The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign is funded largely by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
Schott is one of the few national organizations that supports public education, not privatization.
This is a good video that it funded. Takes only a minute to watch.
Several people wrote to say that membership in the highly distinguished Badass Teachers Association was closed, that they applied and were turned down. This seemed unlikely to me, given the group’s desire to spread, so I contacted its founder Mark NAISON and asked him if there was a glitch. I also asked him if he could create a website for those who are not on Facebook. Here is his response (for some reason, whenever I write Mark’s last name on my iPad, it always turns into caps):
Hi Diane!
We now have six administrators on the site so anyone who applies gets In quickly!
As to how to create a non Facebook option for the group, I will have to discuss that with the five people who have been working with me in this, who are much higher tech then I am!
This whole explosion of interest caught me totally by surprise! I hav e started several Facebook pages and I would have never predicted tha this is the one that would go viral and capture so many people’s imaginations
Now people are talking about just showing up in Washington on Labor Day and surrounding Congress with teachers parents and students
Given what has happened in the last few days, I would not write this off as impossible!!
Best, Mark
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/
A new groups called GPS (Great Public Schools) Pittsburgh plans a major rally at the state Capitol in Harrisburg to demand adequate funding for public education across the Keystone State. The state funds low-performing cyber charters and expands the number of privately managed schools that perform no better than public schools. Meanwhile the lights are going out in public schools across the state, especially in urban districts. Will Pennsylvanians unite to save public education?
Come to Harrisburg on June 25 for the beginning of the movement to stop privatization of public education in the Keystone State.
Katie Osgood refers obliquely here to the famous John Dewey quote that what the best and wisest parent wants for his children is what we should want for all children:
“Here is the fundamental question: If low-income parents were offered fully-funded neighborhood schools with all kinds of “choice” offered within the schools like arts, music, sports, technology, supplemental services, libraries, world language, special education services, small classes, experienced/stable staff with low-turnover, etc (like what kids in Winnetka are offered)-would they EVER choose the charter school with inexperienced teachers, harsh discipline, long “rigorous” school days with little access to music/art, prescriptive curriculum, non-unionized/exploited and overworked staff–>high turnover? If the answer is “no” then what we need is equity, equal access to quality learning environments, and not “choice”.
“As an aside, parents in Chicago came out by the thousands to beg, plead, yell, and protest to keep their underfunded neighborhoods schools open, but the school board still voted to close 50 of those schools. We don’t even have “choice” here, we have sabotage and a privatization agenda.”
This arrived in my email. It came from a retired school teacher in Nebraska. He said the retired teachers will not sit by and watch the capture of our public schools by corporations. The retires helped to defeat a charter bill in Nebraska.
He wrote:
Hi Diane
Just received the following letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson with a request that I send it to the good people in New England. Please help with this task.
My Dear New England Friends,
I hear that billionaires are attempting to take over our public schools. Do not let them do that. Our schools are not for sale. Here are words I used when lecturing and writing about New England’s public school gift to the United States:
“I praise New England because it is THE country in the world with the freest expenditure for education. Starting with the first planning of the colonies, New England may have been the first in the world to take an initial step for education. The initial step might have been resisted as the most radical of revolutions. New England’s step decided the start of the destiny of the United States. Here, the poor man whom the law does not allow to take an ear of corn when starving, nor a pair of shoes for his freezing feet, is allowed to put his hand into the pocket of the rich, and say, “You shall educate me, not as you will, but as I will: not alone in the elements, but by further provision, in the languages, in the sciences, and in the useful and elegant arts. The child shall be taken up by the state, and taught, at the public cost, the rudiments of knowledge, and all the results of art and science.”
My fellow New Englanders, tax the billionaires Gates and Waltons and other billionaires who want your schools. With your democratically elected school boards, educate your children in the arts and sciences. Do not let the rich limit your children’s education to specialized tasks for the purposes of the wealthy.
Best wishes from a former school master.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
David Lentini is a lawyer and school board member in Maine. I am always happy to read his informed comments. In this one, he responds to an earlier post that explained that the radical group ALEC is trying to bypass and extinguish local school boards in their pursuit of privatization.
Lentini writes:
I’ve been sounding this alarm for a long time now; it’s good to see other, more expert, commentators reaching the same conclusion.
Still, as a school board member I also fear there are many ways boards will disappear ALEC or no. Too many boards are under siege trying to balance state and federal budget cuts, increasing child and family poverty, parents and unions with unrealistic expectations, and a “school-industrial complex” that has become the province of administrators and consultants who dominate discussions with technical gobbledegook. Boards are thus left with fighting nasty, frustrating battles and having little to no direct impact on setting educational policy.
This year, my board is losing two members who have lost patience with the process. Another member who was just re-elected has openly expressed regret for returning, and I doubt I’ll run for re-election. The trend over the decades to treat education as a science (which is false), the increasing centralization at the state and federal level created by more and more funded and un-funded mandates, and the inability of the public to really confuse education with jobs-training, will, I fear, kill local control sooner than later.
To keep our local boards, we then have to acknowledge that local control has a real function in defining education that must be respected. We need to remove the noise of the politicians and “experts” who hawk faddish policies, ideas, and technologies as educational silver bullets. Most of all, we need to return to an understanding of the function education that is broader than just “getting a good job”.
Education is about creating and maintaining a culture; that’s why local control is so important. Only local boards can identify and define the issues of their communities and define educational policies to meet those issues. The question is do we want to hold on to this vision?
A diverse group of individuals have joined to sign an Education Declaration to Rebuild America. Please read the statement and if you agree, send it to your friends, tweet it, add it to your Facebook page.
Please sign here.
·
An Education Declaration to Rebuild America
Americans have long looked to our public schools to provide opportunities for individual advancement, promote social mobility, and share democratic values. We have built great universities, helped bring children out of factories and into classrooms, held open the college door for returning veterans, fought racial segregation, and struggled to support and empower students with special needs. We believe good schools are essential to democracy and prosperity — and that it is our collective responsibility to educate all children, not just a fortunate few.
Over the past three decades, however, we have witnessed a betrayal of those ideals. Following the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, policymakers on all sides have pursued an education agenda that imposes top-down standards and punitive high-stakes testing while ignoring the supports students need to thrive and achieve. This approach – along with years of drastic financial cutbacks — are turning public schools into uncreative, joyless institutions. Educators are being stripped of their dignity and autonomy, leading many to leave the profession. Neighborhood schools are being closed for arbitrary reasons. Parent and community voices are being shut out of the debate. And children, most importantly, are being systemically deprived of opportunities to learn.
As a nation we have failed to rectify glaring inequities in access to educational opportunities and resources. By focusing solely on the achievement gap, we have neglected the opportunity gap that creates it, and have allowed the re-segregation of our schools and communities by class and race. The inevitable result, highlighted in the Federal Equity and Excellence Commission’s recent report For Each and Every Child, is an inequitable system that hits disadvantaged students, families, and communities the hardest.
A new approach is needed to improve our nation’s economic trajectory, strengthen our democracy, and avoid an even more stratified and segregated society. To rebuild America, we need a vision for 21st Century education based on seven principles:
· All students have a right to learn. Opportunities to learn should not depend on zip code or a parent’s abilities to work the system. Our education system must address the needs of all children, regardless of how badly they are damaged by poverty and neglect in their early years. We must invest in research-proven interventions and supports that start before kindergarten and support every child’s aspirations for college or career.
· Public education is a public good. Public education should never be undermined by private control, deregulation, and profiteering. Keeping our schools public is the only way we can ensure that each and every student receives a quality education. School systems must function as democratic institutions responsive to students, teachers, parents, and communities.
· Investments in education must be equitable and sufficient. Funding is necessary for all the things associated with an excellent education: safe buildings, quality teachers, reasonable class sizes, and early learning opportunities. Yet, as we’ve “raised the bar” for achievement, we’ve cut the resources children and schools need to reach it. We must reverse this trend and spend more money on education and distribute those funds more equitably.
· Learning must be engaging and relevant. Learning should be a dynamic experience through connections to real world problems and to students’ own life experiences and cultural backgrounds. High-stakes testing narrows the curriculum and hinders creativity.
· Teachers are professionals. The working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students. When we judge teachers solely on a barrage of high-stakes standardized tests, we limit their ability to reach and connect with their students. We must elevate educators’ autonomy and support their efforts to reach every student.
· Discipline policies should keep students in schools. Students need to be in school in order to learn. We must cease ineffective and discriminatory discipline practices that push children down the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools must use fair discipline policies that keep classrooms safe and all students learning.
· National responsibility should complement local control. Education is largely the domain of states and school districts, but in far too many states there are gross inequities in how funding is distributed to schools that serve low income and minority students. In these cases, the federal government has a responsibility to ensure there is equitable funding and enforce the civil right to a quality education for all students.
