New BloomKlein speak...

One of the arguments Joel Klein made as part of the new organization when the issue of parent and teacher input was raised was that parents wouldeb surveyed to get a true picture of a school instead of measuring them just by test scores. More bullshit as usual, as witnessed by the following chain of events:

"When one parent speaks, the DOE refuses to listen; when many parents speak, we ask our expensive consultants to mount an empty PR offensive."

Thanks to Leonie Haimson for the reworking of the Tweed propaganda to reflect what it really is all about and the following post:

Today, the DoE will send home a survey for parents to fill out about their schools. Last week, parents who participated in the focus groups supposed to help design the survey sent a letter of protest to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, pointing out how their concerns were censored from the survey. (see below letter dated April 26 - reprinted at Norm's Notes.) Now, we call on parents to boycott the survey, cross out the questions listed, and before sending it back., write “We want real parent input – as well as smaller classes, less testing, and new priorities at Tweed to deal with the real problems in our schools.”

Class size, testing and test prep, the principal’s attitude towards parents, and the functioning of school leadership teams were all key issues for our groups and the other focus groups whose results we were shown. Despite this fact, none of these issues will have individual questions dedicated to them in survey.

Read all the details at norm's notes.