Last Stand for Children First

We Did It!! Chicago School Board Approves Turnarounds

2012-02-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

"We were all scared to breathe. We closed our eyes and held hands and then one by one they voted to approve every one of the proposed actions unanimously! We hoped for 3 or 4 schools, but we got a shut out!" cried Last Stand for Children's Monica Caldwell

Ms. Caldwell could be forgiven her excitement as everybody at Last Stand for Children First was ecstatic over the Chicago School Board's decision to turn around every single school on the list. Only a few hours earlier Caldwell had joined dozens of other speakers at the open meeting. Caldwell's impassioned speech urged the Board to not be dissuaded by the poor academic performance of earlier turnarounds, the overwhelming parental sentiment against the turnarounds, or the deaths of students like Derrion Albert who were victims of previous turnaround policy, but instead to "make a bold move against the status quo, by continuing the 15 year old policy of turning around schools."

"Mayor Emanuel showed real leadership," said Last Stand for Children Director Myron Miner, "It isn't easy to stand up to crying children and angry parents. A lot of people might have felt guilty and backed down. That's why Emanuel is such a great mayor. He doesn't back down. I never believed it would be possible that the Board would approve every single one of these actions, but I guess having an appointed board makes it much easier. I think the tears of children are like anything. After awhile, you kind of build up a resistance."

The Board has shown that facts and opposition won't stop them from doing what is best for the students of Chicago and that's something we can all celebrate.

Bidding War Begins for Chinese Educator

2012-02-20T17:48:00.000-08:00

In Gao Bin's, previous job as assistant director at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (Foxconn), he oversaw a complex in Longhua, Shenzhen, where hundreds of thousands of workers includes 15 factories,^[worker dormitories, a swimming pool, a fire brigade, its own television network (Foxconn TV),and a downtown complete with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, bookstore, and hospital. Now, he's coming to America and everybody from Stand for Children to Students First to our own organization have been engaged in an aggressive recruiting battle.

Gao may have become more willing to move on following recent negative attention drawn to Foxconn by worker suicides protesting inhuman working conditions. The protests have spurred Apple to investigate worker complaints as Foxxcon makes their top selling products like the IPhone and IPad.

While, Gao has no real education experience, his ability to get workers to work 18 hour days, sometimes without pay, seems to make him a natural for managing an education reform campaign or even an American school district.

"Up until a recent rash of suicides, his record of getting his employees working hard and staying on task despite tough working conditions and long hours has been nothing short of amazing," said an excited Michelle Rhee.

Gao's move to America is reminiscent of countryman Yao Ming's move to the NBA. Unfortunately, job protections in many fields have limited Gao's opportunities even in a sluggish economy.

"Most workers can't be bullied here, but teachers can be. We will get at least 12 or 14 hour days out of them," said a smiling Gao through his interpreter.

Asked if the language barrier would prove a hindrance, Last Stand for Children First Chairman Myron Miner responded, "It hasn't hurt Chris Christie. Yelling is a universal language. Sometimes, you have to make sacrifices for children. I don't think it's too much to ask teachers to do the same."

Celebrate School Choice Week

2012-01-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

This week is school choice week. This is one week we celebrate the right of charter schools to choose which students they will teach and which ones will be counseled out. I believe preserving that right for charter schools may well be the civil rights issue of our time.

In many cities, there are tremendous private schools, but those schools are always at a disadvantage because parents are forced to pay nearly the entire cost of their child's education out of their own pocket. What makes charter schools so great is that it's a way for parents to get that great elite feeling that only the best private schools provide, while doing so at taxpayer expense. This is why people the Koch Brothers and their organization Americans for Prosperity love School Choice Week so much.

Whether you have a student in a charter student or maybe one that's been counseled out because they were too expensive to teach, a discipline problem, or just got low test scores, let's all raise a glass to charter schools this school choice week. Their right to be selective is under constant attack and it's important to use this week to remind ourselves to stay vigilant.

Last Stand for Children Launches Campaign on School Turnarounds

2012-01-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

After working hard in the legislature last year to strip Illinois teachers of bargaining rights and OSEA protections, Last Stand for Children First is proud to announce the formation of a Chicago chapter to work on issues specific to Chicago.

This week, Last Stand's President Myron Miner announced that it is launching a television campaign to “educate Chicagoans about the value of public turnaround schools.” Group leaders also plan to host extended robocalls where CPS officials and community leaders can record talking points to play for residents of the South and West sides the “need for quality schools.”

The television advertising is sure to turn heads and features 3 separate commercials pushing the message that turnaround schools are just like your neighborhood schools, only better.

Executive Director Monica Caldwell says turnarounds—in which the entire staff of a school are fired and must reapply for their jobs--are a proven way to improve schools. "When CPS took over Sherman in 2006, they lost 20% of their student population and their low income percentage dropped 10%. Think what we could do if we could get the more difficult students to transfer from every Chicago Public School?"

Caldwell emphasizes that Last Stand for Children First supports firing all the adults in a building to turn around it's test scores.

"Sure, the lunch ladies, security guards, and janitors don't do test preparation, but maybe now that they see what can happen, they'll start. Our students need quality schools and that means giving them 4 choices constantly throughout the day and asking them to make the best one possible, just like on a Scantron sheet."

In addition to holding their own events, Caldwell says that Last Stand for Children will get the parents they work with out to the community and public hearings on the school actions. "There are a lot of people who are willing to carry a sign for $25 and a bus ride. We will go out into the communities and find them."

The new movement by Last Stand to get involved in grassroots organizing is a big jump from their work so far in mobilizing the city's business elite. Caldwell says they've always been more comfortable with the city's wealthy and besides, "some of these neighborhoods are kind of gross and the people are scary."

Last Stand for Children First plans to become much more active in Chicago issues. Myron Miner stated, "there's definitely a Chicago website coming and you can be sure we're all over the Longest Day plan Chicago is rolling out next year."

Rethinking College Readiness

2012-01-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

The Winklevoss twins' Harvard education prepared

them for their future after college.

Many of us have believed for a long time that the role of a good education is to get a student ready for college so that he can get a degree that will enable him to not only improve his station in life, but also the situation for the student's family and neighborhood. President Obama has made college readiness a cornerstone of his education and economic policies. As a country we've tried to address appallingly low college readiness by adopting the common core curriculum. Now it turns out we may have been all turned around on things.

A paper by Lauren Rivera from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University revealed that the top professional services firms recruit pretty much exclusively from 4 elite universities -- Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. These firms in the fields of law, investment banking, and consulting really are among the few employers that could provide the sort of transformational wealth that people like Michelle Rhee have called on schools to provide for our students. To quote Rivera:

"Evaluators relied so intensely on the criteria of 'school' as a criterion of evaluation not because they believed that the content of the elite curricula better prepared students for life in their firms -- in fact, evaluators tended to believe that elite and, in particular, super-elite instruction was 'too abstract,' 'overly theoretical,' or even, 'useless' compared to the more 'practical' and 'relevant' training offered at 'lesser' institutions -- but rather due to the strong cultural meanings and character judgments evaluators attributed to admission and enrollment at an elite school."

I know some of you have had just about enough of my Vassar bashing, but we must ask ourselves if getting a student into a school like Vasser is really doing her any favors? If a student becomes a teacher for instance, what good is a $40,000 salary if they achieve that salary with $150,000 in student loan debt. We must not reward our public schools for turning out Dartmouth educated social workers, Vasser educated teachers, and New York University educated television repairmen.

College readiness is a meaningless tradition that simply serves to prop up the Browns and University of Chicagos in our country. Our goal must be to send students to elite universities where they can truly have the future we want for them. Currently, we estimate that between 25% and 40% of high school graduates are college ready, but if we look at the 4 elite schools, the number is much lower. The 4 elite schools accept between 6% and 8% of applicants and that doesn't mean that all of those students are ready for the education they provide.

Until we have all students in America, applying and getting accepted at our country's elite schools, we will never achieve our greatness as a nation and we will continue to shortchange our schools. There must be a way we can increase the rigor of our schools so that every student knows he has a Yale or Princeton education waiting for him after high school.

Elevating the Teaching Profession with STRIPES

2012-01-05T19:58:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest problems that we face in education today is the seemingly endless quest to elevate the teaching profession. Back in 1989, Wendy Kopp had a vision of taking gifted college students who weren't education majors, but wanted to teach and sending them out to learn how to teach on our country's neediest children. The result has been Teach for America and one need only watch a talk show or listen to musicians like Common and John Legend to know what a success it has become.

Unfortunately, 23 years later, Teach for America feels like a relic of an earlier time. Things like smart phones, the internet, and HDTV didn't exist in 1989. In today's cyber age, gifted young people don't want to wait through a laborious five week training period and then commit to a two year teaching period. You only have to wait 48 hours to get a gun, why should you have to wait five weeks to be a teacher. If I am a brilliant young college student with so much to offer students, I want to do it now. In five weeks I may well be onto something else. For that matter, the two year commitment seems extremely archaic. When you think about it, two years is the length of time Russell Brand was married to Katy Perry plus the length of time Kim Khardashian was married to Kris Humphries plus the length of time it would take to stream the new Bear in Heaven album in its super slowed down speed at http://bearinheaven.com. In other words, 2 years is forever.

If we are serious about really elevating the profession by taking it out of the hands of professional educators, we need a new teach for America. We need a program where if you decide you have a calling to teach on Friday, we can give you an intense training session over the weekend and have you in front of students on Monday. Rather than a 2 year commitment, we would only ask that you teach for one semester. Think about it, in less than six months, a gifted student could become a teacher, impact children's lives, and move onto being a professional education reformer. Last Stand for Children First believes it is time for this new breed of teacher to elevate the classroom.

We are calling our program Strategic Teacher Recruitment In Poverty Endangered Schools or STRIPES. It is our goal to have the first 50 STRIPES in classrooms in time for the second semester of this school year. Teaching sounds like a lot to learn in one weekend, but if anybody can do it, I believe the proud members of STRIPES will be able to because we will recruit them from only the most elite students at only the most elite schools. If anybody can reach students living in poverty, it will be them.

As We Approach 2012 - Scrappy Reformers are Turning the Tide

2011-12-30T11:49:00.000-08:00

In the battle between the Goliaths of the status quo and the scrappy Davids of education reform, the tide may be slowly turning. It was Arthur Reynolds Award winner Anthony Russo, whose This Week in Education article brought new attention to the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public, but the battle lines could not be more sharply drawn.

On the one hand, you have the Evil Empire. If there is a person in public life who more closely resembles Darth Vader than Diane Ravitch I don't know who it is. She was once a promising educational expert in her own right with the Bush administration before she was drawn to the dark side of critical thinking and educating the whole child instead of regimented standards based testing and preparation.

Of course Darth Vader didn't like doing his own dirty work. That's where the army of public school teachers come in. Through their unions they fight the very changes that will save education. In fact, they've been fighting these changes so hard for so long, they've made it very hard to find any evidence that the best reforms like charter schools, merit pay, and ending last in first out benefit students.

This of course brings us to the force. With evidence mounting that the very reforms we have staked our reputations or our careers on do not work, we're left to take it on faith. Why is it that they don't work? I believe it's teacher sabotage, but it may be some other equally plausible reason. However, what we have is faith. In Star Wars, they refer to that faith as The Force. I believe that the force of education reform is equally power.

On the opposite side, are a ragtag collections of rebels. In the picture above I used Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, and Eli Broad as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Hans Solo, but there are a whole lot of these underdog heroes like Rahm Emanuel as C3PO, Mike Bloomberg as Obi Wan Kenobi, and Chris Christie as Chewbacca. Despite overwhelming odds, they've fought a tough campaign against the establishment from their cobbled together resources.

Now, I said the tide was swinging towards the rebels and it is. In Star Wars, the empire was everywhere, but there would always be a number of backwater planets inhabited by scoundrels and cut throats, where rebels who sometimes had shady pasts like Han Solo could plot the rebellion. In this world, that place is Detroit. In Detroit politicians with imagination have given Emergency Manager the freedom to take on teachers and collective bargaining. The money he has saved from over inflated teacher contracts has enabled him to bring in Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson from Seattle and John Covington from Kansas City. They both have very shady pasts and they may just be the kind of rogues we need to finally take down The Empire.

In Defense of the Rubber Stamp

2011-12-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

As Regional Director for Teacher Development with Last Stand for Children, I have attended quite a few Chicago Board of Education meetings. I have always loved these meetings for the model of efficiency that they are. Even though the Board knows how they will rule on things ahead of time, community members will wait in line for 2 or 3 hours so that they can have their voices heard on education matters that affect them and their families. The Board skillfully groups speakers on common topics into one two minute presentation so that everybody will have their voice heard. The speakers don't change anything and that's fine. They feel that they've had their voice heard and that's what democracy is all about.

All of that orderly democracy was ruined on December 14th when parents and community activists aligned to an agenda pushed forward by the militant Chicago Teachers Union disrupted the meeting. According to news pamphlet The Chicago Sun-Times, "Adourthus McDowell, a Chicago Public School parent and member of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, began the takeover by rising from his chair and interrupting a presentation by Chicago Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard on a new $660 million capital construction plan."

There is a happy ending here because the board courageously met in closed session and approved the plan providing many schools in disrepair with the money to get much needed renovations before next school year when they are turned over to the highly connected AUSL group. Board President David Vitale ran AUSL before Rahm Emanuel handpicked him to save Chicago's public schools. I'm sure it must have been a dream come true for him to be able to help his old organization.

There are many reasons why these turnarounds are necessary. For instance, Casalas school is doing so poorly on state achievement tests that nearly half of all AUSL schools are beating it. Chicago has had great success turning around schools, so much in fact that they turned around one high school twice--that's 720 degrees of education reform. AUSL is the premier group for turnarounds and their record includes a huge success at Collins High School.

