RESOLUTION ON HIGH-STAKES TESTING | Dailycensored.com

RESOLUTION ON HIGH-STAKES TESTING | Dailycensored.com:

RESOLUTION ON HIGH-STAKES TESTING

by Danny Weil

RESOLUTION ON HIGH-STAKES TESTING

Written by Danny WeilEducationApr 30, 2012

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Please read and circulate!

 

http://timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution/

This resolution is modeled on the resolution passed by more than 360 Texas school boards as of April 23, 2012. It was written by Advancement Project; Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund; FairTest; Forum for Education and Democracy; MecklenburgACTS; Deborah Meier; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; National Education Association; New York Performance Standards Consortium; Tracy Novick; Parents Across America; Parents United for Responsible Education-Chicago; Diane Ravitch; Race to Nowhere; Time Out From Testing; and United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries. We encourage organizations and individuals to publicly endorse it (see below). Organizations should modify it as needed for their local circumstances while also endorsing this national version.

WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation’s social and economic well-being; and

 WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing 

 

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National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing

Selective Use of Data Avoids Real Issues in Improving Public Education for All Children | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

Selective Use of Data Avoids Real Issues in Improving Public Education for All Children | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights:

Selective Use of Data Avoids Real Issues in Improving Public Education for All Children

by Cheryl S. Williams

It seems the one thing we can all agree on when discussing how to improve public schooling for all our children is that we need data to guide our approach to personalizing teaching and learning in the classroom, so that we can ensure student success and support teacher effectiveness.  Yet we persist in ignoring data that points to root causes that hamper the most talented school leaders in their work with children.
At a recent meeting on Capitol Hill, researcher Sean Reardon from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) shared data showing the only developed country in the world with a larger percentage of children living in poverty than the United States is Mexico.  So the US is #2 in the developed world in children living in poverty (22 percent of our children live in poverty).  Dr. Reardon also
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Parents speaking out in May! PURE

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Parents speaking out in May!:

Parents speaking out in May!

by admin

Don’t forget to come out for the DePaul College of Education Forum this Wednesday, May 2. I’ll be speaking there along with several other parent leaders. You can catch PURE’s Wanda Hopkins on May 20th at another education forum.
Here’s the schedule, courtesy of Raise Your Hand:
May 2nd –DePaul College of Education, “Parents and Schools”, 5:30-7:30pm
Wendy Katten from RYH speaking with representatives from Blocks Together, COFI, Logan Square Neighborhood Association, and PURE.
Place: Lincoln Park Student Center, 2250 N. Sheffield,
Time: Tuesday May 2nd at 5:30pm-7:30pm
May 5th – Intuit Art Center- Teachers for Social Justice Event
Jill Wohl from RYH speaking. Other invited groups: KOCO, 19thWard Parents, Dyett Students, Whittier Parents, CTU and more.
Place: Intuit Art Center, 756 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Time: Saturday May 5th at 5pm-7pm
May 20th-Luther Memorial Church- “Critically Thinking About Chicago Public Schools”
Sonia Kwon from RYH on panel with PURE’s Wanda Hopkins and other parent and community groups. Discussion around current status, concerns and future of CPS.
Place: Luther Memorial, 2500 W. Wilson,
Time: Sunday May 20th at 5 pm
***
Sign up for the Raise Your Voice Lobby Day in Springfield on May 9th. We plan to take the 7am train from Union Station together but if you prefer to drive and meet us there, that is fine, too. More details will be sent out in the next couple of days on specific bills and we will have a training on May 7th to get you familiar with the process of going to Springfield. Feel free to contact us with questions.
Please email us if you want to attend by May 5th at wendy@ilraiseyourhand.org

May Day march for education

by admin

Parents, stand in solidarity with teachers!
From Teachers for Social Justice:
CHICAGO UNITES ON MAY DAY 2012
Together Labor and Immigrants Will March
Since 2006, May Day has been reclaimed in Chicago
Date: Tuesday, May 1st
March Assembly Noon in Union Park
Rally 3:30PM
Federal Plaza
Why Teachers Should Join the May Day March
Defend our Education & Democracy
Our union is under attack. We have to defend ourselves and it’s not only our contract.  Public education in a democratic society is now in question.
May Day is a perfect time to speak about the future of our public schools.
No to Austerity and Privatization
Marching and speaking up on May Day will help us and all the other public sector workers under the hammer of privatization and austerity cuts. We need our city libraries, mental health clinics and decent transportation. We see our services in the public sector being cut to the bone.
May Day March Builds Solidarity for the CTU
Preparing to strike also means building solidarity with other sectors of labor, students and parents. Our union fight back for a contract must be supported by the labor movement.
No to Rahm!  No to CPS Attacks on Public Education
For teachers and public school workers May Day will be a perfect time to build solidarity within our schools and unions. We must march to defend our jobs, schools and contracts. Our unity gives us strength if we are forced to strike.
Stop Deportations and Full Rights for Immigrants
For immigrant workers who brought May Day back to Chicago it is day to defend our families and call for justice not deportation. Children need their parents. We support families.

