Congress is waiting to hear from you! The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is working on a reauthorization of NCLB. They have solicited feedback from the public, but the deadline for input is February 2nd. Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander has said he wants to finalize a draft bill by the end of February.
Over 1,500 NPE supporters have already written to Congress to #EndAnnualTesting. Our goal is to get 2,000 letters by the February 2nd deadline.
Click here to write your letter today!
NPE’s letter writing campaign makes it possible to send your letter with just a few clicks. Send our sample letter, create you own using our helpful talking points, or go it on your own; the choice is yours!
NPE has been following the hearings closely, and will continue to keep you updated on the issues that matter to you. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the first two hearings is that at both the Senators have had the opportunity to hear powerful teacher voices.
Please take the time to watch NYC filmmaker Michael Elliot’s gripping short film, featuring teacher of conscience Jia Lee, and her testimony before the first hearing of the HELP Committee.
At the second hearing, National Board Certified teacher and NEA member Rachelle Moore provided Senators with another strong example of teacher voice. Moore, an advocate for training and retaining quality teachers, masterfully fielded questions from the Committee.
You can read her written testimony here or watch the entire hearing here.
“We are highly trained and committed professional, the ones most invested in student success, the ones in direct contact with students day in and day out. Listen to our voices. Invest in us. Trust and support us.”
NPE thanks Jia Lee and Rachelle Moore for their courage, and for so eloquently representing teacher voice in Washington, DC.
Don’t miss this opportunity to make your voice heard.
Time is running out to join NPE in asking Congress to #EndAnnualTesting. Send your letter today!
Today is the last day to take advantage of Early Bird Registration rates for the 2nd Annual Network for Public Education Conference!
Register today, and be a part of the movement to save our schools!
We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!
WE ARE MANY. THERE IS POWER IN OUR NUMBERS. TOGETHER WE WILL SAVE OUR SCHOOLS.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ok lots of TEACHER VOICE at hearings fast tracked to ram this through like obamacare. ZERO PARENT VOICE.
anita Hoge is a Parent expert on these matters and we as parents DESERVE To have our VOICE heard. Anita Hoge is our voice. She represents teachers who are parents and doctors who are parents and nurses who are parents and ceo’s who are parents and single mothers who are parents and unemployed mothers who are parents and parents who are volunteers and parents who run the subways and parents who make the donuts, and parents who are earth mothers; all American parents.
We bear the children, pay the taxes and obey the law. The VOICE of Parents must be heard! We are America. I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, I am a teacher a cleaner a cook a referee a babisitter a councilor a medic and a WOMAN. Hear me roar. Do not SILENCE me mr Alexander!
Educate yourselves on this Bill with links below and call your reps! Do it for children and your grandchildren.
rense.gsradio.net:8080/rense/special/rense_Iserbyt_Hoge_013015.mp3
http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2015/01/lamar-alexanders-re-authorization-of.html?m=1
I’m sending a separate letter, to my own representative in congress.
Katherine Clark now sits on the Workforce and Education committee, AS A DEMOCRAT. I am asking her to oppose the renewal of NCLB, and let the hated zombie law die. I’m asking her to propose legislation granting waivers to all states from the provisions of the defunct and discredited law, and voiding any previous restrictions. If Katherine does that, will you and Randi Weingarten be the leaders of a movement to oppose her, leading Alexander’s charge to prolong the vicious lies that underlie the accountability doctrine?
By siding with Lamar Alexander’s renewal, NPE has left honest defenders of real education justice alone and unsupported. On a personal note, I am more wrenched by this betrayal than I was by Obama’s, but I’m no less determined to continue the fight.
“By siding with Lamar Alexander’s renewal, NPE has left honest defenders of real education justice alone and unsupported.”
chemtchr,
I’m not sure why you say NPE is siding with L. Alexander. Please explain.
Thanks,
Duane
Duane and Chemtchr,
The Network for Public Education responded to Senator Alexander’s draft legislation. It offered two choices re testing.
Option 1: grade span testing
Option 2: status quo annual testing
Given the choices, we prefer grade span testing, which negates evaluating teachers by test scores (VAM).
What was not on the table was “no federal mandates for testing.” We would have preferred that but it was not a choice.
Diane, how is it “not a choice” because it”s “not on the table”? Democracy is “not a choice” because a corrupt congress didn’t put it on the table with their proposed bill?
