This is a video that uses the music of “Alice’s Restaurant.”
It is filled with every bit of jargon and pedagogical nonsense that is now official policy in New York state and the nation.
Watch this, listen to the steady flow of mandates, bureaucratese, official baloney, data-driven evaluation, and ask yourself:
What does any of this verbal trash have to do with education?
How does it relate to things of the mind, the heart, character, citizenship, knowledge, the life of children?
Listen, watch, and then decide whether to laugh or cry.
APPR is how you rate, teachers in New York State.
After you listen, if you are offended by this nuttiness, go here and sign on with the principals of New York State who agree.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think the problems in education extend to countries all over the world. The over-parenting/ under-parenting and lack of trust in teachers is a phenomenon that I have seen occuring in Europe in South America as well.
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This video is brilliant.
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He was definitely in it the whole way. Long but i watched the whole thing! Great parody. Would his APPR give him credit for his creativity? His engaging style? Pearson wouldn’t know how to ask a question about satire, parody, or bombshell at the end, “except the charters.” Posting this video to twitter and FB. Oh, and sign the petition.
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APPR doesn’t make sense for charters if your goal is to be able to fire teachers who are tenured.
If your goal is to structure plans that will make teachers better, then exempting charters makes no sense whatsoever.
It makes even less sense to say that charters will “know” what’s wrong with their teachers without this plan and say that there’s no other way to hire and fire tenured public school teachers except for this.
I don’t even know where I’m going to find time to figure out what “acceptable” SLOs are (you see we’re less than a week away from the school year starting, and the DOE still hasn’t put out a list of acceptable SLOs – a list we’re supposed to digest and apply during the school year).
If those lists aren’t out soon (like- today), then, I’d expect a full on lawsuit at the end of the year challenging all unsatisfactory ratings based on this system.
Heck, I expect lawsuits anyway since there is not one lick of science that the DOE is using to establish those SLOs. The process by which they’re approved is a mystery.
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Absolutely briiliant. Help make it go viral!!
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I, obviously, am not from NY, but I can relate to this. Yep…this needs to go viral!
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Verbal trash- the perfect metaphor for reformy sloganeering.
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Loved it! Ready to go up to Albany and shout it through the corruption!
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Brilliant.
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George Wash. duck at 3:05, very inspiring.
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I thought that was the best song I have heard in a long time. My only qualm is that the singer/song writer identified G. Bush as the culprit of the problems. It may have started with Bush but Obama has taken this to a whole other level. Arnie Duncan and Obama are responsible for this mess.
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You got that right
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How did that not go viral?
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Probably because it’s too long, you know the average attention span these days, eh!
Still AG’s AR is one of my all time protest/anti-war songs much as is the following MG song WGO:
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Great job!
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Verbal trash is so right– I call it edu-speak.
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I think I’m JUST old enough to remember the original! I was a little confused until I realized that the singer was a principal. Good stuff.
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