2015-2016 NYS Refusal Letter - NYS ALLIES for Public Education

2015-2016 NYS Refusal Letter - NYS ALLIES for Public Education:
NYS ALLIES for Public Education

2015-2016 NYS Refusal LetterStudent:   _____________________
School:     ______________________
Teacher:   _____________________
Grade:      ______

 Dear ____________________,

We are writing today to formally inform the district of our decision to refuse to allow our child __________________, to participate in:

______ the 2016 New York State grade 3-8 ELA assessment

______ the 2016 New York State grade 3-8 math assessment

______ any stand alone New York State field testing in the 2015/16 school year (grades 3-12)

______ any local/benchmark assessment used in the New York State teacher evaluation system administered in the fall, winter, and spring (may include STAR, AIMSweb, MAP/NWEA, SLO's) in the 2015/16 school year (grades k-12) (excluding spring 2016 middle school local assessments being used as a final grade)*

______ the 2016 grade 4 New York State science assessment

______ the 2016 grade 8 New York State science assessment

Our refusal should in no way reflect on the teachers, administration, or school board. This was not an easy decision for us, but we feel that we have no other choice. We simply see these tests as harmful, expensive, and a waste of time and valuable resources.

We refuse to allow any data to be used for purposes other than the individual teacher’s own formative or cumulative assessment. We are opposed to assessments whose data is used to determine school ranking, teacher effectiveness, or any other purpose other than for the individual classroom teacher’s own use to improve his or her instruction.

We are aware that NYS Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia will direct you to talk us out of this decision in an effort to push forward the corporate takeover of public education.  We decline any such meeting or phone call.  Do not contact us for that reason.  To protect yourself, keep this letter as proof to Commissioner Elia that we have declined.  Instead, we invite you to attend an educational seminar detailing the expert research and reasons that have led parents to refuse participation in this harmful testing program.

Sincerely,



*an option for local assessments that parents and teachers agree are diagnostically useful, yet used for APPR purposes, could be to participate in the assessment while withholding the student's score from the overall evaluation score.

Download the Letter here:

refusal_letter_2015-2016__8_.docx

Download File

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                                                  INSTRUCTIONS FOR REFUSAL LETTERSThe first thing you should do before filling out your refusal letter is find out which assessments your district administers that are tied to the evaluation plan (APPR). All teacher, principal, school, and district evaluations use state assessment scores (ELA, math, and science) to generate a score. Many include a separate local assessment as part of the score. Many different assessments can be used for the local part of the evaluation score. Some have always been used and some have been implemented only to satisfy the state requirements. Some are standardized, some computerized, and some are written by teachers. A few have diagnostic value, and many do not. Some parents may want to refuse any assessment tied to evaluations, some may not. Not all districts will honor the request to refuse local assessments. If your child is old enough to refuse on their own, refusals can still be accomplished in those cases. Another option is to allow your child to take the local assessment if the district agrees to withhold the score from the evaluation system. This would ensure authentic administration and scoring for the benefit of the child and classroom teacher. Please read up on the differences, speak to your child's teacher if you are unsure, and make the decision that best fits your child and your family. Refusal letters should go to the school principal. Copies can also be given to the teacher and the superintendent.

DESCRIPTIONS/TERMS:APPR - Annual Professional Performance ReviewJust like students, teachers, principals, schools, and districts are given a number grade at the end of every year that represents their effectiveness rating. These scores are used to rank, sort, and punish. Schools can be closed and teachers may lose their jobs or face disciplinary action based on the results.

LOCAL ASSESSMENTS
In addition to state assessments, a portion of the APPR score can be based on local assessments. Local assessments are also called SLO's, and can include MAP, STAR, DIBELS, AIMSweb, and teacher created assessments.** These benchmark assessments are often administered the first week of school.

SLO/Benchmarks - Student Learning Objective
Educators who teach a course that does not have a state exam must use Student Learning Objectives to determine part of their evaluation.  Here is how this process works: Teachers that need to use an SLO must give a pre-assessment (benchmark) to their students.  This exam could be a district, regional or corporate created test that would assess the students in what content and skills the children should obtain at the end of the school year.  Basically it is giving the students an abbreviated version of the final exam.  Almost all the students will score poorly on the pre-assessment because they have not learned the curriculum yet and achieve a low baseline level. After the “pre-assessments” are scored, the districts make a prediction as to how their students will perform on the final assessment of the year. If the teacher does not meet this “expected outcome of performance”, then that educator loses points on his or her evaluation score.

**Some districts have chosen to use assessments that are widely considered to be valuable diagnostic tools, such as the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) and the F&P (Fauntas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment), as their local assessment. Again, the concern is that once an assessment is used to rate a teacher, its diagnostic value decreases. This is a perfect case in which a parent could request to have the test administered, but the score withheld from the evaluation.

- See more at: http://www.nysape.org/2015-2016-nys-refusal-letter.html#sthash.cVYHR4Z1.dpuf

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Charter School Ruling: Part One, Overview of Reaction to Ruling

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Charter School Ruling: Part One, Overview of Reaction to Ruling:

Washington State Charter School Ruling: Part One, Overview of Reaction to Ruling

There will be three threads to this topic. 

• Overview of Reaction to the Ruling
• The Ruling Itself
• Current Overview

Part One: Overview of Reaction to the Ruling

Simply put, many people - from the unscrupulous folks who wrote this law to those overseeing charter schools to those running charter schools - made a deliberate choice to gamble with children's academic lives.  And they lost.

The people who wrote this law should get the lion's share of blame.  The wording of the law very much mirrors what the ALEC group's template charter law looks like.  It appears that almost no attempt was made to mold this law to fall within the boundaries of the Washington State Constitution.  I'm certain that many well-paid lawyers reviewed the initiative and may have even warned the proponents of the initiative that there could be constitutional issue but no matter - the initiative went forward.

The Charter Commission, who I have generally lauded, dropped the ball here.  They did not require approved charter schools to notify prospective parents - either via website or application form or public forum - that there was a lawsuit challenging the law and what the possible outcomes of the lawsuit could beincluding the overturning of the law. 

The charter schools themselves could have done notification on their own.  To the best of my knowledge, not a single one told prospective parents or, after they opened, told current parents about the lawsuit.  (I believe there was at least one question brought up by a prospective parent at a forum  - and the charter school rep waved it off - but that's not the same as notification.)  

Finally to note, the Court chose to look only at the funding issue (rightly believing that if the funding wasn't there, the whole thing was moot).  The Court stated, in their ruling, that the plaintiffs had multiple issues with the law but the Court was only considering one.  However, there are at least two other legal issues within the law so even if somehow the Legislature "fixes" the funding, the law can be brought back into legal limbo. 

If charter proponents want charters in Washington State, the best "fix" for this law is to start over entirely and write a law that is constitutionally sound.  Not "strong" or "the best charter law in the Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Charter School Ruling: Part One, Overview of Reaction to Ruling:

The Great Homework Debate: What's Getting Lost in the Hype - NEA Today

The Great Homework Debate: What's Getting Lost in the Hype - NEA Today:

The Great Homework Debate: What’s Getting Lost in the Hype

Homework – is it an unnecessary evil or a sound and valuable pedagogical practice? The media coverage of the debate often zeroes in on these two seemingly polar opposite views, even though they may not be all that far apart. Homework can be good until – well, until it isn’t. Assign too much or the wrong kind (or both) and the law of diminishing returns kicks in, says Dr. Harris Cooper, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, resulting in undue stress for students, aggravation for parents and no real academic pay-off. 

But as Cooper, author of “The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents,” recently told NEA Today, homework levels and parental attitudes haven’t really changed dramatically over the years. Cooper also concludes – perhaps a shock of those who are convinced that very little in our classrooms is working as it should – “the vast majority of educators have got it right.”  

There’s a lot of focus on homework now, but has it been scrutinized so heavily in the past? 

Harris Cooper: Throughout the 20th century, the public battle over homework was quite cyclical. You can go back to World War I or a little after, when it was considered important for kids to exercise their brain like a muscle and that homework was a way to do that. During the 1930s, opinions changed. In the 1950s, people were worried about falling behind the communists, so more homework was needed as a way to speed up our education and technology. During the 1960s, homework fell out of favor because many though it inflicted too much stress on kids. In the 1970s and 1980s, we needed more homework to keep up with the Japanese economically. More recently, as everything about education and teachers is being scrutinized, homework has come into question again.

What’s interesting is that the actual percentage of people who supported homework The Great Homework Debate: What's Getting Lost in the Hype - NEA Today:

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest:

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial.

Learn more about us and our mission.

Spotlight

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Lani Guinier: FairTest Heroes in Education

As part of its 30th anniversary, FairTest will honor Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Lani Guinier with the Deborah W. Meier Heroes in Education Award. The ceremony will be November 11 in Cambridge, MA. For tickets and more information, go to http://www.fairtest.org/FairTest-to-honor-LaniGuinier-and-NancyCarlssonP...

Read more...

State-by-State Nat. Merit Cut-off Scores for Class of 2016 Vary but Guarantee Most Awards Will Go to Affluent Students -- Preliminary SAT scores do not measure 'merit' accurately or fairly

Students from affluent families are greatly over-represented in the lists of high school seniors eligible for National Merit Scholarships released last week, a result of the competition’s reliance on standardized test results, according to data made public today. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) posted National Merit’s previously secret cut-off scores, which vary greatly among states, and a table showing SAT scores by family income.

Read more...

SAT Scores Down (Again), Test-Optional Admissions Way Up

SAT scores continued a 10-year decline but the number of colleges that do not require admissions tests is soaring.

Read more...

You Can Boycott Standardized Tests without Risking Punishment to Your School.

This fact sheet explains why your school will in most cases not lose money or face sanctions if many students refuse to take the state test.

Read more...

Tell Congress: Keep Federal Accountability Mandates Out of a New Education Law

Now is the time to make sure a new federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is the best possible replacement of “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) that we can win at this time.

Read more...

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest:

DEBORAH W. MEIER HEROES IN EDUCATION AWARD | Deborah Meier on Education

DEBORAH W. MEIER HEROES IN EDUCATION AWARD | Deborah Meier on Education:

DEBORAH W. MEIER HEROES IN EDUCATION AWARD

Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 6 – 8:30 PM

Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., Cambridge, MA

Drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served

Lani Guinier is the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, at which she was the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship. Previously, she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Professor Guinier worked in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, then headed the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Her many scholarly and general-access articles and books include her most recent book, The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America. Her work has addressed issues of race, gender, and democratic decision-making and has exposed the damaging consequences of test use in college admissions. She has received many awards and 10 honorary doctorates.

Nancy Carlsson-Paige is co-founder of Defending the Early Years and Professor Emerita at Lesley University. As an education activist, writer and public speaker, Nancy advocates for play-based, experiential education for young children and against over-testing and harmful education policies. She was a teacher educator for more than 30 years at Lesley, where she co-founded The Center for Peaceable Schools. Her books, articles, and op eds stress the need for optimal growth for children while opposing the prevailing climate of harmful education policies, media saturation, and diminishing play. At Defending the Early Years and alongside other early childhood leaders, Nancy calls for education policies and practices that promote social justice, equity, and the well-being of all children.

For more information, to order your tickets, or place an ad in the event program, please go here or visit http://www.fairtest.org.

If you cannot attend, please make a donation in their honor – use the red Donate button on the website.

Honorary Chairs (in formation):
Susan Bailey, Fred Bay, Sherrilyn Ifill, Shirley M. Collado, Patricia Jehlen, Jonathan Kozol, Linda Lantieri, Diane Levin, Margaret McKenna, Intisar Rabb, Suzi Sluyter, Susan Sturm

Host Committee (in formation):
Mahzarin Banaji, Ruth Kaplan, Geralyn McLaughlin, Linda Nathan, Sophie Sa (chair), Chanda Smart

You Should Hear What I’ve Been Hearing | EduShyster

You Should Hear What I’ve Been Hearing | EduShyster:

You Should Hear What I’ve Been Hearing

Which is why I’m launching a podcast series!

THAT’S MY NEW MICROPHONE!

I’ve spent the last two years visiting cities like Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia that are on the front lines of the often bitter battle over the future of public schools in the US. And what I’ve heard along the way is far more interesting, encouraging and honest than the talking points and stale exchanges that dominate the discussions about our schools. That’s why I’m launching a podcast series so that you can listen in and hear what I’ve been hearing.

No talking points allowed
I approach my work as a journalist and blogger with one very important rule: I’ll talk to anyone who will talk to me. I’m keenly attuned to the voices that are too often shut out of the conversation, and I’m not afraid to march right into the places where decisions are being made—whether I’m wanted or not. Now I aim to take that same spirit to the airwaves. My talented sidekick Aaron French (that’s him in the picture!)—the creator and former producer of Teach For America’s popular Education on Tap podcast—and I aim to bring you something new: sharp, insightful, accessible and often humorous conversations about the hottest-button topics in education. You’ll hear voices and points of view you haven’t heard before. What you won’t hear are talking points. We won’t allow them!

Here’s a taste of what we’re up to:

• The movement to opt out of standardized tests is typically characterized as white, suburban and affluent. We’re headed to Philadelphia next week to hear how different the opt out conversation sounds when urban school parents, includingYou Should Hear What I’ve Been Hearing | EduShyster:

Portland Public Schools finishes staffing adjustments to decrease class sizes | OregonLive.com

Portland Public Schools finishes staffing adjustments to decrease class sizes | OregonLive.com:

Portland Public Schools finishes staffing adjustments to decrease class sizes

A group of parents from Portland's Sabin School personally delivered letters to the district to advocate for lower class sizes. Portland Public Schools is currently adding some staff to over crowded schools. (Laura Frazier/The Oregonian)

Portland Public Schools has finalized staffing adjustments to decrease class sizes at some schools.

The district had the equivalent of 20 full-time positions to distribute to overcrowded schools this fall.  Beaumont, Hosford and Mount Tabor middle schools were the last three schools to add a teacher, according to district spokesman Jon Isaacs.

Many schools received an additional teacher or classroom assistant if class sizes were above thresholds. The district reviews all kindergarten classes with at least 26 students, classes with more than 30 students for grades one to eight, and student loads of 180 or more for each high school teacher.

More than two-dozen schools received extra teachers or classroom assistants based on enrollment counts.

Some parents advocated for relief by raising concerns with district officials. A group of Sabin School parents organized a gathering at the district office after a first-grade classroom saw enrollment hit 32 students. Sabin School was allocated an additional teaching position to help with the first-grade class. 

Woodstock Elementary parents also attended a board meeting Sept. 16 to ask for an additional kindergarten teacher. The school at first was allocated a classroom assistant, Portland Public Schools finishes staffing adjustments to decrease class sizes | OregonLive.com:

Climbing the Common Core Staircase | Johnathan Chase | LinkedIn

Climbing the Common Core Staircase | Johnathan Chase | LinkedIn:

Climbing the Common Core Staircase

The CCSSO and NGA clearly have high hopes and great expectations for their Common Core State Standards…

"The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live."

~About the Common Core State Standards

The narrator in the video below explains how the standards are like a K- 12 staircase that every student must climb starting from the bottom step...

"Each step is a skill your child needs to learn before stepping up to the next one. Think of Kindergarten through 12th grade as a great staircase."

The Common Core is a standardized staircase designed to challenge the climbing skills of “standard” students. All students are expected to "climb" these stairs in a synchronized way, regardless of individual ability level or disability.

Unfortunately the Common Core implementation kit does not appear to include contingency plans and directions for assembling and installing the Climbing the Common Core Staircase | Johnathan Chase | LinkedIn:

The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores

The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores:

The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores

The many factors that contribute to a student being successful in the classroom interweave into a complicated tapestry, and one that has grown even more intricate in the last decade.

Pull a single thread and the tapestry falls apart.

For students who grow up in an impoverished household, stresses and other distractions make success all the more challenging. Transience, lack of resources at home, lack of parent engagement — all diminish a student’s chances for success, and in many cases are a direct impact of poverty on a household.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, in Virginia over 975,000 families with 1.8 million children live in poverty.

Over the last 10 years, the percentage of area students qualifying for free and reduced lunch has increased, and in some areas, significantly. The program serves households meeting federal poverty guidelines.

While a causation between high free and reduced lunch populations and lower scores on standardized tests can not definitively be drawn, there is an evident correlation.

Poverty numbers tell the story

It’s hard to say definitively that schools with higher rates of poverty will have lower test scores as well, but there is correlation for many area schools, particularly in the cities.

In both Staunton and Waynesboro the school with the highest free and reduced lunch populations had the lowest Standards of Learning pass rates in 2013-2014, the year with the most recent SOL data released by the state.

In Staunton, Bessie Weller Elementary had 69.5 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch, and had the lowest English and math pass rates at 64 percent and 48 percent respectively during the 2013-2014 school year.

In Waynesboro, Wenonah Elementary had 88.2 percent qualifying for free and reduced lunch, and had English and math pass scores of 48 percent and 57 percent, the lowest in the school division for 2013-2014.

Staunton and Waynesboro have higher rates of students qualifying for free and reduced The complicated correlation between poverty and lower test scores:

Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City - This Week In Education:

This Week In Education: Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City:

Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City

Like so many reformers in Newark and elsewhere, Cory Booker was a true believer in "disruptive innovation" to produce "transformative" change. Dale Russakoff, in The Prize, explains that Newark reformers, funded by Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million grant, were slow in developing a plan for creating a "hybrid" district through school closures and expanding the charter sector.  Booker had said that the biggest challenge would be "breaking this iceberg of immovable, decades-long failing schools." After this is done, "They'll melt into many different school models. They're going to flower, just like the cherry blossoms in Branch Park."

Booker didn't seem to have read about the [then] decade-long history of Chicago school closuresstarted by Arne Duncan. And, he seemed to have forgotten about the murder of Derrion Albert as he walked home from his turnaround school, Fenger H.S. Or, perhaps he believed that Newark gang-bangers would be so inspired by One Newark that they would transform gang turf into cherry orchards for all. 

In 1998, when I had my first experience with a school closure and reopening, Oklahoma City had some schools as violent and low-performing as those of Newark and Chicago. My John Marshall wasn't one of them. It was somewhere between 2/3rds and 3/4ths low-income, very similar to the neighboring Northeast H.S., which was turned into a magnet school. Marshall had the best faculty that I had ever seen, and Northeast was known for producing state and local teachers of the year and teacher-leaders. After the crack and gang violence peaked in the early 1990s, and after the "jobless recovery" finally started to put some patrons back to work, both schools had been seeing incremental gains.

Then came the 1998-1999 "Year from Hell," as our long-suffering principal dubbed it. Combining students from the two neighborhoods who could not be admitted to selective schools was not the sole cause of our collapse. Neither am I aware of a connection between the change in school boundaries and the deaths that year of five Marshall students and recent alumni. But, the meltdown of our school showed the risks involved with tampering with the delicate ecosystems of schooling.  It was a major step in our blood-drenched path to becoming the lowest-performing secondary school in the state.

Even before our first funeral, during my daily, dazed walk to the gym for lunchtime basketball with the This Week In Education: Thompson: School Closings in Chicago, Newark & Oklahoma City:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?:

Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?

At last night's Progressive Caucus community forum in Logan Square, Caucus members and community groups spoke out against Rahm's austerity budget and massive property tax increase. 

Will enough typically spineless Chicago Alders finally find their way out of Rahm's pocket to push back on his draconian budget proposal? Doubtful.

There are 11 members of the City Council progressive caucus who generally don’t side with the mayor on fiscal policy (including Arena); an 18-member aldermanic black caucus that plays nice with Emanuel but doesn’t back the garbage-fee proposal; and a handful of Hispanic aldermen, including Ald. Roberto Maldonado, who think the mayor’s budget proposal, as it stands, well, stinks. -- Mark Konkol, DNAInfo

Rahm's strategy, like his predecessor Daley's, includes selling off or privatizing everything that's not nailed down. Closing schools and getting rid of public space also weakens unions and public decision making.

His idea of privatizing the 311 call center came in his 2016 budget address, saying it would save the city "about a million dollars a year" to replace union workers with outside contractors. It was one of the few pieces of actual news Tuesday, after the mayor's administration had spent the past week dribbling out many of their financial proposals for the coming year. -- John Byrne, Tribune  

His budget proposal includes an unprecedented increase in property taxes and fees Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences

CURMUDGUCATION: The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences:

The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences

Valerie Strauss asked a fairly simple question of the White House and the Education Department:Are you aware that one consequence of the policy requiring test results in teacher evaluation is that many teachers' evaluations are based on subjects or students they don't teach.

For example, in New York City middle schools, it’s been estimated that over 60 percent of New York City teacher evaluations are out-of-subject. An art teacher would be evaluated in part on student math scores.  Are you aware of this state-level consequence of federal policy and do you think it is fair to teachers?

The White House response was, "Go ask the Education Department."

Strauss presents the entire USED answer without comment. I would like to go ahead and present some comment.

