For the past dozen years or so, the New York Times has been a cheerleader for corporate education reform, especially testing. Its editorials have faithfully repeated the talking points of the corporate reformers who slam “failing public schools” because they have low test scores.
But something miraculous happened today: The New York Times has a strong editorial reflecting reality. Let’s be grateful for sound logic, based on fact and evidence.
The editorial gives advice to Governor Cuomo, who has recently adopted the idea of charter schools as his version of reform, while threatening teachers with punitive evaluations based on junk science and threatening their pensions:
If he is serious about the issue [education], he will have to move beyond peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers’ union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and economic segregation that has gripped the state’s schools, as well as the inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting their children up to state standards.
These shameful inequities were fully brought to light in 2006, when the state’s highest court ruled in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that the state had not met its constitutional responsibility to ensure adequate school funding and in particular had shortchanged New York City.
A year later, the Legislature and Gov. Eliot Spitzer adopted a new formula that promised more help for poor districts and eventually $7 billion per year in added funding. That promise evaporated in the recession, spawning two lawsuits aimed at forcing the state to honor it.
A lawsuit by a group called New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights estimates that, despite increases in recent years, the state is still about $5.6 billion a year short of its commitment under that formula.
A second lawsuit was filed on behalf of students in several small cities in the state, including Jamestown, Port Jervis, Mount Vernon and Newburgh. It says that per pupil funding in the cities, which have an average 72 percent student poverty rate, is $2,500 to $6,300 less than called for in the 2007 formula, making it impossible to provide the instruction other services needed to meet the State Constitution’s definition of a “sound basic education.”
These communities and others like them are further disadvantaged by having low property values and by a statewide cap enacted in 2011 that limits what money they are able to raise through property taxes. And last year the New York State United Teachers union said that the cap had been particularly harmful to poorer districts.
These inequalities are compounded by the fact that New York State, which regards itself as a bastion of liberalism, has the most racially and economically segregated schools in the nation. A scathing 2014 study of this problem by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, charged that New York had essentially given up on this problem. It said, “The children who most depend on the public schools for any chance in life are concentrated in schools struggling with all the dimensions of family and neighborhood poverty and isolation.”
Any serious effort to improve education must direct more resources to districts that need them and must address the racial segregation in New York’s schools.
To This I add: https://dcgmentor.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/the-real-crisis-in-nys-education-is-neither-teaching-nor-standards-its-inequity/
I don’t know: does “two” make a “trend”? 🙂
The Toledo Blade, yesterday:
“If schools are to meet students’ needs, they’ll need adequate funding, both state and local….
A significant increase in school funding seems unlikely under the current administration….
Meanwhile, if state officials are serious about repairing Ohio’s economy, they can start by doing their part to repair its schools.”
REPAIR, as in “damage they did over the last 6 years”.
I’m thrilled someone noticed. Now if they could just somehow get this vital information to the huge group of people we’re paying to handle this public school stuff…
. Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2015/01/04/Five-of-eight-is-wrong-debate.html#ys2OvUHiuxYBfUDK.99
Here in Texas they are talking about restoring funding, but most of the increased funding will be shifted to techonology/testing/personalized learning (in other words, to the pockets of tech companies and testing companies). It is madness! Then I have to listen to my neighbors talk about how much more is being spent per student now than 5 years ago. They don’t understand that most of the money never makes its way into our over-crowded and undersupplied classrooms. We provide toilet paper, copy paper, paper towels, soap and cleaning supplies, but the increased funding will never reach our school except to purchase ipads or computer lab programs. We won’t get more teachers or aides or truly needed supplies or higher pay for teachers, etc.
I wish the editorial board of the New York Times has noted the exact minimum dollar number that they believe will ensure that every child receives a sound, basic education. When in New York City we’re at $272,000 in instructional spending alone per 20 children and a staggering $500,000 per 20 children in total DOE spending, and when in the state even the poorest districts are spending $15,000 per child (and are often located in areas where the local cost of living is much less than the NYC area), it is difficult to believe that money, per se, is the issue.
