From EducationNotesOnline:

Where is Leo Casey and Edwize on Test Boycott?

Fred Klonsky at PreaPrez wants to know how the UFT has responded in supporting the teacher in the student testing boycott case?
He writes:
One of their leaders, Leo Casey, seems to have no problem finding time to write on EdWize, the UFT blog, long, very long theoretical critiques of G. William Domhoff’s analysis of the power elite. This is something I’m sure his rank-and-file members have been salivating to read. Yet not a word about Doug Avella and the students of I.S. 318.
We’re sure the UFT is doing what it always does in cases like these: provide a rep and inform the teacher of his rights, which as a probationary teacher are few. They will claim they are negotiating behind the scenes and therefore that must remain quiet.
But what about the public aspect of the situation? That a teacher discusses an issue with his classes, the kids take some action, and the teacher is immediately blamed and sent to the rubber room. Remember. The kids have supposedly taken 22 standardized tests this year and this was one of those practice types that ARIS, which is not working effectively, is supposed to deal with.

“We’ve had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year,” Tatiana Nelson, 13, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday outside the school. “They don’t even count toward our grades. The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”

Sounds like no harm, no foul.

BRING AVELLA BACK TO HIS KIDS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR FOR THE SAKE OF THE KIDS!

Sources tell us the children were threatened with No GRADUATION or PROM if they didn’t comply and rat the teacher out and Avella’s program is being covered by a substitute. Is it a good thing for the kids to lose a popular teacher at this point in the year? And what of the bigger lesson of threats and intimidation? Where’s the outrage at the violation of these children by the system? Anyone out there in the regressive reform movement who are so concerned about achievment gaps in the abstract?

Where’s the NY press which is always talking about how much money is being wasted by the rubber room?