"The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves." -- John Adams

"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution." -- Indiana Constitution Article 1, Section 6.

"...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." – Thomas Jefferson

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Teachers Need to Step Up and Speak Out.

Teachers need to step up and speak out. That is what will change things

 I will refuse to administer...

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

Watch her testimony in the video below and read more about the hearings in...Teachers Rally Against Standardized Testing At No Child Left Behind Hearing
Jia Lee, a New York special education teacher, said the tests "can only measure right or wrong," not complex questions. "I will refuse to administer a test that reduces my students to a single metric. … Teachers, students and parents find themselves in a position of whether or not to push back or leave."

Jia Lee - Senate Hearings Reauthorization of NCLB Jan 2015 from nLightn Media on Vimeo.


HB 1609 Explainer

by Claire McInerny

The Indiana legislature is considering a bill that remove the state superintendent as chair of the State Board of Education. StateImpact Indiana explains how this would change the legislative process for education policy.

Indiana voters, contact your legislators today and ask them to defeat this bill.




Standardized Testing is not Teaching

How much instructional time do your children lose to standardized testing?

Chinese expert Yong Zhao warns standardized testing 'destroys schools'
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/chinese-expert-yong-zhao-warns-standardized-testing-destroys-schools-1.2937625
"My extreme advice, we should do away with all of (standardized testing)," Zhao said in an interview after addressing the forum that convened more than 150 educators and interested business and community leaders.

"It's a waste of money, very little value, destroys parents, destroys schools too, and puts students and teachers in a bind for high-stakes testing."



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The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.
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Stop the Testing Insanity!


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