Join with the American people to BLOCK THE REAUTHORIZATION OF NCLB. It’s that easy. Join with the populist tidal wave in both parties to end the extortion of Arne Duncan’s waivers, instead of treating them like a deadline to beat. They actually can’t ram it through without your collusion. Break with the Democratic Party stalwarts who are repeatedly leading the progressive base to electoral defeat with these hated policies.
When you mouth corporate boilerplate like, “Standardized testing isn’t going away,” you break my heart. Please open the link I posted above. Your mind is still perfectly clear. You’re a historian, and this is history. Read it and understand. This is the chance we’ve been building toward. There may not be another.
Speak out strongly, and oppose the reauthorization. Or else, you will leave me and many others standing against it without you in two months, between our living students and the insatiable greed unleashed by your compromise. We will be the ones who actually “opt out” into the teeth of the monster while bloggers congratulate themselves on their page stats.
Chemtchr,
I am as opposed to standardized testing as you are. Unfortunately neither of us has a vote in Congress. If you watched the Senate hearings, you saw Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Al Franken both defending annual standardized testing. Warren said “we must hold schools accountable.” Franken said “Maybe everyone should take computer adaptive tests,” as though that is an improvement.
If I were a Senator, I would fight for the elimination of testing and accountability from ESEA. I would call for a restoration of its original purpose: equity. Who in the Senate will do that?
To make the situation even worse, The word in DC is that Obama will veto any bill that does not have annual testing. Duncan has been clear that annual testing is a high priority for this administration.
So what shall we do? What is your strategy? We have a chance to beat annual testing. I think we should fight for that, then fight in the states to reduce testing further. All of us have a greater chance of being heard in the states than in DC.
Diane, I do have a vote in Congress. Her name is Katherine Clark, a young representative from (I promise you) a safe district. She may have to go along this time, but I hope she stands tall. Someday, when the new ESEA is written, it might even have her name on it.
Will you address the strategy I’ve offered? It is, oppose the Lamar Alexnder bill if it continues the NCLB regime at all. Make the Republican congress answer to their electorate after supporting the Obama Administration’s corporate give-away for his data-industry cronies. The hostile take over is by no means a done deal, and it could easily go down in both houses. Whether it does or not, let NPE progressives stand against Jeb Bush Republicans in elections.
Every single goddamned American does “have a vote in congress”, and we shouldn’t snivel that away too easily.
Face the fact that there isn’t any “pared down testing” option being offered. The data systems mandated under RttT have been built, and promise to track each individual child for the three year cycle between high stakes tests with continuous formative assessments and remediation toward the testing year. Did anybody open that link?!
We started this conversation on Bridging Differences eight years ago. I haven’t been wrong, and we got this far. Think back on it, and open the link to Edwin/Thinkgate. The contractor is in Ohio, by the way, managing their system also. Surrender terms aren’t an option.
Chem teacher,
I am totally opposed to federal mandates for testing. You don’t have to convince me. You have to convince Obama, Duncan, the Republicans who control Congress, the 19 civil rights groups that endorsed annual testing, Senator Warren, Senator Franken, and probably Hillary Clinton.
With grad-span testing, our foot is in the door. The reason the NRA fights against any gun control, McDonald’s against the minimum wage to be $10.10, because they know how threatening it is for them to have a foot in the their door.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique
Dear Diane, do you see a way to convince senators Warren or Franken that annual testing and teacher evaluations based on them are bad?
If I could sit down with Warren and Franken for 30 minutes, I think I could convince them. What would convince them more would be to get thousands of letters from parents and teachers in their home states.
Sorry for pressing for this a bit, but it’s more than just mere curiosity due to a similar situation here in Memphis.
What would be a technique to try to convince them in a personal conversation? What kind of argument do they listen most?
Make them see that what they are suggesting is on shaky grounds? Or quote some examples from US education history? Refer to foreign countries with successful ed systems?
Diane, and wierdimate, “grade span testing” isn’t a foot in the door, its their foot already on your kid’s neck. Do you work for the Data Quality Campaign?
“The Department created the EWIS in direct response to educators’ requests for early indicator data across multiple grade levels. The EWIS is a tool to systematically identify students that may need additional attention in order to reach an upcoming academic goal (expected student outcome).”
What part of “indicator data across multiple grade spans” or “systematically identify students” do you not understand?
Here is the link again, please tell me if it is opening for you. My machine is logged on to the system, but this is a public document.
Click to access EducatorEvaluation-EWIS.pdf
Duane, the letter in the link can only be sent as-is. It calls for Alexander to “end yearly testing” in his renewal of the NCLB. As we have heard in his previous statements, this is now Duncan’s fall-back plan also. He has backed off, so he can pretend it’s a concession.
