Facebook shared this picture from 7 years ago this morning. It inspired me to revisit that moment, and to tell the wold. I am still walking!
This above picture is my first walk to Washington DC from Connecticut as I crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge from Camden New Jeresey to Philadelphia. I had hoped for a change in the policies of No Child left Behind from President Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Instead I found more of the same.
The 2008 United States Impact Study on "Reading First School", the center piece High-States Testing policies demonstrated K-3 students exposed to NCLB reading reform interventions, actually lost comprehension at in every grade. The only group that demonstrated growth were the control groups. The schools not using any Reading First Reading programs. Reading First Grants continued to be funded for nearly 8 years. In defiance, of the annual data indicating they it's failure. They were finally ended, but not after billions of dollars were spent on failed reading programs rooted in high-stakes testing. As an educator this also opened my eyes to the fact the United States Department had no real clue as to what works and doesn't work.
When Secretary Arne Duncan announced with great fanfare, and every single state department of education in all fifty sate his "Race To The Top" policy? I understood, this policy would be NCLB focus on high-stakes testing on steroids. As an academic and literacy expert I spoke up against it everywhere. No one in Washington, at the state or the local level seem to follow the data on the failure of high-stakes testing policies, or the harm they were having on our children.
No one heard me, people thought I was some oddball. What does an oddball do?
I decided to walk to Washington DC to Connecticut to protest high-stakes testing policies.
BECAUSE,
When our federal, state, and local legislators refuse to listen,
When our public school administrators refuse to listen,
When our federal and state policy makers refuse to listen,
You take your case to the people.
So in 2010 seven years ago I walked to 400 miles in 40 days to Washington DC from Connecticut.
In 2015 I walked again to protest ESSA, which in my professional opinion still places the center of education reform on high-stakes testing. Very little has changed, our children, teachers, and our local public schools are under attacked from the very policies that should protect them.
Seven-years later NCLB and RTTT are considered failures by most people, and more people are fighting back. But, not enough to end these education reforms that harm our children, demoralize our teachers, and are destroying our public local public schools.
I am still wondering why every parent, every student, and every teacher in the nation isn't standing up, speaking up, walking against 15-years of failed education reforms policies harming our children, teachers, and public schools?
Parents and teacher here is a simple Truth To Power statement:
When we all start standing up, speaking up, and walking 15 years of failed education reform polices end. 15 years of harmful high-stakes testing for children in our public schools ends.
Still standing,
Still speaking up,
Still walking,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner
If you are interested in the letter I wrote to Anthony Cody that launch my walk? Here is the link: http://childrenaremorethantestscores.blogspot.com/2010/03/my-letter-to-president-obama-one-that.html
Back in DC outside the United States Department of Education at the January 20, 2017 Women's March with Save Our School Mach.
If you are wondering what song I listened to on my walk over the Avon mountain this morning it's Barry Lane "Jesse Turner Is A Walking Man" https://barrylane.bandcamp.com/track/jesse-turner-the-walkin-man
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