NCLB activism starts in your own back yard... Now is the time to fight NCLB
Now is the time to spend real energy fighting NCLB. We need people to sign on to distribute 100 copies of a booklet offering a straightforward description of NCLB.
Elizabeth Jaeger’s booklet, “What Every Parent, Teacher, and Community Member Needs to Know About No Child Left Behind,” is available for free on the Oakland Education Association web site. www.oaklandea.org/front_page_docs/may_07/NCLB%20Jaeger.pdf
To aid mass distribution, Elizabeth, a longtime teacher, has undertaken to get the booklet printed and is making it available at cost. I am taking orders: 100 booklets for $50.
The time is critical. That means right now. The politicos are pushing for renewal. We need to make this big push NOW. Teacher silence is no longer an option.
Please join in this last-ditch effort. With 100 — or 500 booklets — in hand, you will figure out what to do with them. How about a public reading on the capital steps? Or outside the office of your congressional representative? Or to your school board, which has the right to “just say no”? The booklet contains ideas for activism.
The best thing that can happen is that concerned educators get this booklet into the hands of people they don’t know. And start a conversation.
Send me an e-mail with your order. Include your shipping address.
susano@gmavt.net , Susan Ohanian, P.O. Box 370, Charlotte, VT 05445
NCLB activism starts in your own back yard
1. Find three colleagues who agree with you.
Hand out these booklets together. In Washington State, the Mothers Against WASL stood on street corners, talking with passersby. Now they give seminars.
In Colorado, a handful of parents and teachers held bake sales and car washes to raise enough money to put notices at bus stops informing parents of their right to opt out of the state test. Their activist group, Coalition for Better Education, now numbers in the hundreds. Both groups have frequent letters to the editor in local papers, as well as Op Ed commentaries.
2.Talk to community leaders.
Offer to give a short program explaining NCLB to local churches, to the Rotary Club, the Lions, to gardening clubs. Perhaps they would be interested in ordering this booklet to spread the word. The Vermont Society for the Study of Education presented a half-day workshop to the American Association of University Women.
3. Hold an information night at a public library.
4. Wear an End NCLB button. People are sure to ask you about it. Then you can give them a copy of the booklet.
5. Collect parent stories. Teachers need parents as allies. Their stories arepowerful.
6. Hold a Children’s Day in memory of all the things NCLB has stolen from children. Feature Free Play, in memory of the recess that has been stolen from so many. This day could include other important areas where children are shortchanged: art and music, for starters.
7. Hold a gigantic Read-In where community members read to and with children, in memory of all the good literature that has been replaced by scripted curriculum mandated by the Reading First portion of NCLB.
8. Hold a book give-away, in memory of all the good literature that has been replaced by scripted curriculum mandated by the Reading First portion of NCLB.
9. Ask local pediatricians and health care professionals to participate in a community forum on the importance of developmentally appropriate curriculum for primary grade children. You can give a sample DIBELS test.
Ask health care professionals to order copies of this booklet for their offices.
10. Organize a campaign to send messages about NCLB to local media personalities. Educator Roundtable Educator Roundtable recently asked people to send an email describing the horrors of NCLB to the following news figures, using the subject heading “Saving Public Education, Saving Democracy.”
The emails were addressed to Keith Olbermann countdown@msnbc.com, Amy Goodman mail@democracynow.org, and Arianna Huffington scoop@huffingtonpost.com
Educator Roundtable asked letter writers to refer the recipients to the petition to end NCLB: http://www.educatorroundtable.org/petition.html.
By: Rita Balderas
Immpact of the NCLB
I am a graduate student and writing my paper on what I believe is the negative impact of the NCLB Act and the politicians who support such an act for personal, political and financial gain. I believe that more educators should be alerted as to what NCLB Act is truly about and that parentst need to become more involved and educated as to what this means to their child's education. Students (especially ELLs) are being held accountable for schools districts punitive consequences and so much more -all negative!