Picket the July 22 Board of Ed Meeting

Chicago Teachers Union | Board Meeting Picket July 2015:

Picket the July 22 Board of Ed Meeting

July 22, 2015• 9:00 AM

CPS Headquarters• Dearborn & Madison, Chicago, IL 60603

Host Contact Info: Organizing@ctulocal1.com or 312.329.9100

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On Wednesday, July 1, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the required repayment of $634 million to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund would require cuts to schools of some $200 million resulting in the layoff of as many as 1,400 school personnel. Rahm, Rauner, Ruiz and the corporations and bankers they represent want to pit students and their families against dedicated teachers, PSRPs and clinicians who have devoted their careers to education and have a right to a secure retirement. We must say NO! CPS has a revenue problem, not a pension problem. CPS is broke on purpose!

Join us to picket the Board Meeting. If you want to attend the meeting, click here to let us know and be sure to sign up on Monday, July 13 at 8:00 a.m. Please also let us know if you plan to speak at the meeting.

Chicago Teachers Union | Board Meeting Picket July 2015:

GOP urges update to No Child Left Behind - CBS News

GOP urges update to No Child Left Behind - CBS News:

GOP urges update to No Child Left Behind

Just days after a legislative update to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) squeaked past the House on a narrow, partisan vote, the Republican party is continuing its call to revise the contentious law.

And with a Senate bill now up for debate in Congress, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, called Saturday for states to be given more control over education policy.

"Not only is there consensus about the need to fix No Child Left Behind, but there's also remarkable consensus about how to fix it," Alexander said in a video. "That consensus is this: Continue the law's important measurements of academic progress of students but restore to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about improving student achievement."

The Tennessee Republican said there was "plenty of blame to go around" for the failures of the comprehensive 2001 law enacted by President George W. Bush.

Play VIDEO

Hot-button issue: Common Core standardized tests

"The problems with No Child Left Behind have been created by a combination of presidential action and congressional inaction," Alexander said. "Congress has been unable to agree on how to reauthorize it. As a result, the law's original requirements have stayed in place and gradually become unworkable."

It's a problem with the legislative body that has continued into the current Congressional session.

The partisan House bill, called the Student Success Act, barely passed: 218 lawmakers were in favor and 213 opposed. The vote breakdown showed every House Democrat siding against the measure and 27 Republicans joining them to go against party leadership. The act would eliminate federal education programs that some in the GOP deem redundant. It would also repeal federal requirements for teacher quality, among other contentious measures.

In contrast, the Senate is currently deliberating a bill with bipartisan appeal, co-authored by the Republican Alexander and the Senate Education Committee's lead Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington. The Every Child Achieves Act would allow states flexibility in implementing testing requirements and teacher evaluations.

The bill "prohibits the federal government from telling states what their standards must be, or mandating or coercing states to use a certain set of standards," Alexander said. "Whether your state adopts Common Core is entirely your state's decision."

The White House has also thrown its support behind the bill Alexander is touting, calling it an "important step forward" in reforming No Child Left Behind. The president's administration, however, has also suggested a few changes to the legislation. For example, one improvement the White House is pushing for would "cap the amount of time spent annually on standardized testing."

"I hope this time around, Congress will improve its grade and improve the future for 50 million children in 100,000 public schools," Alexander added.

Play VIDEO

Obama: "A person's zip code shouldn't decide their destiny"

In his own video, President Obama addressed his administration's efforts in continuing its fight for fair housing practices, just a few weeks after the Supreme Court handed down its decision to uphold a key tool in combating housing bias.

"In some cities, kids living just blocks apart lead incredibly different lives," the president said Saturday in a video. "They go to different schools, play in different parks, shop in different stores, and walk down different streets. And often, the quality of those schools and the safety of those parks and streets are far from equal, which means those kids aren't getting an equal shot in life."

Such conditions, the president added, aren't what American neighborhoods should GOP urges update to No Child Left Behind - CBS News:

Clinton won an endorsement, but Weingarten lost a union. | stopcommoncorenys

Clinton won an endorsement, but Weingarten lost a union. | stopcommoncorenys:

Clinton won an endorsement, but Weingarten lost a union.

