Tags
#180DaysCount, Accountability, alternative assessment, authentic classrooms, BPS, Broward Public Schools, bullying, developmentally Appropriate Practice, FLDOE, FSA, Good Cause Exemptions, harmful educational practices, HCSD, Hernando Public Schools, High stakes testing, intimidation, Judge Karen Gievers, K-12, Making kids cry, OCPS, opt out movement, Orange County Public Schools Broward Public Schools, Portfolio assessment, promotion by portfolio, promotion by report card, real teaching, Retention, retention lawsuit, SCPS, Seminole Public Schools, state bullying, Teachers, The Opt Out Florida Network, Third grade, Third Grade FSA
For years, school boards have been telling parents how much they sympathized and empathized with us, as we have pleaded and protested to make a year of school count for more than one test. There are districts doing right by the children and promoting them, as the law specifies. However, immediately following Judge Gievers’ ruling last Friday, effectively “untying the hands” of all school districts in Florida to do as parents have requested and use a portfolio assessment (not the same as the state’s portfolio test bank), Orange and Hernando Counties filed their already prepared appeals. It’s clear now, that the boards’ chants of, “Our hands are tied” were just excuses to not do better. Sadly, yesterday, Broward and Seminole Counties followed suit, in defiance of the judge’s orders.
In response to the districts’ motions for appeal, this “Open Letter to Florida School Boards” was penned by parent activist, Jinia Parker of Pinellas County. We couldn’t have said it better and we are sharing it here with permission:
____________________
Dear Florida School Boards,
Parents, educators and activists have reached out to you for years, asking for your help and guidance. Again and again we got the same messages.
“Our hands are tied.”
“We must follow the law.”
“We wish we could do things differently, but…”
The order issued last week by a Florida Court finally freed those hands completely as the judge’s order made it clear that the districts had not been following the law (as directed by the purposely absent hand of the FLDOE).
I waited for the celebration from the districts. Finally! Those hands were freed and with them, so too, our kids. Finally! School boards were free to follow the statutes plain language AND with the support of the court. Finally! You could authorize superintendents and principals to promote all those proficient students to fourth grade, saving tax dollars & reducing the harm already done to them under your authority. Finally! School boards could recognize, as it was demonstrated plainly in court, that the FLDOE does not have your back. Finally! The focus of school districts would be our students, not serving the illegal mandates of the FLDOE.
That isn’t what happened.
First, Orange County Public Schools appealed the judge’s ruling, followed by Hernando, Broward, and sadly, Seminole Counties. The FLDOE’s appeal is expected, but I’d rather the districts hadn’t raced them to do so. Though it shows us who is who.
This speaks volumes about those districts, demanding free hands to continue harm against students. If you think parents won’t be aware, you are wrong. I believe the impeachment of any elected official, seeking to continue harm to children by refusing to follow a court order is not only appropriate, but the only appropriate action. I’m asking that they resign right now. I have little hope of that, given the complete lack of honor with which these districts (and therefore school Boards) have approached the last school year (and more) on this subject.
I will not accept “our hands are tied” ever again. Throughout history, “I was following orders” has been the excuse of cowards and those who lack honor.
I’m not asking for anything extraordinary. I am asking that school boards in Florida do the right thing.
These families, including children, chose to be honorable and brave. You should try it.
Out of patience,
Jinia Parker
#180DaysCount
__________________
==>> TAKE ACTION:
Use #180DaysCount
Tweetable link: bit.ly/Ltr2FLSB
@BrowardSchools
@HernandoSchools
@OCPSNews
@SCPSInfo
@EducationFL
@BetterSchoolsFL
@FLGovScott
@FloridaEA
@FloridaPTA
THE OPT OUT FLORIDA NETWORK 
Hi!
That’s a great letter and thank you for sharing!
With our newly elected school board members here in Indian River County, may I have your permission to forward to them?
>
LikeLike
Pingback: 9/04 UPDATE – 3rd Grade Lawsuit | THE OPT OUT FLORIDA NETWORK
Our schools are in a terrible tilt, and they’re about to topple on our children.
At the moment, the rarest word in all of education is “kids”. And the most ignored phrase in this giant jungle of jargon is “common sense”.
Long-revered pedagogical precepts have been blue-penciled by classroom-allergic theorists leveraged by profiteers who see public schools as the next sustainable profit-producing motherlode. And the political class … put into office by all of us … has mocked our vote and deserted our children in a flash of cash.
Never has American education been in such a moment of willful destruction of revered pedagogical principles. Never before have the wishes and concerns of those most vested in public schools been so summarily dismissed by bureaucratic double-speak and political bunk.
Beyond the view of the current skirmishes now underway across an array of states, is an emerging reality that … in a very short while … this reform will have razed an American institution to a mound of rubble.
And in its place … for as far as the eye can see … will stand drive-thru learning centers offering kiosk-educations from a B. F. Skinner touch-screen that will supply the finger-pointer with all they need to succeed in a life of rich monotony.
That’s what your now titling schools are going to look like. And that is your kid’s purgatory. Dante would have had devilish fun imagining the distinct horror levels of academic hell that await children in their most crucial years. The recent past showcases the scary future.
Kindergarten has already been invaded by classroom magistrates who see nothing wrong at all in shoving 70 month-olds into a rush-hour of academic traffic … because some basement gnome alleges it’s the ideal moment to vaccinate them with “grit” and “rigor”. And these academic tykes have no need for recess or songs or giggles … because those would be indicators of unseriousness. And education is, above all else, extra-serious business. Even for cherubs still ill-at-ease tying their own sneakers.
The elementary years seem destined to be the Tablet Years. The Mario Bros. Educational Principles will rule the day as students win points and pile up Magic No. 2 Pencils as they are prompted from one level to the next. Competency based education will erase all of those annoying human variables and every learner who reaches Level Six will see their names glitter in on-screen pixie dust. And an 8 X 10 screen-shot of that conquering moment will become the new diploma.
By the time they arrive at middle school they’ll be thoroughly “Skinnered” … and on-screen accountability and specially-tapered curriculum designs will suffocate all of those aggravating teenage twitches and quirks. Schools will … above all else … homogenize this stage of maturity so that no nail stands up … and individuality is presented as antithetical narcissism that is thoroughly unacceptable. Creativity will be assessed as a day-dreaming activity … time consuming musing more symptomatic of a sloth than of genius.
High school will become the sorting years … the Divergent Time … when, at long last, the future of every young adult will become crystal clear. Youngsters will be endlessly nudged in this or that career pathway … justified by the overwhelming mounds of data that can be Hansel and Greteled all the way back to the days when joy was first run out of their very brand-new lives.
And at every level, parents will lose more and more control of their children. They will be less and less invited by school authorities to take part in the joy-remembering rites of passage we all associate with growing up. And that is all by design because the very last thing these new educational absolutists want is any mother or father acting as though they have any regency at all over their own child’s education.
Orwell yourself beyond the moment and come to terms with what awaits us all on the horizon of touch-screen education and data-driven assessments. Huxley yourself into the world of tomorrow when your children will have been programmed and plugged into lifetime situations based not on their passions but on some algorithmic prescription burped out by some electronic ouija mother-board.
If you are doubting of this, examine what the last half-decade has wrought. In the blink of an eye, schools have been systematically transformed, alarmed parents tattooed as adversaries, and politicians have morphed into carnival barkers for every profiteer determined to get their slice of the Big Education pie.
And all the while, half-a-generation has already endured this child-abusing, educational malpractice … as they are guinea-pigged into blazing trails in the brave new world of scholastic madness.
And that is the great tilt. What are you going to do about it?
And if you decide to do nothing … then stand ready to watch their lives topple into misery in this brave new world.
Denis Ian
LikeLike