The indictment of Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.) for trying to force a district attorney charged with drinking and driving out of office is illustrative here. A district attorney who drinks and drives shouldn't be allowed to keep that job, given how often a district attorney prosecutes drunk drivers. And it's rich to see a prosecutor charge a governor with "coercion" for threatening funding if a DA embroiled in a scandal wouldn't resign, when prosecutors coerce defendants into plea deals all the time. Is Perry enjoying widespread support for trying to force a DA that damaged her reputation out of office? Of course not, the DA is a Democrat so a significant amount of Democrats will back her. Her job is to monitor public integrity. It would seem her job should obligate her to resign after being charged with drunk driving. But prosecutors and cops will act in their own self-interest, especially when their jobs are on the line. And so bad actors are incentivized to help each other. Add partisan tribalism into the mix, and you have a recipe for a big old heap of nothing else happening.
Headline: Sports are saved! (for now?)
by Lucy Newman, high school junior, Obama Academy
Good news, Pittsburgh. You may remember the Eagle and the Post-Gazette reporting that Superintendent Linda Lane proposed in her State of the District to cut the sports program here at the Pittsburgh Public Schools. This could include middle school swimming, volleyball, and wrestling; high school tennis, swimming, and golf; and all intramural sports. Dr. Lane recently announced that the Administration and School Board do not plan to make any cuts to PPS sports for next year.“There will be no changes for the 2014-15 school year,” declares Ebony Pugh, the PPS Public Information Officer.
Okay, here’s the bad news, as you might have guessed: PPS sports are still on the chopping block for the 2015-2016 school year. So, sophomore swimmers, you may or may not have a team your senior year.
Yet if we students work together with teachers, the Board, and the Administration on this issue, it is possible to find a solution that solves the financial problems related to PPS athletics while keeping a strong sports program available to students.
The move to defer any decision surrounding sports cuts to a later date is not altogether surprising. As the Post-Gazette points out, Dr. Lane had never said when the cuts would come into effect. “We’re not planning to rush through a process to make a decision,” Dr. Lane says, as quoted in the Post-Gazette.
“The District needs to allow for more [time] to engage the Board and Community around any decisions related to athletics,” Ms. Pugh explains. “ Since we are required to make commitments to WPIAL related to next year’s season it was decided to delay any athletic related decisions. We will be engaging the Board and community over the coming months related to recommendations to the Whole Child, Whole Community plan.”
The plan to which Ms. Pugh is referring is called Whole Child, Whole Community: Building a Bridge to the Pittsburgh Promise. Many of the ideas in Whole Child, Whole Community are also discussed in Dr. Lane’s State of the District address. Both can be found on the PPS website. The plan addresses the District’s vision for the future of PPS. Due the district’s financial challenges, a large portion of the document is dedicated to “living within our means.” To do this, the district is considering both increasing revenue and decreasing expenditures.
Cutting the amount of money dedicated to sports is one of the many cost-cutting measures presented in Whole Child, Whole Community. The document presents two options as to how to do this. The first option would reduce the budgetary allocations to be more in line with actual spending, according to Ms. Pugh. The Whole Child, Whole Community document explains that “By reducing the athletics budget for purchased services, which includes funds used to pay sports officials, transport students to competitions and purchase uniforms and equipment, we could reduce spending by up to $400,000 per year. This change is not expected to have a significant impact on students, as the department has not been spending the full budgeted amount in this area.”
The second option would save more money, but would have a much more severe impact on services available. “Eliminating intramural sports; middle school volleyball, swimming and wrestling; and high school golf, swimming and tennis would reduce spending by an additional $600,000 per year,” according to Whole Child, Whole Community.
However, these are not the only two options. Mark Rauterkus, the Obama Boys swim coach, hopes that the district will be open to changes to its sports program. He writes in a detailed position paper several suggestions for ways in which PPS could possibly improve its sports program. Mr. Rauterkus advocates for expanding PPS sports offerings, by implementing a program called PPS H2O. This program could be financially self-sustaining, Mr. Rauterkus believes, because it could raise revenue through community lessons and events. With PPS H2O, the Pittsburgh Public Schools could have water polo, uderwater hockey, kayaking, triathalons, and more, as well as swimming. Further, components of the program would be available to people of all ages.
