Vicki Cobb, author of many nonfiction books for children, attended the Skinny Awards last night. The dinner is an annual fundraiser for Class Size Matters, Néw York’s most dynamic advocacy group for children, parents, teachers, and public schools. It operates on a shoestring but has had national impact through the efforts of its leader, Leonie Haimson, to support class size reduction, to fight high-stakes testing, and to defend student privacy from corporate data mining.
The Skinny Awards are a direct contrast to billionaire Eli Broad’s “Broad Award,” given to the urban district or charter chain that has most vigorously implemented corporate reform. The Skinny Awards go to those who fight for high-quality public education for all and who oppose the corporate assault on public schools.
Vicki decided, as she watched and listened, that she was observing the birth of a movement for civil disobedience. Not called into being by billionaires or the powerful, but led by grassroots parents, teachers, and principals.
She writes:
“The havoc wrought by corporate group-think on education can well cost us a generation of thinkers and doers and risk takers. Our children can’t be written off as the cost of doing business.
“This has awakened a sleeping giant in the population. Opt-out is political. It is democratic. The people are rising up against oppression. It is the only way to make politicians and the billionaires funding this disruption to take notice. If they don’t, watch; there will be further unrest.
“I am honored and energized to add my voice to the opt-out movement fighting for the minds of our children and the future of America.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The real reason that “reformers” fear the opt out movement is not just due to it’s growing success at engaging parents in the fight for evidence based education policy, it’s because they do not under any circumstances want an anti-partisan coalition of parents of every political persuasion to come together and realize that they have far more in common than they were all lead to believe by the lame stream media. The oligarchs and plutocrats are terrified that once our victory is complete, we will not disband and go home but that we will turn our attention to other places where our voices have been ignored and our rights as citizens tampled, that the anit-partisan coalition will continue to grow and increase it’s ability to degrade their illgotten influence and refute their lies.Their worst nightmare is that the broad coalition of patriotic Americans currently fighting against the hostile takeover of public education will join forces with other true grass roots interest groups against the influence of hyper wealthy special interests and resurrect a government of, by and for the people.
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Excellent Jon. Succinct and to the point…..
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There’s a link in the article written by an insider in the textbook publishing business. Well worth a read.
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Civil disobedience beginning with the opt out movement must spread to a budget that allows kids sufficient materials, sufficient planning time for teachers to serve every child in their class and small enough class sizes that no child to be left sitting in a crowd unnoticed.
And finally, to develop a system of assessment that drives the curriculum to prioritize whole child learning where critical thinking once again is the standard of achievement.
Corporations own the politicians, the judges and the media and they want the schools and it is not in their interest to have critical thinkers. That’s why they accept the test so easily. They want kids that are obedient and respond to their demands in a simplistic,thoughtless manner echoing their teachings, following like lemmings to the sea only to drown in a tsunami of word games and math riddles called the standardized test.
And this test drives the curriculum to narrow its scope to take kids away from creating, exploring and embracing the joy of learning. We must develop a curriculum where, when asked who discovered America, they don’t blindly say Columbus but research, recognizing settlers came in from the west much sooner. No longer may we accept only the text book companies version of the truth. We must empower kids to find their version of the truth.
And whatever it takes to reach that end, must begin NOW!
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