We do not “opt our children out” of state tests. Our children refuse, and we support them. They perform very well in school, and likely would perform well on state tests-and have done so in the pas…
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The Dangers of Parents “Opting out.”
We do not “opt our children out” of state tests.
Our children refuse, and we support them.
They perform very well in school, and likely would perform well on state tests-and have done so in the past.
For their ages, they are very astute, mature, independent thinkers and engage in thoughtful conversations and in outside-of-school endeavors beyond their years, both civic and academic. They are also a little twisted and quite fun to be around. To say we are proud would be an incredible understatement.
But opting out is dangerous, and technically doesn’t exist as an option in NY (while a refusal code exists for record-keeping purposes). It sounds like a choice to sit out on the real issues, and if the underwhelming quality of character in the race for president (short of one candidate from each side) isn’t enough of a wake-up call to get involved and fight for accountability in areas where our nation is truly failing, I don’t know what is.
Refuse, on the other hand, sends a statement. What is being done to children, schools, families and communities is wrong-and it isn’t being done by teachers.
And tests will not fix it. That thinking is beyond wrong, so you shouldn’t expect full cooperation.
To “opt out” would just be a step-back/step aside- allowing what you know is wrong to continue with the weak hope it will just go away-like a bully in the cafeteria, circling around just looking for a tray to flip and a lunch to ruin. Opt out is complacency, and that’s a danger.
Refuse tells it like it is.
Soft credibility vs real reform
It has to be a challenge for our elected officials and/or those benefiting from infusions of donor/investor money. The real conversation is finally beginning to happen, but only after several years of intentional destruction fueled by the pride, greed, and clueless-ness of those groups, and protected to some degree by the perceived helplessness of the victims. The realities that
- education reform is not as simple as a narrow focus on punishing teachers and schools with test scores and bad policies; and
- students lose (and we all lose with them) when so-called reformers are tossing about slogans like “all students deserve” and “school choice”
are realities finally coming under scrutiny. That those driving what is being called reform lack the credibility to define what the job is and what it should be are the reason why much of what they push stands in direct opposition of the things real reform should include.
The growing opposition to such bad practices started quietly and reasonably by parents who knew better and professionals that expressed misgivings gently-they are bound by a need to stay employed, after all. But there are common sense and moral obligations that caused misgivings to grow-as evidenced in part by the “opt out” movement. So called leaders in education were empowered to and supported in their disrespect of concerned parents and professionals, and attempted to dismiss them as tools of teacher unions.
I personally find that interesting, because from my perspective: union leaders have done a lot of leading from the rear-waiting until the ranks of concerned parents and abused professionals reached critical mass.
Parents refused to let their children participate in the kids-are-no-better-than-data charade, or “opted out” in such numbers that the ranks of the reformers became alarmed. Alarmed to the point where their influence over policy has recently been seen in subtle protective shifts. Shifts in policy (loosening the testing noose slightly) and shifts in the attack through social media and traditional press. Backing off on specious but well-crafted attacks on traditional schools is called “backsliding” by reform proponents, and leaders are heaped with praise as they either step down from or are promoted to positions of prominence. Charter school leaders and practices are protected in ways traditional schools never would be.
Peggy Robertson, in speaking at the recent United Opt Out National Conference, describes the goals of the opt out movement as:
“Demanding, and getting all, for all children,” and
“To tear down the test and punish system.”
She notes that “We must halt the harm, before we can rebuild” and that what we look to rebuild should be an
Equitably funded, democratically based, anti-racist, de-segregated public school system, for all Americans, that prepares students to exercise compassionate and critical decision making with civic virtue.
During her opening statements, she notes that there won’t be change until the pain for private interests (“corporate regime”) and politicians, through risk of loss in profits and political status, is so great that change is forced upon them.
Would the defensive and offensive movement we have been seeing amount to that? Are the protectors of the true “status-quo” feeling some pain?
It’s clear that the campaign for dismantling public schools includes a main ingredient of using standardized testing to prove to communities and parents that their schools are failing them-or that their charters are spectacularly successful.
The second ingredient is “school choice”. If we allow resources and obligations to be turned into market choices, we all lose.
The legend of King.
A concise, accurate, and non-inflammatory letter opposing the nomination of John King for the position of Secretary of Education was written by the Patchogue-Medford Union Free School District.
