With A Brooklyn Accent

Sunday, November 16, 2014

A Bizzare and Awful Story of Test Refusal From And Ohio Parent- Guest Post by Allison Shipe

My Bizarro Story of Test Refusal

I am on one of the most interesting and maddeningly 12 week long journeys of my life. It begins on August 25, 2014, my hubby and I were there, at the beginning of this school year in August, and together we agreed that after all we had learned, about increased standardized testing, we would decide to “opt out” (refuse the test) for our kindergartener and second grader. I formally wrote, signed, presented to the school district our formal test refusal, on September 5, 2014. All concerned people: superintendent, principal, classroom teacher were given in hand hardcopies and electronic copies of our signed letter. With that decision, we found ourselves traveling down the rabbit hole. I knew that it would be hard, but was not ready for the push-back, bullying and obstruction I received from our local district. I can handle the bullying, which has continued through the district’s superintendent, who has called my home. Isolated my contact with anyone else in the district, with a long string of emails between us telling me what I can and can’t do with the education of my own children and also mentioning that I am NOT allowed to ask my children’s teachers anything about testing, assessments, curriculum, materials (are they gagged?) Not wanting to start a major “war,” I did as he asked and had not questioned the teachers about those things, yet he continued escalating his tactics. The superintendent has since used in-person verbal scare tactics with me, such as a verbal suggestion that I really should look into homeschooling, and has also sent numerous certified letters about homeschooling, homeschool forms, links to homeschool sites and other unasked for materials. The elementary school principal, Mrs. _____, has called my home to ask about bus transportation and asked me “why won’t you sign the waivers?” and has said “I wash my hands of your test refusal.” My darling daughter, who had been kindergarten screened with flying colors in our previously preferred school district and who was formally enrolled never got to attend one single day there due to the pressure I received from my communications with the preferred school district administrators The administrator had left a phone message stating “don’t bring ____ today, because I still don’t have an answer to your opt-out request from anyone in district five for Ohio. I got scared about truancy, So, I withdrew my children from __________ Village School District to enroll them in the _____ City School District in early September of 2014 so that I could fight this test refusal closer to home. Day by day the battle gets a little stranger. At first, I didn’t know where to turn, for answers, but luckily I found many kind souls out there around the country who were willing to help and support me! People such as Fran Morello, from the Thomas More law firm in Michigan, Dr. Mark Naison, Professor of African American Studies at Fordham University and creator of the activist group Baddass Teachers Association, Ms. Peggy Roberts, an educator in Colorado & co-creator of the National Opt-Out Test site, Ms. Diane Ravitch, nationally published author of “Reign of Error” and political activist; & the list goes on and on. In the state of Ohio, I discovered many other people willing to help and support me in my cause; the members of the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Ohio Badass Teachers Association, headed by Kelly Braun and Dawn Neely Randall, have been and continue to be extremely helpful. I have joined the group and attend monthly BATs meetings in addition to political activist functions they hold. With their help, I’ve realized that I CAN fight this. Why? Because I believe in respectfully speaking truth to power and authority. I believe in the constitution of the United States. I want you and I to be able to lawfully exercise our constitutional rights when we think it is important. And I believe in my heart that my parental and constitutional rights have been violated in the public school district of East Palestine, Ohio. I intend to keep fighting.Currently, I have been asked or sent in the mail(the forms) 13X , to sign a specially created for you, district waivers. In early November 2014, I spoke at my BOE monthly meeting, and here is part of what I read aloud.. November 3, 2014

Dear Board Members, My story begins August 25^th, spans 2 school districts, has continued for weeks, and still does not have an adequate ending as I address you. Here for the record, is my formal test refusal read aloud…(insert my 1 page test refusal letter) …

The districts reaction to my test refusal was first to encourage me to homeschool my children and then to create and ask me to sign 2 district waivers. I thought this was something I HAD to sign, but, when I asked, no law, or Ohio revised code, or policy, or legal writing was able to be produced. Because I did not sign these waivers that were never fully defined as to the language used in waivers, my parental rights are being ignored in the district, and under the direction of the superintendent, my children have been tested against my express concerns and written refusal. They were tested in September with the kindergarten readiness assessment, & the 2^nd grade reading diagnostic standardized test. I want you to understand as a board, that parental rights are being ignored and that these district waivers, signed or unsigned will in no way do anything to stop my children from being tested. The school district waivers are in no way a legal backed document. The district’s decision to have my children tested and to continue testing my children is a violation of my parental constitutional rights. Where does this end? In what ways will student and parental rights continue to be ignored? How many others will be counseled out of the school district so their rights do not have to be granted? A mechanism must be found for parents to test refuse in this district. Myself, as a parent being asked to sign multiple district waivers is clearly not working and will not work for the future. There are many districts here in Ohio that have working proceedures for test refusal. I would be willing to participate in these conversations. Thank you for the opportunity to address the board tonight.

And, I am still stumped, as the only solution offered up to me from my chidren’s school district(yet again) is to sign 2 district waivers that address standardize tests already given to my children , 2 months ago. Please help get the word out, that there are complex, strangeO true stories out there of parents struggling and trying to do what is best for their children. What I want, is a collarboration between myself, my children, and our local school district. Apparently my children’s school district thinks otherwise. I’m thinking that The moment your children or mine step foot on school property, our constitutionally backed parental rights are no longer valid. The public school district can do whatever they want. God forbid the health of your children are not in question, like when my neighbor relay her story to me, of last school year, when her then, 5 year old daughter was on a 504 plan for health reasons, the school completely disregarded that legal document and gave her kinder child a life threatening treat to eat, that could easily have stopped her heart. This Mom friend of mine went into our principal’s office as she stated to me & raised Cain—(secretly I hoped so & applaud her so much). I will keep fighting on, in my convictions on test refusal for my 2 very young children because I do not want to live in a country where we do not have our constitutional rights in working order for ourselves. Our forefathers fought and died for our rights to have the constitution lawfully when necessary.

So, in my quiet moments, when I don’t want to be so sad about my kids testing situation, or focus on how all our constitutional rights are being eroded away little by little, I make up story titles for myself, the most recent one goes something like this, “schools unlawful boo-boo & how Allison fell for it.” Others are, “the autumn of the testing mess, or, trick or treat, some twits test your kids and Skip to the school, my darling & get tested..again” Poems also lift me up, one I wrote, goes like this.. Engine Engine, baby of mine,

off to school, age 5 on the line

If you test, & deformers say "off track"

no way you'll get your childhood back

But more seriously, I want to, let my town know, & more specifically the parents around me, that an unlawful situation happened to me recently, when I formally asked the school district my children attend to not standardize test my kids. The administrators that work down the street from me, are conducting business w/me badly, they has been fond of bullying me, lying to me, singling me out, gagging my kids teachers, trampling on my parental rights, isolating me in communications with only the superintendent, chasing me around town with a made up unlawful waiver, and so very sadly, Under the cover of power, authority, politics, money. This IS NOT LEGAL. I am furious, I am furious for myself, my children, & the whole population of the district, because I have directly had (and having) a crap ass experience with them that is highly illegal. I bow down on my knees for the chance to publish my story far & wide, because I think it is good to show transparnacey with authority when they knowingly hurt simple people like my children and myself. Justice is so critically important.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Why Students Don't Come Into School Respecting Teachers- A Guest Post by Pamela Lewis

Nothing in this world teaches students to respect teachers or education itself; it isn't valued. There is an overwhelming national school culture that we are wasting their time, inconveniencing them, preventing them from doing what they really want to be doing. The system has backed teachers in the corner and allowed us to become powerless. Responsibility has fallen solely on our shoulders. The blame game has allowed children to not accept any responsibility for their own learning. If it is not instilled by the parents, and often times it is not because it has not been instilled in them either, students will not respect the fact that they are being provided a free service that students in other countries don't all necessarily have the luxury of receiving. Society needs to value us in order for our children to. Depending on the teacher/the school, this culture of respect can be bred, but it is not enough, and it should not be something schools should be made responsible for. If you can get that respect from the students at your school, great. But it should not be expected that schools be the only vehicle toward educating kids to care about education. It should start at home. It should be pumped through the media. It should be present in law and policy. If they wanted all students to get what they should be getting out of schools, these things would already be in place. But, alas, that is NOT the plan. Everyone cannot be successful in life, because if we all were, the children of those in power would not have the advantage. So they let our public schools continue to suffer, while their children learn to respect the value of education in their private schools. They also will allow public schools to continue to suffer so that charter schools can come in and "save the world." This is all a part of the plan.

Faculty Petition to Keep Teach for America Out of College Classrooms

Teach for America Faculty Petition- Please Email me at Naison@Fordham.edu if you wish to sign:

Teach for America Keep Out!

November 14, 2014

We, the undersigned, do hereby petition university faculty across the United States to ban Teach for America recruiters from your classrooms.

Whereas we support public education as vital to a democratic society, Teach for America backs charter schools, which draw on public funds yet are unaccountable to a democratic public and are not required to teach all students.

Whereas we support the rights of teachers to form unions, Teach for America recruits are often used as replacement workers in districts with labor disputes, thus weakening the collective bargaining rights of teachers.

Whereas we believe all American students deserve highly trained and experienced teachers, and whereas much research shows that such teachers are more highly effective than inexperienced and untrained teachers, Teach for America sends thousands of recent college graduates into demanding environments after offering them short summer “boot camps” as their only training and experience.

Whereas we understand that teaching is at its best when highly trained professionals enjoy a modicum of autonomy, Teach for America is part of a powerful movement to de-professionalize the teaching profession by reducing all instruction to standardized test preparation, even though much research shows such tests do not measure learning or good teaching.

Whereas systematic economic inequality sabotages what schools can and should do to help all children maximize their potential, Teach for America implies that presumably bad teachers are all that stand in the way of every American child’s opportunity to achieve academic success.

Whereas we understand that civil rights rhetoric is empty when devoid of concern for economic inequality, Teach for America sells itself as the civil rights movement of our age, a grave insult to the black freedom movement of the twentieth century.

As such, we implore faculty to sign this petition and thereby commit to keep Teach for America recruiters out of our classrooms. Although this petition specifically addresses university and college teachers at all levels, we encourage anyone who supports the message to sign it in solidarity.

Selected sources:

Andrew Hartman, “Teach for America: The Hidden Curriculum of Liberal Do-Gooders,” Jacobin

Mark Naison, “Why Teach for America Is Not Welcome in My Classroom,” LA Progressive

Julian Vasquez Heilig and Su Jin Jez, “Teach for America: A Review of the Evidence,” National Education Policy Center

Signatories:

1. Andrew Hartman, Associate Professor of History, Illinois State University

2. Mark Naison, Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University

3. Jesse Turner, Professor of Reading and Language Arts, Central Connecticut State University

4. Denisha Jones, Visiting Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, Howard University.

5. Lisa Phillips, Associate Professor of History, Indiana State University

6. Lois Weiner, Professor of Education, New Jersey City University

7. Aaron Barlow, Professor of English, New York City Technical College, CUNY

8 Robin Brooks, Assistant Professor of Art, University of Maine, Machias

9, Yohuru Williams, Professor of History, Fairfield University

10. Corey Robin, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY Graduate Center

11. Barbara Winslow, Professor of Secondary Education, Brooklyn College, CUNY

12. Joan C Grim, Lecturere, Early Childhood Special Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

13. Eleanor Bader, Ajunct Professor of English, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY

14. Craig Stephen Wilder, Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Friday, November 14, 2014

Rising Violence in Schools Serving Predominantly Black and Latino Students- by Justin Williams:

Over the last ten years, I have worked as a certified English teacher in a high school in Long Island, New York, a suburb of New York City. I am in my seventeenth year working in public education. I have taught various courses in four different school districts on Long Island that range from grades six to twelve. Children and adolescents, whether they are school shooters or gangbangers, do not become violent without cause. None of them were born violent.

I tend to connect the rise in school violence in my suburban school district, 95% of which is African American and Hispanic, to the recent economic downturn and education policy insidiously devoted to teacher, principal and school evaluations tied to standardized testing of students. These students have been exposed to school curriculum, said testing, and “raised” standards (Common Core) conceived by politicians, economists and billionaires, not professional and long-time education practitioners who would know much, much better how to make our public schools the envy of the world (again). They have also been victimized by inflexible “zero tolerance” policies with mandatory minimum suspension periods, as well as increased in-school surveillance and security measures that prepare chocolate and caramel students much more for the realities of prison than they do a safe existence.

I have noticed great family uprooting provoked by the trickle-down effects of the predatory mortgage-lending thievery that targeted chocolate, caramel and other relatively poor folks, all over America. This crime against humanity precipitated global economic catastrophe. American school children were affected too. My students were affected.

Largely (but not only) because of this dreadful event in our history, violence escalated in my community (I live in the town where I work), inside and outside of our schools, largely made up of the same demographic hoodwinked by bankers and lawyers who knew exactly what they were doing yet, remain unpunished. So many of these kids do not or cannot live with their parents (realistically homeless) that new categorical terms like “displaced” or “unaccompanied youth” have been recently coined for them in schools. These kids are angry, don't feel protected by any adults, yet we're asking them (forcing them) to do coursework and take tests they cannot and do not wish to do. They need therapy. And skills with which they can function in the workforce.

There have been numerous fights and assaults over the last decade in the secondary settings of my district, steadily escalating in severity. Adult professionals have been grabbed, groped or assaulted. A troubled young man, a recent graduate of our high school, shot himself in the head in a backyard next to mine. I heard the shot clearly. A kid was stabbed in a cafeteria. About two-dozen young men have been killed in our community or neighboring community, school districts with no more than seven thousand kids. I could not find many of these incidents in the local news. I’m talking about a middle class town where the median income is $70,000. This is not a stereotypical ghetto.

Presently and throughout the past two years, a huge influx of Central American kids with harrowing stories to tell of their journeys to New York have and are adding to the socio-emotional quagmire of the schools (students, teachers and administrators are emotionally, morally and ethically drained, strong as we try to be) in my district. Gangs like MS-13 are replenishing their ranks with Hispanic boys adrift in an American ocean of ambivalence aimed squarely in their direction. Others wish to learn enough English so they can work. Too many received little education in their native countries. Few of them are that interested in coming to our schools for anything else, save food. The Common Core has zero relevance to them. Z.E.R.O.

If my students find irrelevant the Common Core, as well as for-profit corporations like Pearson who greatly benefit from its ill effects, then Pearson and the Common Core are irrelevant to me.

I don’t need “the state” telling me how and what to teach. By paying close attention to the dreams, goals and/or likes and dislikes of my students (they always tell you or show you when they know you care), I know precisely what I need to teach, how I need to teach it, and when I ought to do so. When you can get ten or fifteen re-writes on a research assignment from kids prone to extremely disturbing, violent episodes, not only do you have fodder for great work, but you also have young people who are not thinking about being angry (for the time being).

Every teacher cannot and will not become a master teacher. Every doctor cannot and will not become a brain surgeon. Every lawyer cannot and will not become a famous defense attorney. Every mechanic or welder cannot and will not gain his or her own business. Every politician cannot and will not become Commander in Chief.

There is no profession, organization or country that thrives because of its talented tenth. Though often driven by the talented few, average, hard-working people are the engine that makes progress happen. Most teachers are average, hard-working, women committed to educating the children of others. You do not need to be a Marie Curie to teach, any more than you need to be Babe Ruth to be a professional baseball player.

The big failure of the current school reform debate is that creating great teachers is talked about much more than the creation of great homes. But even the very best teachers are unable to perform consistent miracles with our most angry, violent students; no more than a doctor can treat an emotionally volatile patient or a lawyer adequately interview a hostile witness. In these scenarios, the doctor and lawyer are not typically viewed as the areas to be addressed.

Angry, violent, aggressive students, on average, do not come from stable, healthy homes. Schools full of violent kids and fearful adults are rare in societies that are generally non-violent. But blaming professional educators is easy. Re-energizing and empowering the American family unit is harder.

But not impossible.

Justin holds a B.S. in English education and a M.Ed. in education administration from The Pennsylvania State University, a certificate of advanced studies (C.A.S.) in educational leadership from Hofstra University and he is working on a doctorate degree (Ed.D.) in educational and policy leadership at Hofstra University.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

My Fears for Downtown Brooklyn- Public Housing in the Crosshairs

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to lecture in my friend John Ehrenberg's Civil Rights class at Long Island University Brooklyn campus. As I drove John in from Park Slope, he warned me that the neighborhood around the campus had changed dramatically since I last spoke there five years ago. One luxury tower after another was going up in the neighborhoods adjoining the campus, including a new 70 story residence directly across the street from LIU on Flatbush Avenue. Most of the people who owned these apartments, John observed sadly, didn't even live there. They were wealthy people from around the world who, in John's words "used the apartments for money laundering."

As a Brooklynite born and bred, who returned to the borough to live in the mid 70's, the idea of a Brooklyn filled with luxury towers owned- but not inhabited- by the global rich filled me with sadness. It was people, extremely colorful people, who gave Brooklyn its legendary vitality and an infusion of cash without people seemed more of a step backwards than forwards.

But as I drove home after my lecture, I saw something which made me far more apprehensive than said, something a lot more sinister than merely the loss of a sense of community. As I turned right from Flatbush Avenue onto Myrtle Avenue, passing one luxury tower in construction after another on the right side of Myrtle, I looked at the row of public housing projects directly across the street from them, extending for ten blocks and thought " How long is it before the powers that be set their sights on public housing and seek to privatize the developments and evict their tenants."

All over downtown Brooklyn, there are large public housing projects- the Farragut houses, the Ingersoll Houses, the Sands Houses. I knew young people who grew up in those developments, took youth basketball teams to play in them, followed the legends they spawned during the golden years of hip hop. They are still desirable places to live for poor families. There is a 14 years waiting list to get into them. But now, once feared, once avoided by middle class Brooklynites, they sit on some of the most valuable land in the city, and it is only a matter of time for policy makers, whether in Washington, Albany or City Hall, give developers a free hand to move on them

The temptation to do so will be enormous. The rewards great. And given the policy perspectives of the so-called Democrats sitting in Washington and Albany, I see few if any obstacles to a push to privatize those developments and give them over to the vagaries of the private housing market

This is a grave and imminent danger to the residents of those projects, and to Brooklyn's existence as a place where poor people and people of color still have a chance to live near the borough's most vital cultural institutions.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Some Possible Reasons for the Spike in School Violence

All over the nation, school violence has been increasing, violence of student against student, student against teacher. School districts have

been reluctant to talk about this, but it is a huge subject of private discussion among teachers. Here are my own views of

why school violence is increasing and is likely to increase in the future.

1. Schools have become pressure cookers filled with high stakes tests, putting students on edge. The average school now give 17 tests a
year, compared to 6 before No Child Left Behind. In many schools, all that takes place in classrooms is testing and test prep. Students have
little opportunity to express themselves and often feel assaulted and humiliated by the way the material is presented, as well as the tests
themselves.

2. Class size has risen, reducing the chance of students making a personal connection with teachers, and making it more difficult for
teachers to control a class.

3. Music, the arts and sports programs all have been cut as school budgets have been slashed and testing expenses have risen, taking
away the very things that students most look forward to going to school for and also removing the activities where they are most likely
to find success and express their unique talents

4. Teachers are constantly attacked and disrespected, in the media, in comments made by parents and other adults, eroding their authority
over the young people they work with. And this disrespect is reinforced by the way administrators treat teachers, during observations, and sometimes during routine conversations and interactions. If teachers are everywhere the object of contempt among adults, why should young people respect them?

5. With budget cuts, there has been a sharp decline in support personnel like school counselors and school psychologists, to who young people in trouble
can be referred when teachers see them in pain, or on the verge of exploding. Many student problems are best dealt with in small group settings and forcing teachers to deal with them in overcrowded stress filled classrooms is asking for trouble

6. Students look at the world around them and see few rewards for completing school successfully. The vast majority of the jobs they will get after graduating from college will be low paying and have little in the way of a career ladder, and college is becoming increasingly expensive at a time when even immediate consequence of graduation is more likely to be student loan debt than a high paying secure job. Given the grim job market, telling students about the rewards of working hard and mastering the boring material they are deluged with leaves them cold. Why sacrifice in the present if there is little hope in the future.

7. The same deteriorating economy that is compromising students futures is making their present lives difficult. More and more families are forced to live doubled and tripled up and take in borders; others are going through bouts of homelessness or moving from place to place as their economic prospects dim. Many of these living situations are stressful, some are abusive. More and more students, even from once middle class families are bringing incredible stress to school at a time when schools is less and less equipped to cope with their needs

These are some of the reasons I have put forth for a crisis in our schools that few are willing to acknowledge. i am sure readers can come up with others, but I felt it was important to start this discussion

NY State Ed Commissioner John King's Plan For Buffalo Schools- By Dr Barbara Nevergold

I’ve written on several occasions about the strategic messaging of the Buffalo News regarding former Superintendent Pamela C. Brownand the minority members of the Board of Education. Their stories have been consistently negative and biased or have purposely omitted information that might have given readersa more balanced view of the Superintendent and Board members, particularly thes ignificant student outcomes achieved during her tenure and the role of themajority members in undermining Dr. Brown. But I have to admit that there are stories that even the Buffalo News cannot manipulate to hide their veracity. Some stuff you just cannot make up. I offer the following comments by New York State Education Commissioner Dr. John King during a recent interview. Over the past two years Dr. King has used his regulatory powers to issue numerous mandates and compliance orders to the District.

Dr. King made a surprise visit (none of the minority Board members knew he was coming) to Buffalo on September 18^th. As he normally does, he met with the News’ education reporter. His remarks about the School District, three months after Dr. Brown’s departure, were reported in an article entitled “State is giving School Board more time to enact reform: Education Chief optimistic on new majority’s agenda” and are strikingly candid about the Commissioner’s acceptance and support of the New Majority faction of the Buffalo Board of Education to the exclusion of the minority members.

Specifically, Dr. King:

· Credited the new majority for making amends with the State (especially since current Board President James Sampson and At-Large Member Larry Quinn went to Albany for a secret meeting with the Commissioner before the new majority took office; they claim no deals were made, but it’s obvious that the Commissioner and the Board members reached some agreement;perhaps about the selection of the Interim Superintendent as noted in the article)

· Commended the new majority for hiring Don Ogilvie as Interim Superintendent; the article acknowledged that Mr. Ogilvie is a mentor of the Commissioner

· Approves of the new majority’s philosophy one ducational reform because it aligns with the Commissioner’s own philosophy

· Is “more optimistic than at any other time”about the future of the District (under the leadership of the new majority and Mr. Ogilvie)

· “Championed” the new majority’s creation of a“Vision Statement”, even though that statement was created without the knowledge, involvement or input of the four minority members

· Ignoring this obvious exclusion of a significant part of the Board, Dr. King stated that the task of the new majority is to “transfer their vision statement into some concrete plans”

As if the foregoing wasn’t enough to paint a portrait of the bias of the Commissioner of State Education in favor of a Board faction comprised of only the majority members, the Commissioner concluded his interview with the most outrageous and revealing statement of his dismissive attitude toward the African American women minority members of the Board by saying:

“I’ve been at the department for five years,” King said. “Up until three months ago, you would regularly have members of the board majority or the superintendent saying, essentially, that the state was picking on the district to expect better outcomes. So now you have the board leadership and the district leadership saying that ‘We believe that schools can be the difference for kids. We believe that schools matter. We believe that poverty doesn’t determine outcomes, that we can overcome the obstacles that poverty creates if we improve schools.’”

Like I said, you just can’t make this stuff up!