Their Answer 

The feds open with the right general sorts of noises. Parents have a right to know how their kids are doing, and student performance should be assessed because otherwise some groups will be swept CURMUDGUCATION: The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences:

Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral | Catalyst Chicago

Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral | Catalyst Chicago:

Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral

In June, thousands of CPS teachers and their supporters turned out for a march to support teachers' calls for a new, fair contract.

Then

After legendary Chicago Teachers Union president Jacqueline Vaughn died in 1994, her successor, Tom Reece, adopted a low profile and built a less challenging relationship with the school district, then led by CEO Paul Vallas.

A year later, Springfield slashed the union’s bargaining powers as part of the 1995 law that returned unfettered control of the school system to the mayor, then Richard M. Daley. (Specifically, the law eliminated a grassroots School Board nominating committee, which had been giving Daley candidates he didn't want.)

The lost bargaining powers included class size, layoffs, charter schools, privatization of services, the academic calendar and hours of instruction.

Years later, Reece’s cooperative relationship with CPS would come back to haunt him. In 2001 he was defeated for re-election by Deborah Lynch, a leader in the push to expand teacher union concerns beyond bread-and-butter issues to questions of policy and instructional practice.

Through their efforts to widen the union's scope, Lynch and the Proactive Teachers Caucus, or PACT, planted the seeds for the CTU of today. In a collection of essays published by the left-wing magazine Jacobin, current CTU President Karen Lewis recalls that she joined PACT in time to support Lynch’s win.

See ”The new law,” Catalyst September 1995 and “Deborah Lynch and the making of an upset,” Catalyst September 2001

Now

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Though Lynch’s tenure proved short and divisive, a new cadre of union leaders regrouped with a mission to connect CTU organizing to broader issues of social justice and build alliances with like-minded unions and community groups.

They created the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE). Initially, CORE was a small study group trying to fight school turnarounds, privatization and closings, Lewis and CORE co-founder Jackson Potter told Rethinking Schools.

The larger goal was to shift the CTU from a traditional, staff-driven union focused on teachers pay Chicago’s brand of teacher organizing goes viral | Catalyst Chicago:

TEACH FREEDOM | Bill Ayers

TEACH FREEDOM | Bill Ayers:

TEACH FREEDOM

Schools are an obvious venue for the creation of a public space, a site of freedom. People are coming together, searching for something better, deciding what we value, what we hope to pass on, who we want to be. But schools are seldom constructed as sites of freedom nor places for the practice of freedom.

An urgent challenge to teachers is to see each student as a three-dimensional creature — a person much like themselves — with hopes, dreams, aspirations, skills, and capacities; with a body and a mind and a heart and a spirit; with experience, history, a past, a pathway, a future. This knotty, complicated challenge requires patience, curiosity, wonder, awe, humility. It demands sustained focus, intelligent judgment, inquiry and investigation. It requires wide-awakeness since every judgment is contingent, every view partial, every conclusion tentative. The student is dynamic, alive, in-motion. Nothing is settled, once and for all. No view is all views and no perspective every perspective. The student grows and changes — yesterday’s need is forgotten, today’s claim is all-encompassing and brand new. This, then, is an intellectual task of serious and huge proportion.

As difficult as this challenge is, it is made tougher and more intense because teachers typically work in institutions of hierarchy and power, command and control, where the toxic habit of labeling kids by their deficits has become the common-sense and a common-place. The language of schools is too often a language of labeling, a language of reduction, a language lacking spark, dynamism, imagination, or the possibility of freedom. Whatever the labels point to—even when glimpsing a chunk of reality—are reductive and over-determined in schools. In this way they represent un-freedom—repression, coercion, entanglement. The thinking teacher needs to look beneath and beyond the labels, to reach toward freedom.

Another basic challenge to teachers is to stay wide-awake to the world, to the concentric circles of context in which we live and work. Teachers must know and care about some aspect of our shared life — our calling after all, is to shepherd and enable the callings of others. Teachers, then, invite students to become somehow more capable, more thoughtful and powerful in their choices, more engaged in a culture and a civilization. More free. How do we warrant that invitation? How do we understand this culture and civilization?

Teachers choose — they choose how to see the world, what to embrace and what to reject, whether to support or resist this or that directive. As teachers choose, the ethical emerges. James Baldwin says:

The paradox of education is precisely this–that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no TEACH FREEDOM | Bill Ayers:

Jersey Jazzman: Don't Believe the Data In "The Prize"

Jersey Jazzman: Don't Believe the Data In "The Prize":

Don't Believe the Data In "The Prize"

I have a new policy brief out this week at the NJ Education Forum about the (mis-)use of data in Dale Russakoff's The Prize. Let me add a few words here: The Prize, as I described in my initial review, is the story of how then-Mayor Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie worked to cajole a $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to support the "reform" of the Newark school system, Understand, I actually liked much of The Prize. I think Russakoff does a good job of describing the struggles an urban pubic district school faces when educating students whose home lives are far from ideal. I think she tells the story of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the power players well, and I think it's important to tell that story. But... The Prize is turning out to be an influential book, and Russakoff is making many media appearances where she gets to present her ideas about urban school "reform." She was quoted in the NY Times by Joe Nocera, who used her figures to make the case that the Newark Public Schools (and, by extension, other urban districts) has a bloated bureaucracy compared to its neighboring charters. Connor Williams cites her figures at - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/09/dont-believe-data-in-prize.html#sthash.EGInWgBb.dpuf

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’ - The Washington Post

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’ - The Washington Post:

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’

Mercedes Schneider is a veteran teacher in Louisiana who has been educating students for more than two decades, as well as an education researcher who has been highly critical of corporate school reform. She is also the author of two books, “A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education,” and the newly published “Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?”

The following is an excerpt from her book about the Core. It is about the education company Pearson and it is revelatory in showing the connections between some education reformers and corporate leaders.

Here’s the excerpt, with footnotes removed.  (Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Mercedes Schneider, Common Core Dilemma—Who Owns Our Schools, New York: Teachers College Press. Copyright (c) 2015 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.)

Those “Powerful Market Forces”

In March 2014, billionaire Bill Gates participated in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the many organizations he financially supports in his effort to promote the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (see Chapter 9). In a 6-minute video clip from the AEI  interview, Gates purports to explain various aspects of CCSS, including the reason for the “common” component. His explanation has nothing to do with educational quality:

 If [states] have two [sets of standards] they’re comparing, they ought to probably pick something in common because, to some degree, this is an area where, if you do have commonality, it’s like an electrical plug, You get more free market competition. Scale is good for free market competition. Individual state regulatory capture is not good for competition. [Emphasis added]

His mechanical analogy of education as an object to “plug in” aside, Gates says that the “commonality” of CCSS “is good for free market competition”; however, he immediately notes that he prefers market competition on a level beyond that of the state. In other words, education companies that are smaller—and are more 

Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’ - The Washington Post:

Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests | The Verge

Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests | The Verge:

Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests

The well-educated and wealthy prefer giving to others when it is cheap and benefits everyone

America's well-educated and wealthy elite don’t like giving their money to others — unless sacrificing a small amount creates a big payoff for someone else, a study published inScience suggests. Otherwise, they’re opposed to giving up a lot of their own money to make everyone's earnings as equal as possible. In other words, the elite don’t want to part with too much of their own income.

This type of re-allocation favored by elites is what the study authors call a more efficient form of wealth redistribution (as opposed to an equitable one); it ensures that everyone benefits in some way, and that no one sacrifices too much of their own money. Since graduates of elite universities and professional schools tend to be policy makers, the study may explain why the divide between the rich and the poor continues to grow. "If they have this efficiency focus, it might make them averse to policies that would call for a greater demand for equity," study author Raymond Fisman, a behavioral economics professor at Boston University, tells The Verge. For instance, certain tax policies like the Bush tax cuts, which reduced top marginal tax rates, are thought to have contributed to this income inequality.

IT MAY EXPLAIN WHY THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR CONTINUES TO GROW

To measure America's preferences for income redistribution, Fisman and his team analyzed two different groups: 208 Yale Law students and 309 participants of a national survey known as the American Life Panel. The Yale Law students were representatives of the ultra elite — those with a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. The American Life Panel group served as a diverse representation of the general public.

The groups were given a series of hypothetical scenarios in which they were asked to redistribute money. Participants could give up part of their income so that money could be given to someone else; for instance, a person could forfeit a dollar so someone else would get an extra buck. In some cases, giving to someone else was cheap: a participant could sacrifice 10 cents and someone else would receive a dollar. Other times, giving was expensive: sacrificing a dollar would only result in someone else getting 10 cents. All the choices had varying degrees of trade-off.Society’s elite don’t want to pay too much for equality, study suggests | The Verge: