Don't Back Down!!

Parents Across America has published a 'toolkit' for combatting the negative (and false) information which will be forthcoming when the movie Won't Back Down is released.

Parents Across America is a network of active parents doing the hard work of change in our public schools. We know that our schools need help. Knowing what to do is the problem. Knowing what works in improving schools is even more important.

We know that most parents don’t want to close their schools or turn them into charters. They want to improve their local neighborhood public schools by stopping budget cuts, reducing class size, de-emphasizing high stakes testing, offering a well-rounded education and strengthening parent participation.

PAA has put together a Parent Toolkit to give you some background information on the fictional “Won’t Back Down”* movie and some suggestions on how to get organized and help your children and their schools succeed.

Go to the site at PAA’s Parent Online Toolkit for the WBD* movie and beyond for complete information...some highlights...

1- Learn the facts about the “Won’t Back Down” movie

2- Demand a stronger voice in school decision making
The Empowerment Parents Want: A Real, Effective Voice in our Children's Education

3 – Join with other parents!

4- Know what works –and what doesn’t work – in improving schools!

We don't have the money and visibility that the billionaires who financed and produced Won't Back Down have. We need to do everything we can to counteract the widespread misinformation this movie will produce. Parents Across America is a great source...

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Contact the Stars!

A few months ago, I wrote about the Parent Trigger movement and the upcoming movie, Won't Back Down.

Simply put, parent trigger laws allow 51% of parents of a given public school the right to close a "failing school" or replace it with a privately managed charter.

This is just another way of replacing public schools with corporate charters*. It seems to me that this sort of change would permanently eliminate any parent voice. Unlike elected school boards, corporations are beholden to their stockholders -- not to the parents of the children in their schools.

The real villain in the movie, however, is the teachers union,

No corporate reformer has yet been able to explain why, if unions are so bad, Massachusetts for example, where unions dominate public education, have successful schools based on the all important test scores and states that don't allow teachers unions like North Carolina and Texas rank so low in the test score contest.

In addition, take a look at the plan for reform published by the Chicago Teachers Union. It includes reduced class size, a full curriculum (including physical education and the arts), wraparound services which address poverty, age appropriate early childhood programs, well maintained facilities, increased support for teachers (and yes, it includes better pay) inclusion of parents in the education process, and full funding for education.

A country and city that can afford to take care of its affluent citizens can afford to take care of those on the other end of the income scale. There is no excuse for denying students the essential services they deserve.

This is the kind of education that "reformers" want for their children and it's being promoted by a teachers union! Will corporate charters provide this type of education?

Occupy Education Reform a grassroots movement against the "reformers" said,

Parent Trigger Bills are not about choice. They are about closing public schools and corporate profit. Don't be a puppet for their agenda!

We need to speak out against the propaganda from ALEC and the corporate "reformers".

Parents Across America is trying its best to start a grass roots movement to publicize how wrong the Parent Trigger option is. Read Time to tweet the stars!

We know that most of the performers, like the actors in the movie, don’t have a clue how they are being used to promote school privatization in the guise of parent empowerment, but this concert and WBD movie are going to put the issue front and center and we need to make sure that our voices are heard.

Here’s what you can do...

...reach out to everyone you can about this movie and concert. This movie is designed to be even more powerful than Waiting for Superman, and we need to counter it with every thing we have. How do you fight Hollywood? Make the movie controversial, not feel-good. Take it to the stars who mean well but need to open their eyes to what they are doing. Everyone needs to write to CBS, too.

Everyone wants to write to a star, right? A list of contact info for a few of those involved in the Teachers Rock concert follows (gleaned from posters on Diane Ravitch’s blog). The easiest thing to do is to facebook and tweet them, keeping on mind that they are not the enemy. Post your thoughts on their facebook pages, twitter feeds, use their e-mails, write to their publicist! This is the big one and we need all hands on board!

Go to the web site for information on how to contact the stars and those involved. A sample letter to Meryl Streep is included...contact the stars...do something!

*References to charters generally imply corporate, for-profit charter schools. Quotes from other writers reflect their opinions only. See It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Oppose Parent Trigger Propaganda

This is from Parents Across America. Click here for the full article.

Oppose parent trigger propaganda:

Tweet, Facebook, e-mail, call, write celebs, media, friends, family to protest phony "Teachers Rock" show and "Won't Back Down" movie

The propaganda campaign for the parent trigger law created by charter school operators and promoted by ALEC is in full swing.

The big kick-off event is a concert called "Teachers Rock." Like the "parent tricker" itself, this concert pretends to honor teachers while promoting a movie, "Won't Back Down," that is designed to get a lot of them fired and replaced by Teach for America newbies.

The concert will take place this Tuesday, Aug, 14th, at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. CBS will air a one-hour special using footage from the concert and the WBD movie, tributes to teachers from stars, etc. on Friday, Aug. 17th, at 8 pm EDT.

We know that most of the performers, like the actors in the movie, don't have a clue how they are being used to promote school privatization in the guise of parent empowerment, but this concert and WBD movie are going to put the issue front and center and we need to make sure that our voices are heard.

Here's what you can do:

We've written about the Won't Back Down movie in our newsletters before, but if you don't remember details, take a few moments to read PAA's review of the WBD movie trailer (which is all we have been able to see so far - we are requesting a screening) and fact sheet on the WBD movie.

Then reach out to everyone you can about this movie and concert. This movie is designed to be even more powerful than Waiting for Superman, and we need to counter it with every thing we have. How do you fight Hollywood? Make the movie controversial, not feel-good. Take it to the stars who mean well but need to open their eyes to what they are doing. Everyone needs to write to CBS, too.

Everyone wants to write to a star, right? A list of contact info for a few of those involved in the Teachers Rock concert follows (gleaned from posters on Diane Ravitch's blog here). The easiest thing to do is to facebook and tweet them, keeping on mind that they are not the enemy. Post your thoughts on their facebook pages, twitter feeds, use their e-mails, write to their publicist! This is the big one and we need all hands on board!

Here are a few message points:

The Won't Back Down movie and the 8/17 Teacher Rocks concert are propaganda for the parent trigger law created by charter school operators and promoted by ALEC.

Won''t Back Down is a "feel-bad" movie for parents and teachers who support public education.

The controversial WBD movie promotes charter takeovers of schools, yet charter schools are no better than our regular schools.

No real teacher was depicted in the filming of the WBD movie.

Parents won't be fooled by the "Parent Tricker" or the Won't Back Down movie.

Teachers Rock performers:

1. Dave Grohl: Manager-Gabby at 323-856-8222
2. Adam Levine: Receptionist will take message at 310-776-7640
3. Jack Black: email to sjackson_asst@WMEentertainment.com
4. Meryl Streep: publicist's voice mail at 212-277-7555
5. Viola Davis: email to ewolff@apanewyork.com
6. Morgan Freeman: email to stan@sra-pr.com stan@sra-pr.com

1. Dave Grohl - Foo Fighters - Agent: Don Muller - WME 1325 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, NY 10019 T.212.586.5100 F.212.246.3583
2. Adam Levine - Maroon 5 singer - Manger: Career Artist Management - 1100 Glendon Avenue, Suite 1100 | Los Angeles, CA 90024 | 310.776.7640 (p) | 310.776.7659 (f)
3. Jack Black - Agent: WME 1325 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, NY 10019 T.212.586.5100 F.212.246.3583
4. Meryl Streep - Publicist: Leslee Dart. Dart Group. 90 Park Avenue. 19th Floor. New York, NY 10016. Phone: 212-277-7555.
5. Viola Davis - Agent: Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) 45 West 45th St. 4th floor, New York, NY 10036 T. 212.687.0092 F. 212.245.5062
6. Morgan Freeman - Publicist: Stan Rosenfield and Associates, Inc., 2029 Century Park E., Suite 1190, Los Angeles, CA 90067, USA. Phone: (310) 286-7474, Fax: (310) 286-2255.
7. Josh Groban
8. Maggie Gyllenhaal (last, but not least)

2012 Medley #8

Public Education, Vouchers, Teach For America, Parents, Texas Protests, U. S. DOE, Privatization, Testing.

Why the U.S is Destroying its Education System

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Nation's largest urban school voucher program doesn't produce better results than public schools, reviews find

A longitudinal study on students enrolled in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) found little differences between voucher students and those attending Milwaukee Public Schools overall, according to an academic review released today.

Three recent reports of the MPCP, produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) at the University of Arkansas use largely sound methods, but the data they assemble provide little in the way of an endorsement for the 22-year-old school voucher program – the largest urban voucher program in the nation.

The Sham of Teach for America: Part One and Part Two

TFA is one of many insidious examples of how the language of social justice and equity is hijacked and appropriated, and instead employed to further the goals of the neoliberal education reform agenda. This agenda includes a firm belief that education should primarily serve the interests of private profit and as with all neoliberal education reformers, TFA is actively intensifying racial and class inequality, and the destruction of education as an essential public good along with the continued decimation of unions - two institutions that are primary determinants of a democratic society.

PAA to USDE: Listen to parents, change your policies

“Things are very bad in New York City, where we are closing schools rather than improving them. The city is obsessed with testing and parents are sick of it. This has not been an improvement over No Child Left Behind, but simply more of the same from this administration. Parents are not listened to or respected. We object to the Race to the Top program, competitive funding, and a budget that cuts money from key programs that work such as class size reduction. The law needs to be changed so that parents are really listened to.”

Education reform protests pick up steam

...in Texas, some 345 school districts — out of about 1,030 districts — have adopted a resolution that says that standardized tests are “strangling” public schools and asking the state Board of Education to rethink the testing regime. Those school districts represent more than 1.6 million students.

It was in Texas where the era of high-stakes testing was born. George W. Bush started a test-based accountability program when he was governor and then blew it out into a national education initiative known as No Child Left Behind during his presidency.

Thus it is somewhat ironic that this year Robert Scott, the Republican commissioner of education in Texas, caused a public stir when he told the Texas State Board of Education that the mentality that standardized testing is the “end-all, be-all” is a “perversion” of what a quality education should be. California Gov. Jerry Brown had said essentially the same thing last year. Scott also agreed to postpone by a year a requirement that the results of each end-of-course exam account for 15 percent of a student’s final grade in that course.

Duncan's ED: We Need to Double Down on Irrational and Unscientific Practices

An email from Monty Neill alerted me to the latest development by today's Corporate Stalinists at ED to judge teacher education programs on the basis value-added test scores of students who are taught by the graduates of these teacher ed programs. Got that? No, it's too late for April Fool's.

How to Privatize Public Education in 12 Easy Steps

1) Manufacture a crisis and instill public fear. Waiting for Superman.

2) Create a rallying cry for the need for ACTION to save citizens from some danger – which involves eliminating those posing a threat. In this case, public educators. Bring in your own “private” troops (Blackwater? No. Teach for America and people trained at new “innovative leadership centers”)

3) Create a system which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. High stakes testing policies which will doom schools and children to failure. A convenient way to “prove” the grounds for #’s 1 and 2.

4) Use of “savior” language – sound bite messages which co opt terms which average people identify as favorable such as “innovation,” “reform,” and “choice.”

More on the Privatization of America at Privatization Watch

Jack Hassard: The Testing Games put our Youth at Risk

Because of NCLB testing requirements, many school districts have had to divert resources away from teaching and learning and into their testing and assessment budget. There is also an enormous loss of instructional time. So many schools are caught up in teaching to the test, and many schools take weeks to prepare students for The Testing Games. Because we test in only a few areas, the curriculum is narrowed as teachers are forced to prepare their students in limited areas such as mathematics and reading.

Testing is out of control not only in the sense of administering tests. There are consequences to testing that include shipment costs, scoring services, reporting scores, and then implementing educational service to schools whose students didn't do well, and put the school at risk by not meeting AYP goals.

Pineapples, irresponsible authors, weapons of mass distraction

Talking pineapple question on state exam stumps ... everyone! Students, teachers, principals -- no one has any idea what the deal is

"It's hilarious on the face of it that anybody creating a test would use a passage of mine, because I'm an advocate of nonsense," Daniel Pinkwater, the renowned children's author and accidental exam writer, said in an interview. "I believe that things mean things, but they don't have assigned meanings."

Tweets of Interest

"They didn't invent accountability. We were accountable to our communities. Now we are accountable to disingenuous politicians & te$tmakers." - @johnkuhntx

"Puzzle: How did our nation get to be most powerful in world before NCLB and RTTT? Before ubiquity of standardized testing?" - @DianeRavitch


Food for Thought

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The Next Phase in the Destruction of America's Public Schools: The Government Report

The Council on Foreign Relations just released a report which calls the failure to adequately educate our children "puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk." In other words, America's public schools are failing and the future of our country is at risk.

The report, titled U.S. Education Reform and National Security claims that we must

Make structural changes to provide students with good choices. "Enhanced choice and competition, in an environment of equitable resource allocation, will fuel the innovation necessary to transform results."

"Choice and competition" -- that means that we need to increase the number of charter schools and vouchers for private schools.

The report task force, chaired by former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein and Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, also says we must

Implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security.

...which means that we need to increase testing.

Simply put, the report follows the corporate line spouted by Klein, Bloomberg, Gates, Broad and Duncan -- more money for charters, more money for privatization, and more testing.

It's not surprising that the report "found" just what the corporate interests wanted it to find (this reminds me of the National Reading Panel report. See HERE).

Unfortunately, the news media won't dig deeper into the report and will inform everyone that the public schools have failed which puts the nation in jeopardy. Coupled with the current, regular dose of teacher bashing, the average American will have little trouble concluding that American teachers and their unions are leading the United States on a path of self-destruction.

Fortunately, there are voices (some from the task force itself) who are stating that American schools are not failing, American students are not the worst in the world, test scores do not equal education, teachers are not to blame for everything, and the public schools are not going to doom this nation.

Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk’

Valerie Strauss takes a quick look at the report.

A new report being officially released today — by a Council of Foreign Relations task force chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice — seems to want very much to be seen as the new “A Nation at Risk,” the seminal 1983 report that warned that America’s future was threatened by a “rising tide of mediocrity” in the country’s public schools.

It’s a pale imitation.

The U.S. Education Reform and National Security report, to be sure, has some similar language and themes of a Nation at Risk. It says (over and over) that America’s national security is threatened because America’s public schools aren’t adequately preparing young people to “fill the ranks of the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and the armed forces” (or diplomats, spies and soldiers).

But it takes a very different view of the public education system than the authors of “A Nation at Risk,” who sought to find ways to improve public schools and treat the system as a civic institution. The new report seems to look at public schools as if they are the bad guys that need to be put out of business, with a new business taking over, funded with public dollars.

Best part of ‘schools-threaten-national-security’ report: The dissents

Again Valerie Strauss...in a later post she tells about the dissents to the report from members of the task force.

...there is no consensus among professional educators, academic scholars, or engaged citizens about the net impact of charter schools, vouchers, or other forms of privatization, because empirical evidence is mixed. The report leans heavily toward one side in this contested set of issues, however, thereby encouraging a policy course that could do more harm than good.

The report leans heavily towards the corporate line, ignoring the fact that most charter schools are no better than regular public schools, voucher plans have not helped to improve student learning, testing has not improved learning, teachers are not the cause of the economic mess we're in, teachers unions do not produce poorer schools, and on and on and on.

Dissents from the status quo Council on Foreign Relations report

Parents Across America reports on the dissents to the report as well...

While touting the privatization of schools in New Orleans, the report fails to note that many high-need students have been rejected from charters there, that school exclusion rates are extraordinarily high, and that the Southern Poverty Law Center had to sue on behalf of special education students who were unable to gain admission to public schools. Meanwhile, New Orleans remains the lowest-ranked district in the low-performing state of Louisiana. Similarly, the report neglects to mention the many studies that have failed to find positive outcomes of voucher systems when similar students are compared. Finally, the report ignores the fact that our highest-achieving states have all built high-quality systems without charters, vouchers, educational management companies, or other forms of privatization...

Ignoring the facts about American education

Finally, Stephen Krashen states the facts which the report ignored. The problem is poverty. Krashen reminds readers that evidence is necessary to prove a point and that the evidence does not show that America's public schools are failing.

Sent to the Seattle Times, March 20

The Rice-Klein task force (“Education woes linked to national security,” March 19) ignores the facts about American schools. There is no evidence that American schools are failing. Middle-class American students in well-funded schools score at the top of the world on international tests; our overall scores are unspectacular because we have the highest percentage of children living in poverty among all industrialized countries.

This means that the major problem in American education is not a lack of standards. The major problem is poverty, which means food deprivation, lack of health care, and little access to books. The most ambitious standards, the highest quality teaching and the fanciest technology will have little impact when students are hungry, ill, and have little to read.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

sources:
Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;
Coles, G. 2008/2009. Hunger, academic success, and the hard bigotry of indifference. Rethinking Schools 23 (2);
Rothstein, R. (2010). How to fix our schools. Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief #286. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/ib286;
Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership 55(4): 18-22;

Original article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017790002_apuseducationnationalsecurity.html

The attack on public schools continues -- this time the attackers claim that the public schools are a danger to the safety of the nation. Policy makers are looking for someone to blame for their inability to deal with the pervasive poverty and economic uncertainty under which so many people live (22% of all American children live in poverty, the highest among the world's developed nations). Public education, public school teachers, and the public sector in general are the targets.

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Looking Back

Here are a few of my favorite blog entries of 2011 from a few my favorite education bloggers (including two of my own). The most important one is the last one. If you missed it before, don't miss it this time. It's a must read for every American citizen who has an interest in public education (aka everyone).

••• From It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, October 19, 2011

I Think It's Called "Having A Chip On Your Shoulder"

Mrs. Mimi (now aka, Dr. Mimi) is the author of It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, a collection of her early blog posts. Mrs. Mimi is a teacher...a real one. She works with real live children in real live classrooms. You can tell.

I guess these days I just assume people are going to shit on teachers. I assume they are going to complain without pausing to recognize what is working. I assume they will be all critique and no constructive thought. I assume they're going to blame it all on the teacher.

••• From Parents Across America, December 31, 2011.

The worst and the best education events of 2011

The list from Parents Across America lists events from other sources, not their own blog.

Hundreds of millions of dollars from the Billionaire Boys Club of Gates, Broad, the Walton family, and the Koch brothers are funneled into creating and expanding numerous Astroturf organizations like Stand for Children, Students First, Teach Plus, 50Can, etc. all devoted towards spreading their tentacles into both political parties, to choke off democracy, demonize teachers, mandate more high-stakes testing, and privatize our public schools.

••• From An Urban Teacher's Education, December 31, 2011

Life Learnings: 2011

A teacher near Seattle, WA (formerly of New York City; Washington, DC; Renton, WA; and Knoxville, TN) writes about the challenges he faces daily in his classroom, as well as national issues. His reports on the SOS Conference in Washington DC from July were especially interesting. This excerpt is from his end of the year post. Click the link embedded below to read his "Day One" entry.

5) The importance of working together

In July (July 28, 2011) I went to the SOS Conference in Washington, DC. I met hundreds of amazing educators there, all rallying together to fight the stubbornness of corporate reform, and I learned the impact that people can have when they come together. My experience there in combination with what I've read over the past year about the Arab Spring and similar protests across the world has reminded me that for all the reasons so many have to complain about this world that we live in, I am happy to remember that it truly is the people who have the power, and that we really do have the government we deserve. Perhaps we might soon deserve something better...

••• From The Answer Sheet, December 12, 2011

A Superintendent Calls School Reformers’ Bluff

Every public school teacher in the United States should read and/or listen to John Kuhn. Thanks to Valerie Strauss and her valuable Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post.

By John Kuhn

Today some 22 percent of American children live in poverty. Are we going to pretend forever that it is acceptable to ignore the needs of children outside the schoolhouse and blame teachers and principals for everything that happens inside?

As soon as the data shows that the average black student has the same opportunity to live and learn and hope and dream in America as the average white student, and as soon as the data shows that the average poor kid drinks water just as clean and breathes air just as pure as the average rich kid, then educators like me will no longer cry foul when this society sends us children and says: Get them all over the same hurdle.

And so I as an educator now say to a nation exactly what it has said to me for years: No excuses! Just get results.

••• From Walt Gardners Reality Check, November 18, 2011

Teaching is no Longer Fun

For teachers who started their careers before the accountability movement gained traction, the transformation has been traumatic. No longer can they rely on their professional judgment in preparing lessons, nor are they likely to experience the satisfaction of having opened the eyes of their students to knowledge for its own sake. They now have to treat their lessons as part of an assembly line, where instruction is evaluated strictly on the basis of how much value it adds. The rationale is that the real world operates accordingly.

Reformers maintain that teaching and learning can't always be fun. They say that discipline is an indispensable part of the educational process. That is certainly true. But the way things are unfolding in classrooms across the country means that even if students perform adequately on standardized tests, we run the risk of forever turning them off to further learning in the same subjects. As I wrote before, you can teach a subject well but teach students to hate the subject in the process. When that happens, it's a Pyrrhic victory.

••• From Bridging Differences, October 27, 2011

There Are No Quick Fixes

The Bridging Differences Blog is written by Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch. I spent a lot of time this year quoting Dr. Ravitch (and did again at the end of this post), but one of the most important entries in their blog was this one from October by Deborah Meier. Make sure you take 10 minutes to watch the chalk talk by Daniel Pink.

By Deborah Meier

Why suddenly does the common-sense fact that teachers (and unions) fight for contracts that give them less onerous workloads, more job security, and more pay turn into a crime? Does Wall Street live by another code? (Educators and Wall Street'ers both need to watch Daniel Pink's chalk talk on motivation to consider his counter-intuitive findings—that rewards are counterproductive when it comes to honesty and doing good work.)

••• From Living In Dialogue, July 6, 2011

The Brooks/Ravitch Dialogue Expands

Anthony Cody is a powerful voice for public education. He was instrumental in organizing the SOS Conference in Washington DC last summer and has continued to speak out for public education in the United States. Here he comments about the single most important factor which the so-called corporate "reformers" refuse to discuss, the level of poverty afflicting our nation's children.

Witness the latest cheating scandal in Atlanta. We have leaders intent on proving that poverty is no obstacle to student success. After 24 years of teaching in Oakland, I can tell you that it is. Poverty and the social and environmental phenomena that are its companions: hunger, violence, PTSD, chemical pollution, lack of access high quality daycare in early years, lack of access to vision, dental and medical care, and lack of access to books. Addressing ANY of these would yield better results than the policies underway that attach ever higher stakes to standardized tests, and continually expand the variety and frequency of tests.

••• From Live Long and Prosper, March 4, 2011.

The Daily Show: Diane Ravitch - Teachers vs. Wall Street

Click HERE to see this entry. No one highlights the hypocrisy of the so-called "reformers" better than Jon Stewart of the Daily Show.

••• From Live Long and Prosper, December 11, 2011.

The Most Important Speech on Education in Years

This year, the OTL Summit featured Diane Ravitch as one of the keynote speakers. Dr. Ravitch's presentation was titled Whose children have been left behind? The Daily Kos calls it the "most important speech on education in years." I agree. It is important. The Daily Kos blogger (teacherken) wrote:

You can read the entire text here (pdf).
You should.
You should pass it on.

Ravitch wrote:

Surely the greatest nation in the world can mobilize the will to do what is right for the children. It won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, and it won’t be fast. Doing the right thing never is. The only simple part is to recognize that what we are doing now is not working and will never work. What we need is a vision of a good education for every child. We should start now. Today.

*Vote for me!

America's public school system is the foundation of our republic. We depend on our public schools to help our children grow into responsible and knowledgable citizens. The current administration and those of the recent past have shown that the two major parties have neither the desire nor the ability to run the nation's public school system. *Therefore, I hereby declare my intention to seek the office of President of the United States of America.

We need a President who attended public schools, who worked in public schools and whose children attended public schools -- ME!

**Campaign Platform

1. Standardized tests will no longer be used for grading schools, teachers, or school districts. Teachers may use standardized tests to help them guide their teaching if they choose, however, teacher observation, documentation of student work, and performance based assessments should be the primary tools for assessing student achievement in a classroom.

2. Charter schools and vouchers for private schools do nothing to improve public education. Charter schools don't perform any better than regular public schools and vouchers for private schools drain much needed funds from the public schools. Public schools are fundamental to our democracy. The corporatization and privatization of America's schools must stop.

Charter schools are not, by definition, harmful to public education, however, the current administration is expanding the Charter school system at the expense of public schools. Schools which need improvement will NOT be closed and replaced with Charters. Rather, help and resources will be provided to schools so that they may improve. A Presidential Advisory Board for the Improvement of Public Education will be formed for this purpose.

3. Closing schools, firing staffs, state takeovers of schools and conversion to charters are not reforms. Proven reforms such as pre-K programs, full-day Kindergarten, smaller classes, parent involvement, experienced teachers, a well-rounded curriculum and evaluation systems that go beyond test scores will be used to help schools improve.

4. Schools need to be fully funded. The public education system in America is too valuable to be abandoned. Schools need to be supported, not closed. All schools need fully funded libraries.

5. Parents should be involved in their children's schools. Parents need a voice in local, district, state and national levels. All Education Roundtables must include parents of public school students, public school teachers, as well as members of the community.

6. Schools which serve students living in poverty have lower achievement. Public schools serving middle and upper middle class families achieve at rates which lead the world. Therefore poverty must end. The effects of student poverty will be addressed with adequate prenatal care, adequate childhood health care, food and nutritional support, job programs, and public services including libraries. The United States must never again be the leader in childhood poverty.

7. From this day forth the Secretary of Education of the United States will be someone who has been successful as a teacher in an actual public school classroom.

8. All public school teachers, after a probationary period, will be guaranteed due process.

The following people will be nominated for the Presidential Advisory Board for the Improvement of Public Education (in alphabetical order).

• Anthony Cody
• Linda Darling-Hammond
• Alfie Kohn
• Jonathan Kozol
• Stephen Krashen
• John Kuhn
• Deborah Meier
• Diane Ravitch
• Valerie Strauss
• Jim Trelease
• Yong Zhao
• Public school teachers from preschool, primary, intermediate, middle school, and secondary levels.
• Parents of public school students.

Suggestions

My administration will welcome reasonable suggestions. If you have any ideas for platform planks please feel free to suggest them.

It's time to elect an administration led by someone who understands public education. It's time to end the corporatization and privatization of our nation's school system.

**I have borrowed (and expanded) some of my platform points from Parents Across America. 

*No, I'm not really running for president. It would be nice if we could get someone in office who could do all the things listed in the platform, above, but in order to do that we also would have to elect pro-public school candidates to local, state and national offices. A president can't do everything on his/her own, even if he/she wanted to. Please do not send campaign contributions. Support your local public schools, contribute to a local food bank, or support pro public education organizations instead.
(spoof)

More Hypocrisy

One of the basic tenets spouted by the corporate "reformers" and their politician friends is that bad teachers are ruining American public education. Newsweek has featured "bad teachers" on its cover. The movie Waiting for Superman blames bad teachers and the teachers unions for everything.

Where are all these bad teachers coming from? The answer to that seems to be that they come from greed. The conventional wisdom, at least in the Governor's mansions and state houses in places like Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, is that teachers are so greedy that they will spend years in the classroom simply to get their high wages and retirement pensions.

Arne Duncan has indicated that teaching experience doesn't matter and people like Michelle Rhee and Bill Gates seem to believe that the older you are, and the more teaching you have done, the less qualified you are to remain in the classroom.

How do the Duncan's, Rhee's and state politicians propose to find "good" teachers? The answer it's clear, is to recruit them for Teach for America.

That's just what's happening at the University of Washington.

Students in the Master's program at the University's College of Education, who must spend years getting training, experience in classrooms, and pedagogical background in education before they're allowed to teach, are now being told that they must compete for jobs with Teach for America candidates who are being given teaching credentials after just a few weeks of training.

In a must-read post titled Plan to host Teach for America at Univ. of Washington highlights hypocrisy of ed reform Parents Across America notes that,

Here they have been spending two years following the rigorous standards the dean ostensibly believes in, diligently studying the art and science of teaching, paying their own way for a $23,000 ($50,000 nonresident) masters degree at what they thought was a reputable teaching institution. They are spending hours of in-class time in actual public school classrooms getting invaluable experience, all in the hopes of applying for one of the rare teaching positions in the fall. Now they are being told that a stream of fresh grads will be brought in alongside them at U.W., given a special, condensed education, will do little to no student teaching, but will compete against them for the same jobs.

Furthermore, Bill Gates has offered to pay the $4000 fee for the TFAers.

It turns out that there is a connection between Teach for America and the University of Washington's new Dean of the College of Education, Tom Stritikus. Stritikus is a Teach for America alumnus and is making things easy for TFA to move into position in Seattle.

The Save Seattle Schools Community Blog reported on a series of communications between Dean Stritikus and TFA:

The day before [Stritikus'] appointment was even announced (August 18th), he contacted Wendy Kopp, the head of TFA. He asks her if she wants to build an on-line endorsement program for TFA with UW and to do press for him. She replies, “As you say, this is a terrific moment in the history of TFA and hopefully is a just a harbinger of all that’s to come in terms of the influence of alumni on teacher education.”

Further on in the e-mail, she says, “Let’s absolutely see what we can cook up in terms of ways of working together…”

Just one week later, he is tries to get together with TFA staff in Washington, D.C. He says, “I would love to be able to get a set of possible ideas for collaboration on the table and identify priorities.”

Also that week, he says, “I offered to help Janis in anyway she needed.” Janis is Janis Ortega, the TFA director for Puget Sound.

In an e-mail on Sep 13, 2010, again just weeks after he became Dean, Stritikus writes to a TFA official and says, “By that time (9/29-10/1), I will have talked to key faculty, developed a sketch plan for the master’s degree, and gotten a handle on the certification issues.”

Naturally the students at the College of Education are upset. They are spending thousands of dollars and years of their lives training for careers in education.

One student referred to the UW-TFA deal as a “slap in the face.” You can’t blame them for feeling betrayed by Stritikus and the university...

It must feel like running a 10-mile race, only to have the judges allow a group of new runners join in the last 100 yards and race you to the finish — on skateboards.

Is it really bad teachers? Can you make better teachers by replacing education students who spend years studying for their careers with recent graduates who get 5 weeks of training?

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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Parents Across America: National Group Launches

Parents Across America: National group launches to give parents a voice in the education debate

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Parent advocates from across the country converged on New York City on Monday, February 7 for the first national forum of Parents Across America, a parent-led movement to make parent voices heard in the national debate over education reform – and to promote positive, common-sense solutions that will improve public schools nationwide.

A Gallup poll released this week showed that the majority of Americans want major revisions to No Child Left Behind, the 2002 law that imposes rigid testing and accountability mandates on schools.

“Parents are a sleeping giant,” nationally known education commentator Diane Ravitch said at the event. “If the sleeping giant awakens, we can take back education.”

“Parents Across America is an opportunity to use our collective voices on a national level,” said founding member Karran Harper Royal, a New Orleans parent activist, “to inform the policies that drive the decision making in our each of our communities and nationwide. We will no longer allow our children to be subject to large-scale experimentation in the name of supposed ‘innovation,’ without our consent, when we know these policies have no backing in research or experience.”

At the forum, held at PS 89 in New York City’s Tribeca, Ravitch – author of the best-selling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” – warned in her keynote speech about the harm done by excessive reliance on standardized tests, privatization through charter school expansion, and the growing influence of wealthy private foundations on education policies. Those forces, Ravitch said, are undermining education and failing the children who are most in need.

“We need to do what works: early childhood education. Parenting workshops. Lower class size. For teachers, more professionalization, not less,” she told the 350 people who packed the school auditorium.

Founding members of Parents Across America (PAA) also spoke about the issues confronting their local schools, which reflect larger challenges nationwide.

Harper Royal, who works with New Orleans’ Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, described the turmoil created by charter schools, which will soon enroll nearly 85 percent of New Orleans students. “Children with disabilities and behavior issues are being pushed out of schools and are forced to attend the lowest performing schools in the city,” she said. “Under the guise of ‘choice,’ many children with disabilities have attended three or more schools in the five years since Katrina. This was not their parents’ ‘choice’.”

Seattle parent activist Sue Peters echoed Ravitch on the influence of private wealth and venture philanthropy on education policy. “As a parent, I am very disturbed to discover that private billionaires with foundations and agendas and zero expertise in education are largely determining national public education policy right now,” she said. “Why should Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more of a say in what goes on in my child’s classroom than I do?”

Chicago activist Julie Woestehoff of Parents United for Responsible Education spoke about the damaging impact of high-stakes testing on children. Haimson, founder of New York’s Class Size Matters, emphasized that corporate reformers are advocating for increases in class size, despite clear evidence from research and experience that smaller classes are key to improving opportunities for children.

“We should be looking at the model of Finland’s schools, a system based on cooperation rather than competition, trusting and respecting teachers rather than scapegoating them, de-emphasizing standardized testing and providing small classes,” Haimson said. “Which, sadly, is the opposite direction of the one in which our country is moving now.”

Other founding members of PAA at the event included parent activists Mark Mishler of Albany, N.Y.; Pamela Grundy of Charlotte, N.C.; Dora Taylor of Seattle; Sharon Higgins of Oakland, Calif; Caroline Grannan of San Francisco; Natalie Beyer of Durham, N.C.; and Andrea Mérida of Denver, who delivered the closing speech. Beyer and Mérida were elected to serve on their districts’ school boards.

The audience included Philadelphia parent activist Helen Gym and San Francisco PTA leader Shellie Wiener, as well as members of Rochester, N.Y.’s Community Education Task Force, and New Jersey’s Coalition for Effective Newark Public Schools.

PAA founding member Rita Solnet of Boca Raton, Fla., later summed up the group’s commitment. “Parents will no longer sit on the sidelines and accept the dismantling of their children’s public schools. Enough is enough!” she said. “These are our schools, and our children, and our voices must be heard.”

“We will persist in our mission to provide every child with a high-quality education.”

Read about Parents Across America on their web site.
Join Parents Across America on Facebook.
Follow Parents Across America on Twitter.

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