Tom Ultican teaches in San Diego. He recently read Ciedie Aech’s new book about teaching in Hyper-Reformy Denver and highly recommends it.
Denver is a trifecta of reformers. Non-educator Michael Bennett was tapped to be superintendent. He has a law degree from Yale. He then was appointed to fill an empty Senate seat, so he is now Senator Bennett. He was replaced by Tom Boasberg, another non-educator. He too is a lawyer with no education background. And Colorado has wonder boy Michael Johnston, the TFA-Broadie in the state senate who wrote the nation’s most punitive teacher evaluation bill. It passed in 2010. Colorado was supposed to have great schools, great principals, and great teachers by now. Results don’t matter.
Tom loved the book and thinks you will too.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What is the book’s title? — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
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Book title is “Why Is You Always Got To Be Trippin’: School Reform and the Racial Divide”
It is available on Amazon (paperback or Kindle format):
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THANK YOU Carol.
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Denver really is the shining star of ed reform. It’s Denver, DC, Tennessee and New Orleans. It’s not a coincidence. Al those places were run by “superstar” ed reformers with the ed reform agenda list. It has to have both elements- individuals they’re promoting and all of the policy priorities.
It’s sort of the ultimate in cherry-picking. They just ignore the places where it fails.
You won’t see any big celebrations of Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania, for example, although the agenda is identical 🙂
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Here’s the US Department of Ed. Guess we’re they’re going to promote their K-12 ed reforms?
New Orleans and Tennessee. On the “approved” list 🙂
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This is amazing! I read it in 2 days.
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You tipped me off to the book. I started reading it on a plane trip and couldn’t stop.
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DIANE: THANK YOU. It is a wonder, a surprise, and a true honor to find my work promoted here.
The world of teaching inside low-income, inner-city Denver became such a chaotically unrecognizable mess when the dictates of NCLB hit our 98% non-dominant-culture school that I often thought, in a panic, I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT THIS. I NEED TO TELL PEOPLE ABOUT THIS.
I had been collecting a growing number of articles, papers and references on the subject of test-score invasions, but it wasn’t until our district very unexpectedly forced me into a no-evidence-required administrative leave that I found the opportunity to sit down and read carefully through your book about the death (and life 🙂 ) of public education. I began to see how so much of what I was personally experiencing actually tied together on a national scale.
A year or so later, I attended a talk which you gave at Denver North High School (heartbreaking as that was since it was a school to which I had given my life for nine wonderful years, and was now a building inside which I was no longer welcome). I was excited both to meet you, and to then read your following book which focused so clearly upon exposing the HOAX of the ed-reform game.
Your research and insights helped me to organize my own writing, and gave me the push I needed to finally start putting words down on paper. It is to you, personally, in fact, that I refer when writing about the terrible connection between test-scores and student criminalization — a frighteningly vicious phenomenon which, at that time, I was only beginning to recognize. ( http://www.ciedieaech.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/pun-intended).
Your dedication to HEARING teachers and SEEING the hoax; your interest in COLLECTING evidence and PUBLISHING the truth; your willingness to PUSH information when no one seems to be listening, or even when those who wish to silence you call you evil (ah, sadly it is true that Mr. Polis represents Colorado…) is not only amazing in its effort and breadth, but crucial to so may of us who are out here, just aching to be heard.
THANK YOU again. From: A “bad” teacher whose truest wish, put simply, is to do whatever I can to help you and any other anti-testing/anti-reform writer expose — AND STOP — the growing devastation brought to public education by the test-score school “reform” game. ciedieaech.wordpress.com
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Ciedie,
Thank you for your hard work and dedication. You know what is happening and so few outside the schools do. Thank you for writing about it and keeping up the fight to save our children from the marketplace.
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🙂 🙂
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Ciedie,
Where can I buy your book? TIA, Duane
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I was so very proud of myself (surreptitious pat on the back here) to figure out how to self-publish an actual paperback on Amazon last January. You can find my book at Amazon.com under my name or under the title of the book, WHY IS YOU ALWAYS GOT TO BE TRIPPIN’: SCHOOL REFORM AND THE RACIAL DIVIDE. Or, on a good day, you can find it at http://www.ciedieaech.wordpress.com/2016/o4/26/available-at-amazon-books . (You know I would love to get feedback from you, Duane. 🙂 )
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Got it on order. Thanks for the info. Will let you know my thoughts when I read it.
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Ciedie: Thanks for your creative endeavor that exposes what it is like to live in an alternate reality through no fault of your own. You capture the insanity of the “reform” with wit and just the right amount of sarcasm. You made lemonade from lemons. Keep writing!
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Thanks for reading!
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