This Article May Be Illegal: Lifting the Veil of Silence on Standardized Testing

[midnight]

According to the “Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Directions for Administration Manuel”:

Those individuals who divulge test questions, falsify student scores, or compromise the integrity of the state assessment system in any manner will be subject to professional disciplinary action under the Professional Educator Discipline Act, 24 P.S. $ 2070. 1a et seq, including a private reprimand, a public reprimand, a suspension of their teaching certificate(s), a revocation of their teaching certificate(s), and/or a suspension or prohibition from being employed by a charter school. [emphasis added]

So teachers may lose our certifications, livelihoods, etc. Heck! We could be charged with racketeering like the Gambino Family and face up to 20 years in jail!

And all just for talking!

I thought speech was protected by law. Doesn’t the First Amendment protect me from prosecution for speaking except under extreme and unusual circumstances?





http://commondreams.org/views/2015/04/22/article-may-be-illegal-lifting-veil-silence-standardized-testing

[marym625]

1. Funny, I just replied to someone about charter schools and the fallacy of them

Which I am sure is directly related to your post

Charter Schools Fail: New Reports Call Their ‘Magic’ Into Question

In Pennsylvania, credit-rating agency Moody’s has warned that charter expansions promoted by the state endanger the financial livelihood of Philadelphia Public Schools, the state’s largest school district.

http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/charter-schools-fail-new-reports-call-their-magic-into-question/

Time for a moratorium on charter schools

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/4/time-for-a-moratorium-on-charter-schools.html

There is so much wrong going on it's unbelievable. Your post just proves that the push to privatize education trumps reality, teachers, education and most importantly, the students.

K&R

[midnight]

2. Interesting example of charter schools taken from Milwaukee Wisconsin.

Opening the truth telling about charter schools was a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute on a call for public schools to be replaced by charter schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee, you should note, is the city that has experienced the nation’s longest running experiment, more than 20 years, with charter schools and vouchers as replacements for traditional public schools. The consensus view is that charter schools in Milwaukee do no better than the public schools they replace, and many of the charter schools that perform the worst are never held accountable and continue to remain open after years of failure.

Despite this humble track record for charters in Milwaukee, the EPI report “Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” explores the latest demand from state officials who are for “enamored with a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools.”

The study’s author, Gordon Lafer, looked closely at Rocketship’s practices and found “everything is built around the tests.” However, tests scores for students in the Rocketship programs – as measured by California’s Academic Performance Index (where Rocketship is primarily based) – have declined by just over 10 percent from 2008–2009 to 2012–2013. “Indeed, in 2012–2013, all seven of the Rocketship schools failed to make adequate yearly progress according to federal standards.”

Despite this poor performance, Rocketship executives are bent on an “unshakeable pursuit of large-scale growth.” But instead of good education practice, what drives the Rocketship model is profit. As the report explained, along with a test-driven instructional method, the Rocketship model relies heavily on substituting extensive online instruction for personal instruction from teachers. However, this model leads to clear conflicts of interest when the charter network partners with its own for-profit providers of curricula, and two
leaders of the charter venture both sit on Rocketship’s Board and are primary investors in a for-profit company that provides thmath curriculum used by Rocketship.


My article is the private corporations testing rules-jail, and threats is talk about the test.

Your article is about the privatizing of our public schools that are not held accountable.

The intersect with the private corporations using our public dollars to test our public school students, and or imprison our public school teacher who talk about the test. Milwaukee has had Charter school Administrators run off with the money and nothing happens to them. They are found in Florida surrounded with expensive mortgages and automobiles because there is no accountability for the charter schools.

[marym625]

3. It's just complete and total bullshit.

How did we get to a place that would jail teachers while lying about success of charter schools and making money for corporations on the backs of these kids, teachers and parents?

The whole thing sickens me.

K&R for your article, btw.

[midnight]

4. Everything is a secret. How do we know how to fix stuff if we can't talk about it?

[marym625]

5. Only way is to stop it