I read Jeff Bryant’s interview with the President-elect of NEA, Lily Eskelsen, and I think I love her.
She is smart, strong, and she doesn’t mince words.
She was a classroom teacher for many years, and she speaks from experience teaching many kinds of kids, including kids in special education and kids in a homeless shelter.
She knows that VAM is ridiculous.
She knows that tests can be valuable when used for diagnostic purposes, but harmful when used to pin a ranking on students, teachers, principals, and schools.
She gets it.
Here is a small part of the interview. Jeff asked why NEA delegates voted for a resolution calling on Duncan to resign.
“Bryant: So what’s the frustration for teachers?
“Eskelsen: Here’s the frustration – and I’m not blaming the delegates; I will own this; I share in their anger. The Department of Education has become an evidence-free zone when it comes to high stakes decisions being made on the basis of cut scores on standardized tests. We can go back and forth about interpretations of the department’s policies, like, for instance, the situation in Florida where teachers are being evaluated on the basis of test scores of students they don’t even teach. He, in fact, admitted that was totally stupid. But he needs to understand that Florida did that because they were encouraged in their applications for grant money and regulation waivers to do so. When his department requires that state departments of education have to make sure all their teachers are being judged by students’ standardized test scores, then the state departments just start making stuff up. And it’s stupid. It’s absurd. It’s non-defensible. And his department didn’t reject applications based on their absurd requirements for testing. It made the requirement that all teachers be evaluated on the basis of tests a threshold that every application had to cross over. That’s indefensible.
“Bryant: So any good the Obama administration has tried to accomplish for education has been offset by the bad?
“Eskelsen: Yes. Sure, we get pre-K dollars and Head Start, but it’s being used to teach little kids to bubble in tests so their teachers can be evaluated. And we get policies to promote affordable college, but no one graduating from high school gets an education that has supported critical and creative thinking that is essential to succeeding in college because their education has consisted of test-prep from Rupert Murdoch. The testing is corrupting what it means to teach. I don’t celebrate when test scores go up. I think of El Paso. Those test scores went up overnight. But they cheated kids out of their futures. Sure, you can “light a fire” and “find a way” for scores to go up, but it’s a way through the kids that narrows their curriculum and strips their education of things like art and recess.
“Bryant: Doesn’t Duncan understand that?
“Eskelsen: No. That reality hasn’t entered the culture of the Department of Education. They still don’t get that when you do a whole lot of things on the periphery, but you’re still judging success by a cut score on a standardized test and judging “effective” teachers on a standardized test, then you will corrupt anything good that you try to accomplish.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think I love her, too!
I think I love her too!
Me too! I fell in love listening to her at the AFT Convention (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zppCESWbW2A)!
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC_RPN1HsV0
And maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgJFak-6Wus
I KNOW I love her. 💖
Right on!!!
Keep on point with this message. Great to hear these words and cut to the chase understanding of issues. This is the message that is likely to keep NEA members and bring others into the fold.
Not at all sure about her.
“And we get policies to promote affordable college, but no one graduating from high school gets an education that has supported critical and creative thinking that is essential to succeeding in college because their education has consisted of test-prep from Rupert Murdoch”
Unless my sarcasmometer and/or irony indicator is broken that statement is utter nonsense. No one graduating from high school gets an education in critical and creative thinking???? Murdoch responsible for RaTT????
I don’t see anything about NEA’s culpability in being GAGAers over this nonsense. It’s as if all has occurred while the NEA has been asleep and/or ignorant of the goings on and therefore holds no culpability.
Nope don’t see it.
Lily just met with Arne Duncan and supposedly delivered the sternly-worded letter asking for his resignation to him personally. It was reported that she hugged him as she left his office.
“What does Arne Duncan think about this? Why does he still insist on basing his policies on test scores?