If you are one of the million plus teachers that were never asked which candidate to endorse for president, you are not alone.

American Federation of Teachers has 1.6 million members and has polled a scant 1150. With this minute poll, they have gone public with a presidential candidate endorsement, over a year before any election.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/11/hillary-clinton-picks-up-teachers-union-endorsement/?_r=2.

Their members are furious and demanding a withdrawal of their alleged endorsement of a candidate they were never consulted about.
This is NOT a statistically fair poll.

Gadly on the wall blog states:

“I have nothing against Hillary Clinton.

Heck! I might even vote for her in the coming Presidential race. Maybe…

But the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsement of the former First Lady is strange in many ways.

First, it’s awfully early. The initial Democratic primaries aren’t scheduled for half a year yet – February of 2015 to be exact. And the general election isn’t until Nov. 8, 2016 – more than a year away.

Second, the manner in which this endorsement was reached is somewhat mysterious.

This much seems certain:

1) The AFT executive board invited all of the candidates to meet with them and submit to an interview. No Clinton won an endorsement, but Weingarten lost a union. | stopcommoncorenys:

Randi Weingarten: Survey of AFT Members on 2016 Election

Randi Weingarten: Survey of AFT Members on 2016 Election 

http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/memo_presidentialsurvey2015.pdf

On Public Versus Charter: “The Dispute Has Actually Nothing to Do with Education” | the becoming radical

On Public Versus Charter: “The Dispute Has Actually Nothing to Do with Education” | the becoming radical:

On Public Versus Charter: “The Dispute Has Actually Nothing to Do with Education”

Published 54 years ago, Nobody Knows My Name continues to shake any reader willing to listen as James Baldwin bore witness to the region currently—and again, shamefully—in the national spotlight, “the South, which was now undergoing a new convulsion over whether black children had the same rights, or capacities, for education as did the children of white people.”

Baldwin continued—and we could too easily substitute for his “this” as we now witness debates long past their time for resolution:

This is a criminally frivolous dispute, absolutely unworthy of this nation; and it is being carried on, in complete bad faith, by completely uneducated people. (We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.) Educated people, of any color, are so extremely rare that it is unquestionably one of the first tasks of a nation to open all of its schools to all of its citizens. But the dispute has actually nothing to do with education, as some among the eminently uneducated know. It has to do with political power and it has to do with sex. And this is a nation which, most unluckily, knows very little about either. [Baldwin, James (2013-09-17). Nobody Knows My Name (Vintage International) (Kindle Locations 1102-1108). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

The “frivolous” comes not from the great questions that have always and will always confront humanity—how do we educate?—but from the “bad faith” among “uneducated people” who have undeserved privilege and power.

To believe the current education reform debate is not nearly indistinguishable from what Baldwin contested as the U.S. resisted desegregation is to live among the deaf and blind.

For more than three decades now, public education has been held hostage by the most frivolous of frivolous debates: how to design and implement accountability built on standards and high-stakes testing. This adolescent game of “my accountability can beat your accountability” has left public education and the children it should serve battered and bloodied.

From the seemingly endless cycle of new standards and new high-stakes tests (and ways to punish even more groups within our public schools) to the increasingly snarky divisiveness and personal politics of social media, the often cited reasons for all this sound and fury—On Public Versus Charter: “The Dispute Has Actually Nothing to Do with Education” | the becoming radical:

Marie Corfield: Data does not a great teacher make

Marie Corfield: Data does not a great teacher make:

Data does not a great teacher make

And so the data reporting begins. 

The Star Ledger reported yesterday:

For the first time, New Jersey's Department of Education will publish a centralized database with the aggregate teacher evaluation results for each school across the state. 

The 2013-14 data, to be released next week, will not include performance ratings for specific teachers. But parents will be able to see how many teachers in a school received each of the four possible ratings, according to the state....Before 2013-14, teachers were essentially graded on a thumbs up or thumbs down system, based on a century-old law that required evaluations. Nearly 100 percent of teachers were deemed acceptable....More than 97 percent of New Jersey teachers received positive evaluation scores for 2013-14, the state announced in June (Hmmm... 97% isn't that 'nearly 100%'? Just sayin'.) But unlike previous years, the new system creates more distinction between perforance levels and allows the state to further analyze the data for useful trends. 

For example, teachers in their first or second year were twice as likely to receive a "partially effective" review as more expereinced teachers. 

Meanwhile, experienced teachers were twice as likely to get the highest rating. (emphasis mine)

Ah, ya gotta love the irony. Nothing screams, "We need excellent educators in every classroom!" like underfunding public education, piling enormous amounts of data collection and test prep on top of all the mountains of work classroom teachers already have, blaming, shaming, disrespecting, devaluing, under-paying, slashing and burning, VAM-ing and scaming us into thinking all of this is good 'for the children'. No wonder 40-50% of educators leave the profession within the first 5 years.

Education 'reformers' from coast to coast beat the war drums against seniority and bow to the Holy Grail of data, but will they have the guts to face the data that shows that, as in every other profession, experience matters?

Ask any veteran educator and they will tell you that if they could go back and re-do their first 5 years teaching, they would do things much differently. Experience builds competence; practice makes progress. It's a no brainer—except in 'reformy land'. I hope they have 'some fava beans and a nice chianti' on hand to wash down those words they have to eat. You know... the ones that say we're all just a bunch of lazy oafs, waiting to collect our pensions.

Which brings me to this:

Last week I attended the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Marie Corfield: Data does not a great teacher make:

Salon Writer Jeff Bryant Gets Arne Duncan Exactly Right | deutsch29

Salon Writer Jeff Bryant Gets Arne Duncan Exactly Right | deutsch29:

Salon Writer Jeff Bryant Gets Arne Duncan Exactly Right

Below is a excerpt from the most refreshingly comprehensive, accurate summation of US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that I have ever read. Salon writer Jeff Bryant captures the absolute waste that Duncan was as secretary– and he chastises those removed from the reality of Duncan’s destructive policies for attempting to paint him a success.

Thank you, Jeff, from the multitudes Outside of the Beltway.

Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point

Jeff Bryant 07-11-15

For some years now, the term “The Village” has circulated throughout the Internet blogosphere as a shorthand description of the insular life of the Washington, D.C., policy makers and media mavens. As Heather “Digby” Parton explained in 2009, the term is a metaphor for how Beltway folks in policy circles and the press speak with great assurance about what is understood by “average Americans” without ever actually consulting anyone outside a tight circle of anointed “experts” or dipping their toes into the experiential waters of communities very different from their own.

Although thoughts attributed to The Village are most apt to be shared in discussions about economic policy, there is a form of Village narrowcasting in education policy discussions too.

That’s why, for instance, you almost always see news articles about education policy liberally salted with quotes by operatives from a very select few right-wing and politically centrist Beltway policy shops, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Education Trust, or Democrats for Education Reform.

When reporters want to “balance” that wonkery with another point of view, they might get a statement from a teachers’ union representative such as American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. But what’s extremely rare is to encounter arguments being made by people of color in communities such as New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia, or New York City – you know, the people actually most affected by the kinds of policies being talked about.

Maybe journalists believe ordinary citizens with firsthand experiences can’t be regarded as “experts.” But even when they look for validated expertise, their gaze rarely goes beyond the banks of the Potomac.

This is not to say that those inhabiting the education wing of The Village are dishonest people, lack credibility, or have any bad intentions – or that it may be arguable that people who report about education generally have more journalistic integrity than reporters on other beats. It’s just that when conversations about something as important as public education seem extraordinarily closed off to but an elite few, there are bound to be some completely unsubstantiated claims and atrocious misperceptions being reported by what normally would be considered reliable sources.

That’s likely the dynamic that caused Lyndsey Layton, a normally super-competent education journalist for The Washington Post, to lay thisbrontosaurus egg in that outlet.

The subject of Layton’s reporting, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was thebipartisan stud when the Obama administration debuted but has now devolved into the bipartisan flop as new bills in Congress seek to do all they 

Salon Writer Jeff Bryant Gets Arne Duncan Exactly Right | deutsch29:

CURMUDGUCATION: Test Scoring Monkeys

CURMUDGUCATION: Test Scoring Monkeys:

Test Scoring Monkeys

It's been less than a month since Motoko Rich traveled to San Antonio to hear a Pearson test scoring supervisor explain that scoring the tests is like making a Big Mac. Now Claudio Sanchez has made the same journey for NPR, and the results are no more flattering for Pearson than those from Rich's jaunt.


The center uses scorers from many walks of life, though a four-year degree is required. What is not required is any sort of opinion about the quality of the questions.  


David Connerty-Marin, a spokesman for PARCC, says it's not up to a scorer or Pearson or PARCC to say, "Gee, we think this is too hard for a fourth-grader."

What is or is not developmentally appropriate, he says, is not an issue because the states have already made that decision based on the Common Core Standards.

One of these rainy summer days, I'll spend some time running up and down the internet and see if I can find, somewhere in the great chain of standards and testing, the person who says, "Me, I'm the one. I'm the guy who decides that this test item is appropriate for an eight year old." But until the day comes, we're stuck with test manufacturers who say, "Well, we just follow what the state tells us" and states that say, "Well, we lean on the professionals to design these things" and a whole bunch of people who point and shrug and say, "Well, you know, the standards" as if the standards were dropped down from heaven on the back of a golden cloud that deposited them on top of a burning bush.

The article's description of the scoring process reveals for the gazillionth time that the constructed CURMUDGUCATION: Test Scoring Monkeys:

ICYMI: Top Eduposts of the Week (7/12)

Once again, here's some choice bits from around the edublogosphere that you should catch this week. I"m not perfect and this isn't every single thing you should read, but these are definitely pieces you should not miss.

Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure

Paul Buchheit at Alternet takes a look at what's not to love about charter schools. This is a well-sourced compendium of many of the things we know are wrong. You might not find anything here you didn't already know, but it's a good source for finding it all in one place.

The Disturbing Forces Behind a School "Reform" Fight in Colorado


Jeff Bryant takes a closer look at the ongoing mess in Colorado, where Jefferson and Douglas County have both attracted the attention and money of reformsters from outside the area. This is the same fight featured in the film Education, Inc, and well worth studying up on. This is the blueprint for how outsiders take over a local district, and Bryant is, as always, thorough.

Testimony Regarding PARCC/MAS

Tracy Novick's testimony about choosing between the PARCC and Massachusetts' home-grown test (Novick picks None of the Above). A quick concise argument about what's wrong with the high stakes standardized testing regime.

False Sense of Security

This story leads off with the story of a student who found himself dealing with police twice-- just because he forgot his school id badge. A look at more effective approaches to school security.

Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point 

Lyndsey Layton took some flak this week for her profile of Arne Duncan, but nobody laid down the flak more precisely and thoroughly than Jeff Bryant at Salon with this too-long-for-twitter title.


Kansas Is Becoming a Hard Place To Teach, So Teachers Are Crossing the State Line

A Wichita public radio station notices that Kansas's anti-public ed policies are starting to drive teachers away. Complete with pics of the recruiting billboards Missouri is putting up in Kansas to poach teachers. 

And finally, two pieces from Jersey Jazzman that you should not miss.

Chris Cerf's Victory Lap is a reminder that a 100% charter district is probably not the end game for privatizers. Firing Black, Experienced Teachers in Camden lays out once again, with data, how reformster programs often have a disproportionate effect on non-white teachers.

With A Brooklyn Accent: Where Were You Hillary?

With A Brooklyn Accent: Where Were You Hillary?:

Where Were You Hillary?

When 168 schools were closed in New York City, and more than fifty in Chicago and Philadelphia

When New Orleans became an all charter district

When recess became test prep in high poverty schools throughout the nation and arts, music and sports were pushed aside

When school libraries were closed or became places where students took tests rather than read books

When veteran teachers in NY City became ATR's and were put in "Teacher Jails" in Los Angeles

When the average career of a teacher shrank from 15 years in the 1980's to 5 years now

When Bill Gates funding forced Common Core on an unsuspecting nation without any trials in local schools district

When teachers of color were pushed out of the classroom in urban school districts which were then deluged with teacher temps with 5 weeks training

When rating teachers on the basis of student test scores With A Brooklyn Accent: Where Were You Hillary?:

To Endorse or Not Endorse — That is the Question | Public Schools Central

To Endorse or Not Endorse — That is the Question | Public Schools Central:

To Endorse or Not Endorse — That is the Question

 This has been an interesting few days in education reform.  First the Network for Public Education (NPE) published their qualified endorsement for the ESEA/NCLB reauthorization package entitled the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA).  Then, the AFT announced their endorsement of Hillary Cllinton for president.

I will comment briefly on these two endorsements.  First, while NPE understandably seeks to provide leadership and guidance for public school supporters, I believe it is problematic to endorse a bill that does little if anything to limit the expansive role of corporations and entrepreneurs intent on, as Chester Finn once said, making a dime in the education sector.  An organization’s choice to endorse, or not endorse, or stay silent says a great deal about the organization’s leadership.  So, on one hand, I am thankful to know how NPE feels about the current rewrite of ESEA.  On the other hand, it makes me question their ability to compromise on so many important issues.  This is not an era in which compromise will benefit our nation’s children and public school system.  We should not be willing to accept crumbs at the policy table — hoping for something more in the future.  That day will never come as long as we elect corporate sponsored neoliberals.

Which leads me to another organization’s statement regarding ECAA: The United Opt Out Movement’s statement:  “Why UOO Opposes ESEA(ECAA) and Supports the Necessity of Revolution.   There is nothing tepid in UOO’s statement and no To Endorse or Not Endorse — That is the Question | Public Schools Central:

Hillary Clinton Picks Up Teachers' Union Endorsement - First Draft. Political News, Now. - The New York Times

Hillary Clinton Picks Up Teachers' Union Endorsement - First Draft. Political News, Now. - The New York Times:

Hillary Clinton Picks Up Teachers’ Union Endorsement

Hillary Rodham Clinton, received an endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers on Saturday. Mrs. Clinton with Randi Weingarten, the president of the teachers'  union, in New York in 2003.Credit Louis Lanzano/Associated Press

A major teachers’ union on Saturday voted to make an early endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a lift to her presidential campaign as she tries to fend off a stronger-than-expected challenge from the left.

The endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers was not a surprise. The group is led by Randi Weingarten, a longtime ally of Mrs. Clinton, and it backed her in her losing primary battle against Barack Obama in 2008.

But the union is giving her its support again at an opportune moment for Mrs. Clinton, just before her first major speech on the economy, scheduled for Monday, which is seen as an attempt, in part, to neutralize the criticism leveled at her by her leading challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Mr. Sanders has surged in the polls by appealing to the populist anger of many Democrats over economic issues.

Education policy remains one of the few areas of unsettled debate within the Democratic Party. President Obama’s education agenda has often infuriated the teachers’ unions, and last year, the head of the National Education Association, another union representing teachers, called for the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, to be fired.

Advocates of changes to the system, including some major Democratic donors, consider Mr. Obama an ally and have been pressuring Mrs. Clinton to adopt Mr. Obama’s posture. But in meetings with the A.F.T. last month, Mrs. Clinton said that teachers shouldn’t be the “scapegoat” for society’s ills.

After that meeting — members also heard from Mr. Sanders and Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor — Ms. Weingarten praised Mrs. Clinton’s performance and detailed responses to members’ concerns.

The timing of the endorsement risks angering other union leaders, particularly Richard Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Mr. Trumka has called on Mrs. Clinton to embrace labor’s economic agenda, and has been privately urging individual unions to hold off any endorsements.

But in an interview, Ms. Weingarten said the membership overwhelmingly supported Mrs. Clinton, something which became clear in two town halls and in two separate member polls the group took in the last six weeks.

As a senator, Ms. Weingarten said, Mrs. Clinton was given a 100 percent rating from the teachers’ union on her voting record. She said she had repeatedly heard from the union’s members that they believed Mrs. Clinton would “make the country a fairer place for working people.”

And Mrs. Clinton has deep ties to the teachers’ union, beyond the endorsement it made in her 2008 campaign. She worked frequently with Ms. Weingarten when Ms. Weingarten led the union in New York City. In March, just before Mrs. Clinton made her candidacy official, she and Ms. Weingarten Hillary Clinton Picks Up Teachers' Union Endorsement - First Draft. Political News, Now. - The New York Times:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Arne Duncan and NCLB; Public Education Needs a Break from Both

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Arne Duncan and NCLB; Public Education Needs a Break from Both:

Arne Duncan and NCLB; Public Education Needs a Break from Both

One of the big complaints about NCLB was that it gave the federal government a much larger role in public education beyond mere oversight and reporting.  It gave them a very big stick to use on districts and states.  (Bringing in RTtT was more the carrot but I'll bet it felt very much like a stick sometimes to states who got those funds.)

This federal Big Brother idea made people on the right AND on the left unhappy. That's quite the trick for one law.

The one usefulness of NCLB was that it forced districts to account for every - single - student.  As they should.  But trying to fit all these students - ELL, Sped, homeless - into the same testing box with everyone else was never going to work.

But what everyone should understand about public education over, say the last 15 years, is very much like the old Billy Crystal routine where he imitated Ricardo Montalban and said, "It's not how you feel, it's how you look and you look mahvelous."

There is an awful lot of PowerPoint and meetings and initiatives and goal-setting and rubric-making and then, it usually goes very, very quiet.  There are long titles after people's names and we call employees "human capital" instead of "human resources" (which is what employees are if you are a humane person and not a corporate person).

Meaning, a lot of fluff and not much else.  My perception, after all these years, is that many people at the top in education want to burnish their resume and will run at the first failure to the next big thing.  Or, if they are like Arne Duncan, the person AT the top, will just ignore the warning signs.

This needs to stop.

I have done several speeches about public education to Dems.  I have told them that local control IS everything.  I don't have a problem with national Seattle Schools Community Forum: Arne Duncan and NCLB; Public Education Needs a Break from Both:

Why UOO Opposes ESEA (ECAA) and Supports the Necessity of Revolution - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform

Why UOO Opposes ESEA (ECAA) and Supports the Necessity of Revolution - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:

Why UOO Opposes ESEA (ECAA) and Supports the Necessity of Revolution

“The revolt against any kind of oppression and injustice (requires the) rejection of any palliatives or halfway measures” (Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion, 2015)

The revising, reauthorizing, and writing of ESEA are about POWER, the power to decide policy for those who are seemingly powerless. The legislators revising ESEA who support “less testing” or a “reduction of federal involvement” embrace little more than an appeasement to the bigger testing refusal movement and do little or nothing to challenge the existing power structures. The same corporate-driven entities remain cozily in their position of POWER making damaging, profit-driven decisions about public education.

So long as the POWER structure remains intact, we cannot imagine that any fair, equitable, and truly meaningful state mandated assessment would do anything other than that which it has historically done via NCLB. While ECAA promises to remove the stranglehold of the federal government from state-level decisions and promises to alleviate the “high stakes” attached to teacher and school evaluations, it does not alleviate the corporate ownership over STATE-LEVEL policy makers; nor will it remove or nullify the influence of STATE-LEVEL education leaders equally corrupt as their federal counterparts. Standardized testing of ANY KIND is their primary vehicle to maintain the power structure that currently exists.

All standardized testing is HIGH STAKES. Why else would the profit driven corporate privatizers cling so dearly to its inclusion as the centerpiece of public education? With its emphasis on equal access, high standards, and state accountability in policy and practice; the original intent (of ESEA) was to facilitate an equitable, thriving, and successful public education for all children.  Instead, we have a test based accountability and inequitable system that ranks, sorts, segregates, invalidates, fosters cheating and systemic instability as it provides for corporate exploitation of tax dollars that requests and compromise will not fix. Most advocates for public education know that using standardized testing to influence decisions about school and teacher “quality” and grade retention or promotion violates the original intent because the measurements and methods used by the tests themselves are inaccurate, misleading, and harmful. If standardized tests were a valid and meaningful system of evaluating teachers, children, or schools, the stakes attached to such tests would not be an issue of contention. In fact, IF they were a TRUE measure of that which we value we would not fight them at all. But they are not meaningful nor effective to measure that which matters, so we wonder, why include them in a system of reasonable and meaningful accountability AT ALL?

We – parents, students, educators, and tax payers – have been fighting for the public’s right to REFUSE Why UOO Opposes ESEA (ECAA) and Supports the Necessity of Revolution - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform: