Silicon Valley Leads Major Innovations & Curriculum Development In America's Public Schools

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, is giving middle school principals in San Francisco public schools $100,000 “innovation grants” with the challenge to behave more like start-up founders and less like bureaucrats.

In Maryland, Texas, Virginia and other states, Netflix’s chief, Reed Hastings, promotes a popular math-teaching program where Netflix-like algorithms determine which lessons students see.

And in more than 100 schools nationwide, Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, is testing a really big idea: software that puts children in charge of their own learning, recasting their teachers as support system facilitators and mentors.

"In the space of just a few years, technology giants have begun remaking the very nature of schooling on a vast scale, using some of the same techniques that have made their companies linchpins of the American economy, " writes The New York Times. Through their philanthropy, they are influencing the subjects that schools teach, the classroom tools that teachers choose and fundamental approaches to learning.

The tech industry is also leading the way expressing their upset that Donald Trump withdrew America from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Given the right-wing commitment to pull our children back to the Stone Age, as the test scores of America's kids fall lower and lower, tech giants are focused on creating a 21st century workforce. There are understandable debates about who's in charge among sectors of parents who believe they should determine their child's curriculum. The problem with this thesis is that as a civic society, America has a vested interest in an educated workforce. If they learn about science and evolution in the process, that is what America needs. ~ Anne

ArtNet Interviews New York Philanthropist Agnes Gund, Founder of Studio in a School

artnet News' Andrew Goldstein introduces us to Agnes Gund, New York's 'renowned philanthropist' who brings art and money together for progressive causes. As a beloved figure in New York, Gund attained a special cachet joining Patti Smith, Serena Williams, Tavi Gevinson and more for the 2016 Pirelli calendar, lensed by Annie Leibovitz. . 

The daughter of an Ohio banking magnate, Gund has expressed guilt that she was given so much more in birth than others. Her fervor for philanthropy saw her on the boards of some 20 charitable and cultural organization as of a few years ago.

Gund is especially proud of her project Studio in a School, the nonprofit program founded in 1977 to bring art lessons, taught by real working artists, to New York City’s public schools. Forty years later, Studio in a School has reached nearly one million children in New York alone, with 90 percent of its activities benefiting students from lower-income families.

Agnes Gund and Sadie Rain Hope-Gund by Annie Leibovitz for Pirelli Calendar 2016.

Cyndi Lauper Talks Hillary With Rolling Stone Country

Cyndi Lauper didn't set out to endorse Hillary Clinton during an interview with Rolling Stone Country on Monday. Lauper's country album, 'Detour', goes live on May 6th with songs made famous by Patsy Cline and Ray Price, plus guest appearances by Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Jewel and Alison Krauss. 

"She's the person who can actually do the job," Lauper says. "She can work with these guys on both sides. . . because we've already seen the government shut down and we've already seen the people who moan about the people, 'We care about the people!' And that's why you shut the government down?"
 

Clinton was the only candidate Lauper mentioned, talking about the current presidential campaign, although she did mention Hitler and his Nazi party. Voting is a critical issue to Lauper, who co-founded the True Colors Fund in 2008 to end homelessness among LGBT youth.

Snoop Dogg Embraces Female Perspective

Lauper joins rapper Snoop Dogg, another Hillary Clinton supporter, who endorsed her almost a year ago with a firm embrace of Hillary's being a woman. "I'd say that I would love to see a woman in office because I feel like we're at that stage in life to where we need a perspective other than the male's train of thought." The former libertarian continued, "Just to have a woman speaking from a global perspective as far as representing America, I'd love to see that," he said on Bravo's 'Watch What Happens Live.'

Hillary Smiles on 'Broad City'. Scowls at Joe Scarborough

Check out the trailer from Hillary's 'Broad City' appearance Wednesday night and how the penis pundits led by Joe Scarborough unleashed womanly outrage over his critique of Hillary Clinton's voice.  We track all the Hillary Clinton news in her own channel.