Denisha Jones explains here what happened at a televised event in Pittsburgh when she asked candidate Joe Biden if he would eliminate standardized testing. Denisha is a highly accomplished woman and a champion for children.
Biden’s Broken Promise: Time to Opt Out!
On December 14, 2019, I asked President Biden a question about standardized testing. Seeking the Democratic nomination, he had joined other presidential candidates at a Public Education Forum, the creation of a collective of organizations, including the Schott Foundation, Network for Public Education, and Journey for Justice, live-streamed and moderated by MSNBC.
I had all day to frame my question–Biden was last in the lineup. Given the widespread havoc that standardized testing has wreaked, I had to cover a lot of ground. I wanted to demonstrate the negative impact of standardized testing on teacher autonomyand early childhood education. I needed to emphasize the racist history of standardized testing to remind everyone how we got to this point.
“If you are elected president, will you commit to ending the use of standardized tests in public schools?” I asked. “Yes,” said Biden. He told me that I was preaching to the choir and assured me that he was well-informed about the over-reliance on standardized tests to evaluate teachers and students. He agreed that we need to give teachers the power to determine the curriculum and build children’s confidence.
“When testing is the measure of whether or not the student is successful…teaching to a standardized test makes no sense,” he said. The question went viral, with many educators hopeful that this dark cloud would finally evaporate under a Biden presidency. At the time, I didn’t believe him, and though I voted for him, I had no faith that he would keep his promise to me and America’s teachers.
I knew that Democrats were too deeply aligned with neoliberal education reform policies to end standardized testing. Some thought otherwise, hoping for a positive influence from Dr. Jill Biden, a teacher. Democratic presidents may publicly speak out against such assessments while filling their administration with people who support them. I remembered that President Obama also had delivered a critique of testing and then ramped it up with his Race to the Top program. Biden could have selected Dr. Leslie Fenwick, with a proven track record against standardized testing, as his Secretary of Education. Instead, he chose a moderate, unknown candidate, Miguel Cardona.
I was right.
On February 22nd, Chalkbeat reported, “States must administer federally required standardized testing this year…” the administration announced. While schools will not be held accountable for scores and can administer the test online and shorten it, states will not receive an exemption through federal waivers.
Of course, when Biden made his promise to me, we had no idea that COVID-19 would upend public education as we know it, plunging teachers, students, and families into the world of remote teaching and learning. Now would be the perfect time for Biden to make good on his promise. Last year’s tests were canceled. As the pandemic rages on and districts struggle to move from remote to hybrid and fully in-person, why should Biden insist on keeping the standardized tests he claimed made no sense in a pre-COVID world?
Everyone is asking me what we should do now. Fortunately, parents and students have an excellent tool at their disposal.They can opt out.
I cannot imagine a more opportune time for parents to refuse to have their children participate in a standardized test. The last thing our children need is the added pressure of a test that won’t count, but they are still required to take. Our focus should be on helping children build the resilience they need, not just tosurvive the trauma from this pandemic but to thrive in this new education landscape. Jesse Hagopian passionately reminds us,
“While corporate education reformers prattle on about a need for more high-stakes testing to evaluate ‘learning loss,’ what students truly require is the redirection of the billions of dollars wasted on the testing-industrial complex toward supporting educators and students: to gain access to COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and vaccinations, as well as psychologists, nurses, social workers, trauma counselors, after-school programs, restorative justice coordinators, and more.”
Opting out of standardized testing is a parent’s choice and right, despite administrators’ push back. Pre-COVID 19, some schools tried to force children to sit and stare for hours while their classmates took the exam. Now that testing has gone virtual, some parents had to give up their right to opt out when they signed up for online schooling. They can make you logon to the testing platform, but no one can force your child to answer the questions.
I am not alone in my calls for widespread opt out. On Thursday, February 25th, the recently resigned Chancellor of New York City Schools, Richard Carranza, called for parents to refuse the tests. NYC Opt Out and Integrate NYC hosted a town hall to strategize opting out of spring testing. You can sign the Integrate NYC petition here.
Opting out will not hurt schools, but it will hurt the testing corporations, desperate to prove that these assessments can survive in virtual schooling and protect their bottom line. Two years in a row without standardized testing would clear the way to finally dismantle this racist practice–the likely rationale forhis broken promise. The time has come to banish this obsolete relic of a painful past.
For more information on the opt out movement, visit http://www.unitedoptoutnational.org/
You can also read my blog, Five Myths About the Standardized Testing and the Opt Out Movement
Full Text of My Question
Good afternoon. My name is Denisha Jones, and I am the Director of the Art of Teaching Program at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Today I’m here representing the Network for Public Education Action, Defending the Early Years, the Badass Teachers Association, and The Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action National Steering Committee.
Teaching has changed drastically over the last 20 years. Instead of being allowed to use their expertise to develop creative,engaging, culturally relevant lessons, teachers are often forced to use a scripted curriculum and move students along even when they need more time. Many teachers feel more like a test prep tutor than a teacher of children and are concerned that both teachers and students are evaluated too heavily based on test scores. Beginning in kindergarten, young children are losing time for play and discovery and instead forced into developmentally inappropriate academic instruction in an effort to get them prepared for tests. Although formal testing does not begin until 3rd grade, younger students are bombarded with practice tests that narrow the curriculum and often leave many of them hating school.
Given that standardized testing is rooted in a history of eugenics and racism, if you are elected president, will you commit to ending the use of standardized tests in public schools?
VIDEO: Watch Biden’s response here.
BIO
Denisha Jones is the Director of the Art of Teaching Program at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a former kindergarten teacher and preschool director who spent the past 17 years in teacher education. Denisha is an education justice advocate and activist. She serves as the Co-Director for Defending the Early Years, the Assistant Executive Director for the Badass Teachers Association, an administrator for United Opt Out National, and the Network for Public Education board. Since 2017, she has served on the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee. In 2020 she joined the organizing committee for Unite to Save Our Schools. Her first co-edited book, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, was published in December 2020 by Haymarket Books. She is an attorney.
She asked an excellent question then (best education-based question I can remember asked to a presidential candidate). She gives an excellent reflection now. Would love to see the opt out momentum spread…and not just for this year.
It’s is so frustrating that people do not understand that we are teaching in a pandemic. It is ridiculous to right now because we are teaching remotely for a good part of the school year. We are still expected to do things like plc meetings and focus team meetings. We are planning literacy and math nights virtually. We are required to do our yearly safe schools training. We are being trained on software to help facilitate online learning but yet not provided appropriate curriculum to facilitate online learning. But yet are also required to be observed in an environment that I have not been properly trained.
So is it really shocking that now we are expected to do standardized test? It’s is absolutely absurd.
In addition to all that been mentioned, my school has a 3 district program classrooms moved to my school in the middle of this pandemic. These children have profound needs and were moved to our school. Then in September my principal was moved to another school during these trying times.
When is society going to get that THIS IS NOT A NORMAL YEAR and cut these students some slack.
Dei Montoya,
I totally agree with you.
We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Safety first.
Ignore the bobbleheads who rant on about “learning loss.”
Everyone is in the same boat.
We will start learning for real when schools are safe and able to reopen fully.
And Diane, we are all NOT even in the same boat! Some of our children are in canoes or rowboats trying to paddle up stream while other children are on yachts!
Forcing our young students, with all they have gone through during this unimaginable horrible time, to take these unnecessary assessments is child abruse , pure and simple!
“ While schools will not be held accountable for scores and can administer the test online and shorten it, states will not receive an exemption through federal waivers.”
That said, what exactly is the purpose of administering these tests? If schools will not be held accountable, is then the purpose to inform educators on how their students are doing? Yet, the breakdown in scoring is never shared with the educators whose students are actually tested. The results are more generalized to reflect a system. One source insists these tests should be given to determine which states have “deficiencies in learning” with special respect to the impact or covid. If this is true, then students are being used as test subjects—without having actively chosen to take part this research—to determine the depth influence of a pandemic on learning. Would not these so-called collegial research companies determine that the premise these tests will prove is that there are actual disparities in the unique situations of individual states? We already know this. Are they trying to prove something after-the-fact?
I have no problem with doing research when the subjects make the conscious decision to be tested and will be tested on their own personal time. Now the default is “you will be tested” and the choice is “you can opt out of this research.” Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
It is as if these researchers are being fed the kool-aid that their jobs need to be relevant.
excellent summation
Another issue with using these tests for forced research is that all curricular teaching/learning stops during the time in which the tests are prepped for and administered. That means that even those who opt out of taking them are forced to opt out of having actual school during that time. Many must bring a book to read in some other room while their classmates take the test. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see the value in going to school to do the same stuff I can do from home such as read a book. Nice to have reading time, I suppose.
Yes, it kind of makes a mockery of the whole ” informed consent ” requirement for human experimentation.
But then again, so do massive experiments like Common Core performed on millions of school children without consent from parents.
And the fact that organizations like American Psychological Association have no problem with any of this stuff makes a mockery of such organizations as well. Then again, we know APA is an aider and abettor of torture, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they have no problems with behavior reminiscent of Nazis.
We hope it’s once in a century. The century is young. And not off to a great start. I’m writing a blistering op ed about this broken promise but afraid major newspapers might be shy of it. I won’t even bother with NYT or Wash Post. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Public schools are tired of test and punish syndrome that has been imposed on them for the past twenty years. In a pandemic testing should not be priority. Students do not need the added stress after a frightening year full of isolation and trauma.
Standardized testing is racist at its core and should be eliminated. It does not benefit students, teachers or communities. It is a waste of public funds that would be better spent to provide much needed services to students in public schools.
Insisting that standardized testing occur this year is in direct opposition to what President Biden promised during his campaign. Public educators are tired of public schools being used to advance a corporate agenda. We need to stop the corporate incursion in public education. Public schools must put the needs of students first, not corporations.
BTW, please share this post on social media in order to spread the word on this injustice.
There seems to be 2 set of rules …. one for our public schools and then the rules for charters and vouchers that TAKE from public schools.
RESIST! OPT OUT!
Students are MORE than test scores. Give our students GREAT books to read and allow then to write. Collect data on Covid-19 … for crying out loud and read about pandemics, then do something.
Literacy and Democracy are ACTION words.
First all, this is a very concise, effective argument and one public education advocates should cite and make over and over and over again at the local, state and federal levels. The most important need to make any political argument is to have something to latch onto that can be easily digested and shared. This fits the bill.
But I’ve said it before so I might as well say it again. Public education–despite all the money and lives at stake–has no effective political constituency. Yes, yes, readers will point out the 2018 teachers strikes, but that have had no compelling impact. They were the political equivalent of Christmas sparklers–a dazzling flash the didn’t last long and nothing left to do it again, and again, and again. Yes, yes, readers will point out we have Jamal Bowman in Congress, but he’s one voice, a freshman. Yes, yes, everyone got upset when a screeching Nazi was given a seat on the House Education & Labor Committee and they cheered when booted off. But here’s a dirty secret: it’s one of the least sought after committee assignments in Congress. It is not a power committee. Look instead to the appropriations subcommittees in both chambers. Where are the champions for public education on those? Yes, yes, readers will point to Rosa DeLauro as chair. But who on her subcommittee does she pull along, what effect has she had on the full house, what has she done to make the case with her Senate counterparts (check out the membership on senate.gov to see how uphill a battle this is)?
It’s even worse at the state and local levels. I don’t need to get into the sorry state of affairs in Ohio for readers here. Everyone who cares about public education in this country knows what a cesspool of idiocy the Ohio General Assembly is. My experience with my useless, democratically elected school board and community is the same. The only board meetings that have any significant attendance are the ones that recognize the students of the month and the room empties as the board attends to business. The rest to the time the board is bend-overingly acquiescent to a super who would have made a model apparatchik in the Soviet Union. It seems to me, based on my anecdotal observations of other school boards around the country, this is pretty typical. They are desperate to get whatever funding might be available and could care less about the strings that come with it.
I write this not to whine, not to have the Schadenfreude of “I told you so!” I write this to state the facts, to accept where we are, way at the back of the line when it comes to political efficacy. If we don’t acknowledge that and figure out a way forward, if we don’t stop to pat ourselves on the back when we have Pyrrhic victories, if we don’t understand that getting upset with the Biden administration is misplaced–if we can have serious action in Congress, state legislatures and school board, the administration will follow. At every level education policy must start to be seen as more important than education pork. Denisha Jone’s statement above is as good a rallying point–one that shines a light on education as national, state and local policy–as it gets.
I believe what you state is accurate. That is why we need the power of the people. People need to understand in times like these that people need to take a stand against unreasonable power. If we fail to defend our public schools, we may not have them for future generations. We need to speak up against injustice.
The Civil Rights Movement did not occur because America finally got a conscience. It happened because Black folks had had enough, and they are doing it again with BLM. We need to push back against tyranny.
I think your Civil Rights Movement analogy is correct. Another reason it happened when white people with no obvious stake–other than a moral one–engaged and sacrificed. Never forget the Goodman and Schwerner were white.
This underscores another salient point in the toothlessness of public education advocacy: we have recruited few allies outside of the issue. Derrick Johnson and Rev. William Barber stand out as notable exceptions, but they are few and far between. The notion of “I don’t have kids in public schools, so why should I pay taxes for them” is far more prevalent.
GregB “The notion of ‘I don’t have kids in public schools, so why should I pay taxes for them’ is far more prevalent.”
Oh so neo-liberal, Ayn Randian . . . . CBK
I mentioned some names, which likely put my comment in moderation for a while. One more point that may be anathema to many out there that out to be considered: the creation of Business Roundtable of CEOs who will support public education. It would be nice if some CEOs would be vocal about the question to Biden.
Good idea. Attracting middle management workers has got to be difficult if your state is in the midst of destroying a viable public education system. Those jobs don’t pay enough to put your children in quality private schools , and nobody wants to have to shop for schools that may be gone in a year or two. It’s not just the poor who get shafted with these privatization schemes.
The free market produces winners and losers. It is not a mechanism for equity. It is a mechanism guaranteed to produce inequity, as it does in the larger economy.
I really don’t understand what your comment has to do with mine.
Public education needs all the allies it can harness. Most people support well resourced public education, but we cannot get it because the oligarchy want to transfer its value into their own greedy pockets. All we get is test and punish. Having people from the business world that support public schools would be helpful along with parents, teachers, students and social justice groups. We need an alliance of supporters of public education to stand up and defend our public schools.
retired teacher I think “we” are finally catching on to what 50/odd years of sustained propaganda can do (1) AGAINST public schools, teachers, and teachers’ unions; and (2) FOR private/oligarchic (or pseudo private) and/or corporate control over everything and everyone.
Along the way, everyone, even many teachers, have inadvertently let the propaganda, with its pervasive and sustained diminishment of self and public education, saturate our thinking and even the language of education, e.g., I remember when my teachers started using the “students as customers” language.
If I wanted to follow the same pattern (I don’t), I would nominate Orwell as a secular saint, so well did he predict in his IF/THEN narratives. CBK
I have wondered, does public education have any billionaires on its side? Does George Soros play a role?
If not, have attempts been made to enlist them?
Greg,
You are right that education issues are not considered “national” issues. They are downplayed by the national media and by the Biden administration and Congress.
But you are too defeatist.
If we give up, the wolves will devour public money and redistribute it to profiteers, religious zealots, home schoolers, and entrepreneurs.
No matter how hopeless it appears, we must not lose hope.
We must make noise and pay attention to local and state elections. The reason that so many Red states are embracing vouchers is that they won control and supermajorities.
We have to raise our voices, get into politics, and fight for our public schools and the principle of public education.
I don’t think I’m being defeatist, although I do admit to being frustrated. The first requirement in developing political strategy and tactics is to be realistic about the actual state of affairs. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, or good intentions have no place in doing so. It is obvious that what has been standard procedure is not working, despite the honorable and sincere efforts of those who passionately advocate for education.
I may be wrong, but the last time four times education was a significant national issue was when the Carter administration created the Department of Education (for which he reaped absolutely no rewards), the Nation at Risk Report (which Reagan used as a cudgel against against public education, as you have documented so well), Lynne Cheney’s cynical attack on national standards which was arguably the opening salvo of the “culture wars” the Right has continued to exploit, and NCLB, which was the first substantive shot fired in the privatization movement. In the first, public education had no national constituency, in all of the latter, public education lost and lost big, most notably the narrative, as RTTT went on to verify. Except for the teachers strikes of 2018, the issue has not registered in the national consciousness .
We have had no significant victories at the state level in decades. Indeed, in the last statewide elections, every candidate who promoted or profited off of ECOT and charters–despite the voluminous evidence and reporting of their corruption and damage caused–was promoted. Every. Single. One.
So if we’re serious about building a national constituency, let’s accept the last paragraph of the last essay Hannah Arendt published in her life: “When the facts come home to roost, let us try at least to make them welcome. Let us try not to escape into some utopias—images, theories, or sheer follies. It was the greatness of this Republic to give due account for the sake of freedom to the best in men and to the worst.”
We need to begin to have new strategies, new coalitions, new talking points, new commitment, and be willing to shed old tactics and rebuild alliances that have proven to be ineffectual for the past three decades at least. I conceived of and implemented one such strategy for a small federally funded education program in 1995, when both the Clinton Administration and Gingrich Republicans united to kill it. The plan led to the creation of a coalition of the most conservative Republican, Dan Burton–who to my knowledge never support anything having to do with the Dept. of Education prior this, and a freshman liberal named Diana DeGette who introduced a floor amendment to save it. I had strong support from conservatives and liberals in the Senate to see it through. The grassroots coalition consisted of educators, prominent local business interests in the “right” states and districts, and interest groups ranging from People for the American Way and the National Association of Evangelicals. That’s what we need now, not the same, tired public education advocates who gather for coffee klatches to pat themselves on the back about how noble their cause is. If that’s defeatist, then so be it.
If people like Jeff Bryant, Greg, Mercedes and Diane weren’t fighting for public education and, if the Koch network and Bill Gates weren’t so evil, sinking into defeatism would be possible.
I think the main problem here is that we allow the govt & media narrative to cut public goods into snippets: living wage, physical health, mental health, housing, food security, education, libraries & museums, infrastructure. Each is an “issue.” Not one of them can engender major public backing/ demand all by itself.
Even civil infrastructure cannot seem to command the full-throated backing of the industries/ funding needed to repair it—and that is because it is less necessary than it once was: when manufacture and its labor are off-shored, we need fewer ports, highways and railroads to bring the goods onshore and distribute them. The rest is just local, for the little people, let them fix it if they can. The same mentality behind that has been at work on our other public goods, like termites—privatization.
I’m not saying the ‘narrative’ is a conspiracy. Some see the bigger picture but don’t know what to do about it, so they let sleeping dogs lie. Most are like those who don’t realize they have termites until the structure starts to collapse.
Excellent comment!
Perhaps because we had been sold on the idea of the post industrial service economy, those endeavors have made infrastructure concerns seem less a priority. We have also gotten very addicted to instant gratification/profit rather than long term planning. That’s not just Wall Street. Rather than just cleaning up after disasters, we could actually plan for long term structural integrity, which should appeal to the big guys. It’s cost effective.
I worked in industry in the ‘70’s, & remember the eye-rolls at ‘new service economy’: it was so obviously lipstick on a pig. Global economic scholars bought into this partly as an extension of earlier thought on the end of work/ leisure economy, partly based on observation that the service sector dominates in developing economies. Google ‘the service economy’ and you get few hints that this isn’t a viable, competitive thing despite evidence all around us. I found one, from a 2012 Klaus Soilen conference paper, “The Service Economy Fallacy”]:
“The Spanish empire around the 15thC, the Dutch of the 17th, the British of the 18th, or the Japanese or Chinese of the 20th and 21stC all built their wealth mostly on trade and the accumulation of trade surpluses… this idea of what it takes to gain a competitive advantage among nations is so well documented in economic theory… that it must be considered common knowledge. The deviation from this notion of what it takes to make a nation prosper must therefore be considered one of modern history’s great intellectual misconceptions.”
speduktr connects the dots with the dereg of the financial sector. Soilen continues: “…the change in theory was brought forward not by a concern for what keeps countries competitive, but for reasons of class interests… After much of the production in the Western world moved offshore in the 80s and 90s, the most powerful class interests left was the financial industry. The Chicago School and self-proclaimed “neoclassical” economists have since persuaded two generations of decision makers of the usefulness, but more remarkably about the objectivity, of theories which have served these interests, placing borrowing before saving and short term gain and speculation before long term provision.”
Well, I saw the video in the note . . . that cleared up any question I had about misinterpretation of what Joe Biden said and meant about federal-level standardized testing.
I wonder what his explanation would be if anyone asked him about the OBVIOUS conflict between then and now. From what he said in the video, he understands the problem; and yet he has done a 180 about it.
As with Obama, I love what Biden is doing on so many other issues and fronts; and I would vote for a slug’s turd before I’d vote for Trump. But here I am, gobsmacked again. CBK
I don’t want to watch the video as it would make me feel justified in my wariness of him, but maybe Biden was doing “crossies” with his fingers behind his back? No massaging of the truth….but a flat out lie just makes my blood boil.
Despite my obvious disappointment and outrage over Biden’s lie to Denisha, I would vote for him over Trump again. Without a moment’s hesitation.
Trump is bad for my blood pressure.
He offends my sense of ethics and justice.
Liars are liars are liars, all the time, on every subject.
Diane We all know what Trump is. And I think overall we all question what happened to the moral spine of his base . . . who, for instance, believe the pillow guy over a raft of republican judges. (That would be funny if it weren’t true.)
Lots to think about there for WE in education.
But I think overall, and for decades, WE have been blindsided by our own wrong assumptions (that everyone is on the same page where educating ALL children and even adults is concerned) and by those who have oh-so-easily taken advantage of our remaining asleep-at-the-switch; . . .
. . . and of our consequently NOT understanding the politics of it, and so of our NOT building a better power-base and voice . . . your own series of books are the sterling exception. CBK
I thought Biden’s response in the video was amazing. It was heartfelt. I am a cynical person, but Biden’s response wasn’t canned.
That’s why I think a better approach than demonizing him is to remind him of how what his DOE is doing even before the new Secretary of Education is confirmed goes against everything he said and challenge the Biden administration to clarify exactly why they now demand testing.
I don’t assume that Biden was lying — watching that video it is clear he wasn’t just lying. I do assume that Biden isn’t connecting what this lower level non-teacher appointee is demanding of schools with what he said.
If a reporter was asking Jen Psaki every day “Why did Biden promise parents and teachers no testing and then announce the mandated testing of children during a pandemic?”, Biden would have to address this. And maybe the guy from the DOE would be asked to resign for making this decision without any input from educators.
And its important to ask follow up to the ed reformers pushing this. Because we all know the first answer will be “this isn’t to punish teachers or schools, it is to find out what learning loss students experienced”. And then the follow up question should be why the Biden Administration is now telling parents that a student is only as good as a standardized test says he is, because previously Joe Biden has already told parents he did not believe their child was only as good as his test score, but now he appointed DOE officials who are telling parents that a test score measures their child and Jen Psaki better clarify whether the Biden position is that test scores measure a child, or if he will be firing that DOE official stat.
I’d been curious how you would spin Sargrad’s appointment- direct from the billionaires’ employ at CAP to the taxpayers’ financial burden with no expected change in his allegiance.
I am not interesting in “spinning” things.
I am interested in having the politicians questioned about these inconsistencies to go on record, rather than surmising that this is all a conspiracy theory and throwing out “CAP” the way “Communist Party” used to be thrown out to demonize. “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of CAP?”
I actually prefer CAP to DFER but there are some people associated with CAP who are rabidly pro-reform and some who are pro-public education, but DFER is rabidly reform, period.
This was published by CAP this week — does this mean the billionaires want to raise the minimum wage now?
“Raising the Minimum Wage Is Key To Supporting the Breadwinning Mothers Who Drive the Economy”
By Sarah Jane Glynn February 23, 2021, 4:29 pm
…..”Raising the federal minimum wage is not just a “nice” thing to do for workers: It is a long-overdue economic imperative. Congress should pass the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 in order to boost the incomes of working families and help support working mothers. Increasing wages for the lowest-paid workers across the country will stimulate the economy by getting more money into the hands of breadwinning mothers who are likely to spend every additional dollar they get. In addition to helping boost economic recovery and shrink the racial and gender pay gaps, increasing the earnings of more than 32 million workers would strengthen economic security and decrease poverty levels, especially for the millions of parents who are supporting their families on or around the minimum wage.
It has been 12 years since the federal minimum wage was increased. Working families cannot afford to wait any longer.”
Sarah Jane Glynn is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Sargrad seems too much like a typical ed reformer and when I read more about his views, I will probably dislike him, but not because of his association with CAP, because of his views.
On the other hand, I have noted that Neera Tanden has – over the years – NOT been a knee jerk supporter of ed reform and has spoken out even though education isn’t her speciality.
As I posted below, public education needs a real champion in Congress. And it would be nice if it was someone who already has a strong public profile, like AOC.
And where is the teachers union? I don’t like that they haven’t spoken out enough on behalf of all the issues I care about it, but I’m not going to demonize them by saying it’s because their leaders are corrupt and the entire organization is corrupt.
I want the teachers union to be better, but I don’t want to help destroy it altogether by pushing non-stop propaganda about how corrupt the leaders are.
I just believe in criticizing the Democrats the way I criticize the teachers union. There are flawed leaders, but are they corrupt leaders if they don’t act the way we want?
NYC public school parent “I just believe in criticizing the Democrats the way I criticize the teachers union. There are flawed leaders, but are they corrupt leaders if they don’t act the way we want?”
I think the devil is in the details here; but also in how you/me/we define flawed and corruption, or more basically, what is good. As a general rule, those definitions come to us as assumptions in our common and habitual heritage; and then again in the huge body of laws, statues, and protocols that most of us (I hope still) accept and live by.
As a deeper philosophical issue, however, I doubt you want the problems that educators face to be understood ONLY as what I want against what you want. . . . because a stance of mere relativism is an open door to violence.
If there is no foundation for truth, and no cohesive and collectively accepted idea of what is actually good for us all, then whoever has the most powerful brute force becomes the arbiter of what goes down as our history of being in the world.
This, of course, is why Trump, his minions and his base, are so very dangerous to civilization itself . . . which stands on that heritage of assumed truth and on those remote but powerful ideas of the good-for-all. CBK
I think all NYC parent is saying is that people can have an honest difference of opinion, which doesn’t make either one corrupt or evil just because they see things differently. I find the extremes of either end of the political spectrum tend to demonize anyone who may fall in the middle somewhere.
speduktr Yes, I got that: “I think all NYC parent is saying is that people can have an honest difference of opinion, which doesn’t make either one corrupt or evil just because they see things differently.”
But NYC parent also said allot more and tacitly called up the philosophical issue of relativism. . . . and btw, why do you have to explain what we have all just assumed for most or all of our lifetimes? Why would we have to even raise such an issue?
The honest difference of opinion (add peaceful in that mix) is what we have all been accustomed to . . . but it’s also what has been attacked from several forces which are, if not obvious to all, at least influential on all of our lives.
As you and NYC suggest, that HONEST difference of opinion, and its expression, should not raise fear in our hearts? . . . is it or can it really BE honest anymore? It is not an end but a beginning of the discussion process of winnowing through unacceptable aspects of factional forces to hopefully find some truth that can fit us all or at least that we call can live with (see the Federalist Papers on this, particularly #8). The differences of opinion between the Republican and Democratic parties USED TO BE FOUNDED on that very idea.
So there is no that’s all I am saying any more . . . unless you want to ignore some of the more basic foundational issues that, in fact, are at work in these discussions.
I mean, as a concrete example, when was it that Congress-people were not automatically afraid to speak out . . . and not only for losing their jobs, but for losing their lives? Since when did exercising the freedom of speech make anyone a potential target or an avenue for directing harm at the speaker’s family?
The point is that your statement assumes a civility that, if not gone, is circling the drain, as we speak. How about that Trump who says of his republican opponents “Get rid of them” with the historical backdrop of January 6. CBK
You are totally right. People in Congress have commented on the chill that now exists across the aisle. It didn’t use to be that way is the point. It’s kind of a, “Knock,knock, hello?! Is there really no way we can talk to each other? Are there any adults in the room?” (Snarky tone.) John McCain, Bernie Sanders, and some of the other old timers remember the days of bipartisanship, where having open friendship with people who were philosophically opposite to you was not an oddity. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Scalia, for Pete’s sake! Biden, I think, longs for those days, but I don’t think he is all starry eyed, kumbaya-ish.
speduyktr I have found myself skeptical, but then also wondering if Charlie Brown has finally got wise to Lucy’s football antics.
As a purely political issue, the democrats cannot keep reaching across the aisle in a genuine bi-partisan effort when the other side is seeing EVERYTHING democrats say and do with disingenuous, obstructionist, even hateful eyes . . . some of whom were willing to allow or even support the murder of their own compatriots, e.g., Pence. Some still want that violent “air” to be normative. I find that situation still hard to believe, but there it is.
I also wonder how many of Trump’s base are waiting for their check from the democrat’s covid relief bill while watching THEIR Republican representatives vote against it.
This morning, Joe Scarborough was talking about the book that needs to be written about how remarkable both R and D federal judges have been throughout this national debacle, even from way back in 2017, and including the Supreme Court . . . they just weren’t having any of it, having realized early on the threat to the independence of the Courts was a threat to “the whole thing.” CBK
Yes, the federal courts prevented a coup
I want to hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire.
But I want to do that by forcing them to publicly explain their choices.
I want to hear Jen Psaki explain how Biden telling teachers he doesn’t believe in mandated standardized testing can be explained by his own DOE appointee just telling parents and children that they will be forced to take a test upon which they and their teachers will be judged and if they don’t do that Biden’s DOE will punish their schools.
And I don’t understand why progressive politicians just give lip service to supporting public education but when push comes to shove, they can’t be found and won’t hold hearings or ask the kinds of questions that need to be asked when this DOE official demanded students must take state tests. Do you think the DOE could get away with this if AOC and a group of progressive politicians made it an issue?
Calling names like “neoliberal” doesn’t inform the public. I haven’t heard a politician since “she who must not be named” make the good case for public education and when “she who must not be named” made the strongest case supporting public education she got huge applause AND was immediately shut down by her corporate overlords. But a fear of corporate overlords does not explain why AOC and Bernie aren’t making a strong case against testing. So why aren’t they?
CBK,
For example, there is a parent who comments here whose name I am not allowed to use who is not opposed to standardized testing. You defended that person and don’t believe that the difference of opinion on testing reflects that pro-testing, pro-school opening parent is a tool of CAP or corporate interests.
NYC Okay. Now we are into the limitations of blog writing where most if not all are necessarily cursory; though blogs often do provide us with avenues for further development of issues that interest and concern us. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know here. CBK
NYC public school parent I reread your note and cannot find a lot of clarity there, especially towards the end?
” . . . You defended that person and don’t believe that the difference of opinion on testing reflects that pro-testing, pro-school opening parent is a tool of CAP or corporate interests.” <–I can’t make sense of this statement?
But no matter . . . . ? CBK
CBK,
I think we generally have similar perspectives on things.
I am willing to give a politician who seems to be doing something contrary to what they should be doing the benefit of the doubt if they can offer a convincing rationale for their decisions. Not pablum talking points, but having their view challenged by facts and having them defend it.
It’s a shame that politicians so rarely (or never) have to do this. Will they lie, or will they listen?
I liked “she who must not be named” because she listened. She far too often compromised for political reasons, but she listened. Even when she was silenced after telling the truth to a South Carolina audience in late 2019, she was silent — she did not spew lies or propaganda. I always wondered what would have happened later if she had actually been asked directly about public education by her opponents. Lucky for the ed reformers, she wasn’t. And the other candidate, progressive as he was, showed absolutely no interest whatsoever in the issue and was also offering pablum at the time. Lucky for ed reformers he wasn’t asked about this either.
AOC understands the Green New Deal and she defends it brilliantly, not be calling people who oppose it “neocons” but by clearly explaining why their view is wrong. I wish she had the time to do the same with public education because very few politicians seem to care enough to be able to defend it and criticize the pro-testing pro-privatization neocons in any convincing way.
By I do think that just because a politician isn’t strongly anti-testing, it doesn’t mean that they are pro-testing because Gates donates to them. I don’t think AOC is “anti-testing” — my recollection is that she even defended NYC specialized high schools (admissions via a single exam) and pivoted to the “make all schools good” instead of saying something like “we need to abolish the SHSAT.”
I think the nuance is that there are lots of good, public school-supporting progressive politicians who don’t say “we need to abolish all testing”, but they do say that we need to stop prioritizing testing and judging schools and teachers on the results. But they aren’t knowledgeable or interested enough to be able to clearly explain what that means.
NYC public school parent ” . . . very few politicians seem to care enough to be able to defend it and criticize the pro-testing pro-privatization neocons in any convincing way.”
Which is exactly why teachers who understand the foundational relationship between democracy, public, and education need a stronger, more sustained voice at the table. But then there are many in the “R” party who seem to already not give a rat’s patooie about maintaining the democracy by which they were elected. Irony drips.
I wonder how many of the still well-meaning in Congresses and in State governments even understand the importance to democracy of maintaining public spaces and institutions, and in NOT giving them over to private concerns. So it’s a lack of care or interest, AND a fundamental lack of knowledge of the importance of what they are doing when they allow big donors to control everything, first, tacitly and then openly by handing over the entire farm to them, so to speak, and often without any serious taxpayer oversight.
“But they aren’t knowledgeable or interested enough to be able to clearly explain what that means.” CBK
Neera Tanden worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations. CAP itself was founded in 2003. Lots of talk about raising minimum wage during the 12 years since minimum wage was last raised in 2009. It’s a shame a COLA provision wasn’t added to it.
No limits on the amount of tolerance conferred on, charitably speaking, ineffective, oligarch-funded, self-appointed policy influencers Tolerance for their Wall Street links. Carry on.
Here’s my take: If there are forces/people powerful enough to make Biden eat his own words over testing, then it is time to take these forces down a few notches. Subtlety has to be the name of the game. Screeching alone doesn’t seem to have much effect. Perhaps it is time to add a touch of the Republican model of building a power base from the local level up. Rather than going off to sulk or hurl, “I told you so!”, go back to work on the ground. I think we have a model of that pathway in Bernie and AOC. I have a feeling that the time is ripe for AOC and like minded people to have an impact beyond what Bernie could have ever hoped to have.
speduktr What a concept: “Perhaps it is time to add a touch of the Republican model of building a power base from the local level up.” I second that emotion. CBK
Corporate Democrats are still pulling the strings of the DNC. Hedge fund and Silicon Valley dollars carry a lot of policy weight unfortunately. I recall Biden started out refusing big dollar donations like most of the other candidates. Later, in the campaign he flip-flopped. https://www.investopedia.com/top-donors-to-biden-2020-campaign-5080324
That’s exactly why we have to do the hard work starting with electing people on the local level who are focused on the common good.
I don’t understand why we can’t get politicians like AOC and Bernie to use their bully pulpits to call this out.
I don’t think there are many people in this country who don’t know whether or not AOC supports the Green New Deal.
But do they know whether she believes all mandated state testing is wrong? Do they know whether she believes privately operated charter schools that are non-profit should be abolished? I don’t even know the answer to that!
Public education needs a real champion in Congress just like the Green New Deal did. Jamaal Bowman will likely be one, and I hope he makes it his issue, but he needs others.
I just wrote a very long comment, which wasn’t posted (my fault, I think). Short & to the point, then: what would Karen Lewis do? She’d be out in the streets! THAT is what needs to be done. (I’m sure CTU will be out soon, but this must be done in every town, village, city, state.) & WHY do remote learners (as said in the post) HAVE to log on
(but cannot be forced to answer the ??). If the family owns the computer in THEIR OWN HOME, it’s THEIR choice to NOT turn it on, to NOT log in. & if it’s school-owned, it’s STILL w/in the confines of the family’s home. DON’T even turn those computers on.
&–if kids return to school now, they’ll just be returning for test preps & tests (IL testing has been done in March). NOT a good time to go back, so don’t send your kids back.
I have tried but, apparently, I’m not an influential organizer, so those of you who are, PLEASE get folks out in the street, w/signs, w/foghorns, w/feet.
Joe Biden, like the equally horrible individual he replaced, has a long history of being incapable of telling the truth.
Not even close to “equally horrible”. Trump is a grifting narcissist who should be in prison for financial crimes and for leading an insurrection which led to the death of a police officer at the Capitol.
Trump worked to destroy the foundations of the Republic by appointing religion-driven, partisan hacks to judgeships, by emboldening Christian nationalists and, by sowing division based on race and gender.
Trump furthered the agenda of Charles Koch to make the U.S. a colonialist society despite the nation’s creation for an opposite purpose.
Trump is horrible and is all the things you just said, and I can put together a list of horrors Joe Biden is responsible for that would also make a reasonable person’s stomach turn. Two things can be bad simultaneously.
Robert D Skeels, JD, Esq I have to say that Trump tried much harder to sink the democracy as such . . . much harder that Biden, who seems to like democracy, actually.
CBK