I spoke with Secretary Duncan yesterday [July 16]. He’s very upset with the NEA Representative Assembly’s decision to call for his resignation. We had a hard conversation. He was very straightforward with me. He felt he wasn’t being given enough credit from NEA for advocating for expanded early childhood education and greater access to affordable college. And it’s true there is no light between us on those issues. So he asked why we didn’t explain to people all the good things he has advocated for. I said I would send him copies of speeches I give where I’ve been supportive of the good things the Obama administration has done, and I’d give him position papers from the NEA addressing the need to work closely with his department.”
And what did she do when he shifted away from the demand for his resignation into asking for kudos besides promising him she would prove she did support him? The anti-militancy stance of the 2 teacher unions is proving to be quite costly in terms of what we have lost and are about to lose and there is precious little hope that we will gain anything new.
I like some of what she says and I’m waiting to see what she does. With today’s decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to uphold a law that bans collective bargaining I believe we will see a concerted effort to do away with unions entirely within the next few years. Couple that with thousands of teachers beginning to be fired over their VAM scores and it spells disaster for the profession, for individual teachers, for public schools, for the NEA and AFT, and, worst of all, for the children of our once-great country.
“I’d give him position papers from the NEA addressing the need to work closely with his department.”
Lily, let me be the first to suggest to you that the ONLY, YES ONLY, position paper that you first need to read and comprehend, (if you need help with understanding it, feel free to contact me at: dswacker@centurytel.net) and then give to, better yet, instruct the Dunkster on, is Noel Wilson’s complete epistemological and ontological destruction of educational standards and standardized testing and exposing them for the educational malpractices that they are: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 (Not that I believe he could comprehend it.)
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Not sure why my comment @ 7:07 is awaiting moderation
Duane, did you include multiple links?
No, Mercedes just one link. It’s my Wilson post with a comment before to tie it into this post. And I don’t even think I have any inappropriate language in it either.
Mercedes,
Yes it does have two links as I included my email address which came up as a link-I didn’t realize that it would come up as a link.
Here is my first commentary up to the Wilson study link:
“I’d give him position papers from the NEA addressing the need to work closely with his department.”
Lily, let me be the first to suggest to you that the ONLY, YES ONLY, position paper that you first need to read and comprehend, (if you need help with understanding it, feel free to contact me at: dswacker@centurytel.net) and then give to, better yet, instruct the Dunkster on, is Noel Wilson’s complete epistemological and ontological destruction of educational standards and standardized testing and exposing them for the educational malpractices that they are: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
If my memory serves, NEA was the driving force behind the creating of the DOE back In the 1970s. (Carter admin?) What did they think was going to happen besides the Feds taking tax money and then trying to make educators think they were lucky to “get” this back with strings attached by people who haven’t been in a classroom for thirty years if at all?
If you read Carter’s White House Diaries he specifically says he doesn’t mind the DOE so long as teachers are not involved.
I salute you, Duane. Since I am from Canada, I would love to sign my right to you regarding Public Education, if I am allowed to do so.
You are very wise and you can see things through Lily. I have read her blog in the past. People who talk well without action, cannot be trusted. People who are civilized without emotional detachment, cannot be a good judgement leader.
We can trust people who have expertise, experience, civilized manner, and their love for humanity and the welfare of all of the unfortunate through their action or movement for civil rights. Respectfully yours, May from Canada.
wow, Duane.
good work. hold fast to your standards and perception.
Tago.
Duane Swacker:
Good call . . .
” . . . no one graduating from high school gets an education that has supported critical and creative thinking that is essential to succeeding in college . . .”
I read the whole interview, and although she made some good points, that section undercut her entire message. Granted, she was using a little hyperbole there, but that kind of rhetoric is an insult to all the high school teachers who are doing a good job in spite of all the wrongheaded mandates from above.
You don’t advocate for teachers by insulting them in this way, assuming that they’re all buying into scripted teaching and that no teacher is adapting, supplementing, or largely ignoring the materials they’re expected to use. Interesting that she includes “creative thinking” to the “critical thinking” that is a key talking point in NEA’s support of the Common Core Standards. Though she apparently made a point of leaving out any mention of the Common Core, I’ll be skeptical of her leadership until she labels the “Standards” themselves “crappy,” “ridiculous,” “stupid,” “absurd,” and “non-defensible.”
She says, “The Department of Education has become an evidence-free zone when it comes to high stakes decisions being made on the basis of cut scores on standardized tests.”
In truth, it’s an “evidence-free zone” when it comes to almost any “education reform” topic you can think of, and that includes its support of the CCS.
I’m not going to be impressed by her show of harsh language until she shows more respect for her constituents, the teachers that pay her salary. That includes taking them seriously when they speak out against the Common Core Standards and all the other top-down, “evidence-free” mandates. It isn’t enough just to bash a bad idea like VAM and bash Duncan himself, who is now one of the easiest targets on the national scene.
“. . . who is now one of the easiest targets on the national scene. . . ”
Quite correct there Randall!
Duane,
Glad you wrote that. I have a great feeling of uneasiness.
Until the leadership of both the NEA and the AFT acknowledge their role in these educational malpractices, all of their blatherings are just that blatherings. No acknowledgement plus no action = status educational malpractice quo.
Status educational malpractice quo – did I get that right? TAGO!
She should have said, “but, if current mandates are being followed, it is difficult for anyone graduating from high school to have gotten an education that has …”
I don’t know her history, but the context of the comment makes me think that she did not intentionally mean to slam high school teachers but rather the current test prep regime.
2old2teach:
That’s partly my point. While blustering about the obvious deficiencies of VAM and Duncan, she’s not giving teachers their due. Careful in choosing her invective but not careful in the way she characterizes what’s going on in actual high schools. It sounds like she’s trying to establish her toughness, but at the expense of ignoring the wrongness of the Common Core Standards–not just their implementation, but their shady origins, their overselling, their shaky substance, and on and on.
Chiara:
She might be able to hold her own on a TV cable news show, something that Randi Weingarten has trouble doing. (Weingarten used to have a habit of half-agreeing with the “reformers” before making a weak attempt at defending teachers, and was often unable to finish a sentence–not sure how she’s been doing lately because I’ve been able to cut down on watching cable news.) It would be great to have a union leader who’s a strong advocate for teachers, but she won’t be until she can stand up to David Coleman, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the rest. So far Karen Lewis is the only one I’ve heard who is ready, willing, and able.
She’s definitely very articulate and charismatic, but is pro common core, and pro Gates and company. I don’t quite trust that she has educators backs. Check out her blog.
“The narrative that’s been created by Fox News and others is that teachers’ unions only care about their pensions…”
She should just say “the corporate-based media” instead of referring to Fox News. When it comes to education, they’re all the same (Fox, CNN, CNBC, etc.). She needs to drive home the fact all major media outlets (and they’re very few of them) are owned by people who have a financial stake in privatizing education.
Not at all sure about Lily.
The truth is I WANT to love her, and I DO love what she is saying thus far. But her future actions over a long period of time will tell the most about who she is.
Right now, few great heated dates still will not tell us if this is the person we want to marry.
Still, let’s give her a chance and keep our voices close to her ear.
Presently, she is serving us as the un-Randi, or the anti-Weingarten. Sorry, Randi, but we’ve left our Dear John letters at your door. I’d like to say it wasn’t you and it’s all us, but you know what? It WAS you, and it continues to be about you. We’re breaking up.
Lily, are you listening?
I agree with Robert. I SO want to love her. But Lily is a politician to the core. She embraces CCSS and defends the standards when the audience demands it. She speaks about testing because she knows we ALL hate it, and they came up with the “toxic testing” theme at RA, knowing it would wow the crowd. She is VERY good at working the crowd. My God, she SINGS to us. She made me cry the last 2 years at RA! But I am not convinced that she is a true leader who will lead us out of this quagmire. I want a leader who will NOT demand a seat at THEIR table, but who will set out OWN table and invite people who will listen to OUR requirements for support and endorsement.
I’d like a leader who will sit at a table apart and have Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and Campbell Brown come to the table not as guests or even as waiters and busboys, but as items ON the menu . . . . .
Pass the salt and pepper, please . . . .
“. . . but as items ON the menu. . . ”
No, I prefer more wholesome food!
Take some Di-Gel or enzymes and swallow the enemy . . . .
Gulp . . . .
Lily was the Utah Education Association president before she went to the national office. I was not impressed with her then. She is very well spoken and very charismatic, but my views of her when she ran UEA is that she speaks well but doesn’t act. She was the first in a long line of UEA presidents that have sat back while the state legislature has eviscerated teachers in Utah–a lot of the teacher bashing that everyone has been seeing nationwide for the last decade has been happening in Utah for 25 years. Lily and these other presidents have allowed legislators to bash teachers and cut pay, benefits, and teaching conditions to the bone, which is saying something, since Utah has been the lowest in per pupil expenditure for more than 40 years. The difference now is that Utah no longer spends a large percentage of its tax dollars on K-12 education. In the past the argument was that we were doing all we could considering that large families that Utah has. However, we went from the top 10 states in percentage of tax dollars spent on education to the bottom 10 in the last 20 years. I partially blame UEA for that, because they have NOT spoken against it. And Lily Eskelsen has been a big part of UEA leadership, even after leaving the state. Frankly, after what I have witnessed, I will believe that she will TRULY back up teachers only when I see proof.
Why does she remind me of Obama?
Does anyone love Barbara Madeloni? I think I might . . . . .
Diane, can you find some love for her too? Please? I think you do.
I love Madeloni like I love Karen Lewis – both are very much the real deal.
Now you’re talking!
While we are at it, how about some love for the teachers and students of Philadelphia. They have just been stabbed in the back again by the politicians and it looks like school will not be opening on time and even more teacher layoffs are coming.
http://thenotebook.org/blog/147507/vote-cigarette-tax-fund-philly-schools-put
The NEA needs to find their voice in PA and stand up to these reform legislators. The children and educators of Philly deserve their voices. Honestly as educators aren’t we suppose to advocate for the children. It is time to put serious money into fighting for the students and teachers with a media campaign.
From the article: “The state House and Senate can’t agree on a bill that includes authorization for Philadelphia to pass a $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes to help fund its school system.”
Talk about lily livered scum bags. Yep, let’s tax those with a physical and psychological addiction so that we won’t have to deal with the inequities in school funding. That’s about as disgusting as it gets. Screw it, let’s just murder all the children in Philly so we won’t have to have a school system there.
LOL! How would the privatizers produce revenues if there were no children? They could have the TFAs projecting the scripted crap on Smart boards to empty rooms.
An update on Philly. Thankfully Helen Gym is entering the fray.
http://parentsunitedphila.com/2014/07/31/sabotaging-our-children-and-our-schools/
For what it’s worth, I think she’s an engaging and persuasive advocate and public education needs those.
I watched a clip of a speech and I think she will be convincing outside education circles. That’s valuable. In my opinion we are going to have to reach people who don’t follow this stuff. I think she could do that.
That’s great Chiara but she was elected to be the leader of the National Education Association and it is a union of teachers who pay dues to giver her a salary, a budget, and a platform.
Her primary job should be leading teachers to fight for our very existence and representing our voices to the government without softening the message in carefully-worded ‘position papers’ which are soft sop indeed.
She may be a great goodwill ambassador but that will mean diddly squat to teachers who are kicked out of the profession based upon VAM scores in the coming year not to mention the mental abuse and longterm mental damage about to be committed on children ages 3 -18 and the testing extravaganza about to be unleaded upon them through CCSS.
The times call for a militant leader who is not afraid to fight. The days of compromise and negotiation in good faith are long gone, killed and buried by ALEC and the billionaire reformists.
Oh, I agree with you. I don’t know how she is as a union leader.
