There are two important stories that speak to the length to which “reformers” will go to suppress the voices of those who oppose corporate reforms.
The first was the intimidation of a Teachers College professor, Celia Oyler, by PARCC after she posted a column by an anonymous teacher critiquing the 4th grade PARCC exam. You can read a complete account of what occurred here.
Professor Oyler received a warning letter from the CEO of PARCC, Laura Slover, which threatened her with legal action. Slover claimed it violated their copyright, and demanded that she also disclose the name of the teacher who wrote the column and remove the post.
NPE Board member, Leonie Haimson, had her tweet of Olyer’s column deleted by Twitter. She reprinted the original post on her blog, along with the excerpts of the 4th grade exam, and urged other bloggers to do the same as “an act of collective disobedience to the reigning testocracy.” The Education Bloggers Network, a collection of more than 200 grassroots bloggers, managed by Jonathan Pelto, joined the effort.
Readers can find related blogs and stories in Slate, USA Today, the Progressive, Washington Post Answer Sheet, and posts by Anthony Cody, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, Daniel Katz, and our President, Diane Ravitch.
The second was an attempt by Campbell Brown and Peter Cunningham to intimidate Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris, and to a lesser extent, Tom Loveless of Brookings because they asked Brown to correct her false claim that two thirds of our nation’s children were below grade level in reading and in mathematics.
Attempts to persuade Ms. Brown to correct the false information led to an exchange on Twitter. Brown later took down most of her tweets, claiming she had been unfairly attacked and began likening Diane to Donald Trump. You can read more about why Brown’s error is so problematic and one more unfair attempt to disparage our schools here in the Washington Post Answersheet. You can read Diane’s reaction to Brown’s refusal to correct the record here.
NPE needs your help in the fight to raise public awareness on these issues and more. We made progress this year but we have a long way to go.
Here 5 things we at NPE need you to do.
Follow us on Twitter @Network4PublicEd https://twitter.com/Network4pubEd and retweet what we share.
Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/networkforpubliced/ so that our postings appear on your page.
Post some of the links to the stories above on your Facebook page to help educate friends and family.
Ask 5 friends to join us as supporter by signing up. https://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/
Make a tax deductible contribution to help us carry on our work. https://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/
It is our job to ensure that we help our nation understand why public schools are a pillar of our democracy and must be saved.
And be sure to join us when we march on Washington in July.
Thanks for all you do,
Carol
