Learn here in only three minutes how to start a movement.
I posted this a few years ago, but it stayed with me as I watched what is happening in our society.
A few brave people spoke up and said what was in their hearts.
They didn’t like the corporate takeover of public education. They didn’t like the overemphasis on testing and the punishments that following testing. They didn’t like the nutty ideas that teachers are solely responsible for students’ test scores. They didn’t like the powerful top-down dictation coming from the federal government, nor the policy capture of government by hedge fund managers and billionaire philanthropists. They didn’t like the assault on public education as a keystone of our democracy.
One person alone is a “lone nut.” The key figures are the followers, who risk ridicule by joining in, but who together create a movement.
Today we have a movement. A movement of parents, educators, and concerned others who want to take education back from entrepreneurs; who want to build respect for teaching and learning; who admire teachers; who understand that poverty is the biggest obstacle in the lives of children who get low test scores; and who also understand that tests are a measure, not the goal of education. The goal of public education is to contribute to the development of well-educated citizens with humane values, citizens who are prepared to take charge of their own lives, to help their neighbors, to advance knowledge and science, and to improve our society. Turning standardized testing into a fetish does not advance us towards that goal.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I spent some time recently in the hospital, and they gave me senna and colace.
LikeLike
I know what Senna and Colace are. So what are you saying?
LikeLike
Um, think “movement”.
LikeLike
I had forgotten about this clip. Thank you for sharing it again.
We are indeed in the midst of a movement that has grown from a few lone voices at a ‘Save Our Schools Rally’ in DC, a number of years ago, into a force that can no longer be ignored.
LikeLike
I would like to see a Million Mom (and Dad) March on Washington D.C.
LikeLike
There have been some of us who have been fighting this “data driven decision making” for many years now and have paid the price. But we weren’t aren’t “lone nuts” but ethical defenders/promoters of truth in dialogue/discourse.
LikeLike
I don’t know if you-all have seen this but Nate Silver thinks VAM is a sham.
Maybe a famous political odds-maker they all follow will get DC’s attention 🙂
LikeLike
I can do ok with math and tried to get the VAM formula first from ODE, then Battelle for Kids web sites. What they post is vague and obscure. I wonder if the formula even exists.
LikeLike
Ohio’s EVASS formula is propriety. That means it is in a lock box, kept from any informed independent review. This formula was developed by a statistician in Tennessee, William Sanders better known in a former life for studies of genetic engineering–how to get more “productivity” from seeds, sows, and cows…until he was enticed to calculate the “value added” to student test scores of teachers and schools.
A typical value-added model, or VAM, relies on hierarchical linear regression methods of data analyses. These methods of analysis are supposed to support valid and reliable cause-effect inferences about the magnitude of a teacher effect on test scores, a classroom effect, and a school effect with separate estimates of random and measurement errors. The statistical model may include methods to estimate the influence of thirty or more demographic variables on test scores.
From something I wrote in 2011.
“It is useful to restate some rudimentary ideas about genetic engineering not only as the source of statistical methods for evaluating educational outcomes, but also as a metaphor operating below a threshold of public and professional discussion in re-engineering education.
Genetics is the study of ways to alter or select traits of plants and animal species. The studies are made in order to perfect ways to propagate superior traits, accelerate genetic improvement, and engineer transformations that incorporate new features (e.g., capacity to resist disease), or functions (e.g., terminator seeds that grow sterile plants).
The technologies of genetic engineering also have unintended consequences. Among major risks are disturbing a thriving ecological system, doing harm to strengths in existing species, unexpected and toxic reactions to changes introduced into reproductive systems, and the development of resistance to engineered interventions. Other concerns bear on unhealthy concentrations of traits by inbreeding, and the irreversibility of these processes.
Although selected techniques of statistical estimation (e.g., mixed model analysis of variance, “percent cumulative norm gain”) have uses across many contexts in and beyond education, other lessons that might be learned from genetic engineering as a metaphor (and program) for evaluation in education have been left unexamined.
In any case, value-added scores are estimates of the effec-tiveness of teachers, schools, and school systems. These estimates are determined by complex equations that use scores from standardized tests. This means that an effective teacher is one who raises test scores, irrespective of the method of doing so.
The tests are assumed to be valid and objective measures of student achievement and the performance of teachers, schools, districts, and the system as a whole. Value-added methods slice, dice, and repackage test scores of students—even students with incomplete histories of taking tests—into predictions of the scores students should receive over time, based on their past performance.
These predictions are estimates of an average year-to-year gain in scores—a percent cumulative norm gain—that effective teachers exceed, and that ineffective teachers do not……”
I am not a mathematical wizard but the intended and unintended consequesences of genetic engineering sound a lot like the ideas and the consequences of thinking that you can “fix” education if you just get the right data and do some triages on teachers and schools in a version of “survival of the fittest”–social engineering under the banner of “evidence based” policies and practices–and no small amount of scary insistance that purification of the educational system –100% proficiency or else, mastery of grade level standards on time, or else, and so on– is a solution…rather than a major problem a moral problem not just a technical or managerial issue.
LikeLike
Love this clip Diane. I just wrote about opt out as the people’s movement yesterday. http://www.pegwithpen.com/2015/05/opt-out-is-peoples-movement_9.html (posted below but you will have to go to my blog to get the embedded links)
Mike Petrilli recently stated, “If this [opt-out] thing goes national, the whole education reform movement is in serious trouble.”
Indeed it is. (Listen to him state it here in the Fordham Institute podcast at the 6:43 mark.)
The Opt Out Movement is the people’s movement and that makes us dangerous.
Petrilli worries about it going national? That’s funny.
His arrogance, and the arrogance of corporate ed. reformers everywhere, caused them to fail to pay close attention when opt out went national over four years ago when the people organized and began the hard work of supporting teachers, students, parents and citizens across the country via a little FB group page titled OPT OUT OF THE STATE TEST: The National Movement, which then quickly grew into a website, United Opt Out National, and finally a social movement of individuals across the country working for free, on their own time before work, after work, and on the weekends. The people’s movement has spread like wildfire and it is raging forward. There are so many grassroots opt out groups across the country that it is absolutely impossible to count them.
The people’s Opt Out Movement is so strong and so fierce now that not only is the “whole education reform movement in serious trouble” – it’s going down, and as it goes down, we expect our demands to be met.
At United Opt Out National we believe in demanding everything for all children.
All of us opting out all over the country have NO funding. This absolutely terrifies them that we can accomplish this with no funding. If we can accomplish this, what else might we be able to do?
Think about that.
What else might we be able to do? Why not get all for all children? We, the people, must harness our power.
We at UOO refuse to settle for less. We believe in the people. We must not fall for ploys which state that we could only possibly get a little. The state legislatures and the federal ESEA re-authorization only want to give us a little. We can demand it all.
There is a reason that many are attempting to wrestle and gain control of the opt out narrative right now. They wish to control and manage this narrative because it is indeed dangerous to their livelihood. We have suddenly landed in their backyard just as they landed in ours. There is a reason that organizations and mainstream media refer to the ECS opt out guide (funded by Pearson and Gates) rather than the UOO guides written for the people by the people.
Those trying to co-opt the opt out message all have funding – and this funding means that they have ties to political or corporate ideology. Therefore, they will not demand all for all children because ultimately they need common core and the testing system to thrive in some shape or form in order to save their jobs, their corporations, their status and so that they may continue to push forward their privatization agenda using children, teachers and our communities.
And understand this clearly, the Opt Out Movement is not an anti-testing movement. We all trust our teachers to assess our children – our teachers know how to assess. The corporate ed. reform system of test and punish serves only one purpose – sort, rank, order children and keep them in their place. Teachers do the exact opposite. We determine a child’s strengths, attempts and next steps – and we do this using developmentally appropriate practices to make sure all children thrive and love learning. Our goal is to make sure all children are successful and that all children recognize their own strengths and power to make positive change for their lives, our country and our world.
We don’t need this test and punish system. We need social policies which protect our children from poverty. We need teachers to be the professionals who are trusted and respected to assess and teach our children. We need our teachers to be able to work together and support one another as professionals. We need our neighborhood schools to be fully funded and resourced so that all children can thrive. We need to reclaim our public schools – reclaim all of it for all people. The test and punish system denies children everything they deserve. Anyone who supports the test and punish system ultimately does not truly wish to change anything to support all children. They simply want the test and punish system to stay intact so that they may continue to thrive by feeding our children only tests and then – devouring our schools whole.
We have a chance to save the cornerstone of this democracy. Don’t settle for less. We don’t need less testing, better testing. We don’t need to keep ranking and sorting our children only to see the zipcodes once again – this is their game – it is a vicious game that keeps everyone in their place and does NOTHING to solve the problems that plague our society. The public schools are not to blame for society’s ills nor can the public schools fix society’s ills on their own. We must demand social policies to end childhood poverty and to create equitable funding for our public schools. We know what needs to be done. Let’s do it.
Opt Out is the people’s movement. And our work is just beginning. Let the revolution rage forward to levels that bring the test and punish system to its knees in 2015-2016. As we decimate their system, demand everything for all children. No exceptions. All of it.
LikeLike
TAGrO!!
LikeLike
I keep thinking back to 1967, the Viet Nam anti-war protests and Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre”. Substitute the corporate take-over of public education and excessive standardized testing for the Viet Nam war, and the Opt-Out movement for the anti-war protests and I wonder if his advice could still be relevant. The arrest and sentencing in Atlanta, comments from Duncan and Cuomo and attempts to silence teachers by threatening to remove their teaching certificates, are in too many ways similar to the treatment of the anti-war protestors nearly 50 years ago.
I suspect that the labor and civil rights protests are more important and relevant examples of movements that were examples of the oppressed protesting intolerable conditions imposed by those at the top than the Viet Nam war protests. Maybe not, given our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sadly enough, given the current racial tension and renewed attacks on labor unions, they too seem to have been only temporary successes and that they are still causes in need of, as Guthrie put it, organization to become a movement. In education, the Opt-Out Movement may be it.
“And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is
study in black and white of my fingerprints.
And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you’re in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do, and that’s walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say “Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.”. And walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and
they won’t take him.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an
organization.
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.
And that’s what it is , the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the
guitar.
With feeling. So we’ll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and
sing it when it does. Here it comes.
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I’ve been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes. I’m not proud… or tired.
So we’ll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.
We’re just waitin’ for it to come around is what we’re doing.”
(Arlo Guthrie – Alice’s Restaurant Massacre”
Perhaps SomeDAM Poet can update the lyrics for the Opt-Out movement Massacre.
LikeLike
From http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_time_for_sublime_madness_20130120, Chris Hedges:
Reinhold Niebuhr, as Cone points out in his book, labeled this capacity to defy the forces of repression “a sublime madness in the soul.” Niebuhr wrote that “nothing but madness will do battle with malignant power and ‘spiritual wickedness in high places.’ ” This sublime madness, as Niebuhr understood, is dangerous, but it is vital. Without it, “truth is obscured.” And Niebuhr also knew that traditional liberalism was a useless force in moments of extremity. Liberalism, Niebuhr said, “lacks the spirit of enthusiasm, not to say fanaticism, which is so necessary to move the world out of its beaten tracks. It is too intellectual and too little emotional to be an efficient force in history.”
Niebuhr’s “sublime madness” permits the rest of us to view the possibilities of a world otherwise seen only by the visionary, the artist and the madman. And it permits us to fight for these possibilities. “
LikeLike
PS – I love this video. Thanks for reposting; I didn’t see it the first time.
LikeLike
We took back our school by agreeing to share decision making and to develop a truly collaborative culture which I talk about in Corwin’s, “I’m in the Principal’s Seat, Now What?”
LikeLike
I believe teachers have the power to do this. Now it will take their will.
LikeLike
I am trying desperately to do this in my school and district. But nobody is willing to do one darn thing to help me. I am the “lone nut.” I feel like I’m the voice of one, crying in the wilderness. The other teachers all realize what’s happening, and they complain in the faculty room about what’s happening in education, but they are all too busy or too scared to help. How does one get others to help?
LikeLike
Today we have a movement. A movement of parents, educators, and concerned others who want to take education back from entrepreneurs; who want to build respect for teaching and learning; who admire teachers; who understand that poverty is the biggest obstacle in the lives of children who get low test scores; and who also understand that tests are a measure, not the goal of education. The goal of public education is to contribute to the development of well-educated citizens with humane values, citizens who are prepared to take charge of their own lives, to help their neighbors, to advance knowledge and science, and to improve our society. Turning standardized testing into a fetish does not advance us towards that goal.
LikeLike
I CROSS POSTED the actual link at Oped
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/How-to-start-a-movement-D-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Create_Effect_Influence_LEADER-150511-51.html#comment544587
but I added a commentary at the end which quoted this post and linked here and to the NPE
Okay…by now you expect me to link anything to education… so I give you, once again, Diane Ravitch from the blog that I got this link: She writes: “I posted this a few years ago, but it stayed with me as I watched what is happening in our society. A few brave people spoke up and said what was in their hearts.
“They didn’t like the corporate takeover of public education. They didn’t like the overemphasis on testing and the punishments that following testing. They didn’t like the nutty ideas that teachers are solely responsible for students’ test scores. They didn’t like the powerful top-down dictation coming from the federal government, nor the policy capture of government by hedge fund managers and billionaire philanthropists. They didn’t like the assault on public education as a keystone of our democracy.”
“One person alone is a “lone nut.” The key figures are the followers, who risk ridicule by joining in, but who together create a movement.”
“Today we have a movement. A movement of parents, educators, and concerned others who want to take education back from entrepreneurs; who want to build respect for teaching and learning; who admire teachers; who understand that poverty is the biggest obstacle in the lives of children who get low test scores; and who also understand that tests are a measure, not the goal of education. The goal of public education is to contribute to the development of well-educated citizens with humane values, citizens who are prepared to take charge of their own lives, to help their neighbors, to advance knowledge and science, and to improve our society. Turning standardized testing into a fetish does not advance us towards that goal.”
AND YOU CAN JOIN too, go to The Network For Public Education | We are many. There is power in our numbers.
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org
Submitted on Monday, May 11, 2015 at 10:36:38 AM
LikeLike