RALEIGH, N.C. — The group organizing Wednesday’s mass teacher rally in Raleigh says it wants state lawmakers to sharply raise education spending — including pay raises for all school employees — and to reverse many of the education changes made in the past seven years.
More than 15,000 teachers have signed up to attend the “March for Students and Rally for Respect,” an event that’s causing at least 38 school districts, including Wake, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Durham and Johnston counties and Chapel Hill-Carrboro, to cancel classes Wednesday.
On Monday, the North Carolina Association of Educators released its priorities for the march, which coincides with the opening day of this year’s state legislative session. The list includes raising both teacher pay and per-pupil spending to the national average over the next four years. The group also wants “significant and livable raises for all public school employees.”
The National Education Association estimates that North Carolina’s average teacher salary is $9,622 below the national average and per-pupil spending is $2,406 below the national average. The NCAE says lawmakers should not cut corporate taxes until both teacher pay and per-pupil spending reach the national average.
“North Carolina public school educators, parents, and our communities demand better for our students,” NCAE President Mark Jewell said in a statement. “These specific public education priorities will give every student an opportunity to succeed and help recruit and retain educators as we face a critical shortage in our classrooms and school buildings.”
Senate Leader Phil Berger’s office responded Monday by pointing to how the Republican-led state legislature has increased public education spending by nearly $2 billion since 2011. Berger’s office also noted that lawmakers have promised a fifth consecutive teacher pay raise that will lead to an average 6.2 percent raise next year.
“Over 44,000 teachers in North Carolina — half the state’s workforce — are receiving at least a $10,000 raise since 2014 under the General Assembly’s budgets,” added Joseph Kyzer, a spokesman for House Speaker Tim Moore. “That’s why North Carolina has ranked No. 1 and No. 2 the last two years for teacher pay growth by the NEA.”
Other big-ticket items for the NCAE, which is the state affiliate of the NEA, include adding at least 500 school nurses, social workers and counselors this year and expanding Medicaid to improve health options for students. The group also wants lawmakers to put a $1.9 billion statewide school construction bond referendum on the ballot “to fix our crumbling schools and large class sizes.”
In the face of rising health insurance premiums, the NCAE also wants legislators to provide school employees with “enhanced and protected health insurance and pension.”
Some of the NCAE’s “expectations” for legislators would require reversing changes made since Republicans gained the majority in 2011, including:
— Restoring extra pay for teachers with advanced degrees.
— Restoring longevity pay for school employees based on their years of service.
— Restoring career status, colloquially called teacher tenure, that gives due process rights to teachers before they’re fired or demoted.
— Ending pay for performance based on student test scores for teachers and administrators.
“There isn’t a vision here for increasing student achievement,” said Terry Stoops, vice president of research for the conservative John Locke Foundation. “There’s a vision for increasing the amount of money we spend on public schools but with very little sense on how that money would be used.”
Oman/May 15, 2018/by Times News Service/Source: http://timesofoman.com/
The Ministry of Education signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Oman Oil Production Company and Innovation (Ebtikar) for Intelligent Solutions Company.
The MoU comes to implement a number of technical projects that promote the use of technology in the field of education. It also seeks the integration of innovative digital projects that promote the educational process in the Sultanate.
With the presence of Dr Homoud Al Harthi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education for Education and Curriculum, Yahya Al Harthi, Director-General of the Directorate-General for Curriculum Development at the Ministry of Education, signed the MoU with Ashraf Al Mamari, vice-chairman of Oman Oil Company, and Eng Tamer Al Abri, Executive manager of Innovation Company.
The MoU is part of the Ministry of Education’s efforts to develop innovative electronic services that enhance the educational process in the Sultanate. It is also within the framework of the Oman Oil Exploration and Production Company’s keenness to support innovative scientific projects that enhance the educational aspect. The MoU also comes in line with the fact that Ebtikar (Innovation) for smart solutions is an Omani company characterised by the industry of smart applications and new technologies as well as innovating a new concept through the delivery of knowledge in entertainment.
The MoU covers designing, programming and implementation of the oil and gas from exploration to production book to become an innovative interactive electronic book across various platforms, from a web version, to an interactive application. The signing of this MoU seeks to develop educational content that enhances the understanding of the content of the book. This content varies from graphics to images that enhance the science fiction and definitions of book content with audio explanations that correspond to the content. The project will be available to everyone in official smart application stores after the completion of its implementation.
Autralia/ May 15, 2018/By Emily Baker/Source: https://www.smh.com.au
Reforms aimed at improving the ACT’s education system for children with complex needs and challenging behaviours continue to lag.
An expert panel behind a 2015 review of the education system – triggered after a Canberra school used a $5000 cage to manage the behaviour of a child with autism – made a suite of recommendations broadly accepted by the public and Catholic education sectors.
But the Schools For All December 2017 progress report, only released this week, showed the ACT Education Directorate and Catholic Education Office were yet to finalise five and seven recommendations respectively.
Among recommendations not yet completed by the ACT Education Directorate and Catholic Education was the professionalisation of learning support assistants.
A directorate-specific progress update said the system had partnered with the Canberra Institute of Technology to offer a pilot group of workers a Certificate IV in Education Support and further pledged to «consider the minimum expected level of training for LSAs».
The Catholic system reported 80 per cent of its classroom support assistants had either completed or started a Certificate IV or equivalent training.
Both systems were also yet to sign off on a recommendation relating to alternatives to out-of-school suspensions, originally due in June 2016.
The directorate’s Schools for All update said an off-campus alternative education option was under development «for a small number of students» who could not «effectively» access learning in a mainstream setting.
«The directorate is working closely with Canberra high school principals and the community sector to design and implement the off campus flexible learning program,» the report said.
«A first intake of students is expected to participate in the program in the second semester of 2018.»
The directorate’s progress report hinted at possible future projects in the public system.
The directorate had investigated the «schools as hub» model, according to the progress update, which had included a visit to Melbourne’s Doveton College. A report had been handed to the directorate’s Future of Education and early childhood education strategy team, it said.
Most remaining Catholic recommendations related to administrative processes. One called on the system to establish procedures to apply, monitor and report on restrictive practices.
The Archdiocese-specific report said early career teachers and «several targeted schools» had received a course on managing aggression and potential aggression. Processes to report and respond to critical incidents had been developed, it said, and «schools have and will continue to be advised on alternatives for restraint».
A key advancement in the December quarter was the development of an evaluation baseline against which the Schools for All reforms could be measured, another government report said.
Public, Catholic and independent schools had also joined to ensure their disability criteria aligned with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition.
» … we have begun to see a systemic cultural change where all children and young people in ACT schools are placed at the centre of all decision-making relating to education policy and practice to enable their social, academic and wellbeing needs to be met,» the summary report said.
The leadership of almost all major political parties have signed reform agenda called “Charter for Education”, committing to increase the provincial and federal education spending to 4 per cent of the GDP, supported by substantial governance reforms to ensure that the allocated funds are spent effectively and transparently.
The leadership of almost all major political parties made the commitment in a landmark education conference titled Ailaan-e- Amal hosted by education campaign Alif Ailaan here on Monday.
All the parties have committed to ensuring that the agreed charter will be adopted into their respective election manifestos, besides committing to developing a plan of implementation within 100 days of the oath-taking of the future chief ministers after the upcoming elections.
Political parties including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), National Party (NP), Awami National Party (ANP), Jamat-e- Islami (JI), Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), PkMAP and BNP-M pledged to go beyond political differences and proceed with national reform agenda for education.
Punjab School Education Minister Rana Mashood, KP Education Minister Muhammad Atif Khan, ANP’s Afrasiab Khattak and Sardar Hussain Babak, PTI’s Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar and PPP MNA Dr Azra Pechuho among others attended the conference.
The conference discussed improving learning outcomes in schools and delivering on the state’s obligation to provide compulsory and free education for all children between the ages of 5-16 and continue support for the provision of quality education to all Pakistani children. Besides that, all provinces were also asked to commit a minimum of 20 per cent of their budget for education annually.
The conference also agreed on a standard career plan for all recruited teachers and clear distinction between teaching paths and management paths, besides reaffirming merit-based recruitment.
Speaking on the occasion, Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar stated that in a country like Pakistan, where 23 million children were still out of school, a national emergency must be declared after the general elections. “We will need to set strict targets to get them all in school and get them learning.”
Dr Azra Pechuho was of the view that there is a need for legislation extending beyond the provision of free and compulsory education to legislation on quality, teacher availability and budget utilization.
Punjab School Education Minister Rana Mashhood stated that it was heartening to see that all provincial governments have prioritized education since 2013 and Punjab, specifically, focused on providing quality education.
Speaking on the occasion, Ajmal Khan Wazir said that it was shocking to know that FATA was even not included in the draft despite having many out of school children. He added that the long-deprived area must be included and all political parties should play their part to develop the area.
Madeleine Albright, without irony, has written a book on resisting fascism. She has also published an op-ed in the New York Times pushing the same argument.
Albright, former secretary of state under Bill Clinton, is alarmed. She wants to warn the public to stop the fascism emerging under the Trump regime before it’s too late.
Unfortunately, moralism on the part of the infamous and notorious is often the enemy of both historical memory and the truth, in spite of their newly discovered opposition to tyranny.
It defies belief that a woman who defended the killing of 500,000 children as a result of the imposed U.S. sanctions on Iraq can take up the cause of fighting fascism while positioning herself as being on the forefront of resistance to American authoritarianism.
Albright appears on ‘60 Minutes’ in 1996.
Denis J. Halliday, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Iraq for part of the sanctions era, once said of those measures: “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.”
Is any policy worth the death of 500,000 children?
Albright, however, is not alone.
Hillary Clinton, herself a former war-monger and an unabashed ally of the financial elite, has also resurrected herself as a crusader in fighting the creeping fascism that now marks the Trump regime.
Speaking recently at the PEN World Voices Festival, Clinton appeared to have completely removed herself from her notorious past as a supporter of the Iraq war and the military-industrial-financial complex in order to sound the alarm “that freedom of speech and expression is under attack here in our own country.” She further called for action against America’s creeping authoritarianism.
‘Flight from memory’
It’s an odd flight from memory into the sphere of moral outrage given her own role in supporting a number of domestic and foreign policies both as a former first lady and as secretary of state.
There was the refusal to punish CIA torturers, the drone killings, the lavishing of funds to the military war machine, the shredding of the federal safety net for poor people and the endorsement of neoliberal policies that offered no hope or prosperity “for neighbourhoods devastated by deindustrialization, globalization, and the disappearance of work.”
Clinton’s critique of Trump’s fascism does more than alert the public to the obvious about the current government, it also legitimatizes a form of historical amnesia and a long and suppressed legacy of cruelty and human misery. It gets worse.
Michael Hayden, the former NSA chief and CIA director under George W. Bush, has joined the ranks of Albright and Clinton in condemning Trump as a proto-fascist.
Writing in the New York Times, Hayden, ironically, chastised Trump as a serial liar and in doing so quoted the renowned historian Timothy Snyder, who stated in reference to the Trump regime that “Post-Truth is pre-fascism.”
And yet he’s now being regarded as an honest, expert commentator on intelligence and other issues.The irony here is hard to miss. Not only did Hayden head Bush’s illegal National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program while the head of the NSA, he also lied repeatedly about about his role in Bush’s sanction and implementation of state torture in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dubious heroes
The United States and its Vichy Republican Party has drifted so far to the fascist right that people like Albright, Clinton and Hayden are serving as heroes in the political and ethical resistance to fascism.
While the call to resist fascism is to be welcomed, it has to be interrogated, not aligned with individuals and ideological forces that helped put in place the racist, economic, religious and educational forces that produced it.
