480 in the collection
Martin Luther King Day and CSAP
Press Release
Tim Babbidge
Treasurer, The Coalition for Better Education
Aurora, CO
On behalf of the Coalition for Better Education, and the students, parents, teachers, and concerned citizens of Colorado, as well as the almost twenty-five thousand Americans nationwide who have already signed the petition opposing the renewal of No Child Left Behind, and in the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I would like to announce this year's edition of the CBE's bus bench campaign.
As Rosa Parks just said no to Jim Crow and segregation, so too do we "Just Say No!" to CSAP and the "standardistas" who are leading our schools to destruction by their support of a profit driven barrage of high stakes standardized testing. However, again in the memory of Dr. King, we also extend our sincere invitation to those who support high stakes standardized testing to further their own educations by visiting the CBE's website, and to engage us in a continuing dialogue on this issue.
We too have a dream, that someday our children will be judged, as Dr. King said, "by the content of their character", and not by a soulless, socio-economically, gender, and ethnically biased high stakes standardized test. Such tests not only punish the victims of the many political, economic, and social injustices that still afflict the United States almost forty years after Dr. King's death, but they also divide our children, families, schools and communities on the basis of race and economics.
Unlike Dr. King, those of us who oppose high stakes standardized testing, as a matter of both principle and practice, are still at the base of the mighty mountain of economic and political power that supports testing's many injustices. We know that the forces of educational oppression will spare no innocent victims in their efforts to maintain their control of our schools. Closing schools, disrupting teachers' careers and lives, oppressing students in ways great and small, e.g. denying them academic and other rewards that they have earned when they take principled stands against CSAP, and denying parents their right to be the final arbiters of their childrens' educations are every bit as emotionally violent as the physical violence once used by segregationists and the forces of apartheid. Sadly, history does repeat itself.
Regardless, we of the CBE know, just as Dr. King did, just as his role model Gandhi did, just as all of those throughout history who have supported the rights of people over the privileges of power knew, that it is the journey and not the destination that truly matters. Just as the struggle for the civil rights of black Americans began its final phase on a bus, so shall the struggle for educational civil rights and freedom begin with a bus bench. JUST SAY NO TO CSAP!
— Coalition for Better Education
Press Release
2007-01-15
http://www.thecbe.org
INDEX OF NEWS ITEMS
Pages: 24
[1] 2 3 4 Next >> Last >>
