MORE ON THE BOARD OF REGENTS MEETING...

I said I'd post more specifics on the BoR meeting I attended last Monday.  But I haven't had the brain energy to sift through my notes as I'd intended.

I'll just re-iterate these important highlights:

• The Board has clearly heard there are trust issues in our State, between the public and the SED.
• They clearly seem concerned about re-gaining trust.
• Their path to regaining trust is unclear, however.

I have great faith in Dr. Betty Rosa to lead forward into sanity, if that's possible.
I have faith that she'll be successful bringing actual research findings to the table when making critical policy decisions.
I also have faith that there were will be some positive movement on teacher evaluation plans, helping struggling schools, and something to do with testing.

But I am also equally clear that she cannot do it alone.
She needs teachers and parents to stand behind her and continue to question and to hold the entire SED - Regents, Commissioners, office staff, and the Governor - accountable for re-righting the ship, and steering us towards logical, child-centered decision-making.

We need to keep pressing for the things that will make us trust them again (sane, appropriate and logical standards, tests, and teacher evaluations.)  We need to speak out against the things that make us question their trust-ability (missing test pages, unlimited time to take tests, pressuring young children to decide for themselves how long to test for, continued inappropriate questions, too-long tests, questionable standards, and onerous, stressful, unproductive teacher evaluation systems that require districts such as mine to add three more administrators just to keep up with evaluations and paperwork, etc.)

If you live in New York State, your voice is needed.  

Join with me here or send your own comments and questions.

But please, participate.

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

I came out of a store this morning and found someone kneeling behind my parked car.  I immediately assumed he'd hit me and was looking at the damage.  But when the man saw me coming, he stood up and smiled instead.

He'd seen my bumper sticker and liked it so much he wanted a picture of it:

"If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

It pretty much sums up how I feel about things in general.  

Although I first got the sticker during Bush Jr.'s infamous days in the White House, this saying has sadly become even more relevant today as 1% money invades and threatens to overcome our democratic way of life.

This is not a popular opinion to voice, but I wonder how different things might be in education today if more of my colleagues were a tad more outraged.  If more teachers were paying attention, connecting the dots, and seeing through the deception that goes by the name of "reform," I wonder if Misters Gates, Broad, Walton, et. al. would have been so successful worming their way into our schools and classrooms if they'd been questioned at every turn.

I don't actually like seeing all the connections.  (The constant cognitive dissonance hurts my brain.)  I don't enjoy questioning the motives of people who claim to have children's best interest as their priority.  But it also doesn't take very long to feel the outrage, if you're willing to pay a little attention.

Compliance and obedience and doing what you're told without questioning are not the hallmarks of exemplary professional behavior.  (Contrary to what nearly every administrator has told me.)  If your job is to place children's best interests at the heart of your efforts, then you are obliged, compelled, and actually mandated to think first before acting.  Use the critical thinking skills so avidly talked about in education circles.

Sometimes the most professional thing to do is to question and to find another way.  

For the sake of the kids.

And the future of public education.

Please.

And if you need a place to start your eye-opening and to gain some "BI" (background information,) then I highly recommend two blogs and a book:

dianeravitch.net         and       curmudgucation.blogspot.com
and Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told To Do Is Wrong.

WHY THE MISSING NYS TEST BOOKLET PAGE MATTERS

For those who haven't heard, there was a page missing from the 2016 New York State ELA test booklets for grades 3-8. Given the excessive importance given to these tests, the enormous amount of money spent on creating, prepping for, and administering these tests, this omission has to be important in some way. I admit I continued to be confused why there is so little public discussion about the missing test booklet page.  Even amongst my colleagues, there is a general sense that it is a minor detail not worth wondering or worrying about.  

While some might say I'm just looking for stuff to complain about, I maintain that the missing page has much more significant implications. 

Here are some things worthy of pondering:

•              Even if you personally don't plan your writing ahead of time, many students do (particularly students who have been test-prepped for months and given a "formula" for writing high scoring essays.)  Your personal feelings about the importance of a planning page doesn't make the absence of one any less important to those students that needed it.

•              The test booklet directions, as well as the directions read aloud by teachers, refer to a "planning page" that wasn't there.

•              Students are instructed not to go past "stop signs" nor to write in any spaces not designated for answers.

•              A main intent of these tests is to claim a standardized (read: "irrefutable") ranking of students across the State. But standardized test scores require standardized testing conditions.  On Wednesday, April 6th, only some students were alerted to accommodations they could make in the absence of the official "planning page." Other students did not receive that advantage.  Blank pages were only available in some grades' test booklets, and occurred after the "stop signs" that test takers are instructed not to turn past.       TO SUMMARIZE - a planning page, critical for organized and coherent writing for some students, was missing in all test booklets.  Only some students were instructed on alternative spaces to use for planning.  CONCLUSION - all students did NOT test under standardized (read: "the same") conditions.

•              What protocols does the testing company Questar have in place to insure accurate, error-free publishing of standardized test booklets?  How and why did the protocols fail?  Is there any consequence to the testing company for its error of omission?  What other errors may have been made that are far less obvious?

•              Can the scores of the essay on Day 2 of NYS ELA testing be considered valid under the conditions outlined above?  (read: "Testing conditions were not standardized across the State.  Valid scores require standardized conditions.")

Just some food for thought...

Your thoughts?

BOARD OF REGENTS MEETING

I attended my first Board of Regents meeting in Albany on Monday.
It was fascinating and I highly recommend all teachers make the effort to get to Albany at least once in their careers to attend a meeting.

I took lots of notes and hope to post a detailed debriefing this weekend.

These things stick out as important initial observations:

• This message was repeated several times throughout the day - a major goal of the Board is to regain trust.  (How they're going to do that is still not completely clear...)
• 
  
• There seems to have been a deliberate decision to not keep records on how long students chose to sit with the tests in this first year of un-timed tests.  (If records weren't kept, then you can't document if there was a problem...)
• 
  
• Amidst a discussion about the impending roll out of computerized testing (for the 2016-17 school year) a Regent wondered aloud about when the Board had actually agreed to move forward with computerized testing.  It was a stunning moment.  And while there was a brief discussion following her question, no conclusions were reached and further discussion was put off to another time in the future.

Stay tuned for more details this weekend...

POUGHKEEPSIE JOURNAL INTERVIEW WITH COMMISSIONER ELIA

Here is a great interview of the New York State Commissioner of Education by the Poughkeepsie Journal on April 14th.

It's long but well-worth the time to watch and listen.

The questions are direct and cover many concerns that have been raised about receivership, testing, teacher evaluations, and more.  The answers are often evasive but there is satisfaction in hearing the questions at least being asked.

Among some important highlights:  Ms. Elia seems to firmly believe a teacher evaluation system has to produce positive outcomes, be created in conjunction with teachers, be done at a local level, and be for the benefit of students.  She agrees there's more work to be done.  She says there's a plan to give parents more useful information on their child's tests results, and she thinks there needs to be a partnership with universities to ensure students graduating from high school are in fact "college ready."

Things not asked or not answered clearly - what about the missing pages in the ELA test booklets this year?  What impact does the missing page have on test validity? Was she aware some teachers knew and were able to alert their students to the missing page, and other teachers didn't know until the test booklets were collected? What impact does students sitting for vastly different amounts of time have on the scores they get?  (Is a "3" from a student who took 70 minutes to take a test equivalent to the "3" another students took 3 hours to get?)  How can she keep saying teachers reviewed and approved all the test questions on all the tests, thereby implying all the test questions are now developmentally appropriate and well-written (a major concern of all stakeholders) when in fact the teacher reviewers could only replace bad questions from a list of Pearson created questions that could also be bad but maybe not AS bad...  This strikes me as a tad disingenuous...

Watch the video and then add your own comments to the PJ page. Maybe the paper will start covering the story of missing test pages and the travesty of un-timed tests.

The public MUST know.

MORE ON UN-TIMED TESTING

I thought I was done writing about State testing, but apparently, I'm not.
Ms. Elia's words just echoed in my head:

"Students who are productively working will be able to demonstrate what they know and are able to do, even if it takes more time. We're interested in what students know, not how fast they can go."

