Mark Naison has written a passionate plea: It is time to start suing to stop the harm inflicted on children, teachers and schools.
The political parties have abandoned them and use well-honed PR rhetoric to paint abandonment as “reform.”
The media swallow the rhetoric.
The foundations have an open wallet for those who are destroying public education.
The Republicans want to intensify the harm. Arne Duncan boasts of bipartisanship with a party that hates public education.
Naison says it is time to go to the courts to prevent further damage to America’s children and its education system.
Any public interest law firms listening? ACLU? Anyone?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You said it yourself – the foundations have an open wallet. It’s quite daunting to go up against that. I have great respect for the ACLU and they are doing a lot of valuable work, but they are stretched rather thin right now and they, like anyone else who might take this on, are dependent largely on contributions from ordinary people, which such people are seeing less and less in their take home pay that they might be inclined to give. Not to mention that they have direct competition from the foundations who have convinced many of those ordinary people that they (the foundations) better represent children’s educational needs.
The system is broken from the top down and I sure don’t know how to fix it. Lawsuits may be a good start, but I’m afraid nothing short of open rebellion is going to change the course this country is on.
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“Protecting children from abusive testing is the REAL civil rights cause of our time.”
The anti-testing folks need to come up with a real client (with standing to sue) in a favorable state. All this will be quite a stretch–basically states (if they so choose) can compel children to attend deadly boring schools where they will be paddled for misbehavior. If there are laws in the state being ignored by test-obsessed districts, then courts might order that corrected.
It would be easier to impeach President Obama for fabricating human rights status to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. (This won’t happen either, since Democrats won’t support impeachment and Republicans don’t support the UN’s review process.)
Regarding the ACLU, prior to Obama’s election, they called US compliance efforts a human rights whitewash. Also, in Reed, the ACLU challenged LIFO/bumping in union contracts for causing staff churn in high poverty schools chosen by teachers as a last choice.
Making a false campaign statement is illegal in Ohio–but this doesn’t quite meet the test: “Under President Obama: Julia takes the SAT and is on track to start her college applications. Her high school is part of the Race to the Top program, implemented by President Obama. Their new college- and career-ready standards mean Julia can take the classes she needs to do well. … The public schools in their neighborhood have better facilities and great teachers because of President Obama’s investments in education and programs like Race to the Top.”
All in all, the easier case is probably that Democrats and teachers’ unions collude to obstruct implementation of US civil rights and treaty obligations. Teachers might consider encouraging their unions to be more proactive in this regard (and less vulnerable to embarrassing litigation).
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Anthony Cody, in exchanging ideas with the Gates Foundation recently, mentioned “repairing the damage” already done by the edreform movement. I think it is a direction to pursue. Wish I was a lawyer.
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What about filing a lawsuit against DoE for violating ESEA legislation by providing waivers for NCLB? Isn’t it just Congress who can do that?
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Someone should do that. It’s mind boggling that a cabinet official can rewrite a law to suit his personal preferences. It is only because Duncan’s policies are so consonant with GOP ideology that he gets away with it.
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Excellent idea.
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I would almost think it would be an impeachable offense.
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How about FERPA, too? Didn’t Arne change that as well, in order to allow more folks to have access to student data?
I found this letter from the ALCU to DoE but I couldn’t locate anything about the outcome:
Click to access ACLU_Comments_on_Changes_to_the_Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act_FERPA.pdf
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I’m no lawyer but I’m also wondering about the demands in RTTT. How is it that a Cabinet member has the power to direct states to change their laws, such as by eliminating caps on charters, in order to obtain federal funds? I would think the ACLU could have a field day addressing DoE issues.
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I’d love to see something like a legal silver bullet work. But it’s hard to think of any legally enforceable right to the sort of public education in its current form. I suspect that state legislatures have the right to determine the structures and mechanisms of education.
But those determinations have to be made in accordance with the law. Given what’s happened in my state (Maine), it will likely be useful to examine “reform” efforts for evidence of corruption of state officials and legislators, and the violation of legislative procedures, by the corporations pushing for reform. This would have two benefits: (1) law suits to block implementation of bad laws, and possibly impeachment of elected officials; and (2) laying the groundwork for removing pro-reform legislators and officials from office at the next election.
We also should start our own campaigns to make sure that the “reform schools” (as I call the charters and virtual schools being shove down our throats) are subject to the following:
1) they are measured by the same scales and held to the same performance standards as the public schools (in fact, they should beat the scores of the public schools);
2) they must hire the same quality of teachers as the public schools;
3) they must accept the same students as the public schools; and
4) they must be held accountable to the state, such that any failed reform school must pay for the costs of re-introducing their students to public school and their management and shareholders can’t simply take the money and run by taking the full amount of taxpayer money and delivering cheap substandard schools.
All of these points can be supported by using the same logic of the reformers: If they claim their schools are better, then they should be able to handle the same students, using the same teachers, to deliver markedly better results. They can’t be allowed to take the public’s money, fold, and then run. If the reformers can’t accept this, then their refusal should be shouted long and loud to the public.
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Start with demanding the prosecution and/or impeachment of any public official who took campaign contributions with vendors doing business with the state and hoping to profit by garnering taxpayer dollars.
Follow the money.
As for charters, make your friends aware that they are funded with dollars that are supposed to go to your community public schools. As they grow, your community schools will be forced to lay off teachers and cut programs.
I think it is called beggar your neighbor.
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“Follow the money”
Right on!
You cannot say this enough times.
All the reform is really about money.
Privatization and profits.
Anyone familiar with the the work of Naomi Klein? The Shock Doctrine is an excellent read, and puts the whole ed mess in a larger context of “free market” reform.
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Class action lawsuits demanding restitution for the compromised, narrowed, and dumbed-down education of America’s schoolchildren. Class action lawsuits demanding restitution for teaching careers ruined, shortened, and rendered meaningless. Plaintiffs are k-12 schoolchildren, their parents, and their teachers, Defendants, well, there are plenty to choose from, including dozens of astroturf reform organizations and a couple of really big corporations. OK to dream, right? 🙂
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How about teachers suing over our evaluations?
Down here in GA we just drank the RTTT kool aid, and our evaluations are now 1/3 based on student test scores. But no one seems to be able to tell us the formula they intend to use, or if that formula will be the same for all teachers.
What score does little Johnny need to make so I can keep my job?
Does it matter if little Johnny comes in the middle of the year? Does it matter if little Juan speaks no English?
Are all the targets the same?
No one knows. (Or, no one is willing to tell us).
It seems teachers should know what targets we are shooting for, does it not?
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There are already lawsuits involving VAM – search for Beardsley and HISD – you probably can find it.
The HISD was ahead of the game and began implementing VAM in teacher evaluations some years ago. These lawsuits stem from that. It makes for an interesting read, but I have not heard the results.
VAM will surely bring lawsuits – the question is when. It will take a group of teachers being “hurt” before there can be a large-scale lawsuit. This could become a civil rights issue if minority teachers in urban areas are fired disproportionally, which is a possibility as children in those schools conceivably will not ‘grow’ the same as the suburban kids.
But for teachers to sue, they need to get fired first.
I believe they would have a case.
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Beardsley made a video about VAM sham in HISD and I will post it in a few days.
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The real Sham is that Sanders and SAS will not be more straightforward about their methodology. I hope something is done about that.
The only good example of their method is in Milman’s Grading Schools and Grading Teachers, but they will not release data, at least that I know of, showing the stability of teacher ratings. I also am not sure if the studies they purport to have tested EVAAS stem from real data or simulated data. SAS’s website lists the independent studies that supposedly testes the stability of the system.
I don’t like theories in science that are derived exclusively from simulations.
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I actually wrote to the ACLU about two years ago, asking them to investigate what I felt was an unequal education system based on test scores. I detailed the narrowing of the curriculum, the lack of field trips, etc. I never received a response.
Teachers should file lawsuits, parents should file lawsuits and students should file lawsuits. Maybe it will make others sit up and take notice.
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Doesn’t anyone know a friendly, neighborhood, labor lawyer? We’re beginning to sound a little like some kids in entitled communities. If you look at them crooked, their knee-jerk reaction is to claim that their parents will sue you. I don’t mean to trivialize our grievances, just suggest that talk is cheap. Of course, lawyers aren’t…
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Here is a column published in the Advocate, the Baton Rouge paper by our state education reporter. As you can see by many of those commenting, those readers who care anything about the reforms that deal with improving teacher effectiveness in the classroom, question his skill to do some research before he submits a story to be printed.
http://theadvocate.com/news/3819371-123/report-backs-evaluating-teachers-on
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