Dear Bill Gates,
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please
stop experimenting on our kids, their schools and their teachers.
Signed,
The Parents of America
– Sue p.
Seattle Education 
Come on folks,,,,,stop your complaining! The more money one has, the more one knows!!! Bush, Jr. proved that point, did he not? Laissez-faire capitalism is the answer to our problems, so let’s let the billionaire’s do their work. Profit margins drive ’em, so let them drive us for a while, or, at least, let them drive our schools deeper into the ground. Charter schools are cropping up throughout this great nation, and despite the fact that fewer than 20% of them are making grade, those who runs these schools are making profits – who cares if the money comes from tax-payers. For my part, I look forward to the corporate take-over of public education; most high-school students have little knowledge of how corporations have damaged the American economy throughout the last 130 years anyways. Besides, book-learning and vicarious experience are overrated: Let our students get a first-hand lesson in how destructive corporations can be. Since the corporations are already looking abroad for cheaper labor and well-educated expertise, the race to the top has become a mute point. The last piece of pie in America is public education, so let the corporations and their parasitic minions scarf it down and reap the benefits, i.e. the publishers, the testing companies, the endless thousands of highly paid consultants, and real-estate investors. Few politicians appear to be predisposed to stopping them anyways. In fact, they appear to have their grubby little hands in the same cookie jar.
Thanks for allowing me the time to vent!
A product of public schooling : )
So which public school do his children go to again?
Diane Ravitch blasts Michelle Rhee
Slowly the truth is eeking out. This blog has it right. The bloviators and apparently half the think tanks and governors in the U.S. have it wrong.
I just came across this and found the parallels very similar to what we see as Gates’ involvement in education.
“Some time ago, the head of WHO’s malaria research revealed that the increasing dominance of the Gates Foundation was stifling diversity of views among scientists and that it could seriously impede the policy-making function of the world body. He was dismayed by the foundation’s decision-making process: “A closed, internal process, accountable to none other than itself”.
Indeed, that is exactly how Gates has determined what’s best for the rest of us. There has been not been any parent or teacher involvement in the decision making process that has occurred at the Gates Foundation over on Eastlake Avenue. Funny thing is that we all just live blocks or a few miles away from this behemoth of an organization and yet our voices have not been heard…at all.
I found the above quote at http://www.gmwatch.eu/latest-listing/1-news-items/13004-the-dark-side-of-giving-gates-foundation-and-the-rise-of-philanthro-capitalism.
Dora
Foxglove,
Many parents do not know that they can opt out of taking the MAP test. It’s a simple process that requires only a note from the parent to the principal.
Parents Across America is sponsoring a forum for parents to discuss testing and alternatives to the constant testing that our students are now “required” to go through. See: https://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/parent-perspectives-on-standardized-testing-a-discussion/.
Dora
Margaret King, Please don’t think that this is just about venting. What am I doing to help? I’m slowly gathering the courage to respond to blogs. I’m writing letters to various state and federal government representatives. I’m trying to offer an alternative and more realistic viewpoint of what it is like to teach at a public school–the passion, knowledge, practice, long hours, and commitment.
I am constantly learning more about the predominant disability of the students I teach. I am seeking and completing professional development across subjects and grade levels so that I can support those students. I am constantly using the kind of formative assessments that actually provide me with useful information about my students. I am volunteering after school to teach a craft. I am mentoring a high school student, and several students from my school.
There is lots more that I do and lots more that I can do. I will keep trying to do something.
One thing that parents who are concerned about multiple tests could do is opt out. That is their right as parents. I don’t understand why more concerned parents do not take that option.
Hang on a minute, Margaret. I linked this post to Parents Across America, the national organization that Dora and I belong to, and PAA is all about what we should be doing instead of corporate ed reform. Take a look at the “What We Believe in” and “What Works” part of that site: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/what-we-believe/
Also, here at Seattle Ed 2010 we have posted a Declaration of Support for Public Schools that states what we believe in: http://www.petitiononline.com/PUBED101/petition.html
We also believe in honesty and transparency in running school districts and policies that incorporate parent input and which are truly focused on what’s best for the kids. With this site, we have tried to daylight when our school district and national education policies do not follow those basic tenets. We believe that educating people about what’s really going on in public ed and what’s at stake is itself a valuable contribution toward positive change in public ed.
Also, quite simply, so much of the ed reform agenda has simply been destructive, dishonest, heavily funded by a small group of corporate-linked interests, and backed by fawning media (witness “Education Nation”), that fighting back against this rubbish does indeed take up a fair bit of our energy. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of public education is at stake — the very existence of it in fact. So yes, we do spend a fair amount of ink fending off Goliath on this site.
Please remember: Dora and I are merely public school parents doing this in our spare time. No one pays us to maintain this blog. We are doing this because we are genuinely concerned about the future of our children’s education and that of all American public school kids.
This blog is just one of various efforts we make on behalf of public education. We advocate in various ways and we help directly inside our kids’ schools and classrooms.
Lastly, arguably, the naysayers in this national discussion are the ed reformers themselves who have nothing but dire and damning things to say about our kids, their schools and their teachers. When in fact, we actually have great schools, great teachers and great learning moments going on in our nation every day. But it is in spite of the last 10 years of damaging ed reforms, not because of them.
–Sue p.
Margaret,
You have a point.
I think that sometimes we get so frustrated about what is being put upon us and get so busy trying to at least alleviate the pain that we don’t focus on the way learning should be.
The alternative schools that we have in Seattle are an example of what works. The Nova Project High School that my daughter attends is a project and student based school that prepares students for life after high school.
Students develop their skills at thinking critically and creatively. They develop a sense of self-confidence in their ideas and are able to articulate their thoughts. The teaching staff is excellent and committed to the school community.
I am glad that you have reminded me that I had planned to do a series of posts on schools and programs that work not only in Seattle but wherever I can find them.
Thanks for the reminder.
Dora
Are you listening Bill?
As a mother of a duaghter in kindergarten who has taken at least 6 tests this year, I agree that the current idea of testing and more testing is a joke and has little to do with teaching or learning. I come from a family of public school teachers and support public schools.
Ditto what Susan said!
Bravo!!