Supporting Lisa Nielson: Leading DOE Official Shael Polokow-Seransky Affirms Parent Right to Opt Out

When I first heard the NY Post was exposing a DOE official for supporting the opt-out movement I thought they must have come across the video I made of Shael affirming the rights of parents to opt-out. Maybe the Post should take a look at this video.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmfOOJkBlds

But of course the Murdoch-owned Post would be outraged by any protest against testing that might hurt the boss's and his pal Joel's profit margins on the testing regime.

So, there was lots of chatter about the Sue Edelman's "exposure" of DOE official Lisa Nielson's support for the opt-out movement -- and I put "exposure" in quotes because Lisa, who I've known as an aquaintance for about a decade -- has never hid her activities from the Tweedies and I'm sure they know all about it. Of course, they are so concerned about what the Post thinks, they just may pull the plug but I hope not. (I hope Ed Notes support is not the kiss of death.)

Actually, Sue, who can be a snake, did not do a terrible job given that the work Lisa does was given lots of space. It was the vicious headlines and the photo of Lisa they used from her Facebook page that made it look bad.

Here are some links to the Post Article and Perdido Street School:

More Tweedies Like This One, Please

And some stuff from Leonie:

Here is a response to this NYP article by kris Nielsen ( no relation):

http://mgmfocus.com/2013/01/20/ny-post-is-shocked-by-opt-out/

This is my favorite line from the NYP article:  ““The department is always open to working with people with different ideas,” said spokeswoman Erin Hughes.” Really?  Could have fooled me!

NY Opt out group which she moderates is here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/OptOutNewYork/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Lisa here: http://www.facebook.com/InnovativeEdu?ref=ts&fref=ts

Go show Lisa some love.

And maybe one day we can get her to tell us the inside dope on how DOE technology really fared under Bloomberg admin over the last 12 years. As a tech guy myself in the last 20 years (roughly 1985-2005) I worked both at the school, district and region level my sources generally report a disaster with enormous sums wasted.