Mercedes Schneider, high school teacher, blogger, and Ph.D. in research statistics wrote an open letter to Laura Slover, CEO of PARCC, to ask for documentation of Slover’s efforts to suppress critical articles and tweets about the PARCC test. She invited Slover to respond and promised to post her letter in full.
Mercedes reviewed Slover’s response to Teachers College Professor Celia Oyler. She wondered why the threat of legal action came from Slover, not a lawyer.
She wondered why PARCC didn’t add the three items in Oyler’s post to the 800 items that have already been released. Wouldn’t that be simpler than trying to silence the dozens of bloggers who reposted Oyler’s post?
She noted Slover’s claim that every PARCC item had been created and reviewed by educators. She asked Slover to release the names and credentials of those who wrote and reviewed the questions.
Let’s see if Laura Slover answers Mercedes’ letter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just think, Diane…without your fulcrum site, most of us would never have met Mercedes.
Diane is a guru — all sarcasm aside.
True. She is amazing.
Don’t play poker with Mercedes Schneider.
They’ve underestimated our entire profession, democracy, and the rule of law. Go Mercedes! Loved the line about spouting off without legal assistance. SBAC, you’re next (Hi, Ellen.).
If anyone really believes that Dr. Schneider will receive thorough and honest answers to the questions she sent to Ms. Slover then they must be using some very, very strong weed. The leadership of Pearson nor PARCC will allow Ms. Slover to answer the questions without a complete review and rewrite of half-truths and mostly false statements. That is how these people work — deceit and deception. I wish Dr. Schneider would receives the answers she is looking for and make a liar out of me but I don’t see it happening.
At this very moment, members of the Education Bloggers group are being having their tweeting accounts redacted by Pearson for informing others about PARCC. Just got this news in my email box. This is all very alarming.
There’s an easy remedy: dump Twitter.
Twitter would seem to be fairly useless if they take stuff down any time someone whispers “copyright” in their ear.
With that kind of censorship, all that remains is basically little better than the meaningless twitter of birds that it is named for.
So what’s the point of even using it if you know that everything that appears there has been heavily censored?
I didn’t realize Twitter was named for birds. I thought it was for twits.
But, even though I as an LA teacher am personally unwilling to risk engaging in social media to get out the message for public schools, the power of the people’s, like Diane and Mercedes, use of Twitter and Facebook to counter billionaire owned mass media is not lost on me.
I am excited that people outside of classrooms are finally waking up to the bullying and threatening nature of the reformists. Will this wake people up to the reality of the reform movement and its evil players?
For too long we have collectively believed that if we just tell the truth, promote circulation of research, or write letters that somehow, we will prevail.
These reformists don’t play. They don’t give a fig about truth, research, or our opinions. When billions of dollars are at stake the stakes get much, much higher and the knives and big guns come out. They will defend their profits by any means necessary.
The bullying and threats have been a daily occurrence in classrooms since NCLB. The whole testing industrial complex has always used this intimidation against classroom teachers.
Maybe now that ‘important’ and ‘distinguished’ people with PhD’s, illustrious careers, privileged platforms, and wealth are feeling the bite and not just common classroom teachers, we can see some action and movement to battle the reformers with more than noble words.
Chris in Florida is so right. I always have to grit my teeth when people talk as though choosing ed reform Superintendents, and Secretaries of Education, etc. are “mistakes.” They are not mistakes, and the “experiment” of ed reform is not dying or going awry — it is succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. We persist in the fiction that all this was meant to somehow improve student education, or scores, or something — while making some people very rich on the side. It never was. It was actually designed to destroy public education — while making some people very rich on the side. Because once public ed is gone — (1) their pie grows astronomically, as they will be the only game in town, and (2) their forms of schools are highly antithetical to democracy, freedom of speech or thought, due process, privacy rights, and any number of other freedoms that we hold dear (but also take for granted).
We will stop sounding so silly if we remember to take THEIR view of their goals, and to stop assuming that they share OUR goals (their claims that they do are just part of the propaganda).
JEM,
The reformers enjoy victories,but they are transitory. Where is Rhee? Where is Klein? Everything they have done has failed.
FAILURE is their LEGACY!
Failed policies, failed programs and failed products. And after 15 years all they can offer is more of the same. In their war on public schools and teachers, they used children as cannon fodder.
“The PARCC Plague”
The plague of PARCC
Is black and dark
And rides on little fleas*
From tiny threat
It does beget
A terminal disease
*who will not be named here
It is just amazing that Campbell Brown is now the national expert on public education:
“Without question, to me, the issue is education,” says Campbell Brown in the video above. “Two out of three eighth graders in this country cannot read or do math at grade level. We are not preparing our kids for what the future holds.”
In the latest installment in a new weekly series from Slate, 92Y, and New America, we hear from Brown—a former NBC News and CNN anchor, and co-founder of the education news site, The 74—who offers her advice for the next president of the United States. Each Monday this election season, we’ll publish a short video in which a policy maker, writer, or thinker gives the next commander in chief their best ideas for how to handle the highest office in the land.”
You literally don’t even have to ever ENTER a public school and “educational pundit” can be a career!
My husband and I did a career presentation at our son’s public school today. It was fun. They asked great questions.
One of them asked what you need to be an auto mechanic.
I should have told him about opportunities in educational punditry! No qualifications needed at all! Auto mechanic certification is much, much tougher 🙂
No, no, no Chiara. She has all the credentials every one of these self-proclaimed education reform experts has. She was a student! Please correct your inaccurate accusation below:
“You literally don’t even have to ever ENTER a public school and “educational pundit” can be a career!”
Here’s her education bio from Wikipedia:
Brown grew up in Ferriday, Louisiana, and attended the Trinity Episcopal Day School. Her family was involved in hunting, politics, and cooking, “It was all about Cajun and tight-knit families and big parties,” according to Brown.
She was expelled from the Madeira School for sneaking off campus to go to a party. Brown attended Louisiana State University for two years before graduating from Regis University. After graduation, she spent a year teaching English in Czechoslovakia. In her 2006 wedding announcement in the New York Times, she was described as having “spent her post college years as a Colorado ski bum.”
http://www.nystoptesting.com/2016/05/parcc-test-exposed.html
A public school student with perfect recall (as in a person like Mary Steenbergen who has rare “perfect recall”) needs to challenge Laura Slover and come forward and restate an entire PARCC test in “his/her own words”! There is a reason why we learn how to do a “synopsis” in English class! ha ha ha ha ha 🙂
“PARCCer-boarding”
The PARCCer-board excels
For coming up with name
Of anyone who tells
About their testing game
With Copyright as weapon
And Slover as its plier
The PARCCer-board will threaten
Most any who defy ‘er
Here’s a free marketing tip for ed reformers: they should occasionally talk to public school parents about something other than testing, test scores and labor unions.
They can’t keep insisting they are about a host of issues in public schools when their entire “movement” focus contradicts that claim.
I’m not even an opt out parent. My son is 13 and he doesn’t want to stick out and I’m conflicted on opt-out anyway- I’m fairly “traditional” about following rules- he mostly has to follow rules in school including misguided testing rules.
I’m not even categorically opposed to testing and all I see from these people is test, test, test and lawsuits against labor unions. Why don’t they try offering public school parents and students something positive- a BENEFIT- an IMPROVEMENT.
We were told they would “improve” public schools. I have yet to see any evidence of that and it’s been 15 years.
I am in good company. Got this from Twitter this morning. See below.
Hello,
The following material has been removed from your account in response to the DMCA takedown notice copied at
the bottom of this email:
Tweet: https://twitter.com/pana/status/731262060193943553 – DO READ! https://t.co/asZjnoF6sc
According to Wikipedia, “In 2013, talking to CNN, [Twitter CEO Jack ] Dorsey expressed admiration for Michael Bloomberg”, which tells you all you need to know about Twitter’s priorities and operating “principles”.
Welcome to the club, Yvonne!
“Pearson Access… entry point to all Pearson services used by school districts participating in the PARCC Consortium.” Pearson and Microsoft have a development deal. Z-berg/Bill Gates//Pearson share ownership of BIA.
Major Silicon Valley tech firms, allegedly, colluded to suppress wages of tech workers. If found to be true, other inter-connected activities, are a logical deduction.