The “3 times over third to eighth grade” testing “compromise” leaves corporate control in place. Any mandated take-over trigger leaves corporate control in place. Proprietary interim assessments and data-driven personalized interventions are already oozing out its many orifices, and are already filling all the years of childhood.
“The Department first released the Early Warning Indicator System (EWIS) data for grades 1-12 in the 2012-13 school year. The Department created the EWIS in direct response to educators’ requests for early indicator data across multiple grade levels. The EWIS is a tool to systematically identify students that may need additional attention in order to reach an upcoming academic goal (expected student outcome). The EWIS was developed by looking at the actual outcomes of Massachusetts students in prior years and statistically validating a wide range of student level data to best predict whether our current students are on track to meet upcoming academic goals. ”
Click to access EducatorEvaluation-EWIS.pdf
Thanks, chemtchr, for the clarification!!
Considering the complete invalidity of the whole educational standards and standardized testing the usage of said educational malpractices are beyond my realm of comprehension.
chemtchr wrote “Duane, the letter in the link can only be sent as-is.”
This is not the case. I completely rewrote it, and it got sent. The browser appeared to be hanging, but I then verified that the capacity of the server at the other end is very limited, which made the browser work harder. .
Chemtchr,
The legislation is the basic law defining the federal role in education. It won’t be repealed. What should be repealed is the accountability provisions added by President Bush and Congress in 2001-2.
The original purpose of ESEA was to send federal aid to schools that enroll poor kids. It was not intended to mandate testing. What we want is to eliminate the testing and accountability mandates inserted in 2001. They hurt all children.
Unfortunately Senator Alexander is not considering that option.
THEN WE MUST CONTINUE TO BLOCK THE REAUTHORIZATION, just as we have been, until he or the next congress does offer the “option” of a public education system not under the control of the corporate public-private partnership. There is majority support for THAT option in both parties, and Jeb Bush knows it It’s the Obama administration that’s putting out all this “We have to get a bill to his desk”.
No, we don’t. Yes, the current law in a trainwreck and can’t be sustained, so Congress would have to pass a waiver on the enforcement of the Bush accountability provisions, and we’d struggle on with the current ESEA until an acceptable law can be crafted. The American people would dance in the streets.
Duncan has been handing out waivers capriciously, as extortion, so the Obama administration can’t say waivers are impossible.
chemtchr, Sen. Alexander gave you only two choices. You have to choose one of them. It’s not possible to do anything else. You should be thankful that he gave you any options at all.
Are you being ironic, FLERP? My choices aren’t Lamar Alexander’s to give.
Yes, I was being sarcastic.
Thank God. I was afraid the pods had gotten to you, too.
I just remark, the link is loading very slowly, and the buttons don’t appear to work, but, in fact, they do work. So just be patient.
I wrote a bit different letter, a more personal one, though not listing explicitly all the issues related to NCLB. It’s at
http://thales.csi.hu/mw/lamar_alexander_drop_annual_testing.html
Here is my letter as well:
Senator Alexander,
I am writing this email to ask you not to re-authorize ESEA. Common Core, NCLB and the like are doing serious psychological damage to our children. As a parent of a special needs child, as well as someone who holds a Masters of Science in Early Childhood Education, I speak of that which I know.
My son is no longer attending public school. I removed him from public school one year ago, in December 2013. I pulled him because he was having daily meltdowns and calling himself “bad” and “stupid”. I pulled him because his Developmental Pediatrician diagnosed my then seven year old son with “Performance Anxiety Disorder”, and wanted to put him on anti-anxiety medication. Rather than medicate my son for something over which he had no control , I chose to eliminate the source of his anxiety; Common Core. He has spent the last year with me learning and growing and loving school. He was a year behind academically when I pulled him. He is now at grade level in almost everything.
I have my son back, Senator. I don’t want to ever lose him again. He will never succeed with a “one size fits all” approach to education. There is no time for teachers to individualize Common Core curriculum for each child in every subject. And, it would require too much change, which isn’t allowed because it is copyrighted.
The parents of special needs students are used to fighting for every service and program on behalf of their children. Here in NY, there are thousands of us in the trenches every day to stop Common Core. We are not only fighting for our special needs students, but for all students. As one of the first states to adopt Common Core, we have been fighting for quite some time now. We are tired, but we are not going to give up.
