Archives for the month of: January, 2019
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The Los Angeles Strike: Whose Perspective Matters

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
34

The “Red Queen in LA” (aka Sara Roos) tries to sort the players in the Los Angeles teachers’ strike.

Who represents the public? Who represents the public interest? Who speaks for the students?

Teachers, administrators, board members, students, parents. In the background, Eli Broad, pulling the strings of Austin Beutner, money manager.

Kids of all ages from 4 to 18 will face a bigger political question of whether to “cross a picket line”. While parents weigh the potential incremental damage to their own kid’s school’s budget from loss of Average Daily Attendance (ADA) money, against the long-term effect of staffing all schools properly with teachers, counselors, librarians and nurses among others, kids have somehow to navigate a world of contingent attendance. Drilled into them the administratively-self-serving mantra of “100% attendance” long ago, they suddenly face a moral dilemma that belies the unwaivering rectitude assigned that rule. In the age of shock doctrine education reform and testing hysteria, has come a political battle-cry that all kids should attend school always, even when sick, even when family duty calls, even when honors or accolades call them elsewhere.

Older kids as emerging moral beings must begin to design this decision independently from their parents. And the resulting “opinion gap” is a stress with incumbent consequences they must bear personally. They must straddle a moral field that encompasses the relationship with their teacher, their school, their friends, their families, their personal dreams and desires. Some students have been threatened with punishment from truancy, with poor grades to diminished GPA and college opportunities, to lost graduation privileges or failure to graduate altogether. The UTLA president has promised to fight “100% at the back” of any students or parents or families who face retaliation for supporting the strike. Pertinent legislation assures that a “valid excuse” will mitigate truancy, but discretion over that definition is Group M’s and they have been clear about asserting a strict, narrow, fealty to financial demands in mandating student’s “100% attendance”. Which incidentally belies all that former pedagogical justification, since there is little chance that students sitting in the school during a strike will actually learn or be taught anything.

Student’s needs and perspective are the least-articulated to the public (though parents will be better-acquainted with kids’ burden). But kids disproportionately bear the brunt of collateral damage when elephants fight. Like the two prostitutes before Kong Solomon, true kinship and care is revealed by willingness to defer to the child’s need. The District has been pimping our children for political gain for long enough.

Which side are you on?

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Students

Southern Poverty Law Center: What Mollie Tibbett’s Family Did about the “Immigration Crisis”

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
12

The Southern Poverty Law Center is one of my favorite charities. It fights hate and bigotry in all its forms and it is super-busy these days.

Here is a story that I just got in the mail.

Remember Mollie Tibbetts, a student at the University of Iowa who was murdered last July while she was jogging. Her murderer was an immigrant who entered the country illegally. Her family objected to the politicization of her murder.

SPLC wrote this:

President Trump took to the airwaves this week to denounce people he called “illegal aliens,” thousands of whom he said were “charged or convicted of assaults, sex crimes, and violent killings.”

Trump described a “humanitarian and security crisis at our Southern border.”

But we know the real crisis is one his administration has manufactured.

It’s a direct result of the president’s relentless war on asylum seekers, his administration’s heartless policy of separating families, and its arbitrary limit on the number of people who can be processed at ports of entry.

It’s a result of the president’s well-documented preference for fearmongering over the facts.

Just ask Laura Calderwood. Her daughter, Mollie, 20, was murdered this past summer, and an undocumented immigrant has been charged.

Trump tried to make political hay out of Mollie’s death: On the day her body was found, he issued a statement containing some of the same anti-immigrant falsehoods that he repeated during his primetime address Tuesday night.

Mollie’s parents, Laura and Rob, found his words abhorrent, as Terrence McCoy describes for The Washington Post:

He’d never called Laura, knew little about her daughter, but had no problem, Laura thought, using Mollie’s death to try to end immigration policies he now referred to as “pathetic.”

Laura hated the sound of Mollie’s name coming from his mouth. His words were the opposite of who Mollie was, advancing a “cause she vehemently opposed,” as her father, Rob Tibbetts, who’s separated from Laura, wrote in a newspaper column soon after her funeral.

The family’s dissent didn’t stop with rejecting Trump’s comments about their daughter.

Laura Calderwood is living her rebuttal: She has taken in a teen named Ulises. He is the son of two immigrants who were forced to flee the community as a direct result of Mollie’s death, when an anti-immigrant backlash drove out many who worked at the same farm as Mollie’s alleged killer.

Ulises, a friend of Mollie’s younger brother, Scott, wanted to finish his high school education, but when his parents decided they had to leave the community, he had nowhere to go. So Laura took him in — the son of farmworkers who had worked alongside the man who allegedly killed her daughter. Or: the friend of her youngest son, a boy who had grieved along with the family when Mollie was killed. A member of their community, no matter his parents’ immigration status.

Laura and her family are an example of how to address the very real immigration crisis that the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric have created.

The nation is living through “an elemental battle over who gets to be an American,” as McCoy writes for The Washington Post. He asks:

Should any immigrant — regardless of race, religion, nationality or circumstance — have that chance? Or should it be reserved for the few who might more quickly assimilate into the American majority?

Ask Laura Tibbetts.

The Editors

Want to fight hate? Send a gift to SPLC.

Categories Education Reform

What’s at Stake in L.A. Teachers’ Strike: The Survival of Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
36

The New York Times editorial and opinion pages have been a cheering section for charter expansion for years. I have tried and failed to get articles about the dangers of privatization on the op-Ed page. The last time I tried, my article was rejected, then posted online by the Washington Post (whose editorial board also favors charter schools). After that rejection, I swore I would never again submit an article because I knew it would be turned down. Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times to find the article below. Miriam Pawel, an independent historian and a contributing opinion writer for the Times, was allowed to explain the real dynamics behind the teachers’ strike: demographic change; high poverty rates; overcrowded classes; underfunding of the schools; and an aggressive charter industry, led by Eli Broad and other billionaires, willing to spend vast sums to privatize more public schools and kick out the unions.

Online, thisis the subtitle of the article: “Can California provide sufficient resources to support an effective public education system? Or will charter schools cripple it?”

What is so remarkable about this article is: 1. The New York Times printed it; 2. Pawel connected the dots among demographic change, underfunding of the schools, bloated class sizes, and the district’s deference to charter expansion; 3. Pawel acknowledged that the rapid growth of charters is the direct result of the intervention of billionaires like Broad, who poured $54 million into two losing statewide races last fall. I couldn’t have said it better.

Miriam Pawel writes:

LOS ANGELES — For decades, public schools were part of California’s lure, key to the promise of opportunity. Forty years ago, with the lightning speed characteristic of the Golden State, all of that changed.

In the fall of 1978, after years of bitter battles to desegregate Los Angeles classrooms, 1,000 buses carried more than 40,000 students to new schools. Within six months, the nation’s second-largest school district lost 30,000 students, a good chunk of its white enrollment. The busing stopped; the divisions deepened.

Those racial fault lines had helped fuel the tax revolt that led to Proposition 13, the sweeping tax-cut measure that passed overwhelmingly in June 1978. The state lost more than a quarter of its total revenue. School districts’ ability to raise funds was crippled; their budgets shrank for the first time since the Depression. State government assumed control of allocating money to schools, which centralized decision-making in Sacramento.

Public education in California has never recovered, nowhere with more devastating impact than in Los Angeles, where a district now mostly low-income and Latino has failed generations of children most in need of help. The decades of frustration and impotence have boiled over in a strike with no clear endgame and huge long-term implications. The underlying question is: Can California ever have great public schools again?

The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.

California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.

Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.

On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.

When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state. To counter demands for greater regulation and transparency, charter advocates have in recent years poured millions into political campaigns. Last year, charter school lobbies spent $54 million on losing candidates for governor and state superintendent of education.

In Los Angeles, they have had more success. After his plan to move half of the Los Angeles district students into charter schools failed to get traction, the billionaire and charter school supporter Eli Broad and a group of allies spent almost $10 million in 2017 to win a majority on the school board. The board rammed through the appointment of a superintendent, Austin Beutner, with no educational background. Mr. Beutner, a former investment banker, is the seventh in 10 years and has proposed dividing the district into 32 “networks,” a so-called portfolio plan designed in part by the consultant who engineered the radical restructuring of Newark schools.

“In my 17 years working with labor unions, I have been called on to help settle countless bargaining disputes in mediation,” wrote Vern Gates, the union-appointed member of the fact-finding panel called in to help mediate the Los Angeles stalemate last month. “I have never seen an employer that was intent on its own demise.”

It’s a vicious cycle: The more overcrowded and burdened the regular schools, the easier for charters to recruit students. The more students the district loses, the less money, and the worse its finances. The more the district gives charters space in traditional schools, the more overcrowded the regular classrooms.

Enrollment in the Los Angeles school district has declined consistently for 15 years, increasing the competition for students. It now educates just under a half-million students. More than 80 percent are poor, about three-quarters are Latino, and about one-quarter are English-language learners. On most state standardized tests, more than one-third fall below standards.

For 20 years, Katie Safford has taught at Ivanhoe Elementary, a school so atypical and so desirable that it drives up real estate prices in the upscale Silver Lake neighborhood. Ivanhoe parents raise almost a half million a year so that their children can have sports, arts, music and supplies. But parents cannot buy smaller classes or a school nurse. Mrs. Safford’s second-grade classroom is a rickety bungalow slated for demolition. When the floor rotted, the district put carpet over the holes. When leaks caused mold on the walls, Mrs. Safford hung student art to cover stains. The clock always reads 4:20.

“I was born to be a teacher,” Mrs. Safford said. “I have no interest in being an activist. None. But this is ridiculous.” For the first time in her life, she marched last month, one of more than 10,000 teachers and supporters in a sea of red.

Monday she walked the picket line outside a school where just eight of the 456 students showed up. Now her second graders ask the questions no one can answer: When will you be back? How will it end?

It is hard to know, when the adults have so thoroughly abdicated their responsibility for so long. Last week, the school board directed the superintendent to draw up a plan examining ways to raise new revenue.

This strike comes at a pivotal moment for California schools, amid recent glimmers of hope. Demographic shifts have realigned those who vote with those who rely on public services like schools. Voters approved state tax increases to support education in 2012, and again in 2016. In the most recent election, 95 of 112 school bond issues passed, a total of over $15 billion. The revised state formula drives more money into districts with more low-income students and English learners. Total state school aid increased by $23 billion over the past five years, and Governor Newsom has proposed another increase.

If Los Angeles teachers can build on those gains, the victory will embolden others to push for more, just as teachers on the rainy picket lines this week draw inspiration from the successful #RedforEd movements around the country. The high stakes have drawn support from so many quarters, from the Rev. James Lawson, the 90-year-old civil rights icon, to a “Tacos for Teachers” campaign to fund food on the picket lines.

If this fight for public education in Los Angeles fails, it will consign the luster of California schools to an ever more distant memory.

Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel), a contributing opinion writer, is an author, journalist and independent historian.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Union

Rebecca Klein: The Los Angeles Strike Will Affect the Future of the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
48

Rebecca Klein, education editor at Huffington Post, predicts that the LA teachers strike will play a large role in the future of the Democratic Party.

Oneof the reasons for the strike is the LAUSD’s pro-charter majority, elected by the cash of billionaireswho want to eliminate public schools and unions. These billionaires, like Eli Broad and Reed Hastings, claim to be Democrats.

In Los Angeles, charter schools drain $600 million every year from public schools.

Real Democrats support public schools and unions, not private management of schools.

Real Democrats do not make alliances with the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and DeVos.

Every Democratic candidate for president in 2020 should join the UTLA picket line and show: Which side are you on?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Los Angeles, Privatization, Unions

New York: Opt Out Leaders Protest State Plans to Pubish Their Schools

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
22

New York State Allies for Public Education, representing 50 parent and educator groups, protested state plans to give their schools low ratings based on opt out numbers.

The New York Board of Regents debated the issue at its meeting today.

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/education/opt-outs-schools-board-of-regents-1.25943165#user=5ad18091576f2c5bc32db60a&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Afternoon-Update

Subject: Serious Concerns Regarding Incorrectly Labeling Schools

January 14, 2019

Dear Honorable Board of Regents,

We are writing to ask for clarity on the impact of opt outs on a school’s designation as a “Targeted Support and Improvement” (TSI) school and a “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” (CSI) school. Our inquiry is premised on reports of schools and districts being notified that they may be “TSI” or “CSI” based on their state test scores, even though only a small percentage of students took the tests, meaning of course that the results are not representative of the full district or school, and that in all likelihood, they are not a reliable measure.

We have combed NY’s regulations and ESSA plan, and remain unclear as to how the Board of Regents will assess the performance of schools and districts that have a high number of opt outs. We understand that two scores/composites will created (via a truly Byzantine weighting system). But we ask that you explain — in simple terms — the impact of the two scores/composites. We ask that you explain:

whether a low-scoring school with a high percentage of opt outs will be labeled as “TSI” or “CSI,” even though only a small percent of children take the tests,
whether you will label a low-scoring school as such when the percentage is so small as to be statistically unreliable
whether you will label a low-scoring school as such when the handful of test-taking students fall primarily into subgroups who may have historically performed lower than the school/district has a whole.

If the answers to any of the above is “yes”, then we must object.

The decision to label a school as “TSI” or “CSI” means that the school/district must redirect its funding and energy to raising participation rates, instead of other, critically important tasks, like ensuring the physical safety and mental health of our students, or creating curriculum to support NY’s new science and social studies standards, or helping provide services for special education in the face of insufficient federal funding of the IDEA.

Instead, districts must expend funds to travel to Albany and stay (apparently the state does not fund even travel expenses for this), and divert staff and time towards trying to convince parents to have their kids take tests that aren’t yet where they need to be. On top of this, such labels impact a school’s reputation and can impact the value of homeowners’ property.

Back in in 2016, when Chancellor Tisch stepped down, we were heartened to hear new Chancellor Rosa explain that she wanted “to get to a place where we come to the table and examine the current test and move forward in a way that parents have a sense of full trust.” (https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/03/chancellor-elect-rosa-speaks-in-favor-of-test-opt-out-032591).

Chancellor Rosa recognized that the tests were problematic, and that opting out was a valid and legal option. In fact, she said that if she were a parent of a young child, she would opt her child out of state tests. (Id.) Commissioner Elia confirmed that Chancellor Rosa’s statements, that “parents have a right by law to opt their children out.” (Id.) We held high hopes that testing would become something that was valid and meaningful, that didn’t take days away from learning, and that didn’t create a tension and stress so great that children literally get sick.

We recognize that changes have happened, but as we’ve been clear, they are not nearly enough. Concerns about length, about substance, and about validity, remain strong, as well as about alignment with NY’s standards. In fact, our understanding is that the State shares these concerns about the tests by its recent decision to extend the moratorium on the tests’ usage in teacher evaluations.

This leads us to the natural question: if the tests are problematic enough to not use for teacher evaluation, why are they okay for school evaluation? Also, as both Chancellor Rosa and Commissioner Elia acknowledge the legal right to opt out, why would you then penalize a school population for exercising this right, in the case where only a small, statistically unreliable number of students provide test data?

Again, we ask that you explain the impact of opt outs. And we ask that you refrain from placing schools and districts with high opt outs on the “TSI” or “CSI” list. Social media is already abuzz about this, claiming you are nothing more than a political arm, and not a body concerned with learning and child safety. We ask that you prove them wrong, and show that we are all in this together, and that you are working to gain the public’s trust, just as Chancellor Rosa stated in 2016 — and that you will not mislabel a district as needing help, when in fact it may be doing beautifully.

Sincerely,

NYS Allies for Public Education

nys.allies@gmail.com

Categories Education Reform

Los Angeles: First Day of Strike

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
37

This just in from UTLA:

JUST IN: Moments ago, Supt. Austin Beutner held a press conference and attempted to minimize the impact of our strike – he told the media that only 3,500 teachers participated.

THE TRUTH: As of now, and with 90% of UTLA chapters reporting, more than 27,000 UTLA members rallied, picketed, chanted, in the first morning of UTLA’s historic strike to take back public education in LA.

With initial estimates, our march from City Hall to Beaudry is well over 60,000 people. Stay tuned for more.

CLICK BELOW AND FOLLOW UTLA

[id:image002.png@01D45031.2C1F37D0] [id:image003.png@01D45031.2C1F37D0] [id:image004.png@01D45031.2C1F37D0]

—
Anna Bakalis
UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net
http://www.UTLA.net
http://www.WeArePublicSchools.org
[signature_2127940312]

Categories Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Black Lives Matter Releases Statement Supporting UTLA Strike

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
5

Please read this statement released by Black Lives Matter in support of the United Teachers of Los Angeles and their strike for better conditions for teaching and learning.

It reads, in part:

The demands of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) strike are in direct support of students and parents, and are directly aligned with the four demands of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. It is therefore our duty to stand with UTLA in it’s fight for:

More nurses, counselors, school psychologists, librarians

Smaller class sizes

Less standardized testing

Sustainable community schools

End to privatization and charter expansion

End to criminalization of students through unlawful and random police searches

Categories Los Angeles, Students, Teachers, Union

New Orleans: Major Scandal, Principal with Criminal History Hired, Allegations of Sexual Improprieties

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
11

This story is one for the record books. When Reformers boast about New Orleans, tell them this story. Open the link and read the transcript of the recording of a conversation between the principal and a teacher. It is a weird story, and the bottom line seems to be a lack of oversight by any central authority.

A federal sexual harassment trial begins Monday in New Orleans against former elementary school principal Stanley Roy Green.

The allegations against Green include a shocking audio recording, made by former William J. Fischer social studies teacher Lindsay Garcia, who claims Green is the man in the recording telling her he wants to “snatch up, kidnap, subdue… someone we both know.”

The evidence presented by Garcia in court also raises questions about a lack of oversight for the 42 charter school organizations now operating most of New Orleans’ public schools. One concern is how they hire staff – a concern that already helped inspire a change in Louisiana law last year to prohibit schools of any kind from employing convicted felons.

The evidence in the court record shows that Algiers Charter Schools Association, which operates Fischer, hired Green even after he acknowledged having a criminal record, after his Louisiana teaching certificate had already been revoked for failure to disclose a felony conviction, even though his application stated that he had been asked to resign from a previous job because a coworker had accused him of “physical abuse in the workplace.”

Green presented himself as “Dr. Stanley Green.” He claimed on his application to Algiers Charter to have a PhD. from Maryville University in St. Louis, conferred in May 2015. But he later testified in a deposition, under questioning from Garcia’s attorney, that Maryville never gave him the doctorate because he still owed the university money.

What’s more, WWL-TV found that another charter organization, New Orleans College Prep, hired Green as a principal right after he was fired by Algiers Charter for sexual harassment. New Orleans College Prep’s excuse: Green simply left his experience at Algiers Charter off his resume and acted like he hadn’t been principal at Fischer at all.

“He never indicated he was employed during the gap and was dealing with personal family issues,” said Troave Profice, New Orleans College Prep’s director of communications.

Algiers Charter Schools Association’s interim CEO, Stuart Gay, stood by his organization’s decision to hire Green after performing a full background check.

“In accordance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Algiers Charter does not automatically disqualify candidates due to their criminal record,” Gay said.

It’s unclear if the new state law, Act 634 of 2018, could run afoul of federal law.

Charter schools do not have to comply with state Education Department requirements for teachers and administrators to hold certain certificates. But the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) is in the process of promulgating new policies for issuing other authorizations for charter school educators.

Green had his Louisiana teaching certificate revoked in 2012 by BESE, which said he failed to disclose a 1998 conviction in Jefferson Parish on access device fraud. The conviction, which was for fraudulent credit cards, has since been expunged, but BESE certification rules still required it to be disclosed.

The new state law also prohibits schools from hiring people with convictions, even if they have been expunged.

He was also convicted of possession of an unregistered firearm in New Orleans in 1994, which was later expunged, and arrested in 2008 in Fulton County, Ga., for simple battery against his brother-in-law, according to his deposition testimony last year.

On his 2016 application to Algiers Charter, Green admitted that he had been convicted of crimes, but claimed his brother had used his identity to commit the offenses.

Green told Algiers Charter in his 2016 job application that he was in the process of applying for a new Louisiana educator’s certificate. But BESE records show he had not applied again since being denied in October 2012.

But Green still had active educator’s certificates in Georgia and Missouri. After leaving New Orleans’ Recovery School District in 2011, he became a teacher in St. Louis Public Schools and then principal at St. Louis College Prep, a charter school in Missouri.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Orleans

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
57

The New York Timeswrote that the first-year memberof Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was tending bar in the Bronx a year ago, is pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Alexandria (@AOC) is a remarkable figure in our politics today. By sheer force of personality, she has emerged as a dominant voice. She terrifies moderate Democrats and the entire Republican Party. She has proposed a Green New Deal. She has proposed that people who have an annual income of more than $10 million pay a tax of 70% of everything above $10 million (the marginal tax rate was 90% during the Eisenhower years).

She has two million followers on Twitter.

If anyone knows how to reach her, I would love to get her aid in fighting the privatization of public schools. She would be a powerful ally.

This is part of what the Times wrote about her today:

“Not so long ago, left-wing activists were dismissed as fringe or even kooky when they pressed for proposals to tax the super rich at 70 percent, to produce all of America’s power through renewable resources or to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Then along came Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and her social-media megaphone.

“In the two months since her election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has had the uncanny ability for a first-term member of Congress to push the debate inside the Democratic Party sharply to the left, forcing party leaders and 2020 presidential candidates to grapple with issues that some might otherwise prefer to avoid.

“The potential Democratic field in 2020 is already being quizzed about her (Senator Kamala Harris praised her on “The View”), emulating her digital tactics (Senator Elizabeth Warren held an Instagram chat in her kitchen that looked much like one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s sessions) and embracing some of her causes.

“Ms. Warren and Senator Cory Booker, among others, have recently endorsed the idea of a “Green New Deal,” a call to reimagine an environment-first economy that would phase out fossil fuels. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez thrust that issue into the national dialogue after she joined a sit-in protest in the office of then-incoming House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi, in one of her first, rebellious acts in Washington.

“Her rise has stirred a backlash among some Congressional Democrats, who are seeking to constrain her anti-establishment streak and fear her more radical ideas could tar the party as socialist.

“Back home in New York, she has stoked opposition to a deal with Amazon to set up offices in Queens, putting pressure on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to justify corporate incentives.

“Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born 29-year-old of Puerto Rican descent, is the youngest congresswoman ever, and Washington veterans say they cannot recall a similar congressional debut.

“A bartender from the Bronx has been able to create a litmus test around climate and economic policy for every 2020 Democrat,” said Waleed Shahid, who was one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s early campaign advisers and is now the communications director for Justice Democrats, a liberal activist group.

“Far beyond policy, she has emerged as a potent symbol for a diversifying Democratic Party: a young woman of color who is giving as good as she gets in a political system that has rarely rewarded people who look like her. Her mastery of social media has allowed her to connect with audiences who might otherwise be alienated from Washington.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance

New York: State May Punish Districts with High Opt Out Rates as “Low Performers”

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
26

The desperation of the New York State Education Department to stop the Opt Out movement is boundless.

Newsday reports that the state may lower the rankings of schools with high numbers of opt out students, even though it knows that the schools are high performing schools.

There is nothing that State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia won’t do to force parents to sit their children down and make them take the state tests.

Shameless!

The state believes it must “deal with” these recalcitrant parents. It has never crossed Commissioner Elia’s mind that she should listen to the parents and find out why they won’t let their children take these pointless tests, that provide no diagnostic information to teachers or parents or students.

A statewide effort to deal with massive student test boycotts has sparked debate in the Island Park school district, where officials contend that one of their schools could face academic sanctions because of opt-outs there.

Island Park’s school superintendent, Rosmarie Bovino, recently posted a letter on the district’s website advising residents that Lincoln Orens Middle School was in danger of being placed on an upcoming state list of schools regarded as low academic performers.

Under a new state rating system that is based largely on test performance, such schools will be designated as requiring comprehensive support and improvement, or CSI. The state Education Department is expected to release names of the first group of schools as early as next week.

A note to the parents who opt out their children. Please remember that Commissioner Elia works for YOU. You do not work for her. Please remember that you pay her salary. She is not your boss. Please remember that the Pierce Decision of 1925 by the Supreme Court declared that your children belong to you, not the State, and the State has no power to standardize them.

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance
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