Picket in the Pines! Put the PUBLIC back in public education!

Sunday, May 4, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Lake Placid, NY.

• Register online: http://www.cvent.com/d/h4qslh
• Spread the word via Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/234136926786807

WHY:

Education Reform Now, a union-bashing "reform" group run by Wall Street hedge fund managers, is hosting a retreat at Lake Placid May 4-6. The hedge-funders' deep-pocket Political Action Committee - Democrats for Education Reform - also will hobnob at the$1,000-a-head "Camp Philos."

These groups promote non-union charter schools, overreliance on standardized tests and Common Core, student-data collection, vouchers, merit pay, test-based teacher evaluations, privatization, and removing teacher unions from almost any role in shaping curriculum or determining working conditions.

ACT:

Picket in the pines to put the "public" back in public education! For too long, so-called "reformers" have drowned out the voices of parents and teachers. These hedge-fund propagandists have contributed to New York State's Common Core mess, the (failed) In-Bloom push for student data, and the spread of corporate charters that undermine public schools serving all kids.

WHEN:

Sunday, May 4, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

WHERE:

Meet at the Comfort Inn
2125 Saranac Ave
Lake Placid, N.Y. 12946

REGISTER ONLINE:

Register online at http://www.cvent.com/d/h4qslh.

The deadline to register is Wednesday, April 30.

Based on participation and need, buses from NYSUT Regional Offices will be made available.

SPREAD THE WORD:

• Promote via Twitter. Use the hashtag #picketinthepines.
•  RSVP via the official Facebook event - and share with your friends!
• Download the flier.

TENTATIVE PROGRAM:

1-2 p.m.
Lunch

2-3:30 p.m.
Presentation by Sabrina Stevens of Integrity in Education

3-4 p.m.
Picket Sign-In and Sign Making

4-5 p.m.
Picketing at the Whiteface Lodge where Education Reform Now and DFER are meeting

Stand With Spencerport

More than 60 teachers at Spencerport’s Cosgrove Middle School have signed a petition calling for action by the NYS Commissioner of Education John King, Chancellor Meryl Tisch, and Governor Andrew Cuomo.  The petition takes issue specifically with this year’s ELA and Math tests for grades 3-8 characterizing the tests as “poorly written, developmentally inappropriate, deliberately confusing, and ambiguous.”  Additionally, the tests require students to complete tasks with insufficient time.

Stand with Spencerport – SIGN THE LETTER TODAY

______________________________

To Whom It May Concern:

We, the teachers at Cosgrove Middle School in Spencerport, NY, hereby demand transparency and accountability in the administration and scoring of the Grades 3-8 ELA and Math exams.  When teachers, parents, and the public cannot access the tests students are required to take, in their entirety, test-makers and policy-makers are not held accountable for the following:

• Reading passages that are:
  • Poorly-written
  • Developmentally inappropriate
• Questions that are:
  • Poorly-written
  • Developmentally inappropriate
  • Deliberately confusing
  • Ambiguous, with multiple correct answers, or no clear, correct answer
• Tasks in which students are given insufficient time for their completion

In their current state, these tests serve no discernible purpose other than wasting precious

hours of instruction in order to rank schools, teachers and students against one another. Even if the tests weren’t completely flawed, which they are, the data that they generate are vague, released to schools too late to be of any relevance, and are completely useless to our instructional practices. Without access to the test questions themselves, these exams provide us with no valuable information to help our students learn.

If time on task is important, and teachers are truly valued, we must be allowed to teach. We will lose approximately three weeks of instructional time to administer and score these absurd exams. Effective students have effective teachers who are in the classroom…teaching.

As educators, we are constantly asked, “What’s best for students?” but it’s obvious that

these tests do not have students’ best interests in mind. At best, these exams waste time and money. At worst, they traumatize students and create unnecessary stress in their lives. Students gain nothing of value from taking them, and their teachers gain nothing of value in their administration and scoring.

To correct these grievous errors, Commissioner King and the Board of Regents must eliminate these exams entirely, or be held accountable for their quality by releasing them to educators and the public for scrutiny. The privilege of keeping the exams secure was lost when they became grossly flawed and filled with purposefully deceptive questions. Only when our concerns are heard and addressed can we honestly say that the question “What’s best for students?” is guiding education in New York State.

inBloom Says Bye-Bye...

New York State United Teachers said today’s announcement that inBloom would shut down its operations demonstrated the power that parents and teachers hold when they work together and fight for what’s best for students.

NYSUT, in coalition with parents’ groups and other allies, had demanded that New York state cancel its contract with inBloom, a nonprofit funded by $100 million in Gates Foundation grants which had planned to collect, store and manage troves of highly sensitive, personal data on every student.  At legislative hearings, rallies and through its lobbying clout, NYSUT repeatedly stressed that inBloom’s cloud-based data storage portal threatened student and teacher privacy and represented a costly — and unnecessary — expense for school districts.

NYSUT President Karen E. Magee noted that teachers and school districts use data responsibly and securely on a daily basis to ensure that students receive the support and services they need to succeed in the classroom.

“The inBloom project was exploitive. It sought to collect and store 400 different data points on every student, with no guarantee that highly sensitive information about students and their families would remain private and secure, and not be sold or misused,” Magee said. “InBloom was invasive. It was costly. It was unnecessary and, because parents and teachers stood up together for kids, inBloom is no more.”

NYSUT Executive Vice President Andrew Pallotta said students and their families will be well-served by existing BOCES and school district services, which are less expensive and offer stronger protections.  “This is a clear victory for the privacy and confidentiality of students and educators,” Pallotta said. “Our voices were heard.”

Why VOTE-COPE Matters...

Koch brothers help Kansas lawmakers strip teachers of tenure

• BY VALERIE STRAUSS

• April 8 at 7:00 am

(wwp.greenwichmeantime.com)

The Kansas legislature just passed legislation that strips teachers of tenure and the right to due process, a move pushed by conservative lawmakers who were forced by a state Supreme Court ruling to provide more funding to poor school districts and wanted to get something out of the deal. After stripping teachers of their tenure, legislators had a brief discussion about jewelry.

Yes, you read that right: jewelry. According to a witness, immediately after the vote, someone in the chamber told fellow lawmakers that there was a jewelry in the house and rings were on sale. Remove tenure and buy a ring. Makes all kinds of sense, doesn’t it?

The legislation was in part a result of a state Supreme Court ruling in March that said state public school funding was unconstitutional because many schools were not adequately and equitably funded.  Some legislators considered defying the court but in the end, lawmakers approved more money for poor school districts, expanded school “choice efforts” and, while they were at it, stripped teachers of their tenure. According to this Associated Press story, Kansas teachers who have been on the job for at least three years have certain rights when they are being fired. They must be told in writing why the action was taken and they have the right to request a review of the decision. Under the new law, those rights go away.

Pushing the effort to end teacher tenure, the AP reported, was a group called Americans for Prosperity, backed by the extreme conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have funded other anti-union measures around the country. Not so incidentally, Americans for Prosperity has been far outspending the top Democratic super PACs in nearly all of the Senate races the Republican Party is targeting this year, according to this story by my Post colleague Aaron Blake.