Peg with Pen: Regaining our Humanity and Co-optation

Peg with Pen: Regaining our Humanity and Co-optation:

Regaining our Humanity and Co-optation

www.unitedoptout.com 

Right now across the country there are students, teachers, parents, and community members rising up in an act of civil disobedience, stating their proclamation to reclaim public education by refusing to be servants to the corporations and the federal mandates which attempt to destroy our schools, and ultimately our democracy.  We are refusing the tests.

As we rise up and feel our own power - our power to restore dignity to our teaching profession, our power to give children what they all deserve, our power to be truthful, good and kind to our school communities, and shed our skin of the horrible mandates which have attempted to pit all of us against one another, we should recognize our ability to change the world,  and indeed embrace it, and one another. We can regain our humanity; it takes immense, hard, back-breaking work, but we can do it, and we must harness that power and success, and feel it. It feels good to be human and no longer a serf fulfilling mandates that harm our country. When you regain that feeling, take stock - pause - and create a space in your memory to bring that feeling back - we must not forget what it feels like to truly be human in a country that is founded on democratic values.

However, as we see success surround us, that doesn't mean our work is done. Our work right now is based on a solid foundation of civil disobedience. Our ability to refuse tests gives us such immense power that we literally may take down the common core national tests this year.  But there are other forces at play right now that could attempt to stop us by co-opting the Opt Out Movement.

What is co-optation?

Movements can also decline, if their organizations are highly dependent on centralized authority or on charismatic leadership, through co-optation. Co-optation occurs when movement leaders come to associate with authorities or movement targets more than with the social movement constituents. For example, a leader could be asked to work for the organization that is the target of a movement with offers of being able to change things from the inside. Instead they themselves become integrated into the organization and take on its values, rather than the social movement’s values. Leaders could also be paid off by authorities or target groups who ask them to redirect their activities in exchange. See more here.

Co-optation is occurring right now in multiple ways. 

For example, ECS recently came out with an "opt out" document. The Education Commission of the States created this document to let folks know the legalities around opt out. This document is now being shared in tweets, on FB, as well as in articles by educational groups and individuals.  This document allows folks to jump on the Opt Out Bandwagon, while defeating the main reason we have been successful as a social movement. We are successful because we recognize opt out as an act of civil disobedience. When folks share this document, while ignoring the social movement constituents - we are looking at a co-optation. Why share this document when local grassroots Opt Out movements are going strong across the country -  why not share information from the local and nationalPeg with Pen: Regaining our Humanity and Co-optation:

President Obama Selma Speech 2015 on 50th 'Bloody Sunday' at Edmond Pettus Bridge #Selma50

President Obama Selma Speech 2015 on 50th 'Bloody Sunday' at Edmond Pettus Bridge, Alabama |FULL - YouTube:



President Obama Selma Speech 2015 on 50th 'Bloody Sunday' at Edmond Pettus Bridge

The President spoke on Saturday on the 50th anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday'



President Obama spoke before thousands on Saturday during a commemorative ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the events of “Bloody Sunday” when over 600 non-violent protesters were attacked by Alabama state troopers as they attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights.

It is a rare honor in this life to follow one of your heroes. And John Lewis is one of my heroes.

Now, I have to imagine that when a younger John Lewis woke up that morning fifty years ago and made his way to Brown Chapel, heroics were not on his mind. A day like this was not on his mind. Young folks with bedrolls and backpacks were milling about. Veterans of the movement trained newcomers in the tactics of non-violence; the right way to protect yourself when attacked. A doctor described what tear gas does to the body, while marchers scribbled down instructions for contacting their loved ones. The air was thick with doubt, anticipation, and fear. They comforted themselves with the final verse of the final hymn they sung:

No matter what may be the test, God will take care of you;

Lean, weary one, upon His breast, God will take care of you.

Then, his knapsack stocked with an apple, a toothbrush, a book on government – all you need for a night behind bars – John Lewis led them out of the church on a mission to change America.

President Bush and Mrs. Bush, Governor Bentley, Members of Congress, Mayor Evans, Reverend Strong, friends and fellow Americans:

There are places, and moments in America where this nation’s destiny has been decided. Many are sites of war – Concord and Lexington, Appomattox and Gettysburg. Others are sites that symbolize the daring of America’s character – Independence Hall and Seneca Falls, Kitty Hawk and Cape Canaveral.

Selma is such a place.

In one afternoon fifty years ago, so much of our turbulent history – the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war; the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow; the death of four little girls in Birmingham, and the dream of a Baptist preacher – met on this bridge.

