The Network for Public Education needs your help tomorrow!!!

As you know, The Network for Public Education’s first Conference culminated with a major announcement by the NPE Board about the board’s press release to call for formal Congressional hearings “to investigate the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized testing in the nation’s K-12 public schools.”

We can put public pressure on Congress by using technology – thanks, Bill Gates – to fight corporate reforms! The board at NPE decided to launch a Twitter Storm to reach the public and Congress.

Why NPE is doing this Twitter Storm:

We are taking our message to Twitter because while we lack access to paid media, we have thousands of passionate educators, students, parents and citizens across the country who care deeply about our schools, and are deeply concerned about the colossal waste of resources now being directed to standardized tests. We hope to raise awareness among the public, media and elected representatives around our call for Congressional hearings into the abuse of standardized tests.

Our first NPE Twitter Storm has been scheduled for Wednesday, March 19th, 2014 from 5-7 pm PDST. Our NPE Twitter Storm Facebook Event has this information available and updates that you will want to follow:

Get ready for a giant NPE Twitter Storm on Wednesday | 3-19-14 | 5-7 pm PDST

Network for Public Education is demanding Congressional Hearings on Standardized TESTING abuse.

Join us on Twitter that evening and look for future events to include a phone campaign and letter writing campaign.

Please SEE NPE TOOL KIT here!

Grassroots Toolkit: Time for Congressional Hearings into the Abuse of Standardized Testing http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2014/03/grassroots-toolkit-time-for-congressional-hearings-into-the-abuse-of-standardized-testing/

But what is a Twitter Storm and how does one participate? I thought perhaps some of your readers will join in to create this public pressure on Congress.

First of all, you will need a Twitter account and some basic Twitter skills. A tutorial for Twitter basic skills can be found here. I did not create this one, but hopefully it will get you started.

Many people wonder, “What is a Twitter Storm?”

A Twitter Storm is an organized activist event that includes a large number of individuals working in unison to send out tweets at the same time for a sustained amount of time on the same topic in order to create a trending topic. Everyone joining the Twitter Storm uses the SAME hash tag. It is different from a chat which is more conversational, does not have the same goal of trending, nor is the pace as fast in a chat, typically.

What happens when a topic is trending? #NPEconference was a trending topic for the 2 days of the NPE conference, over and above the crisis in Kiev and above the major protest over the KXL pipeline protests in DC. As a result of this, others engaged in our conversation that may not have engaged and it led to several mainstream media opportunities in print, radio, and television formats.

Thus, by creating a trending topic, the chances of spreading the message to people who did not have awareness of the topic are much higher. In addition, the likelihood of mainstream press coverage increases dramatically for trending topics. In this case, our hope are – that with enough public pressure and news media coverage – we could hope to create enough public pressure that Congress would in fact begin to hold formal investigative hearings on standardized testing.

How does a hash tag work? The hash tag on Twitter can be thought of like a “file in a file drawer” that holds every tweet that anyone puts in that file. We will be sharing the hash tag with you all on Tuesday night! Watch for it, but please do not use it until the event begins on Wednesday at 5 pm PDST.

How do I participate in the Twitter Storm?

We will be sending out tweets very quickly with the hash tag about the topic of the call for Congress to hold formal hearings on standardized testing and the effects of standardized testing on all students – including people of color, special needs students, and ELL students – as well as teachers, schools, communities, , and democracy.

· Be prepared by looking at your search bar on Twitter and typing in the hash tag. You will see two choices: “Top Tweets” and “All” – choose “All”.

· Click on “All” and from there you can cut and paste other people’s tweets into your feed, which is more effective in trying to get a topic trending than simply retweeting.

· Trick to use the tweets multiple times: You can change a few characters or a word to be able to tweet these multiple times.

· Tweet through the entire two hours or until you are in “Twitter Jail” for sending out too many tweets. It helps to have multiple Twitter accounts so that you can continue tweeting once you are in Twitter Jail.

· Some people use Tweet Deck to be able to access multiple Twitter accounts at one time and this works great! Access here https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ and practice prior to the Twitter Storm, but do not use our hash tag until the event, please.

· You can reply to others, but always include the hash tag and a message that is on topic in each and every tweet.

· Tweets that include the hash tag, memes, links, and videos must always comply with the 140 character limit.

· The Twitter Storm is very fast moving. Be ready with a fully charged phone, laptop, or PC.

· You may want to tweet to your US legislators. You can find them by entering your zip code here. (Remember to include the hash tag in every tweet.)

· Please target the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee via the following Twitter handles: @EdWorkforce and @EdWorkforceDems (Remember to include the hash tag in every tweet.)

· Please send tweets to media as well: @ChrisLHayes @EdShow @ValerieStrauss @Salon @Politico @HuffPostEd @DailyKos @DemocracyNow (Remember to include the hash tag in every tweet.)

What other tools can we use to improve our reach via social media?

One way that we can improve our reach through social media is through a site that is called Thunderclap.

What is a Thunderclap?

“Thunderclap is a tool that lets a message be heard when you and your friends say it together. Join a Thunderclap, and you and others will share the same message at the same time, spreading an idea through Facebook and Twitter that cannot be ignored.

If a tweet falls in the forest…

Social media is an easy way to say something, but it’s a difficult way to be heard. Thunderclap is the first-ever crowdspeaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together. It allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style, so it rises above the noise of your social networks. By boosting the signal at the same time, Thunderclap helps a single person create action and change like never before.

You don’t need a huge following for a successful Thunderclap.

A user with 200 Facebook friends could amplify her message better than someone with 3,000 friends. It all depends on your cause’s voice and shareability—and how much your friends are engaged. Thunderclap has already reached millions of people. Check out some of the successful projects on our homepage!

The tipping point

The beauty of Thunderclap is that it sets the goalposts: one message, one number, one date. It’s a common threshold you and your supporters work toward together. It’s a tangible way to measure awareness.” – from Thunderclap

Readers, please join our Thunderclap using this link: http://thndr.it/1m7RmMC

In order for social media to work, you need to share this link on Twitter, on Facebook in groups you belong to, on pages you have liked, and on your wall to invite people to join us. You can also share it on other forms of social media such as Tumbler, Linkedin, etc.

We have also created a Facebook Event which you can join here to stay updated with the latest news about our Twitter Storm. Join the NPE Twitter Storm via our FB Event (to be held on Twitter on Wednesday, March 19, 2014 from 5-7 pm PDST) via the link above.

We will be following up the Twitter Campaign with more activism opportunities through a phone calling campaign and a letter writing campaign.

If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up as a member of The Network for Public Education!

Thank you for joining our NPE Twitter Storm and please let me know if you have any questions! Follow us on Twitter: @NetworkPublicEd @DianeRavitch @AnthonyCody

Now, get ready! Join the FB event, sign up for the Thunderclap, and by all means join us on Twitter for this amazing opportunity to call on Congress to hold Congressional hearings to investigate standardized testing misuse!

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The Network for Public Education held its first annual conference at the LBJ Center of the University of Texas in Austin.

It was an amazing gathering of some 400 activists from across the nation: students, teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, journalists, union leaders.

Many familiar names, bloggers everywhere, interspersed with state and local heroes, people fighting for kids and public schools.

I gave the keynote address on the second day. It was called “Why We Will Win!” (The link has two parts.)

I can sum up my message in two points.

1. We will win because everything these faux reformers are doing is failing or has already failed. You can’t succeed if everything you do fails.

2. We will win because the tide is turning as students, teachers, parents, and communities organize to fight high-stakes testing and privatization.

Watch and enjoy!

Paul Horton, teacher of history at the University of Chicago Lab School, wrote the following after participating in the first conference of the Network for Public Education:

Attending the NPE inaugural conference was an exhilarating experience! As Diane said in her keynote, we cannot afford to exclude anyone. We all met hundreds of amazing and dedicated folks in Austin.

I had a conversation with Jason Sanford at Scholtz’s that I would like to share. He encouraged me to share it with everyone: Texas was the birthplace of the Populist Party, the most successful grassroots third party movement in American History. The Party was born outside of Lampasas, Texas and spread to the entire country. The Party sought to unite urban workers, miners, and farmers, black and white, who were being squeezed by economic forces beyond their control.

We would all do well to read the Omaha Platform of the Populist Party, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5361/.

Populists, above all, wanted to do something about corporate dominance of politics and economic decisions. We face many of the same issues today in the second Gilded Age.

The late Larry Goodwyn, who wrote the best book on Populism, Democratic Promise, a University of Texas dissertation originally, wrote that the success that the movement had was based on the construction of a movement culture. Populists organized cooperative stores, newspapers, a lecturer network, raised money to form a national movement, and conventions at every level. Their platforms endorsed candidates who would support their platforms, not political parties. The Populists forced the major parties to listen because they controlled so many votes and candidates who supported their platforms were elected to government at all levels.

Above all, the Populist Party was a grassroots movement. As historian Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, many individuals have ridden populist rhetoric to the White House. Populist rhetoric is a useful political tool for politicians seeking office. Politicians abandon populist rhetoric when they raise money and solicit support from plutocrats.

The history of Populism is instructive for many reasons. Most importantly, the lesson that we need to learn is that grassroots movements are easily coopted by politicians who make promises about support for cosmetic issues and meaningful legislation is too easily watered down in the political process.

Another lesson is that coalitions that seek to unite disparate elements of the working class come under attack. What Joel Williamson has called “racial radicalism” that motivated a resurgence of the Klan in the 1890s was motivated by the political threat of a united Populist Party to the racist white power structure in the South and nationwide.

A third lesson to learn is that political movements that sustain themselves in this country must have the cooperation of the middle class. Because Populists were successfully branded by the corporate media as illiterate and stupid, corporate leaders were successful in marginalizing the Populist movement.

As Jim Hightower would say, we need to dance with the ones we came with. But I say, because teachers, firemen, police officers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers are threatened with downward mobility because corporate honchos using Computer Based Systems are trying to squeeze productivity gains out of us without paying us more, we need to make every effort to bring these groups into a broader coalition that believes in the idea of the public, the nation as a commonwealth that invests in people, not wars, and not privatization.

Back in 1964 when Milton Friedman was Barry Goldwater’s economic advisor, the country laughed at the idea of neoliberalism because most Americans were motivated to serve broader causes. Altruism was cool, and the Civil Rights movement was ascendant. Kennedy had inspired us to think big. Now the ideas of Friedman and Hayek dominate public discourse and the Ayn Rand cult has returned with a vengeance.

The idea that Corporate Education Reform is the Civil Rights Movement of our time is the pinnacle of absurdity. Ella Baker, Septima Clark, and my relative, Myles Horton, are turning over in their graves! There were no students turned out of Freedom Schools! Freedom Schools did not operate with military discipline and focus on preparing students for standardized tests. At Highlander, participants sat in a circle. There were no corporate sponsors or foundations involved. At Highlander, Ziphlia (who rewrote “We Shall Overcome”) and Myles prepared meals and washed the dishes to show their profound respect for Civil Rights leaders. Do we see Bill Gates doing this?

The NPE represents what Larry Goodwyn, who also studied the Poland’s Solidarity Movement, “Democratic Promise.” We are facing a long fight. As Diane told us, “we have to cast a wide net, but we must remain a grassroots movement.” We must insist on inclusivity in all respects. We need to be visible but our platform must speak more loudly than any segmented “talking heads.”

Thank you, NPE Executive Board for an absolutely exhilarating experience! “We Shall Overcome.”

I had planned to publish each of the bloggers’ descriptions of the first conference of the Network for Public Education, but it would take weeks to report them all.

Here is the initial wave of comments.

My impression from the conference was that people were ecstatic. They loved the conversations, the debates, the solidarity.

Robert Perry, communications director of NPE, and a middle school teacher in Rhode Island, collected these posts, mostly from bloggers but some from outside commentators:

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/sarahlahm/bring-education-spring-lessons-austin

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2014/03/03/network-for-public-education-calls-for-congressional-hearings-on-testing

http://blog.chron.com/k12zone/2014/03/educator-ravitch-brings-message-to-austin/?cmpid=houtexhcat

http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/first-network-for-public-education.html

http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-network-for-public-education-npe_3.html

At the first national conference of the Network for Public Education

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/03/11-essential-questions-from-network-for.html?showComment=1393891444159

http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2014/03/pa-ed-policy-roundup-for-march-4-2014.html

http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/3-things-i-learned-network-public-education-conference

https://www.myworldnews.com/Channel/206-kxan/Story/384029-the-network-for-public-education-national-conference

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4856&section=Article

http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2014/03/ny-teacher-mercedes-schneider-shreds.html

NPE Calls for Congressional Hearings on Testing

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2014/03/john_kuhn_speaks_at_the_npe_co.html

http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2014/03/fighting-back-at-standardized-tests.html

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2014/03/listen-to-mike-klonsky-and-julian.html

http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_archive.html

http://texasaftblog.com/hotline/?p=3602

http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2014/03/testing-time-time-to-think-about-opting.html

http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2014/03/for-love-of-learning-3-things-i-learned.html

http://atthechalkface.com/2014/03/04/what-does-it-mean-to-be-in-solidarity/

http://georgiaschoolwatch.com/category/testing/

John Kuhn and Karen Lewis spoke as keynoters at the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education at the LBJ Center at the University of Texas in Austin last weekend.

Watch and listen here.