New York is not known as a Tea Party state, but it does have large numbers of suburban moms and dads who care about their children and who are well-educated.
Here is an account of State Commissioner John King’s public forum in Mineola, Long Island, where hundreds of angry parents and educators turned out to reject the state’s Common Core testing.
How many more public beatings will John King subject himself to before he begins to admit he might be wrong? Is that possible? He listens but he does not hear.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My State Senator Jack Martins (R), mentioned in the piece, has a bill to protect children’s data from private interests run by the likes of Rupert Murdock, who illegally eavesdropped on tragic children’s cell phones after the London bombings.
I testified before the NYC Council where Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Education Chair Robert Jackson and City Comptroller John Liu sent a letter to Governor Cuomo to change his decision about giving the kids data to InBloom.
I also see the Catholic Scholars coming out against Common Core as a tipping point as an issue of social justice, which needs to be stressed.
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Catholic Scholars Blast Common Core
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/02/catholic-scholars-blast-common-core-in-letter-to-u-s-bishops/
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Isn’t Gale Brewer the Manhattan-President Elect – Formerly the councilwoman for district 6 (on Jan 1st). If you testified before the Manhattan Borough President, it was Scott Stringer.
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Ms. Ratvich, Dr. Joe Rella from Suffolk County on Long Island is hoping Arne Duncan will listen. He penned a letter to Mr. Duncan that can be found at the following link: http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/184935281 for your consideration.
Thank you for your tireless support and for helping us continue to spread the message!
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This assumes that Duncan is capable of reading. From the positions that he has taken, I question that he has that level of cognitive capability.
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Let King deal with the increasing (think avalanche) number of parents who are really PISSED OFF at the idiocy of common core and what it is doing to their children! Just think about Arne Duncan’s recent comment about “white suburban mothers” suddenly realizing that their children are not as “brilliant” and they think. Ughh! The WP published today a story on Arne Duncan’s comment in “The Answer Sheet” and it already has 1,600 responses and growing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/ It think Duncan better pay attention to the reality as opposed to his never-ending sound bytes. This one HAS STRUCK A VERY RAW NERVE. So let us hope that King is paying attention to the fact that he is striking a lot of “raw nerves” right now!
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Full 3 hour Youtube video of Mineola session.
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I watched the entire thing. He said something toward the end of the “student privacy” section that seemed like an actual new piece of information. This was that districts who returned Race to The Top money and didn’t choose a data dashboard would still have data shared with InBloom, but only _aggregate_ data.
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People in other states need to know what is happening in New York. Here in Florida, my colleagues have no idea what is being done else where. BAT’S we need to spread the word.
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If King and Tisch truly believe the CC is and education miracle, they’d be able to stand on a stage and sell it in a way that fosters understanding. They’d be able to answer UNCENSORED questions from the audience in a direct and confident manner (without the need for politician-ese). Instead, they face anger because everyone, King and Tisch included, knows they are simply playing out a real-life version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. There must be some powerful incentives at the feet of King and Tisch to be able to continue to sit in community meetings, looking bored and disconnected. Cash? Fame and notoriety? Power? They certainly don’t continue on out of the goodness of their hearts.
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Part of the RTTT agreement was that the states would lift the cap on charter schools and evaluate teachers based on student test scores. With those two elements in place, students just need to fail and then teachers will be labeled ineffective for two years in a row, the school will be judged as failing, closed down and replaced by a charter school. The way charter schools make money is by cutting teacher salaries, possibly replacing them with TFA or facilitators who can keep students in front of a computer taking online courses. Merryl Tisch’s brother-in-law, Andrew Tisch sits on the Board of K12, the largest online curriculum company in the U.S.
So Merryl is in charge of approving charter schools and Andrew might just get a contract for his K12 curriculum. Extreme conflict of interest here in NY state. Follow the money.
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There is that old saying about being unable to make a man understand a thing when his livelihood depends upon him not understanding it.
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Let’s get real: John King is nothing more that a water carrier. When will those who ‘pull the levers of the machine’ fire him? Only when their jobs are in jeopardy; when the state wide political ruckus and parent resistance makes dumping King a necessity. Otherwise, expect “…(S)ame as it ever was… .” (with apologies to The Talking Heads.)
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You’ll think this is a parody of ed reform, but it’s not:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2013/11/17/can-hedge-fund-billionaire-paul-tudor-jones-save-americas-public-education-system/
Can this hedge fund billionaire save America’s public education system?
He’s identified the problem. It’s…. teachers unions. Now, there’s a shocker!
The tone of this article is just cringe-worthy. The reporter is basically bowing and scraping before this guy. Disgusting.