If the funding gap is created not by a spending floor in poor districts that’s too low but rather by a spending ceiling in rich districts that’s too high, then why isn’t anyone proposing drastic cuts to the high-spending districts? Is it fiscally or even morally appropriate (especially considering the ugly racial exclusion) for the rich districts to spend $30,000 or more per student? Why isn’t the Times calling for a complete overhaul to how the state funds its schools, period? And the same goes for segregation: the problem has been decades in the making, and it is largely associated with how traditional district schools are zoned and funded, and the Times wants to dump this problem in Cuomo’s lap without suggesting a single strategy to address it?
It would appear that like most “well meaning” “liberals,” the members of the Times board lose interest in meaningful solutions at the exact moment they involve the communities where they live or send their own kids to school.
(shamelessly re-purposed and lightly edited from a comment I left on another site on the World Wide Web)
Diane — do you have any ideas about what New York state should do to reduce segregation in schools?
NY State has had countless opportunities and a bottomless pit of funds to use to end the residential segregation which makes this state’s public schools so racially segregated. One key choice was to aggressively build low-income, affordable housing widely dispersed in middle and upper-income neighborhoods. NYState and NYCity had more than enough funds to do this–spending about $1.5Billion in public subsidies to build the new Yankee Stadium, the new Shea Stadium, and the new Nets home in the Barclays Arena. All this public capital subsidies could have been directed to solve the segregated housing situation which would then have led to integrated catchment school districts. NYState and NYCity could have raised their disgracefully low tax rates on the 1% to help finance smaller classes for public schools, and could have imposed a tax on stock transfers on Wall St. Instead, the public treasury was looted to finance private ventures in stadiums and in the infamous provision of public space to private charters. Economic resources to move in these directions were clearly available in the past two decades, and are still available now—private corporations and finance houses have about $4Trillion in cash on hand now. More than this can be done and could have been done but segregation and income inequality were the prime policies pursued by both political parties.
Similar story in many communities. Not in my back yard on housing, with red-lining, by financial and insurance industries, appoximating zones for schools, tax incentives and under-writing for stadiums, for corporations who promise jobs, but jump to a new state as soon as another offer sounds better. Courts keep declaring that Ohio’s school funding funding formula is illegal. Many charters are cash cows.
My bet is it would help, but some (to many) of those upper middle class parents would find private school options for their children.
Defending public education is the task abandoned by AFT, NEA, and PTA. They are the organized official representatives of school stakeholders, and they are in the pockets of the rephormy billionaires and their politicians. These org’s refused to mobilize their mass memberships to stop the hollowing-out of the public sector. Only a handful of union locals bravely opposed the cuts and the tests–Chicago(Karen Lewis), Mass.(Barbara Madeloni), Wisconsin(Bob Peterson), and teachers in Washington too. Even the Working-Families Party of NY helped re-elect Cuomo the Public School Destroyer when a viable opposition candidate was ready, Zephyr Teachout, candidate for NYS Gov. last Nov.
Teachers, parents, students, and voters are mass of stakeholders on the ground whose official leaders prevented democratic power from the bottom up stopping billionaires like Gates and Koch with their crony politicians.
The NYTimes editorial is that newspaper’s belated recognition of what’s really going on in this private war on public education.
The next good chance for democratic stakeholders to defend kids and public schools is the United Opt-Out Conf in Ft. Lauderdale Jan. 16. Parents hold the winning cards in their hands, if we refuse PARCC/SBA for our kids. The whole CCSS/TFA etc. story is a grotesque narrative of public school failure blamed on derelict teachers and selfish unions. If we refuse to let our kids take their tests, we can bring this war to a halt–no students/no test subjects/no validity.
More on the sellout of the national PTA from Ani McHugh on teacherbiz:
http://teacherbiz.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/how-reformy-can-the-national-pta-get-see-its-most-recent-publication-for-the-answer/
Oh my god. Could it be?
Yes, it can. The whole private war on public schools to loot the $600Billlion+ public sector and transfer that wealth to private hands depends on the PARCC/SBA tests which can only be considered valid and credible if the great mass of public school students take them. By refusing these tests for our kids, we remove the key resource required by the private sector destroyers of public education.
And this from Jay Mathews in WAPO
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trouble-grading-teachers-with-test-scores/2015/01/04/3c17de94-91da-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
Ira Shor is exactly right. Quit feeding the testing monster! Have your students, children, grandchildren and any other families with children Opt Out of excessive standardize testing! This is the only and best way to stop the testing madness: http://unitedoptout.com
Can my family join next week? The Hunter College High School exam is this week . . . .
Great. Now I’m going to wonder whether every person awkwardly hanging out in Starbucks for 3 hours is Flerp.
I’ll the one cursing under my breath, which probably doesn’t narrow it down much.
Add Buffalo to NYC when you discuss inequities in NYS.
Cuomo gave his State of the State address here in Buffalo, NY at the Buffalo Historical Museum (built for the Pan Am Expo at the turn of the last century – you know, the one where President McKinley was assassinated).
He did not have kind words for the Buffalo Public Schools. We are constantly being disparaged by Albany and the Board of Regents, despite the fact that Buffalo has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. For the record, we have some fantastic schools within the Buffalo school system. It’s those “pesky” neighborhood schools with high rates of poor minority students and/or refugees and other ESL students who bring down those assessment scores when averaged in with the others.
Oh, what statistics can show when you are willing to manipulate the findings. So when a 90% (at one of the top schools in the country) is mixed in with 23% (at the International School), you get a substandard score. Go figure!
We are talking about those “leftover” students who never come to school, live a life affected by violence, and lack the family structure to support the educational values so important to those in NYS government. All they know is a life of poverty and they are comfortable with that. Algebra, History, Science, Literature, and Grammar are far down on their to do lists. Survival is foremost in their thoughts. It’s what they know.
There are exceptions. And those can be taught. The others are a challenge beyond the realm of teaching. And if those teachers who attempt the impossible are chastised and dismissed for their lack of success, I fear it will be difficult to find replacements to volunteer to attempt this “suicidal, career ending” mission.
Then again, what do I know. I’m only a retired teacher with over thirty years experience. I’ll leave the decision making to the know-it-alls who went to private schools and feel their experiences as a student makes them an expert in all-things regarding public education.
Ellen T Klock
If those in power did anything other than patronize teachers, I’d eat my hat.
This great report, which I stumbled on a while ago, compares NJ vs. NY in funding equity (mind you, that was before NJ’s current governor went against the courts on funding):
A Tale of Two States: Equity Outperforms Inequity
http://www.edlawcenter.org/news/archives/new-york/a-tale-of-two-states-equity-outperforms-inequity.html
I wish this report was more widely circulated/blogged about and that NJ’s Governor would honor his legal commitments in regard to education
I hate to put a downer on this seeming “ray of hope” but… if title one schools receive more money will it not go directly to the “ed reform” infrastructure for their gain and not the gain of the students? There will be more testing, more data and more hired consultants to preach the latest and greatest “disruptive innovation” idea. The problem is not so much about inequitable funding in as much it is about failing to deal with poverty and allowing essential money to be misdirected through “corporate ed reform”. I fear that giving school programs (under the guise the money will be used for students) will only go to the corporate “ed reform” thieves for all things PARCC and common core among other essential corporate profitable things.
Thus the irritated complaint about throwing money at “the problem’ when neither the problem nor the solution is well defined and most certainly differs depending on those pesky variations that schools tend to show. Why can’t we just send our students through the factory, stuff them into uniform sausage casings, and spit them out ready to face the world/their masters?
Artseagal – I always wonder where the money goes. The Buffalo Public Schools has a billion dollar budget yet they are constantly crying a lack of funds, especially when teachers want a raise. There were even three years when the wages were frozen. Yet teaching positions are continually cut while administration jobs are added. Forget about supplies.
When I first started in Buffalo, several of the inner city schools had health clinics, with full time nurses and part time doctors. Vaccinations were given right in the school. Parents had a place to bring their children for medical attention. This program was cut due to lack of funding. So were many counselors, psychologists, and social workers. And the attendance officers were also eliminated, even though poor attendance is a major problem affecting student achievement. We used to have truant officers ride along with the police to round up the vagabonds skipping classes. That is no longer a priority. These changes in philosophy over the past twenty plus years has lead us to the current environment or student attitudes which our teachers must face in the classroom.
There are some excellent new programs within the schools, many of them sponsored by outside groups, but the problems faced by those living in poverty won’t be solved with a quick fix.
“There are some excellent new programs within the schools, many of them sponsored by outside groups, but the problems faced by those living in poverty won’t be solved with a quick fix.”
I so agree with you! I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts of people who choose to volunteer their time and energy toward educational programs; I, myself, tutor at a school where a majority of the students live in poverty,but problems that require a societal response cannot depend on the charity of private agencies. Those who advocate privatizing public education are only interested in those functions where there is profit in the short term. They are not interested in the long term benefits to society of a comprehensive social safety net or to the individuals that receive such services. It doesn’t improve their bottom line. Of course, even knowing all that, I will stick my finger in one small hole in a very leaky dyke and keep tutoring.
Ironically, 2old2teach, it is those same denigrated teachers who volunteer their time and services upon retirement because they have experienced first hand the needs of their former students.
Now how does that equate with the “lazy”, “incompetent” teacher image promoted by the government to justify layoffs?
We are naive, or blind, or good hearted to believe that anything different is going to come riding in on a white horse. We know better than to believe that edreform is about anything but smoke and mirrors, and getting the money into reformer hands, and changing the world into an oligarchy. Read about abolishing-representative-government-education-common-core-choice-charter-schools/ and be enlightened. “They” may never stop, and as much as “they” and their newspapers and their spokespeople and their bought politicians want to say the naysayers are conspiracy theorists and believe in aliens, the truth is as plain as the noses on our faces when we see white is white, black is black, up is up and down is down, instead of how we are being spoon fed the opposite.
It is taxation without representation. Every brick is built on the previous. Backdoor legislation, regulations, mayoral control, sidestepping elected boards, buying school board seats, funding very profitable “non-profits” – and time after time when these scum are exposed, where is the “ah-a” that it is indeed a conspiracy to control the underlings. They chose education because they are masterful at rhetoric – would you like 2 quarters or fifty cents? Sign along the dotted line if you believe in treating our teachers well —- meanwhile the peddler wants exactly the opposite. Its horrible. They are disgusting liars without conscience. I guess either it catches up to them eventually as we are seeing with all of these phony “doctors” (Carter et al.) and charters closing and anointed superintendents finally getting the boot (Deasy), but even as they leave, the narrative is “he done good; he could have done more” all the while he was a crook, liar and thief. Enough. They will never stop. Never.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/01/abolishing-representative-government-education-common-core-choice-charter-schools/
You are so right about the Times editorial Diane. I read it this morning and said to my husband, “A miracle has occurred.” Now we just have to hope the State is paying attention.
How can NY citizens find out how much it is costing the state to defend a terribly politicized and inequitable system for funding schools? The state lost the CFE case–they are now attempting to delay the follow-up lawsuits knowing that it is costly for small school districts and parents to maintain their legal action. Citizens should be outraged that the state is fighting to defend the indefensible–all kids in NY State have a right to a ”
sound Basic Education.” Ask your State Senator, and Assemblyperson, “Why is New York State spending millions defending a system that denies its citizens their constitutional rights?”
“Stating the Obvious”
The NY Times has spoken
The obvious is true
The NY Times is broken
And LA Times is too.
I don’t usually like these rhymes but this poem is a Masterpeice!
I have a file of letters to Th eNew York Times editors, the publisher, and the columnists. Everything you say is true. They cover sports and business but have never assigned a journalist to dig into the essentials that make learning possible, so that they can assess the results they see (the evidence) properly.
The influence of the businessman Bloomberg as mayor forever, was apparent. Klein, who was the final ‘destructor’ that brought the schools crashing down so charters could take-over, all with the blessing and hoopla at the NY Times. Moscowitz was their heroine.
Leonie knew what the schools needed but The Times interviewed only those that fit the Duncan narrative…. and now, as the schools tank, and the anti- teacher ‘guvnur’ wants to put the city into receivership, perhaps they are looking at observable reality for a change.
(and FYI, today’s UFT news issue, shows a promise to close loopholes for foreign wealthy owners of real estate who buy but done’ use their million dollar digs, in order to create more classrooms and smaller class size!
http://www.uft.org/press-releases/city-should-cut-class-size-closing-tax-loopholes
and, personally, nothing is going to change in NYC. They killed it, they want it (largest district in the 15,880, and they are not relinquishing it.
It is so nice to check in at this site and see and hear so many wonderful people. Though of course I am no fan of war, go see the incredible “The Imitation Game”, a British film starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
This reporting of the “crisis” is is similar to pharmaceutical advertising. You didn’t know you had a problem until they told you about it
Finally, we begin to see a few who know the truth have the courage to speak truth to power. Testing children in all the grades required in New York State wastes dear resources that need to be used to help districts with high numbers of children living in poverty. Governor Cuomo needs to identify school districts with high unemployment and decide to focus on those who need the help of government. The other school districts and communities need the state to back off and let them do what they do very well- win the support of their residents, teach and help children become self regulating learners.
The testing in New York State has improved nothing. Charter schools in the aggregate are not any better than the majority of schools in New York State.
Governor Cuomo has to stop pretending he has a solution for low scores on new state exams and admit some communities need more help than others and those communities need job training for adults, infrastructure capital improvements and jobs, better health and dental care, early childhood learning centers and sufficient financial support to reduce class size from 35 and 38 students in an elementary grade to 24 so that teachers can offer personalized instruction.
There are so many proven ways that Governor Cuomo could initiate to improve struggling communities and he has chosen to avoid all of them and look for a quick media fix. Awful state of affairs in New York.
Robert – the discrepancies have always bothered me. My children went to one of the top schools in the area and I worked in some of the worst. The differences between the two were startling. My kids school district provided full time social workers, guidance counselors, librarians, nurses, computer teachers with small class size and individual instruction for children whose reading skills needed improving, etc. The school I worked at had none of these advantages, even though these students were much needier than those In my affluent district. It is not a surprise which school district had better results (even if there were no discrepancies between the student populations).
If those who have get more, what happens to the have nots? They seem to get less.
Ellen T Klock
Do I dare hope the tide is turning?
Angie, never give up hope. Hope breeds optimism, which is the fuel of resistance to oppressive and harmful policies. Bad ideas don’t last forever. They eventually falter and fail.
In the face of truth –what we observe before us–are the seeds of that failure, but we should never stop our battle to prevent those seeds from flowering.
It takes brave people like you, to stand up to power, as you did with Bush, and do still with this wonderful site where the truth flourishes.
I come from a jewish family where looking at the bright side of life is a built in tenant. They would love Monty Python.
I am an optimist in many things, but as a playwright my optimism concerning the behaviors of human beings pales in the light of the facts, and the story that Mr. Moyers presented, which shows that the robber barons are at the helm, once again, but this time, they are engineering the income inequality. I.
I love stories, as I said in an earlier post, quoting Thomas Moore, whose writings I love.
I used stories in grade 2 and in grade 7 so that some ‘rumination’ could go on, and the real meanings that lie under all the chatter and chaos are as clear as day.
Have you ever read his book “On Creativity? or “Care of the Soul”, the book from which I drew that quote about souls and stories.
One thing is for sure, proven over time, when people like you refuse to stop telling the truth, then failure is assured. In 2 years you have created a space that we educators on all keels can find the truth discussed. Reflecting on what is afoot on the stage that is national education requires some serious reflection, and it goes on here.
