I’m currently deep into Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation, 
a highly recommended read for those committed to learning about struggles for social justice in public education. An excerpt captured from the book’s introduction serves as a catalyst for thought and questioning. In the foreword teacher activist Adam Sanchez interviews Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools.
Actions & Organizations
- ASCD's Whole Child Education
- Caucus of Rank-and-File Educatores (CORE – Chicago)
- Coalition of Essential Schools
- Community Education Task Force (Rochester)
- Grassroots Education Movement
- Institute for Democratic Education in America
- Kennewick School District Citizens
- Parents Across America
- Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE)
- Petition: Replace Education Secretary Duncan with a real educator!
- Save Our Schools
- Students 4 Our Schools
- The Forum for Democracy & Education
- United Opt Out
- Use Your Teacher Voice
Good Reads
- Accountable Talk
- All Things Education
- An Urban Teacher's Education
- Bridging Differences
- Cooperative Catalyst
- Dear Mr. President
- Does Experience Count?
- Ecology of Education
- EdVoices
- EdVox
- Edwize
- Elementary Rat
- Good Magazine – Education
- GothamSchools
- InterACT
- Living in Dialogue
- Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog
- Modern School
- Mr. D's Neighborhood
- NYC Educator
- NYC Public School Parents
- NYC Public School Parents
- Occupy Education
- Rethinking Schools
- RheeFirst
- School Tech Connect
- Seattle Education
- Susan Ohanian
- Teacher in a Strange Land
- Teacher Sol
- The Answer Sheet
- The Frustrated Teacher
- The Washington Teacher
- Transparent Christina
- Walt Gardner's Reality Check
Resources
Humor/Satire
We put out a call for Troubled Terms a while back, and have gotten some excellent submissions. (Click here to read some of the others, and share one of your own!) Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts– hopefully, we’ll be able to start sharing these weekly. (Even more hopefully: We’ll start having honest policy discussions, where policymakers and influencers actually mean what they say… A girl can dream, can’t she?)
–Sabrina Read More→
Learning how to become our best selves, & demonstrating that learning, was an explicit part of the culture in my classroom.
Standardized testing– especially the high-stakes variety– has earned a serious and growing backlash, and for good reason. The weight of the research evidence shows that it has not improved education, and that it undermines the kind of academic behaviors that support critical and divergent thinking. High-stakes testing has distorted the teaching and learning process, resulting in time taken away from actual instruction, cheating scandals, and more. Testing is also expensive, representing yet another way in which scarce education funds have been diverted away from student learning toward powerful private interests. And while they’re inelegant at best in performing their intended function– measuring student knowledge– they’re now being inappropriately used to close schools, evaluate (and shame) individual teachers, and more.
Clearly, this system is fraught with issues. Yet policymakers and some members of the public still argue that, despite their flaws, it’s good to have an “objective” measure of student, teacher and school performance– an argument I find completely maddening. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: standardized tests are not objective.
Just because a process somehow results in a number, does not necessarily mean that anything about that process is objective (unless you’re prepared to argue that men standing on a street corner rating passing women on a scale of one to perfect 10 are engaging in an “innovative form of female evaluation,” instead of borderline sexual harassment). Read More→
President of the Rochester Teachers Association Adam Urbanski wrote a commentary on how “Teachers need more support” recently. A collaborative call to action then came from Community Education Task Force member, parent, retired teacher, and community organizer Howard Eagle. In my view, the response featured below was worthy of and relevant to the spirit of our mission here at Reclaiming Reform: Read More→
I have participated in a fairly large quantity of relational meetings over the last several years as both 
a grassroots community organizer and an urban school district teacher. A phrase that frequently comes up during many meetings and conversations about education is “best practices”. However, being precise in our language is paramount. Recognizing where terminology originated is equally important if we expect to intelligently address issues in education. The phrase “best practices” has an interesting history as it allegedly originated in industry and business circles and then drifted into a host of other fields, notably education. Consequently, education is overflowing with questionable actions and dubious initiatives, often promoted by elites as “best practices” using flowery PowerPoint presentations. Read More→
Today, in the context of a conversation about some school turnarounds I heard this very question. “Aren’t charter schools better?” The question came from a person, a parent of public school children, who was called in for temporary work at my school. It was stated innocently and without malice. I answered the question in the negative, providing a brief overview of my reason for disagreeing, stating that charter schools don’t perform better than traditional schools, statistically (high-stakes test) speaking, and in some cases they perform worse. Since then, I have been considering other parts of that “no” that I didn’t go into. Such as the following:
After building in the struggle against mayoral control in Rochester, NY, organizing a Communitywide Education Summit, launching a hard-fought grassroots school board campaign, and battling with a Broad-trained Superintendent, we in the Community Education Task Force (CETF) have returned to (re)building our organization.
Educator, author and parent activist Angela Engel recently shared some tools for parents who wish to opt their children out of state testing. Given how standardized test Data has been misused, and how testing has distorted the educational process, a growing number of parents have chosen this path– including Maria and others close to this blog.
What I personally love most about this letter in particular is that it undermines the divide-and-conquer strategy that often keeps parents and teachers from becoming true partners in the education of children. Among the biggest losses we’ve suffered at the hands of a false “reform” movement has been the erosion of trust between parents and teachers– as though teachers cannot be trusted to monitor and share children’s progress, and as though parents cannot be trusted to make informed judgments about the quality of teaching and learning in a classroom without a (profit-driven) third party beating them over the head with a number that allegedly represents a student’s (or a teacher‘s) performance.
Real reform in this area would involve creating small enough classes that allow teachers to forge relationships with their students’ families and share actual examples of student work, and giving families the time and tools they need to actually make sense of their individual student’s strengths and needs– rather than faulty graphs and percentages that mislead (or even intimidate) credulous parents into a certain course of action (or, more likely, inaction).
Below are Angela’s sample tools, for others who would like not to participate in this process. And be sure to visit United Opt Out as well. Read More→
The days have been exceptionally long as we inch toward, and then abruptly away from the spring season, in typical Colorado fashion. My schedule is crazier than usual and I have been on the go for over twelve hours a day for at least two weeks, which is hard to maintain with a family (unless you have a superb nanny, which I don’t.) As a result, I have had very little time to myself, and even less to actually reflectively apply that time and develop one strand of thought. However, I have no shortage of brief observations to offer on my own experiences and on some current news, some of which I will now share.
How about that test?
My eligible child still isn’t taking it but the kids at my school are. As usual, all able bodies in the building and spaces they occupy are expected to be available to the testing machine. Primary teachers, as well as intermediate ones are giving up planning time and specials classes to accommodate the testing schedule which, of course, outweighs anything else. It bothers me that in my school, my city, my state, and my country, all of this has somehow come to represent the sum total of the work that teachers, schools, and students do. It also bothers me to think that not enough people are inclined to say or do anything about it. Teachers did not, I dearly hope, earn their university degrees and teacher qualifications because they wanted to teach children how to take a test. Parents do not send their children to school hoping that after high school their progeny will excel at filling in the correct bubbles to multiple choice questions. I like to think that teachers and parents share a vision of those very same children developing useful critical thinking skills, becoming citizens who are informed, engaged, and empowered. The money and time being funneled into these tests are not serving that purpose, and are in fact detracting from it.
Two of the most pressing continual questions in the education arena are still “If We Don’t, Who Will?” and “What will we do to catalyze positive change and build power?” As a teacher and a grassroots community organizer, I’ve continually returned towards reflecting on several important connections between public education and progressive community organizing. There is an urgent need to build and strengthen understanding of the many connections between grassroots organizing, real education reform, and schools as centers of democratic practice. In my view, we who are committed to education activism must widen and improve the quality of critical analysis and awareness if we are going to move towards widespread improvement in our schools.