Taking the fight local

Some readers may wonder where the walking man has been these days. I have been collaborating with others to grow the fight against those people who are bent on reducing public school learning to teaching to the test. Linda Hall, Jonathan Pelto, with Dianne deVries, and I worked on bulding a real Save Our Schools Connecticut Chapter. We formed alliances with Defending Public Education Cradle to College, with AUUP, Hartford AFT, and CT AFT, and with CCSU Student Government Assocation, and other local groups. As Chair of the Literacy Essentails Conference I worked with Connecticut After School Programs to bring Antonia Darder's turth to Connecticut. http://www.darder.org/ She shared her view that RTTT Ed Reforms are attempts at Language Assination for second langauge learners, and cultural killers. In between all of that I drove down to DC to support my Opt Out Brothers and sisters as they occuiped the United States Department of Education in April.
While I may stop blogging for a while, I never stop marching against those reformers who want to reduce public education to teaching to the test. Fighting those that want to reduce reading and writing to inpersonal repsonses to mandated texts is an every day event, on my walks, in my classroom, and every where else I go for me. Like Muhammad Ali  said "I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" against their insane vision of that "The Brave New World" committed to the production of perfect little worker bees. You know perfect little Bill Gates clones.
So readers I am still fighting wind mills, still feeling strong, and still strongly believing that good will beat evil in the end. Here is my lastest venture "Taking the Fight Local:
https://www.facebook.com/events/159038687593865/
Defending Public Education Cradle to college: A free one-day conference addressing issues that cut across all levels of public education, including fighting back against assessment and addressing inequities in public education. We have great speakers lined up, including Jonathan Pelto, Roberto Cotto, and Ceresta Smith.
Spread the word Connecticut has joined the battle to save our public schools.

Why, why, oh why fight this battle.....
Why I am going to Defending Public Education: Cradle to College this Sunday?
Ever since NCLB started testing children every year from grades 3-8, elementary schools have become houses of detention where teachers are force to teach to the test, and children suffer.
Teaching should be more than testing,
Childhood is more than filling in their bubble sheets.
Child hood is a gift,
A time of wonder,
A time for play,
A time for reading anything your heart feels like reading,
Imagining new worlds,
Journeying through old ones,
A time for art,
For music,
For dancing,
For running and jumping,
A place where teachers open imaginations, not imprisoning them into objective little Common Core Close Reading boxes,
Where science, history, literature are not experiments in mind control, but in celebrating the liberation of young minds,
Where our seeds of democracy are nurtured not ignored,
A place where friendships are grown,
A place where failure is a mere side step on the jounrney to smart,
Where you fall often, but get up time and time again with the help of teachers, families, and friends,
Where Laughter sings,
Where giants and dragons live,
Where school buses take you to museums, historic places, and on safaris,
Child hood should not be a prisoning of the mind,
Schools should not have armed guards at their doors,
Police officers should not patrol our school halls,
Testing should be meaningful for personal learning,
Testing should not be a sorting, a weighing, and measuring of young minds for corporate futures,
I am going to the Defending Public Education: Cradle to College conference on Sunday, because childhood is a gift not a race,
Education should be a never-ending journey that does not end in bankruptcy for our children,
Most of all I am going because I care enough not to become apathetic and silent while our policy makers and politicians crush young minds,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

If you are wondering what the Walking is listening to on his walks lately:

"Preacher man, don't tell me, 

Heaven is under the earth. 

I know you don't know 

What life is really worth. 

It's not all that glitters is gold; 

'Alf the story has never been told: 

So now you see the light, eh! 

Stand up for your rights. come on! 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights! 

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight! 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights! 

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight! "  

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7hElX3VR2z8Ab_NXNyoA?p=bob%20marley%20stand%20up%20utube&fr2=sb-top&fr=moz35

Dear Mr. President, Friendship does not trump Racist Policy

Will someone please tell the President that the revolution will not be televised on CNN, or MTV. Tell him instead it's a rising chorus of discontent; reaching from sea to shinning sea.  And  this week it was in Washington DC where 220 African American Civil Rights Leaders called Obama's education agenda "Racist"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/school-closures-civil-rights-arne-duncan_n_2577003.html

Now you can talk about your Rock of Ages
Talk about Gideon
Talk about David and Goliath
But Mr. President be warned
An army of Davids' are coming.
They are marching with Save Our Schools
They are standing with Parents Across America
They are on Facebook with Testing Is Not Teaching
They are parents, students, and teachers (PCAPS ) rocking that boat of unjust school closures in Philadelphia.
They are that noble coalition of concerned citizens in NYC known as NYCoRE
They are the 140 spreading the word online and in the streets  with Dr. Mark Naison
They are standing with Karen Lewis, and her glorious Chicago Teachers Union
They are writing on Teachers Letters to Obama
They are blogging with Valerie Strauss, Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, Anthony Cody, and Fred Klonsy
They are standing with the Garfield High School teachers in Seattle
They are students speaking up against high stakes testing in Providence, Rhode Island
They are Opting Out with United Opt Out the National Movement.
They are working to open your eyes to Secretary Duncan's lie at Dump Duncan on FaceBook
They are standing with C.O.R.E. that beautiful Caucus of Rank and file Educators in Chicago
They are parents from LAUSD calling for an end to this testing madness, 
They are informing a nation of the NCLB/RTTT lies at FairTest in Massachusetts
They are CELTers writing resolutions against this insanity that reduces children to test scores at NCTE.
They are our Early Childhood Heroes at DEY (Defending the early years) labeling this madness an abuse against children.
They are standing up for equity in Selma, Alabama at the Education Summit for the Selma Jubilee,
They are in Boston with Citizens for Public Schools,
They are our old and true Social Justice Warriors at Rethinking Schools
They Are UMass Students saying No to Pearson
They are opt outers,
They are SOSers,
They are students,
They are parents,
They are Dream Act Children,
They are Latin,
They are black,
They are red,
They are yellow,
They are white, and every color in between,
They are listening to Tim and Shaun on "At The Chalk Face"
They are our respected researchers like Stephen Krashen
They are mothers and sons fighting for justice like Nancy Carsolm-Paige and Matt Damon
They are the 8000 SOSers, who marched in 2010 with Bess, Rick, Sabrina, Bob, Michael, Morna, Ruth, Amy, Betsy, Tim, and Ceresta.
They are your brothers and sisters
They have been there since the beginning with Susan Ohanian.
They are 220 African American Civil Rights Leaders in DC calling Secretary Duncan's Race To The Top Policy"Racist"
They are too many to list.
We are the masses,
 crying out for justice in our public schools.
We are your people
Mr. President
suffering from an unjust education policy
one that reduces children and their teachers to data
and places for Sale signs on our local schools.

Mr. President the time has come to ask Secretary Duncan to resign.
Friendship and loyalty must not trump racist policy.

Let me hearken you back to another messager whose birthday our nation recently celebrated,  Dr.  Martin Luther King fought a war on poverty.  We are still fighting that war. We reject President Ronald Reagan's perspective "The War on Poverty is Over, and Poverty Won". We refuse to study that lie. This isn't class warfare.  This is the most righteous struggle any human being can be engaged in.
This is God's work, this is Social Justice, this is Walking in the Light of Christ.
Still Marching with Martin,
Jesse, The Walking Man, Turner

If you want to know what song the Walking Man is listeing today it is "We Shall Over Come"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j__MFhKvGQA



 

Who needs to talk race, poverty, and inequity in America's Public Schools? Especially when we have those very objective and so safe Common Core State Standards.

http://educationnext.org/all-a-twitter-about-education/ Mike Petrilli linked article (All A-Twitter about Education).  I'm a bit confused by it's claim tweeters are sort of talking past each other. Mike is one of those George Bush's DOE devotees who woke up in 2007, and found NCLB wasn't working. He found some new religion in the Common Core, a new job as Executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is twitter user, blogger, and policy advocate. 

  

My response to Mike Petrilli's obsession for counting twitters: 

I find it amusing Mike Petrilli is keeping tally of tweets. Counting tweets does not discount America's children are more than test scores. Or that desegregation is still the prize not new testing, or new standards. A prize America loves to ignore. Who wants to talk race when we can talk testing data? A decade later, and a nearly trillion dollars spent on NCLB/RTTT policies that still leave millions of children behind. America’s urban schools are becoming choice zones that leave our public schools more segregated than ever.
As Mike’s is counting twitters America’s urban schools are fast becoming the new projects.
In between some of those reform tweets is a view that testing and standards are the cure for poverty. A cure that seems only to speed up that good old public school to prison pipeline.
RTTT policy is a "testing cure” that every billionaire, and for profit school ventures love to love. That objectivity sounds old school, so very objective, and so very 20-century eugenics to me, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-614728.html .
An NCLB/RTTT policy by their own data leaves nearly 80% of America schools as failing. Of course states can always get a Secretary Arne Duncan’s bondage waiver, and pick up tens of millions as they pass that RTTT Go sign.
You remember the policy Mike Petrilli advocated while working at the President Bush’s DOE until he left.  The policy he discovered was not working after he left his NCLB lapel pin behind in 2007. Praise the lord he found his new religion in the Common Core. The one he ran to support when Indiana wanted out. Imagine if the Common Core turns out to just another policy lapel pin cure for poverty rooted in that old carrots and sticks approach similar to NCLB?

Well in my humble opinion neither testing nor national standards will save our public schools. You can bet they won't end racial isolation, economic isolation, or poverty. Come to think of if thse NCLB scores are all good then there wouldn't be a need to segregate at all. It would be a kind of second coming for those old separate, but equal dreamers.
I rather imagine a real federal commitment to desegregating America's public schools?
Skip the RTTT wavers,

Skip the Common Core State Standards, and Certainly skip the high stakes testing.
I rather America start holding it’s states accountable for failing to desegregate their public schools.
Rather than U.S. DOE counting RTTT bondage wavers Secretary Duncan might reward communities for actual moves to desegregate their public schools. This doesn’t require new testing or standards. We already have a built in moral standard with Brown V. Board of Education. All it requires is counting already available segregation data, and connecting Federal funding to real increases in those desegregation numbers. 
As Mike count tweets I’ll be trying hard to survive the policy mandates that reduce children and teachers to test scores.
In between teaching, learning, surviving mandates I'll take a few weekend trips. Going to the Selma Jubilee Educational Summit again this February, (http://www.selmajubilee.com/)occupying the DOE 2.0 in April, (http://unitedoptout.com/occupy-the-dept-of-ed-in-d-c-april-4-7/) and once again walking to DC this summer.

Desegregation can’t be tweeted away, and is not some Race To The Top. It is still the law of the land that states are out of compliance with.  Brown v. Broad of Education threw out Plessy v. Ferguson. Perhaps Mr. Petrilli this is the line in the sand for any relevant school reform discussion some 117 years later. This is still about the the savage inequities that refuses to acknowledge desegregation is the prize. I reject the notion that proficiency measures are the path to desegregate America’s public schools.
Still Marching, 


Jesse The Walking Man Turner
Guess what the walking man is listening today? How about a little Undisputed Truth Smiling Faces (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wKyXA_nMVQ)