RED FOR ED IN INDIANA
On November 19th, thousands of teachers across Indiana will converge on the state capital in Indianapolis, or gather in their local communities to draw attention to the lack of state support for public education in Indiana.
Indiana teachers, through the Indiana State Teachers Association, sponsors of the event, have several priorities.
- Increase funding for public schools to increase teacher pay. Currently, Indiana has among the lowest average teacher salaries in the Midwest and has had the lowest increase in teacher pay over the last decade and a half in the nation.
- Don't blame Indiana teachers for student performance on tests. There are too many variables that have an impact on test scores to single out teachers as the only, or even the main cause.
- Repeal the requirement for teachers to spend their valuable time as business interns in their communities.
- Stop the move to grade school systems and schools based on what their students do after graduation. Again, there are too many variables in students' lives to assume that schools are the only cause of their choices after they graduate.
From Wendy Robinson, Superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools
FWCS to close for Red for Ed Day
The State did not reach this point with public education overnight, and it won’t be fixed in a day. There has been a long, concerted effort to systematically dismantle public education through standardized testing, constantly changing accountability systems and pouring money into private schools. We have been sounding the warnings for years. To change things now will require just as much planning and effort, if not more. True change will only come through legislative action, and that won’t happen if the same people continue to have control of the rule book.
PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
From Alfie Kohn
@alfiekohn
The late James Moffett suggested this slogan for elite, selective schools: "Send us winners and we'll make winners out of them!"
From Heather DuBois Bourenane
Executive Director at Wisconsin Public Education Network
They call them 'innovation schools" because they are an innovative way to remove local control, remove public oversight of public funds, place public property and decision-making under private control, and convince the public that failed old ideas are good and new ideas.
From William J. Mathis
in Beat the dead horse harder
...schools were mandated to solve the test score problem. The trouble was that the policymakers got it backwards. Poverty prevents learning. It is the threshold issue. Without resorting to what we knew, the dead horse was beaten once more with the No Child Left Behind Act. We adopted the Common Core curriculum, punished schools, and fired principals and teachers whose misfortune was being assigned to a school with high concentrations of needy children. It was literally expected that a child from a broken home, hungry and with ADHD would be ready to sit down and learn quadratic equations. Nevertheless, the test-based school accountability approach emerged and still remains the dominant school philosophy. While it is claimed that successful applications exist, the research has not been found that says poverty can be overcome by beating the dead horse. The irony is that the tests themselves show that a test based system is not a successful reform strategy.
From Peter Greene...in answer to Betsy DeVos
in DeVosian NAEP Nonsense
No. For three decades you and many others have used aggressive chicken littling as leverage to remake education in your preferred image. You said, "Let us have our way and NAEP scores will shoot up like daisies in springtime." Do not even pretend to suggest that you have somehow been hammering fruitlessly on the doors of education, wailing your warnings and being ignored. The current status quo in education is yours. You built it and you own it and you don't get to pretend that's not true as a way to avoid accountability for the results.
From Doug Masson
in Some thoughts on Red for Ed, Caleb Mills, and Indiana’s School Policies
The privatization fad isn’t working. Voucher and charter schools do not produce better results than traditional public schools and there is some evidence that they produce worse outcomes. A fractured approach to education cannot produce consistent results. If we’re looking to be responsible with our money, we can’t afford to have education dollars sucked up by self-dealing charter management companies with opaque accounting or vouchers sent to private institutions with books closed to the public. We can’t spend tens of millions of dollars on tests with arbitrary faulty metrics.
LIFELONG LEARNING
Vlogger John Green talks about learning new things, communication, friendship, innocence, and connections.
From John Green
in still learning
...I still like learning even at my extremely advanced age because new learning can reshape old learning and because learning is a way of seeing connection. And all the little connections across time and space are reminders to me of how deeply connected we all are.
ON TEACHING
From Steven Singer
in Are Teachers Allowed to Think for Themselves?
Teaching may be the only profession where you are required to get an advanced degree including a rigorous internship only to be treated like you have no idea what you’re doing.
🎤🎧🎤
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