Charter Schools & ESSA Regulations: “We Are Not The Same” – Exceptional Delaware

Charter Schools & ESSA Regulations: “We Are Not The Same” – Exceptional Delaware:

Charter Schools & ESSA Regulations: “We Are Not The Same”

We strongly oppose the inclusion of this requirement, which is not authorized by the statute. The Department bases this proposal on a desire “to provide transparency.” (No further justification is provided in the NPRM.) We, too, support greater transparency, regarding both charter and non-charter schools, but this requirement would result in the reporting of misleading data. Moreover, the proposed requirement appears to be based on the premise that charter schools should look the “same” as district public schools in close proximity, when by definition charter schools are open enrollment. Lastly, the proposed requirement that is not in the statute, and would not equally apply to all public schools – only charter schools would be included.

The National Association for Public Charter Schools gave a very long public comment for the draft regulations put forth by the United States Department of Education and Secretary John King.  Even they aren’t happy with parts of these regulations.  Many felt the Every Student Succeeds Act gave gifts to the charters, but apparently the charters do not like some of these regulations.

The most important question is not who is enrolled in a charter school; it is whether all students and families who may wish to enroll have the opportunity to enroll – only then is the parent’s choice a meaningful one. The comparison data that the Department is asking for would not reflect this factor because the data would confuse and conflate the decision to enroll with the opportunity to enroll. As such, comparison data may be one indicator of meaningful access but comparison data are not the correct, best or only frame with which to evaluate equity.

I find some of their statements very ironic.  Especially for some charter schools in Delaware where the opportunity to enroll is buried in selective enrollment preferences and factors that lead to very low populations of at-risk students: African-Americans, students with disabilities, and English Language learners.  So much so that the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in December, 2014.

Like some charters in Delaware, this collection of America’s largest charter school organizations and franchises want to cherry-pick through the Charter Schools & ESSA Regulations: “We Are Not The Same” – Exceptional Delaware:

 

The nation’s teacher force lacks diversity, and it might not get much better - The Washington Post

The nation’s teacher force lacks diversity, and it might not get much better - The Washington Post:

The nation’s teacher force lacks diversity, and it might not get much better

In this file photo from 2006, third-grade teacher Marla Wyche opens the "interactive notebook" in her classroom as she prepares to drill students on holidays and people to know. Studies show that minority students can benefit from having minority teachers, but a new study says there are too few of them. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Persistent achievement gaps among black and Hispanic students have confounded education experts for years. One strategy researchers have found to be successful at narrowing the gaps is a simple one: Employ more minority teachers, who often can forge a better connection with them.

But a new study from the Brookings Institution and the National Council on Teacher Quality identifies several challenges school districts must address in seeking to increase the ranks of minorities leading classrooms, including a leaky recruiting pipeline that could lead to a dearth of qualified candidates lasting decades.

Because few minority college graduates are choosing to become teachers, it is increasingly difficult to recruit minorities into classrooms where they could potentially boost the performance of minority children and increase the pipeline of teacher candidates, according to the study, released Thursday. The authors described it as a cyclical problem that could remain for decades if hiring practices and recruiting efforts do not change significantly. The study suggests there will be minimal improvement as far out as 2060.

The study — from Michael Hansen and Diana Quintero of Brookings and Kate Walsh and Hannah Putman of the NCTQ — notes that while minority children account for half of the nation’s student body in public schools, minority teachers make up just 18 percent of the workforce, creating a significant disparity.

“Given these bleak findings, the chances of success for districts’ laudable goals to build a teaching corps that mirrors their student populations crumble in the face of reality — even looking forward nearly fifty years,” the authors wrote. “While that harsh truth certainly doesn’t excuse districts to give up and resign themselves to a mostly white teaching force, it does suggest that districts must embrace and promote a range of other, more immediately viable The nation’s teacher force lacks diversity, and it might not get much better - The Washington Post:

As Cost of School Supplies Add Up, Educators Step Up to Help Parents

As Cost of School Supplies Add Up, Educators Step Up to Help Parents:

As Cost of School Supplies Soar, Educators Step In to Help Parents

‘Tis the season to stock up on school supplies—the spiral notebooks, scissors, glue sticks, and more that will cost about $200, on average, per elementary student this year, or $330 and $375 per middle and high school student, respectively.