The delay in making a decision on sports cuts allows students and the community more time to participate in the decision-making process. Any changes will be voted on by the School Board, and there will be multiple opportunities for students and community members to have a say before they vote. Possibilities for community engagement are posted on the district’s website, Facebook, and Twitter. “We’ve got to keep asking a lot of questions,” says Mr. Rauterkus. Only by doing so can we influence the decision-making process to encompass our needs as students.
So, email your Board representative. Speak at a Board meeting. The district’s financial problems can be solved. We need to make sure that we don’t sacrifice too much of what makes our district great in the process.
The Eagle |
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One problem of significant consequence with the current teacher evaluation system is how difficult it is to write an article on the subject. Teachers are afraid. Several of the teachers whose opinions I asked about refused to comment on the evaluation systems, or told me their opinions “off the record.” Their jobs are at stake, and they believed that saying the wrong thing in print could get them in trouble. And just as important as the jobs of these teachers, the education of Pittsburgh’s students is also on the line. An education system in which a few words that may not sound politically correct could get a high-quality teacher in big trouble is compromising the future of its students.
It is always important to ensure that teachers are effective. It is as important to teachers and students, all of whom are directly involved in the process of learning, that teaching is effective, as it is to administrators looking at the test scores and the bottom line. According to Ms. Papale, Pittsburgh Obama’s ninth and eleventh grade English teacher, “We want all of our colleagues to be doing their share. It makes it easier on us.” But there are sometimes a few teachers who cannot maintain sufficient control of their classroom, who do not seem to be invested in instilling their knowledge on the youth in their class, or who simply do not seem to understand what they are teaching. This is where teacher evaluation comes in. Similar to standardized tests for students, there are several tools that the Pittsburgh Public Schools district is currently using to evaluate its teachers. Value-Added Measures, commonly abbreviated as VAM, is one such method. VAM attempts to measure the academic growth of students that can be attributed to a particular teacher. This is done by examining how students standardized test scores have improved, and by comparing the students’ test scores to those of other students. The Pittsburgh Public Schools are also currently implementing student and principal evaluations of teachers. The students of at least one class taught by each teacher evaluate that teacher using a survey called Tripod, which contains 89 questions relating to the teacher and the class. The principals at each school also rate the teachers there. All of the above factors are combined into a composite score that affect whether the teacher is in line to be laid off, to be put on an improvement plan, or will get pay raises and bonuses. The Pittsburgh Public Schools recently got a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $40 million in order to improve the quality of teachers. The system that the Gates Foundation has pushed to be implemented at PPS is based on the system that Bill Gates had used – and recently abandoned – at Microsoft. Perhaps the worst part of the system is that it forces a certain percentage of employees to be placed into each of several categories. This means that it forces some teachers to fail each year. But it is unrealistic to say that no matter how good a school is some teachers have to fail. If the principal hired only the best applicants in the first place, as he would logically attempt to do, there may be no need for anyone to fail. The system fosters unhealthy competition among colleagues, and causes teachers an unnecessary amount of anxiety. Starting this year, 50 % of the teacher evaluation is based on an administrator’s classroom observation. The other 50 % is comprised of student outcomes. The “student outcome” category can be divided further to say that VAM for a specific teacher counts for 30 % of that teacher’s score, Tripod surveys for 15 %, and VAM for a school in general for 5 %. This information was obtained from a publication called “Education Committee Update: Empowering Effective Teachers,” published in January 2013. The publication uses idealistic and vague language, saying for example that the district’s goals are to “accelerate student achievement” and to “become a district of first choice.” Its methods for doing this are to instate a strict high-stakes teacher evaluation system that may not effectively distinguish good teachers from bad. Evaluating a teacher is not easy to do. PPS is trying to make the system more quantitative, but this does not always mean that it is more objective. “There are 1,000 different ways to be a good teacher and 10,000 different ways to be a bad teacher… And just because you can’t punch the boxes doesn’t mean you’re a bad teacher” says Mr. Boyce, a teacher at the Pittsburgh Gifted Center. A good teacher will instill knowledge in his or her students. Beyond that, there are many options and many different ways to be a good teacher. Further, some of the things