This just in:
My name is Emma Tai (@emmachungming) and I’m the Coordinator for Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, an organizing collaborative for education justice led by students of color from across Chicago (www.facebook.com/voyceproject).
Yesterday, some of our students went public with stories of being demoted from junior to sophomore status in March, a month before the PSAE state exam which is administered next week and only given to juniors, and which Mayor Emanuel has made major efforts to link to school closings and principal and teacher evaluations. Two VOYCE student leaders were on a list of 67 juniors in total who were demoted in March at a southwest side high school, or a third of that school’s junior class.
We’ve seen similar patterns at a number of other schools with junior classes that, by mid-April, are significantly smaller than senior or sophomore classes and are calling on the Illinois State Board of Education to formally investigate CPS officials. If you would like any more background information about this or to speak with our youth leaders, I’m happy to provide it.
Here is some coverage we got from that action: http://www.wbez.org/news/students-want-boycott-state-test-106735
As you can see, we are also aligning our efforts with Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools which is calling for a boycott of the PSAE next week in protest of the proposed school closings. You can follow the boycott preparations at @chistudentsorg or hashtags #cpsboycott and #cpsclosings.
We would really appreciate you sharing this information through your blog and twitter feed so we can raise the profile of student efforts to turn back the tide of closings, privatization and pushout in Chicago!
Thanks so much,
Emma
—
Emma Tai
Coordinator, Voices of Youth In Chicago Education (VOYCE)
emma@voyceproject.org
773-583-1387 ext. 208
http://www.voyceproject.org
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
a pattern we have seen before, in Texas. Its tests were given in 10th grade. Students were held back if they were considered not likely to pass, sometimes even for 3rd year. If they decided to drop out feeling they could never graduate they were asked if they might seek a GED at some point and if they answered affirmatively they were marked as having transferred to an alternative educational setting so that they would not show up as dropouts. Or – and this applied especially to gifted athletes – they were told they had made so much progress in their 2nd year in 9th grade they were being skipped directly to 11th.
Campbell’s law strikes again.
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teacherken: just so!
“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” Hence the need for Mayor Emanuel and CPS to twist and spin the numbers in order to fit a prejudged outcome.
[saying attributed to Mark Twain but apparently predates him:
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/15/liars-figure/%5D
For the readers of this blog who may not be familiar with teacherken’s reference, here is Donald P. Campbell’s original formulation in 1976: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Campbell’s Law has been used to help explain, for example, the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools and DCPS: when high-stakes test scores become [in practice] the be-all and end-all for teachers and principals, there is a pressing incentive to do anything to raise those numbers. Just one consequence of school staff changing many wrong answers to right on such high stakes tests for only one Atlanta middle school: the students’ misleadingly enhanced test scores resulted in the loss of an estimated $750,000 in funding that would have addressed the actual challenges and difficulties they were experiencing in school. On the other hand, some school staff received money bonuses and lavish praise.
If this seems perverse, just remember what so-called educational reformers call this: $tudent $ucce$$. [English-to-English translation: the students might get a few spare ¢¢¢¢¢ while the edubullies get guaranteed mountains of $$$$$.]
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Campbell also made some remarks specifically about educational tests,
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Many of us in L.A. support you. LAUSD has also had student walkouts over the years when nothing else worked. These sociopaths like Emmanuel and that Tribune so-called reporter who says Karen Lewis has no business being president of CTU need to be thrown out on their heads. Now you also have the problem of the Koch Brothers getting ready to by the Tribune newspapers which includes the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times. Isn’t that just great and Obama does nothing about antitrust. You in Chicago should know best about the destruction Barack and Michelle have done in privatizing the schools in Chicago since 1995 and the destruction he and Duncan have done since being first elected. They are not friends. Duncan lied to the State of California to push mayoral control. I have the documentation. Just like Rod Paige under Bush 1 should lose his job for lying to get into office.
Please go ahead with the student walkout as this is the only way you will get the point across and get the publicity needed to complete getting rid of these people who do not care about anything except packing their pockets and that of their puppet masters.
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I love Krazy TA and teacherken. They know what is going on. Keep it up as we can win against those “Destroyers of our public education system.”
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Congratulations to these brave students who are standing up for themselves and their communities.
To demote students in March goes beyond incompetence and malpractice – “So, Mr. School CEO, it took you 70% of the school year to realize this student was incorrectly placed?” – and deep into the realm of abuse.
Since high stakes tests are the linchpin of the smash-and-grab political economy of so-called education reform, the repression and straight-out cruelty of its practice is going to intensify, and parents are going to likewise have to push back harder in defense of their children.
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Bravo to these brave students! This New Yorker applauds you!
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Emma,
You are the voices of the future. Now is the time to speak for yourselves and bring your parents with you!
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What possible excuse can there be for demoting students in the middle of the year? Other than gaming the test score outcomes.
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I just donated to their movement! I just wish the youth in our district would rise up and say no more! We are being run over with a Mack truck in MPLS.
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One of the best supports students like Emma Tai—and school staff and parents and concerned citizens—can have is an online forum like this. To amplify our voices, to speak to each other, to organize.
Not too many minutes ago this blog surpassed 4,000,000 hits. In less than a year!
🙂
I would urge others to post their thanks to Diane Ravitch for creating and hosting “A site to discuss better education for all.” Just a single one of the leading edubullies, Michelle Rhee, the Masking Tape Darling of the billionaire boys club and their accountabully underlings, has a staff of 120 all of her own. Add in the eduphilanthropies and the increasingly numberous for-profit eduproduct companies and the politicians and school boards they have purchased and you have a might army of money, muscle and might. Diane has herself to rely on—and whatever small aid the rest of us can offer.
Goliath and his buddies were confident in their overwhelming advantages. Well, David had his sling. Diane has this blog.
I’m putting my money on the woman with the sling.
Anybody with me on this?
🙂
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I don’t think David, in this case, is going to kill Goliath, because there is no stone in the sling pocket, which is to say the money’s gone and won’t come back. Words are not money, and money talks.
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With you, Krazy TA! Yes, WE can, and yes, WE will (NOT them)!!
“It isn’t over until WE say it’s over,” Karen Lewis, John Belushi (Blutto), and numerous others.
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So proud of our CPS students! They are standing strong!
Just today the Student’s posted:
CPS will be making robo-calls (those calls with messages) to our homes tomorrow! They are making these calls because want to scare us! In reality, they are the ones who are concerned, otherwise they would not be making these calls.
They will probably mention the boycott and tell our parents that we MUST take this test Wednesday. This is not true, as the state mandates a retake on May 8th! If CPS does not allow retakes, THEY are breaking state mandates. We will have lawyers to assure that no student is denied this right.
Aside from this, tomorrow we will have a press conference where parents will also speak out against this test and show support for us.
REMEMBER! We are doing this to stand up for our schools, our futures, and for the generations that are yet to come!
I also heard from teachers, that the students are being to be both threatened and bribed at the same time. This tells so much! CPS is getting scared and the CPS does not know the first thing about dealing with high school students.
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Good for the students. They are learning a tough lesson: They are not one if the top 1% and are being screwed by the elitists who want drone learners…no thinking just following orders no matter how horrific the outcomes are. Sad.
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