Oppose High-Stakes Tests for Your Kids? Seek Religious Exemption

Parents: looking to opt out of the state tests?
Use a religious exemption.

Seattleducation2010 blog reported in "Part 5: High Stakes Testing and Opting Out: The Push Back" that United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries contributing to writing the National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing.

Valerie Strauss, reporting last year in the Washington Post, cited Presbyterians among religious denominations signing onto the national resolution on high-stakes tests.
High-stakes testing protests spreading

*The national resolution has been endorsed by a variety of major national organizations have also endorsed the resolution. This includes education groups such as the National Education Association and National Association for Bilingual Education; civil rights organizations such as the NAACP-Legal Defense and Educational Fund and its Asian American counterpart, AALDEF; National Opportunity to Learn Campaign; religious denominations including Presbyterians; and more. The National PTA sent to its members a letter saying the resolution is congruent with PTA policy and urging locals to sign it.

Yes, Rhee Did See Cheating Memo as D.C. Chancellor

(UPDATE: JOHN MERROW APPEARED ON CHRIS HAYES' MSNBC SHOW, DISCUSSING CHEATING SCANDAL - MEMO LINK BELOW) Valerie Strauss reported today that John Merrow reported that Michelle Rhee did see the January 30, 2009 memo about cheating in Washington, District of Columbia (D.C.) schools. Of course, she was well into her tenure as schools chancellor there, as her term of service began in June 2007 and ended October, 2010. So she could not pass this off as a development that began prior to her watch.

Just to be clear, because some have wondered, Rhee did see the memo, according to Merrow. He wrote in a post ["Michelle Rhee's Reign of Error"] on his blog, Taking Note:

I have a copy of the memo and have confirmed its authenticity with two highly placed and reputable sources. The anonymous source is in DCPS; the other is DC Inspector General Charles Willoughby. A reliable source has confirmed that Rhee and Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson discussed the memo in staff gatherings. Sanford came to Washington to present his findings in late January, 2009, after which he wrote his memo.

Rhee, however, did not push for a thorough investigation and instead, repeatedly, publicly minimized the extent of the cheating.

No, the memo doesn’t prove that cheating took place, but it does suggest there was more going on than investigators have so far uncovered. There have been several probes, but two — one by a private testing firm and the other by the D.C. Inspector General — were limited. Another, by the U.S. Education Department’s Inspector General, resulted in no action taken, though the extent of the investigation is unclear.

If the memo isn’t enough to spark a new investigation, this should be: My colleague Emma Brown reported in this new story that teachers in 18 D.C. classrooms cheated last year on high-stakes standardized tests during the chancellorship of Henderson, Rhee’s successor in the post, according to the results of an investigation released Friday by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

This confirmed cheating took place after security was tightened as a result of the earlier suspicions. All in all, a new probe — by investigators with real subpoena powers, which is how the Atlanta cheating scandal was uncovered — is clearly warranted.

Here is the bombshell 2009 memo, as reported at Merrow's Learning Matters website. At that time, the brewing scandal already had a name, euphemistic we might add: Erasure Study.

All of this reverses the long standing official story on the erasuregate scandal, that it was limited to 2011, that it was limited to one school. Yet, as this recent April 11, 2013 story by Greg Toppo at USA Today attests, the memo shows that the cheating was more widespread than previously understood.

District of Columbia Public Schools officials have long maintained that a 2011 test-cheating scandal that generated two government probes was limited to one elementary school. But a newly uncovered confidential memo warns as far back as January 2009 that educator cheating on 2008 standardized tests could have been widespread, with 191 teachers in 70 schools "implicated in possible testing infractions."

The 2009 memo was written by an outside analyst, Fay "Sandy" Sanford, who had been invited by then-chancellor Michelle Rhee to examine students' irregular math and reading score gains. It was sent to Rhee's top deputy for accountability.

The memo notes that nearly all of the teachers at one Washington elementary school had students whose test papers showed high numbers of wrong-to-right erasures and asks, "Could a separate person have been responsible?"

It recommends that DCPS contact its legal department "as soon as you think it advisable" and ask them to determine "what possible actions can be taken against identified offenders."

DCPS officials have said they take all cheating allegations seriously, but it's not immediately clear how they responded to Sanford's warnings. Only one educator lost his job because of cheating, according to DCPS. Meanwhile, Rhee fired more than 600 teachers for low test scores — 241 of them in one day in 2010.

The cheating issue first came to light in 2011, after USA TODAY reported that, between 2008 and 2010, 103 schools had test-erasure rates that surpassed districtwide erasure-rate averages at least once.

So, with those mass firings Rhee did, we wonder, was the wrong person (Michelle Rhee) not fired?
* * *
Another matter that arises is in Merrow's account how Rhee catapulted to the top of education supervision with flimsy credentials. She was aided by elite school pedigrees, a B.A. at Cornell University and a Masters in public policy from the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She then went on to teach her three year minimum in the elite Teach for America program in Baltimore. She never served as a principal or as another other sort of education administrator. She had no training or certification in educational supervision. Instead, she coasted along her stint supervising 120 teachers in the New Teacher Project (TNTP). She got the D.C. Chancellor position upon no standard credentials, instead by the recommendation of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. She billed herself as a student performance wonder in her bid as chancellor, yet her actual personnel file that would document her claims of supposed spectacular student performance were unavailable. (See the June 30, 2007 Washington Post article, "Council to Challenge Rhee's Résumé.") When someone did uncover her files, they indicated that her students' scores increase during the 2nd and 3rd years, but the gains were less than half what Rhee had claimed. (See February 8, 2011 Washington Post article, "Michelle Rhee's early test scores challenged.")

Furthermore, she practiced some cronyism. She hired her best friend, and that was just the start. Merrow wrote:

She surrounded herself with people with no experience running a large urban school system. Her deputy would be her best friend, Kaya Henderson, another former Teach for America corps member who was then Vice President for Strategic Partnerships at TNTP. She would be managing the District’s 11,500 employees.

Her Chief of Data and Accountability would be Erin McGoldrick, whom Rhee had met at Sacramento High School some years earlier and who was an avowed fan of Rhee. A classics major at Notre Dame, McGoldrick also studied public policy at UCLA. Although she was in charge of data analysis at the California Charter Schools Association when Rhee offered her the job, McGoldrick had no experience in Rhee’s ‘data-driven decision making,’ according to several reliable sources.

Rhee selected Jason Kamras, the 2005 National Teacher of the Year and a veteran of seven years in the classroom, to lead what she called her ‘Human Capital Design Team.’ Kamras’ assignments were to design a teacher evaluation system and create a model union contract.

That no one in her inner circle had any experience managing an urban school system did not seem to concern Rhee.

Quinn's Nixonian Threat to Time Warner Rivals Bloomberg's Napoleonic Power Impulse

Some labor union groups pooled money and hit against the front-runner in the 2013 New York City mayoral election, City Council president, Christine Quinn. The video ad, "Smoke-Filled Room," by NYC is Not For Sale, as the New York Times said, "conjures up ''The Wizard of Oz.''" So, she threatened Time-Warner's license.
(Gothamist reportign on Quinn's threatening letter, rant the headline, "A Mini-Giuliani Is Creeping Around Inside Quinn, Former ACLU Chief Warns." The Gothamist piece carried excerpts from opinion pieces by Ira Glasser and Norman Siegel. )
(See the video at right, under the link for Julie Cavanagh's interview with WOR's John Gambiling.)

You know, Quinn has been getting money from current mayor Michael Bloomberg, and presumably from other people. It is fair game, especially in the age of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
Yet, she is threatening Time Warner brings to mind president Richard Nixon's assault on the New York Times in 1971. Not even Bloomberg went after Betsy Combier, Norm Scott or the legion of anonymous New York bloggers and their Internet access. Quinn's threat against the free speech rights of Time Warner or the sponsors of the video ad really is beyond the pale of political intimidation.
Here's the beginning of Crain's of New York's story:

Updated: April 9, 2013 1:51 p.m. Christine Quinn's effort to suppress a negative TV ad has drawn harsh criticism from her rivals in the mayoral race.
A lawyer for Ms. Quinn's campaign had sent a letter Monday to Time Warner Cable and NY1 urging them to yank the ad, calling it "false, misleading and deceptive." The station could lose its operating license if it continued airing the ad, wrote the Quinn campaign's lawyer, Jerry Goldfeder.
The ad, funded by a coalition of labor and business interests, accuses Ms. Quinn of flip-flopping on issues like paid sick leave and living wage mandates, and slams her decision in 2008 to extend term limits.
After a mayoral forum on waterfront issues Tuesday, her main rivals pounced on Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, for what they perceived as a threat against Time Warner and NY1.
"It's very over-the-top," said Bill Thompson, the former city comptroller. "When looking at that ad, there's a lot of accuracy in that. I think [the Quinn campaign's letter] is an attempt to intimidate the press … and I think it's wrong."
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said he opposes independent expenditures like the one that paid for the commercial, but said it was a mistake for Ms. Quinn to question its premise. He also said he resented Ms. Quinn for suggesting he was responsible for the ad, calling it a "baseless" accusation.
"It's clearly an independent effort, and her team should recognize and respect that fact," he said. "I have never asked anyone to participate in independent activity, and I never will."
He added, "She's in denial ... I think the notion of any candidate suggesting something shouldn't be aired publicly is problematic." Comptroller John Liu said it unwise of Ms. Quinn to provoke a news organization like NY1.
"I don't know of any legal strategies that would work here," he said. "There are still the golden rules, which are if you're running for office or you're serving in office, don't mess with people who buy ink in bulk quantities or don't mess with people with really big antennas or big broadband."
Then, to NY1 reporter Grace Rauh, Mr. Liu added, "Your station seems to fit in that category."

Crain's Business closed with a note arguing that Quinn had some hand in bringing this problem upon herself.

But it could be argued that Ms. Quinn is being hoist by her own petard. The speaker supported a bill in the City Council that would greatly expand the ability of unions, corporations and advocacy groups to spend in political campaigns. The bill allows those groups to work indirectly with candidates on communications to their members, without the costs counting against candidates in the public finance system.

Questions Mulgrew Still Has Not Answered About Evaluation Deals

Here is a Movement of Rank and File Educators (UFT) handbill of "Ten Questions for President Mulgrew About the Evaluation Deal," from spring, 2012.
Covering issues ranging from evaluations, evaluation deals, whether such deals will go to a membership vote, TDRs, observation appeals, "validators," PIP+, the new burden of proof on teachers (rather than the New York City Department of Education) to prove that they are not ineffective, mandated unannounced observations, test-based evaluations, most of these issues are still not properly resolved, and these issues point to the central failure of New Action / Unity's Michael Mulgrew's tendency to make easy deals with mayor Michael Bloomberg for the sake of making deals. Essentially, these topics point to many of the ways that Mulgrew has failed to properly lead the membership. X the slate box to Vote Julie Cavanagh for UFT president, and the rest of the MORE slate.

X the Slate Box for MORE in the UFT Election (See article for MORE's 2nd leaflet)

The stakes in the United Federation of Teachers election are high. The choice is clear: continue the path of the destruction of the teaching profession (that the New Action and Unity caucuses' Mulgrew has helped to carry out) as a viable long-term career, saddled by the endless contract-breaking give-backs plus the curricular travesty of the Common Core, or vote for a positive alternative leadership caucus with a vision of fairness for teachers and students.
In the United Federation of Teachers elections this month, say good-bye to Unity and X the slate box for MORE caucus. Beat the April 24 deadline; mail in your ballot now. Download the full leaflet at this address.

MOVEMENT OF RANK and FILE EDUCATORS
www.morecaucusnyc.org
The UFT elections are upon us.
UFT members have a choice for new officers, and MORE believes that this choice can make a difference. The Movement of Rank and File Educators believes the teachers union can and should be the fighting force to defend public education for all students. In the classroom we will fight for small class sizes, rich curriculum, push back on the testing regime and an end of harassment and incessant paperwork. Outside the classroom we will demand a fair contract and democratic governance of our schools instead of simply waiting for a new mayor.
We will partner with parents, communities and other unions because we understand that our teaching conditions are our students learning conditions, and together we can make a difference.

Ballots are out April 3 and are
due back April 24 by mail.
We urge you and any UFT members you know to vote for a positive leadership for our UFT. In past elections less than a quarter of the active UFT membership voted for their leadership. Please spread the word to Get Out the Vote and vote in a positive alternative leadership.

Vote MORE!
Demand MORE from the UFT.
No more waiting, no more concessions to billionaire mayors
and the corporate reform agenda that ignores the needs of students, teachers and communities. Together let's build a movement to fight for the quality public education that every students deserves!

HELP US CHANGE OUR UNION
Vote MORE in the election and encourage all the UFT members you know to do the same.

Forward this message to friends, relatives, activists circles and ask them to do the same.

Watch and share our video at: http://morecaucusnyc.org/2013/03/

For more ideas on how to help GET OUT THE VOTE for MORE, please visit http://morecaucusnyc.org/2013/02/19/get-out-the-vote/

WWW.MORECAUCUSNYC.ORG

“In the last ten years, in a departure from the roots of our union’s founding, the leadership has failed to organize and mobilize the membership at the time we have needed their leadership the most. The tidal wave of unprecedented attacks on our profession, our schools and our children will not stop with a new mayor. It is time for change. It is time we demand MORE from our union.”
--Julie Cavanagh, MORE’s candidate for UFT president

Weingarten, Tisch gave in '13 to Bill Thompson for mayor; Mulgrew for mayoral control in 2002, 2009 and supports it in 2013

Uh oh, what a combination: William Thompson as New York City mayor, supporter of mayoral control; plus Michael Mulgrew as United Federation of Teachers president, supporter of mayoral control, as you can see at this November 2009 conference video, sitting to the right of New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, and supported it at last month's UFT Delegate Assembly. He has the chutzpah to say that mayoral control's 2009 form gave parents a "stronger voice."
-->>This week, you have the chance to change the latter part of this equation: replace Mulgrew with Julie Cavanagh of the MORE caucus as UFT president.

And now we see that Thompson has received four figure donations from Randi Weingarten and Merryl Tisch.

Credit Geoff Decker, Gotham Schools for scooping this story:

Bill Thompson lags behind his Democratic rivals in fundraising, but he’s out in front in one area of interest: support from high-profile education officials.

As he has ramped up his fund-raising efforts in recent months, Thompson has raked in thousands of dollars in donations from notable public figures in education, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and, most recently, Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the City University of New York, filings show.

Weingarten, who worked closely with Thompson when the pair overlapped during previous city education posts more than a decade ago, gave $2,000 to his campaign in two installments on Jan. 10 and Jan. 11. Tisch contributed $4,950 — the maximum allowed by the city’s campaign finance laws — to Thompson’s six-month haul ending in January, which totaled more than $1 million.

In his latest three-month filing, which totaled $322,000 and ended last week, Thompson took in $500 from Goldstein, records show. Goldstein, who along with Weingarten sits on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Education Reform Commission, gave the maximum $4,950 to Republican candidate Joe Lhota, a member of CUNY’s Board of Trustees.

Click to http://gothamschools.org/2013/03/19/bill-thompson-bid-gets-help-from-high-profile-education-figures/ for the rest of the story.

Citizens' Committee on Children Issues Map for Advocacy: "Know Your Geography: City Council Districts and Community Districts"

The Citizens' Committee on Children recently (March 27, 2013) issued a pair of overlapping maps, New York City Council districts and Community Districts. As the title implies, these maps are useful for community advocates, professional and volunteer. (My blog's old address carries a map of New York City school districts. The shading refers to the mid-2000s "regions" that the New York City Department of Education had, in one of their numerous pointless reorganizations.)

In the light of the current scandal embroiling among New York City Councilors and New York State legislators, it is interesting to consider: are the apparent disparities in educational resources between one councilmanic district and an adjacent one (within a single New York City school district) the result of unfair power of certain city councilors or are the disparities the result of mis-placed priorities on the part of city councilors? (So far, among the arrested in this scam to rig the Republican nomination of Queens Democrat Malcolm Smith are: Smith himself, Dan Halloran, Eric Stevenson and Joseph "Jay" Savino. Link is to story by Bob Kappstatter and David Cruz in the Bronx Times, April 4, 2013)

(For those just becoming aware of the matter --steady attention to the issue is unfortunately not a first page priority for the New York Times-- During the week of April 1, 2013, a number of Democratic and Republican city councilors and state legislators, hailing from a number of New York City boroughs, were arrested for their involvement in a plot to rig the 2013 New York City mayoral election. Why did the New York Times put this article on Christine Quinn, mayoral front-runner, and by many reports, current mayor Michael Bloomberg's hand puppet for a fourth term, and complaints about her role in councilmanic funds disbursements on page 20 instead of the front page?: Michael Grynbaum, April 4, "Councilman’s Boast Revives Question of Quinn’s Oversight")

FOR EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY, KNOW YOUR GEOGRAPHY: CITY COUNCIL DISTRICTS & COMMUNITY DISTRICTS

Keeping Track includes hundreds of indicators of child well-being at the community level. These data allow advocates, researchers, policymakers, and community members to understand the varying needs of children across New York City.

But when we bring Keeping Track to our local City Council Members, they often ask what the numbers mean for their constituents. Most of “community-level” data we collect from city and state agencies, and from other sources like the Census Bureau, are reported at the community district level.[1] But community districts and council districts are not the same.

Council districts are political boundaries and must be redrawn every ten years, after each decennial census, to ensure equal representation in city government, in compliance with the constitutional requirement of “one-person, one-vote.” Unfortunately for our local representatives, very few data – beyond basic demographic information – are available at the council district level.

Community districts, on the other hand, are administrative districts that exist mainly for community planning purposes. Their boundaries tend to (but don’t always!) follow natural neighborhood dividing lines (think large avenues or park boundaries) and encompass one or more whole neighborhoods. Many city agencies collect and report data by community district for planning purposes.

The map above shows the relationship between New York City’s current council districts[2] and the community districts. You can also download a more detailed version of the map that includes a table identifying the council districts and members and their corresponding community districts.

Understanding the geography of the data we report is critical to effective advocacy on a local level. We hope you use tools like these, along with the data in Keeping Track, to inform your local advocacy efforts. For more information on how to effectively advocate for New York City’s children, visit the What is Effective Advocacy page on our website.

[1] The U.S. Census Bureau reports data at several sub-borough geographies for New York City. The Census-designated Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) roughly approximate the city’s 59 community districts and are used in CCC’s analyses of Census data at the community district level. For more information on the relationship between New York City’s community districts and the Census Bureau’s PUMAs, see the Department of City Planning’s notes on city geographies: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/geo_notes.shtml.

[2] On March 1, the New York City Council adopted a Final District Plan with newly drawn council districts. On March 4, the plan was submitted to the United States Department of Justice for approval under the federal Voting Rights Act. As of the publication of this blog post, the U.S. Department of Justice was accepting public comments on the plan and approval was pending. The new council districts, when approved, will go into effect for the elections to be in 2013.

See the original CCC page for the hyperlinks.