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Monday, March 9, 2015
Twisted Validity: Guilting Parents to “Opt” Kids to Test in Order to Save Teachers and School | deutsch29
Twisted Validity: Guilting Parents to “Opt” Kids to Test in Order to Save Teachers and School | deutsch29:
Twisted Validity: Guilting Parents to “Opt” Kids to Test in Order to Save Teachers and School
Test validity concerns how well a test measures what it is actually supposed to measure.
Twisted Validity: Guilting Parents to “Opt” Kids to Test in Order to Save Teachers and School
Test validity concerns how well a test measures what it is actually supposed to measure.
As such, student achievement tests should be confined to measuring student achievement– not for grading teachers and schools. It really is that simple.
Nevertheless.
The validity issue has been completely ignored with George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and with the Obama/Duncan NCLB waivers, and with both Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorizations currently in theHouse and Senate.
All of this works for those wielding the high-stakes-testing power wand and raking in financial rewards because of what I will term “the compartmentalized beauty for ed reform.” Here is how it works related to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) assessment appendage, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test:
1. PARCC assessment vendor, Pearson, can make a test and call it a student assessment based upon CCSS.
2. Federal or state legislation can mandate that the student assessment scores are to be used to measure individuals who d not complete the tests, such as teachers, or even entities, such as schools.
3. Pearson can offer individualized score reports; consolidated reports on schools, districts, states, or even the entire (dwindling) PARCC consortium. And since Pearson is not offering reports that directly pass judgment on non-testers (teachers, schools), then even though the company knows that its individualized student tests are to be used to pass high-stakes judgment on non-testers, it need not pay any attention to it.
4. Those wielding test driven reform (lawmakers, policy pushers) are not readily held responsible for violating test validity because if stupidity is written into the law, that somehow makes the violation non-existent.
5. Meanwhile, the actual test takers– the students– have undue pressure placed on them to carry both teacher careers and school destinies upon their young backs.
You see, in our little American education top-down “reform” hierarchy, as one goes down the chain and moves farther away from the non-classroomed– the legislators, policy opiners, and education profiteers– responsibility increases and power Twisted Validity: Guilting Parents to “Opt” Kids to Test in Order to Save Teachers and School | deutsch29:
Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.
Where Rahm Emanuel's 'head is at' on runoff strategy | #Chuy2015 #imwithchuy
Where Rahm Emanuel's 'head is at' on runoff strategy | Chicago:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is known for brute-force politics, but never before has he had to fight for his own political life.
Where Rahm Emanuel's 'head is at' on runoff strategy
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is known for brute-force politics, but never before has he had to fight for his own political life.
Now, facing a tough battle with challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia to stay in office, Emanuel is trying to smooth out his own rough edges while waging a four-week war with four goals:
• Build a stronger field operation to boost voter turnout, particularly among white-ethnic and African-American voters.
• Use surrogates to try to carve out for himself a healthy chunk of Garcia’s Hispanic base.
• Carefully exploit historic tensions between Hispanics and blacks.
• Portray Garcia as indecisive, inexperienced and incapable of leading a city that’s wavering on the financial brink.
“This is not four weeks of destruction or scorched-earth,” said an Emanuel strategist, who agreed to speak only on the condition of not being named. “We’re looking to make sure the differences between the candidates are stark. It’s a comparison that’s very favorable to us.
“Chuy Garcia has served in three different legislative bodies. The only remarkable thing about him is how unremarkable his record is.”
Paul Begala and James Carville, who served with Emanuel in the Clinton White House, both have given political advice to their close friend — advice they declined to talk about.
But Begala said the extraordinary mea culpa commercial that features Emanuel looking straight into the camera and saying, “I can rub people the wrong way or talk when I should listen,” is a “very strong reflection of where his head is at.
“It’s a very different race than the first time,” Begala said. “It’s a choice now — not a referendum [on Emanuel]. That’s an enormous strategic shift.”
Carville said he sees the runoff and what Emanuel needs to do this way:
“It’s a close race. It’s got to be a contrast: ‘This is my record. This is what I offer. This is what I propose to do. This is what my opponent proposes to do.’ The choice has to be framed. Chicagoans have to make a decision. That happens more often than not when an incumbent is running and people say, ‘I’ll just vote against the incumbent.’ ”
The Chicago Sun-Times interviewed five political strategists with ties to Emanuel to get a sense of the mayor’s game plan for the runoff. All agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, not wanting to alienate the notoriously controlling Emanuel.
All said they think Emanuel is in real danger of becoming a one-term mayor. But all also said that, if the following campaign strategy is executed well, he can win re-election:
BLACK VOTE: Four years ago, Emanuel got 58 percent of the African-American vote and captured every black ward on the strength of President Barack Obama’s tacit endorsement of his former White House chief of staff.
But in the Feb. 24 election, the mayor got just 42 percent of a much smaller pie. Millionaire businessman Willie Wilson got 25 percent of the black vote, thanks to residual anger from the Where Rahm Emanuel's 'head is at' on runoff strategy | Chicago:
JESUS "CHUY" GARCIA FOR MAYOR OF CHICAGO #CHUY2015
What Will It Take to Build a National Movement for Education Justice? | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign
What Will It Take to Build a National Movement for Education Justice? | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity:
What Will It Take to Build a National Movement for Education Justice?
Posted on: Wednesday March 4th, 2015
Mark Warren
Students, teachers and parents at a rally with
the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools in May 2014
Mark Warren
If you want the best explanation of the challenges facing our nation's public schools and what parents, students, teachers and policymakers must do to fix them, look no further than University of Massachusetts professor Mark Warren's latest article, "Transforming Public Education: The Need for an Educational Justice Movement."
Warren's paper, published in the New England Journal of Public Policy, is a valuable primer on how our schools and students are impacted by broader inequalities in our society and how the seeds of an emerging education justice movement can take root and flourish into a political force to be reckoned with.
As Warren outlines, the problems facing American public schools are deep and tied tightly to circumstances outside the classroom:
"Our educational system is profoundly marked by racial and class inequality tied to broader structures of poverty and racism. We live in a society in which half of all black and Latino children grow up in or near poverty, often in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty with high rates of violence and inadequate services. They attend under-resourced schools which fail them at high rates."
As long as low-income students of color remain at the "epicenter of injustice in our society," change will only result from a full-fledge movement to transform schools and communities. For Warren, this means getting beyond technical or organizational approaches like reworking curricula or introducing charter schools. Instead we must transform the role of schools so they can provide the kinds of supports and services to students and their families that build stronger communities and combat poverty.
Warren sees reason to hope (as do we here at the OTL Campaign!) in the kinds of student, parent and teacher organizing taking place already across the country. Groups like Padres y Jovenes Unidosin Denver have helped build a national movement to end harsh school discipline policies that has garnered the endorsement of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder. Those efforts can be scaled up and broadened:
Students, teachers and parents at a rally with
the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools in May 2014
"The seeds of a new educational justice movement have been growing. They can be found in the rise of community and youth organizing efforts, in the development of teacher activism, and in the recent creation of new alliances at local, state, and national levels that connect grassroots organizing to a broad range of stakeholders. Many of these activists and stakeholders have begun to offer a program for school transformation that connects to broader efforts to address poverty and racism."
By Warren's count, there are at least 500 community organizing groups across the country working on public education, many of which are participating in the Alliance to Reclaim Our What Will It Take to Build a National Movement for Education Justice? | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity:
Emanuel allies promise property tax hike, pension cuts in new term - #Chuy2015 #imwithchuy
Emanuel allies promise property tax hike, pension cuts in new term - Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago:
Chicago — Following is a statement from Jesus “Chuy” Garcia Campaign Manager Andrew Sharp in response to the press conference held by Rahm Emanuel’s City Council allies this morning:
Emanuel allies promise property tax hike, pension cuts in new term
Chicago — Following is a statement from Jesus “Chuy” Garcia Campaign Manager Andrew Sharp in response to the press conference held by Rahm Emanuel’s City Council allies this morning:
“The same aldermen who’ve pushed the Emanuel Administration’s policies that have driven our economy into a financial freefall today endorsed Rahm Emanuel’s budget priorities.
“Year after year, this team has deliberately chosen to underfund police and public safety budget items, while giving out corporate giveaways and rewarding large campaign contributors with over $100 million in tax breaks.
“The numbers put forth today by Emanuel’s allies would flunk any third grade math test. More numbers provided by the people who brought you the parking meter deal and five financial downgrades in the last four years have zero credibility.