It was not a clash of armies, but a clash of wills; a contest to determine the meaning of America.

And because of men and women like John Lewis, Joseph Lowery, Hosea Williams, Amelia Boynton, Diane Nash, Ralph Abernathy, C.T. Vivian, Andrew Young, Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. King, and so many more, the idea of a just America, a fair America, an inclusive America, a generous America – that idea ultimately triumphed.

As is true across the landscape of American history, we cannot examine this moment in isolation. The march on Selma was part of a broader campaign that spanned generations; the leaders that day part of a long line of heroes.

We gather here to celebrate them. We gather here to honor the courage of ordinary Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod; tear gas and the trampling hoof; men and women who despite the gush of blood and splintered bone would stay true to their North Star and keep marching toward justice.

They did as Scripture instructed: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” And in the days to come, they went back again and again. When the trumpet call sounded for more to join, the people came – black and white, young and old, Christian and Jew, waving the American flag and singing the same anthems full of faith and hope. A white newsman, Bill Plante, who covered the marches then and who is with us here today, quipped that the growing number of white people lowered the quality of the singing. To those who marched, though, those old gospel songs must have never sounded so sweet.

In time, their chorus would reach President Johnson. And he would send them protection, echoing their call for the nation and the world to hear:

“We shall overcome.”

What enormous faith these men and women had. Faith in God – but also faith in America.

The Americans who crossed this bridge were not physically imposing. But they gave courage to millions. They held no elected office. But they led a nation. They marched as Americans who had endured hundreds of years of brutal violence, and countless daily indignities – but they didn’t seek special treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century before.

What they did here will reverberate through the ages. Not because the change they won was preordained; not because their victory was complete; but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate.

As we commemorate their achievement, we are well-served to remember that at the time of the marches, many in power condemned rather than praised them. Back then, they were called Communists, half-breeds, outside agitators, sexual and moral degenerates, and worse – everything but the name their parents gave them. Their faith was questioned. Their lives were threatened. Their patriotism was challenged.

And yet, what could be more American than what happened in this place?

What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people – the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many – coming together to shape their country’s course?

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

That’s why Selma is not some outlier in the American experience. That’s why it’s not a museum or static monument to behold from a distance. It is instead the manifestation of a creed written into our founding documents:

“We the People…in order to form a more perfect union.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

These are not just words. They are a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny. For founders like Franklin and Jefferson, for leaders like Lincoln and FDR, the success of our experiment in self-government rested on engaging all our citizens in this work. That’s what we celebrate here in Selma. That’s what this movement was all about, one leg in our long journey toward freedom.

The American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge is the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew immigrants from across oceans and the Rio Grande; the same instinct that led women to reach for the ballot and workers to organize against an unjust status quo; the same instinct that led us to plant a flag at Iwo Jima and on the surface of the Moon.

It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what’s right and shake up the status quo.

That’s what makes us unique, and cements our reputation as a beacon of opportunity. Young people behind the Iron Curtain would see Selma and eventually tear down a wall. Young people in Soweto would hear Bobby Kennedy talk about ripples of hope and eventually banish the scourge of apartheid. Young people in Burma went to prison rather than submit to military rule. From the streets of Tunis to the Maidan in Ukraine, this generation of young people can draw strength from this place, where the powerless could change the world’s greatest superpower, and push their leaders to expand the boundaries of freedom.

They saw that idea made real in Selma, Alabama. They saw it made real in America.

Because of campaigns like this, a Voting Rights Act was passed. Political, economic, and social barriers came down, and the change these men and women wrought is visible here today in the presence of African-Americans who run boardrooms, who sit on the bench, who serve in elected office from small towns to big cities; from the Congressional Black Caucus to the Oval Office.

Because of what they did, the doors of opportunity swung open not just for African-Americans, but for every American. Women marched through those doors. Latinos marched through those doors. Asian-Americans, gay Americans, and Americans with disabilities came through those doors. Their endeavors gave the entire South the chance to rise again, not by reasserting the past, but by transcending the past.

What a glorious thing, Dr. King might say.

What a solemn debt we owe.

Which leads us to ask, just how might we repay that debt?

First and foremost, we have to recognize that one day’s commemoration, no matter how special, is not enough. If Selma taught us anything, it’s that our work is never done – the American experiment in self-government gives work and purpose to each generation.

Selma teaches us, too, that action requires that we shed our cynicism. For when it comes to the pursuit of justice, we can afford neither complacency nor despair.

Just this week, I was asked whether I thought the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report shows that, with respect to race, little has changed in this country. I understand the question, for the report’s narrative was woefully familiar. It evoked the kind of abuse and disregard for citizens that spawned the Civil Rights Movement. But I rejected the notion that nothing’s changed. What happened in Ferguson may not be unique, but it’s no longer endemic, or sanctioned by law and custom; and before the Civil Rights Movement, it most surely was.

We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, or that racial division is inherent to America. If you think nothing’s changed in the past fifty years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or L.A. of the Fifties. Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed. Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress – our progress – would be to rob us of our own agency; our responsibility to do what we can to make America better.

Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest that racism is banished, that the work that drew men and women to Selma is complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the “race card” for their own purposes. We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character – requires admitting as much.

“We are capable of bearing a great burden,” James Baldwin wrote, “once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.”

This is work for all Americans, and not just some. Not just whites. Not just blacks. If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel, as they did, the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize, as they did, that change depends on our actions, our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such effort, no matter how hard it may seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.

With such effort, we can make sure our criminal justice system serves all and not just some. Together, we can raise the level of mutual trust that policing is built on – the idea that police officers are members of the communities they risk their lives to protect, and citizens in Ferguson and New York and Cleveland just want the same thing young people here marched for – the protection of the law. Together, we can address unfair sentencing, and overcrowded prisons, and the stunted circumstances that rob too many boys of the chance to become men, and rob the nation of too many men who could be good dads, and workers, and neighbors.

With effort, we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans don’t accept a free ride for anyone, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity, and if we really mean it, if we’re willing to sacrifice for it, then we can make sure every child gets an education suitable to this new century, one that expands imaginations and lifts their sights and gives them skills. We can make sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage, and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on that ladder into the middle class.

And with effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge – and that is the right to vote. Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor.

How can that be? The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort. President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office. President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office. One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects. If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year.

Of course, our democracy is not the task of Congress alone, or the courts alone, or the President alone. If every new voter suppression law was struck down today, we’d still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples. Fifty years ago, registering to vote here in Selma and much of the South meant guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap. It meant risking your dignity, and sometimes, your life. What is our excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought? How do we so fully give away our power, our voice, in shaping America’s future?

Fellow marchers, so much has changed in fifty years. We’ve endured war, and fashioned peace. We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives, and take for granted convenience our parents might scarcely imagine. But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship, that willingness of a 26 year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five, to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.

That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America. That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.

For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction, because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.

We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea – pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, entrepreneurs and hucksters. That’s our spirit.

We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and then some; and we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That’s our character.

We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We are the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because they want their kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be.

We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.

We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent, and we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, Navajo code-talkers, and Japanese-Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied. We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, and the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.

We are storytellers, writers, poets, and artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told.

We are the inventors of gospel and jazz and the blues, bluegrass and country, hip-hop and rock and roll, our very own sounds with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom.

We are Jackie Robinson, enduring scorn and spiked cleats and pitches coming straight to his head, and stealing home in the World Series anyway.

We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of, who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.”

We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”

That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American as others. We respect the past, but we don’t pine for it. We don’t fear the future; we grab for it. America is not some fragile thing; we are large, in the words of Whitman, containing multitudes. We are boisterous and diverse and full of energy, perpetually young in spirit. That’s why someone like John Lewis at the ripe age of 25 could lead a mighty march.

And that’s what the young people here today and listening all across the country must take away from this day. You are America. Unconstrained by habits and convention. Unencumbered by what is, and ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, and new ground to cover, and bridges to be crossed. And it is you, the young and fearless at heart, the most diverse and educated generation in our history, who the nation is waiting to follow.

Because Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person.

Because the single most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” We The People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. It is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.

Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished. But we are getting closer. Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding, our union is not yet perfect. But we are getting closer. Our job’s easier because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already got us over that bridge. When it feels the road’s too hard, when the torch we’ve been passed feels too heavy, we will remember these early travelers, and draw strength from their example, and hold firmly the words of the prophet Isaiah:

“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”

We honor those who walked so we could run. We must run so our children soar. And we will not grow weary. For we believe in the power of an awesome God, and we believe in this country’s sacred promise.

May He bless those warriors of justice no longer with us, and bless the United States of America.

Miami Charter School Hailed by Jeb Bush Ended in Ruin - NYTimes.com

Miami Charter School Hailed by Jeb Bush Ended in Ruin - NYTimes.com:

Miami Charter School Hailed by Jeb Bush Ended in Ruin

MIAMI — “That’s where the classrooms were,” said Katrina Wilson-Davis, pointing at the deserted building that housed the school where she was once principal. She climbed the chipped stairs that children used to race down at recess in their cherry-red school uniforms and walked past a street sign that still warns drivers of a 15-mile-an-hour speed limit on school days.

Those days are over. Now trash and fronds from the palm trees that students planted litter the grounds, and cafeteria tables are folded away in a dark doorway. Jeb Bush’s charter school is a ruin baking in the Miami sun.

Co-founded in 1996 by Mr. Bush with what he called in an email a “powerful sense of pride and joy,” Liberty City Charter School was the first school of its kind in Florida and a pioneer in a booming industry and national movement. It became an image-softening vehicle for Mr. Bush’s political comeback, though the school’s road was anything but smooth.

It served a poor, often overlooked black population, and struggled with landlord problems and deepening deficits without the resources and infrastructure of a public school system to rely on. And by the time it closed, in 2008, the school did not have Jeb Bush to count on, either.

“He was a private citizen then,” said Ms. Wilson-Davis, an admirer of Mr. Bush’s. “He was trying to make money then. He was no longer in office.”

But with Mr. Bush all but certain to be running for office again, this time for the White House, the school he once championed is again useful. As he tries to sell himself to the conservative Republicans wary of his support for the testing standards they consider emblematic of government overreach, he can speak with authority on charter schools, funded largely by taxpayers but run by private companies, as a free-market antidote to liberal teachers’ unions and low performance.

And his firsthand experience in the education of underprivileged urban grade-schoolers lends him credibility in a party that has suddenly seized upon the gap between the rich and poor as politically promising terrain. In his first speech as a likely presidential candidate in Detroit last month, Mr. Bush credited Liberty City Charter School with helping “change education in Florida”

But Mr. Bush’s uplifting story of achievement and reform avoided mentioning the school by name or its unhappy ending. For all his early and vital involvement during his 1998 campaign for governor, and for all the help he offered from afar in the governor’s office, Mr. Bush’s commitment to his school project was not as enduring as some students and teachers might have hoped.

Critics of charter schools note that Liberty City, named after the impoverished African-American neighborhood from which many of its students hailed, also set an unfortunate precedent for the short life span of schools whose survival is dependent on their financial as well as academic success. And while Ms. Wilson-Davis does not blame Mr. Bush for the school’s demise, members of her former faculty and student body wonder whether it ultimately did more for him than he did for it. What everyone agrees is that Mr. Bush moved on.

Jeb Bush in 1998, visiting the school that he co-founded. The school closed nearly a decade later after a rocky financial road. CreditJoe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

His involvement began after his narrow loss in the 1994 governor’s race, which he ran as a tough-on-crime and solid-on-social-issues conservative who clumsily asserted that he would do “probably nothing” for blacks if elected. With defeat still fresh, he called T. Willard Fair, a president of the Urban League of Greater Miami, with a question: Would he accept leftover Miami Charter School Hailed by Jeb Bush Ended in Ruin - NYTimes.com:

Time to change New York's failing schools narrative

Time to change New York's failing schools narrative:



Editorial: Change N.Y.'s 'failing schools' narrative

The debate over the state education budget is still being driven by the false notion that New York's schools are "failing." It's time for critics of the state's reforms to cast a new narrative.

Credit the state Board of Regents led by Chancellor Merryl Tisch, former Education Commissioner John King and Gov. Andrew "Break the Monopoly" Cuomo for holding tight to a "failing schools" narrative. They've kept their critics on the defensive and warded off substantive discussions about the true state of almost 700 diverse school districts.

Oddly enough, if Cuomo gets what he seems to want most, a really bad teacher evaluation system, the results could eventually blow up in his face.

Many agendas

How is the budget debate shaping up? On Wednesday, thousands of charter-school advocates gathered in Albany to support Cuomo's contention that public schools stink and that privately run, tax-funded charters are the alternative. One charter school chain closed schools so that everyone could participate, sending a strange message about prioritizing politics over schooling.

NYSUT, the state's powerful teachers union, has been holding rallies in Albany and elsewhere to fight Cuomo's agenda and demand more equitable funding for education. NYSUT has been slow to release its own vision of a fair, meaningful teacher evaluation system, missing a prime opportunity to influence lawmakers who are trying to decide what to do with Cuomo's plans.

