Archives for the month of: February, 2015
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Peter Greene: What’s the Matter with Indiana

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
5

Peter Greene and I are on the same page about Indiana. What is going on there has nothing to do with education, nothing to do with children, and everything to do with politics, power, and money.

 

Peter’s post, as usual, is brilliant. 

 

He writes:

 

In the modern era of education reform, each state has tried to create its own special brand of educational dysfunction. If the point of Common Core related reforms was to bring standardization to the country’s many and varied state systems, it has failed miserably by failing in fifty different ways.

 

What Indiana provides is an example of what happens when the political process completely overwhelms educational concerns. If there is anyone in the Indiana state capitol more worried about education students than in political maneuvering and political posturing, it’s not immediately evident who that person might be.

 

The current marquee conflagration of the moment is the announcement of a new Big Standardized Test that will take twelve hours to complete. This announcement has triggered a veritable stampede from responsibility, as every elected official in Indianapolis tries to put some air space between themselves and this testing disaster. And it brings up some of the underlying issues of the moment in Indiana.

 

Currently, all roads lead to Glenda Ritz.

 

Back before the fall of 2012, Indiana had become a reformster playground. They’d made early strides solving the puzzle of how to turn an entire urban school district over to privatizers, and they loved them some Common Core, too. Tony Bennett, buddy of Jeb Bush and big-time Chief for Change, was running the state’s education department just the way reformsters thought it should be done. And then came the 2012 election.

 

Bennett was the public face of Indiana education reform. He dumped a ton of money into the race. And he lost. Not just lost, but looooooooosssssssssst!!! As is frequently noted, Glenda Ritz was elected Superintendent for Public Instruction with more votes than Governor Mike Pence. I like this account of the fallout by Joy Resmovits mostly because it includes a quote from Mike Petrilli that I think captures well the reaction of reformsters when Bennett lost.

 

“Shit shit shit shit shit,” he said. “You can quote me on that.”

 

And it gets better. Read it.

Categories Charter Schools, Indiana, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Mark Naison: When Civil “Rights” Are Civil Wrongs: Where is the Obama Administration?

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
24

Mark Naison wrote the following post:

 

 

In Newark and Buffalo, attempts to promote charter schools over public schools, and suppress the voices of educators and community residents have stripped the “Civil Rights” rationale from School Reform in the most naked way. In each city, an authoritarian white leader- in Newark Cami Anderson, in Buffalo, Carl Palladino- have attempted to stifle community input into education policy while seeking to intimidate some of their city’s most respected Black educators. In each instance, officials of the Obama Administration and the US Department of Education, who constantly claim that replacing public schools with charter schools advances the interests of children of color, have been conspicuously silent.

 

Let us be perfectly clear- what Cami Anderson and Carl Palladino are proposing mirrors what the Obama Administration is recommending for schools in the nation’s cities, yet large portions of the Black and Latino communities in Newark and Buffalo are up in arms about what is being done to them, and how their voices and opinions have been rendered irrelevant or viciously attacked.

 

Rather than facing that contradiction, and standing up for democratic governance of public schools, officials of the Obama Administration remain silent.

 

At its best, this is opportunism. At its worst, it is a short sighted and hypocritical failure to recognize that their policies are not only flawed, but may be undermining the very objectives they claim to promote.

Categories Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Obama

Wall Street Journal: Businesses Shower Employees with Love, Not Sanctions and Punishments

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
19

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, American business is taking a new approach to its employees: Show them appreciation, support, and encouragement. The title of the article is: “You’re Awesome: Firms Scrap Negative Feedback.”

 

Stack-ranking of employees from best to worst is out. Punitive evaluations are so yesterday. People do their best when they are appreciated.

 

So this is what American business is doing! Would someone please tell Arne Duncan, Andrew Cuomo, Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Mike Pence, and members of Congress?

 

 

The article, written by Rachel Feintszeig, begins this way:

 

 
If you don’t have anything nice to say, management has a tip: Try harder.

 

Fearing they’ll crush employees’ confidence and erode performance, employers are asking managers to ease up on harsh feedback. “Accentuate the positive” has become a new mantra at workplaces like VMware Inc., Wayfair Inc., and the Boston Consulting Group Inc., where bosses now dole out frequent praise, urge employees to celebrate small victories and focus performance reviews around a particular worker’s strengths—instead of dwelling on why he flubbed a client presentation.

 

The shift may annoy leaders who rose in a tough-love era in business, but executives say hard-edge tactics simply do more harm than good these days.

 

When employees’ flaws are laid bare, “there’s that mental ‘ugh’ and shrug of, ‘This is who I am,’ ” says Michelle Russell, a partner at BCG.

 

Bit by bit, the consulting firm has changed the way managers evaluate employee performance. For years, those discussions focused largely on employee missteps and where they needed to improve.

 

“We would bring them in and beat them down a bit,” says Ms. Russell. After the reviews, she observed some employees left the company as their confidence and performance slipped; others seemed rattled days or weeks later.

 

Now, managers are expected to extol staffers’ strengths during reviews and check-ins, explaining how the person can use his or her talents to tackle aspects of the job that come less naturally.

 

Bosses are advised to mention no more than one or two areas that require development, Ms. Russell adds…..

 

The rising popularity of tools like Gallup’s StrengthsFinder, which is designed to measure a person’s talents in any of 34 areas, suggests how many more companies are taking a positive tack. About 600,000 people used the tool each year from 2001 through 2012, says Leticia McCadden, a spokeswoman for Gallup.

 

Since 2012, the number of users has jumped to 1.6 million a year. As of last year, StrengthsFinder was used by 467 members of the Fortune 500.

 

Facebook, one of the best-known users of StrengthsFinder, has crafted a new management style attuned to the needs of 20- and 30-somethings that comprise most of its staff….

 

VMware has borrowed techniques from marriage counselors, such as increasing the ratio of positive to negative comments in the workplace and encouraging employees to celebrate their wins.

 

“You’re really trying to get them in the moment where they’re reliving the joy they felt,” says Jessica Amortegui, a former VMware talent development executive.

 

 

 

Categories Teacher Evaluations

Susan Ochshorn: Defending Childhood In the Face of Ignorance

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
121

Susan Ochshorn read Robert Pondiscio’s post “Is Common Core Too Hard for Kindergarten?” (he thinks not), and she felt impelled to respond, even though she is on vacation. Ochshorn is the founder of ECE Policy Works. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “Squandering America’s Future – Why ECE Policy Matters for Equality, Our Economy and Our Children,” about critical policy issues in early childhood education (Teachers College Press, 2015).

 

 

Susan Ochshorn writes:

 

Leave the country, and all hell breaks loose. A couple of days ago, in the “Common Core Watch,” the bully pulpit for the conservative Fordham Institute, Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs, asked if the blessed academic standards were too hard for kindergarten. The short answer: no.

 

The occasion for his musings—and supreme irritation—was the publication of “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose,” a report of Defending the Early Years (DEY Project) and the Alliance for Childhood. The paper debunks the common belief that reading earlier is better for future academic success, and warns of the deleterious effects on children of what Pondiscio calls a “perceived shift” from play-based, experiential learning to more academic approaches.

 

Perception is relative, of course. But where has Pondiscio been? Apparently, he’s heard nothing about the research of Daphna Bassok and Anna Rorem—empirical proof on the shift, from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Working with two national datasets, which straddle the introduction of No Child Left Behind, the authors sought to fill in the gaps about the changing nature of kindergarten in the United States between 1998 and 2006. They discovered that even before the adoption of the Common Core standards, pressure among principals and teachers had accelerated considerably, with high-stakes assessments leading to academic and accountability “shove down.”

 

For some of that time, according to LinkedIn, Pondiscio was employed in public relations and communications at Time magazine, Hill and Knowlton, and Businessweek. Just as NCLB got going, he spent four years teaching fifth-graders in the South Bronx, before moving on to the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools based in Harlem, where he taught seminars in civics, citizenship, and democracy.
Civics? For someone who calls himself an expert on the machinations of our precious democracy, Pondiscio couldn’t be more disdainful of those who would raise their voices in protest—those who do know something about early child development and education. “The authors make much of the fact that no one involved with writing the standards was a K-3 teacher or early-childhood professional,” he writes. Not important, he concludes.

 

And then there’s Valerie Strauss. The Washington Post and “Common Core-averse education blogger” has been championing the report in her space, and running pieces by parents and teachers “arguing that ‘forcing some kids to read before they are ready could be harmful.’” What unmitigated nerve!
But let’s get down to the nitty gritty here. Before Pondiscio became a PR guru and a civic society expert, he picked up a bachelor’s degree in cultural studies. Nowhere on his curriculum vitae do I see anything related to kids’ development. Nada.

 

Yet he has no trouble weighing in on the fine details of the subject—including developmentally appropriate (or inappropriate) practice.
It’s “not as scientifically clear-cut as many suppose,” he writes. “There’s little evidence to suggest that a child’s readiness to learn occurs in the discrete, stair-step phases that Piaget theorized about long ago.” He then goes on to cite cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, who has apparently noted—wisely, I might add—that “children’s cognition is fairly variable day to day, even when the same child tries the same task.” Indeed. The very argument made by the authors of “Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose!” Kids are not universally ready to read at five.

 

Pondiscio’s in way over his head here. Children’s development is exceedingly uneven. Anyone who knows anything about child development would tell you that—including the Finns, who don’t push their children to read when they’re five, who hold off on standardized testing until much later, and, by the way, are up there with the world’s highest scorers on the PISA tests of academic mastery. Another thing: the Finns revere children, and see early childhood as a time for play, exploration, and the foundation for equality, and citizenship in a democracy.

 

As Finland’s minister of education, Krista Kiuru, told an interviewer in the Atlantic last spring: “Equal means that we support everyone and we’re not going to waste anyone’s skills. “We can’t know if one first-grader will become a famous composer, or another a famous scientist,” she said. “Regardless of a person’s gender, background, or social welfare status, everyone should have an equal chance to make the most of their skills.”

 

But Finland’s not cramming kindergarten readiness assessments and reading down the throats of five-year-olds. And Finland doesn’t have alarming rates of preschool expulsion, as we do in the U.S., mostly among little boys of color. Children’s social-emotional development is inextricably linked to their acquisition of cognitive skills. And play is where the cognitive and social-emotional come together. Yes, kids are capable of amazing things—they are, in fact, our littlest innovators—but play, as neuroscientist and anthropologist Melvin Konner wrote in his epic work, “The Evolution of Childhood,” is the primary engine of human development.

 

Pondiscio says that nothing in the Common Core standards precludes the creation of “safe, warm, nurturing classrooms that are play-based, engaging, and cognitively enriching.” Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so? But such classrooms are rapidly disappearing, given over to learning blocks dedicated to discrete subjects, which sideline the kind of imaginative play on which children thrive. They’re part and parcel of the Common Core package, over which teachers have no control. He also urges early childhood advocates to push “aggressively for teacher education and professional development,” enabling them to meet the Common Core benchmarks. They are pushing, like Sisyphus—but the rock weighs a ton. And as states develop evaluation systems that rate teachers based on student test scores, their very livelihoods are at stake.

 

I’d suggest a semester of child development 101 for the Fordham Institute’s VP for external affairs. NYC has plenty of terrific programs, and he’s got huge gaps in his own core knowledge.

Categories Childhood, Common Core

Teachers of the Year to Governor Cuomo: Please Pay Attention!

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
10

Seven outstanding teachers wrote a letter to Governor Cuomo. It was published in the Albany Times-Union, where there is a good chance he and members of the Legislature might read it. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall. Maybe by now the paywall has disappeared. I hope so as everyone in every state should read this excellent letter.

The teachers write:

The following article was written by seven New York state Teachers of the Year: Ashli Dreher (2014, Buffalo); Katie Ferguson (2012, Schenectady); Jeff Peneston (2011, Syracuse); Rich Ognibene (2008, Rochester); Marguerite Izzo (2007, Malverne); Steve Bongiovi (2006, Seaford); and Liz Day (2005, Mechanicville)

Dear Governor Cuomo:

We are teachers. We have given our hearts and souls to this noble profession. We have pursued intellectual rigor. We have fed students who were hungry. We have celebrated at student weddings and wept at student funerals. Education is our life. For this, you have made us the enemy. This is personal.