I think it’s important to consider the facts and opinions from (and coming from) every angle, and especially when it comes from the public education angle-if we are talking about education policy. Within the last two weeks, the legend of King has begun to be spun by the wide-web of school privatization/pro “choice” reformers for whom King is an ally with experience in the charter school business. It feels like a page was stolen from the script of that movie “The Natural” and King himself is some against-all odds, uber-talented lifelong educator with a magical education bat in his hands.
Communicate with people who have sat in meetings with him and ask about his response to critiques regarding his more exclusive school experiences (and the ones he chooses for his children): it is suddenly about his children being “attacked”.
Ask why parents, students and professionals who know better are called “special interests” as if it is an insult, but policy being promoted and sold through the private investment-to public policy process is given a silent “pass”.
I would not wish the loss of both parents on any 12 year old, or dismiss the emotional impact that it might have, but ask why the blogo-twittosphere has lit up with the legend of King: a boy born into a well educated household, blessed with incredible educational opportunities who chose charter school leadership and policy, and who against all odds made connections with school reform leaders and got an opportunity to do their bidding at the national level.
It should be a movie.
Let’s talk “choice”
“Choice”.
If you feel taking a test is the most important thing your child can do to demonstrate progress, choose to have them take it. If the test is well designed it will tell you what you need to know.
No reason to compel or chastise those who make a different choice (or who just know better).
No reason to initiate some false civil rights battle to force other people’s children to take a test.
No reason to start the slow boil on the campaign to convince suburban and rural communities that their local schools and teachers are the cause of all their social and economic strife just like they are in the big city.
The same way a parent can execute “choice” to choose to pull their kids out of a mixed ability traditional school that hosts any student regardless of their home-supports and aptitude, and try to choose a different one that offers a more homogenized cohort providing a greater likelihood of test proficiency…another parent can choose to believe that policy makers and investors can do better than a weak market-style test/stack/eliminate approach to improving outcomes. Pundits can do better than shrug, look hopeless and say “Well if not high stakes tests, how else can we judge the value of people we want to control?”
“Choice”, right? I see that word foisted like the banner of freedom and justice over and over again.
Until the choice made doesn’t serve the true agenda.
Eva’s Video: Can you really “dismantle” a position against this video?
It appears that even though the young woman was teaching in a public school and performing her public school job with public school students in the video, Eva came to her defense because, she says, that teacher is not a public figure. Not only that, the tentacles of the reform machine immediately began to reach out to lay themselves all over this story in an attempt to put their own special brand of justification on it. Traditional public schools, on the other hand, would never get the sort of sympathetic PR-assist. In fact, the defense is more of a juvenile “Well…systemic cruelty is okay in our special schools because every once in a while a weirdo worms their way into your schools too!” This contradiction-the willingness to support and defend only some unfit educators doesn’t generally come up- in the same way that the willingness to support and keep only some students in the test score academies doesn’t come up.
So when I get into exchanges about charters in an attempt to clarify the semi-exclusive product actually being sold, I come prepared for a couple of things:
- A well-rehearsed response that schools like this are not exclusive-type charters,they are public -type charters: a “choice”, brought to us by the caring investors and political activists for the benefit of all (imagine the benevolent, smiling and open armed welcoming posture). Funny, though, how that line between public and private gets selectively blurry. You just have to know that with sharks who circle within policy-making at state and national levels, hungrily swimming up into the public money feeding frenzy: some of the narrative is going to be crafted by those who know exactly what they are saying and how to carefully put those words together. “Public just like you- but waaaayy better than you (when there’s test score bragging to be done, parents and students to pull out of school for a matching t-shirts “civics field trip” photo-op, or gobs of money to be fought for)!” “Privately managed”, though, when there’s scrutiny, public money contract signing demands, or students that don’t fit the charter model because they might muddy test score numbers. Now while the sharks know it, get it, and play it smooth-some of the more vocal and elevated remoras latched on for the ride to important places are not so skilled (or just not that bright) slinging vitriol over dialogue.Thank god for the reasonable folks who realize that Moskowitz’s “academy” collects certain kids and turn others away-creating a pliable and cooperative standardized cohort.
- A resistance to and denial of the very real issues holding back a growing population, and weighing most heavily on black and brown children living and learning in poverty and in impoverished communities.
Make no mistake, regardless of what is shown in Eva’s Video-her schools offer vital opportunities to many children who would not otherwise have them. But unions and tenure, one of the primary targets for criticism of the reform-through-segregation crowd, are not the main reasons communities and classes of people have been abandoned. Unions are a firewall against further erosion of security and stability in the middle and lower classes, and it is this very type of union-ish collective that has sparked the demands for and creation of choice schools-as well as the demands for more than tests as the end-all target and measure.
Unions are not the reason parents struggle in multiple part time jobs, or why children and parents wait for Superman while navigating a gauntlet of crime, drugs, food deserts and young violent students disrupting their classrooms and their learning. Parents are not looking to get away from unions, bad teachers and failing schools-they are escaping to a carefully homogenized and tightly controlled setting where disruptions are eliminated. These enrollment engineering options are not choices that the public servants in traditional schools have, but operating under traditional school mandates can certainly make them easy targets for institutions that operate with their own rules-including practices that filter away more challenging students.
But don’t just take my word for it when wondering who would actually advocate for sending students away and putting them on that school-to-prison pipeline. Ask Eva!
- But Moskowitz defends her school’s harsh discipline by saying it’s integral to the success of the kids who don’t get kicked out
- Ms. Moskowitz has said that suspensions can make parents recognize the seriousness of their children’s misbehavior and that removing students who are acting dangerously from the classroom protects teachers and allows them to do their jobs more effectively.
It’s becoming clear that the organized and most forceful attackers of traditional schools and the teachers in them, despite their sanctimony, have designed a very similar system for themselves. They have found their niche,funding sources, a promotional/ political action machine capable of influencing policy…Now these folks are finding the need to defend what they do the same way teachers have had to since “school reform” became the modern day soylent green: eat it because we tell you to; believe it’s good for you because we say so. But I am more understanding now of their narrow vision and the need to mount a defense of S.A., of high stakes tests, of “parent choice” (unless it’s a choice the reformers don’t like, like parents choosing to not swallow the importance of high-stakes testing over the importance of equitable resources and opportunities).
That’s because as a pragmatist I get it. Not only is there good work being done-it’s the reform bread-n-butter. And really: like an amputation, or like being blinded by some acid throwing psychopath –there are benefits to what the reformers do. Through their destruction and out of what and who is ignored or intentionally cast aside during their self-described heroics: what remains and what is gained becomes stronger.
So, to get to it:
When I started this writing, I had not yet even watched Eva’s Video. I’m getting ready to. Right now. I don’t even really care what it shows because I already pretty much know. I just hope this video could finally spark some mature and more honest conversation between the two sides:
1) the whiners against reform injustices and every standardized wrong ever committed, and
2) the self-proclaimed Moses-style saviors of the children: the ones parting the Red Sea of failing public schools and delivering poor black and brown children from the clutches of the godless white unionized teachers-straight into the promise land of Eva and her academies…as long as they win a lottery and behave, that is.
*VIDEO BEGINS*
Okay, real time. I stopped the video immediately after the paper tear. The first thing I want to say is “wow”. That was a violent tear-n-chuck.
*RESUME*
“Go to the calm down chair and sit” (from a young teacher clearly needing the calm down chair herself)
“There is nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper” This is an admission to the students that while being the supposed adult leader, you have weak emotional control and are willing to personalize student challenges in a way that frames them as if they harm you. That’s weak emotional control and character- and is likely to promote insecurity, not independence, in the students.
The fact that she speaks at a child (not to a child) in this manner says one thing-that another adult in the room was ready for it to happen says even more. Anger, humiliation, hostility and aggression are far different than high expectations-even different than “no excuses” (although that little gem is one is loaded with all sorts of innuendo). What I saw was nearly an assault.
Don’t roll your eyes at the suggestion, know the law. I don’t think that there was realistically a threat, but imagine seeing this and feeling this as the victim-and that’s what the child was. Where is the outrage for that child or any of the other children in the room? Ask what their perception at that moment was. Ask why the adult recording that video was ready to do so, and if the rumors that more clips like that exist are true. Ask if it’s true that this person is a leader/model.
Then ask if advice to Eva to circle her wagons within the ranks and work on how to protect themselves from whistle-blowers by working on “culture” from within would be the advice you would give to a traditional public school finding themselves starring in a similar video. It’s not a bad idea, but I thought this was a better idea (posted as a comment here on 2/16):
Eva approaches the mike:
“I am really nothing special, and certainly no teacher. My school is not one that dares take on the more serious behaviors and challenges that traditional schools and experienced professionals take on every day, and I know that. What I do have is access to a market and some promotional mechanisms that will provide some of the more capable and willing parents and students an escape hatch to greater achievement and opportunity than they might have otherwise realized in schools and classrooms failed by our economy, society, and policymakers. True, we don’t want them all. True, we can’t really just come in and work the same type of magic in a regular classroom, because not all students are so easily trained to comply. But by me simplifying the job for us, we can help some kids get great test scores. Not all, I know, so I promise not to keep comparing S.A.’s results with traditional schools and I ask the press to cooperate in helping keep me humble. What my schools choose to do and how we do it is far different than what other schools are obligated to do. I just want to help those with potential that could otherwise risk getting lost. Thank you.”
Described as a mea culpa, but that’s not it at all. No apology in there, just a theft of the high horse. Maybe more like the beginning of honest recognition of and conversation regarding the “choices” being created in the growing education market. Success Academy is a great idea, it’s the invalid comparisons and unwillingness to discuss them and why they continue that concern me. Among the defenders of Success Academy are some of the writers at Education Post. I do have to say that Executive Director Peter Cunningham has always been willing to engage in a thoughtful and reflective way. That is good, because I come to that table with a reflexive suspicion of those that go from the policy maker/communications world to one that influences the real world I live in. He has always been willing to participate in thoughtful sharing. And J. Gordon Wright once had some nice things to say about a quick little blurb I wrote about my youngest daughter’s teacher. I might be in a network of some kind now,and I’m not sure what that means or if I get into that special room in airports where the stewardesses party…I’m not even sure if my pic and bio are listed or if I am on some other sort of “list” now and need to alter my appearance and go into hiding. It could be more dangerous for them than me, though. I’m a real teacher, and you’ve heard how dangerous we can be.
Every child…
1) Every child deserves a great teacher.
2) Every child deserves opportunity regardless of zip code.
3) Every child can achieve…
But does “great teacher” have a cookie-cutter definition, or does every child deserve teachers that have the desire, training, know-how and support to meet varied individual needs?
Does every child deserve to get the same great opportunities within their zip code, or are opportunists looking to give potential customers that fit a particular mold an escape hatch to a different zip code? Once “poverty is not an excuse” became kind of beat up by the facts (regarding the economic and social realities tied to geography and impacting the community school’s stats) it became clear that some “reformers” looked more to segregate peer groups and pull them away for efficiency than to truly improve the situation for “every child”.
And what exactly do we call achievement?
Sorry about starting a sentence with “And”-a cardinal writing sin, I know, but: A) Count your blessings I’m trying to be less gross and profane (my default setting usually) ; B) I rarely stand on formalities like that; and B) Users of that “every child” sentence starter have committed ongoing sins of sloganizing. Using “hopey-changey” words to “cut and run” while seeming to wag the finger of shame at schools, teachers, unions and what has also been called the “status quo”. So many slogans and so little time to dissect. Certainly no room to question it, and who would dare? Of course any child can achieve, but if schools are to be labeled, and educators evaluated legitimately on something we’re calling “achievement” (the realization of goals), there should be some agreement on and collaboration in the ways and means of making achievement happen and what goals should be prioritized.
We can start by saying each child instead of every-making the best first-step by acknowledging that people are individuals and there is no “every” because all of these young learners come to school with a wide variety of priorities of their own, and just as wide a variety of needs and challenges. Our endeavor and obligation is to maximize potential and empower future individual citizens to pursue their dreams, not someone else’s standards for acceptability.
We can continue by ignoring the most destructive voices, opinions and approaches presented as if they are either bold or visionary. Vacancies in brains and hearts reveal themselves in the spitting and sputtering vehemence with which one refers to those who do a job he never could and in the way another explains away her unwillingness to carry the truly heavy weight of serving the neediest and most challenging students.
Worse though, are the carrion eaters who flock to the defense of such false prophets and their ignorance hoping to fatten themselves on the kills. Worse than simple boot-lickers: they are self-important opportunists looking for the perpetual benefit of nepotists and revolving doors that sweep the lazy from one lucrative failure to the next.
Roll up them sleeves, jokers. Get into the classroom, help, learn. Each child deserves an opportunity, not your opportunity.
School readiness
“What is an example of schools having a poor readiness?”
I was asked this in a essay-to-comments chain on writerbeat.com
My piece was a redux of “Good for Students”, where I describe (among other things) what we would/should/could do if we really wanted to make teachers and schools more accountable for closing what is called the “achievement gap”. For starters, we should also focus on school readiness.
If I say “school readiness” I mean learner readiness for school. Before I walk out of the door, I need to have clothes on. Before I get in the shower-the opposite. Before learners come to school or whatever mechanism/setting has brought them to the present place on the learning/training path- they need the preparations of the past. You can only move forward from where you are today and cannot pretend that you can build on where you might be tomorrow, next week, or as investors/curriculum and testing corporations have through their intrusion on public education policy…where a learner might be years from now (or worse-simply ignore accepted developmental norms as well as the variations/variables that can come into play)to the benefit of some back-filled formula that is supposed to mathematically ensure some standard outcome. To move forward (or upward) that foundation needs to be in place. Scaffolding.
On the front end of school comes a child. At the end, a young adult hopefully ready for the world. While much can be done in between in terms of remediation in cases where a foundation is compromised, by the time a 4/5/6 year old hits the classroom, a significant amount of “foundation” has already been constructed. Has that foundation been constructed in a “me first” environment of relative wealth and entitlement? A “me first” environment of crime, drugs, poverty? An environment regardless of economic situation filled with books, love, lots of language and communication? There may be a number that can be placed on the neural pathways possible in the actual cognitive web being constructed in the developing brain, but it would require lots and lots of zeroes as placeholders.
The variations and purpose of those networks that condition/shape a learner’s behavior are revealed to some small degree in kindergarten screening exams used to gauge school readiness. More and more, the negative impacts of a gamed “free market” and rigged political process are seen in the classrooms as more families struggle to survive, tread water, become desperate, or sink. It is not “choice” or lack of motivation in all cases (maybe in some), but when you destabilize a family or an economic class, you destabilize the nation’s ability to send children to school with “readiness”.
Good for students
Good for students: Proven, research based approaches to economic equity and school readiness
- “Grit and Rigor” are not magic words that make developmentally inappropriate choices and wrong-headed approaches suddenly work.
- Repeatedly insisting that annual testing is top priority in the education-as-vehicle-to-equity approach is either intentional and diversionary- or unintentional and ignorant.
- BUT: To be an educator in this modern time and to not realize that the changing world requires changing approaches in how we prepare young people for that world is dangerous-to yourself and those you teach.
YES our kids need to increasingly be able to grasp more and be able to do more than they once had to, but a large part of why they are not already isn’t because schools are failing or we’re not identifying “bad teachers” -it’s because of what we’re failing to do collectively. It’s what we allow to happen, and it’s even what we sometimes willingly participate in. To do the “long story short” (out of character for me, I know): our society is failing on the front end to prepare the number of capable learner/leaders it once did- and instead is focused on manufacturing mindless consumers and future workers.
What we are failing to do-and here I mean “we” collectively-a community a state, a nation-a world even. We are failing to hold our leaders truly accountable, rein in our markets and our own participation in them, and to teach our kids true character and responsibility. We’re failing to identify models and to really lift up examples of the kind of people we want our children to grow up to be.
Little bodies are being poisoned by cheap garbage food, their minds poisoned by the smut glorified in the media, and instead of focusing on those endemic and chronic dangers- we are driven to serve numbers tumbled and polished in various complicated formulas; or scores on various standardized tests that supposedly signify human value. But more proficiency on standardized tests of academic skills requires brains that process and perform more proficiently, which requires a foundation of cognitive health and experiences that will support and proficiency.
That means focus on positive cognitive engagement from birth, maybe even before (I would sing to my wife’s belly, and purely anecdotal evidence leads me to believe “You are my sunshine” worked magic on my daughters when they were in-utero). Great books in every home; parents freed from low-wage servitude enough to participate and support academic and emotional development; social networks and experiences away from televisions and gaming screens…
Making these the standards we shoot for would be a difficult goal, for sure- and potentially costly to the garbage dealers, smut peddlers and testing corporations (as well as PACs, non-profits and politicians feeding at their trough). But entering into this reform battle is true grit, and it’s not just good for students-it’s good for us all.
PART IIIB An Attempt to Wrap It Up
Public Education Needs to be Reformed
It’s true, I am in favor of school reform. We need school reform because times have changed and are changing-and it isn’t all good. Changing so much, in fact, that public education needs now to be thought of as more than a mere step-up to opportunities in life but also as the bulwark against the offensive forces depriving us of opportunities to truly thrive. A recent New York Times article describes the economic decay eating our nation from the middle out:
Younger households have borne the brunt of the slowdown. Those headed by people aged 30 through 44 are more likely to be lower income — and less likely to be middle income — than in 2000
These are our parents, our families, our neighborhoods. The jobs, the income, the opportunities waiting for high school graduates, college graduates, and young people looking to start families and lives and join these communities…those things that once strengthened and stabilized our nation and its economy…they just aren’t there the way they once were. The problem is that the public sector, used, abused and abandoned by the buyer-owners of policy, have been scapegoated for the conditions created by financial and political shenanigans not in their control. Not so much “public” as in parents and families (they were needed as a force to win over and turn upon itself-it’s own neighbors, schools, those just under-and-over class compared to them). The culprit pointed to was the public sector worker with any amount of job security, social and financial stability, or likelihood for advancement. Those became only for the wealthiest and/or those connected to policy. People who began to revolve in and out of corporate advisement, political appointment, and “non-profit” advocacy regardless of their experience, performance or content/clarity of their message.
So education reform was launched and flown by these forces-less experienced in education or interested in educating citizens; more interested in training future citizens for survival in and compliance with the currently destructive system.
A truer reform effort, different than the current one grounded in a campaign of misdirection and misinformation, will be one that doesn’t just toss about words like “school choice” or “teacher quality” when it plays well in snips and snaps. It will be about more than a collection of arrogant and privileged non-educators playing education expert-partnering with policymakers to avoid the real issues and replace those issues with tests and data. True reform will come after a deepening of the debate regarding what those terms (and others used in current reform’s dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge[i] style talking points) mean for who-and what efforts need to be made to move us forward on a better path.
Regarding a better path:
First off, let’s be honest: if you fail to get adequately educated your outcomes are less likely to be desirable. Surprised? I hope not, but current education reform narratives are built on this understood truth as if it’s some new epiphany limited to those who are behind the school reform campaign. Their evidence that schools are failing include a long semi-legitimate list (remember, I believe reform needs to happen but we need to replace theater with thought): that so many more young people are struggling in school; that so many are failing in school; that so many leave high school and attempt college unprepared; that so many drop out or are expelled; that test scores aren’t what they should be…it goes on and on.
The reform campaign, while likely to produce improved outcomes (“survival”?) for some, was initiated under an umbrella of blame that is not convincing. Sure we can all be better, should want to be better, but the propaganda can get a little outrageous-and it must be kinda fun too. I’m sorry, but there’s a twisted part of me that wants to travel back in time and be a fly on the wall for the conversations that rocketed Rhee from lousy teacher for a few years to nationally renowned teacher humiliat-er and education expert. For those who can reach back to the classics and make this connection, I am going to give reform-think a shot:
The only reasons Charlie Bucket made it to the final round was that he was a disconnected white child of privilege, and because Willy Wonka ran a shoddy, narrow vision failure factory (and was himself an overprotected failure…probably a pervert too), and all his products were wrapped in shiny packages but contained little real quality. Actually, Charlie didn’t really earn that factory…he was just given it because Willie didn’t want to hold him to a higher standard!
What many reform advocates avoid is a discussion about the undeniably correlated factors that 1) impact a learner’s ability to take advantage of opportunities and in concentration can place hurdles in the path of a school’s academic mission-turning it towards a more social one; and 2) encourage market forces to undermine the goal of having a truly educated citizenry, turning the goal of public education towards feeding the free-market furnace. It didn’t take long for reform narratives to shift to “the most important in school factor…”
But of course. That’s like an arsonist avoiding responsibility by saying the most important in home factor in preventing fires is a fire extinguisher. The market seeks to undermine, blame and maximize economic and social control.
While this did come from Alternet, I wouldn’t categorize it as just typical Alternet alarmist-speak. The folks involved in test-based accountability and common standards are pretty much on the record salivating over the opportunities available in the edu-product market-especially those available once citizens are compelled to comply with common standards, becoming a large population of standardized consumers.
What do you suppose education reformers and our leaders intend for the world our children are growing up in to? Is it a “civil right”-is it right at all, for us to demand, test and punish a growing number to ensure that a few more will merely survive?
Can we do better with a refocused brand of reform for all of us?
[i] Patches O’Houlihan, dodgeball legend
realedreform.com 