Archives for category: Standardized Testing
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Owen Davis: How Pearson Made a Killing from the US Testing Mania

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
17

Journalist Owen Davis explains in this article how the giant British education publisher Pearson made a killing as American politicians went gaga for standardized testing.

it is important to bear in mind that annual standardized testing is neither necessary nor customary. No other nation requires every child in grades 3-8 to take standardized tests every year. The US didn’t do it either until after the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. NCLB was a bonanza for Pearson and other testing companies. They beefed up their lobbying operations to make sure that the testing industry was well protected in DC and in state capitols. One of the architects of NCLB, Sandy Kress, went home to Dallas and became a well-paid lobbyist for Pearson.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Pearson, Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Testing

The Growing Dominance of Online Assessments and the Dangers They Pose

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2016 //
39

 

 

In this article, posted on Valerie Strauss’s blog, Lis Guisbond of FairTest interviews New York opt out leader Jeanette Deutermann about the creeping incursion of online assessment into regular classroom use. i remember hearing New York ‘s Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia predict the advent of “embedded assessments,” in which students would be continually assessed, as they complete their assignments online. No need for a “test.” The testing would be daily, continual, and invisible.

 

Guisbond writes:

 

 

Long Island parent Jeanette Deutermann is only half-joking when she says she should give a Christmas gift to her son’s school computer this year instead of the teacher. She sees the way computer-based curriculum-plus-testing packages have taken control of her son’s classroom, and she doesn’t like it.

 

Deutermann has been a leader in New York State’s unprecedented opt-out movement. Now she is calling out the latest damaging twist in education reformers’ efforts to fatten the pig by weighing it even more often.

 

Deutermann’s fifth-grade son and his classmates are among those on the edge of this craze, now that their school has adopted a product called i-Ready. She’s alarmed that her son gets daily computer-based math and reading lessons triggered by the results of a computer-based test. He also has thrice yearly (or more) i-Ready exams and even i-Ready-based homework.
She laments a shift away from students learning how to communicate and collaborate with one another on group projects to more and more time in solitary communion with a computer screen…

 

We already know that high-stakes exams narrow and dumb down instruction, depress student engagement, and produce inaccurate indicators of learning. Now we must be vigilant and prepared to push back against these new threats:
The push for frequent online or computer-based testing threatens to reverse recent progress in reducing testing and lower the stakes attached.
*Instead of schools with trained educators who use their professional expertise to personalize learning for students, these programs perpetuate standardized, test-driven teaching and learning, now automated for “efficiency.”
*Frequent online student assessments require teachers to review copious amounts of data instead of teaching, observing and relating to students.
*In truly student-centered learning, children guided by teachers can choose among topics, materials and books based on their interests and passions. But the vision promoted by many education technology vendors and proponents is of students learning material selected by online or computer-based adaptive assessments.
*Companies and government agencies are amassing unprecedented amounts of student data through online learning and testing platforms. There is widespread concern about accessibility of this data to third parties and violations of privacy through data. Parent groups and others advocate legislation to provide transparency and protect data from misuse. In the meantime, security breaches or data sharing are serious risks.
*Frequent online testing creates obstacles to opting out as a way to call attention to and protest testing overkill. A robust national opt-out movement created enormous pressure for change. But a shift to online exams creates new hurdles for parents who want to opt their children out.
*After several decades, researchers have seen little positive impact from educational technology. Meanwhile, researchers warn of a range of negative consequences from overexposure to technology and screen time. These include damage to intellectual, physical and emotional development, threats to privacy, and, ironically, increased standardization.

 

 

Categories Standardized Testing, Technology

Colorado: Architect of Punitive Teacher Evaluation Law May Run for Governnor

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2016 //
11

 

State Senator Michael Johnston, architect of Colorado’s failed, punitive teacher evaluation law, may run for governor.

 

Johnston, an alumnus of Teach for America, is a devout believer in standardized testing. His law, passed over the objection of the state’s teachers, makes test scores 50% of teacher evaluations.

 

I happened to be in Denver the day that his bill came to a vote. We were scheduled to debate at lunch time,  but young Senator Johnston showed up after I finished speaking. I got to hear him, but he never heard me. He told the audience that his bill would produce great teachers, great principals, great schools. All by basing evaluations on test scores.

 

Senator Johnston’s fantabulous claim never came true. Six years after passage of his law, Colorado has the harshest teacher evaluation statute in the nation and apparently no will to change it.

 

What are the results? When measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Colorado is in stagnation since passage of Senate Bill 191. Scores in fourth and eighth grade math and English are flat or have declined. None have gone up.

 

His greatest achievement was a bust. Since its passage, the theory that teachers can be evaluated by the test scores of their students has repeatedly been debunked by scholarly associations like the American Statistical Association, but Mr. Johnston is unable or unwilling to admit his ruinous error or to take steps to repeal it.

 

 

 

 

Categories Colorado, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Politico: Will the ED Department’s Office of Civil Rights Survive?

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2016 //
11

Politico speculates that the Trump administration will get rid of the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. This would satisfy the hard-right, which has always objected to federal enforcement of civil rights laws. If it is not abolished outright, it might be handed over to someone who is opposed to civil rights enforcement, which seems to be an emerging pattern in Trump’s hires. The Office then might exist to cancel out existing federal enforcement activities.

 

Politico reports:

 

THE OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS’ LAST HURRAH? The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which could be on the chopping block once Donald Trump takes office, is celebrating its work over the last eight years – a period in which it became significantly more aggressive than ever before. The office has cracked down on colleges that mishandle sexual assault allegations and used Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex, to protect the right of transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice – an issue now headed to the Supreme Court. The department this morning is releasing two new reports highlighting its work under the Obama administration at a celebration in D.C.

 

– The highlights: The office has been flooded with complaints during the Obama administration – more than 76,000 in all, with each year seeing more than the last. It has settled 66,000 of them. That work has been done with a near record-low staff of 563 full-time employees. The office had about 1,100 staff in 1981, according to the report. “Much progress has been made in the past eight years, but much work remains to ensure all children enjoy equitable access to excellence in American education,” U.S. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. said in a statement. “These two reports highlight the ongoing vital necessity of OCR’s work to eliminate discriminatory barriers to educational opportunity so our nation’s students may realize their full potential.”

 

– But the office faces an uncertain future. Civil rights groups say they’re “deeply concerned” that the extension of civil rights protections to gay and transgender students by the Obama administration will be dismantled by Betsy DeVos, who Trump has tapped to lead the Education Department. DeVos’ family has a long history of supporting anti-gay causes, POLITICO previously reported. Trump’s surrogates, meanwhile, have said there’s no need to have an Office for Civil Rights, period.

 

– Schools remain hostile environments for LGBT students, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, a group that advocates for LGBT rights. The group conducted in-depth interviews with students, parents, teachers and administrators in Alabama, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Utah and found that in many schools “discriminatory policies and practices exacerbate the sense of exclusion students face.” Teachers still fear for their jobs if they identify as gay or support LGBT students, according to the report. Students in same-sex couples said they were discouraged – or even prohibited – from attending events as a couple. Many schools censor discussions about LGBT topics, and eight states restrict discussions of LGBT topics in schools, according to the report.

 

– The Office for Civil Rights has also become a watchdog over colleges that mishandle investigations of sexual assault on campus. This week alone, the office opened four new investigations, bringing the list of schools currently under investigation to 219. OCR is also currently investigating some high-profile cases, such as the sexual assault cover-up by coaches and administrators at Baylor University that led the Texas school to demote its president and fire its star football coach.

 

Politico also reports on the latest from two rightwing groups that have established themselves as gatekeepers of the teaching profession, although they themselves have no credentials or authority, other than wealth:

 

REPORT: TEACHER PREP PROGRAMS MAKE PROGRESS: Nearly 900 programs preparing elementary school teachers are showing “significant progress,” particularly when it comes to how reading instruction is taught. That’s according to a new National Council on Teacher Quality review. But programs aren’t selective – a little more than a quarter of programs draw aspiring teachers from the top half of college-goers based on GPA or SAT/ACT scores, the report says. Still, programs have improved their selectivity over the years, and programs that are selective have also shown they’re diverse. More.

 

– Speaking of teachers, the Fordham Institute finds that it’s still really difficult to remove an ineffective teacher from the classroom after a decade of teacher evaluation reform. In 17 out of 25 districts studied, “state law still allows teachers to earn tenure and keep it regardless of performance.” And in most districts, an ineffective teacher’s dismissal is “extremely vulnerable” to appeal, the report says.

 

Comment: NCTQ’s standards of quality for teacher education programs is whether they are faithfully teaching the Common Core standards. Wonder if they will stick to that criterion in the age of Trump? Their definition of good reading instruction is phonics. Their judgments are not based on campus visits, but on reading catalogs and websites.

 

TBF, of course, judges teacher “effectiveness” by test scores, or value-added measurement, a method that has been debunked by scholarly associations like the American Statistical Association.

 

 

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Jeffries and Cunningham on “Choice”: THE LINK IS WORKING

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2016 //
36

Reformers have been trying to figure what to say about Trump and DeVos. It is embarrassing for people who call themselves “progressives” to acknowledge that their agenda of charters and choice has been embraced by the most rightwing president in the past century, if not all of American history. They want more charters, as Trump promises, but they have to distance themselves from a president who has been warmly embraced by the KKK and other neo-Nazi groups.

Shavar Jeffries of DFER and Peter Cunningham of Education Post (and former aide to Arne Duncan) try to wend their way through the political thicket in this article. THE LINK IS NOW WORKING. 

First, they list all the Democrats (like Rahm Emanuel and Andrew Cuomo) who support school choice. But they include Albert Shanker without admitting that after promoting the idea of charters in 1988, he denounced them as no different from vouchers in 1993, when he saw the business groups vying to run schools for profit. Documented in my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, pp. 127-128, revised edition).

Second, they give a nod to their friends in the unions, neglecting to mention that 93% of charters are non-union and are endorsed by all the Red State governors and right wing think tanks as a way to break unions.

Their biggest concern seems to be that DeVos might not adhere to the accountability regime established by George W. Bush. For them, high-stakes testing is a civil rights issue. Critics of high-stakes testing know that these tests measure family income and cause immeasurable harm to children who are poor, children with disabilities, and children who are English language learners. Just look at the Common Core scores in any state: most kids “failed” a test that was a grade level or two above their real grade. The highest failure rates were among the children with the greatest needs.

Accountability belongs at at the top. That’s where crucial decisions are made about resources and leadership. Yet the “reformers” still want to pin it on teachers and students.

As for “choice,” the results of 20+ years of vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland and Detroit, and of charters there and  in other cities should persuade everyone that neither vouchers nor charters address the needs of our children, especially those who are poorest. Their most damaging result is to drain resources from the public schools that enroll all children, making them less able to do their job.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, DFER, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Standardized Testing, Testing, Vouchers

Steven Singer on Standardizing Whiteness

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2016 //
12

The corporate reformers love standardized testing. They treat the scores as sacred truths. The scores are the measure of success or failure. We hear again and again that school choice will close the achievement gap. We hear it from rightwing think tanks and governor’s who never showed any interest in the well-being of poor children and children of color. As a matter of fact, the achievement gap will never close because it is a reflection of the measure. Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve. The bell curve never closes.

Steven Singer explains the problem with standardized tests. They measure privilege. Their standard is whiteness and advantage. They give honor to those who have the most.

He writes:

“We talk about standardized testing as if we don’t really understand what it is.

“We say we want No child left behind!

“And then we pass a law named after that very sentiment that ensures some students MUST be left behind.

“We say we want Every student to succeed!

“And then we pass a law named after that very sentiment that ensures every student will NOT succeed.

“It would be absurd if not for the millions of children being forced to endure the harsh reality behind our pretty words.

“It’s not these ideals that are the problem. It’s standardized testing.

“Researchers, statisticians, and academics of every stripe have called for an end to high stakes testing in education policy. Parents, students and teachers have written letters, testified before congressional committees, protested in the streets, even refused to take or give the tests. All to deaf ears.

“The federal government still requires all students in 3-8th grade and once in high school to take standardized tests.

“But these assessments are graded on a curve. A certain amount of students are at the bottom, a certain amount are at the top, and most are clustered in the middle. This would be true if you were testing all geniuses or all people with traumatic brain injuries.

“It doesn’t matter how smart your test takers are. There will always be this bell curve distribution. That’s how the tests are designed. So to talk about raising test scores is nonsensical. You can raise scores at school A or School B, but the total set of all test takers will always be the same. And some students will always fail.

“But that isn’t even the worst part.

“Standardization, itself, has certain consequences. We seem to have forgotten what the term even means. It’s defined as the act of evaluating someone or something by reference to a standard.”

Categories Hoax, Injustice, Race, Standardized Testing

Laura Chapman’s Review of John King’s Teacher Ed Regulations

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2016 //
20

Our reader Laura Chapman reviewed the regulations for teacher education issued by John King’s Department of Education today.

She writes:

“I downloaded the regulations. They are final, include some discussion of comments, but the parts that matter are concentrated in “definitions.” Here you go on the definition of “student growth.”

“Student growth: The change in student achievement between two or more points in time, using a student’s scores on the State’s assessments under section 1111(b)(2) of the ESEA or other measures of student learning and performance, such as

“student results on pre-tests and end- of-course tests;

“objective performance-based assessments;

“student learning objectives;

“student performance on English language proficiency assessments; and

“other measures that are rigorous, comparable across schools, and consistent with State guidelines.

“Teacher evaluation measure: A teacher’s performance level based on an LEA’s teacher evaluation system that differentiates teachers on a regular basis using at least three performance levels and multiple valid measures in assessing teacher performance.

“For purposes of this definition, multiple valid measures must include data on

“student growth for all students (including English learners and students with disabilities) and

“other measures of professional practice (such as observations based on rigorous teacher performance standards, teacher portfolios, and student and parent surveys).

“There is no real difference between ESSA as interpreted by these regulations and the last iteration of regulations in NCLB.

“The persistent reference to student learning objectives (SLOs) and gains between pretests and same year end-of-course tests reflect a profound misunderstanding of teaching, learning, curriculum organization across and within a year, the difference between what may be explored but individuals and subgroups or the whole class and what may be treated as a matter of “mastery” (especially of easy to test content/skill-sets).

“The explicit and implicit assumptions about education are wrong from the get go. The process can be followed but it will mean more of the same invalid stack ratings that have prevailed since 2001.

“Student Learning Objectives–SLOs–are not valid. Recent research from the American Institutes of Research confirms that there is no evidence of gains in student achievement or basis for claims of validity for every grade and subject where those convoluted writing exercises are required.”

Categories Accountability, Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

Monty Neill Responds to Comments about the FairTest Assessment Model

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
8

On Sunday, I posted the FairTest model for state assessments. FairTest has spent decades fighting the misuse and abuse of standardized testing. One of its long-time board members, for example, is Deborah Meier, a well-recognized and distinguished critic of standardized testing.

Several readers read the report as a covert effort to legitimate Competency-Based Education, that is, embedded computerized testing controlled by corporations.

Monty Neill of FairTest responds here:

The comments in response to the posting about FairTest’s report, Assessment Matters, raise interesting points. I will respond here to just a few.

First, there is no doubt that corporations backed by some foundations and politicians are promoting a version of schooling that is built around computerized packaged programs that combine curriculum, curricular materials, instruction and testing. The tests are in most cases multiple-choice and short-answer with occasional write-to-a-prompt items, to be machine graded. They seriously narrow and diminish education and should be exposed and stopped.

But not one of the examples in FairTest’s report rely on these kinds of computerized packages. Each one is teacher controlled and very much teacher controlled. We clearly support and praise those that allow significant student voice and control over the learning and assessment processes. New Hampshire fought for a deal that has opened doors that have been nailed shut since the start of NCLB and thus deserve serious credit. As we point out, we can learn from and improve on what they have thus far done, and that ESSA makes it easier for that to happen. (As a sidebar, we have regularly opposed much of what is in ESSA concerning testing while noting the victories and gains the testing reform movement made and providing ideas on how to take advantage of the opportunities it does provide.)

People can choose to believe the fight is over because corporations are trying to seize control of terms such as personalized and competency-based. We believe that is a mistake. It is not over, and one part of the battle is the fight to own the terms. The more important fight is the one to determine the shape of education, whether it is built on human relations among teachers and students, with parents and other community people also engaged; or it is based on computer algorithms and subordinating human relations to the computer packages.

FairTest fights for the former. We think that is clear in what we call for and the programs we highlight. If people have questions about that, they should read what we actually write and then follow it up, looking at the programs themselves.

Monty Neill

Categories Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Georg Lind: Standardized Testing is Bad for Education and Bad for Democracy

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2016 //
16

Georg Lind is an educational researcher and professor of psychology in a German university who has studied the moral implications of standardized testing. His bio is at the end of this post. He sent me the following short essay on the negative consequences of standardized testing:

Leviathan: The Anti-Democratic Effect of High-Stakes Tests.

We ought to think about high stakes tests in wider contexts than we usually do, namely in the context of human functioning and in the context of human rights and democracy:

(a) All tests which are based on classical test theory (CTT) and its off-springs (e.g., item-response-theory, Rasch-scaling) are essentially statistical artifacts. Their hidden psychology is at odds with our knowledge of psychological processes underlying human behavior. These tests are built on a false postulate which says: each and every human response to a test is determined only by one disposition, namely the competence or personality under consideration, except for some degree of random measurement error which can be easily minimized by repeating measurements.

This core postulate is totally wrong: A single response is usually determined but by several dispositions at the same time, not just by one. Hence a single response is ambiguous and does not allow to make any inference on a particular disposition. If data falsify this believe they are misclassified as “unreliability.” Besides, repeated measurement is virtually not possible with human subjects. Repeated questions have to be varied, and the more varied tasks are used to reduce “unreliability,” the less valid a test becomes.

Better methodologies exist, especially for the measurement and improvement of curricula and teaching methods (see my reading suggestion below). We can single out the disposition(s) determining a person’s responses only with experimentally designed tests that let us observe pattern of responses to carefully arranged pattern of tasks. Of course, such tests require much expertise and money, probably more than the private test industry is able to provide.

(b) High-stakes testing violates human rights and undermines democracy. The frequent evaluation – year by year, month by month, day by day, and sometimes even hour by hour – of students violates their basic rights and, indirectly, also of the rights of their teachers and parents. This inhumane practice has nothing to do with well reasoned and well designed assessments required before taking over a responsible position in our society. There should be more such assessments. Why don’t we examine future parents whether they are prepared well enough to raise children? This would spare us a lot of juvenile delinquency and broken up families. Or assess future politicians’ ability to run a town, a state, or a country? You can imagine what this would spare us.

Frequent high-stakes testing is also a threat to democracy. It restricts students’ thinking and reflection. It leaves too little opportunity for the development of moral competence. It produces “subjects” not citizens of a democracy. As many decades of research into the development of moral competence shows, simply through the extreme proportion of time absorbed by the preparation for evaluations and other activities required by authorities, students are prevented from developing the ability to solve problems and conflicts through thinking and discussion instead of through violence, deceit and power. They will later, as adults, depend, as Thomas Hobbes has pointed out, on a “strong state” and on dictators to keep violence, deception and power within bounds. Morally competent citizens don’t need a “Leviathan.”

Reading suggestion: “How to Teach Morality. Promoting Deliberation and Discussion. Reducing Violence and Deceit” by Georg Lind (Logos publisher, Berlin, 2016)

—————

Contact:
Dr. Georg Lind
Schottenstr. 65
78462 Konstanz, Germany
Georg.Lind@uni-konstanz.de
http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ag-moral/

Vita:
Prof. emeritus of the University of Konstanz, Department of Psychology
Doctorates in social sciences and in philosophy; master degree in psychology.
Long-time educational researcher and test developer.
Main area of research and teaching: Moral-democratic competence development and education.
Visiting professor at the University of Illinois/Chicago, Monterrey/Mexico, and Berlin/Germany.
Guest lectures and workshop-seminars in several countries, e.g., Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland.
Married and three children (two adopted in Chicago)
Born in 1947.

Categories Accountability, Real Education, Standardized Testing

Jesse Turner: Who Decides? Who is a Sell-Out? Who is Pure?

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2016 //
14

http://childrenaremorethantestscores.blogspot.com/2016/09/who-decides.html?m=1

Jesse Turner is known as “the walking man.” He walked from Connecticut to D.C. inn 2010 to protest the overuse of mandated testing and its negative effects on children. He did it again in 2015.

His blog is called “children are more than test scores.”

This is his latest. It is called “Who Decides?”

It begins like this. Please open the link and see where he goes with it.

I hear some educational activists want to be the deciders?
Who is authentic?
Who is a sell out?
Who is weak?
Who is pure?
Who is a real activist?

Who decides?
Who decides if you are an education activist?
Who decides if you can join the rallies against NCLB, RTTT, or ESSA?
Who decides if you can make your own sign for the cause?
Who decides if you can march?

Who decides?
I know something about activists.
I have been an activist since I was eight years old.
My first march was August 28, 1963.
I was the tag along company for my grandfather who decided he needed to be part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
At eight years old I had no idea I was an activist, but activist I became.
The only thing about the March on Washington I really knew was,
No one from the union hall would go with him.
No one from our church would go with him.
No one from his VFW would go with him.
I knew my grandmother was afraid to go.
My mother was afraid to go.
I knew they both loved Dr. King.
But, they read the newspapers,
They watched the news, and everywhere Black people marched back in 60’s they were met with hatred and brutality.
My mother loved justice, but she was afraid.
For weeks my grandfather asked friends and everyone he knew to go to DC,
He said I’ll drive,
I’ll pay for the gas,
I’ll buy lunch,
But no one would go.
My grandmother and mother prayed no one would go.
Why, because they loved him, and were afraid something would happen, and he would be hurt.
Finally he stopped asking people.
My grandmother hoped he would decide not to go.
He was going?
He fought in World War I, lived through the great depression, believed every American deserved a good job, and everyone had the right to vote.
My grandmother and mother prayed he would change his mind.
God did not answer their prayers.
They were afraid for their stubborn old man with a love for justice.
God did answer his marching prayers.
On the day before the march he washed his car, changed the oil, checked the tires, and filled up the gas tank. Laid out his best Sunday suit. Asked my grandmother if she could pack some sandwiches and his thermos. He said please in his best please voice.
There was an argument, my grandmother tried to get him to change his mind. He would not.
She called my mother crying. My mother went over. She took me with her.
They came to accept he was going to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
They were afraid, but proud of their stubborn old man.
They made sandwiches, brought an extra thermos one for the drive down, and one for the drive back. In 1963 he was 68. They calculated the drive time down would take 4 to 5 hours and another 4 to 5 hours on the way back, and figured the march would last at least 6-8 hours.
He would need to leave at 4:30 AM. They figured he would get there around 9:00, stay until 4 or 5, and drive home. They determined he needed coffee for ride down and back. None of this change the fact that they were afraid for him. People today have no idea how brave those 250,000 marchers were in 63.
My mother had brought a bag with pajamas and my only suit to my grandmother’s house. She had decided if the old man is going to Washington he needs company for the ride. She told my grandmother it’s a long ride, he’ll be lonely, and he could get tired. He needs someone to keep him awake.
Little Jess is the perfect person for that. He can’t stop talking. Plus if we send him with the boy he’ll be extra careful not to get into any trouble. If trouble starts he’ll take the boy and run.
So I began marching in 63 at the age of 8.
No one asked my grandfather are you for freedom?
No one asked are you for jobs?
No one asked my grandfather why is a White man marching with Black people?
Why did you bring a little boy?

Who decides?

All of us do what we can. I write. Jesse walks. I couldn’t do what he does. I say it is time for him to join the honor roll of this blog for his persistence, his goodness, his love for children, and his physical stamina.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Honor Roll, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing
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