The Network for Public Education announced its reaction to Arne Duncan’s resignation and the choice of John King to replace him. NPE was founded in 2012 to rally parents, educators, and concered citizens against out-of-control high-stakes testing and privatization of our public schools, which have long been a symbol of our democracy.
Archives for category: Network for Public Education
At 3:30 pm EST–less than one hour—Robin Hiller of the Network for Public Education will interview Jitu Brown, one of the hunger strikers at Dyett High School in Chicago. Jitu is a member of the board of NPE.
Robin has a regular radio show in Tucson. http://www.kvoi.com/live-stream/
The hunger strike has ended!
Learn what happened.
Earlier today, I gave the wrong date for the third annual conference of the Network for Public Education.
It will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, from April 15-17, 2016.
More details later.
In the last two state board elections in Louisiana, millions of dollars flowed to candidates from corporate reformers, mostly from out of state. They elected board members who support privatization and high-stakes testing. Now the people of Louisiana have a chance to elect Jason France, a oublic school parent who knows the inner workings of the state education department (having worked there). Jason needs every dollar he can raise to win. If you want to help him, his website is http://www.jasonfrance4la.com. I debated his opponent, Chas Roemer, a few years ago in Lafayette, Louisiana, and found him to be a true believer in vouchers, charters, letter grades for schools, and high-stakes accountability for teachers.
The Network for Public Education is proud to endorse Jason France for Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), District 6. Jason France, also know as the education blogger Crazy Crawfish, is a former Louisiana Department of Education employee, a public education activist, and the parent of two Baton Rouge public school students.
Jason is running for Louisiana BESE to “remove the outside influence of corporations and the federal government (and their phony education surrogates) to allow parents and educators the freedom and final say over the education of their children.”
France is running for the seat currently occupied by BESE President Chas Roemer. Roemer is the son of former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer – he has never attended public school, and his children don’t attend public school. He has been a champion of “charter schools, Common Core, test-based evaluations for schools and teachers and Education Superintendent John White,” according to the Times-Picayune. Roemer is a classic example of the privileged few making decisions for other people’s children.
The next BESE Board will have a crucially important to role to play in the future of public education in Louisiana. The next board will decide to keep or fire controversial reformster State Superintendent John White, who has stated a desire to stay in the position. A flip in District 6 would mean the potential for real change for students and teachers in Louisiana.
NPE is certain Jason France is just the candidate to help bring about the kind of revolutionary change needed in Louisiana. Please visit Jason’s campaign website to learn more about his policy positions on issues such as Charters, Common Core, Testing, VAM, and Student Privacy. You can also read the most recent post on his blog, which is a direct appeal to the voters of Louisiana.
“Louisiana, if you really want to fix education, you need to examine the motivations of folks that are pitching their ideas to you and stay focused on your chief goal – fixing education outcomes and preparing children for a lifetime of learning – rather than being tied down by a single solution, candidate, or ally.”
Jason’s years of activism in his home state have won him the support of some of Louisiana’s most prominent voices in the fight for public education.
Career classroom teacher, researcher, and writer Mercedes Schneider says:
“Jason France is a committed and knowledgeable fighter for the community school. His experience as a former LDOE data manager continues to be invaluable as the Louisiana public seeks a level of transparency that current state superintendent John White and the current BESE majority fight to conceal. As a BESE board member, France will be in a position to truly hold White, LDOE, and BESE accountable to the Louisiana public they are supposed to serve. I wholeheartedly endorse France as the next representative for Louisiana BESE District 6.”
And indefatigable New Orleans Education Advocate Karran Harper Royal adds:
“Jason France is extremely knowledgeable about the issues facing public education in Louisiana. As a public school parent, Jason will bring the kind of informed and invested voice that has been missing from education policy making in our state.”
Jason’s work has not only been on the local and state level, his advocacy has extended to the national level as well. His work with the group Student Privacy Matters helped bring about the destruction of data giant inBloom.
Jason’s work has gotten the attention of NPE President Diane Ravitch, who said:
“Jason has the deep knowledge of education that’s needed for BESE. More than that, he is a parent of public school children. BESE needs Jason France.”
Louisiana is one of only nine State Boards of Education’s in the nation with elected, rather than appointed members. The opportunity to elect advocates like Jason to BESE should not be squandered. It is time to bring the voice of the people to a board that has shut out the community for too long. As Jason wrote on his blog:
“We won’t have successful community schools without the community. We have mobilized communities in many parts of the state. This BESE and LDOE ignores them, mocks them and alienates them.”
We urge those in District 6 to get out and vote for Jason, and help spread the word. There are links on his website where you can sign up to volunteer or donate to his campaign. Please help Jason take Chas Roemer’s seat and give it back to the people of Louisiana.
When award winning principal Carol Burris announced that she was retiring early to dedicate all of her energies to “fighting the assault on our public schools and our teachers,” many wondered how and where she would continue that fight.
There is no need to wonder any longer.
Today NPE President Diane Ravitch announced that Carol Burris will become the new Executive Director of the NPE Fund, NPE’s non-political 501C3.
“The Board of the Network for Public Education is thrilled that Carol Burris has agreed to serve as Executive Director of the NPE Fund. NPE Fund will conduct research, issue policy papers, and communicate to the public about the crucial issues facing public education today. With Carol’s extensive and exemplary experience as a principal, a teacher, and a writer, she is exactly the right person to lead the NPE Fund at this time.”
Burris had this to say about her new role with NPE:
“We are living in a time of unrelenting attacks on the women and men who have dedicated their life’s work to educating and caring for children. Our youngest students are buckling under the pressure of excessive testing, and our most vulnerable children are unfairly classified as failures. Parents are skeptical of and confused by the Common Core. Profiteers are seeking to capitalize on dissatisfaction and confusion.
“We must now stand together to stop the privatization of our democratically controlled local schools and protect all children’s rightful heritage to a free and equitably funded public education. I am proud to join Ravitch and the members of the NPE in leading that fight.”
And NPE Board Member Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig added:
“Carol Burris brings the perspective of a life long educator and an important national voice to the position of ED for the NPE C3. I am thrilled to be working with her to connect communities and allies across the nation in the important work for our nation’s children.”
You can read more about this exciting development on our website.
Robin Hiller, who has been NPE’s Executive Director since the organization’s inception in 2012, will stay on as the ED of NPE’s 501C4, which will continue to make political endorsements and “engage in the war of ideas over the future of public education.”
Ravitch lauded Hiller, saying that she has “led the way in building a solid foundation for the growth of NPE as a voice for parents and teachers.”
Please join us in welcoming Carol!
Save the date for #NPE16NC!
Click here to read more about our 3rd Annual Conference, which will feature a keynote address from North Carolina’s own Rev. Barber, the founder of the Moral Mondays movement.
We hope to see you there!
Support The Network for Public Education
The Network for Public Education is an advocacy group whose goal is to fight to protect, preserve and strengthen our public school system, an essential institution in a democratic society.
Over the past two years, donations to The Network for Public Education helped us put on two National Conferences, and the first PUBLIC Education Nation. In the coming year, we will hold more events, and work on the issues that our members and donors care about the most!
To make a donation, go to the NPE website and click the donate button. We accept donations using PayPal, the most trusted site used to make on-line payments.
Minutes ago, a bipartisan majority of the Senate approved the Every Child Achieves Act, which is the bill forged by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) and Patty Murray (D-WA). This is the long-overdue reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the legislation passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law on January 8, 2002. The underlying legislation is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, whose purpose was to authorize federal aid to education targeted to schools that enrolled significant numbers of children living in poverty. The original bill was about equity, not testing and accountability.
The Senate bill retains annual testing, but removes federal sanctions attached to test results. Any rewards or sanctions attached to test scores will be left to states. The Senate rejected private school vouchers; nine Republican Senators joined with Democrats to defeat the voucher proposal. The bill also strengthens current prohibitions against the Secretary of Education dictating specific curriculum, standards, and tests to states, as well as barring the Secretary from tying test scores to teacher evaluations. The bill repudiates the punitive measures of of NCLB and RTTT.
The House of Representatives has already passed its own bill, called the Student Success Act. A conference committee representing both houses will meet to iron out their differences and craft a bill that will then be presented for a vote in both houses.
As I get additional details, I will post them.
Speaking for the Network for Public Education, I will say that we are pleased to see a decisive rejection of federal micromanagement of curriculum, standards, and assessments, as well as the prohibition of federal imposition of particular modes of evaluating teachers. We oppose annual student testing; no high-performing nation in the world administers annual tests, and there is no good reason for us to do so. We reject the claim that children who are not subjected to annual standardized tests suffer harm or will be neglected. We believe that the standardized tests are shallow and have a disparate impact on children who are Black and Brown, children with disabilities, and children who are English language learners. We believe such tests degrade the quality of education and unfairly stigmatize children as “failures.” We also regret this bill’s financial support for charter schools, which on average do not perform as well as public schools, and in many jurisdictions, perform far worse than public schools. We would have preferred a bill that outlawed the allocation of federal funds to for-profit K-12 schools and that abandoned time-wasting annual testing.
Nonetheless, we support the Senate bill because it draws a close to the punitive methods of NCLB and RTTT. It is an important step forward for children, teachers, and public education. The battle over “reform” now shifts to the states, but we welcome an era in which the voices of parents, educators, and students can mobilize to influence policies in their communities and states. We believe that grassroots groups have a better chance of being heard locally than in Washington, D.C., where Beltway insiders think they speak for the public. We will continue to organize and carry our fight for better education to every state.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is a major national figure in the civil rights movement of our time. He will be the keynote speaker at the Network for Public Education’s annual conference on April 15-17 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Rev. Barber is the founder of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, where a radical faction has taken control of the Legislature and the Governor’s seat. The Moral Mondays convenes every Monday in front of the State Capitol to protest the legislsture’s assaults on basic human rights.
Please come to Raleigh to meet Rev. Barber and hear his eloquent plea for justice and decency in our time.
Here is a statement that Rev. Barber wrote about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Rev. Barber writes:
Fix public education, end high stakes testing, pass ESEA
All lives of students matter. Children come into life with fresh eyes, fresh minds, and boundless hope and energy. Our elders created schools, and taxed themselves to pay for well-educated, loving people to be teachers, to keep that hope, energy, and freshness alive through the first two decades of life. But every day we hear of kids being bullied, giving up, dropping out, losing hope. To stop this man-made flood from schools to prisons, we need an all-out, multi-dimensional effort.
I write today because all people of good will, all patriotic Americans, have a chance to do something now to begin repairing the striking poverty breach that is so plain. Congress is preparing to vote on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on its 50th anniversary. What they decide now can change the course of federal aid to education for decades to come.
My father taught physics at the high school I attended in one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. My mother has worked in the same high school for more than 40 years. My five children worked their way through public schools in the poorest part of our state. One earned a PhD from Harvard in public health; one starts law school this fall; and two are working on their college degrees. My youngest son has several more years of public school ahead of him.
But my heart aches for their peers. Everywhere I go, I see children attending under-funded schools with over-worked teachers. The seeds of justice and love that we try to sow have a hard time taking root, when they land on hungry stomachs and hopeless hearts. Kids are born as hungry to learn as they are to eat. All of them need learning environments that help them thrive and live purposeful, prosperous lives. Educational opportunities and qualified, caring teachers make this dream possible. But as we under-resource our public schools, we are not just deferring dreams, we are shriveling and stomping on them.
The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) has tried to alert the nation for years about the crisis in our schools. Their 2013 report makes the problem plain. SEF Vice President Steve Suitts said, “Without improving the educational support that the nation provides its low income students – students with the largest needs and usually with the least support — the trends of the last decade will be prologue for a nation not at risk, but a nation in decline…”
In our Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina, we believe we must engage in every non-violent means of struggle possible to stop the tea party extremist attack on our teachers, our schools, and our children. If we sit back and watch extremists destroy our University and public school systems, we are discredited before our children, and we forfeit our chance to be called ‘repairers of the breach.’
When Congress enacted the ESEA in 1965, everyone knew education opportunities for black children were radically unequal to the opportunities for white students. Now, 50 years later, these gaps persist and are widening–despite the law’s promise to level the playing field for the nation’s most vulnerable students.
The last time Congress reauthorized ESEA, they and President George W. Bush established high-stakes testing, labeling, and policies that punish schools if kids flunked the tests. Tests don’t teach. Nurturing creative adults who know how to draw out individual children are what education is about. We don’t send our kids to school to become skilled test takers. We pay our taxes and send our kids to public schools because we need future corporate CEOs, cardiologists and aerodynamic engineers, university presidents and school principals, urban planners and architects. Our sons and daughters can’t reach these heights when accountability in our education system hinges on standardized test scores, not cultivating intellectual opportunity—the real measure of education. Standardized tests can tell us only so much. Educators know that annual multi-dimensional assessments that tell us whether a child is falling behind, whether she or he needs intervention and support the school can’t provide, or if a youngster is on track to graduate are the tools they need—not a single number.
Congress has a chance to fix the high stakes testing regime that has failed. Congress has the chance to deliver on its promise of educational opportunities for all students, especially the nation’s most vulnerable ones, which is the purpose of ESEA. Congress has the chance to repair the breach caused by sins and systems of slavery and segregation.
All our children have a fundamental civil right to a quality education. The ESEA can help make schools of hope and love. Stop drying up our kids’ dreams, like raisins in the sun.
Barber is the current president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the National NAACP chair of the Legislative Political Action Committee, and founder of Moral Mondays.
After much debate among the board members, the Network for Public Education decided to offer its qualified endorsement to the Every Child Achieves Act. We recognize that the bill has drawbacks. We oppose annual testing. And we oppose federal funding of privately managed charter schools. But in the end, we agreed that this bill would end some of the worst features of No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top. As the bill moves through the Senate and the House, we will watch closely to see how it evolves.
NPE Statement on the Every Child Achieves Act
July 10, 2015 Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Every Child Achieves Act, NCLB, Race To the Top, Reauthorization of NCLB, Testing / Opting Out
There is much we applaud in the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). Although the bill is far from perfect, it is better than the status quo. ECAA represents a critical step forward, placing an absolute ban on the federal government intervening in how states evaluate schools and teachers. It bars the US Department of Education from either requiring or incentivizing states to adopt any particular set of standards, as Arne Duncan did through Race to the Top grants and NCLB waivers.
The Every Child Achieves Act would prohibit the federal government from requiring that teachers be judged by student test scores and would prevent the federal government from withholding funds from states that allow parents to opt out of testing, which Duncan most recently threatened to do to the state of Oregon.
And it would take the federal “high-stakes” from annual testing—the consequences of which have a disparate negative impact on students of color and those of highest need.
ECAA does not “lock in” the Common Core, but rather allows the states to set their own standards without having to meet a litmus test set by the federal government. States could thoughtfully design and revise standards and their teacher evaluation systems with stakeholders, without fear of losing a waiver that protects their schools from being labeled as failing.
Below is the relevant language that expressly prohibits the federal government from exerting influence on standards, curriculum and teacher evaluation, followed by the language that prohibits the federal government from interfering in parental decisions to opt out of state tests:
“(a) Prohibition Against Federal Mandates, Direction, Or Control.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any other officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s—
“(1) instructional content or materials, curriculum, program of instruction, academic standards, or academic assessments;
“(2) teacher, principal, or other school leader evaluation system;
“(3) specific definition of teacher, principal, or other school leader effectiveness; or
“(4) teacher, principal, or other school leader professional standards, certification, or licensing
“(K) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION ON PARENT AND GUARDIAN RIGHTS.—Nothing in this part shall be construed as preempting a State or local law regarding the decision of a parent or guardian to not have the parent or guardian’s child participate in the statewide academic assessments under this paragraph.
Even as we support the above, we disapprove that the bill does not go far enough to meet the justified concerns of those who support our public schools. The federal government should cease providing financial support for privately managed charter schools that drain much needed resources from the public schools that enroll the vast majority of our students–caring for all and turning none away.
We are also dismayed that the bill maintains an annual testing mandate–which enriches testing companies while distracting us from the needed work to be done to improve our public schools.
We will continue to fight to restore ESEA to its original purpose of providing equity for the most disadvantaged children. We support the concerns raised by the coalition of Civil Rights groups who do not see testing as the answer to improving our schools. We will also continue to fight for charter school accountability and the elimination of annual tests. And we will carefully watch the bill as it progresses through Congress.
With all of its limitations, however, the end of NCLB, NCLB waivers and Race to the Top is a cause worth supporting. Therefore, NPE gives its qualified endorsement to ECAA.
Here is the list of 110 groups from across the nation that have signed a petition to Congress opposing high-stakes testing.
This is the petition. Your organization should sign too:
We, the below undersigned organizations, oppose high-stakes testing because we believe these tests are causing harm to students, to public schools, and to the cause of educational equity. High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent immigrants to this country.
We oppose high-stakes tests because:
There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap.”
High-stakes testing has become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.
Many of these tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.
High-stakes tests are being used as a political weapon to claim large numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and to fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.
The alleged benefit of annual testing as mandated by No Child Left Behind was to unveil the achievement gaps, and by doing so, close them. Yet after more than a decade of high-stakes testing this has not happened. Instead, thousands of predominantly poor and minority neighborhood schools —the anchors of communities— have been closed.
As the Seattle NAACP recently stated, “Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants as lesser—while systematically underfunding their schools—has a long and ugly history. It is true we need accountability measures, but that should start with politicians being accountable to fully funding education and ending the opportunity gap. …The use of high-stakes tests has become part of the problem, rather than a solution.”
We agree.
Yours sincerely,
Network for Public Education
I was born July 1, 1938, at 12:01 am at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Houston, Texas. I was my parents’ third child. We lived in a tiny house on Dunlop Street. Five more children followed over the next 10 years. We would eventually be five boys and three girls.
I went to public schools from K-12. Then, encouraged by my rabbi and his wife, I applied to Wellesley and was accepted. Going east to college changed my life.
Birthdays make you think back on your life as you get older. When you are young, birthdays make you either want to party or think about the future.
I’ll save the look back for my memoirs, if I ever find the time.
I’m still looking forward. The struggle to save public education against privatization and to protect kids from test-mania will grow stronger. The opt out movement will spread across the nation. Researchers will continue to demonstrate the failed policies of high-stakes testing and privatization.
You can help. If you want to make a gift for my birthday, join the Network for Public Education. Give as generously as you can. The Network helps grassroots activists across the nation and connects them to allies.
Here is the contact information: The Network for Public Education. Open the link to learn how to contribute online and/or become a member. This organization is fighting for public schools, for students, parents, teachers, and all other citizens who care about the future of our democracy.
If you want to send a check, here is the address:
Network for Public Education
P.O. Box 44200
Tucson, AZ
85733
