Students in Chicago have had enough with their school system.
A group called Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools boycotted the state-mandated test, PSAE, on Wednesday and protested citywide. Like many people against standardized testing, the students, which numbered in the hundreds, have had enough with test taking.
But their objections, however, go further.
They are also fed up with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the public school system?s leaders in their attempts to shutter 54 school programs and 61 school buildings, mostly in underprivileged and minority neighborhoods.
Brian Sturgis, a senior at Chicago?s Paul Robeson High School and an organizer of the boycott, wrote in an Education Week blog, ?Mayor Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education are supposed to make the CPS system work for all of us. But instead they are putting too much pressure on standardized testing and threatening to close schools that don't have high test scores. When schools are under so much pressure to raise test scores it leads to low-scoring students being neglected, not supported.?
The protestors posted frequently on social media to keep people updated on their activities. Their Twitter feed shows a picture of students lined up, arms interlocked, in front of school. One student held a sign that said, ?The best way to learn is by taking a test?No child ever said.?
The students? activities haven?t sat well with administrators.
Earlier this week, the school district made robocalls to students? parents, warning how important the test results are to a their children?s academic future.
Every student must take at least one day of the two-day exam to be promoted to 12th grade and graduate. The second part of the test, given on Wednesday, included science, math and reading. This part, in turn, gives a career-readiness certificate endorsed by employers to students.
Of course, as is the norm in America?s classrooms, the tests are also used to help evaluate each school and teacher.
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the Chicago Public Schools CEO said on Wednesday, ?The only place that students should be during the school day is in the classroom with their teachers getting the education they need to be successful in life. Today's PSAE is one of the most critical exams our students will take. Every adult should support and encourage our students to make sure they are in school.?
Mark Naison, a Fordham University academic who monitors educational movements in the United States, compared the Chicago protest to the student?lunch counter sit-ins that began in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960.
?In both instances, you had a situation that many people thought was outrageous?and yes, many people do think the level of testing in schools has become so intrusive and counterproductive that it is national tragedy?but people in elected office seemed unable to change, so young people decided to take history into their own hands,? he said. ?I would not be surprised to see these walkouts and boycotts multiply next year.?
Last week, New York parents, teachers, and students participated in a similar protest when students decidedly opted out of tests administered by the state of New York. An overabundance of testing has, according to critics, contributed to a rise in cheating by teachers and administrators, a segregation of students based on test scores, high teacher turnover, and the decrease of classes that teach enrichment, such as the arts.
Some see these protests as a last resort to help students and teachers in a broken system with few benefits.
Shaun Johnson, a Maryland-based teacher educator, former public school teacher, and blogger for At the Chalk Face, feels that while a boycott to prevent data from being collected may not be the most effective tool, it's perhaps all we have left.
Related Stories on TakePart:
? Op-Ed: Watching Our Chicago Schools Close Is ?Like Being Stuck in a Bad Dream?
? What Will the Closure of 61 Chicago School Buildings Mean for Kids?
? Op-Ed: It?s Not Always the Right Choice to Close a Failing School
Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based?political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in?The Washington?Post?and?The Christian Science Monitor. She is the?author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com?
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boycott-happening-chicago-time-isn-t-teachers-212009314.html
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Foursquare today launched redesigned venue pages to focus on its Explore and Discover functionality, bringing them more in line?with its homepage.?The changes, which come two weeks after the company raised another round of funding and released an updated iOS app, are designed to capitalize on the traffic that Foursquare gets from?Google, which has doubled the site’s traffic over the past year. This is an important play for Foursquare, as it’s competing with Google Local, Yelp and?Facebook,?which today launched its redesign for local business pages. Foursquare’s lead engineer for the web, Mike Singleton, told me that the site now gets over 50 million unique visitors on the web, which is 17 million more than actually use its app. That means that Foursquare is quietly breaking through as a place for information about venues, its most prized asset: People are coming from Google for different reasons, we needed to give them the information they needed at a glance, which was difficult. Since focusing on its Explore functionality, Singleton says that its usage has doubled, especially on the website. The new venue page has all of the information that people need in a quick glance, the pages are more visually appealing, and owners of the venues should be proud to show them off, perhaps by linking to them on their website over competitors like Yelp. Here’s a look at what a venue page looked like before today’s launch: You’ll notice that some of the more attractive content, such as photos, are pushed way down, putting more focus on the map. Additionally, information such as when the venue is open was shoved to the right-hand side, requiring a scroll, as well as someone’s eyes actually finding them. This redesign solves that: The new design is cleaner, and brings all of the information that Google searchers would want to see immediately, such as photos of the venue and a more attractive map. Since some of the people visiting from the web might not be app users, Foursquare wants to give them a better first impression of the service by populating the page with the info that’s needed to make quick decisions, such as whether to actually go to a place for dinner or not. By being able to search through tips, you could find information about a particular meal, rather than continually clicking “next” buttons to scan all tips. Naturally, Foursquare wants this page to
You may have heard about almost daily demonstrations, almost riots, in Paris and all over France. France is that European country above Italy and was the home of "Libert?, ?galit?, Fraternit?."
So long to the party girl, let's start lobbying.
"The church is in agony in modern societies. It is in anthropologic shock. On one side you have a catholic anthropology that want to put individuals under control through the feeling of love that they pretend to control and incarnate. The catholic anthropology is this: an institution that wants to control love. It's a big ambition. On the other side, it just takes a little sociology, philosophy and history to understand that everybody agrees to acknowledge that the singularity of modernity is to separate institutions and feeling of the individuals. It is the separation of church and state, science and theology, private and public life. Once those institutions are separated from the feelings of the individuals, it allows them emancipation. On one side you have a catholic anthropology that want to control feelings and on the other side an anthropology that wants to separate them from institutions. 
UMP
CIVITAS
Frigide Bargeot
have dared brandish a bible in a session of the French parliament (which is a major offense against the laicity of parliament). They are old time fighters against the opening of civil union to gay and lesbians couples in 1998/99. She was leading the 1999 demos against the PACS (first civil union accepting same sex couples in France) were hateful slogans were told : "Fag today, paedophile tomorrow" "Fags on the pyre" ?.
Xavier Bongibault
