Earlier I posted the draft of a letter to President Obama and asked for your help.
I got some excellent suggestions.
To begin with, this is not an online petition, but an invitation to join together to write your own individual heartfelt letter to the President and to email the White House on the same day.
The President should understand that he can’t take educators for granted–or parents. We want change. We want a constructive education program, one that supports children and teachers and schools, not carrots and sticks and sanctions and punishments. We want support for public schools, not privatization.
So if you are willing, everyone should turn October 17 into the target day, for maximum effect.
One excellent idea came from a parent, who changed the letter to make it a letter from parents to the President.
If you don’t agree with any part of the parent or teacher letter, feel free to add or subtract your own ideas and language.
Or write your own letter, from scratch.
The important thing is that we should try to get thousand of parents, students, teachers, administrators, and concerned citizens to join in sending a respectful email to the President on October 17. I will republish my letter, for your use, to copy, revise, or change at will.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Will you link the email or is it something real simple? Shouldn’t we send to Arne as well?
I will look for emails now.
ARNE DUNCAN
First Name: ARNE
Last Name: DUNCAN
Primary Phone: (202) 401-3000
E-Mail Address: arne.duncan@ed.gov
Location
Region: HEADQUARTERS
Building Name: LBJ EDUCATION BUILDING
Building Address: 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, DC
Up to 2,500 characters:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Call the President
PHONE NUMBERS
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
TTY/TTD
Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitor’s Office: 202-456-2121
Linda,
Is that the best email address for our letters?
Diane
I searched and searched and that is all I can find.
It says employees have first name, last name and then Ed.gov.
There is no Obama email posted anywhere.
Could it be Barack.obama@ed.gov?
Arne’s is listed as: Arne.duncan@ed.gov
I am definitely going to do this. In fact, a friend urged me to write President Obama about this very subject, so count me in. I have a unique situation, as a stay at home mom of two school aged kids. I am also an artist and went back to school 2 years ago to get my masters of art education in the hopes of working in an area public school. I graduated in August and unfortunately due to the economic downturn and the Obama Administration’s reforms, I am unable to find any art teaching positions at all.
http://rationalmathed.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-open-letter-to-barck-obama-about.html
Will do!
Can you tell us where to send the letter to Obama on October 17?
Yes, I will post a White House email.
This is what I found:
Up to 2,500 characters:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Call the President
PHONE NUMBERS
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
TTY/TTD
Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitor’s Office: 202-456-2121
Individually written letters will have more impact than copies of the same letter. All writing on the same day is a great idea, though.
I am all in on this. I encourage people to send copies of the letter to their newspaper editorial boards and locally elected officials. Perhaps local TV stations and NPR outlets too. Spread the word!
Great idea!
May I just say that I’m willing to give it another try, but I sent the President an extremely heartfelt letter– a rant really about how I feel like I’m being standardized out of the profession– some time ago and received an appalling form letter about the wonders of Race to the Top in return. I can only hope that the impact of lots and lots of letters finally make someone listen. I feel like teachers and parents who see what’s going on are completely invisible to politicians and most of the press.
If the White House gets enough letters on the same day, they might notice.
I’ve written President O and Mr. D a thousand times–but will do so again Oct. 17. Thanks for organizing this.
Here’s, basically, what I write:
8 Reasons the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will hurt children, not help them:
1. The elementary text exemplars are primarily by and about White people, thus privileging White children and marginalizing children of color and the poor. The proficient reader research shows that, to become proficient readers, children must make text-to-self connections. Besides proficient reading, there is also identity. Julius Lester says, “They are asking us who they are and we are telling them.” When we leave out children of color and the poor, we are telling them they don’t matter.
2. The word “analysis” appears 94 times in the CCSS; the word “emotion” twice in a clinical sort of way, and the word “affect” not at all. For children to care about “facts,” their emotions have to be engaged. The CCSS’s focus on the mind and neglect of the body and emotions has been tried before, and failed. By ignoring emotions, the CCSS ignores decades of research.
3. The CCSS eliminates reading for pleasure and choice and, although the CCSS claims to be “internationally benchmarked,” does not say which nations. The city of Shenzen, China–a city of 15 million–emphasizes free and pleasure reading and has the highest university pass rate in the country. The Chinese government is, wisely, encouraging the rest of China to follow Shenzen’s lead; the CCSS are leading us down the opposite path.
4. Music is mentioned once, the visual arts not at all. “Acting out” is okay for enacting vocabulary words. Yet, the arts are powerful ways to foster literacy; the CCSS leave out a V-8 engine for literacy in leaving out the arts. Many educators of color have argued for the inclusion of the arts as a way to actively engage children of color in literacy learning. The CCSS ignore the power of the arts and the concerns of diverse educators.
5. Informational text is privileged, with the expectation that by the secondary grades the fare will be 75% informational and 25% literary genres. Yet, Adam Jones’s interviews with 57 genocide scholars and human rights activists show that their most powerful experiences were with 75% arts and literary texts, 25% “informational” texts–the exact opposite of the CCSS. A study of 37 biographies and autobiographies of writers shows that the most powerful works for these writers when they were children were 90% literary and 10% informational. Albert Einstein would tell you to read children more fairy tales; Charles Darwin would tell you to read them more poetry (email me for references). The CCSS claims to aim for making children “college and career ready,” yet ignores important research.
6. Efferent reading (what you carry off, like when you read the directions for your new cell phone) is privileged over aesthetic reading (when you cannot put down a book). By privileging efferent reading the CCSS turn children into information processors, imposing a view of children and humanity many of us do not share. In the CCSS “aesthetics” are not mentioned until 11th grade. Children need aesthetic experiences long before that. The middle and upper classes will be able to get aesthetic experiences for their children outside of school.
7. “Close reading”–all 13 years–will bore children to death. Children need multiple approaches to text (please email me for research on English Language Learners whose test scores moved from zero to 50% passing in six months through arts-based literacy). To throw out letting children make personal connections to text is a big mistake.
8. Resources are being diverted from children to testing that won’t help them. Resources need to go to what directly affects children: Schools’ infrastructure, playgrounds, labs, libraries, and professional learning for teachers who teach children not of their own culture or ethnicity.
Children need multiple approaches to text (please email me for research on English Language Learners whose test scores moved from zero to 50% passing in six months through arts-based literacy).
I would love to hear more about this!
Would also be great if we sendregular snail mail letters in colorful envelopes preferably red ? Just an idea
Here are my thoughts. Is this too many words?
Dear President Obama,
I am teacher and a lifelong Democrat. I have voted in every presidential election since I was old enough to vote. I’m certainly not going to vote for Mr. Romney but for the first time in my adult life I am considering not voting at all. I can not in good conscience support the educational policies espoused by you and your Secretary of education, Arne Duncan. I know many teachers who are facing the same crisis of conscience. When you ran for president four years ago, I like many of my colleagues, were full of hope that that you might take measures to address the negative outcomes that were the result of the No Child Left Behind mandates. Instead, The Race to the Top, standardization, and privatization are destroying our public schools.
Although I agree that teachers should not be evaluated by test scores, this is not my principle concern. Inside the school building, there are three stakeholders. The students, the teachers and the administrators. A wise middle school principal of my acquaintance has pointed out that the students should always be considered first, the teachers second and the administrators third. When so much time is being spent on teaching the student how to do well on standardized tests, can it truly be argued that we are putting the student first? Bloom’s revised taxonomy suggests that there are six levels of learning. The bottom of the pyramid starts with remembering and then moves upwards to understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and finally creating. At best, standardized testing might measure the bottom two skills. The united States has always been recognized for its innovation and creativity. Do we really want our teachers to ignore the top four learning skills in order to conform to a “one size fits all” concept that doesn’t recognize student abilities, interests and needs. The other major stakeholder in education is our students’ parents. We are seeing more and more of them who are expressing dismay at what we have to do to keep from becoming a school in need of improvement. Many are seeking alternatives such as Waldorf Schools where students are treated as creative human beings rather than as fodder for data. I come from a long tradition of teachers and even my own grandchildren are all going to a Waldorf School. My daughters’ families are willing to make personal financial sacrifices so that their sons and daughters will not be exposed to the standardization that was mandated by the Bush Administration and now yours.
I have been fortunate to witness the the outcomes of student based learning. Students who are engaged in an environment where they may pursue some of their own interests blossom into true learners. Standardized testing is alienating not only our teachers but also, more importantly, our students. NECAP test prep is about the worst possible way I can think of to engage potential learners at the start of a new school year. I actually had a student suggest to me that we should find a way to fill a bucket with what is on the tests. Then we should bore a hole in the students’ heads and pour the contents of the bucket into the hole. Is this how we want our students to see education?
The Common Core Standards may very well be useful guidelines but they do not teach the students to infer. Interpreted literally, they are fostering a mentality coming from the top down that each teacher must cover the same material at exactly the same pace and during the same time period. Most teachers don’t believe in this methodology but they are afraid to speak up in fear of losing their jobs. The top levels of the taxonomy are being lost to what appears to be an effort to make everyone be the same. 21st Century learners need to be creative problem solvers, not mindless automatons. Studies have shown that formative assessment is much more effective than summative assessment and yet we we spend an inordinate amount of time on cumulative assessments that address only the lower levels of learning. As one educator has said,”Rigor is not giving the students difficult stuff, it is the quality of the feedback.” The feedback from standardized tests is not high quality. Noam Chomsky from MIT has pointed out that it is not what is covered that is important, it is what the student discovers that matters.
Mr. President and Mr. Duncan please realize that your present policies are not only demoralizing teachers, these policies are also doing our students a great disservice. Those of us who choose to teach do it not for monetary reward. it is however not unreasonable to assume that we should be able to earn a respectable professional income. We don’t work to win monetary recognition for high test scores. Doing so does not set a good example for our students. Bribing our students to do well on the tests is also not a good model for future adult behavior.
I want to support you on November 6 but I don’t know if I can. Do we really want a society where only the students who go to private schools will be the creative thinkers of the future? Education is not a basketball game. The Race To The Top only creates a few winners and many losers. The losers are also the future of our country. Please listen to those of us who have devoted our lives to helping our students become lifelong learners and thoughtful productive citizens in a free society. Diversity, not standardization is what has brought out the best in the United States of America.
Rick Davidson
Computer Technology Integrator
Kingswood Regional Middle School
Wolfeboro, NH
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Your comments are dead on! Great letter! Regretfully, I strongly believe there are forces in play that have the intention to do exactly what you stated, turn our children into AUTOMATONS in the service of the 1% via ALEC legislation, Charter schools, privatization of schools for profit, union busting and the list goes on. I am grateful that there are people, private citizens and educators, out there that are not as stupid as some think we may be! The ground swell is growing and I urge everyone to talk to friends, family sounding the alarm loud and clear!
I’m in and have started spreading the word via Facebook and email. Also, if you mail the letter it will be helpful to write the following in the return address field: A TEACHERS LETTER or A PARENTS LETTER or A GRANDPARENTS LETTER…you get my point. In this way once one a few letters are opened, the point will be made. I am not sure anyone has the time to find colored envelopes, as a BUSY teacher, I know I don’t, however the idea was heartfelt.
I think this is an awesome idea. I just retired after 19 years this past June. I had planned to continue teaching a couple more years but school leadership became impossible to work with. Leadership with 3 years experience in the classroom cannot be effective! I am more than willing to participate in this endeavor.
Your Great Obama Helped pass this bill, If you want help get him out of the White house.
Look it up.