Students statewide walkout in protest of new tests. Here’s everything you need to know and the schools where that is happening.
20 responses to “Students statewide walkout in protest of new tests. Here’s everything you need to know and the schools where that is happening.”
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I must say you have very interesting articles here.
Your posts should go viral. You need initial boost only. How to get massive traffic?
Search for: Murgrabia’s tools go viral-
Thank you, but I’ll continue to do it without tools and algorithms that promise, p[romise, promise but only if I pay them money to get the tools, etc.
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I know. I’ve read all about it and I want millions to walk out in every state refusing to take the CCSS tests or any test like them. I want our children and their parents to demand our schools be run from bottom up and not top down—putting teachers in charge of teaching.
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Thanks — on my reader but I would have missed it — shared from the original since I am in NM. I’m so glad to see the Albuquerque high schools doing this ~ can’t imagine it happening in Mountainair though
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The parent/children Opt Out movement and walk outs like these are growing. I wonder if this movement will eclipse the protests against the Vietnam War.
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That’s an interesting comparison ~ worth examining in depth. Hell no I won’t go = #OptOut. Unfortunately, the next question that comes to mind is: will the establish launch a comparable major media shut down / content control campaign ~ more than they already do, that is.
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I think the PR hacks paid for by the few oligarchs who control the corporate media message—about 90% of the traditional media is owned by six corporations—are struggling to find a message that will work to discredit the growing Opt-Out movement and resistance to Common Core’s Bill Gates driven Common Core ranking agenda that was designed to fire teachers, strip the teachers’ unions of any power as a voice for the teachers, and replace the non-profit, transparent, democratic public schools with for profit, opaque, corporate run autocratic corporate Charter schools mostly controlled by a few billionaires. For instance, the Waltons already control a cooperate Charter chain with more than 1,600 branches—a chain that I’ve read teaches creationism over science and evolution.
The PR hacks who work for these oligarchs and corporations fear for their pay checks. If they don’t deliver a message that fools most of the people, the contracts will go to other big PR and advertising firms. We might have seen an example of that desperation on Diane Ravitch’s Blog yesterday when a anonymous commenter known as, I think, WT (or something like that) called those children in New Mexico vigilantes.
I see this as a sign of panic. There is a vast difference in the definition of vigilantes versus civil disobedience.
For any readers here who are not sure of the definitions of those two terms, here they are:
> A vigilante is a person who is not a police officer but who tries to catch and punish criminals.
> Civil Disobedience is the refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.
And just who are these students really protesting against: Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Eli Broad and a few others and none of them have ever been elected to any political position, but these people and a few others are the drivers behind the corporate war on public education. Bill Gates, alone, has dedicated several billion dollars to this effort, and the Walton family spends about $160 million annually and has been doing so for decades.
Is it civil disobedience to stand up and protest an agenda that is clearly controlled and driven by a few billionaire oligarchs and the elected representatives that they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to get elected to do their bidding?
A few who are the puppets of these oligarchs are: Jeb Bush (former governor of Florida where Common Core standardized testing has gone instance and who is now running for president), Cuomo of New York, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Ohio’s Jon Kasich, Chris Christie (who can’t be trusted) of New Jersey, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, David Coleman, Eva Moskowitz and a few others scattered across the country who are doing as much damage as possible to the public schools.
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I’ll have to share Ravitch’s post on my local network blog and pages — plus track the story more closely in area news feeds. So far, my impression is that media here is not giving it due coverage. A former teacher friend in Deming tells me there is one there too.
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Don’t be surprised about the traditional media. At least 90% of the media has consistently ignored, misrepresented or played down the wide and growing resistance to the Common Core Standardized rank and fire, fail or close public schools based on standardized test scores agenda—that no other country on the planet does or has done in history—being pushed by Arne Duncan and his masters, Bill Gates and a few other billionaire oligarchs.
You might be interested in this book by Anthony Cody: http://www.amazon.com/The-Educator-And-Oligarch-Challenges/dp/1942146000
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I’d be more surprised if they did what they were supposed to
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Do you mean fair, honest and balanced reporting?
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something like that
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I think the United States lost that chance during the Reagan presidency when he vetoed the Fairness Doctrine and the first Bush in the White House made sure the Fairness Doctrine stayed dead when Congress attempted to bring it back. The GOP isn’t interested in honest debate or fair and balanced reporting through the traditional media.
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despite rhetoric Dems no prize there either
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My parents never voted. When I was old enough to be aware, I asked my dad why. He said, “Politicians are all crooks and liars. Voting is a waste of time, because they will tell us one thing to fool us and get our votes and then do something that hurts us.”
I think my dad was speaking from experience. Both of my parents had to drop out of high school at age 14 during the Great Depression to survive. My mother, at 14, was a waitress who was supporting her mother and younger sister. My dad started out mucking out the horse stalls at Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, California. Both earned poverty wages and barely made it. The unemployment rate at the high point of the depression was about 25% and most of these people lost their homes too while the govenrment did nothing until FDR became president. FDR was elected for a fourth term before he died and he wasn’t perfect but his policies were designed to help as many people as possible while holding the greedy oligarchs who only thought of themselves and more wealth in check.
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that reminds me of the old anarchist saying, “voting just encourages them.” One of the 19th anarchist women (not Goldman) commented that if voting could change things, they wouldn’t let us do it.
PS I worked full time as a stable hand on a TB breeding farm and later as a waitress before getting back to college
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When I left the Marines and started college with help from the GI Bill, that money wasn’t enough to support me, and I worked part time for the first two years at a Lucky Market as a box boy. In my third year in college, I quit that job and went to work part time at a JC Penny stocking shelves, selling shoes and putting window displays together. In my fourth year—it took five years to earn that BA—I worked full time one summer at a Gallo Winery in Modesto, I think it was in Modesto. It was touted as the largest winery in the world with a farm of 60,000 gallon stainless steel tanks that, with the help of chemicals—some that were poison—could turn out a tank of wine in about a week and then ship it off to the bottling plant. I never drank any wine from Gallo again.
But I started working in my teens when I delivered newspapers for a friend when his family went on vacation and then stood in as a temp for another friend in a butcher shop pushing a broom and cleaning up when his family went on vacation. At 15, I started work washing dishes about 30 hours a week nights and weekends and that job lasted for more than three years until after I barely graduated from high school and joined the Marines.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the reform movement. Reform is a word that most people think means improvement, but in reality reform means change and change doesn’t always lead to good things.
For instance, this post at ProPublica: The Demolition of Workers Compensation
Then there was Tort reform that was based mostly on lies and fooling the public to gain their support. Tort reform only benefited the corporations and limited or ended any chance of the average man getting justice. HBO did a documentary on it.
Then there is the mobile phone and/or internet cable industry. When we sign a contract with Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. there is fine print that says we give up our right to sue them for any reason—except in small claims court. We end up signing contracts that are so long in such small print that few people take time to read what they are signing and if they refuse, they can’t buy phone or internet service.
Corporate reform of public education is another misuse of reform for profit. Education reform in America has nothing to do with improving education.
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back in the 60s my not yet ex (UPI international desk) saw death of journalism in mechanization and failed strikes…used to bring home teletype roll for me to read the naked news from around the world…before it got spun
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About 90% of the media today is a tool that is used to fool as many people as possible while a very small number of incredibly wealthy individuals use those fools to accomplish agendas that will benefit mostly those few who already hold much of the wealth and power.
I earned my BA in journalism in 1973, and while earning that degree in college on the GI Bill, I also learned that the media could not be trusted—and it is ironic that earning a BA in journalism also caused me to stop trusting most of what I heard or read from the media without doing some fact checking on my own.
Too many people probably don’t even think about fact checking what some talkign head claims on the news or in a paper or magazine and because they don’t doubt, they become the fools that power agendas that end up hurting millions of people to beneift a few.
Lloyd Lofthouse
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