Roy F. McCampbell's Blog

Remember the D.C. Whistleblower? Adell Cothorne was the new principal at a highly-touted elementary school where test scores had gone up and off, off the charts. She said she walked in on a grade-erasure session, where staff members were changing student answers from wrong to right. When she blew the whistle on what she learned, she became a pariah and nearly lost her career. For a time, she ran a cupcake bakery. She appeared on John Merrow’s PBS program about the legacy of Michelle Rhee, telling her story.
Now she is back as an educator.

In this post, Cothorne tells us about her early years as a worker for McDonald’s. she reminds us why thousands of fast-food workers are demanding a living wage of $15 an hour. Employers say the rise in costs would be prohibitive for consumers. But would it? She says no.

Another side to this story…

Fred,

Some of these “representatives” may be OK in your book. I don’t know many of them personally. Those I have had interaction with don’t seem to act much like representatives of the worker.

They have been on occasion belligerent, self serving, not interested in representing worker interests, and demanding of unquestioning subservience to the I.E.A. party line.

Just like you, when we questioned what we were told to do, we were called disloyal and anti-union. The merits of each directive must be blindly accepted. When our contract was settled with their involvement, we were sold down the river and our union president became a principal. Many teachers quit the IEA and the local in disgust.

Even today, the IEA party line has been harmful to our interests. I do not wish to continue to support an organization that views retirees as chips to be negotiated away. I prefer the…

A recent article by business columnist Eduardo Porter in the “New York Times” was titled “Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe.”

This is what the “Americanization of labor policy” means:

“In 2008, 1.9 million Portuguese workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Last year, the number was down to 300,000.

“Spain has eased restrictions on collective layoffs and unfair dismissal, and softened limits on extending temporary work, allowing workers to be kept on fixed-term contracts for up to four years. Ireland and Portugal have frozen the minimum wage, while Greece has cut it by nearly a fourth. This is what is known in Europe as “internal devaluation.”

“Tethered to the euro and thus unable to devalue their currency to help make their goods less expensive in export markets, many European countries — especially those along the Continent’s southern rim that have been hammered by the…

Robert Shepherd has written curriculum, textbooks,
assessments, and lots else in recent decades.

Here he explains what
is wrong with the Common Core’s version of English Language Arts:

The CCSS in ELA appear to have been written by complete NOVICES
based upon

a. poorly conceived, unexamined notions about how the
outcomes of ELA education should be characterized and measured AND

b. vague memories of extremely mediocre English classes that the
authors happened to attend when they were in school years ago.

It would be amusing that so much money and time had been spent on
“standards” (I can barely bring myself to use this term to refer to
them) this mediocre if not for the fact that they are going to have
dire consequences on many different levels, including dire
consequences for curricula, for curricular innovation, for
pedagogical practice.

So, what are the problems with the new
national standards in…

Dear Fred:

Let us assume that a viable third party candidate does not emerge in the upcoming election for Governor. What do we do?

Those in power like to rig the election process in their favor. Maybe we can turn the tables. Can we use the election process against them?

A possible strategy for the March Primaries:

If your present Illinois State Senator or Representative is a Democrat who voted anything but NO on Senate Bill 1:

Check to see if they have a primary opponent you can vote for. If YES, pull a Democratic Party primary ballot and vote for their opponent.

IF NO, pull a Republican Party primary ballot and vote for someone OTHER than Bruce Rauner.

Everyone else pulls a Republican ballot and votes for someone other than Rauner.

We can all agree on who is the least offensive Republican is, and vote for that candidate. We vote for…