In Case You Missed It – Apr 8, 2019

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention in NEIFPE's social media. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

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THINK ABOUT THIS

Have We Stolen A Generation's Independent Thought?

We're teaching students not to think...and standardized tests are part of the problem.

From Peter Greene in Forbes

"Kids these days," the complaint begins. "They cannot think for themselves." The complaint has come across my desk three times this week, voiced by someone in the higher education world complaining about the quality of student arriving in their ivy-covered halls.

It's worth noting that the observation itself has no particular objective, evidence-based support. There's no college student independent thought index we can consult to check for a dip. Just the subjective judgment of some people who work at the college level. So the whole business could simply be the time-honored dismay of an older generation contemplating the younger one.

ALEC STRIKES AGAIN

Bombshell Report About Copycat Legislation Written by ALEC but Adopted by Your State

From Diane Ravitch

ALEC and corporate America are churning out legislation that is introduced in your state under false pretenses as “reform.” Every one of these bills is meant to protect corporations and profiteers, whether in health care or any other industry.

You may have noticed a sudden mushrooming of voucher legislation in state after state. It was not written by your legislators. It was written by the rightwing corporate funded American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC.

Not only is ALEC funded by corporations, it is funded by the DeVos family and the Koch brothers.

Need to learn more about ALEC? 

Bill Moyers: The United States of ALEC

United States of ALEC September 28, 2012 Full Show from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

• ALEC Exposed

• ALEC & Education

INDIANA FOSTER CHILDREN

Indiana foster children are less likely to graduate, more likely to be suspended, a new report shows

It would be nice if on seeing a report like this if our Hoosier legislators would make it a mission to support public schools so that they’d have the resources to support these children. Instead, the General Assembly would rather give to charters and vouchers who don’t have to accept or keep children who need intense support.

From Chalkbeat

Indiana now has its first look at how well the state is educating the 9,000 school-age children in foster care, and the findings are discouraging. Foster children are more likely than their peers to attend underperforming schools, and only 64 percent graduate from high school.

INDIANA TEACHER LICENSING

Indiana could scrap test seen as a barrier to training more teachers of color

Of course we need more teachers of color in Indiana! And we also need a way to vet qualified candidates for teachers. This test just is not it.

From Chalkbeat

A panel of Indiana House lawmakers took steps to get rid of a teacher preparation test that some educators say keeps teachers of color out of the classroom.

The House Education Committee unanimously voted on Wednesday to remove the state requirement that students pass the basic reading, writing, and math skills test known as “CASA” as freshmen or sophomores before they enter college teacher preparation programs. The provision was added to a bill that would change some rules about alternative teacher licenses, which passed the committee unanimously as well.

INDIANA SCHOOL FUNDING FALLS SHORT

Ongoing neglect hits rural schools hardest

From Southwest Allen County Schools Superintendent, Phil Downs, in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

If Indiana is to pursue the noble goal of funding all its children's educations, it should do that. Since the voucher program began in 2011, no additional money has been added to the budget to fund the vouchers, and the program has created a de facto final step in the school funding process which is hurting most communities in Indiana.

Funding falls short on effort, fairness

From School Matters

Indiana’s highest-poverty school districts spend only 65 percent of what’s needed for their students to achieve modest academic success, according to a new education finance report from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and the Albert Shanker Institute.

Is it because we can’t afford to do better? Not at all. Indiana is near the bottom of the states when it comes to funding “effort,” the percentage of gross state product spent on schools.

It’s more compelling evidence that state legislators should be thinking a lot bigger as they decide how much of the two-year state budget to spend on K-12 education.

State blamed as teacher pay stalls

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Most seem to agree that Indiana teachers don't get paid enough.

But the disconnect comes in where the blame lies. Is the legislature not providing enough money? Or are school districts spending too much on administration and too little on teacher salaries?

CHARTER MIDDLE SCHOOLS NO HELP

Federal study finds charter middle schools didn’t help students earn college degrees

So why are we allowing our legislators to misuse our tax dollars to support charters?

From Chalkbeat

Attending a sought-after charter middle school didn’t increase a student’s chance of attending or graduating college, a new U.S. Department of Education study showed.

The report, released Monday, also found little connection between charter school quality, as measured by test scores, and college outcomes.