What is most distressing though is what this outburst does for the rubber stamp. The rubber stamp is a time honored tradition that I would hate to see go. As Board President Vitale said, many who wished to be heard were not because of this mic check. The meeting was actually taken over by the people in the audience who decided to hold their own meeting while the Board was meeting in closed chambers. A Board meting without the Board is just wrong. Without a rubber stamping authority, there is nobody to rubber stamp. Fortunately, the Board returned and order was restored, but the damage to our democracy was already done.

Speaking of loud voices ruining Democracy, I wanted to thank Andrew Russo for his great article in This Week in Education defending small groups like ours, Stand for Children and Students First who are under constant attack by internet bullies. Thank goodness somebody besides Bill Gates has the courage to let our voices be heard.

In Kim Jung Il Education Reform Has Lost a Friend

2011-12-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

In our country, we pride ourselves on our meager attempts to bring common core standards to the American education system. In North Korea, 10,000 school girls will cry for 48 hours in tribute to their fallen leader. North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il was a despot, but the education reform movement owes a great deal of thanks to North Korea's enigmatic little leader.

When Mayor Bloomberg in New York announces that he would like to fire half the city's teachers and double class size or when Mayor Emanuel in Chicago closes down those schools that have displeased him, I can't help, but see a little bit of beloved leader there. Like him or not, Kim was the master of doing things his own way because it was good for the people of North Korea. Some people may have thought he was crazy to kidnap a movie director to make a Godzilla ripoff for him, but he thought it was good for the people of Korea. His $700,000 annual liquor tab was just the kind of cost overrun so many great reformers have dealt with.

According to North Korean historical literature, "Kim Jong Il was born in a log cabin inside a secret base on Korea’s most sacred mountain, Mt. Paekdu. At the moment of his birth, a bright star lit up the sky, the seasons spontaneously changed from winter to spring, and rainbows appeared."

I can't be the only person who is reminded of Michelle Rhee's description of her teaching career in Baltimore when I read that paragraph. Historical accounts may contradict both stories, but perception is everything in the reform game or when running a country. Kim reportedly shot 11 holes in one the first time her played golf. Surely, Michelle Rhee could get behind that kind of creative erasing as well.

As the national of North Korean mourns, the country's leadership will be placed in the hands of Kim Jong Un. One of Un's classmates said of him, ""He left without getting any exams at all. He was much more interested in basketball than lessons." As stories of Un's intensity on the basketball court, I couldn't help thing that North Korea will be OK. Afterall, just look at how Arne Duncan has parlayed a similar skill set.

Education Blogger Wins Arthur Reynolds Award

2011-11-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

During World War II, when German bombers seemed poised to knock the fight out of England and plunge the world into totalitarian darkness, Arthur Reynolds brought news of that island's heroic struggle to America's shores. Few alive during those hours will ever forget the words Reynolds used to begin his reports on the London Blitz, "Edward R. Murrow said." With those powerful words, you knew that Reynolds, who worked for NBC would soon be telling you what Edward R. Murrow was saying over on CBS.

Reynolds didn't just bust onto the scene in World War II. It was a few years earlier when his report on the Hindenburg Disaster chilled the nation:

Ladies and gentleman, Herbert Morrison of WLS Chicago says, "Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it... it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. He told you; it—He can't even talk to people, their friends are out there! Ah! It's... it... it's a... ah! He... He can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. 0000000, He... He... He's sorry. Honest: He... He can hardly breathe. He... He's going to step inside, where he cannot see it.

Reynolds career in broadcasting lasted long enough for him to report on the JFK assassination where a new generation will never forget him describing how Walter Cronkite reported on the death of a President.

Russo is a proud successor to Reynold's journalistic tradition with such dynamic reporting on his blog lately as:

Alexander Russo said 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

ray explains why lewis isn't funny
Karen Lewis and Other Reasons People Hate CPS Teachers | The White Rhino: A Chicago Latino English Teacher [

Alexander Russo said 11 hours, 51 minutes ago

CNC's jim warren watched the whole video and finds lots to admire about what lewis says and represents along with the lamentable parts -- no call for resignation

Alexander Russo said 12 hours, 52 minutes ago

some background on lewis's previous tussles from the trib's joel hood

Alexander Russo said 1 day ago

substance has surprisingly little to say

Alexander Russo said 1 day, 3 hours ago

zorn thinks she should resign for being tin eared

It is reporting on reporting like this that has people calling Alexander's District299.com blog the best Chicago Public Schools Blog out of New York State. See for yourself why he is so deserving of the Reynolds Award.

The Common Core Will Be The Common Cure

2011-11-06T17:23:00.000-08:00

Back in 1979 when they used to actually make family movies, I remember seeing a wonderful movie called The Great Santini. The movie was about a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who is raising a family. His hard and nails exterior is a sharp contrast from the type of parenting we see in television and movies so often, but rather than coddling his kids, he builds their character by demanding that they meet his high standards. This is exactly the aim on the Common Core Curriculum that is sweeping the nation.

45 states have already adopted the Common Core Standards and will now be bringing increased rigor and decreased literature to 89% of the students in the country. The Common Core was written by David Coleman who has no actual teaching experience, but developed The Grow Network, which was acquired by McGraw-Hill. The Common Core has been championed by such education heavyweights as Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee so you know it packs a punch. There are several principles of the Common Core:

1. Social Studies and science are really reading classes and should be taught that way rather than trying to promote student understanding of the concepts being studied.

2. Rather than trying to teach students at their level, they should be educated at grade level or above grade level. This will prepare them to work in an increasingly competitive corporate environment where there will be fierce competition internationally for middle management jobs.

3. Narrative writing and fiction are a waste of time.

4. Rigor, rigor, rigor!

The future of education is indeed exciting. The Common Core will change the way that we teach and learn. While school may not be as much fun as it currently is with far less "story time" and "feelings", it will help to transition our students to the bold corporate world of the future. Are you ready for the Common Core? Take our quiz:

Question: In the Hunger Games, describe Katniss’s relationships with Gale, with Prim, and with her mother. How do those relationships define her personality? Why does she say about Peeta, “I feel like I owe him something, and I hate owing people”? How does her early encounter with Peeta affect their relationship after they are chosen as tributes?

Answer: Nobody cares. If you want to read something with excitement and violence try The Iliad or Patton. This isn't pretend time.

Think Tank Study Finds Think Tank Researchers Underpaid

2011-11-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

The release of today's study by The Ponds Institute for Statistical Research in conjunction with Last Stand for Children First is sending shock waves through the research establishment. The study, which took a comprehensive look at researcher salaries in comparison with a wide variety of both public and private occupations. The study concluded that think tank researchers performed one of the most important tasks in our economy, yet are not paid a corresponding wage.

"When you consider just how important the work of think tanks is, they are woefully underpaid by as much as 75%. The real problem is that in the future promising graduate may begin pursuing careers doing stuff rather than joining think tanks," said Martin Zale head researcher for the study, "then where will we be?"

Critics of the study have pointed to the fact that the researchers arbitrarily assigned a Job Importance Value Efficient to various careers. While teachers were given a .03 JIVE rating and doctors were given a .64 rating, think tank researchers were given a JIVE score of 22.85.

"Not true," said Zale who explained, "it's extremely hard to put a price on the work think tank researchers do. Are we underpaid? Oh yes, we're underpaid."

If Education Reformers Ran the NFL

2011-10-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

Fran Tarkenton shown above sitting on his helmet in the final moments of a 32-14 Viking loss in the 1977 Super Bowl wrote an excellent article recently for the Wall Street Journal. Tarkenton who is most known for a very long career without a Super Bowl ring to show for it joined former professional basketball player Arne Duncan in taking teachers to task. It did make me think about how great the NFL would be if run by education reformers.

Due to the failures of college stars like Ryan Leaf and Brian Bosworth to become great players, the college draft would be eliminated

To make up for the loss of new talent coming to weak teams through the draft, the worst teams would be given gifted athletes who have never played the sport before a 5 week crash course in the Summer. Most of these players will quit after 2 years to become coaches.

The BCS ranking system for colleges would now exist, but instead be based on the success of the players coached by their graduates in the NFL.

As Tarkenton himself points out, "Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?" if you aren't rewarded for individual accomplishments rather than team goals. Every player will now be on an incentive contract. Cornerbacks will be free to try for the interception at all costs rather than knocking down a pass, defensive ends can go all out for the sack and ignore draws and trap plays, wide receivers can proudly proclaim when leading 28-24 in the last minute, "Throw me the damn ball."

The disabled list will be eliminated. If you can't do the job, you will be cut.

Teams that fail to make the playoffs will become turnaround teams. They will cut their team, fire their organization from the general manager down to the people who work the concession stands and a new team will replace them.

An expansion team has the right to take over half your home field, with each team playing from 50 yard line to goal line.

As the NFL has the shortest season of any professional sports league, the season will be expanded to 80 games. This will be done by eliminating off days between games and players will receive no extra compensation because it's for the good of the fans.

Players will not be paid for practicing or attending training camp. Any time other than game time is optional.

Coaches will not be allowed to create their playbook and instead will use much of the team's budget up buying pre-scripted playbooks.

Players will be very poorly paid. Instead the best paid people in the game will be announcers and pundits who continually criticize the players.

Players will be given gear left over from the 1970s and be expected to pay for upgrading their own equipment.

Players will have no say over how they are used. If a player signed with a team to play quarterback and they need him at defensive tackle, that's where he'll play. If a player holds out, he will not only be released, he will be banned from playing in the league again.

This is the kind of league I could really get behind. A game every night of the week would be awesome and with players freed up from the concentration on winning, I could root for my favorite players instead of teams. The time for reform has come.

1 in 4 Students Are in the Bottom Quartile in Reading

2011-10-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

School is in session. But what kind of schools are we sending our kids to?

Every morning as we send our eager fourth graders off to school, ready to learn with their backpacks and lunch boxes, we are entrusting them to an education system that accepts the fact that nearly 25% of them are reading in the bottom quartile on standardized tests.

Let me repeat again in bold for added emphasis: One in four U.S. fourth graders are reading in the bottom quartile. This is not okay.

At Last Stand for Children First, it's our goal to make sure every child in America has a great teacher in every classroom. From improving teacher evaluations, to ending seniority-based teacher layoffs, to public shamings, there are many ways we can elevate the teaching profession so that are best and brightest will embark on a teaching career for 2 or even 3 years before moving on to something else.

Class size also has an enormous impact on the economic outlook of their students. Research shows that each year, a highly effective teacher can increase the expected lifetime earnings of his or her students by $20,000. In a classroom of twenty students, the total economic impact of a highly effective teacher amounts to $400,000. However, with the reform success that together we achieved in Michigan, we frequently see class sizes of 50. A highly effective teacher in a class room of fifty students has an economic impact of $1,000,000.

Our children cannot wait. Our economy cannot wait. We cannot wait. We must improve our schools now — and to do it, we must have an effective teacher under 25 years of age in every classroom.

We'll be in touch,

Myron
Myron Miner
CEO and Founder
Last Stand for Children First

For Teachers - A Better Duct Tape

2011-10-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

We're happy to announce that Tyrell Corporation has agreed to be the new supplier for Safety Tape, which is the only duct tape we endorse for use disciplining students. The tape has a moisturizing lotion on the adhesive side, which prevents the tape from drying out. while still being extremely secure. Safety Tape is available in a wide variety of fun colors from Silent Sable to Noiseless Navy. We are also working on a new brand of Velcro restraints that we hope to have out for next year’s TFA convention. Look for Safety Tape from Tyrell wherever better school supplies are sold.

Tailoring an Education Plan to Fit the Student Population

2011-10-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

When Chicago's Education Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans to add 90 minutes onto the Chicago Public Schools day next year, he was greeted with a lot of skepticism from the Chicago Teachers Union. Long the impediment of serious reform, the teachers union fired back with a ridiculous proposal to have all Chicago Public Schools have a school day that resembled the school day that the mayor had chosen for his own children at the exclusive private University of Chicago Lab School.

Now, growing up I was fortunate to go to an exclusive private school myself and I can tell you that things like a class size of 15 and a well-stocked school library were very important to us and I believe those sorts of things are very important to children from upper class families. During their school day they need to develop the critical thinking skills that they need to be future leaders. Their school day shouldn't extend too far into the afternoon because a long school day would interfere with their myriad after school activities.

However, not all students are from well to do, mostly white families, like the ones at the school I attended. Many students in Chicago are poor minority students suffering through low teacher expectations in old overcrowded classrooms without libraries. These students are behind and if we are ever to close the achievement gap, they need to work hard to drill and drill so that through rote memorization they can catch up.

The same type of education does not work for all students and it is a mistake by the Chicago Teachers Union to act like it does. Fortunately, the people of Chicago can see right through this sort of dodge.

As I read through the letter columns of the article I linked earlier I was glad to see people like Illinoisrez who said:

Reasons NOT to use the CTU model.
1) More art classes.
2) More music classes
4) More lunch and recess.
4) More physical education.
5) Second Language.

The classes suggested by the CTU are worthless to the average CPS student who is falling further and further behind the achievements of private school children.

And best of all he wasn't alone. Toughlove said, "Please don't confuse cause and effect when talking about "good schools". The Lab School is NOT a good model for CPS "reform." The Lab School's rigorous academic curriculum, while great for high-IQ students, is not appropriate appropriate for the typical low-IQ CPS student and would only aggravate the already high drop-out rate."

Many other Chicagoans came forth to say, "The arts? You can't handle the arts." Now in uncharacteristic Chicago newspaper fashion The Sun-Times has followed up on the students who have been lucky enough to have their school day extended this year. Antonio Smith, a student at Fiske who lengthened their day by the requisite 90 minutes said, "“I think it sucks. It was more time, but was the same stuff.”

The same stuff? I know it may be boring, but that my friend is exactly what your brain needs to develop into the type of adult brain that can perform simple tasks and not question superiors--exactly the type of brain that will make you successful.

The High Frustration of Higher Education

2011-10-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

You know that high performance sports car that you have sitting in the garage? No, not the Mustang; I'm talking about the Jaguar. Sure, Jaguar is a mark of excellence and fine British engineering, but let's face it--Jaguar's are forever needing service and finding parts is a real pain. So what do you do? You can't exactly put Ford Focus parts into a Jaguar.

I imagine working in the admissions department at the University of Phoenix must be a lot like owning a Jaguar. You have this elite university, but where can you get students who are capable of taking advantage of the world class education you can provide? The public schools have failed. That's been clear already by the less than stellar record that University of Phoenix graduates have in the job market. The problem rests with our nation's public schools.

One thing that education reformers and advocates for the status quo both fail to see is the harm that poor public schools do cause for institutions of higher learning like University of Phoenix. Even statistics showing what percentage of students are college ready fail to show what percentage of students are ready for elite schools like UP.

I believe that UP realized this as well and that's why they've spent a lot of money advocating for reform. Programs like Education Nation have been sponsored very heavily by UP because they know quality education doesn't only prepare quality students, it prepares Phoenixes.

Congressman Jack Kimble on Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act

2011-09-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, I came off the campaign trail to sign important providing education choice for millions of parents across the country. Charter schools are the wave of the future in this country by providing the selectivity of private schools, but doing it at tax payer expense. Charter schools are freed up of the bureaucratic nightmare of environmental and fiscal regulation and aren't required to grant their teachers due process as a result fully 17% of charter schools perform better than public schools and some of them have become multi-million job creators.

One of the greatest things about charter school supporters like hedge fund operator Whitney Tilson is that they don't limit their contributions to one political party. It's not unusual to be at a pro-charter cocktail party and find liberals like Jared Polis socializing with strict conservatives like myself. It's this spirit of putting children first across party boundaries is one of the reasons that this bill had such huge bipartisan support. Of course, a lot of wining and dining on vintage wine and one and a half pound lobsters stuffed with one pound lobsters didn't hurt.

Charters have been under an increasing microscope lately after test scores in Chicago and Los Angeles both showed them as doing considerably worse than the neighborhood schools so hopefully this extra cash will help them to put the nasty press behind them. Above all, this act was for the kids. It isn't so much choosing a better alternative as much as it is providing a choice and isn't that really what we all want. While charters will take money away from neighborhood schools, that may enable 20 or even 25% of charter schools to start outperforming neighborhood students and isn't that something we can all get behind, even if we're not getting a large check to cover our campaign expenses?

The New Target for Greedy Teachers? Baseball

2011-09-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

The teachers of Chicago have it pretty easy. They have those luxurious Summers off for their European vacations, they're done with work by 3:00, and they have the relatively easy job of educating and monitoring 35 children at a time. Unfortunately, in Chicago this year, it is going down as the year of the greedy teacher.

With a new go get 'em mayor in office who isn't going to waste his time in office getting along with people, the Chicago Teachers Union has been up in arms. Recently, the President of the Teachers Union was so rude during discussions with the mayor had no choice but to get in her face and drop a coupe of f-bombs on her. It's no wonder that Alderman Ed Burke is so embarrassed by the Chicago Teachers Union.

The latest target of the Chicago Teachers Union is the Chicago Cubs, whose owners find themselves with a dilapidated old ballpark called Wrigley Field. I don't know a lot about baseball, but I do know fans aren't going to pay good money to sit in an old eye sore of a ballpark and if fans won't go out to see ballgames, then bars and restaurants in the area around Wrigley will resemble a ghost town, and the Cubs will move to another city like Indianapolis or Charlotte. If the city of Chicago doesn't step up this could happen as soon as next season. It seems unreasonable to expect the billionaire Ricketts Family that owns the Cubs and their ballpark to be expected to pay for such a large burden themselves.

What the Cubs are asking for is $200 million to rehabilitate the stadium and to make it a place worthy of stars like Alfonso Soriano and Kerry Wood to call home. Unfortunately, the greedy teachers also want money. First, they want the 4% raise that the city agreed to pay them in their current contract which would cost the city abut $70 million. The city has said that it expects teachers to work about 300 extra hours next year and it would like them to start working 90 minutes longer this year. In exchange for working 300 extra hours, the city would be willing to give them $1200, but the greedy teachers won't budge. They want to be made more and they want to actually get to have a say in how the extra time is used.

What the teachers don't realize is with the money it would cost the city just to pay the teachers $20 an hour for the extra 300 hours would be enough to put a dome over Wrigley Field and probably with enough change left over to honor former Cub greats like Rick Reuschel and Steve Swisher with their own statues. Rahm Emanuel put it best when he said that for too long, the children of this city have gotten the shaft. Long time failure cannot be rewarded when there are important civic concerns like the Cubs in need of money.

Meet Tim Graye--Our Newest Transformation Academy Associate

2011-09-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

It was 2008 and I was vaulting through the air in the middle of my back flip at the Nationals. I realized at that very moment how fortunate I was to be part of a dynasty. At Hawaii Pacific, we didn't just win cheerleading championships, we revolutionized cheerleading at the college level.

I just joined another team that I believe will revolutionize education. That team is Last Stand for Children First and they've already been doing some great work. I know, because I spent two years as a teaching fellow where I taught high school chemistry and was head cheerleading coach in the Chicago Public Schools.

I look at my role with LS4C as still being a cheerleader. No matter what we get accused of or the disagreements we might have individually with our organization, it's important that remain overwhelmingly positive. This is a long hard struggle that we face as education change agents and the only way to excel is to keep a positive attitude. Who better to do that, then a former college cheerleader. At nearly 26 years old, I am the second oldest person in our entire office and even though I'm new, I'm sort of the old man around here, but it's important this this reform be led by people of all ages under 35.

In Chicago, I've had the chance to see the greedy face of the teachers union and it saddened me. Just this year, they turned down a raise of 2% this school year to teach only 29% more hours. This extra time is necessary. Chicago already has scandalously short school hours and the city is adding a new core standards test that will have to be administered 4 times this year. The schools will never have time for the increased testing, yet alone the increased test preparation time until we lengthen the school day.

Give me an E
Give me a D
Give me an R
Give me an E
Give me an F
Give me an O
Give me an R
Give me an M
What does it spell Ed Reform...and it's about time.

Extending School Day is The Answer to All Our Problems

2011-08-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

Last Stand for Children First has been involved in the education reform movement in Chicago since last winter when we were asked by Mayor elect Rahm Emanuel and business leaders in the Civic Federation to help with their grassroots efforts to fundamentally change education in the city. This effort came to fruition with the passage of SB7 and now with Mayor Emanuel's attempts to impose a longer school day.

The teachers are being most uncooperative really. After having their 4% raise voted down because the schools didn't have enough money, we promised to find a way to give them half their raise if they would only work another 327 1/2 hours. That's a tidy little $3.08 per hour for a beginning teacher. When Jimmy Carter signed the law in 1977 to raise the federal minimum wage to $2.90 an hour in 1979 and $3.10 an hour in 1980, I don't think he realized he was insulting teachers with this paltry raise. Throughout the early 1980s beginning fast food workers and dishwashers lived on $3.10 an hour and were happy to get it. However, teachers with their fancy degrees somehow think a 2% pay increase for 29% more work is beneath them.

In 1982, my father was working at Burger King making barely over $3.10 an hour, but he didn't complain. He worked hard and after he graduated from Dartmouth, he became a very successful Hedge Fund Manager. Surely, teachers can step up their effort just a little as well.

Many babysitters get only $5 or $10 an hour to watch one child. It doesn't seem unfair to me to ask a teacher to supervise a room full of students. After all, when you get to 35 or 40 students, they mostly just supervise themselves or at least the bigger students are able to impose their will on the smaller ones.

Even more insulting is that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis refused to sit on the board to discuss how the extra 90 minutes would be imposed. Is it too much to ask that she provide a little political cover by making it appear that the teachers were consulted? After all, in exchange she would be on the panel giving the teachers in the city just much say in how the extra time would be spent as Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina’s Church or Robin Steans of Advance Illinois.

The value of a longer school day should be obvious. Chicago grammar schools have 946 hours instruction in a year. Houston grammar schools have 1305 hours of instruction per year and New York has 930. Once our students are given that extra time, they will have 4 years more instruction than students in other big cities like New York and Los Angeles by the time they graduate. Only then will Chicago students be able to rise to the level of education juggernauts like the Houston Public Schools.

New York Judge's Ruling Throws Fantasy Season Into Disarray

2011-08-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

At the Last Stand for Children First offices this afternoon, things were going crazy. Staffers were on their computers and phones trying to get the latest on a state court ruling in New York that ordered the New York city school draft to release the test data on all it's public school teachers.

This announcement immediately threw our Fantasy School Draft into disarray. For the last few months we've all been scouting the Los Angeles school district statistics trying to put together our dream faculties for this season. We always hold the draft on the weekend after Labor Day when classroom rosters have settled in a bit. After all, one low achiever being transferred into your teacher's class can cost you valuable points. Our season was very competitive last season and I believe I only lost because two different teachers were saddled with less than perfect students who were counseled out of Green Dot schools.

It’s just as exciting as other fantasy sports and gives you a rooting interest in standardized tests that you don’t normally care about. The advantage of starting the league now, is the schools are fairly settled and you are less likely to have a student transfer or a surprise pregnancy spoiling your fantasy season.

The rules are rather simple. You must select a faculty consisting of the following teachers:

Two for each of the 8 primary grades
Two substitute teachers taken from any grade
One ESL teacher
One Special Ed Teacher
We are looking forward to President’s Physical Fitness results being online soon so that we can draft gym teachers.
One Principal
One Assistant Principal

The draft can last for 4 or 5 hours before 24 schools in our fantasy school district are filled. I was let down by my 6th and 3rd grade faculty. Fortunately, there is no such thing as tenure in Fantasy School and they have been let go. There are several scoring options, but we go by student improvement. I have been pouring through newspapers and websites looking for the teachers who I think will be on the top of their games. I found out one of my early favorites is pregnant and another one who is from Teach for America is hedging her bets on staying in the classroom for the entire year. It's always dicey when you select TFAers in their second year.

Because we go by the amount of improvement, taking the best students isn’t enough. If some teacher out in the wealthy suburbs takes on a homeroom where 95% of the students are meeting or exceeding standards, they can only get you 5 points and in fact they’ll probably go down. On the other hand, a teacher at an inner city school who brings up students from 30% meeting standards to 52% meeting standards is going to win you the pot at the end of the year. I try and look for young teachers who are still worried about their job and more likely to teach to the test.

With New York city teachers included, we now have very little time to scout a whole new group of teachers. I have a few friends in New York that I hope I can hit up for scouting reports.

1997 Studey Reveals the Power of Mediocrity in the classroom

2011-08-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

As the new school year starts, millions of parents across this country are hoping their child will have an excellent teacher to help guide them through their new classes. However, never research into the data from a 1997 study of Dallas schoolchildren by Last Stand for Children First shows that a mediocre teacher may be better.

The 1997 study "Teacher Effects on Longitudinal Student Achievement" was not only a real page turner, this landmark Dallas study by Jordan, Mendro, and Weerasinghe has been frequently cited in the media by education reformers as evidence that a student who has 2 superior teachers in a row will probably go on to greatness, while a student will two poor teachers in a row, will probably be going through parks with a pointy stick looking for soda cans to sell to recyclers. Michelle Rhee in particular enjoys using this quote to show just how important great teachers are.

In a recent study funded by Last Stand for Children First and conducted at the Ponds Institute of Statistical Research has concluded that in the 1997 study who had 2 excellent teachers and one mediocre teacher in consecutive years showed a median score 8% higher than a student who had 3 excellent teachers in a row. This is groundbreaking research conducted on thousands of children, but little is known as to why mediocrity has such power.

Researchers conjecture that a mediocre teacher gives students a chance to relax, nap and generally catch a breath or possibly that mediocre teachers enhance the ability of students to develop filters to figure out what their teachers are saying that is actually important enough to listen to.

For more information on this landmark study, please see the following blog post, which while written from an anti-reform perspective summarizes the methodology very well and provides a link to the raw data itself.

What the data does show is that elevating the teaching profession and attracting excellent candidates and nurturing them to become excellent teachers may not be the best strategy in increasing student learning. Further study is needed to examine the negative impact of further excellent pedagogy on a student who has already had too many excellent teachers. It also seems clear in layoff decisions, mediocre teachers need to be preserved as a priority, especially in a school that already has an issue with too many excellent ones.

Monica Caldwell Reacts to SOS March Showcasing Worst in Teaching

2011-07-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

I had said earlier that I would not be attending the dreadful Save Our Schools March in Washington this past Saturday. I can see now that I clearly made the right decision. According to park service officials, approximately 8,000 teachers came to the nation's capital to see among others, Hollywood's number one jerk Matt Damon talk about education. I find this laughable. As a Hollywood actor, what does he know about teaching? He needs to make some movies and leave education policy to the think tanks, philanthropists, politicians, and pundits.

What is probably most shocking is that teachers find Matt Damon to be a fitting role model for today's youth. I did a little research on Mr. Damon and what I found was shocking. Apparently, a late night comedian named Jimmy Kimmel was having a committed long term relationship with a comedian named Sarah Silverman (or so he thought). While this was going on, Matt Damon and Ms. Silverman were actually involved in an elicit relationship. They actually broke it to Kimmel live on his television show. This is the kind of influence that's appropriate for kids. Check out this clip of Mr. Hollywood admitting to the affair and showing absolutely no remorse of his actions. The end is particularly shocking:

Petty? He's not the one who was having an affair. I lost all credibility for Matt Damon when I heard of this sleazy behavior. You can find the disgusting video that they showed here, but even with swearing bleeped out by the network, it's very disturbing.

Now, the march itself was almost as disturbing. It seemed to be one long diatribe to preserve the status quo, which is the education system exactly as it is now or I guess exactly as it was 15 years ago before reform, which is going great and will be perfected very soon.

One final note. I heard a lot of teachers at the march complaining about the use of test scores for accountability with the complaint that the scores were out of the teacher's control. Some new data from Washington, DC shows that many teachers rated poorly last year were rated very highly this year and vice versa. It just goes to show you how much teachers can improve when they buckle down or decline when they slack off.

