Jesse Hagopian brought a rate moment of truth to the corporate-dominated Education Nation show when he spoke on behalf of his colleagues at Garfield High in Seattle. He instantly became the voice and face of the movement to stop pointless and punitive high-stakes testing. Imagine: a real classroom teacher sitting among the CEOs and governors. They speak Reformy platitudes, he is the voice of experience.
This is an interview that Jesse gave to Jaisal Noor about his vision of the movement that is now building in state after state, to protect children from the predatory practices endorsed by the governors and CEOs at Education Nation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is so great to see the spread of recognition across the nation, and more importantly, that they are taking action.
there will be many speakers, many leaders, as the movement, like a prairie wild fire, moves north to south and east to west. we are at the beginning of a long struggle; there will be no easy. ‘gimmee’ victories, no ‘folding up tents’. we will ‘stop the gears and levers of the machine’
or south to north and west to east!!!
and from the heartland outward!!!!
Dear Diane,
Thank you for highlighting Jesse Hagopian’s efforts on behalf of those of us in Seattle — and the nation — who oppose the destructive effect of excessive testing in our public schools, the result of “No Child Left Behind” and continued by “Race to the Top.” I am proud to have worked with Jesse for the past 5 years, advocating for sound education policies and practices, against school closures and the MAP test, in support of teachers and families. I am also proud to count Jesse among my friends, colleagues and endorsers of my campaign for Seattle School Board. Congratulations and thank you, Jesse — and Diane — for being champions of public education! — Sue Peters (www.suepeters4schoolboard.org)
Dear Diane,
Thank you for highlighting the efforts of Jesse Hagopian on behalf of those of us in Seattle — and the nation — who oppose excessive testing, a damaging vestige of “No Child Left Behind” and its offshoot, “Race to the Top.” I have worked with Jesse for the past 5 years advocating for sound education policies and practices, opposing school closures and the MAP test, supporting teachers and families. I am proud to count Jesse as a friend, colleague and endorser of my candidacy for Seattle School Board. Congratulations and thank you, Jesse — and Diane — for being champions for public education! — Sue Peters (www.suepeters4schoolboard.org)
Four out of five parents agree, the future belongs to standardized testing regime change.
In case Bill Gates missed the album Free to be You and Me while he was playing pong or pouring salt on slugs or whatever he was doing, he needs to replay that album about a thousand times and rethink his educational policies.
The last paragraph of the transcript of the interview with Jess Hagopian:
“And I think that NBC realized that this movement had gained so much traction that it was impossible to deny it and have a credible conversation about education in this country. And I was so glad that I was able to raise the points on the show. The part of the show that was not shown in that clip, I was able to point out the fact that perhaps Garfield High School did not start the MAP test boycott. You could say that the boycott was actually started by the elite private schools like Lakeside, where Bill Gates attended as a high school student, because those elite schools, they have never given the MAP test and they don’t inundate their students with standardized testing, because they want their children to be raised to be the next generation of leaders. They want critical thinking in the classroom. They want time for the arts and the things that really enrich education. And we want the very same for all of our children in the public schools.”
Link provided by the owner of this blog, who has also provided this quote from John Dewey several times:
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”
Read the last sentence of Jesse Hagopian’s statement. Read the John Dewey quote.
You would think this is plain enough. But given that just days ago State Commissioner John King said that Montessori schools are exemplars of Common Core in action, perhaps every edubully and edufraud should have the following tattooed on their foreheads in letters as big as those on Dr. Steve Perry’s website:
“I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.” [Groucho Marx]
Oops! Now I’ve done it… Sorry, all you four-year-olds. I shouldn’t have implied that the education establishment was as bright as y’all.
My bad.
😦
“Those who make non-violent revolution impossible only make violent revolution inevitable”
He was fantastic. Can we replace the Obamameister with him? Maybe, we can then educate our children and stop the insane wars for the profit of the military industrial complex’s profit.
Communist Teacher, never have truer words been spoken.
We are all very much indebted to Jessie Hagopian and the other brave teachers of Seattle. I very much hope that what happened in Seattle with the MAP protest will be repeated nationwide.
And I very much wish that people would think more about the inherent danger of creating national standards and tests–about creating what is to be, in effect, a centralized authority. Such an authority invites further consolidation of monopolistic control in the hands of a few providers of educational materials. It creates those “national markets” for “products that can be brought to scale,” as Arne Duncan’s office puts it.
If you like big-box education–if you like the idea of Microsofting and Walmarting U.S. education–then you should LOVE having a single set of national standards and a single set of tests based on those, and you should love having a single national database of student responses and test scores, because those ENABLE THAT RESULT.
National standards and tests are the necessary prelude to the creation of a single gateway/portal through which curricula passes–A Common Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
If that doesn’t scare you, then you are not thinking.
What are the alternatives to national standards and testing? The alternatives are
1. voluntary, competing standards and
2. local decision making about what will be taught, when, and to whom and
3. diagnostic and formative testing instead of high-stakes standardized testing.
By those means you get real news teachers can use and real innovation. Innovation comes from competition among competing ideas and from the exercise of liberty by individuals–communities making their own decisions about standards and tests.
Professional educators are not business people. They typically don’t think of the business consequences of their actions. And many do not understand, yet, the consequences of creating a single set of national standards and high stakes tests.
For decades, educational officials in state departments around the country created adoption criteria for textbooks that piled on, year after year, additional requirements for components that textbook programs would have to have.
And then, a few years later, those education officials found that a formerly robust, competitive market for educational materials in which there were MANY players–MANY COMPETING COMPANIES–had been reduced to one in which there were a few large educational publishing monopolies. And the education officials still don’t realize that THEY CREATED THAT MONSTER by ensuring that only the largest players could survive via basal adoption requirements that small publishers could not meet.
And now a lot of education officials are backing national standards and national tests, which will have EXACTLY THE SAME RESULT–that will make it easy for a few players in the education business to maintain or develop monopoly positions by taking advantage of the economies of scale that only very, very large educational publishers can take advantage of.
If you LOVE the idea of big box education–of the Microsofting and Walmarting of U.S. education–then you should be a big supporter of national standards and national tests because the one leads, inevitably, to the other.
It all comes down to unit cost. If you have a NATIONAL market based on NATIONAL standards, then a big-box publisher can create one uniform product for the entire nation. It can can manufacture the print product in enormous quantities at very low unit cost. It can have one expense for developing one marketing and advertising program for its print and online products. A new, smaller entrant to the education market cannot possibly compete with this.
The new national standards are the engine that runs the corporate reform juggernaut that is rolling over our kids.
If those remain in place, then the rest of the anti-deform movement is moot. So, people need to stand against the amateurish standards being forced upon them, and they need to stand against the tests. And civil disobedience is a good way to do that, as the events in Seattle and Poughkeepsie have shown.
There is one way to ENSURE that the business of creating educational materials will be a monopoly business in the future, and that is by creating a single set of invariant, one-size-fits-all national “standards.”
Everyone who dissents is a “special interest” who doesn’t “put children first”, also they’re not anti-public schools, they are “agnostic” on public schools. That existing public schools are directly harmed by the policies they have lock-step followed for a decade doesn’t matter, as long as they robotically repeat “agnostic”.
It’s just so nice to hear from him, if for no other reason than he doesn’t speak in slogans. What kind of parent wants a teacher who uses this strange, pre-scripted reform language where words like “public” are endlessly elastic and devoid of meaning?
This change to Common Core is a Huge waste of taxpayers money because the lack of student success in math related professions is not caused by the standards or the curriculum and well educated experts know the causes. These minor changes in moving topics from grade level to grade level will not change the fact that Teachers will still be forced to teach to the NEW TEST and therefore, they will not change how they teach and how the daily classroom routine looks. Spending huge sums of limits resources on implementing this NEW TEST will not increase the number of students demonstrating success in mathematics and related STEM occupations. At some point, the teachers will be blamed for implementing these untested ideas and wasting taxpayers money because they and their unions approved of this Experiment using All of our Public School children as Guinea Pigs. If this were truly the right thing to do, then every Expensive Private School would have already implemented these ideas! I guess this is Darwinism at work. God Bless America and Capitalism!
A little humor to lighten things…
What occurred backstage with John
King and his advisors after King fled
the stage: