"We've had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year," Tatiana Nelson, 13, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday outside the school. "They don't even count toward our grades. The school system's just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams."
According to the petition, they are sick and tired of the "constant, excessive and stressful testing" that causes them to "lose valuable instructional time with our teachers."
My students know they are welcome in my class to have open discussions," Avella said. "I teach them critical thinking."
"They're saying Mr. Avella made us do this," said Johnny Cruz, 15, another boycott leader. "They don't think we have brains of our own, like we're robots. We students wanted to make this statement. The school is oppressing us too much with all these tests."
Several students defended Avella. They say he had made social studies an exciting subject for them.
"Now they've taken away the teacher we love only a few weeks before our real state exam for social studies," Tatiana Nelson said. "How does that help us?"
The most important conclusion of "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education" is that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender, its authors said.
"A lot of people think it is the boys that need the help," co-author Christianne Corbett said. "The point of the report is to highlight the fact that that is not exclusively true. There is no crisis with boys. If there is a crisis, it is with African American and Hispanic students and low-income students, girls and boys."
Recently attended a closing event for NYU's Catherine B. Reynolds Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship.
Fellows were asked to bring along a book that had been meaningful to them on their social entrepreneurship journey. Some titles included:
by Paul Loeb 
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 
by Paul Fleischman 
by Paul Coelho 
by Paulo Freire 
by Leslie Crutchfield, Heather McLeod Grant 
by Jon Krakauer 
by Peter Moskos
Was just introduced to this book today. I'm suprised I hadn't heard of it sooner. A must-buy and must-read.
From School Library Journal
"Just make a mark and see where it takes you." This sage advice, offered by her intuitive, intelligent teacher, sets our young heroine on a journey of self-expression, artistic experimentation, and success.
First pictured as being enveloped by a blue-and-gray miasma of discouragement and dejection, Vashti seems beaten by the blank paper before her. It is her defeatist declaration, "I just CAN'T draw," that evokes her teacher's sensitive suggestion.
Once the child takes that very first stab at art, winningly and economically dramatized by Reynolds's fluid pen-and-ink, watercolor, and tea image of Vashti swooping down upon that vacant paper in a burst of red-orange energy, there's no stopping her. Honoring effort and overcoming convention are the themes here.
Everything about this little gem, from its unusual trim size to the author's hand-lettered text, from the dot-shaped cocoons of carefully chosen color that embrace each vignette of Vashti to her inventive negative-space masterpiece, speaks to them.
Best of all, with her accomplishment comes an invaluable bonus: the ability and the willingness to encourage and embolden others. With art that seems perfectly suited to the mood and the message of the text, Reynolds inspires with a gentle and generous mantra: "Just make a mark."
-Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Greenwich, CT, Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
And more: we want "excellence for every child. Every school. It's every child as an individual. I want our children to take ownership over who they are and how they learn."
When asked why the DOE doesn't push an active learning/arts-based literacy component to principals, Lyles answered: "It may not work for every school--there may be another way."
It all sounds nice, doesn't it. So why aren't we doing it? What happened?
By perpetuating school finance systems that treat children from different districts so differently—by shackling students to the economic circumstances into which they were born—states are undermining the egalitarian goals of public education and new performance imperatives of NCLB. At the very least, combined state and local funding per student should be equal among districts within each state.
The Education Sector and the University of Washington's Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) have released School Funding's Tragic Flaw, examining local, state, and federal education funding policies. The bottom line? Policies systematically give money to schools and students that have more resources, and give less to those that have less.
First the Federal Government...
The Title I program, which provides money to school districts with high concentrations of poor students, contributes to the funding disparity problem. Title I allocations are dependent upon how much states and districts spend. States and districts with more money spend more money, so they get more federal dollars. States and districts that are poorer and, therefore, have less money to spend, get fewer federal dollars, penalizing poorer states.
Then the States...
Many states have adopted policies—some prompted by lawsuits—to equalize funding between richer and poorer school districts. However, laws allowing local districts to augment state funding with local property tax levies often mean those districts with higher property wealth wind up with more money. Also, when state funds are distributed according to staffing reimbursement formulas, wealthier districts that spend more typically benefit.
And finally, the Locals...
Districts make decisions that determine how funding is distributed among individual schools, especially around budgeting for teachers. When teachers are allowed to choose where they work, they tend to go to lower-poverty schools where working conditions may be better. High-poverty schools typically have less experienced teachers and higher turnover rates, so the average teacher salary is usually much lower in those schools, resulting in significant per-student funding disparities between schools within districts.
Underlying Reading First is one of the religious right's favorite issues, phonics instruction. Educators have long understood that some students need help sounding out words while learning to read. However, the "reading wars" is an offensive by neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists convinced that every child learns to read in exactly the same way by being taught 43 phonemic sounds in a lockstep sequence. Some suspect that the promotion of "highly structured, systematic sequential explicit phonics" instruction is a Trojan horse for public school privatization while others suggest that phonics is embraced by religious fundamentalists happy to reduce reading to the literal interpretation of text. Either way, Reading First is the federal government's program for mandating uniform phonics instruction. Any parent who has watched a child spontaneously learn to read must question mechanistic theories of human development that oversimplify complex issues.
It doesn't really work, but at least we got our teachers to spend time on it!
What was so meaningful about this experience was...being able to meet... I don't want to call them our ancestors but...being able to meet somebody who pretty much changed our lives today, so that we don't live- we wouldn't live the same lives they did in the 60s...."My favorite: The Struggle for a Good Education with Jean McGuire, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO). (Only 5 minutes long.)
If you’re a teacher, thanks for being braver than I am. Thanks for riding it out when I’m just, well, riding out. And if you’re a parent, please fight for your child. Ask to see your school’s test-materials budget and its library budget. Ask to visit the classroom on a random day, unannounced. Ask whether your kid is getting more or less art than she would have had five years ago. Ask why band practice is at 7 a.m. when it used to be part of the school day. And while you’re mourning the loss of art, music, language, or history, ask the one most damning question of all: What took its place? If you get really riled up by the answer, please consider running for a spot on the school board.
As for me, I’m out. And I’m sorry.
talkin' bout is an online discussion series that brings together educators, activists and youth to participate in a public conversation on the network website about timely and important topics in liberatory education. From Monday, May 19 to Tuesday, May 20 a panel will answer questions posted to an online discussion board about what teaching current events in the context of Education for Liberation means. The conversation will take place on the website of the Education for Liberation Network (http://www.edliberation.org/). Please join us by posting questions and comments for the panelists andparticipants. This discussion features panelists from organizations and media outlets that publish current events teaching materials including The Nation magazine,IndyKids, Democracy Now! and World Savvy.
It turns out that democratic education is considerably more difficult than a form of education that seeks primarily to induct the young into the ways of the old. Dewey spent considerable efforts during his career to try to outline the principles and methods of democratic education, and remained frustrated that many readers of his works seemed unable to escape the tired dualism of an education that is primarily grounded in tradition and one which is primarily aiming to free the myriad possibilities of each child. The best education, Dewey argued, would take account of both the curriculum—taken from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of intellectual and social tradition—and the child, with his or her creativity, fresh perspective, and lively imagination.Worth reading: Dewey'sThe School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum
It is important to understand how Dewey’s concept of democracy connects with this nuanced and hard-to-achieve conception of education. Education cannot be considered apart from the conditions of associated living in the society, and such conditions cannot be considered separate from education. Life rooted in “conjoint communicated experience” is inherently educative; young people in a democracy inevitably grow to become participants in shared activities and shared governance; and schools—as institutions explicitly designed to further education—must necessarily be continuously redesigned to serve—and reflect—democracy.
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. --Paulo Freire
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. --John Dewey
The New York Collective of Radical Educators is sponsoring a one-day workshop on building communities that support core students and teachers:
NYQueer Presents:
Beyond Tolerance:
Building Communities that Support Queer Students and Teachers
Join students, teachers and community organizers for a dialogue and workshop on challenging heteronormative assumptions and combating homophobia and transphobia in NYC schools.
Saturday, May 31st
9:30 AM to 3 PMNYU Barney Building
34 Stuyvesant St.*Lunch and a lite breakfast will be provided.*
NYQueer is a NYCoRE working group focused on gender and sexuality as they relate to school communities. The daily pressures of teaching students at any level (K-12) are such that teachers often feel as if they do not have the time, the support, or access to the resources they need for addressing gender and sexuality in the classroom. More specifically, they are unsure how to challenge heteronormative assumptions and combat homophobia and transphobia.
Recognizing the wealth of resources that both individuals and organizations throughout the city have to offer in this area, NYQueer is planning a one day event that aims to unite students, teachers and community organizers for the purpose of building a stronger solidarity network and increasing awareness about existing resources and possibilities.
For more information and/or to RSVP please contact us at NYQueer@nycore.org.
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