A consortium of big education groups representing school boards, superintendents and others recently called for reforms to the state's property-tax levy cap. This is a tall order when polls show public support for Cuomo's prize initiative – despite the governor's failure to deliver promised relief from state mandates that drive up local property taxes.

Other groups continue to rally against the Common Core standards and the related standardized tests. It will be interesting to see how many parents will stop their kids from taking the state's ELA and math tests next month. Last year, an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 students in New York did not take the tests for grades 3 to 8.

Opponents of the myriad issues that make up the state's "reform" agenda have so far been unable to present a compelling alternative to the now-familiar "failing schools" narrative. Such a narrative needs accuracy and nuance; the needs of urban, suburban and rural districts vary widely. And many of New York's schools are not failing. In fact, many are thriving and would do better if left alone by Albany.

Hazel Dukes of the NAACP of New York speaks during a March 4 United Federation of Teachers luncheon at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany, as about 1,000 public school teachers lobbied against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education proposals, which include tougher teacher evaluations and a teacher tenure overhaul. (Photo: AP Photo/Mike Groll)

A different vision

Such a narrative would have to focus on the effects of poverty on big-city schools and offer fresh perspectives on confronting this greatest of challenges, tapping approaches Time to change New York's failing schools narrative:

How I spent my Summer Vacation 1960: My Walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge #Selma50

How I spent my Summer Vacation 1960: My Walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge

In the summer of 1960 I was 12 years old. I got to spend two weeks with my maternal Grandfather outside of Birmingham Alabama. He lived on a farm, had cows and chickens, raise vegetables in his garden and we fished for sun perch in a pond, it was what every child should do in the summer. I had heard of civil rights but didn't really understand what all the hub bub was about. In my home town of Muskogee Oklahoma we had Jim Crow but none of the active Racial violence that you saw in the Deep South.

My Grandfather took me to Selma to visit relatives. The sun was shining brightly and my grandfather stopped his pickup on the far side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Me and my cousin wanted to throw rocks into the water below the bridge. The sidewalk concrete was hot and burned my bare feet. We walk on across and got back into the bed of my grandfather's red pickup. He stopped at a grocery store to buy us a soda pop (Grapette). As we left the store a elderly Black Gentleman was walking in the wrong side of the automatic doors, several white teenage boys jumped on the pad that opened the out door striking the old gentleman knocking him to the ground. They were laughing and calling him a dumb N-word. I was shocked! Later my cousin and I were exploring the neighborhood around my relative's home. We saw a young black kid, our age, walking in front of us, suddenly a white man sitting on the stoop of his front porch  got up, opened his front door and turn his German Sheperd  loose on the boy. I was afraid.

So when Bloody Sunday happened, I understood the Civil Rights Movement.  

CURMUDGUCATION: Believing in Charters

CURMUDGUCATION: Believing in Charters:

Believing in Charters

The charter talking point of the week was believing in charter schools and charter school students, and it suggests that at some point Franz Kafka and George Orwell had a love child who went into the PR biz.

Charter boosters are outraged-- outraged!!-- that anyone would criticize or question their success, because that must mean that those critics believe that poor African-American students are victims of their circumstances and these critics don't believe that such students can succeed. But charter schools do believe. They believe in all students. Now, here's a completion sentence. Can you finish it?

Because charter school operators believe that all students succeed, they work hard to serve_______.

If you said "all students," you lose, because most modern students are not devoted to serving all students at all. They will serve the chosen few, the students that they consider worthy of being saved.

They will brag about 100% college acceptance rates, when what they should be bragging about is their ability to winnow a group down to only those students they were sure they could prep for college.

"What are you saying," they will reply. "Are you saying that those students we got ready for college couldn't really succeed?"

Of course not. That group of students, however small, represents a real success. And if I were the parent of one of those students, that success would mean the world to me. It's like the old starfish story; any success is a Good Thing, particularly to the person who succeeds.

But there are two problems with this kind of charter success story.

One is that it is not replicable. All that these charter success stories prove is what every public CURMUDGUCATION: Believing in Charters:

Children can’t eat test scores. Why school reform isn’t good enough. - The Washington Post

Children can’t eat test scores. Why school reform isn’t good enough. - The Washington Post:

Children can’t eat test scores. Why school reform isn’t good enough.

No, it is not "all about the kids."

A language lesson in Middletown, Del. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark)

Education reformers are missing the point. To them, the only thing that matters is school quality and performance, and they’re right that those are crucial goals. But they are intermediate ones – means to a bigger end: Lifting up an entire community. Any school reform that doesn’t also help parents, local businesses, and other stakeholders is a reform that is destined to fail.

Children can’t live wholly in schools; they need strong communities to thrive. The United Nations Development Program’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published in the 2010 documents the “overlapping deprivations suffered by people at the same time.” The authors found that income, schools, health, and policing impact whether or not families’ needs will be met (to say nothing of housing, access to quality foods, employment, and other challenges faced by the American poor). Place matters because the range social determinants that influence life are concentrated in specific neighborhoods. For instance, the Orleans Parish Place Matters Team, along with the National Collaborative for Health Equity, found that life expectancy in the poorest zip code in New Orleans is 54.5 years; life expectancy in the zip code with the least poverty was a quarter century higher, at 80 years.

Terrible schools in specific zip codes aren’t what’s trapping students. (Zip code hasn’t stopped middle- and upper-class families from having educational choices.) So let’s be clear about what’s really keeping families from climbing the ladder – poverty. Socioeconomic status is a function of having access to healthy food, adequate housing, energy, employment, quality educational options, safety and health care. Our lives depend on participating in, and benefiting from, the collective institutions that govern our lives. Over the last 60 years of solid education research, income and wealth remain some of the strongest predictors of academic success.

The rhetoric has calmed, but education reformers haven’t come to grips with earlier claims that “truly effective teaching” can “overcome student indifference, parental disengagement and poverty.” They still say that a laser focus on school improvement will help the entire community. “It’s all about the kids,” they say, in a favorite catchphrase. Sonya DiCarlo, director of communications for the Alabama Opportunity Scholarship Fund (school voucher fund) recently used exactly that language in an op-ed defending her the state’s voucher policy. “If this really is ‘all about the kids,’ not the school, the parents, the teachers or the politicians, but the children — then the Alabama Accountability Act is handling that idea soundly,” she wrote.

Likewise, ed reformers love rhetoric suggesting that their opponents just want to keep control because they love power. (“How long are we going to deal with adult power issues,” lamented Joel Klein a few years ago.) This is an outright dismissal of people who are inextricably linked to children, and Children can’t eat test scores. Why school reform isn’t good enough. - The Washington Post:

Plenty of Room for Liberals in Oklahoma -- Step Up!

Plenty of Room for Liberals in Oklahoma -- Step Up!:



PLENTY OF ROOM FOR LIBERALS IN OKLAHOMA — STEP UP!

The Oklahoma State Capitol Building. Photo by Brett Dickerson

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Well, well. My native state of Oklahoma has been in the news a lot lately. It seems that people around the country find us entertaining at best, and at worst, dangerous.

We are both. 

In an earlier post last year I made the case that Oklahoma belongs to all of us, and not just the extremely rich, powerful few who seem to always be the ones pulling the strings with our governor and legislature lately.

But Oklahoma has plenty of room for liberals as well as moderateswho are called “liberals” by the Crazy Right.

Because well-funded think tanks and politicians have turned the word “liberal” into sort of a cuss word here, many people try to keep their liberal beliefs on the down low by saying things like, “I’m really conservative about a lot of things.”

So am I. So are most of us.

The issue is this: Do you believe that there is room for everyone in this state culturally and politically? If you do, you fit the Crazy Right’s definition of “liberal”.  It doesn’t matter if you like it or not.

So go with it.

I actually tell people that I’m liberal. Out loud. Right here in Oklahoma. Sometimes they look stunned. They don’t really know what to say.

You used to get that response if you openly said that you were gay. But, even most conservatives have a polite response to that one worked out by now.  But, liberal? Uhhhhhhh…Hey! Did you go to that last Thunder game?

The Crazy Right want to keep the state on lock-down because that’s what radical conservatism does anywhere. It’s focused on exclusion and exclusivity.

That’s why in Oklahoma the exclusive richest 1% are so often allies Plenty of Room for Liberals in Oklahoma -- Step Up!:

NEW: Beware the Roadbuilders (Garn Press) | the becoming radical

NEW: Beware the Roadbuilders (Garn Press) | the becoming radical:

NEW: BEWARE THE ROADBUILDERS (GARN PRESS)

Thomas, P.L. (2015). Beware the roadbuilders: Literature as resistance. New York: Garn Press.

Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance was born out of blogging as an act of social justice. Over a period of about two years, many posts built the case against market-based education reform and for a critical re-imagining of public education. This book presents a coordinated series of essays based on that work, using a wide range of written and visual texts to call for the universal public education we have failed to achieve. The central image and warning of the book—“beware the roadbuilders”—is drawn from Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. The book presents a compelling argument that billionaires, politicians, and self-professed education reformers are doing more harm than good—despite their public messages. The public and our students are being crushed beneath their reforms. In the wake of Ferguson and the growing list of sacrificed young black men—Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner—the essays in this book gain an even wider resonance, seeking to examine both the larger world of inequity as well as the continued failure of educational inequity. While each chapter stands as a separate reading, the book as a whole produces a cohesive theme and argument about the power of critical literacy to read and re-read the world, and to write and re-write the world (Paulo Freire).

Supporting that larger message are several key ideas and questions:

• What are the confrontational texts we should be inviting students to read, that anyone should read?
• Instead of reducing texts to the narrow expectations of New Criticism or “close reading,” how do we expand those texts into how they inform living in a free society and engaging in activism?
• How do traditional assumptions about what texts matter and what texts reveal support the status quo of power?
• And how can texts of all types assist in the ongoing pursuit of equity among free people?

NEW: Beware the Roadbuilders (Garn Press) | the becoming radical:

California Paraeducator Named 2015 NEA ESP of the Year - NEA Today

California Paraeducator Named 2015 NEA ESP of the Year - NEA Today:

California Paraeducator Named 2015 NEA ESP of the Year

BY SARA ROBERTSON AND JOHN ROSALES

Among her peers, Janet Eberhardt has long been known as a fighter for student causes, defender of human rights, and champion of all things ESP (education support professionals). In her 29 years with the San Francisco United School District, Eberhardt has worked with students, parents, community support agencies, and local businesses.

A decorated leader and activist with the California Teachers Association (CTA) and United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), Eberhardt reached another career milestone Friday night at the National Education Association (NEA) Education Support Professionals Conference in New Orleans when she was named the 2015 NEA ESP of the Year.

“I say one thing to my students every day,” said Eberhardt, a community relations specialist and elementary advisor at Monroe Elementary School in San Francisco. “And I say it to my fellow ESPs today: ‘go the extra mile.’”

In her brief remarks, she stressed the need to approach each student as a whole student who is unique.

“Each student is an individual and has different gifts,” said Eberhardt, who rides the bus more than two hours each day to and from work. “Please be bold, be strong, and help our kids to find their special gift.”

“Janet is an absolute dynamo,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, who presented Eberhardt with a trophy, bouquet of roses, and $10,000 check. The annual award is NEA’s highest for an ESP.

“She is a leader on ESP training and issues, and is also someone who helps nurture other leaders,” García added. “It’s impossible to measure the impact that she has had in her work, in her passion, and in her activism.”

More than 1,100 ESPs and other educators from across the country are participating in over 50 workshops, seminars and panel discussions being held through Sunday at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel. The conference theme is, “Organize, Educate and Lead: ESPs Meeting the Needs of the Whole Student.”

Among her many duties, Eberhardt supports classroom teachers by addressing emotional, behavioral, and other issues students may have that are interfering with their academic progress and how they interact with others. Essentially, she works one-on-one with students and their parents regarding conflict resolution.

NEA President Lily Eskelsen García with 2015 ESP of the Year Janet Eberhardt.

“First and foremost, Janet is a child advocate,” said CTA President Dean Vogel. “She is poised and powerful, always ready to take on new projects that will put students, parents, and community members in a better place.”

For example, for 25 years Eberhardt has worked on Reach Out, Touch a Life (RO/TAL), a mentorship program where she screens and recruits adults in the community to mentor students. More recently, Eberhardt created “I Believe in Me,” a program designed to help students build self-esteem and make positive choices regarding their personal lives. She also created Literacy Plus, a reading program that encourages students to visit the San Francisco Public Library.

“The goal is to unlock the love for reading,” Vogel said.

Eberhardt is such a believer in the value of education that she holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial and personnel management, and a master’s degree in counseling. She also earned teaching credentials in California and taught school for a year before returning to her present work.

“Janet was convinced of the greater good for students and families in her ESP role,” Vogel said.

As a union leader, she has planned, coordinated and delivered ethnic minority leadership training for regional members. She represented CTA as an NEA delegate to the Representative Assembly for 14 years, and UESF ESP members as a bargaining team member for 18 years. In 2006, she campaigned for ESPs to gain voting rights and be admitted as full CTA members, which they were after CTA changed its bylaws and 5,000 ESPs gained full membership.