I wonder what impact this will have on every day classroom assessments...

Does this mean that unit tests, and mid-terms, and finals, and maybe even those weekly spelling tests should also be un-timed?

If the State has declared that they're "interested in what students know, not how fast they can go" then who are we at the local level to place time constraints on students during any test?  Isn't the goal to always discover what our students know, not how fast they can go?

But that leads me to other questions.

One of the most common reasons given why parents should not let their children refuse the tests is because in real life, there are challenges.  And just because the challenge is hard, doesn't mean you can "opt out."

Well, I don't do a lot of testing in my class. (I prefer essays where students really do get to show what they know.)  But I do know that in real life, you don't get unlimited time on many things.

What life lesson are we teaching our children/students if we show them that this critically important State test does not require them to show what they know in any particular time frame?  Does this set them up for failure later in life, certainly in their high school and college careers when assignments and tests most definitely have a timed component?

These are important questions to consider.

It's been clear that the NYSED doesn't do a lot of projecting into the future in regards to potential real-life impacts of policy on children.

So the questioning is left to us.

Please, ask the questions.

STATE TESTING 2016 - FINAL THOUGHTS

Six days of testing in New York State are over.  (apart for make-up days.)
I don't want to dwell on the past, but I do want to record some of my thoughts/concerns here in public cyberspace.

Here in New York we have a new Commissioner of Education - MaryEllen Elia.  She replaced John King a year ago.  (Despite spearheading the destruction of our State's public school system and demonizing teachers, Mr. King received a promotion to the highest Education Office of the Land when Arne Duncan resigned...)

Ms. Elia said she understood there had been serious concerns about the way in which Mr. King had rushed the implementation of new standards and tests of those standards (before teachers had had a chance to learn the standards and before there was new curriculum in place to address the new standards - all this referred to in a bizarre training video about "building a plane in mid-air.")  

In an effort to "reboot" the process of education reform in NY, Ms. Elia went on a "listening tour" around the state (more than 20,000 miles of listening she's been known to boast,) to meet with and hear first hand from parents, teachers, administrators, and other interested stakeholders.  She claimed she heard our concerns.  You can read her words here.

She said she heard the concerns about the tests themselves. 

"We brought teachers from across the State to Albany to review every reading passage, word problem, and multiple-choice question on this spring's tests to make sure they're fair. In all, every item has been reviewed by at least 22 educators."

But on the ELA tests my 5th graders took there were questions that had no clear right answer, math questions that required knowing 'the trick" rather than relying on the deep comprehension skills the "Shifts in Instructional Focus" for the new Common Core Standards demand, and please let's not forget about the planning page that was missing entirely.  If these tests were reviewed by competent teachers, then there was a flaw in the process that needs serious consideration.

Ms. Elia also heard concerns about the stress the tests caused.

"We reduced the number of test questions and alleviated time pressure for test takers. Students who are productively working will be able to demonstrate what they know and are able to do, even if it takes more time. We're interested in what students know, not how fast they can go."

But Ms. Elia did not consult teachers when she created this response. Many elementary classroom teachers could foresee problems Ms. Elia had apparently not considered - mainly that some children, as young as 9 years old, might end up "choosing" to sit with tests for 3, 4, 5 hours a day and more.   (And for myriad reasons - to meet expectations, to do their best, to please adults, in response to some diagnosed or undiagnosed anxiety issue, etc.) 

At a meet and greet session with Ms. Elia that I attended, she refused to give specific details of how "un-timing" tests would work.  She seemed to think things would just magically work out. No timing. No pressure. No problem.

Lack of foresight?  Lack of collaborative decision making?  Lack of authentic interest in real change?

Can un-timing the tests possibly be considered age-appropriate or best practice?  Is any test that requires a child to make such a choice (how long to sit for a test) designed in a developmentally appropriate manner?  There are so many questions this particular "change" has triggered, I encourage you to read my past (and future) posts on this issue.

I've applied to be part of the committee Ms. Elia is convening to review all the Math Standards.  It's a long shot, of course.  And while I blog under a pseudonym (spoiler alert) I am who I am, whatever my name. 


I do a lot of reading.  I came across this quote from Ms. Elia in response to some less-than-favorable reviews of her performance as Hillsborough County  Fla. Superintendent prior to moving back to New York.  
“The concept of continuous improvement is critical,” Elia said. “That’s my agenda — to work in a constructive way and continually get better.” 

Let's all hold her to that lofty goal.

DEAR CHANCELLOR ROSA,

Things have reached a new level of insanity here in New York.  I feel powerless to protect my students.  So I wrote another letter...

Dear Chancellor Rosa,

I have high hopes that you will bring sanity to the scary situation classroom teachers are finding themselves in during this current testing season.  After all the promises Commissioner Elia made, (I spoke to her in person when she visited White Plains High School a few weeks ago,) she has failed to demonstrate an honest and believable response to the serious concerns she claims she heard while on her "listening tour." 

This has to be the worst testing season to date. Students in New York State have been "choosing" to sit with a test for 3, 4, 5 hours and more. No normal, healthy child would make this decision.  

We are preying on the weaknesses of children with anxiety issues, OCD, a heightened need to please teachers and parents, or a host of other possible reasons to "choose" to take a test for so long.  

When I asked at school if we had an obligation to tell parents how long their children had been testing for, I was looked at like I was crazy.  

I continue to be stunned by our complicity as a profession.  How did we allow ourselves to be co-opted into becoming foot soldiers in a war on children?  

This whole situation has created chaos, confusion, and a lot of crazy thinking.  We are further today from returning sanity to public education than we were last year with John King.

I am tired of being forced into being complicit in the State Ed Department's illogical decisions and directives.

Have policy makers heard of the Milgram or Stanford Prison Experiments? They were both wildly successful studies of exactly what human adults are capable of doing in the name of blind obedience.

There is much that is wrong this year. This is not a reboot.  This is a nightmare.

Un-timed tests are abusive to children.  Improperly printed test booklets invalidate the scores.

Please, we need your help to stop this madness.

Sincerely,

a veteran elementary teacher

MORE ON TESTING 2016

I continue to be stunned by our complicity as a profession.  How did we allow ourselves to be co-opted into becoming foot soldiers in a war on children?  Students here in New York have been "choosing" to sit with a test for 3, 4, 5 hours and more. No normal, healthy child would make this decision.  We are preying on the weaknesses of children with anxiety issues, OCD, a heightened need to please teachers and parents, or a host of other possible reasons to "choose" to take a test for so long.  When I asked at school if we had an obligation to tell parents how long their children had been testing for, I was looked at like I was crazy.  My own colleagues don't think there's a problem with the insanity un-timed tests are causing.

And I don’t see anyone reporting this in the news. (I’ve tried contacting many media outlets. I’m inexperienced at how to do this effectively, and so haven’t had one positive response yet.) 

I don’t even see much chatter on the internet or on blogs. (Although maybe they’re in places I’m not visiting…)

This whole situation has created chaos, confusion, and a lot of crazy thinking.

I am tired of being forced into being complicit in the State’s illogical decisions and directives.
Has anyone heard of the Milgram or Stanford Prison Experiments? They were both wildly successful studies of exactly what human adults are capable of doing in the name of blind obedience.

I, for one, refuse to be blindly obedient.

I feel a lonely voice of one from where I teach, but my tiny inaudible voice will not be silenced.

MORE "TESTING 2016" DEBRIEFING...

As time wears on, and I have more time to think about testing this past week in New York State, I get more and more sad, confused, and outraged.

The Commissioner and the Governor both said "they heard the parents." 

But I'm not sure what they heard the parents say.

The parents (and, in case it matters to anyone, the teachers,) said the tests were too long.

The response? Keep them three days long, remove a handful of questions, and un-time them?

The result? Most of two weeks in a "prime teaching/learning time" of year taken up by testing and disrupted schedules.

The result?  Mostly the same length tests (as evidenced by the State's own "estimated time" for tests.)

The result? Some students sat for 2, 3, 4, hours and sometimes more. 
Children as young as 9 years old, "voluntarily" choosing to sit with a test, in order to do as they were told!

And the missing page? Don't get me started on that one again!  (See previous posts for why it matters and why the test scores have been invalidated.)

This is nothing short of State-sanctioned child abuse, and teachers have been co-opted into being complicit.

This is a moment in time when we all need to speak out.
This is that moment in time when we need to stop following orders and question the sanity and logic of what we're being told to do.

And if you haven't read the book already, I once again highly recommend Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told To Do Is Wrong.

This groundbreaking book will give you all the reasons you need to just-say-no.

(And let me know when you finish reading the book. We can set up a chat here on the blog to share stories, ideas, and encouragement.)

TAKE MY "STATE TEST TAKING" SURVEY

I'm just a little curious.
I would greatly appreciate participation in my first ever on-line survey.
The results are for my information only.  Results could become fodder for a future blog post.
I will publish results on this blog in the near future.

If you think of any questions I should add to the survey, please let me know.

Thanks, in advance, for your participation!

Click here for the survey: State Test Taking Survey

STATE TESTING 2016 - DAY 3

In case you haven't heard, the test booklets for grades 3-5 in New York State were missing planning pages for essay writing this week.  Some may say this is minor, and ask "what's the big deal?"
But if you're someone who uses pre-planning as a strategy for writing coherent, organized essays, then this omission is significant enough it could impact your writing and therefore ultimately, your score.

The State's response was predictably quiet. Late yesterday, they issued a letter of response.
A tad late, I'd say.

What checks and balances does Questar have in place to ensure that tests are published accurately and in their entirety?  Who is responsible for quality control?  Who is going to check on the validity of test scores in light of the page omission?  And who is going to speak out about trust and reliability, in general, when it comes to State testing?

Do you trust the State to do the right thing, as they keep insisting we should?  Do you feel confident in the State's ability/intent to make things right?  To authentically reboot the process of reform?  To genuinely respond to stakeholder concerns by making substantive changes to past bad policy?

I can't say I'm feeling much trust these days.
How 'bout you?

And if you're so inclined, I strongly encourage you to contact your local papers and ask them to cover this story (the one about the missing pages in the NYState ELA 3-5 tests, and the State's rather weak response.)
Better yet, if you live in NY State, call your State representatives.

UNANSWERED LETTER TO NYSED #921

Here's another unanswered letter.  (And more interesting in light of the discovery today by my students that the new and improved Questar published tests were missing the Planning Page for the essay.  May seem trivial to some, but as I mentioned previously, it's relied on by many students for utilizing their pre-writing strategies to ensure a clear and coherent essay...No way for teachers to have known if we aren't supposed to read the tests....)

Dear ____________,

I'm not sure my question was understood exactly.

I was asking about any teacher's ability to read the test to themselves, while students are taking the test.  Before Pearson put a gag order on teachers which prevented us from looking at tests to preserve their profit interests, teachers always read the tests to themselves as part of a responsible teacher's duty when administering a test to young children.  Then Pearson declared this "illegal" and threatened legal action against teachers who read the tests as part of their professional duty.

Now that we're in a new era of education reform in the state, and we're trying to encourage parents to trust the tests and the decisions the State is making on behalf of their children, are teachers still prevented from reading the test booklets to themselves?

The teacher administration manual is contradictory on this issue.  On Page 6 the language implies teachers can read the test.  On page 8 it says we can't.

I've called the SED twice and both times employees in the Office of Assessment have affirmed a teacher's ability to read the test booklet to themselves.  

But there are still conflicting directives being given by administrators.

If we're still prevented from reading the tests, I think the public should know that not too much has changed.  (How can teachers support the contention that there have been changes to the tests themselves, if we can't read them?)

If we can read the tests, to ourselves, for professional use only, then the directions need to be made abundantly clear on that issue.

Thank you for helping to clarify this for me and the rest of the 3-8 teachers in the State of New York.

STATE TESTING 2016 - DAY 2

You know those tests we're all supposed to be supporting and pressuring parents to trust?
"Things have changed. Opt back in. Parents aren't seeing change because they don't want to, blah blah blah???"

Today, Day 2 of ELA tests written by Pearson but published by Questar, my students discovered there was no planning page for the essay. (This is the designated for utilizing the pre-writing planning skills I spend so much time teaching...)

The written and oral directions clearly tell students to use the Planning Page,  and practice materials by Pearson have always contained a Planning Page.

But today? No Planning Page.

And while that may seem like a relatively minor error, in this current climate of "trust us, things have changed" to have such an obvious omission is unacceptable.  

It is hard to have confidence in the existence of a myriad of smaller, nuanced details we can't detect so easily, if something so blatant has been overlooked.

Just thought I'd share...
(Not sure what this will do to the validity of the essay scores. Some of my students really depend on the planning strategies I've taught them in order to write organized essays the respond in detail to a given prompt.)

STATE TESTING 2016 - DAY 1

Day One of ELA State testing here in New York is over.
37% of my fifth grade students didn't take the test.
30% of my district overall didn't take the test.
I'm curious to see what the numbers are across the State.

Part of me feels victorious.  There are still people taking a stand and using their democratic right to protest in the face of injustice and government overreach.

Make no mistake about it, though.
There have been NO substantive changes this year.  Despite what you may have heard in the news or from Education Authorities, things are much the same as they were last year.

I don't feel any greater trust of the State Education Department than I did last year.
There will still be six long days of testing.
I will never have the opportunity to see my students writing, nor receive their scores for writing to see if my teaching has been effective.
The math tests will still come too soon for me to have finished teaching the topics I know will be on the test.
I again haven't had the time to teach "deep comprehension" of math topics as required by the Common Core "Shifts in Focus."

And I still have to feel like a criminal as I read the test my students are taking to see if the test has, in fact, been made "more fair."  My district administrators are not in agreement with the State Ed Dept about whether or not teachers can, in fact, read the tests. Under Pearson's contract, teachers were prohibited from reading or discussing the tests - based solely on proprietary concerns. (Read: protecting their profits.)   Even though Pearson's contract has been terminated, we're still working under the same gag order it seems. The Test Administrator's Manual has conflicting messages about a teacher's ability to read the tests.  No official seems willing to make a public statement of clarification.

But part of me is also sad and exhausted.
No one wins in the day to day struggle to maintain sanity as a public school teacher.
The confusion of having my class so divided is overwhelming.
The cognitive dissonance is exhausting.

Elementary students should not be put in such a compromised situation of taking or not taking a test their teacher is giving to some of the class.  It is a confusing message to be sure.

I don't blame the parents, as my administrators do.  I don't hold my parents in contempt as my principal does.

I lay the blame squarely on the backs and at the feet of those completely responsible for the mess we're in.

I call out the bullies who have complete control over the debacle they've created.

It is the Governor, the Commissioner, the State Education Department, and the Board of Regents who have the power to turn this around immediately, TODAY.

There is no need for measured decision making in the face of the disaster they've created.

If you want everyone to opt back in, if you want classrooms to be made whole again, if you want parents and teachers and students to have trust in our State Education Leaders,
then bring on change today.
Real Change.
Today.

PLACE THE BLAME WHERE IT BELONGS

Testing season is just about upon us here in New York State. And it's all become more than a little confusing for everyone involved.  It's easy to want to find someone to blame, particularly if you're a school administrator and your district has failed to make AYP for the first time, due purely to large test refusal numbers.  It's easy to turn to parents and blame them for permissive parenting when they enable their kids to opt out of something "just because it's hard"  It's a bit simplistic to turn to the parents as the bad guys because they just don't seem to understand that change is here and their concerns have been heard.  

But change isn't here.  Not yet.  Because saying we need to change and saying what needs to be changed, are a far cry from real and substantive change.

So if you feel the need to place blame for all this confusion - either because you're an administrator who can't see past a bogus designation (failure to make AYP due to testing refusals,) or you're a parent who wants your child to take the tests but it's become more challenging when their friends aren't taking the tests, or you're a teacher who feels challenged to support all your student's decisions when some will take the tests and others won't - then PLEASE be sure you lay blame where it belongs.

There is no blame in this debacle to lay at the feet of parents nor teachers.  

The problems we're facing with testing and test refusals belong squarely on the backs of education policy makers and politicians who absolutely refuse(d) to listen to educators when we/they spoke out about the harmful impacts of their attempts to "reform" education and teaching. They alone have the complete power to return us all to some normalcy and sanity.  They alone can stop the spread of an unintended message that students may now think they can refuse to do something that is hard or confusing.  

It just isn't enough for Albany policy makers to say they hear what the problems are, and can articulate the problems. Until real and substantive change is actually implemented in response to the recognized problems, then Albany policy makers cannot honestly expect people to accept that their concerns have been heard. So it is they alone - the Albany policy makers - that are responsible for the large numbers of students who don't take state tests, and for all the regrettable side effects of that action.

And let us all be clear - legislators are not now deciding to consider a change of course because they woke up one morning and decided to rethink their plan or question their own motives, "just because."  They're only speaking about any kind of change because parents joined together in a unified voice, embracing their democratic rights and responsibilities, and said "You must listen to us.  Things have gone terribly wrong.  We must change the direction of education policy decisions so that all children can have access to their American right to a free and appropriate education."

Hooray for the parents! 

We teach our students about events in American history when people have joined together to speak with one voice about injustice and the need for change.  (Ending slavery, fighting for workers rights and civil rights, etc.)  It is always a difficult process.  There are always unintended consequences. But the ultimate goal of righting a wrong has often prevailed above the voices of those who say it's best not to rock the boat, best to stay the course, best to trust the leaders to make the right decisions. It's not easy.  It gets messy.  But the alternative is not a choice. 

Injustice must be confronted.

For those that believe we have to force parents into having their kids sit for the tests in order not to create a message that it's okay to refuse life's hard choices, I also think we have the power to easily rewrite the message. We don't have to abide by the narrative that it's parents who are causing the problem.  We don't have to perpetuate the story that we're teaching children the wrong message about obeying authority, following directions, or even about the value of testing.  We can just as easily, if we choose to, describe what is happening as what happens in a democracy when people feel their government has overstepped its authority.  This is a real-life application of lessons learned in Social Studies classes across the state and across the country. 

We could teach our students that this is the lesson learned - "In a democratic society, people have to speak up to injustice - and actually have an obligation to speak up." Just as we teach our students what to do in bullying situations. Bystanders have a role and an obligation to help the bullied.  Victims need strategies and advocates, etc. This current response to testing is really that comparable.

I feel deeply and passionately that we have to be careful not to blame the victims.  Blame needs to be laid squarely on the shoulders of the bullies - the policy makers who have the power to enact real change, right now. Today.

THE DYSTOPIAN WORLD OF EDUCATION REFORM

I like to write and I often view the books I read through the eyes of a writer, wondering if there's some book inside of me struggling to come out.  (So far, nothing. But I do think about it.)  

Lately I've mused about the idea of someone (not me) who may be looking for a storyline for a new novel of the dystopian genre.  Maybe they could write their plot with "education reform" as their setting and backstory.  I think people could possibly respond in a similar way as they have to Hunger Games and Divergent - they'd be inexplicably attracted to the non-stop action, struggle of right vs might, underdogs prevailing agains all odds, despite the horror of children caught in the crosshairs.

In the process, this potential literary tour-de-force could possibly help people who aren't informed about the true details of what's going on find a little understanding and insight into the current battle for the very existence of public education in this country.

Hopefully in this hypothetical book, logic and righteousness and goodness could actually prevail and public education could become what it's best intended for - educating citizenry to be informed, participating members of a working democracy.  

This mess we're in so often feels other worldly and dystopian.  Things have occurred in the name of "reform" that feel just as surreal and unbelievable as any of the twisted and sordid details of those best-selling books my students seem so attracted to.

An interesting idea for some crafty author to try...
Any takers?