and to communicate as much in the corporate-reform-preferred delivery of a marketing-friendly news byte.

However, I veered form typical corporate reform delivery in that I linked to documentation of my calculations behind the news bytes as well as to the data used in my calculations.

All of the above work was the result of my attending the Education Research Alliance (ERA) of New Orleans conference and hearing former Recovery School District (RSD)…

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Demonstrate at the Wilson Building Tomorrow at 9 AM to Allow the Washington Teachers’ Union Access to Important Teacher Data

GFBrandenburg's Blog

ACTION ALERT! Join us tomorrow to demand access to information on IMPACT   On Tuesday, June 30 at 9 am join fellow DCPS educators, parents and other WTU allies at the Wilson Building to oppose cutting off access to information about the DCPS teacher evaluation system, IMPACT.   Tomorrow morning the City Council will vote on legislation that would cut off access to IMPACT information, which your union, researchers and others need to judge the fairness and effectiveness of the evaluation system, and to determine whether D.C. Public Schools’ policies are really helping our children succeed. The Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) has always stood for transparent decision-making and open government. The union and others have urged the mayor and council members to remove from the Mayor’s Budget Support Act the provision that would prevent the union, educators and others from having access to IMPACT data, and to hold hearings on…

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NPR: fair and balanced reporting

bwahahahahahahaha. *snort*

I didn’t listen to the segment. I tend to avoid National Polite Republican, but give in and listen every now and then.  I can’t stand what they pass off as fair and balanced democratic debate…this is just another episode of trying to look relevant and tapped in.

Supreme Court in bed with Big Coal

I can’t freaking believe this.  You might as well scrap the EPA.  Who gives a rip about what the costs are TO THE POLLUTERS?!  Again…they are polluters!  It is their responsibility to not send mercury, lead, and arsenic into the atmosphere while profiting off of it.

Oh, right, I forgot…it’s an Ayn Rand world now, where we can do what we want without concern for others nor responsibility towards the Earth.

Good God.