Newark's Top High School Students Occupy Cami Anderson's Offices

from Bob Braun:

A small group of Newark high school students Tuesday night seized the office of state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson in a protest timed to coincide with her imminent re-appointment to another year, her fifth,  as head of the state’s largest school district. The action, which is continuing through the night, stands in stark contrast to the failure of Anderson’s older–and, theoretically, more powerful–critics to do anything to dislodge her from her post.

The operation was executed with an efficiency that has eluded Anderson’s control of the district. The dozen students and a few adult advisers pulled off the occupation of the suite of offices on the eighth floor while a public school board meeting droned on two floors above on the tenth floor. The students had attended the meeting and some spoke, hinting broadly they were about to do something, and then left in a group–but they weren’t going home to do their homework.

Newark students sprint down long eighth-floor hallway to get to Anderson's offices ahead of security officersNewark students sprint down long eighth-floor hallway to get to Anderson’s offices ahead of security officers.

The dozen or so students crammed into an elevator and pushed the 8th floor button, then sprinted to Anderson’s office, expecting all the while to be met with resistance from security officers. Instead, the office site was wide open and empty except for a puzzled janitor who, while mopping the floors, cautioned the students not to slip on the wet tiles. “Be careful,” he said, not quite sure of the intent of the visitors.

The students–many of them from the city’s vaunted Science Park High School–set to work establishing what amounted to a communications center where they broadcast their demands that Anderson resign immediately–for, among other reasons, her failure for a year  to attend board meetings, including the one the students had just left.

Read the rest here.

Carol Burris Urges Civil Disobedience to End High Stakes Testing

from Valerie's place at WaPo:

It has become increasingly clear that Congress does not have the will to move away from annual high-stakes testing. The bizarre notion that subjecting 9-year-olds to hours of high-stakes tests is a “civil right,” is embedded in the thinking of both parties. Conservatives no longer believe in the local, democratic control of our schools. Progressives refuse to address the effects of poverty, segregation and the destruction of the middle class on student learning. The unimaginative strategy to improve achievement is to make standardized tests longer and harder.

And then there are the Common Core State Standards. Legislators talk a good game to appease parents, but for all their bluff and bluster, they are quite content to use code names, like the West Virginia Next Generation Content Standards,  to trick their constituents into believing their state standards are unique, even though most are word for word from the Common Core.

The only remedy left to parents is to refuse to have their children take the tests. Testing is the rock on which the policies that are destroying our local public schools are built. If our politicians do not have the courage to reverse high-stakes testing, then those who care must step in. As professor of Language and Composition, Ira Shor, bluntly stated:

 Because our kids cannot defend themselves, we have to defend them. We parents must step in to stop it. We should put our foot down and say, “Do it to your own kids first before you experiment on ours!”

Read the rest here.

Students of Democracy in Colorado and Around the World: Two Videos

A Little Too Ironic

Maybe you're not 44 and so are not conversant with the movie Reality Bites (its genesis and presentation 20 years past), but I am.

The down-and-out 20-something "losers" (heed my punctuation, please) in that film did not exemplify me.  I had a job as an English teacher in a parochial high school in St. Louis, MO and was raking in a massive 18k.  The mise-en-scene of this movie with which I did not identify was the marketing juggernaut called "Seattle Grunge."  In any event the protagonists have relationship issues, job issues, artistic issues, Pearl Jam shows up, maybe Alice in Chains, maybe Soundgarden, I don't really remember.  But I do have, apparently, permanently etched in my memory, a scene, an offhand, tossed-off scene, in which Winona Ryder's character and Ethan Hawke's (Oh Captain, my Captain!, sorry, different movie) discuss the fact that she cannot properly define irony and suggests it's indefinable.  The Hawke character, perhaps the genesis of all Hawke characters thereafter, is a jerk, and without missing a beat, defines it.  As with all definitions, it is partial.

Now, irony, life, reality (perhaps simply synonyms) have been visited upon me on many occasions.  But I think we can only see life as ironic if you take a "meta" position to your life.  Oedipus marrying Jocasta and murdering Laius performs (or is visited by) an irony but feels it as a deserved judgement and so he must not see it as irony but rather as a fate.  If he'd have gone about his business, moved on and tried to be the tyrant of another city-state, or gone off to be a hermit offering wisdom to Monty Python characters, and reflected upon the narrative events of his performed life he might have thought those events ironic.  In short (was that short?), irony springs out of studying performance, reflecting upon the events and happenings in life AS IF they were something akin to a play--a fiction, an act.

However, we likely feel that irony is our tragedy and that is not an act, but our lived, flesh-and-blood, painful, life.

I recently wrote and posted a kind of "study" that attempted to call into question certain behavioral performances in schools ("Instructed to Ignorance").  These performances are, I would propose, near-universal in schools all across the this empurpled majestic land.  I described the content of a classroom situation that to me yielded, from one perspective, this conclusion: "curriculum materials" are only education product and so only a commercial venture and so only an economic widget serving to turn a profit for corporations like Pearson.  It seems to me that teachers know this.  It seems to me that administrators know this.  The parents I talk to know this.  Why is there persistence in this?

Further I wrote that a principal, when attempting to discipline elementary-age children, is disciplining by his/her own behavior and that it is likely that "he" is, in himself (a whole and a part!), a giant "non-verbal" sign to children who are being "institutionalized" in school.  Again, this seems to me a commonplace.  We try to train children to walk in a line on one side of the hall (like roadways), we try to train them in respectful silence, we try to train them in respect for authority.  In short, this is obedience training.  I pointed out that this is done in animal training too and that we have positive and negative reinforcements open to us.  Further I noted that correction requires consistent repetition.  I did not say this was a "wrong" thing, or that it was an abhorrent act, or some kind of injustice.  I did not call the principal a bad man or an unprincipled one.  I described an act that I believe so common as to not even need description.  I described a display of hierarchical authority.

Yesterday, irony bit me for this transgression.  It was conveyed to me that this was an act of ridicule.  I was, to use Peckham's phrase, introduced to a "policing" event.

I was released from the position that was valued the same as a locker room attendant in this particular school corporation; from the position for which I would be paid, if annualized, about 4k less than I made 20 years ago in my first teaching job.  In this I do self-pityingly feel an urge to blind myself in penance to the fates...

***

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all [men], apt to teach, patient, 

To win them through our patient bearing with them, but not to please them or excuse them in their wickedness. 

In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; 

He means those who do not yet see the truth.  (2 Timothy 2:24-5, Geneva Bible)

It is instructive that I was treated as if I were those same kindergartners and perhaps this action was a proof of the perceived exposure to ridicule.

An important difference to note is that I was not instructed (with rolled-up newspaper, as it were) so as to correct an error and hopefully show the results of that education by "learned" response.  Instead I was sent to the pound for disposal, perhaps like Veruca Salt, unregenerate, a clear instance of the "bad egg."  You'd think the weeks in 5th grade "IDR" would have learned me better.

Or at least my reading of Moby Dick...


***

   But the third emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. 

   It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned. 

From "The Cabin-Table" (ch. 34) in Moby Dick.
***

But what of recourse?  None, really.  There is an appeal process that consists of the HR Director appointing an "impartial hearing examiner" (defined as a party who is unaware of the situation) to meet with me and investigate the circumstances regarding the recommendation to terminate my employment. This examiner is an employee of the school corporation.

Thoreau offers us advice in his "Resistance to Civil Government."

One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offense never contemplated by its government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who put him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again. 

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.  

As for adopting the ways of the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should be doing something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body. 

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

The corporation hires hourly wage employees because they are hiring fewer teachers, buying more technology, and need, simply, bodies ("embodied air").  These are bodies that cannot offer an opposing view, or, I should say, they can offer this one time.  We noted the ramifications of this in Jim's post on the 60-student cubicle classroom and I offered a kind of expansion in "Technagogically Yours."  Not only does this cut labor costs; it cuts out that "dangerously" random relationship that consists of one human conversing with another human.  It cuts out a potentially disobedient or inappropriate response (thought-crime!) and attempts with greater intensity and aggression than ever before to create an wholly predictable respondent, i.e., student, citizen, human.  In other words, a slave.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. 

   What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about -- however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way -- either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

From "Loomings," (ch. 1), Moby Dick

Mark Your Calendar: Occupy the DOE in DC March 30-April 2

United Opt Out National endorses Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together by creating ACTION in solidarity.   

PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE POST FOR ALL INFORMATION ON THE OCCUPATION. WE OPT OUT OF CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM.
 

It is time to end Wall Street Occupation of Education.

We asked – they said NO.  We wrote – they said NO.  We sent them research – they said NO.  We say NO.  We opt out. We will put a screeching halt to corporate education by saying NO to the test.

We will occupy the Department of Education in DC from March 30^th to April 2^nd.  On-going planning can be found at our Facebook Occupy the DOE page.

It’s time to put the public back in public education. Occupy the DOE and show them who education REALLY BELONGS to.

Join United Opt Out National & #OCCUPYDOE in Washington D.C.

April Fools!
No Child Left Behind – Fool Me Once.
Race to the Top – We Won’t be Fooled Again.

Join us.  In solidarity with Occupy Movements everywhere.
See SCHEDULE.

Download summary of schedule.

Share this letter to promote Occupy the DOE in DC.

See here for Occupy the DOE in DC posters created by Jay Rivett from Occupy ART: Indiana.
Wondering where to stay? Check the map here for hotel locations and more.

See here for Occupy DOE Rules of Engagement

Our Problem Is Civil Obedience

Governor Scott Walker, Welcome to Mic Check in Chicago!

Be Part of the Last Thin Line on October 6-7

Teachers Call Out Government-Corporate Collusion and Get Taken to Jail

Think it's too early for civil disobedience?  Even as they scrounge of copy paper and markers for their students, teachers know where the money is--the BANKSTERS have it.  From Susan O:

CA teachers have spent this week getting arrested. In Sacramento, UC Santa Cruz students and Oakland teachers led other teachers into a sit-down strike in the capitol rotunda until they got arrested. This embarrassed the CA Teachers Assoc president, David Sanchez, into getting himself arrested yesterday.

And yesterday Oakland teachers continued their (our) protests at Wells Fargo, where 7 got arrested for sitting in the lobby.

Be inspired! Go shut down one of the Not Too Big to Jail banks!

OEA Stages Sit-in at Wells Fargo, Oakland from Pamela Drake on Vimeo.

Will the British Royals and American Billionaires Hire Blackwater for Their Entourages?

Mr. Obama, America's Nick Clegg, should take note:



A clip from the Guardian:

. . . . Shiv Malik, co-author of the book Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth, says the under-thirties feel betrayed – sold out in favour of their parents and grandparents. Fees, he argue, are just one part of the jigsaw. The 29-year-old took to the streets himself on Thursday, and was injured after being hit by a police baton. He argues that most of the protesters were not anarchists or socialists but young people whose instinct to revolt had been awakened for the first time.

"George Osborne kept his promises to the older generation – to keep their free eye tests, their winter fuel allowance, their free prescriptions, their free bus passes," says Malik. "Eighty per cent of winter fuel recipients are not winter-fuel poor. If you means-tested [them], you would make £2bn to spend on higher education."

He argues that what has particularly angered the young is David Cameron and Nick Clegg's insistence that the cuts are necessary to prevent heaping debt on to the next generation. "They have cut our futures and are lumbering us with debts anyway," he declares.

The shift in mood is perhaps most obvious inside the National Union of Students. Until recently, its president, Aaron Porter, had been attacked for being unwilling to fight, facing howls of protest from the left for giving up the battle for free higher education and instead accepting the principle of a "graduate contribution".

But he wanted a graduate tax – not annual fees of £9,000 a year. While the NUS marched against fees in 1998 and 2004, this year's revolt has been on a different scale. "There has been a build-up of issues – not just tuition fees but the EMA, youth unemployment, struggling to get onto the housing ladder and bleak prospects for the future – all coming together to spark a wave of protest," says Porter. "The NUS considers this level of youth activism to be unprecedented, perhaps since the 1960s."

Other organisations are involved too: UK Uncut, which has targeted high street chains in its campaign against tax avoidance; the Education Activist Network for lecturers and students; the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts, which grew from a meeting with 170 students.

The photographers who ran alongside the protesters on Thursday captured the defining moments of an extraordinary day: young people using metal poles to try to break into the Treasury; the Duchess of York open-mouthed as protesters attacked the car she and Prince Charles were travelling in; Charlie Gilmour, son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, swinging by the union flag off the side of the Cenotaph.

It had started peacefully, but as evening slipped into night the scenes turned violent. The bright yellow jackets of the police disappeared, replaced by black riot gear, batons and shields.Some described it as reminiscent of the poll tax protests of 1990. Fifty people were injured, 33 were arrested, one police officer sustained a serious neck injury and one student, Alfie Meadows, suffered a stroke and required brain surgery after allegedly being struck by a police baton.

The protests opened a passionate debate about whether the violence had harmed the cause or helped by putting the story on the front page. Cameron reacted angrily to the "feral" behaviour, saying it was not just a "small minority". "There were quite a lot of people who were hell-bent on violence and destroying property," he said.

Questions also swirled about whether the police had gone too far. Protest leaders accused them of a heavy-handed and disproportionate response; students who had travelled to London with Meadows, for example, insisted he had been there to protest peacefully.

So, it seemed, had many others. "By the time the cuts are put into place, my uni will be hanging by a shoestring and the government want to charge people three times the amount," said Lucinda Hodge, 22, from Goldsmiths, University of London. "Politicians don't care about young people as we don't vote as much. We are just collateral damage."
Others had come from school and college. "There is a slim chance of going to university now," said Roze Brooks, 17. "Quite frankly I won't be able to pay," said Jack Jordan, 16.

There was even some sympathy in the right-wing press. While condemning the violence, the Daily Mail also commented: "We… worry that graduates will have to start paying this money back at about the time they are buying their first house and starting a family, crippling them financially just as they try to become fully fledged members of society."

Young people are discussing fears about their financial futures. "Debt for ever?" asked Holly Carlile, 22, from the University of Birmingham. "Will we ever be out of rented accommodation? How are we expected to put a single foot on the property ladder?" Jacob Burns, who studies at Goldsmiths, said he was increasingly pessimistic about ever being "debt free".Back in Hove, Lucas switched off the television. She felt the police and some protesters had gone too far and described the action as a "lost cause".

The demonstration may not have stopped the vote on fees, but it certainly has political implications, not least for the Liberal Democrats, who have seen their support among students collapse.

Other young people are angry too. Lucas said she would be unlikely to vote for them again, and she doubted that any of her friends would either. "They say it is a long time till the next election, but I don't think people will forget. They don't seem to have stood by anything I voted for apart from the pupil premium," Lucas said.

"I feel let down, like I was naive. It is a bit like a boyfriend has cheated on you. I will not be able to trust them again – and trust is an important thing when you are deciding who should run the country."

It is not just the Lib Dems that are suffering. Many students believe that all three parties failed to come clean about their ideas on higher education in their manifestos. On Thursday, one Tory MP was seen being harangued by three angry female students, decked out in coats and woolly hats for the protest.

"So what you are telling us is that we are not worth paying for," said one, raising her voice. Labour can challenge now, but many remember that it was Labour which set up the Browne review that led to the change in policy.

Nevertheless, the Lib Dems' problems are the most visible, not least because the party reached out to young people before the election. At the end of the debate on Thursday, the tension was clear as some of the party's MPs stayed rooted to their seats, abstaining, while others headed to different lobbies to vote for and against the policy. . . .

Mass Civil Rights Demonstration Planned for Raleigh July 20

The vote by the Tea Party Five to destroy the most effective socioeconomic school integration plan in America has spawned a new era of civil disobedience in Raleigh and a re-connection of the state NAACP with the flowering of the Civil Rights Movement.  From the News and Observer: 

RALEIGH In an attempt to draw parallels with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a pair of local activists issued a letter today explaining why they were willing to be arrested to oppose the end of Wake County’s school diversity policy.

In the letter, the Rev. William Barber, head of the state NAACP, and the Rev. Nancy Petty, pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, write that their actions were decided to force the community to confront the issues now facing the school system. They were among four people arrested for disrupting last week’s school board meeting.

Their letter is a direct play on Rev. King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which he wrote in 1963 after being arrested for protesting municipal segregation in Birmingham. Ala. King argued in the letter that direct action through non-violent demonstrations were needed to combat segregation.

“In the best American traditions, from Henry David Thoreau to Ella Baker to Martin Luther King, Jr., we recognize the necessary place of civil disobedience: breaking a small and unjust law in order to protect a larger and broadly significant law,” Barber and Petty write.

Their letter is called “Thoughts While we were Being Handcuffed, and Processed at the Wake County Jail on June 15 after Engaging in an Act of Nonviolent Civil Disobedience.”

Supporters of Wake’s diversity policy have repeatedly tried to link their fight with that of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. They’ve argued that the school board majority’s elimination of the socioeconomic diversity policy will lead to racial resegregation of Wake’s schools.

“Our actions are a call to the community,” Barber and Petty write. “There is a tragedy unfolding in Wake County, but it is not confined to Wake County. What is happening in Wake County is a national issue.”

Opponents of the board majority have held mass protests, engaged in acts of civil disobedience and sung civil rights era songs at school board meetings and rallies. Tim Tyson, a Duke University historian and author who was among those arrested at last week’s board meeting, has repeatedly tried to tie the call for neighborhood schools with George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama.

Barber announced Monday a mass demonstration in Raleigh on July 20 to coincide with that day’s school board meeting. . . .                           

New Jersey Students Role Models for Civil Disobedience

New Jersey students exhibit the intensity, determination, and focus that should serve to inspire students nationwide. What 18 year old or what parent will organize a nationwide walkout and boycott of the tests? That will change the political rhetoric overnight. Video from Star Ledger.

Newark students walk out of school, take City Hall

AP Reports Millions Rallying to Save Public Education

Students, teachers rally to protest education cuts

03/04/10 at 11:48 AM

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Millions of students, teachers and parents are expected to rally throughout California and many other states to protest deep cuts in funding for schools and universities.

Demonstrations, marches, teach-ins and walkouts are planned nationwide Thursday in what is being called the “March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education.”

Events are being held at most of California’s public colleges and universities to protest budget cuts that have led to canceled classes, faculty furloughs and steep fee hikes.

Students, teachers and school employees are converging in Sacramento to persuade lawmakers to restore funding to public schools.

Regional rallies are planned in civic plazas in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and other cities.

Defending Public Education

UPDate: Go here for Updated information.

From the Daily Californian:

By Jeff Schauer

Special to the Daily Cal

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Category: Opinion > Op-Eds

March 4 is a day for the promotion of public education in California.

There is a march at the state capitol planned for 11 a.m., a rally in Oakland at 1 p.m. and many reasons to be at either location.

Any teacher knows that education isn't something that comes cheaply. You can't cut corners in what is one of the most labor-intensive but necessary and ambitious endeavors out there. Technology can aid but can never displace the need for a low teacher to student ratio. Bureaucracy, though an issue, is a minor one, and focusing on cutting costs plays into the hands of Republicans who are drooling at the prospect of hacking into the state's budget. We must fund K-12 and higher education properly, and this means tax hikes at some stage, which in turn mean the repeal of Proposition 13.

Corporations have been blackmailing the public, threatening to leave the state if we raise taxes to fund education. We can call their bluff: other states will be taking similar action to sustain their own education systems; there is already considerable infrastructure in place that would make the threatened pull-out impractical; finally, it is in the interests of businesses to have a skilled, educated workforce. But pragmatic counter-arguments aside, we should not cave into threats against education's ability to do moral good. The skills and lessons that education provides, and the central ideal of a properly-funded public education system--that children and students from all backgrounds learn on an equal footing and are treated the same-are the best antidotes to the inequalities of geography, class, race and opportunity that plague us. This is why access to the University of California, badly threatened by a view that sees the sky as the limit where fee hikes are concerned, is so important to defend.

I have spent 19 years in California's public education system (six at the University of California), and feel as though I have been incredibly well-served by the experience. But now the students with whom I work at Cal and in Berkeley's school district are facing formidable hurdles: the familiar specters of inequality that come from a chronically-underfunded system on the one hand; but also looming threats from a growing and powerful minority in our legislature and state who argue that public education is expendable, that the public good doesn't matter, and that the idea of equality is irrelevant. March 4 provides an opportunity to go on the record saying that we don't buy any of those ideas.

The campus community will interminably debate whether UC leadership or legislators in Sacramento are the real villains. My own view is that the ultimate solutions to the university's problems lie in state politics in general and in Proposition 13 in particular (and, if this is about public education broadly conceived, that is all the more reason to target Sacramento).

That doesn't mean that we can't also hold UC President Mark Yudof and the regents' feet to the fire. The important thing to realize, though, is that we have run out of reasons to delay taking collective action: what hangs in the balance on Thursday is more than an absence from lecture or missing a teaching day. Berkeley should live up to its ideals and speak with one voice on March 4, whether that be in Oakland or at the capitol.

Make it National: Strike March 4 to Save Public Education

Posted on Facebook and MySpace:

Please Invite Your Friends To This Event!

Want to receive updates? Contact us at: march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com

MySpace: http://tinyurl.com/yeugu4b
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com
************************************************

March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education

On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education – Pre K-12, Adult Education, CC, CSU and UC – to "decide on a statewide action plan capable of winning this struggle, which will define the future of public education in this state, particularly for the working class and communities of color."

After hours of open collective discussion, the conference democratically voted, as its principal decision, to call for a statewide Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. The conference decided that all schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics – such as strikes, walkouts, march to Sacramento, rallies, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. – for March 4, as well as the duration of such actions.

We refuse to let those in power continue to pit us against each other. If we unite, we have the power to shut down business-as-usual and to force those in power to grant our demands. Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services.

We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations across the state to endorse this call and massively mobilize and organize for the Strike and Day of Action on March 4.

Let's make this an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and educational segregation in California.

To endorse this call and to receive more information, please contact march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com and consult
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com

_____________________________________
Endorsers:
Oct. 24th Mobilizing Conference to Defend Public Education
CUE Local 3 at UCB
Solidarity Alliance at UCB
General Assembly at UCB
CFT: CA Federation of Teachers
United Teachers Los Angeles: the largest teachers local in CA
AFSCME Local 444: East Bay Municipal Utility District
AFT 1021: part of United Teachers LA, represents over 10,000
California Labor Federation, which has over 2 million workers in unions
California Faculty Association [CFA]: CSU Faculty Union,representing the 23,000 professors, librarians, etc.
Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC) - the SSCCC endorses a march 4th day of action
Carpenters Local 713 passed AFSCME Local 444's
CDPH Inter Union Organizing Committee: SEIU 1000, Stationary Engineers 39, CAPS, PEGS, and others have joined the March 4th Strike Call
Oakland Education Association- 2,800 teachers,counselors and librarians

Zero Tolerance for Peaceful Protest at Southwestern College

From Inside Higher Ed:

On Thursday, several hundred students at Southwestern College, a community college outside of San Diego, held a peaceful protest over budget cuts that are leading to the cancellation of more than 400 additional course sections next semester. On Friday, the students got a sign that someone was paying attention to the protest, but they didn't get the response they wanted: Four faculty members were immediately suspended and barred from the campus or using the campus e-mail system. . . .

If Not Now, When? Reclaiming Education

William Greider's recent article in The Nation, The Trouble with Democrats, Reclaiming the Economy for the People, has enormous implications for other critical issues facing the nation -- including education.

"This crisis brought down the world economy and yet Congress still hasn't passed a bill making sure it doesn't happen again."

Julia Gordon, a lawyer with the Center for Responsible Lending, did not seek anonymity. "We have reached the moment to ask ourselves Rabbi Hillel's question: If not now, when?" Gordon said.

"I fear we are letting this crucial moment pass without putting forward-looking rules in place to fundamentally change how mortgages are made and prevent predatory lending. That question ought to haunt the democratic Party and President Obama, who has been missing in action himself on key issues. Congressional Democrats are responding to this epic conflagration with the same risk-avoidance tactics they learned during many years in minority status. In those days, they could always blame right-wing Republicans for blocking their good intentions. But who do the Dems blame now that they have the White House and fifty-nine votes in the Senate and a seventy-eight seat majority in the House? Their standard explanation for not doing more is, 'We didn't have the votes.' So when might we expect Democrats to achieve more? When they have eighty votes in the Senate.

The party's ideological intentions are being defined with greater clarity in these new circumstances, and so are the President's. It's still early, but the implications are ominous for other issues. If Democrats are reluctant to disturb the power of other major interests, in seems improbable that fundamental change will occur on healthcare, energy conversion or the restoration of work and wages. The problem now is the Democrats, not the Republicans. The party aids and protects its free-roaming entrepreneurial politicians and does not punish those who undermine the party's larger promises. When Republicans were in charge, they enforced party loyalty with Stalinist discipline. Democrats ar ethe party of safe incumbents, weak convictions.

For those of us who had high hopes when Obama came into office and a new Democratic majority held the promise of universal healthcare, real education reform and regulation of Wall Street, we watch in horror as the powerful money interests continue to undermine any hope of meaningful change. The Democrats instead have been "standing with the sharks" says Greider.

According to Greider, we can't count on Washington any longer -- we need a moral awakening of the people.

Given all the adversities facing the country, I conclude that meaningful "intervention" is plausible only if it originates with people at large who are more distant from power. I envision the intrusion coming from many "independent formations" free to ignore Washington's insider routines and mobilized by citizens on behalf of their own convictions, their common-sense ideas of what needs to be accomplished. This alternative path is a central theme of my new book, Come Home, America. I describe (somewhat wishfully) how self-directed organizations might develop the power to break through regular politics and overcome the usual barriers.

As a prime example, Arne Duncan was spinning his "education reform" on CNN this morning , promoting national standards, longer school days and years, rewarding the best performing teachers, databases to track all students and link their performance to teachers. It was the same old, tired rhetoric, blaming the schools for the United States falling behind in the almighty global economy. Meanwhile, the criminals on Wall Street and in Washington are off the hook, and schools budgets are being axed all across the country -- another variation on Margaret Spelling's recipe for success.

Here's a dose of reality from Stateline.org:

More than $100 billion in federal economic stimulus will help public schools and colleges survive the recession over the next two years, and for districts in dire straits, that money is a lifeline.

But some states’ finances are so precarious their schools are still going to face large cuts. That’s why the Los Angeles school district canceled summer school classes, several Idaho districts have declared a state of financial emergency, and some states are considering shortening the average 180-day school year even as U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan pushes for students to spend more time in school.

“Pretty much every school system I know is making cuts to their budget because of the economy. In some cases the stimulus money prevented cuts for some of those school systems, but in the vast majority of others, it didn’t because the cuts were so massive,” said John Musso, the executive director of the Association of School Business Officials International.

This year, 26 states made midyear cuts to elementary and secondary education and 31 made cuts to higher education, according to a recent report by the National Association of State Budget Officers and the National Governors Association. Some of the cuts were approved before Congress passed the stimulus relief and were rolled back after the first stimulus dollars started flowing to the 29 states that so far have applied for their education allocations.

Back to Greider's self-directed organizations who need to break through regular politics:

These groups could function, not as a third party nor as standard "issue" advocates, but as a mixture of these capabilities. They could act like free-roaming guerillas who educate and agitate; like a political party that selectively destabilizes safe-seat incumbents by entering party primaries or running independent challengers; like a representative organization that can demand political relations through direct confrontations or even civil disobedience. This development sounds implausible, I know, especially in Washington. But our crisis demands a more aggressive response from citizens--something that threatens the power of both parties and makes them insecure.

If not now, when?

Today's Heroes: Dean Defends Teacher's Civil Disobedience Against 3rd Grade Test

The rumble against the educational genocide of high-stakes testing is getting louder. From the Vancouver Sun:

The dean of education at Simon Fraser University says a teacher who defied her employer by refusing to deliver a mandatory reading test to her Grade 3 students should serve as an inspiration and role model for all teachers.

In a speech to SFU graduates this month, Paul Shaker praised Kathryn Sihota, a Vancouver Island teacher, for engaging in civil disobedience to protect her students from "psychological and educational vandalism," despite knowing that she risked discipline and public disapproval for her actions.

"You should remember that you entered the profession at the moment when this courageous teacher was taking her principled stand," Shaker told graduates in a fall convocation speech now posted on SFU's website. "Let her character, conviction and willingness to act be an inspiration to you."

Although his comments landed in the midst of a province-wide debate about the value of standardized tests, Shaker said in an interview he was making a point about the need for professionals to take non-violent action in defence of their principles and he was not passing judgment on the tests.

But he admitted he is particularly sensitive to the debate about standardized tests because before moving to Canada he spent many years as an educator in the U.S., where he said students have been damaged through rampant abuse of high-stakes testing.

"I like to think that won't happen in Canada," he said, "but I don't think that we can be complacent."

B.C. Education Minister Shirley Bond said it was irresponsible of Shaker to encourage teachers to engage in civil disobedience rather than working cooperatively with others on issues of mutual interest.

"It's unfortunate when political agendas become part of a graduation speech to teachers in the province," Bond added.

But the B.C. Teachers' Federation, which supported Sihota in her fight with the Sooke board, cheered Shaker's stance.

"It's so heartening to see someone outside of teaching and someone with the stature of Paul Shaker ... making those comments, especially to student teachers," union vice-president Susan Lambert said in an interview.

A longtime teacher and union leader, Sihota said she decided not to administer the District Assessment of Reading test to her students at Millstream elementary after seeing a nervous child break down in tears.

She said the test was not worth that amount of stress.

As a result of that decision, Sihota was called before the Sooke board of education last month and given a letter of discipline for insubordination, which her union has grieved.

Shaker, when asked by The Sun if he agrees the tests are damaging to students, insisted he wasn't taking a position on the tests. "That judgment would have to be made in the context of the teacher in the classroom," he said.

But in his speech to almost 300 new teachers, Shaker said they have a professional obligation "to protect our students, not only from bullets or brutality, as we have seen teachers regularly do, but also from psychological and educational vandalism against their spirits. And this is what Kathryn Sihota has sought to do."

Penny Tees, head of the B.C. School Trustees' Association, declined to discuss Sihota's actions but said she doesn't accept the contention that tests damage students' spirits. She noted that even B.C.'s representative for children and youth, Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, has defended the tests.

"If every teacher had the right to eliminate the pieces of the curriculum that they personally don't agree with and don't want to teach, then we would have a very, very hard time managing a public school curriculum," said Tees.

Shaker said he does not have a problem with the most controversial standardized test in B.C. -- the Foundation Skills Assessment -- but is highly critical of the way it is used to rank schools.

jsteffenhagen@png.canwest.com