High-stakes testing the new Gulag

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 wrote “In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

There is no doubt in my mind that education reform policies of NCLB, RTTT and Common Core testing are a sort of new Gulag for our children, our teachers, and our local schools. The only difference is there is no need to send you to Siberia today. The oppression of our children begins right in their local communities. High-stakes testing is feeding that New Jim Crow that Michelle Alexander writes about: " "For me, the new caste system is now as obvious as my own face in the mirror. Like an optical illusion—one in which the embedded image is impossible to see until its outline is identified—the new caste system lurks invisibly within the maze of rationalizations we have developed for persistent racial inequality" (2012). 
Some will say I am going to far, that these policies all had good intentions. Others might call my thinking radical pedagogy, and some others would label me a tool of the left.
Let me make this clear:
I am a registered independent,
I belong to no party,
I vote my conscience,
I am to the right and I am to the left on things,
I am a deeply religious man, a church going man, but faith is driven by my belief in God not by my religious affiliation.   
I am a loving brother, a loving husband, and father.
I don't fit Fox's, MNBC, or CNN's political boxes.
I am simply a morally driven man.
I am a man that believes the enemies of democracy are apathy and silence.
Dr. King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham jail: " “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
Is it wrong to chase Dr. King's what "ought to be"?
Is it extreme to follow Dr. King's the four steps of a nonviolent campaign for justice?
Step: 1. collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist, (I started doing this in 2002); Step: 2 negotiation; (since 2003 I attempted negotiation with policy makers, legislators, and my professional organizations;
Step: 3 self-purification, (Since 2010 I have used walking and prayer to clear my mind and my soul;  Step: 4 direct action, I have use direct action to protest injustice since I was a young boy.  The first march I ever attended was when I was 8 years-old in 1963. I was my grandfather's company for the ride down from Jersey to DC for the March On Washington where Dr. King gave America the dream. I love marching for righteous causes, it sure beats sitting home saying how sad. I walked and marched, chanted, and carried many signs over the years. It never gets sour, it's always sweet, and it's beside it's a family tradition.


This is Erin my daughter who marched with her dad and the New Britain NAACP's No Justice, no peace march last February. I rather stand alone in the rain for a hundred years against what is being done to our children, their teachers, and our local schools than stay dry and warm at home in silence. This cause feels as righteous to me as that first 1963 March on Washington.
Finally I am calling these education reform policies the New Gulag Extreme.
I say:
13 years painful testing is extreme,
Forcing our poorest schools to compete against each other for their survival, closing our poorest schools in our most needy communities in record numbers is extreme,
Denying high school students in 19 states the right to high schools diplomas based on non-validated standardized tests is extreme,
Allocating 1.2 Trillion dollars for education reforms that have failed to address the fact that 49 states spend more money on their wealthy schools than their poor schools is extreme.
Is it extreme to be inspired by words of a dreamer written from his jail cell?
Dr. Kind wrote: "But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist? -- "Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist? -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a mockery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?"
Silence and apathy are not acceptable in the face of unjust policy no matter how good their intentions were in the beginning.
Call me an extremist for love, for equity in our public schools, for children, for teachers, and our public schools.
Walking to DC,
Jesse
If you want to know what I am listening to on my walk this evening it's Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes "I'm a man on Fire"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=3bww8R2yoyM

1,2,3 What Are We fighting for

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There was a good article in Education Week on testing, accountablitiy, and civil rights groups support for testing. It pointed out that historically testing actually harms minority children more than it helps. (see link)

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/05/annual_accountability_testing_time_for_the_civil_rights_community_to_reconsider.html

Since we have been testing students for over a hundred years, and yearly for weeks at a time for the past 13 years shouldn't we see evidence for it's success? Testing is not equity! All data counts, but the data that counts most for teaching and learning is the very data Ed Reformers and some civil rights groups are ignoring. A couple of examples of the data that really matters:

Class size,

Wrap around services,

IEP Access to Special education and Literacy interventions services,

Access to daily PE, 

Access to daily Art,

Access to daily music,

And of course school libraries and librarians,
If we 
want to hold politicians accountable? 

Let us start by equalizing the playing field with the above.
There is the data that matters, and there is the data that really matters. For 13 years our policy makers have been focused on the data that doesn't matter. 

Walking to DC, 

Jesse

10 days out from my walk. 17 connecting the dot Walking Man events from CT to DC. It time to start thinking chants people.
Hey it's time to think of some chants(-:
1,2,3 What are we fighting for,
Our children,
1,2,3 What are we fighting for,
Our local schools,
1,2,3 what are we fighting for,
Our teachers,
Our stories, our history,
1,2,3 What are we fighting for,
Our communities, our schools.
1,2,3 What are we fighting for,
ART,
Music,
PE,
Play,
Recess,
What Are We fighting for?
Hope, equity, and our democracy.
Come on people, you know what I'm listening to on my walk in the rain today...It's country Joe at Woodstock vintage 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyS66rAk3M

You never know who you'll meet on a good walk

Thomas Paine said" “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” I am standing next to Mark Naison here, a man whose religion is to do good. Especially for the ones a young Jewish poet named Emma Lazarus called to America in her poem found at the Statue of Liberty.
He talks the talk, and walks the talk of her words in the "The New Colossus"
I remember my third grade teacher Mrs Gitter reading Emma's poem on top of her desk holding an old kerosene lamp making every word come alive. Reading:
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,0
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Mrs Gitter did not read "The New Colossus", because it would be on the test. She read it, because it mattered to America. She read it, because it mattered to a bunch of third grade children who could see the Statue of Liberty everyday on their way to school. She read it, because it would shape a new generation of Americans. She read it, because she loved us, and we knew loved us.
Well America needs people whose religion is to do good, and I am looking forward to walking for my brother Mark Naison in the fellowship of doing good. Come walk with us for children on June 23rd in the Bronx....
Can't wait until I start walking to Bronx on my way to DC,
Jesse


If you are wonder what song inspired me on my walk today it's Martha Bass's 1972 Walk with me > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm4j48BsIb4 <