Viva la Revolution! State Teachers of the Year Advise ED about Teacher Policy | ED.gov Blog

Viva la Revolution! State Teachers of the Year Advise ED about Teacher Policy | ED.gov Blog:

Viva La Revolution! State Teachers of the Year Advise ED about Teacher Policy

by Laurie Calvert

At the end of a week of activities in Washington to honor the accomplishments of the state Teachers of the Year, those teachers engaged in a conversation about how to improve the teaching profession.
It began as ten small-group discussions about the new RESPECT Project to elevate the teaching profession. But it grew into a passionate plea by the teacher leaders for total transformation, as representatives from each of the small groups addressed the room at large. “Our key concern is making sure this project is moving along at a faster pace,” the first teacher reported to officials at the U.S. Department of Education.  “As a nation we need to elevate the status of the profession and change the culture of teaching.”

Teachers of the Year at ED. Official Department of Education photo by Leslie Johnson

As the two-hour session continued, teachers called on one another to lead the change of the profession.  “If we want to see radical change, we need radical reform,” said Alvin Davis, the State Teacher of the Year from Florida.
Alana Margeson (Maine) urged both the Department and teachers to put systems in place to implement changes, arguing that without practical solutions, the vision would go nowhere. “Any idea without legs will never walk you very far,” she urged.
When asked to describe how they lead their profession from the classroom, one by one, the teachers described their strategies and pressed one another to be agents of real transformation:

• “I teach because I want to change the script.” Elena Garcia-Velasco (Oregon)
• “Anything worthy of your passion is worthy of your preparation.” Tyronna Hooker (North Carolina)
• “I believe we can always do things better.” Mark Ray (Washington)
•  “The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution.” Chad Miller (Hawaii)

Because of their passion and courage, I left the meeting with these teachers with ideas about how to improve the RESPECT Project.  Mostly I felt encouraged about my profession and the future of teaching because of their inspiration.  Viva la revolution!
Laurie Calvert
Laurie Calvert is the Teacher Liaison at the U.S. Department of Education, an English teacher on loan temporarily from her school in Buncombe County, N.C

Education Radio: How high stakes testing warps self identity | Seattle Education

Education Radio: How high stakes testing warps self identity | Seattle Education:

Education Radio: How high stakes testing warps self identity

by seattleducation2011

…particularly with minority students.

On Education Radio now:

In this week’s program, we take a closer look at how high stakes testing is impacting what happens in classrooms, how teachers see students, how students see themselves, and the kinds of society we are building through how young people are being educated. The impact of high stakes tests is both broadly social and intimately personal. Socially, high stakes testing re-segregates our schools, marginalizes black and brown children, young people who live in poverty and children who do not learn in traditional ways. High stakes testing tells us who we will value, and who we will not value, and makes room for us to criminalize youth, especially black and brown youth, opening the path to the school to prison pipeline. It operates within and builds on white supremacy, and exploits long standing privileges and oppressions. And, as with any dominant discourse, high stakes testing enters our consciousness and begins to structure how we see ourselves, each other, and the kind of

Kenneth Cole. Is it the shoes? « Fred Klonsky

Kenneth Cole. Is it the shoes? « Fred Klonsky:

Kenneth Cole. Is it the shoes?

by Fred Klonsky

H/T NYC Educator
The picture of the billboard showed up on lots of Facebook and blog sites this weekend.
Kenneth Cole, shoe monger and brother-in-law of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, put up the billboards. They showed a picture of a woman in red with lots of cleavage and a message that teacher unions didn’t care about students. Odd juxtaposition of message and image.
Kenneth Cole doesn’t like unions.
In fact, Cole is complicit in the murder of union organizers in the third world countries where his shoes are made.

Aminul Islam, a head of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, disappeared from the country’s main textile center of Ashulia on Wednesday after receiving a call from a worker requesting assistance.

“His legs had severe torture marks including a hole made by a sharp object. All 

Schools Matter: Nashville's Mayor Dean Commits Almost 10% of 4-Year School Improvement Budget to One KIPP

Schools Matter: Nashville's Mayor Dean Commits Almost 10% of 4-Year School Improvement Budget to One KIPP:

Nashville's Mayor Dean Commits Almost 10% of 4-Year School Improvement Budget to One KIPP

by Jim Horn

In Nashville, as in many metropolitan areas, capital improvement funds are short and the need is large.  Nashville Metro has identified needed school improvements that amount to $185 million. Mayor Dean has committed $16 million, or almost 10 percent of Nashville Metro’s 4-year school capital improvement budget, for a new segregated KIPP, Inc. corporate charter school, even as the Fisher, Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations, along with other wealthy patrons, pour in hundreds of millions of dollars into this charter chain that has just over a hundred schools nationwide.  


Meanwhile, Nashville's public school teachers that serve the poor use garbage cans to collect water from leaky roofs and do their best in overcrowded and damaged classrooms.  At Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet, a high-performing 

Bi-partisan Failure: Misreading Education “Gaps” | Dailycensored.com

Bi-partisan Failure: Misreading Education “Gaps” | Dailycensored.com:

Bi-partisan Failure: Misreading Education “Gaps”

Written by Paul ThomasDaily Journal (Opinion), Education, PoliticsApr 30, 2012

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It took about twenty years, and then another secondary ten years, but the hysterical and misleading A Nation at Risk under the Reagan administration successfully kicked off three decades of public school accountability.

In the beginning, the hysteria revolved around several points that were factually inaccurate, but publicly effective: (1) U.S. public schools were failing, (2) U.S. students were weak, and possibly lazy, but their schools didn’t do much to challenge them, and (3) because of this cycle of lazy students in failing schools, U.S. international competitiveness was in dire straits.

These claims and the discourse grew from the White House and became recurrent and unquestioned talking points in the media, among the public, and by politicians. At first, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. public education built state-based standards and testing cycles that targeted primarily students (best typified by the exit exams designed to hold students accountable and insure the value of the high school diploma) and then 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

by Mike Klonsky

Gail Collins

Do you know how difficult it is to get anybody to read about “privatization of education?” It’s hell.  A pineapple, on the other hand, is something everybody likes. -- N.Y. Times

Diane Ravitch

New York got the pineapple story because NY is paying Pearson only $32 million for five years of tests. Texas is paying Pearson $500 million for five years of tests. That means that Texas gets the shiny, new questions–the ones that make sense-and NY gets the recycled remainders, the 

The Sorry Stafford Panderfest :: Frederick M. Hess

The Sorry Stafford Panderfest :: Frederick M. Hess:

The Sorry Stafford Panderfest

by Frederick M. Hess  •  Apr 30, 2012 at 8:31 am
Cross-posted from Education Week

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Hidy, all. I'm back. Had my head down, crashing away on the Cage-Busting book manuscript. We'll eventually see how that turned out. Meanwhile, I've been blown away by the quality of the guest-blogging, so a special thanks to Jonathan, Chapman, Robin, and Andrew.

Anyway, let's get back to it, shall we? I've been typically disheartened by the Obama-inspired, now-bipartisan panderfest that's broken out over Stafford loans. For those who've been otherwise occupied, here's a quick recap.

Five years ago, in a piece of cheap political theater, Democrats in Congress wrote an additional sweetener for federally subsidized Stafford loans into the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. Beyond offering college loans at a guaranteed rate of 6.8%, Congress temporarily dropped the undergraduate rate as low as 3.4%. The logic for the fixed 6.8% in the first place was that student advocates were bummed out that interest rates fluctuate and wanted the feds to offer certainty (with the understanding that taxpayers would do well when market rates were low, and that that would hopefully buffer the Treasury against times when market rates were higher). The Bush administration, which never worried about spending a couple billion more bucks, cheerfully went along for the ride.

Now, the temporary 3.4% is set to naturally expire, with undergraduate Stafford loans reverting to the standard 

Mad men « Fred Klonsky

Mad men « Fred Klonsky:

Mad men

by Fred Klonsky

There was a scene in Mad Men last night where Don Draper’s daughter, Sally is on the phone to her friend, the more-than-slightly-weird Glenn. Sally had just returned from a dinner where her father had received an award.
Sally had inadvertently walked in on a sordid scene involving the character Roger and her step-mother’s mother.
Asks Glenn, “How’s the city?”
“Dirty,” answers Sally.
Which brings me to the topic of Springfield.
I will be with sixty teachers from the area, retired and active, headed there Wednesday.
More on that in a second.
This morning folks are headed there for a Board of Trustees meeting of the Teacher Retirement System.
The Board will be meeting in secret executive session where some said they will express their disagreements