“Are you willing to put your children’s education at stake because somebody has promised you something they can’t deliver? I for one am not willing.”
Here’s the video:
Your children’s education at stake —Sam Allen, FVCS, 7 July 2011
No school consolidation,
Press Conference, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 July 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
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Dan Heyman wrote 12 January 2010 for Public News Service – WV, Churches: No Private Prison For Immigrants In WV,
CHARLESTON, WV – West Virginia’s largest church group has asked U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation to oppose funding a private prison for undocumented immigrants in Pendleton County near the Virginia border.Continue readingThe Council of Churches is one of several groups discussing immigration reform ahead of expected congressional action on the issue. The Council has asked federal lawmakers’ help in the effort, arguing private prison operations have been rife with abuse. GSI Professional Corrections is seeking county commission approval to build the detention center near Sugar Grove to house 1,000 nonviolent immigrant detainees awaiting possible deportation.
Rev. Dennis Sparks, the Council’s executive director, complains private prisons operate outside the mainstream legal
She sent her slides to me this morning for publication by LAKE.
Here they are
on the LAKE web pages,
in PPT, PDF, and HTML formats.
She said there is no FPSC web page, but their meetings are shown in the calendar of events on Valdosta’s city website. The next FPSC meeting shown there is for 18 August 2011.
| Date: | 8/18/2011 5:00 PM |
| Location: | Valdosta City Hall Multi-Purpose Room
300 N. Lee Street |
I will probably post some more here about what she said and some of the Q&A that ensued. Meanwhile, you can see the slides for yourself.
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I do mean that literally, the best in the world:Shanghai’s education system is distinctive and superior—and not just globally, but also nationally. Hong Kong, Beijing, and ten Chinese provinces participated in the 2009 PISA, but their results reflected education systems that were still the same-old knowledge acquisition models, whereas Shanghai had progressed to equipping students with the ability to interpret and extrapolate information from text and apply it to real world situations—what we would normally refer to as ‘creativity.’ Twenty-six percent of Shanghai 15 year-olds could demonstrate advanced problem-solving skills, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.
Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers its worldwide Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure how well a nation’s education system has been preparing its students for the global knowledge economy. Nations such as South Korea, Finland, and Singapore have traditionally topped the rankings, but, apparently, even they are no match for Shanghai, which shoved the others into lower positions in its very first year of participation in the programme, in 2009.That’s according to Jiang Xueqin writing in the Diplomat 1 August 2011, How Shanghai Schools Beat Them All.
So, how did they do it? Continue reading
I hear this all the time around here:
“We’re not going to get into debate.”
“We will not, however, debate you over e-mail.”
“There’s been enough debate.”
“one more public meeting with 15 minutes of pros and cons and then hopefully that will be the end of discussion.”
“I’m not going to debate you about that.”
“Debate is not allowed.”Well, why not? When did “debate” become a dirty word? What if we call it a civil discussion, will that make it sound better? Nobody seems to know how to do that, either.
And that, my friends, is the real failure of the local education system.
Next: how they do it in the best education system in the world.
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Craig Howley, Jerry Johnson, Jennifer Petrie wrote 1 February 2011,
Consolidation of Schools and Districts: What the Research Says and What it Means:
…the review of research evidence detailed in this brief suggests that a century of consolidation has already produced most of the efficiencies obtainable. Research also suggests that impoverished regions in particular often benefit from smaller schools and districts, and they can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.Isn’t such irreversible damage what Rev. Floyd Rose got Mrs. Ruth Council to admit?
They are referring to black schools before desegregation in the 1960s.Rev. Rose: “…we were told about the world, where we came from, how we got here.”
Mrs. Council: “I think we did receive a better education.”
Rev. Floyd Rose is president of the local SCLC, and here is a statement by Leigh Touchton, president of the local NAACP: Continue reading
Hm, a billion a year, like Georgia’s “950 plus million budget” that we also can’t afford.The Arizona Department of Corrections has given a green light to four private, for-profit correctional management corporations for the construction and management of an additional 5,000 state prison beds.
The American Friends Service Committee condemns this action as unnecessary and deeply irresponsible given the state’s economic crisis and the dismal safety records of all four of the corporations involved.
Arizona’s Auditor General estimates this expansion will cost us over $640 million by 2017. Yet our prison population only grew by only 65 inmates in 2010.
This year, our corrections budget is over $1 billion, consuming 11% of the state general fund. The Department of Corrections was the only state agency whose budget saw an increase this year.
The Tucson article cites the NY Times article that demonstrations private prisons don’t save money, continues with examples of worse public safety at private prisons, and concludes: Continue reading
Kevin Bullis wrote in MIT Technology Review today,
Chinese Solar Companies Thrive on Manufacturing Innovations:
Suntech Power’s CTO argues that the secret to China’s success is not cheap labor but advanced equipment for making solar cells.How about this part: Continue readingFive years ago only one of the 10 largest solar cell producers was based in China. But by last year, four of the top five were based there, and each is growing fast: all four doubled their production last year. It’s widely believed that this success is due to low labor costs, but Stuart Wenham, CTO of the largest solar cell maker in China, Suntech Power, argues that the real causes are advances in manufacturing technology that have improved solar cells’ performance and cut costs.
David Worthington wrote for smartplanet 28 June 2011, Google: delay on renewables will cost U.S. trillions, over million jobs:
The study was about renewable energy in general, but: Continue readingGoogle has published an analysis of the economic benefits of renewable energy innovation. It has concluded that even a five year lapse without a national clean energy policy would cost the United States an aggregate US$2.3-3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP gains and 1.2-1.4 million net jobs.
Welcome AndreaContinue readingShuijerSchruijer to a great opportunity as the new Executive Director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)!
For a year I’ve been asking for a list of jobs attracted by the Authority. We welcome your marketing expertise so we’ll know the Authority’s successes!
We welcome your communications expertise to inform the community affected by the process of bringing new jobs. VLCIA could publish its agendas, minutes, and videos of its meetings, events, and new jobs on its web pages, and facebook, maybe even twitter.
We welcome your stewardship of the Authority’s $3 million/year in taxes. Maybe some