“Janet has worked tirelessly to gain equity and fairness for ESPs,” Vogel said. “She not only finds a way to get the job done, she does it with class.”

The four-day conference is designed to help ESPs garner the skills they need to organize stronger locals, build internal and external relationships, and enhance their ability to influence student achievement. Pre-conference workshops were conducted on social justice, membership recruitment techniques, leadership development, communication skills, membership empowerment, and creating strategic alliances with other labor organizations. Some workshops were targeted for emerging and advanced Association leaders.

More than four out of 10 public school employees are school support staff. NEA categorizes ESPs into nine K-12 job groups, plus one for higher education. The first ESP of the Year award was presented in 1992.

Photos: Andrea Kane

California Paraeducator Named 2015 NEA ESP of the Year - NEA Today:

Education Support Professionals

2015 ESP of the Year Winner Announced
Congratulations to Janet Eberhardt, paraeducator with the San Francisco Unified School District in California, for being named the 2015 NEA ESP of the Year award winner! Eberhardt joins her predecessors as the 24th national ESP of the Year award winner.

Additional Resource: Press Release Announcement

ESPs Meeting the Needs of the Whole Student

ESPs Ensure Student SuccessEducation Support Professionals are the first and last school employees to see students in the school community. Through their various careers they touch the lives of students and ensure student success. Watch our featured video recorded at the 2014 NEA ESP Conference to hear how.

My View: A Look at the "Whole Child" Approach
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Utah School Employees Association (USEA) President Jerad Reay discuss why student success requires every resource available in a school community.

Paraeducators' Impact on Student Learning Keeps Growing
Read how ESP paraeducator Paulette Lyons directly impacts student success in her Functional Skills class at Century Elementary School in Bear River City, Utah.

ESP Lead Farm to School Program in Massachusetts
Read how ESPs in Haverhill Education Association used NEA ESP Quality Department's Farm to School grant to start a new program that allowed physically disabled high school students to take pride and ownership in the food they helped grow and later prepare. 

Bus Safety Orientation for Parents and Kindergarten Students The best way to ensure bus safety throughout a students school career is to make them feel safe and help them understand bus safety from day one. Read how the Lake Region Non-Teaching Association in Maine does just that.

NEA Foundation ESP Grants
The NEA Foundation offers news about grant resources geared toward ESPs. Visit the Foundation’s website for an overview about grants, FAQs, and an instructional video. On each page, in the top right corner, you’ll find buttons that link directly to the online application.

Education Support Professionals

The 47% Solution: Playing Musical Chairs With Our Children's Futures - Living in Dialogue

The 47% Solution: Playing Musical Chairs With Our Children's Futures - Living in Dialogue:



The 47% Solution: Playing Musical Chairs With Our Children's Futures 

 By Anthony Cody. 

We all remember the game of musical chairs. At a children’s party, the adults count the number of children, and put chairs in a circle, with one fewer chair than children. The children circle the chairs as the music plays, and when the music stops, everyone tries to get a seat. In each round, all but one child gets a seat. Each round yields a single loser, who must exit the game. The game ends when there is but a single chair, and one of the two surviving children succeeds in getting his butt in it first.

From the latest news, it looks like this is becoming the model for our children’s economic future, as jobs are whisked away, leaving young people as the losers. Diane Ravitch today shared news of a report from Oxford University economists that predicts that as many as 47% of current jobs in the US are at risk of being eliminated by technology. I first reported on this study back in June of last year. This figure may be subject to challenge, but one education philanthropist seems to be taking it seriously.

Bill Gates, in an interview a year ago at the American Enterprise Institute, said this:

Well, technology in general will make capital more attractive than labor over time. Software substitution, you know, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses… It’s progressing. And that’s going to force us to rethink how these tax structures work in order to maximize employment, you know, given that, you know, capitalism in general, over time, will create more inequality and technology, over time, will reduce demand for jobs particularly at the lower end of the skill set. And so, you know, we have to adjust, and these things are coming fast. Twenty years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower, and I don’t think people have that in their mental model.

So let’s adjust our mental models right now to the future that is being created for our students.

There will be far fewer jobs. There will be intense competition for the jobs that remain, leaving employers free to keep wages low. It should be noted that in our current economy, even highly educated workers are seeing their pay levels decline.

We are adding one twist to the game of musical chairs we are imagining as our children’s future, where a The 47% Solution: Playing Musical Chairs With Our Children's Futures - Living in Dialogue: