WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CNN anchor, Jim Acosta calls "BS" on Fox

"That tale from the border didn't just border on BS, this was USDA Grade-A bullsh*t. -- Raw Story

Rick Ayers -- Capitalism is killing us

The big US and European pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna, hold patents on the counter-COVID vaccines and the accompanying formulas they’ve developed, keeping the processes of production under wraps. -- Medium

Sec. of State Anthony Blinken on Afghan pullout

 Just because our troops are coming home doesn't mean we're leaving. We're not. -- 60 Minutes

 Eric Goldstein on Israeli apartheid

To bring real change, we need to call the situation what it is: an oppressive and discriminatory system that shows no signs of going away, and that meets the legal definition of apartheid. -- Human Rights Watch

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves

On the penultimate day of the Confederate Heritage Month Gov. Reeves made a bold declaration: “There is not systemic racism in America.” -- Mississippi Free Press

Ali Velshi 

Arizona recently chose to out-source its rights and responsibilities to recount ballots to a private company run by a CEO who has been spreading the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen. -- MSNBC

Rebecca Solnit

Ideas put forth in the Green New Deal in 2019, seen as radical at the time, are now the kind of stuff President Biden routinely proposes in his infrastructure and jobs plans. -- Guardian

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mississippi lawmakers voted Sunday to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag, a symbol that has flown for more than 120 years.

James Waterman Wise

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -- NY Review of Books

Miss. State Sen. Derrick Simmons

"In the name of history, I stand for my two sons, who are 1 and 6 years old, who should be educated in schools and be able to frequent businesses and express their Black voices in public places that all fly a symbol of love, not hate." -- NBC News

Pete Giangreco, Democratic political strategist 

... called Trump’s letter a campaign stunt to gin up support. “Trump is playing the law and order/race card, and attempting to scare people by painting a future under Democrats that is some sort of Mad Max post-apocalyptic danger zone.” -- IL Playbook

 Former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg 

“Under the current trajectory, Trump is on the precipice of one of the worst electoral defeats in modern presidential elections and the worst historically for an incumbent president.” -- Politico

Donald Trump

"And you got to remember Andrew Jackson, the Battle of New Orleans and so much. He was a very good president. He was a great general and you can’t let that happen.

"You make some mistakes, like, you know, an idiot like Bolton — all he wanted to do is drop bombs on everybody. You don't have to drop bombs on everybody. You don't have to kill people." -- Hannity Town Hall interview

I don’t need leadership lessons from Donald Trump.

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) June 27, 2020

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A setback for union organizing in the south. The struggle continues. 

Dennis Williams, U.A.W. president

“Perhaps recognizing they couldn’t keep their workers from joining our union based on the facts, Nissan and its anti-worker allies ran a vicious campaign against its own work force that was comprised of intense scare tactics, misinformation and intimidation.”  -- New York Times

Boyah J. Farah

I came to America as a refugee from Somalia. I know what happens when a group of people is labeled as a threat -- Salon

Andy Borowitz

The special counsel, Robert Mueller, just called Donald Trump to tell the President that he was “the most innocent person ever,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. -- New Yorker 

Sen Biss on Hitting Left

Candidate for governor, Sen. Daniel Biss

I support a complete moratorium on charters. The notion that we're opening charters and closing public schools is wrong-headed.  -- Hitting Left 

Pasi Sahlberg

The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so. -- Diane Ravitch Blog

Local Mississippi radio warns Nissan workers they'll go back to "picking cotton and digging ditches" if they unionize. (via @DoBetterNissan) pic.twitter.com/0ZO4PDSzer

— Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) August 4, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Urban Prep students support their teachers at a rally earlier this year. (Arielle Zionts)

Noel Perez-White, Urban Prep English teacher

"I support the unionizing efforts at Urban Prep because our students deserve a school where teachers return year after year. Teacher turnover has a grave impact on students. I believe a union will create a more supportive climate for teachers at Urban Prep -- ending the revolving door, and creating a more consistent learning environment for students". -- Progress Illinois 

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 

“The evidence from across the country is clear and compelling: Our nation must dramatically change the way that educational resources are distributed so that there is true equity in America’s classrooms.” -- Washington Post

Milwaukee School Board member Larry Miller

 “The whole idea of regimented, special discipline for African-American children doesn’t work for me...How are you bringing music? How are you bringing the arts? Kids need much more than just academic rigor.”” -- Neighborhood News Service

Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police at Senatobia [MS] High 

“We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done. And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people.” -- New York Times

Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“Scott Walker didn’t have the stature, influence or money to become governor on his own or to end collective bargaining on his own. All of that flowed from Mike Grebe, the Bradley Foundation and a network of influential conservatives, including the Kochs.” -- New York Times

Duncan's disaster, Mississippi churns

The Race To The Top is stalling out over testing and evaluation. Common Core roll-out has been an abysmal failure. High stakes testing data is invalid, unreliable and running too late to be used in mandated evaluations. Several states, including RTTT winners, are threatening to pull back or put test-base evaluations on hold. Sec. Duncan either has to respond by pulling the plug on federal funding as he's threatened or get off the pot.

Time to go, Arne. Surely you can move over to Gates, Walton, or Broad foundations or spend more time with the family.

Lyndsey Layton's recent front-page article in the Washington Post tells us “How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Common Core Revolution” implying that Gates can and did  buy the policy result he wanted—with democracy potentially at risk. But now, even Gates who has more that $200 million invested in CCSS is urging a moratorium on using student test scores to evaluate teachers, students and schools.

Not surprisingly, Gates finds a cloying defender at Forbes. Howard Husock gives us a bit of untended irony when he writes:

"The idea that money alone can buy impact is no more true  in public policy than  it is in elections." 

Hello Howard. Anybody home?

MISSISSIPPI CHURNING...The race to the bottom continues in Mississippi today where T-baggers backing Chris McDaniel have their best chance to knock off a sitting senator, Thad Cochran in the state's GOP primary runoff. Some Dems are actually hoping racist McDaniel wins, possibly opening a chance for them to win a rare seat in a Dixie election. Others are calling on black voters to cross over a pull a Republican ballot to vote for Cochran. He has been openly courting black and union (the few that exist) voters.  It's an amazing turn of events when the black vote is actually encouraged in Mississippi.

Outside groups have poured more than $8 million into the race -- an amazing sum for a small state election-- and a collection of conservative groups will be sending in poll-watchers. FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, and the Senate Conservatives Fund will team up for the unprecedented, single-minded effort to beat the not-right-wing-enough Cochran.

McDaniel is married to a former teacher and has her make his pro-teacher, anti-Common Core and federal funding for education pitch here. 

The progressive Mississippi Parents Campaign is strictly non-partisan but is obviously worried about the loss of federal funding for education of McDaniel becomes the state's senator. 

The right-wing National Review reports: 

The executive director of the Mississippi Parents Campaign, a group that opposes vouchers and charter schools, sent an e-mail to members not-so-subtly urging them to vote for Cochran. Without mentioning either candidate by name, she said, “A number of our members have asked recently what impact the current Senate and Congressional elections could have on public schools. The truth is, a BIG one! Mississippi children benefit heavily from the federal investment in our public schools, and the folks we send to Washington determine, in large part, the resources that are available to educate our kids.” McDaniel has said that he thinks the Department of Education is unconstitutional.

Cochran's support for Common Core could be his undoing in a tight race, despite the fact that  has brought millions of federal education dollars into the state. But he also has a pro-voucher, pro-charter voting record.

Mississippi, with strong Common Core and no unions, is losing Race To The Top

As long as we're racing to the top, let's take a look at how the race is going. The theory coming out of the D.O.E., the Gates Foundation and the think tanks is that implementing Common Core Standards is key to winning the race and that the main problem is "status-quo" teacher unions protecting bad teachers.

But according to the latest edition Education Week's Quality Counts report, Mississippi, with no teacher unions and strong implementation of Common Core, ranks 51st among the states and Washington, D.C., in K-12 student achievement. Only Mississippi and post-Michelle Rhee D.C. were graded "F'' in student achievement. Mississippi also ranked among the lowest 10 states in providing young people a chance for success in life, financing schools and improving teaching. Mississippi's best ranking, as has been the case for several years, was in the area of standards, where the state got an "A'' and ranked 10th.

How can that be? The answer should be obvious. As you could probably guess, Mississippi once again lags behind all other 49 states when it comes to child welfare. They're on the bottom of the scale for the 12th straight year. In fact, Mississippi’s child poverty rate is twice as high as Lithuania’s. One key indicator of the lack of school success is the State's bottom ranking when it comes to children being born with low birth weight. 

It's important to understand that Mississippi like all other states, shouldn't be looked at as a single entity when it comes to poverty and education. In Mississippi communities whose school districts have an “A” grade from the Mississippi Department of Education, the average median household income is more than $46,000 a year. In those whose district has an “F” grade, the average income is below $25,000, according to a Daily Journal analysis based on 2013 rankings.

The rest of the country has nothing to brag about when it comes to child poverty. The United States’s child poverty rate ranks second-worst among the world’s developed countries, ahead of only Romania.

Massachusetts, with  the 4th highest median family income in the country, captures the top ranking in the Chance-for-Success Index for the sixth year in a row, earning an A-minus. But even Massachusetts is really "a tale of 3 cities" when it comes to child poverty and school performance.

Side Note: Mississippi is also a state that spends a large chunk of its education and teacher training budget on imported TFA teachers.