"Threat is Real" Published in Sunday Eunice News on October 19, 2014

With constant media coverage of the Ebola virus, you may have missed news reports that the Pentagon released its Climate Change Report, assessing international threats to our security when coastlines, water supplies, floodplains are impacted by sudden climate events.

It's hard to imagine this august Republican institution having the fortitude to admit that climate change is a very real threat to American security – especially before an election.

But, climate change is real. Everyone in Louisiana knows this first hand. We lived through terrible storms that destroyed large segments of New Orleans. Our coastal lands are disappearing at an unbelievable rate. Our children carefully assess storm threats to determine whether they should be happy for a weather holiday, or fearful that they might lose their roof or their house. Again.

The Pentagon does not prescribe actions we can take to prevent climate change in its report. It boldly claims the effects of climate change are real, and they are here to stay.

The military is not only worried about the impact of climate change on its overseas bases. It is worried that countries can be overrun with terrorists when climate change destabilizes foreign governments.

This may be hard for Americans to imagine, since our media focused on the hundreds of thousands of humanitarian deeds committed by our citizens who responded to the Hurricane Katrina disaster with compassion and the belief that we owed survivors every effort to restore their communities to their former glory.

But, most of the effects of climate change do not happen with sudden events like Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Most of the effects are gradual: water sources dry up. Land is swallowed up by the oceans.

Louisiana's coastal land is disappearing at a frightening rate, but, we don't seem to notice it, because it's not happening within a 24 hour news cycle.

Our nation still believes in safety nets and emergency humanitarian response. When communities lose their water, we ship in water and ice. When towns are flooded, we ship in shelter, water, ice, food, and thousands of workers to help get the town back to some semblance of normalcy.

In its report, our Department of Defense claims that most of the 63 or more nations where our military has bases will be completely destabilized and vulnerable to terrorism. Why? Because these countries do not have that same capacity to rush in and save their people from climate change disasters as we do in this country.

When I served at Fort Polk as the first female chaplain in the Second Armed Cavalry Regiment, I learned a lot from the men and women who ran water purification and other basic operations necessary for humans to live in areas where water is contaminated.

There were a couple of huge disasters along the Mississippi River that put our country on notice about the reality of climate change. Our water purifiers chomped at the bit after every disaster, hoping they would be sent up to Minnesota and other northern states to help restore clean water to the region.

Thank goodness, we still believe in the Common Wealth as a nation. Thank goodness, we still believe in working for the Common Good. Because whether or not this nation embraces the Pentagon's Report on Climate Change, disasters will continue to happen in our nation and abroad.

As long as we continue to believe that it is our duty to work to save our people from the impacts of climate change disasters, we won't have to worry about Terrorists taking over our communities.

But, how do we teach the leaders of the 63-plus nations where we have military bases that their first duty as a government is to protect their people, their resources from the very real damage to their nations inflicted by climate change?

How do we pull together as a nation and as a world community, and rise above the foolish politics of climate-change denial, and work proactively to prevent the devastation that comes with disappearing coastal land, contaminated water, flooded towns and cities, and the diseases that happen when our safe water supplies are contaminated?

I would love to hear our politicians and our elected officials address these questions with common sense answers that reflect our highest values as Americans. We deserve nothing less.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf

Secretary White Bends the AP Facts: Published in Thursday Eunice News on Auguest 16, 2014

   Did you watch John White’s interpretation of Louisiana’s “Advanced Placement” scores on TV last week? Secretary of Education White is claiming a success because Louisiana moved from near bottom to about 38th in the number of high school juniors and seniors taking AP placement courses last year (2013-14).

Sounds like an amazing improvement, except for one thing: The vast majority of Louisiana’s AP test takers fail the test.

Our high schools are forced to enroll students in this commercial, for-profit program on the theory that “rigorous” AP classes will prepare our students for college success. Our school performance score depends on the number of students who take and pass AP classes.

White thinks we should celebrate that our state ranks 38th for participation rate. (The accolade comes from the company that designs and sells the classes to our state.) But, the percentage of students who actually passed the tests declined from 34.1% in 2013 to to 30.3% in 2014.

I solidly believe that human beings learn from failure. But I don’t understand how White is serving our students by forcing them to take classes they are not prepared to pass. Professional educators (White is a Teach for America survivor and a political appointee) would never claim they were successful as teachers if only 30% of their students passed their classes.

Can you imagine being forced to put a certain kind of roofing on your house, and then, after the first rain, you discover only 30.3% of your roof works to prevent water damage? Secretary White forced you to put that roof on your house, and he claims success, because at least, your shed is still dry.

Can you imagine being forced to buy a certain brand of Thailand crawfish, only to find that 69% of the product is not consumable? Metaphorically speaking, Secretary White is forcing you to buy that product, and he claims he did a good thing because his corporate backers told him Thailand crawfish is a better crawfish than our own home-grown products.

Why did news outlets participate in White’s deception about our rankings? Why did the media fail to check the facts before giving this con man free press? We may rank 38th in the number of students taxpayers subsidized for AP classes, but we are 49th in passing rate.

White is hiding data and facts from the public. Data that should be on the state website is missing.

Every week, I check the Louisiana Department of Education website to see if White has the courage to post real information about our school and district performance on state LEAP, End of Course tests, and college preparatory ACT and Advanced Placement (AP) tests.

Alas, when you go the state website, you can only find clear, honest data for the school years prior to White’s takeover of the Louisiana Department of Education.

Google helped me track down the real facts from the College Board, facts printed as a table by The Times Picayune. The passing rate for all those taking the AP test in Louisiana was down four percent; women passing declined by 3 percent, African Americans by almost 1 percent.

If White would give us the true data, parents and teachers could work together to fix the problems that contribute to our declining scores.

If AP courses are necessary for the neighborhood schools to survive, for example, they need to be run properly. All AP instructors would need to be exempt from White’s mandatory “COMPASS” teacher evaluation system.   I was trained by the lead AP Music Theory test designer. He insisted that students could only pass the music test if they engaged in rigorous drill and kill. When I explained his teaching methods would get us fired as Louisiana public school teachers, he had a few choice words to describe the foolish COMPASS rubric that is dragging down our achievement scores.

AP classes need to be run as full-year classes. Louisiana high schools embraced the one-semester block program, making it impossible for teachers to do adequate instruction and review before the tests are administered in the spring.

Our Secretary of Education may have forced all these conflicting changes on our public schools with good intentions, but, in every instance, the outcome has been disastrous.

Our children’s future is at stake. We cannot afford to put them in situations where 70% fail because of bad policies and bad financial investments.

It’s time for the media to stop re-telling John’s Big White Lie.

For more information you can google these sites:

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/10/louisiana_sees_some_improvemen.html

http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/rtn/10th-annual/10th-annual-ap-report-state-supplement-louisiana.pdf

No thanks, Bill Gates!

Bill Gates was on MSNBC's “Morning Joe,” and in his efforts to promote the “Common Core,” he proved that corporate billionaires are as qualified to run our nation's public schools as donkeys are qualified to design his Microsoft software.

Gates insisted that until US schools embrace “Common Core” we will always lag behind twenty or more countries in our scores on a test that is wrongly used to generate education policy in the United States.  The test is “Trends in International Mathematics and Science.”

Then, Mr. Gates proceeded to contradict himself by insisting that American education needed to copy the Korean, Singapore and Peoples Republic of China school designs – because he does NOT believe America has the right teaching strategies for academic success.

How did Bill Gates contradict himself?

Gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars to campaign  vigorously to impose “Common Core”  teaching methods on US teachers.   Bill Gates wants to walk into any classroom in the United States and see it filled with sharply focused eager children who work independently, inventing new math ideas without any direct instruction from teachers.

As if every child were a Baby Bill Gates, or a Baby Beethoven, or a Baby Einstein,  Common Core proponents believe our children will “invent” new mathematics with no time spent learning math facts. Or, they will write symphonies without learning to read music.  Or, they will become astronauts with endless hands-on lab experiences, and very little time spent acquiring foundational knowledge.

There's no doubt in my mind that every teacher in Louisiana WOULD embrace the “Common Core” discovery teaching methods if our schools were wealthy like the private schools where Bill Gates sends his children.  If American schools were run like Finland's public schools where every student is given exactly the same amount of classroom materials, computers and teachers, we could probably replace Finland as the top scoring nation.

When MSNBC interviewers asked Bill Gates if he wanted the US to follow the Finnish model of public education to improve our science and math scores, he flatly said “No!”  

Bill Gates wants American public schools to become more like Singapore, South Korea and People's Republic of China public schools.

His incredulous host asked why, and Bill Gates gave these answers:  1) they have better school demographics, 2) their schools are cheaper to run because they pack 40 to 50 students in a classroom.  

Singapore, South Korea and China do not embrace the Common Core in any way.  In fact, these countries use very rigid rote memorization models.  If you've ever been to South Korea or the People's Republic of China to observe their schools, you would know firsthand that the mass majority of students engage in memorization, vocabulary building, mastery of the written English language, and strict adherence to traditional mathematics methods.   There is no diversity in their schools.  Students with disabilities are put in orphanages.

Children in these countries DO NOT spend hours a day in the gym or on the football fields after school.  They DO NOT spend weeks preparing for homecoming, proms, all night basketball tournaments, school day golf matches, etc.  Instead, students with college potential have NO free time.  NO social time.  Early in the morning, they walk to private academic tutors.  After school, until six or seven p.m. students walk to private academic tutors to ensure they mastered materials required for university entrance exams.

The South Korean birth rate is the lowest in the world.  Policy analysts attribute this fact to the agony families go through once their children enter the public school grind of tutoring, testing, memorizing, testing some more.  The South Korean government is discouraging college education, because the country already has too many college graduates who cannot find jobs.

Obsessive focus on teaching math, English and science will not guarantee academic success in our children, nor will it improve the American economy.

Why would Gates preach “Common Core,” and then, contradict himself by rejecting Finland's success model and instead, pushing for standardized tests, large class sizes, and Korean-style drill-and-kill instruction?   Well, Finland does not believe in high stakes tests.  There's no market in Finland for Bill Gates to “monetize” education for his own personal gain.

But, Americans have to decide for themselves.  Do we want our children to be educated the Chinese way?  The Korean way?  The Finnish way? Or, the American way?  If we believe in the American public education model with its traditional wealth of art, music, dance, sports, vocation and industrial arts classes, we must fight to save it.