Keep this in mind in quest to reform Detroit's schools

Keep this in mind in quest to reform Detroit's schools:



Data is key in quest to transform Detroit's schools

The formation of the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren — a broad spectrum of community stakeholders, including leaders from the education, business, philanthropic and faith-based sectors — is an unprecedented opportunity for genuine reform in Detroit's public schools and a chance to improve the lives of thousands of young people.

As representatives of so many perspectives, coalition members will have varied ideas about what needs to be done, but we want to urge the coalition to follow the evidence.

The good news is that we have more data today than ever before to tell us what works in transforming education in high-poverty schools and neighborhoods.

The data show, for example, that the schools facing the greatest educational challenges require an infusion of human resources and capacity-building efforts so that evidence-based innovations addressing both academic and non-academic needs of students can be implemented. These are schools in which nearly all students need not only engaging instruction from skilled teachers, but also additional support to help them attend school regularly, stay focused in class and complete assignments.

DETROIT FREE PRESS

Detroit commission reaches consensus on school governance

Reform must address the needs and structures of the whole school and the whole child; a piecemeal or either/or approach will not work.

Research also tells us that many high-poverty schools have been struggling and unsuccessfully reforming for years. In good part, this is because both students and adults have to function under high stress and conditions of scarcity — a situation, which, recent findings have shown, clouds judgment. It also leads to a loss of hope. Thus the human, as well as the technical, aspects of school reform need to be attended to.

The students, families, teachers and adults at the center of it have to feel listened to and be shown a clear and supported path to improvement that is attainable. At the same time, in some cases, a fresh team of adults in the school will be required, not because they will necessarily be more skilled, but because they bring a can-do spirit instead of being bound by years of despair.

The data also tell us that by the end of sixth grade, it is possible to identify about half of the students who are falling off the path to graduation, and as many as 75% can be identified by the end of ninth grade. The good news here is that early-warning indicator systems — already in place in several Detroit schools and hundreds of others across the country — allow educators to intervene effectively and provide these students with the support they need to get back on the path to graduation. This approach especially works when a high percentage of students live in poverty and when schools are struggling to generate higher levels of student achievement and academic growth.

DETROIT FREE PRESS

School funding should help all poor kids, not just some

Finally, data and experience indicate that comprehensive school reform, including improved classroom instruction, enhanced student support, and effective early-warning indicator and intervention systems, works best when supported by a broad spectrum of community and educational leaders. They not only help sustain the reforms over time, track progress and make mid-course adjustments, but also provide students with tangible pathways from high school graduation to adult success via internships, job training and post-secondary schooling linked to the local labor market. This has been the case in school districts around the country.

The Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren has a real chance to break the Keep this in mind in quest to reform Detroit's schools:

How Jeb Bush’s school reforms really played out in Florida - The Washington Post

How Jeb Bush’s school reforms really played out in Florida - The Washington Post:

How Jeb Bush’s school reforms really played out in Florida

Jeb Bush talks a great deal about his record on education when he was governor of Florida from 1999-2007 and later as a private citizen through his Foundation for Excellence in Education. As governor, he introduced school reforms that have become common across the country — including high-stakes standardized testing for “accountability” purposes and school “choice” — and since then has been a leading voice in spreading his education gospel nationwide. His critics call him not a “reformer” but a “privatizer” of public education in part because of his attitude abouttraditional public schools — calling them “politicized, unionized monopolies” or “government-run monopolies run by unions” — while advocating for charter schools as well as voucher and voucher-like programs, which use public money to pay private school tuition for students.

How successful were Bush’s reforms in Florida? He, of course, says they were enormously successful. Others don’t. To understand what really happened, I had an e-mail conversation with professor Sherman Dorn of the University of South Florida, who has spent years researching and writing about public education in the Sunshine State. He maintains a blog about public education at www.shermandorn.com.

Here’s our conversation:

Q) Let’s start with the basics. When Jeb Bush became governor of Florida in 1999, how did he proceed in terms of school reform?

A) In his first term, most of Jeb Bush’s efforts in education came in three areas: test-based accountability, private-school vouchers, and support for improved reading instruction. In 1999, Bush signed legislation that required annual testing of all children in grades 3-10, tied test scores to annual “A” through “F” labels assigned to local public and charter schools, and required retention of children in third grade if they did not meet critical scores in the state reading test or provide other evidence of reading skill. In the same year, the Florida legislature created two voucher programs, one tied to the state labeling of local public schools and the other available to children with disabilities. Bush also created the Florida Center for Reading Research in 1999, which used both state and federal funding to support classroom teachers and reading coaches.

The real-estate boom in Florida at the time made it relatively easy for the state legislature to add funding in the form of bonuses for teachers in schools labeled A (or in schools with improved labels), and to support the hiring of hundreds of reading coaches in Florida’s elementary schools. Bush left office at the peak of the boom years and never had to face budget crises that are a regular part of state politics now.

Q) Bush frequently talks about how his test-based policies led to higher test scores. I’m not sure if he was referring to NAEP or to FCAT. What happened with the test scores and the achievement gap?

A) Most of the time that Bush or his policy advocates talk about Florida children’s achievement, they refer to NAEP. Attached are some relevant materials taken from the NAEP website, comparing reading and math scores between Florida’s students and the rest of the country for grades 4, 8, and 12 for the years where Florida scores can be separated out and where NAEP 

How Jeb Bush’s school reforms really played out in Florida - The Washington Post:

The important things standardized tests don’t measure - The Washington Post

The important things standardized tests don’t measure - The Washington Post:

The important things standardized tests don’t measure

In this photo taken Feb. 12, 2015, sixth-grade students  work through an exercise on their laptops during a practice session to prepare for the the Common Core State Standards Test at a school in Stockport, Ohio. (AP Photo/Ty Wright)

Marion Brady is a veteran educator who has long argued that public education needs a paradigm shift, though not the same one pushed by school reformers who champion the Common Core State Standards, school choice and vouchers. Brady says schools need a complete transformationl in what and how students learn. He has also been highly critical of standardized testing. Here’s his latest piece. You can see some of his earlier pieces here (Why Common Core isn’t the answer), here (One way to solve America’s major curriculum problem) and here  (‘The Procedure’ and how it is harming public education).

By Marion Brady

As my students were taking their seats, Myrna, sitting near my desk, said she’d just read a magazine article about secret societies in high school. What, she asked, did I know about them?

I knew nothing—had never even heard of them—but the matter was interesting enough to quickly engage my eleventh-grade English class, so I let the conversation continue. Someone suggested making it a research project and I told them to have at it.

The school library wasn’t much help, but somebody figured out how to contact the student editor of the school newspaper in a town mentioned in the article and wrote her a letter. She answered, other contacts were made, and kid-to-kid communication began. How did the societies get started? Who joined them? Why? How? Did they create problems? If so, what kind? Were the societies more than just temporary cliques? How were teachers and administrators reacting?

Answers generated more questions. My students thought, wrote, took sides, argued, learned. I mostly watched.

That happened in a class in a semi-rural high school in northeastern Ohio many decades ago. I’d be willing to bet that if any of the participants remember anything about the class, that research project would be it.

I wasn’t smart enough to realize it at the time, but I was seeing a demonstration of something extremely important, that real learning is natural and inherently satisfying. Myrna’s question kicked off genuine learning—self-propelled and successful not because the work was rigorous and the kids had grit, but because it was driven by curiosity, because The important things standardized tests don’t measure - The Washington Post:

With ESEA Reauthorization Underway, Coalition of Education Advocates Unveil Proposal to Expand High-Quality Early Education

RELEASE: With ESEA Reauthorization Underway, Coalition of Education Advocates Unveil Proposal to Expand High-Quality Early Education in Rewrite of Historic Education Law | Center for American Progress:

 With ESEA Reauthorization Underway, Coalition of Education Advocates Unveil Proposal to Expand High-Quality Early Education in Rewrite of Historic Education Law

Call and Tweet your House Rep and ask him/her to vote ‪#‎NOonHR5‬ http://bit.ly/17s6O1b

 Center for American Progress, American Federation of Teachers, Children’s Defense Fund, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Education Association, and National Center on Learning Disabilities unveil proposal to include new title for high-quality early education in ESEA

Washington, D.C. — As Congress moves forward with rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, a coalition of education advocates—including the Center for American Progress, the American Federation of Teachers, the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Education Association, and the National Center on Learning Disabilities—today unveiled a proposal for adding a new title to the law to expand preschool, invest in high-quality early childhood education, and make full-day kindergarten more widely available for families.

“Enacted as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has brought tremendous change to our schools and helped level the playing field for all students—no matter their parents’ income or ZIP code,” said Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress. “Decades of research have shown how important high-quality early education is for narrowing the school readiness gap and putting children on a pathway to a lifetime of learning and career success. The reauthorization of ESEA presents a rare opportunity for Congress to help our nation meet the goal of a high-quality education for all students.”

“Fifty years ago, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act improved opportunities for public school children in the United States—in particular, Title I leveled the playing field for poor students. Today, we have the chance to make ESEA better again by adding a new title that makes a significant commitment to early childhood education,” said American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, President Randi Weingarten. “The value of early childhood education is undeniable. It helps ensure kids, especially poor kids, have a strong start. And it yields a strong return on the investment: Every dollar we invest in early childhood programs saves us up to $8 in the future. This new title would ensure fewer poor children fall through the cracks by providing access to high-quality early childhood education, and it’s an investment our nation can’t afford not to make.”

“Principals who lead our nation’s elementary schools that serve more than 35 million children support an expansion of high-quality early childhood education to ensure that every child will have access to impactful learning opportunities as early as possible,” said National Association of Elementary School Principals, or NAESP, Executive Director Gail Connelly. “This vision is necessary to address all students’ developmental or social and emotional well-being, which goes hand-in-hand with academic success, especially during the foundational years of a child’s life from prekindergarten to the third grade. The proposal sets forth an appropriate and necessary plan for congressional leaders as part of a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”

“Expanding access to early childhood education is paramount to ensuring equal opportunity for all children regardless of the ZIP code in which they live,” said National Education Association, or NEA, President Lily Eskelsen García. “In fact, we fundamentally believe access to high-quality early education programs is an indicator of student and school success, which is why we are urging Congress to include as part of its ESEA reauthorization process high-quality learning opportunities for children from birth to age five. This would go a long way toward fulfilling America’s promise of equal opportunity for each student.”

“The National Center for Learning Disabilities, or NCLD, is pleased to support expanding preschool programs to include early screening for learning and attention issues, which affect one in five children across the nation. Yet, because these learning issues are not immediately visible, they often go unnoticed for years, making early screening an essential component of any early education program. By providing professionals with the tools and information they need to identify children who are struggling with early math and reading skills, we can set children on a path to success,” stated James H. Wendorf, Executive Director of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

The coalition’s proposed new title of ESEA would expand access to preschool for the nation’s poorest children, using a federal-state cost-sharing partnership as states ramp up their programs. The proposal would provide for coordination and collaboration between early childhood providers and schools, ensuring that providers and districts work with school RELEASE: With ESEA Reauthorization Underway, Coalition of Education Advocates Unveil Proposal to Expand High-Quality Early Education in Rewrite of Historic Education Law | Center for American Progress:

Failing the test | Opinion | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon

Failing the test | Opinion | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon:

Failing the test

Smarter Balanced assessment does more harm than good

My high school son will not be taking the Smarter Balanced assessment this spring.

According to the Oregon Department of Education, parents may request that their children be exempted from state testing based on either disability or religious belief, which means any personal ethical standard. My ethical standard includes the view that schools should implement research-based practices that will help all students, regardless of background, achieve success.

Further, it goes against my ethical standard to capitulate to a conspiracy that apparently involves the richest man on the planet, a company that has made billions on high-stakes tests that have failed to improve achievement or equity, cohorts of a woman who wants to destroy public schools, and a secretary of education who forces schools to hold teachers accountable for factors that are entirely outside their control.

Lastly, I believe it is a grievous sin to intentionally set young people up for failure.

Instead of addressing the underlying concerns of poverty, its harmful effects on student achievement, and school funding inequities and inadequacies, our nation has tried for more than a decade to raise student performance by testing students and then using the results to shame them, their teachers and their school leadership. The No Child Left Behind Act has failed to improve student achievement.

As a result of the primary focus being placed on tests, schools today are less creative and engaging, while instruction in physical education, music and art has been reduced. Schools don’t have time to focus on things like helping students learn how to cooperate and resolve relationship problems.

Schools have become test factories. Teachers are forced to spend time teaching students how to take tests, instead of helping them learn more about the world around them.

A recent open letter to President Obama and Congress signed by more than 2,000 education researchers and professors stated: “We are researchers and professors in colleges, universities, and other research institutions throughout the United States with scholarly and practical expertise in public education, including education policy, school reform, teaching and learning, assessment, and educational equity. ... (W)e strongly urge departing from test-focused reforms that not only have been discredited for high-stakes decisions, but also have shown to widen, not close, gaps and inequities.”

The underlying idea of the Common Core was to identify what students need to learn so they can be successful in the 21st century and ensure that students are better able to engage in critical thinking and problem solving. This is actually a good idea. The problems emerge when you look behind the curtain of the idea’s implementation.

Contrary to what the promoters say, the Common Core was not initiated by states or educators. The Gates Foundation kick-started this venture by providing more than $200 million to the various organizations supporting the idea. Microsoft will reap huge financial benefits from the investments in technology. Pierson Corp. has made and will make billions off the sales of high-stakes tests and low quality curriculum designed to teach to the test.

The lead writers of the Common Core standards, David Coleman and Jason Zimba, were also the foundational board members for StudentsFirst — an organization created by Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools whose perspectives on education and lack of respect for public school teachers are abhorrent. The Common Core standards were not created with significant involvement by educators, and there has been insufficient professional educational review.

A joint statement by over 500 early childhood professionals stated: “We have grave concerns about the core standards for young Failing the test | Opinion | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon:

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

Russ on Reading: Standardized Tests: Silly Incentives or Serious Instruction?

Russ on Reading: Standardized Tests: Silly Incentives or Serious Instruction?:

Standardized Tests: Silly Incentives or Serious Instruction?

In today's guest post, Cindy Mershon, reading specialist and literacy consultant, asks us to keep the child at the center of our thinking about standardized tests. What is our responsibiity as teachers when kids face the high stakes testing? Cindy's answer includes considering standardized testing as a genre to be taught.

by Cindy Mershon

“Educators are faced with a dilemma: our knowledge of reading processes and reading instruction is at odds with our assessment instruments.  As a result, we run the risk of misinterpreting assessment data.  If tests do not assess what we define as skilled reading, then they cannot adequately determine progress toward that goal.  Thus, if we equate high scores on existing tests with good reading we may be led to a false sense of security.  Conversely, low scores may lead us to believe that students are not reading well when, by a more valid set of criteria, they are.  Furthermore, tests have a powerful impact on curriculum and instruction; they influence classroom practice.  In short, tests may be insensitive to growth in the abilities we most want to foster and may be misguiding instruction.”

Valencia, S.W., Pearson, P.D., Peters, C.W., Wixson, K.K. (1989).   Theory and practice in statewide reading assessment: Closing the gap. Educational Leadership, April, pp. 57-62.

It is my fault that I chose to read the local paper on Tuesday morning.  It is my fault that, when I spied this headline – “Schools Cancel Test Incentives” – I remained in my chair in the kitchen, cocker spaniels in attendance, read the headline, felt the migraine button in my head switch to “on,”, and kept reading.

Seems a local school district had planned “to offer incentives, including $5 gift cards, intended to boost student participation and performance on the standardized PARCC exams.”  This district had used such incentives in the past, but had recently decided to cancel their plan due to increased Russ on Reading: Standardized Tests: Silly Incentives or Serious Instruction?:

Public schools aren’t failing | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer

Public schools aren’t failing | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer:

Public schools aren’t failing

In a stroke of whimsy or irony, two new studies about American education have been released in time to get the most media coverage during School Choice Week. The first, from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), looks at the international tests that rank students worldwide in reading, math, and science.

The second is a report from the Horace Mann League and the National Superintendents Roundtable that looks at the international tests but also compares economic equity, social stress, support for families and schools, and student and system outcomes in nine G-7 countries.

Advocates of school choice often speak of a crisis in American public education, but these newest reports indicate otherwise. In fact, both show that American public school children are doing remarkably well.

For example, the NCES report shows that in schools with less than 25 percent poverty rates, American children scored higher in reading than any other children in the world. In. The. World.

The takeaway is simple. Our middle-class and wealthy public school children are thriving. Poor children are struggling, not because their schools are failing but because they come to school with all the well-documented handicaps that poverty imposes – poor prenatal care, developmental delays, hunger, illness, homelessness, emotional and mental illnesses, and so on.

School choice advocates argue that private or charter schools are the answer – but there again the results show otherwise. In Florida, for example, public school children outscored their private school counterparts, and nationally, charters are outperformed by traditional schools the majority of the time. If you want more bang for your buck as a community stakeholder and taxpayer, traditional public education does a better job of educating most children.

A different sort of concern about money, however, drives education reform these days. Forbes recently wrote that “the charter school movement [is] quickly becoming a backdoor for corporate profit.” Wall Street invests heavily in the charter movement, and testing companies push the idea that more tests and scripted curricula are a wise investment of scarce education dollars.

Instead, research is clear that money spent addressing the issues of child poverty are the most effective way to move test scores up – and more importantly, improve learning. However, many states have decreased their spending on education since the recession and those budget deficits are still in place. Head Start cuts are the worst in the history of the program, even though early childhood education is a critical part of helping children in poverty overcome their disadvantages.

The United States is, by far, the wealthiest and best-educated of the nine G-7 countries studied by the Horace Mann League and National Superintendents Roundtable, yet it posts some of the worst measures of economic inequality, social stress, and support for young families. We have the highest rates of substance abuse and violent deaths, for example, issues which negatively affect children and their performance in school.

The writers of the study have suggestions for all stakeholders. Teachers are tasked with making sure the connection between “formative forces in society” and the “summative scores” of children are communicated to communities.

The report asks communities to recognize that schools alone can’t address those formative forces.

For policymakers, the report says, “Celebrate the success of schools whilePublic schools aren’t failing | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer:

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article9499466.html#storylink=cpy

Cuomo Fails the Children of New York State - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

Cuomo Fails the Children of New York State

By:  Marla Kilfoyle, General Manager BATs

Every day our children achieve despite having their public schools grossly underfunded by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and his education reform agenda.  From Albany to Roosevelt, from Wyandanch to Troy, children are receiving honors and accolades that show their schools are not failing but are indeed providing exemplary services to our children.  For the Governor of New York to go publicly on social media and call those students, their districts, and communities “failures” is a gross misrepresentation of what is really happening – Governor Cuomo has failed our children.

Last week Governor Cuomo released a report about  New York States failing schools.  Read here:  https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/governor.ny.gov/files/atoms/files/NYSFailingSchoolsReport.pdf

If you go to page 10 you will see the list of those 17 “failing” school districts but here is a screen shot of that page so that you can peruse it quickly.

Cuomo blasted out a long series of tweets about the failing schools on February 26th.  Here is a sample of the torrent of tweets he sent calling the children , communities, and teachers who utilize these schools “failures.” 

Thankfully, well respected school finance researcher  Bruce Baker took to twitter and tweeted his report about the underfunding of NYS schools.  You can read it herehttps://schoolfinance101.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/50-biggest-aid-gaps-2013-14_15_final.pdf   Baker wrote up a magnificent report comparing Cuomo’s 17 failing schools and how significantly they have been underfunded over the years   https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/angry-andys-failing-schools-the-finger-of-blame/    

But......... this is not the reason for this write up.  Being a teacher in NYS, I want to highlight some amazing things these “failing” schools are doing for kids, and kids in these schools are doing, Badass Teachers Association:

THE DEBT

BY: Andres Rodriguez, Jr.

Andres Rodriguez, Jr with his daughter BAT Leadership
Team Member Aixa Rodriguez

My family immigrated to the United States from Puerto Rico in the summer of 1960. I was an eight year old boy who, along with two younger sisters and his parents, arrived to start a new life in an urban setting that dwarfed the quiet and mostly rural lifestyle he left behind. The change in scenery was overwhelming. In the island we were part of an extended family living in a humble but spacious home. Life was joyful, noisy, carefree, simple and full of adventure. The thought that we were poor never crossed our minds. My daily childhood routine consisted of waking at sunrise, playing outside all day without adult supervision and coming home just before sundown. Boredom was an unfamiliar state.

Until I arrived in the United States, I had never experienced isolation. Suddenly I was in a different world. Everything was new or alien. The familiar warmth and security of our extended family disappeared. What family we had living in the states lived far away. I didn’t know a word of English. I had no friends. Concerned about my safety, my parents wouldn’t let me play outside unsupervised. I had to devise indoor games and grow accustomed to the confining and constraining forces of apartment living. But there was no turning back. As much as I hated my new surroundings, I knew we had arrived to stay. Still, traumatic as that introduction to life in the South Bronx was, the idea that things could get worse never occurred to me. But they did. It would take some years for me to understand why and to realize the profound impact that simple acts of kindness and compassion had on my life’s trajectory. One such act was performed by Ms. Bonilla in September of 1960 when my mother took me to P.S. 62 to register me for school.

It is noteworthy that to this day the island’s K-12 public school instruction includes European as well as American characteristics. It is: free and secular, compulsory and conducted entirely in Spanish, with English taught as a second language and compulsory at all levels. Hence, by the time they graduate high school students are fully bilingual and are quite competitive in America’s higher education system. Many decide to attend American colleges and universities.

Ms. Bonilla was the only Latina administrator in P.S. 62 and may very well have been the only one in NYC’s public school system at the time. She was also one of the few of color and as a woman, a rarity in NYC’s public education bureaucracy. She also lived in the community where she worked. Perhaps it was coincidence, but she was in the administrative office when my mother walked in with me in tow. With her limited English my mother spoke to a non-Spanish speaking administrative staff member explaining that she was there to register me for school. I had completed the first and second grade in Puerto Rico and by the time I finished second grade I could read and was already getting writing instruction. My mother provided that information fully expecting that I would be  Badass Teachers Association:

The School Closure Playbook - How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago | naked capitalism

The School Closure Playbook - How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago | naked capitalism:

The School Closure Playbook – How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Yves Smith

Rebecca Rojer, who directed this film essay about a public school version of the Shock Doctrine playbook called “corporate school reform” asked us to present her video after it first appeared on Jacobin. It is accessible yet presents a hard-hitting overview of who is behind this taxpayer looting program and the mechanics of how it operates. From Rojer’s overview:

The piece uses Chicago to explore the broader neoliberal campaign against public schools, focusing on how education “reformers” manufactured a budget crisis through a combination of creative accounting, secretive tax schemes (specifically TIF), and media cooperation. It also looks at some of the organizing that developed to regain local control of schools (and possibly just forced Rahm into a run-off election!).

What is stunning is the degree of out and out grifting that has taken place in Chicago, with millions diverted from public schools to create a false image of a budgetary crisis. And some of the money wound up in dubious-looking pockets, like a Hyatt Hotels franchise.

I hope you’ll watch this video. Be sure to circulate it to anyone you know who lives or votes in Chicago.

The School Closure Playbook - How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago | naked capitalism: 

“The Other PARCC:” A New Short Film Of Refusal In New Jersey | The Education Activist: From Student to Teacher

“The Other PARCC:” A New Short Film Of Refusal In New Jersey | The Education Activist: From Student to Teacher:

“THE OTHER PARCC:” A NEW SHORT FILM OF REFUSAL IN NEW JERSEY

The activist movement in New Jersey, as a coalition of parents, students, teachers, and community members, has culminated in some of the most incredible grassroots organizing in the country. As Diane Ravitch has reported, new legislation in New Jersey has been coined “a ray of hope against PARCC” and state and national writers have been covering the happenings in local towns all across New Jersey (there are just too many links to post, but please look around online). All of this work in New Jersey has culminated in a new short film to be released tomorrow – “The Other PARCC: Parents Advocating Refusal on High-Stakes Testing,” a short documentary film by Michael Elliot.

The video is set to be released nationally at 5:00pm tomorrow, Sunday, Match 1st, 2015 and will launch the already inspiring grassroots activist movement in New Jersey into the national spotlight, highlighting the stories of parents and students in the struggle against high-stakes testing. The video is set to also be released at an event tomorrow in Montclair, New Jersey.

The Other PARCC: Parents Advocating Refusal on High-Stakes Testing Synopsis:
Parents gathered from many different communities in New Jersey to make a short film to voice their concerns and share their stories about the effects that the implementation of CCSS and the PARCC tests were having on their children, teachers, schools and lives. 
Link: https://vimeo.com/120619448

**Note: The link is currently private and cannot be accessed. It will be available upon release at 5:00pm tomorrow, Sunday, March 1st, 2015.

The event is set to take place Sunday, March 1st, 2015 from 3pm to 5pm at Firehouse headquarters (1 Pine Street, Montclair, New Jersey, 07042) in the second floor meeting room. The Firehouse is located just in from Bloomfield Avenue, near the Bay Street train station. Parking will be available across from the Firehouse. Filmmaker Michael Elliot will be in attendance for the premiere at the event, along with many of the film participants.

There is a Facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/815054668561757 

The organizers have asked that all who wish to attend register for free tickets using the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/parcc-refusal-meet-up-tickets-15904851840

Again, at the event we will be premiering a fabulous short 5 minute film of parents and students talking about their reasons for refusing from all over the State. Michael Elliot, filmmaker from New York, has made the film with support from Montclair Cares about Schools. Michael has also made an incredibly inspiring film with Change the Stakes, which can be see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ayYajsQjg8

This is a great way to solidify and build support on the eve of the PARCC testing that is set to begin Monday in New Jersey. We hope to see many of you there.

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We Care: Teachers Speak Against Cuomo on Vimeo

We Care: Teachers Speak Against Cuomo on Vimeo:

We Care: Teachers Speak Against Cuomo 

We Care: Teachers Speak Against Cuomo from Social Media on Vimeo.

We Care: Teachers Speak Against Cuomo on Vimeo: