Month: May 2016

It’s Time To Talk To Your Superdelegates

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 3 Comments

If you are concerned about education in this country, the fate of the nation, or the survival of the planet, here is a sample letter that you may use to send to your superdelegates. The list of 2016 Democratic superdelegates is included.  Please use this sample letter or write your own letter or call your superdelegates. It’s all we can do now.

It just might be up to us. 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Dear Superdelegate:

We cannot have Donald Trump as our President. You are one of the only people in the country who can keep that from happening. Please change your vote to the Democrat who can win.

I know that a year ago you decided to cast your vote for Hillary Clinton at the Convention, but so much has happened in that year. You could not have foreseen then where we, as a country, would be now. No one could have.

Hillary looked then like the only game in town. She didn’t appear to have a substantial Democratic opponent, and Donald Trump wasn’t being taken seriously as a possible Republican nominee. All that has changed. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton has become unelectable.

Hillary is unelectable because she is associated deeply with all that most voters find distasteful in a presidential candidate: courting big money donors, a sense of entitlement within the privileged establishment, and an inability to inspire and call us to greatness. The more the electorate has come to know Hillary in the past year, the less they like her. Hillary had approval ratings of 64% as Secretary of State, and earlier this month had approval ratings of just 34%. And that was before the Inspector General’s report.

The report of the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department charged Hillary with breaking the rules of the U.S. State Department in how she used emails as Secretary of State. She did not ask permission to use a private server in her home for government business, and if she had, it would have been denied. She did not preserve and turn over her emails when she left office as required by the Federal Records Act. All prior secretaries of state, as well as John Kerry, were interviewed by the Inspector General for the State Department investigation, but Hillary Clinton refused to be interviewed and would not permit her staff to be interviewed either. She put herself above the law in so many ways. As TV political commentator Chuck Todd said, Hillary could not now be confirmed for a cabinet position with those actions as part of her history. All the more, she cannot be President.

Worse yet for her, she lied about her actions after the State Department report was made public. If she had told the truth at that time, perhaps her candidacy could have been saved. The public will not forgive her for looking straight at the camera and lying. It makes fools of anyone who tries to defend her. And no one wants to be thought of as a fool.

Even the Hillary-supporting MSNBC reporters were appalled at Hillary’s flagrant disregard of the rules of the State Department and her lies in covering it up. The Republicans and Donald Trump will be much more critical and more savage than the now skeptical MSNBC reporters.

For the sake of all that is good about us as a country and for the sake of the world that needs us to be our best selves as a nation, we cannot elect Donald Trump as President. Please prevent that disaster by casting your vote in Philadelphia for Bernie Sanders who will continue Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and work to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream come true. Because he has traditional Democratic values, Bernie Sanders inspires people. And Bernie Sanders can win in November.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Added Proof: The Common Core Hurts Kids

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 1 Comment

The Common Core State Standards were marketed as serving to “close the achievement gap”. That did not happen.

The designers and promoters of the Common Core determined that standardized test scores would be the measure of achievement. By that limited measure of achievement, the achievement gap increased. As  Results Are in: Common Core Fails Tests and Kids shows, NAEP scores of students whose education was focused exclusively on the Common Core curriculum decreased while NAEP scores for students in affluent suburbs whose education is not limited to test prep for standardized tests increased.

Fairfield University Professor and Network for Public Education Board member Yohuru Williams argues these tests, which are manifestly unfair to the neediest children, feed into racial determinism in American society while closing doors of opportunity for Black and Latino children.

More important than standardized test scores, the quality of the education that students who are educated with a Common Core curriculum have is vastly inferior to the education  that other students in affluent suburbs and independent, private schools have.  The Common Core curriculum does harm to children in their early years in school because it limits their development as thinkers and learners. Similarly, The English Common Core inhibits thoughtful reading, effective writing, and critical thinking.

The true achievement gap of being productive, analytical, competent citizens and workers is increasing. That is the injustice. That is the real harm that the Common Core curriculum is doing to children of color and children of poverty. Shame on us.