(California) Governor Jerry Brown Puts the Testing Juggernaut...

[YvonneCa]

...On Ice:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/05/california_governor_puts_the_t.html

Crossposted to the Education Forum.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. This is VERY good news. Recommended.

[YvonneCa]

2. It IS, isn't it? I am SO glad we Californians...

...elected a governor that understands the issues, especially education. Thanks for the rec. :)

[Snoutport]

13. [phone]

[dana_b]

3. wonderful!! from the article:

Jerry Brown is unusual among our nation's governors. He got a bit more involved than most in on-the-ground school reform while he was serving as mayor of Oakland. He learned the hard way how schools are a reflection of deeper social issues. In a statement he wrote to respond to Arne Duncan's Race to the Top a year and a half ago, while he was California's Attorney General, he said:

You assume we know how to "turn around all the struggling low performing schools," when the real answers may lie outside of school. As Oakland mayor, I directly confronted conditions that hindered education, and that were deeply rooted in the social and economic conditions of the community or were embedded in the particular attitudes and situations of the parents. There is insufficient recognition in the draft regulations that inside and outside of school strategies must be interactive and merged.
Even more revealing was what he wrote about federally-driven education "reform":



The basic assumption of your draft regulations appears to be that top down, Washington driven standardization is best. This is a "one size fit all" approach that ignores the vast diversity of our federal system and the creativity inherent in local communities. What we have at stake are the impressionable minds of the children of America. You are not collecting data or devising standards for operating machines or establishing a credit score. You are funding teaching interventions or changes to the learning environment that promise to make public education better, i.e. greater mastery of what it takes to become an effective citizen and a productive member of society. In the draft you have circulated, I sense a pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power of social science.


Wow! Color me impressed.

[YvonneCa]

6. Jerry Brown is...

...FANTASTIC! :)

[mountainlion55]

4. Good work Jerry

:smoke:

[blondeatlast]

5. STANDING OVATION! Food for Governor Brown! k/r/nt

[wryter2000]

7. That's my former mayor

:applause: Jerry Brown. :loveya:

[YvonneCa]

8. You are SO lucky. My former mayor was...

...Pete Wilson. :( Yuk!

[Snoutport]

14. ew!

[montanto]

9. Wow, finally, seriously

I have never heard a politician actually say the things that teachers say about testing. And then to act on it, too. Outstanding!!

[YvonneCa]

10. OUTSTANDING...

...is right. And about time. :)

[immoderate]

11. I voted for Jerry Brown for president.

In the New York Democratic primary. It counts. :)

--imm

[Gabi Hayes]

12. so did I. are you LISTENING, governor QUINN???? wise up. we're having

a debate right now in the Ill. assembly about reducing (VERY unconstitutionally, btw), the already very meager pensions of most Illinois public employees. teachers have it somewhat better than others, but, hey, they actually have a decent.......UNION that negotiated a pay scale lower than comp jobs in the private sector, in order to receive what was thought to be livable pensions years down the road

and NOW they're trying to take it away

what a surprise

[immoderate]

16. Yer durn tootin'!

:hi:

--imm

[YvonneCa]

17. Quinn is a Dem...

...right?

[Karmadillo]

15. K&R

nt