The jargon-free speech and direct approach is appealing in a speaker, though.
There’s a lot of grim determination in ed reform, but
not a lot of humor or joy. She will
stand out simply because she’s different.
I hope you are right. What I fear is that people are being dazzled by her directness simply because it is so different from Van Roekel’s mealymouthed approach and Randi’s carefully parsed political pabulum.
Something tells me that she never would have been elected though if she didn’t already pledge to maintain the status quo. There’s way too much familiarity between the NEA, the AFT, the Democratic Party, Eli Broad, Harvard, and the other usual suspects. It’s too important and controlling a cabal to allow someone who might threaten them to be elected. Look at how well candidate Obama followed the protocols.
Any gains and growth will come from the grassroots I believe. I know that everyone hopes that some important people in high positions will somehow start to lead us, risking their comfy and well-paid sinecures but I don’t see it happening.
We must rise up from the classrooms and take back our profession.
CC testing has already begun in Utah–we piloted the mess this spring. Not ONE word has been said from a woman who taught elementary school in Utah for over 10 years. How is she not supporting teachers and students in her state, when those poor kids from grade three up spent over ten hours in testing? Is that lack of comment indicative of what she will (not) say when the horror of the new, “improved” testing hits everywhere?
Chris,
“. . . the National Education Association and it is a union of teachers. . . ”
No, it is not a “union” of teachers. It has many administrators as part of its ranks and the teachers have a tendency to follow the party line especially if they have administrators as part of their local organization-they, the teachers, know who butters their bread. It is a professional organization, not a union. Since when does a union have management as part of its rank and file????
The NEA attempts to play both sides of the fence-union and professional organization (and they don’t do either that well)-and for them the grass on the administration side is greener (think $$), thicker and longer.
Great points Duane although here in Florida we are a hybrid of the AFT and NEA and administrators are not eligible for membership.
The state is imposing all of the same VAM nonsense on principals starting this year, however,and they may wish that they were eligible for representation.
They sold their souls for a big pay raise a few years ago and relinquished all rights to collective bargaining in return for the extra $$$$. All administrators were at-will employees a few years before teachers joined them 3 years ago against our will — we did receive the extra $$$, of course.
Diane, are you awake with the night shift now, and having some crackers and ginger ale? I hope you wake up tomorrow morning refreshed and steady. It gets easier and easier from now on.
I kind of like Lily, too. Wish she’d give back the Gates money, and disclose all the corporate grants and gifts the NEA is holding, though.
Hi chemtchr:
Why should NEA and AFT give back money to whoever donates, except with an intentionally and conditionally legal agreement to be their puppet/slave? You will see the true color of union leaders, won’t you?
In Canada, ex-Prime Minister Mulroney did not return $300,000 donation from businessman who bribed Dr. Mulroney when he was in position as Prime Minister. I love that. I hope that someone in legal field would put that businessman in jail for being defamation a retiree.
Also, in USA, someone in legal field should put Ken Star and Monica in jail for being intentionally defamed ex-President Clinton.
All journalists in media can expose all bad characters of all leaders and their family members under the sun before these leaders run for authority position, but not scrutinize or trap them during their position or after their retirement.
Legal system should have special clause that protect dignity of authority in government, in religion and educators in school during in position or after their retirement. This will help leader and his/her family members avoiding threats by any MALICE tycoon. As a result, we, from leaders to ordinary citizens need due process, tenure track to protect our dignity. As well as, we need to impose serious penalty on all power (strip their licences, like bad doctor, bad banker), rich (take away their wealth and put in national treasury coffer for public education), and authority (ban them from running for government position) who abuse their position to harm people who achieve tenure track, excellent work record, and help community learning civil rights.
If educators only love leaders who are charming about talk the talk, but are afraid of walk the walk, then could educators blame on ordinary people who vote the wrong businessman as their representative? (ex: Oprah and Black community are so hyper in voting Obama twice!)
Up to now, Dr. Chetty of Harvard University, Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown should be under microscope from media before they become worse with the backup of tycoons. I know that I am the dreamer. Back2basic
In Canada, Harper is no better.
As usual, Chemtachr, you make a strong and powerful point. Follow the money trail and it will peel back all other layers of rhetoric, good and bad. Whether Lily inherited this money or not, she should give it back. I think that would make a FAR more powerful statement than keeping it to buy the rope to help hang the enemy.
Or am I being too idealistic here?
Gestures can make deeper impressions than money. Besides, if she gives it back, we’ll know the NEA is guranteed not to spend it on actions that don’t further our interests. That’s about the most bare, deductive logic I can derive out of this . . . . .
Off topic but this is insane: the mainstream media is unable to label anything as it truly is anymore.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5639719/comments
Hi TOTT,
Thanks for the link. These people clearly have no experience working with Special Needs children. They should observe children with severe cognitive impairments taking these inane tests.
The Department of Education is not being run by educators, including Duncan. They have no idea what a classroom and teaching is like.
The new NEA President is speaking truth to power. Good for her!!! I wish the American Association of School Administrators and National School Board Association would support the NEA’s position on this issue. Associations representing “management” have planks in their platforms that mirror the NEA’s. We ALL want full funding for special education and ALL support legislation that provides more funding and social services for children, for example. This isn’t about being “pro-union”, this is about rejecting practices that are not research-based and corrode the public’s support for public education.
And now that Lily has been applauded for saying things what is the plan? Thousands of teachers face dismissal and loss of license due to VAM at the end of the coming school year.
WHAT IS THE PLAN TO STOP THIS?
I keep asking this and keep being ignored. How are we going to help save the jobs and careers of these teachers now?
Or are they going to end up on the trash heap as collateral damage while Lily sends carefully-worded and lawyer-parsed ‘position papers’ as a love letter to Arne Duncan?
I stand with the teachers who are about to lose everything in a few short months. Who stands with me? Do they AFT and NEA? And if they do WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?
No one seems willing to engage with my question or to even attempt to answer it. That’s a shame. If we wait until after the fact and try suing then we’ve lost the battle and the war. Collective bargaining is disappearing and there will be no one left to fight soon. We need to wake up and get militant now.
Chris,
Face it man, you don’t matter at all in the NEA’s world, you ain’t squat to them. I hope you begin looking now for a different line of work.
See the quote below where ol Lily “personally doesn’t like standardized tests” but she also says that “the problem is not the standardized test”. Oh so professional of her to separate her “personal” likes and dislikes from her “professional” duties of shilling for the edudeformers.
I heard her interviewed by Sam Seder at Netroots. Very impressed, but we shouldn’t put our hopes in one person, we should really be explaining all this to parents…
Nichols: “So are the tests the problem?”
Eskelen: “I told him I personally don’t like standardized tests. I think they’re a waste of time and money. I agree with Finland that when something tells you so little you have to question why you are doing it. But the problem is not the standardized test itself. I gave the Standards of Achievement Test to my fifth graders in Utah. When the district used the scores to look at big picture reading achievement data over time, they realized, “Oh look, our reading achievement scores are going down.” So they analyzed the data for probable causes and realized that they were getting many more English language learners in their schools.”
First of all how can one “agree with Finland”??
Oh, I know, one must throw out a reference to Finland so as to appear knowledgeable.
And if the district needed a standardized test to tell them (ignoring the fact that any standardized test results are COMPLETELY INVALID to start with) that “they ere getting many more English language learners in their schools” then the district had its collective head up its ass to already not know that particular bit of information.
Great ! Now, LEG will sooner or later justify all this w/ the fact that she supports #CCSS .
Yes Ms. Eskelsen, but you’re preaching to the choir.
What we need is for NEA to actually initiate action (strikes? walkouts? etc.) for American educators to follow and stop dead in its tracks the assault on public education.
Talk is cheap; if you’re not on the front lines and under fire; as classroom teachers are,
you’re leading from the rear.