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Advocates of Student Privacy Criticize Tech Industry’s Voluntary Pledge Not to Sell the Children’s Data

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2014 //
10

Several tech companies promised not to compromise the privacy of student data. Advocates of student privacy were not reassured by their promises. See here and here and here. As Politico points out, neither Apple nor Google signed the pledge.

Here is a statement by leaders of the student privacy movement.

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy Not Satisfied with Tech Industry “pledge”

While parents and advocates involved defeating inBloom are appreciative that the voluntary pledge released by members of the software industry bars the selling of student data and its use for targeting ads, its provisions fall far short of what would be necessary to uphold the rights of parents to control access to their children’s personal information and protect their privacy. It appears that technology vendors and their supporters are trying to forestall stronger federal and state laws that would really hold them accountable.

The provisions do not include any parental consent or notification requirements before schools hand over the highly sensitive personal data of their children to vendors, and contain no specific security or enforcement standards for its collection, use or transmission. It would also allow for the infinite disclosure or sale of the data from one company to another, when the first one goes bankrupt, is merged or acquired by another corporation.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters based in NYC and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said: “We need legally enforceable provisions requiring parental notification and consent for the disclosure and redisclosure of personal student data, as well as rigorous security standards. This pledge will not achieve these goals, and will not satisfy most parents, deeply concerned about protecting their children from rampant data sharing, data-mining and data breaches.”

As Rachael Stickland, Colorado parent and co-chair of the Coalition pointed out, “The pledge explicitly allows for the use of student personal information for ‘adaptive learning.’ Parents are very worried that predictive analytics will lead to stereotyping, profiling and undermining their children’s future chance of success. At the least, industry leaders should support full disclosure of the specific student data elements employed for these purposes, and understand the need for informed parental consent.”

Said Melissa Westbrook, moderator of the Seattle Schools Community Forum and co-founder of Washington State’s Student Privacy Now, “This so-called pledge, filled with mumbo-jumbo, has one glaring item missing – legally enforceable punishment for K-12 service providers who don’t protect student data. Without that, students and their data have no real protections. ”

Concluded Josh Golin, Associate Director for the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, “Across industries, self-regulation has been proven inadequate when it comes to protecting children, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that students’ most sensitive information can be safeguarded through voluntary pledges. Only federal and state legislation that have clear enforcement mechanisms and penalties will give students the protections – and parents the peace of mind – they deserve. It’s disappointing the ed tech industry’s main takeaway from the inBloom fiasco is that they need better PR.”

Leonie Haimson, leonie@classsizematters.org; 917-435-9329

Rachael Stickland, info@studentprivacymatters.org; 303-204-1272

http://www.studentprivacymatters.org
###

Categories Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Resistance, Students

Here Is Proof that Arne Duncan is a Destructive Force in American Education

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2014 //
53

Arne Duncan issued waivers to 43 states to allow them to avoid the sanctions of the No Child Left Behind Law, passed in 2001, signed into law in January 2002. NCLB is an utter disaster, recognized as such by everyone except the people who had a direct hand in writing it. It requires that 100% of all children in grades 3-8 must be “proficient” on state tests of reading and mathematics or the school will face dire consequences.

 

In no nation in the world are 100% of all children proficient in reading and math. Congress’s mandate was a cruel joke on the nation’s public schools.

 

In order to get Duncan’s waiver, states had to agree to Duncan’s terms. One of them was that the state had to create a teacher evaluation system based on test scores. Washington State initially agreed, but as the research accumulated showing that this strategy was not working anywhere, the legislature refused to pass such a system.

 

Duncan revoked the waiver he had in his lordly manner extended. Now almost every school in the state is a failing school and must spent at least 20% of their federal funding on private tutoring or allow students to transfer to “non-failing” schools, if they can find one.

 

This article by Motoko Rich in the New York Times shows the ugly consequences of Duncan’s policies have been on the public schools of Washington State. Schools that have shown dramatic improvement in recent years are now declared failures. Duncan says the state must suffer the consequences of its failure to follow his orders.

 

This man is not fit to be Secretary of Education. He is a promoter of privatization and high-stakes testing. His period in office has been marked by massive demoralization of teachers and educational stagnation (his own term). From his actions, it appears that he doesn’t care for public education and hopes it will be replaced by privately managed charters and vouchers. His action in this case has caused harm to the students and teachers of Washington State. The headline of the article says he put schools “in a bind.” It would be more accurate to say that Duncan has rained chaos on the schools and children of Washington State. The sooner he is out of office, the sooner we can turn to realistic ways of helping children and schools.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Students, Teacher Evaluations, Washington State

Jefferson County, Colorado, School Board Passes Proposal for Patriotic History Curriculum

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2014 //
43

By a vote of 3-2, the school board of Jefferson County, Colorado, passed its controversial proposal to adopt an American history curriculum that removes references to dissent and social disorder and anything else that diminishes a sense of patriotism. This idea was cooked up by a radical rightwing majority that took control of the board at the last election.

The meeting was noisy and fractious. Students turned out in large numbers to oppose the sanitized curriculum, and by their actions, showed that dissent is alive and well.

Luckily, there is a website devoted to watching the JeffCo school board. The Jeffcoschoolboardwatch says the word of the day now is: Recall!

The students have gained national and international attention. The school board majority and its allies say they are “pawns” of the teachers’ union. Fox News called them “punks.”

Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College in California, proposes that the major historical associations honor these students for demanding a history curriculum that is not saddled with ideological bias. They have stood up for academic freedom.

I call them heroes. Students cannot be fired. They can stand up for their right to learn and for their teachers’ right to teach. Teachers and principals can’t do that. Student protests can awaken the public. They can alert the people of JeffCo and Colorado about radical efforts to remove controversy from the teaching of U.S. history. They can save our schools from the reactionaries who want to hand them over to Walton-funded, Broad-funded, Gates-funded, NewSchools Venture-funded profiteers. They can stop data-mining.

Their voices cannot be stilled by threats and intimidation. They have the idealism of youth and the freedom to act and speak without fear. Go, students of JeffCo!

Categories Colorado, Honor Roll, Resistance, Students

Adrienne Hill: A Day in the Life of a Data-Mined Kid

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2014 //
28

Did you know that your child is constantly data mined? Adrienne Hill writes about how extensively most children are now tracked, usually without their parent’s knowledge or consent. The federal government has given states hundreds of millions of dollars to help build a giant database, called a “statewide longitudinal data system.”

Hill writes:

“The government isn’t the only one trying to figure out what’s working by investing in and gobbling up data about your kid.

“Sales of educational technology software for kids in kindergarten through high school reached nearly $8 billion last year, according to the Software and Information Industry Association.

“One of the biggest players is the field is Knewton. It analyzes student data that it collects by keeping track of nearly every click and keystroke your child makes during digital lessons.

“Jose Ferreira is Knewton’s CEO. In a video posted by the Department of Education, he says “We literally know everything about what you know and how you learn best, everything.”

“Knewton claims to gather millions of data points on millions of children each day. Ferreira calls education “the world’s most data-mineable industry by far.”

“We have five orders of magnitude more data about you than Google has,” he says in the video. “We literally have more data about our students than any company has about anybody else about anything, and it’s not even close.”

“Five orders of magnitude more data than Google is a whole lot of data.

“The promise is that all that data can be used to tailor lessons to individual kids, to their strengths and weaknesses. They will become better learners, and that will lead to higher grades and better graduation rates.

“Ferreira imagines a day when “you tell us what you had for breakfast every morning at the beginning of the semester, by the end of the semester, we should be able to tell you what you had for breakfast. Because you always did better on the days you had scrambled eggs.”

“If the right breakfast makes for a better behaved child, that will be measured, too.”

And more:

“We live in a 24/7 data mining universe today,” says Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media. “And I think most of us parents and teachers and kids don’t realize how much of our data is out there and used by other people.”

“Steyer is also a parent. He says what worries him most is that “information that’s very personal to me and my family, for example my kids disciplinary record or health record or something like that, is made available to somebody who it’s no business to have that.”

What will be done with all this data? Sell stuff to your child? Monitor her behavior? For what ends? For whose benefit? What brave new world is this?

Categories Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students

Harvard Students Ask University to Cut Ties with TFA

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2014 //
19

Progressivism is not dead at Harvard University.

A group of students called on the University’s President Drew Faust to cut ties with Teach for America unless the organization made major changes.

“The group’s demonstration comes as part of a larger movement initiated by United Students Against Sweatshops, which holds that holds that Teach For America is working to privatize education through its relationships with big-name corporations that are threatening the sanctity of public education. The group had a TFA Truth Tour during March and April earlier this year, wherein protests were scheduled and executed on college campuses, including Harvard University.

“In their letter to President Faust, the student group outlined the reforms they would like to see within the organization:

“Send Teach for America participants only to areas where there is a teaching shortage

“Work to provide these participants with more training and education

“Eliminate the ties the organization has with such corporations as Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, and JPMorgan Chase.”

In other words, SLAM recognizes that TFA is an enabler of privatization and acts like scabs, taking the jobs of experienced teachers and busting unions.

Categories Resistance, Students, Teach for America

Peg Robertson Warns Parents: I Cannot Protect Your Children

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2014 //
26

Peg Robertson is a teacher and a founder of United Opt Out, a national group that encourages parents, students, and other educators not to take or give the state tests. She writes here that though she has refused to administer the PARCC assessments, someone else will do it. Try as she might, she admits, she cannot protect the children from endless test prep and the age-inappropriate practices introduced into the early grades by Common Core.

She writes:

“Across the nation teachers are fighting back hard. Across the nation – actually across the world – teachers will shut their doors and do their best to protect children from high stakes testing, test prep, nonstop district and state mandated testing and more. But – the truth is this, our best is not good enough, because in order to attempt to do our best we are jumping through hoops, shutting our door to secretly do what is right for children, spending our own money on resources for our classrooms and on supplies for children who have none, and we are spending hours and hours gaming our way through “teach to the test” curriculum and massive amounts of mandated corporate formative and summative assessment – in order to attempt to “do our best.”

“So, I’m going to be blunt here. I cannot do my best under these conditions. I can attempt to do my best, but my best under these conditions is not good enough. And my attempts to play the game and resist where I can will not be enough to protect your children from what is happening….

“And I cannot protect children from certain non-negotiables within common core curriculum and on-going assessment. We cannot protect the children from the common core professional development which takes us away from our buildings and leaves children with substitute teachers. As a literacy coach, I do what I can to rephrase and rid my school of corporate reform language such as rigor, grit, calibrate, accountability, no excuses and college and career ready. I can even replace these words with language that represents inquiry, heart, relationships, community, equity, creativity and more. But ultimately, all of my attempts are simply band aids.

“Even though I have done my best to make writing “on-demand” prompts developmentally appropriate for kindergarten (let’s face facts -there is NO such thing), it is still an “on-demand” writing prompt for kindergarten. Even though I will do everything in my power to support children in their inquiries about bugs, outer space, poetry, sports, cooking, their favorite authors, music, art, history and more; I cannot stop the testing train which makes stops in every classroom every week in some shape or form. The classroom is no longer driven by the rhythm of learning, it is driven by the testing schedule which continually interrupts our children’s talk and exploration of their interests – the testing schedule extinguishes the passion for learning. It makes all of us tired with the constant stop. start. stop start. as we try to regroup and get back on track with the real learning that is occurring in the classrooms. I can’t tell you how many “ah ha” moments have been lost for children as they had to break away from their projects, their thinking, their conversation, in order to hunker down over an assessment as they labor for the corporations…..

“Some days I feel like a nurse inside a war tent with wounded soldiers. And no matter how brave I am, no matter how much I stand up to these reforms, it is not enough – they have taken away so much of my power, and my ability to make professional decisions in order to protect children and do what is right for all children.

“I teach at a school with 73% free/reduced lunch. Over 40 languages are spoken within my school. I know what our children need – they need wrap around services for poverty, books, librarians, small class size, health care, nurses, counselors, recess, quality food, and the opportunity to express their interests as they talk, read, write, play, sing, dance, create and smile. But you see, that doesn’t create corporate profit. Poverty must be ignored in order to keep corporate profit churning.

“Parents, I cannot protect your children. I must be honest in telling you that the war is alive and well in our classrooms, and children are being harmed every day. What is happening is evil, cruel and abusive. Refuse the tests and deny the corporations the profit, deny the district, state and federal government your child’s data (which they can share with corporations), deny the publishing companies the opportunity to create more common core products. Without the data, the profit ends and we have an opportunity to reclaim our public schools, our profession. We have an opportunity to do what is right for all children. I am done smiling and saying, I am doing my best. I’m not.”

Categories Childhood, Common Core, Parents, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Students

Join the Network for Public Education on October 11 at “Public Education Nation”

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2014 //
7

JOIN US FOR THE FIRST PUBLIC EDUCATION NATION ON OCTOBER 11!

NBC has abandoned its annual “education nation” funded by Gates and featuring the leaders of privatization and high-stakes testing.

Now is our hour! We are here for you! We are here for the millions of students, teachers, parents, and administrators who are part of public education. We are here permanently. We are not going away.

Coming Saturday, Oct.11

PUBLIC Education Nation

Panel #1: Testing & the Common Core

Just Two Weeks Away! The first-ever PUBLIC Education Nation

This time we own the table, and we will bring together educators, parents and students to tell the truth about what is happening in our schools, and what real reform ought to be all about.

Next Sunday, October 5, will be our major money bomb online fundraiser for the event. This is NOT sponsored by the Gates, Bloomberg or Walton foundations – it is sponsored by US – each and every person who cares about the future of public education. Please donate here, and spread the word.

If you are in the New York area, and would like to attend the October 11 event in person, please show up by 11:30 am at 610 Henry St at Brooklyn New School/Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, and register here in advance. You can also sign up for the online event on Facebook here.

Follow us on Twitter at @PublicEdNation & @NetworkPublicEd

Panel #1: Testing & the Common Core

One of the highlights of the event will be the very first panel,

Testing and the Common Core, which will be moderated by New York’s high school Principal of the Year, Carol Burris. Burris has written extensively about equity in schools and the impact of the Common Core, and will bring her many years as an educator to the table. She will be joined by the following education experts:

Alan A. Aja, Ph.D. is the Assistant Professor & Deputy Chair of the Department of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies in Brooklyn College. His research examines race, gender and class disparities between and among Latino and African American communities; immigration/education policy; social and economic segregation; sustainable development and collective action/unionization. Before academia, Aja worked as a labor organizer in Texas, an environmental researcher in Cuba, a human rights organizer in Argentina and in a refugee hostel in London. He is a public school parent and elected member of the SLT (School Leadership Team) of PS264 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Dr. Aja will discuss the impact of common core aligned testing in New York, Kentucky and other states on marginalized communities, with attention to blacks, Latinos, ELLs, special ed/learning and disability students. He will present the early evidence to demonstrate that the Common Core and its testing is not resulting in the closing of the achievement gap, but may, instead be leaving disadvantaged students even further behind. He will also discuss alternative ways to increase student and school performance.

Rosa L. Rivera-McCutchen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at CUNY’s Lehman College. She began her career in education as a high school teacher in the Bronx.Her research examines the theory and practice of leadership in small schools in urban settings in order to create socially just and equitable schools for Black and Latino students. Dr. Rivera-McCutchen’s research has appeared in an edited book entitled Critical small schools: Beyond privatization in New York City urban educational reform.

Dr. Rivera McCutchen will focus on the moral imperative of leading for social justice in the face of CCSS and high-stakes testing. She will highlight the challenges leaders face in resisting, and focus on the strategies that leaders have used in mounting successful campaigns of resistance.

Takiema Bunche Smith is the Vice President of Education and Outreach at Brooklyn Kindergarten Society (BKS), where she oversees educational programming and outreach initiatives at five preschools located in low-income neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York. In both her professional and personal life, Ms. Bunche Smith is involved in various advocacy efforts that relate to early childhood care and education funding and policy, and the push-back against the overemphasis on high stakes testing in public schools. She has been a classroom teacher, teacher educator, content director for Sesame Street, and director of curriculum and instruction. She attended NYC public schools for 3rd-12th grade and is now a public school parent and member of the SLT at Brooklyn New School.

Ms. Bunche Smith will discuss the early childhood education implications of the Common Core and how it affects schools, students and parents. She will discuss various parent perspectives on the Common Core as well as critically highlight those who are not part of the conversation around Common Core.

On Saturday, Oct. 11, you can tune in online here at SchoolhouseLive.org to the live broadcast starting at 12 noon Eastern time, 9 am Pacific time.

The event will conclude with a conversation between Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown.

The Network for Public Education is hosting this event. It is NOT sponsored by the Gates, Walton or Bloomberg foundations. It is sponsored by YOU, each and every one of the people who care about our children’s future.

Can you make a small donation to help us cover the expense of this event? We are determined to create the space not ordinarily given to voices like these. But we need your participation. Please donate by visiting the NPE website and clicking on the PayPal link.

A live-stream of the event will be available on Saturday, Oct. 11, starting at Noon Eastern time, 9 am Pacific time at http://www.schoolhouselive.org.

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. Our mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools and the education of current and future generations of students.

Over the past year, donations to The Network for Public Education helped us put on out first National Conference – an incredible success. In the coming year, we will hold more events, webinars, and work on the issues that our members and donors care about the most!

To become a Member or to Make a Donation, go to the NPE website and click on the PayPal link. We accept donations using PayPal, the most trusted site used to make on-line payments.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org

The Network For Public Education | P.O. Box 44200 | Tucson | AZ | 85733

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Network for Public Education, Parents, Principals, Students, Teachers, Testing, U.S. education

Mayor Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Close Dyett High School!

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2014 //
57

As I write, community activists in Chicago are demanding that Mayor Emanuel allow Dyett High School to remain open.

 

The local community is fighting for the school. They want it to be a school dedicated to global leadership and green technology. Only 13 students remain in the school. They remain as a symbol that the community will not give up. They will not abandon a high school that they cherish. They do not want it to be closed.

 

Mike Klonsky gives some background here.

 

Please call the mayor’s office. Tell them to restore Dyett High School as a treasure that belongs to the community, not as a place to be shuttered by the mayor.

 

Jitu Brown of Journey for Justice–and a new member of the board of the Network for Public Education–sent this appeal today:

 

Brothers and Sisters,

 

You may know that the Bronzeville community has waged a protracted battle for saving Dyett High School on the south side of Chicago. Students, parents and community residents are rallying at city hall at 4pm CST today, demanding support for the Dyett 13 (the remaining students who are taking art, physical ed as online classes) and support for Dyett to stay open as global leadership and green technology high school (the community’s plan). We have been disrespected, under served and ignored so today…we are taking arrests and we need your support. Starting at 3pm CST, please call Mayor Rahm Emanuel office at (312)744-5000 and Deputy Mayor Ken Bennett at (312)399-5370 and tell him this:

 

1. Shame on you. Parents and community should not have to go through this to have voice in their PUBLIC schools.
2. Get resources like a gym teacher and ACT prep to Dyett students NOW.
3. CPS sabotaged Dyett hs. Support the community plan for Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology H.S. NOW! We want a signed commitment from the Mayor, Barbara Byrd Bennett and David Vitale to support our planning and implementation process. NOW!
4. Dyett community must be treated with dignity and respect. If they are arrested, do not harm them! The nation is watching!
Go to twitter and Facebook today with #Dyett13 and #SaveDyettHS. Let @RahmEmanuel know that the world is watching.

Categories Chicago, Students

Norm Scott: Charter Warns Parents about Dire Consequences for Late Pick-Ups

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2014 //
39

Talk about “no excuses”!

Blogger and retired teacher Norm Scott broke the story that Girls Prep Charter School in New York City posted a warning to parents about the dire consequences of arriving late to pick up their children. If the parent did not arrive by 3:45, the child would be taken to the local police precinct. Repeated failure to pick up on time would lead to a report to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.

Referral to ACS might trigger an investigation of the parent and family. Chalkbeat picked up Scott’s report, based on an anonymous tip. ““You’re almost criminalizing parents. You’re calling them neglectful,” said Ocynthia Williams, an advocate with the Coalition for Educational Justice. “The bottom line is it’s a terrible policy for parent engagement at that school.”

Officials told Chalkbeat’s Geoffrey Decker that it was probably an idle threat. Girls Prep earlier came under criticism for offering $100 for referring students who remained enrolled at least three months.

Norm Scott ran another exposé of the same charter, posting a letter from a disgruntled parent, who claimed that the school was a “boot camp” that was training children in robotic behavior.

Categories Charter Schools, New York City, Parents, Students

Teachers as Conscientious Objectors

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2014 //
32

A group of teachers at a progressive public school in Néw York City have formed “Teachers of Conscience” and written the Chancellor of the school system to say that they could no longer administer the state tests to their students.

For their willingness to act on the demands of their conscience rather than serve as compliant enforcers of actions intended to rank and rate their students, I place them on the honor roll of this blog. They are indeed Teachers of Conscience. They are resisters and conscientious objectors. From small acts of conscience, multiplied, grow revolutions.

They were inspired to act by the Seattle teachers’ boycott of MAP testing, but also by their conviction that the tests distort the purpose of education. They act in opposition to market-based reform and the Common Core.

Here is their letter to the chancellor from Teachers of Conscience:

Teachers of Conscience

A Letter to Chancellor Carmen Fariña

“The ongoing wars, the distortions of truth we have witnessed, the widening gaps between rich and poor disturb us more than we can say; but we have had so many reminders of powerlessness that we have retreated before the challenge of bringing such issues into our classrooms. At once, we cannot but realize that one of our primary obligations is to try to provide equal opportunities for the young. And we realize full that this cannot happen if our students are not equipped with what are thought to be survival skills, not to speak of a more or less equal range of literacies. And yet the tendency to describe the young as “human resources,” with the implication that they are mainly grist for the mills of globalized business is offensive not merely to educators, but to anyone committed to resist dehumanization of any kind.”

– Maxine Greene, In Search of a Pedagogy

Dear Chancellor Carmen Fariña,

We are teachers of public education in the City of New York. We are writing to distance ourselves from a set of policies that have come to be known as market-based education reform. We recognize that there has been a persistent and troubling gulf between the vision of individuals in policymaking and the work of educators, but we see you as someone who has known both positions and might therefore be understanding of our position. We find ourselves at a point in the progress of education reform in which clear acts of conscience will be necessary to preserve the integrity of public education. We can no longer implement policies that seek to transform the broad promises of public education into a narrow obsession with the ranking and sorting of children. We will not distort curriculum in order to encourage students to comply with bubble test thinking. We can no longer, in good conscience, push aside months of instruction to compete in a city-wide ritual of meaningless and academically bankrupt test preparation. We have seen clearly how these reforms undermine teachers’ love for their profession and undermine students’ intrinsic love of learning.

As an act of conscience, we are declining the role of test administrators for the 2014 New York State Common Core Tests. We are acting in solidarity with countless public school teachers who have paved their own paths of resistance and spoken truthfully about the decay of their profession under market-based reforms. These acts of conscience have been necessary because we are accountable to the children we teach and our pedagogy, both of which are dishonored daily by current policies.

The policies of Common Core have been misguided, unworkable, and a serious failure of implementation. At no time in the history of education reform have we witnessed the ideological ambitions of policymakers result in such a profound disconnect with the experiences of parents, teachers, and children. There is a growing movement of dissatisfied parents who are refusing high-stakes Common Core testing for their children and we are acting in solidarity with those parents. Reformers in the State Department of Education are now making gestures to slow down implementation and reform their reforms. Their efforts represent a failure of imagination — an inability to envision an education system based on human development and democratic ideals rather than an allegiance to standardization, ranking, and sorting. State policies have placed haphazard and burdensome mandates on schools that are profoundly out of touch with what we know to be inspired teaching and learning. Although the case against market-based education reform has been thoroughly written about, we feel obliged to outline our position at length to address critics who may see our choice of action as overstepping or unwarranted. You will find a position paper attached to this letter. We are urging you, Chancellor Fariña, to articulate your own position in this critical and defining moment in the history of public education. What will you stand for? What public school legacy will we forge together?

Sincerely,

Colin Schumacher, 4th/5th Grade Teacher, P.S. 364, Earth School

Emmy Matias, 4th/5th Grade Teacher, P.S. 364, Earth School

Jia Lee, 4th/5th Grade Teacher, P.S. 364, Earth School

If you have written a letter or statement regarding market-based education reform and the Common Core state standards, please consider submitting it for publication on our blog.

Categories Honor Roll, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers
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