Educational CyberPlayGround ®

K12 Department of Education Business Model
Needs To Be Redesigned

K12 POLICY

This all about the politics of money and nothing about K12 education at all.

Despite all the importance being placed on testing and the results you might want to know that my students probably have the highest test scores in California for a non-magnet school with over 95 percent of them placing in the state's top category. I teach social studies, including ESL. This rate has continued for years and not one district administrator or state or federal official has ever asked how this was accomplished. On the other hand, I have a job and a classroom budget and lots of erasers. ~ Alan Haskvitz

Put the "PUBLIC" back into the DOE Institution 

The Death of the Public Square

Today's most powerful companies are enemies of free expression.

The Department of Education operates in a "group think" bubble controlled by corporate political interests.  Technology is mature, corporations like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft own everything and the Department of Education owns the rest.

The Department of Education does not serve K12 Public School interests.

The Department of Education is a money making machine run by Betsy Devos an evangelical, vocal pro-life opponent of abortion,  school choice advocate selected by President Donald J. Trump. She is a billionaire from For Profit schools that she owns and from Bethany Christian Services whose business interests are in warehousing stolen refugee children for $700.00 a day. 
Tax filings archived by ProPublica show that between 2001 and 2015, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation (the philanthropic organization run by DeVos and her husband) gave $343,000 in grants to Bethany Christian Services. Brian DeVos  - a cousin of Betsy DeVos's husband Dick who was the Senior Vice President for Child and Family Services at Bethany as recently as 2015, and Maria DeVos who is married to Dick DeVos's brother Doug and has served on the board of Bethany. <Facts>

Corinthian University Student Rippoff Run by Betsy DeVos
The  judge's ruling in May 2018  banned the Education Department from using earnings data to grant partial student loan forgiveness to Corinthian students and halted collection on their federal debts. The Education Department has no right to use the data, which is supplied by the Social Security Administration, for any purpose other than to evaluate vocational programs. The attorneys also said denying full relief to Corinthian students is illegal.
"The Department of Education has now been rebuked in court not once, but twice for violating the rights of students it should be serving," said Toby Merrill, director at the Project on Predatory Student Lending. "Corinthian ripped off hundreds of thousands of students, and the Department of Education is making it worse by collecting their illegal debts, prolonging their suffering."  

Strike Debt article about the DOE -- Announces Sale of 56 Corinthian Campuses, Solidifies Its Support of Criminal For-Profit Colleges Instead of Defrauded Students: 

You may be eligible for a 100% discharge of your Direct Loans, Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans, or Federal Perkins Loans under either of these circumstances:

Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.

Unruliness, naming, and shaming are critical tools for the disenfranchised, this is also true when they are used towards people in power. When a multi-million dollar organization uses these methods on a small organization that is relatively powerless in the situation, they are not “tools” of the disenfranchised - they are instances of bullying, intimidation, and entitlement.
Protect Students @strikedebt
There is a HUGE number of people who, loaded with student debt, are barely making subsistence wages by adjuncting and need to get on their feet.

2018 Judge Smacks Down DeVos For Illegal Conduct by Education Department
In mid-August, the DeVos Department of Education withdrew the 2016 Gainful Employment Rule, which prohibited diploma mills from swindling students out student loan money. But DeVos isn't just interested in changing the rules to suit her big-money cronies - she also appears to have been ignoring existing rules since she took over the DOE. Obama-appointee and United States District Judge Randolph D. Moss granted summary judgment against the DOE in a 57-page smackdown that declared DeVos to have acted unlawfully, saying that DeVos' position “lack[s] any meaningful analysis,” and calling the DOE's actions “procedurally invalid,” and “arbitrary and capricious.” That victory, though, promises to be short-lived, as DeVos continues to dismantle legal protections against waste, fraud, and abuse. Without the Borrower Defense Rule, the federal government is unconstrained to give free money to diploma mills on behalf of unsuspecting students and their families. Then, even when actionable fraud occurs, the offending predator keeps its money and the federal government gets paid back with interest.

May 2007 400,000 were promised student loan forgiveness.the Department of Education is planning to propose ending the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program..

Bottom Line
race and class are inextricably linked

The Department of Education does not serve K12 Public School interests. The Department of Education is a money making machine run by Betsy Devos an evangelical, vocal pro-life opponent of abortion, school choice advocate selected by President Donald J. Trump. She is a billionaire from For Profit schools that she owns and from Bethany Christian Services whose business interests are in warehousing stolen refugee children for $700.00 a day. Tax filings archived by ProPublica show that between 2001 and 2015, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation (the philanthropic organization run by DeVos and her husband) gave $343,000 in grants to Bethany Christian Services. Brian DeVos - a cousin of Betsy DeVos's husband Dick who was the Senior Vice President for Child and Family Services at Bethany as recently as 2015, and Maria DeVos who is married to Dick DeVos's brother Doug and has served on the board of Bethany. <Facts> Corinthian University Student Rippoff Run by Betsy DeVos The judge's ruling in May 2018 banned the Education Department from using earnings data to grant partial student loan forgiveness to Corinthian students and halted collection on their federal debts. The Education Department has no right to use the data, which is supplied by the Social Security Administration, for any purpose other than to evaluate vocational programs. The attorneys also said denying full relief to Corinthian students is illegal. "The Department of Education has now been rebuked in court not once, but twice for violating the rights of students it should be serving," said Toby Merrill, director at the Project on Predatory Student Lending. "Corinthian ripped off hundreds of thousands of students, and the Department of Education is making it worse by collecting their illegal debts, prolonging their suffering." Strike Debt article about the DOE -- Announces Sale of 56 Corinthian Campuses, Solidifies Its Support of Criminal For-Profit Colleges Instead of Defrauded Students: You may be eligible for a 100% discharge of your Direct Loans, Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans, or Federal Perkins Loans under either of these circumstances: Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.

Money, Race and Success

Most Parents believe their kid
is reading and doing math on grade level. They are wrong.
Ask the teacher what grade level your kid is reading on!

An analysis of reading and math test score data from across the country confirms just how much socioeconomic conditions matter. Children in the school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.
Find a District
The analysis should not be used to rank districts or schools. Test scores reflect not just the quality of schools or their teachers, but all kinds of other factors in children's lives, including their home environment; whether they attended a good preschool; traumas they have experienced; and whether their parents read to them at night or hire tutors. What emerges clearly in the data is the extent to which race and class are inextricably linked, and how that connection is exacerbated in school settings.

AASA American Association of School Administrators has 13,000 members, 7,000 of which are active superintendents in all fifty states. The superintendents are considered the CEO's of each school district. AASA can and does partner with for profit companies. Dan Domenech AASA Executive Director

Education Reform "theory" comes from corporate types, many of whom accept the contentions of management gurus who have no financial reason to know or understand how much socioeconomic conditions matter. A Public School Chief Operating Officer, looks at running the city's schools the same as running a business.

2016 Cheating Administrators in Test Score Fraud Scheme to circumvent federal accountability requirements under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to artificially boosted one campus' Average Yearly Progress (AYP) Act. In the 2008-09 school year, Murphy and unnamed others allegedly gave principals “marching orders” to “put up barriers” to prevent 9th grade Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students and others they believed would struggle with the state's 10th grade administered test from “going onto 10th grade.” That test was the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).

“Don't tell me your values,” Vice President Joe Biden has said.

“Show me your budget and I will tell you your values.

read of go to jail
Over $150 million annually, education is by far the biggest line item in the city's budget.

How Government Is Handing Ownership of our Schools To Private Corporations

The Day I Was Terminated ~ Diane Ravitch
A few years ago, when I began speaking out about the destructive policies that are now called “education reform,” I had the comfort of knowing that no one could punish me. I didn't want a job, I didn't want a political appointment, and I didn't want a foundation grant. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I learned on June 5 that I would not be reappointed as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Bear with me. This is an unpaid position, so it does not represent a loss of income. But I was sad nonetheless, because I had a long association with Brookings and loved the institution.
I have been affiliated with Brookings since 1993. At that time, Bruce McLaury, then the institution's president, came to visit me in my office at the U.S. Department of Education to offer me the Brown Chair in Education Policy, a newly created position. I told him I did not want to live permanently in Washington, D.C., and looked forward to returning to my home in Brooklyn after nearly two years as assistant secretary for research in the George H.W. Bush administration. But I was interested in working at Brookings for a time and writing a book there. <snip>
My book—the one he had no interest in discussing at Brookings—had become a national best seller. On the very day that I got his email, it happened to be the #1 book in public policy on amazon.com. It was also the #1 book in social policy on amazon.com. The night before I got his email, I was interviewed on the PBS Newshour. This is the kind of public engagement that Brookings revels in. There was nothing more to be said or done. I was terminated. //

K12 POLICY

WHO'S YOUR DADDY:
WE NEED TO REDESIGN THE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO FIX THE INEQUALITIES OF AMERICANS WHOSE BRIGHT CHILDREN FROM POOR FAMILIES ARE FAR LESS LIKELY TO FINISH COLLEGE THAN THE LESS ABLE CHILDREN OF THE RICH AND OF THE OLIGARCHY.

"There's a true schizophrenia where if you say to voters, you know, do you think the federal government spends too much money and they should spend less, they say yeah, absolutely. Then you name specific things, like Pell grants for students and they say, no, not that. How 'bout NIH, medical research funding? Nah, you really shouldn't cut that. And pretty soon you've proved that what the American public is against is arithmetic." -- EducRAT Bill Gates, March 10, 2011

Persistent economic disadvantage and education inequality in the United States - How economic disadvantages affect standardized test scores.
In test scores in the 8th grade between students who are occasionally eligible for subsidized lunches and those who have been eligible every single year since kindergarten. The two economists consider students who have been eligible every year (14 percent of Michigan students) to be persistently disadvantaged. And they find that these students score a full standard deviation below kids who have never been on subsidized lunches (40 percent of students) and just under a quarter below students who are occasionally eligible for subsidized lunches (roughly 45 percent of students). (A standard deviation being further away from something than a quarter standard deviation.)
The difference between persistently-eligible students and occasionally-eligible students is a sign that the former are from much lower-income backgrounds. It's a story of income inequality, not income volatility.

 

It's no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you'll get a good job, and it's becoming less true with each passing decade. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen. What we can't do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don't exist or don't pay middle-class wages.
Economists David Autor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane think technological progress is actually reducing the demand for
highly educated workers.
Economists David Autor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane pointed out, Computers excel at routine tasks, cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules. Therefore, any routine task a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs is in the firing line. white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. Princeton Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger suggests that high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more offshorable than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers. If they're right, growing international trade in services will further hollow out the U.S. job market.Conversely, jobs that can't be carried out by following explicit rules a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress. [Degrees and Dollars]

* Protroversy means you take charge of what you believe in, and charge ahead. This isn't doing so blindly; quite the opposite. You've done your research, listened attentively to other perspectives on the issues at hand, and now have the conviction, the strength, and the agility to make and use a decision. Thus, at the heart of protroversy is the possibility that people who aren't in agreement will react the same way they would if it was a controversy, but you won't be wasting time & energy arguing back.

When reduced to its most fundamental elements, public education is just another cold, hard business.

#bill bennett radio show #k12 com, #k12 online school, #k12 charter school, #k12 virtual School, #distance Learning, #for profit schools, #cyber playground

THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NEEDS TO BE DISSOLVED,

OR BE REDESIGNED BY DESIGNERS - ACTUAL ARTISTS!

FOR THE COMMON GOOD,

THE COMMONS THE CITIZENS OF AMERICA.

IT IS NOT TO BE USED FOR THE GREED, AMASS WEALTH BY THE CORRUPT ALLIANCE OF POLITICIANS AND INDUSTRY.

The Meaning of the Human Journey

 

K12 Education Redesign

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How K-12 Education Fails
the people of the United States.

The President appoints a CEO as the Secretary of Education and COO and many Senior Advisors to run the Department of Education.

WHO RUNS GOVERNMENT?


First read this:

[... China will invite 100,000 U.S.nationals to study Chinese over 4 years
BEIJING, May 26 2010 China will facilitate 100,000 U.S. nationals studying Chinese over the coming four years, a Chinese education ministry official said here Wednesday. Zhang Xiuqin, director of Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges of the Ministry of Education, briefed the press on the exchange programs agreement reached at the second round of the China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The agreement includes the inviting to China of U.S. students, principals of U.S. primary and secondary schools and Chinese teachers of American nationality. It also includes the inviting of U.S. college students to summer camps in China. Also under the program, 10,000 Chinese postgraduates will go to the United States to undertake PhD programs. Zhang said the program will allow China to send its top graduate students to prestigious U.S. universities and research institutes. "Education serves as a lubricant for the steady development of China-US ties over the long run," said Zhang. ]


China and the United States agreed Tuesday to launch an expanded student exchange program, offering US students 100,000 more places in China over the next four years. "China would like to provide positive assistance to the US initiative to send 100,000 students to study in China over the next four years," said State Councilor Liu Yandong while meeting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of bilateral strategic and economic dialogues. She said China would increase the number of government-funded scholarships for Chinese who want to pursue doctorates in the US.
Liu added the two countries should explore new ways and content of people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Clinton said the United States would like to see a steady increase in the number of student exchanges between America and China, adding it could deepen mutual understanding and friendship among youth of both countries. Currently, more than 300 million Chinese people are learning English, and about 100,000 Chinese students are studying in the US, while about 20,000 US students are pursuing studies in China, said Liu. The talks between the two senior officials also mark the first meeting of the China-US High Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchanges, which was agreed during President Barack Obama's China visit last year.
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zmgx/zmrwjljz/t708363.htm

This is a lie. The intended purpose is NOT education, but infiltration and domination. Make no mistake [ education ] is the biggest Trojan horse there is.

[ people-to-people and cultural exchanges ]

"The agreement includes the inviting to China of U.S. students, principals of U.S. primary and secondary schools and Chinese teachers of American nationality."

I know a Chinese person actually involved in this project, who recruited me to help it begin!! Nothing about this was initiative was honest. It is all about "FACE".

The selection process was about { who was connected to who } then these U.S. principals were sent to a selected town and only shown what the Communist Party wanted to allow these visitors to see. Everything was for Show. Everything is about the PRC is about appearances. There were no dialogues without supervision and control by the Gov't Officials. Red Carpets were rolled out. Everything was staged. The real purpose of this effort is to help the well connected find what will be the "Good and Nice" Chinese families located in America where the rich and well connected Chinese Party members can send their kids for a couple of weeks in America. Where the kids can learn some english, make relationships with the right people, and the Parents don't have to worry about them. These are the relationships they want to find.

What does the Communist Party spend on their own?
Peoples Communist Party has doesn't spend any money on day care, nursery schools, or kindergartens for the people. They don't pay for High Schools. People are expected to pay for that service. They aren't spending money on an education for china's low class farmers. They don't need an education. They need to farm or work as slaves in the factory.

[ bilateral strategic and economic dialogues ]

American Policy Makers are so stupid, what do you think this actually means. They have been talking for 30 years and will continue forever. But, actually broker a deal? It hasn't happened yet.

Jobs left America for China by 1970 That's when America started going downhill and China starts to rise up.

China doesn't allow foreign investments without "special" permissions. And you only get permission through buying into the correct relationships. That's what Hong Kong is for, they will bring it into China for you.

People came to America because you could make money here. China wants to come here too. They want what we have, in fact, they want to own everything. Make no mistake about it. They want to dominate the world.

The doors swing open to allow the chinese to come here for their "education". Then they all leave. They will go back to where they are from. They don't stay in America. They take their know how with them, not relationships.

The Communist Party is Real. All Media censorship 24/7 is real. The Communist Party allows certain people to make vast amounts of wealth and in exchange the regime gets to stay in control. Anyone who wants to do business will belong to the party, they need these connections, or they won't get the jobs. Mao's Picture is up and solders patrol and salute everyday. They are our enemy, they are against personal freedom and human rights.

Even the Chinese want to come here to live. Everyone wants to live in the land of the free. Chinese expats never go back. Nobody will give up their freedom once they feel what it's like. They learned how to make it here, and love America.

Feeling free is sweet. Free to move to any city without registering with the police, learn any subject you like, talk about anything you want without getting arrested, travel anywhere without having to show your bank account, use the internet to visit any site you like. Who will want to go back to live in China after that?

[ Currently, more than 300 million Chinese people are learning English ]

Of course they are. But . . . which english? British English or American English? And they don't have English speakers teaching in the public schools. They have Chinese teachers who don't know what the words mean and don't know how to speak the language. Chinese people do not know english and wnat to learn it. They want to come here to learn to speak english. What is going to happen when they watch the news and use the internet and learn what freedom feels like? Will they want to go back home after that? Will they want to challenge the authority of the Communist Party?

[ Education = Cultural Exchange - Is just a Trojan horse. ]
Remember 40 year old Robin Li the chinese student who was here to studied computer science at the State University of New York at Buffalo using google everyday and then took his "education" back to china to start something called there called a search engine? [BAIDU] Now he is a billionaire because of his copy of google. That's why google pulled out of china because it can't compete with a clone of itself. It just never made enough money to bother with all the hassle.

[ The Copy Culture ]

What's China want to copy? The only thing we have left. The Best Ivy League Brands available on the planet. We sell our ivy league brand, we sell our intellectual capital, then China turns around to use it for themselves.

But wait - is that really true? Is it really that easy?

Student's can also come here for 4 years get the education, and at the same time, have a good look around at the business models that are working here and simply copy them. Yes, it's just that easy to go back to china, steal the business models they seen work here and you're done. No need to do the heavy lifting, work like hell, put your bank account on the line, sacrifice your time, take all those risks, and make it happen.

China people who live here, only to learn about and copy anything and everything that makes money, to take back home. That's all there is too it.

Yes, That's exactly how it's done in China and everybody knows it. It's a Copy Culture.


[ MBA, COMPUTER SCIENCE, MBA, SCIENCE, MBA ]

The chinese aren't coming to the U.S. to get their doctorate degrees in Psychiatry, Philosophy, Law, Ethics, or Education etc. because none of that makes money.

Psychiatry
What mental disorders? They don't acknowledge it.
You think you could sell anti depressants to china people? Hard to do if no one knows they are depressed cause it isn't something anyone can be which makes it hard to explain the China Foxconn Factory 13 suicides where they make apple ipads, iphones and other tech.
The population that is 80 years old, 60 years old, 50 years old. Post traumatic stress syndrome, depression, mental illness, denial, rape, destruction, families crushed, relocation, re education, torture, starvation, denial, secrets. This is a very very big story. They don't talk about it and they don't teach it.

Ethics
"Made in China" Brand - meaning it will fall apart, be a fake, be poison milk, poison your kid, poison you dog, poison your house. They are cloning everything. All the labs do whatever they want to do.

Imitation Vocational Training Schools
There are no schools for training that are real schools as we think of them in the U.S. Everything is made up. They are copies. There is no oversight as to Teacher credentials, or course work authenticity. It is a patch work of copies, of imitations of imagined authentic schools, and how they should be, by people who don't know what real ones are, populated by ignorant migrants who think its real and can't know any better. Everyone improvises to get ahead. Everyone fakes it. The interior structure of china is fake.
And all this really doesn't matter cause its the money that's real and that is the real goal that everyone agrees is the point.

Law
Fairness and Regimes don't really mix.
The Communist Party allows certain people to make vast amounts of wealth and in exchange the regime gets to stay in control. The Communist Party is a Regime who censors and controls all media 24/7. Anyone who wants to do business will belong to the party, they need these connections, or they will won't get the jobs. Mao's Picture is up and soldiers patrol and salute everyday. They are our enemy, they are against personal freedom and human rights.

Why did all our manufacturing jobs leave America?
Answer: Enable Corporate Exploitation without Liability.
Commerce without Conscience - Ethics vs. Institutional Corruption

FAIR TRADE
Example: The Electronics Industry - cheap digital gadgets, gizmos, and computers.
Working in an electronics factory where workers process one tiny component every 3 seconds.
Fall behind your wages docked or get sick or injured then no money at all. So little money by so many people because electronics factory had to accept tiny profit margins in order to win its contracts.
All the large tech companies such as Apple, Nokia, Dell, etc have agreements with their suppliers that they do not employ children, and that they will abide by certain standards to protect workers. But it's not monitored, enforced, or how much they share practices across the electronics industry.
The focus on reducing manufacturing costs, and the largest manufacturing cost is labor; which is why employees are pushed to work faster, while maintaining high quality work, and at the lowest wages acceptable.


Education
China has a top-down education system. Local school systems are expected to follow orders from the Education Ministry. Their system emphasizes the regurgitation of outdated knowledge and leaves students lacking in language skills and practical experience attributes employers are look for in a global market place. But the system is in place and they don't / won't rock the boat.
China's talent shortage: There is a long tradition of rigidly hierarchical talent selection, dating back to the imperial civil-service-exam system more than a thousand years ago and still there in a school system driven by a daunting national college-entrance exam. The Chinese call it the gaokao, a three-day ordeal for which the preparation is arduous and on which a single point difference can spell radically different life options. NYT

The average chinese person is a migrant worker - a slave - and all about leaving the farm, going to the city, finding a job and reinventing themselves. They have a chance to become someone else, develop a new identity, in fact it is a progression from one to many that follow. The same person can go from farmer, to factory worker, to secretary, to overseer, to real estate sales person, to a supply shop owner . . . and on and on and on with no real credentials of any kind. Really all you need is one thing. A cell phone.

Philosophy
Can you get a PH.D. in Greed and World domination? They have already accumulated Vast wealth but care nothing about the environmental catastrophic problems they have. [ See Ethics ]

Which is why I wanted you to read how the American Policy Wonks - Hillary and Barack both intend to use OUR TAX MONEY to fund Chinese Students Education and help send their top graduate students to prestigious U.S. universities and research institutes.

The University can be Outsourced

The nerve!
I DON'T WANT MY TAX DOLLAR GIVEN TO THE UNIVERSITY TO EDUCATE OUR COMPETITION.

There is a finite amount of money, and we already have enormous debt. This is the kind of madness that shows why everyone in Washington needs to be voted out of office.


[ deepen mutual understanding and friendship ]
What's our Wall Street Brand doing in Shanghai? How did this Happen? The vast wealth of corporations has left the U.S. and gone to China. They have the Shanghai Stock Market now with the same Wall Street Bull made by the same Italian artist who made the one in NY.

China money can buy our Creative talent, all the best American talent can be bought. Just like the Wall Street Bull on the Bund, Madison Avenue can set up shop over there to claim their market share.
Education Inc. is for hire. The Ivy Leage College Inc. Brand export business is happy to sell it to China. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT not to mention all the rest like Temple University, Rutgers U. etc. is always for sale to the competition.

What do we have that money can't buy? Nothing.
What do we have that they won't copy and steal? Nothing.
What do we have that they don't have?

FREEDOM

 What does freedom allow?

CREATIVITY

 What does freedom + creativity produce?

WORLD CLASS IMAGINATION
It's Our ability to Think It Up in the first place and sell it, create the brand, create the market for it. That is something you just can't copy.

[ Madison Ave. marketing campaigns ]
Americans have imagination, the ability to be Creative. Think it up! and sell it. That's what We've got.

Beat the Drum, Jump on the Band Wagon, Razzamatazz:
We have that. We have the Idea and the Know How to Sell It. But they will buy it now and the China Brand will dominate.

The Chinese may do well on fact-based, standardized tests. Their brains are hardwired for those at an early age from having to memorize at least 3,000 different characters in order to be literate in the complex Chinese language. But the American secret for prosperity lies in these other learned abilities.

Madison Avenue spins WHY Steve Jobs does what he does! . . . cause he wants to make something beautiful! We buy into the WHY he does it. We love that - we love that it is all about beauty, we want to identify with that, support that, promote that, and by the way, he also sells computers, oh yeah, ok, alright i think I'll buy one.

But Apple (electronics industry) has problems:

1) Sadly, Americans have no idea about the ugly Chinese suicides, blood, sweat, and human suffering that went into creating that Ipod, Ipad, and other digital devices. The horrible work conditions that millions of chinese people face daily, every week, for years, and decades. Exploited to the point of suicide.

2) Payback is a Bitch.When an American Company sends all their IP / proprietary capital / supply chain / to China it will get stolen. A Chinese company has cloned the iPad and dubbed it the iPed. Just about all of its features, right down to the box and icons, have been ripped off. Its priced at $105 in Japan.

And Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry plans to raise workers' salaries by about 20% at its Foxconn unit in China, as it struggles to stop a spate of worker suicides and quell rising public anger.
iPhone maker to raise salaries 20% after worker suicides.
Ooops - unhappy slaves, strike for more money, enter unions
Exit China - Enter India - Chase slave labor around the world.

Americans fought for a better life. Thanks to Unions, those dark horrible times are behind us. However, those battles are all just in front of the Chinese work force. We won't go backwards without a fight. Americans won't allow themselves to be treated like slave labor


[ K-12 Department of Education: Color Code Red Alert ]
The Corporate lobbyists paid the politicians to out source our factories to China. Our Manufacturing jobs are gone. The skills needed for the jobs have been forgotten.

K-12 Public Education's original purpose was to make people into better citizens. Which meant prepared for the farming life, the factory life, complacent, compliant, and happy for whatever horrible work was available to them. You certainly didn't need an education that made trouble for the corporate master. They want a slave who is complacent, compliant, who doesn't know any better. A slave willing to stand on their feet 10 hours a day, with no overtime, no protection, and willing to do it for pennies. It is the same today as it ever was. They don't care where the slave lives. They are happy to out source the job anywhere. Today's world is all about slave labor used to make cheap goods, bought with cheap money, from a workforce that is out sourced from around the globe.

Americans better Protect Our Most Precious Resource.

The number #1 educational essential for the U.S. workforce is creative thinking. It isn't knowledge to pass machine-scored tests that's important. Creative thinking is not measurable by standardized tests, we all know that!!

"Do Schools Kill Creativity?" .

 
The "arts" need to stop being only a bunch of separate subjects (that are cut first). It needs to be integrated into every subject. And we need to get over the notion that some people are naturally creative and others are not.

(4/9/10)Secretary of Education Arne Duncan before the Arts Education Partnership National Forum.
The case for a well-rounded curriculum begins with a disappointing reality: many schools today are falling far short of providing an engaging, content-rich curriculum. Instead, students are often saddled with boring textbooks, dummied-down to the lowest common denominator. It is no wonder that much of todays curriculum fails to spark student curiosity or stimulate a love of learning. In the coming debate over ESEA reauthorization, I believe that arts education can help build the case for the importance of a well-rounded curriculum in at least three ways.

First, the arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college.
Second, the arts are essential to stimulating the creativity and innovation that will prove critical to young Americans competing in the global economy.
And lastly, the arts are valuable for their own sake, and they empower students to create and appreciate aesthetic works.
As First Lady Michelle Obama sums up, both she and the President believe strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nations leaders for tomorrow.

Art Advocates

Habits of mind developed in art classes that are not unique to the arts at all. Winner says, Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments.
"HABITS OF MIND" which are exactly like the K-12 "HIGHER ORDER" THOUGHT PROCESSES classifying, inferring, hypothesizing, generalizing, valuing, relating, and synthesizing"

kleptocracy

The new Republican majority approved the "virtual school act" May 21 despite warnings that it would let for-profit companies recruit hundreds or thousands of children across the state and siphon off taxpayer funding. The bill contains no cap on enrollment or funding. It's going to be an enormous transfer of taxpayer dollars from the state to private pockets ever seen.

K12 Inc., a for profit online education corporation which has "virtual schools" all over the country, including Arizona Virtual Academy here, needs to operate in volume to make a profit. K12 Inc. maintains a 50-to-1 student-teacher ratio. It needs, to get legislators to let it in and then get students to sign up. K12 Inc., whose lobbyists pushed a virtual-school bill through to passage in the closing minutes of the state legislature in May, doesn't have to pay for school buildings, libraries, buses and ball fields.
In Tennessee, K12 Inc.'s lobbyists got a bill through the legislature at the last minute a "virtual school act" voted for mainly by Republicans, which allowed K12 Inc. to set up shop. Then it created a media advertising blitz to attract students -- free computers for your home, textbooks shipped to you, teachers at your service online and over the phone. The state is obligated to send at least $5,387 to Union County Public Schools, the small rural district northeast of Knoxville that rushed to contract with K12 to operate the new virtual school - for each student that gets enrolled. That includes home-schooled students expected to take advantage of the free textbooks and other supplies offered by the virtual school. School districts usually keep about 4% of per-pupil funding; the rest flows to the contractor.
K12 Inc. compensated its CEO more than $2.6 million last year, its chief financial officer more than $1.7 million, and other top executives several hundred thousand dollars each, according to its latest annual report to shareholders.
People in Tennessee are wondering why a school without buildings should get so much funding. They are also worried that one school district is sponsoring the school, which means it get 4% of the state funds that flow to the school, for doing nothing but signing on the dotted line.
K12 Inc. is a serious corporation which takes takes making profits seriously. And its top people make serious money.

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE SAVES MONEY.
That is a business decision. Business Relationships are not based on what makes good sense for education but on money.

Your school CIO decides where to spend money.
Ask your school board why they don't have free software. Ask your school CIO why they aren't using free software. Google .mfr report

November 3, 2010 If your City Government is trying to save money, Why Can't Your School District CIO / CTO?
Code for America' Programmers to Work in City Governments fellowship winners will work as open-source Web programmers for city governments for a year.

Seven to eight billion is spent nationally on text books and instructional materials

FreeReading provides high quality, rigorous, instructional materials for free. Provides content by educators, for educators. Open-source and Web 2.0 technology Creates a community of educators. Who uses FreeReading? You can, right now! FreeReading is the first open-source instructional program to be approved through an official state adoption.
Save and reapply school funds so they can be used to purchase other initiatives that directly help teachers in the classroom. It offers a complete intervention program in phonics and phonological awareness for grades K-3. The FreeReading community has grown rapidly to include educators in all 50 states and 165 countries.