My Beefs With Education Reform-- A List

1.Deluging schools with tests from pre K on up, in every grade, and every subject, to the point where little else goes on in school but preparing for tests. ******2. Pushing the arts out of a central role in the life and culture of public schools. ******3. Demoralizing teachers, especially the most talented and experienced teachers, by subjecting them to evaluations based on junk science *******4. Discriminating against special needs and ELL students by giving favorable treatment to charter schools which exclude or drive out such students, and forcing such students to take tests that are developmentally inappropriate for them ********5. Destabilizing communities by closing schools that have been important community institutions for generations. *********6. Undermining the mentoring and relationship building that are at the core of great teaching, especially in poor and working class communities, by raising class size and substituting on line learning for direct instruction without thinking through the consequences of such policies on young people who need personal attention and guidance. *********7. Creating such unrealistic pressure on schools, and on administrators and teaching staffs, that cheating on tests becomes endemic. *********8. Giving billionaire philanthropists, and wealthy companies which provide services to schools such power over education policy that the voices of teachers, parents and students are totally smothered.