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Thanks for reading it for us. I don’t feel the need to throw up right now, so I’ll pass on reading it till later.
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Being at this forum listening to King and Tisch dig their heels while they ignored the pleas of parents, the concerns of administrators and the dismay of teachers made me realize that they feel that they are untouchable. Well they are wrong, the key to the dismantling the disaster called APPR and Common Core in NY is to drive Gov. Cuomo’s poll numbers into the ground. King may believe he does not have to answer questions from parents, but Cuomo needs to pay the price.
Time to zero in on the self proclaimed student advocate… Cuomo.
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It is time for those who speak at the Tisch/King “I’m not listening tour” to call this what it really is: Cuomocore.
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Ding!
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“self proclaimed student advocate… Cuomo”
That’s like joseph Stalin claiming he was an advocate for Ukrainian nutrition.
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lol
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“the key to the dismantling the disaster called APPR and Common Core in NY is to drive Gov. Cuomo’s poll numbers into the ground. King may believe he does not have to answer questions from parents, but Cuomo needs to pay the price.”
rratto
Cuomo’s poll numbers = The Achilles heel of CCSS/APPR
End of story. Brilliant insight.
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Looks like Cuomo is a shoe in. No one will run against him. Plus he just got the Casiinos approved, so he’s riding hight. Plan for another term.
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The election is still a long way off… Cuomo governs via his polling. That is the only way to get change in this state. Go after his numbers, make noise, demand he go on a state listening tour.
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When 7 out of 10 parents in New York state have been officially informed that their 8 to 14 year old children are failures (i.e. “not as brilliant as they thought”). The three-headed beast has angered 70% of the state. That’s a lot of votes! Call your reps; call the gvernors office and let them know your outreage will br felt at the polls.
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Coumo also needs a very decisive victory. He has aliented some huf=ge voting blocks with SAFE legislation and now CCSS and the InBloom disaster. He might be confident in victory but at the same time he is very concerned with the degree of victory.
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Public school system in Tennessee getting eaten alive by establishment of a separate, privatized charter system:
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/nov/17/charter-schools-prompt-concerns-about-money/
There are districts in Michigan where the public schools are completely gone. No public schools at all. Is Tennessee next?
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****As for the impact of charter schools, Haslam appeared less than sympathetic.
“I think the flip side of that is if you look, again in Nashville, if you look at the schools with the best results, a large number of those were charters,” the governor said. Later, he added, “at the end of the day our responsibility is to provide the very best education with those public dollars we can for our school system.”****
How would one go about researching the results Governor Haslam is referring to? Is this statement accurate?
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Well, I certainly hope it’s true, because if it isn’t true, and Haslam continues defunding the public schools and replaces all the public schools with privatized charter schools, it’ll be a little late to discover he cooked the books or exaggerated the record of his favored charter system after that.
Once public schools are gone, they’re gone. They won’t be coming back. I can’t think of a single example of a universal public system that was privatized and then became public again.
I’m sure you saw the incredible amount of lobbyist resistance to a single “public option” insurance entity in health care reform.
In 20 years we’ll be lobbying Congress for a “public option” in K-12 education, and the effort will fail, just as it did in health care.
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Billions ride on the success of CC and APPR, he just has to sit and spew. Those are his orders.
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Anyone who supports invariant national standards, high-stakes testing, VAM, and a national database of student responses and scores is obviously quite comfortable with distant, unaccountable, centralized, totalitarian authority. Such a person is not going to be the sort who “hears” criticism. He or she has an authoritarian personality type and probably grew up under a harsh, authoritarian father of the “spare the rod and spoil the child” variety. To such a person, what looks like child abuse to the rest of us is simply maintaining discipline, physical or mental.
People with authoritarian personalities always think that ordinary people–their employees, the citizenry at large–are idiots and uninformed–out of the loop because of their low status and thus prone to foolishness. And it doesn’t matter, at all, how informed the critique of such a person’s policies is, for he or she typically believes that there are a few natural leaders–the members of the oligarchy of which he or she is a member or to which he or she aspires, and that only those folks–the members of the class who rule by virtue of their superiority, have a clue. Any critique of the policies of those with superior status is just so much blather–blah, blah, blah–to be put up with an “managed.”
Of course such a person, when he or she deigns to listen, does not hear.
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I think you nailed it, Mom/speducator!
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The NYTimes article on this topic (finally) is more about ivy league background of King and the fact he is the first African-American chancellor of NYS. Funny how Duncan and the reformers are trying to turn this into a race issue. That’s a sign of desperation.
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