Kiss My Assessment – A High Stakes Testing Poem

April 18, 2018April 18, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Labor, Local Control, Opt Out, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, Teachers, Toxic Testing, union busting, Unions, United Opt Out, Violence Against Children annual testing, education, high stakes testing, Opt Out, poem, poetry, PSSA, public schools, standardized testing, teaching, test-based accountability

Double, Double, test and trouble;

Standards stern so fill in that bubble.

Little Laquan, Empty belly

Reading passages by Maichiavelli

Does he know what the author thinks

Last night did he get forty winks

Drive-by shooting in his neighborhood

Answer questions that he should

Interrogated by the cops

Took away and locked his pops

Now he sits slumped in school

Testing, testing, it’s a rule

Will he – this time – make the grade

A debt to society he has paid

For being poor and his black skin

Success and riches, let me in!

But not unless you answer right

Like wealthy kids whose hue is white

Not two plus two or three and four

Context implied when you ask for

European culture and white society

If you know it, you’re in propriety

If not, take a longer road

Hurdles to jump and words to decode

But do not label the test unfair

Rich folks will blast you with hot air

Testing makes them bundles of billions

Leaching off of us civilians

Test prep, grading and remediation

Never mind that it keeps you in your station

Need new books, here’s Common Core

So big corporations can make some more

Money off your starving schools

The funding is drying up in pools

As politicians vote to gut

So they can give bankers another tax cut

Hotels and yachts and Maltese vacations

Touring havens in other nations

To hide their money and avoid paying

Anything to keep preying

On little kids and their moms

So long as they aren’t forced to pay alms

No nurses, no librarians, no psychologists

Nothing to feed a tummy or an esophagus

No fancy buildings, no small class sizes

Nothing to match the suburban enterprises

Fewer resources, fewer tutors,

Crumbling classrooms, archaic computers

Just give them tests as charity

And pretend it means populace parity

When he fails, we’ll blame Laquan

Fire his teacher and make her move on

Close his school and open a charter

And then his services we can barter

To turn his funding into profit

Democracy melts like warm chocolate

Private boards get public voice

Deciding who to enroll and calling it choice

Spending tax money behind closed doors

Filling classrooms with Americorps

Instructors who never earned a degree

But cheap trumps any pedigree

For teachers to teach the darkest of humans

As long as they don’t form any pesky unions

Reformers they’re called, really just hypocrites

Wolves with sheep skin in their identity kits

They might refuse to come out of the closet

But don’t burn this humble prophet

Who tells you the truth about high stakes tests

About the school system and the unholy mess

We’ve made for kids so hedge funders

Can bark and rave and push for blunders

To make money off of kids misery

And a better world – not for you, not for me.

Am I obsessed and distressed by oppressive divestment?

Oh who cares? Kiss my assessment!

Double, Double, test and trouble;

Standards stern so fill in that bubble.

NOTE: I wrote this poem during and after proctoring this year’s PSSA test for my 7th grade students. Can’t imagine where the inspiration came from! I’ll just say that the opposite of standardized testing has always seemed to be poetry. I hope you enjoyed my verses. It was either that or spit curses!

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

In Trump’s America, You No Longer Need to Pretend to be Against School Segregation

April 13, 2018April 13, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Media, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Students, Teachers, White Privilege Brown v. Board, education, Judge, Politics, school segregation, Trump, values, Wendy Vitter

School segregation is kind of like war.

When asked point blank, no one wants to admit to liking it.

To paraphrase Motown singer songwriter Edwin Starr:

“Segregation. Huh, Good God.

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.”

However, when it comes to supporting actual integration programs or even just education policies that don’t make segregation worse, no one in politics really gives a crap.

Both Republicans and Democrats are heavily invested in ways to divide up school students along racial and economic lines – whether they be charter and voucher schools or strategic disinvestment in the public schools that serve the poor and minorities and hording resources for wealthy whites.

That’s why it’s somewhat shocking to hear the outrage over Trump judicial nominee Wendy Vitter.

Trump nominated the extremely partisan justice for a federal judgeship in Louisiana. Yet during a Senate hearing Wednesday, Vitter refused to answer a question from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) about whether or not she believed the Supreme Court was right in its landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

The decision overturned the excuse that we could educate white and black people in different facilities so long as they were “separate but equal.” In effect, it said that when we educate the races separately, their schools will never be equal.

And Vitter couldn’t bring herself to affirm this ruling.

“If I start commenting on ‘I agree with this case’ or don’t agree with this case,’ I think we get into a slippery slope,” she said.

“I don’t mean to be coy, but I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with,” Vitter said.

She added that the ruling was “binding” and that she would uphold it if confirmed as a judge.

And there we have it, people.

That’s where the bar is set during the Trump administration.

You no longer need to pretend to be against school segregation.

On the one hand, it’s more honest than most people in the political arena.

On the other, how far have we sunk when you don’t even need to feign decency in order to expect having a chance of Congress confirming you?

Let me be clear. Vitter’s nomination should not be approved.

Congress should draw a line in the sand and say that it cannot accept people who do not share bedrock American values on the bench.

If you aren’t in favor of integration, you have no place making decisions about race, class and education.

And that is the barest minimum.

That is merely decorum.

It’s like having the decency to condemn Nazis – something else Trump can’t bring himself to do.

What actually happens to Vitter will probably be determined by the degree of backlash against her.

As of Thursday afternoon, the video clip of Vitter’s comments about Brown V. Board had more than 1.7 million views, and was retweeted over 13,000 times.

A few months ago, another Trump judicial nominee, Matthew Petersen, withdrew from consideration after a video in which he couldn’t answer basic legal questions went viral.

But even if this reprehensible person who has no right sitting in judgement over anything more taxing than a checkbook gets turned away from the bench, we’ll still be far from where we need to be on school segregation.

Despite Brown vs. Board, many of our schools today are more segregated – not less – than they were in the 1960s.

And instead of putting on our big boy pants and tackling the issue, we’ve gone in the opposite direction.

On both sides of the aisle, lawmakers support charter schools. Republicans and a few Democrats support school vouchers. And just about everyone is fine with the fact that our public schools serve vastly disproportionate racial and economic populations yet rely on local tax revenues for funding and thus are inequitably resourced.

In every case, these policies make segregation worse. Yet hardly anyone in the halls of power or in the media even admits it is happening.

At most, you get a news story every anniversary of Brown v. Board about the increased segregation and a journalistic shrug. Well, we don’t know how to solve that one…

Yes, we do!

We need to integrate – not segregate.

We need to end school privatization.

We need to redraw district boundaries.

We need to audit school policies that keep the races apart within districts by building or by class.

And we need robust, equitable funding that can’t be manipulated to favor wealthy white kids.

That will take a lot more moral courage than partisan outrage against Vitter.

Oh, she deserves outrage, but because of her lack of morality, not her political party.

This can no longer be about if your political football team is in power or not.

It has to be about what’s right and wrong.

Caring about integration should be part of what it means to be an American – like freedom, justice and apple pie.

If it isn’t, we have a lot worse problems than one reprehensible would-be judge.

I Stand With Striking Teachers Because I Stand for Underprivileged Children

April 8, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Labor, Pensions, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, protest, Racism, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions Arizona, education, education reform, Kentucky, labor, Oklahoma, public schools, Puerto Rico, schools, Strike, teacher shortage, teacher strike, teachers, unions, West Virginia

America’s teachers are taking to the streets by the thousands.

In West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and soon to be Arizona and Puerto Rico, educators are leaving the classroom and storming their state capitals.

Why?

Not because they’re greedy. Not because they don’t want to do their job. But because this country doesn’t care enough to provide them the resources they need to do it.

America doesn’t care about black and brown children.

America doesn’t care about poor white children.

America only cares about middle class and wealthy kids, preferably if their skin has a melanin deficit.

Don’t believe me?

Just look at how much these states have cut education funding. Look at how the federal government has slashed financial assistance. Look at how districts are forced to increasingly rely on local tax revenues to pay for the kind of education their children receive.

This means poor kids get poor resources. This means minority kids have to do without.

For the dark and the destitute, this means larger class sizes, out of date text books, and narrowed curriculum. It means fewer tutors, reading specialists and librarians. It means being left to your own devices to deal with the effects of generational poverty which put them behind their wealthier, lighter peers before they even enter kindergarten. It means greater emotional disturbance, greater malnutrition, higher absences, more learning disabilities, and less help to deal with any of it.

On the other hand, for the economically privileged white kids, it means just the opposite – fewer social problems, and the best of everything to deal with whatever issues they have.

It’s an unfair system, and teachers aren’t having it. We’ve been sounding the alarm for years, but it has fallen on deaf ears.

We don’t want to strike, but lawmakers are giving us no choice.

We’re saying, Enough! We’ve had it with the excuses.

Society hires us to do a job – let us do it.

Don’t refuse us the money to get it done and then blame us for the results.

That’s why there was a 9-day teachers strike in West Virginia which won educators a 5% raise in February.

That’s why 30 districts closed in Kentucky this week after a statewide sick out inspired by the legislature’s plan to cut pension benefits.

That’s why thousands of teachers in Oklahoma walked out this week demanding higher wages and better school funding.

And it’s why educators in Arizona, Puerto Rico and other states and territories may be next.

When you deny teachers the basics necessary to do their jobs, you’re refusing your responsibilities toward children.

When you deny educators a fair wage, you’re discouraging young people from entering the profession and encouraging those already there to seek work elsewhere.

And that is what we’re talking about here – a fair wage. We’re not talking about teachers getting rich off the taxpayers dole. You’re asking us to get an advanced education and do a hard job – that requires a middle class income so we can pay off our student loans and support our families.

The same goes for pensions. When teachers took their jobs, a fair pension was part of the contract. You promised that after 30-some years, educators could retire and you’d take care of them. You can’t renege on that. And if you plan to offer less for those coming in to the field, you’re going to get fewer high quality teachers willing to take the job.

When you attack unions and union benefits, you’re really attacking students. A teacher who can be fired at the whim of an administrator or school director is not as affective at her job. She has less autonomy and freedom to do what is right for her given students. And she has less reason to take a chance on the profession in the first place.

This doesn’t mean that after three years teachers should have a job for life. They don’t. It just means that if you’re going to fire a teacher for negligence, you should have to prove she’s negligent first.

This is why there’s a so-called teacher shortage in most states. As a society, we’ve become less-and-less willing to pay for teachers to do their jobs. We’ve become less-and-less willing to offer them the independence and respect necessary to get things done.

Why?

Because we’ve swallowed a pack of lies from the business community.

Many of them look at our public schools and see an opportunity for financial gain.

School funding may not be enough to give every one of the 50.7 million students in public school a first class education, but it’s more than enough to make a cabal of entrepreneurs and corporate officers rich.

That’s why they’re pushing charter schools and voucher schools and standardized tests and edtech software scams.

They want to get rid of democratic rule, get rid of teacher-based assessments and – ultimately – get rid of teachers. They want to replace us with minimum wage temps and leave the work of educating to computers that can provide test prep and standardized assessments.

But only for the poor and minorities. The affluent and middle class white kids will still get the best money can buy. It’s only those other kids they’re willing to feed to the wolves of edu-profit.

THAT is what educators are fighting.

THAT is why teachers across the nation are striking.

We’re demanding this nation does right by its public school students.

And that begins by supporting their teachers.

Every Public School Teacher Should Support Opting Out of Standardized Tests

April 4, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Labor, Local Control, Opt Out, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions, United Opt Out education, high stakes testing, Opt Out, standardized testing, teachers, teaching to the test, Test Prep, test-based accountability

Over the last few years, educators and parents have built up a wall of opposition to high stakes testing in the Opt Out movement.

But now it seems some teachers are starting to tear it down.

Not so long ago, tens of thousands of parents refused letting their children take the tests – with full support of their teachers.

Yet today you hear some educators question their involvement or even if they’re on the right side.

It’s almost like an anthropomorphic red pitcher smashed through the bricks and offered beat down educators a drink.

And far from refusing that rancid brew, some are actually gulping it down.

“OHH YEAH!”

You hear things like these:

“Opt Out’s dead. Stealth assessment schemes like Personalized Learning and Competency Based Education have replaced the federally mandated tests.”

GLUG. GLUG. GLUG.

“The tests often take up fewer days now so there’s no reason to opt out.”

GLUG. GLUG. GLUG.

“The kids who opt out aren’t doing it for the right reasons. They just want to get out of work.”

GLUG. GLUG…

Blargh! I can’t drink any more of that artificially flavored propaganda crap!

I’ve even heard of some teachers in New York State agreeing to call families who have refused testing in the past and asking them to reconsider!

What the heck!? Have we all lost our minds!?

We’re educators!

If anyone knows the problems with standardized testing, it’s us.

We know in intimate detail how these assessments are biased and unscientific.

So let me counter some of this dangerous disinformation going around.

1) You say the tests take up less time?

Marginally, yes. There are fewer test days.

But we’re still being pressured to narrow the curriculum and teach to the test just about every other day!

2) You say stealth testing has made the traditional standardized assessments irrelevant?

Okay. Competency Based Education is a real problem that threatens to make everyday test day – I’ll go with you there. In fact, schemes like Personalized Learning could transform every app into an opportunity to test kids without them even knowing it.

But that doesn’t mean the old fashioned high stakes tests have gone away!

Far from it. The federal government still requires all states to give these assessments to public school students in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

Let’s say the feds required teachers to give rich kids higher grades than poor children.

Or say the state commanded teachers to copy down sensitive information about students and give it to private corporations.

Imagine if the school board instructed teachers to put minority kids in slower classes than white kids.

If any of that happened, there would be wide scale revolt!

Yet standardized tests do all of these things!

They dishonestly give higher scores to rich kids and lower scores to poor kids.

The apps used for preparation and remediation often steal student data and sell it to third parties.

They are used to justify increased segregation within school buildings because implicit testing bias means white kids generally score higher than children of color. So the white kids get more advanced courses and the brown ones get test prep.

3) You say the Opt Out kids are just trying to get out of doing work. It’s just laziness.

First, of all, it is the parents who are opting their children out of standardized testing – not the students. Second, who are you to question their motives?

We serve the parents and children of the community. If they say they don’t want their children tested in this way, we should listen to them.

Third, why are you defending these tests? They are used by charter and voucher schools as “proof” that the public schools are failing.

These tests are used to justify unfairly evaluating YOUR work, narrowing YOUR curriculum, repealing YOUR union protections, reducing YOUR autonomy, cutting YOUR funding, and ultimately laying YOU off.

Why are you standing up for THAT?

So why are some teachers wavering in their opposition to high stakes tests?

I think it has to do with who we are.

Most teachers are rule followers at heart. When we were in school, we were the obedient students. We were the people-pleasers. We got good grades, kept our heads down and didn’t make waves.

But the qualities that often make for the highest grades don’t often translate into action. That, alone, should tell you something about the limits of assessment which are only exacerbated by standardized test scores. When it comes to complex concepts, it’s hard to assess and even harder to determine if success on assessments is a predictor of future success.

Bottom line: Every teacher should be in favor of the Opt Out movement.

And I don’t mean quietly, secretly in favor. I mean publicly, vocally in favor.

Many teachers are parents, themselves, with children in the districts where they teach. Every educator should opt out their own children from the tests.

If we can’t at least do that and lead by example, what good are we?

Next, we should force our unions to do the things that we can’t as safely do as individuals.

Call parents and ask them to opt IN!? We should be doing just the opposite, but that would put a target on our backs.

As a teacher, I can’t unilaterally call or send a letter home to my students’ parents explaining why they should opt their kids out. If I did that, I could find myself in administration’s cross hairs and face grave repercussions.

But isn’t that why we have a union? To stand up as a collective and do the necessary things we can’t do as individuals?

Imagine if every teachers union in the country routinely sent open letters to all parents asking them to opt their kids out! What an impact that would make!

Imagine if the unions put pressure on the school boards to pass resolutions against testing and in favor of opt out! What effect would that have on state legislatures and the federal government?

How could the feds continue to demand we give high stakes tests when nearly every school board across the country objected and advised parents to refuse testing for their children?

Taken individually, these aren’t really all that difficult things to do.

They require a certain degree of moral courage, to be sure. And teachers have been beaten down by a society that devalues their work and begrudges them just about everything.

But what do we have to lose?

Our backs are already against the wall.

We are being slowly erased – our numbers dwindle more every year while policymakers shrug and point to a teacher shortage that they refuse to explain by reference to the way we’re treated.

The tech moguls and the testing giants are salivating over the prospect of replacing us with apps and low-skilled, low paid babysitters to oversee students hunched over computers and tablets. (See? Told you Personalized Learning was poison.)

We shouldn’t be helping them destroy our own profession by advocating for the same tests they’re using as a tool in our destruction.

It’s high time teachers get some backbone.

We may all end up on the unemployment line, but that’s where we’re headed already.

I’d rather go kicking and screaming.

Who’s with me?

Would Democrats Really Do Better Than Betsy DeVos on Education?

March 29, 2018March 29, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM Betsy DeVos, Center for American Progress, Democrats, education, John Podesta, Politics, propaganda, public schools, Republicans, teacher, think tank

Everybody hates Betsy DeVos.

As Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, she’s ignorant, unqualified and insincere.

But would the Democrats really do much better if they had control of the Executive Branch?

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a left leaning think tank, wants you to believe that they would.

The organization founded by John Podesta and deeply tied to both the Clinton and Obama administrations has come out with a list of seven policy goals if Democrats take back the House and/or Senate in the midterm elections this November.

On the face of it, many of these goals are smart and worthy ends to pursue.

But this is the Center for American Progress, after all! These are the same people who pushed charter schools down our throats, the same people who never met a standardized test they didn’t love, the same people who think Teach for America temps are just as good – if not better – than fully licensed, fully trained teachers with 4 or 5 year education degrees.

Frankly, I don’t trust a thing they say.

The last two Democratic administrations pushed almost the same education policies as the last three Republican ones. They often use different rhetoric and pretend to dislike policies that BOTH parties have championed for decades.

So when an organization with a history like CAP offers school policy proposals – even if they’re innocuous on the surface – a closer look often reveals something disturbing hiding just under the skin.

In any case, it’s worth taking a look at this new report to examine what’s helpful in these think tank proposals and in what ways they might hide dangers for students, teachers, parents and society.

THE BAD

CAP proposes we:

Provide a tutor for all students who are below grade level:

This includes both academic and emotional support. And it sounds great! Imagine what struggling students could do with more one-on-one help!

However, according to the report, CAP’s major problem with previous tutoring initiatives like those provided under the No Child Left Behind Act was that they weren’t “high-quality.” Moreover, “tutoring could grow at the local level, helped along by things like an AmeriCorps expansion.”

Oh great! “high-quality” is often used by think tanks as a euphemism for standardized testing. And AmeriCorp has helped push more Teach for America temps into positions that should be held by teaching professionals.

I would love for struggling students to have extra help, but this sounds too much like sending Teach for America to give poor and minority students test prep and skill drills for hours and hours after school.

2) Go to a 9-to-5 school day:

Child psychologists have been suggesting we start school later in the day for at least a decade to better suit growing bodies and brains. Students would be able to get more sleep and come to school more rested and ready to learn. It would also help parents if students didn’t get out of school up to two hours before most adults are home.

In addition, CAP is cognizant that this would have to be a local decision – it couldn’t be handed down at the federal level. They suggest encouraging the move with more Title I funding and other sweeteners.

However, this ignores the fact that U.S. kids already spend more time in class than their international peers. Few countries make their children suffer through an 8-hour day. In Finland, for example, where kids start later and are released earlier than U.S. children, students get a 15-minute break for every 45 minutes of class work.

This suggestion, coming as it does from test-obsessed partisans, could be just another way to try to increase the amount of work piled on students in order to raise test scores. I advise caution.

3) Pay teachers more

I’m certainly not against this one. CAP notes that teachers only take home about 60 percent of the salaries that employees with similar levels of education earn. They suggest a base salary of $50,000 – up from the current average of $38,000 for incoming educators.

“More-experienced educators with a track record of success should make at least $100,000,” the report suggests (emphasis mine). And THAT’S where I start to feel queasy. What exactly do they mean “track record of success”? Well, this is CAP, so that probably means teachers whose students score well on standardized tests.

So I’m guessing it’s a back door merit pay policy. In other words, they want to offer more money to teachers who clobber their students with the test prep club so they’ll magically score Advanced on high stakes tests. This is yet another attempt to bribe educators to narrow the curriculum, avoid collaboration and sideline students who don’t traditionally score well on these kinds of assessments – the poor and minorities.

I want a raise, believe me. I DESERVE a raise! But not if you’re going to make me sign a Faustian bargain first.

THE GOOD

CAP proposes we:

4) Offer free breakfast and lunch to all students, no matter what their parents income:

We have this at both my daughter’s school and the district where I teach in western Pennsylvania. It is a tremendous success. Making it a nationwide initiative is an excellent idea.

It’s hard to argue with this, even if the main justification is that better nutrition will lead to better academic outcomes (read: test scores). Plus this removes the stigma of a free meal because all students receive it, and once initiated it would be harder to take away.

5) Provide more opportunity for students going to college to get technical workplace experience:

Students should be able to get real world experience to help them decide if certain careers are for them. I’m struggling to see a downside.

6) Hire more social workers, counselors and school psychologists:

Heck to the yeah. I see no downside there.

7) Initiate a national infrastructure program to fix crumbling school facilities:

It’s about time! Schools in impoverished neighborhoods are falling apart. We need to bring them up to the same level as those in the upper middle class and wealthy communities. Obviously, we’ll need to audit these programs and make sure money isn’t being wasted or embezzled, but this is a worthy goal well past due.

AND THE OTHER SHOE DROPS

And that’s it.

Not a bad list, over all.

I do have some reservations as noted above. However, many of these proposals would be really positive…

…until the other shoe drops.

Queue Lisette Partelow, CAP’s director of K-12 Strategic Initiatives and the lead author of the report. Pay careful attention to her remarks about the report in Education Week.

The think tank doesn’t expect these policies to be introduced or enacted anytime soon, she says. And even if they were, Partelow understands they would probably go under significant legislative changes before becoming law.

“We’re really excited about this as a counter balance, as an answer to the ideas we’re seeing put forward by [U.S. Secretary of Education] Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration,” Partelow says.

So THAT’S their game!

CAP is playing the long con here. They are putting forward a bunch of puppy dog and teddy bear proposals to contrast with Trump and DeVos.

These aren’t policies as much as they are advertisements for the Democratic party. It’s the equivalent of saying, “We promise we’ll do good things like THESE if you elect Democrats – despite the fact that we mainly focused on standardization and privatization when we were in power.”

Look. Maybe I’m being too cynical.

Maybe the Democrats really, really are going to do a better job this time, cross their hearts and hope to die, if we give them just one more chance.

But words aren’t nearly enough.

I like many of these policy suggestions. But I just don’t trust the Democrats.

The brand has been tainted for me by the Clinton and Obama administrations – by leadership from the same people who are making these suggestions.

In short – I’ll believe it when I see it.

Perhaps the greatest lesson organizations like CAP have taught is not to trust organizations like CAP and the faux progressives they’re selling.

For more, Read CAP’s Full report: HERE.

Testing Corporations Rake in Cash while Teachers Sell Plasma to Survive

March 26, 2018March 26, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers charter schools, Data Recognition Corporation, high stakes testing, Keystone Exams, Music, Pennsylvania, PSSA, public schools, salary, school vouchers, standardized testing, teacher, teacher shortage, teachers, teaching, test-based accountability

If you want to get rich in education, don’t become a teacher.

Open a charter school or take a job at a testing corporation.

Sure, charter schools are elaborate scams to make money off children while providing fewer services.

Sure, standardized tests are just corporate welfare that labels poor and minority kids failures and pretends that’s their fault.

And teachers? They’re just the people who do all the actual work of educating children. Yet there’s never enough money, never enough resources for the job they do.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary of public school teachers in Pennsylvania is between $53,000 and $59,000 per year.

Compare that with the salaries of the people who make and distribute the state’s federally mandated standardized tests – employees at Data Recognition Corporation (DRC).

DRC publishes numerous assessments in various states. However, in the Keystone state, the corporation makes everything from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) to the Keystone Exams in Algebra, Literature and Biology.

At its 14 locations across the country, the company has more than 750 full time employees and 5,000 seasonal ones used mainly to help grade the tests.

According to glassdoor.com, a site that showcases job listings, here are some openings at DRC and their associated salaries:

Test Development Specialist – $68K-$86K

Quality Assurance Analyst – $77K-$83K

Technology Manager – $77K-$84K

Business Analyst – $81,856

Software Developer – $83,199

Psychometrician – $95,870

Senior Software Developer – $96,363

So teachers spend 180 days in overcrowded classrooms with fewer resources than they need – often forced to buy school supplies for their students out of pocket – to get their students ready to take the high stakes tests.

Meanwhile, the test makers sit in luxury office buildings taking home tens of thousands of dollars more just to make the tests that students take over the course of a few weeks.

And these corporate test employees DO work in luxury.

Here are some of the benefits they receive listed on DRC’s own Website:

“DRC offers a comprehensive benefits program that allows employees to make choices that best meet their current and future needs.

Key Benefits

Choice of medical plans

Choice of dental plans

Flexible spending accounts

HSA account

401K savings plan

Profit sharing

Short- and long-term disability plans

Wellbeing Benefits

Paid vacation

Paid holidays

Personal time off

Workout facilities/locker rooms at select locations

Tuition reimbursement

Community service hours

Discount programs

Adoption assistance

Fitness classes

On-site massage

Walking paths

Convenience Benefits

Business casual attire
On-site subsidized cafeterias
Dry cleaning pick-up and delivery
Company store”

It’s funny. Some folks get all in a lather about the much less extravagant benefits given to teachers, but I’ve never heard anyone in a rage about these benefits being paid to corporate test makers.

And keep in mind, both teachers and test makers are being paid with public tax dollars. YOU are funding the test makers on-the-job massage break just as you’re funding the public school teachers trip to the doctor for anti-anxiety meds.

The Pennsylvania legislature has entered into three contracts with DRC through 6/30/21 for services related to standardized testing for a total of $741,158,039.60, according to State Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D-West Chester).

That is your money funding the test makers workout facilities and flexible spending accounts. You pay for their walking trails, fitness classes, dry cleaning services and subsidized cafeterias.

Meanwhile, public school teachers – who do the bulk of the work educating children – are left struggling to make ends meet.

According to estimates by the National Education Association (NEA), teaching salaries from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia have stagnated by 2.3% in the past 15 years.

But that’s way better than in most parts of the country.

In West Virginia, teachers across the state went on a 9-day strike to get a 5% pay raise.

Teachers in Arizona and Oklahoma are planning their own strike due to even worse neglect.

In Oklahoma, some educators have actually had to resort to selling plasma in order to survive.

KOCO News 5, in the Sooner State, reported on a fifth grade teacher at Newcastle Elementary school, Jay Thomas, who sells blood to supplement his income.

“I’ve got a permanent scar doing that. Just did it yesterday,” Thomas said.

“I’ve been doing it for a couple of years. I’ve given over 100 times. It’s twice a week.”

Though Thomas has been an Oklahoma teacher for 16 years, he makes less than $40,000 a year after taxes.

Selling plasma nets him about $65 a week.

And if you think Thomas is the anomaly, when this story was spread on Twitter, other teachers responded that they do the same, some even including pictures of themselves at the blood bank.

This is why there is a teacher shortage in many states. This is why fewer college students are entering the field. And it is why many of those educators who have stayed in the classroom are considering strikes.

We take teachers for granted. We value the work they do but not the people who do that work.

Meanwhile, we give extravagant rewards to the corporate vultures who provide very little for children but divert funding that should be going to educate students – the standardized testing corporations and the privatized school operators.

If we really want to improve our education system in this country, the first step is to value those who work in it.

We need to turn the money hose off for unnecessary expenses like standardized testing and allowing charter and voucher operators to pocket tax money as profit.

And we need to spend more on the people in the trenches day-in-day-out making sure our children get the quality education they deserve.

We need to give teachers the resources and respect they need to succeed and end the scams of high stakes testing and school privatization.

The Lone Voice of Dissent Against Standardized Testing

March 21, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Badass Teachers Association, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Politics, privatization, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Toxic Testing annual testing, courage, dissent, education, high stakes testing, Opt Out, Pennsylvania, public schools, speak out, speak up, standardized testing, teacher, teacher autonomy, teachers, teaching to the test, Test Prep, test-based accountability, Thomas Paine

Everybody wants to fight the good fight.

Until the battle begins.

Then many of us are all too ready to give in to what was intolerable just a moment before.

To paraphrase Thomas Paine:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in times of crisis, shrink from service, but those who stand up in time of need deserve the love and thanks of every man and woman.

I see this almost every day in our schools.

Ask nearly any teacher what they think about high stakes standardized testing, and they’ll complain until they’re blue in the face.

They’ll give you gripes and grievances galore.

The tests take too long. They’re not valid assessments. They narrow the curriculum. They’re dumbing down the teaching profession and ripping away our autonomy.

To which I say – Amen, Sister!

Standardized tests more accurately measure economics than academics – poor kids generally fail and rich kids pass. They’re culturally biased, poorly put together, unscientifically graded and demonstrate a gobbsmacking conflict of interest.

Two conflicts of interest, actually.

First, the people who make the tests, grade the tests and thus have a financial interest in failing the most students possible because that means we have to buy more remediation material which they also conveniently sell.

Second, these test scores are used by the school privatization industry to unfairly label public schools failures so they can more easily sell fly-by-night charter and voucher schools.

So, yeah. Almost all of us agree standardized testing sucks.

But when there’s an administrator present, I too often find I’m the only one willing to speak that truth. My colleagues, who are pleased as punch to gripe in private, suddenly go quiet in the presence of their superiors.

What’s worse, some of them don’t just stay quiet – they offer arguments to support whatever nonsensical test-based solution our boss has in mind today.

Let’s say an administrator suggests we do something about the handful of students who opt out of standardized tests.

We could just respect the rights of parents who have handed in their written intention to opt their children out under a religious exemption – the only option in Pennsylvania. Or we could do as the administrator suggests and force kids who’ve been opted out to take a standardized look-a-like assessment.

I hear something like that, and I’m on my feet ready to fight.

But I find myself standing there alone.

“You can’t do that,” I say.

“It violates state law. In particular, Pennsylvania Code Title 22 Chapter 4, section 4.4.”

(Okay, I had to look up the particulars later, but I made sure the administrator got them.)

Consider subsection (d) (4). And I quote:

“If upon inspection of a State assessment parents or guardians find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied…”

Or how about subsection (d) (3):

“School entities shall adopt policies to assure that parents or guardians [have]… (3) The right to have their children excused from specific instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, upon receipt by the school entity of a written request from the parent or guardians.” (Emphasis mine)

In other words, parents have a right to excuse their children from the tests and/or instruction such as test look-a-likes.

If we go forward with requiring students who are opted out to take tests that are just like the ones their parents instructed us NOT to give, we will be violating parents’ rights under state law.”

That seems pretty airtight to me.

But the administrator disagrees.

And I look around at the assembled mass of workaday teachers for support.

Not a peep.

Instead I get this:

-We’re being evaluated on these standardized tests, we have to make sure kids take them seriously.

-I see where you’re coming from but we have to do something about these kids who are opting out just to get out of doing the work. They don’t have any real intellectual objection. They’re just lazy.

-We’ve got to do something about grade inflation.

Oh. Em. Gee.

Yet after the meeting, some of them cautiously walk up to me asking my opinion of what went down.

YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR MY OPINION RIGHT NOW!

Take my word for it.

Tomorrow or the next day or the next week, they’ll be complaining again.

I’ve seen some of these people reduced to tears by administrators unfairly manipulating them based on their students’ test scores.

Yet none of them have the guts to stand up and be counted when the moment comes.

I say again – everyone wants to fight. But no one wants to do the fighting.

They want someone else to do it for them.

Does that make you angry?

It makes me furious.

But if you feel that way, you’ve got to do something about it.

You think teachers are too cowardly? What have YOU done to fight corporate education reform today?

You think too many administrators are quislings. You think the lawmakers are bought and sold. You think the public schools are under attack.

Well, get off your ass and do something.

I am tired of being the lone voice of dissent here.

All across the country there are people like me – people willing to stand up and fight.

But it’s a big country, and we’re usually spread pretty thin.

We need people willing to put their money where their mouths are – right here, in our hometowns.

Put up or shut up, America.

Do you want a school system that serves the needs of children?

You’ve got to make it happen.

I can’t do this all by myself.

Twenty-One Reasons People Hate, Hate, HATE Betsy DeVos

March 12, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school violence, school vouchers, Schools, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice, Special Education, Students, Teachers 60 Minutes, Betsy DeVos, charter schools, education, education secretary, Lesley Stahl, Politics, Privatize, school vouchers, Secretary of Education

Lesley Stahl: Why have you become, people say, the most hated Cabinet secretary?

Betsy DeVos: I’m not sure exactly how that happened…

I’m more misunderstood than anything.

The above exchange from last night’s 60 Minutes interview highlights an important point about our Education Secretary.

She is deeply unpopular, but not because she’s misunderstood. If anything, she’s understood too well.

We know what she stands for and we don’t like it.

If she was really so misunderstood, why didn’t her answers in the interview veer away from the same usual canned responses she’s given time-and-time-again to the same type of questions?

What’s wrong with schools? NOT ENOUGH CHOICE.

How do we prevent school shootings? LET SCHOOLS ARM TEACHERS.

You didn’t really even need DeVos to show up to the interview to be able to guess with a high degree of accuracy what her answers would be.

In fact, many of her responses seemed to have been coached – as if someone had prepared her with talking points before the interview even took place.

So without further ado, here is my exhaustive list of all the reasons I can think of why people really, REALLY hate Betsy Devos. If I’ve left something out, please feel free to add it in a comment.

WHY PEOPLE HATE BETSY DEVOS:

1) She didn’t earn her position as Education Secretary. She bought it. And even then it took a tie breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence to shove her down our throats.

2) She wants to spend tax dollars to boost privatized schools in which she has a financial stake.

3) She doesn’t mind taking funding away from public schools to do it.

4) She wants to destroy the entire system of public schools which enroll 90% of America’s children.

5) She doesn’t really know what public schools are, having never attended one or having never sent her children or grandchildren to one.

6) She wants to arm teachers not because it will protect kids from school shooters, but because that boosts her family’s investment portfolio. (i.e. her brother’s mercenary army for hire, Blackwater)

7) She won’t make charter and voucher schools give the same services to special education kids as those provided by traditional public schools.

8) She’s getting rid of students’ civil rights protections while adding protections for nefarious student loan providers and fly-by-night on-line schools.

9) She’s rescinded rules that protected trans students.

10) She’s considering rescinding rules that protect minority students from being unfairly and disproportionately disciplined by schools.

11) She’s made it harder for victims of sexual assault and harassment to report abuse and easier for those accused to avoid prosecution.

12) She talks about state’s rights to determine their own education systems while using the power of the federal government to coerce them to doing things her way.

13) She wastes public tax dollars. She is the only Cabinet member protected by Federal Marshals, which costs us nearly $1 million a month. Whether this is necessary or not, as a billionaire she could save the taxpayers money by taking on this cost, herself.

14) She doesn’t care if the public doesn’t want her at their school or event. She goes anyway and then pretends to be angry that protestors showed up. She doesn’t seem to understand that as a public servant she should serve at our pleasure – not the other way around.

15) She uses tragedy as a photo-op – as she did when she visited the Parkland school to promote arming teachers. She didn’t meet significantly with students or staff. She didn’t listen to their concerns. She even bailed on her own press conference there when the queries weren’t to her liking.

16) She has no problem whitewashing black history as she did when she claimed historic black colleges were pioneers of school choice. In reality they had no choice. For many African Americans at the time, it was create black colleges or forgo post-secondary education at all.

17) She is ignorant (purposefully or not) of the results of her own policies. Her advocacy of school choice in her home state of Michigan has weakened that state’s public schools, not strengthened them.

18) She’s out of touch with average Americans. She’s the richest member of Trump’s cabinet and often travels in her on super luxury yacht.

19) She’s rich not because she earned it, but because she was born into it and married into even more wealth. Moreover, much of her wealth is due to her family’s Amway fortune – basically it’s founded on rooking average people out of their hard earned money with what’s essentially a pyramid scheme.

20) She’s arrogant. She smiles vacantly at topics that don’t deserve a smile – they deserve serious regard.

21) She is extremely biased and partisan. She is supposed to serve the public interest, but her radical Christian Fundamentalism and anti-LGBT activism make her untrustworthy to serve in that capacity. Statements such as “There is enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education… Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s kingdom,” do not help.

Okay. That’s all I can think of – though more may pop into mind as soon as I publish this. If I missed something please include it in the comments.

Hopefully this answers DeVos’ question about why she’s hated.

When Students Stay Up All Night Playing Fortnite and You’ve got to Teach Them in the Morning

March 6, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bill Gates, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Guns, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, VAM, video games Accountability, edtech, education, Fortnite, gamification, schools, standardized testing, Teacher Evaluation, teachers, technology, Value Added Measures, VAM, video games

There is something monstrously unfair about our teacher evaluation systems.

If your students fail because they were up all night playing video games, it’s your fault.

Seriously.

When students fail at academic tasks, there is no responsibility attributed to the students, no responsibility attributed to the parents and certainly no responsibility given to society.

It’s all just thrown on the teacher because, hey, someone’s got to be responsible. And it might as well be them.

I’ve written scores of articles about how standardized tests forced on students by the federal government are unfair.

They are developmentally inappropriate, culturally biased, and subject to a deep conflict of interest because the people making the tests get more money if test takers fail.

The tests drive the curriculum instead of the other way around. The scores needed to pass change from year-to-year invalidating annual comparisons. And many lawmakers pushing for these assessments are funded by the school privatization industry that uses failing test scores to sell its own fly-by-night brand of education.

These are real problems our education system faces every day.

But we mustn’t forget an even more fundamental one: we’re all responsible for student success or failure.

Not just teachers. EVERYONE.

Society, lawmakers, business people, parents – but those most responsible are the students, themselves.

Case and Point—

Over the last few months a word has entered my students’ vocabulary that hadn’t been there before: Fortnite.

It’s not that they’re so interested in an antiquated term for a two-week period. It’s the name of a popular multiplayer on-line shoot-em-up video game for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, and Mac. Players build forts with teammates to defend against other players or enemies.

Apparently, many of my students got it for Christmas. Or since there’s a free on-line version, they were turned on to it by others who had gotten the deluxe version as a present.

It started as an undercurrent of trash talk. “You suck at Fortnite.” “You can’t beat me on Fortnite.” “You just wish you could take me on Fortnite.”

And then it started to manifest physically.

Those same kids would come in to school with Fortnite Face – glassy red eyes, heads slumped on the table and the inability to stay awake for more than 10 minutes at a time.

It’s not all of my students, but it’s a significant percentage. Almost all boys. And almost all at a distinct learning disadvantage.

Teaching them is like teaching someone in a deep sea diver suit. They can’t really see or hear you very well. And any message you get back from them sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of the ocean.

When I noticed it, I cleared as much of my schedule as I could to call parents. It’s hard because administration decided not to fill positions in my department for teachers who retired last year – so all our classes are larger. And they gave me a new class I haven’t taught in years so the planning load is more cumbersome.

Plus I have as many special education students as legally allowed in every class, which requires mountains of extra paperwork and monitoring for each child.

And of course the phone in my room doesn’t call out and the cell reception is terrible, so I have to move to one of the few phones that will actually allow me to contact parents and try to communicate my concerns.

Most parents I talked to noticed the same things I had. Fortnite was taking over their children’s lives. Their kids were playing the game at every opportunity and ignoring most everything else.

However, most parents I couldn’t reach. Those cricket burner phones get disconnected quick. Others go straight to a voicemail box that’s so full it won’t accept new messages. Others allow me to leave a message that will never be returned.

But sometimes I did get through. And sometimes parents didn’t simply throw up their hands and say they don’t know what to do. Sometimes a parent actually laid down ground rules or took the game away.

However, if I’m being honest, contacting parents did not solve my problem.

I’m not blaming them. Most of my students live below the poverty line. That means their folks are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. Or they’re grandparents raising their sons’ or daughters’ kids. Or they’re foster parents with a full house.

They’re doing the best they can. But it doesn’t end up stopping the addiction.

And – let’s be honest – it is an addiction.

For the first time in 2018, the World Health Organization recognized video game addiction as a real thing. Not every video game. Not every time someone sits down to play a video game. But video games can lead to addictive behavior.

That’s what I’m seeing in my students.

So after talking with as many parents as I could, I came to a mostly dead end.

My next step was to try to use student interests to influence instruction.

We were in the middle of a poetry writing unit. So I allowed students to write their poems about Fortnite.

That perked up a few heads.

Here’s a cinquain about Fortnite. Here’s an acrostic, a narrative, a concrete poem in the shape of a soldier or his gun.

To be honest, none of them were masterpieces.

They were just the normal trash talk and braggadocio written down in verse.

So I got an idea. Use the heightened competitive urge to push artistry.

We came to limericks – a difficult but fun type of poetry with five lines, a specific rhyme scheme and meter.

We read funny examples, we sang the rhythm together in chorus – da Dum da da Dum da da Dum – and then I set them the task of writing their own limericks.

With one twist. Whoever wrote the best limerick would get a homework pass.

That got them going like a shot.

All of my Fortniters perked up.

They wrote like I’d never seen.

Each wanted to one-up the others. And no one wrote about the game.

By the end of class, we had some pretty good poems. I wouldn’t say they are the best ever written, but they were miles better than where we were before.

So what does it all mean?

When we talk about video games these days, the conversation usually strays toward violence.

Pundits caution that video games will desensitize children and make them more prone to aggression and acting out. It might even contribute to the creation of school shooters.

Wrong.

In general, video games don’t make children more violent. Fortnite is a game where students shoot each other with guns all night long and it hasn’t made my students any more aggressive or violent than they already were.

Many cultures like the Japanese are much more into video games than ours and they have fewer violent incidents or school shootings.

However, video game addiction is a real thing and it impacts learning.

Some corporations want to try to harness this addiction to push learning. Hence the move to personalized or competency based education. That’s pure rubbish.

It’s a way to monetize education without paying attention to what’s best for kids. The same with gamification – using game theory to drive instruction.

And don’t think I’ve lost sight of my own use of competition in class. I haven’t.

Games and competition can be used to positive ends in moderation.

You can motivate reluctant kids to do things they wouldn’t normally do with competition. But it doesn’t work for everyone and it doesn’t work all the time.

It needs to be a novelty. Any tool can be overused.

Even video games aren’t bad in moderation. I used to be a gamer, myself.

The problem is when it becomes an addiction.

Our social structures can’t handle it.

Game corporations only care if it makes money. Parents are often stressed to the limit just to provide the basics.

The only group we require to be responsible is teachers.

And that’s just not going to work.

Video game addiction is another area where it becomes painfully clear how much work we all need to do to help our children succeed.

Gadfly on the Road – Reflections on My First Book Signing

February 24, 2018 stevenmsinger bloggers, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Guns, Parents, Politics, privatization, School Choice, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Uncategorized book, book signing, books, charter schools, corporate school reform, education, Gadfly on the Wall, parents, Privatize, school segregation, school vouchers, Students, teachers

So there I was standing at a podium in Barnes and Noble before an audience of 25 people who had come to hear me talk about my book.

Speech uploaded to my iPad – check.

Cough drop – check.

Fear that no one would take me seriously – Oh, double, triple check!

Let me just say there is a big difference between sitting behind a keyboard pounding out your thoughts for consumption on the Internet, and being somewhere – anywhere – in person.

I’ve spoken at rallies. I’ve spoken at school board meetings. I’ve spoken in private with lawmakers and news people.

But none of that is quite like being the center of attention at your own invitation, asking people to take time out of their busy lives and drag their physical selves to some prearranged place at some prearranged time just to hear whatever it is you’ve got to say.

I had been practicing my remarks for weeks after school.

I had a 15-20 minute speech ready to go – a distillation of the main themes in my book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.”

Would people hear what I had to say?

I surveyed the audience. A few people I didn’t know. But there was my mom and dad, a bit more grey haired than I remembered yet doing their parental duty. There were a few colleagues from work – teachers, aides and substitutes. There were a few students standing in the back with their parents. One of my old high school buddies even showed up though he lived about a half hour away.

And there in the second row was my daughter.

For a moment, the whole world seemed to be nothing but her 9-year-old face – a mix of emotions – curiosity, nervousness, boredom.

In that moment, everything else disappeared. I had an audience of one.

I began.

It was surreal.

I spoke the words I had written weeks before, pausing to look up at the audience when I could.

Somehow I was both more and less nervous. I stumbled over parts that had caused no problems when alone. And I hit other points with more passion and purpose than ever before.

At certain points I found myself getting angry at the people behind the standardization and privatization of public education.

I rebuke these greedy saboteurs just about every week on my blog. But there was something different about putting the words on my tongue in public and letting the vibrations beat a rhythm on the ear drums of those assembled before me.

It was like reciting a spell, an incantation. And the effect was visible on the faces of those in front of me.

I glanced at my daughter, expecting her to be nagging her Pap to take her to the children’s section, but she was as entranced as the others.

And was I kidding myself or was there another emotion there? Pride?

I finished my remarks, getting a few laughs here and there. Anger and mirth in equal measure.

I thanked everyone for coming and took questions.

There were quite a bit.

Which aspect of corporate education reform was the worst?

Is there any way for parents to protect their children from standardized testing?

How has the gun debate impacted the move to privatization?

My mother even asked what alternative methods of assessment were preferable to standardized testing.

It went back and forth for a while.

When it seemed to die down, I thanked everyone for coming and said I would be there for as long as anyone would like to talk one-on-one and sign any books if people would like.

I had a line.

Thankfully, my wife brought me the nicest sharpie marker just before I got up there.

I tried to personalize as much as I could but everything seemed to be a variation on “Thanks for Coming.”

Students came up to me with huge grins. Parents asked more questions about their children. Lots of handshaking and hugs.

Teachers came up to tell me I had done a great job. Many introduced me to their kids – most itty bitty toddlers.

A former student who had already graduated got really serious and said, “It was about time someone said that.”

And it was over.

The store manager told me how many books we sold. I had no idea if that was good or bad, but he seemed well satisfied.

I packed everything up in my car and then went looking for my family.

I found them in the children’s section.

They had picked out a few books Mommy was purchasing. A really nice one about Harriet Tubman among them.

My daughter was sitting alone by a toy train set. She was worn out. It had been a long day.

“Daddy!” she said when she saw me. “You were amazing!”

And that was it.

That was all I’d needed.

She asked me about this or that from the speech. Obviously she didn’t understand the ins and outs of what I had said, but some of it had penetrated.

We talked about racism and why that was bad. We talked about what we could do to help stop it.

The rest of the time she held my hand and took me on a tour of the store.

I have hope for a better world, but if I’m honest, I’m not sure if writing this book or my activism or any of it will ever actually achieve its goal.

As ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime.”

But I’ve shown my daughter where I stand.

I’ve shown her where I think it’s appropriate to stand.

I’ve shown the same to my students, my family, my community.

They’ll do with that what they will.

I just hope that one day when I’m gone, my daughter will remember what I taught her.

She’ll remember and feel my presence though I’m long gone.

Photos:

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Videos of the majority of my speech:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

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"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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