Hawthorne PTA resists the Trump Flu with loving inclusion

There has been some kind of Trump Flu bug going around Seattle — one that looks enough like norovirus to prompt the Department of Public Health in Seattle/King County to send a letter home to parents in the district.

This particular flu hit our house hard. If we’re all being honest with each other here, even our two dogs showed all the flu symptoms for a couple days each. I'm not saying they had the same flu necessarily, but it gives you an idea what life has been like at our house recently. I wonder if our collective consciousness might just be having an allergic reaction to these most recent injections of hate and oppositionalism.

The Trump Flu has also meant that I’ve fallen behind on a few things when it comes to education in Washington State. Even as our laughable-turned-maniacal “leader” systemically takes apart the freedoms and rights we've enjoyed pretending we still had, it turns out we’re still expected to go about our lives and send our kids to school and whatnot — even as that school system now rests so tenuously under Donald Trump’s smug thumb. But I digress.

We regular American humans are under assault right now, that’s true, but good things are still happening. Our little Northwest nook of the Empire has done itself proud so far, too, in the early going. We’re pushing as we speak to pull all Seattle funds out of Wells Fargo in support of the #NoDAPL movement. Mayor Ed Murray has declared Seattle a sanctuary city, and we’ve seen local protests and demonstrations opposing just about every single racist, menacing policy Trump has enacted.

Even many of our schools are taking bold steps to show that they stand with their most vulnerable students and families during this threatening time.

The Hawthorne Elementary PTA — or Friends of Hawthorne (FOH) — held a special topic discussion on race and equity right after the election. The meeting had been scheduled weeks before, but Trump’s victory prompted an even broader conversation.

FOH followed that up with a well-attending open house at the school, offering parents and neighbors information on how to talk about the election with children and inviting the community “to share their hopes, fears, dreams,” as FOH member and Hawthorne parent Molly Laster put it.

One parent brought in a version of the “Hate Has No Home Here” poster for the open house.

“It was cool,” Laster said, “but it didn't have ‘our’ languages — particularly Somali.” Somali is one of Hawthorne’s diverse student body’s most common home languages.

Laster found the poster’s designers online and asked if they had other versions of the poster.

“They didn’t,” Laster said, “but offered to customize one for us. The poster [now] has the most-common languages spoken at Hawthorne.”

On the one hand, this is a relatively small gesture. But on the other hand, Hawthorne’s families know where their school stands. When asked to choose, the community has come out on the side of equity and inclusion.

Trump and his regime are exposing all of America’s hidden, unspoken inequities and tripling-down on them. We will have to be every bit as bold in our resistance as they are in their aggression. Let this be an example we can build on. We cannot be neutral in this time of injustice.

Tips from a Senator's office: How concerned citizens can best influence their legislators

Some great tips from a high-level staffer for a Senator:

There are two things that all concerned citizens should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things.

First off: You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing. Those don't typically accomplish anything except to help us feel like we've "done" something when we haven't.

1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time. If they have town halls, go to them. Go to their local offices. This is how the religious right, as the Tea Party, began to establish influence.

If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson's website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.

2. But, those in-person events don't happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling. You should make six calls a day: two calls each to your two Senators and your one Representative -- one call to their DC office and another to your local office.

The staffer was very clear that any sort of online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash (unless you have a particularly strong, emotional story -- but even then it's not worth the time it took you to craft that letter).

Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the three most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. They're also sorted by zip code and area code.

She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or Planned Parenthood funding, etc...), it's often closer to 11-1, and that's recently pushed Republican congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last eight years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven't.

So, when you call:

A) When calling the DC office, ask for the staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of healthcare, please"). Local offices won't always have specific people assigned to each issue, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's okay - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all -- then you can, but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).

B) Give them your zip code. They won't always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.

C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever;" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos;" or "as a single mother," or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever applies to the issue.

D) Pick one or two specific things per day to focus on. Don't go down a whole list -- they're only figuring out which one or two topics to mark you down for on their lists, so focus on one or two per day. Ideally it's something that will be voted on or taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter -- even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.

E) Be clear on what you want. "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on..." or "I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because..." Don't leave any ambiguity.

F) They may get to know your voice and start to get sick of you. It doesn't matter. Press on. The people answering the phones generally turn over every six weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone in six weeks.

From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone and feel awkward (which is a lot of people) don't worry about it. There are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some, and there are lots of others floating around these days). After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural. Put the six numbers in your phone (all under "P" for Politician. An example is Politician McCaskill MO, Politician McCaskill DC, Politician Blunt MO, etc., which makes it really easy to click down the list each day), make your first call, and go from there.

If, like me, you've been meaning to add elected officials' contacts to your cell phone but haven't gotten around to doing it yet, you can text your zip code to 520.200.2223. It will respond with your federal and state legislators' names and phone numbers. Then you can easily save those contacts in your phone.

A version of this post originally appeared as a Facebook post. Reposted with permission.

How Parents Benefit from School Accountability

By Laura Waters

If you’re a parent like me, at the start of each school year you eagerly learn all about the course content your child will study, the enrichment opportunities available, the field trips your child will take and the school supplies your child will need as you brace yourself for that evening’s trip to Staples.

If you’re a taxpayer like me, you know how much of your money goes to public education.

In other words, you are well-informed about everything that goes into your child’s educational experience, which we can call “input.” But what about the output? How much do you really know, outside of parent-teacher conferences and the quarterly report card, about your child’s learning outcomes?

The answer is likely “not much,” and that’s true across America, both at the micro-level of your specific child and at the macro-level of schools, districts and historically under-served subgroups like English-language learners, students with disabilities, students of color, and students from economically-disadvantaged homes.

Yet, according to federal law—once called No Child Left Behind (NCLB), now called Every Student Succeeds Act(ESSA)—schools and states are responsible for both inputs and outputs in order to ensure adequate school quality and equity.

Another word for this sort of responsibility is “accountability,” a much-maligned word in the education arena, often clustered with other imprecations like “No Child Left Behind,” “Race to the Top,” “standardized tests,” and “value-added teacher evaluations.”

But accountability simply means that states are responsible not only for adequate inputs like sufficient funding, ambitious course content standard and high-quality instruction, but also for outputs like accurate measures of student learning and teacher effectiveness. They are also responsible for intervening in the lowest-performing schools through extra funding, new leadership and other turnaround strategies.

These strategies, of course, are mere inputs. If student achievement—the ultimate output—remains stagnant then those initiatives represent wasted resources and, more urgently, wasted time for that school’s students.

Over the last several years federal and state accountability legislation has come under attack from a duo of strange bedfellows: Tea Party/Trump-ish acolytes who wave the banner of local control and teacher union leaders who disdain objective measurements of student learning, at least when they’re tied to teacher evaluations and job security.

ESSA, America’s new federal education law, provides wiggle room to accommodate this political pressure, a kind of NCLB-lite, extracting federal teeth to gum onto the cachet of hands-off government.

Yet states still must, like under NCLB, administer annual standardized tests to students in grades three through eight, intervene in the lowest-performing schools, report progress for historically under-served subgroups, and submit accountability plans to the U.S. Department of Education.

But states can also play limbo (how low can you go?) with tying student outcomes to teacher evaluations and with how they measure school quality.

Daria Hall of Education Trust warns:

"We have to be really cautious because we know that states have a long track record of not making tough decisions when it comes to the interest of low-income students, students of color, English-language learners. If states are going to walk away from those students, we are going to lose whatever progress we’ve made with those students, who now make up the majority of our public school population."

Clear and sober data can help parents make informed school choices and learn more than what goes on that Staples shopping list. That’s a key goal of accountability systems. Now if only states could accept responsibility for the elements necessary to ensure that all students have access to the input of effective instructional services and the output of developmentally-appropriate proficiency.

An original version of this post appeared on New York School Talk as Beyond Staples: How Parents Benefit from School Accountability.

As Trump tries to get DAPL finished, Standing Rock responds: "We are just now beginning this fight"

Donald Trump has signed executive memoranda to authorize the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines.

I spent a month at Standing Rock near the end of last year. The violence visited by militarized police on peaceful everyday people was shocking to see up close.

As intense and vivid as the encounters were with armored police, the more surreal aspects have been even more jarring to me in the long run. What does it mean that they were there, enforcing a corporation’s desire for profit against a peaceful assembly of real-life citizens? What does it mean that the government never fully intervened, even under Obama?

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and she owns the land on the reservation that borders the much-discussed land controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers. The original camp of water protectors, Sacred Stone, from which the entire #NoDAPL resistance grew, continues to sit on LaDonna’s private land. She has essentially been hosting everyone who has come to Standing Rock and stayed at the camps.

She posted a video on Facebook today addressing the many conflicting reports and the unrest that has grown out of Trump’s DAPL memo. Here is the full transcript:

Good evening, everybody.

I wanted to tell you, it has been a long day. A lot of things have happened.

We started this day with the United Nations listening to testimony on the water protectors and all of the events that happened to our water protectors. Today was hard, listening to the people who were hurt, the damage they received from Morton County Sheriffs and Army National Guard as they stood up for the water. 

But while we were hearing the testimony, we heard the decision from president trump on signing the executive memoranda — they are not executive orders yet, they are executive memoranda — for Dakota Access and XL Pipeline. 

We knew this day was coming.

We are asking everybody to say prayers today to give the people who are standing strength — wherever you are, to pray.

We have started something that we must complete, and that is the healing of our nations. That is the healing of our people.

And how do we do that? We stand up for the water. We continue to stand up for the water. And so I’m asking you to continue to stand with me. Continue to stand for the beautiful rivers, for the beautiful lakes, for the beautiful creeks. Everywhere our water flows, please stand.

We are just now beginning this fight.

My heart hurts for all those that are hurt, all those that have suffered. But I see something in each one of them. I see this strength and this pride. I see a building of a new nation, and so even as we start this new journey, this new fight — because that’s what it is — we must all stand together.

And we will continue to stand, because I will continue to stand.

I will not back down.

I will not back down. We must stand for the water. We have no other choice. When we stand for the water, we stand for the people. We stand for the people, we stand for healing of our nations. It is time for all the nations to be healed.

So, I wanted to let you know that we continue to stand. I know there’s a lot of confusion out there with the proposed closing of the camps — or not closing of the camps — who has jurisdiction? — all of these things.

Sacred Stone is not closing. We’ll be standing. And we ask you to continue to stand with us. All of you are welcome in my home and on my land. You are welcome to come back and you are welcome to stand with us, because we will continue to stand.

Be safe, everyone. Pray hard, because the journey has just begun.

Donald Trump is doing so many dangerous, awful things so quickly that we can't afford to spend any time wondering what to do.

However bad things have been, however unfair, however inequitable, however racist, however sexist, however dangerous Amurrica already was… it’s worse. Trump has his foot on the accelerator of the DeLorean and we are screaming at 88 mph toward the alternate timeline where Biff has the almanac and everything is disgusting and awful. (In fact, Trump might be Biff with the Almanac. I’ll look into that more soon.)

This is what it's like to use a port-a-potty during a blizzard in North Dakota. Photo by Lindsay Hill. 

​My friend Nic Cochran has been in Standing Rock throughout this brutal winter. He would love to go home and be warm indoors back home in West Virginia. He's tired. He acknowledges this. And he called Trump's memorandum "an executive order to stay."​

The time is now for all of us everywhere. It’s like every movie. Goodness is under assault, truly. Find a way to stand up against it. Be brave. Be safe if you can, but be brave no matter what. Safety isn’t an option for everyone.

Here's an easy place to start. Join Seattle's visionary leader, Kshama Sawant, who has helped organize an action on Feb. 11 to demand that the Seattle City Council boycott Wells Fargo until it withdraws its DAPL funding: Stop Trump! Boycott Wells Fargo, NoDAPL!

Trump’s inauguration is ours too: Be a watchdog for kids under the new regime

Today we are inaugurating Donald Trump, a president promising to “make America great again.”

Again?

It's almost a joke at this point. We all know America has never really been great — not for everybody at the same time anyway. Any of its strengths have always existed at the expense of an oppressed group of people.

In a way, because he has made so much truth so hard to ignore, Trump’s inauguration is ours as well. Now is our time. We know things are not right in this country.

And in knowing, we are now choosing: Will I stand up and resist? Or will I be an oppressor, even if only in my silence?

By knowing, we have been called to stay vigilant. It is up to us to take action, to decide whether or not we heed that call. Every little thing is at stake. We are, like it or not, watchdogs.

There’s no better example of this than in the world of education. Maybe you remember that last year our government came together for a rare moment of bipartisanship and passed a new education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Like the No Child Left Behind law that preceded it, ESSA still asks states to measure how well their public schools are doing with vulnerable populations like low-income, minority and children with special needs. But now it’s up to the states to monitor themselves on this behavior.

And if you know anything about the history of civil rights in this country, you know that states haven’t done such a good job of policing themselves on this sort of thing: Think Brown vs. Board or the Civil Rights Act or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). These battles won in the courtroom or on the legislative floor aren’t acted out on the ground without a fight.

Now each state is submitting new plans for accountability under ESSA to the federal government. Think about it: States will be asking Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos for approval on how to make sure they’re closing the opportunity gap and improving student outcomes for kids who’ve traditionally been ignored. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not optimistic.

Even once those plans are in place, the feds then have very few levers to impact anything if the states do fail to meet accountability standards. For all its faults, No Child Left Behind at least had teeth that the new setup does not.

Most of this is going to happen without a vote and without significant public input. It’s up to us to keep tabs, speak up and create change, to let go of our defensiveness. It’s time to move forward together in resistance to Trump, the new symbol of the all-American oppression we have been living with all along: racial discrimination, “justified” violence, economic disparity, intentional segregation, destructive environmental policy, profound inequity in school funding, and more and more everywhere we turn.

We have always been forcing someone to fight tooth and nail for their rights in the United States, and it takes a toll on all of us. If we aspire to some old “greatness,” as Trump would have us do now, we are only reaching backward to expand on our oppressive past.

It will be hard. It is hard.

The decision is ours to make each minute, but there is really no decision to make. Fortunately, the wisest among us have already thought this through:

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

—Desmond Tutu

In Trump's America, we're all activists all the time — not just on MLK Day

View fullsize

Martin Luther King Day is a reliable source for inspiration every January. It’s like the activist’s New Year’s. Just about everyone goes out — even lots of folks who wouldn’t normally — and things seem possible and fresh and worth dreaming about.