that teachers give their students are difficult to quantify. As summarized by Mark Rauterkus, a PPS father, the best thing a teacher can do is teach students “a thirst for knowledge and how to discover things for themselves. If a teacher teaches a student a love of learning in a subject, that’s fantastic.” Mr. Dumbroski teaches eighth grade English at Obama, and is also involved in the teacher evaluation process as an administrator. According to him, a good teacher is “somebody who’d do whatever is humanly possible to get the most out of every single student with whom they come into contact.” For Mr. Dumbroski, a good teacher teaches more than academic lessons; he can teach social skills and life lessons as well. “Here’s a hint for how to be a good teacher,” Mr. Dumbroski says, “Remember that students are people, too.” In his classroom, Mr. Dumbroski attempts to connect with and teach each and every one of his students. Mr. Kocur, Obama’s tenth grade English teacher, agrees. “First and foremost, a good teacher needs to be able to communicate with a variety of different kids.” It is important to Mr. Kocur that teachers have empathy. “Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,’” Mr. Kocur says, quoting leadership expert John C. Maxwell. To Ms. Hetrick, the most important quality of a teacher is “passion.” This includes passion for the content being taught, as well as passion for the process of teaching. It is necessary for a teacher to care passionately about his or her students in order to instill in them a passion for learning. Yet whether a teacher makes a student want to learn, connects and empathizes with his students, cares about his students as individuals, or has passion is difficult to measure on any sort of evaluation. Also, a teacher who is effective for one group of students may be ineffective for others, and different students show improvements at different rates. With increasing class sizes, it is becoming more and more difficult for teachers to teach to the individual students in their classes. Further, class sizes are being increased and “mainstream” level classes have been abolished. This has resulted in students of ever more varying abilities being placed in the same class. The teacher’s job is becoming more and more challenging. The current default model for education at PPS is one in which students have minimal choice in their classes, and in which teachers have minimal choice in what is taught. Curricula are set by the district, and each student has to take a certain set of classes with few possible variations. Teachers have to cover a specified curriculum on which the students will be tested at the end of the year as mandated by the district. In a system in which neither the teacher nor the students have choice over what is taught, some of the results being evaluated may not be attributable to the teacher. However, there are alternatives to the current model. For example, the Pittsburgh Gifted Center is based on a different model. There, teachers design their own curricula so they are able to teach at a pace that they feel best fits the needs of the class. Additionally, students can choose the courses they want to take so they are often more motivated to participate in the classes in which they are enrolled. The classroom observation component, half of teachers’ composite scores is being shifted to a system called the Research-based Inclusive System of Evaluation, or RISE, in which teachers are rated in categories such as planning, instruction, and leadership on a scale of one to four based on their performance. “I actually think the RISE components do a pretty good job of identifying everything we’re looking for,” says Ms. Hetrick, Obama’s ceramics and IBDP visual arts teacher. The system is numerical and more standardized than previously used systems in which principal evaluations were based on value judgments. When Ms. Hetrick looks at the criteria, she sees the “distinguished” category as something she wants to work towards, and appreciates that the RISE rubric’s different levels seem to make sense. Mr. Boyce points out the human factor that goes into the RISE system. “If you want to make me look like a good teacher you can make me look like a good teacher. If you want to make me look like a bad teacher, you can do that, too. I guess I kind of like the old go-or-no-go thing because I was in the military. RISE is just a fancy way of doing the same thing.” It is true that even in the RISE system, a principal has a lot of sway. Pittsburgh Obama is fortunate to have a principal, Dr. Walters, who is a strong and fair leader. Yet principals like Dr. Walters are few and far between. One teacher from another school, who would like to remain unnamed, reports that his personal differences with his principal got in the way of her objectivity and brought down his rating. She rated him as “basic” in just enough categories that he would fail his RISE evaluation, despite the fact that his VAM scores were above the school’s average. “You can say its objective until you’re blue in the face,” agrees Mr. Kocur. “But it still comes down to an administrator walking in and saying what he thinks of you.” The VAM system, comprising 30 % of teacher scores, seems mathematically pure at first glance, but does not necessarily treat all teachers fairly. Mr. Boyce believes that the sample of students in one classroom is not big enough. “They take a sample size of 30 students and apply that to 10,000. Because really, they’re using my students to say how I’d perform across the board. And that’s not realistic. In research science, a sample size of 30 typically means nothing but some preliminary results that could lead to further research.” While the VAM system assumes that students are randomly assigned to teachers, this is rarely the case. Students can sometimes, but not always, choose their schools and classes. Differences in students from class to class greatly affect how the scores will turn out here. Mr. Boyce’s classes at the Gifted Center are more likely to perform well because many of them chose to be in his class. Further, a study by the Gates Foundation has shown that VAM is more applicable to math than it is to language subjects. Children learn language from a variety of sources, including family and peers as well as school, while they learn math primarily from their teachers. Yet in the Gates Foundation model, VAM is being used across the board in both math and language subjects. However, VAM is not being used in all subjects. It is used in the subjects for which there are standardized tests: english, math, and some sciences and social studies classes. Teachers for other subjects get a different type of score, called a 3f, which shows student growth based on criteria that the teacher decides at the outset. While it is unfair to grade different teachers on different standards, it is also unfair to the students to create standardized tests in even more subjects simply as a way to grade the teachers. Ms. Berry, a middle school math teacher at Obama who is involved in the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and who is a member of the committee that decides on evaluation criteria, says that “they shouldn’t test kids in every subject, because then it’s just a test for the teacher. I think it’s just mean to kids, the amount of testing they do…. Some things you should learn just because they are beautiful to learn.” Student surveys, the Tripod questionnaires, comprise 15 % of teachers’ scores in the new system. According to Mr. Boyce, to be a good teacher “you teach for a long time, and you don’t repeat the things that don’t work. You do repeat the things that do work, and you throw something new in there every once in a while.” Mr. Boyce believes that the student Tripod surveys are helpful in this way. They allow him and other teachers to recognize their weaknesses and find things that they can improve on. The Tripods allow him to better understand how his students feel about him, to fix misconceptions, and to work on problems. Student feedback is useful if it can improve a teacher’s practices without putting too much at stake. There are, however, some problems with high-stakes student surveys such as Tripod. “I don’t like some of the questions on Tripod,” explains Mr. Schaefer, a history teacher at Obama. Of the eighty-nine questions on the Tripod survey, many depend on factors that are not within the teacher’s control. It is a joke among students and teachers at Obama and other PPS schools that one of the questions is whether the class “feels like a big, happy family.” In fact, many students do not take the survey seriously in general. Some are fatigued by the length of the questionnaire and the fact that many questions are repetitive (evidently in order to ensure fairness), while others allow their personal feelings about a teacher to taint the results. Yet it is not a joke that such subjective questions are putting teachers’ jobs and student education on the line. It should not be expected at a middle school or high school level that the class “feels like a big, happy family,” and whether it does or doesn’t likely depends more on the students than the teacher. Mr. Dumbroski believes that student feedback is useful, but that the Tripod survey does not go about collecting feedback the right way. Instead, he has his students write down on note cards at the end of each grading period what they feel he did right and what they would want him to work on. One suggestion that he received in this way was to give the students more choice; in response, he began to allow students to propose their own ideas for projects, rather than always choosing from a list of suggestions. Also, some students would write on the note cards that the pace of the class was too fast, while others would write that it was too slow. As a result, Mr. Dumbroski has begun to give more individual attention to students in his class. Mr. Dumbroski feels that this note card system lets him understand what is most important to his students more effectively than the Tripod does. Colleges and universities are beginning to count student evaluation of teachers for less and less. According to Mr. Boyce, studies have begun to discredit such evaluations. “This is the exact system that colleges and universities are getting away from,” says Mr. Boyce. “Statistically, kids who perceive their grades as being good in a class are more likely to rate their teachers higher. Teachers can then manipulate the system by inflating grades.” So it is questionable whether a system that is being abandoned at the college and university level should be taken up and implemented for middle and high schools. The last 5 % of teachers’ scores is based on the building’s VAM scores in general. This is entirely illogical, as the teacher has little or no influence on how students perform in a class down the hall. VAM’s inability to control for variables is magnified when it is applied to classes that a teacher doesn’t even teach. As the system is currently set up, the above factors will be tallied up and turned into a score out of 300. If a teacher gets less than 140 points, that teacher is considered failing and put on an improvement plan. If he or she does not improve sufficiently within two years, the teacher will be fired. Teachers were given scores last year, although the scores will not count as grounds for being fired until after this year. Last year nine percent of teachers were placed in the lowest category. Nationally, less than one percent of teachers are failed, but teachers in other districts are graded with different standards. If last year’s results are any predictor of this year’s, Pittsburgh’s teachers will be failed ten times more than the national average. The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, Pittsburgh’s teacher union, believes that the 140-point cut-off is far too high. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Superintendent Lane both disagree. The Gates Foundation has been hinting at withdrawing the remaining $15 million of the $40 million grant that it awarded to Pittsburgh Public if the district does not comply with the 140-point standard. “We have not made any decisions about the future of the grant, but we are continuing to watch this very carefully,” reports Vicki Phillips, the director of College-Ready Education at the Gates Foundation. This puts the pressure on the district and Dr. Lane to go along with the Gates Foundation’s strict cut-off. Dr. Lane says, “I’m still a firm believer that there is a correlation between effective teaching and student learning outcomes.” To back this up, she cites a study that concludes it is twice as likely for students who show significant improvement to have teachers in the top category. What she does not mention is that sometimes there are students who show improvement under “failing” teachers or who show less improvement under top-rated teachers. The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and Dr. Lane are currently at odds over the issue of teacher evaluation. “I thought we were partners in reform, but the partnership [with the union] has been rocky, let’s just say that,” Dr. Lane says. While both agree that effective teaching is important, they have strong differences when it comes to how to implement teacher-evaluation reform. Ms. Berry acknowledges that not all teachers are good teachers. To be a good teacher, it is necessary to have coherent lessons, a good relationship with students, and a desire to work. “It has a lot to do with personality,” she says. Implementing any plan to improve failing teachers is difficult, because some people do not have the personality for it. “It does take a long time,” Ms. Berry says, “to improve a poor teacher. I don’t know how you’d set it [an improvement plan] up so that it’d be fair to teachers and students.” On the one hand no one wants to fire a teacher who may be simply misunderstood, but on the other hand the students and the whole system suffer under poor teachers. To Mr. Dumbroski, the problem is that “No matter what, any type of evaluation tool, there’s going to be something wrong with it.” No matter how perfect the RISE criteria can be, the people who are checking the boxes are not perfect. No matter how many numbers and mathematical equations are used to compute RISE, VAM, and Tripod scores, the result is variable and subjective. There is a certain amount of bias that is impossible to remove.
To Mr. Kocur, teachers are not the problem in the first place. “At some point, people should stop being politically correct and put the blame where it is due. Behind nearly every good student, there is a supportive parent, and vice versa.” Teachers are held responsible by national, state, and local governments (including the school board), by the media, and by philanthropic organizations like the Gates Foundation for failures in student education. But according to Mr. Kocur, students should be learning from their parents before they can talk. Children who have parents who read to them, who help them with homework, and who model and encourage a positive attitude towards learning, are more likely to succeed in school than those who do not. This is as important as teachers are to student education, yet it is rarely considered in government laws and plans, by the media, or by philanthropic organizations who want to donate to education.
The way in which teacher evaluation tools should be utilized is debatable. While some of the measures that PPS is taking are more legitimate than others, it is clear that there are many problems with the current system. The PPS students and teachers are hoping that Superintendent Lane, the school board, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will consider how difficult it is to rank teachers by how well they teach, before making scores so critical to a teacher’s future.
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Despite the clamor about low teacher pay in America, the average teacher in a taxpayer-supported public school earns more in base salary alone — with summers off — than the median U.S. household earns in an entire year.
According to a new report from the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the average base salary for a full-time public school teacher in the 2011-2012 school year was $53,100.
The Census Bureau estimated that the median household income in the United States was $50,054 in 2011, the latest year for which figures are available.
The income earned by public school teachers is also significantly higher than the base salary of the average private school teacher, $40,200 a year, according to the NCES.
Many public school teachers earn more than their base salary. For example, 41.8 percent of teachers receive additional income to work in extracurricular activities in the same school system; 4 percent earn additional compensation based on students' performance; and 7.3 percent receive income from other school-system sources, such as state supplements.
On top of that, 16.5 percent of public school teachers have another job outside the school system.
When all sources of income are included, the average public school teacher earned $55,100 in the school year studied.
Teachers at public high schools earned even more: $57,700 in 2011-2012, and teachers at schools with at least 1,000 students made $59,100.
In contrast, teachers at private elementary schools earned just $38,400 that year, and those who work in a community classified as a "town" earned only $31,200.
Footnote: The NCES figures for public school teachers do not include their often generous retirement pensions.
Lesson #1: Freelancing and the Law
with Eric Davis of Elliot & Davis, PC
Thursday, April 25th, 6:30 PM—8 PM
Assemble, 5125 Penn Avenue
You’re up and running. Projects are coming in and clients are spreading the word about your good work. There’s not much time for sorting through legal mumbo-jumbo. Does it matter anyway?
Yes. Pittsburgh attorney Eric Davis has worked with start-ups, entrepreneurs, creatives and social businesses for much of his career. He’s seen it all. Let Eric answer your legal questions: incorporation, contracts, and the ins and outs of small-claims court are some of the lions that will be tamed at our first Lesson from the 6% Place on April 25th.
No RSVP is required and seating at Assemble will be first-come, first-served.
Lessons from the 6% Place is a free series that aims to make the business part of running one’s own creative business less scary with spirited workshops led by subject experts with an affinity for the creative community.
Many citizens gave great effort to save Schenley's building as an educational asset for city students. This was a noble fight. The public district used all its might and loads of misinformation to insure its eventual liquidation.
Now, I fear, it is safe to say that the only things left to do is watch, wait, wag fingers and say, "We told you so."
The deed to the building is almost gone from the clutches of its public trustees.
Fingers wag at Mark Roosevelt, Patrick Dowd (former PPS board member who greased the pathway to closing the school) and all other politicians who did nothing, little or mowed down the grass-roots opposition.
Eventually the building will be filled with student housing.
Perhaps there will be a tweet or media story about the first resident to the Schenley Dorm who also uses some Pittsburgh Promise funds to pay for college. Perhaps the ownership of the building will flip from PMC. Perhaps historic tax credits will come too -- or a TIF like "development deal" tied to another project bundled with this rehab. Perhaps the union workers will get an elevator job and taxpayers get the shaft.
Let's live to fight another day.
Sold!
Wag on the ready.
Free Program Series at the Mt. Lebanon Library
A facilitated program series planned and moderated by John Hemington, on The History and Impact of Financial Power –1868 to 2008, will be held at the Mt. Lebanon Library. It will examine, evaluate and draw conclusions from the historical, political and economic roots of both the Great Depression and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 (GFC). We will try to determine whether the same processes, problems and ideas which led to the Great Depression are related to the events which triggered the GFC. We will also critique the contribution of mainstream economic ideas, models and policies and whether they may have contributed to the ongoing turmoil in the world’s economies today and what this bodes for the future?
The group will meet twice a month to discuss readings from the three books and the cumulative issues raised by these readings. The program will last for a year, beginning on the first Tuesday of March, the 5th, from 7:00 p.m. until 8:45 p.m. and subsequent 1st Tuesdays (except for July which will be the 9th). The 2nd monthly meeting day will be determined at the initial meeting. The program is free but will involve a commitment of time and a willingness to read the three books over the course of the year – listed below – on which the program is based. Clearly, not everyone will be able to attend every session, but a good faith effort should be made to attend as many as possible and to read the material assigned.
Even for those with a good background in history this should be a fresh and revealing experience. Our goal is to demonstrate conclusively that there is not just one history connecting events over time, but perhaps as many different histories as there are historians; and that critical study and evaluation is required to come to meaningful conclusions. Participants will be encouraged to carefully evaluate the facts behind issues before arriving at judgments about the nature of current events. There is no interest in furthering any particular political agenda, view or ideology in this program, therefore, three non-mainstream – but highly credible – authors have been selected for the core reading material. Because the material is primarily historical and minimally technical any reasonable literate individual should be able to participate fully. The discussions will be moderated to minimize argumentative speeches and debates. The idea is for conclusions to be focused on the factual substance covered in the materials – not on personal political or cultural prejudices. An extensive list of optional readings will be provided.
Carroll Quigley, whose book Tragedy and Hope is central to this project, is one of the very few historians whose studies focused on the activities and operations of the world’s “power elite” in the twentieth century and is reputed to have been the only historian ever given unfettered access to the Archives of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller Archives. Prior to his death in 1977 Quigley taught at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where one of his students was Bill Clinton. Earlier in his career he taught at both Princeton and Harvard.
Reading Material
Tragedy and Hope – A History of the World in Our Time (1966), by Carroll Quigley (through page 1083)
The Gods of Money – Wall Street and the Death of the American Century (2009), by F. William Engdahl
Debunking Economics – The Naked Emperor Dethroned (Revised Edition, 2011), by Prof. Steve Keen
If Interested Contact John Hemington at: jehemington -at- verizon -dot- net or show up at the initial meeting.
“We were taught by Dr. Quigley that mankind's greatest tragedies were the consequence of man’s adherence to mistaken or outmoded ideas. The most pernicious of these false ideas are the belief in the perfection of knowledge and that the truth is ours to possess. The belief in the infallibility of human knowledge destroyed classical civilization and threatens to destroy our own. It was faith in the false god of perfect knowledge that led to the silencing of Galileo by the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror in France, the slaughter of a whole generation at the River Somme and the burning of Wilhelm Reich’s books by the U.S. government. It was this same sort of intellectual intransigence that deluded our leaders into believing that strategic bombing could crush the Vietnamese Revolution and has led our civilization closer and closer to ecological disaster.”
William Erickson (Georgetown SFS ‘75)
Dear Open Debates Supporters,
We have some exciting news. In direct response to an email and letter-writing campaign from our allies and supporters, three of the ten corporations that sponsor the Commission on Presidential Debates have withdrawn their sponsorship! Over the past week, advertising agency BBH New York, nonprofit women’s group YWCA and tech giant Philips North America have withdrawn their sponsorship of the Commission. YWCA explained its decision: “As a nonpartisan organization dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all, we have decided to withdraw our sponsorship effective immediately.”
Here is a good article on the events: http://t.co/1kBxVvhT
We want to keep the heat on and persuade the remaining seven sponsors to withdraw their support of their Commission. Please contact the following seven companies and foundations at the listed address and express your desire for them to withdraw sponsorship. Note that Anheuser-Busch remains, by far, the largest sponsor of the Commission on Presidential Debates; these debates are largely brought to you by Bud.
Crowell & Moring LLP
At Crowell – Moring LLC, the Chairman is Kent A. Gardiner and his email is
kgardiner@crowell.com
Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
One Busch Place
St. Louis, MO 63118
800-342-5283
E-mail Contact Form: http://contactus.anheuser-busch.com/Contactus/email.asp
Southwest Airlines
P.O. Box 36647-1CR
Dallas, Texas 75235
https://www.southwest.com/contact-us/contact-us.html
The Howard G. Buffet Foundation
158 W Prairie Ave, Suite 107
Decatur, IL 62523-1442
Also:
121 S 51st St
Omaha, NE 68132
402-556-6641
Sheldon S. Cohen, Esq.
Farr, Miller & Washington
1020 19th Street, NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
800-390-3277
202-530-5600
202-530-5508 Fax
Email: sscohen@farrmiller.com
International Bottled Water Association
1700 Diagonal Road
Suite 650
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-683-5213
703-683-4074 Fax
Email: ibwainfo@bottledwater.org
800-WATER-11 (Information Hotline)
http://bottledwater.org
The Kovler Fund
aka Marjorie Kovler Research Fellowship
c/o John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
Columbia Point
Boston, MA 02125
617-514-1624
617-514-1625 Fax
Email: kennedy.library@nara.gov
Thank you for your support!
- Open Debates Team
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