I know. I read this site’s best work everyday. I see some angry voices, too, and oddly enough, they come not just from “trolls,’ who love their own voice an shave nothing else to do, but some very serious words come from intelligent, well-meaning people.
last night, on The Daily show, the discussion of the book “Wiser,” made it clear — research shows that people in a space become hardened in their positions, sticking gore obstinately to their belief system when faced with contradictory evidence.
Recently, here, some a person, tried tot to portray our voices as ‘pushing an idealistic agenda”. Being rooted to the tea-party ideology he assumed that what he read here was a political movement pushing an agenda. He was a middle school principal, and he came here, in his first post, to “caution” YOU, Diane.
hee, hee. Hey, I don’t write the dialogue that issue from the minds of these puffed-up imitation of a school administrators.
I am trying to say, that you are correct, Diane, we can never give up, for we are The Greater Fools”
We will prevail, because we know what learning is all about, and the people are seeing the poop on the fan. The media will follow, and hopefully some real investigative reporters will follow the leads you leave like breadcrumbs, to THE story of the century… how they did it…. how they toppled the schools in 20 years.
All that lies between us, at this stage is the participation of the media… we need a viral film, or someone that illustrates the travesty that occurred… like Ferguson exposed the reality of another abusive social injustice.
The problem is such a simple one, to me, as a student of the media.
It is the ACCESS that money buys everything, especially to the dissemination of information.
It’s all about ACCESS, NOT MONEY… the access that it buys… to the people,” said a UN worker in Afghanistan; she saw the corruption by big money, that allowed the Taliban to control the people. She said that it was “our mistake” to misunderstand what wins the people… weapons don’t win, access to the people is the key.
Broad, Walton, Gates, Koch, Murdoch (big owner in Pearson) and clones have the media. We have the internet, but there needs to be a voice that takes the STORY of our destruction, the conspiracy and the process, and puts it before the people who are begin Bamboozled.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
It is time we stop talking about why we are being TOTALLY ignored as a profession, and solve the problem, and I know you believe that we can do it. THAT gives me hope.
Your voice is loud and clear and the very fact that it is not ringing from the rooftops, and instead Duncan’s narration of ‘deform’ is blasted — that shows me that we must begin in the media, and in the internet community that LISTENS here.
If anyone ‘out there’ (besides us teachers) is listening — this very week, you revealed the astonishing reality, when you reported the STORY of those folks vying for positions in Nevada’s government!
Hey, these folks (who plan to to regulate and rule the schools in that state) — are NOT educators (NOT ONE!) BUT in fact, are tied to the corporations!
Not a single educator TO RUN & DICTATE the state’s government education policy decisions.
The BEHAVIOR implicit in such a story… for a story it is — is of the P OWER of money to gain access to what the CITIZENS KNOW and thus — they have the POWER TO BUY the education of the citizens of the United States of America…
and our democracy.
Am I optimistic… well, I see a ray of sunshine that you are still doing what we Brooklyn girls do, talk truth to power, and that I get a chance to talk here, too, and maybe meet some of the people who WILL make a difference at the NPE>
I am waiting for your input on just what that post about the April conference means for my participation. How or why did this happen??
I know that I engaged with dialogue with May King ,on one of your posts, but I know very little about why she is doing this or what I can expect.
Angie, we haven’t got a prayer. A lot of us believe that anyway. It cannot be so or we would not have made reform work so hard for what they’ve stolen so far . But let’s say it is so.
Shall we fold ? Shall we torture students with common core and wait until we are let go and our pensions go to John Arnold to spend on cavier and his PR for his next heist? Shall we wander off to skid row and take cover in a cardboard box? Should I tell my son his only hope for the future is to surrender his soul to our oppressors and hope to gods he never becomes ill because there will be no options available for any treatment on Obamacare unless an $80 aspirin can cure it? Should we flee to Finland or join Egypt’s dissidents who are demanding Democracy? Maybe we should sing “Is that are there is?” and get so drunk we won’t feel it when President Joel Stein orders an extermination crew to go out and burn members of our resistance In the town squares to assure others don’t try it?
It is the stake for heretics ( bloggers, caring moms, academics , students, teachers who dared to ask question during a faculty meeting) ?
