Mr. President, We Want Your Children's Education, Too

From an insightful column by Rachel Levy

(Photo: Not a Sidwell classroom!)

"Mr. President, if... the new school reformers' policies, which you and your administration support, are the right ones, why don't you send your own children to the very schools where such policies are being implemented? If that is not possible, why send them to a school that is in many ways the mirror opposite of your revolutionary reforms?

Is it possible that the very things that make Sidwell [school] so enticing to you (..their website [states]: "We offer these students a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders") do not apply to children in public schools, and, specifically, inner-city schoolchildren?

Your educational reforms leave interdisciplinary curriculum, creative inquiry and independent thinking by the wayside in the pursuit of higher math and reading scores. Elite kids get to read, find learning fun and relax in moments of quiet reflection, but public school systems, apparently in a crisis, have to drop recess, the arts, science and social studies, not to mention many of their neighborhood schools, in the quixotic quest for higher test scores and school "choice." Are such policies fine for the education of other children, but not your own?

Mr. President, if we should all have your healthcare, as you have said we should, then shouldn't we all have your children's quality education, too? No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Arne Duncan and Bill Gates are not going to get us there, and your choice in where you send your children to school demonstrates that.

Do you think that children in public schools aren't ready for these luxuries? Or are their brains somehow different? Less curious? Less creative? I don't think you believe this. But it seems to me you should at least say that they deserve exactly what your own children have. When you fail that basic test, it makes me think you're just the elitist that your populist critics say you are. "

Where are the others?

This first post is dedicated to Dr. Jesse Turner. He walked some 350 miles from his hometown in Connecticut to Washington, D.C. to protest the education reform policies under No Child Left Behind and now also Race To The Top that focus on test scores. He's taking a stand for all children in hopes of turning the tide against testing which causes teachers to spend more time on preparing students for the test than on good teaching!

Here is the wonderful and heartfelt response from Jesse to a message on my Stop National Standards Yahoo group where education activists and nationally renowned authors are joining forces; also to take a stand for all of America's children!

Don Perl, the first known teacher to refuse to give the CSAP (Colorado state test) to his students, now heading The Coalition for Better Education wrote:

"..my sense is that unless there is a resounding NO by parents to the horror that is high stakes standardized testing, the criminal policies of the tiny tyrant (translation: [Secretary of Education, Arne] Duncan) will continue to decimate and undermine all of us.

Thank you Jesse, for undertaking this courageous walk for justice and equity in education".

Jesse replied: "Salutations Don and others, yes we need parent voices in mass to fight this insanity. At one of my Walking Man Events in Jersey City New Jersey a parent Laura Brown said "we believe in your cause Jesse, and appreciate your walk, but where are the others walking with you. There should be thousands, there should be be hundreds here tonight for you."

I often am alone on my walk to DC. I wonder where is the press? I wonder where is the outrage. Then I reflect how many walked with Dr. King on his first walk? How many refused to give up their seat on the bus with Rosa Parks on the bus?
Is this not a civil rights issue? Our politicians use the Achievement Gap and race with this legislation every chance they get. The mainstream media pays them homage every chance they get.

While I am no Dr. Martin Luther King, no Rosa Parks, I can't help feeling them walk beside every step of the way. This nonsense of focusing mainly on standardized test scores (so very often accused of racial, cultural, and linguistic bias) to close the Achievement Gap is an insult.

I told Mrs. Brown the same thing I tell everyone on Facebook's Children Are More Than Test Scores. We are part of the resistance. We are growing. We are moving. Some are walking, some are writing, some are meeting, some are organizing, and I am walking. Finally I told her "Every tidal wave begins with a single drop of rain", (my signature line these days)

Don, I am collecting those drops of rain in my pockets these days, and one day we will all be walking in a rain that brings a tidal wave of justice to our schools.
Thank you for your kind words of support, and thank you every one for resisting this insane reform policy that is destroying our public schools, and thank you for keeping us informed.

Sincerely,
Jesse