Immigrants: A Shot in the Arm for Our Ailing Democracy by David Andersson - Room Eight

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I think this is a wonderful idea and urge Speaker Quinn to bring it up for a vote in the City Council ASAP... 

We are about to witness a new and a rather unconventional contribution of the immigrant community in New York. This time, it will not be with work and cheap labor, or with cultural art and entertainment, or even with food. It will be by resuscitating our old and paralyzed democracy.

The state of affairs of our democracy is in general pathetic, and even worse at the local level. Only about 15% of the registered voters participate in local elections. The elections are already decided days before the voting booths open; the parties and lobbies place their candidates, make deals and control the outcome on Election Day. People are not stupid - they don't want to waste their precious time doing something useless! Everyone knows that voting in local New York elections is meaningless.

For the well being of the majority of the New York's residents, the situation has to change. We need to increase the representation and participation of everyone; we need to destabilize the political status quo and to form a dynamic multicultural voting community. The rights to affordable housing, to a decent minimum wage, to quality public education, and to adequate social services are possible, but only if our democracy changes, and represents everyone.

We are not just in an economic crisis. Everywhere we look, we can see that violence is gaining ground, the tensions between groups and communities is increasing, and the situation is getting crazier by the day.

This is a difficult but opportune moment to come forward with real and sincere proposals - proposals that will unite and reconcile - proposals that will have as their central tenet nonviolence, both as a personal attitude and as a social form of action. We need to come up with proposals that are coherent, and open to the future.

This past November, a bill was introduced to the New York City Council that is designed to do just that. The bill, Intro 410, proposes the right to immigrants, who are lawfully present in New York City, to vote in municipal elections. This legislation would grant voting right to over 1.3 million New Yorkers (for more details, see www.ivotenyc.org).

The legislation, proposed by the Chair of the City Council Immigration Committee, Daniel Dromm (D-25), has already received endorsement from 21 Council Members. According to Mr. Dromm, “…It is time for our evolving democracy to embrace voting rights in local elections for all residents. We are all stakeholders in our community and should have a say in important local issues. In the words of the Revolutionary patriots who put their lives on the line for the freedoms we enjoy today, 'No taxation without representation.' ”

Of course, this is not the magic bullet that will resolve all our problems. However, it is a step in the right direction. This legislation is something that could change the political map of the City, and give representation to a larger percentage of the New York's population.

If we have to remember just one thing from our history, it is that we have no democracy without participation. Our rights depend on our democracy. And our democracy depends on our participation. Without you, I lose my power and my ability to choose the conditions under which I live. Are we willing to give that power away?

David Andersson
Director of NYC Chapter of the Humanist Party and the coordinator of the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights (iVote NYC).

My Opposition to Kindergarten - Second Grade 2 Standardized Testing by NYC Department of Education (DOE)

My comments to the District 27 Community Education Council regarding - "My Opposition to Kindergarten - Second Grade 2 Standardized Testing by NYC Department of Education (DOE)" got picked up by The Huffington Post via Room8...Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Good evening, District 27 CEC board members and Superintendent Lloyd-Bey. Many of you know me, but for the record my name is David M. Quintana - I am the former District 27 representative to the Chancellors Parent's Advisory Council and former Co-President of the Parent's Association of MS 210.

I am also a former student and graduate of District 27 having attended PS 97, PS 60, MS 210 and John Adams High School many, many years ago.

It has recently come to my attention that the DOE (Tweed Administration) is planning to begin subjecting students in grades kindergarten - 2 to standardized testing. I am vehemently opposed to this testing and will outline the reasons for my opposition, as follows.

• 1. School needs to be fun, exciting, and motivating for young children. Children need to read books they enjoy, discover how to solve math problems, learn to communicate and work with their peers, engage in science, civics, social studies, music and art, take field trips, and develop a capacity to imagine and think deeply. This does not happen within a testing environment.

• 2. Testing takes precious time away from teaching and learning. Also, teaching and curriculum change with this kind of testing because teachers and schools feel pressure to prepare their students for the test. Test prep becomes the curriculum.

• 3. The DOE bosses (Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein), if allowed to go forward with this, will store the test score data in their $80 million ARIS computer system and use it to rate teachers and schools, negatively affecting the quality of instruction being given to 5, 6 and 7 year olds.

• 4. I ask, what evidence do we have that all the test prep (that has been forced on children in grades 3 - 8) has done anything to improve their learning? The NYC and NYS National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP - a national test - frequently referred to as the "gold" standard of testing) results in 2007 in ELA and Math - and in 2009 in the Math NAEP - show no statistical improvement - NONE. (The 2009 ELA NAEP results are due in a few weeks - which I predict will also remain flat.)

• 5. Testing young children is highly unreliable due to the varying timetable of the academic/cognitive development in early childhood. It is unfair and potentially harmful to judge a child on testing tasks for which she/he is not developmentally ready.

• 6. Young children may not be able to meet the demands of a standardized test for a myriad of reasons: hunger, boredom, fatigue, illness, anxiety or simply the developmental inability to sit still for protracted stretches of time. And, as any experienced educator or knowledgeable parent knows - any child can simply have a bad day. Yet, if a child receives a low score, it may set up expectations for parents and teachers that this child is, and always will be, a poor learner. Such expectations can negatively affect their future learning experience.

• 7. Standardized tests have a long and notorious history of misrepresenting the intellectual capabilities of young children based on race, class and immigrant status.

• 8. Test scores are not perfect measures, therefore no single test should ever be used alone to make a critical judgment about a child. Yet, the DOE, has a long history of using single test scores to judge our children and schools, a policy that I fear will be perpetuated with kindergarten through second grade testing.

• 9. During this period of financial crisis, it would be an utter waste of money to spend millions of dollars on a testing policy that the research and education communities nearly unanimously decry as unreliable and potentially harmful to children. This is not the time to be taking money out of the classrooms to enrich large corporate testing companies.

I am urging CEC27 to thoroughly review this matter (further statistical information can be found at timeoutfromtesting.org) and issue a resolution condemning this practice in OUR NYC Public School system.

Thank you.

David M. Quintana

http://davidmquintana.blogspot.com

quintana.david@gmail.com

Meeting Date: Monday, November 16 @ 7:30 PM

Meeting Place: PS 124 129-15 150 Avenue, South Ozone Park, NY 11420

Read the whole story: Room Eight

Rock Hackshaw on THE PEREZ NOTES on July 22nd, 2009 at 6PM

On Wednesday, July 22nd at 6PM, Roberto Perez will be interviewing City Council candidate Rock Hackshaw at 6PM.

To listen to the interview go to www.lagcc.cuny.edu/webradio . A bio of Rock below so that you can all get to know him a little better.

THE PEREZ NOTES airs every Wednesday from 6-8PM so spread the news and tell a friend.

Roberto Perez

ABOUT ROCK

“The Rock” was christened HERMON EMANUEL JEROME HACKSHAW when he was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. He came to New York in 1973 and has lived here continuously ever since. He became a citizen of the USA in 1996, and now holds dual citizenship. His father --John M. Hackshaw-- was a well known politician, writer, community activist, trade unionist and diplomat, who spent ten years in New York, heading up the Trinidad and Tobago Tourist Board. He later spent another year in Canada, as the Labor Attache in the T&T High Commissioner’s Office.

In his own right, Rock is as accomplished as his dad. He attained an academic scholarship at the tender age of ten and attended Queens Royal College. He later taught History at the Progressive Educational Institute and was also employed at the Ministry of Works before migrating.

In New York, Rock graduated from the prestigious ivy-league institution Columbia University (BA/Political Science/1985). He then attained a Masters Degree from Fordham University in 1987 (Public Communication). He has also studied Microeconomics and Macroeconomics at Hunter College, and did post-graduate studies in Education, at Brooklyn College.

He is a licensed Social Studies high school teacher, and has lectured at various universities and institutions of higher learning, including: The College of New Rochelle, the Manhattan Institute of Management and also within New York City’s University System (CUNY). He has lectured to graduate students at Brooklyn College’s Center for Worker Education; lectured on communication theory at the Bronx Community College; and taught Reading to foreign students at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

He is a lifelong political activist who unsuccessfully ran for the N.Y. State Assembly in 1998. He has served as a political consultant/adviser to various candidates and elected officials, and once headed up a community development organization in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Amongst the many other hats he has worn are coach (chess and basketball), writer, reporter, education consultant, entrepreneur, businessman, journalist, radio and television announcer, community organizer and political analyst. He has held membership in many civic, sports, cultural and social organizations; and has served on many public and private boards. He has played chess, scrabble and backgammon at the professional level/tournament circuit, and once represented Trinidad and Tobago at chess as a young man. He is a generous, humorous, loving father, who writes poetry as a hobby. He thinks that politics is “the only game in town”.