Sunday, April 12, 2015

Vote for Fred Klonsky for NEA-RA


Don’t You Wish Someone Would Stand Up Against Arne’s Abusive Push for Toxic Testing and Injurious Competitive Grants?   What?…Who Did?

Or
Why to Vote for Fred Klonskly for NEA-RA

Because retirement is not always the bed of roses it’s cracked up to be, you may have understandably forgotten some of the items passed in the 2014 NEA-RA Assembly in Denver last year.   Things get in the way.

But you probably couldn’t avoid reading about, feeling, or even being a part of the growing national resentment against mindless educational mandates and detrimentally forced testing like the PARCC. 

Last summer, Representatives from the NEA and the Retired Assembly convened in Denver to consider the year’s national platform and offer new business items for consideration.  One vote taken in Denver came very close to voting “no confidence” in the Obama administration’s faith in Arne Duncan’s RTTT program with its over-emphasis on testing. 

Fred Klonsky was there.

Supporters, who realized that it was only pebble thrown at the administration, also acknowledged it might just provide the impetus for a greater questioning by states, districts and educators in the next year.  And it did.

In Illinois, the CPS considered ignoring the testing or taking only a part of it, until they were threatened with the withdrawal of nearly $1.4 billion if federal and state aid.  Students in a northern Illinois high school district passive-aggressively took the exam in several minutes and did their homework.  Thousands of parents began opting to remove their child from the testing requirement. 

Representatives tried for several years to move NEA leadership from an initial blind adherence for Duncan to a call for his resignation…they came close last summer.  I wonder what they can do this year?  Charter schools?  Common Core?  Poverty and education?  Pensions?  Collective Bargaining? White Suburban Moms?   

A lot of serious issues to consider.

I’m voting for Fred Klonsky to keep the ball rolling. 
Hope you will too.

1 comment:

  1. Done--vote in! No one can do it like Fred, so all of you out there take John's advice.
    Time for the NEA to take a stand against wasting our kids' educations & our money
    (taxpayers' money!) that should go to funding REAL education rather than fake "standardized" (NEVER have been & NEVER will be--no quality control, no oversight, just million$ of dollar$ $quandered...on Pear$on {a co. not even owned by/based in the U.S.--we don't even know where that $$$ is going})

    Elect Fred--someone who speaks truth to power & takes a REAL stand for our children, & for all of us.

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