How Urban Moms of Color- UMOC's- Are Revitalizing the Opt Out Movement

Based on what I have seen in the Bronx, and in Philly, I think we need a new acronym to describe the leadership of the Opt Out movement, replacing Arne Duncan's pejorative category WSM's-- White Suburban Mothers. The new category is UMOC's-- Urban Moms of Color.

More and more , resistance to testing is finding a home in inner city communities where testing has been linked to school closings, charter school favoritism, elimination of recess, physical education and the arts, humiliation of ELL and special needs students and adoption of zero tolerance disciplinary policies.Parents in these communities are getting fed up with the tests and are rejecting the "testing is civil rights" mantra promoted by all to many of those shaping education policy

Three weeks ago, Philly moms headed up an incredible session at the United Opt Out Conference and yesterday, Bronx moms were the leading voices at a press conference sponsored by Opt Out NYC on the steps of City Hall

And this is grounds for hope. When the WSM's and UMOC's start joining forces, they represent an unbeatable combination.

Restore Recess Party Ten Point Education Program--2016

1. End Receivership, Trusteeship, School Takeovers, School Closings once and for all. Not only have these been unsuccessful, they have created an atmosphere where everyone in schools in low income communities works and learns in fear.

2. Pass laws requiring that every school from Pr-K to 6 grade have a certain amount of time of recess and mandating that recess can NEVER be used for test prep.

3. Protect the freedom of speech of students, parents, teachers and principals on all matters relating to education policy, including the right to refuse to take or administer tests.

4. Use tax incentives and government subsidies to vastly expand the supply of affordable housing, including affordable housing for teachers, so that teachers can live in the communities they teach in

5. Reject all contributions to public education from foundations and corporations for any purposes other than expanding arts, science, sports, vocational and technical and agriculture programs in the public schools.

6. Limit the time assigned to standardized tests in Pre-K to 6th Grade to 10 hours PER SCHOOL YEAR. That includes pre-tests and practice tests.

7. Create financial incentives for teachers to live in the communities they teach in and to work in the same schools for more than 10 years. We need teachers for LIFE, not Teacher Temps..

8 Allow no teachers to enter public schools through alternative certification programs which do not have at least a FULL YEAR of mentored classroom experience.

9. Exempt Special Needs students and ELL students from standardized testing in circumstances where such testing exposes them to humiliation and abuse.

10. End paddling, corporal punishment, and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies in public schools. And.funding MUST be provided for schools to have more school social workers, guidance counselors, and psychologists to provide students with the social emotional support many students desperately need!

Oakland Schools in Turmoil as District Threatens to Remove 17 Principals

Prescott Principal Enomwoyi Booker

By Ken EpsteinPosted March 25, 2016 3:05 pm

As the school year begins to wind down, planning is underway for next year. But many of Oakland’s schools – especially flatland schools – are in turmoil and are anxiously worrying whether the district administration will allow them to maintain the progress and stability they have worked so hard to build.

 

Seventeen principals have received warning letters that they may be removed or reassigned. A number of schools have learned that they may have to move for charter schools to “co-locate” onto their campuses and a large number of new teachers have just learned they will be fired at the end of June.

Staff at Place@Prescott in West Oakland are fearful about what will happen to their elementary school if they lose their principal, Enomwoyi Booker, who is one of the principals who received a March 15 warning letter, according to a teacher at the school who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The teacher said the principal, who has been at Prescott for over a decade, “is building rapport with the community. She is popular with the staff and the community. We have spent years building a (community) core that comes together and helps out.”

“We’re fragile,” a poor school in a poor community, the teacher said. “We are partial to our leadership from the years of being deprived of materials. We (finally) get some money and some inkling of materials, and then they take the leadership away.”

“The district administration says one thing, but the next thing you know, they shut you down or throw schools together. We don’t know what’s really going on.”

The teacher said she did not want Prescott to have to share its campus with a charter school.

“If we have to share it with another school, that will kill it,” she said. “With all the gentrification that is going on (in West Oakland), we feel kind of threatened.”

This is also the time of the year the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) sends out “probationary release” letters to teachers who are in their first or second year in the district – a state-approved procedure that allows the district to fire teachers and rule them ineligible ever to work again in an OUSD school, without right to appeal or a hearing.

According to Trish Gorham, president of the teachers’ union, 60 teachers have received probationary releases this year.

“Many have lacked proper support, have never been properly evaluated or coached,” she said. “Many have been thrown in difficult classroom management situations (such as coming in after a succession of substitute teachers), and they receive no help.”

“Some of them have asked for help over and over and have not received it,” said Gorham. The district generally never tells teachers why they are being released, she said.

“Of course, there needs to be a process of evaluation to earn tenure, but you’d think it would be beneficial to support a first-year teacher into a second year, rather than to have an endless cycle of brand new teachers who come into a school without any training,” said Gorham.

She said that the numbers of teachers of color who are receiving probationary releases are disproportionately higher than the numbers of white teachers who are being released.

As a result of constantly removing principals and teachers, many schools are unstable, she said.

One of the schools where parents and teachers are fighting to keep their principal is Westlake Middle School, which is next to Whole Foods by Lake Merritt.

The Westlake community is fearful that their school will be destabilized like other OUSD schools if they lose their principal, Misha Karigaca, who has been at the school for 15 years and leads staff and a group of parents who are enthusiastic about what they have built in the face of years of low funding and lack of district support.

At a meeting with parents and staff last week, district administrators cited persistent low test scores as the reason for removing Karigaca, who they said would be given another position in the district.

Speakers after speaker at the meeting in the school library warned that this was an especially bad time to remove their principal because the school may have to “co-locate” a charter school on its campus next year, a serious disruption when they feel they need a veteran, respected leader and a united faculty to see them through the transition.

Network Superintendent Ron Smith speaks last week at a parent and teacher meeting at Westlake Middle School. Photo by Ken Epstein.

Replied Ron Smith, OUSD Network Superintendent, “It’s a challenging, challenging time – it’s probably not a good time. But two years, three years, five years, there’s probably not going to be a good time.”

A parent said she was not swayed by the test score rationale.

“Eighty-eight percent (of our students) are low income. We have two or three jobs, many parents don’t have both partners at home. I don’t care about these numbers,” the parent said.

“My daughter is receiving music lessons and learning to write down music. She’s in the after school engineering program. I am proud my kid is here – she feels like this is her home,” the parent said.

Network Supt. Smith responded to parents who were fearful that programs at the school will be lost or wrecked as demoralized parents and veteran, beloved teachers flee the school next year.

“If someone says, ‘I’m not going to be here because Misha (Karigaca) is not going to be here,’ that’s their choice to make,” said Smith, who assured the meeting that the school would not be closed in the fall.

“My sole goal is to ensure that to the best of my ability, the doors (will) open next school year,” he said.

Magic in the Classroom

The classroom should be a magical place- filled with wonder and surprise, leaving space for play, fantasy and the joy of discovery. That is how you create lifetime learners and critical thinkers. Filling it with fear and stress builds the expectation that life will be barren and harsh. If you impart that lesson to children who have already experienced too much of life's pain, you are lowering their expectations of a caring and benign world to dangerous levels. And encouraging them to inflict as much pain as they receive because pain is all they know. Current education policy is child abuse writ large. Like most forms of abuse, it turns its victims into agents of its continuation.

Rejecting the Theology of LGBTQ Oppression: A Message to the Black Church by Desmera Gatewood

I grew up in the ministry.  Whether it were a home church or one of the churches we visited, I can recall very little mention in support or opposition to the LGBTQ movement.  Yet, the lack of a conversation spoke volumes as well.   The first time I had openly heard black folks in my community talk about LGBTQ, was in reference to a scandal of a local prominent preacher who had been caught in an affair with a man.  

What I can recall that folks were most  appalled by were not his faith in contradiction to his dishonesty (we wouldn't have enough appall left in the world if we were appalled by that phenomenon), but his faith in contradiction to his sexuality.  What's fascinating is that the bible emphasizes truthfulness and love as much as anyone can claim it justifies any form of fear or hate towards anyone.  But, let's get back to the scandal, would folks have been appalled if he used church funds to buy a jet? Would Jesus have been?   Yes.  The only time Jesus throws a tantrum in the bible is when he goes to the church and sees the officials exchanging money: not when he encountered anyone with a what some would call a (but he didn't) a deviant lifestyle.  

The bible preaches against what would be known today as Capitalism, materialism, yet folks conveniently forget that when holding clergymen accountable.  Interestingly, even on the subject of what some would call "deviant" behavior, there isn't a broad application of accountability either.   The Catholic Church internationally has priests who are called out daily by victims of sexual abuse, degradation and torment.  Where's that public outrage?

Let's bring it back home though, to the black church.  The black church in many ways is marred and tainted by those white slave masters who sang Amazing Grace How Sweet The Sound from the pulpit while raping their slaves, auctioning off families, and getting rich off of chattel.  They told their very slaves, who they dismembered for learning to read, that a book they had no knowledge of, justified all of the oppression taking place on the plantation.   They took truths and created myths that the bible was the reason that it was ok to brutalize, degrade and take ownership of other people.  One must wonder how often they told the story of Moses.  The same Moses whose story began with him being born a slave and dying as the one who let his people go.  One must wonder how often they told the story of Jesus who said He has been sent to heal the broken heart and set at liberty them that are captive.  I imagine never.  Because had they, their slaves would have been privy to a phenomenon that would become a pattern in America and globally for centuries:  the Bible being used as a means and justification to hate and oppress and to hate THE oppressed.  

The slave masters however were only taking cues from religious predecessors and movements in the past like the Crusades, a genocide led by the church which slaughtered people for simply not believing in the Father, the Son and the blessed Holy Ghost.  They were setting the tone for the reinforcement of those hateful movements led in the name of Christianity, like The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the Moral Majority.  Those slave masters were laying the foundation in the Americas for the church to be used as a tool to reinforce oppression instead of dismantling it.

So black people in America learned very quickly that there was a place, filled with the pandemonium of beautiful music and call and response , that could say one thing in the name of God and do something completely different in the name of God, without consequence.  Or, that there was a place that taught people to not rebel against their rulers, and to just pray their way to salvation.  Ironically,  the bible's hall of fame, from Jesus flipping tables in the Church, David sling shotting Goliath, Daniel being sentenced to the lion's den, Miriam leading Moses to mobilize the liberation of the slaves, Moses taking out a slave master and watching a sea of oppressors drown, Shadrack, Meshack and Abendigo taking a death sentence before they would bow before the king,  is stacked with stories of not just praying against but FIGHTING against oppression: by any means necessary.

Even currently, the stories of only certain religious leaders are heralded as examples of how one fights oppression.  The pacifists and the peaceful are deemed as the good Christian fighters, but the Rev. John Brown who led an uprising against slavery with an army armed with pikes, is rarely recognized as a model "Christian".   What that has created is a double whammy for some black folks and the oppressed religious classes: either you bow to your oppressor, or if he hits you, turn the other cheek and let him hit you again.  Not only does that model contradict "Christianity" and American Culture in general, but it contradicts natural human fight or flight response and every animal's instinct to defend and fight for its life.  Is a dog going to hell for attacking you if you take his meal?   (we all know All Dogs Go to Heaven [sorry I couldn't resist]) Is a bear going to hell for ripping you apart if you cross her cub? Is a bird going to hell for pecking your eyes if you dismantle their nest?  No.  And when we get out the I am superiority complex, we'll recognize humans have those same natural instincts as all animals do, to fight threats to their survival.

So what threats to survival do we see in the Black Church? I'm generally speaking, so excuse my political incorrectness while I paint this picture (if your church doesn't apply, congratulations, it doesn't apply). We see a replication of that Slave Master inspired behavior, of using a book and a theology to justify hate.  But the hate I'm talking about this time, isn't limited to white people hating black people, but black people hating black people.  Yeah I said it.  Black people using a book to hate their own people.  Which people am I referring to? Their own products of the black village, the black home, the black womb, the black family, the black community: black LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer folk).  

The bible was written during an era (depending on whether you believe King James or King "David" wrote which parts, but either era applies) that in no way could've understood the psychological and physiological nuances associated with gender and sexuality.  So even IF the bible can be interpreted as a text used to justify the oppression and exclusion of LGBTQ folk, what was that even remotely based on? Divine truth?  That's ignorant as hell.  

Let's step outside of the Bible for a second:  let's just go cerebral, under what logic model, for just basic preservation of humanity, does it make sense for you to ostracize your own child? Let's go back to the bible, Jesus said come as you are.  He didn't say leave differently.  He didn't specify how "who you are" had to be.   He didn't specify if you had to be born that way or if you had to choose who you were, just come as you are.  

So what happened where we left all of that behind and told black folk who were LGBTQ to not come as they were and to not even come at all?  What happened to lead us to  believe Jesus, who I believed behaved and in almost all ways (regardless of which racial depiction) looked to be gender androgynous and non-conformist, would sanction that?   That didn't come from anywhere but each individual's "choice" to be an oppressive bigot against their own people.

We are coming off of an era where black people espoused Black Power and entering one where black people are widely espousing that Black Lives Matter.  I believe in Black Power (and power to All People) and that Black Lives matter,  but what I know is that I can't believe in those concepts and leave my black LGBTQ people excluded in fighting for either of those causes.  

What God do you serve that doesn't believe all Black Lives Matter?  What Jesus do you follow who told you to beat the gay out of your child?  What theology do you ascribe to that told you a gay person can't come into or lead your institution?  What science were you taught that told you homosexuality was a disease?  What life did you live that led you to believing your identity was a choice?

I'm not saying you don't have justification based on any of those things to believe what you do, I'm saying IF you do, in order for all of us to be free even by the American hog-wash standards of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you have to make a choice to reject those teachings and gain new knowledge.  You know what else the bible you use to justify your hate tells us: My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge, because thou has rejected knowledge I will also reject thee. So your own ignorance is even inexcusable by your own theology.

But once you learn why you should love your LGBTQ kinfolk, even if you don't believe your identity aligns with their plight, if you must still look to the guidance of religious leaders to make decisions on how you as an individual fight back, make like John Brown and pick up your pike, and bring down those systems with the wrath of God behind you.

 

Why? Because this patriarchial, oppressive racist system is literally sanctioning the persecution of LGBTQ people.  The HB2 legislation passed in North Carolina legalizes the discrimination of people who we claim to love: black people.  Yes, those LGBTQ people who the NC General Assembly is ok'ing the dehumanization of are part of our black communities, black churches, HBCUs, and our black entertainment industry. Their stories are told through  our black present-day icons like Laverne Cox who uses her platform to advocate for black trans incarcerated women like CeCe McDonald,  or black elders like Bayard Rustin and Paulie Murray who had to conceal parts of their identity from their own people while they fought for their own people.  All of black LGBTQ folk deserve our attention, love, space time and our fight for justice for all people because when partriarchial, sexist, homophobic, classist, racist, transphobic systems are in motion, they're coming for us all.

Texas Children Deserve Better by Jennifer Rumsey

March 24, 2016

Texas Children Deserve Better
Jennifer Rumsey

It’s that time again. Time for STAAR testing in Texas. STAAR is the legislatively mandated series of high-stakes tests for public school children in Texas, and it is the most recent and most difficult of several testing program iterations that began in the 1980’s. I have been a Texas public school teacher since 1999. I have experienced TAAS, TAAS prep, TAAS workbooks, TAAS-aligned textbooks, TAAS packets, and even a TAAS pep rally.

Once students’ statewide overall scores became pretty high, the legislature made the costly move (paid to Pearson) to TAKS. The public schools adjusted: we adopted TAKS-aligned textbooks (published by Pearson), bought TAKS workbooks, held TAKS bootcamps and tutorials. During this time, the lawmakers instilled the Student Success Initiative (SSI), claiming that 5th and 8th grade students would “benefit” by being required to pass the TAKS reading and math tests. If students don’t pass, don’t worry…they “get” two more tries to pass the tests. But if they fail it repeatedly, these children can be retained in grade. Nevermind that research shows that students who are retained are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and to dropout of high school.

And then there was STAAR, the most ambitious testing program yet. The Texas legislature decided to gut public education funding that year, 2011. The cuts amounted to a loss of $5.4 billion, while they voted to create STAAR and pay Pearson $500,000.00. At first adoption, high school students were required to pass 15 End of Course exams to graduate. Now, thanks to grassroots efforts to change excessive testing requirements, high school students only take 5 graduation exams. However, their future life success remains impacted by rules that they must pass these exams to graduate, even with their Carnegie credits earned.

Tuesday my freshmen students must take the 5 hour English I End of Course Exam. I will be one of the lucky test administrators. During one of my test administration trainings, I found out that I am now required to write down the name of each student who leaves the testing room to use the bathroom, the time the student leaves, and the time that they return. This information, along with a seating chart, will be turned in to the Texas Education Agency. I am not sure why. Is it an additional measure of control over the students? Is it an additional measure of control over myself and other education professionals? Is it a deliberate attempt at de-professionalization of educators? When I mentioned to my students that I had to keep track of their times in and out from the restroom, they were puzzled and irritated. One savvy freshman girl asked, “Do they want to know the stall I used also?”

What I do know for sure is that these tests have become far too important. They are treated as top secret, national security-level documents. Why is the material in a standardized test treated as more confidential than the information in the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails? I have already signed my oath, and in my test administrator’s manual I am threatened with the loss of my hard-earned professional certification if I share information relating to what is on the test. I am cautioned to in no way purposely view the tests. Ironically, I am allowed to read the writing prompt to a student who requests it... My students are asked to sign an honor statement as well about not sharing the test material. During the five-hour testing block, I must “actively monitor” the students in my room, making sure they don’t cheat, don’t forget to bubble their answer document, don’t sleep. In the past, I have been warned that I am in not allowed to sit down during this all-important monitoring session. I may not read or write anything. I may only monitor, monitor, monitor, resting only on a “perch” of a stool for a short while before getting back up and walking the silent room filled with stressed students whose self-worth depends on their bubbled answers.

Tuesday is a big day for my little family. If my daughter doesn’t pass the math STAAR test, she will face the possible future of retention in fifth grade. My 10-year-old daughter is one of the unlucky guinea pig fifth graders in the state of Texas. My sweetie is a captive of the Student Success Initiative and one of the unlucky children impacted by a State Board of Education decision from 2015 that “pushed down” developmentally inappropriate math TEKS objectives. Some of the newly required 5th grade material was, until 2015, not taught until the children were in the 7th grade. What does this “pushing down” of objectives do? It requires more material to be taught during the school year, stealing valuable time that math teachers need to teach the foundational material for that year. It makes math harder and more rushed for the children. It is wrong. The TEA suspended the math passing requirements for 5th graders last year. But not so this year. Nope. My child and her peers must pass this test or face retention in grade. And wait, the news just gets better. The outgoing Commissioner of Education announced near his departure that, “STAAR performance standards have been scheduled to move to the more rigorous phase-in 2 passing standard this school year. Each time the performance standard is increased, a student must achieve a higher score in order to pass a STAAR exam” (http://tea.texas.gov/About_TEA/News_and_Multimedia/Press_Releases/2015/Commissioner_Williams_announces_STAAR_performance_standards_for_2015-2016_and_beyond/).
Thus, my daughter and all her little 10 and 11 year old friends are being held accountable for inappropriate math standards and will be judged at a higher performance standard at the same time. Something is not right here. Something is very, very wrong. My child is not a subject to be experimented on.

While my child is held to harder performance standards, the TEA has failed to comply with laws passed this legislative session. The 2015 legislature passed HB 743, and Governor Abbott signed it into law. This law requires that the TEA redesign STAAR assessments in grades 3-5 so that 85% of children testing can complete them in two hours. Currently, the assessments are four hours in length, far too long. The TEA has not shortened the tests for this year, ignoring the law. Why is my 10 year old held to higher performance standards on developmentally inappropriate math objectives, threatened with grade retention if she fails, but the TEA is getting away with ignoring the law? In my view, this refusal to follow the law invalidates all test scores for all children in grades 3-5 this year.

Research shows that standardized tests are not a true measure of what a child knows. I can tell you that they are not any kind of measure of a child’s worth. The children in the state of Texas deserve better than to be over-tested and experimented on. I am an expert in the field of education. I am a professional. I am a teacher. I know when my students are learning. I love seeing the light in their eyes when they have mastered a difficult concept, the excitement on their faces when they ask if they can continue reading a novel that they truly enjoy, the beauty in their smiles when I praise their successes. As far as being accountable, all teachers are accountable. We always have been. We are accountable to the children in our care, the children who become ours for a year, the ones we listen to when they are sad, the ones we feed when they are hungry, the ones we teach. It is time for the lawmakers and the TEA to be held accountable. Texas children are not subjects for your high-stakes experiments. They deserve better.

Defend Casey Young! Stop Receivership in Buffalo and New York State

Several years ago, my great friend Dr Henry Louis Taylor took me on a tour of the East Side of Buffalo where his students were part of a movement to get neighborhood residents to take the lead in shaping their communities future. One of the stops of the tour was East Side High School, where Dr Taylor said," I want you to meet someone who reminds me of you.". He then took me up to the principal's office where I was introduced to a powerfully built white man  with a shaved head who looked to be in his late 30's . His name was Casey Young.

After the introductions, Mr Young gave me a brief synopsis of his own life before coming to this new position. which had been filled with hardship and challenges. He then proceeded to talk about East Side High School. "I love this school and I love the kids here" he told me, "but they are going to get rid of me in three years. No matter what I do, my graduation rates probably won't meet the state standard because I have been sent all the kids with low test scores that other schools have pushed out. Of my 163 freshmen, 160 scored 1's and 2's on the state tests. I am going to give them everything I have, but I am playing with a stacked deck."

After I digested what Mr Young had told me, I toured the school, talked to some of the teachers and students and came away with a sense that some real idealism, energy and hope were present in the building. But I pondered the numbers that Mr Young had given me, and knowing the rigidity of the state education department, wondered whether the scenario he gave me would come true

Then yesterday, I found out, that Mr Young was not wrong. On a Buffalo education page, I saw an article which said that Mr Young was being brought up on by local education officials, which were under huge pressure from the State Education Department to close low performing schools, on charges of tampering with graduation rates.

 This accusation had set up written all over it! What a disgrace! When you find a principal with the passion and energy Casey Young has, who loves working with children others have rejected, you need to support him in every way possible, not harass him and remove him.

But in the rush to close public schools, even those with the long and noble history East Side has, and replace them with charters, the kids interests easily get lost

This is yet another reason why school closings are community destroying and the receivership program must be ended.

Defend Casey Young! Stop Receivership in Buffalo and New York State!