News Releases

CHRIS ERNESTO, chris at stpeteforpeace.org
Ernesto is with OccupyArrests.com which just released these findings: “With the May Day arrests of at least 116 people at Occupy protests around the country, there have now been a minimum of 7,106 Occupy arrests in 114 cities across the United States since the Occupy movement began in New York on September 17, 2011.”
See: “Arrests Exceed 7,000 As the Occupy’s Movement’s Spring Plans Unfold Across the Nation.”

HEIDI BOGHOSIAN, director at nlg.org
Director of the National Lawyers Guild and author of the forthcoming book, “Spying on Democracy, Protest and Dissent in the New Era of Government Surveillance,” Boghosian said today: “The piling on of Occupy arrests can be seen as a barometer of this government’s intolerance for the First Amendment. Aggressive policing tactics, including frequent gratuitous assaults on protesters and bystanders, are making our parks and streets hostile to the Constitution.”

JOHN KNEFEL, johnknefel at gmail.com
Knefel can address media coverage of May Day and the Occupy protests. He wrote “Bored With Occupy — and Inequality: Class issues fade along with protest coverage” in the current issue of the media watch group FAIR’s magazine Extra!

FAIR recently posted two additional pieces on May Day coverage: “May Day Media” and “Fox Host Leaps to Link Occupy to White Powder Mailings.”

MARINA SITRIN, [in NYC] marina.sitrin at gmail.com
Sitrin wrote the piece “May Day 2012 — A Success Before it Began in the U.S.,” which states: “We succeeded before we began. May Day has been retaken in the U.S. We are now again a part of the rest of the globe — where May Day is one where we celebrate our power — people’s power — that of workers, precarious and unionized, immigrants and migrants, radicals of all sorts, from the anarchist to the democratic socialist. People around the world were talking about May Day in the U.S. before May Day began. And now, those of us here in the U.S., have begun something new, something that is old, and yet has been reinvented … the future of which is still being determined, as so many things are in our new movements. But the question is again posed – as with democracy and power.”

Sitrin is co-author of the forthcoming “May Day: The Secret Rendezvous,” which is part of the “Occupied Media” pamphlet series from Zuccotti Park Press. See was on the recent IPA news release “May Day Is Coming Home.”

See video “May Day Protests Around the World Pt.1″

KARL GROSSMAN, kgrossman at hamptons.com
Professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, Grossman recently wrote the article, “Rupert Murdoch and the FCC: Unfit to Broadcast,” which states: “With the finding this week by a committee of the British Parliament that Rupert Murdoch is ‘not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,’ the Federal Communications Commission should move to prohibit Murdoch from owning television stations in the United States.

“The licensing system for TV and radio stations in the U.S. requires that their owners be of good character. It also mandates that only U.S. citizens hold a major interest in a station — the reason why Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in 1985 as he moved to create a U.S.-based media empire.

“His Australian citizenship went, but as for his questionable character, that remained. In its extensive and scathing report on the hacking and bribery scandal in the U.K. involving Murdoch’s News Corporation, the Parliamentary committee declared that Murdoch ‘turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top.’ …

“‘Rupert Murdoch is certainly not, as part of his evidence would have us believe, a “hands-off proprietor,”‘ the panel stated. Indeed, last week, Murdoch finally acknowledged to the committee that there was a ‘cover-up’ of the scandal in which he took part.

“The report, said the BBC, ‘directly questioned the integrity and honesty of Rupert Murdoch’ and could lead to a determination in the U.K. that Murdoch’s company ‘is not fit and proper to hold a broadcasting license.’

“When the Federal Communications Act — the regulatory structure for radio and later also TV in the U.S. — was initially enacted in 1934, a similar standard requiring station owners to be ‘stewards’ of the public airwaves became law in America. … If the owners are found guilty of a felony, an anti-trust violation, a fraudulent statement to a governmental entity, discrimination, among other things, they can lose their license to operate the station.

The New York Times just wrote from Afghanistan: “President Obama landed here Tuesday, on a surprise visit, to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan meant to mark the beginning of the end of a war that has lasted for more than a decade.

The Times claimed: “Mr. Obama, arriving after nightfall under a veil of secrecy at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, flew by helicopter to the presidential palace, where he was to meet President Hamid Karzai before both leaders signed the pact. It is intended to be a road map for two nations lashed together by more than a decade of war and groping for a new relationship after the departure of American troops, scheduled for the end of 2014.”

HAKIM, [in Afghanistan, available intermittently] weeteckyoung at gmail.com http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com http://vcnv.org
Hakim (Afghans frequently only have one name) is a member of the the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and was recently in Afghanistan. They recently co-wrote a piece that states that the text was kept from the people of Afghanistan. They wrote: “While the world may accept that the U.S. and Afghan governments have some ’state’ or ‘noble’ considerations for not revealing the contents of the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, how about the democratic consideration of involving Afghans in their own future?

“Even the Afghan Parliament was in the dark and uninvolved until they were recently given a peek when Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, read ‘portions’ of the Agreement to assembled parliamentarians on 23rd April, saying that the U.S. will defend Afghanistan from any outside interference via ‘diplomatic means, political means, economic means and even military means.’

“The U.S. has said it expects to keep about 20,000 troops in the country after 2014. …” http://vcnv.org/the-un-may-have-silenced-the-afghan-public

Kelly added: “The SPA is likely to prolong fighting in the region because the Taliban and neighboring countries have clearly stated that they won’t accept U.S. foreign troop presence. Also, many Afghans wonder if the U.S. and NATO want to protect construction of the TAPI [Trans-Afghanistan] pipeline, which the 2010 NATO summit approved of and the New Silk Road which Hilary Clinton has promised the U.S. will construct.” Kelly is currently on a peace walk from Madison, Wisc. to Chicago, where she will arrive in time for the upcoming NATO Summit.

JACOB GEORGE, jacobdavidgeorge at gmail.com, http://www.operationawareness.org
Sgt. Geroge works with a group of veterans touring the country by bike. He recently visited Afghanistan, is based in Arkansas and is currently in Missouri. He said today: “The agreement actually allows for sustaining a ‘post-conflict’ force of 20,000 to 30,000 troops for a continued training of indigenous forces. They are pretending this is something new, but it’s not. That’s what I was doing in 2001 — and 2002, 2003 and 2004. This is just disastrous, for ten years, with the greatest military the world has ever seen, we’ve been unable to defeat people with RPGs. And a year after Bin Laden was killed, we’re still planning to keep tens of thousands of troops there.”

ABC News recently reported: “Although specific troop numbers and other military details are not included in the agreement, the U.S. has said it expects to keep about 20,000 troops in the country after 2014. They would mentor and train the Afghan National Security Forces while also taking part in counterterrorism operations.”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-defend-afghanistan-decade-drawdown-16193077#.T6BNi8dYtMG

The Guardian is providing live coverage of May Day protests.

ARUN GUPTA, ebrowniess at yahoo.com occupyusatoday.com
Gupta is a founding editor of the New York City-based Indypendent, co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and covers the Occupy movement for Salon. He has recently visited dozens of “occupations” around the country and just wrote “Occupy’s Other Big Test: In order to survive past May Day, the movement will have to fend off attempts at co-optation.”

JACKIE DiSALVO, [in NYC] jdisalvo at nyc.rr.com
DiSalvo is on the May Day committee of Occupy Wall Street. She said today: “We have a coalition with over 50 unions and 20 emigrant organizations. There will be a rally at Union Square which will feature a lot of musicians. We’ll then march past Zuccotti Park and to Wall Street and then Bowling Green. We’ll also march on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the march will be lead by transit workers, who are facing wage freezes and benefits cuts, like so many workers now. We’ve set up pickets in front of various companies including banks, the New York Times and ABC/Disney over the last week and a half.” See: 99picketlines.tumblr.com, maydaysolidarity2012.org, maydaynyc.org, #M1GS and occupytogether.org.

