Its unlikely to be valid in terms of what its trying to do. I do believe there is ability. Parents who come into kindergarten, when you have a child they always say children will develop at their own weight and age. Whats important is that theyre thriving and happy and then all the sudden that rhetoric comes to a halt and if you dont learn to read by third grade youre doomed forever and wont ever go to college. I hope you buy the book and give it to all the parents you work with. I was reading about this thing called a racial button law where the children are in control of their own content because their children and they put content online and the idea is they own their content and could get rid of it. Its being proposed in other states as well but it is here. However it doesnt affect what happens in the rooms of the school so when kids are taking their test the system knows whether their parents are divorced. They dont take into account good days or bad days or that we know the kids going through a tough time. The concern is and i think there are laws being proposed but as technology starts coming into the School System this is a bigger concern, especially with Identity Theft and misuse and mishandling of information. Thanks for bringing that up. This is an enormous issue and its going to get much bigger before it goes away. Its not just for student, but student privacy is at the forefront of the overall privacy issue. Some of the best minds in the world are working on student privacy because these are our children and it really matters. California is considered to have the strongest law. This law will be modeled by others and its in the house of representatives right now. It tries to follow on what some of California Law does but not all of it. The student privacy issue isnt just about testing. Although testing is an important one because theres consequential information about the students performance. Here the potential issues theres different issues about students and schools collecting data and the agencies they work with. Theres the concerned that it will be stolen or mis used or used for Identity Theft or use to make money. Then theres commercialization which is my students data is available to a Third Party Vendor who will use it for advertising products. Products. My student will be advertised to win shes doing her homework or whats very difficult to defined in some ways in commercial misuse is schools have already outsourced things to a thirdparty vendor. Whatever goes into a forprofit vendor is going to be used to improve the product itself. The more people that use google or google docs, the better it becomes so in some sense weve already turned our students information into commercial gain. Thirdly, i think most to the point of what were talking about here is privacy of my student but in the sense that he has a permanent record. The information stored in my kid is going to be used to make decisions about him in a way i cant control it. You can see this in predictive analytics. Predictive analytics is what target uses to try to tell us your pregnant before you do. They look at your searches and then sell your products. Predictive analytics and schools is, i look at the data and i have a low income kid and they have this grade and middle school and so i believe they are at risk to drop out. Now you look at the data and you make a decision or prediction about a kid and that prediction could be used to help them and intervene on their behalf. Its also inevitably shaping the beliefs about that kid on any professional who looks at that file. So the file is going around and when teachers are giving information about their student they are led to believe that the students are really gifted, then they treat the students differently and the students achieve more. The impact of having this information on the student the readout at the bottom said this kid is a potential dropout. That is the kind of question that the law is so far away from getting at and even in the court of Public Opinion theres a lot of division about where is this helpful, when is this helpful, should they be forgotten should they be able to tear up this record when they leave high school. Is it non personally identifiable and can we change policies to reduce dropout rates. Its totally complex and fascinating and a little scary as well. It depends where youre sitting, its extremely scary. Say its 25 years from now and youre on a book to her with the test sql, what would you be talking about . I would love to be talking about how the next generation of assessment really opened up her eyes to each persons capabilities and each student would be graduating with a robust record of their own learning that they control and they could qualify to a future employer. That schools would be robust and embrace creativity and use dashboard conductivity to figure out what really motivates them. If i could magically call up the sum of all papers i wrote in first grade through high school i would have such an interesting record of my own thinking in my own skills as they evolved and my own interests. The power of the data is really in how you use it. I dont i dont know how they deal with standardized testing but in learning competency models, masters mastery is there some synergy between that model and incorporating that into standardized testing . There is and its a very odd alliance. Im getting interest in this book from companies that believe they are the ones that will reduce the burden of testing by making it invisible. They talk about invisible integration. They want to do an experiment that would do away with state tests in favor of five questions a a day. Five question a day for a year knowing zaidi, this is a low steak game and the importance of the question could change from student to student to get a more adoptive model. You can you can cover