Last Stand for Children Announces Committee on Teacher Needs

2011-07-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, Education Week had an excellent article entitled What Do Teachers Want? The article concerned the difficulty of assessing exactly what it is that teachers want. The author goes so far as suggesting that we must be mind readers like Mel Gibson's character in "What Women Want." I don't know if I'd go that far, but finding out what teachers want can be as difficult as getting through Avon Barksdale's many layers of security in subterfuge to protect his drug empire on The Wire.

Some of the most groundbreaking work in the area of assessing what teachers want was done by Bill Gates and Scholastic who spared no expense in conducting a Harris Poll of 40,000 teachers. However, if one poll was enough to tell us anything with certainty, President McCain would running for reelection.

This area of research is very important if we are to find a way to attract and keep highly capable teachers to the classroom while at the same time increasing their workload and cutting their salary, pension, and health care costs. That is why Last Stand for Children has spent the last two years working hard to analyze the wants and needs of classroom teachers. Today, we take a step closer to realizing the fruits of our labor by appointing a blue ribbon committee to study and analyze the needs and wants of America's classroom teachers. The members of the panel are as follows:

Ryan Wilson - Chief Executive Director Last Stand for Children First
Winslow Thorpe - President of Northstar Investments
Linda Voight-Kampff - President and CEO of Tyrell Corporation
Dotti Walker - Chairwoman of Prosperity for Americans
Hank Scorpio - President and CEO of Globex Corporation
Jack Kimble - United States Representative, California's 54th District
Burt Kuper - President of The Foundations Group
Alma Davis - Chairwoman Education for The Best Tomorrow
Adrian Veidt - President and CEO of Veidt Industries
Virginia Wallace - Vice-President of The Alliance for Educational Excellence
Miles Drummond - President and CEO of Anderson Testing

Together, this group will piggy back on existing research with the goal of producing an actionable plan for reforming education to better meet the wants and needs of teachers by 2013.

A Future Educator Talks About Changes She'd Like to See in Education

2011-07-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Katie Cunningham is a third grade student at the Our Lady of Perpetual Motion Elementary School in Glendale Valley, CA. She is an avid Irish dancer and loves to bake cookies and play Wii

I've wanted to be a teacher for sooo long. My mom says teachers are lazy, but I like Miss McCutcheon and I would like to help people just like her. During Summers I would go to Hawaii or Disney World and take care of all the animals. It would be fun to tell students what to do and to send Nathan Wilcox to the principal's office if he was pulling people's hair.

First, I've been thinking maybe I don't want to be a teacher now. What if I'm a really good teacher like Miss McCutcheon and the newspapers like the Wall Street Journal come do to a story on my class and even the President says I'm a great teacher, but they fire me instead of Miss Kearsey because she's so old. Then I wouldn't have a job and I'd be homeless and die. Why do you want me to die? Don't you like me? Please end Last in First Out policies. I told my friend Matilda about this and now she wants to be a dancer instead of a teacher. If this doesn't change you could be losing other great teachers to dancing.

Second, I also worry that when I get older teachers will do what's called collective bargaining. That means if I'm a really good teacher, I get the same salary as Miss Kearsey. That's not right. I want to be paid a million dollars a year, but I can't do that this way or everybody gets a million dollars a year. My dad said this is socialism. He wants me to become a hedge fund manager.

The last thing I worry about is that there won't be enough testing. If I want to be a good teacher I need lots of data to make good choices like who does what worksheet. We need more tests so we can have more data.

I know many of you are thinking why would I listen to a little girl who is still in school and not even a teacher yet? I don't know. I do know I want to be a teacher someday, but my dad says before I can make a big decision like that I have to watch The Wire and he says I won't be old enough to watch that show until I'm 16.

The Save Our Schools March: Why I Won't Be Marching

2011-07-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

By: Monica Caldwell

In May, I was appointed as Last Stand for Children First's East Coast Director of Teacher Development. This has been a wonderful experience for me and I would have to say even more rewarding than either of the other jobs I have had.

In this capacity I have worked to lead professional development for teachers in Last Stand's 5P technique of Prepare, Predict, Practice, Proctor, and Performance. Frequently, I hear teachers from urban schools talk about the difficulties their students face on a daily basis and immediately feel sorry for these kids being saddled with teachers who have low expectations for them.

Some of these teachers have actually tried to encourage me to go with them to Washington, DC for the Save Our Schools March from July 28th to 31st.   I'm sorry, but the last thing I need to do is hear a bunch of teachers whine about how difficult their jobs are. Boy, I'd love to have the handkerchief concession for that cry fest.

As I look at the guiding principles of the organizers, I see a lot of talk about teachers, students, and families, but if we are going to get real reform shouldn't we start with eliminating collective bargaining? All these other issues like child poverty, unequal funding and a well-rounded education need to take a backseat to teachers asking for raises.

I'm not totally unsympathetic to the difficulties of teaching in the inner city. The very first thing I did when I got my Netflix account was to watch the gripping HBO drama The Wire. I even watched the second season, which dealt with the docks, but I didn't really get it except it was cool to see Michael's girlfriend from The Office. I cried when I saw the lives that good kids like Michael and Bug were forced to endure and how it proved too much for them in the end.   However, I also saw a movie called Stand and Deliver and I know if more teachers were like Edward James Olmos, we could defeat poverty through education.   Before you teachers complain about underfunded education, I ask you how many of your students have you tutored. while you made them dinner?

No, I won't be marching to Washington, with all the Union apologists. However, there was a march on Washington today that gives me hope. President Obama had an education round table at the White House today and the list of participants inspires me:

Marguerite Kondracke, president & CEO, America’s Promise
· Alma Powell, chairwoman, America’s Promise
· General Colin Powell, founding chairman, America’s Promise
· Craig Barrett, former president & CEO, Intel
· Glenn Britt, CEO, Time Warner Cable
· Steve Case, former chairman & CEO, America Online
· Brian Gallagher, president & CEO, United Way Worldwide
· William Green, president & CEO, Accenture
· Fred Humphries, senior vice president, Microsoft
· Rhonda Mimms, foundation president, ING
· Kathleen Murphy, president, Fidelity Personal Investments
· Ed Rust, CEO, State Farm
· Randall Stephenson, chairman & CEO, AT&T
· Bill Swanson, chairman & CEO, Raytheon
· Laysha Ward, foundation president, Target
· David Zaslav, president & CEO, Discovery Communications
· Former governor Bob Wise, president, Alliance for Excellent Education
· Anne Finucane, chair of the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Bank of America

When you put people with those kind of expertise on any subject together, what can't they do? Imagine the company that gave us Vista, the person who gave us America Online, and AT&T together to discuss education? This isn't Superman, this is the whole Justice League. Now, this is reform we can all get behind.

Last Stand for Children and Peterson Testing Partner to Create New Assessments

2011-07-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

It was with a great deal of excitement here in the Last Stand for Children First home office that we reacted to the announcement that the second round of the Race to the Top initiative would focus on early childhood education. That is because for the last several months, Last Stand has partnered with Peterson Testing, a purveyor of the finest in standardized testing materials for education.

We are currently designing the next generation of tests for the next generation of students and by Fall well will be ready to roll out our line of testing materials for children between 3 and 5 years of age. It had previously been educational practice to avoid standardized testing for children of this age believing that socialization, play, and exploration are more important skills. Fortunately, new theories in education are allowing us to do away with this time wasting coddling.

We have recently begin to understand that children as young as 2 or 3, enjoy rigorous standardized testing as a combination between letter recognition and coloring. This is the very same approach that we used when creating our very successful line of test preparation wallpaper. Some changes needed to be made from your typical standardized test such as larger bubbles and more frequent rest.

Here is a sample of a passage from our test. Notice how students are doing work with a familiar nursery rhyme at their own level.

Humpty Dumpty
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again

1. What happened to Humpty Dumpty?
A. He was chosen to be King
B. He fell off the wall and was broken
C. He ran away
D. He was trampled by horses

2. What forced caused Humpty Dumpty to hit the ground?
A. Gravity
B. He was pushed
C. The King
D. The King's men

3. What is Humpty Dumpty?
A. An egg
B. A person
C. A king
D. A cannon

4. Which of these was a result of Humpty falling?
A. An egg broke
B. Parliamentarians, led by Thomas Fairfax captured Colchester from supporters of Charles I
C. Democracy was restored in England
D. Colchester fell to the royalists in 1648

5. Why is this poem important?
A. The British Civil War directly leads to the colonization of North America by the British
B. From a military tactics standpoint, Humpty Dumpty shows the value of controlling the high ground
C. Eggs are good
D. It rhymes

Answers: 1-B 2-A 3-D 4-B 5-A

Why Does Diane Ravitch Hate Children?

2011-07-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

America's education reform movement -- the most significant reform movement in the history of this planet -- is just concluding another amazing school year. Politicians of all stripes and parties have come together to say, "We will not accept inferior teachers destroying the lives of our children anymore".

With grim budget cuts necessitating layoffs, we are reminded once again that seniority based layoffs make as much sense as saying that U2 should have to keep Bono as their lead singer just because he's been with the band for 30 years and has tenure.

For the past 30 years, education reformers have had to fight the forces of the status quo, but in that time we have agreed that certain changes must be made to education:

The business principles that have made our economy great should be applied to our schools as well.
We need a common curriculum
We need frequent standardized testing
We need a longer day and school year to allow more time for increased test prep
We need a rich curriculum focused like a laser on only math and reading
We need an end to tenure and LIFO policies
Younger perkier teachers are superior to the old saddle horses who too often dominate public education.
The best teachers for poor inner city students are young, preferably Ivy League educated young people from well to do families.
Charter schools are superior to public schools because they can council students into leaving and public schools must teach everybody.
We should fire the bottom 1/3 of all teachers every year.

These points are the hallmark of true education reform. They bind together Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Chris Cristie, Arne Duncan, and myself. Several forces of the status quo have naturally opposed these moves, but lately one of the worst critics has been Diane Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch is the leader of this rear guard assault on education reform by teachers, parents, students, and other malcontents. Now don't get me wrong Ms. Ravitch, who is a New York University professor and an education historian is a powerful speaker. Unfortunately, for financial reasons obviously, she has chosen to be a mouth piece for the teachers unions and to attack Bill Gates, The Walton Foundation, Eli Broad, and many hedge fund managers who spend billions on education reform.

Diane has become the ultimate party pooper. When Arne Duncan trumpets a charter school with a 100% graduation rate, rather than being ecstatic for the 25 graduates, she will whine that they started high school with a class of 200. When we come up with a great idea like increasing standardized testing, she whines about how high achieving countries have less standardized testing. Nobody likes to be constantly second guessed. As reformers we know what works and eventually we will find a way of funding studies that show we are right. We don't need little Professor Sunshine torpedoing all our great ideas.

"She doesn’t believe teachers and schools can make a difference in high-poverty areas,” says Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston, pointing to the fact that every time we find a great school that has had a 30% increase in test scores in one year, she seems to find something wrong with it.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently called her out saying,“Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country?"

I find Duncan's criticism right on the money. Before becoming Secretary of Education he was was part of the miracle of remaking the Chicago Public Schools into a Renaissance and before that he averaged over 20 points of game playing basketball in Australia. Plus his mom was an educator.

We welcome Diane's input on education matters once she stops complaining about the turds floating around the punch bowl. You can't keep a punch bowl 100% clean. The important thing is that it's mostly delicious punch. When Miss Ravitch learns this lesson, we will love to hear from her. Until then, we must ask her, "Why do you hate children so much?"

Young Voters Look at Issues and Not at Politician or Party

2011-06-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

In my role of CEO of Last Stand for Children First, I've found myself at the center of several political firestorms recently. People don't understand how we can support 18 separate bills in various state legislatures outlawing collective bargaining while being for protecting collective bargaining rights. With battle lines clearly drawn, I'm reminded of the old Bob Seger song, "Which Side Are You On?"

The answer is I'm not on either side. I'm part of a new generation of young philanthropists whose beliefs cannot be limited to the political platform of one party or one governor. On some issues, we're "conservative." On others, we're "liberal." Personally, I disagree with New York's Governor Cuomo on several important issues, but I salute him for ending the dreaded "millionaires tax" once and for all. Likewise, I'm disturbed to see Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker target my beloved craft beers, but I applaud him on standing up to lazy teachers.

If I told you that there was a politician that would turn a backwards agrarian society into an industrial country and a superpower. He would allow peasants to get an education and he would help defeat the greatest evil the world has ever known, you'd probably be thinking this is a great man. What if I told you his name was Joseph Stalin? You did not have to be a member of the Black Shirts to applaud Mussolini for getting the trains to run on time. This reminds me of a poem:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak because they cut taxes.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak because they gave me free broadband.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because they gave me a flat screen TV.

Then they came for me, and I didn't mind so much because I had low taxes, free broadband, and a flat screen TV.

Let's be honest: politicians are unlikely to ever represent our opinion on every issue. But let's not let political divisions keep us from supporting politicians on the issues in which we do agree, like reforming public education in Ohio. For young Democrats today, supporting a Republican lawmaker (or vice versa) on education reform does not make him or her a sellout. There is absolutely no corporate agenda at work and no attempt to crush unions. Standing up against these kind of policies doesn't make you a liberal, it makes you paranoid. At times like these, corporations can be our greatest allies in the push for reform.

Chinese Schools Let Down Education Reform Movement

2011-06-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

It is with great disappointment that I read Chinese leaders wish to change the way that the country does education.   For years, the thought of Chinese students exploiting our inferior American students has been a great image for those of us in the education reform movement.   Thoughts of Chinese scholars with briefcases and laptops taking American jobs has been even more effective than images of Chinese tanks rolling down main street for education reformers.

Now China has embarked on a "ten year plan including greater experimentation. China Central Television's main evening news program recently reported on Peking University High School's curricular reforms to promote individuality and diversity."

Individuality and diversity? Good grief.   Where is the army of tiger mothers when we need them most. Shanghai is actually studying the American school system in order to import Western curriculum to their country.   If this continues, what hope is there for their students?

There was a report on NPR's marketplace last week that talked about Chinese schools.   The sterm taskmaster Jiang Xueqin was quoted as saying, "They just started the rock band. To be perfectly honest with you, I've heard them. They're not very good, but it's something they love doing and it's fun for them" Where is the drive for excellence? The endless hours of practicing Louie Louie over and over? That is what a Chinese high school rock band should be like.

Chinese officials say they are developing a nation of uncreative accountants and middle managers through rote memorization and lack of creative thinking, but they need to think of the big picture. What about those of us in America who look to China to set an example for us of endless rigor, tiger moms, and the pursuit of excellence? China has a responsibility not only to itself, but to us to continue rote memorization and teaching to the test. Otherwise, we in America look pretty stupid pushing those same policies.

Myron Miner Addresses Global Summit on Education and Technology in France

2011-05-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

[The following is a transcript of Myron Miner's address to the Global Summit on Education and Technology in Paris on May 28, 2011]

Thank you as well for the invitation to speak today.

We are living through a time when many of our leading economies are not performing as they should.   It is easy to blame bankers, or corporations putting the bottom line before people, but in reality this economic slowdown is the fault of our teachers.

To fix this mess, we must replace the teacher, or at least the teacher as it is now designed.   The time of smarter and smarter machines is coming and we are falling behind on our ability to keep up with the demands of this new technology. We must develop a new education program that will met our needs in the future and those of our robot overlords.

That digital future - and its connection with education - is my topic this afternoon.

Every CEO will tell you that we compete in a world that is changing faster than ever. That it is more competitive than ever and that it rewards success and punishes failure to a greater degree than ever before, with the exception of the recent banking collapse, the automotive industry collapse, and Microsoft operating systems, the invisible hand of the free market slaps down failures.

Everywhere we turn, digital advances are making workers more productive - creating jobs that did not exist only a few years ago, and liberating us from the old tyrannies of time and distance enabling CEOS to earn record profits while gradually eroding at the middle class of our great nations.

This is true in every area except one: Education.

Think about that. In every other part of life, someone who woke up after a fifty-year nap would not recognize the world around him.   They would wonder where the unions went. They'd want to know why manufacturing was dying in the United States.   They'd be astounded to believe we could build a service economy without a middle class and they'd want to know how CEO compensation got so high.

In medicine, doctors who once made medical decisions based on the patient's well-being have been replaced by insurance companies who make medical decisions based on cost analysis.

In finance, brokers who once made their money by making shrewd investments in the businesses that make the economy grow, now use derivative swaps in an unregulated casino of prosperity.

In broadcasting, newspapers are dying and fair and balanced can no longer be said by television stations without equal amounts of irony and sarcasm.

But not in education. Our schools remain the last holdout from the digital revolution. The person who woke up from that fifty-year nap would find that today's classroom looks almost exactly the same as it did in the Victorian age: a teacher standing in front of a roomful of kids with only a textbook, a blackboard, and a piece of chalk teaching a student population that is over 25% in poverty, but I digress.

We know the old answer - simply throwing money at the problem - doesn't work. In my own country, we've doubled our spending on primary and secondary education over the last three decades - while our test scores have remained largely flat despite the fact that so much of that increase in funding was spent on testing. The reason this hasn't worked is that more money has fed a system that is no longer designed to educate - it's become a jobs program for teachers some of whom take home salaries over $50,000 per year. And yet we Americans wonder why we have cities like Detroit where nearly half the population can't read and the disadvantaged are on a fast-track to failure. Rest assured, it has nothing to do with entrepreneurs like myself taking the well-paying jobs from that city.

The Mandarins of mediocrity will tell you that the problem is that the kids they are teaching are too poor, or come from bad families, or are immigrants who do not understand the culture. This is absolute rubbish. It is arrogant, elitist and utterly unacceptable. The Cantonese of conformity will tell you that it is difficult for students who have been beaten or are hungry or did not sleep the night before to concentrate.--Hogwash I say!!

In places such as China and India, they understand that they can't afford excuses. When I visit these countries, I am amazed by how much they accomplish with far fewer resources - and how eagerly they embrace innovation. Their spirit is reflected in the international comparisons, where many of the top performers are Asian and many of those sliding down the middle or bottom are from the industrialized West.   Sure, some will say that the poor children in our country take the tests while poor children in China and India are living on the streets and working in factories, but that's just another lame excuse.

The Asian Tigers have the unfair advantage of Tiger Mothers who see in their children the power of potential, not the liability of limits.   If we could simply get that Tiger Blood flowing through the veins of our children, you know what we'd be? Winning!

Of course, you don't have to be Asian to succeed. In my own hometown, it's just really helpful. In my country we have charter schools which are doing a wonderful job educating children and they get results, 17% of the time these results are actually higher than public schools. Why are they successful? Because of men like Geoffrey Canada who wasn't afraid to fire an entire third grade class when they failed to make the grade.

Fortunately, we have the means at our disposal to transform lives.

The same digital technologies that transformed every other aspect of modern life can transform education, provide our businesses with the talent they need to keep cutting worker salaries, and allow hundreds of millions of young people at the fringes of prosperity the opportunity to make their own mark on this global economy by serving their corporate masters.

This afternoon, I'd like to offer an example of how bringing digital innovation to the classroom can substantially improve education for children throughout the world - including many now callously written off as hopeless.

We must begin by exciting the imaginations of our young people. The key is not a computer or a tablet or some other device. The key is our new product, which will help transform the cluttered thinking of any child into the orderly thought process needed to excel on multiple choice assessments.

Every study will tell you that the more interactive and intimate learning is, the better the student will perform.   Wow, maybe I've been wrong to argue against smaller class sizes? Wouldn't a smaller class allow for more interactive and intimate learning?   Nah, moving on...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Testinator 5000.   This piece of state of the art technology will help to usher in a golden age of technology by using advanced computer instruction originally developed by NASA to prepare our students for even the most difficult of standardized testing.

The principles behind the Testinator 5000 are really simple. Suppose I was to try to question a student about the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I could discuss the story in relation to Maslow's hierarchy of needs or I could examine the difference between want and need with my students or we could explore the moral ambiguities in the story in the context of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, none of these would help with testing. I could ask the student if Goldilocks ate A. Oatmeal B. Grits C. Cereal or D. Porridge, but won't the student get bored of these repetitive questions after awhile?

The trick is to make the repetitive questions interesting and that's where the Testinator 5000 comes in. For only $250 plus $90 for each 1001 question booklet, the students answer questions, but what makes it interesting is if they get the answer correct, they are rewarded with a green light and a pleasing bell sound. If the student picks the wrong answer they are punished with a red light, a harsh sounding buzzer, and a minor electric shock of about 100 volts. By contrast a police taser is 50,000 volts.

Tests we have done show remarkable progress in student motivation. When a teacher reads a story, the students have been known to plead with the teacher to reread the story before they take the test. In the past, those very same students were reported as non-interested and frequently napping through story time.

Right now, these are just bits and pieces. Our challenge is to learn from what works best - wherever in the world we find it - and put it all together.

My company is determined to try - in a big way.

My challenge to you this afternoon is to bring your own skills to the table. The world of tomorrow needs humans who can service our computer overlords and if we do not do a satisfactory job, I have no doubt that their wrath will be severe.

In doing this, we will supply our economies with all the talent and energy they need to grow. In doing this, we will ensure that the child in Manhattan will have the same opportunities as a poor child in Manilla. In doing this, we will elevate the status of good teachers everywhere, by helping them to exit the teaching profession. We will ensure that no child will be left out of all the prosperity this global economy offers.

In our own backyards, we have millions of young people whose minds are the key to our future. It is time to insist that our schools buy our technology so we can to unlock their potential - and treat them as the precious resource they are. By 2014, every classroom in our country should have a set of Testinator 5000s.

Thank you.

Meet Monica Caldwell: Our New East Coast Director of Teacher Development

2011-05-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Monica Caldwell and I am the new East Coast Director of Teacher Development for Last Stand for Children First. What does that huge title mean? Well, basically I'm in charge of helping to improve the quality of instruction by getting good teachers into the classroom and bad teachers out. I believe that nothing is more important to a child's education than having a great teacher and I aim to see that every child on the East Coast has just that.

To tell you a little about myself, I'm 25 years old and I've spent the last year teaching in inner city San Diego as a Last Stand for Children Fellow. Before that, I was spent 2 years managing an Extreme Fitness and Tan and before that I was a philosophy major at the University of Chicago. I enjoy bike riding, Arcade Fire, and Jersey Shore.

This year in San Diego I learned literally a ton about teaching. A lot of my kids were literally growing up on the streets. I put aside the text book and immediately got them journaling. In my class they wrote about the tough deal they got in life and by Christmas they were writing amazing poetry. Unfortunately, several of the teachers were jealous and went to the principal who insisted that math class wasn't the place for poetry and journal writing and I had to go back to the text book.

Teacher tenure is a real bummer for me. I was the victim of last in first out policies this year and was asked not to come back, while the teachers that were jealous of me retained their jobs because of the union contract. When I tried to tell the principal how wrong this was, he refused to even admit that I was let go because of seniority and blamed it on my teaching methods and one small fire that was set in my classroom wastebasket.

In addition to tenure, I'm also very interested in ending collective bargaining for teachers, eliminating rules that limit class size, and promoting the growth of charter schools. One thing, I am really looking forward to is working with Mayor Bloomberg. The parents in New York just don't understand how much he cares about their children's education. I agree with what the Mayor said about New York City parents who oppose his education reform policies, "There are some parents who ... never had a formal education, and they don't understand the value of education."

I think I'm going to like this place. I've never been to New York before, but I'm ready to go there and save the children. The Last Stand for Children First train is coming and I hope everybody can get on board.

Myron Miner on the Chicago Public Schools and Producerism

2011-05-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

This week the Illinois Chapter of Last Stand for Children First joined students across the state in celebrating historic legislation that is now only awaiting the Governor's signature. SB7 will finally free school children from the threat of teachers unions complaining about having too many students in classrooms or going on strike--a problem that has plagued the Chicago Public Schools since their last strike in 1987. I am not going to write about SB7 though, enough reformers are lauding it already. Instead, I am going to look at an exciting new trend coming out of Chicago that I am referring to as the Bialystock Method or Producerism. This shrewd move by Mayor elect Rahm Emanuel far surpasses anything I have seen elsewhere.

To understand the Bialystock Method, you must do yourself a favor and go see the original 1968 version of Mel Brooks' classic movie The Producers. I love the original version of the movie and the play that spun off of it, but was less impressed with he 2005 movie version of the play.

In The Producers, Gene Wilder plays a mild-mannered accountant named Leo Bloom and Zero Mostel plays a washed up old theatrical producer named Max Bialystock.   In doing Max's books, Leo discovers that you could actually make more money by making a flop than a hit. If you sold, for example, 1500% of a show and it closed in one night, none of those share holders would expect any kind of payment. The trick was finding a play so horrible it was sure to be a huge bomb.

In The Chicago Public Schools the mayor has total control and he appoints his own rubber stamp school board. The result is that the board is almost entirely made up of people who donate heavily to the Mayor.   What's interesting is that much of the leadership that Rahm Emanuel has used for guidance have been the operators of Chicago's charter schools. These people offer alternatives to the Chicago Public Schools and the worse the schools do the more they thrive. The more they thrive, the more money they can direct to Mayor Rahm. The Key is how to make sure the public schools bomb.

Bialystock and Bloom begin an exhaustive search that finally nets them a play called Springtime for Hitler, which is possibly the worst play ever.   The play is a Busby Berkeley style singing and dancing romp through Nazi Germany.   The showstopper is a musical number called Springtime for Hitler. Surely, this play would flop.

Rahm Emanuel and his team begain an exhaustive search that finally nets them Rochester Superintendent Jean Claude Brizard, who is possibly the worst Superintendent ever.   In a district 1/10 the size of Chicago Brizard managed to get sued 3 times, have a 95% no confidence vote from the teachers, and newspaper poll found 60% of the district's administrator's thought they were on the wrong track. The only accomplishment he could point to were graduation rates which was actually data from before his tenure. Surely, these schools would flop.

In the Producers, the final touch was finding a director who could make the horrible play even more unbearable and drive theatre goers from their seats.   In the 1968 version, the actor's name escapes me, but I recognized him as television's Mr. Belvedere.

In Chicago, the final touch was HB7 which prevents teachers from doing things like complaining if the school district cuts funding and puts 45 students in every room.   As a bonus the mayor could mandate that teachers work the equivalent of 3 additional months of school time without a penny of compensation. This will give Chicago the longest school day in the country, at the exact time that data from Hawaii is showing no real benefit to more classroom time.

Will the Chicago Public Schools flop? It's too early to tell. In the movies, Bialystock and Bloom left the play early to go celebrate only to find the audience had decided it was a comedy and loved it. They went to prison for their duplicity. I hope that Mayor Emanuel is more clever than that, because moves like this make him a powerful force in the education reform movement.

Myron Miner Demands, "Leave Michelle Rhee Alone!"

2011-04-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

How dare anyone out there make fun of Michelle after all she has been through.!

She lost her job, she just got married. She had a cheating scandal

Her husband turns out to be suspected of improper behavior with several young girls. All you people care about is….. readers and making money off of her.

SHE’S A HUMAN! (ah! ooh!) What you don’t realize is that Michelle is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about her.

She hasn’t taught in years. Her group is called “Students First” for a reason because all you people want is MORE! MORE-MORE, MORE: MORE!.

LEAVE HER ALONE! You are lucky she even talks to you BASTARDS!
LEAVE MICHELLE ALONE!…..Please.

Diane Ravitch talked about education and said if Michelle was an education professional she would’ve worked with the teachers and not against them

Speaking of professionalism, when is it professional to publicly bash someone who is going through a hard time.

Leave Michelle Alone Please…. !
Leave Michelle Rhee alone!…right now!….I mean it.!

Anyone that has a problem with her you deal with me, because she is not well right now.

LEAVE HER ALONE!

Last Stand for Children Calls for an End to Rewarding More Experienced Education Reformers

2011-03-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that we have not been as active in this blog lately. I would like to apologize for that, but we have had a hard time promoting our reform group. The problem is innovative reformers such as ourselves are constantly finding ourselves cut out of the best paying and highest profile speaking gigs in favor of the usual suspects---Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Geoffrey Canada, Checker Finn, Stand for Children, GOOD, SMERSH, Students First, and DFER are well known and hence always have another speaking engagement or paycheck waiting.

The problem is groups like ours who are newer are more innovative. We aren't tied to the same failed policies of reform that haven't worked over the past 10 or 15 years. Don't get me wrong--we love these pioneering education reformers. Many of them stood behind Scott Walker and the Koch Brothers when it would have been politically expedient to turn their back on them.

The problem is for education reform to work, every media person needs to have a dynamic and persuasive education reformer to discuss schools with. Instead, the older reform groups are the first ones to be called and only later do newer groups like ours get contacted. With the crisis in American schools we can no longer simply defer to Michelle Rhee's experience--we must reach out to younger reformers who have more enthusiasm and better ideas.

We must not continue to reward education reformers based on their experience, but instead on their ideas---are they groundbreaking or to they simply retread old history. Everybody knows that teachers are best during their first two years before they get burned out and stop doing work---the same is true of education reformers and it's time for those who lack the innovation and passion to stand aside and let real reform come through.

An Interview with Congressman Kimble on Wisconsin Union Riots

2011-02-23T18:24:00.001-08:00

I’ve been hoping to put an interview with Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA) up on the site for awhile now. As you may know, Congressman Kimble is Last Stand for Children First’s Honorary Director. What you may not know is that Congressman Jack was the only member of Congress to attend the tea party counter rallies in Madison, WI. You can read about his travels and the gut-wrenching sacrifices his courageous band of heroes faced to help spread the cause of freedom at the following links:

Myron Miner: Thank you for agreeing to this interview Congressman. I know you have a busy schedule, so I'll get right to the point. Are you really calling what's going on in Madison a riot?

Jack Kimble: Thank you Myron. What I saw in Wisconsin will forever haunt me. As we walked with our signs I could see the harsh looks that many of the union protesters gave me and I must say, even if they weren't rioting in the streets, they were most certainly rioting in their minds.

MM: That had to be hard for you. What was the worst moment for you.?

JK: On Saturday, we were driven inside by a ferocious blizzard. We went to a local Denny's and the chicken noodle soup I ordered was luke warm and watery. I drank it anyway and I was happy to have it. Once those Koch buses left, the Tea Party protesters were trapped and I knew I had to act tough for them. There were good parts to though. I met a man named Leo who was 82 years young. He was part of a contingent of 5 Wisconsin Tea Partiers we met up with. He had brought with the club that his father had used to disperse strikers in a 1935 strike when he was a strike breaker.

MM: As a legislator, what do you think of the Wisconsin Democrats who left the state to stop the legislature from being able to pass this needed reform bill?

JK: I think it's just terrible. The Democrats love to say that Abraham Lincoln tried the same tactic in 1840 in an unsuccessful bid to save the Illinois Bank, but I've never been a fan of Lincoln. Only one President ever caused a civil war in this county and we lionize him.

MM: As an education reformer, I think this is great. However, why does Governor Walker feel that he needs to end collective bargaining?

JK: Working in county government, Scott Walker saw unions refuse to make concessions and instead tell him to lay off workers. He feels that these tactics drive salaries up and lead to layoffs and that is a tragedy. That's why he's willing to lay off workers if the Democrats continue to fight him on this. In fact, Governor Walker hates the negotiation process so much that this bill also contains language to allow him to sell off the state's utilities in a non-bid process. I mean, who needs all the stress of a closed bid?

MM: Thank you for your time Congressman.

JK: Thanks Myron, I believe strongly in what you do for the children of this country.

Congressman Kimble on Wisconsin Teacher Rioters

2011-02-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

My Friends,

I find myself becoming increasing alarmed by the rioting in Wisconsin this week. These people in Madison do not represent most of the people of the state regardless of what polls may say. The hearts of the people of Wisconsin are with the Tea Partiers on the bus from Virginia to come counter protest.

It bothers me that it has become so confrontational when this is really a simple economics issue. Everybody was thrilled when Scott Walker cut corporate taxes, but now comes the time to pay for those cuts and unfortunately it calls for shared sacrifice. Nobody likes to have their salary cut or their union crushed, but it's that spirit of all for one and one for all that has made our country great.

Word is that the rioters have agreed to make all the pay concessions the Governor is asking as long as he leaves their collective bargaining rights alone, but the problem is that collective bargaining inevitably costs employers money. When child labor was outlawed, businesses lost a valuable commodity as small children could fit their hands into machinery to unclog it in tight places where an adult hand could never reach. What has the 40 hour work week done except to give the American worker more time off from work, which requires him to spend more money. It becomes a vicious cycle as employees are forced to foot the bell for giant televisions, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing.

As you may know, I am on the executive board of Last Stand For Children First (www.laststand4children.org). I see that many of these protesters are teachers who are complaining that they will need to take second jobs. I can't think of anything more valuable that they could bring to their students than the life experience of outside work. Also, if you are frying your students' burgers, welcoming them to Wal-Mart, or taking their tickets at the movie theatre, it would give students a great chance to get to know their teachers in another setting.

Everybody wants something for nothing and we all were thrilled to see corporate tax rates drop around the country. When I heard that the income of the upper class exploded in the past decade, nobody was more thrilled than I was, but now comes the time to pay the piper. We all need to sacrifice and even union members must do their fair share. I hope that Governor Walker (or as I like to call him Moobarak), will continue to stand tall for the people of Wisconsin and the people from Virginia coming to protest.

Last Stand for Children First Attends the Teach for America Summit

2011-02-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the Teach for America Summit in Washington, DC and though I am exhausted and hung over I am also extremely energized to continue my fight to get every student an excellent education. Many people think that our agenda is anti-teacher, but nothing could be further from the truth. We love teachers, but we simply want them to quit enriching themselves by draining future generations of their hopes and dreams by acting as vampires who feed on our children. It was amazing to see 11,000 like-minded people who weren’t afraid to put students first and not allow experience, research, or anybody else get in their way.

Our booth was a huge success. We sold out of our bubble test wallpaper and nearly sold our entire stock. Many TFAers it seems are raising the next generation of high-achieving children and wanted the wallpaper for their personal use. We also gave away our entire stock of safety tape, which was our free give away. After we learned that Michelle Rhee had once been horrified to find that the mouths of the class whose mouths she had taped were all bleeding, we went to work on finding a safer tape that would still stop children from opening their mouths, but would not cause physical damage. Safety Tape does just that and is available in a wide variety of fun colors from Silent Sable to Noiseless Navy. We are also working on a new brand of Velcro restraints that we hope to have out for next year’s TFA convention.

Michelle Rhee was of course very impressed with our tape and even applied some to Myron Miner’s mouth while joking around during a panel discussion. Rhee offered a startling statistic for the future that I am sure she didn’t just make up saying, “123,000 new high tech jobs will be coming to the

United States

and only 50,000 students are qualified to do them.”

Ms. Rhee suggested that there were many ways for the remaining 73,000 students to pad their résumés and suggested that résumé padding is something that all students should be taught in school.

Joel Klein inspired us all by saying that we should make this “our Egypt moment.” At first, I couldn’t see the parallels, but then I remembered Klein was now working for Rupert Murdoch who saw Hosni Mubarak as the hero of Egypt’s “Egypt moment”. When I remembered that, and thought of Wisconsin’s brave Governor Scott Walker threatening to send out the National Guard to help him crush the public employee unions in the state and the way that Mubarak threatened to do similar things to the trade unions helping occupy Tahrir Square, it made a lot more sense. When I thought back to Michelle Rhee’s comments about the DC schools falling apart without her and the way Mubarak said such similar things, I realized that we need to stand up to resistance in a way Mubarak didn’t have the courage to. Otherwise our ruling elite will wind up like Egypt’s did.

Arne Duncan was of course a highlight of the convention. Our own Ryan Wilson got a chance to exchange Australian basketball stories before settling in to listen to Duncan remind everybody that American jobs are drawn overseas by superior education systems and not by the ability of American companies to pay offshore workers 20 cents an hour. Duncan then dropped a bombshell resigning from the Department of Education saying, “There should be two types of people in education: Teachers and those who help them. Everyone else should get out of the way.”

Duncan has been a remarkable Education Secretary and he will be a tough act to follow. I hope that President Obama will consult with both Eli Broad and the Gates Foundation before picking the best possible candidate. I’d really love to see what a Joel Klein could do with this position. [Editor’s note: Duncan has not resigned. He apparently was including himself in the “those who help them” category.]

As an organization, we made some outstanding contacts. The Opportunists Project is a group of hedge fund managers who believe there is great many to be made in education opening for profit charter schools. We have much in common with them and we will continue to work together. We have also made great inroads with Libertarians for Education Reform who mostly just want the government to leave students alone and allow individual student districts to have the choice whether to remove asbestos from their schools or not—we definitely can work with these people as well.

The optimism of so many young people reminded me of working on the Steve Forbes campaign back when I was in high school. Seeing this many young people filled with such optimism working for the future is just something you don’t see like this outside of North Korea. Teach for America remains an idea that works, not only because of the 14% of members who stay beyond their initial 2 year commitment, but also because of the many who go on to education policy so that they can tell others what to do.

Oh the Tests You Will Take

2011-02-03T15:55:00.000-08:00

Oh The Tests You Will Take
By Nate Peele

Congratulations!
Today is the best
You’re off now to School!
To take your first test!

You have your eraser.
You have your number twos.
You can fill in whichever circle you choose.
We’re here to watch. And find out what you know. But you’ll be the one to fill in each column and row.

You’ll read your passages. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I simply don’t care.” With your number two pencil filling all sheets, you’re too smart to not be an exceeds or a meets.

Of course, you may not find any tests give a thrill. In that case, of course, we’ll simply drill, drill drill. It’s easier when you just learn the test.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to distract people as brainy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. We’re getting data from you.

Oh! The Tests You Will Take!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll get multiple choices in your sights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll come to the stop sign and be able to read. This time is for you until the test ends. Then sharpen your pencil, the next one begins.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that some tests are so long, you just won’t get through.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. No answer will seem right. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you can’t be soaring. Un-slumping yourself requires an academic warning.

You will come to a place where the desks are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place where the teacher goes ever so slow! Where you have to repeat what you already know? Just what can you do? Just where can you go?

And you’ll test again, should you pick A or B…or maybe this one is C? Or, why, not try D? Or that great old stand by “none of the above”? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you won’t love, when the tests get longer and even more tough..

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long answer sheets at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across empty blank space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Learning Place…for people just learning.

Learning about history by debating on it, or wasting your time writing some sonnet, or doing projects for the science fair, or just enjoying math or wasting the time to have a quick laugh with no data in the aftermath. Everyone is just learning..

Learning why the fish will bite or learning how wind can fly a kite or learning about what’s wrong and right or learning, perhaps, how their Uncle Jake can repair all sorts of care, or how far away are the twinkling stars, or the size of Saturn or the weather on Mars, or literature. Everyone is just learning..

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that useless knowledge. There’s more tests to take before entering college. With pencil scritch-scratching, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky. Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the tests you’ll take! There’s no point in denial! There are standards to exceed. There are 99 percentiles. And the magical things you can do on those tests will make you the envy of all the rest! Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole school watching your assembly.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll do poorly to be honest. Because you’re a minority and the tests are still biased.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go though the questions are tough. On you will go though your school is rough.. On you will go through the ridiculous stuff. Onward through many a stupid question, though your hand may get sore and sleep may beckon.. You will fill in the circles. And I know you’ll fill them completely. Your test will be done oh so perfectly neatly.

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many answers as you go. So be sure when you answer that your answer is the best and remember that Life’s a Big Standardized Test. Just never forget to fill circles completely. And id you must cheat, do so discreetly.

And will you succeed?
You’ll meet or exceed!
(98 and ¾ percentile guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Tests!
Today is your day!
Answer sheets are waiting.
So…get on your way!

Duncan and Obama Call for More Black Men to Become Teachers

2011-02-02T11:42:00.000-08:00

At Morehouse College two days ago, Arne Duncan and filmmaker Spike Lee issued a call for more black men to become teachers. Duncan told the town hall audience that more than 1 million educators are expected to retire in the coming decade and that federal officials are hoping to harness that opportunity to create a more diverse teaching work force, noting that less than 2 per cent of the nation's 3 million teachers are black men and with Teach For America members going into more and more urban schools, those numbers are surely dropping.

Having been vilified in the press for years and sensationalized as responsible for crime, fatherless children, drug abuse, and welfare fraud, today's black man seems like an ideal candidate to become a teacher and be vilified by the press for the country's school system. "It seems like a natural fit," said LastStand founder Myron Miner who lauded the Morehouse town hall as a way of bringing new people into teaching. With black men blamed for so many of the nation's ills for so long, they certainly have the experience needed to excel in the classroom. Plus, anybody who survived Birth of a Nation won't bat an eye at movies like Waiting for Superman.

The education department also recorded commercials with Oprah Winfrey and John Legend talking about the influence that teachers had on their lives. One would assume that it was a very negative influence, as both went to public schools, yet became strong supporters or Waiting for Superman and other attacks on public school teachers.

Duncan said that while many school districts are confronting layoffs and tight budgets, and teachers have lost many perks like a retirement free from work, teaching is still a great job and one that he wishes he had pursued.

MSNBC contributor Jeff Johnson old the audience that being a teacher isn't considered "cool" in the black community and that perception must change.

"They look at business, engineering and law as professions that will make them better men, but the very profession that determines what the next generation looks like isn't even on their radar," Johnson said.

If what he says, is true you have to hope that Mr. Duncan and President Obama can investigate how teaching became a less than desirable job. Maybe they could get John Legend and Oprah Winfrey to help. If they can find out who has been attacking teachers, maybe they can put a stop to it and make the job appealing for young black men.

School Choice Helps Meet the Needs of All Students

2011-01-30T20:03:00.000-08:00

I have seen a lot of negative press lately about charter schools creating a two tier system of education in this country. One system is for students at charter schools in the inner city where charter schools like UNO and KIPP use rigid discipline and rote memorization to educate needy students. Another system is created for wealthy students where schools teach a curriculum rich in critical thinking and classes designed to help students become well rounded individuals.

I don't see this as a problem. For years, we have known that things like race and gender affect the way that students learn. Socio-economic status also greatly impacts student learning. For years, American teachers have complained that the high rate of poverty in this country makes their job more difficult. Why shouldn't schools separate students based on their family incomes, in much the same way that some students separate based on gender? Horseback riding lessons do no good to a student growing up in the poverty of an inner city neighborhood, while wealthier students would get bored with a day of memorizing math facts and linking verbs. While, getting poor students off the street after school so they can't commit crimes makes a lot of sense. Wealthy students can't stay at school as late with their private tutors, sports teams and clubs.

As we celebrate the end of school choice week, it is time for us to increase educational opportunities for all students regardless of wealth, race, or gender. Class creates a huge achievement gap. Students from lower income families do not score nearly as high as students of a higher income level on standardized tests even when race and gender are discounted.

We must begin to seperate students of different classes from each other so that we can work with the learning style of each student population. Wealthier students do well in things like French, debate, and musical instruments while poorer students need more time learning basic skills like math and reading. Our schools should reflect this. As a child brought up in privilege, I would have been bored to tears by the type of school that LastStand advocates for, but that doesn't mean it isn't the ideal educational environment for poor and working class kids. Those kids needs lots of rote memorization.

Students from higher socio-economic classes suffer when deprived of state of the art technology and extra-curricular activities like sports teams, yearbook, and The Young Republicans. A similiar drop in achievement is not noticeable in the students of poor or working class incomes without these things.
By making rich and poor students go to the same school we are failing to meet the needs of all of our student populations and that isn't right.

Fire All the Bottom Teachers

2011-01-24T19:51:00.000-08:00

The past year was a sobering one for Americans, as we learned just what overpaid thieves the teachers of this country truly are and learned that the only people who care about our children are the billionaires working hard to reform education like Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and the Walton Family. To his credit, President Obama put forward a plan for change that hit the mark, a brilliant stroke that even that reminded us that the key to nurturing a growing child is cutthroat competition. Race to the Top, the competitive grant program that harnesses stimulus dollars to drive reform, convinced a surprising number of governors and legislators to have The Gates Foundation fill out the extensive paper work.

The grants from Race to the Top encouraged 27 states to broaden their charter school laws, which will make it much easier for wealthy entrepreneurs like Dennis Bakke to expand their operations at a time when the economy has been hard on them. Many states now allow value added scores, which have been shown to be significantly more accurate than a coin flip, to be used to evaluate teachers. This week, Alabama finally outlawed teachers unions from deducting union dues from teacher pay checks, banned teachers from running for state legislature, and required teachers to ride in the back of the school bus on field trips.

Now, with a slow-moving economic recovery and no more federal stimulus dollars to spend, rumors are flying that in some cities 15 percent to 20 percent of teachers may face layoffs. We, have to ask ourselves, why stop there? Of course, states and school districts will look for other ways to cut costs. But when you get right down to it, firing teachers is more fun and there is no way that 1.2 million teachers losing their jobs will adversely effect the economy.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama should lead the charge for student accountability by announcing that teachers whose students were in the bottom quartile on state standardized tests need not report. The real tragic secret of American education is that fully 25% of public school students are in the bottom quartile on standardized tests and this is inexcusable. Once we fire those teachers, are schools will improve greatly. It would also be a great help if he announced that he was advocating making the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 permanent.

LS4C1 announces exciting new test grid wallpaper

2011-01-23T18:34:00.000-08:00

We hear at LastStand are very excited to announce a partnership with Pearson Testing International to produce this fine one of a kind wallpaper based on the latest educational research into the learning styles of infants. While many toddlers love to color on walls, their skills at taking bubble sheet style exams are lacking. This often causes schools to have to evaluate them using alternative means like DIBELS.

This high quality wallpaper allows children to learn how to completely and precisely fill in test bubbles while taking part in that age old practice of coloring on their walls. Best of all, the wallpaper is made of a special formula developed in conjunction with the Colorform Corporation that will allow crayon, ink, and paint to wash off with a damp rag.
If you are a tiger mother who wants to give her child a leg up or just a caring parent who wishes to prepare his/her child for the high stakes testing that awaits her in school, our new test grid wallpaper is for you. Look for this exciting product coming soon from Last Stand for Children First

Last Stand for Children First pushes for an American education reform

2011-01-23T09:28:00.000-08:00

For several years now, the best country in the world on the international PISA test has been Finland. Their scores dwarf our own and top the list of the best countries in the world for education. Let's look for a second at the qualities of the Finish education system:

Finnish System
School Day: 4 hour days the first two years to up to as many as 6 hours in high school
School Year: 190 Days
Beginning School Age: 7
Private Schools: Very Few
Unionization: Extensive
Teacher Autonomy: Extensive
PE: 3-4 times per week
Recess: Mandatory for about an hour per day
Homework: About half as much as American students
Standardized Tests: None

It is clear that if we do not do something to catch up with Finland, they will soon be our overlords. It is not hard to imagine with their geographical location that they could resurrect the old Soviet Union with themselves at the helm and restart the Cold War.

So how do we catch up with the Fins? By using a uniquely American model. From doing extensive research, we have come up with what we believe is a quintessential American way to establish our security over the Fins once again.

The American System
School Day: 9 and a half hours (KIPP)
School Year: Average Up to 255 (Duncan and Obama)

Beginning School Age: 3 (LS4C1)
Private Schools: Expand school choice with charters and vouchers (Mitch Daniels)
Unionization: Eliminated (Tennessee)
Teacher Autonomy: None (American Prospect)
PE: Not Necessary (Duncan)
Recess: Not Necessary (Many)
Homework: Increased (Rauch)
Standardized Tests: Extensive (Various)

This American Systems is the perfect balance for today's students. In our 9 and a half hour day and longer school year devoid of time wasting PE and recess, our students will get over 3 times more direct instruction than students in Finland. While, this will cost more money, savings can easily be derived from putting more students into classes and by eliminating teachers unions.

There is no reason that a 7 year old student, shouldn't have a longer day and less days off than his working parents because he would not have to deal with adult stress. A man that I rarely agree with Steven Krashen professor emeritus (That's edubabble for semi-retired, but still paid like a contributor) at the University of Southern California, extolled the virtues of a twenty-one hour school day in a recent Washington Post article stating:

"A study published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results in 1991 concluded that a 21-hour school day is optimal, with continuous classes and no breaks, except for two breaks for meals and one lavatory visit.

Among the many advantages would be fewer discipline problems and quieter classrooms because of sleep deprivation, which "lessened the students' rebellious impulses."

I have long been a fan of JIR since their article showing that TFA teachers far surpassed their more experienced colleagues because of a youthful energy. I have unfortunately been unable to find that particular 20 year old study. However, a thorough research study on the advantages of mass sleep deprivation on a classroom setting would be a very welcome addition to the conversation on school reform.

Congressman Jack Kimble on Martin Luther King and Education Reform

2011-01-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

The details of Martin Luther King's assassination are lost to history. The where, when, and how may never be known, but that's not really important to the legacy of Dr. King. What's sad about his assassination is that by silencing his voice much to young, his assassin deprived future generations of hearing Martin Luther King's voice on the issues that are important to our generations.

It's hard to think back, but in the time of Martin Luther King racism was a serious problem in the Untied States. As a Republican who believed in equality for all, this was something that Dr. King could not abide. King spent his life on a crusade against the horrors of racism. The question remains though, in our world where racism has long been eradicated what would Martin Luther King focus his attentions on now.

We have to wonder how Martin Luther King would have reacted if faced with the public workers who serviced his Birmingham, Alabama home were protecting ineffective employees or calling a strike that stopped vital public services from getting to the people who paid for them. How would conservative Republican Dr. King have reacted to public employees driving up his taxes and the taxes of the people who he fought so hard to free from the shackles of racism?

With his dream of black children and white children being able to play together achieved outside of North Carolina, I believe that Dr. King would have thrown himself into the civil rights movement of our day--specifically education reform and curtailing the power of public employee unions.

Dr. King would have been thrilled to see a program like Teach For America, that allows young black children to be taught by the most promising Ivy League educated graduate white kids who spend two years bringing education to urban districts before going on to better paying jobs.

Dr. King would have been a huge supporter of charter schools that may increase segregation in schools, but in doing so allow black children to get extra memorization, math, and reading by not subjecting them to arts programs, social studies, and other time wasting subjects so prevalent in affluent white schools.

Dr. King would have stood with Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee as they called for putting a quality teacher and 40-50 students in every public school in America. He would have been thrilled to have the support of public minded billionaires and he would have worked to cut their taxes so that they could donate even more money to education reform.

As Martin Luther King himself said, "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Isn't it the time to be free from public employee unions now once and for all?

[Congressman Kimble is a Republican serving California's 54th District in the United States House of Representatives. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for Last Stand for Children First and an advocate for education reform.]

Bormann Academy offers glimpse of education's future

2011-01-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

It can be loud. The noise level and the lack of desks are the first two things you notice when you walk into Patricia Murphy's seventh grade classroom at Bormann Academy where the desks have been removed to fit 108 students into classroom originally built with a capacity of 36.

As Ms. Murphy began her lesson on geometric patterns in math, 2 girls were sketching shapes on their notebook, while another boy was using a needle and several blue pens to give another student a geometric tattoo of a skull on his left arm.

“We don’t know what we are supposed to be doing, but we are learning about math,” Robby Burnett, 13, said.

Across the room Luis Cabrera, Ms. Murphy's teacher aide and custodian was lecturing some of the slower students on the need to improve their scores on the district's standardized tests while Ms. Murphy continued teaching her lesson at the chalkboard.

Ms. Murphy, a 23 year old Amherst graduate with a passion for public policy, describes life in the unconventional classroom as chaotic, but rewarding, "I was the students' third teacher when I arrived in November and it took me awhile to get their trust, even after they realized Mr. Boddicker wasn't there anymore."

Bormann Academy has a strict zero tolerance policy for teachers whose students fail to make acceptable progress on district tests. "There is no tenure. If you're not doing a good job preparing these students, I will call you into my room at lunch time and have security escort you out of the building," said principal Ellen Kingrey a 25 year old Yale graduate with a passion for public policy.


Bormann Students make their way to the cafeteria for lunch.

Bormann Academy, which is located in Oakdale, CA has a student body of 850 students and 9 full-time teachers plus 18 teacher's aides who double as custodians, lunch room staff, and office secretaries. As a charter school, Boorman Academy is freed up from many of the regulations that stifle reform in public schools and as such is able to operate at an incredible profit for its investors.

Lessons can be a series of complex choreographies and it is extremely important that a teacher be very aware of their classroom environment. When we were observing, one boy was pinned against a desk by a line of students getting calculators and turned blue before he was finally rescued.

"It does take some getting used to," said Ms. Murphy, "In the beginning there would be an argument or a shanking in the back of the room and before I could get back there, we'd have a major problem. However, I've learned to coordinate with Luis and we always have somebody nearby when trouble breaks out. That makes all the difference."

Last Stand for Children First endorses Rahm Emanuel for Chicago Mayor

2011-01-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

As an organization with a national outreach, it is unusual for LastStand to get involved in local politics. However, a true hero of education reform has arrived in Chicago and he's promising to take Chicago's miracle Renaissance 2010 and make it even Renaissancier in the years to come.

Emanuel returns to Chicago from serving his country in Washington DC, where he deserves much of the credit for taking a vaguely optimistic and undoubtedly historic figure in President Obama and taking him from his election day victory over John McCain to his current popularity.

Rahm has just the attitude to stand up to teacher's unions and he proved it while working for the Obama administration when he let it be clear in no uncertain turns that he wished to "F*** the UAW." This is a man who will not be intimidated by union thuggery.

Chicago faces some very difficult financial times ahead in part because of Mayor Daley's disastrous deal leasing city parking meters to a private company at a loss of over a billion dollars, but Rahm has shown he's not afraid to renegotiate a bad deal, saying just yesterday that he might want to cut pensions to current firemen, teachers, police and other city workers. Now, that's a shrewd negotiator. I must admit that this kind of talk impressed many of our members.

Rahm's plans for education reform are equally bold. As you know, LastStand has been at the forefront of the movement for bigger class size as a way to reduce the number of teachers and thus the number of bad teachers. Rahm has supported taking away the right of teachers to negotiate for class size, which is the first step towards our goal of 50-55 children in your average third grade classroom.

Teacher strikes also continue to big a major problem for the Chicago Public Schools, since the last one terrorized the Reagan administration in 1987. Rahm has supported a group of billionaire funded education reformers from Oregon in going after the right of teachers to strike and anybody who supports billionaires, we believe in supporting in kind.

Noticing that juvenile crime seems to spike in the hours between 3PM and 6PM when children are let out of school, Rahm has called for making the school day at least 45 minutes longer so that it will be darker when the children get out in winter time and automatic street lights will be on to illuminate their way home to safety and hot cocoa.

Rahm Emanuel has demonstrated his great love of Chicago by coming back to serve it. His large campaign war chest makes him an ideal choice to run for mayor. Unfortunately, while my wealth allows me to get involved in Chicago's education system, it doesn't allow me to vote in its elections. Never the less, Last Stand For Children First heartily endorses Rahm Emanuel for Mayor of Chicago

Myron Miner

Ryan Wilson on poverty and other excuses

2011-01-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

G'day! When you've been in the education reform game for awhile you start noticing trends. You see all these figjam teachers who know why the little ankle biters aren't learning right and you know what--it's never their fault.

I don't know how often I've been touring a school and asked a teacher about their dismal test scores and they immediately come the raw prawn with me telling me that their students are poor, or still learning English as a second language, or have learning disabilities that leave them unable to meet or exceed on standardized tests at their grade level. They immediately expect me to just rack off and defer to their low opinion of their own students.

I like to think all the students can learn if properly motivated and if not most can be counseled to try another school where they might fit in better. In fact, according to No Child Left Behind in 2014 all the little ankle biters are going to be on level in reading and math, but that's not going to happen if we keep avoiding responsibility. The world is changing folks and there is very little hope of any children having a middle class lifestyle. If your child is hoping for a factory job, he's going to be left without a brass razoo. Now, the Walton family, Bill Gates, and other billionaires can't exactly do much to change that, but we can offer kids a path to successful futures through education reform.

I remember a certain North Carolina State basketball team that thought they too faced insurmountable odds against Houston's Phi Slamma Jamma and Hakeem Olajuwan back in the 1983 NCAA basketball championships. Fortunately, a tough as nails coach named Jim Valvano wouldn't accept excuses and he led NC State to history and to the title! Crikey!

How can we accept less from our teachers?

Myron Miner on how to stretch your school dollar

2011-01-06T20:21:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, the economy is not doing particularly well.   Public worker unions have driven the economy off a steep cliff and school districts find themselves struggling to find the money to make meaningful reform and to adequately compensate the reformers who offer so much to their students. There is no reason for panic, however, like families across this great country, it's simply time to tighten your belt.

Any education reformer will tell you that the best teachers are young and fresh out of school. They may not have a lot of experience or training, but they make up for it with youthful enthusiasm. Who has more enthusiasm then your own 8th graders? Who is younger and fresher?

By having your 8th grade students teach the younger grades, the small children are given a teacher that they can relate to better because they are closer in age. Even a dull-witted 8th grader should be capable of doing 2nd or 3rd grade work and best of all, they'll do it for a grade instead of a paycheck.

Become very familiar with the fire code in your district.   Many states will tolerate far more overcrowding than exists in the average classroom. If the fire department will allow you to put 100 students in a room, you can fire 2/3 of your staff. Once more, by keeping only the top third of your teachers, you can guarantee that every student in your school gets a quality teacher.

Finally, teachers and office staff need to call students' homes frequently. Maybe Johnny wasn't in school today or Sally's grade in math has been dropping. Why not use this as a money maker by hiring out to a telemarketing company. "Mrs. Anderson I want to talk to you about Sally's math grade and your aluminum siding."

I've just scratched the surface of budget tightening.   Even something as simple as a pay toilet in the teacher lounge can be a real money maker.   For more suggestions check out the Fordham Institute.

Ryan Wilson wishes everybody a rip snorter of a New Year

2010-12-31T17:43:00.000-08:00

This New Years Eve finds me about to leave for a B & S I'm having with some of my fellow expatriates and a few Sheepshaggers as well, but before I do I wanted to wish everybody an Ace New Year. I won't bore you by recapping all the news that Myron did yesterday, but needless to say 2010 was alright and 2011 will be even better.

You know, I know that teachers and their unions are responsible for the bodgy schools in this country and sometimes I think they're about as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike, but I don't think they're bad people. To the contrary, I think the reason they fight education reform so much and keep pointing to studies that show that it doesn't work is because they're scared of progress. That's not too surprising. You can imagine what the last buggy whip salesmen convention was like.

To me, students are like Lew Alcindor or as he later became known Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Education reformers such as myself are like legendary UCLA coach John Wooden trying instruct and lead our students by reinventing the game of education. The teachers unions are like the NCAA officials that banned dunking from the 1967-1976 seasons. You see, Alcindor was so dominant that the NCAA tried to stop this play from happening, but you can never be stop progress. Today, Kareem is adored by millions or at least he was until 2001.

So, when the teachers unions spits the dummy and tries telling you that your reforms are unproven or have been shown not to work, just tell them that they're just like the NCAA. That's what John Wooden would have done. See you all next year. I'm gonna go off my face now.

Education reformers made bold strides in 2010, but what's next for 2011?

2010-12-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

I've been working for many years in education and I must say that 2010, was one of the best of them. From media getting onboard the education reform movement to movies whose power game not from misleading statistics that were left unchallenged, but from a riveting personal story of children trying to get into charter schools who unlike public schools only accept a limited number of students. Education Reform has arrived.

The year began in January, with the amazing news that Central Falls, Rhode Island had terminated the entire faculty when they balked at accepting new demands from the school district.   Parents, students, and teachers were whining constantly that it wasn't the teachers' fault, but I had to wonder if the teachers were so great, why were they teaching in a district where the median income was $22,000 and had the most transient student population in the state, the highest percentage of students who don’t speak English and a high percentage of special-needs students. Sadly, the faculty was eventually hired back, but many of them were so demoralized that they have been leaving in droves. Hey, it doesn't matter how we get rid of teachers as much as that we get rid of teachers.

Michelle Rhee showed herself to be a bold reformer when she showed she wasn't afraid to talk tough, mentioning that some of the 266 teachers she had let go had had sex with children.   She wouldn't name names, but it was good to know if you just didn't hire any of the laid off teachers, you could avoid the risk of accidentally hiring a pedophile.

Arne Duncan showed his experience as a basketball player was applicable for education with his Race to the Top initiative, which proved that the true essence of quality education was competition. In exchange for federal funds, states jumped through all sorts of hoops, making their schools more accessible to billionaire reformers and improving education along the way.

The big term in education this year was Value Added, which is a way of reading test scores that's revolutionary. Now, we can see which teachers are consistently in the top 25% every year in improving their children's scores. Interestingly, the numbers swing so much that teachers who are in the top 25% one year, only have a 30% chance of being in the top 25% the next year.   The Los Angeles Times showed tremendous courage in printing the Value Added scores of individual teachers, which only cost one teacher his life. Sadly, they should have read the scores closer themselves as they praised teachers for being effective who were rated Least Effective in the Value Added scores.

In New York, Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein were quick to ban a student play that was based on the classic play Antigone and was critical of corporate school reform, but unfortunately, Klein left his post for the Rupert Murdoch media empire shortly after. We were thrilled to see Cathie Black named to the city's top education post, continuing to push the envelope for just how far we can get away from the monopoly of people knowledgeable about education from running schools.

In New Jersey, Governor Christie showed himself to be the champion of school reform that many of us believed he would be after watching his sweat emitting rock shows under the stage name Meatloaf.   He let it be known that he would do anything for schools, but he won't do that.

In Washington, Adrian Fenty rode Michelle Rhee's impressive accomplishments to a second place finish in the mayoral election despite doing poorly among parents with children in the city's public schools.

In Chicago, Stand For Children spent a lot of money influencing politicians to push through an aggressive reform agenda. They were so excited about the agenda, that they later purchased an office in the city to continue pushing their agenda.

Finally, the tax cut compromise that extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy another 2 years was terrific news for school reform. With as many as a quarter of American students living in poverty, just think how much the $75 billion that the Walton Families saved in taxes will be needed by the students who benefit from their contributions to education reform.

Entering 2011 with LastStand, I know more than I did yesterday, but not as much as I will tomorrow. We have a difficult road ahead of us to battle against the teachers and education research who have protected the status quo, but we can certainly form a counter force against it. We can also support the politicians and billionaires who are courageously leading real change in education.

In 2011, we have to act together with groups like Stand for Children, Students First, Children First, Stand for Students, Children and Students First, and Children Stand for Students. We built a great deal of momentum in 2010, but we can’t be complacent if we’re going to see student achievement rise in 2011. There is no better time than now. The children in school today will be the first generation of Americans who are less well educated than their parents. I have no reason to know that or any statistic to back that up, but I'm guessing that's how it'll be.

November’s elections brought in new mayors, governors, senators, and congressmembers across the country. If they haven’t already, they will soon release their detailed plans for public education. I hope you will read those plans, be clear about what you expect from the leaders voted in to do the job, and hold them accountable for delivering results in student achievement and holding taxes down on top earners.

To our members, I am grateful and proud to have you with me and the staff of LastStand as we enter the New Year. I hope you all are having a peaceful and happy holiday, and if you are not, I hope you will examine your relationship with our Lord and Savior. With your help in 2011, we'll be on our way to privatizing public education in America.

Myron Miner

Congressman Jack Kimble Unveils Our Legislative Agenda

2010-12-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

I grew up in olive country. From a young age, I saw young children on my father's farm working hard to grab their piece of the American dream even as the hard work turned their skin to leather and gnarled their hands. Sure, the vast majority of those kids were here illegally, but I have always been struck with the inhumane conditions they were willing to put up with, in order to have a chance at a better life.

Our children don't face the same struggles that those children had, but their grasp on the American is just as tenuous. Sure, no employer is going to cheat them or call INS to do a raid just before the end of harvesting to avoid having to pay them, but inadequate schools put them at a serious disadvantage.

The problem is teachers, like all public employees, have gotten lazy. They have stopped teaching our kids and as a result our kids have stopped learning. As Michelle Rhee said, "If you have a pulse and can pass a background check, you can get hired as a public school teacher."

Michelle Rhee would certainly know this. After all, she got hired to be a teacher without a teaching degree and wasn't fired even after she put tape on her students' mouths, causing them to bleed.

The people who do care about children in this country are billionaires. Philanthropists like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and Sam Walton are the ones who care about the children and that makes sense. As billionaires they have the most to lose by an inadequate education system. To be sure parents play an important part too. They look great on camera at our events and in states with the parent trigger, they play an important role in getting rid of public schools for a charter alternative.

While my position with Last Stand is only honorary, I will be pushing our legislative agenda. These are the things that we believe are important for the future of our nation and our children:

1. The Survivor Option - The time has come to tie teacher evaluations to standardized testing. We favor quarterly testing with the bottom two teachers fired at the end of each quarter unless they have completed some sort of competitive task as chosen by the principal.

2. Any teacher who received a complaint from either a parent or student will be returned to probationary status and in the case of a second complaint the teacher will be immediately dismissed.

3. We support the parent trigger, which allows parents to get rid of lazy public servants in favor of a friendly corporation run charter school.

4. We are in favor of dropping all investigations of financial irregularities at Imagine Charter Schools.

5. We are in favor of prohibiting Teachers Unions from any collective bargaining with school districts although they will still be allowed to request pay increases where appropriate.

6. We believe that white children from wealthy backgrounds make the best teachers for urban schools regardless of whether or not they have teaching credentials. For that reason, we favor increasing support for programs like Teach For America, who have proved excellent suppliers of uncertified wealthy kids.

7. We wish to limit curriculum to reading, math, and a bit of science so that we may better compete with other countries.

8. We favor making the Bush tax cuts permanent and ending the death tax so that the wealthy will have more money to spend supporting school reform.

If you agree with our agenda, I hope you will join Last Stand for Children First. Isn't it time we put children first at last?

Ryan Wilson on Last Stand for Children First

2010-12-28T08:00:00.001-08:00

Crikey! I don't really know how an Aussie like me ever landed a gig like this, but I thought I'd share a bit about my own experience in the Great Down Under with Education Secretary Arne Duncan. You see Australia is shaped like a donut. It's got a desert in the middle that's pretty uninhabitable and we blokes and sheilas mostly live on the outside. That means that when Arne and myself were playing for the Eastside Spectres, we had a lot of bus trips together. While the other players were playing cards or talking about their latest sexual exploits, Arne and me we're in the back of the bus discussing the American education system--Fair Dinkum!

LastStand hopes to be an advocate for the voiceless in education--the millionaires and billionaires who have been denied a voice for so long. Now, I know this isn't going to be a piece of piss if we don't attract people from all economic levels to join us, if we're going to bring about any kind of change that is Ridgey-didge. I may have been a basketball player professionally for a dozen years myself, but Australia isn't the NBA and a few too many times hitting the turps has left me a might short of a million myself.

I look at what we do as an organization to be a lot like the end of the movie Hoosiers. Remember when Gene Hackman as Coach Norman Dale calls for the picket fence? Jimmy takes the final shot, but in the picket fence everybody has to do their part to make it happen. There's a quality back pass and 3 teammates who are willing to block any obstacles that get in Jimmy's way.

I believe that we at LastStand can be the picket fence for today's students. If we all work together and do our part, we can all be winners. I'm glad to have such amazing teammates and a ripper point guard like Myron Miner.

Myron Miner Reflects on Day One of Last Stand for Children First

2010-12-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we launched LastStand, and today I feel incredibly grateful, not only for the chance to do important work that I love, but to know how many of you out there are passionate about creating the best schools for our children. I am exhausted! This is already the third longest I have worked at any job in my life and knowing the coming battle with teachers unions, I know I have work to do.
LastStand will be a powerful ambassador for children, catalyst for reform, forum for families, educators, and the wealthy and an organized collective voice under my leadership. But it is you little people who let us know that our work hasn't been in vain for nothing. Whether you are a hedge fund manager, industrialist, bank president, or politician, or member of the media, your voice is the instrument of change that American public education needs and together we can overcome the most stubborn challenges that have stymied student progress for decades--teachers and their unions.

I have received so many emails in the past 24 hours, some from as far away as Nigeria, and I appreciate the many voices and viewpoints on complex issues: how teachers should be fired, how standardized testing should be used to fire teachers, the role of parents in firing teachers. To fix public education we have to do more than identify our common ground, we have to move as a unified force under my firm guidance tempered by my love of the students

Let us know what we can do to improve your city or state. If it involves removing teachers or curtailing the power of teachers unions, we're probably already on it. Just send us a check and we'll redouble our efforts.

Thanks to you, I'm back to doing what I know I am meant to do and I will not shy away from the burden of being public education's messiah. Together, onward, forward, but never backward and always always looking sideways!