CHARLES IDELSON, cidelson at calnurses.org, LIZ JACOBS, RN, ljacobs at calnurses.org
Idelson and Jacobs are with National Nurses United, which just released a statement: “Registered nurses will mark May 1 with a one-day strike at eight hospitals that are part of the wealthy Sutter corporate chain to protest Wall Street-type demands for more than 100 sweeping reductions in patient care and nurses’ standards and workplace conditions.

“Despite making over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and paying its chief executive Pat Fry $4.7 million a year (or $2,260 per hour), Sutter is demanding big cuts for its RNs, many of which would pose risks to patient safety. The nurses … offered to call off the strike if Sutter agreed to withdraw the concession demands. Some 4,500 RNs, as well as respiratory and radiology techs, are affected by the planned walkout at some of the Bay Area’s largest hospitals in most of the counties ringing San Francisco.”

Background, see IPA release: “May Day is Coming Home,” which outlined the origins of May Day in the U.S.

Pulitzer-prize winning author David Shipler had an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times titled “Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the FBI,” which states: “The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

“But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.”

SHAHID BUTTAR, via Amy E. Ferrer, media at bordc.org
Buttar is executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He said today: “The FBI has a long and recurring pattern of civil rights abuses impacting numerous law-abiding Americans from all walks of life. It has abused its investigative powers, violated its own guidelines, arbitrarily revised those guidelines to permit longstanding abuses even in the face of congressional concerns, and avoided public accountability by cloaking its actions in secrecy — all while actively (and demonstrably) misleading federal courts, Congress, and the American people. Its modus operandi, contriving fake cases to inflate its political capital, reflects an institutional recidivism screaming out for long overdue transparency, accountability, ongoing oversight, and corrective legislation.”

See letter on the FBI from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee to members of
Congress [PDF]

Also see: “Former FBI and CIA Officials Share BORDC’s Concerns.“

Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Forest Home Cemetery: "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today."

NOAM CHOMSKY, via Karla Quinonez-Ruggiero at Adelante Alliance, occupy at adelantealliance.org
Available for a very limited numbers of interviews scheduled well in advance, Chomsky’s latest pamphlet, titled Occupy, is being released on MayDay. It’s the first of the new “Occupied Media” pamphlet series from Zuccotti Park Press. Chomsky just wrote the piece “May Day,” which states: “People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning. For example, Ronald Reagan designated what he called, ‘Law Day’ — a day of jingoist fanaticism, like an extra twist of the knife in the labor movement. Today, there is a renewed awareness, energized by the Occupy movement’s organizing, around May Day, and its relevance for reform and perhaps eventual revolution.”

MARINA SITRIN, marina.sitrin at gmail.com
Sitrin is co-author of the forthcoming May Day: The Secret Rendezvous, which is part of the same “Occupied Media” pamphlet series. She said today: “The Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere are gearing up for May Day. One of the most significant things about these protests is their ‘horizonalnzess’ — that is the lack of hierarchical structure. This is remarkably similar to how protests in Greece, Spain, Egypt and elsewhere are developing.” See for NYC: maydaynyc.org and nationwide: occupytogether.org

STAUGHTON LYND, salynd at aol.com
Lynd’s books include The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown’s Steel Mill Closings, From Here to There: The Staughton Lynd Reader and Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks. He recently wrote the introduction to Howard Zinn’s re-released book On History. He said today: “There is a general impression in the U.S. that May Day is a communist holiday since communists did latch on to it eventually, but it’s a wrong impression. May Day originated in 1886 in the U.S. There was a large nationwide general strike that day, the purpose of which was to obtain an eight-hour day. There were radicals involved, but they were anarchists, not communists. On May 4 of that year, at a plant in Chicago that was locking out its workers, the authorities opened fire. So a meeting was called at the hay market and it was peaceful. Then a junior officer riled up the crowd and someone threw a bomb. The government went after the leaders of the popular movement in Chicago, who were not associated with the bomb-throwing, leading to the trial and
execution of ‘the Haymarket martyrs.’

“The European social movements picked it up immediately and May Day spread around the world. It was not associated with communism until after World War I. The U.S. government has feared and sought to suppress May Day — creating things like ‘Law Day’ on May 1st and a new ‘Labor Day’ in September — as a sort of tame labor celebration. But the original May Day was neither communist nor state-endorsed, it was a holiday of the international working class.

“Since 2006, May Day has been rescued to some extent by immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala and elsewhere who see it as a workers’ holiday and a chance to come out of the shadows. And now, this year, we see the Occupy movement picking it up.”

PRISCILLA MUROLO, pmurolo at sarahlawrence.edu
Murolo’s books include From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States. She said today: “May Day is coming home. The oppression of the labor movement moved it offshore, but this year there should be extensive May Day activities inside the U.S. as well as around the world.

“In 1884, a nucleus of trade unions — which would later become the AFL — decided that, starting May 1, 1886, they would refuse to work for more than eight hours a day. When that day came, several hundred thousand workers across the country went out on strike for the eight-hour day. The movement’s vital center was Chicago, where radicals — in particular anarchists — were a core component of the trade-union movement. On May 2, Chicago police opened fire on workers picketing the McCormick tractor factory and killed some strikers. In response to these shootings, thousands of workers gathered in Haymarket Square on May 4 for an ‘indignation meeting’ called by the anarchists. As this protest drew to a close, a phalanx of police entered the Square, and someone — we still don’t know who — threw a bomb. Among those killed by he bomb were seven police officers, and their deaths gave the enemies of the eight-hour movement a pretext to crush it. Picket lines were busted up, meetings were raided, labor activists were rounded up for questioning. In the end, eight anarchists — some of whom had not even been in Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown — were convicted of conspiracy to murder, despite a dearth of evidence against them. Four of the defendants were hanged, a fifth committed suicide, and the others were sentenced to long prison terms and later pardoned by a pro-labor governor.

“This assault on the labor movement was devastating. Not until the 1910s did labor unions establish the eight-hour day as the standard in some sectors, and it wasn’t until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act defined the eight-hour day as the norm in workplaces covered by this law. The meaning of the Haymarket crackdown was not just that it derailed the eight-hour movement but also and more fundamentally that it deprived the U.S. labor movement of its most potent wing. In later years, U.S. labor radicals revived May Day. Veterans of the union organizing drives of the 1930s and 1940s will recall gigantic May Day marches in American cities, but McCarthyism saw to it that U.S. labor was once again deprived of its radical sectors.

“The re-emergence of May Day in 2011 signals of new convergence of organized labor, the immigrants rights movement, and the Occupy movement in the name of the 99%. The excitement surrounding this convergence gives us a chance to experience what our ancestors experienced — the power of a workers’ movement for better labor conditions AND for equality and human rights for one and all.” Murolo is co-director of the Graduate Program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence College.

Reuters reports: “A United Nations-backed court convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the first time a head of state has been found guilty by an international tribunal since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg.”

EMIRA WOODS, via Lacy MacAuley, lacy at ips-dc.org
Woods, who is originally from Liberia, is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. She said today: “Taylor’s case is associated with many firsts. He is the first head of state to have escaped from a U.S. medium security prison. He is the first head of state to publicly refuse to sign an imbalanced rubber concession agreement with Firestone Tire
and Rubber Company. He was the first sitting head of state to be brought on charges for international crimes against humanity. And now, he is the first
head of state since World War II to have been convicted of war crimes by an international criminal court.

“Taylor was accused of 11 charges, ranging from murder, rape, and sexual violence to the recruitment and use of child soldiers in a long and bloodied war in Liberia’s neighbor Sierra Leone. Taylor was charged by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a court that predates the formation of the International Criminal Court.

“Taylor’s history is a reminder that proxy wars can be like deadly dominoes. Embroiled in cold war politics, Taylor and his forces were trained, armed, and financed by Libya’s former president Mohamar Qaddafi as an antidote to Liberia’s U.S.-backed dictator Samuel Doe. Taylor successfully ousted Doe in a war that ultimately killed 250,000 Liberians.

“While in Libya, Taylor was trained with Sierra Leonean rebel leader Foday Sankoh, head of the Revolutionary United Front. Taylor and Sankoh marched forth jointly from Libya to unleash terror in the subregion.

“Taylor, Qaddafi’s proxy, then served with Qaddafi as patrons of Sankoh as he led RUF in a push for power and control of diamond-rich Sierra Leone. Taylor is alleged to have served as kingpin in what was a vibrant guns-for-diamonds trading scheme. The spotlight of the trial shone most brightly on supermodel Naomi Campbell who had allegedly received from Taylor what she called ‘dirty little stones’ — rough diamonds.”

Protesters in front of the Supreme Court

MARGARET HU, mhu at law.duke.edu
Hu is an assistant professor at Duke Law School and is the author of a forthcoming article in the U.C. Davis Law Review titled “Reverse-Commandeering.” She just wrote on the American Constitution Society blog: “As the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Arizona v. U.S., one of the main legal questions it considered is this: Whether Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070) is preempted by federal immigration law under the Supremacy Clause. This is a statutory-driven inquiry that misses the constitutional mark. The more relevant question is this: Whether SB 1070 poses a threat to the vertical separation of powers. …

“The recent tidal wave of thousands of immigration control efforts proposed by state and local governments can best be characterized as ‘reverse-commandeering’ laws. Setting migration policy at the national level, like establishing a national currency, falls within the sole power of the federal government. Reverse-commandeering by the states is an effort to usurp the federal government’s sole prerogative. This growing movement represents an attempt to control the terms of what federal resources and officers must be appropriated to accommodate a myriad of state immigration enforcement programs. It is a deliberate attempt to skew the immigration enforcement power in favor of the states. …

“Given the impact of immigration policy on foreign and interstate commerce, international treaties, and foreign relations, the Court has concluded that controlling migration patterns is strictly the prerogative of the federal government. Consequently, the growing proliferation of thousands of proposed state and local immigration laws should be examined doctrinally within a commandeering jurisprudential frame. To fail to do so — to continue to accept mirror image theory carte blanche as a favored method of statutory interpretation under the existing preemption doctrine — threatens federal sovereignty. Put another way, it eviscerates the federal government’s ability to develop and implement a coherent, efficacious, and uniform immigration policy at the national level.”

DANNY GLOVER, FRANCES FOX PIVEN, NORMAN FINKELSTEIN, TALIB KWELI, via April R. Silver, pr at akilaworksongs.com
Actor Danny Glover, activists and authors Frances Fox Piven and Norman Finkelstein and rapper Talib Kweli are among those participating in “Occupy the Justice Department” protests today. The protests demand an end to “systemic police corruption and civil rights violations in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case and in the cases of hundreds of others across the nation.” They also demand that the government “Release Abu-Jamal; End mass incarceration and the criminalization of Black and Latino Youth; Create jobs, education, and health care, not jails; End solitary confinement and stop torture; End the racist death penalty; Hands off immigrants; Free all political prisoners.”

NOELLE HANRAHAN, globalaudiopi at gmail.com
Hanrahan is the director of Prison Radio. She edited Mumia Abu-Jamal’s book “All Things Censored” and for years has produced his recordings from death row and now from prison (Abu-Jamal was recently released from death row). She said today: “Prison Radio brings the voices of prisoners into the debate on crime and punishment. We have a new recording by Mumia and by other political prisoners. Mumia’s case and voice is emblematic, it represents much of what is wrong in our society. There are 7 million people under correctional control, 2 million actually in prison. About 1 in 46 people will do time in their lifetime. We spend more on prisons than we do on education. It does not lead to public safety, it leads to the public sector not being able to provide what it needs to for a healthy society. What you do to people in prison directly impacts us on the outside — you have HIV and TB spreading in prisons. And it’s devastating to particular communities: 1 in 3 black men will do prison time.”

JOHN CARLOS FREY, via Ben Wyskida, ben at berlinrosen.com
John Carlos Frey is a documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist at the Nation Institute. His exposé on the death of Anastasio Hernández-Rojas aired on Friday on “Need to Know.”

This morning on Democracy Now he said: “Anastasio Hernández-Rojas was caught trying to cross back into the United States. He was detained by Border Patrol agents, went through the detention process. And in the process of being deported, this is when the story really begins. The Border Patrol agents, via their own press release and documents, say that he was combative, Hernández-Rojas was combative. They removed his handcuffs — this is actually in the document — they removed his handcuffs and applied the use of a taser. He fell to the ground, suffered a heart attack and subsequently died. That is what is actually in the police report.

“But the new video and eyewitness testimony proves otherwise. He was handcuffed. He was hogtied. He was not combative. The taser was applied at least five times. He was kicked. He was beaten. He suffered five broken ribs, bruises and cuts all over his body, misaligned teeth. None of that is in the official report. … The Justice Department has not asked any of the eyewitnesses for this information. … So, from our knowledge, it looks like the Justice Department has done absolutely nothing in investigating this case.”

[Note: A previous version of this news release incorrectly identified Talib Kweli as being affiliated with the group Public Enemy.]

Throughout the U.S., children are taking tests this week so that local jurisdictions can get federal “Race to the Top” funds.

CAROL BURRIS, cburris at rvcschools.org
Burris has served as principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District in New York since 2000. She is author of “Detracking for Equity and Excellence.” She was just featured in a report “Teachers, parents push back against high stakes testing,” part of a series on education by The Real News.

Late last year she co-wrote a letter about how testing is being conducted in New York State. As of last week, 1432 New York State principals have become signatories to the letter, which states: “In May 2010, the New York State Legislature — in an effort to secure federal Race to the Top funds — approved an amendment to Educational Law 3012-c regarding the Annual Professional Performance Review of teachers and principals. The new law states that beginning September 2011, all teachers and principals will receive a number from 0-100 to rate their performance. Part of that number (ranging from 20 percent to 40 percent) will be derived from how well students perform on standardized tests. At first glance, using test scores might seem like a reasonable approach to accountability. As designed, however, these regulations carry unintended negative consequences for our schools and students that simply cannot be ignored. Below we explain both the flaws and the consequences.

“Educational research and researchers strongly caution against teacher evaluation approaches like New York Stateʼs APPR Legislation. A few days before the Regents approved the APPR regulations, ten prominent researchers of assessment, teaching and learning wrote an open letter that included some of the following concerns about using student test scores to evaluate educators. Value-added models of teacher effectiveness do not produce stable ratings of teachers. …

“The Regents examinations and Grades 3-8 Assessments are designed to evaluate student learning, not teacher effectiveness, nor student learning growth. Using them to measure the latter is akin to using a meter stick to weigh a person: you might be able to develop a formula that links height and weight, but there will be plenty of error in your calculations. …

“Students will be adversely affected by New York Stateʼs APPR. When a teacherʼs livelihood is directly impacted by his or her studentsʼ scores on an end-of-year examination, test scores take front and center. The nurturing relationship between teacher and student changes for the worse. …

“With a focus on the end of year testing, there inevitably will be a narrowing of the curriculum as teachers focus more on test preparation and skill and drill teaching. Enrichment activities in the arts, music, civics and other non-tested areas will diminish. …

“Teachers will subtly but surely be incentivized to avoid students with health issues, students with disabilities, English Language Learners or students suffering from emotional issues. Research has shown that no model yet developed can adequately account for all of these ongoing factors. …

“Collaboration among teachers will be replaced by competition. With a ‘value added’ system, a 5th grade teacher has little incentive to make sure that her incoming students score well on the 4th grade exams, for incoming students with high scores would make her job more challenging. When competition replaces collaboration, every student loses. …

“Tax dollars are being redirected from schools to testing companies, trainers and outside vendors…”