As new “parent-trigger” laws seem poised to allow parents to take over failing schools, they’re already the stuff of Hollywood drama.

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I am a teacher. You know, one of those about whom you and your Secretary of Education say are so important to our young people. If only I - and thousands, perhaps millions of other teachers - could believe those words.

There are things your administration has done that we respect, at least most of us. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act meant large numbers of teachers and other public employees did not lose their jobs. Under ARRA, for the first time ever the Federal government for two years just about met its commitment to provide 40% of the average additional costs imposed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. There was also the $10 billion in funds to support local government employment that also save some jobs. We acknowledge these things.

If only the policies your administration advocates were similarly supportive of teachers and what we see as the best interest of our students.

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The Brian Piccolo Specialty School in Humboldt Park, Chicago is currently Occupied by parents, teachers, and students. Occupy Chicago and other allies are outside the building in solidarity and have set up an encampment. Around one hundred people are present and are taking shifts to ensure the safety of the occupation. The Chicago Teachers Union has expressed support for the action. Piccolo, an elementary school with a student body that is almost entirely from low income communities of color, is one of 16 Chicago public schools slated to be closed by Mayor Rahm’s service cuts to the poor.

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Jon Stewart hosted Arne Duncan on ”The Daily Show” in an exercise that proved it is impossible to have a real conversation with someone who refuses to move beyond his talking points.

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Lately it seems that public policy and the reformy rhetoric that drives it are hardly influenced by the vast body of empirical work and insights from leading academic scholars which suggests that such practices as using value-added metrics to rate teacher quality, or dramatically increasing test-based accountability and pushing for common core standards and tests to go with them are unlikely to lead to substantial improvements in education quality, or equity.

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That is how families, students and teachers need to start approaching the matter of education reform — “Nothing about us, without us.” These are our children, our tax dollars, our schools, our communities, our careers and our futures. We cannot accept being pushed to the margins of our own domain.

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The Obama Administration’s approval last week of 10 state applications for waivers from NCLB was another missed opportunity to learn from a decade of policy failure. Instead of changing the disastrous direction of federal education policy, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s waiver process allows states to reproduce some of the worst aspects of NCLB’s “test and punish” approach while continuing to ignore real issues, like reducing concentrated poverty or providing equitable funding and high quality pre-K for all schools.

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The president rightly says that NCLB forces teaching to the test. But so do his solutions, writes Diane Ravitch.

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Monty Neill of FairTest writes that states should refuse to accept the Education Department’s waivers from key provisions of No Child Left Behind because they have to give up too much in exchange.

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The Republican education commissioner of Texas, Robert Scott, might not be the first person you’d think would find common ground with California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, but Scott has spoken against high-stakes testing in a way that would make Brown smile.

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All I hear coming from the powers that be is to “fire more teachers,” “create more charters schools,” or “give more tests.” None of the remedies being peddled by the elites help my students AT ALL. They are the kids being left behind.

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As the Assistant Secretary of Education in the first Bush administration, Educational historian Diane Ravitch became known for her push to establish national standards for K-12 education. From 1997–2004, she served as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, overseeing the federal testing program.

Now, as the author of The Life and Death of the Great American School System, she’s taking it all back. Well, sort of.

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Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an “island” resort on the coast of Florida to a unique “education academy” sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.

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Deconstruct this. Teachers would love to “stop teaching to the test,” but Race to the Top makes test scores the measure of every teacher. If teachers take the President’s advice (and they would love to!), their students might not get higher test scores every year, and teachers might be fired, and their schools might be closed.

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TAG is proud to coordinate No History is Illegal, a month of solidarity work in support of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program.

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