I am not simply condemning the hypocrisy of former politicians who are now criticizing the emerging fascism in the United States. Nor am I proposing that only selective condemnations should be welcomed.
What I am suggesting is that the seductions of power in high places often work to impose a silence upon people that allow them to benefit from and become complicit with authoritarian tendencies and anti-democratic policies and modes of governance. Once they’re out of power, their own histories of complicity are too often easily erased, especially by the mainstream media.
Their newly found stances against fascism do nothing to help explain where we are and what we might do next to resist it now that it’s engulfing American society and its economic, cultural and political institutions.
What is often unrecognized in the celebrated denunciations of fascism by celebrity politicians is that neoliberalism is the new fascism.
And what becomes invisible in the fog of such celebration is neoliberalism’s legacy and its deadly mix of market fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism, rabid individualism, unchecked selfishness, shredding of the welfare state, privatization of the public sphere, white supremacy, toxic masculinity and all-embracing quest for profit.
‘Savage politics’
The new and more racist, violent and brutal form of neoliberalism under Trump has produced both a savage politics in the U.S. and a corrupt financial elite that now controls all the commanding institutions of U.S. society.
Systemic corruption, crassness, overt racism, a view of misfortune as a weakness, unapologetic bigotry and a disdain of the public and common good has been normalized under Trump, but it’s been gaining strength for the last 50 years in U.S. politics. Trump is merely the blunt instrument at the heart of a fascistic neoliberal ideology.
We need to be wary, to say the least, about those mainstream politicians now denouncing Trump’s fascism who while in power submitted, as noted U.S. sociologist Stanley Aronowitz puts it, “to neoliberal degradations of health care, jobs, public housing, and income guarantees for the long-term unemployed (let alone the rest of us).”
What is often ignored in the emerging critiques of fascism is neoliberalism’s legacy coupled with the mainstream media’s attempts to hold up many of its architects and supporters as celebrated opponents of Trump’s fascist government.
Trump is the extreme point of a long series of attacks on democracy —and former politicians like Albright and Clinton cannot be removed from that history.
Unchecked and systemic power, a take-no-prisoners politics and an unapologetic cruelty are the currency of fascism because they have long been the wedge that makes fear visceral and violence more than an abstraction.None of these politicians have denounced nationalism, the myth of American exceptionalism and the forces that produce obscene inequality in wealth and power in the U.S., or the oppressive regime of law and order that has ruled the U.S. ruthlessly and without apology since the 1980s.
This lethal mix is also a pathological condition endemic to brutal demagogues such as Trump. Trump and his ilk demand loyalty —not to justice and democracy, but loyalty to themselves, one that stands above the truth and rule of law.
Stamp out amnesia
The calls to resist fascism are welcome, but they can’t be separated from the acts of bad faith that helped produce it.
The fight against fascism is part of a struggle over memory. We must not engage in historical and social amnesia.
It is also a fight to defend the public spheres and institutions that make civic literacy, the public imagination and critical consciousness possible. We must expose the forces that are and have been complicit in the longstanding attack on democratic institutions, values and social relations, especially those that now hide their past and ideological convictions.
Any resistance to fascism has to be rooted in the call to make education central to politics with a strong emphasis on the teaching of historical consciousness and civic literacy as crucial weapons.
At the same time, the fight must be unwavering in its refusal to equate capitalism and democracy. We are at war over not just the right of economic equality and social justice, but also against the powerful and privileged positions of whiteness, toxic masculinity and the elimination of solidarity and compassion.
This is a war waged over the possibility of a radical democracy while acknowledging that the rich and powerful will not give up their power without a fight.
Looking for guidance on fascism in the U.S. today? Listen to Parkland activist Emma Gonzalez, 18, not Albright, Clinton or anyone else who has been complicit.(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
And so instead of listening to complicit politicians and others deeply embedded in a system of exploitation, disposability, austerity and a criminogenic culture, we need to listen to the voices of the striking teachers, the Parkland students, the women driving the #MeToo movement, the Black Lives Matter organizers and others willing to make resistance visible, collective and widespread.
The fight against American-style fascism cannot and will not be lead by establishment politicians and pundits parading as the new heroes of the resistance to Trump’s fascism.
EEUU/ May 15, 2018/By: RACHEL LEAH, SALON/ Source: https://www.rawstory.com
The Education Department significantly scaled back a special team investigating abuses by for-profit colleges, the New York Times reported and Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has hired several of the people who were formerly employed at the for-profit colleges under investigation. They now hold top positions in the education department, while “The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges,” according to the Times.
The original investigative unit was created by the Barack Obama administration in 2016 to look into advertising, recruitment practices and job placement claims at several for-profit institutions, like DeVry Education Group. This was amid the collapse of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges. But student complaints echoed beyond the Corinthian institutions, and pointed to widespread fraud, predatory activities and gross misrepresentation of enrollment benefits, program offerings and job placements rates at for-profit colleges.
This team, which under President Obama included more than a dozen lawyers and investigators, has now been stripped down to three employees. “Their mission has been scaled back to focus on processing student loan forgiveness applications and looking at smaller compliance cases, said the current and former employees, including former members of the team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the department,” the Times reported.
Early last year, the investigation into DeVry was stopped and a few months later, DeVos hired former DeVry dean, Julian Schmoke, as the investigative team’s supervisor. Investigations into two other large for-profit colleges, Bridgepoint Education and Career Education Corporation, were also halted. And former employees of these institutions, Robert S. Eitel, Diane Auer Jones and Carlos G. Muñiz, were hired by DeVos.
A spokeswoman for the Education Department told the Times that “conducting investigations is but one way the investigations team contributes to the department’s broad effort to provide oversight.” She added that the new employees from the for-profit education industry had not influenced the investigative unit’s task.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) pointed out that the marginalization of the investigative unit is just one of many of DeVos’ decisions to roll back Obama-era regulations that are meant to protect students from the for-profit college industry. “Secretary DeVos has filled the department with for-profit college hacks who only care about making sham schools rich and shutting down investigations into fraud,” Warren told the Times.
DeVry settled two lawsuits in 2016, one with the Federal Trade Commission for misleading students and one with the Education Department for fraudulent claims about graduation success rates. But the investigative unit continued to look into other claims made by the institution.
Other for-profit colleges like Bridgepoint, which was under investigation, has deep ties to the administration. Bridgepoint is a former client of Mercedes Schlapp, director of strategic communications at the White House. The consulting and lobbying firm, Cove Strategies, which she founded with her husband Matt Schlapp, worked with Bridgepoint and is still a Cove client. “Bridgepoint and other online institutions were persecuted by President Obama’s administration because they dared to bring innovation to the education market,” Matt Schlapp told the Times in an email. “I believe educational innovation and disruption are a fight worth having and it matches the President’s agenda of rolling back the excess of the Obama regulatory stranglehold.”
The Education Department spokeswoman told the Times that the department’s new mission is “focused on weeding out bad actors” across institutions of higher education, “not capriciously targeting schools based on their tax status.”
Windhoek — In an exciting move by dynamic local duo, Bjorn and Kirstin Wiedow of FABlab fame, a new and inventive school will launch in Windhoek in June 2018, aptly dubbed ROBOTSCHOOL – ‘the robotics hardware and software school for kids of the future’.
Technology is no doubt building the future as we all witness explosions of it in our everyday lives; from the fast evolving of the brick phone to the super sleek iPhone and now tablets and even locally designed small form factor computers like the inspirational PEBL from local innovator Vincent van Wyk, we are dependent on it to survive.
According to the World Economic Forum, over half of the world’s young people will end up in jobs that haven’t been created yet.
Considering the current curriculum that children between the ages of 6 and 13 are learning, it is worth noting that this curriculum was developed years ago and in parallel the digital era and Fourth Industrial Revolution are changing everything around us daily – these two need to go hand-in-hand if we are to learn the skills we need today, sadly this is not the case for many countries.
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