What is the Young Teachers Collective? | Young Teachers Collective

What is the Young Teachers Collective? | Young Teachers Collective:

What is the Young Teachers Collective?

MARCH 19, 2015 / STEPHRRIVERA

As future and young teachers, we are constantly advised not to go into teaching. We are painted as apathetic and unaware of “what we’re getting ourselves into.” This idea completely ignores the fact that the next generation of teachers are the same students who experienced the faults of oppressive reforms. From No Child Left Behind (NCLB), to de facto segregation of schools, we know that education can and should be so much more. The Young Teachers Collective, a group of future and young teachers from across the country, are ready to make our voices heard.

GOALS

The current climate of the education system is not inviting. We constantly see poor reforms implemented by people the most distant from the classroom. We constantly hear “don’t go into teaching.” Regardless, we see the profession as something worth fighting for. In order to win this struggle, we understand the importance of coming together to support each other and lift each other up–even if it’s only through an online community. By creating this collective, we hope to:

• Create a space to educate each other and others
• Promote a common vision for the future of education
• Build a network to support each other to prevent\support each other during burn out
• Strengthen our presence in discussions about education
• Create a space to share\suggest resources to build consciousness as well as materials to use in the classroom

In order to do this we plan to engage in the following:

• Weekly blog posts by members of YTC discussing an issue of their choice
• Host monthly Twitter Chats. Our past chat includes improving teacher education.
• Host monthly Google Hangouts
• Host webinar workshops
• Host workshops and\or discussions on our campuses\in community when possible

IMPORTANCE OF YOUNG AND FUTURE TEACHERS’ VOICES

While many of us have been inspired by teacher-activists currently in the field, we have come to recognize the importance of creating our own collective voice. The voices of young and future teachers are largely ignored in the education movement. We are often dismissed because we are viewed as not having the experience to truly understand the issues facing public education. However, there is no doubt that our voices are valuable and even necessary in this struggle. We are in the unique position of simultaneously facing issues affecting both students and teachers. At the same time, this position presents different challenges that students and experienced teachers are not aware of. Young and future teachers are the only ones who can really speak to these challenges, which is why it is so important that we speak out and have our voices amplified.

What is the Young Teachers Collective? | Young Teachers Collective:

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

If you are a future or new teacher in the field looking to learn more about YTC, please contact us at: YoungTeachersCollective@gmail.com

What is the Young Teachers Collective? | Young Teachers Collective:

Gov. Cuomo Declares War On Special Education | Crooks and Liars

Gov. Cuomo Declares War On Special Education | Crooks and Liars:

Gov. Cuomo Declares War On Special Education

Credit: DonkeyHotey

 As a long-time special education teacher, I have been disheartened by Governor Cuomo. Back in January, he laid out his plans to reform public education which included an overhaul of how we are evaluated.

Evaluation is necessary, but to mandate 50% of test scores to our evaluations is unreasonable. This new standard is an attack on special education. Our students are enrolled in special education schools because of their severe disabilities and because of the mandates on their IEP’s (Individualized Education Plan, which is a legal document as mandated by the state).

Our city’s most vulnerable students are forced to participate in high stakes testing based on their grade, not abilities. These tests are developmentally inappropriate for our students and they result in much lower test scores. Lower test scores do not mean they have “bad” teachers. In fact, the teachers in my school are some of the most hardworking ones that I know. If Governor Cuomo is successful, and the 50% goes through, all special education teachers are in danger of having poor evaluations. What teacher is going to want to work in special education knowing that despite their hard work and dedication, they could be fired for it? Our special education students thrive on routine and with knowledgeable and adept teachers. If they don’t have these teachers, who will be there to educate and care for these students?

In Governor Cuomo’s speech he also made his love for charter schools quite clear. He showed his favoritism towards charters with no plan to help the funding-starved public schools. So why does Governor Cuomo love charters so much? In an article by Petr Svabin the Epoch Times, the donors behind Governor Cuomo’s reelection campaign were revealed, showing over $1.6 million in donations, from charter school proponents. Eva Moskowitz and her cohorts donated $682,367.

I know what it is like to be in co-location with Moskowitz. Her chain began in my building over eight years ago. She has gutted my special needs school without shame. Moskowitz’s school has become the “haves,” while my school, along with another general ed school in my building, became the “have nots.”

Over a year and a half ago, her plan, pushed through by Bloomberg and his cronies, would have shut down my school. If we had lost this space, federal, state, and local laws that were put in place to PROTECT these children would have been violated.

Mayor de Blasio has said many times that he would not permit her school to displace special needs students, which the media has mostly ignored. A press conference was organized by advocacy groups, teachers, students, parents, community leaders, and elected officials at my school. Coincidentally, Moskowitz planned her press conference for her lawsuits against the city that same day. Guess what got coverage?

She closed her schools last March to rally in Albany. Participants either did not know what they were fighting for or they did not care that over 100 students would be affected by her expansion. Governor Cuomo also made an appearance, and it was later revealed that he was instrumental in the planning of this event. Subsequent to this rally, he changed the law Gov. Cuomo Declares War On Special Education | Crooks and Liars:

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program | Campus Pride | The leading national organization for LGBT student leaders and campus groups

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program | Campus Pride | The leading national organization for LGBT student leaders and campus groups:

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program

THANK YOU! Campus Pride & GLSEN extend our appreciation to our presenting sponsor Toyota as well as the hundreds of LGBTQ and ally students who participated in the first-ever online college fair. A very special thanks also to the 50+ LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities. Please learn more about these campuses and other LGBTQ-friendly campuses online at CampusPrideIndex.org Check this page often for updates on the 2015-16 Campus Pride National LGBTQ-friendly College Fair Program to take place in Fall 2015 in eight to ten different cities across the country.
Bentley University Brooks Institute – The Visual Arts Cal Poly Pomona California State University, Chico Centennial College Columbia College Chicago Duke University Eastern Illinois University Eastern Michigan University Ferris State University Hanover College Illinois Wesleyan University Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis James Madison University Johns Hopkins University Knox College Metropolitan State University of Denver Nebraska Methodist College New Mexico State University Noodle North Dakota State University Northern Arizona University Oakland University Occidental College Ohio University Otterbein University	Point Foundation Roger Williams University Rutgers University Salem State University San Diego State University Southern Illinois University Edwardsville St. Cloud State University SUNY Purchase The American University of Paris The Ohio University The Ohio State University The University of Illinois at Chicago UMBC-University of Maryland Baltimore County University of Arizona University of California, Santa Cruz University of Houston University of Idaho University of Iowa University of Maine at Machias University of Miami University of Pennsylvania Virginia Commonwealth University Wabash College Wentworth Institute of Technology Western Michigan University Willamette University MBA as of 3/19/2015

Campus Pride National LGBTQ-Friendly College Fair Program | Campus Pride | The leading national organization for LGBT student leaders and campus groups: LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index Special Bulletin Upcoming LGBT & Ally College Admission Fairs Find your LGBT-Friendly campus by asking the questions YOU want to know... Learn More Become a Premier Campus If you have already completed the LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index, your campus may upgrade to a Premier Campus for FREE. Learn more.   Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Edwardsville, IL Region:  Midwest Type of Institution: Master's College/University, Public/State Institution Size:  14,000 In-State Tuition:  $8,865 Out-of-State Tuition:  $18,810 Knox College Galesburg, IL University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Westminster College Salt Lake City, UT University of Mary Washington Fredericksburg, VA Note: The Honor Roll recognizes the achievements of colleges and universities who score a LGBT-Friendly star rating of 3 stars or above. The campuses are selected randomly from the LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index for every new site visitor.   LGBT-Friendly Campus Pride Index

“Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29

“Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29:



“Doxxing”: A Primer

 I learned a new term today: doxxing (also spelled doxing). In short, doxxing involves the spreading of personally-identifiable information (documents, of “dox”) on the internet.

I noticed that some usage of the term presumes inappropriate “dropping” of personal “docs.” However, it seems that the perceived appropriateness of doxxing can sometimes be difficult to determine and seems to be tied to the motivations of the one “dropping the docs.” In his On the Media article dated March 10, 2014, producer Alex Goldman captures the complexity in determining such appropriateness (and, indeed, of defining doxxing):

The word “Dox,” for years an internet term of art for revealing personal information online, suddenly entered the popular lexicon last week when Newsweek published a story about a man named Satoshi Nakamoto who the author claims is the founder of Bitcoin. But I have to say that I think the term is not being very well applied in this case, and before we can decide whether the outing of Satoshi Nakamoto is, in fact, doxxing, we should have a better idea of what doxxing actually means. …

Back in the pre-world wide web universe, doxxing, or “dropping dox,” as it was known then, was basically a petty, retributive act meant to shame or embarrass rivals, and to establish supremacy as a hacker. A good example of the classic variety of doxxing occurred last week at Duke University. First, a student named Thomas Bagley outed a woman who goes to his school that he recognized as appearing in pornograpy to some of his friends (in itself a sort of analogue version of doxxing). Bagley, in turn, was doxxed by the CEO of a porn company for having a pretty healthy online pornography budget.

In the case of Newsweek’s article, however, it’s more complicated than doxxing as I define it. Generally, doxxing is perpetrated against private individuals without any relationship to newsworthiness or the public interest. The same can’t be said about the identity of Bitcoin’s creator. A guy who invented a crypto currency that has an (albeit miniscule) chance of destabalizing the online payments industry is certainly newsworthy. At the same time, the article ran with a picture of Nakamoto’s house and license plate, easily allowing reporters to discern its location, which, as a journalist, makes me pretty uncomfortable. The article’s impact is complicated by the fact that the man himself denies any relationship to Bitcoin, and Newsweek’s article, while building a pretty excellent circumstantial case that Nakamoto is Bitcoin’s founder, is conspicuously absent any smoking guns. …

So what are my conclusions? Well, I think that whether or not Newsweek’s Bitcoin article is actually doxxing kind of rests on whether the author was correct about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. In the larger context, I feel like it’s only doxxing when revealing a person’s information has no news value whatsoever. But what determines news value is, of course a gray area. In the end, I hate to get all Potter Stewart on you, but when it comes to doxxing, I know it when I see it. 

Thus, the motive of the writer as intending to serve the public interest via newsworthiness of publishing personal information is (for Goldman, and for me, as well) a key issue in determining what actually constitutes negatively-connoted “doxxing.”

Not all view the term doxxing as negative. But it’s complicated.

If one takes the term doxxing at its most general, it simply involves “dropping documents.” Yet the definition has nuances. Some refer to “doxxing” the as the publicizing of personal information not otherwise publicized. Yet others maintain that it is “doxxing” for one to even draw attention to publicly-available, personally-identifiable information.

To some, doxxing is always negative. To others, it is not. Again, I think motive plays an important role. If I assemble a dossier of publicly-available personal information on an individual and disseminate it as a means of revenge, I think most would agree that my actions would fit the term “doxxing” in a clear, negative sense. However, if I reference information available on a nonprofit tax form in order to establish that the “Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29:

Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update | Seattle Education

Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update | Seattle Education:

Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update

#PARCCWALKOUT for updates

From Fair Test with additions made in italics:

Testing Resistance & Reform News

As the peak of spring standardized exam season nears, parents, students, teachers, superintendents, school board members, and state officials are escalating campaigns to stop testing overuse and misuse.  Once again this week, testing resistance and reform stories come from more than half the 50 states demonstrating the breadth and depth of the national movement.

Arkansas Parents Frustrated by PARCC Test Confusion
http://www.arkansasmatters.com/story/d/story/parents-frustrated-by-parcc-testing-confusion/11575/TwwMjvP36kmAOz2wHN6sMA

California Suspends Use of Test Scores to Evaluate School Quality
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-test-scores-suspended-20150311-story.html
California Families Exercise Legal Right to Opt Their Children Out of Standardized Tests
http://www.kcra.com/news/more-california-parents-exercise-right-to-skip-standardzed-tests/31725478

Colorado Students Explain Protest Movements
http://co.chalkbeat.org/2015/03/09/rising-up-voices-from-colorados-student-protest-movement/#.VQAxMZNLUZw

Colorado State School Board Rejects High “Cut Scores” on Controversial New Test
http://blogs.denverpost.com/coloradoclassroom/2015/03/11/state-board-rejects-cut-scores-high-school-cmas-tests/4597/

Connecticut Teachers Propose State Testing Overhaul
http://wnpr.org/post/connecticut-education-association-asks-legislators-cut-back-standardized-tests
Connecticut Superintendents Offer Alternative Assessment Vision
http://ctmirror.org/2015/03/16/op-ed-connecticut-education-vision-lacks-clarity-coherence-superintendents-say/

Delaware Governor Planning Review of All State Testing
http://www.wdde.org/74173-governor-mulling-state-testing-review
Opt Outs Spread as Delaware Testing Begins
http://www.wboc.com/story/28397642/state-testing-starts-as-opt-out-debate-continues

Florida Testing Fails Every Testing resistance around the country, now a national movement: A state-by-state update | Seattle Education:

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child. | Reclaim Reform

Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child. | Reclaim Reform:

Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child.

Posted on March 19, 2015by Ken Previti

Pearson testing “monitors” your child electronically without your prior knowledge or consent. Pearson is foreign company collecting information (lucrative data mining) on American children without the knowledge or consent of the parent or child. It seems fair to call this “spying” as it accesses any social media your child may use. Here is Bob Braun’s full, updated account.

Pearson does NOT deny this, even in its own written release attempting damage control for the corporation itself.Yes it looks at your child’s social networking actives and reports it to each state’s government officials.

Pearson, on its own site, attracts new employees to specifically –

“By building a world-class education evidence base, we’ll push boundaries with ground-breaking research. We’ll embed what we know in our products and use data to improve them… Examples of what we do include: collecting data on learners’ digital activities.”

This seems like the right time to request a Department of Justice investigation into this behavior.

Until a full investigation by the Department of Justice is completed, any “no law was broken” PR statements are political hype or mere conjecture.

Here are two petitions for you to sign in defense of your child. MoveOn.org and Badass Teachers Association for a DOJ Investigation.

Since Pearson is a foreign corporation (UK and Hong Kong connections) with Would you surrender your child’s rights? Of course not. How you can defend your child. | Reclaim Reform:

Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms - Working In These Times

Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms - Working In These Times:

Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms

New York teachers and parents took to the streets last week in protest of an education budget they say furthers free market education reforms. (United Federation of Teachers / Instagram)  

Last week, New York City teachers took to the streets in massive numbers to protest New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo, who has made no secret of his disdain for public school teachers, fired another salvo at public education with his 2015-2016 budget, which includes lifting the city’s charter school cap, tying teachers’ pay and retention to students’ test performance, and putting low performing schools into the hands of outside operators. In response, thousands of teachers and parents protested across almost 200 city schools.

On March 12, teachers, parents, and students around New York City took part in the Protect Our Schools action. According to Chalkbeat New York, planning began back in January, when Cuomo spelled out his reforms. A proposed $1.1 billion in additional funding could be rescinded by Cuomo, who is asking the state legislature to approve his education reforms. If legislators do not approve the budget, the funding increase drops by almost two-thirds, to $377 million. The demands were issued after Cuomo released a report that argued 91 New York City schools and 178 schools statewide were “failing.”

Teachers say the standardized tests are not just as a threat to their profession but also to public education as a whole. The tests serve as a gateway to all of Cuomo’s other reforms, including the opening of more charter schools, as students’ test results will play a large part in determining their fate.

Some parents stated they feared the loss of a well-rounded education as teachers began to teach to the test to keep their jobs.

