Comments Re the RNC Platform

Comments made after reading - http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Renewing/

This year 2012, The Republican party has moved forward as the party of No. The party has said no to almost every one of Obama’s concepts, plans and ideas. In some areas I do agree with the Republican Party. In many others I think that the party has lost sight of what Politics truly is – Negotiation of finding a way agree. The Republican party of 2012 is spinning itself out of control and with respect to all of the people trying extremely hard to move more right than ever before – STOP and think of what you are doing. With a successful campaign you are going to be called liars simply because many of the plans you have in place will never come to be.

Another issue I am having is the rhetoric of a social policy. Lets talk about Marriage. The Republican party states through research that children who come from a married home are far better off than those who come from a single family home. As a trained Counselor (no longer practicing) I cannot agree more. Good point and 100% the truth. The institution of marriage must be validated and further we must find ways to help keep families together. What is left out is that children who grow up in same sex families fair just as well as children from opposite sex households. The argument to ban gay marriage has removed 8% of the population for what reason? The Republican party wants to be involved with the Church which is a fair place to be, yet if we review history well enough, the church does not play well with others and has only 1 goal, to be in control. Should we assume then that the Church is actually controlling the Republican party? If that is the case then respectfully, the Founding Fathers would be appalled, since they were philosophers who knew enough to keep the two apart.  The reason for calling on a ban of Gay people is not politically a good move and nor does it bring a nation together.

Healthcare, Social Security and Medicare all need to be reformed. Obama offered his best shot and respectfully to the GOP, he tried to appease you in his plan. This shows his weakness as a leader and also shows us that what this country needs is less important than is creating a political rift. I am a proponent of a Flat tax with no power for the Federal government to raise said tax 20%. I believe 5% of this tax goes to create a national health care system that all Americans (not illegals) use. This system would also mean that many tax credits/deductions will be removed and yes it also means that the impoverished pay their 20%. I also believe if we are to maintain social security, then 3% of our taxes go toward that and that upon our retirement there is a true tiered system that people receive until they pass away. This is not a popular option yet is a system that the people deserve rather than the political answer. Politicians are the voice of the people, and the people are asking for this type of system..respectfully it is necessary for the Republicans to take up this fight and think of the people, not of the corporations. Additionally this system will be better for the business environment as they will not have to participate in any health care plan. 

Then I read further into the Republican plan to develop a better educational platform. Respectfully to both parties, your ideas are all horrid. The Democrats want a competition, yet education is not about competition. The Party states that money is not the answer. We agree, yet we cannot succeed in education without money. The Federal and the State systems all require money for the unfunded mandates, which include testing, retesting and more testing of our students. The mandates are there for special needs, which children of all different situations fit this category. The money is required for children living in poverty, mandates for enhancing diversity etc etc. So respectfully to the Republican Party, yes money is necessary. Above all of this is the argument that the Unions need to be busted.
Within the Educational environment, the Unions have a balancing act, and they also help to offer some professionalism. The education of our American future needs the funding, and it needs the collaboration of the profession, not the divisiveness of competition or the rhetoric of ignorant politicians.

With my last sentence I would like to share some final thoughts with the Republican Party. Every person who runs for office and gets elected is ignorant. There is no person on the planet who can share that they know everything. Each person has a finite amount of information they can retain and they rely on the direction of others to help them make decisions. Within the field of the American Social system, the GOP needs to adapt and to utilize a different environment than the one they are moving to. The use of the Constitution and Founding Fathers is being used incorrectly. The use and reliance of corporate funding to guide is being irresponsibly utilized; and the weakness of attracting the young is going to destroy the principled ideology of the Republican party. The GOP needs to remove the ‘old’ label and allow itself to be the Grand Open-minded Party. This will allow for the system to develop and enhance the nation of America and bring the goals of the Founding Fathers. To be the greatest open-minded nation who is ok with change and allows for the people to develop themselves philosophically by their own abilities and desires.

Response to a misguided ex-teacher

Today I was given the opportunity to read the work of an ex teacher. (http://ateachertransformed.com/)  This is a young lady who was very good with her students and who spent a lot of time trying to reform those people and mold them into good citizens. In this particular school there was no parent involvement, never any parent complaints and most certainly little or no administrative support. This lady worked as the Honors Language arts teacher and was able to ignore the many violations of human indecency that went on around her so she could aide her students. A very admirable role that was taken, yet in all her effort, was she ever able to help lift those students out of their cultural situation and save them to become scholars. Real research says No!

Attacking this lady is not the purpose of this post, it is instead to enlighten her and the many other misguided people who feel that American education is failing because of Unions, bad teachers and the Democratic party. Respectfully, none of these factors are the direct result of a failure yet are all parts of the system which is no longer allowed to work as a system.

At the RNC in 2012 Education is under attack. The teachers are still at fault for the ruination of education and the reason they are still in the classroom is because ultimately Unions are to blame. To all of the people who are saying this, lets share a coffee and allow me to share with you more than I will here.

Over the past 10 years I have been involved as a Faculty Representative to help aide the teachers in situations that involve administration. Sometimes the situation was blatantly an administrator pushing for power and or satisfying to want of a parent when no such need was necessary. Other times it was the teacher who was at fault and I was there to maintain balance of the situation. In other situations we did have to bring in the association for guidance and support. As a reader you may be saying – this is what Unions do. I answer – yes they protect the workers. I urge anyone who wants to remove a Union or association to first learn why these institutions are important and further why they are so necessary in America. Add to that even more important in a right-to-work State.

One story that comes to mind is from the above mentioned teachers school. My wife was told she is no longer wanted at her place of employment because she was pregnant. The principal chose to fire my wife from her position as a teacher and let her know it was because she was pregnant and that the children did not need to see this in his school. This is one example of the abuse that occurs in our nation and in our schools. With a call to the association office and a following of contract law my wife had her job back. This is an example of abuse which can and does occur in the private sector – which is respectfully not allowed in the government environment.

Another comment I would like to make is this notion of educational reformers doing an amazing job. Some of the worst educational reformers are being hailed as martyrs today. Michelle Rhee who cheated and lied to get where she is is no reformer, she is simply a dictator who no respect in the field of education, yet in the field of politics she is beloved. The same can be said for Jeb Bush and Arne Duncan. All of these people are working to create a private sector system where it does not belong.

John Thrasher, a Florida Legislator, recently shared that he never envisioned charter school abuse in the way it is occurring. His idea for charter schools was for the poor people to get an education. This is another example of how a politician spins a story.

In the field of academia the exacted result is not known until years after a child leaves the classroom, yet the tea party fanatics, who have no idea of American history, want teachers to compete for financial compensation. Education is a teamwork environment more akin to research and development of a product that may or may not ever work better than another, it is not a widget factory to create automatons.

Finally – and in respect to the person this blog post was written for:  There are many ways to develop education and there is one sure way to destroy it. Pitting teachers, administrators, school systems

The system of education needs to overhauled. Not to test and test and test. Rather it needs to be given the chance to be a professional environment in which teachers are given professional wages and offered the chance to teach what they are experts at. Parents should never be given the power over the school, even if the tea party wants it to build more charter schools. the PTA is there to support the system and they understand the value of a teacher. The NEA and AFT understand support of the teacher. Consider the support of a family, would you prefer for me to tell you I appreciate you and never hug, assure, respect or care for you. In psychology we call this a schizophrenic mind. In education we call this tea part politics.

I am a Republican teacher who has asked to work with government to help develop a professional environment. Until people learn that the problem is rarely in the classroom, rather it is in misguided legislative hands and in the hands of the profiteer, then this country will maintain the educational process it always wanted – Wealthy Superiority over the majority.

Judge strikes down state merit pay rules as 'invalid'

Today there was a victory for education in the State of Florida. I realize that many of the Florida Republicans feel that public school system has been given a free pass for a period of time prior to their arrival in Tallahassee. Respectfully, you went too far in trying to create a Corporate Model for education that is not designed to work. The passion that is shown to try and help alleviate the problems of education is extremely appreciated, yet you should be working with professional educators to facilitate the change and to stop working with Private Groups who have a goal of profiteering. This ruling states what teachers already know..merit is not for the world of education. I respectfully ask each of the Legislators to put their heads together now, develop an educational caucus of State Teachers and use the information from these people to learn how to create a better educational system. Use this opportunity to remove the words Merit Pay from your vocabulary and develop a fair market pay scale for teachers utilizing accurate data. Make the teachers State Employees and treat them as professional. Use the successful European models and lets teach the other States in America how to do it right.

That’s my 2c, thanks for listening

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-teacher-merit-pay-ruling-20120822,0,1384356.story

http://www.wctv.tv/news/headlines/Judge-Finds-Florida-Department-of-Education-Failed-to-Follow---167110645.html

The Value of Being Educated

The following is an Opinion Article Written by Cade Resnick

When a person is talking to another person and shares with them that they are educated, the person receiving the compliment often says thank you and leaves it at that.  Over my tenure of being involved in education, I have come to learn that the term, educated is used far too often without a true measure of its value. In the field of studying conflict, and human culture he meaning of educated extends to the ability to question and research all systemic possibilities.  The most important aspect of being educated in the field of culture is to begin your research trying to remove all aspects of your bias. It is after all, bias that is the downfall of the validity within research.

Read the Rest here

http://tinyurl.com/93he2xs

My Comments to Dean Cannon

In Response to http://tinyurl.com/79y4mmw Article in Orlando Sentinel
Dean Cannon: Measuring students' progress critical to education's success

“Florida received some good news recently. Education Week reports that Florida's African-American and Hispanic students are more likely to graduate from high school than their peers in other states.

The 2012 "Diplomas Count" report compared Florida to the rest of the nation and found that our Hispanic graduates beat the national graduation-rate average by 10 percentage points. African-American students exceed the average by 3.5 points. In fact, Florida places third in the nation for the largest increases in graduation rates of all students over the past 10 years, jumping from 52.5 percent in 1999 to 70.4 percent a decade later, in 2009”.

Attention Mr. Dean Cannon.

We did all of the above by lowering the standards to say we are worthy. I will gladly ask you to sit with me and go through how education has changed in the past 12 years to make sure that access is more open (not a bad thing) and that teachers are to teach to the lowest denominator not the highest.

There are many ways to alter data for our best conclusion, and respectfully this is what we have done. Florida is an amazing State, yet we need a national test to compare where we are. We also need a national measure to see drop-out rate vs actual graduation rate and we need national comparitive data to see college readiness. Keeping everything in home is, in my opinion called inbreeding.

I offer you an invitation to sit and listen before you write your next article

Perception is Reality

                Over the past few years, the American society has been enveloped in the negativity of the educational environment. The Federal government has shared that the most important factor within a person’s education is the teacher, and that this teacher needs to be evaluated through a one stop evaluation system. This same message has resonated in many of the State Legislatures and is now being implemented.

                President Obama (D) orchestrated the Race to the Top program, which simply gave millions of dollars to States to develop an evaluation system and to remove ineffective teachers.  Although the selling of this program was not listed in this manner, the reality seems to be that all failure of education belongs to teachers. Therefore, the system has worked to develop a robust, very expensive evaluation model which, in Florida, was implemented through SB 736 in 2011.

                The monies that Florida received for Race to the Top did not go into the classroom. The reality is that most of that money has been spent in buying the rights to use the Marzano model of evaluation. The irony of this model, is that Marzano himself has stated in his own books, “I strongly believe that there is not (nor will there ever be) a formula for effective teaching”.
With the hypocrisy continuing to develop, Marzano sold an evaluation system to the State of Florida for an unspecified amount of monies, and the majority of the 67 counties in Florida are now using this system. The system is being utilized to evaluate teaching, yet, in reality it is being utilized for punitive reward or removal of favored teachers. The government has said that the system was created to be more collaborative within the field of education and that great teachers would be validated while bad teachers would be removed.

                The irony of a statement such as this is that education is an art. Every teacher has a different method for designing their art and they work within their own style to develop the future of our educated workforce. I certainly understand that there are some artists that are better than others, yet I do not understand an Evaluation tool that is designed that can truly to define who the great artists are from the not so great ones. To me this is perception.

                This year, I have spent a lot of time talking with teachers and administrators and have been listening to the disconnect within my educational circle. Within my own county, the disconnect seems to be the same as in surrounding counties, so I do not believe this to be an abnormal evaluation. Through my analysis, what I am seeing is that administrators are grading teachers based on a review through arbitrary factors. Administration is supposed to walk through classrooms on a consistent basis. My administrator was so busy through the year that he was only able to see me for a total of 16 minutes throughout the year, and when he came to me for my formal observation, he was only able to see a portion of the class. When he and I met for my final evaluation, he looked at me, saw that most of the check marks were within the evaluation and said, “Effective”. I did ask what it takes to be highly effective, and I was told that Effective is the new Highly Effective. Respectfully, for a teacher who considers their art work to be toward the highly effective model, I want to know why I am just effective, and how I become highly effective. I have asked this question to my administrator, to other administrators and to the Union, and at this time none of them are able to qualify what makes a Highly Effective teacher.

                Any qualified teacher knows that they are going to be evaluated by an administrator. What the teachers would like to know is how they are able to reach their full potential. As teachers we offer to our students a rubric which allocates point scores. The observation system that we are being held to has no definitive idea of the skill of teaching. Rather it is very prescriptive to place teachers into a box. Further, when teachers are able to follow the script as it is being asked, the power to evaluate is then left in the hands of an administrator to decide how effective the teacher is. Respectfully, without a true rubric, the aspect of truthful evaluation is further turned into an open ended joke. Talking among teachers, we are now pondering how this evaluation system is moving the abilities of teachers forward. The power to decide the fate of a teacher is now in the hands of an administrator. This is not collaborative at all.

This means that every teacher has to succumb to the whim of the administrators and principals for fear that retribution may arrive from any disagreements. Collegiality is being removed from the field of education and is being replaced with a one size fits all punitive model. If this was the goal  of the Florida Politicians, then I can share with them that their goal has been achieved.  Yet I believe that the original intent of the Political environment was to develop a system that moves the field of education further ahead. The reality is very different, which is why teacher morale is so low. Every teacher has to have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, yet the field of education is treating teachers as ignorant children.  

The field of education needs to be overhauled, and designed for the 21^st century. Presidents need not make education a competition, State legislators need not force the hand of school systems to create Charter Schools for their own gain and school administrators need to learn that teachers are the foundation of our future. There are many ways to evaluate art, yet with every critique there is a differing argument of perspective. Our American Society needs strong, powerful teachers who are able to design their art to stand the test of time. There are many ways to do this; yet this cannot be done with a one stop model to contain every teacher. Perception is reality, and right now, the reality is that every teacher needs to stop the art of teaching and begin the color by number evaluation model.

The Purpose for Educating a Globalized Negotiation Model

Social cognition is the mental state upon which our biology and mental abilities combine to create who we are. The development of this concept begins at birth and continues throughout the social environment of our lives.  Recently I was able to see firsthand how the different concept of individualism versus collectivism has an impact on the belief system of people. This difference in beliefs allies with our abilities to negotiate; and the expected outcome of the negotiation.  

Upon entering a cruise ship guests are greeted by people (cruise ship employees) who have given up their normal state of being and are working in a consistent state of flux. Using this example, I mean to say that these people are working on a rotating schedule, and are in different countries, cultures and environments on an everyday perspective. The working people also deal with thousands of different personalities each and every day, and then over a short period of time, have to reset and do this once again. For the majority of westernized people, this idea would be awful and something that we cannot live with.  When taking the time to talk with people who work on a cruise ship, you learn very quickly that it takes a lot of sacrifice in order to maintain employment. My recent excursion taught me that all of the people on this particular boat were on there for 6 months, and were only able to call home when they were in a port. Further, most of the people I spoke to had been part of the company for many years, had children and a husband/wife at home and were comfortable living in a 135sq foot room. Further, all of these people are only guaranteed the contract they currently have, and if they receive too many negative surveys or complaints from customers who are on the cruise ship, then at the end of their cruise, their contract is not renewed. With that in mind, the majority of the people I spoke with was very friendly, and was constantly aware to make me happy in worry of offending me, rather than being honest with me and stating that I am just being ridiculous.

The culture of people on a cruise ship is certainly an interesting study. The part that made me most open my eyes to the different lifestyle was that most of the people working are not Caucasian. The majority of the people working seemed to be from countries that are considered developing. So I put together a small list of questions and began to build a profile of the type of person working on a cruise ship. To begin with I asked the educational level of all the workers I met with, followed by asking of their family life, socioeconomic situation before being on the cruise ship and also since. I also asked if these people had children and if they did what they did with them. The answers would shock many of the people living in a western culture which shows so much of an individualistic mindset. One would think that the western culture would like the cruise ship life due to the ability to see much of the world, yet, in further investigation, the life on board a cruise ship does not delve into the western ideals at all.

When I ask people in the western culture research based questions, I usually get people questioning me, asking what I am going to do with this information and for some of the people, I am asked to go away. It was the opposite through this very short study. The people I asked questions to were only too willing to share, and for some, I think they were offended I only had 6 questions to ask. It was evident that I was supposed to spend more time talking and building a friendship. This is not the same behavior I witness when speaking with people from a more western background, which is part of the reason cultural negotiation, is so difficult.

 In talking about all of the above, one of the areas that I found to have a distinct difference in culture was the aspect of hours worked for monies paid. The people on the cruise ship are not paid a lot of money. The person who cleaned my room began to work at 6am each day and did not end his day until the last person on his section of rooms had given him access to their room to turn down the bed and offer a towel animal. The room steward shared with me that most nights he gets to eat dinner around 8pm and then is in bed himself by 11pm. Although this may seem like a good opportunity, the time between 6am and 11pm is all work. He is given two, 30 minute breaks to eat and redress before he is back on the floor. In the western culture we would state that we deserve overtime, and for that many hours per week we deserve more than an hour break throughout the day. This is a primary reason that you don’t see many western cultured people in positions such as cruise ship steward. With that in mind, I was able to find out that the same hours and work intensity exists for all of the lower classed ship workers. To clarify, even on a cruise ship there is a hierarchy.

For Further Reading, please visit the rest at the following link:  http://tinyurl.com/7lo35mo