We are not going to give up until our children once again have the chance to explore, create and play. We want our children to have time to be children. We want our children to be the natural curious learners they used to be. We are worried that the innovators and entrepreneurs of the future, those who would think outside the box, will be crushed under the stifling conformity of Common Core. Please do not allow it to happen!!
I ask that you give local educators and parents the respect we deserve by allowing us, who know our students/children best, to develop the standards and curriculum that best fits their needs.
Thanks you for your time and consideration.
Thank you, MonicaNY.
They just received one more parent letter.
1-February-2015
Dear Senator Alexander,
I write today, with my statement of professional conscience and urgency, to ask you to end the federal mandate for annual high-stakes standardized testing.
I write as a former public school teacher (2002-2011), a current public school parent, and (recently graduated) M.Ed. in Educational Policy and Leadership.
Public Education is at a critical juncture where parents who believe in the function of public education are forced to decide between (1) the priceless value of education that is inclusive of everyone in public schools AND (2) the value of their own children’s love of learning and authentic learning journey.
The result of this fork in the road is twofold: (a) families are leaving public education in pursuit of developmentally-appropriate learning environments for their children, and (b) Families who firmly believe in education that includes EVERYONE, AND are there to participate in and improve it, and/or lack access and/or resources for alternative, private, or home education, are left struggling with the detrimental impacts that mandated standardized testing has on our children.
My family falls into the latter category. My family is steadfast in our core belief in public education that is INCLUSIVE of EVERYONE. We believe we are living WITH the world, not merely in the world. I could not believe MORE in the possibilities that public education has for humanity — namely our growth toward inclusiveness, social integration, and equity. However, I am not of the professional or personal conscience to subject my children to testing that deflates their self-esteem, stifles their authentic learning journeys, and treats their childhood experience as a deficit. The mandated testing that is currently being forced on public school children is morally wrong, not supported by any psychological or early developmental research, and not reflective of anything that matters to me as an educated parent.
Additionally, standardized test scores are a source of sorting and segregating our cities and neighborhoods. The number that is assigned to a school–based on these federally mandated tests–categorizes the school and its neighborhood. Families actively searching for homes pay great attention to this sorting mechanism, and often base their real estate decisions on the assigned numbers. In this sense, these test scores further divide and segregate our already segregated nation. As a family actively seeking a neighborhood that is integrated with community-supported PUBLIC schools, this test score assignment makes this mission impossible. Your testing system is further dividing, not uniting, our United States of America.
It is time to LISTEN TO CHILDREN, to high-performing educators, and families who vehemently oppose federally mandated testing. Presently, everyone is an expert on children except for children themselves. You can remedy this.
First, do no harm. Please. End the testing and listen to the well-educated people who work with children, raise children in PUBLIC schools, and those who RESEARCH public education.
Please stop alienating children and their families. Children are not inadequate; they are not scores. They deserve education INCLUSIVE OF EVERYONE, with great teachers who jointly pursue innovative, authentic learning that children love. We can give children that– ending federally mandated testing is the first step among numerous urgent others.
I am a signature on a letter, and I urge you to contact me. I am a practiced teacher, a public school parent, and hold an Educational Policy M.Ed., here to discuss research and ways to help transform public education in the United States of America.
I just wrote a letter, on the 5th try, and it refused to load. It erased my letter and I can’t get in to write a new one. Next time I’ll compose it in Word and then try to copy and paste it. But the page is overloaded and very slow.
Okay, I got it to go. Here is what I wrote:
Please stop the testing.
I am a career educator. I’ve spent my entire working life teaching kids in a public high school. The testing culture is perverting education. It is not that teachers are afraid of accountability—I do a conscientious job and welcome anyone to observe so I can prove that. It’s that testing narrows the focus to the vanishing point. Education can never truly about forcing kids to converge on a single answer, but instead about fostering curiosity, the posing of questions, inquiry, discovery. Tests appear to be objective, but what they really are is hierarchical and directive. How can any person or group of people be wise enough to know what our kids will need to know in their lifetimes? Far, far better to foster in them the skills to learn, to question, to create, to gird themselves with courage and ingenuity. Annual testing renders this quest impossible.
Our motto is E Pluribus Unum. Where is the plurality in testing? Each kid is unique and needs to pursue a unique course to his or her greatest fulfillment. Testing presumes they are all on the same track, hunting the same goal. Untrue! And undemocratic and the undoing of our economic and cultural life, which demands innovation and splashy confidence, both undermined if not destroyed by a testing culture.
The Japanese have a saying: the nail that stands up gets hammered. We want our nails to stand up, our young people to create and dream and build a better mousetrap. That’s what has made us America. Testing promises to crush our innovative Yankee spirit—in the service of what? Mean-spirited, hateful distrust of the very teachers who have labored to do the hard work?
I live it and I see it. The more kids buy in to the rank-and-sort that our system is becoming, the more dull and drone-like their work. Fine, they take tests well. And that’s the end point of their accomplishment. The kids who will find the solutions to global warming, terrorism, and cancer are even now staying up late doing something that nobody has thought to test them on. And if we stay this pernicious course, they will “fail” and not go to college and wind up working for the drones who know nothing but what they are told will be on the test.
Thank you for your attention.
Have any of you read the bill? Testing is not the only problem, unless a big media parade will be shouting ” hooray they agreed together as bipartisan chums to stop the testing, now we can pass it!” Your setting it up.
Because if you had read the bill and really cared about children you would find the wraparound mental health services unacceptable and creepy. republican in cahoots with arne duncan et all are playing everybody for fools. Its dialectics, good cop bad cop. They both have same outcome desire of nationalized education. Malpractice. Deceitful. Outrageous and all you all talk about is testing. All bad for kids and the country. Diane worked with Lamar devoloping it years ago… Lets stop the incessant lies and tell the truth.
Terrence, it is true I worked for Lamar Alexander from 1991-93 on a voluntary program called America 2000. It contained no mandates. I did not work for him or with him on present legislation.
The Network for Public Education has written an analysis of the bill which will be released this week. We make many recommendations for change in the bill.
Do you seriously contemplate NOT demanding that the NCLB accountability provisions be stricken from the bill? By designing a letter writing campaign that generates false support for the “grade span testing option”, you’ve already used your 17,000,000 page views to undermine our capacity to fight them.
Does NPE now answer to office seekers who would have a much easier time of getting elected if only they gave a little to get a little? Look where that’s gotten us so far.
I have been writing my elected officials at all levels. Glad to finally see a petition!!! I called George Miller’s office in his last weeks of Congress and there seemed to be little concern about the dysfunctional reform.
Here is the letter I wrote:
Senator Alexander,
Using standardized test scores to threaten and punish teachers, schools, or students cannot be fixed. For the last 14 years, I have administered every ELA, math, and science test required by NCLB to 8th grade students. I can conclude, with absolute certainty, that this test-and-punish regime is a failed reform. It has not helped to improve teaching and learning one iota, but has instead inflicted much harm. Harm in the form of opportunity costs; harm in the form of stigmatizing too many children as failures using invalid instruments (bad tests). Harm that results from ignoring all we know about cognitive learning theory and brain development. Harm that will soon manifest itself through institutionalized, chronic failure of a generation of young people. Please put a stop to test-and-punish federal reform. Please stop the madness. And please understand that it is impossible to measure teacher accountability using student test scores; no more than you could measure the beauty of a spring day using a broken thermometer.
Here is what ESEA should do if you really want meaningful legislation:
Provide equitable funding and resources
Repair and renovate crumbling schools
Air condition schools
Ensure that all teachers are highly qualified graduates of schools of education
Reduce class sizes to a maximum of 20 students in all academic core classes
Require that school administrators be highly qualified with a minimum of 10 years of classroom experience
To attract the best of the best into the profession, increase teacher pay by exempting all effective teachers from having to pay federal income taxes. This would not cost local districts one penny and the money could easily be skimmed from the defense budget.
Has anyone noticed that this bill contains in it all of the requirements of RTTT? So instead of individual MOUs with states we will have all of the RTTT mandates as Federal Law? This is not seen as a huge red flag?
Thank you, Jen B. My reading comprehension is (literally) off the charts, and I was worried other people just couldn’t see the dots, or connect them. Possibly it is not seen for other reasons. The huge red flag is there, but it is obscured by upwellings of dark money everywhere.
Diane, can you comment on Jen B’s comment? She writes:
FLERP
The Network for Public Education releases its critique of the Alexander proposal later today or tomorrow. I stand with that.
The most obnoxious part of RTTT –evaluating everyone by test scores–is not likely to be part of the legislation.
Here is a link to a summary and notes taken at the hearing today (Tues 2/3). It seems that none of the things in NPE’s comments were discussed. This is all getting quite scary as it seems this reauth is plowing forward… http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/esea-reauthorization-roundtable-discussion-link-and-notes/