Principles are only as good as the policies that put them into action. The current policy agenda dominated by standards-based, test-driven reform is clearly insufficient. What’s needed is a supports-based reformagenda that provides every student with the opportunities and resources needed to achieve high standards and succeed, focused on these seven areas:
1. Early Education and Grade Level Reading: Guaranteed access to high quality early education for all, including full-day kindergarten and universal access to pre-K services, to help ensure students can read at grade level.
2. Equitable Funding and Resources: Fair and sufficient school funding freed from over-reliance on locally targeted property taxes, so those who face the toughest hurdles receive the greatest resources. Investments are also needed in out-of-school factors affecting students, such as supports for nutrition and health services, public libraries, after school and summer programs, and adult remedial education — along with better data systems and technology.
3. Student-Centered Supports: Personalized plans or approaches that provide students with the academic, social, and health supports they need for expanded and deeper learning time.
4. Teaching Quality: Recruitment, training, and retention of well-prepared, well-resourced, and effective educators and school leaders, who can provide extended learning time and deeper learning approaches, and are empowered to collaborate with and learn from their colleagues.
5. Better Assessments: High quality diagnostic assessments that go beyond test-driven mandates and help teachers strengthen the classroom experience for each student.
6. Effective Discipline: An end to ineffective and discriminatory discipline practices including inappropriate out-of-school suspensions, replaced with policies and supports that keep all students in quality educational settings.
7. Meaningful Engagement: Parent and community engagement in determining the policies of schools and the delivery of education services to students.
As a nation, we’re failing to provide the basics our children need for an opportunity to learn. Instead, we have substituted a punitive high-stakes testing regime that seeks to force progress on the cheap. But there is no shortcut to success. We must change course before we further undermine schools and drive away the teachers our children need.
All who envision a more just, progressive, and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.
Signatories
· Greg Anrig
The Century Foundation
· Kenneth J. Bernstein
National Board Certified Social Studies Teacher
· Martin J. Blank
Director, Coalition for Community Schools
· Jeff Bryant
Education Opportunity Network
· Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige
Co Founder, Defending Early Years Foundation
· Anthony Cody
Teachers’ Letters to Obama, Network for Public Education
· Linda Darling-Hammond
Professor of Education, Stanford University
· Larry Deutsch, MD, MPH
Minority Leader (Working Families Party), Hartford City Council
· Bertis Downs
Parent, Lawyer and Advocate
· Dave Eggers
Writer
· Matt Farmer
Chicago Public Schools parent
· Dr. Rosa Castro Feinberg, Ph.D.
LULAC Florida State Education Commissioner;
Associate Professor (Retired), Florida International University
· Nancy Flanagan
Senior Fellow, Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA);
Blogger, Education Week; Teacher
· Andrew Gillum
City Commissioner of Tallahassee, Florida
National Director of the Young Elected Officials Network
· Larry Groce
Host and Artistic Director, Mountain Stage, Charleston, West Virginia
· William R. Hanauer
Mayor, Village of Ossining;
President, Westchester Municipal Officials Association
· Julian Vasquez Heilig
The University of Texas at Austin
· Roger Hickey
Institute for America’s Future
· John Jackson
Opportunity To Learn Campaign
· Jonathan Kozol
Educator & Author
· John Kuhn
Superintendent, Perrin-Whitt School District (Texas)
· Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D.
Incoming Dean, University of San Francisco School of Education;
President, National Association for Multicultural Education
· Rev. Peter Laarman
Progressive Christians Uniting
· Chuck Lesnick
Yonkers City Council President
· Rev. Tim McDonald
Co-Chair, African American Ministers In Action
· Lawrence Mischel
Economic Policy Institute
· Kathleen Oropeza
Co-Founder, Fund Education Now
· State Senator Nan Grogan Orrock
Georgia Senate District 36
· Charles Payne
University of Chicago
· Diane Ravitch
New York University, Network for Public Education
· Robert B. Reich
Chancellor’s Professor, University of California at Berkeley;
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor
· Jan Resseger
United Church of Christ, Justice & Witness Ministries
· Nan Rich
Florida State Senator
· Hans Riemer
Montgomery County Council Member; Montgomery County, MD
· Maya Rockeymoore, Ph.D.
Center for Global Policy Solutions
· David Sciarra
Education Law Center
· Rinku Sen
President and Executive Director, Applied Research Center
· Theda Skocpol
Harvard University
Director, Scholars Strategy Network
· Rita M. Solnet
Co Founder, Parents Across America
· John Stocks
Executive Director, National Education Association
· Steve Suitts
Vice President, Southern Education Foundation
· Paul Thomas, EdD
Furman University
· Dennis Van Roekel
President, National Education Association
· Dr. Jerry D. Weast
Former Superintendent, Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools;
Founder and CEO, Partnership for Deliberate Excellence
· Randi Weingarten
President, American Federation of Teachers
· Kevin Welner
Professor, University of Colorado Boulder School of Education;
Director, National Education Policy Center
Roger Hickey
Campaign for America’s Future
office: (202) 587-1604 cell: (202) 270-0300
“Two roads diverged in a wood,” begins one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems.
In 2011, Arthur Camins described the fateful choice confronting American education. In 2011, he wrote:
“U.S. education is at a transformational moment. The choices we make will determine whether our schools become collaborative and democratic or prescriptive and authoritarian. The policies proposed by the federal government for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will create some good schools for some students while hurting many more and will do little to improve teaching or learning.”
Now, in 2013, he writes that our leaders are taking us down the wrong road:
“We have traveled much further down the latter road than I imagined even in my most pessimistic moments. Charter schools and school closings, value-added, metrics-based teacher evaluation and pay systems and prescriptive turnaround models have all gained momentum, while so-called reform–minded billionaires have influenced elections and administrative hiring around the nation. Perhaps, most disturbing is that this has proceeded despite persistent credible evidentiary challenges, while scholars from around the world have pointed out that no country has made accelerated improvement by relying on market-based policies.”
Yesterday I wrote about the championship chess team at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, which needs $20,000 to travel to tournaments and remain in competition. The after school funding that keeps the program alive was cut by the New York City Department of Education.
I thought you would enjoy watching the segment on “The Daily Show” when Jon Stewart interviewed the producer and one of the students who are featured in the film.
My favorite moment is when the student, Pobo, says spontaneously, “I love my teachers!” And the audience breaks into applause because they love their teachers too.
John Galvin, the assistant principal at 318 in charge of the chess program, has been reading this blog. John, give us a name and address, and we will do some fund-raising for our chess program.
Great Neck, New York, is a suburban community outside New York City that has long been renowned for its excellent public schools. About 95% of its students graduate high school, and many are admitted to our nation’s finest colleges and universities.
At its meeting last Monday, the Great Neck school board unanimously passed a resolution opposing the state’s over reliance on standardized testing.
For their clarity of vision and their willingness to stand up for their students and for good education, I place the Great Neck Board of Education on the honor roll as champions of good public education.
Here is the resolution, which was read aloud in its entirety at the meeting and sent to the Governor, legislators, the Commissioner of Education, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, and shared with the media:
June 3, 2013
RESOLUTION REGARDING OVERRELIANCE ON STANDARDIZED TESTING
A CALL TO THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, THE NEW YORK STATE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, THE NEW YORK STATE BOARD OF REGENTS AND OTHER POLICYMAKERS TO STOP THE OVERRELIANCE ON STANDARDIZED TESTS AS A MEASURE OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE AND PRINCIPAL/TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS.
WHEREAS, every student deserves a quality public education dedicated to preparing engaged citizens, creative and critical thinkers and lifelong learners ready for college and careers; and
WHEREAS, the decline in state aid and support for public schools has forced our district to reduce programs and limited our ability to fully implement new programs mandated by the State such as the Common Core standards thereby creating an uneven rollout of the standards among school districts around the State; and
WHEREAS, while the implementation of the Common Core standards will ultimately help students, teachers and the teaching and learning process, the growing reliance on, and mismanagement of, standardized testing is eroding student learning time, narrowing the curriculum and jeopardizing the rich, meaningful education our students need and deserve; and
WHEREAS, there has been a reliance upon the Common Core standards in the development of state testing despite the fact that students have not been exposed to these standards for a sufficient amount of their school experience; and
WHEREAS, despite the fact that research recommends the use of multiple measures to gauge student performance and teacher effectiveness, the State’s growing reliance on standardized testing is adversely affecting students across all spectrums and the morale of our educators and is further draining already scarce resources; and
WHEREAS, the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s testing policies fail to appropriately accommodate the unique needs of students with disabilities and English language learners in assessing their academic achievements which results in test scores that do not accurately represent a true measure of the impact of teachers and schools; and
WHEREAS, it is time for policymakers to reconsider the number, duration and appropriate use of standardized tests so that our schools can refocus their efforts on improving student learning outcomes; now, therefore be it
RESOLVED, that we call upon Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, State Education Department Commissioner John B. King, Chancellor of the Board of Regents Merryl Tisch, Chair of the Senate Committee on Education John Flanagan, Senator Jack Martins, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Education Catherine Nolan, Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel and other policymakers to reduce the use of, and overreliance on, standardized testing.