“The overall conclusion that there is little difference between charter schools and non-charter schools is not shocking to me,” said Sarah Cohodes, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She pointed to prior research showing charters perform comparably to district schools nearby.

A VIRTUAL MESS -- PAID FOR WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS

Indiana: Virtual School Scams Taxpayers and Students

From Diane Ravitch

In every state that has authorized virtual charter schools, these schools are marked by two characteristics:

1. They are very profitable.

2. The “education” they provide is abysmal.

Typically, they have high attrition, low graduation rates, and low scores on state tests. The state fails to monitor them for quality. Students and taxpayers are fleeced.

Some parents say getting help was like ‘pulling teeth’ as troubled Indiana virtual schools grew

From Chalkbeat

Morrice’s portrayal, which he documented in a complaint to the state education department two years ago, lines up with some accusations leveled against the 8-year-old online school and its sister school by its authorizer last month: that thousands of students for whom the schools received millions of dollars in state funding didn’t complete or sign up for classes. The schools say the allegations, which could lead to the revocation of their charters and eventually their closure, are false and based on incomplete information.

Some virtual school students and parents who spoke with Chalkbeat also echoed Morrice’s description of how the school often didn’t give students enough attention, including not returning phone calls and emails. The parents and students said they struggled to get teachers and school staff to communicate, transfer records, provide educational advice, or ensure credits were processed.

INDIANA VOTERS LOSE A VOICE

Hoosiers lose direct say over state school chief

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

House Bill 1005 was signed by the Indiana Senate president pro tem on April Fool's Day and quickly moved to Gov. Eric Holcomb's desk. With his signature Wednesday, the governor claimed appointment authority for the state superintendent of public instruction.

Holcomb scores a victory for his Next Level Agenda, which called for removing the post from statewide ballots. State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick cleared the way to move up the 2025 appointment date when she announced last October that she would not seek reelection. But she also suggested there were behind-the-scenes efforts to do so regardless of her plans.

Who pushed appointed-superintendent law?

From School Matters

McCormick, a Republican, was elected in 2016 after a campaign in which she received a lot of support from advocates for charter schools and vouchers, including the Chamber of Commerce and, especially, the advocacy group Hoosiers for Quality Education. But the former Yorktown, Indiana, school superintendent turned out to be a forceful and effective advocate for public schools.

You can imagine that some of her backers were disappointed and wanted her out, sooner rather than later.

DEVOS CONTINUES TO DO DAMAGE TO PUBLIC EDUCATION

The Special Olympics funding outcry is over, but it’s been crickets over some of DeVos’s other proposed education budget cuts. Think civics, history, arts...

From the Answer Sheet

The Trump administration has proposed eliminating a $4.8 million program to enhance American civics and history education. It has also called for making these cuts that would eliminate programs:

• $1.2 billion for programs that help boost student academic achievement before and after school and during the summer.

• $190 million to boost literacy instruction from birth to age 20...

• $27 million for arts education programs for children from low-income families and students with disabilities.

• $10 million to boost community schools...

• More than $207 billion over 10 years from student loan programs...

DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

From Curmudgucation

...The shock and scandal and outrage is not that DeVos would offer up this class size bullshit on the Hill, but that she stands on top of a whole pile of educational amateurs who have been pushing this bullshit for at least a decade, despite the mountain of evidence and the actual teachers who speak against it.

Why I was Shaking My Head at Betsy DeVos

From Living in Dialogue

I can only shake my head in disbelief.

The problem for DeVos is that there is ample research that shows just the opposite – that class size matters very much. My friend Leonie Haimson has worked for years with a group called Class Size Matters, and they provide here a set of studies supporting this..

Another friend, Nancy Flanagan, attributes the source of the idea that larger classes are just fine to every billionaire’s favorite education researcher, Eric Hanushek. Way back in 1998, Hanushek suggested there was no real value in reducing class sizes– using test scores, of course. In 2011, Bill Gates urged policymakers to stop worrying about class size.

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Vouchers Fund Church Improvements

Reposted from Living In Dialogue blog by Anthony Cody.

Indiana Vouchers Will Help Fix Church Steeples

Guest post by Phyllis Bush.

Vouchers approved in the state of Indiana are prompting creative bookkeeping on the part of Catholic school leaders, with a significant boon to the churches that run them. A recent talk by Father Jake of St. Jude parish in Fort Wayne, Indiana, indicates that, thanks to the impending influx of tax dollars, the church will soon be getting a repaired air conditioning system, redecorating the church, new paint, and repairs to the church steeple.

Ever since the corporate education reform movement has taken hold in Indiana, I have felt as though I have been moving from one island of rage to the next. However, yesterday when I watched the video presented by St. Jude's (Fort Wayne) about their "tuition reconfiguration" due to additional voucher moneys, it was apparent that all of the unintended consequences of vouchers that I have been concerned about had finally come to fruition. [Note: The video was originally posted here, but has since been removed. It is still available here.)

Because I have had serious issues with the expansion of vouchers/choice/opportunity (choose your own euphemism) scholarships, I was curious to listen to St. Jude's plan for spending their "choice scholarship" dollars. Twice I listened and took notes from the video and the accompanying letter to make sure that I was being fair. (Note: The numbers in parentheses indicate where these quotes are found on the video.)

In his letter to the parish, Father Jake beseeches his audience to apply for (voucher) assistance. He writes that "this program requires everyone to ask for assistance....I ask everyone to view this, not so much as outside assistance, but, rather, your willingness to allow the parish to share the responsibility for the education of your children. Your willingness to share this responsibility with the parish allows us to fulfill the mission God has given us." On first blush, this letter seems rather benign; however, in effect, it is not so subtly asking parishioners to "game the system."

Even though Father Jake, the narrator on the video, seems very affable and pleasant, his presentation is neither circumspect nor mature. In fact, the presentation borders on cavalier when the audience is told that the choice scholarship comes with "no strings attached" (minute 39:37). As I listened to the presentation, I was appalled when he said that most of the students who are accepting vouchers are already attending St. Jude's (minute 40:57). Wasn't one of the selling points of "opportunity scholarships" to reach out to economically disadvantaged students so that they could attend the private school of their choice? Weren't students to qualify for vouchers based on the Federal Free and Reduced Lunch Guidelines?

Father Jake says with a chuckle that scholarships must be based on need, but the parish is free to determine what this means (minute 39.47). He says that since the Indiana Supreme Court says that vouchers are constitutionally allowable because the money goes to the tax payer, so the Indiana Choice Scholarship comes essentially with no strings (minute 42:00). Father Jake goes on to say that he doesn't see the program going away because the state of Indiana is saving millions of dollars a year by taking $4700 off the top of the funding formula to give to voucher kids rather than spending the $7000 per public school child in the state formulation. So, the state saves over $2000 per student, but at what cost to our community schools?

Much of the first part of the video is to explain how the system works and how to apply. However, the "voucher plot begins to thicken" when the narrator talks about how the scholarships will help alleviate the budget problems of the whole parish budget so that there will be money to spend on redecorating the church and fixing the steeple and working on other projects, including installing a new sound system and lighting for the church. Because the church will now have the funds to pay for things that they haven't been able to keep up with...like deferred maintenance issues, the whole parish will see an improvement. As the narrator refers to his "dream list of improvements" that the church needs or really wants but hasn't been able to do, he notes that (voucher) system is really going to be able to help fulfill this wish list (minute 49:50).

While the use of this "voucher" windfall will help the school to accomplish its goals, not once did I hear any mention about students or students' needs. Not once did I hear any mention of offering any services for special needs kids. Not once did I hear any talk about professional development for teachers. Not once was there a mention remediation or enrichment programs. Nor did I hear anything about providing meals for the neediest children. The only mention that I heard of student needs was when he once complained that St. Jude's is being hurt by the state A-F grading system in the same way that public schools are; his complaint was that their school had a hard time showing a letter grade improvement because their scores were already so high.

All of this is bothersome to me because I keep hearing how vouchers are giving kids living in poverty a better chance and giving their parents a choice. After listening to this presentation, it seems to me that the children who are attending this school would have gone there regardless of vouchers. There is evidence also that this has been the case with other schools which accept vouchers.

Doesn't this fly in the face of the argument that the voucher proponents have been using?

While I am sure that some legislators would say that this is only one school, I would argue that this school is not the only religious/private school that will be using vouchers to expand and to build more schools.

To this, I would ask the following questions:

• Why in the world are we as taxpayers helping to fund and maintain private and parochial schools while public school districts are having difficulty maintaining their buildings, paying their staffs, running their buses?
• Why do public schools have to float bond issues in order to have the funds to maintain the buildings owned by THE PUBLIC?
• Why in the world are my tax dollars going to repair St. Jude's steeple when the vestry of my own church has turned to its own parishioners for a fund drive to repair its crumbling infrastructure?
• Why in the world is Indiana funding religious education with no strings attached?

While these vouchers may or may not be saving money for the State of Indiana, what damage is being done to our local public school districts who are forced through funding cuts to enlarge class sizes, to cut services, and to operate on the fiscal margins all the while being held to a different set of standards and accountability than the voucher schools?

To say that I am outraged is an understatement!

Are the legislators who are promoting vouchers as the magic bullet aware of how our tax dollars are being used?

What will it take to get our policy and law makers, both state and federal, to realize the damage that they are doing to our local communities by the voucher reform monster they have created?

Phyllis Bush is a retired teacher who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is a founder of the grassroots group Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education.

[emphasis in original]

Not Ready to Exonerate Tony Bennett in School Grading Scandal

The following op-ed, written by Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education (NEIFPE) and the Monroe County Coalition for Public Education (including Monroe County coalition member and public school parent, Jenny Robinson) appeared on Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue blog titled Indiana Grassroots Groups Not Ready to Exonerate Tony Bennett in School Grading Scandal. It was also posted on the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette's Learning Curve blog, written by Karen Francisco, under the title Reputation rewrite, ed-reform style.

In his article in the September 9, 2013 Education Week, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, claims that the recent report on the Tony Bennett grading scandal, commissioned by leaders of the Indiana state legislature, has exonerated Bennett and his staff. Many of us here in Indiana would respectfully disagree.

Most of the state news reports indicated that Bennett’s claims were plausible, which was a curious word choice. There are many ways to interpret the word plausible, which seems to imply there is an appearance of truth, which may or may not be accurate.

Having said that, Steve Hinnefeld states that while acknowledging plausibility, Bennett has NOT been exonerated.

“Grew and Sheldrake said Friday that the report does not ‘exonerate’ or ‘vindicate’ Bennett, nor condemn him. They said it only explains how his team changed the grading formula...”

The only people who would consider the report "exoneration" are those who agreed with Bennett in the first place. To the best of our knowledge, Bennett was never in favor of "grading on the curve" before Christel House didn't get its "A." Perhaps the question that should be asked is this: Would Tony Bennett have made any changes if the supposed error was discovered in any of the large urban public schools like Indianapolis or Ft. Wayne? The answer is absolutely not.

While no one really seems to understand the A-F system, under the revised standards, school wide performance and improvement are predominantly based on standardized tests. At the elementary and middle school level a preliminary score is based on the percentage of students passing several state tests. The high school accountability formula gives significant weight to graduation percentages, incorporates college and career readiness (which is determined by the number of students who pass AP and IB tests or by earning at least 3 college credits, or by receiving industry certification. School districts had complained about the A-F system when Bennett first pushed it through.

While all of this may sound plausible in theory, in practice it does not take into account the variables of school demographics or of poverty levels or of any of the intangibles which work together to create a school environment. Recognizing this, in April lawmakers mandated that Bennett’s system needed to be overhauled and a new grading system be created in its place. These actions came before the grading scandal erupted in July. Currently, the Accountability System Review Panel, a review committee composed of teachers, principals and superintendents, will review the system and create a new one.

Whether what Bennett did was plausible or not is really irrelevant to those of us who are still dealing with the damage that Tony Bennett did to public schools and public school teachers in this state. Bennett’s IDOE issued punitive policies and grades with warp speed and with little transparency. The abrasive attitudes displayed by Dr. Bennett and his IDOE team were both mind boggling and sickening. Mr. Hess indicates in his article that Indiana voters sent Bennett packing because of his style. However, we would argue that Bennett's style was only a part of why we voted him out; his damaging policies were the major reason. His leadership style left little room for discussion or for debate or for field testing. His push to privatize, voucherize, and charterize Indiana public schools has left them reeling financially and has left educators dispirited as they have tried to jump through policy hoops which they knew in their hearts were educationally unsound.

Unfortunately, one of the worst of these initiatives was the A-F grading system, and this and the rest of his agenda is still being carried out by the Indiana reformers that he has left behind. When we look at that grading system, we need to ask what is the purpose of giving schools a letter grade? Is it meant to help improve how a school functions, how children learn, and how teachers teach, or it is meant to label and devalue a school community? If grades are used to label rather than to improve learning outcomes, then perhaps that system itself deserve an F.

Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education and Monroe County Coalition for Public Education

You can access NEIFPE's blog here, and Monroe County Coalition Public Education's blog here.
http://icpe-mcsci.blogspot.com

An additional comment from a parent, Jennifer Robinson, who is a member of Monroe County Coalition Public Education:

I'm a parent of young children, not an educator, and I'm just going to talk about elementary through 8th grade here. Bennett wanted a system where absolute scores on ISTEP, combined with some degree of scoring for growth, was equated with the quality of our schools. It all came down to standardized test performance. In other words, school culture did not matter. Whether children got science and social studies, in the grades which have no ISTEP test for that subject, didn't matter. Whether they had access to school libraries staffed by certified media specialists did not matter. Art, music, P.E., didn't matter, and increasingly in southern Indiana schools lack certified teachers in those areas. Clubs, field trips, community connections didn't matter. Recess didn't matter. Class sizes didn't matter. Whether the teachers had extra knowledge of the subjects they were teaching didn't matter. (It is my understanding that funding for professional development was eliminated in the Bennett years.) Whether kids enjoyed learning and wanted to go to school didn't matter. Whether your child's teachers talked with you didn't matter (our district no longer pays teachers to hold conferences with parents). And if you had a problem with Bennett's system, or felt it was unfair to your school, he didn't want to hear about it. He rejected two pleas from Indianapolis Public Schools that the grading would be unfair to them for the same reasons that Christel House didn't do well. When such pleas came from public school administrators, in his eyes, those were mere excuses.

In my own district, the two schools that had the highest proportion of free-and-reduced-cost lunch both received "F's." In one of these schools, with the economic downturn, there were twenty-eight homeless children. There were kids coming to school who needed to sleep for two hours, and eat, before they could even begin to learn. And Bennett's grades penalized these schools for working with vulnerable children, and they made those children a liability to the school.

But it turned out that his own rules, which he wouldn't have even considered modifying for other schools, could be rearranged at the last minute in the special case of a donor's charter school, a school that he had held up as an example. This was proof for teachers in public schools across Indiana that the deck was indeed stacked against them. Bennett just knew (and it was to his political advantage to believe) that Christel House was a good school, and the whole grading system had to be altered to fit reality as he knew it. It was a grading system that worked on a curve, with a guaranteed percentage of losers. It was to be linked to teacher's evaluations and pay. It had punitive consequences for individual children (who would want to be the valedictorian of an "F" school?) and for neighborhoods branded with failure. And it had been developed with so little care that it could be thrown into disarray and totally rearranged for one school's grade.

If you want to know why Bennett and co. changed the grade, read the e-mails. Thanks to AP reporter Tom Lobianco, they are online for all of us to see.

Tony Bennett emails batch 1

Tony Bennett emails batch 2

Tony Bennett emails batch 3

Tony Bennett emails batch 4

Tony Bennett emails batch 5

Jennifer Robinson, Monroe County Coalition Public Education.

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Announcing: New Group to Oppose Corporate Reforms

For Immediate Release
March 7, 2013

Contacts:
Anthony Cody, 707-459-2147, 510-917-9231 (cell) Anthony_cody@hotmail.com
Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329, leonie@classsizematters.org

Today marks the public launch of a new network devoted to the defense and improvement of public education in the US. Led by renowned education historian, Diane Ravitch, the Network for Public Education will bring together grassroots activists and organizations from around the country, and endorse candidates for office, with the common goal of protecting and strengthening our public schools.

Diane Ravitch said, “The Network for Public Education will give voice to the millions of parents, educators, and other citizens who are fed up with corporate-style reform. We believe in community-based reform, strengthening our schools instead of closing them, respecting our teachers and principals instead of berating them, educating our children instead of constantly testing them. Our public schools are an essential democratic institution. We look forward to working with friends and allies in every state and school district who want to preserve and improve public education for future generations.”

Our nation’s schools are at a crossroads. Wealthy individuals are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into state and local school board races, often into places where they do not reside, to elect candidates intent on undermining and privatizing our public schools. The Network for Public Education will collaborate with other groups and organizations to strengthen our public schools in states and districts throughout the nation, share information and research about what works and what doesn’t work, and endorse and grade candidates based on our shared commitment to the well-being of our children, our society, and our public schools. We will help candidates who work for evidence-based reforms and who oppose high-stakes testing, mass school closures, the privatization of our public schools and the outsourcing of core academic functions to for-profit corporations.

Renee Moore, former Mississippi Teacher of the Year, said, “One of the greatest gifts the U.S. has given to the world is the promise of quality public education. It is also an unfulfilled promise. Public education is a critical part of America’s legacy, and the key to our future. We must defend and constantly improve it.”

According to Anthony Cody, retired California teacher and columnist for Education Week: “As a teacher in Oakland I saw the effects of our obsession with tests first hand. Our students are learning less, and losing the chance to think for themselves as we put more and more pressure on them to perform well on tests. It is time for the millions of us who know better to challenge those who have put our schools on this path. This Network will allow us to learn from and support one another as we push for real school change.”

Leonie Haimson, NYC parent advocate and head of Class Size Matters, said: “With all the billionaire cash trying to buy elections, we need to amass people power to ensure that individuals who care about preserving and strengthening our public schools are elected to positions of power. As the recent Los Angeles school board election shows, when we are organized we can overcome the forces of the privateers and the profiteers, intent on pillaging and dismantling our public schools.”

According to Arizona parent activist and director of Voices for Education, Robin Hiller: “No school was ever improved by closing it. Every community should have good public schools, and we believe that public officials have a solemn responsibility to improve public schools, not close or privatize them.”

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas stated “This new network will seek to empower communities nationwide to unite to be more influential than the powerful. The network will also be an important vehicle for the latest data and research on the strengths and weaknesses of reform fads espoused by a multitude of talking heads.”

Phyllis Bush, a retired teacher from Indiana, said “Public schools are under assault in this country. Now more than ever it is imperative that concerned citizens unite to save the public school system. Our group, Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education, and other grassroots groups helped to elect Glenda Ritz to become our Superintendent of Public Instruction, a huge victory against rampant and destructive education policies. With the creation of the Network for Public Education, we will reach out to others across the nation to fulfill the promise of public education.”

Added board member and Alabama education activist Larry Lee, “From my view, a lot more “ed reform” is because of the love of money, not the love of children. The result is that kids have become a very poor rope in a political tug of war. The only way to turn this tide is with the collective voices of the American public saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”

The Network invites individuals to join as members and welcomes other organizations to become our allies, to fight with us to preserve and strengthen our public schools.

The group’s website is http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org
and the Twitter feed is at https://twitter.com/NetworkPublicEd

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NEIFPE Letters to the President, 2

Diane Ravitch coordinated a Campaign for our Public Schools in which teachers, students, parents and concerned citizens wrote letters to the President expressing dissatisfaction with the current government policies towards public education. On Saturday, October 20, 2012, Dr, Ravitch reported on the results. A PDF file of all the letters collected was created by Anthony Cody.

The entire file of letters from writers around the country is available HERE. Over the next few days we'll reprint a few of the letters submitted from our members.

It's not too late to tell the President or any elected officials what you think of government policies towards public education. You can find out how to contact your elected officials at http://capwiz.com/npta2/home/.

~~~

Dear President Obama,

It was great to see your debate with Romney last night. In it, you were spirited, in command of your facts, and you held your ground when Governor Romney attempted to misrepresent you. With that same spirit, I am writing this letter regarding education, hoping that you will listen, reconsider, and renounce both the policies that your presidency has endorsed through Arne Duncan and Arne Duncan, himself. Perhaps then I can bring myself to vote for you again in this election. I will admit that before last night's debate, I had not planned to participate in this letter writing campaign, thinking that any and all persuasive attempts would be futile wastes of energy. I had resigned myself to the feeling that you no longer cared.

But in light of last night's debate, I will now ask you to do the following: Please avail yourself of the great and mounting evidence that high stakes testing is detrimental to our nation's children and to the institution of public education. Please consider that the uber-competitive spirit of Race to the Top is, in effect, undermining, and in fact, almost destroying the chance for equitable funding and the desegregation of our public schools. Please consider that these policies are wiping out the staples of the arts and physical education in the public schools for the poorest of our nation's children. Please consider that these policies do nothing to support quality early childhood education. Please consider that merit pay for teachers, based on student evaluations, has already been tried and has failed miserably. Please consider that we cannot build a strong economy without a strong public educational system. Please consider that the things you want for your children in a private school are the things that our less fortunate students deserve in the public school. Please consider that the current policies have done nothing to assure equitable access to quality education. Please read the letters that parents and my fellow teachers are sending your way. Please read Diane Ravitch's blog. Please read the writings of Yong Zhao and Pedro Noguera, to name a few. Please look to the lessons of Finland when it comes to Public Education. Please become informed and don't accept Arne Duncan's failing and failed policies anymore.

I could fill this letter with anecdotes and with facts and sources to support my reasons asking you to reconsider, but my guess is that you already have all these things available to you at your fingertips. I could also list my 33 years of experience in Special Education and my "retirement" work with Adult Education, and my credentials as a parent and a grandparent, but I'm really just one of many educated and informed people who are begging you to reconsider the current educational policies of your administration. One thing further I would ask you to contemplate, and that is; Please consider that I am one of the many undecided voters in this election. It is true that I cannot stomach Romney, but I will throw my vote away rather than vote for a candidate who does not, in truth and in actions, support our nation's children and PUBLIC education for all. Please show the same determination and grit in response to this plea that you showed in last night's debate.

Sincerely,

Cynthia J. Pastore

~~~

NEIFPE Letters to the President

Diane Ravitch coordinated a Campaign for our Public Schools in which teachers, students, parents and concerned citizens wrote letters to the President expressing dissatisfaction with the current government policies towards public education. On Saturday, October 20, 2012, Dr, Ravitch reported on the results. A PDF file of all the letters collected was created by Anthony Cody. Dr. Ravitch wrote,

In a brief, two-week period, nearly 400 letters were submitted. There were many that were eloquent, many that were heartfelt, many written from personal experience.

No one was paid to solicit letter-writers or to write letters. No one who worked to bring the letters together was paid. This was an earnest and completely volunteer effort to carry the views of concerned citizens to the President.

Not a single letter of those submitted expressed support for high-stakes testing or for the policies of No Child Left Behind or the Race to the Top.

The entire file of letters from writers around the country is available HERE. Over the next few days we'll reprint a few of the letters submitted from our members.

It's not too late to tell the President or any elected officials what you think of government policies towards public education. You can find out how to contact your elected officials at http://capwiz.com/npta2/home/.

~~~

Dear President Obama,

After 32 years of teaching, I have been happily retired for a number of years. Even though I am no longer in the classroom, I have become so distressed with what Arne Duncan has done to public education that I have become a grassroots activist, working to slow down some of the reforms that I know are not educationally sound. After the damage done to education by No Child Left Behind, I was hopeful that your Department of Education would turn some of that damage around. Much to my dismay, the Race to the Top has managed to be even worse; it is a punitive NCLB on steroids.

Since all of the educational research says that high stakes testing is neither good for students nor for teachers, it defies reason as to why Arne Duncan and you are putting so much emphasis on test scores. I have heard you say that you do not believe that teachers should be teaching to the test, but that is completely antithetical to what Duncan's competitive rush towards high test scores has caused. If a teacher's performance, if a school's performance, and if a child's performance are based on test scores, how else do you think those scores are going to be raised?

In your speeches, you often claim that you support and honor teachers. Sadly, your rhetoric does not match the actions of the D.O.E. Why are teachers who are in the trenches not consulted? Why are real educational experts not consulted? Why is poverty never addressed? Why is the whole child never considered? Why do faux corporate experts such as Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg have more sway with your administration than teachers?

Are you aware of how much money is being poured into money making schemes on the backs of the children of our nation? Are you aware of how many teachers are fleeing from the profession they used to love? Are you aware of the unintended consequences of all of these reforms? Are you aware of the level of exhaustion, frustration, and sadness that most good teachers are experiencing as a result of these so-called reforms?

I urge you to speak to those who have been impacted by these ill considered reforms. If you cannot find a teacher who is willing to voice his or her honest concerns, I would be happy to share mine.

Sincerely,

Phyllis A. Bush

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