In Greece, New York, however, a partnership between the Greece Teachers Association (GTA) and local school officials has dramatically reduced the cost of school supplies, taking a huge bite out of the burden borne by parents. “These supply lists have gone down from $100 or $120 per student to, in some cases, zero to $10,” said Rob Stalter, a high school teacher and a leader in GTA’s social justice committee. For a family with a couple of kids, the savings could pay for a week’s worth of groceries.

This is a big deal in Greece, where its 11,000 students are more likely than ever to live below the federal poverty line. Like a lot of upstate New York communities built around manufacturing industries, “jobs here have been lost and many have not been replaced, or they’ve been replaced by low-paying jobs,” noted Stalter. Over the past 15 years, the percentage of Greece students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch has risen from about 12 percent to 54 percent.

Meanwhile, the costs of school supplies also has risen over the past decade. According to the Huntington Backpack Index, which has tracked the issue since 2007, the cost of school supplies and school fees has jumped 88 percent for elementary students, 81 percent for middle school students, and 68 percent for high school students, over the past decade.

The idea for the union to take a critical look at school supply lists—the inventory of file folders and highlighters that parents are required to buy each August—originally came from GTA President Jason Cooney, who opened his son’s school locker one day two years ago and discovered a refuse pile of unused supplies. Like most parents, he immediately thought of how much money he had spent on those supplies. When Cooney mentioned it to Stalter, both agreed this was an unnecessary burden on parents, and especially hurtful for Greece’s many low-income parents. Trying to help those families in need made sense for GTA, a social-justice oriented union of about 1,000 members who often organize around community activism—and has received support from the National Education Association to do so.

Since 2007, the cost of school supplies and school fees has jumped 88 percent for elementary students, 81 percent for middle school students, and 68 percent for high school students.

While Stalter began asking teacher colleagues to look critically at their lists—”Do you really need to buy 20 new clipboards every year?”—he also approached Brent Critchley, the school district’s central store supervisor. “I said, ‘your timing is perfect!’” recalled Critchley. He had been considering the same issue, but focusing on how to use the district’s purchasing power to buy the required supplies in bulk.

Consider this: While parents might spend $2 to buy a dozen pencils at an office supply store, the cost at the school district’s central store is just 38 cents per dozen. Glue sticks are 6 cents each. “Where I have an advantage is, I can buy at the very best price, but I need help from the education side: ‘What don’t I carry that you need?’” said Critchley.

“My thinking is let the teachers teach, and let me buy,” said Critchley, and basically that’s exactly what has been happening in Greece as the union and district have worked to align teachers’ and students’ needs with the district’s inventory.

“Things like this don’t happen unless you get some teamwork going — and that’s what this is, the district and union working together,” said Stalter.As Cost of School Supplies Add Up, Educators Step Up to Help Parents:

Big Education Ape: Why Teachers Are Going Broke Buying School Supplies | MONEY - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-teachers-are-going-broke-buying.html

Portfolio School Reform and Unregulated Charters Harm Ohio as School Year Begins | janresseger

Portfolio School Reform and Unregulated Charters Harm Ohio as School Year Begins | janresseger:

Portfolio School Reform and Unregulated Charters Harm Ohio as School Year Begins

 On Monday, children in Cleveland, Ohio began the 2016-2017 school year, but problems in a one-party Republican state whose legislature has warmly embraced “corporate school reform” will affect their education this year.

First of all, as the school year began on Monday, the Cleveland Teachers Union presented the school district with the required 10-day notice of a strike, to begin on the Friday before Labor Day unless the district and the teachers union can reach agreement on a long-running problem.  Teachers, who have been without a contract since early July, are wearing blue t-shirts that proclaim, “I don’t want to STRIKE, but I will!”

Why begin the school year with such conflict? Actually it isn’t a new problem. In 2012—with support from the Cleveland business establishment, the philanthropic sector, and the mayor and his appointed school board—the Ohio legislature passed a portfolio school reform plan (Manage the district like a business portfolio with a marketplace of school choice including rapid expansion of charters that receive local tax dollars.) and imposed it on the Cleveland schools.

Plain Dealer reporter Patrick O’Donnell explains that the Cleveland Transformation Plan also has affected salaries for teachers, and continues to affect contract negotiations four years later: “Negotiations on this contract are more complicated than in most districts, thanks to the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools…. That Plan called for a teacher pay plan ‘based on performance,’ instead of the traditional teacher salary schedule other districts use. That made Cleveland the only district in Ohio that no longer gives raises for years of experience and degrees that teachers earn. But the district and union have failed for four years to create the full pay plan called for in law and in the last teacher contract, reached in 2013. Though the sides agreed in their last contract that teachers would receive raises for multiple reasons, the district is only awarding them when teachers receive strong ratings on annual evaluations.  Ignored, so far, are contractually-agreed items like teaching in hard-to fill jobs or undesired schools; completing pre-approved courses and training that directly affect teaching; and Portfolio School Reform and Unregulated Charters Harm Ohio as School Year Begins | janresseger:

NYC Educator: A Lesson for Common Core Enthusiasts

NYC Educator: A Lesson for Common Core Enthusiasts:

A Lesson for Common Core Enthusiasts

Someone sent me an interesting link from the Gates-funded Center for American Progress the other day, about how we could all do fabulous close reading things with the Common Core standards. Believe it or not, just about every organization that's taken money from Gates has fallen head over heels in love with Common Core, on which Gates spent a whole lotta cash. Go figure. 

During the 2014-15 school year, more high school seniors read the young adult-oriented booksThe Fault in Our Stars and Divergent than Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Hamlet, according to a report that tracks what K-12 students at more than 30,000 schools are reading during the school year. These books are generally self-selected, making it not all that surprising that students would prefer to read a contemporary New York Times bestseller than a 17th-century play written in early modern English. And while some of the books that students select are thematically targeted to a mature audience, they are not particularly challenging to read for the average high schooler. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, for example, have the readability of a fourth- or fifth-grade text in terms of sentence structure and word difficulty.

God forbid that students should read stuff they enjoy. The end of the world is nigh. What we should value, according to this logic, is difficulty rather than content. Allowing students to self-select has a negative connotation in that paragraph. I'd argue the opposite. If students love to read, they will practice it without guns to their heads. Then, when they are presented with difficult readings, they will figure out how to get through them and deal with them. Forcing them to plod through Shakespere if they don't wish to is not how you get motivated readers. They continue:

Three of the top five most commonly assigned titles in grades 9 through 12 are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, and Of Mice and Men. All three books, while classics, are not particularly challenging in terms of sentence structure and complexity

Can you imagine that? Those crappy teachers are assigning books because of depth of theme, and they have no regard for how rigorous they NYC Educator: A Lesson for Common Core Enthusiasts:

Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy | BustED Pencils

Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy | BustED Pencils:

Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy

The social fibers in our society seem to be unraveling and the ruling class is scrambling to keep it together, as they fight over how to handle gaping social conditions. Historically oppressed minorities and immigrant groups are reminded daily how little they are valued by this society. We are in the midst of a system of mass incarceration and a scourge of unaccountable police murder and brutality, viewed online like the public executions of the past; cities across the country are seeing rebellions and riots. Refugees flee their homelands to come to America, the very place responsible for the policies that forced them to leave in the first place are rejected and sent back callously. If not, they are forced to eek out an existence in the shadows of society as family bonds are fractured and relatives are deported. The numbers of homeless are swelling as tent cities of mentally ill, drug addicted and struggling people, dot the urban landscape.  This is the richest, most powerful country in the world with a wealth gap that is beginning to mirror that of the underdeveloped world.

As a society, we have no answers to these problems. As educators, with access to the future of this nation, what has been our response? Since we as, teachers are generally regarded as ideological custodians of the system, largely, it has been as tools in the reproduction of the status quo. In recent decades, we have seen an attempt to separate from that tradition with Social Justice education. Social justice education is a means to encourage students to analyze the world and see their place in it as an agent of change for a more just world. What does a social justice framework mean?

Cal State Channel Islands school of Education website says,“According to Marilyn Cochran-Smith, a leading scholar in education, a social justice framework is one that “actively address[es] the dynamics of oppression, privilege, and isms, [and recognizes] that society isSocial Justice and Critical Pedagogy | BustED Pencils: 

Gates’ money does what? – Missouri Education Watchdog

Gates’ money does what? – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Gates’ money does what?

 Love him or hate him, is there anyone or anything that Gates’ global reach hasn’t touched?  Gates’ money seemingly buys influence andseemingly opens doors everywhere.  In the last year alone Gates has courted both sides of the aisle, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2015, (donating 47 different grants to Clinton initiatives in recent years)  and as Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss reports, Gates tried (unsuccessfully?) to persuade the Koch brothers, to side with him on Common Core in December 2015.   Apparently, investing Billions of dollars buys a lot of clout in the policy making world. In fact,  Gates believes that it is the role of the philanthropist foundations to give money togovernment and then direct them how to spend it.  

So Big Money directs government policy, everyone’s got a price?  

Speaking of  money and directing policy…  Gates just recently awarded  $8.9 Million for Personalized Learning tools to one non-profitorganization, but Gates has awarded PAGES of money for personalized instruction over the years.  Remember, this Common Core  “education stuff”  isn’t just about standards.  Online personalized learning  is Key to ed reform and involves lot and lots of #DATA.

****Also remember that Gates’ money helped develop SLDS, Data tags and CEDS data standards to share student data across states via theData Quality Campaign in 2005.     –and–

****Now our Federal Dept of Labor also has a WORKFORCE DATA QUALITY INITIATIVE  that plans to use personal student data from each SLDS, starting in Pre-school.     –and–

****The Federeal Learning Registry  has arranged for Microsoft, Amazon, Edmodo and others help manage and deliver the data from all the *free* online ed resources and online curriculum.

    All roads seem to lead to Gates MONEY and DATA.

To see likely legislation in your state’s future,  look at how Gates is  investing money, via the Gates Foundation Awarded Grants page.  We have Gates’ money does what? – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Why Teachers Are Going Broke Buying School Supplies | MONEY

Why Teachers Are Going Broke Buying School Supplies | MONEY:

Why Teachers Are Going Broke Buying School Supplies

As the beginning of a new school year draws near, it’s not just parents who are scouring the big-box and office-supply store sale fliers for deals on school supplies. Teachers are under more pressure than ever to provide the kinds of items that used to be stocked in supply closets or provided by school districts — and they can get yelled at for an infraction as small as using up too much copier paper.

Even though the economy’s been in recovery for some time now, schools never reversed the cutbacks they implemented during the recession, and many are actually spending less per pupil this back-to-school season, according to CBS News. As a result, most teachers spend more than $500 per year on school supplies out of their own pocket.

Read More: Here’s How Much Your Kid’s Teacher Is Shelling Out for School Supplies

The problem is that state-level school funding has been cut way back, and municipalities are loathe to fill the gap by hiking property taxes. Not having enough money is especially acute in some districts and in lower-income neighborhoods, where parents might not have enough money — or kids might be living with a grandparent on a fixed income — to pay for basic school supplies, let alone the paper towels, hand sanitizer and other items schools now ask them to provide. One teacher interviewed by CBS said she was only allotted $1.60 for school supplies per kid — for the entire year.

In many places, the situation is dire. CBS cited data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that found more than 30 states actually paid less per student in school funding in 2014 than they did back in 2008. As a result, teachers are digging more deeply into their pockets than ever before, and that’s before the school year has even begun.Why Teachers Are Going Broke Buying School Supplies | MONEY:

 

BACK TO SCHOOL SUPPLIES

1. A piece of chalk -- in case the classroom you're assigned to has none.
2. An eraser or small rag -- in case the classroom you're assigned to has none.
3. A piece of colored chalk -- in case you want to underscoresomething.
4. A few rubber bands -- in case you need to band some things together.
5. A pad of sticky-notes -- in case you want to stick a note onto something.
6. A mechanical lead pencil -- because they're always sharp, don't require a pencil sharpener, and are fine, clear, and erasable.
7. Press-on white labels (either address label size or one-line width labels) -- so you can white out or label anything.
8. A black ink ballpoint pen -- for making carbon copies or for writing that's more reproducible by a copier than that produced by a blue ink pen.
9. A package of 3 x 5 cards -- for class participation exercises, sort-able notes, hall passes
10. A yellow highlighter pen -- to highlight points in your lesson plan that you inadvertently omitted, need to review.
11. A red pen -- to write evaluative notes on students' tests, homework
12. Loose-leaf reinforcements -- to keep pages from falling out of your binder.
13. Wet-wash pad -- for quick cleanups.
14. A single-edged razor blade(instead of bulky scissors) -- for cutting out magazine articles, pictures... They usually come with a protective cardboard over the blade.
15. A small tin of aspirin -- in case of a headache.
16. Some large and small paper clips -- to clip together homework or test papers from particular class periods.
17. A piece of carbon paper -- in case you want to keep a copy of notes you write to parents or students.
18. A see-through plastic pencil case -- to carry all the above items.
19. An appointment book -- to keep track of weekly appointments, things to do
20. A cell phone.
21. A grade book -- for taking attendance, checking homework, giving credit for class participation
22. A pad of newsprint (rolled up?) -- to make notes on; especially useful when you'll teach the same lesson more than once-- in different rooms.
23. A magic marker or two -- to make notes with.
24. A small stapler -- for securely posting items on a bulletin board or attaching papers.
25. Cardboard -- to place over a door or window to cut down on hallway distractions.
26. A small can of machine oil -- in case a squeaky seat or door distracts students.
27. This list -- to check over a couple of days before school starts.
Click here for a printable version of the supply list. 

Donald Trump and School Choice: An Increasing Focus? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Donald Trump and School Choice: An Increasing Focus? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Donald Trump and School Choice: An Increasing Focus?

In a Tuesday speech in West Bend, Wisc. tailored for the African-American community, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump expanded on his brief mention of K-12 at the Republican National Convention by mentioning a few teacher-related policies and his thoughts on charter schools. In fact, since the convention, he seems to be putting a little more emphasis on school choice policy in particular.

Trump first criticized the performance of schools in Milwaukee, which is about 40 miles from West Bend, saying the city has only a 60 percent graduation rate and that 55 city schools are rated as failing. Despite Trump's record of stretching facts, these two particular claims are based on data. Politifact Wisconsin reported in May that 61 percent of Milwaukee students graduated after four years in 2014. And the state did rate 55 Milwaukee schools as "fails to meet expectations"on the state report card, based on data from the 2013-14 school year. 

He then pivoted to K-12 policy questions, which he has largely neglected during the 2016 race. 

"On education, it is time to have school choice, merit pay for teachers, and to end the tenure policies that hurt good teachers and reward bad teachers. We are going to put students and parents first," Trump told the audience.

In the past, Trump has been critical of teachers' unions' impact on school and their fear of competition. He's also argued that Democrats protect the unions in exchange for political backing. 

He also took a shot at his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, saying she "would rather deny opportunities to millions of young African-American children" in order to prop up the "education bureaucracy." And he said that Democrats in charge of cities have "ruined the schools."

That's similar to his RNC speech, in which he backed parental choice of schools and blasted Clinton's support for bureaucrats.

And Trump said he would allow charter schools specifically to "thrive." It's worth noting that since the RNC, he's worked support for school choice into at least three August speeches: in West Bend, during his economic policy speech in Detroit, and during a speech in Wilmington, N.C. He also brought up child care last week. 

Have you made it this far? Then you can keep going by checking out our comparison of Clinton and Trump on key K-12 policy issues, like testing, teaching, and school safety.

---

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Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12.Donald Trump and School Choice: An Increasing Focus? - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

NC school vouchers support discrimination | News & Observer

NC school vouchers support discrimination | News & Observer:

In NC, vouchers support private schools that discriminate

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BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The logic behind a state program that gives lower-income parents up to $4,200 a year for private school tuition is that it provides parents “a choice.” But now there is a disturbing other side to that choice. Some private schools that are getting public dollars choose not to accept lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students.

The Charlotte Observer reported last week that at least four faith-based private schools in Mecklenburg County that get public funds say in their handbooks that they will not accept certain students based on sex or gender issues.

Unfortunately, this discrimination is legal in North Carolina since sexual orientation is not included in the state’s anti-discrimination law. But that lapse does not justify spending taxpayers’ money to sustain schools that practice discrimination.

And the state’s objection should be practical as well as moral. Why should the parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students have to pay taxes to provide “a choice” that includes schools that refuse to accept their children?

State Rep. Paul Stam, a Republican from Apex who sponsored the voucher program legislation, isn’t bothered by the moral or practical issues of underwriting discrimination. With the head-spinning logic he often applies to dismiss objections to Republican policies, Stam says there’s no problem with schools that discriminate because parents can choose from others that don’t. “Parents choose where to send children. And parents are free to choose whatever school they want within the hundreds of possibilities,” he says.

The liberal-leaning advocacy group, N.C. Policy Watch, has long questioned the discriminatory aspects of the voucher program. Chris Fitzsimon, the group’s co-founder, says, “We’re asking taxpayers in North Carolina to support schools that they’re not eligible to attend.”

Stam and other voucher supporters are not eager to examine the issues raised by paying for students from low-income families to attend private schools because they need to declare the program a success in order to expand it. In fact, GOP members have already boosted it to the point where by 2027-28, $145 million in taxpayer dollars will be going to private school tuition. Today, some 400 schools get money through the voucher program, some of them church-based, many of them small. All of them should be open to all students.NC school vouchers support discrimination | News & Observer:

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article96295292.html#storylink=cpy

Typical anti-testing activist: Educated, white, married, politically liberal parent | Get Schooled

Typical anti-testing activist: Educated, white, married, politically liberal parent | Get Schooled:

Typical anti-testing activist: Educated, white, married, politically liberal parent

In the last few years, there’s been a rise in parents pulling their children out of high-stakes exams at school.

While opting out occurs across the country, the northeast appears to be ground zero for the movement. For example, the opt out rate last year in California for state language arts and math tests was 3 percent. It was more than 20 percent in New York.

The movement is fledgling in Georgia where nearly 4,300 exams were not taken by Georgia students last year. This year, the AJC found a few instances of students opting out, including 60 kids in Gwinnett, 145 in Fulton and 24 in DeKalb.

Who are the parents making this choice? Researchers from Teachers College of Columbia University sought to find out by recruiting respondents online, through links on the webpages and social media channels of opt out groups. They asked them to take a lengthy survey. The national sample consisted of a 1,641 respondents from 47 states. (If you go here, you can find the actual survey starting on Page 60.)

The research shows former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan got at least one thing right when he described the anti-testing and Common Core movement as “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

According to the Columbia report: “The typical opt out activist is a highly educated, white, married, politically liberal parent whose children attend public school and whose household median income is well above the national average.”

Among the other findings of the survey and analysis:

•The opt out movement includes more than just parents who have opted their children out.  It also includes parents whose children are in public school but did not opt out; parents whose children are homeschooled and/or in private school; and individuals without children who are supporting the movement. About four‐fifths of the respondents (81.5 percent) were parents or guardians of school‐aged children. The vast majority of them (92.9 percent) indicated that their children attended public schools. Approximately three‐quarters of respondents who are parents or guardians of school‐aged children (74.5 percent) have opted their children out of testing. Nine out of ten (92.1 percent) respondents who are parents or guardians of school‐aged children said they are likely to opt out in the future.

•Parents refuse standardized tests even in states where opting out is not permitted or discouraged by policy makers. The share of parents who opted out is lowest in states where opt out is prohibited (73.2 percent) and highest in states where refusal and opt out are permitted with constraints (85.7 percent). We find no significant differences in opting out between respondents residing in states where opt out is permitted and other respondents.

•The movement brings together Democrats (46.1 percent), Republicans (15.1 percent), Independents (33.3 percent), and supporters of other parties (5.5 percent).

•Most participants have come to the opt out movement during the past 3‐4 years, with almost half (48.9 percent) joining during the past two years. Social media – Facebook, Twitter, etc. – play a key role in mobilizing participants, as do social networks. Compared to their peers in other parts of the country, respondents in the South have heard about the movement most recently.

•The opt out movement is about more than just opposition to high‐stakes testing. Respondents gave many reasons as to why they participate. In particular, respondents feel that judging teacher performance by students’ standardized test scores is unfair (36.9 percent). They also are protesting the narrowing of the curriculum, corporatization/privatization of education, and the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

•Motivations vary, depending on whether the respondent was a teacher or not. Teachers (45.0 percent) say that they are opposed to tying teacher evaluation to student performance on standardized tests while non‐teachers were more likely to mention opposition to ‘teaching to the test’ and to the Common Core.

•Opt out activists are concerned with current educational reforms and efforts to improve public schools. Compared to the general public, they are more critical of the use of different types of testing in education, especially high‐stake tests. Also, opt out activists view increasing school funds as important idea for improving schools. While the general public rank this idea in the 4th place (out of five), opt out activists rank this idea in the 2nd place.Typical anti-testing activist: Educated, white, married, politically liberal parent | Get Schooled: