Breaking News: New Mexico Student Protests Against PARCC Continue

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog:

Hundreds of students at Rio Grande High School in Albuquerque walked out to protest the PARCC tests. In their march to another high school, they blocked traffic.

http://krqe.com/2015/03/03/protests-continue-against-parcc-test/

Some students complained that they would be denied a diploma based on this one test. One student said it was so difficult that not even the teachers could pass it.

Meanwhile the Albuquerque school board warned students who walked out that they would be given a zero and would face other consequences.

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REFUSE to surrender our children’s rights. OPT-OUT. How?

VanessaVaile:

saluting the brave NM youth….

Originally posted on Reclaim Reform:

Mr. Rogers knew. Mr. Arne Duncan, certain governors, legislators, school boards and school administrators seem to be ignoring our and our children’s basic rights.

Whatever race or combination of races we and our children are, we have basic human rights.

We and our children do not surrender our basic rights as Americans as we enter a school building.

Civil rights apply to all Americans. How can we stop the labeling and monetizing of our children when they are forced to take high stakes tests that none of us as parents were ever forced to take?

The wonderful people at United Opt Out National give us the paperwork to complete to defend our children and our children’s basic human rights.

Whether we are one of those “white suburban moms” that Arne Duncan insulted or are someone he chose to marginalize and ignore, we have legal recourse by filing a valid Civil…

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Students statewide walkout in protest of new tests. Here’s everything you need to know and the schools where that is happening.

This gallery contains 4 photos.

Originally posted on PROGRESSNOW NM:
Students across New Mexico are planning to walkout of classes Monday en masse to protest high-stakes standardized testing they say have little or no correlation to curriculum in the classroom but are closely connected to teacher evaluations and place their own graduation opportunities in jeopardy.  And many of these students have…

Day 1 of the March SOLSC! #SOL15

VanessaVaile:

why not?

Originally posted on TWO WRITING TEACHERS:

Welcome to the 8^th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge! Whether you write every day or haven’t written in a long time, I am glad you are here!

If you’re participating in the individual Slice of Life Story Challenge, this is where you share your writing.  If you’re sharing your students’ slice of life stories, then head over to the Classroom Challenge, which Anna, Beth, and Tara are hosting this month.  (Please see the previous post.)

A special welcome to the first-time Slicers who are joining us this year.  As of 9:30 p.m. last night, we had 95 new Slicers who filled out the participant information form!

Each day you’ll find a section called “BE INSPIRED,” which will follow each day’s essential information. That section will include something like a link to someone’s slice of life story, a quote about writing, etc. Even if you’re back for your eighth challenge,

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#Ccourses Bonus #Dailyconnect: Connect with Your Future Self

VanessaVaile:

most of my reblogs go to the Adjunctiverse (humming “all of my exes live in Texas” as I write), not without it’s own need to connect better — within and without. The latter means jumping some arbitrary boundaries — transgression, literally — and getting back to local and other interest blogging. Besides this looks like fun. I may reblog to my blog based online ESL study group too for a writing exercise.

Originally posted on The Daily Connector:

We do a lot of connecting with others. But how about time to connect with your own big bad self? Use the FutureMe site to write yourself an email that will be delivered sometime into the future (for example, I am writing this post a few weeks before this post goes live and I am writing an email to myself to remind myself about this post … got it?)

What connections do you hope to achieve in six months? A year? Two years? What will it be like to get a note from the you of “now” in the future? Everyone … do the time warp!

Write a Connected Letter with FutureMe.

Want an additional challenge? Write a note to the future to someone else in your network (if you know their email).

Thanks to Terry for sharing this one out via Twitter.

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Week 1: Exploring technology, networks and communities in the service of learning

VanessaVaile:

Yeah, like when and how do I fit it in? Any which way I can. Or not. I’d like to see some of my adjunct / advocacy colleagues give it a try too.

Originally posted on Exploring Innovations in Networked Work and Learning:

Time to start. This is the opening post for the full open section of #msloc430 as well as for the two-week exploration of networked learning innovations. Let’s cover a few things:

• How we’ll organize throughout the six weeks
• Some tips for success
• An introduction to Weeks 1-2
• Readings and resources for Weeks 1-2

These same items (except readings and resources) are addressed in the video in a bit more detail.

How we’ll organize during #msloc430

How to Participate and Topics and Schedule offer an overview. But keep in mind that we are generally organizing around a few tools and spaces – both for course updates and to help guide our learning.

Updates and general organizing

We’ll use this blog, the MSLOC430 Enterprise Social Networking Google+ Community and Twitter for course logistics, updates, suggesting recommended readings and topics for discussion.

On Monday (U.S.) at the start of each week we’ll post…

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Cartoon of the day

Originally posted on occasional links & commentary:

Special mention

 

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Arne Duncan’s Great Kid Story Problem

Originally posted on Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

In his speech laying out administration priorities for the renewal or rewrite of No Child Left Behind, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan turned to a personal anecdote to explain the imperative of accountability based reform:

In between my junior and senior year at college, I took a year off to help in my mother’s after-school tutoring program on the South Side of Chicago and figure out if I really wanted to devote my life to this fight for educational opportunity.

One of the students I tutored was a basketball player at the local high school, who was studying to take his ACT.

He was a great kid who had done all the right things. In a very violent neighborhood, he had stayed away from the gangs. He didn’t drink, he didn’t use drugs. He was actually an honor roll student with a “B” average, and on track to graduate…

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Mandates of and from Our Hearts

Originally posted on Poetic Justice:

We are being mandated to death. A mandate is an official order, a commission to do something, a law. I am tired of official orders and of commissions and of the law. I need the mandate paradigm to be shifted now.

I am sitting in front of a blank screen on this Sunday evening – almost Monday morning – just thinking about the mandates we educators are under. We have mandates from our school, our departments, our district, our state, and, yes, from the government. We have mandates to test our young children and mandates to write up goals on our own evaluations based on those tests. We have mandates to enter data every month, every week, every day, and every period of every day. We have mandates to meet in data teams to manipulate and further extrapolate more data from the data. We educators are being mandated to death.

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Reblogging Etiquette

VanessaVaile:

Personally, that about covers it. Basic blogging etiquette still applies: whenever the original author asks to have material removed, for whatever reason, just do it. Then, depending on circumstancs, add the person/s to your personal digital no-fly list and walk away ~ #notime4sillystuff

Originally posted on Heart of a Lunatic:

I’ve been reblogged a few times (once or twice by the person that inspired this post), and my decision never do them myself is very much at odds with my opinion on the practice itself. So when I saw Opinionated Man’s Daily Opinion post on the subject I thought I’d answer the questions he posed about it, if only to explore and explain my perspective.

Do you consider being reblogged without being asked first rude?

No, and I think it’s rude to take offense or complain if someone reblogs one of your posts.If you’ve made a blog, written on it, and left it accessible to the public then you’ve got no right to complain about the ripples your words cause in the world of the internet. Negative attention isn’t something to complain about either. If someone was impacted enough by you to share some of your work, it doesn’t matter if…

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