Under your leadership, schools have endured the Gap Elimination Adjustment and the tax cap, which have caused layoffs and draconian budget cuts across the state. Classes are larger and support services are fewer, particularly for our neediest students.

We have also endured a difficult rollout of the Common Core Standards. A reasonable implementation would have started the new standards in kindergarten and advanced those standards one grade at a time. Instead, the new standards were rushed into all grades at once, without any time to see if they were developmentally appropriate or useful.

Then our students were given new tests — of questionable validity — before they had a chance to develop the skills necessary to be successful. These flawed tests reinforced the false narrative that all public schools — and therefore all teachers — are in drastic need of reform. In our many years of teaching, we’ve never found that denigrating others is a useful strategy for improvement.

Now you are doubling down on test scores as a proxy for teacher effectiveness. The state has focused on test scores for years and this approach has proven to be fraught with peril. Testing scandals erupted. Teachers who questioned the validity of tests were given gag orders. Parents in wealthier districts hired test-prep tutors, which exacerbated the achievement gap between rich and poor.

Beyond those concerns, if the state places this much emphasis on test scores who will want to teach our neediest students? Will you assume that the teachers in wealthier districts are highly effective and the teachers in poorer districts are ineffective, simply based on test scores?

Most of us have failed an exam or two along life’s path. From those results, can we conclude that our teachers were ineffective? We understand the value of collecting data, but it must be interpreted wisely. Using test scores as 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation does not meet this criterion.

Your other proposals are also unlikely to succeed. Merit pay, charter schools and increased scrutiny of teachers won’t work because they fundamentally misdiagnose the problem. It’s not that teachers or schools are horrible. Rather, the problem is that students with an achievement gap also have an income gap, a health-care gap, a housing gap, a family gap and a safety gap, just to name a few. If we truly want to improve educational outcomes, these are the real issues that must be addressed.

Much is right in public education today. We invite you to visit our classrooms and see for yourself. Most teachers, administrators and school board members are doing quality work. Our students and alumni have accomplished great things. Let’s stop the narrative of systemic failure.

Instead, let’s talk about ways to help the kids who are struggling. Let’s talk about addressing the concentration of poverty in our cities. Let’s talk about creating a culture of family so that our weakest students feel emotionally connected to their schools. Let’s talk about fostering collaboration between teachers, administrators and elected officials. It is by working together, not competing for test scores, that we will advance our cause.

None of these suggestions are easily measured with a No. 2 pencil, but they would work. On behalf of teachers across the state, we say these are our kids, we love them, and this is personal.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, Poverty, Students, Teachers, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

A Roving Billboard You Helped to Pay For

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
9

Thanks to your generous contributions, added to those raised by BATs and many others, this billboard is now driving around Long Island, the hotbed of parent anti-testing sentiment.

 

Highway billboards will soon loom over major roads into Albany and other cities.

 

The funds were raised by New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), a coalition of 50 parent and teacher groups across the state.

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Testing

A MUST-READ: Indiana Mom Vents Her Rage at Governor Pence

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2015 //
47

Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, a parent in Bloomington, Indiana, posted the following “rant” (as she calls it) on her Facebook page. She is one of the parents who is outraged by Governor Pence’s unrelenting attack on State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, who was elected in 2012 with more votes than Governor Pence. She is a member of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education. The great majority of parents—Democrats, Republicans, and independents–send their children to public schools, not to charters or voucher schools. They see clearly what the Governor and the Legislature are up to: the destruction of their community’s public schools. They know what is behind it: money, campaign contributions from private interests who will profit by the proliferation of for-profit charters. And they are furious that their votes for Ritz have been disregarded by Pence and his allies.

 

Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer writes:

 

“Governor Pence has swooped down on his white horse and hat to right the wrongs of the ISTEP. You have got to be kidding me.

 
Fixed ISTEP?

 
Yes. The same way that dissolving his secondary department of education at the start of this session (CREATED BY HIS OWN EXECUTIVE ORDER WASTING MILLIONS OF OUR HARD-EARNED TAX DOLLARS) “FIXED” the troubles with Ritz and the SBOE.

 
Governor Pence has created both problems and then somehow gets credit for finding solutions. Heck, he doesn’t need his own state-run newspaper. He’s got a confused unaware citizenry.

 
It was the pressure of his constituency and that of the super majority that made them PASS A LAW TO STOP COMMON CORE AND CREATE NEW STATE STANDARDS. Yes, the feds require college and career ready standards. So give up the waiver already. Democrats, Republicans– these are corporate education reformers we are talking about and they are not doing ANY OF THIS FOR YOUR KIDS. It is all about the money.

 
Glenda Ritz put together new state standards by including as many of the players she could and being sure that she was including all of the many standards that the supermajority, SBOE and governor required of her. She and her staff wanted to ask for a halt to the accountability until they could roll out and test this assessment. This is our superintendent enacting THE POLICY SET BY THE GOVERNOR THE SBOE AND THE SUPERMAJORITY. (Yes, in line with the federal requirements. So drop the waiver already. Aren’t you so flipping proud of your surplus as others have pointed out).

 
But it’s not even about standards. There is NO RESEARCH that shows that standards educate children. I thought they salivated over data? SHOW ME THE DATA.

 
It’s about Chambers of commerce blaming teachers for not having kids “college and career ready for a global economy” while they and their corporate interests ship jobs overseas or avoid paying workers a living wage so the top tier can make more money. SHOW ME THE JOBS, INDIANA SUPERMAJORITY. Because these kids in public schools can sure as heck show you some jobless parents.

 
It’s about making money off of these exams that show that kids are failing and blaming the schools of education for creating these teachers who can’t get kids to test well. Let’s test the teachers to test the schools of education to prove that they, too are failing. Watch them open their virtual online academies of teacher preparedness training. OR, more profitable, let’s create more Teach for America unskilled well-meaning teachers to replace those union thugs.

 
It’s about a narrative that calls superintendents CEOs and views schools as businesses and education as a product and our kids.. widgets in a factory. Those unskilled laborers are creating a better product because of competition.

 
It’s about a message that claims that our public schools are failing. And the offer: MARKETS WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING.

 
It’s about ALEC (google ALEC and destroy public education) and the Friedman Foundation and creating a market. Choose your schools, privatize the system so the markets can improve everything. Try charters (where only engaged parents can transport kids and get on lotteries and no democratic accountability to the people exists because there is no voting for a board to run them and they are proven to be no better and no worse, but way way more open to corruption and harm for kids).

 

Try your voucher (then you don’t have to go to school with those kids. Except, of course in your private school doesn’t want to keep you or deems you a behavior problem).

 
Where these have existed, public schools have not improved. What of the kids in those schools?

 
Here’s the thing.

 
My child is not college and career ready because he is a child. A test does not begin to sum up what I want for him. I trust teachers. i believe in public education because I believe that every single child regardless of background should have the same opportunity to a free, high quality public education as it states in our Indiana constitution. I believe that accountability means:

 
Every child should have a school that has enough nurses, social workers, guidance counselors, gym teachers, art teachers, music teachers, librarians, small class sizes, electives, hands-on projects, science experiments, theater, band. Every child. But instead our schools are being strangled. They are jumping through hoops where every. single. thing. is. tied. to. a. score. And the purpose is money.

 
Tell you what:

 
Let’s privatize firefighters and police officers. They don’t get to houses in the inner cities or out in rural areas fast enough. Let’s see if competition improves things. Oh? That child in the meth trailer out in the county? Too bad. If his parents weren’t on drugs maybe they could have afforded to buy a house closer to the damn fire department.

 
No, you know what? I don’t ride the city bus. But my teens could use a new used car. Give me a voucher for the money for public transportation because the money should follow my child. I don’t like to touch the books at the library either, gimme my voucher for Barnes and Noble.

 
Ridiculous? Our ancestors would be appalled that we want to go back to the days where the children lie dying neglected in the streets.

 
Governor Pence and his friends at ALEC, the Koch brothers, don’t believe in democracy. They don’t believe in a government for the people, by the people and of the people. They don’t believe in democratically elected school boards and schools.

 
Glenda Ritz was in the way of a much bigger agenda. My child who has not yet lost his baby teeth is a pawn in a game that has taken away our local control, relegated our public school system to a circus act of jumping through testing hoops to please the ringmaster… who can bring the tent down at any time.

 
Fix the problem? Be rebellious, Indiana. Wake up and smell the fascism. You’ve got someone who gets his way by executive order and a supermajority with no checks and balances. The one dissent in the education policymaking just lost her major responsibilities–not by democratic vote, but by changing her position through statute.

 
Follow the money and you’ll find the motivations.

 
I hope the mama bears and papa bears, and yes, the Grandma and Grandpa Grizzlies will get mad enough to do something radical:

 
Vote. Until then, see you at the protests and rallies.”

 
-Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Gene V. Glass: Arizona Education Politics Gets Stranger by the Day

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2015 //
10

Gene V. Glass, distinguisher researcher of education at Arizona State University, brings us up to the date with the drama in Arizona over privatization and the Common Core, with surprising enemies and allies taking sides:

 

 

Professor Glass writes:

 

 

It all started when Doug Ducey won the governor’s race last November. Duce, who cut his political teeth as a student at Arizona State University editing the campus newspaper, made his millions in the ice cream business (Cold Stone Creamery). Immediately upon taking office he instituted a hiring freeze and promised to increase school choice. That same mid-term election saw a virtual unknown Republican school board member, Diane Douglas, defeat ASU Education professor David Garcia for the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Douglas vowed to dump Common Core on grounds of its being federal intrusion into a state responsibility, but policy had nothing to do with her victory; if you had an R behind your name in the mid-term election, you won.

 

Two days ago, Douglas fired two of her top administrators — Executive Director and Asst. Executive Director — at the Department who were carry-overs from the previous Superintendent. It’s not hard to imagine why; they were far down the road of installing the Common Core in Arizona schools. Yesterday, the whole business erupted in a public fight between Ducey and Douglas over whether the latter has the authority to fire people in her department. After a prayer breakfast Thursday morning, the Governor was barely out the door before he gave reporters an insincere piece of his mind: “[I’m] sorry she chose to go down that path.”Douglas shot back: Ducey, she said, is establishing a “shadow faction of charter school operators and former state superintendents [referring to Lisa Graham Keegan who supported Douglas’s opponent in the election] who support Common Core and moving funds from traditional public schools to charter schools.”

 

Score +1 for Douglas for speaking the truth. The Arizona Senate has moved forward quickly in this session to support the privatization of K-12 education. The Senate education committee has already approved bills that would 1) award vouchers (at 90% state per pupil expenditure) to any student whose application has been turned down to open enroll in a public school or a charter school within 25 miles of their home, and 2) award a voucher to any student on an Indian reservation. Clearly the Republicans are flexing their muscles after the November victory; such radical pro-voucher legislating has never before made it into law in Arizona. Perhaps this is the year.

 

 

Gene V Glass
Arizona State University
National Education Policy Center
University of Colorado Boulder
_________________________

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Common Core, Privatization, Vouchers

Indiana: Join the Rally on Monday to Support Public Education!

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2015 //
12

On Monday, there will be a mass rally at the Statehouse in Indianapolis to protest the assault on public education.

 

The rally will begin at 2 p.m.

 

Whether you are a parent, an educator, and/or a concerned citizen, please attend to show the Governor and the Legislature that you oppose the destruction of public education and the attacks on Indiana’s elected State Superintendent Glenda Ritz.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Indiana, Resistance, Supporting public schools

Help Fund Anti-PARCC Billboards in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2015 //
4

A reader posted this link to a billboard fund in New Jersey. Help get the word out to New Jersey parents. Send a gift of any size to help.

 

Funny, I was thinking about the millions that the rightwing “Center for Union Facts” has available to buy huge billboards in Times Square and full-page ads in the New York Times to attack unions and teachers. And here is a campaign to raise $8,000 and change. If everyone who reads this blog sends in $10, the organizers of the campaign will meet their goal.

 

Meanwhile, if you want to get involved, think of direct action, people power, demonstrations and sit-ins that cost nothing but show the strength of our numbers and the power of our ideas.

Categories New Jersey, Resistance
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