“As Mayor, Emanuel’s slash-and-burn budget priorities have included shutting down half of the City's public mental health clinics and cutting hours and staff for public libraries that families depend on. His budgets have sold off public assets in privatization deals, cut funding for promised health care benefits for retirees, and have nickeled-and-dimed Chicagoans with revenue scams like red light and speed cameras.
"Chuy Garcia has been clear from day one on his budget priorities.
“As mayor, Chuy will invest in resources and services for Chicago's neighborhoods, like 1,000 new police officers to keep our communities safe. He’ll get our fiscal house in order by ending irresponsible practices like ‘scoop and toss’ bond schemes that have led to the downgrade of Chicago's credit rating. And he’ll ask the very wealthy and big corporations to pay their fair share, instead of balancing the books on the backs of working people and seniors.
“These attacks are designed to scare Chicagoans, and distract them from the fact that a majority of voters rejected his slash and burn approach to governance on Feb. 24. It won't work."
Contact: Monica Trevino, mtrevino2319@gmail.com
Contact: Vanessa Figueroa, vanessa@figueroastratcom.com
Arkansas Mom Exposes Common Core For The Nightmare It Is
Arkansas Mom Exposes Common Core For The Nightmare It Is:
Karen Lamoreaux addressed the Arkansas Board of Education in December 2013 to discuss the negative effects of Common Core on the local students. Mrs. Lamoreaux said that she represented more than 1,100 parents, educators, and taxpayers of Arkansas “who have very serious reservations about the Common Core initiative.” The mother of three children accused the board of falling for the same empty sales pitch that Common Core would be a “set of rigorous, college-ready internationally bench-marked standards that prepare our kids to compete in a global economy.”
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/arkansas-mom-exposes-common-core-nightmare/#5FUjcYYfczUs3yZc.99
Arkansas Mom Exposes Common Core For The Nightmare It Is
Are you smarter than a Common Core 4th grader?
Karen Lamoreaux addressed the Arkansas Board of Education in December 2013 to discuss the negative effects of Common Core on the local students. Mrs. Lamoreaux said that she represented more than 1,100 parents, educators, and taxpayers of Arkansas “who have very serious reservations about the Common Core initiative.” The mother of three children accused the board of falling for the same empty sales pitch that Common Core would be a “set of rigorous, college-ready internationally bench-marked standards that prepare our kids to compete in a global economy.”
Mrs. Lamoreaux instructed the members of the school board to participate in a Common Core math problem by getting their pencils out.
Are you smarter than a Common Core fourth grader? Let’s find out. The problem is: Mr. Yamato’s class has 18 students. If the class counts around by a number and ends with 90, what number did they count by?
After restating the math problem again, Mrs. Lamoreaux asked if anybody on the board knew the answer. One board member answered “five” by dividing 18 into 90. Mrs. Lamoreaux confirmed:
You know why? Because that’s what makes sense, right? That’s the way we were taught to do it in the fourth grade level.
Then she held up a Common Core math lesson that teaches students to solve this problem in a different way.
This, however, is what the Common Core Standards expect our fourth graders to do. If they solve it in those two steps they get it marked wrong. They are expected to draw 18 circles with 90 hashmarks solving this problem in exactly 108 steps. Board members, this is not rigorous. This is not college ready. This is not preparing our children to compete in a global economy.
Mrs. Lamoreaux went on to say that students who were in the upper eightieth percentile or greater in the previous year are now getting C’s, D’s, and F’s on their report cards. With passion in her
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/arkansas-mom-exposes-common-core-nightmare/#5FUjcYYfczUs3yZc.99
Is your third grader a failure? Of course not - But the Common Core Test will say they are. - Wait What?
Is your third grader a failure? Of course not - But the Common Core Test will say they are. - Wait What?:
Is your third grader a failure? Of course not – But the Common Core Test will say they are.
Parents – No matter the age of your child, please read this article:
Is your third grader a failure? Of course not – But the Common Core Test will say they are.
Parents – No matter the age of your child, please read this article:
It was U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who exclaimed that the goal of the “education reform” industry was to create a public education system in which we’d be able to look every second grader in the eye and tell them whether or not they were on track to get a college education or have a good career.
The comment is bizarre, incredible and more than a little scary considering it is not only inappropriate, but impossible, to know what will arise in the future of an eight year old.
But supporters of “education reform” actually brag that their Common Core standards and Common Core Testing Scheme will ensure that every child will college and career ready by the time they finish 12th grade.
Earlier today, Diane Ravitch posted an absolutely MUST READ piece about an analysis of the Common Core English Language Arts Test that is being given to third graders this spring in New York State.
The analysis was written by Kevin Glynn, an elementary teacher in Long Island, New York.
New York educator analyzed the third grade questions on the Common Core PARCC Test. Connecticut students will be using Common Core SBAC Test, a parallel version of the PARCC Test.
The New York teacher discovered that the language used in the 3rd Grade Common Core Test was, “far above the level they could understand.”
Glynn wrote,
“In English Language Arts tests, the grade level appropriateness of text used is a gray area. Some would argue that it is perfectly fine for third graders to be assessed using texts with readability levels of 5th and 6th graders. But even the champions of rigor must adhere to the golden rule of testing- the questions MUST be written on the grade level you are attempting to assess. It only makes sense. Students can’t answer questions that they do not understand. These tests are constructed for ALL students in a given grade level and therefore it is imperative that the questions are grade appropriate.”
He added,
“As a former test developer for Pearson, PARCC, CTB, and NYSED we wereIs your third grader a failure? Of course not - But the Common Core Test will say they are. - Wait What?:
"(Ya Got) Trouble" at Pearson | Alan Singer
"(Ya Got) Trouble" at Pearson | Alan Singer:
Inexcusable Irresponsibility - On Tuesday, March 2, 2015, the following memo was posted on the New York State Teacher Certification Examinationswebsite by Pearson Education:
"(Ya Got) Trouble" at Pearson
Inexcusable Irresponsibility - On Tuesday, March 2, 2015, the following memo was posted on the New York State Teacher Certification Examinationswebsite by Pearson Education:
"Important Announcement about Score Reporting for Redeveloped NYSTCE Content Specialty Tests: Reporting of scores for the redeveloped Content Specialty Tests (CSTs) listed below will be delayed until Spring 2015, while NYSED establishes a passing score for each test/subtest. Please check this website frequently. When passing scores have been established, the score reporting schedule will be updated." The new Content Specialty Tests for teachers designed, administered, and graded by Pearson were rolled out it September 2015. Students seeking teacher certification were originally told to expect results in "early 2015."
A notice was also posted on the NYSED.gov website. NYSED reported it is in the "process of establishing passing scores for each of the redeveloped Content Specialty Tests (CSTs) listed below. It is anticipated that scores for each test/subtest will be released in Spring 2015. When passing scores have been established, the score reporting schedule on the NYSTCE website will be updated."
In response to these postings, I received an email [names deleted] from the parent of one of the students who recently completed the Hofstra University teacher education program.
"As a teacher myself, I am utterly frustrated and angry at Pearson and Gov. Cuomo for the current attack on our profession. I know you have kept a watch on Pearson . . . Currently, I need some advice on how to handle this situation. I do not know whether to contact an attorney and bring a suit against Pearson because this time lag is unacceptable or contact our State Senators but since they are both Democrats, I do not think that will get my anywhere. I can only imagine the students who are waiting for this test and are unable to obtain employment/interviews because they are currently not certified . . . Pearson states that they are releasing the grades in Spring, 2015. Again, an unacceptable time lag."
On Diane Ravitch's Blog, Jane Arnold, a reading specialist with the State University of New York, reported that she "was one of the people asked to 'help' set the cut-off scores for the 5-9 multi-subject tests. We did the math and the ELA. First, these were to set the cut-offs for the 36 people who took the tests in September and who are still waiting for their results. Second, we were asked to take the tests ourselves, and many people said they couldn't imaging having to do this on a computer."
According to Arnold, "one of the questions was worded in such as way that there was no correct answer. Several of the evaluators felt "We're here so Pearson can say they "(Ya Got) Trouble" at Pearson | Alan Singer:
I want a fleet of Teslas not Tesla coils - Badass Teachers Association
Badass Teachers Association:
I want a fleet of Teslas not Tesla coils
Originally posted on http://commoncrud.kinja.com/i-want-a-fleet-of-teslas-not-tesla-coils-1534657909
I am a mother to three children. Two that I made, and a third that I creatively acquired. They range in age from 18 to 8. The eighteen year old is away at college and, for the most part, had the benefit of not having to deal with this Common Core crap. Now I look to the little guys, who are in elementary school, and I furrow my brow every time I consider their 'education'. They have been thrown into the middle of this convoluted nightmare and I've watched their enthusiasm and pride toward their school work dwindle away with each passing week. When I consider the changes I've seen in the last 6 months and apply it to the remaining 7 and 9 years, well, I shudder.