View fullsize

Particularly striking this year was the intersectionality on display at yesterday's MLK Day march from Garfield High School to downtown Seattle. “Black Lives Matter” was sort of the grounding principle of the event, but woven in seamlessly were protest signs and chants tied to Standing Rock and the #NoDAPL movement, opposing Muslim registry and urging resistance to Trump.

We will face another challenging year together in 2017. Unlike any I’ve ever experienced, I’m quite sure.

If you thought last year was crazy, think about the implications of this woman's sign:

Days before the inauguration, we have many, many people filling the streets of many, many cities advocating resistance to our President-elect. And not just because we want different things or have different political ideals. This resistance is being shouted into existence out of fear and shock and desperation and self-defense.

View fullsize

We’ve elected a leader whom a LOT of people — intelligent people — believe to be a fascist posing a serious threat to our “democracy.” A startling number of people believe he represents a force to be opposed, and I think there’s good reason to be scared. Trump is a bad guy in the Lord Helmet or Dr. Evil mold — stupid yet sinister. You can never really let your guard down.

I think that sentiment, the idea of “resisting Trump,” in some ways encompasses everything. It gets at the root of the issue for once.

View fullsize

An inequitable public school system is a symptom of an inequitable, racist system of government. Poverty and gross income inequality are symptoms of our savage, discriminatory capitalist system. They aren’t themselves the source of the sickness.

We know our systems are fundamentally flawed. To continue on this way is akin to tirelessly treating every individual symptom of a disease without ever acknowledging the disease that continually births the symptoms. We don’t worry too much about alopecia until the cancer is gone, you know?

View fullsize

So, I hope we continue to see and create this intersectionality all year long. I will not truly be free until all my brothers and sisters share the same privilege that I do. My liberation is tied up in everyone else’s.

Standing Rock and Ferguson, Flint and Charlotte, Seattle and Chicago and New York and everywhere else that someone has been resisting, these are the front lines. They are the front lines not of individual, separate wars, but of different battles within the same desperate struggle against American hate and blind capitalism.

It’s only appropriate today to refer back to someone who has talked much more eloquently about all this than I ever will:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, 
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. 

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar, 
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. 

Through violence you may murder the hater, 
but you do not murder hate. 

In fact, violence merely increases hate. 

So it goes. 

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: 
only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate:
only love can do that.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.
From ‘Where Do We Go From Here?” as published in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62.

Remember: Martin Luther King, Jr., was just a man. He was a man who lived an unusually bold, unusually brilliant life, and his work has made life better for every person in this country. I believe that. But he was also just a father and a son, a husband with a profession. 

View fullsize

We’re all just people, and no one else can do this work for us. It may threaten our comfort and our safety and our lives, but if we are to live out the values that we all so fervently and social-medially supported yesterday, we will have to be bolder than we are used to being, too. We will have to use our fear and our discomfort as torches lighting the pathway to our courage. It will take everyone’s love to drive out this much hate, and everyone includes you.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, but it will be a hollow gesture if we don’t spend the rest of the year backing it up with more bold, loving action in the name of equality.

Resist Trump. 

Huge surprise: Washington’s Charter Schools are still under attack — and still plugging away

A coalition of unions, led by the Washington Education Association, is once again pushing to eradicate charter schools in Washington State. That’s nothing new. The WEA has been fighting hard to maintain its monopoly on public school choice across the state for years now.

In fact, it’s been such a long and dogged battle that it’s easy to get lost in the fray. Let’s catch up.

Washington State is currently home to about 1600 charter school students, and plans are in place to open Willow School in Walla Walla next fall, along with a Summit school in West Seattle and a Green Dot middle school in South Seattle.

Everything is on track to continue.

Also set to continue, often seemingly to infinity, is the coordinated opposition to our state’s charter school movement.

What’s all this about unconstitutionality?

View fullsize

The Washington State Supreme Court questioned the constitutionality of charter schools in 2015 based on a technicality around such schools’ oversight. The court’s initial opinion was lifted almost word for word from a document produced by the Washington Education Association (WEA — the state teacher’s union.)

The unconstitutionality loophole was closed last spring through a partnership with the Mary Walker School District near Spokane, which agreed to host the state’s existing charter schools and designate them as Alternative Learning Environments (ALEs).

This action was based on a resolution passed by the district’s board, part of which read, “the District believes that all students should have a choice in their educational program.”

Another key part of last spring’s decision is that funding for the charters in Washington comes from a specially designated lottery fund, which is separate from the pool of money used for public education.

But the saga does not end here! The Charter School Act was challenged again late last summer so the movement remains under fire.

What’s happening with the current lawsuit?

This time around, the plaintiffs have been led in name by El Centro de la Raza, a Seattle-area non-profit that receives grant funding from the WEA, but the case is almost entirely union-driven. Many unions involved have ties to education, but many don’t. Here’s the full list of plaintiffs (unions in bold):

• El Centro de la Raza
• Washington Education Association
• Washington Association of School Administrators
• International Union of Operating Engineers 609
• Aerospace Machinists Union DL 751
• Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
• United Food and Commercial Workers Union
• Washington Federation of State Employees
• American Federation of Teachers, Washington
• Teamsters Joint Council No. 28
• League of Women Voters, Washington State
• Pat Braman, on her own behalf
• Donna Boyer, on her own behalf and on behalf of her minor children
• Sarah Lucas, on her own behalf and on behalf of her minor children

This list is significant because it shows that the WEA views charter schools as a threat to unions, not to education. They are not looking at this through an equity-based, student-first lens, but rather through a lens based on the best interests of teachers and their union as an institution. As a result, the WEA has pulled together a group of unions and of predictably supportive grantees to protect their own self-interest, disregarding the specific needs of the students they serve.

A hearing last November before a courtroom packed full of charter teachers, parents and students saw a slew of procedural decisions, almost all of which fell in favor of charters.

The primary question at hand was, do these unions have standing in this case? Can they even claim they are somehow impacted by the charter law?

The judge struck down most of the plaintiffs as not having taxpayer standing, but left an opening for them to come back with a named party leading the way with a rewritten complaint. They will basically return as individuals representing their unions and organizations.

One claim from suit is that the ALE designation was more workaround than satisfactory solution, and the plaintiffs wanted to make sure the ALE wasn’t an option again. Judge John H. Chun said essentially said he considered this too much supposition and too little substance — that he wouldn’t rule on something that wasn’t presently an issue.

Chun also threw out the plaintiffs’ red-herring claim that charters shouldn’t be funded before we have met the McCleary mandate to fully fund our broader public school system, calling it speculation at best. The state legislature will have to to do something about McCleary no matter what, and charters are unlikely to impact McCleary as the two are funded separately, pulling from separate pots of money.

All of this is building toward another hearing on Jan. 27, 2017, to debate whether charters are constitutional and whether the money funding them is still somehow affecting the common fund. They will argue the meat of the case and the judge will rule. And then we’ll keep on going.

So, the existing handful of charter schools continue to operate, offering much-needed school choice to hundreds of families in different communities. They will keep moving forward as well and keep running good schools. The proof, ultimately, will be in the pudding. Great schools will overcome great opposition in time.

In the meantime, even as the charter school association and its attorneys work to take the burden of this distraction off the schools and their students, the environment created by this union battle axe remains unsettling for all involved. It’s scary for families, nerve-wracking for teachers and administrators. It’s exhausting.

But we will keep on moving. Change isn’t always comfortable, but the status quo won’t do any longer. We need more and better school choices for our students, and we need better outcomes in our traditional schools. If the price for that is being exhausted, so it goes.

Campaign for Student Success launched today to urge an equitable McCleary fix

A coalition of Washingtonians are banding together to ensure that the solution to McCleary is a solution for all students, including those our state typically overlooks.

Launched today, the Campaign for Student Success (CSS) invites all Washingtonians to participate in sharing their vision for an education system that prepares every child to be career- and college-ready. The coalition has pledged to collaborate with Washington legislators and Governor Jay Inslee to ensure that this vision becomes a reality.

So far, the growing list of member organizations includes the Equity in Education Coalition, Washington Roundtable, League of Education Voters, Stand for Children Washington, Statewide Poverty Action Network, Treehouse, School’s Out Washington, Thrive Washington and the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition.

View fullsize

Sharonne Navas, co-founder and executive director of the Equity in Education Coalition, addresses the crowd at today's Campaign for Student Success launch event.

From the CSS press release:

“In McCleary, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that because the state government is not providing sufficient education funding, it is violating the state’s constitution. Further, the Court found that inadequate funding from the state is leading to inequalities and disparities between wealthy and poor school districts. McCleary is a unique opportunity to reimagine – and bring fairness to – Washington’s public education system.”

That’s a promising start. I completely agree that we need to use McCleary as an opportunity to forge a bold new beginning for our public schools.

“We cannot afford to miss the opportunity presented to us by McCleary,” said Sharonne Navas, co-founder and executive director of the Equity in Education Coalition, at today's CSS launch event. “The choice is simple—will we meet the constitutional obligation by dumping money into an unfair system, or take the time to reimagine and reshape our education system into one that puts the needs and assets of children first and works for each and every child in our state? Our coalition has come together to fix a system that is inherently unfair by ensuring that every kid has access to equal opportunity. And it’s not just about the kids. The economy of our state and our way of life depend on a well-educated and diverse workforce.”

The Campaign for Student Success will function according to three key policy pillars: 

• Funding & Fairness: “Sufficient funding must also be equitable and fair, meaning we must support those students who need it most;”
• Talent: “Educator compensation must be funded with a focus on equity, growing the pipeline of excellent educators and matching them with students who need the most help;”
• Accountability: “Funding and talent must be accompanied by a robust accountability system that sets clear goals, tracks progress over time, and provides appropriate supports and programs for under-performing schools and struggling students.”

“The Campaign for Student Success is giving voice to every parent in Washington,” said Regina Elmi, a mother in the Renton School District. “As a parent, I’m thrilled to be asked to be a central part of the conversation because my two daughters are counting on our legislators to get it right. As parents, we need to make sure our voices are heard in Olympia.”

I see so much to love about this campaign. I trust the leadership and the intention. Let’s hope they get the help they need to make equitable education funding a reality in our state.

We already know how to "fix" education. Will this be the year we choose to do it?

The year is almost over, so let's cut to the chase.

Education in the United States is an unfair mess right now, and we spent another 12 months squabbling about how not to fix it.

The fact is, we already know how to "fix" education in the U.S. and everywhere else, and nothing else is going to work until we own up to that truth and change the way we live.

So the question is, will 2017 be the year we decide to do it? Will we have the collective compassion and gumption to make it happen?

Because the solution, on its face, is simple: Think of every child as your child (or your sibling, or your grandchild, or yourself -- whoever you love the most), every school as your child's school. The iniquity and inequity embedded in the system is so immediately intolerable through that lens that we would quite literally rise up for students (see what I did there?) in a national fervor.

Something radical would get done, because the roar of demand would be deafening.

Until we actually treat each other like we love each other, nothing will change. And because our nation loves capitalism more than its people, and because capitalism incentivizes profit above doing what's right, it's going to hard. It's up to us as individuals, moment to moment, to see through the illusion and do the right thing for its own sake. Even when it seems counter-intuitive to the reward system we live in.

The black boy that's a year or a month or a day away from that first little event that steers him down that pipeline out of school and into prison, he's someone's son. He's probably a brother. He has a body and a soul.

Think of the kids in your life, especially us parents. Where you would try to get the edge for them, where you would try to get them an advantage or spare them from a less-than-ideal situation, where you would try to get them into the best private school, consider the kids being left behind. At whose expense is your advantage?

From then-Senate-hopeful Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people.

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.

If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.

If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work.

When we're not giving a political speech, we're free to take that a step further. That fundamental belief in our interconnectedness and interdependence is not just what unites us as Americans, and it's not just what makes this country work. Love and compassion and investment in our brothers and sisters in humanity -- that's what makes life work. That's what makes life's worth.

Our country was founded on racism, but we as humans were not. That racism is perpetuated by a capitalist system in which inequity and discrimination are fundamental. What a task it is to live honorably in such a place! I'll admit I don't know how to do it.

But we are united by our shared humanity, and I know that the best parts of being human -- of being, period -- begin and end with love.

In 2017, I'm committed to doing my best every moment. Let's try it together. Love the people around you as gently and intensely as you can, and things will change. I believe that. We will only fix education by fixing ourselves.

You need to see this Seattle artist's '2017 Racial Justice Calendar'

View fullsize

Sharon H Chang is a writer, photographer and 

Sharon H Chang is a Seattle-based writer and activist, and she has made a genuinely inspiring calendar.

I'm not sure I'd have thought that was possible a few days ago, but Chang's "2017 Racial Justice Calendar" is a remarkable look at the year ahead through a non-colonial, non-white-dominant lens. It features her own original activist photography, mostly from the Seattle area, and manages, simply by listing anniversaries, to give a thorough, holistic look at the recent and semi-recent history of racism in America.

"The calendar is a monthly/daily reminder to wake up and stay woke," Chang wrote on her GoFundMe page, where a donation will get you a signed, handmade calendar. "It includes over 150 names of Black lives lost due to police violence the last half decade, some of my movement photography from 2016, and pivotal racial (in)justice events to remember from near-to-distant history such as Hurricane Katrina, the Flint Water Crisis, #NoDAPL and Kaepernick Anthem Protest. As a writer, scholar, activist it's the calendar I wanted for my wall and the one I couldn't find anywhere else."

Did you know the TPP was signed on Feb. 4, 2016? Or that the original "Birth of a Nation" premiered on Feb. 8, 1915?

In June, we'll commemorate Medgar Evers' murder (1963), Thurgood Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court (1970), the Charleston Church Shooting (2015), Nixon's declaration of a "War on Drugs" (1971), Juneteenth, plus the Chinese Railroad Workers' Strike (1867), Little Bighorn (1876), and Bree Newsome's removal of the Confederate Flag in South Carolina (2015).

Nov. 23 is labeled "THANKS-TAKING," and the 24th is "BLACKOUT FRIDAY." Chang even managed to get some of the super-recent highlights at Standing Rock, including the denial of the easement on Dec. 5.

It's an incredible thing. I feel like I will learn so much through this calendar this year. Honestly. You should take a look.

Are our kids being educated, or are we all just getting schooled?

John Taylor Gatto was named New York State's Teacher of the Year three years in a row from 1988-1990. Nearly 400,000 active teachers currently belong to the union in the Empire State, so even being mentioned in a conversation about the state's best teachers has you breathing rarified air. Winning the award outright three straight years is an astounding singular achievement. Gatto was clearly at the pinnacle of his profession.

I stumbled onto the transcript of his third and final acceptance speech, and despite a quarter-century having passed, I find that he raised many of the same questions I have been wrestling with myself -- and many I don't think I had quite reached yet, or been quite bold enough to even ask myself.

I find that Gatto also echoes much of the stifling rigidity I struggled against as a kid growing up in the schools he's describing. It echoes just as loudly the fears I've struggled as an adult to name when I think about sending my own kids into the same system of public schools -- a fear that is only magnified by having kids of color.

View fullsize

The winter solstice is just behind us and the New Year is just ahead. Now is the time for reflection, a time to ask tough questions about our past, to honor ourselves and our communities in the present, and to dream of bold visions for the future.

What is the goal of our public education system? Is it to create like-minded U.S. citizens, or to empower our young people to create the future?

Can we realistically reform a system of education that is currently a pivotal part of the two-headed snake in the grass known as the school-to-prison pipeline? Can we really reform a system that was founded on segregation, racism and capitalist values? Or do we need to start with a new foundation?

Can we have honest conversations about the state of our public education system when so many people have confused their identity with being tied up in the system and so defend it as though they're defending their very selves?

Can we ever hope to mend the inequity embedded in our public schools when our schools are part of a web of systemic inequity? They inevitably reflect the tenor of the government that funds and directs them, and that government legislates with a capitalist mentality. With our newly elected Don, the prospects of positivity and equity coming from a government agency seem more unlikely than ever.

What kind of education do our kids deserve? How do we deliver that to them right now?

Without further ranting, here is Why Schools Don't Educate, by Taylor Gatto, courtesy of The Natural Child Project:

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I've known over the years who've struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word "education" should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.

We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world's narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan fifty per cent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic - it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880's when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you.

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don't think we'll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we're going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution "schools" very well, but it does not "educate" - that's inherent in the design of the thing. It's not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it's just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic - because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead. The products of schooling are, as I've said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.

The daily misery around us is, I think, in large measure caused by the fact that - as Paul Goodman put it thirty years ago - we force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own part and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its "homework".

"How will they learn to read?" you say and my answer is "Remember the lessons of Massachusetts." When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.

But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who reads, writes or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of talkers, we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most, and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and schoolteachers. It is very difficult to teach the "basics" anymore because they really aren't basic to the society we've made.

Two institutions at present control our children's lives - television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stopping abstraction. In centuries past the time of a child and adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to become a whole man or woman.

But here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal with:

Out of the 168 hours in each week, my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self.

My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up.

My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 6 hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework - a total of 45 hours. During that time, they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, my kids eat, and that takes some time - not much, because they've lost the tradition of family dining, but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals, we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.

It's not enough. It's not enough, is it? The richer the kid, or course, the less television he watches but the rich kid's time is just as narrowly proscribed by a somewhat broader catalog of commercial entertainments and his inevitable assignment to a series of private lessons in areas seldom of his actual choice.

And these things are oddly enough just a more cosmetic way to create dependent human beings, unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. It's a national disease, this dependency and aimlessness, and I think schooling and television and lessons - the entire Chautauqua idea - has a lot to do with it.

Think of the things that are killing us as a nation - narcotic drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all - lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy - all of them are addictions of dependent personalities, and that is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce.

I want to tell you what the effect is on children of taking all their time from them - time they need to grow up - and forcing them to spend it on abstractions. You need to hear this, because no reform that doesn't attack these specific pathologies will be anything more than a facade.

1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days and who can blame them? Toys are us.

2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?

3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present, the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.

4. The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.

5. The children I teach are cruel to each other, they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, and they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.

6. The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candor. My guess is that they are like many adopted people I've known in this respect - they cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of preserving a secret inner self inside a larger outer personality made up of artificial bits and pieces of behavior borrowed from television or acquired to manipulate teachers. Because they are not who they represent themselves to be the disguise wears thin in the presence of intimacy so intimate relationships have to be avoided.

7. The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of schoolteachers who materialistically "grade" everything - and television mentors who offer everything in the world for free.

8. The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges. This is frequently masked by surface bravado, or by anger or aggressiveness but underneath is a vacuum without fortitude.

I could name a few other conditions that school reform would have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies, or television, or both. It's a simple matter [of] arithmetic, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That's what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.

What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn't quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot, then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.

Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn't cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of "experts", a central elite of social engineers. It hasn't worked. It won't work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato's republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn't work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology - drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach.

It's high time we looked backwards to regain an educational philosophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a favorite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching, as much, that is, as I can get away with given the present institution of compulsory schooling. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones.

At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Everywhere in this system, at every age, you will find arrangements to place the child alone in an unguided setting with a problem to solve. Sometimes the problem is fraught with great risks, such as the problem of galloping a horse or making it jump, but that, of course, is a problem successfully solved by thousands of elite children before the age of ten. Can you imagine anyone who had mastered such a challenge ever lacking confidence in his ability to do anything? Sometimes the problem is the problem of mastering solitude, as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, or Einstein did in the Swiss customs house.

One of my former students, Roland Legiardi-Lura, though both his parents were dead and he had no inheritance, took a bicycle across the United States alone when he was hardly out of boyhood. Is it any wonder then that in manhood when he decided to make a film about Nicaragua, although he had no money and no prior experience with film-making, that it was an international award-winner - even though his regular work was as a carpenter.

Right now we are taking all the time from our children that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back, we need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.

A short time ago I took seventy dollars and sent a twelve-year-old girl from my class with her non-English speaking mother on a bus down the New Jersey coast to take the police chief of Sea Bright to lunch and apologize for polluting [his] beach with a discarded Gatorade bottle. In exchange for this public apology I had arranged with the police chief for the girl to have a one-day apprenticeship in a small town police procedures. A few days later, two more of my twelve-year-old kids traveled alone to West First Street from Harlem where they began an apprenticeship with a newspaper editor, next week three of my kids will find themselves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at 6 A.M., studying the mind of a trucking company president as he dispatches 18-wheelers to Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Are these "special" children in a "special" program? Well, in one sense, yes, but nobody knows about this program but the kids and myself. They're just nice kids from Central Harlem, bright and alert, but so badly schooled when they came to me that most of them can't add or subtract with any fluency. And not a single one knew the population of New York City or how far it is from New York to California.

Does that worry me? Of course, but I am confident that as they gain self-knowledge they'll also become self-teachers - and only self-teaching has any lasting value.

We've got to give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must re-involve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstraction. This is an emergency, it requires drastic action to correct - our children are dying like flies in schooling, good schooling or bad schooling, it's all the same. Irrelevant.

What else does a restructured school system need? It needs to stop being a parasite on the working community. Of all the pages in the human ledger, only our tortured entry has warehoused children and asked nothing of them in service to the general good. For a while I think we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life.

For five years I ran a guerilla program where I had every kid, rich and poor, smart and dipsy, give 320 hours a year of hard community service. Dozens of those kids came back to me years later, grown up, and told me that one experience of helping someone else changed their lives. It taught them to see in new ways, to rethink goals and values. It happened when they were thirteen, in my Lab School program - only made possible because my rich school district was in chaos. When "stability" returned the Lab was closed. It was too successful with a wildly mixed group of kids, at too small of a cost, to be allowed to continue. We made the expensive elite programs look bad.

There is no shortage of real problems in the city. Kids can be asked to help solve them in exchange for the respect and attention of the total adult world. Good for kids, good for all the rest of us. That's curriculum that teaches Justice, one of the four cardinal virtues in every system of elite education. What's sauce for the rich and powerful is surely sauce for the rest of us - what is more, the idea is absolutely free as are all other genuine reform ideas in education. Extra money and extra people put into this sick institution will only make it sicker.

Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of "school" open - to include family as the main engine of education. The Swedes realized that in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of adopting unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted. They didn't succeed completely but they did succeed in reducing the number of unwanted Swedish children from 6000 in l976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by children not raised by their natural parents so they did something about it. We can, too.

Family is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 - we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life, we've gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief. I have many ideas to make a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you will have many ideas, too, once you begin to think about it. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grass-roots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large vested interests pre-emptying all the air time and profiting from schooling just exactly as it is despite rhetoric to the contrary. We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We've all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press - a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more "expert" opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their "solutions" are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family. I've said my piece. Thank you.
 

© John Taylor Gatto. All rights reserved

'Still I look to find a reason to believe' in Seattle Public Schools

Seattle Public Schools announced recently that it will face a $74 million budget shortfall if the state legislature does not "fully fund education." Since that phrase has been so overused in Washington that it's lost all meaning, it seems safe to assume SPS will have to make some pretty enormous cuts.

Stephan Blanford, our strongest and often lone voice for equity and reason on the incessantly dysfunctional Seattle School Board, wrote in a piece for the South Seattle Emerald about his fears that our more-voiceless south-end schools will bear the greater burden of these looming cuts:

"I know I am motivated more by fear — fear of the kinds of cuts that we will need to make in December and January as the board grapples with a deficit that has grown to $74 million. I am deeply troubled by the ramifications these cuts will have in classrooms across the city and the uneven impact we could have on schools serving low income students and students of color. And I am motivated by my knowledge of what has happened in the past.

First, the uneven impact. Academic research demonstrates that seniority-based teacher layoffs disproportionately impact schools serving low income and students of color. This is because those schools tend to be staffed with newer teachers having less seniority – the last hired is often the first fired. Many of our principals will tell you that they’ve finally gotten a good mix of older/experienced and younger/energetic teachers in their buildings. As a result, many are optimistic for the first time in their careers about the chances of closing our achievement/opportunity gaps — unacceptable gaps that are larger than nearly every big city school district in the nation.

Secondly, based on recent history, I have come to believe that the school board that I serve on is not sufficiently oriented to or motivated by the need to eliminate the gap, in spite of the fact that the majority of students (53%) served by Seattle Public Schools are students of color. Obviously, not every student of color is in the gap – in fact, many students of color outperform their peers. But for those that don’t, there was very little outrage or even discussion when the board learned of our national ranking in a story that was reported back in May. I’ve frequently seen members of the board disregard advice from the staff and parents when it conflicts with the narrow interests of some of their constituents. During the months when we first learned of a possible budget deficit, some of my colleagues were much more interested in how to spend last year’s $10 million surplus, which could have made a sizable dent in the projected deficit. Many of the choices that were made during that exercise only make our achievement/opportunity gaps worse.

Why does this matter?

If you have a child in Seattle Public Schools, or are troubled by the growing gaps based on family income, race and ethnicity, gentrification, the school-to-prison pipeline or any number of societal ills confronting our city, region and nation, you too should be concerned! At the root of each of these problems is society’s failure to adequately prepare our children to reach their awesome potential. IT IS CRITICAL THAT WE STEP UP NOW."

If you want to lose hope altogether, read the comments on Blanford's article. He's met with defensiveness, privilege and skepticism, often admittedly from the north end residents (and from Charlie Mas, who loves chiming in on our issues from wherever he's at).

This isn't about dividing the city into a north and south end. That's already been done. We are already the have-nots. It's not that there are no low-income families in the north end, or that there is no money in the south. It's that these are two very different places, home to two very distinct populations. Our city has been largely segregated for ages.

Blanford's fears are based in reality, and part of that reality is that schools like Emerson exist in a different realm of Seattle Public Schools than their north-end counterparts. At Emerson, we are already operating with two long-term substitutes where we should have full-time teachers. We are one of the only schools in the city with such a high percentage of students eligible for free/reduced lunch that it's just given to everyone. We've had four principals in four years.

This is, by definition, a high-need school, but it's serving mostly low-privilege students and families, which means it gets ignored. Then when someone tries to speak up about it, the overwhelming response is defensiveness.

But we should just keep plugging away, believing things will change. I'm trying.

We're progressive in lots of ways in Seattle, but that doesn't give us a pass on all the ways we're still way behind the times. We have the fifth-highest achievement gap along racial lines in the country. It persists because comfortable, privileged white moderates dominate the conversation about education locally.

We will keep speaking up from the south end, from the other sides of all the borders and barriers. The question becomes, when will people listen? I'm looking for a reason to believe that will happen soon. It needs to, because my kids won't be kids forever.

El álbum fue grabado el 5 de febrero de 1993, como parte de la serie "Unplugged" de MTV. Rod Stewart se reunió, por primera vez en casi veinte años, con Ronnie Wood, compañeros en The Face.

What will it take to undo institutional neglect at Emerson Elementary?

I live in South Seattle. My oldest son goes to Emerson Elementary, our neighborhood public school, and it’s gotten some long-awaited attention in the past couple months.  

Emerson Elementary School in Seattle, circa 1920

The Emerson community has been a long-term victim of institutional neglect — despite serving a high-need population, the school sees chronically low resources and high staff turnover. In a system whose schools in wealthy neighborhoods are propped up by parent donations, advocacy and involvement, the schools in lower-income communities are left to fend for themselves.

It’s no surprise, then, when these schools struggle. Emerson, for its part, was downgraded from a “priority school” to a “superintendent intervention school” after last spring, and nearly every teacher in the school exercised the accompanying opportunity to “displace” and leave Emerson.

Not surprisingly, almost every family in the neighborhood with privilege is also finding a way to choose another school — and why wouldn’t they? Kids of color, as a result, make up almost the entire student body at Emerson, and that has been true for years. Emerson draws from an extremely diverse part of town, but "diverse" means exactly that. There are plenty of white kids around the neighborhood, too. Most of them just aren't at Emerson.

On a state level, our schools have been under-funded for years, and the legislature seems if anything further from resolving the McCleary mandate than it was whenever we checked in last. And even if by some magic our schools are soon “fully funded,” Emerson’s issues will remain. Funneling more money into an inequitable system won’t solve issues of inequity.

The voices of the Emerson community began to be heard for the first time in a long time this fall when principal Andrea Drake’s leave of absence garnered some media attention. That led to a community meeting in November to discuss Emerson’s past, present and future with Kelly Aramaki, executive director of Seattle Public Schools’ southeast region, and our local school board rep, Betty Patu. It was an unexpected spotlight and an unexpected opportunity to change the course of our struggling school.

The following is an email sent from Kelly Aramaki to the Emerson mailing list on Monday, Dec. 12:

Dear Emerson Families,

Thank you for so warmly welcoming Dr. Drake back. I know that she appreciates the welcome and well-wishes she received from families, students and staff. Thank you also to those of you who were able to attend the Emerson family meeting with School Board President Betty Patu, myself and other district leaders on November 17. We recognize and acknowledge the challenges Emerson Elementary has faced over the years and the community’s concern about insufficient funding, support and attention. As Director Patu mentioned at the meeting, we are committed to doing better by Emerson students and community.

As promised at that parent meeting, this is a follow-up letter to share more information and to answer questions asked that evening. The following are key points we’d like to give more information on, as well as answers to questions raised that evening. We know that much more dialogue with the community is needed moving forward, and will use this is a starting point.

The Need for More Support for Emerson – One of the key points made that evening was the need for more support for Emerson than what has been given in the past. We agree. This year, the district has allocated additional family support to Emerson through a Family Engagement Coordinator who will work alongside Yolanda McGee, the Family Support Worker. We have allocated two building substitutes (one full-time, one half-time) to provide more consistent substitutes when teachers are out sick. We also allocated additional funding to make the counselor full-time. We are providing the school enhanced professional development support to support the teachers and staff. We are providing enhanced leadership support for the building administrators. Through the Families and Education levy funding, Dr. Drake and her team have also secured additional resources for students such as whole-child support in partnership with Seneca. We have also allocated an additional math specialist to support students who are struggling with math. Looking to next year, the district and school are working with the Seattle Education Association (teachers’ union) to pursue a new model for school improvement that leverages family and community engagement.

Recruiting the Best Teachers – One of the most important factors in a child’s education is the quality of the classroom teacher. A number of concerns were raised at the parent meeting regarding recruiting and retaining the best teachers. Last February, Dr. Drake and I, along with Ms. James and Ms. Dusin, went to the Washington Educator Career Fair at the Tacoma Dome to recruit and offer contracts to teachers who are not only extremely qualified, but also passionate about working in schools with a diverse community like Emerson. Human Resources has invited us to do that again this year to fill any vacancies with the best candidates. In addition, Human Resources is protecting Emerson from any forced-placed teachers. Any teacher who comes to Emerson will be interviewed and approved by an Emerson interview team. Our goal is to find, support and retain outstanding teachers who are committed to the Emerson community.

Concerns About Vacant Positions –  This year, we have struggled to fill two classroom teaching positions. Parent concerns were heard regarding the challenges of rotating substitutes in those classrooms. We now have long-term substitutes in place for both of those classes.  We will do better to ensure that students in those classrooms are receiving the same level of education as students in other classes. That includes getting regular homework and updates for parents on their child’s progress.

City Year & After School Activities – Due to the particular needs of Emerson students, the school decided to fund a partnership with Seneca instead of City Year, because Seneca’s program and services were more aligned with the needs and goals of the school. Regarding after-school activities, we have opportunities in place this year for students such as choir and instrumental music. Additionally, we have after-school academic supports for English Language Learners. The school is looking into other after-school opportunities for Emerson students for next year.

The Budget Crisis – Concerns about the current budget crisis, the “levy cliff” and how schools are funded were raised at the meeting. This is a concern that impacts all of our schools. We are doing everything we can to mitigate the impact of the budget cuts on our students and schools. For more information about the current budget crisis, we encourage you to attend a Community Budget Gap Meeting on December 15 from 6:30 – 8:00PM at South Shore PK-8 School or on January 3 from 6:30 – 8:00PM at Franklin High School. For more information on this, please go to www.seattleschools.org.

Future Parent Engagement – Parents asked about future opportunities for Emerson families to talk with school and district administrators. I will coordinate with Dr. Drake to provide future opportunities for families to talk directly with school and district administrators about Emerson Elementary and to get updates on how we are better supporting the school.

Those are all the updates we have for now. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, I encourage you to contact Dr. Drake at Emerson. She is more than happy to talk with you about the school’s vision and to receive any questions or feedback you may have. If your concerns are about district support for Emerson, please feel free to contact me as well. Both Dr. Drake and I are passionate about and committed to helping Emerson students succeed in school and in life. Our unified goal, along with the staff, is to make sure that Emerson becomes one of Seattle’s most successful schools for each and every student in the Emerson community.

Have a wonderful week and a joy-filled winter vacation.

Sincerely,

 

Kelly Aramaki, Executive Director of Schools

 

This is a very nice letter, and the community meeting was a great first step -- as long as it's a first of many steps. I wasn’t able to attend the meeting, so maybe I would feel differently had I been there in person, but I struggle to find hope in these words. Despite the best intentions, Julian’s school will still have TWO long-term substitutes for the rest of the year where there should be full-time teachers. This is not a road map for foundational, long-term change at a school that desperately needs it. It’s more of a list of current problems, immediate band-aids, and lofty aspirations.

But then again, what did I expect?

Too many low-performing public schools like Emerson seem doomed, forgotten, stuck getting by as best they can. It’s a systemic problem. Emerson Elementary School — and its students and families — are just victims of an unfair capitalist system of education. People like Betty Patu and Kelly Aramaki mean well, I'm sure -- they don’t have a foot on Emerson Elementary School’s back. They're working within the confines of the same inherently inequitable system.

For now, I think the key here is that our leaders are willing to listen. If this is a first step with bigger steps soon to follow, then great. If this is the best we can do, then Emerson is stuck. Either way, we still have work to do.

Catching up after a busy month

I'm home.

View fullsize

A lot, it turns out, happened while I was gone. And having spent most of the past month with little cell service and lots of things demanding my attention, I'm still getting caught up.

For starters, Donald Trump was elected president. That seems bad.

Trump has also nominated Betsy DeVos to be our new Secretary of Education. She supports charter schools, which seems good at first, until you find out she's obsessed with them in a bizarre, fairly extreme way. She also wants to "Make Education Great Again," which requires no dissection to be rendered obviously ridiculous (though I do look forward to dissecting it soon anyway).

But the point is, Trump and DeVos will be making decisions very soon that have very real implications for our kids. What will we do?

In Washington State, meanwhile, we showed our own backwater stripes and failed to elect Erin Jones to be our new state superintendent of public instruction. Instead, we shout hooray for Chris Reykdal, a white male career politician! He's the change we've been looking for, no doubt.

The frivolous challenge to Washington State's charter school law was dismissed, and the same law has since been called the strongest in the nation, so our locale hasn't been completely bereft of positive developments. Our budget crisis remains, however, and the broken systems that created the inequity are still the ones trying to fix it. We are still scales on a snake trying to eat its own tail.

Luckily, there's reason for hope. Our kids are beautiful geniuses, and we (their parents and their community) recognize this and love them all the more for it. They will not be denied the education they deserve. We won't stand for it.

Day 10 at Standing Rock: Kings Return

About the Music: “Kings Return”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

I wanted to end the awareness campaign with something powerful. Something that will last. Like Earth. Earth will beat out all our human greed. I pray we can unite to respect this miracle we live on.

From Matt:

I ate Thanksgiving dinner today, but we called it by many different names. Forgiving Day. No Banksgiving. Native Feast Day was my favorite.

We were all invited to the community high school in the nearby town of Cannon Ball, and the community served and ate dinner with us.

A Lakota elder spoke to the crowd first. He told his people's story of the black snake and sang a prayer song.

Then he thanked his Lakota brothers and sisters for being there, and said that we were all Lakota. That we were all living out the values of peace, love, protection and unity.

I thought I was coming to Standing Rock to serve. To help. To offer up my privilege and stand up against something.

It's that, for sure, but it's also much more. It turns out the "Lakota way" is pretty simple: to be your purest, best self every moment of the day. There is no protest, because there is only one way to live.

If we heal ourselves, we can heal the sickness threatening to flow into that pipeline.

Every moment is another chance to live like a king again if you choose to love yourself. If we do that, we will all be living in resistance. We will all be standing with Standing Rock in the most profound way possible. I would be thankful if you would join us.

#NODAPL #DAPL #CeeGoodsProduction #MattHalvorson #StandingRock #Unity #Community #Earth #Preserve #Water #Life #Love #Fight #Together #Peace #WaterProtectors #Beats #HipHop #Portland

Day 9 at Standing Rock: Major Keys

About the Music: “Major Keys”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

Every move we make is major. We are all in this together, and together we can take down corporations. They need us, they need our money. We can fight and win the war. 

 "I am not god. We are God."

I love my family and my friends with intensity. It's part of what fuels me every day. And I love them actively — especially my family. We support each other, and we fit into each other's lives as part of a little web, an ecosystem almost. We hug and hold each other and help connect each other to the real beauty of deep, unshakable love.

The pain of Standing Rock has finally started to make the news. But the magic of Standing Rock is that so many people here are somehow learning to love everyone else with that same intensity and activity. In the old world, we were strangers. In the New World, we are brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents and children, and we treat each other that way. We live with the Earth, not on it.

Written behind Emma in this photo are the camp's direct action principles, led by the ideas of protection over protest, prayer and love over fear and reaction. Standing Rock can change the world because it is not simply about standing up to injustice and declaring that it's wrong. It's about saying enough is enough, and living differently come hell or high oil prices.

There's a reason "All You Need is Love" was the first satellite broadcast on planet earth. It's probably the truest thing anyone's ever said.

The best thing you can do to support Standing Rock this minute — and every minute — is to love everyone in your life as gently and intensely as you can. Then make the decision to share that love with the next person, too.

I am not god. We are God. And if we all realize that, we will change the world.

Day 8 at Standing Rock: Diamond

About the Music: “Diamond”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

The sample says, "Darkness falls, may it be, your heart remains true." I chose this because it embodies the courage each protector is sacrificing for the better of millions of people in this country.

This man was sprayed in the eyes at point-blank range with OC spray — normally used during prison riots, where it's also inhumane. His face is covered with milk of magnesia, offering only the slightest relief.

That was more than a week ago, and the use of force by police has only escalated since.  An unarmed woman may have lost her arm to a concussion grenade yesterday. A 13-year-old girl was shot in the face with a rubber bullet. An elder went into cardiac arrest and was revived on the scene, remaining in critical condition. Hundreds were injured.

Let's just be clear about what's happening: the police are protecting the interests of a private corporation with military force. Our president knows this is wrong and has said as much, but he has not stopped the pipeline. Even Obama is under the thumb of big oil.

We must band together now to save ourselves. Nobody will do it for us. Use your platform, whatever it is, to educate your circles and share your passion about this issue.

Take your money and your debt out of the big banks supporting the pipeline. Close your accounts. Call local police and government. Do everything you can. Now is the time we reclaim our respect for the Earth and each other.

#NODAPL #DAPL #StandingRock #CeeGoodsProduction #MattHalvorson #Together #Community #Unity #Earth #Preserve #Life #Love #Water #Peace #Beats #HipHop #Portland

Day 7 at Standing Rock: Judgement Day

About the Music: “Judgement Day”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

The energy feels like it's coming soon. People are going to have to make conscious decisions of how they want our future to look. Are you with good? Or are you with greed?

An old Lakota prophecy says that a black snake will tear through the continent, ravaging the Earth and endangering all life on the planet if it is allowed to take hold. Similar prophecies exist across many different tribes, as do foretellings of the importance of the Seventh Generation in defeating the serpent and preserving life on Earth.

Many believe that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is the fabled black snake.

I have gotten to know a number of strong, proud, brilliant young Lakota men and women during my time here. They're a little younger than me, which makes them part of the seventh generation of their people to be born since their first contact with white European invaders. I'm not alone in sensing the power that flows through them from their ancestors. If you met them, I think you, too, would believe that we have all been called here to fight for Mother Earth as brothers and sisters.

We are the Black Snake Killers.

From Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nation:

"A "disease of the mind" has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring Peace.

In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unite spiritually as a Global Nation, or be faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives' eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the Source of Life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land, using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me on this endeavour. Our vision is for the Peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all Nations to begin a global effort, and remember to give thanks for the Sacred Food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the Great Myth of Progress and Development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You yourself are the one who must decide.

You alone - and only you - can make this crucial choice, to walk in honour or to dishonour your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you yourself are essential to this World. Believe that! Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this World. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending!"

Day 6 at Standing Rock: Life is Sweet

Life is Sweet. We value our lives. They can try and attack with any means of weaponry, but it does not match the level of commitment to stopping this pipeline. Our lives are worth too much.

About the Music: “Life is Sweet”

(co-produced by Old Gold; vocals by @frankstickemz - aka Flowzavelt)

From the musician, Cee Goods:
Life is sweet. We value our lives. They can try and attack with any means of weaponry, but it does not match the level of commitment to stopping this pipeline. Our lives are worth too much.

(The following are actual text messages I sent to Spencer (aka Cee Goods) on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016. It was too hectic to write anything coherent.)

"Please share, protest, donate - do whatever you can do. What is happening at Standing Rock is happening to all of us... whether we realize it or not."

"I fell asleep sitting up in my car from about 430 to 630. Woke up and something was going down off in the main camp in the distance. Police cars, and a call for all the protectors to come to the bridge [on Highway 1804, which has been blockaded and closed for several weeks]."

"Police are definitely here, but it's not clear if they are the perpetrators or if it's DAPL."

"Can't get through on twitter or Facebook right now. Two planes and a helicopter circling constantly right now. Lots of people shot with both gas and rubber bullets in face and chest. People have gotten tear-gassed, they're using a water cannon to soak people and things."

"Concussion grenades and rubber bullets. Shit is going down. Someone has already left in an ambulance. There are no reporters or news outlets here."

Day 5 at Standing Rock: The Stand-Off

How much can we take? Something has to give. We pursue with positivity, but has it reached a limit? Do we retaliate with the same energy that is received? Energy is shifting. Something is on the horizon.

About the Music: “The Stand-Off”

From the musician, Cee Goods:
How much can we take? Something has to give. We pursue with positivity, but has it reached a limit? Do we retaliate with the same energy that is received? Energy is shifting. Something is on the horizon.

We are here as protectors, not protesters. This young man threw himself down onto the tracks separating militarized police from peaceful demonstrators, a visible act of prayer.

As we eventually tried to leave the scene, however, police advanced. People were sprayed at point-blank range with OC gas -- a riot-caliber tear gas used in prisons. Women and Native elders were accosted and thrown to the ground. Many were arrested, many were injured.

It is said that capitalism becomes fascism when the government begins protecting the interests of corporations over people. We have long-since crossed that threshold. Please stand with Standing Rock to take back the power from the corrupt, morally bankrupt oil barons and give it to the people.

Our country was founded on a genocide of the indigenous people, and our legacy of "freedom" has been built on oppression and lies.

Will you stand by as our government attempts to quietly break another treaty? Will you stand by as our president-elect promises to abuse his power and double down on racist division and oppression?
Or will you stand with all people, with the Earth itself, by standing with Standing Rock?

Let's make America great again, just like it was when we found it.

View fullsize

Gwen Frost is a student in Bellingham, Wash. She grew up in Portland, Ore. She was sprayed in the eyes at point-blank range with OC gas by police in Mandan, ND. Why? Because she is peacefully standing up for what she believes is right, and that goes against the interests of the biggest pile of money.