Filmmaker Michael Elliot documents Special Education Teacher, Jia Lee from the Earth School in NYC, who was invited to give testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, to discuss the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind.

Naison Rants: Sounding the Alarm!
Will you raise your voice and Speak Truth to Power? Will you join Mark Naison and commit the acts of civil disobedience that MUST take place in order for change to occur? I will join him in solidarity. Who else will heed his call??
Revolution is right around the corner.
#2015YearoftheStudent
#DoNoHarm
#TakeNoShit
Teacher Education to USDOE: “Let Us Ruin Our Own Discipline!”
Nice blog post on Teacher Education.
Maybe this is appropriate with Groundhog Day approaching—since many of us now associate that with the Bill Murray comedy classic. But I am also prone to seeing all this through the lens of science fiction (SF), possibly a zombie narrative like World War Z.
“This,” for the record, is the accountability plague that began in the early 1980s and continues to spread through every aspect of public education—starting with students and schools, followed by infecting teachers, and now poised to infect teacher education.
As I noted above, on one hand, the accountability game is predictable: some government bureaucracy (state or federal) launches into yet another round of accountability driven by standards and high-stakes testing and then educators respond by showing that they too can play the accountability game.
On the other hand, accountability seems to be a SF plague, spawned in the bowels of government like the root of…
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Schools of Higher Ed- WAKE UP!
Five Days left to make comments about the Fed Proposals to Higher Ed. Please click on the link below- you can comment in the document or you can click on the embedded links in the blog post.
“Everything is such a nightmare – teacher prep programs being taken over by the feds; school counseling being privatized; GED being made impossible to pass; and it is just one thing after another – definitely DISRUPTION and DESTRUCTION at its peek—- and while it is all happening, the children are crying and tearing out their hair, and succombing to docility.” – Jo Lieb
#2105YearoftheStudent
#DoNoHarm
Don’t Be a Sucker! TCAP Writing Assessment Opt Out Laws!
TCAP Writing Assessment Opt Out Laws!
http://www.tennessee-education-matters.net/blog/tcap-writing-assessment-opt-out-laws
Shared with the permission of TNEducationMatters Blog. Thank you!

Tennessee TCAPs – How to Refuse the Test
Tennessee “Opt Out” guide. Shared by the Tennessee Education Matters Blog! Thank you!
http://www.tennessee-education-matters.net/blog/parents-opt-out-guide-for-tcap-writing-assessment

For Whom the Memphis Bell Tolls: Are Graduate Schools of Education Incubating Their Own Replacements?
By Wayne Jebian
It is a new educational experiment, an in-vivo implantation of a (purportedly) viable degree-granting institute into a mature host, an existing university-based graduate school of education. According to a post on the blog Schools Matter signed by the faculty of the Department of Instruction and Curriculum Leadership at University of Memphis, the embryonic Master’s program will be run by New York-based Relay School of Education with the purpose of training and certifying teachers to work in urban charter schools.
The Relay School of Education has been operating under its current name in New York City since 2011, when it became the first independent graduate school of education to be newly credentialed in more than 80 years, according to company literature. Before that, it was called Teacher U, and operated out of the Hunter College Graduate School of Education. Teacher U was the creation of three major charter school companies in 2008: Uncommon Schools, Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), and Achievement First. Currently, Relay’s leadership includes Wall Street operator Larry Robbins, and at least two trustees associated with the “venture philanthropy” organization Robin Hood Foundation, David Saltzman and Norman Atkins.
According to Nancy Bailey’s Education Website, the implanted program has a second parent, one which will share the task of teacher training: The New Teacher Project (TNTP), founded by Michelle Rhee. It has been described by the New York Times as a spinoff of Teach for America, of which Rhee is an alumna. Nancy Bailey lists organizations donating to or investing in the new school as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan and the New Schools Venture Fund, among others. Chalkbeat.org states: “To support U of M’s program, $24 million in donations have been raised through commitments from philanthropists, who wish to remain anonymous. “
There are indications that there is much more at stake than just one southern university being invaded and victimized by northern insurgents while money changes hands. According to Nancy Bailey, University of Arkansas already has a program like this, motivated by the Walmart/Walton Family’s pro-reform zeal. The newsletter speculates:
I would say most university schools of education should watch for TNTP and Relay to come knocking on their doors. But don’t rest on the idea that this new teacher package will be just for the poor. While these alternative teaching programs may start out that way, experimenting around with hungry children, if you eventually dissolve teacher preparation as we know it, TNTP and Relay will wind up being the teacher programs for the way all teachers are made.
I truly believe this is the ultimate goal for today’s education reformers.
If this sounds like the same peril that public schools face from charter schools and their privatizing backers, educators affiliated with higher education programs may just have more to fear. While the push to transform k-12 education has been arguably characterized by far more hype than substance, opinion leaders in higher education have been quietly gathering a consensus that graduate schools of education are ripe for re-invention. Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, is as mainstream and influential in education policy analyst as they come, and his concerns are almost perfectly in sync with those of Nancy Bailey’s “be very afraid” alarm bells. He stated in the Hechinger Report in 2013:
“The point is this: University-based teacher-education programs are in trouble and could possibly lose their franchise. Can they be repaired, or must they be replaced?”
The State and Fate of Public Education: Washington State in the Wake of War – Inside the War
WAR REPORT EXCLUSIVE – Sunday April 25th – tune in to The War Report on Public Education hosted by Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. with co-hosts Susan DuFresne and Julianna Dauble
Call- in Numbers –
A direct listen-in line only
Station 1 – 716-748-0150
Station 2 – 716-748-0144
To call-in and interact live
Station 1 – 888-627-6008
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Words of War from Dr. Miller
IT IS AN ACT OF WAR AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY—THE REAL CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES OF OUR TIME. THE WAR REPORT ON PUBLIC EDUCATION. ~ James Avington Miller Jr.

The Personification of Pearson: Always Earning
My daughter was in Kindergarten when she first met Pearson. According to my daughter, Pearson was the bully that chased you around and around the playground until he finally got a grip on your blue denim jacket- and- with a mighty heave, stopped you dead in your tracks, spun you around, grabbed you by the collar, put his face right up close into yours, demanding not only your lunch money, but anything else you had in your pockets: coins, pencils, rubber bands, erasers, paper scraps, chewing gum, jawbreakers, even lint. Even Lint. Yeah, Pearson was THAT kind of bully. It seemed that he wanted everything that every kid had- all of your money, paper, ABC gum- you name it.
Needless to say, I marched myself down to the elementary school and discussed Pearson with my daughters teacher. I was told that Pearson was a challenge but that he had been adopted by the state and would be staying in my daughter’s school. As a ward of the state, there was nothing the teacher could do about that; however, she would make sure that my daughter was exposed to Pearson as little as possible and that she would never have to be in the same room with him during testing. Time passed- and my daughter- through lack of contact- rarely saw Pearson during the remainder of elementary school.
Fast forward to Middle School. Orientation. Guess who greets us at the door???? Yup. Pearson. This guys is everywhere AND suddenly he is popular!!! POPULAR! He is the darling of the new Teach for America teachers and old school testing gurus alike. He is still a bully, only now he is a sly one, a sneaky one, a slithery serpent of a bully who insinuates himself into the good graces of both Guidance and Gradebook alike. My daughter is wary of him, but this time, they are in every class together. She said that he doesn’t pick on her anymore but sitting next to him still makes her uncomfortable. I told her to just do her work and ignore him unless he becomes a real issue during testing and essay writing time. Thankfully, other than his overbearing and popular persona, Pearson doesn’t influence my daughter much during middle school. High school, however, will be a different story.
In high school, as luck would have it, my daughter actually began to enjoy spending time with Pearson. I don’t know what she saw in him, but she liked working with him on the school computer programs. The more time she spent with him, the more she began to like him. She had no problem with how much personal information he wanted from her. As much as it creeped me out, it didn’t seem to phase her. Perhaps this is due to a “generation” gap, but I can’t seem to shake the image of that pilfering bully on the playground all those years ago.I can’t stand the thought of his nimble fingers picking her pockets, rifling through her purse, or picking her brain.
These days, Pearson isn’t so much a bully as he is nosey. He wants to know everything about my daughter. He asks her questions about her name, ethnicity, her likes and dislikes, questions about her parents. He records all of it in his data-bank of a brain, squirrelling it away for use at a later date. What is he going to do with this data? Where is it going? Who sees it? My daughter has even told me that he asks about us, her parents. Where we live, how much money we make, our phone numbers, our email addresses. I told my daughter our personal information is none of Pearson’s business and she doesn’t have to tell him anything about us- or her- if she doesn’t want to. She can refuse to answer any of his questions.
Hopefully, my daughter will take my advice about Pearson to heart. She will start college before too much longer, to become a school teacher, and Pearson will be at the same school. Pearson, it seems is EVERYWHERE. Apparently, Pearson isn’t going to a four -year college; high school (and some dual enrollment classes) gave him all the tools he needed to be college and career-ready.
Ironically, although he isn’t going to be attending my daughter’s college as a student, he IS going to be there. He got a job working for a company where he is in charge of monitoring the student teachers at my daughter’s college. Although he has no formal degree, he is working for the company my daughter will be PAYING to grade her student teaching experience! So Pearson, with his lack of education and lack of teaching experience, will be making money grading videos of my daughter ( which she has to pay money to upload ) while evaluating her as a student teacher. Wow. Pearson certainly does get around. In fact, you could say that from the moment my daughter met him, he was always earning.
by Lucianna M. Sanson
Lucianna Sanson is a high school English IV and AP Literature teacher in Franklin County Tennessee. She is a public school parent and she is married to a public school teacher. She is FCEA President, and the Associate Co-Producer of the War Report on Public Education internet radio show. She is a warrior goddess activist for students and public education. She is admin on several FB pages and she can occasionally be found on twitter. You can also find her delivering nasty bits of edu-reform wisdom via Honey BADger Blurbs.