This data would seem to indicate that I am very good at doing a bad job, in terrible times. Kind of like winning a gold medal the year the Soviet Union boycotted the Olympics. Or winning the Super Bowl during the NFL strike season. Like my rating this season needs an asterisk. *Highly Effective.
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There is no way a logical mind can look at the situation and not come to the conclusion that the status quo on testing is a triumph of capitalism over science and reason. In a month or so, the year without testing will be just that – a single year.
For more than fifty years, Charles Koch has been pouring money into advancing his libertarian free market philosophy. Koch has taken Austrian economic theory from its 1950s fringe thinking status to an influential force in American governance. This is a continuation of that effort. Targeting teachers and school leaders is designed to expand Koch’s ultra-conservative low tax and small government agenda.
Read MoreIt’s time to create a teaching profession supported, and given the respect it deserves to become a shining example for the world to see! If Americans want real progress, they must get behind the people who will make it happen, America’s public school teachers.
Read MoreWe can sit idly by as our children get left behind or we can stand up and do something about it.
Read MoreToday, unbelievably, more and more forces are agitating to undo public education and even American Democracy itself.
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After all, student tests are designed to favor answers from privileged white people. Most of these lawmakers are the target demographic already. They passed a standardized test (or paid someone to pass the test for them) as a smokescreen getting into whichever prep school or ivy league college where they were legacy enrollments, anyway.
In Pennsylvania, as in most states, public schools are primarily funded by local property taxes. So rich communities spend a boatload per student and poor communities scrape together whatever they can afford.
Maybe rich people like Mike Allman and the former Secretary of Education, think teachers and students should take the risk and get back in school. But “little flare-ups or hot spots” are existential threats for many teachers and school staff. Now that vaccines are rolling out and schools are announcing reopening plans it seems foolish to rush it. Schools finally have the resources needed for a safe reopening and the staffs have vaccines being distributed that make them safer. Getting school open by May 1 is reasonable and prudent. Teachers, staff and students are not endangered unnecessarily.
Read MoreThe breaking point was being told, in writing, I could not sanitize an area--or myself-- after a student violated Covid-19 protocols (leaving his socially distanced area, mouthing others personal property, sucking on objects around the classroom, spitting, not wearing his mask, touching everything, hugging me...etc). Yes. I have it in writing.
Read MoreA global pandemic that’s infected nearly 29 million Americans and killed 523,000 is bad enough. But it’s the constant bungling of local, state and federal governments response to the virus that has been absolutely demoralizing.
Read MoreWasting time on testing is bad in any year, but in a year when school buildings have been closed and learning has been conducted remotely, when we’ve struggled with new technologies and safety precautions, when we’ve seen our friends and neighbors get sick, quarantine and hospitalize… Every second learning is that much more valuable.
Our schools, our neighborhoods, our towns, our nation are not solitary landscapes upon which we can play out our lives with no effect on others. We live life in connection with others. If we would remember that, we would live healthier and with much less argument over rights.
Read MoreOpting out will not hurt schools, but it will hurt the testing corporations, desperate to prove that these assessments can survive in virtual schooling and protect their bottom line. Two years in a row without standardized testing would clear the way to finally dismantle this racist practice–the likely rationale for his broken promise. The time has come to banish this obsolete relic of a painful past.
Read MoreThe government – under both Republicans and Democrats – wouldn’t pay people to stay home so they had to keep working even at nonessential jobs, and doing so just spread the disease. And instead of blaming lawmakers, lots of folks blamed teachers for refusing to risk their lives to teach kids in-person.
Read MoreThe relationships that Urban Collaborative fosters and the curricular development activities at EDC may have value. But sadly, these organizations have been corrupted by billionaire dollars and the lust for national prominence. They have lost their focus on improving public education and have become power players in the world of corporate education reform.
Read MoreContinuing and encouraging the narrow judgment of schools based solely upon a test given once a year for only two subjects, reading and math, is misleading. Worse than useless, the results mislead the public, politicians, and policy makers into bad decisions.
Read MoreSo, before you rally for the children in some super-spreader event to open schools, before you vilify the teachers' unions for protecting their membership, ask. . . is it worth it? Is there more going on here? Am I getting swept away in an agenda? WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC. Your children are not "falling behind." Falling behind what, exactly?
Read MoreFor those of you watching the news and hearing the “rush to get teachers and kids back to school”. Yeah, ya know the last 6 months when we couldn’t go out to dinner, grab a quick lunch with friends, go to funerals, attend weddings, see grandparents, go to football games, use tickets to the theater, hug our friends, shake hands, support small businesses... remember that? Some of us have been in the classroom, face -to-face with students since September.
Read MoreYes, we have vaccines for adults, but most districts have inoculated well under 50% of their staffs, and the goal has never been just to protect adults. Teachers have been making their case to protect students and their whole school community.
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