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Cut from the Corporate Kloth–Preferring KIPP Failure Over TPS Success

NOTE:  A small section of this article originally mistook the KIPP Indy school with KIPP’s school in Gary.  This has been corrected. UPDATE: As this Doug Martin story broke, word came down that a federal judge ruled in favor of the mayor’s decision to close The Project School.  Additionally, Jason Kloth is getting a pay-raise.  [...]

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Buying Mayor Ballard: More Truth About the Project School Closing

In my last piece, The Truth about the Project School Closing: The Indiana Corporate School Complex,” I noted how Indy mayor Greg Ballard was promoting a school privatizing movement full of crony capitalism, propaganda, and lots of money, one at odds with the community-led/social justice Project School. Therefore, the fact that Ballard, last year, accepted tons of [...]

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The Truth Behind The Project School Closing: The Indiana Corporate School Complex

(Below is Doug Martin’s in-depth look into the corporate forces in Indianapolis working to keep true community-led charter schools from operating.  Please sign the petition to “Save The Project School.”) On July 17, Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard announced he was closing The Project School, one of the few community-led charter schools in Indiana and the [...]

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Extreme Thinking Errors: Tough-Love Christian Boarding Schools and the Indiana Department of Child Services

In a clip from Kidnapped for Christ, Kate Logan’s movie debuting next year, a homosexual U.S. teenager named David describes how men, to “de-gay” him, woke him in the night, dragged him by his belt, and drove him to an airplane which flew him to a Dominican Republic boarding school operated by a fundamentalist religious [...]

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In the City of Corporate Love and Beyond: The Boston Consulting Group, Gates, and the Filthy Rich

When the Michelle Rhee/Betsy Devos-endorsed Pennsylvania governor, Tom Corbett, slashed $1.1 billion in educational funding over the last two years, he was merely continuing the disaster capitalism agenda against Philadelphia schools which began in 1998, when Act 46 passed.  As retaliation against Philadelphia Public Schools’ superintendent David Hornbeck for threatening to close down the entire [...]

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Teaching as CIA Cover–Gülen Charter Schools, Dan Burton, and State Secrets

The following continues Doug Martin’s look into the Gülen charter school movement, which began with Islam and the Free Market of Privatized Education: “Friending” the Gülen Charter Schools. Besides noting U.S. charter school connections to the Fethullah Gülen Movement during her testimony in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case in Ohio on August 8, 2009,* former [...]

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Islam and the Free Market of Privatized Education: “Friending” the Gülen Charter Schools

[Sit back and feast on this cornucopia of "insider-trading" in Indiana Education.  Is it just me or is there just an odd linguistic "reality" called forth in this partnership?  "Indian(a)" and "Turkey" equals an (immigrant) Pilgrim conquest of the "free market" in education?  Which group is instructing which in the use of a fish to [...]

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A Little Ditty ‘Bout Jeb and Patty: Bush Ed Lobby Director Levesque Hearts Tony Bennett

Editor’s note–this is especially compelling coming on the heels of the I-Read 3 results (see the last “success” listed for TB below). FROM: Doug Martin TO: Indiana Select Commission on Education Dear Indiana Select Commission on Education: A recently leaked email details how Jeb Bush advisor Patricia Levesque is begging her friends and fellow Bush [...]

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Libertarian Charter School Indianapolis

Mayor Bart Peterson of Indianapolis

NOTE: This is Doug Martin’s follow-up investigation into Indianapolis charter schools.  For background on this story, please see his “Warren Buffett and Corporate School Reformers to Gentrify/Charterize Indianapolis and Other Cities.” If anyone has any inside information on Challenge Foundation Academy Indy or the Paramount  School of Excellence, briefly mentioned below, please leave comments at the [...]

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Corporate Foxes in the IN DOE Henhouse: The Chain School Gospel of Jeb Bush, Jon Hage and WalMart

When the Indiana Charter School Board recently approved two new Charter Schools USA schools to open in Indianapolis, the corporate school honeymoon was on. The East Indianapolis Charter Academy and the South Indianapolis Charter Academy, Charter Schools USA claimed, would be “feeder schools” for students to eventually enter the three other Indiana public schools the [...]

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The Chaos of Monoculture

I hope you had a nice Father’s Day. Mine was blessed with the gift of multiple cheeses…what more can you [...]

The Custom House: Louis Agassiz with Christoph Irmscher

Episode 2 is now available for download: Agassiz, Inc. Please share far and wide, early and often. Thanks! This week [...]

The Errant Goes Audible: The Custom House on WFHB

I am hosting a radio show and podcast on WFHB, community radio, in Bloomington, IN, called The Custom House that [...]

Who Runs the Indianapolis Public Schools?

Who runs our IPS? “The crisis is not about education at all. It’s about power.” ~ James BaldwinOverview:Traditionally, local school [...]

What is Learning?

Question: Define the purpose of guttering on a house. Answer: Choose the response that represents your thinking. a. to catch [...]

The Great Lawsuit (Audio)

This is the essay that led to Fuller’s longer treatment on the Rights of Women titled Woman in the 19th Century. [...]