Archives for the month of: October, 2016
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Daily Kos: Paul Ryan’s Critique of Trump’s Misogyny is Equally Misogynistic

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
18

Reader Ellen Lubic drew my attention to this excellent analysis of Congressman Paul Ryan’s rejection of Donald Trump’s lewd, crude remarks about women.

I must that that when I read his comments online in an instant bulletin from CNN, I found them offensive. I was driving with friends to the airport in Las Vegas on my way home from a National Parks vacation, and I read his remarks out loud. He said, “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”

My reaction? What? I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, championed and revered like a fragile piece of pottery. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else.

But this writer said it much better, because she knows the lengths Paul Ryan and Gus party have gone to take away women’s rights.

Excuse me? Who are you, Paul Ryan? One of King Arthur’s men? A knight of the Round Table declaring fealty to the Code of Chivalry?

Let’s get one thing straight. You are not my knight in shining armor.

I don’t need to be “championed” by you. And I certainly don’t want to be “revered” by you. As to your assertion that women should not be “objectified”? GTFO. The entire modern Republican party does nothing but objectify women. You deny our humanity daily. You have made it your number one mission to reduce us down to our uteri and said you, and you alone, control what happens to our bodies.

You hold entire hearings about women’s issues without inviting a single woman. When you do deign to allow women to speak, you condescend to, brow beat and aggressively attempt to shame them. You have launched a single-minded assault on the ability of poor women in this country to obtain healthcare. Championed our employer’s rights over our own when it comes to our private healthcare decisions. You have legislated that our doctors lie to us and rape us with ultrasound wands. In Texas, you played God by keeping a dead woman artificially “alive” so that she could serve as an incubator. In Indiana, your new hero, Mike Pence, legislated that women had to deliver aborted or miscarried fetal blood and tissue to funeral homes for burial or cremation and crusaded to severely punish women for having miscarriages in the first place.

And what about you, Paul Ryan? How have you personally “championed” women? Was it in 1998 when you said that women should be criminally prosecuted for terminating pregnancies? When you tried to prevent women serving overseas in our military from having abortions in U.S. military hospitals even when they paid for it out of their own pockets? How about when you worked with Todd Akin to narrow the legal definition of rape to “forcible rape”? Or maybe it was in 2009 when you co-sponsored the “Sanctity of Life” Act which declared a fertilized egg a “person” and outlawed abortions, most forms of contraception and in-vitro fertilization? The numerous times you have voted to defund Planned Parenthood? In 2011 when you supported the “Let Women Die Bill” that allowed hospitals to refuse to terminate pregnancies even when the woman’s life was in danger?

Was it when you opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Opposed paid family leave?

When. When have you ever “championed” women, Paul Ryan?

Donald Trump may be a crass misogynist who thinks women exist for his own pleasure but you, Paul Ryan, are just as bad if not worse. You don’t respect us. You seek to be master over us and I, for one, could do without your paternalistic brand of “championing”.

Read this great post and open the links. Hypocrisy through and through.

Categories Fraud, Politics, Trump

Georgia: Governor Deal to African-American Ministers: “Trust Me.”

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
21

Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is pushing a constitutional amendment to allow the state to take over low-scoring public schools. He calls it an “opportunity school district” and points to New Orleans and the Tennessee Achievement School Districts as models. He brought called together a group of African-American ministers and asked for their support.

Here is the response from one of the attendees, who knew that neither New Orleans or the Tennessee ASD had helped the neediest students. Governor Deal couldn’t answer his questions, because the ALEC model legislation doesn’t explain why cessation of democracy helps schools or what to do after privatizing the schools and giving them to corporations.

Here is the report by Rev. Chester Ellis:

Governor’s Ministers Summoning Meeting was a School Takeover Sales Pitch
By Rev. Chester Ellis 912-257-2394
Pastor of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia

Governor Nathan Deal is working hard to sell the voters on what he calls an Opportunity School District. But this is an opportunity that Georgia should not take.

Recently, The Governor made a pitch to twenty-nine African American ministers in the basement of the mansion. No media was present. But I was one of those ministers.

If Amendment One was about education and opportunity for our communities and children, we could at least hold a logical discussion about evidence-based solutions. As a retired educator and community activist, it is very clear to me that his Opportunity School District is not about education or the community. He has no plan or roadmap to improve schools.

Gov. Deal was looking for our support. He stated, “I need your help.” But we left with more questions than we had answers. It truly is a takeover, and one whose extent is clear to very few voters.

I was disappointed. I thought the Governor would be able to lay out his plan in detail to us. But, what I got from the Governor is he’s making it up as he goes. There’s really no plan. At best, it was guesswork.

Bishop Marvin L. Winans, who has a charter school in Detroit, was the first to speak to us. Brother Winans is a minister and an award winning Gospel singer. He does not live in Georgia. Marvin talked about why he had established his school in Detroit and why he thought it was a good idea that the Governor was willing to do something to help failing schools. But we didn’t have a chance to dialog with him, ask questions or shed light on anything here in Georgia for him. He left for a concert, almost as quickly as he appeared!

Afterwards, the Governor followed with a spiel about why he thought he needed to take over the schools and why the Black clergymen needed to be in support of Amendment 1, The Opportunity School District. He then opened the session up for questions.

I asked him, what is the student to teacher ratio per class of all the schools on your list for takeover? He said he did not have the answer to that question.

My rationale for asking that question was that research tells us ideal pupil to teacher ratio should be 18 to 1, and the further schools and classrooms go past that recommended ratio, the more they are setting students up for failure. Districts need resources to address that problem. The A plus Act of 2000 provided such resources. In fact, this Governor has taken more resources from our public schools. The governor added that he needed to do more research on that issue, so I invited him to do that and gave him some websites he could Google.

I also asked the Governor if all of the schools that are having trouble, as defined by him, are predominately African American schools. He replied, not so much, but that when they looked at schools that were failing they looked at schools that were in a cluster. And that the ministers summoned to the meeting were invited more for being in those identified clusters of schools.

One of my colleagues asked the Governor for the specifics of his Opportunity School District plan. Deal replied that he was using different models, and two of the models he mentioned were the Louisiana Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District models. Then the question was raised about both of those state’s backing away from the models because they failed to accomplish their achievement goals. In fact indicators prove that New Orleans is worse off now The Governor replied, “We are going to look at what they did wrong, and correct their mistakes so that ours will be right. You know, we have to do something, we are willing to try this and then if it doesn’t work, we are willing to work on what doesn’t work and straighten it out.” The problem with the Governor’s logic is that he is asking the voters to change the state’s constitution. We can’t back up if the voters do that!

The Governor says OSD is a “plan in the works”. . So I urged the Governor to use Massachusetts as a model rather than one from Tennessee or Louisiana, which have both failed.

According to a recent article in Education Week, scholars at the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation and Philadelphia-based Research in Action organization found that some states are proposing to mimic “opportunity school district” takeover models despite evidence that prototypes of these models have gone awry. The esteemed Education Week reports that imitating these models are not an appropriate prescription for providing support for schools that needs it.

Massachusetts put their plan in place with on the ground, in the classrooms education practitioners. . Legislators met with them and applied the educator’s advice and professional know how. They set out on a course working together and didn’t change the course until they got the results they were striving for. They are now one of the celebrated and better school systems in the country. I asked the Governor, why didn’t his planners and plans look at that type of successful model?

He replied, “It’s because of demographics.” I responded that clearly Massachusetts doesn’t look like Georgia but education isn’t rocket science …..It requires an understanding of what you are working with. I also referenced just one of many of our state’s successful public school model, Woodville Thompkins High School in Savannah. I’m a graduate of that school and I have worked since 2006 with that school and the community. As a result it is an award winning school in many disciplines.

For the last two years, Woodville-Tompkins Technical and Career High School has had a 100 percent Graduation rate. They have also been cited as being one of the top 30 programs worldwide in Robotics. There is a way to turn schools around and it doesn’t require a Constitutional Amendment. I don’t see the need. It takes a little elbow grease and total involvement from parents, community and legislators to sustain evidence based solutions and models that are already working.

I don’t buy the Governor’s program or plans. He’s selling the public on a quick fix. I think the Governor has some friends who see education as a carte blanche card; something they can make money off of. It’s about the money, not about the children. The legislation doesn’t even define what a failing school is. The Governor has spent little or no time educating the public on the thirteen pages that compose all of the little devils in his plan per Senate Bill 133. He is spending lots of time though, selling his plan.

The Governor is a lame duck, yet he’s asking citizens to trust him blindly and give him all the power over their schools, public property, pocketbooks and children by changing the constitution.

I thanked the Governor for inviting me, but I told him before I left that there are too many uncertainties and too many unanswered questions to go before my congregation and say we should support this. I’m not comfortable with the Governor’s answers or his solutions. His Opportunity School District has no facts and no plans to improve schools. This is an opportunity that citizens can’t afford to take. It is all about the money. It’s just that simple.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Georgia, New Orleans

My Reflection on the Second Presidential Debate

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
236

I watched it all, with a growing sense of dismay. Once again, Trump was rude, abrasive, and couldn’t stop sniffing. When Clinton was speaking, he got up from his chair, lurked behind her, loomed over her, and it was incredibly distracting. He changed the subject and deflected as usual. His attacks on Bill Clinton were disgusting. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. For a man who is a serial sexual abuser, a man who boasts of his sexual assaults, to complain about another man’s infidelity is a high level of hypocrisy. What I found so depressing was the small amount of time devoted to discussing actual issues that confront the nation. Trump talks in slogans; he will kill Obamacare and that will fix all the problems with spiraling costs. He will crush ISIS. He will do this and do that, but forget the details. He knows nothing about foreign issues and it is embarrassing to listen to him blabber on about Russia or Syria or anywhere outside of his social media orbit.

But, for me personally, the worst moment of the debate occurred when he said that if he were President, Hillary Clinton would be in jail. That sounded like the kind of threat or behavior that one expects to hear from a dictator. In democracies, winners are gracious in victory and form a government. They don’t pursue their opponents and threaten to jail them. This man is a psychopath. He is unfit to be anywhere near the Presidency.

He played to his hard-core white nationalist base. He gave them the Red Meat they love. He was the bully we have come to know and loathe.

As for the infamous sex tapes, where he bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia, he again said it was “locker room banter,” the kind of thing that men say to one another whenever they are together. If he attempted to apologize for his remarks, it was clear that he was not sincere. He still does not understand why women and men too would find his vulgar remarks offensive. But his debate coaches told him to be contrite, so he pretended. But it wasn’t a good pretense.

The idea that this man is the candidate of the Republican party is a stain on the party. It once claimed to be the party of “family values.” No more. If ever. If they accept this man afflicted with satyriasis as their leader, they lose all pretense of caring about family values, morality, decency, or respect for women.

Yuck! The level of discourse in this campaign has been driven down to potty talk and worse by the most unqualified candidate for the Presidency in modern times, maybe ever.

Categories Clinton, Trump

Support Education Warriors as They Walk Across New York to Demand Equitable Funding of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
3

I just made a contribution to the #EdWalk for CFE, to honor a group of parents, students, and educators who are walking from New York City to Albany to call attention to the legislature’s failure to fund the public schools equitably, as a state court ordered long ago. Please show your support, with any amount: $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford.

A message from Marla Kilfoyle, executive director of the BATs, about the #EdWalk for CFE.

10 years ago, parents won a landmark case by proving that the State of New York was failing to provide a basic education to our kids.

A decade later, schools across New York state have still not received the money they are owed. All schools are suffering, with Black, Latino and low-income districts facing the worst inequities.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) lawsuit was filed in 1993 by New York City parents, alleging severe underfunding of public schools in communities of color and low-income communities. The state’s highest court, The Court of Appeals, rendered its final ruling ordering the state to add billions of funding to city schools.

The governor and legislature at the time provided a statewide solution, committing to infuse $5.5 billion, of classroom operating aid, also known as Foundation Aid, over the course of four years. The state provided two years of this funding, then in 2008 when the financial crisis hit, the aid not only stopped, but the legislature also did hurtful cuts to budgets. Generations of students have gone through school without realizing the full benefits of the CFE since the funding has been inadequate.

After the 2016-17 state budget did not include adequate levels of Foundation Aid, parents and advocates across the state made the decision that we needed to bring a new level of moral urgency to demand that the state stop letting generations of students graduate without realizing their full potential. We decided that it was our time.

JOIN THE FIGHT

Check out our interactive map to get more info about local events happening in your community!
http://action.aqeny.org/edwalk/

Categories Accountability, Funding, New York

Dilbert Explains How VAM Really Works

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
11

It takes a comedian or a cartoonist to explain the nutty world of education reform.

Check out this great cartoon by Dilbert, giving a fast explanation of the idiocy of VAM.

Enjoy!

PS: Thanks for KrazyTA for sending me the cartoon and also giving the correct link!

Categories Humor, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

A Personal Letter to a Persistent Charter Advocate

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
122

This is a letter to a reader who frequently sends comments defending the privatization of public schools in Massachusetts. On some days, he sends 3-5 comments, filled with references to studies that support charters, insisting that charters will not take money away from public schools, even though as a practical matter, charter schools everywhere have led to budget cuts for public schools that enroll the vast majority of children. His comments are repetitive and he has taken up a lot of space on a blog that opposes privatization and opposes school choice because of the damage it does to a universal, democratically controlled system of public education. Unless you believe that scores on standardized tests are the purpose of public education and the best measure of educational quality, these “studies” are meaningless and lacking in any understanding of democracy, civic responsibility, and the common good.

For these reasons, this letter is directed to this reader.

I will not post any more of your comments about Question 2 in Massachusetts and the glories of charter schools until you answer my questions.

Why do you have so much time on your hands to defend privatization?

What is your day job?

Is anyone paying you for your constant rebuttals?

What are your credentials and your expertise?

I told you mine: 50 years a scholar of education; a Ph.D. in history of American education from Columbia University; numerous books and honorary degrees; Assistant Secretary of Education for Research in the George H.W. Bush administration; a founding member of two conservative think tanks–the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution, as well as a Senior Fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a Senior Fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution. I was an avid proponent of charter schools for almost 15 years. Several years ago, I realized that the charter industry is now led by people who want to privatize and profit from money intended for our public schools. I saw the light. I know the arguments for charters better than you do. I used to believe them.

I have determined to devote my strength and energy, so long as I have it, to the preservation and transformation of public schools so that they offer equal opportunity for all children. Charter schools are a diversion that weaken public education. I will not allow my blog to be used as a forum for those who fight to destroy public education by diverting public funds to private schools and to those who mask their goal of privatization by stealing the language of the civil rights movement. I don’t believe that anyone should put words in the mouths of those who are not living, yet I feel certain that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would never have locked arms with the Waltons, the Koch brothers, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, ALEC, hedge fund managers, Wall Street titans, and demanded privatization and defunding of public schools. Dr. King was a great supporter of the labor movement. He was murdered in Memphis fighting for the rights of sanitation workers to organize a union. He would certainly oppose the charter industry, which prides itself on being anti-union. 93% of charters are non-union and aggressively oppose efforts by teachers to form a union.

Did you notice that the World Economic Forum just named Finland the best educational school system in the world? It has no charters, no vouchers. It has a strong union that all educators belong to. It has no standardized tests until the end of high school. It focuses on creativity, the arts, physiical activity, play, and critical thinking. It has a rich curriculum taught by well-prepared teachers. No charters, no Teach for Finland. No disruption. No teacher churn. The joy of learning is paramount. Children don’t begin academic studies until the age of 7. There is a recess after every class. There is free medical care, and low poverty.

We, by contrast, ignore poverty as a given and assume that school must be harder, tests must be harder, recess must be sacrificed to rigor and grit. Joy of learning? Play? The arts? No time for that. Gets in the way of testing.

The public is waking up. No matter how many millions your friends pour into the charter industry, an aware public will not sell or give away their community public schools. The public built them with their taxes. The public wants experienced career teachers, not temps who come and go with regularity.

You can cite all the studies you want about test scores. Readers of this blog know how those scores were obtained. They know that charter schools choose the students they want and kick out the ones they don’t want. They know charters with high scores engage in intensive test prep for months. Test scores will not convince an informed public to hand over their schools to corporations and non-educators. The Waltons have wiped out large swaths of small-town America, killing mom-and-pop stores, then hiring mom and pop as low-wage greeters. The motto of the charter industry is disrupt, destroy, privatize. Disruption harms children and communities. Tell your billionaire funders: Disrupt your family and community, but don’t impose your rootlessness on others.

No thanks. We don’t want to see the Walmartization of American public schools. They are a basic democratic institution. They belong to the public, not corporations and Wall Street. Not “Families for Excellent Schools” whose own children go to such excellent schools as Exeter, Phillips Andover, Deerfield Academy, and other elite schools where tuition runs about $50,000 a year. Too bad they don’t want similar excellent schools for other people’s children. Instead, they favor “no excuses” boot camps that impose harsh discipline and focus relentlessly on test scores in math and reading, the tested subjects. I acknowledge that there are outliers, that there are charter schools that seek to improve the education of poor kids. But unfortunately, the charter industry is now led and driven by indiduals and groups that want to destroy public education. They dress their children in identical T-shirts and bus them to legislative hearings and political rallies to demand more charters, more money. Their greedy, self-serving charter leaders use the children (their “scholars”) as pawns in their quest for political power.

When charters become a potent political force, democracy suffers. Communities are divided. Legislators become consumed by charter issues, even though the charters enroll less than 10% of students. Big campaign contributions guarantee political allies, even Democrats, despite the fact that school choice has always been a beloved Republican policy, despite the fact that it promotes segregation, despite the fact that it was the rallying cry of southern segregationists after the Brown decision.

And so, dear reader, we reject your repetitive defense of school choice. We will oppose your efforts to cripple a cornerstone of our democracy. We will oppose a dual system of publicly funded schools, one open to all, the other open to a few and privately controlled.

We will fight for great public schools, democratically controlled, accountable and transparent.

We mean to keep them and make them better than ever.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Thomas Ultican on Mercedes Schneider’s Wonderful New Book about School Choice

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
8

Mercedes Schneider has written a book every summer for three years in a row, during her break from teaching high school English. Thomas Ultican reviews her latest book, School Choice: The End of Public Education?

The book traces school choice to libertarian economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Mercedes shows the centrality of school choice to the segregationist diehards in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

There is a terrible irony in the fact that today’s advocates of school choice claim to be fighting for civil rights when they are promoting racial segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would not have allowed them to get away with this deceptive rhetoric.

Ultican notes that school choice has encouraged not only racial segregation, but class segregation as well. He tells this anecdote:

“Around 2003, a friend tried to convince my wife and I to send our daughter to High Tech High. This mother did not want her daughter to be exposed to all those bad influences at Mira Mesa High School. Mira Mesa High School is a quality school that graduates amazingly gifted students every year and sets them on to a course of academic and social success. But the new charter school that Bill Gates and Irwin Jacobs had put so much money into surely would not have all those feared “bad kids.””

Schneider’s book is the go-to book to understand the current vogue for vouchers and charters, as well as public ignorance of the ways that charter operators scam public funds. The most lucrative angle is in real estate; the charter operator buys the building, rents it to his charter school, charges double the going rate, and passes the bill to taxpayers.

Ultican urges you to buy the book, read it, and share it with friends.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Tulsa Adopts a “Teach Like a Robot” Program

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
24

Peter Greene learned that the Tulsa public schools have adopted a program to standardize teaching by putting a little microphone in teachers’ ears through which they can get real-time coaching. The superintendent in Tulsa is Deborah Gist, a reformer who was previously State Commisssioner of Education in Rhode Island, where she achieved plaudits from President Obama and Arne Duncan for supporting the mass firing of the entire staff of Central Falls High School.

Tulsa public schools invited the press to see a demonstration of scripted teaching.

“The press were there to watch Remote Control Scripting in action because they had been invited there by Tulsa Public Schools and the company TPS hired to provide this program. It’s the same company that put Berard through her paces– CT3 (The Center for Transformative Teacher Training). They are partners with all the cool kids– Success Academies, Teach for America, Aspire, and many other charter schools….

“No Nonsense Nurturing has been around forever, but previously we’ve called it “tough love” or “taking a hard line” or even “acting like an emotionally-withholding, borderline-abusive jerk.” I have never seen nor read of an example of it that doesn’t make me immediately think “this is no way to treat human beings.”

“Real-Time Coaching, the part that got all the press attention in Tulsa, is actually Real-Time Scripting, and like scripting, it has no place in a classroom. Ever. No child should ever, ever have a teacher whose answer to, “Why are we doing this?” is “Because the voices in my head tell me to.”

“The real time nature of the coaching is actually a bug, not a feature. If I’m coaching another teacher, after I’ve watched the lesson, I’ll need at least a few minutes to reflect. In the real time moment, I’m pretty much limited to the instant thought of What I Would Do, or, if I’ve been trained in a particular method, the One Correct Response to that situation. Either response devalues and dismisses that teacher’s own teaching voice.

“It’s just silly to say that there is One Correct Way to teach a particular lesson, irregardless of the teacher or the class involved. It makes no more sense than saying there is One Correct Way to be a spouse, irregardless of who is your partner.

Borrero defends CT3 practices by saying, “Our programs were developed through careful analysis of high performing teachers’ practices in schools serving traditionally disenfranchised communities across the country; all of our work is rooted in building positive life-altering relationships with youth and their families.” But it is hard for me to imagine how Real Time Coaching could possibly help accomplish any such thing.

“Standardizing and human behavior is the worst kind of folly. To fit in such a system requires the practitioners to be less themselves, less real, less human. It is a favored dream of people who are too small to comprehend the vast variety of human experience and behavior, too scared to face anything but the narrow sliver of possibilities they feel prepared to master, or too morally impaired to respect the independence and autonomy of other human beings.

“Good teaching exists at the intersection of the material, the humanity of the teacher, and the humanity of the students in the room. Additionally, that intersection is influenced by a background of previous experience, current events, and the feelings of the moment. It cannot be standardized any more than a marriage or a child or a pancake or a planet can be standardized. And it can’t be attempted because it shouldn’t be attempted.

“I have no doubt that buried here in there in the real-time scripting and the no-nurturing nonsense, there are occasional nuggets of useful information or technique. But it is saddening to see CT3 still successfully peddling their wares. Nobody needs to teach like a robot.”

This program is a vivid demonstration of lack of respect for teachers. It strips them of both their professionalism and their dignity.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Oklahoma, Teachers and Teaching

Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
5

Before the second debate tonight, the Journey for Justice asks the candidates to respond to these questions:


NEWS RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Jaribu Lee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(773) 548-7500
October 8, 2016
info@j4jalliance.com

Education activists release statement ahead of second presidential debate: “Will the next president be tone deaf…”
​

CHICAGO – Today, Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) released the following statement ahead of the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday, September 9th. Thousands of African American and Latino parents, students and activists have challenged both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and third-party candidates) to release their K-through-12 public education platforms, as well as identify how, if elected, they will work to end federal education policies that have destabilized communities and hurt students of color:

“As parents, students and residents of communities impacted by corporate education interventions in 24 cities across this nation, we are dismayed by the omission of public education as an issue during this presidential election season. Public education repeatedly polls as a top tier issue, but has been largely ignored by both major and third party candidates,” said Brown.

“Will the next president be tone deaf to the tremors from the ground? As a national network of grassroots community organizations across America, we have seen first-hand a determined resistance to failed, top-down corporate education interventions that cannot be ignored; Title VI civil rights complaints filed in 12 cities, thousands of people in determined protest against school closings, sit-ins and traffic blockades, students occupying the superintendent’s office in Newark, a 34-day hunger strike to save a neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school in Chicago, the rejection of punitive standardized test across the nation and from those who wish to be the leader of the free world; silence.

“The next president must base their advocacy in relationship with people’s lived reality, not corporate relationships. When a mother cries in Detroit because her child’s school is being closed, or students walk-out by the thousands in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia; it matters. The next president must understand that the United States ranks 19th in the world in public education among OECD countries but when you remove poverty we are number 2. The next president must have the courage to stare down inequity in public education with a commitment to hear the voices of the people directly impacted. The next president must understand that we do not have failing schools in America, as a public we have been failed,” he continued.

“We are asking the next president to meet with the Journey for Justice Alliance and adopt our education platform. Include J4J on your education transition team so that public policy can be rooted in our lived experiences, not someone’s opinion of our communities. We were disappointed that the vice-presidential candidates said nothing about public education in their October 4th debate. We want to hear from both candidates on October 9th about their education agenda. Will they be honest about the harm inflicted on our communities by school closings and the unwarranted expansion of charter schools? Will they acknowledge that the “illusion of choice” must be erased by the reality of strong, high quality neighborhood schools within safe walking distance of our homes? We will be watching.”

​###

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) (www.j4jalliance.org) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.

Journey For Justice Alliance
4242 S. Cottage Grove
Chicago, IL 60653
773-548-7500

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Equity, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Inequality, Injustice, Poverty, Privatization, Race

FairTest: A Model State Assessment System That Avoids the Destructive Testing of NCLB

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
49

FairTest has been fighting the overuse and misuse of standardized testing for more than 40 years. Recognizing that you can’t defeat a failed system by complaining, FairTest has designed a state system for assessment that does not rely on standardized testing.

The new system relies on student work and teacher judgment. It takes advantage of a provision in ESSA that allows seven states to create innovative approaches to sssessment.

This is a plan that is research-based, reasonable, and feasible.

Please read it.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Testing
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