2020 Medley #16

Union presidents reject Medicare for All,

Getting back to school,

Charter schools are businesses,

We didn’t ask for vouchers. 

WE'VE GOT OURS. TOUGH SH!T FOR YOU

Teacher Union Presidents Weingarten and Eskelsen-Garcia Vote No to Medicare for all in Dem Platform

Randi and Lily are just being selfish. Yes, we had good health insurance when I was teaching. We had good prescription insurance. It cost a lot, but we were a large insured group so we got so-called "Cadillac" plans for less than it would have cost us individually. It included vision and dental, something that isn't included in Medicare and my Medicare supplement.

But, employer-based health care leaves people behind. It's unfair. It leaves some people without any coverage at all. And we're the only advanced nation on the planet that still allows a large chunk of our population to be unprotected in the event of an expensive (and they're all expensive) medical emergency.

Around a half-million Americans declare bankruptcy because of medical bills each year. Some of them might even have insurance, but it's not always enough. Often a serious illness means loss of work...and loss of work means loss of health insurance. Now, with the coronavirus pandemic upon us, more than 30 million American workers are unemployed and without employer-based health insurance. No other country would let this happen to its citizens. It's cruel. It's selfish. And it's unnecessary.

To protect those "Cadillac" plans, the presidents of the nation's two largest teachers unions have doubled down on American selfishness and rejected a single-payer plan as a plank in the Democratic Party platform. It's a "We've got ours. Tough sh!t for you" plan worthy of the Republican Party.

Weingarten has been an outspoken opponent of national health care for a while. Like other national union leaders she says she wants to protect the health care her AFT and other union locals have bargained.

Now that 30 million newly unemployed workers are without employer provided health insurance, this defense rings hollow...

Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former health commissioner for the city of Detroit, argued that the coronavirus outbreak demonstrates why the country needs a single-payer system like Medicare for All rather than just an expansion of the Affordable Care Act.

“We have an opportunity to go bigger because this moment demands it,” El-Sayed said, arguing for an amendment that was eventually defeated.

What a time to vote against national healthcare.

So out of touch.

STARTING SCHOOL

Trump’s Plan to Reopen Schools Puts Black Students at Risk

Guess which students are most susceptible to COVID-19.

Then guess which students have the fewest resources in their schools.

Now guess who will suffer most from an early, poorly designed return to in-person schooling this fall.

It is not shocking that Black parents, and many other parents of color, are choosing the lives of their children over going to school. Children in the United States are more likely than kids in other countries to have underlying health conditions, such as asthma, that place them at an increased risk of becoming severely sick with COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black children suffer from asthma at more than double the rate of white children.

It again comes back to racism. Black people are more likely to live in the areas hit hardest by the epidemic, as a result of the segregation and pollution that worsened it.

How To Stop Magical Thinking In School Reopening Plans

Here's a good idea. Let's use science and facts to plan how we will go back to in-person education this year. It's important for kids to have live interaction with a teacher. Young children may not be as susceptible to the dangerous aspects of COVID-19. But older children and adults in school buildings are susceptible to the illness. What's more, they are more likely than young kids to spread the disease. Some children and adults have preexisting conditions that make exposure to the coronavirus a life-threatening experience. Some children and adults have parents and grandparents living in their homes who would be threatened by the virus.

There's no reason to scold teachers for their very real fear about going back to school. There's every reason to believe that teachers, staff members, and administrators know more about how to teach -- even how to teach during a pandemic -- than politicians.

I can only speak for myself: I am not yet ready to abandon the idea that we can go back to school safely this year. I think it's going to take a lot of work and more resources than we're currently talking about at the national level. I also think we are going to be very hard pressed to make this work by Labor Day. But if we can get the virus under control outside of school, get together the necessary resources, and make an honest assessment of the risks and rewards... OK.

But we're not going to get that honest assessment unless and until we stop thinking that magical plans will allow us to reopen schools in a few weeks. I know this will come as a shock to many pundits, but people who actually work in schools have almost certainly already thought of your "creative" solution to the problem. The likely reason they aren't implementing it is because they don't have the luxury of not questioning the very real issues you didn't address in your op-ed.

If that sounds harsh, I'm sorry -- but lives are literally at stake. 

Open schools are the exception, not the rule, around the world

The President and his billionaire Secretary of Education are either too stupid to see the difference between the way the US and successful countries have handled the pandemic, or they don’t care. Personally, I think it’s at least a little of both.

The few countries that have successfully reopened their schools have lowered the incidence of COVID-19 in their countries so that their children and school workers will be safe. We haven’t.

The few countries that have successfully reopened their schools have universal health care so that citizens who need health care don’t have to worry about losing their health care if they lose their job. We don’t.

The few countries that have successfully reopened their schools have included teachers and other school workers in the planning so that reopening is done by people who know what goes on in a school. We haven’t.

Opening schools when we're still seeing a thousand deaths a day is just stupid.

Each of these European countries provide universal health care and have a nationwide pandemic plan. To the extent that decisions are delegated to local levels, as they are in Germany, there is national coordination.

Teacher unions have typically been involved in planning school reopenings in Europe, which is critical, since teachers are the most viable enforcers of new safety rules. “There's a great deal of trust in authorities because we know that we can always sit down and talk about things,” Dorte Lange of the Danish Union of Teachers said.

Educators Prepare for Reopening with Living Wills and Life Insurance

The public school infrastructure in the US is so inadequate in some places that a safe return to school during the pandemic is impossible. Teachers want to teach their students, but they don’t want to risk their lives to do it.

To safely return, educators want personal protective equipment (PPE) for every staff member and student. They want hand-washing supplies. They want safely ventilated classrooms, fully staffed custodial and deep-cleaning crews, and school transportation plans that don’t include crowded buses. “One thing that could help is if we had a plan to resume safely,” said Miami high school teacher Nyree Washington. “We do not have this plan.”

Educators like Washington’s Rieker know what it’s like to be in a classroom with 27 or 28 fourth graders. “A kid needs to blow their nose, sharpen their pencil. How do you do these things and stay socially distanced?” she asks. “I have individual desks in my classroom, but some of my coworkers have tables. We don’t even have desks for everyone.”

PRIVATIZATION: PPP MONEY TO CHARTER SCHOOLS

NPE Publishes Comprehensive, State-by-State Listing of PPP Money to Charter Schools

There’s no doubt about it. Charter schools are not “public schools.”

Public schools have been prohibited from getting small business loans from PPP funding. Charter schools have not. Public schools are forced to use the money received from the cash-strapped state for their operation. Charter schools are raking in money meant for small businesses as well as using money from the state.

Here is a link to a list of charter schools that received Small Business Administration PPP funding.

National List of Charter Schools/CMOs/EMOs That Received Small Business Administration PPP Funding

On July 24, 2020, I posted about ProPublica’s PPP loan search engine, which allows the public to easily investigate PPP loans disbursed to any small business or nonprofit, including scores of charter schools, private schools, and other education-related businesses and nonprofits.

PRIVATIZATION: VOUCHERS

The Proof Is In The Ballot Box: Voters Don’t Like Private School Vouchers

Hey, Indiana...do you remember when we, as voters, chose to divert millions of education dollars from our public schools to school vouchers for mostly religious schools?

Neither do I...because we didn’t. The legislature, under the direction of Governor Mitch Daniels, decided to move public money from the schools that 90% of our students attend to religious institutions.

We didn’t vote for it. We didn’t approve it. We didn’t choose it.

Although Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Republican officials believe that vouchers are an issue worth pursuing to gain support, the voting record on this matter shows otherwise: Vouchers are not popular with voters. AU has compiled a list of ballot initiatives from states all over the country dating back to the 1960s that planned to use public taxpayer funding to support private schools. In all of these instances, voters rejected voucher schemes, proving that policies like school vouchers actually have very little support among the American electorate. (In Arizona, voters went to the polls in 2018 and rolled back an expansion to that state’s voucher plan that had been approved by the legislature – 65 percent to 35 percent.)

The National Coalition for Public Education, an umbrella organization of defenders of public education that AU co-chairs, points out that there are several reasons why people do not support school vouchers and why vouchers are actually largely ineffective at helping to improve the education system. For instance, school vouchers take needed assistance away from public school systems to fund the private education of a much smaller population of students.

Private school vouchers also do not save taxpayers dollars in the long run. The number of students using private school vouchers to leave public schools is so minimal that it does not affect the operating costs of public schools. Therefore, public schools are only losing out on necessary funding at the hands of the voucher system. In addition, many pro-voucher supporters have argued that they help give education options and opportunities to low-income students. However, as NCPE notes, studies have found that “private school vouchers do not adequately serve low-income students.” This is because the price of private school tuition and fees often exceed the amount of the voucher itself.

🚌😷💲🚌

Our Students' Voice

In my last post, I took Lily Eskelsen Garcia and the NEA to task for not acting in the best interest of children, teachers, and American public schools.

Today, however, I'd like to thank Lily for her words of support and her understanding of what it actually means to spend a year in a classroom. Here is the story of her flight encounter with a businessman, the "man in the middle seat," who challenged her to tell him what we really need in public education. Her answer was a simple sentence, and you can click on the link below to hear it, but her deeper answer was something that is important for all teachers to hear and understand.

She said to her audience...

I'm an educator. It's up to me to educate the "man in the middle seat..."

All public school educators should adopt that attitude. We are the political voice of our students. Without us they are silenced, disenfranchised, and at the mercy of policy makers, most of whom have never taught a day in a public school, who think that privatization is the simple answer to improving our schools.

It's up to us, America's educators, to educate our fellow citizens. We can't make them listen, but they will never hear us if we are silent. American public education is being dismantled and sold off to the highest bidder and it's our responsibility to shout "STOP!"

Lily listed what public education does for America's children. Her list is long, but it's still just a partial list. She didn't include that we serve some kids two meals a day, provide grief counseling, clothe children who come to school without shoes or coats, help them across the street, give them the opportunity to express themselves through the arts, and provide some with the only safe environment they experience. I'm sure there are more...

She talked very fast, and I think that she stumbled over a few words while she was racing through the list, but to the best of my ability, here is her list..

A plane passenger asked a teacher a kind of rude question about her job. She responded eloquently!

I'm an educator. It's up to me to educate the "man in the middle seat" as much as to educate a politician about what happens in any given typical school on any given typical day...

• we serve kids a hot meal,

• we put bandaids on boo boos,

• we diversify our curriculum instruction to meet the personal and individual needs of all our students, the blind, the hearing impaired, the physically challenged, the gifted and talented, the chronically tardy, and the medically annoying,

• we make sure they've had their immunizations,

• we make sure they understand disease control,

• we teach them to resist drugs, alcohol, tobacco,

• we give career counseling, pregnancy counseling, mental health counseling,

• we get them on the bus safely. we take them off the bus safely,

• we provide computer instruction, sex education,

• we stop bullying and teach them to say, "I'm sorry" and mean it,

• we instill an understanding of civil rights, the political process, challenge racism, foster social tolerance, and an appreciation of our cultural and religious diversity,

• we teach the principles of free enterprise, how to be a good sport,

• we develop personal responsibility, practice bicycle safety and check for head lice,

• we provide bilingual education, teach metrics, how to be a wise consumer, exercise for weight control, how to drive a car,

• we teach the impact of wars, develop collaborative skills, how to tune a violin, how to use reason and evidence to protect the future,

• we teach them to revere their environment and how to manage their money, how to access information, how to make wise choices, how to balance a checkbook,

• we teach loyalty to the ideals of a democracy,

• we build patriotism, good oral hygiene, a respect for the worth and dignity of every individual,

• we nurture curiosity, encourage a good question, build self esteem,

...and then we teach reading, writing and arithmetic.

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade...“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

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I Get a Response From NEA

CANDIDATE INTERVIEWS

Earlier this month I posted about the NEA's Primary Election endorsement of Hillary Clinton for U.S. President. I included a comment I had written in response to a special ed teacher's guest blog on Lily Eskelsen-Garcia's blog.

You can read the guest blog, Proud to Be an Educator for Hillary. Scroll down and you can see a comment. As of this writing, my comment has not been included, however the one comment that is there expresses similar objections to the endorsement. Perhaps mine wasn't written well enough...or I was too emotional...or confrontational...or impolite. It doesn't matter. I only mention this to indicate that, apparently, the NEA is willing to read opposing views: something positive.

You can read my comment in my post, Finally, I Rant About NEA's Endorsement of Hillary.

I submitted an abridged version of my comment a second time. I thought perhaps that it hadn't been published because it was too long. After that submission, I received a response from NEA which you can read in its entirety at the end of this post.

My point in arguing against the endorsement of Secretary Clinton is not because I disagree with many of her positions on public education, it's because I don't know many of her positions on public education. I would argue against the endorsement of any of the three candidates who responded to the NEA's questionnaire for the same reason.

In her letter to me, Lily provided a link to the interviews she did with the three candidates (all Democrats) who responded to the NEA questionnaire: Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley, and Bernie Sanders (you can see all the interviews here. Scroll to the bottom section for the complete interviews).

Some of my objections have been answered. Lily asked all three candidates about their views on equality of opportunity, testing, college debt, collective bargaining, and their vision for rescuing the middle class. All three candidates gave essentially the same answers with minimal differences.

• All children need equality of opportunity and we need to fully fund public education.
• Too much testing is horrible and we need to fix that.
• College should be available to all. Debt is bad.
• Collective bargaining is important for all workers. Unions are important.
• America's middle class is shrinking. We need to dump Trickle Down economics and provide health care, a higher minimum wage, and better jobs.

There is nothing about the record of the three candidates on the interview page. There's a link in the letter from NEA to a summary of Secretary Clinton's record, but that doesn't highlight the differences between the candidates. It only tells me, vaguely, what Clinton has done. During the interviews the candidates tooted their own horns freely, so that's something.

The problem, as I see it, is not that Secretary Clinton is not deserving of NEA's endorsement. It's that there is still too much about the candidates that we don't know. We did this before, with Barack Obama, and for our no-strings-attached support we got Arne Duncan and Race to the Top.

The fault is partially with the candidates. Clinton's campaign site has a section on K-12 education, but it's vague and unspecific. Sanders' and O'Malley's sites don't say "boo" about K-12 education. All three discuss universal preschool and affordable college. To earn NEA's support we ought to get some assurances that we won't get a DFER, someone who wants to privatize public education, or another Arne Duncan in the office of Secretary of Education.

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS: WHERE ARE THE DETAILS?

But the lion's share of the fault is with NEA's leadership. Where were the questions (or if you asked them, where were the answers) about...

• Charter schools? I know that Clinton and Sanders are "in favor" of charter schools and that they support charter school accountability, but where are the details?

• Vouchers? Democrats are generally against vouchers, but in the last few years they have made fewer and fewer comments about vouchers. Where do the candidates stand? Will they work to stop our tax dollars going to religious institutions?

• No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the reauthorization of ESEA? Where are the questions about the failure of No Child Left Behind, the cost and damaging competition of Race to the Top, and the fact that there is still no renewal of ESEA? Where do they stand on providing support for schools that need more help or are they willing to close schools with high poverty and blame the victims for "failing?"

• VAM? How do the candidates feel about teacher evaluations being based on student test scores? How about teachers of non-tested areas, such as music and art teachers, being evaluated using reading and math test scores of their students?

• School letter grades? Should schools be judged by how well their students do on test scores? Is an A school simply one in which the children score high on the state standardized test?

• Due process? Where do the candidates stand on due process (aka tenure) for K-12 teachers?

• National Teacher shortage? How will the candidates relieve the national teacher shortage? How will they encourage more students to go into education?

• Common Core? We know Lily loves her some Common Core, but not all of us do. I find many of the early childhood standards to be developmentally inappropriate. Where do the candidates stand on this issue?

• The U.S. Education Department? Do they want to save the USED? Right now it's filled with privatizers, DFERs, and "reformers." How will a Clinton (or Sanders, or O'Malley) administration differ?

Lily, your questions about equality of opportunity, testing, college debt, collective bargaining, and the middle class were good; The candidates' desire for universal preschool and affordable college is admirable. But it's not enough. In the last two presidential elections the NEA supported President Obama because he said the right things. That's not enough any more. I want more details. We still don't know if any of these candidates support the corporate privatization of public education. I could make an educated guess, but it would have been nice if my professional association asked more detailed questions, or provided us with the answers to more detailed questions.

The candidates need to earn our endorsement. We need details, not vague references. We need assurances, not campaign sites that don't even acknowledge the major issues facing today's public schools, public school teachers, and public school students.

NEA'S RESPONSE TO MY COMMENT

Replying to your message about NEA's presidential primary recommendation
from 2016presidential@nea.org

...Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts surrounding NEA’s recent primary recommendation of Hillary Clinton for president. I want to spend a few moments highlighting our process since February and, ultimately, our decision to move forward with the Clinton recommendation.
NEA members and leaders have engaged in our primary presidential recommendation process since last February, identifying and reaching out to nearly 25 candidates from both major political parties. Throughout this process, we asked for input from candidates and, equally important, did our best to highlight candidates’ positions on education issues for members like you. Throughout the last few months, we distributed a candidate comparison highlighting each candidate’s positions, hosted a tele-town hall with members to discuss the presidential field, and provided updated candidate positions via social media.

Just three candidates – Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders – met with me to discuss their positions on the issues. Afterward, I made it a priority to ensure all three taped interviews were distributed to NEA members and leaders throughout the country, which you can view right now.

These interviews remind all of us that each candidate is a dear friend of strong public schools and the students and children we work with, and Hillary Clinton’s proven track record, coupled with her comments throughout the recommendation process, is why I brought a recommendation for Secretary Clinton to the NEA PAC Council and Board of Directors for their consideration. Their discussions were thoughtful and robust, and our Board was able to spend time with Secretary Clinton on Saturday to discuss our issues.

Throughout this process, I am proud that NEA’s members and its leaders have had the opportunity to speak on this recommendation, and today I believe there is too much at stake to remain on the sidelines. Please continue to share your views, and go to Strong Public Schools for updates.

Only together can we work to ensure the next president ensures every child has a quality public education regardless of zip code.

Gracias,
Lily

*******************************************************************
Only the individual sender is responsible for the content of the
message, and the message does not necessarily reflect the position
or policy of the National Education Association or its affiliates.

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade...“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

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Finally, I Rant about NEA's Endorsement of Hillary

Ok...so it took a while and everyone else has probably already said everything there is to say about the NEA supporting Hillary for President in the primaries, but I was looking around at blogs and I read one that triggered a rant.

The stimulus that finally got me going was a guest blogger on Lily's blog who was Proud to Be an Educator for Hillary.

I have nothing against the teacher who wrote the blog and I did follow her link to Hillary's Education platform on NEA's server which said all the right things...well not all of the right things, but some of the right things. Missing, however, was detail about how those things would be accomplished and what they would be replaced with...for example,

Hillary Clinton supports reducing the role of standardized tests in public education, and she supports NEA's push to create an opportunity dashboard, understanding the multiple measures that we must address and monitor to truly close the opportunity achievement gaps between students. She has committed to fighting to provide equal opportunity to have access to arts education, school nurses, librarians, and counselors, and funding so all students can succeed, regardless of their ZIP code.

Sounds great, right? Reducing the role of testing is something I would like to see, but what about teachers being evaluated by test scores, loss of due process, and loss of collective bargaining rights? What about the connection between poverty and low achievement?

Furthermore, how does her policy differ from that of Bernie Sanders? Martin O'Malley? Lawrence Lessig (did you even know he was running? Read Republic, Lost)? or other candidates?

Mrs. Clinton may indeed be the candidate we ought to support, however, I think we need to have more information before we endorse someone.

Here's what I wrote as a response to An Educator for Hillary (I've fixed a couple of typos, added a link, and made one sentence bold).

The NEA board has decided for the rest of us that there is no need to get any assurances that our endorsement for a candidate will bring support for public education other than some vague references to "every child and teacher will get support."

What is Hillary's stand on Charter schools and the massive amounts of corruption which privatization has brought to so many states and school districts? More accountability? What does accountability mean for charter schools? More tests? Publicly elected school boards? Open enrollment or will Charters still be allowed to skim the cream? Will charters still be allowed to hire "teachers" with no credentials?

What is Hillary's stand on the Common Core? We know Lily loves it, but that doesn't mean that it's not developmentally inappropriate. What about the cut scores manipulated by state houses and governors in order to "prove that public education is failing?" What about the overuse and misuse of standardized testing -- both Common Core related and otherwise?

What is Hillary's stand on vouchers? Will there be any attempt to do away with public tax money going to religious schools?

What about due process for K-12 teachers (aka tenure)? Collective bargaining? Where are the details to Hillary's education platform? What about test based evaluations? What about Teach for America?

Why didn't we get (or get to see) the details BEFORE we endorsed someone?

In 2008 we endorsed President Obama who "sincerely" told us that we didn't devote our lives to testing...we devoted our lives to teaching and teaching is what we ought to be allowed to do. That, and a "seat at the table" was enough for us...endorsement done. Look what we got...Arne Duncan -- who never set foot in a public school as either a student or a teacher -- and Race to the Top which doubled down on No Child Left Behind's labeling of low test takers as losers. Arne Duncan, who cheered when an entire school full of teachers in Rhode Island were fired because the school was "low achieving" (aka filled with high poverty students). Arne Duncan, who manipulated federal dollars meant for low income students so that it became a contest to see which states could raise the caps on Charters fast enough and evaluate teachers based on test scores.

A seat at the table? Haven't we learned anything?

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade...“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

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