Winter-Spring Speaking Schedule for Feminist Teacher, Ileana Jiménez « Feminist Teacher

Winter-Spring Speaking Schedule for Feminist Teacher, Ileana Jiménez « Feminist Teacher:

Winter-Spring Speaking Schedule for Feminist Teacher, Ileana Jiménez

I had the honor of being a part of the opening plenary at this year’s Scholar & Feminist Conference hosted by the Barnard Center for Research on Women (photo credit: Sarah Rodriguez).

I’m excited to announce my speaking schedule for the remainder of the winter, spring, and early summer of 2015 (jump to the end for a full list). Last year’s line-up was particularly invigorating, with talks and panels everywhere from schools in India to universities in the UK. I was especially honored to be the keynote at various conferences last year, including Bowling Green State University’s Generation Justice Conference in Ohio and the National Sex Education Conference in New Jersey.

This year started out just as promising and just as national and global in reach. January included a Skype session with teachers in Iceland that was organized byAuður Magndís Auðardóttir, who works on initiatives on education and youth in Reykjavik. Auðardóttir said that my session on teaching feminism and intersectionality in K-12 classrooms “was inventful in finding ways to [make] the subject both personal and professional – which is so very important. Even [though] we were working over Skype, she managed to get everyone involved in sharing their thoughts and reflecting on their own situation in regards to feminism and equality. Her take on intersectionality was also very helpful for educators.”

Last month, I was also invited by Tracy Ainsworth, Director of the Brace Center for Gender Studies at Philips Academy Andover, to deliver a three-hour workshop for faculty on using an intersectional lens in curriculum design. Following this workshop, I also led a two-hour session for students on how to generate youth-led feminist activism and multi-issue organizing across student groups.

One teacher said about the curriculum workshop:

“Great resources about the teaching of feminism and intersectionality — one of them (the Audre Lorde piece) I used that same day in a class! Inspiration from Ileana! Sometimes it’s just good to know that there are people like her out there. It’s a worthwhile ideal to orient myself toward. Practical advice about assessments as well. I created a new assignment based in large measure upon the sample assessment she gave us.”

I was also part of several panels at the Scholar & Feminist conference hosted by the Barnard Center for Research on Women in February. BCRW invited me to curate a series of panels on teaching feminism at the high school level and I was thrilled to bring Winter-Spring Speaking Schedule for Feminist Teacher, Ileana Jiménez « Feminist Teacher:

Schools Matter: The Moral Collapse of Education Reform

Schools Matter: The Moral Collapse of Education Reform:

The Moral Collapse of Education Reform

Übermensch

In 1954 the U. S. Supreme Court declared 9-0 that separate schools based on race are inherently unequal. That decision launched the American Civil Rights Movement, and it provided a moral and legal foundation for civil rights gains among women, the disabled, English language learners, and the LGBT communities.

Now six decades hence, the U. S. has a Secretary of Education admits to having a "Rosa Parks moment" while watching the Hollywood documentary, Waiting for Superman, which celebrates the virtues of black children schooled in segregated total compliance testing camps run by white CEOs and staffed by white temporary missionaries with no professional teacher preparation.

At the same time, the black civil rights leadership has been hijacked, emasculated, and corrupted by growing numbers ofneoliberal self-serving traitors like Howard Fuller, Cory Booker, Floyd Flake, Kevin Chavous, and Rod Paige.

In Massachusetts, we have the best and whitest law firms in Boston planning to go to court to force unlimited expansion opportunities for segregated corporate reform schools as an affirmation of their civil rights priorities.

In New York we have white moms calling for more testing to further label, sort, and segregate, and for more charter schools to warehouse black and brown children whose poverty distinguishes their test scores from those of white middle class children, whose advantages have been preserved by the racist sorting machine.

In Washington, we have washed up bureaucrats like Peter Cunningham confessing a bankruptcy of imagination and will to keep alive the legacy of Dr. King and Thurgood Marshall.  How can someone with any functional moral compass intact support another generation of racist accountability practices as the best we can do to realize educational equality?  What kinds of Schools Matter: The Moral Collapse of Education Reform:

You won’t believe what New Mexico teachers aren’t allowed to say to students - The Washington Post

You won’t believe what New Mexico teachers aren’t allowed to say to students - The Washington Post:

You won’t believe what New Mexico teachers aren’t allowed to say to students

South Valley Academy students protest after leaving class on March 2 in Albuquerque, N.M. New assessment tests that have angered parents and teachers across the nation prompted the walkouts by hundreds of high school students in New Mexico who had been set to take the exams. (AP Photo/The Albuquerque Journal, Roberto E. Rosales)

Put this in the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category: The New Mexico Administrative Code prohibits teachers and other school staff from saying anything negative to students about standardized tests. Or, to be more precise, they are not allowed to say anything that might  “disparage or diminish the significance, importance or use of the standardized tests.” (The word “disparage” is bold-faced on the code’s Web page, which you can see here.)

Veteran teacher Peter Greene wrote about this on his blog, Curmudgucation, calling the implications “chilling.”

What can happen to teachers and other staff who are found to be disparaging the tests, or who violate any of the other more common-place prohibitions in the code relating to test security (not releasing any part of the test, permitting the test to be unsecured in an unlocked room, etc.)? The code addresses this, too, with penalties for “testing irregularities” ranging from ordering the violator to stop, to having their professional license revoked.

Here are the relevant sections of the code:

6.10.7.11         STAFF RESPONSIBILITY:

A.        All school district staff, including administrators, teachers, volunteers and office personnel who come in contact with standardized tests, shall familiarize themselves with basic principles of standardized test security. Any specific questions should be directed, first to their school or district test coordinator, then to the assessment and evaluation unit of the PED.

B.        Test examiners shall:

(1)     administer the standardized test according to the directions and specifications in the standardized test examiner’s manual and during the designated test administration window;

(2)     return the standardized tests to the school or district test coordinator after testing each day during the test administration window for secure overnight storage;

(3)     use test monitors in the hall to gather additional materials or deal with medical situations; and

(4)     review the standardized test examiner’s manual so that administration procedures are understood.

C.        It shall be a prohibitive practice for anyone to:

(1)     photocopy or reproduce in any other fashion including 

You won’t believe what New Mexico teachers aren’t allowed to say to students - The Washington Post:

NYC Public School Parents: How Cuomo's idea to expand state receivership is based on a false narrative of failing schools

NYC Public School Parents: How Cuomo's idea to expand state receivership is based on a false narrative of failing schools:

How Cuomo's idea to expand state receivership is based on a false narrative of failing schools

Below is the testimony I gave today in front of the NYC Council Education Committee, in favor of the resolution opposing the Governor’s proposal on receivership -- the state taking over our struggling schools.

I am here to testify in support of the resolution against the Governor’s proposal to expand state receivership of allegedly low-performing public schools.  The state has no track record of improving schools in receivership.  When the State Education Department took control of the Roosevelt school district in 2002, and ran it for over a decade, there was little or no improvement, as reported in a Newsday 2013 article:

Albany's intervention ends Monday, after 11 years and more than $300 million in extra state spending. The period -- marked by limited scholastic progress and memorable mistakes by state officials and their appointees -- was the first and only time the state ever managed a local school system.

"I can tell you right off the bat that the state Education Department has no capabilities to run a school district," said Roger Tilles of Great Neck, who is Long Island's representative to the state Board of Regents. "We need other alternatives, if we're ever going to turn around other districts that are really not succeeding."[1]

Moreover, the narrative of a “crisis” in failing schools that is being used to justify the expansion of state receivership is manufactured -- to encourage the hostile takeover of public schools. 
As Michael Petrilli of the Thomas Fordham Institute, a big supporter of the Common Core standards just wrote:

Some education reformers and media outlets are already using the results of the new, tougher tests to brand schools as “failing” if most of their students don’t meet the higher standards. Note, for instance, the Daily News’s special report, “Fight for their Future,” which leads with the provocative headline “New York City is rife with underperforming schools, including nearly two-thirds of students missing state standards.” This line of attack closely resembles the talking points of Eva Moskowitz and Jeremiah Kettridge of Families for Excellent Schools, who both promote the notion that in New York, “800,000 kids can’t read or do math at grade level” and “143,000 kids are trapped in persistently failing schools.”

These statements are out of bounds, and reformers should say so. They validate the concerns some educators voiced all along: that we would use the results of the tougher tests to unfairly label more schools as failures.[2]

The results of the new Common Core exams are essentially unreliable.  They were designed to find two thirds of students failing, and did so, not just in New York City but in the rest of the state as well. The reports by Families for Excellent Schools claiming a “crisis” of failing schools were put out by an organization that has received considerable funding from hedge funders and Wall Street financiers, as well as more than$700,000 over the past two years from the Walton Foundation, an organization that has an aggressive privatization agenda.[3]  The unreliable figures and claims of an education crisis cited by this organization were echoed in a report from the Governor’s office that has been described as “sometimes indistinguishable from the eight reports on struggling schools F.E.S. has sent reporters since the summer.”[4]  Not surprisingly, Cuomo himself has received huge sums from some of the same pro-privatization hedge funders and financiers. [5]

Yet Carol Burris, award-winning principal in the Rockville Centre School District, has shown how unreliable these figures are, based on cut NYC Public School Parents: How Cuomo's idea to expand state receivership is based on a false narrative of failing schools:

Richer Schools Get More Money

3/19/2015 – The Education Spring Goes To College:

The Education Spring Goes To College

 THIS WEEK: Richer Schools Get More Money … Education Not An Equalizer … Hedge Funders Back Cuomo … NCLB Hasn’t Worked … Bad Republican House Budget

TOP STORY

The Education Spring Goes To College

By Jeff Bryant

” The Education Spring has become an influential force in higher education too. The popular groundswell of grievances with higher education policy differs in some important ways from what’s driving anger in the K-12 community. Particularly egregious is how government disinvestment in higher education has coupled with a predatory loan policy to hike college student debt levels to an unimaginable $1.3 trillion. But the unifying theme is the same – that We the People – not political ideologues, bureaucrats, or corporate profiteers – should be in control of our education destinies.”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

In 23 States, Richer School Districts Get More Local Funding Than Poorer Districts

The Washington Post

“In 23 states, state and local governments are together spending less per pupil in the poorest school districts than they are in the most affluent school districts … Nationwide, states and localities are spending an average of 15% less per pupil in the poorest school districts … than they are in the most affluent … Wealthier towns and counties are able to raise more money through taxes to support their schools than poorer localities can … State aid is often not enough to make up the difference Federal spending … is serving as an equalizer … But federal spending was never intended to equalize funding for poor children … It was meant to add more money for students who need more services.”
Read more …

Education Is Not Great Equalizer for Black Americans

NBC News

“New research is showing that getting another degree or a higher paying job may do less than believed to make good on the American Dream for families of color. Black Americans with college degrees have less in savings and other assets than white Americans who dropped out of high school … Just as education does not erase wealth divides, racial disparities in savings and assets remain persistent even when black workers earn more. The median black family earning an income in the middle fifth of all wage earners had slightly less accumulated wealth than the median white family earning incomes in the bottom of fifth of earners … Black families with some wealth are often compelled to use those extra dollars make up for longstanding economic gaps … The majority – 7 out of 10 – of African Americans kids born into families in the middle fifth of wage earners will fall out of the middle class as adults.”
Read more …

Hedge Fund Executives Give ‘Til It Hurts To Politicians, Especially Cuomo, To Get More Charter Schools

New York Daily News

“Hedge fund executives have unleashed a tsunami of money the past few years aimed at getting New York’s politicians to close more public schools and expand charter schools. They’ve done it through direct political contributions, through huge donations to a web of pro-charter lobbying groups, and through massive TV and radio commercials … Since 2000, 570 hedge fund managers have shelled out nearly $40 million in political contributions in New York State, according to a recent report by Hedge Clippers, a union-backed research group. The single biggest beneficiary has been Andrew Cuomo, who received $4.8 million from them … direct donations don’t tell the full story … The indirect contributions are even more astounding … Cuomo and the Legislature approved up to $2,600 more per pupil for charter school facilities … Now, the governor wants the Legislature to increase the state limit on charter schools.”
Read more …

No Child Left Behind: What Standardized Test Scores Reveal About Its Legacy

The Washington Post

Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing writes, “NCLB provided that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should be the primary means for evaluating the success … Here are key findings … The rate of progress on NAEP at grades 4 and 8 was generally faster in the decade before NCLB took effect than since … The slowdown in math was pronounced, especially at grade 4 … Score gains slowed after NCLB for English language learners, while score gaps increased between ELLs and non-ELLs … Scores for students with disabilities flattened or declined… Scores for high school students have stagnated … NCLB’s failure to even raise scores on other standardized exams should be considered in light of widespread evidence of curriculum narrowing and extensive teaching to the test.”
Read more …

House Budget, Short on Education Details, Would Lock In Sequester

Education Week

“House Republicans unveiled their fiscal year 2016 budget … The nonbinding spending blueprint would cap discretionary spending for things like federal education programs at sequester level, making it extremely difficult to obtain any of the increases proposed in the president’s budget. And it outlines even steeper cuts for fiscal year 2017 and beyond for a total overall decrease of $759 billion, or 14 percent below the current caps … It asks each committee, including the House Education and the Workforce Committee, to recommend $1 billion in funding cuts for programs from fiscal 2016 through fiscal 2025 … On Monday, the president addressed the funding discrepancy … ‘I can tell you that if the budget maintains sequester-level funding, then we would actually be spending less on pre-K to 12th grade in America’s schools in terms of federal support than we were back in 2000.’”
Read more …3/19/2015 – The Education Spring Goes To College:

Chicago’s veteran reformers praise Chuy Garcia on finances ‪#‎Chuy2015

Chicago’s veteran reformers praise Chuy Garcia on finances | Chicago Reporter:

Chicago’s veteran reformers praise Chuy Garcia on finances

If the media are right when they insinuate that Chuy Garcia is so unprepared to deal with the city’s finances, why are so many veteran good-government reformers backing him?

For one thing, they remember how disastrous much of the media thought Harold Washington was going to be on finances when he ran for mayor in 1983 — he couldn’t even pay his own taxes on time! he was a criminal! — and how he went on to lead the most fiscally responsible administration in recent history.

But there’s much more.  “For me, it’s particularly important that we deal with [the budget crisis] in a way that involves citizens and is accountable to citizens rather than technocrats or backroom operators,” said former Ald. Dick Simpson, now a political science professor.  “There are going to be choices and sacrifices, and I think we as citizens need to have a voice in that.  We won’t under Rahm Emanuel and a rubber-stamp City Council.”

He recalled the budget hearings held in communities across the city by Washington, scaled back by Mayor Richard Daley and eliminated by Emanuel. “It was actually a process where you were heard and you were taken seriously,” Simpson said. “If we’re going to have to make some service cuts and have some tax increases, you want citizens to be part of the decision-making, because there will be choices and tradeoffs.”

Garcia has dealt with budgets at the city, county and state levels, said former City Clerk Miguel del Valle, who ran for mayor against Emanuel four years ago.

“He has an unblemished record as an elected official, and on top of that, he has a deep understanding of the city and its neighborhoods,” del Valle said. “He understands what it means to provide balanced development — as was done in the Harold Washington administration — with a balance between downtown and neighborhood development, to correct the inequities when it comes to distributing city resources.”

Those who herald Emanuel as a competent administrator ignore his record, while those who attack Garcia ignore the plan he’s put forward, said Cook County Clerk David Orr, who is co-chair of Garcia’s campaign.

“Rahm Emanuel has failed,” Orr said.  “He’s nearly bankrupted the city.

“I don’t know what tough decisions he’s made. He’s put off his school budget — his school board used 14 months for a 12-month budget.  He’s put off pension payments.  Sure, he passed four city budgets without property-tax increases — using hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines and fees, red light cameras and speed cameras, and with $1.9 billion in expanded borrowing.  And of course his school board and Park District raised property taxes to the limit.”

Emanuel’s huge campaign war chest allows him to distort his record and evade accountability, Orr said.

“He blames everything under the sun on Daley — without mentioning his name — but his relationship with Daley is what got him where he is today.  Then he tries to tag Chuy with ‘the failed policies of the past,’ and Chuy, if anybody, has been fighting the machine since the day he stepped into City Hall.  He’s never been Chicago’s veteran reformers praise Chuy Garcia on finances | Chicago Reporter:

Toward Fiscal Sustainability: A New Approach in Prudent Fiscal Management of Chicago

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Saving Students From A Shattered System: A school without representation? A true story

Saving Students From A Shattered System: A school without representation? A true story:

A school without representation? A true story

While mentoring a first year, special education teacher, in Milwaukee’s Guadalupe middle school an incident happened that I will never forget.  The facts caught on video were told to me as follows. 

A teacher is walking down the hall and his leg thrusts backward and hits a female student.  The teacher turns around and laughs a little and moves on.  The video was picture only so they no one could hear what was said.

As told to me by the teacher, the girl complained to her mother that a teacher kicked her.  The mother complained to the principal and the teacher was brought into the office.  As there were no unions allowed in this charter school, he had no representation.  He was confronted with the video and told his side of the story.  He was told he was lying and that he could either resign or be fired.  He chose to resign.

Now his side of the story:  He was walking down the hall when he felt something stick on the bottom of his foot.  He lifted his leg backward to see what it was and inadvertently kicked the girl.  There was nothing in the video to discount what he said but he was asked to resign anyway.

And now the rest of the story:  The young man was Chinese and was born with a withered hand.  As his hand could not hold his foot if he lifted it forward, he lifted it backward instead thus inadvertently kicking the girl.  But why did he laugh?  There was no previous animosity between the teacher and the girl and she was not one of his students.  Well here is a quote from the Handbook of Cultural Psychiatry by Wen-Shing Tseng  2001 Academic Press  San Diego California  

  

“Nervous laughing…is one kind of coping mechanism commonly used by some Asian people.  When a person is nervous, particularly in an embarrassing situation, instead of manifesting feelings and gestures of nervousness or embarrassment he may laugh nervously.  By bursting into Saving Students From A Shattered System: A school without representation? A true story:

‘Wrapping Our Arms Around All Children’ | Oklahoma Observer

‘Wrapping Our Arms Around All Children’ | Oklahoma Observer:

‘WRAPPING OUR ARMS AROUND ALL CHILDREN’

BY JOHN THOMPSON

This is the third in the series about alternatives to the risky school choice experiment known as SB 68. This “under the radar” bill is the latest education gamble based on the idea that the stress of high stakes testing and extreme competition can overcome the educational legacies of the stress of poverty.

With spring comes familiar smells, sights, and emotions. Daffodils bloom, children ride bikes, play basketball, and explore. Many front and back yards in my neighborhood are now filled with neighbors conversing, relaxing and working on projects with each other. The once-beleaguered Central Park neighborhood currently feels like the Oklahoma City of my youth. But today there are two huge differences – both to the better.

Nowadays, Millennials walk, push their children’s strollers, and ride bikes and skateboards, and they don’t just drive everywhere. The new urbanism is based on the principle of “Placemaking,” and young citizens seek a sense of place within their community.

Vastly more important, all of this socializing is multi-cultural. We now have the ability to extend the opportunities that accompany great neighborhoods and schools to Oklahoma City residents of all races and nationalities.

It won’t be easy to create educational equality, but the United States of America has conquered far tougher challenges.

As the New York Times Magazine’s Paul Tough explains, school “reform” came from “liberal PTSD” from losing the War on Poverty. Even though we didn’t actually lose the war against inequity, a generation of reformers decided that fighting the legacies of poverty and Jim Crow was too difficult, so they adopted a supposedly cheap and easy shortcut.

To borrow from the great education historian, Larry Cuban, they “deputized” teachers as the agents for reversing the damage done by poverty. The result was scapegoating schools and educators who weren’t able to create a quick fix for intense concentrations of generational poverty and trauma from within the four walls of the classroom.

The defeatism known as school “reform” has been brazen in playing the “race card” but it has been shockingly oblivious to the conditions faced by our poorest children of color.

Moreover, it has been irresponsibly cavalier about the damage done by segregation. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has killed efforts to integrate schools based on race, reformers have ignored the damage done by sorting children by race and class. In fact, the market-driven reform movement has actually increased segregation.

While I must stress that reformers did not mean to do so, and they sincerely sought to help children, the unintended effect of competition-driven reform has been “neo-Plessyism.”

The answer to the “Big Sort,” or the self-segregation of contemporary America, is not the corporate reform policies of test, sort, reward, and punish. An overwhelming body of education research points to high-quality early education, full-service community schools, and socio-economic integration as the most effective school improvements.

The next post will address the potential for early education and full-service community schools to ‘Wrapping Our Arms Around All Children’ | Oklahoma Observer:

When Will "Progressives" Defend Public Education? - Living in Dialogue

When Will "Progressives" Defend Public Education? - Living in Dialogue:



When Will "Progressives" Defend Public Education?

 By Anthony Cody.

This morning I opened my email to find a message from “Bold Progressives,” who exist to rally support for Democratic Party candidates willing to fight for real change. The message was a survey from the “Progressive Change Campaign Committee,” asking if I thought Hillary Clinton should face a primary challenge. The second question is this:

Would you help press all Democratic candidates for president to run on bold progressive ideas?

I clicked “yes,” and the following option appeared:

Check this box to sign the pledge to urge candidates to campaign on bold progressive ideas.

We want the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee to campaign on big, bold, economic-populist ideas that tangibly improve the lives of millions of Americans.

We urge all candidates for president to campaign on big, bold ideas — such as establishing a national goal of debt-free college at all public colleges and universities, expanding Social Security benefits instead of cutting them, creating millions of clean-energy jobs, reducing big money influence in politics, breaking up the “too-big-to-fail” Wall Street banks that crashed our economy, and ensuring that working families share in the economic growth they help create.

Notice anything missing from this bold agenda?

There is no mention of K12 education. No mention of the issues confronting public schools, the attempts to privatize, voucherize and charterize our schools. No mention of school closures in African American and Latino neighborhoods. No mention of assaults on teacher unions and due process rights. No mention of the test obsession destroying the quality of education in our schools, leading students to walk out by the thousands.

Will we go through another election where Republicans rail at the public school monopoly, and Democrats say virtually nothing? Will the next administration continue the policies advanced by the Obama/Duncan administration, requiring the use of test scores in teacher evaluation, and promoting the expansion of charter schools and Teach for America? Will we continue to have an administration  that promotes an “accountability” system centered on high stakes tests, and promotes school closures and other disruptions to public schools?

Will groups like “Democrats for Education Reform” continue to funnel buckets of hedge fund cash to candidates willing to support charter schools and Teach For America?

Organizations such as the “Bold Progressives” — and potential candidates for office —  need to wake up to the movement of teachers, parents and students that is taking shape across the country. I, for one, am unwilling to support candidates who refuse to go on record in support of public schools.

In advance of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid, the National Education Association made its endorsement more than a year ahead of the election. Teacher unions were “all in,” in their early public support of Obama, in spite of Race to the Top and other disastrous policies. I am not sure what we got for that support. Obama’s second term has brought more of the same. I hope our unions take a very different approach this time around, and demand that any candidate that receive our support reject high stakes testing and the use of tests in teacher evaluations, and truly support democratically controlled public schools.

The election race between Chuy Garcia and Rahm Emanuel is a bit of a preview of this, and could send a shock wave to Democrats who have gotten accustomed to ignoring their constituencies. Education is a huge issue in Chicago, and if Garcia wins on April 7, it will be because he had the full throated support of teachers — and the Chicago Teachers Union, out in the streets. Garcia has paid attention to education issues, and When Will "Progressives" Defend Public Education? - Living in Dialogue:

Test security now means checking social media for cheaters - Yahoo Finance

Test security now means checking social media for cheaters - Yahoo Finance:



Test security now means checking social media for cheaters

Standardized test security now means monitoring social media and some aren't OK with that

 For the organizations that give standardized tests, it's a common — and common-sense — security measure.

But to the growing number of critics of the exams, the practice of monitoring students' social media accounts against leaks of test questions is evidence that the tests and the companies that create them are too invasive.

The debate exploded last week in New Jersey when a school administrator emailed some colleagues about her district's experience. In the email, Watchung Hills Regional High School District Superintendent Elizabeth Jewett said the state Education Department contacted her district at a testing company's request at 10 p.m. one night last week with news of a possible test breach. A student apparently had posted a photo of a question from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test, or PARCC, on Twitter.

The state Education Department, she said in her note, was informed of the issue by Pearson, the London-based company that oversees the test developed by PARCC. It is being given in a dozen states this month.

"The DOE wanted us to issue discipline to the student," she wrote.

But, Jewett said in the March 10 email to leaders of other schools that was obtained by education blogger Bob Braun, it turned out that the student was merely complaining about a test question; there was no photo of the item itself. She said the student's tweet was removed.

Jewett released a statement confirming that the email was hers and asserting it was accurate, but she did not return an email seeking more details. The district also said she would not comment further.

PARCC, intended to measure how well students are learning what's required by the national Common Core curriculum standards, has many critics. Some students scattered across the country are protesting the exam and some parents organized through social media networks are boycotting it.

Their objections include that the exam itself is inappropriate, that it's part of a culture of testing that is taking away from real learning at school and that it's generally dehumanizing. They say the testing is more about consequences — as factors in determining which teachers could be fired; which schools may be closed for performing badly — than it is about learning. They also say they worry about the privacy of students' data.

At a legislative hearing on Thursday, the state Education Department said it would do a review to make sure students' privacy isn't compromised. Still, one lawmaker said he would introduce legislation to address the monitoring of social media.

"I just find this to be unacceptable," said Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, the Democrat who is chairman of the Assembly's education committee.

In the testing world, there's nothing ominous about the monitoring. Pearson referred a reporter to a statement on its website that the company notifies education departments to any possible breaches.

"Copyright and test security are not new issues in testing. What's different is the social media aspect," said Luci Willits, deputy executive director of Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which is giving Common Core-measuring exams in 18 states this spring. "You wouldn't approve of a student taking copies of the test and handing it out to friends or posting it on the locker."

Willits said her group uses student workers to do hashtag searches online to see if anyone is posting the test itself. Last year, when 4 million students took a trial run version of that test, she said about 75 breaches were discovered.

But the New Jersey incident gave opponents more not to like.

Save Our Schools NJ is calling for an investigation. "Posting a snarky comment about a stupid question hardly warrants the Department of Ed calling a superintendent," said Susan Cauldwell, an organizer of the parents group.

Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation for Teachers union, started a petition drive this week calling for Pearson to stop monitoring students' social media accounts.

In an interview, Weingarten compared the alleged snooping to tactics in the Soviet Union. "It's creepy for parents, creepy for students and creepy for teachers," she said.

New Jersey Assistant Education Commissioner Bari Erlichson said monitoring should be expected. "We should work to ensure that students and parents understand that statements that are posted publicly online are not private," she said.

Melissa Tomlinson, a middle school math specialist in New Jersey's Buena Township, said her objection was what the test company asked the state to follow up on.

"It was not a test question," she said. "It was not the big security breach that Pearson implied it to be."

Test security now means checking social media for cheaters - Yahoo Finance:

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