Sunday, January 20, 2013

More Tweedies Like This One, Please

The NY Post decided to expose a central DOE official who doesn't buy into the Endless Testing regime, undoubtedly in hopes of getting her fired:

Forget the city’s standardized tests — skip school!

That’s the shocking advice publicly offered by Lisa Nielsen, 44, a high-ranking city Department of Education official recently promoted to the newly created, six-figure position of “director of digital literacy and citizenship.”

In her spare time, Nielsen is an administrator of the Facebook group Opt Out of State Standardized Tests — New York, which promotes boycotting the very same standardized tests her agency administers.

“More and more parents are speaking out and standing up for their parental rights by opting their children out of standardized tests,” she wrote last week on her blog, “The Innovative Educator: Way Out of the Box!”

On Thursday, she blogged that kids would learn more by cutting class on exam day instead of being “sentenced to sit and start [sic] into space.”

Instead, Nielsen — co-author of “Teaching Generation Text: Using Cellphones to Enhance Learning” — recommends that parents or volunteers plan group activities and “put together a fun pass book for testing days with discounts to local zoos, museums, theater, etc.”

She adds, “They’ll all be empty since most young people will be locked up taking tests.”

Blasting the powers-that-be and their “ineffective measures,” the Las Vegas-born Nielsen referenced Occupy Wall Street in another post.

“These protesters aren’t occupying the real culprit behind the unfair economic system that benefits the rich and corporations at the expense of the rest of us . . . our public schools,” she blogged.

“Occupy Wall Streeters: It’s time to change direction . . . Occupy those schools.”

On Facebook, she urges people to sign a petition to Gov. Cuomo to “End High Stakes Testing,” started by Carol Burris, a “fearless principal” in Rockville Centre, LI.

Nielsen also agrees with critics who denounce the Common Core — national standards New York has adopted that spell out what kids should know and when — as a scheme to enrich testing companies.

Gee, what a bad person, telling kids to skip school on High Stakes Standardized Testing/Pearson Giveaway Day for enriching cultural activities like going to the zoo or a museum.

And what a bad person, calling out this corporate-devised Common Core curriculum for what it is - another giveaway to the testing companies who get to cut costs by delivering national tests, one size fits all, as 48 different states give the same tests.

The Post titled the story "Ed Big Is Class Clown".

Not at all.

If anybody is a class clown, it's the NYSED commissioner, Dr. John King, who equates a high quality education system with Endless Testing and a teacher evaluation system that uses tests all the year round to evaluate and fire teachers.

Quite frankly, Lisa Nielson sounds fantastic and we need more DOE or NYSED bigwigs like her.

Now that the Post has exposed her for not being on board with the Obama/Cuomo/Bloomberg education agenda, you can bet the DOE will look for a reason to fire her.

Which is a shame.

If anybody ought to lose their jobs, it's the Tweedies who promote Endless Testing or the NYSED commissioner who equates that with a high quality education for kids.

But given that they're the ones carrying out the corporate agenda for our corporate overlords, I suspect that isn't going to happen.

1 comment:

  1. I know Lisa and she has never hidden her activities from Tweed. Her blog is on the ed notes blogroll. They apparently knew all about it. When I first saw the Post story -- and in fact if you skip past the headlines etc. the story did not show her in an unfavorable light -- I thought it was going to be about Shael who at a forum I taped endorsed parent rights to opt out.
    I'll put up the video on Ed Notes.

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