DECEMBER 9TH –THE DAY FOR A SINGLE SPARK
December 9th is a day for reclaiming public education through community vision and action
A Single Spark….ignites a fire of educational change. Because our children can’t wait.
One classroom at a time, one school at a time, we can alter the landscape of public education. By now, many of us are well versed in what is wrong with current education reform policies. We find national imposition of common core standards, infusion of corporate interests, and abuse of high stakes testing to be questionable practices that harm our children and our schools.
But what do we want?
As part of the National Day of Action(see www.otlcampaign.org/sites/default/files/Updated-List-of-Events.pdf for list of national event) United Opt Out invites local school communities all over the country to participate in The Single Spark campaign, an effort launched as part of the Dec. 9th National Day of Action and continuing into spring 2014 where UOO will be in Denver, CO working with local community advocates. A one-size-fits-all solution does not work! But we can begin with a shared vision or set of guidelines. We encourage parents, teachers, and community activists to bring these twelve ideas to their PTA, community organizations, or their elected officials and begin the work of reclaiming public education – now. Because our children cannot wait.
Twelve ideals we should demand – we should CREATE – for public education:
1) Revise how we fund public education. Serving children on the basis of whether they come from a rich or poor neighborhood based on taxes does not work. Neither does evading the difficult problems of poverty and segregation by closing schools and funneling money to charter schools outside of their communities. All communities should have full and equitable funding to provide the needed infrastructure to support all of its public schools. This includes additional support for community resources and wrap around services as determined by the needs of the community itself.
2) Size matters! Part of the funding issue (#1) includes having resources needed to maintain small class sizes for all grade levels, and additional staffing as needed.
3) Full staffing for all schools. All schools will be staffed with adequate numbers of highly qualified and unionized teachers (not TFA), teachers’ assistants, librarians, nurses, social workers, and other personnel deemed necessary by the community.
4) A fully inclusive range of creative subjects. Regular availability of art, music, PE, drama, dance, and other creative endeavors must be an integrated part of every school curricula.
5) The full funding for and inclusion of athletics, after-school programs, lunch, and recess. They are vital for the social, emotional, and physical development of children and must be built into their everyday routines. We must focus on building wrap-around programs and “in put” toward communities, health, recreation, and employment services and less on “out put” that is based on test scores.
6) Course content and teaching methods emphasizing a diverse range of perspectives, needs, and voices that embody the diverse fabric of our society. Such curricula include far more than the traditional narratives of dominant voices, but also includes stories, values, and perspectives of those who have historically been silenced or marginalized by the oppressive stream of history. Such content and methods not only encourage multiple learning styles that honor individual differences of each child but also engages students to be active citizens in a democratic society.
7) Demand that curriculum be selected based on the needs of the community. They must be shaped by children’s various and individual developmental, social, emotional, and intellectual needs. Let local and state entities decide on reasonable standards. We must demand that federal mandates about curricular decisions be eliminated. The goal is to meet children where they’re at and take them where they want to go.
8) Elimination of all high stakes standardized testing. Competition, punishment, and fear, driven by biased and unreliable tests reduce experience to over-simplified “right or wrong” factoids, and children to a number. Refuse to measure your child, or your child’s school by faulty numbers. Refuse to use tests as a way to eliminate great teachers who are faced with challenging classrooms. Refuse to punish children by forcing them into “test driven” instruction.
9) Include meaningful systems for assessment and evaluation such as portfolios and project-based learning. If we have smaller class sizes and meaningful instruction, teachers and schools will be able to create purposeful and useful assessments of the learning for EACH child. No one ever asks high priced private schools that do not use high stakes testing how THEY know what the children have learned. A model for evaluation used by $50,000- a- year- tuition private schools should be good enough for all our schools!
10) Elimination of corporate interests in “funding” their right to promote their agenda for public education. Our children cannot be bought and schools cannot be sold. Know any millionaires out there that want to donate to a new playground with no strings attached? Great. The rest of them must stay the hell out of policy including what and how we choose to teach our children.
11) Demand that your schools board be comprised of elected officials. And then be active in campaigning for them and know the election process for those people who SUPPORT your schools! Around the country, in larger cities, school boards are being bought by billionaires or handpicked through mayoral control and are populated by corporate CEO’s who have their own self-serving interests.
12) Be informed about the “choice” policies coming to your district! Vouchers and corporate-sponsored charter schools claim to provide “choice” to children, but the reality is that the monies going to these efforts are draining the resources that would otherwise go to building sustainable public schools. Many of these policies are aimed at eliminating a public school system in favor of a privatized one. If we make our public schools great, we won’t need vouchers and charters to replace them!
These ideas are not luxuries. They are necessities. If we continue to evade and deny our own children the fundamental rights to these opportunities, we will surely perish a divided, and intellectually, economically and emotionally impoverished people.