When I was in school, I had the benefit of teachers who were passionate about a variety of subjects. Mr. Waters, a war veteran, taught me about true patriotism and introduced me to a living, fascinating history. Ronnie Bush exposed me to Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbirdand translated Shakespeare so well, that I can read between the lines and 'get' the jokes. Mr. Miller introduced me to Nikola Tesla, the Serbian compelled to immigrate to America to fulfill his dream of being a modern inventor. To date, this is one of my favorite stories illustrating the beauty of America's tradition of emigration. I have these memories because of the passion expressed by my teachers. They cemented this knowledge by eliciting emotion.
Common Core squelches emotion at every turn.
What makes something memorable? In his book The Accidental Mind, the neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how emotions organize our memories:
'In our lives, we have a lot of experiences and many of these we will remember until we die. We have many mechanisms for determining which experiences are stored (where were you on 9/11?) and which are discarded (what did you have for dinner exactly 1 month ago?). Some memories will fade with time and some will be distorted byBadass Teachers Association:
The Better Way to Improve Education: Invest and Trust | Arthur Camins
The Better Way to Improve Education: Invest and Trust | Arthur Camins:
Current debate about education policy is dominated by several zombie ideas. One idea that should have been dead, but keeps coming back to life is the "government is the problem"-inspired commitment to public disinvestment. The other better left for idea is to distrust educators, but trust tests and markets to improve education. There is a better, third way to improve education: invest and trust.
The Better Way to Improve Education: Invest and Trust
Current debate about education policy is dominated by several zombie ideas. One idea that should have been dead, but keeps coming back to life is the "government is the problem"-inspired commitment to public disinvestment. The other better left for idea is to distrust educators, but trust tests and markets to improve education. There is a better, third way to improve education: invest and trust.
Some in congress appear determined to abandon any federal role in ensuring equity or quality in education by cutting funds, supporting portability of federal education funds to public or charter schools and underspecifying use of funds through block grants to states. Put into action, these policies will reinvigorate and perpetuate the ugly history of opposing equity under the guise of local control.
Others legislators remain enamored with destructive, evidence-free ideas: Test-driven accountability, competition between public and charter schools, and rewards and sanctions will force teachers and schools to "step up their game," and produce more equitable student performance.
The Better, Third Way
One feature of a better invest and trust improvement strategy is what education scholars Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves call investing in professional capital. That means investing in developing the professional capacity and expertise of the people who teach and operate schools. It also means investing in developing leaders who support success through vision and support, creating learning organizations rather than hierarchical monitoring and compliance regimes.
Another feature of the invest and trust option is to provide support to children and their families to optimize readiness to learn. It also means trusting and encouraging people to participate in the decisions that effect their lives.
Unlike old school, top-down strategies like firing the bottom 10 percent of employees, invest and trust is not a prescriptive recipe for improvement in education. Modern management research and practice indicate that invest and trust is what any successful organization does. Research indicates investment and trust move organizations beyond the status quo. It is a better way to improve than threatening, blaming or abandoning the people who must do the hard work of improvement.
Identifying value-driven goals and what needs to change are the starting points for a better way to improve education. Democracy, opportunity, and shared responsibility are core, if sometimes contested, and not yet realized, aspirational American values. We need a society in which there is not just more equal opportunity, but more lived equity. Schools can play a part to realize these values and goals, but not alone.
We need better democracy, not more external control.
Education can advance individual wellbeing, but it also has shared social benefits. That means that its purpose, structure and quality should be democratically decided. A market driven system in which unelected charter boards or private schools are vested with decision-making powers violates this core democratic value. Therefore, The Better Way to Improve Education: Invest and Trust | Arthur Camins:
Controversial: The War on Kids
The War on Kids:
THE PERILS OF THE HOME-TO-SCHOOL PIPELINE
By Cevin Soling
The high incarceration rate of students as result of minor offenses has been described as “epidemic,” but this focus obscures the underlying problem of compulsory schooling that gives rise to pervasive injustice. The school-to-prison pipeline can best be understood as a natural extension of civil rights violations that are endemic to public schooling. Schools operate in accordance with their design, which has less in common with democracy than with fascism, where all dissent is suppressed and loyalty is demanded. As a consequence, schools are virtual factories of human rights violations. In addition to unreasonably curtailing the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 13th and 14th amendments, they violate Articles 17, 18, 22, 25, 26, 38, 51, 52, 53 and 99 of the Third Geneva Convention, which govern discipline, labor demands, personal effects, general health and well-being, diet and exposure to humiliation. Conditions in school would be considered war crimes if children were deemed enemy combatants. Eliminating zero-tolerance policies and removing resource officers from school grounds will not change this fact.
These abuses go largely unnoticed because people implicitly recognize that the institution could not function without repressive authority, and there is a pernicious presumption, codified by the Supreme Court that the “educational mission” of schools supersedes civil rights. In a brazen display of duplicity, the ruling that gave rise to the catchphrase that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate” did just that. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Court set forth three exceedingly onerous hurdles for permissible student expression. Speech in school is only protected if it is “quiet and passive…not disruptive, and [does] not impinge upon the rights of others.” This ruling completely undermined any pretense of democratic values in schools.
Possibly the most egregious example of the Supreme Court’s disinclination to recognize that students possess even the most basic rights was displayed in Ingraham v. Wright(1977). This case involved a 14-year-old boy who was physically restrained by two adult males while the school principal hit him more than 20 times with a wooden paddle such that he required hospitalization. The beating was in response to Ingraham being “slow to respond to his teacher’s instructions.”
What is notable is not simply that corporal punishment was found to be constitutional —despite such actions being impermissible toward any other segment of the population including prisoners — but that the Court’s ruling deemed due process to be unnecessary prior to the instigation of violent reprisals against students. In the majority’s opinion, “[t]he administration of corporal punishment in public schools, whether or not excessively administered, does not come within the scope of Eighth Amendment protection.” This ruling still stands, and in 19 states more than 210,000 children are hit with impunity each year.
Cases like these should lead people to ask: what is the purpose of an education if not to learn how to exercise and defend civil liberties? What do children really learn in an environment that suppresses liberty, dismisses justice, and requires students to take orders in a docile manner? It is hardly surprising that prison has become a natural extension of the public school experience, although prisoners possess some non-trivial rights that students clearly do not.
Students’ constitutional rights must never be usurped in the name of education. We need to recognize that subjecting children to this kind of environment has grave consequences, and that schools may be to blame for general acquiescence to the erosion of civil liberties and the absence of meaningful outrage in response.
In the absence of promoting democratic citizenry or self-actualization, another purported benefit of schooling is economic. This deceitful promise lures the dispossessed into a snare. Not only does this lie succeed in blaming victims of poverty for their condition under the guise that their situation is a consequence of character defects where they lack the will to study, but schools, in fact, sustain inequality. Literacy is predominantly learned at home and schools impart very few skills that are useful in the work place. The impracticality of curricula matters less for students from privileged backgrounds just as the oppressive environment is easier for them to endure. The instillation of uniform skillsets creates an abundant supply of labor within a limited sector where the disadvantaged must compete. One does not go to school to learn, one goes to get a piece of paper called a degree because schools monopolize certification. This is one of the ways in which the underprivileged are trapped. They cannot get meaningful work without a degree, but schools do not provide marketable skills and instead alienate people from learning due to the oppressive environment.
The problem is not the school-to-prison pipeline—the problem is the home-to-school pipeline. Families need to abandon these soul crushing bureaucratic wastelands that destroy children’s passion to learn. The monies that fund schools should instead be invested in communities so that they can become empowered to support families and bring people together to educate their children in ways that do not rely on rigid institutions that deprive children of their liberty and dignity.
Cevin Soling directed The War on Kids, the first theatrically released documentary on education and authored The Student Resistance Handbook. He is a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and lectures on education issues and other subjects. Soling’s films have appeared on the BBC, HBO, Showtime, The Sundance Channel, MTV, The Learning Channel and other outlets. His media appearances include being a featured guest on The Colbert Report.The War on Kids: