The Delaware PTA is hosting a parent rally at Legislative Hall in Dover on January 14th, at 2pm. This event is changed from January 12th. Please make every effort to attend: parents, students, citizens, teachers, administrators, superintendents, charter heads, and anyone else you can think of. The latest bomb from the US DOE about opt-out is a slap in the face of every single parent of a child in public school America. We need to make this standardized high-stakes testing madness stop. Take off work that day, bring your kids, and support the God-given, fundamental and constitutional rights of parents. This is YOUR moment. Do not let it pass. For school employees, bring the students on a field trip that day and show them how democracy in America works best. This is about parents rights, pure and simple. This is not a civil rights issue. If anything, the Smarter Balanced Assessment has proven how disgusting and vile one test can cause illusions and perceptions about students who have the most needs for instruction. And if you are the parent of a brilliant child who did great on the test, that is excellent. Your child is going to be brilliant either way and doesn’t need this money-wasting time-consuming test to tell you what you already know.
I’VE HEARD FROM SEVERAL FOLKS THAT GOVERNOR MARKELL IS CALLING ALL OF THE HOUSE REPS AND ASKING FOR THEIR SUPPORT IN NOT VOTING YES TO THE OVERRIDE OF HOUSE BILL 50. While everyone who told me this asked me not to share it, and I pretended with each one this was the first time I heard it, it is far too many for my comfort zone. Jack Markell is telling legislators about how it would be so disrespectful to his office if they override HIS veto. Sorry Jack, this is not YOUR bill. This is not YOUR decision. Our legislators sided with parents over your diabolically insane testing mentality. You are a bully. You do not care about parents. How many of your children took the Smarter Balanced Assessment? We both know the answer to that one!
FOR OUR DELAWARE LEGISLATORS: If you vote no to the veto, you are nothing more than a bully. You are a pawn of Governor Markell and you care more about disrespecting one already disrespectful person than thousands of your constituents. You serve Delaware. The People of Delaware. Not Jack Alan Markell. The people. A no vote on the veto could very well cost you your re-election if you are up again next year. And if you aren’t running or don’t face the ballot until a later date, good luck getting any support from the thousands of Delaware parents who have been spit on, disrespected, bullied and intimidated. I know for a fact some of you have already given your support to Jack on this issue. I would think long and hard about that costly mistake if I were you. Republicans and Democrats alike. This is not the time for you to lend support to a failed Governor on education. Seven out of twelve states who received the latest US DOE threat letter were Smarter Balanced Assessment states. Do more than override the veto. Get rid of Smarter Balanced, and come up with a meaningful and productive assessment for our students without all the strings attached. We don’t need to hire outside consultants and companies to do this. We don’t need to spend tens of millions of dollars to do this. We have the teachers and educators in our very own state to come up with something better for our children. And as for you John Carney, you need to get your head out of the clouds and oppose Markell’s bullying tactics. Loudly and clearly. Stop being quiet on everything and just assuming you are a shoe-in on Election Day. That is weak and tiring, and Delaware deserves better than that.
FOR GOVERNOR MARKELL: Do you hear that? That is the sound of parents becoming more important than you. That is the sound of the legislators in your state supporting those same parents and honoring their rights. It rang like a bell on June 25th when the Delaware Senate cleared the final passage of House Bill 50, and it will ring again when they override your veto. This is your legacy. This is your thumbprint on Delaware: causing parents to rise in opposition to a tyrannical eight years of you. We are done with you. We are casting you aside and praying the next one is infinitely better. For all the talk you had about education, you are no better than a school yard bully taunting those you believe are weaker than you. We are stronger than you and we will show you once and for all how much stronger we are. We know you taunt and tease our legislators with threats about not supporting this bill or that bill, or how you use your executive power to make promises when it comes to the budget. We know you allowed Rodel to use their influence so you could hand-pick your leaders in the Delaware DOE and your unelected members of the State Board of Education. We know which legislators are in your pocket. No more. Your power is waning and you know it. Instead of succumbing to the will of the people you actually think exerting more power will make people listen. No. You are done.
As a state, we need to STOP making every single education decision that is surrounded by the measurements of standardized assessments. The Wilmington Education Improvement Commission is doing it. Our schools do it. Our DOE certainly does it. Our businesses aligned with Markell and Rodel do it. Enough. What about YOUR child. What about their INDIVIDUAL rights? Do they mean anything anymore?
The Season Of Myths 