Support corporate interests rather than public concerns.
Revoke local decision-making.
Standardize children.
Distance classrooms from the communities they serve.
Here Are Some Tips for Addressing Fundamental Issues
With "Race to the Top" and the current push to adopt national standards in mind, Marion Brady has created six Powerpoint presentations addressing fundamental issues.
The presentations -- simple, clear, brief, and thought-provoking -- should be of interest to all who care about the future of public education. Requiring no commentary or advance preparation, they lend themselves to easy use by school administrators, coordinators, department heads and other school officials, by program chairs for school support organizations , civic clubs and study groups, and by private citizens concerned about the education of the young.
Every one of the presentations should stimulate lively, productive dialog.
(Note: Each ends with a screen relating to a particular instructional program, but since the program isn't for sale, this should present no problem.)
Contrasts, with examples of actual instructional activities, these two very different approaches to instruction, and the implications of each for reform.
Advances a revolutionary idea -- a sharp focus for general education. (The idea was advanced in A Policy With Punch,[pdf file] an article appearing in the October 2008 issue of American School Board Journal.)
Addresses students directly (and educators indirectly) challenging them to become change agents.
— Marion Brady Power Point Series
MIT Professor of Molecular Biology Jonathan Kingnotes :
Scientific achievement is not standardized. The natural world is diverse, and productive human inquiry takes many forms. The chemistry needed to synthesize antibiotics is different from that used to assess their effects on bacteria. Understanding glacial motions requires different mathematics than that used to calculate asteroid trajectories. Scientific advances depend on nurturing the full spectrum of human intellectual diversity
=================================================== Richard J Meyer advises:
If Lakoff is correct, we also cannot argue with them on their terms because, from a framing perspective, it merely (and importantly) ends up bringing more to mind what THEY are supporting rather than the counter argument we THINK we are offering. REFRAMING is the goal. But how? We keep getting stuck here.
I think a, and pardon the military metaphor, frontal attack is in order. something like this in a letter to the editor, ads, and placards AT the meeting and you SHOULD go (who ever is in oz)..."YOU PROFIT AND OUR CHILDREN SUFFER" or "THIS CONFERENCE IS NOT ABOUT READING; IT'S ABOUT HURTING" These people are inflicting pain and perpetuating suffering by locking kids into mindless programs. Middle class and upper class kids have a life outside school that counteracts, so they learn IN SPITE of school. Maybe that is another placard: SCHOOL IS ABOUT LEARNING. Also, consider A TEST SCORE IS NOT AN ECONOMIC SCORE. In the past when I have infiltrated such meetings, I'm asked to leave, but not before distributing flyers that tell participants to ask questions and then I list questions they should ask. Do that. Get in there. Or be outside where you can stand legally and distribute. Even if the questions don't get asked, they are in attendees minds. Fight. Fight hard.
Marion Brady's Comments submitted to the Race to the Top website make good talking points
RTTT is profoundly reactionary. Period.
It's:
(a) driven by data,
(b) derived from tests,
(c) keyed to subject-matter standards,
(d) keyed to a curriculum adopted in 1893.
Yes, 1893.
Imagine a car being driven at high speed down a winding rural road, with all the passengers, including the driver, peering intently out the back window. And take a look at his PowerPoint, Hey Kid! Listen Up!
Stephen Krashen's Comments at the U. S. Department of Education Race to the Top website make good talking points.
Are our schools failing? Students from high-income families outscore nearly all other countries on international tests. Only our high poverty children score below the international average. The US has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries. Our schools have been successful; the problem is poverty.
The first priority should be reducing poverty. Poor diet and lack of reading material seriously affect academic performance. When all our children have the advantages that children from high-income families have, our schools will be considered the best in the world.
Comparisons: An argument for standards and tests is that they allow comparisons. We can do this now. The NAEP is given every few years to samples of children, the results extrapolated to determine how different areas are doing. We need not test every child; the doctor does not have to take all your blood to get an accurate picture of your health. Let's improve NAEP and not start all over again.
Dangers of narrow, rigid standards: Everyone understands the value of having some common baseline benchmarks as well as the value of assessment. The push now is for narrow and rigid standards and widespread testing. Secretary Duncan's goal is to ensure that all children know where they are "on every step of their educational trajectory" at all times.
The tests will become the curriculum, promoting a rigid scope-and-sequence approach not in tune with how children learn.
Research shows that many "skills" are acquired when we do other things, not through "study." Most of our knowledge of concepts and facts comes from our attempts to solve problems. Nearly all of our educated vocabulary and our ability to write accurately and coherently, comes from wide reading.
It is impossible to teach all "skills" as discrete items; the systems to be mastered are too complex and large. Attempts to do this dominate and drive out activities that help children the most.
Over-testing promotes a culture of school as test-prep, with a focus on increasing test scores, not real learning.
21st century skills: New developments are nearly always a surprise. The best path is to make sure children are prepared for a wide variety of options and opportunities and develop individual talents. This means broadening the curriculum, not making it narrower.
We can use the standards established in longtime educator and children's author Lester Laminack's dream as inspiration and advocacy. Send his dream to NCTE and Ira. Adapt it for op eds in the local press. Send your op eds to your union and to your local politicos, school board, and service organizations.
by Lester Laminack
I dream of schools where children's art hangs in gallery spaces filling the hallways
And children gather in clusters in the mornings before class to hear books and poems flowing on the voices of teachers
I dream of schools that host conversations about books in the corridors and in alcoves throughout the building
Of schools that post poems and quotes in public spaces where children wait for lunch, cue up in line for water and restrooms, to enter the library or wait for buses.
I dream of schools that feature teachers’ favorite books face out throughout the hallways and in the office
Where children don’t know what AYP means, and don’t know where their class ranked on any test, and are greeted at the front door each morning like family returning from a long trip.
Where children are treated with the same respect afforded the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Where mistakes are seen as evidences of valiant attempts.
Where kindness is spoken with sincerity
Where collaboration and cooperation trump competition
Where all people are deemed worthy simply because they inhale and exhale
Where everyone is assured of both physical and emotional safety
Where your last name, country of origin, skin tone, sexual orientation, gender identity, language facility, economic status, politic views, religious traditions have no bearing on the attention you receive from teachers and others in the school
I dream of schools where days are not scripted by those who could not find the Post Office in your town
Where time spent engaged in inquiry, reading, making art, writing, interviewing, dancing, problem solving, dramatizing is more highly prized than time spent filling in bubbles, choosing the right answer to someone else’s questions or logging on to prove you read.
Where libraries will be as important as stadiums and auditoriums rival gymnasiums
Where children are eager to arrive and reluctant to leave
Where devotion to time for reading and writing can rival attention to the lunch schedule
Where teachers read aloud with the zeal of a street performer and the frequency of a birdsong
Where principals lead by example, know children by their successes, place books over bus schedules, teachers over text scores, students over stanines, communication over control
I dream of schools where teaching is judged by the character of the students leaving, their treatment of others, their concern for humanity, and their ability to think and reason with clarity and compassion
Where a teacher’s knowledge is the map used to chart the course of learning--and his/her heart is the navigator directing the journey
Where learning "how" is more important than learning "what" and knowing "when" and "why" are as important as getting the right answer
Where trying is more important than triumph and successive approximations are valued as much as success itself
Where children sit in small clusters for lunch gathered around a book discussion, a quote of the day, an issue to resolve in the classroom community while dining in a civil setting
Where children learn to engage in open dialog, respecting the ideas of others, entering and exiting a conversation in civil ways without raising a hand to be given permission to share their thinking in a free, civil, democratic society
I dream of schools where teachers do not feel forced to turn the pages and do what comes next in a program they do not believe in
Where teachers are treated with respect and professional courtesy, where their voices are listened to and trusted
Where hallways are read, viewed, puzzled over, seen as bearers of clues to riddles and brain teasers found throughout the building
Where walking in straight lines, and raising hands are less important than caring for classmates
Where writing is evaluated more on what is said, how it moves a reader, stirs an emotion, evokes a response, causes one to pause to think or change than on how many sentences were in a paragraph or how many paragraphs are in an essay
I dream of schools where readers are asked what they make of a text rather than asked to log on to give the correct answer to someone else's questions
Where children are found discussing the actions and motives of a character instead of recording the details of that character’s home or clothing
Where children are more familiar with poets than NFL players, more familiar with authors than actors, more familiar with illustrators and artists than with athletes, more familiar with inventors and social activists than the names of video games, more familiar with mathematicians and scientists than sit-coms and March Madness
I dream of schools where children know they are cherished and trusted, where they feel safe to risk being wrong in order to learn lessons more important than arriving at the right answer
Will you join me? Will you stand up for the children of this nation? Will you take a stand on the issues that matter most to the preservation of their one, precious childhood.
Free market education is Coulson's theme, aka school choice and competition. We may not want to jump off the cliff with him, but he makes strong arguments against national standards.
Don Perl Suggests: Sometimes the best answer is simply another question. And I would ask, "Why is that useful information when the measurements are invalid and tell us nothing about children, the way the learn, and their infinite variety?
General Points
1. We are opposed to detailed, rigorous and rigid standards that become items leading to a skill-building curriculum and a test.
2. Vague is good. It is far better to have a standard that says children will have experiences that help them develop a love reading fiction and nonfiction than to have a standard that declares 3rd graders will learn the comma in apposition. If you doubt this principle take a look at this funny review of E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy.
3. Anyone who has more than one child and/or a sibling or two will readily acknowledge how different siblings are. If two children living in the same household are so different, then how can we expect 3 1/2 million third graders to all learn the apostrophe at the same time?
4. We are not without standards. Our professional organizations have a long history of elucidating the tenets of the professional disciplines.
5. The political buzz surrounding the need for forces outside public school teaching and learning communities to create educational standards distracts public attention from the very real need for health, housing, and living wage needs of many children in our urban and rural schools.
We can use the standards established in longtime educator and children's author 
