Jennifer is a Momma Bear in Tennessee. The Momma Bears are a parent group that fights for their children and their schools.
Jennifer had a fantasy: She imagined she was stuck in an elevator with Bill Gates. Trapped between floors. And she told him what she thought. In the time they were stuck, she insisted he watch a video that disproved his world-view. She even gave him fruit snacks (he was famished).
What did she teach him? Read and enjoy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bill Gates is not an innocent pawn of his “advisers”.
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I don’t necessarily think the Common Core is the evil that it is set up to be here. I do believe that testing has been a detriment to schools, but states have been doing this to our kids and their teachers long before the Common Core. Fighting against these tests and how they are used should be the focus as well as issues of equity (which the US has a very poor record). I also have problem with the video in that it seems targeted toward the white audience. Finally, the issues Dr. Teinken talks about are real, but the presentation makes it seem like the well-known and respected people that designed the Common Core are directly related to the testing companies and that simply IS NOT true.
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Thanks for the link to the video.
To stop the subjugation of America, each citizen should commit to land one blow against Pearson and the Gates Foundation.
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My response to the video:
Chris, you’ve thrown a lot of good information in the video but may be looking at them and their import in ways that may result in more damage to the already damaged education system. There is really nothing wrong with having a standardized test for the whole nation. Each state may still have its own unique state tests for their students if they so choose and colleges across the nation have been accepting alternative assessments for admission in to colleges for a very long time.
Your comparisons of America to China are totally off base because the economies do not work the same way and the Chinese are NOT looking at things the way Americans see things. Unfettered capitalism is a problem you have inadvertently CLEARLY identified here but have failed to FULLY address. You may want to rethink your position after addressing the issue of the consequences TODAY of [too many] innovations with very short shelve lives and their overall impact on America’s future.
The Chinese don’t need new innovations, American businesspeople willingly GIVE them innovations for very selfish motives, i.e., profits, at the expense of the American workforce. It is amazing to me that as all the debates about common assessments are raging on like wildfires across the U.S., many of those countries where American jobs are being exported to are preparing their students to take MORE American jobs. By the time America wakes up, the American innovations you mention are employing more foreigners in their own countries where labor is much cheaper than America while our academically unprepared students and graduates end up with virtually nothing. Have you considered the impact of the last two years’ raging education debates that are going nowhere on America’s future?
Finally, you list so many solutions that [teachers] need and have to do (essentially on a daily basis) BUT you have IGNORED to address the rabid attacks on teachers by EVERYBODY across the nation and their diminished say in these matters. Are you going to suggest robotic teachers through American innovation to accomplish all those solutions you have outlined?
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Stuck in an elevator with Bill Gates is imaginative and fun! We can have some fun on the way to serious.
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