A Brief Education Manifesto

We need kids to learn auto repair , electronics, construction trades, computer and air conditioning repair, airline mechanics, food production and preparation, urban agriculture and aquaculture-- along with test taking skills. The one size fits all college professional school model works for some- but this other track has to be cultivated too 

Building school around test taking skills is an unmitigated disaster in the Bronx- we have recess and gym being used for test prep in communities which have the highest obesity rates in the nation.

I am all for re-imagining schools- but not through testing and preparing everyone for college. College today is no panacea. Many people leave it with huge loans and limited job prospects.

Cognitive development yes--relentless testing and college prep for all- no

Why Professors Who Support Unions Should Bar Teach for America From Their Classes

If you are a professor, and allow Teach for America to recruit in your classroom, you are complicit with a stealth attack on the American Labor Movement.

Here's why:

In Chicago and Philadelphia, TFA has made sweetheart deals to have their Corps members hired in charter schools after hundreds of veteran union teachers have been fired when public schools have been closed. In other cities around the nation,  like Buffalo,  where this is no teacher shortage, TFA has tried to cut
the same deal.  An organization founded to address a teacher shortage in low income communities, is now, when 
no such shortage exists, actively encouraging municipalities to close public schools and replace them with charter schools so its Corps members can find jobs.

 The Teach for America leadership, whose largest single contributor is the fiercely anti-labor Walton Family Foundation, has allowed TFA to  become a replacement labor agency.

 While there are other features of Teach for America-- from its test driven pedagogy, to its refusal to extend the time commitment of its Corps members to more than two years- that are highly questionable and undermine the teaching profession, its venture into union busting and strike breaking truly places it beyond the pale.

The BATS- Shadowing The Ed Deformers Every Step of the Way

Corporate Education Reform is filled with opportunists. We have Governors Chris Cristie and Andrew Cuomo, right across the Hudson River from one another, one Republican, the other a Democrat, each hoping it provides the formula to take them to the White House. We have Michelle Rhee, Stever Perry and Wendy Kopp, each using attacks on teachers and teachers unions to elevate them to national prominence and allow them to command large speaking fees. We have Pearson and Rupert Murdoch standing make a fortune from testing and data sharing. BATS are here to spoil their party. To hound them and challenge them every step of the way when they sacrifice students and teachers to their ambitions. We plan to be their worst nightmare- teachers motivated by love for their students  who will turn into their shadow,being loud and present where ever and whenever they plan to expand their influence. More BATS, more trouble for those who seek to profit from other's misery.

Letter to the Fordham President on Assessment and US Department of Education Mandates

Dear Father McShane and Esteemed Academic Administrators

   I returned to my 44th year of teaching at Fordham with great excitement and a growing sense of trepidation about national trends in higher education and how they might effect the Fordham community.

   My classes have never been better. I have wonderful students who are excited about the material and go the extra mile to bring new material and new issues to my attention. I have great graduate and undergraduate student workers for the Bronx African American History Project and have worked out an arrangement with the Fordham library staff to gradually digitize and preserve our entire oral history collection

   But yesterday, I received a document about assessment that reinforced my worst fears about how US Department of Education mandates may be affecting teaching and learning at Fordham.

On a section of the document entitled "Goals and Assessments: Are You Suceeding" the following phrases appear "Desired Student Outcomes" "Assessment of Student Outcomes" and "Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes."

   Rarely have I encountered language which undermines the goal of all liberal arts education than this. What it does to the ideals of Jesuit education is even worse.  Never, in all my years of teaching did I think of what I was doing was "producing outcomes." I was trying to inspire young people to think more creatively, to seek out new perspectives and new experiences, to build communities inside the university and out, and to develop greater confidence in their own capacity to take intellectual, moral and spiritual risks.

    While I will, as in the past, participate in legitimate efforts to assess what we do in our Department in a manner consistent with our traditions, I cannot and will not use language that violates my conscience as a teacher and a scholar.

    I know many of you agree with me in principle, but are afraid of the consequences for the University if we defy the mandates of the US Department of Education.

    But in moments like this, someone has to say "No" and it might as well be me

    I categorically refuse, even at risk of terminating my employment, of inserting the word 

"student outcomes" in any of my syllabi or sign off on any assessment document that uses that language.

     This, to me is a matter or conscience as well as of principle.

     And lest you think I fear being assessed, here are some of what be considered my "out comes"

      More than 50 of my former students who have received doctorates in the arts and sciences and are teaching in universities around the world

       More than 30 of my former students who have published books with university presses which are considered important works of scholarship in their filed

       Hundreds of my former students who are working in schools, community organizations, government agencies, trying to bring to life the commitment to a life in pursuit of justice they were exposed to at this University.

       Founding and administering, along with my former students and many Bronx community partners, one of the most respected community based oral history projects in the nation, the Bronx African American History Project.

    

   I take my stand on my conscience and my record

      Let the chips fall where they may

Sincerely

Mark

Mark D Naison

Professor of African American Studies and History

Founder and Principal Investigator, Bronx African American History Project.

You May Win Some, But You Just Lost One- One Teachers Response to The DeBlasio Victory

Bill DeBlasio's victory in the NY Democratic Mayoral Primary ( it is still unclear whether he will face a runoff) is one of the first by a major candidate who took a strong stance against Corporate Education reform, and hopefully it will set a trend around the country.

DeBlasio, strongly supported by Diane Ravitch and her son Michael, along with thousands of parent and teacher activists in the NYC school system, soundly defeated the candidate informally supported by the Mayor, Christine Quinn, and the candidate supported by the United Federation of Teachers, William Thompson, whose finance chair happened to be head of NY State Regents Chair Merryl Tisch.

While DeBlasio's victory stems as much or more from his fierce opposition to "stop and frisk" and hospital closings as his education policies- his opposition to excessive testing, school closings and charter school co-locations, along with the open hatred he inspires among charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz, led many education activists to campaign for him even while the UFT campaigned for Bill Thompson.

We have all learned, through harsh experiences, that what a candidate says when they are campaigning may be very different than they do when they govern, and that the Billionaires have a way of asserting their influence behind the scenes when the excitement of an election quiets down.

But for the moment, teacher and parent activists should take notice that a strong anti-testing candidate can win elections on a very big stage, and that there is a deep well of public dissatisfaction with the Corporate Reform policies being pushed so hard by both major parties.

We still have a huge amount of work to do in the runoff- if there is one- and in the general election- but we still can say, in the words of the great Lauryn Hill "You may win some, but you just lost one."

Solidarity With Chicago.-Protest Teach for America

Solidarity with Chicago- Protest Against Teach for America

Today, teachers across the nation are thinking about Chicago, where Rahm Emmanuel announced that he plans to open 52 new charter schools staffed by Teach for America Corps members in a city where 50 public schools have just been closed. This is a declaration of war on teachers, students, and hard pressed neighborhoods, and a throwback to the ugly years before the Great Depression when union busting was the American Way. Teachers who care about justice, and our many allies will fight this with every organizational weapon at our disposal. We will shine the bright light of publicity on the main players in this disgraceful drama- Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and TFA Founder Wendy Kopp-as well as Education Secretary Arne Duncan- and participate in and organize demonstrations at their headquarters, but we will also ask those with direct connections to these organizations to take other actions. Current and former TFA Corps members- mobilize among your cohort to protest the Chicago strategy of the TFA leadership. Faculty members at major universities, organize your colleagues to refuse to let TFA recruit in your classes. This is WAR.

Teach for America has become the 21st Century Version of the Pinkerton Agency
Solidarity with the Teachers and Children of Chicago is the Appropriate Response

Making Test Abuse a Medical and Legal Issue

During the past six months, I have received scores of emails and Facebook messages from teachers who describe the anxiety and stress that some of their students have been under as a result of excessive or developmentally inappropriate tests. Such complaints are likely to increase in the coming year as Common Core Standards are implemented in school districts across the country, with no exemptions for special needs or ELL students, for whom the tests associated with CCSS are often an exercise in humiliation.

While it is our duty, as education professionals, to speak out against such abuse, it is not clear that such advocacy will get a sympathetic response from the public, as we have been so demonized by the media and elected officials, as to render every thing we say suspect

It is therefore time to start bringing other professionals into a public debate about the abusive levels of testing currently being imposed in our public school- in particular lawyers, doctors, psychologists and counselors. Such an approach should have two components. First, every teacher who sees their own students suffering intolerable levels of stress and anxiety- especially those which turn into medical conditions requiring treatment- should privately document what is happening. Secondly, leaders of teacher activist groups such as BATS, or leaders of teachers union locals, should quietly approach lawyers and medical professionals in their area to see if they are willing to launch class action lawsuits in behalf of affected students or call for public hearings by school boards or town or city councils to document and discuss test abuse.

And while that is happening at the local level, researchers in the field should approach national organizations like the American Bar Organization, the American Medical Association, or the American Psychological Association, to see if they are willing to organize sessions on test abuse at conventions and national meetings.

It is time the conversations that teachers are having among themselves about the destructive consequences of high stakes testing be brought to a much larger audience. But that also requires us to carefully -- and in most cases privately-document the catastrophe we see happening around us.