many topics in many ways to learn more about what they know, and theyre also looking at as a next level to this, could a teacher create an activity that would satisfy that question or that construct such that you wouldnt have to ask these given questions but you can have a teacher created assessment. It takes a really, some of the software doesnt necessarily make for better teaching and learning but when you get these mines on a problem, as long as you have unified mines i think theres interesting potential there. I didnt realize that a lot of this is about how much can i know but its not how much are you teaching me to think or to see that and think about it this way, and this way way, and this way and bring this in. Is there anything thats developing that part . Test creators have been in credibly creative and coming up with rubrics to define what that means. And what i mean by that the oss and world war ii was trying to figure out who would be a good spy. They created a several day long battery of tests. There was one that there was one that someone had to build a box and they had two helpers. One of the helpers was a incompetence dude stooge and one was a jerk. They had tools and was incredibly stressful. Very few people pass in the time allotted and the test was really about could you not lose your cool and wail on the other people. You had a come up with a cover story and keep it for several days, there are all sorts of challenges within the test. With the performancebased assessment you cant imagine that happening in being mandated for a couple a couple weeks a year unless you had some Crazy Society that was trying to produce a a nation of stat spies. If you integrate teaching and learning and the teachers are engaged in their integrating their own selfworth flexion, i flexion, i think thats really important. I was really struck by the student being prompt by their achievement and how they got where they were. That was a really huge part of it. You can make students do that and that can be part of the outcomes youre trying to assess and create, for sure. Was there anything that while you were in the process of writing this book, changes you as a parent the way you dealt with your daughter . I was inclined in this direction anyway but i was led to downplay her intellectual growth for her social emotional growth. If anything i learned and this i learned and this might be helpful to anyone who has kids if youre educated people, if you and your partner and you both went College Chances of your child not graduating college are pretty small. Once you factor out the impact of Family Income theres only no almost note difference in private school. Based on math performance Public Schools do much better because her teachers are better trained. What can negatively affect your child is anxiety surrounding the idea of achievement in entering the 21st century world. The achievement ladder gets narrower and narrower at the top. It freaks parents out because theres so much competition. Ive strive to work on that as a parent and say where am i really not making space for my child to develop socially and emotionally so that she can be the happiest she can be and calm and make home as a refuge. Reading and indulging her interest is very important and so is opting out of madness of what looks like a really great goal which is getting a really great education for your child. Well see, shes only three. Score and a history teacher at Garfield High School in seattle takes a critical look at standardized testing. This is about an hour, 20 minutes. [applause] thank you. Welcome everybody for braving the elements in making it up here. My name is brian jones. Im an educator and activist in new york city and as jason said im going to moderate our event to just say a few words about the event and we will kick about. I will introduce our panel of some of them kick it off and we will have discussion after that. We are here, no doubt you understand for a very important reason. A, to mourn the decision, the fateful decision to not run Marshawn Lynch on the oneyard line last night he. [laughter] v to protect Jesse Hagopian from future pepper spray incident. C to talk to pineapples. Or d to celebrate the launch of this book more than a score the new uprising against highstakes testing. Now obviously c is a distractor question. Theres nothing relevant theyre obviously so you can eliminate that one right off the bat but a a b are possible. Either of those acts would make sense and if youre confused many the things i have said just google them and they will make sense to shirley. In all seriousness we all know probably everybody in this round has taken a test, standardized test even at one point or another in your life are you test are nothing new. They have been around around for along a long time but it seems we are living in the moment where the stakes attached to tests have never been higher. Not only to standardized tests determine a childs future in many places but they can determine the future of the teacher working with that child. They can determine the future of principals and administrators. The guidance counselor the gym teacher the music teacher in the art teacher. Everybody has spent sometimes the whole school to be bound up with the results of a test or even the fate of whole districts. Whats interesting about this moment is that trend towards raising the stakes higher and higher can you hear me . Has finally been confronted by a movement and perhaps its auspicious we are meeting on february 2. Every first, 1960 was one for College Students in North Carolina sat in and direct action in 1960 that sparked a whole new era in the civil rights movement, and mass civil disobedience era. Here we are talking about civil disobedience, talking about people refusing to take a test. Students, young people refusing to take a test that they are told by everyone in charge that they are supposed to take. In some cases we are talking about parents refusing to allow their children to take a test. Just opting out its called or we are talking about very courageous teachers risking their jobs in some cases to refuse to administer standardized tests. All of those risky behaviors refusing to do what you are supposed to do in taking direct action to stop the standardized test machine read all of those things are on the rise and this book capture stories not just by the four by the four of us but i havent counted how many many people have contributed to this book but many stories from across the country firstperson stories of students, parents and teachers who have been taking these actions and trying to figure out where to go from here. Towards that end we have a fantastic panel for you. Let me introduce the mall and asked him to save some room opening remarks. First first up we will hear from dao x. Tran. Dao as a parent of an Elementary School. He she is the coeditor of the book 101 changemakers rebels and radicals who have change u. S. History. Dare i say she is one of them. [laughter] she is working on a World History teacher project right now among other things and she was on her childs pta in the 2013 14 school year. After dao will be Diane Ravitch historian and Professor Emeritus emeritus. Not emeritus. Sorry diane. [laughter] scratch that from the video. Professor at new york university. Diane was the former u. S. Assistant secretary of education and the author of the book reign of error the hopes of privatization of the danger to americas Public Schools. And lastly we will hear from Jesse Hagopian. Sub by visit teacher of history at Garfield High School in seattle and the codirector. Advisor to the black Student Union at that high school. He was in 2013 the winner of the secondary teacher of the year by the Education Association of arts and sciences and most importantly for our purposes was the leader or one of the leading figures in the 2013 math test boycott. That was national news. [applause] and before we start off with dao i would be remiss if we did not acknowledge there are other testers sisters in the audience anchor jupiters to the beauprez somebody who testified in the u. S. Senate gina lee an Elementary Schoolteacher and parent and in the upper deck over their rosy and lee giles teachers at rustic heights who led a protest last year. C rachel ailes is here and what other bulldogs . And riosa roe from Garfield High School. These were two of the leaders of a math test boycott. C fantastic. Welcome all. Dao tell us your story of the boycott at your school. My daughter is seven now but in new york city if you want to send your child to a Public School you have to start thinking about and looking for a school when they are like three. So we started looking for a school for her and i live in the south bronx and was committed to sending her to a Public School. I wanted to send her to our Neighborhood School which was right on the block which was a beautiful idea. Send your kid a amok with him to School However when i went i actually put her in a school i was to say the least super disappointed because basically school, her first School Experience was basically one of massive amounts of homework, sitting at a desk listening to a teacher talk at the front for a 15 minute blocks of time. No recess. If they were good at the end of the day they would get to do choice time which to me was what most of the school day shouldve consisted of which was playing which is how i think young kids actually learn. So it was not a great experience for her. She was super sad. She would wake up every morning and say that her stomach hurt, that she fell sick and it was clear to me that there was something going on that i needed to address. And i think what i came to understand was that it wasnt just her classroom or her particular teacher. They were actually really lovely. Her teacher was super sweet but felt like she was doing what parents expected and the School District expected and the school expected which was to prepare our children to take the standardized tests. So therefore they structured the day in a way that was completely inappropriate for any kind of joy, any kind of solid basis in wanting to go to school and or learning anything in school. There was no play, there was no imagination and there was no hands on the experiential learning instead of learning how to count by say counting buttons they were learning how to count by counting stars on a page which is a very different experience and completely ineffective because you get kids who then get frustrated that they are not smart or they are not doing what all these grownups who care about them are expecting that they should be able to do. So we basically went through that for a year and felt like we had to try something different. We looked for Different School and we were able to find an Amazing School which was not in her neighborhood called castle bridge located in washington heights. Its a dual language english spanish Progressive School which was completely based and also a Public School thankfully completely based on the idea of handson arts infused music musicbased joyful learning. We were super super excited to get her in their city can imagine how i felt at the beginning of her second year her second year when we were told cocoa by the way she is going to come along with the other kindergartners through secondgraders, have to take a standardized test and its not to measure what they know or what they are learning but actually to score and rank and evaluate her teachers. I was shocked. We have never been told way the city School District or by the states, by the state School Administration that they were going to have to do this test. And i tried to find out what was going on. There was no information. The only thing i found was in an article in the New York Times from a summer previous that said these tests may be coming. Eventually i figured it out that its a complicated thing that happened because basically the state have to figure out a way to measure and evaluate teachers and they decided the best way to do that was to impart views the scores of very Young Children to do that. The word got out that basically a number of schools including the school where my daughter goes 30 some schools in the city that were too new to have kids who were taking the state tests from third grade up couldnt use those scores so they were going to test the very but once some of whom to be frank couldnt even hold a pencil. So the idea that they were going to be taking a test when they would have to bubble in something really made no sense at all. Some of his parents put ourselves in our kids shoes and i will just take a read a section from the book because i think its a helpful way to think about it. Usually we spend our time playing and learning how to take care of ourselves and our friends the one they are teacher sits down and puts a test book with in front of us. It has saved 27 multiplechoice doubling math problems from which you will read aloud and asked us to fill in the bubble for the right answer. Nevermind some of us havent had much experience holding a pencil nevermind some of us havent yet learned how to read, nevermind we may not recognize numbers yet to help us locate which numbers we are to answer our teacher will prompt us to find the image of a cat or the eyes. This is something the test makers put on the test because they recognized a lot of the littlest kids cannot yet read. Teachers cant help us if we are confused and we cant Work Together as we are usually encouraged to do. How odd. And if we dont speak or understand much english too bad. If we have learning challenges or disabilities, too bad. We will actually get her time to sit in front of the testing get more frustrated, more stressed and more upset about this to do what . To help our teacher understand what we know and are able to do with math . No to make make sure they that we give me the services and support . No. For parents i think if the purpose of the tests were actually to help our children learn i think most of us would probably be down with that. We want to know how her kids are doing. We want to know if they are going to be able to learn to read and to work with numbers but as it turns out these tests are not about our childrens learning at all. I think we have an oldfashioned way and i think a lot of the teachers actually helped us to understand this, but there is a very good way of knowing whether they know that stuff which is just by asking them for asking their teachers who after all spend the majority of their days with them explaining, exploring supporting and observing. I dont think Pearson Incorporated or Discovery Incorporated trademark can have much insight into childrens learning more than their teachers. So i had a couple of the other parents at the school decided that not only was it important for us to not have our children take the test but we were concerned about our whole school and what it would have done to the culture of our whole school and beyond that we were concerned about all the other schools that were being made to take this test. We thought the best and strongest thing we could do was organize together to take a stand that was very public and i dont know, wholesale you might say. In the end we were able to organize all but three or four families to send an official form saying they did not want their children to take the test. [applause] i think i will just say its a good lesson if you are going to do something kind of illegal to do it with a lot of people. Because what ended up happening was her turn to pill said i can hardly give a test that would be statistically invalid. How can you rank and score a teacher and the basis of one or two kids test scores . It really didnt make any sense and in fact the state Education Department acknowledged it is not so sensible to have kindergartners take tests and they scrapped that idea. [applause] unfortunately not many schools know that. I know that this year some schools went ahead and gave those tests anyway which is i think terrell tragedy. All the more reason why we have to be out there and say to people you know parents have such an Important Role to play. We are also the caretakers of our childrens education and they cant fire us. [applause] next up dr. Diane ravitch. [applause] thank you. Im thrilled to be here to celebrate jesses book in the book that so many people contribute it to but i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the presence of mayor de blasio and his wife sure lane. [applause] i also cant help but say a year before the Mayoral Election started one of the newspapers was doing a round up and said what do you think the next mayor should do an education my proposal was the next mayor should declare a threeyear moratorium on standardized testing. [applause] i think its important to understand that we are in an unprecedented time in american history. We have never had the federal government up until no child left behind passed in 2001 tell the whole country have the u. S. Department of education take control and say when and how children can be tested and then to punish schools and teachers who didnt measure up to what the federal government thought was appropriate. No child left behind says by the year 2014 100 of children will be proficient in me reading and math by standardized tests. Its 2015 and we didnt make it. So arne duncan gets out waivers and is waivers say what you dont have to be subject to the 100 rule but what you do have to do is be subject to my rules and my rules are you have to evaluate teachers by the test scores other students. You have to open more charter schools. You must adopt common core. You you must does come a must that, you must collect data and he actually took the waiver away from a state of washington because the legislature refused to go along with the teacher valuation peace and therefore every school in the entire state of washington is a Failing School and had to so inform the parents. So we live in an unprecedented time not only because we have this crazy law no child left behind which shouldve been reauthorized and thrown in the ash heap eight years ago but instead the Obama Administration added race to the top which is a new iteration of no child left behind making the punishment more severe because it took us on punishing schools. Race to the top focuses on labeling and punishing teachers. Many teachers have been fired and over the past, just read the statistics in an article by leo casey who some of you may know. Leo said that 4000 Public Schools have been closed since 2008. You know rahm emanuel close 50 Public Schools in one day. That is has never happened before. We are not talking about continuity with the past. We are talking about radical extreme break with the past. A direct attack on Public Education. The attack is coordinated. It starts with making test scores the most important thing in the world which contributes to the narrative that Public Education is broken. Public education is failing. We are falling behind the other nations of the world and soon estonia will invade us and take over because we have higher test scores. Youll never hear any of the people who talk about this mention japan which is headed higher test scores than us for the past 50 years has been in a deep recession for years. The test scores of 15yearolds have nothing to do with the economic productivity of the nation five, 10 or 20 years hence. [applause] but what is really scary is the narrative of failing Public Schools is being hyped and ratcheted up to the common core because the tests are even harder than those that preceded them so in new york whereas we usually have 80 of the kids passing state test now we have 70 failing. We have 97 of the english language english language learners failing. We have more than 80 of the children of color failing. This is all an artifact. This is is pearson in the state Education Department of board of regents making the decision in advance that they want 70 of the kids to fail and saying it was a validation of their civil rights. Excuse me i dont understand the logic there. When you look at whats happening in washington and gia testified brilliantly before the the committee. Theres a Bipartisan Coalition that was testing it and kids are not able to jump over a fourfoot par we should raise the bar to 6 feet and watch more of them fail. There is this Bipartisan Coalition that thinks testing is essential to the future survival of our nation. Its ridiculous. I could go on with explanations why but i think you know them all. You understand what matters most is not your ability to pick the right bubble but your ability to think for yourself and to ask the questions, not give the right answer. To be able to take risks and what we are doing to children for 13 years in some cases testing now is in prek. When i heard the description of what is happening at castle bridge i kept thinking about districts where kids in prek are taking tests. I dont know how. I dont know how they do that on computers. Kids dont know how to keyboard when they are three in four years old and their kindergartners taking testing in florida there was a child and hospice dying he was forced to take a test. What is this madness that has overtaken our society with standardized testing . I am possibly the oldest person in the room and i went to school when there were no standardized tests. The only standardized test i ever took was the s. A. T. And there was no test prep for it. You just took it and they said thats your score. Now the s. A. T. Is determined by who can pay the most for tutors. So it turns out the s. A. T. It he a. C. T. And every test is a measure of Family Income. And if you havent seen it plan a veneer has a new book called the tyranny of a meritocracy where she makes this case clearly where some of us have seen it argued for years when you look at any of those scores you can correlate Family Income without fail. The wealthiest are at the top and the porsche at the bottom. What the test do is to redistribute privilege. The bottom line as they say we are unprecedented moment in history. It means we are in a place where we have all the powers that be locked up in favor of a really terrible regime. People who are the most powerful dont think very much about it. As he watched and listened to those senators talking about and c. O. P. You realize they dont know by much about schools. They probably havent been in school since they were a student. And yet they are making these policies that strangle her children and in my case grandchildren. What can we do . Asked the question all the time what can we do . The only thing we can do is to disobey. [applause] theres something much older than testing in our society called civil disobedience. I think when the day comes when the grownups learn to be as creative as the young people in resisting testing testing things will begin to change. 5000 students walked out in colorado and would not take the test. [applause] we have example of seattle teachers and i know its hard for teachers because their job is on the line but parents can opt out. They can opt out and they can do so even when its not legal to do so because its their children. If you are the only one that opts out you are going to be in trouble and they will do something to threaten you or your child but the whole school opts out they cant do anything. So what is needed today is the movement that jesses book will help to build and that reflects a willingness to say the powers that be will not listen. Things will change as people take action. Thank you. [applause] let me stand so i can see everybody in the back and just say that this is a great honor to be with these contributors to the book here today and to have other tragedies here in the audience and people who have fought in this struggle for a long time and we are finally beginning see some incredible victories that i think are changing this narrative that diane laid out so clearly. The importance of this work to me really hit home this year because i became the father of a Public School student. My son entered kindergarten this year so i got a whole different perspective on this. In fact he entered a school that just got changed to be an International School and have a bilingual program with so they had a Ribbon Cutting ceremony. Had a wonderful banner and all these different cultural events and all the students in Elementary School came out to the front lawn and were sat down. Theres a whole bunch of politicians that came to speak at my sons school. Principal gave an amazing speech about what this new school meant a Different SchoolBoard Members and then the governors Education Aid came. Here she is addressing my kindergartner here and the other students in the school and she says i want to congratulate you all for making the choice to come to the school because you are now getting ready to compete in the Global Economy. [laughter] cheers did not erupt from the fourth grade section. I was like yes. My son can keep that kid down in china. My son will be ready to beat down that kid in mexico. Thank goodness for this new school. But this is their vision for the purpose of Public Education. Its sick. I want to read for you in my research for the book, i came across this quote from the common core web site. You should go on the common core web site and read. Dont take our words for it. Go and listen to the proponents of common core and find out why they say this new standardized standards and assessments are so needed. This quote came up. From edward the rest junior chairman and ceo of State Farm Insurance company and he says quote statebystate adoption of these standards is an important step toward maintaining our countrys Competitive Edge with a skilled and prepared workforce. The Business Community will be better prepared to face the challenges of the international marketplace. Education isnt about collaboration and critical thinking. Its not about helping our kids learn how to interact better with each other. Its about these International Local corporations being able to compete with one another. Thats the fundamental problem that is happening with the standardization movement and the reason why the struggle at Garfield High School erupted i think when it did. I think that testing became so overbearing. My brave colleagues especially the ones in the testing subjects of reading and math and special education in english language learners voted unanimously to refuse to administer a deeply flawed exam. Every threat only emboldens our faculty to say youre going to end up on the wrong side of excite we are fighting for Public Education. [applause] i just want to share a couple quick parts from the book. What erupted at garfield led to walkouts of students, just a week later, students in Portland Oregon walked out refused to take the oaks test and the president of the portland teachersdown un teachers union, and it workedded with the students and its called the education spring. Were in the largest revolt against highstakes testing in u. S. History. We had 60,000 errantses opt their kid oust tests here in new york state. The walkout that diane said is the largest walkout in u. S. History of high stakes testing in colorado and itsen incredible struggle, and i want to share a couple of the best just little stories that came up in the collection of this book. This one is from providence. Student union. They wrote, passersbuy jumped at a crowd of young people turned the corner of kennedy plaza. Green skins shining, sunken eyes stared, and torn, bloodspattered clothes dragged as the shul shuffled down the street. Thats young men and women gathered at the entrance of the rhode island deposit of education and thesesome bees showed they had brains. One demonstrator stepped forward with a megaphone, were here to protest the use of high stack standardized testing and the zombie identifying effect on our states young people. Those students got the testers to take the test. Lets get the lawyers, the doctors, professionals, to take this test and then they held a press conference to release the results. 60 of these professionals failed the test. But yet this is going to be the are bit arbiter ol of who will be successful in our society. Its just as asinine. In chicago, a parent and preschool teacher wrote this on april 17th 2013, parents, children and Early Childhood educators arrived at the chicago Public Schools headquarterses early. We entered the main lobby and spread out our blankets on the linoleum tiled floor. The department of education. I propped up a few of the handmade picket signs designed by a preschool teacher. Who had to work and couldnt join us but wanted her voice to be health were more than a score, play us how we learn. Play is every childs human right. We were approached bay member of the security personnel who inquired about what we were doing. Were playing. Was our reply. He whole you, you could dot that sneer at this point more and more parents and children trickled in. Julie kept the Security Guard busy with questions. Who into shoo we talk to . The rest welcomed the arriving families with. Art supplies desup clothes, toys, as we began to stake out more space. [applause] and so theres so many more stories i wish i could share with you. Of Just Creative forms of resistance to show what education should be about and today i have the honor, i think, of participating in one of the most important forms of resistance to highstakes standardized test which is going to the new York Consortium schools [applause] absolutely. People are applauding because these schools have a waiver and dont give the state tests, and instead they have a performancebased assessment which i think is such an important alternative to be advocating for as we build this movement. Right . When you get your ph. D at that level they actually want you to be able to think. Right . So instead of filling in bubbles, you develop a dissertation. You have a thesis. You work with an adviser. You collect evidence. If evidence doesnt spurt your thesis you have to revise your thesis and at the end you present your thesis and defend your dissir certain addition and middle School Students are doing this, through high school in every subject. They make it developmentally appropriate, and we find out when you put educators in charge of education, and of assessment you can come up with incredible alternatives and its amazing to know that the new York Consortium schools have higher Graduation Rates. Public schools who actually have more special needs students than the general Public School population, and yet have higher Graduation Rates and also higher Graduation Rates for students of color, best are College Attendance rates, better numbers of students staying in college. This is an incredible vision theyre building, and i will just i want to end by saying that i think that we face incredible challenges in our world today that education has to have something to say about. We have to repurpose and reclaim the purpose of education, because right now there are more black men behind bars than or on probation or parole than were slaves on plantations in 1850. We have a rampant rape culture our society that is flourishing on College Campuses where one in four women report having faced Sexual Assault at some time in their life. We have the worst economic inequality in u. S. History. You have 85 people who have as much wealth as the bottom 3. 5 billion people on the planet. We have these social catastrophes. Perhaps none of which is serious as Climate Change because we know if the climate races three degrees it could be iranway change that we cannot reverse and human life wont be supported on our planet, and none of those problems can be solved with a b. , c d thinking. We actually have to redesign our Education System to empower our students to become leaders, to develop civic courage, to know how to co will be operate with each other to solve real problems we fait face in our sew see if if were going survive as human beings on this planet. Those are the real stakes that were up against, and thats why im proud to be in the fight with you all. Thank you. [applause] that was fantastic. Thank you. We have just a little bit of time for some discussion before we have we have a booksigning right over there. You can get your book signed. Just stick around to talk to the authors and connect and help build the movement. For now, id like too hear from you a few more thoughts. One of the big arguments in favor of standardized testing it its a measure of accountability and transparency. And how do we counter that argue; which is the principle thing . They say that teachers who dont want to give the tests are trying to avoid any responsibility. Trying to avoid accountability they dont want their feet to be held to the fire if their students arent doing well. What do we say to that . The first thing i would say is where is the accountability for the ceos who sabotage the Global Economy . Right. We are for accountability. But i think it first should be applied evenly, through society and the other thing is, we see a much better accountability system right here in new york with the new York Consortium schools, having Better Outcomes for students of color, and for the students in general. And so i think that is a smoke screen. I think that accountability argument is really about busting up teacher unions really about vilifying teachers and labeling them the problem with Public Education, to hide the fact theyre systematically underfunding schools, denying the kids that need the most resources to succeed and achieve. I would say brian theres nothing less transparent than standardized testing. And theres also the accountability attached to it is usually wrong. For instance, with the tests given as part of the common core, and with a lot of other tennessee, standardized tests as well teachers are not allowed to see the questions, and afterwards the grades come in when the student is no longer in the same classroom, and the teacher the new teacher doesnt know the children, and they dont get to see the test either. So they learn nothing from the test. The purpose of a test should be diagnostic. When you go to a doctor you want the doctor to tell you what your temperature was you. Dont want him to say ill let you know six months from now and ill let you know but it will just be comparing you to other people. And not you in particular. Something like that. But if a teacher just says learns the child is a 43, 2 1 thats not accountability and theres no transparency because you cant they dont want to release the questions, and i think the reason they dont want to release them is because if they did people would be picking them apart and saying, this is ridiculous. There are two right answer. Theres no right answer. The question is misleading. And in fact, i think that i recently read some of the testmakers are saying its actually the park test which new york may be testing may be taking. The park test the instructions say theyre going to have answers that are plausible but incorrect. That means theyre going to be tricky and deceptive, and the really