“Education under attack! What do we do?
Stand up, fight back.”
-- Save Our Schools Chant
This from the Washington Post:
There are many reasons thousands of teachers traveled across the country to protest in front of the White House on Saturday — including to oppose charter schools, to fight for equal funding for poor schools, and to have more say in public education policies.
But at a noisy rally starting at noon under soaring temperatures, their message boiled down to one point, which was summed up by the sound check before the first speaker took the stage: Tap. Tap. “No testing, no testing, 1-2-3.”
The assembled teachers, education advocates and parents vented a frustration they said has been building since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, which made standardized testing the centerpiece of a school reform agenda championed by George W. Bush.
With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, many thought their long-standing complaints, about how the policy has imposed unfair penalties on the poorest schools and how it has narrowed curriculum to make time for test preparation, would finally be heard.
But three years later, the law is still intact, more schools are being labeled as failing, and standardized tests are starting to be used to make teacher tenure and termination decisions.
“We had reason to believe from his campaign promises that Obama was going to reverse the damage that this law has caused,” said Jonathan Kozol, a public education activist and author. “He has betrayed us. . . . That’s why we are here today.”
And so about 5,000 people, according to the organizers’ estimates, stood on the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument and waved posters that read “Boycott NCLB” and “Teach Me, Don’t Just Test Me.” ...
At least a dozen other cities hosted sister rallies or events. The demonstration’s leaders are a core group of teachers, parent activists and education bloggers who maintain that federal policies are too influenced by business leaders and too little by educators who know how policies play out in classrooms...
1 comment:
I think that this is wonderful that teachers are in Washington protesting to boycott the No Child Left Behind Act. While the NCLB Act seemed like a good idea when George W. Bush enacted it because "my child, no matter their learning ability or socio-economic status will move forward" many would not realized the acutal damage it would do. With the current emphasis being on test scores for children and schoolds to be successful, the testing includes those that have learning disablities, those that have test anxiety, and others that do well in class, but don't succeed on the tests. This is extremely unfair to the teachers as it puts the burden on them, while they may be a wonderful teacher and their students many seem to understand the material. I agree with the march. Hopefully soon this act will be boycotted.
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