Carol Burris has valiantly rallied her fellow principals in New York to oppose the state’s test-based evaluation system created in response to Race to the Top.
Carol is principal of an exemplary high school in Rockville Center, New York.
Some readers responded to her latest post by saying, “look, it’s over. They won. Live with it. Make the best of it.”
I hear this all the time: Stop fighting. The train is leaving the station. Resistance is futile.
Carol answers here:
I will continue to put my energies into bringing this awful system down even as I seek to protect my teachers from it as best I can. There is nothing that the creators of this system would like more than for us to ‘make the best of it’. The ‘make of the best of it argument’ was what inspired MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I am so glad that King wrote that remarkable letter and did not take the advice to slow down and make the best of segregation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Never yield! Does wrong become right because we are tired? Do we not fight on, perhaps others will complete the fight. I can not submit to evil. I would rather lose my job and my home, both of which may happen. I for one shall continue to tell parents what is happening in my school and how it is shortchanging the education their child is receiving. This fight is too important, the truth is on our side.
Carol, thank you. I worked for 9 principals in my 31 years as a public school teacher. The ONE I would work for again, would do whatever he asked, had the same priority of protecting his teachers that you mention. He never said it, but we all knew he was taking it on the chin for us, over and over.
He was a Viet Nam vet, a sergeant who nearly lost his life over there trying to protect his troops. He brought a caring, protective attitude to our school, and the resulting environment was magical.
Unfortunately, he ultimately couldn’t take it any more, and retired. Carol, as you stand up for your teachers, be sure you take care of yourself. Thanks – Mark
No, it is far from over, and no trains have left any stations. I’ve been hearing that for ten years.
That was part of a grand eduventurist strategy to to sneak in under the radar, and do something the people would never tolerate. They meant to take over the public education funding stream while they denied it was even happening. Hired sock-puppets and pundits called honest opponents of their hostile take over conspiracy nuts.
Once they had control, the plan was to claim it was too late to stop it.
And all that time, resistance has been growing. Take a look around.
There is no “best of it” to be made! How can we live with ourselves if we didn’t go down swinging? At times I feel daunted, discouraged, and dejected ( is alliteration taught in the Common Core?), but I refuse to give up.
This isn’t over by a long shot. The reformers have always relied on what Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer famously called FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), using slogans such as Margaret Thatcher’s TINA (There Is No Alternative), and the Borg’ s Resistance is Futile. They seek to win not by the force of their arguments and evidence, but by demoralizing, confusing, and passivating the political will of the majority of the voting population.
The truth is we are the majority. We have the power, but we aren’t organized and focused. They have money and organization, but are a small minority. if we get organized and disciplined, then we win.
We have to do exactly what the Tea Party and Christian Right have been doing for decades–get involved in local and state government. Join your local school board and PTA. Get to know your state and federal representatives, work on their campaigns, and even run for office yourself! Write letters to the editor and op-ed pieces explaining the game that’s being run by the corporatists against America.
And start making waves. Don’t just buy into the “lesser of evils” argument that keeps the rich in power by buying off the Democrats and Republicans. Look at the Green Party. Look at the American Justice Party. People are getting fed up with the wholesale corruption of the GOP and Democrats, and the alternatives are starting to appear. On Wednesday night, watch the presidential debates on DemocracyNow!, which will also provide time for Jill Stein (Green Party presidential candidate) and Rocky Anderson (Justice party presidential candidate) to answer the same questions as Obama and Romney. See more about the debate here:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/9/28/third_party_candidates_to_join_in_real_time_on_democracy_now_s_live_coverage_of_first_pres_debate
Government by FUD is not democracy. The old adage “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” applies to domestic politics even more than national defense. We have to fight if we want to save our future.
I wish that Samuel S Jackson would make a Wake the #@$% Up Video about this situation. People won’t get it until their ‘beloved’ teachers who they know this testing regime would never affect are non the less kicked to the curb over not getting their 90% students to be 95% students on VAM. I can’t tell you the number of parents who are just counting the days until their own kids graduate so they don’t have to worry about this situation. What they don;t understand is that the real estate they so prize will not be nearly so valuable when the local community school is no longer the gleaming beacon that it currently is. Then they will wake up but then it truly will be too late.
A lot of Florida teachers are upset over the Marzano observation system adopted by 31 of the 67 school districts to comply with Florida Senate Bill 736 and Race to the Top, which seems to take away individual teacher creativity and provide a one-size-fits-all approach to instruction. This is in addition to the state’s use of standardized test scores for 40-50% of the evaluation (even if you don’t teach tested subjects), whose scores from the 2011-2012 school year still have yet to be released!
My attitude is to do my best to succeed under the system yet continue to support efforts to come up with a more fair and effective evaluation process.
As the madness that is APPR becomes clearer to parents, I think Cuomo, King and Tish will have a harder time defending it.
Cuomo has already felt the pressure over fracking and has had to delay that program in NY State.
Environmentalists plan to keep the pressure on him and force him to delay it forever.
We can do the same with APPR – once the madness becomes clear.
For now, it’s still academic for most.
Wait until the dozens of state and local standardized tests are added to every grade in every subject and teachers start getting “i” rated and fired.
Wait until the NYSED are pressured to explain their VAM and can’t.
That will bring home the madness.
Thank you Carol. I call the ‘make the best of it’ argument the discourse of inevitability. This discourse tells us that the accountability regimes are here to stay and all we can do is hope for is a ‘place at the table.’ Meanwhile children are suffering, teachers are being ground down, and public education is being undone. With this acquiescence to inevitability comes a loss of the very idea of the public good, of schools as places to grow democracy, of teaching and learning as relationship based, complicated, messy and beautiful. The very idea of what it means to learn, to know, to make meaning is slotted into outcomes based measures controlled by corporations. We become powerless pawns hoping to eek out some tiny space of possibility or we forget even that hope and succumb to cynicism and despair. I understand the profound struggle of individual teachers in classrooms as they try to negotiate their immediate demand to be with the children in a meaningful way in the midst of the imposition of these dehumanizing measures. I do not understand the silence and complicity of leaders in education who act as if we can manage this assault with a few polite tweaks of the system. When will these leaders be more like Carol and use their position to give voice to those on the front lines who know in their bones the dangers we face?
And thank you for courageously fighting the standardized testing model at the teacher prep level. I hope that you have been offered your position back or at least have found something else. Good luck!
“You better get used to it,” is another way of putting it and what I have heard from some in response to my concerns. My response is that I better NOT get used to it.
I get discouraged a lot easier than I used to, but I know it’s important to keep fighting. I got into teaching because 1) I believed in public education, 2) I believed I had something to offer children, and 3) I wanted to be the kind of teacher who I needed (but didn’t always have) when I was a student. Since I have retired I have been volunteering in a local elementary school for one-on-one tutoring and I still believe in what I’m doing…for the same three reasons.
In addition, however, I try to encourage my former colleagues working in the school at which I volunteer. I blog about public education policy (though vent is probably a more accurate word). I also run blogs/web sites for two active local teacher unions, two local retired teacher organizations, and a local community group made up mostly of parents and retired teachers.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but, in my opinion, we can’t give up. As long as we know that our children…and usually our neediest children…are being hurt by current education policies we can’t be quiet. We owe it to them, our grandchildren, ourselves and our nation to do what we can to fight against the privatization and/or destruction of public education.
If we believe that every child deserves a free, appropriate public education…
if we believe that a free, adequately supported public education system is important to a free society…
if we believe that we are capable, as a nation, of providing our children with such an educational system…
then we are obligated to do whatever we can to see that it’s restored, and sustained.
I do it by working with a few students, reaching a few readers, helping out former colleagues and supporting organizations who are working towards the same goals.
If we really believe that public education is important, we can’t give up.
I agree Stu. Retired also and refuse to go away quietly. Once a teacher, always a teacher, and today’s educators need our voice to support their hard work. Public education is the cornerstone of our democracy and we can’t give up on something of such importance.
I am so proud of Carol Burris and others who are willing to stand up for injustice. I hope one day children will read about their courage and be proud of these brave people who fought for the civil liberties of our time.
I will stand with Carol too. We can’t just sit here and watch education become a pawn in the chess game of politics! We know these reforms hurt, and they hurt deep! We can not give up just because we did not win one battle. We still have the war, and I for one will keep fighting until we win. So thank you Carol for not giving up either, and I hope and pray we will will all fight like Carol and Diane!
What an odd idea some folks have re democracy. You try. You lose. You give up. Is that what they’re telling their students. You do that even under dictatorships!!!!!
A million thanks, Carol. Note the Matt Farmer post Diane put up. There are enough of us all over the country who are “Mad as hell, & we’re not going to take it anymore!”
ReTired as I might be, I’m not yet dead, &, being from the land of the red shirts (CTU), I will unite & fight. The children of America are depending on us, and WE won’t back down!
Just put in to present a brief seminar for our “Share Fair” for the first day back second semester professional development day. The seminar will be on how VAM will be affecting us next year and they wanted a snazzy title-“Bam, VAM Slam” is the title. I’ll bet $10 to one that it won’t be picked to present.
But hey one has to try.
You’re VAMed if you do, you’re VAMed if you don’t
You haven’t mastered the art of deception, you still have some honesty and integrity about you. You must not be a banker or a corporate creature. Maybe they will still give you a chance, they may be too busy at the bar to think straight and will let you in.
Can the news from Louisiana get any worse?
The director of Louisiana’s controversial new system to evaluate public school teachers is a 27 year old with a bachelor’s degree in political science. She has 2 years TFA experience.
http://theadvocate.com/news/education/4004848-123/evaluator-defends-not-renewing-own
teaching certificate.
http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/
Please help spread the outrage. Louisianians please contact your legislators.