Watched the documentary with Miami teachers and student activists the other day - Standardized - about the origin and development of the high-stakes testing and school rankings that caused the general public to believe that our schools have been "failing" and need to be fixed. Very interesting. Regardless of the GOP, our education policies have been following the same course - from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump... who will change this course? Standardized tests assess students' test-taking skills, not knowledge. We had been been given workshops in Broward Schools in regard to how the test questions and answers should be analyzed. What appears to be the correct answer is actually not. This is not how knowledge is assessed, especially in the 21st century - the era of innovation and creativity. Current forms of instruction and assessment do not prepare students for the future careers that have not yet been invented. To develop creativity and innovation, learning must be student centered, meet students' needs and interests. More movement, arts, music, drama, creative writing and free play must be incorporated into curriculum that also must be age appropriate. Teaching pre-algebra skills to elementary students, administering long multiple-choice assessments and other developmentally inappropriate practices must be eliminated. It is crucial that our leaders in education and policy makers are actual educators who have adequate training and experience and are bound by professional code of ethics. Unfortunately, we have MBA's, JD's and other non-educators at every major level of educational leadership - from school districts (like Broward, for example, run by a Broad Academy trained Harvard MBA graduate Superintendent Robert Runcie) to state DOE's (like Florida's DOE led by lawyer Richard Corcoran - whose wife has been on the board of charter schools - who is now planning to bring new "world's best standards" to all Florida schools next year and - just like George Bush - expects 100% of students to read on grade level) to the USDOE run by Betsy DeVos, the wealthiest pro-charter school member of the US Government whose goal is to dismantle public education and privatize it. Education cannot be run as a for-profit corporation like #Microsoft or #Walmart when the goal is to maximize profit. Public education is not for profit. Its goal is to maximize human potential. It appears that for many years businessmen, lawyers and politicians have been running public education without considering the needs of students, teachers, parents, against the interests of the people they must serve. It is time to give public education back to the public. That is also why teachers demand action. #education #policies #politics teachersdemandaction #highstakes #testing #standards #schoolgrades #creativity #innovation #developmentally #appropriate #instruction #studentcentered #learning #ethics #professional #codeofethics #educators #broadacademy #elibroad #billgates #walton #walmart #microsoft #commoncore #richardcorcoran #robertruncie #betsydevos