A stand to save our schools
The recent Save Our Schools conference and march drew thousands as part of a movement for real education reform and against teacher-blaming.
August 2, 2011
LAST SATURDAY, I joined thousands of educators, parents, students and activists who gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Save Our Schools (SOS) march. Coming from all parts of the country, participants were united by outrage with federal education policy and local school budget cuts.
Brian Jones is a teacher, actor and activist in New York City. He is featured in the new film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, and his commentary and writing has appeared on MSNBC.com, the Huffington Post, GritTV and theInternational Socialist Review. Jones has also lent his voice to several audiobooks, including Howard Zinn's one-man playMarx in Soho, Wallace Shawn's Essaysand Noam Chomsky's Hopes and Prospects.
Homemade signs spoke clearly to the growing frustration with privatization, attacks on teachers' unions, and especially to the use of high-stakes standardized tests to measure student achievement and, increasingly, teacher effectiveness. "Spend $ on kids, not te$t$!" read one sign, and another "Education > testing". My personal favorite wasn't a placard or banner, but a mock graveyard arranged