Maybe while we are waiting for the ax to fall we can become drug dealers because that is the only criminal enterprise we can get in on ground level of and frankly the least offensive beside these offers to facillitate the crony capitalists escalating cluster f**k? Have we all become infected by some postmodern strain of Stolkhome syndrome? You fight until the damned war is over . You fight because it is more noble to die stranding than it is to live on your knees . You fight because you love your family ,your students , your country
( WHAT it was and SHOULD be) , your FREEDOM, you fight because that is what we do . We are teachers and that doesnt mean we are complacent pansies, shiftless quitters and it sure doesn’t make us victims! I will go down fighting . If we lose, it will be because you, you, you and all ya all didn’t fight.
Students are fighting all over the world for an education. Teacher unrest is global. I think Finland is the only place there are no problems. Saudi Arbia is cutting deals with Pearson . And teachers in Mexico are being murdered for burning test scores and protesting . Anyone who says the swine have already won and gives up is a traitor to us and to self . Look around . We got war all the time, rampant racism, unarmed children being shot in the street by police who act with impunity. They’re giving cops drones in LA , where Eli Broad is building a shrine to himself as miles of homeless on skid row wait for the Gestapo to show and say being indigent is a crime.
I do not bow down to Bill Gates or Eli Broad . I don’t answer to a sell out president . I defer to the tenets of Democracy as Jefferson so eloquently explicated. We question authority. We vote . We have a right to express our opinions, to bear arms, to the 4th and 10th amendmants . We abide the directive that ALL people are created equal and respect MLK enough to insist the Brown act is NEVER violated, least of all by our own governments . We can remove anyone we want from an elected office. ANYONE.
We are THE people and this is our country .
If we have to become rebel Militia in cyber space or A mob supporting strikers at WAL mart ( who is crewing teaches over too) so be it.
Put your money where it doesn’t support anything but small business.
Every day we can do things that HITS THEM WHERE THEY LIVE. Don’t stand for corrupt judges. Vote their a**es out. Do not administer test. Let them fire you. Parents will take note of that. Be Norma Rae or Chavez. Be somebody who makes a difference. That is what we do. And…What we have to do is nothng next to people in countries who are dying because they fight knowing if they didn’t they’d die anyway, just slower. We don’t like it but it has to be done. We have to make sacrafices. We have to make choices. We can no longer afford a wait and see attitude or to pretend it is not happening. If we keep putting it off we will face more than foreclosure abd joblessness. It is much worst than test factories in place of our schools because these guys are posed to own Everything and make us pay to use what they stole from us. 1984 looks like a tea party compared to the legacy we will leave these kids if we don’t fight. Now!
In the novel Night Mosch the Beatle, the narrator’s spiritual teacher, is taken with a trainload of other Ghetto dwellers by the Gestapo . They are transported to a plot of land and ordered to dig a long deep trench . When they finish the officers line them up along the trench and start shooting . For some reason Moshe survives and digs his way out. He has been hit on his leg and is exhausted . He hasn’t even had water for days . But he creeps through the night and travels the formidable distance back to the ghetto . When he shows up he is mess and has not slept . He has a bullet wound and marks from the chains they wore by travel . His feet are black and bleeding; he is filthy and in a panic he as tells his neighbors what happened . He beseeches them to flee before the Nazi’s come back. Only the boy believes him Everyone else calls him crazy . Moshe is very sad for them but he gets out if there after he tells that kid to hang on so he can tell this story.because it would be very important. Elie Weisle did.
It is not ever a win like you want. There is no moment where the baloons drop down and we toast ourselves . We just keep shoving back. Those who step back let others handle it are no better than the fascists, especially when the evidence is so clear. Because if all of us Or even 1/10 th of us pitched in and served the greater good, the BBC would be disbanded, possibly imprisoned with Rhee, Deasy, Stein, etc and we would shut down every one of these Industrial Complexes and use what we save on schools, housing, cleaning up the earth and a well earned trip to the hot springs spa for a soak.