Ten thousand students in seventeen schools were in lockdown in the Fairfield , Connecticut Public Schools on October 23^rd because the two high schools and one elementary school received threatening phone calls. The caller, according to the Fairfield Police, proclaimed that he was on his way to those schools with pipe bombs and an M16 rifle. When those calls came in, the two high schools and one elementary school went into immediate lockdown, and, within four minutes, all of the other fourteen Fairfield Public Schools were also in lockdown.

All 10,000 students were in the care of their teachers and school administrators.

Word went out fast. The news outlets put the state on alert. Police and fire departments from neighboring towns, including Newtown, sent assistance. Some parents gathered near the schools; others heeded the advice of the police chief who asked parents to remain away in case emergency vehicles needed access to the schools. Speculation was rampant. Anxiety was everywhere. Those whom the parents treasured most in the world, their children, were in those schools. A generation of the town of Fairfield was in those schools.

With all of the speculation and all of the anxiety, none of the parents interviewed and none of the reporters, talking about the increasingly tense situation from every possible angle, expressed one single doubt that the students were in good hands.  And they were in good hands.

Teachers in all of the classrooms locked their classroom doors and committed themselves to caring for their students for whatever lay ahead. Some of the students were not in classrooms when the lockdown occurred but were in unlocked areas of the schools. Teachers in all of those situations thought quickly and made heroic decisions to create places as safe as possible for those students. Those teachers put themselves in vulnerable positions in order to protect the students if the threats became real. The students could not have been in better hands.

About two hours after the first call, the police determined there was no danger. The lockdown ended, and the students were dismissed early from all the schools. As students were leaving one of the high schools, reporters interviewed them. All of the students said that their teachers had kept them calm and that they all knew what to do because of the lockdown drills held regularly at the school.

The Fairfield teachers and administrators proved on Friday what most parents know about their children’s teachers and their children’s school administrators: They are the best of us. We trust our kids to them. And they earn our trust every day.

If we can trust our children’s safety, their very lives, to them, we certainly can trust them to design English, math, social studies, science, world language, art, music, and physical education programs and reliable ways to assess what students learn in those programs.

Let’s stop leaving the education of our children to people who have never taught even one class and have never spent even one day as a school principal.

Bill and Melinda Gates have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the Common Core standards, which are neither intellectually sound nor based on any research, and to influence promotion of those standards through their financial support of major media outlets and educational and civic organizations. It’s just money talking.

Arnie Duncan and Dan Malloy have established rewards and punishments for students, teachers, and schools, based on the unreliable measures of standardized tests. It’s just political power talking.

David Coleman, chief architect of the Common Core and now president of the College Board, has mandated how reading and writing will be taught in kindergarten through 12^th grade, based solely on his own preferences. One of his preferences is that students read much less literature. David Coleman’s Common Core standards demonstrate that he does not understand at all how students develop as readers, writers, and thinkers. It’s just arrogance talking.

None of them know how kids learn. None of them know what real learning is. None of them know what real assessments are.

Those people who mistakenly call themselves “reformers” joined together to tell us that learning is only what can be measured on standardized tests and that good teachers are those whose students are good test takers. But what standing do those people have? What do they really know? Why should we trust them with our children’s education?

Let’s, instead, opt out of the misguided, damaging, and misnamed “reform” and put decisions about the education of our children in the hands of educators. Let’s ask teachers and administrators who love and care for our children every single day what good learning is and how to assess it. It is educators, working together, who can best set standards and design assessments that are in the best interests of students.

On October 23^rd, the people of Fairfield knew whom to trust.

Let’s do the same.

Two days ago, I received the following message:

” Just wanted to let you know that I passed my dissertation defense yesterday! 

Thank you for believing in me. Here is my first publication.”

I taught the writer of that message 24 years ago and have not been in touch with her since then. Even though I left that school, moved on to another school district, changed my last name and where I live, she  found me through social media. She now holds a doctorate in clinical social work.

I remember the paper she wrote in my sophomore Honors American Literature class. She analyzed the play, The Death of a Salesman, by focusing on the flute playing that was mentioned in the stage directions. No student of mine had ever written about the flute playing and drawn the conclusions that she did. She wrote that essay after reading the play carefully, responding to it in detail, sharing her questions and insights with the others in the class and me, and listening to our questions and insights as well. Her thinking and her writing were perceptive, innovative, and totally her own.

I remember my former student and she remembers me. That is what teaching and learning are all about.

That American literature course was not based on the 188 isolated and mundane skills that the non-educators who wrote the Common Core mandate to be taught in every sophomore English class in the country. (That is more than one skill per day for those of you who are counting). That course was based on collaborative curriculum work, initiated by the English teachers in that school district as we worked together over summers and during the school year to figure out how to best teach based on how students best learn.

Then this morning, I read an article by Gina Barreca, who once loved being a student and now loves being a teacher, in which she wrote about teachers and their students.  She gave examples of  teachers who enliven their students’ lives with a sense of endless  possibilities and how those students give joy to their teachers as they realize those possibilities for themselves. It is hearing about the kind of relationships that Gina Barreca writes about and the kind of message that I received two days ago that will inspire idealistic, bright young people to want to teach. It is inviting teachers into the dynamic and empowering discussions about teaching and learning, rather than handing them scripted Common Core lessons, that will keep teachers with the best minds in our classrooms.

The Huffington Post reported in November 2013 that there were 11 people who were greatly influencing education yet have never taught. That list was comprised of: Arnie Duncan, Bill Gates, David Coleman, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Harkin, Rupert Murdoch, Janet Napolitano, Wendy Kopp, Kevin Johnson, Cory Booker, and Mark Zuckerberg. Other givers of big money with very tight strings attached, such as Eli Broad and the Walton (Walmart) family, as well as front groups such as Families for Excellent Schools and Educators for Excellence could today be added to the list of those who influence education but have no experience as educators.

Of that Huffington Post list,  Arnie Duncan, Bill Gates, David Coleman, Michael Bloomberg, Wendy Kopp, and Mark Zuckerberg remain influential in K-12 education today.  The embattled Arnie Duncan still insists that test and punish is the way to close the achievement gap and setting up competition (races) among public schools is the way to improve education for all kids. David Coleman, as the chief writer and designer of the Common Core English Standards, leaves behind the legacy in all U.S. schools that implement the Common Core of less literature being read,  student engagement being eliminated as a goal, and writing taught as  formulas without personal involvement of the student writers. And he now he is president of the College Board so we can only guess at that damage. Bill Gates is funding every possible avenue for discussing Common Core, including the League of Women Voters, and every possible avenue for implementing the Common Core, including teachers unions and Educators for Excellence. Michael Bloomberg, although no longer mayor of New York City, still exerts great influence on the governor of New York and uses his vast wealth and powerful connections to support the cause for charter schools. Wendy Kopp, founder and now Chair of the Board of Teach for America, continues to insist that 5 weeks training in the summer is enough education and an internship under an accomplished  mentor is not necessary to produce a qualified teacher.

Mark Zuckerberg may be an outlier. After donating 100 million dollars to the Newark schools and realizing that endeavor failed because educators and parents were left out of the process, he and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan who has been a teacher, have now donated 120 million to San Francisco and Bay Area schools with the stipulation that all efforts must focus on teacher and parent involvement. He has learned that it is teachers who know about teaching and learning, and it is parents and teachers, not investors or politicians, who care about the children. We will have to watch this endeavor.

Here is what The Huffington Post had to say about the non-educators who have been and still are in charge of much of what has been called “reform” but actually should be called malpractice as suggested in another Huffington Post article:

They design teacher evaluation systems, teacher training guidelines and the types of standards that need to be taught. Yet, they have never been teachers themselves.

These days, being a teacher is clearly not a prerequisite for becoming a leader in education. In fact, some of the leaders with the most daily influence on classrooms come from entirely unrelated fields.

Below we have compiled a list of some of the most influential leaders in education who have never been teachers.

• Arne Duncan
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  While our nation’s foremost leader in education policy has extensive experience in education administration, he was never actually a teacher. In the early ’90s, Duncan headed the Ariel Education Initiative, a program that helped fund college for inner-city kids in Chicago. He became the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools system in 2001, before assuming his post as U.S. Secretary of Education.

  Education was an important part of Duncan’s early life. His mother runs an after-school tutoring center, while his late father taught at the University of Chicago.

• Bill Gates
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  Microsoft mogul Bill Gates has risen as an education influential in recent years through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation’s education initiatives have pumped billions of dollars into advocacy groups and research organizations that support pro-education reform causes like charter schools and teacher evaluation systems.

  In addition, Gates himself has reportedly taken a strong personal interest in improving student outcomes across the country. His foundation is also helping to fund the implementation and promotion of the groundbreaking Common Core State Standards, a set of national education benchmarks that have been adopted in most states.

  However, some teachers resent his unduly influence in the field. Several months ago, a website called “Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates” emerged. The site publishes letters from educators who feel the philanthropist has impacted their classrooms in negative ways.

  “We are teachers with questions. We are teachers who no longer want to live behind the Gates. We are teachers who are not funded by the Gates Foundation,” the website’s “About” section reads.

• David Coleman
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  David Coleman, a figure The Huffington Post has dubbed “the most influential education figure you’ve never heard of,” is the president of the College Board, a national educational organization that is currently redesigning the SAT. Prior to his post at College Board, he was “the chief architect” of the Common Core  English Language Arts Standards.

  While nearly every teacher and student in the U.S. will be impacted by Coleman’s ideas, the education influential was never a teacher. During his early years, he was exposed to the world of education through his mother, who was a university president.

• Michael Bloomberg
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  Changing education in New York City was a centerpiece of Michael Bloomberg’s agenda during his three terms as mayor. A 2002 law, which was renewed in 2009,granted the mayor direct control over the city’s public schools. During the rest of his time in office, Bloomberg worked to expand charter schools in the city, make teachers more accountable through evaluations tied to student test scores and close what he deemed to be failing schools.

  However, it does not seem his legacy will end as he vacates his mayoral post. As HuffPost’s Joy Resmovits wrote, “his legacy in remaking the city’s schools was at the center of local and state elections nationwide, sometimes explicitly” this November.

  Successful businessman? Yes. Teacher? No.

  Mark Zuckerberg
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  Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, made a big splash in the education world in 2010 when he agreed to donate $100 million to public schools in Newark, N.J. In 2013, Zuckerberg and other technology influentials launched a political group that pushes for issues including school accountability and STEM education.

  The Silicon Valley boy king was never a teacher.

  Wendy Kopp
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  Wendy Kopp is the founder and chair of the Board of Teach For America, an organization that puts thousands of recent college graduates and professionals in classrooms with disadvantaged youth. Yet, she was never actually a teacher herself.

  Kopp had the idea for Teach For America as an undergraduate at Princeton University. Its model recently went global with an organization she founded called Teach for All.

Language is power. Let’s promise ourselves that we will never say the word “reform” when it refers to initiatives for our schools mandated by those who have never taught in any school.  Those individuals, regardless of their money or their political power, do not understand what it is to teach and what it is to do the demanding, thoughtful, fulfilling work of helping children and adolescents to learn. Let’s, instead, call their initiatives by their right name: malpractice. 

The Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled on last Friday that the funding of privately- managed charter schools with funds diverted from public schools is unconstitutional.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/state-supreme-court-charter-schools-are-unconstitutional/

The ruling of the Supreme Court of Washington centers on the definition of “common schools”. All schools which are eligible for public funds must fit the definition of “common schools” . Here is the part of the court ruling which addresses that requirement:

“The words ‘common school’ must measure up to every requirement of the constitution … and whenever by any subterfuge it is sought to qualify or enlarge their meaning beyond the intent and spirit of the constitution, the attempt must fail.”

Bryan (a former court case) established the rule that “a common school, within the meaning of our constitution, is one that is common to all children of proper age and capacity, free, and subject to and under the control of the qualified voters of the school district. The complete control of the schools is a most important feature, for it carries with it the right of the voters, through their chosen agents, to select qualified teachers, with powers to discharge them if they are incompetent.” …

Here, because charter schools under 1-1240 are run by an appointed board or nonprofit organization and thus are not subject to local voter control, they cannot qualify as “common schools”….

Our constitution requires the legislature to dedicate state funds to support “common schools.” … As noted… “the entire revenue derived from the common school fund and the state tax for common schools shall be exclusively applied to the support of the common schools.” … Using any of those funds for purposes other than to support common schools is unconstitutional. …

Our constitution directs the legislature to establish and fund common schools and restricts the legislature’s power to divert funds committed to common schools for other purposes even if related to education. … The Charter School Act’s diversion of basic education funds allocated to the support of the common schools and common school construction funds is unconstitutional and void.”

This ruling is an important step towards using taxpayer money to shift our national priorities towards creating excellent and equitable education for all our children and away from funding profit-making private enterprises that have no evidence of improving education for the children who attend them. A step in the right direction for sure!

What does Hillary think about what is going on now in k-12 education?

Watch this video and find out:

http://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4534445

What I would like to ask Hillary after watching the video is:

1. What do you mean by the Common Core being a “wonderful direction”? Do you know what the 42 Common Core English Language Arts Standards are and in what ways they help or hinder students becoming thoughtful readers, effective writers, and deep and broad thinkers?

I am very familiar with those 42 Common Core English Language Arts Standards and know that they are detrimental to producing thoughtful readers, effective writers, and deep and broad thinkers. I doubt that Hillary has read those standards and, even if she has, has no idea about the developmental needs of students and the  best ways to teach them.

Of course, standards can be a good idea, but only if the standards themselves are worthy ones. It is also a good idea to eat three meals a day but not if those meals are comprised of a lot of sugar and very little protein and vitamins.  The Common Core English Language Arts Standards are sugary fluff and will make neither the students nor the country strong. .

2. What do you mean when you say that the Common Core was “not politicized”?

The Common Core standards were approved by governors before they were even written and before the governors knew what they would contain because accepting them was the only way that states could be relieved of the sanctions the federal government would impose on them for not meeting the impossible goals of NCLB and be allowed to apply for Race to the Top money.  It was all totally political. It was all about the federal money. It was political bribery.

3. Why do you imagine that the Common Core and the aligned detesting will prevent a ” two tiered educational system” when, in reality, the Common Core and the aligned testing will create those two tiers?

One tier is the children of privilege who either go to elite private schools which do not adhere in any way to the Common Core and which do not test their students with Common Core aligned tests or go to suburban schools which do not limit education to the Common Core and do not emphasize test prep because the income level of their students insures good test scores.

The other tier is the children in urban schools whose education is largely test prep about the limited and damaging content of the Common Core.

Tier one students develop skills for their future; tier two students learn how to take tests that do not assess the quality of their thinking, collaborating, reading, or writing.

4. What do you mean when you said that we should go “back to basics”? What are your “basics” and why are we going “back”?

Basics for the present and the future are: exploration, collaboration, effective written and oral communication, creativity, cultural awareness, curiosity, questioning, imagination, accessing and analyzing information, problem solving, innovation, civic engagement, and initiative. The Common Core addresses none of these, and the Common Core aligned tests assess none of them either.

5. Why do you say that we should “look to teachers” for the direction of education?

You praise the Common Core, yet when the Common Core English Language Arts Standards and the Common Core Early Childhood Standards were created, not one single teacher was involved.  The standards were created by employees of testing companies. The Common Core Standards are not good education. They are a compilation of items which can be measured on standardized tests  and teach students to write essays which can be nonsensical but receive high marks from the testing company computers which grade them.

6. Hillary, please can we talk?

When Nikki Haley, the Governor of South Carolina, changed her mind and took back her long-held support for the flying of the Confederate flag, she said that she did so because she didn’t know how she could explain the flag’s presence to her young children. After the deaths in the church in Charleston, Nikki Haley must have looked at the flag and seen something different. She must have seen racism.

Let us in Connecticut, the state with the greatest income difference between the very wealthy and the impoverished and the largest achievement gap among our K-12 students, look anew at what we, as a state, have been supporting. Let us see if we missed the racism underlying it all.

If education in Connecticut is not marked by racism, why do affluent, suburban, largely white students have an education that is of a much higher quality than the education provided in the urban areas where most black students attend school?

The suburban students read whole works of literature and ask their own questions about that literature and about how that literature connects to their own lives. They collaborate with one another in class discussions and explore diverse perspectives as they analyze texts, evaluate ideas, and problem solve. They write essays not just to support claims but also to explore questions for which there are no ready answers and to explain the evolution of their thinking as they read and discuss a work of literature.

Black students in our cities, howeve, do test prep because their schools are under pressure to improve standardized test scores. Those students read only excerpts from literary texts. They practice answering multiple-choice questions instead of posing their own questions, and they write only formulaic essays to prove claims about topics not of their own choosing but ones on sample standardized tests.

The suburban, largely white students develop capabilities that will serve them well in their future. The urban, largely black students learn to see school as a place to be compliant and passive.

If education in Connecticut is not racist, why do we use standardized tests as the measure of achievement?

All standardized tests are correlated with the incomes of the test-takers. In addition, the Common Core-aligned tests, such as the SBAC tests that Connecticut uses, have no validity in terms of predicting success in college or careers. The tests also are not rigorous but, instead, have been designed and constructed so that 70% of high school students taking the math SBAC test will fail it and 60% of the high school students taking the English SBAC test will fail it. When the Governor and the Commissioner of Education set those failing rates, prior to the administering of the test at 70% and 60%, they knew that the majority of those students who will be labeled as failures will be poor and black. They also knew that the “failing”  was artificial and communicated very little about actual achievement.  As a state, we spend millions on this useless exercise of standardized testing which further stratifies our akready stratified state.

If education in Connecticut is not marked by racism, why is school structure different for suburban whites and inner city blacks?

Those in the suburbs are enfranchised to make decisions about their public schools- to elect school boards which write policies, formulate budgets, set priorities, and inaugurate programs for ALL students in their community. On the other hand, blacks in the cities are told through the actions of the Governor and the acquiescence of the General Assembly that almost all of their students must remain “trapped in failing schools”  except for a few who will be saved from themselves by the actions of wealthy, white entrepreneurs who will set up profit-making charter schoools. No suburban community is asked to accept that just a few of its chidren will be adequately educated.

These charter schools are staffed by transient, inexperienced teachers, keep only those students who do not have special needs and are already proficient in English, foster increased racial segregation, and have no greater record of success than the traditional public schools that have been labeled as “failing”. The charter school entrepreneurs are like Harold Hill of  The Music  Man. Harold Hill  convinced the citizens of River City that, first of all, their children were in peril and, secondly, that their children could be saved only by being in a marching band, for which, of course, he would sell them the instruments. Charter school entrepreneurs , like Harold Hill, treat parents of inner-city chidren as gullible, uneducated, and easily manipulated. No  entrepreneurs seek to open charter schools in the suburbs.

John Dewey said, “What the wisest and best parent wants for his own chidren, that must the community want for all its children.” We in Connecticut, however, do not do that. The wisest and the best parents, or at least the wealthiest and those with the most options,  choose either elite private schools, none of which use the Commmon Core or the accompanying standardized tests and all of which have experienced teachers, or they choose public schools committed to educating all students with a broader, deeper curriculum than the limited Commmon Core. Those in political power in Connecticut must see the black children of our inner cities as ” other” and “less than” because their education is not the same education as the one that people of privilege give to their own children.

We, like South Carolina , must look at what we have supported in the past through the lens of what happened in that Charleston church. We must take down the Connecticut flag of separate AND unequal education. We must see the racism in our flag.

We must equitably educate ALL of our children.

The Secretary of Education says it. The New York Times says it. The President of the United States says it. So it must be true.

But it isn’t.

They all say that the Common Core State Standards will make graduates of our K-12 schools “college and career ready”

But they won’t.

I know the 42 Common Core Standards for English Language Arts really well.

For reading, those standards and the tests that assess those standards ask high school students to know the information in what they read, to objectively summarize what they read, to recognize elements of fiction such as plot, character, setting, point of view, and theme, to recognize elements in informational texts such as claims and evidence for the claims, to recognize structure in both kinds of texts, and to see how source materials influence later texts.

For writing, those standards and the tests that assess those standards ask high school students to write arguments in an impersonal, anonymous voice about assigned topics. The emphasis is on the writing of single draft essays. Revision will be done only “as needed” instead of as an integral part of developing thinking and improving written expression of that thinking. Students are asked to use technology to gain information for their written pieces.

That’s it.

We, as a country, got into the business (and it IS a business) of thinking that the purpose of K-12 education is to make graduates “college and career ready” instead of seeing learning as the means of personal fulfillment and growth or education as the means of creating an informed citizenry necessary for a functioning democracy. Education with the Common Core is regarded as a matter of national security.

The Common Core has as its major premise that those standards will insure that students are “ college and career ready” and that having all of our students “college and career ready” will then make the United States secure as an economic powerhouse.

There are three problems with that premise:

1. There is zero correlation between academic standards and the economic strength of any country.

2.The Common Core Standards have never been field-tested to ascertain if being proficient in meeting those standards means that the students will be successful in college or careers.

3. They are the wrong standards.

So what are the right standards?

There is near universal agreement, among both scholars and business leaders, about the competencies we need to teach today’s students. Not one of these competencies, however, is part of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards. Not one of these competencies is assessed on the standardized tests aligned with the Common Core.

Tony Wagner, lead scholar at Harvard University’s Innovation Lab and previously the first education fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, has written two books that discuss in depth the competencies that our students need. In The Global Achievement Gap, he interviews business leaders and asks them to tell him what they need in the people that they hire. In Creating Innovators. Wagner gives examples of what instruction that produces the needed competencies looks like.

Professor Wagner calls the competencies survival skills. The Seven Survival Skills are:

1. Critical thinking and problem solving: Approaching problems as learners as opposed to knowers, engaging in the inquiry process, asking provocative questions.

2. Collaboration: Engaging in dialogue with diverse people in order to explore questions, consider a wide range of possibilities, and identify solutions.

3. Agility and Adaptability: Being a life-long learner, being able to deal with ambiguity and new  information, knowing that there are no right answers.

4. Initiative and Entrepreneurship: Taking initiative and trusting yourself to be creative.

5.  Effective Written and Oral Communication: Expressing ideas with focus, clarity, and passion. Writing with a strong personal voice.

6.Assessing and Analyzing Information: Finding the important details and then saying, “ Here’s what we should do about it.”

7. Curiosity and Imagination: Being inquisitive, engaged, and interested in the world; creating something new.

What these core competencies have in common is that they are all about the construction of knowledge and the creating of personal meaning.

The Common Core Standards for English Language Arts, on the other hand, are all about the transmittal of information from teacher to student and then from student to teacher.

We can teach these competencies. I have been in English classes in the most privileged of Connecticut communities and in the neediest of Connecticut communities and have seen English teachers in both kinds of communities teaching their students those competencies. I have seen engaged and motivated students in both kinds of communities questioning, exploring, finding personal meaning, and growing as learners and thinkers as they increase their facility with those competencies. We can’t let test prep for the Common Core stop that energy, stop that rigor, or stop that learning.

Tony Wagner sums sit up:

“Increasingly in the twenty-first century, what you know is far less important than what you do with what you know. The interest in and ability to create new knowledge to solve new problems is the single most important skill that students must master today.”

Put the Common Core aside as a vestige of the past, and let educators prepare students for their future.

DRUM ROLL FOR GOVERNORS AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The following list of governors who have negatively influenced public education in their states was compiled by Russ Walsh, an experienced curriculum director in school districts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Our governor, Dan Malloy, is on the Top Ten list of offenders, but Governor Malloy is ranked number 10. I am sure, to the dismay of many in Connecticut, if this list had been written today, our governor could earn a much, much higher spot.

Surely, he could place at #3 or maybe even at #2. His new attacks on public education include taking $17.1 million out of traditional public schools, which will curtail extended day and summer programs in needy school districts, make universal preschool impossible, not fund priority districts as promised and at less than last year, and limit aid for transportation of students. At the same time, his budget will spend $12.4 million to build two new charter schools in cities that voted against them and add 700 new seats in existing charter schools.

In addition as the legislative session was coming to close the first week of June, Governor Malloy  tried to pull a fast and sneaky trick on the legislature by switching language on a bill that the legislature had almost unanimously passed a few days earlier. The bill gave the authority to approve charter schools to the state legislature instead of keeping it in the hands of the officials at State Board of Education, who are appointed by the governor,  and would make charter schools responsible under the Freedom of Information laws to disclose the same information as all other publicly funded entities. The governor tried to change those two provisions in the bill that the legislature had just passed without telling the legislators.

Now that I think of it, I say that we have a governor who definitely ranks #1 in the destruction of public education.

Here is the list as posted on russonreading.blogspot.com/2015/06/stupid–governors–tricks.html

Top Ten Governor’s Stupid Education Tricks

by Russ Walsh

Now that David Letterman has exited stage left, taking his Top Ten Lists and Stupid Pet Tricks with him, Russ on Reading is ready to step into the void by highlighting a new bunch of clowns for your diversion. Inspired by the incredible stone-headedness of this nation’s governors when it comes to education, I call my new list Top Ten Stupid Governors Education Tricks.

Since education policy supposedly lies with the states in this country (unless you are accepting bribes in the form of stimulus money from the federal Department of Education), governors hold a great deal of power when it comes to education policy and budgets. Many governors have fallen in love with the false promises and faulty reasoning of the corporate education reformers (possibly because these reformers fill their campaign coffers) and have done some supremely stupid things. The list below only scratches the surface. Please feel free to add your own stupid governor’s tricks to the list.

Now that David Letterman has exited stage left, taking his Top Ten Lists and Stupid Pet Tricks with him, Russ on Reading is ready to step into the void by highlighting a new bunch of clowns for your diversion. Inspired by the incredible stone-headedness of this nation’s governors when it comes to education, I call my new list Top Ten Stupid Governors Education Tricks.

Since education policy supposedly lies with the states in this country (unless you are accepting bribes in the form of stimulus money from the federal Department of Education), governors hold a great deal of power when it comes to education policy and budgets. Many governors have fallen in love with the false promises and faulty reasoning of the corporate education reformers (possibly because these reformers fill their campaign coffers) and have done some supremely stupid things. The list below only scratches the surface. Please feel free to add your own stupid governor’s tricks to the list.

10. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy – While most governors on this list are Republicans, Democrat Malloy shows that Republicans don’t have a monopoly on gubernatorial stupidity. In his 2012 State of the State address, after riding teacher union support to an electoral victory, Malloy said,  “In today’s [education] system, basically all you have to do is show up for four years. Do that and you have a job for life.” Malloy then introduced a bill to do away with tenure. Malloy has been backpedaling from this stupid trick ever since, finally pressuring his reformy Education Commisioner, Stefan Pryor, out in a deal with the Connecticut Education Association last year. But you need to ask, “On what planet do you get better education performance from students by denigrating the people who are working closely with those students every day?” See?  Just stupid.

9. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner – Rauner is so reformy that he has a charter school named after him. He has given millions to charter schools in Chicago. In an exchange with charter critic Diane Ravitch, Rauner said that his charters don’t need to apologize for not accepting second language learners and children with disabilities, because they only want families who are highly motivated. For Rauner “school choice” apparently means only educating children that charters choose to educate. He is a champion of the dual system of education, one for the haves and another that none of his cronies cares about or supports for the have-nots.

8. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – Chris Christie is running so hard for president that he is laying waste to the state he was actually elected to govern. On education he has flip-flopped more than a stranded whale on a New Jersey beach. Christie has read the conservative political waters of the nation and has suddenly discovered that the Common Core State Standards, which he has long championed, now represent federal overreach. Compounding his stupidity is that the governor has called for new “New Jersey” standards, but will keep the Common Core aligned PARCC test in place. So, let’s change the standards, but not the test that measures the learning of those standards. This leaves New Jersey’s school children and teachers further confused about what to study and how to prepare. In any test of accountability in public office, Christie can only be pronounced “not proficient”.

7. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal – Like Christie, Jindal loved him some Common Core until he decided to run for president. But this flip-flop added an extra measure of stupidity by generating a legal battle between Louisiana Schools Superintendent John White, who continued to support the Core and Jindal, who needed to distance himself from the Core to appeal to the conservative Republican base. White actually sued and won a court battle over the Common Core against Jindal. Louisiana blogger Mercedes Schneider writes that Jindal’s legal team failed to provide a strong case. This is the second high profile court case related to education Jindal has lost (He lost an earlier federal case that vacated his voucher program). Jindal has argued that teachers do not need training in education to be effective teachers. Perhaps Jindal hires lawyers without legal training as well.

6. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant – Governor Bryant flunked third grade when he was 9 years-old because he couldn’t read well. Bryant believes that this was really good for him and so he has decided to share this good fortune with about 6,000 current Mississippi third graders who “failed” a state literacy test. Apparently, Bryant’s literacy education was not sufficient to allow him to read and comprehend the tons of research that demonstrates how retention is bad for children in myriad ways and often leads to students dropping out. I wrote more about this child abuse here, but for perpetrating this stupid education trick let us hope that Bryant is not “retained” as governor in the next election.

5. Indiana Governor Mike Pence – Republican Mike Pence came into office in 2012 hoping to continue the destruction of public education begun by his predecessor Mitch Daniels. Unfortunately for Pence, on the same election night when Pence was elected, the people of Indiana also elected a new Superintendent of Public Instruction, Glenda Ritz. Ritz was voted in as a rebuke to the reformy policies of former Superintendent Tony Bennett (not the one who left his heart in San Francisco), so Pence was faced with a quandary: How to continue the reformy agenda with an actual public school teacher and advocate for public education in office as the schools superintendent. Pence hit on a plan that earns him a special place on this list. He decided to ignore the democratically elected Ritz and strip her of any power. His message: Democracy be damned, I gotta’ deliver school choice for my wealthy cronies.Pence managed most of this with the aid of a heavily Republican legislature, but Ritz may have the last laugh. She recently announced she is running for governor. In the last election, she polled more votes than Pence. We can only hope that happens again in 2016. Read more about Pence’s stupid education tricks here.

4. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker – College dropout Scott Walker earns his stupidity award honestly. His motto seems to be “Who needs an education when you have rich friends?” Taking his cues from these rich friends, Walker has gone full frontal in his attack on public employees, particularly teacher’s unions.The New York Times reporters Patrick Healy and Monica Davey have done a good job of exposing the roots of Walker’s anti-unionism in this article. There are many acts of stupidity that can get Walker on this list, but his latest one is a doozy. Walker wants to cut 250 million from the budget of the University of Wisconsin and use the money to build a new stadium for the National Basketball Association’s Milwaukee Bucks. Walker was quoted as saying about his reasoning for spending big bucks on the Bucks, “There is a cost to ‘no’.” Apparently it is ok to say no to a great state university, but you dare not say no to a basketball team. What Walker seemingly learned during his short stay at Marquette was “Basketball good, public education bad.”

3.  Florida Governor Rick Scott – Like the other reform governors here, Florida’s Rick Scott loves charter schools, vouchers, union bashing and everything else designed to destroy public education and turn it over to the privatizers. Scott makes this list though because about three years ago he discovered that Florida might be giving too many tests.  Nothing much happened about this discovery until this year, where, after apparently three years of study of the problem, Scott signed a bill eliminating exactly one test, an 11th grade language arts exam. I am sure that makes the 3rd graders in Florida feel better. Of course, these kids should all feel better because now they can only be tested for 45 hours a school year or the equivalent of non-stop testing for two weeks a year. Gee, thanks, Guv.

2. New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez – Martinez earned her way onto this list with one of the more telling stupid governor’s tricks. During her campaign she was caught on tape denigrating women, political opponents, and teachers in a profanity laced campaign meeting. Specifically, Martinez said that she could not understand what teachers were complaining about since they “don’t work you know two-and-a-half months out of the year, three months out of the year.” Unsurprisingly, a person with such a low regard for teachers has bought in to the entire corporate education reform agenda of test based accountability and choice. When her uncensored remarks were made public, her advisors tried to laugh it off as Susana being Susana, but the teachers and children of New Mexico are not laughing.

1. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – And the number one prize for Stupid Governor Tricks can go to none other than that champion of educational obtuseness, Andrew Cuomo. In December 2014, Cuomo vetoed his own bill that placed a two year moratorium on the use of test scores in teacher evaluations. Apparently, Merry Andrew was miffed that teachers scored well on their 2014 evaluations, and he would have none of that.  Against any and all factual information at hand, Cuomo then decreed that 50% of the teacher evaluation would be based on test scores. If these bogus “value added measures” show the teacher to be ineffective, the teacher cannot get an effective rating, no matter what observational data says. Other provisions rule out the following as part of the evaluation: student work portfolios, student or parent surveys, and professional goal setting documents. Andrew Cuomo truly believes that teachers are to blame for student failure and by gum, he is going to find an evaluation scheme to prove he is right, no matter what damage it does to teachers, children, and public education in New York.

Like all the other governors listed here, Cuomo has chosen to ignore the real reasons for educational problems: poverty, segregation and inequitable distribution of resources and has focused his sights on those miscreant teachers, who have only dedicated their lives to working with children. Children whose welfare and potential these governors ignore at every turn. Let us understand that the actions of these governors play to their political and financial backers, to the monied few, and are designed to further disenfranchise those without the political and financial resources to fight back. Unfortunately, the ultimate joke is on all the citizens of this country who rely on a strong public education system as a centerpiece of a thriving democracy.