“There is too much focus and too much stress on testing,” Brooklyn Public School 200 PTA President Concetta Aloi told the New York Daily News. “All the parents think too much time is spent on preparing kids for tests instead of learning the curriculum.”

The organization Class Size Matters said, in helping plan the protests, they wanted to prevent the state from taking over their schools.

 “We don’t want the state to determine which schools and teachers are failing, which would enable more school closures and stake takeovers,” their protest flier stated.

Many see Cuomo’s education reforms as part of a larger plan to privatize public education, in which the opening of charter schools plays a key role. Some of Cuomo’s biggest donors are strong supporters of charter schools. And the governor has routinely sided with Eva Moskovitz, founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, in her battles with New York Thousands of New York City Teachers Protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Free Market Education Reforms - Working In These Times:

What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place? - Pacific Standard

What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place? - Pacific Standard:

What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place?

That’s the conclusion of a growing number of researchers who argue that 30 years of test scores have not measured a decline in public schools, but are rather a metric of the country’s child poverty and the broadening divide of income inequality.

It’s been just over 30 years since war was declared on America’s public schools. The opening salvo came with 1983’s A Nation at Risk, the Ronald Reagan-era Department of Education report that alleged that lax schools and ineffective teachers constituted a dire threat to national security.

Yet three decades later, and in spite the opening of a second front comprised of school vouchers, a 2.57-million student charter school network, and a classroom culture tied to test preparation, the nation’s education outcomes have barely budged, and rather than narrowing the education gap, the chasm between rich and poor appears only to be significantly widening.

But what if it turned out that education reform, with its teacher-blaming assumptions, got it all wrong in the first place? That’s the conclusion being drawn by a growing number of researchers who, armed with a mountain of fresh evidence, argue that 30 years of test scores have not measured a decline in America’s public schools, but are rather a metric of the country’s child poverty—the worst among developed nations—and the broadening divide of income inequality.

"The most striking takeaway, was that the students that need the least in this country, who are already coming in with every possible privilege and advantage, are getting the most resources."

It represented a fundamental misreading, claim the husband and wife research team of professors Gary Orfield and Patricia Gandara. The pair, who investigate education inequities for the University of California-Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project, say this represents a tragic distraction from addressing the real roots of educational inequality.

"The Reagan revolution basically said, 'No, we don’t have to worry about any of those things,'" Orfield explained to Capital & Main. "'[It said] it’s all the schools' fault, and inside the schools it's the teachers' fault and the teachers' organizations. And if we just beat up on them, we can eliminate all the gaps and so forth. And if they don't do it, we'll just privatize everything. ... And we don’t even have to measure that, because we know that's true.'"

One area of agreement for both sides in this battle is that quality education remains crucial to both achieving economic security and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. More education typically leads to better jobs and more pay—a fact that has become increasingly critical due to the loss of middle class-manufacturing jobs to globalization—and it directly correlates to better-life outcomes for children. Added to that are the considerable social costs of educational deficits, including an incarceration rate of one in every 10 young male high school dropouts landing in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates.

For California, the implications couldn’t be more profound. In sheer numbers, the state leads the nation in its share of students from low-income, predominantly immigrant families, and claims the largest percentage of English learners. It also consistently lags far behind comparable states in K-12 per-student spending—it was ranked 44th as recently as 2012-13, though that is expected to change, thanks to a boost in base funding from Proposition 30. The state is ranked 48th when it comes to adults with high school diplomas, beating out only Mississippi and Texas.

It is facts like these that recently led the Social Science Research Council to place California at the top of its educational inequality index in December’s Portrait of California: 2014-15 report. Using its own 10-point scale based on such factors as preschool enrollment and high school graduation rates, the report measured a dizzying eight-and-a-half point spread between Santa Clara County’s gilded Silicon Valley and the educational sub-basement of Los Angeles neighborhoods like Huntington Park City, Florence-Graham, and Walnut Park.

How that plays out on the ground is the day-to-day reality of the frontline What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place? - Pacific Standard: