NYTimes Reports on Parents Fed Up with Testing Hysteria

Good story!  My comment at the New York Times:

It is refreshing to see this kind of coverage in the NYTimes news pages. This portrayal of reality, however, remains so at odds with the antiquarian ideas of the Times Editorial Board, which continues to pay homage to the corporate reform school initiatives that have had 30 years now to prove themselves as sure failures. 

Parents, teachers, and students have signaled that TIME IS UP for profiteering, privatizing, punishing, and deprofessionalizing of teaching, learning, and schooling. If you are not a part of the national Opt Out movement already, you should be--or you risk being run over as the public rushes in to reclaim public education from Wall Street and the billionaires. It's really way past due.

Parents, Teachers, and Students Say NO to Charter Takeovers in Memphis

Momentum is building to demolish a plan by H3 (Haslam, Huffman, Hopson) to turn Memphis into another corporate reform school feedlot like New Orleans.  

After yesterday's angry meetings at Raleigh-Egypt High School and at American Way Middle, the ASD's profiteers are reeling.  

Yes Prep had to pack up and go home after parents would hear none of the corporate plan to turn American Way Middle over to inexperienced and unprepared non-teachers and their CEO school "leaders." 

At Raleigh-Egypt High, where the Green Dot profiteers (backed by Eli Broad) are lined up to feed, parents and students gave warning that they will not send their children to Green Dot's corporate chain gang if the H3 plan moves forward.

from WREG:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Families in Raleigh fear they’re losing control of their schools. They’re calling it a hostile take-over. Parents tell WREG they’ll transfer their kids to another school before they let them stay here under charter control.

An out-of-state program known as Green Dot is coming in to take over Raleigh Egypt High School, but the community isn’t rolling out the red carpet for them.

Chasity Balfour has two kids in this high school.

“If they change I will not keep my kids in this school. Period,” she said.

Balfour isn’t ready to accept that they don’t have a choice in this. She says great things are happening under the new Raleigh Egypt Principal James Griffin, and she wants to see it continue with local control.

“I feel that if they just give them a year or two to boost the grades up it will make a big difference,” she said. . . .

. . . . The Achievement School District invited these families to the table to talk, but the pizza was far from an olive branch. Parents didn’t have questions — they had demands and threats.

Students from Fairley High School already under Green Dot control were on hand to talk about the transition process. They told WREG it’s not an overnight fix, and it involves a lot of change.

Jameka Elam is a senior at Fairley Student.

She said, “Maybe, probably ten teachers that I recognize from last year.”

Families in this school district aren’t ready to say the same thing. They say the fight is far from over.

King Suspends NY State Public Meetings on Common Core After Parents Speak Out