The Graduate Employee Organization, UAW 2322 endorses the rehire of Dr. Barbara Madeloni, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Secondary Teacher Education Program at the School of Education, who last spring led a group of students to boycott the implementation of a corporate sponsored, standardized teacher assessment on pre-service (student) teachers.  We see this as one more example of the corporatization of public education and the surveillance, silencing and demands for obedience that accompany it.

Shortly after Barbara was featured in a New York Times article detailing the recent student resistance to Pearson and the Teacher Performance Assessment, she received a letter of non-renewal. While the School of Education (SOE) claims that this is coincidental, many of our members who know Barbara and have witnessed current trends in the SOE believe otherwise.  We join our members in the SOE who are organizing efforts to support Barbara and to resist the larger corporatization of education, of which this incident is symptomatic.

Students and faculty in the School of Education who speak out are putting themselves on the line.  They need our support from across campus:

  1. Find out more by reading the New York Times article, this Daily Hampshire Gazette op-ed piece, and listen to the recent Education Radio episode about the TPA.
  2. Go to Can’t Be Neutral – our SOE members’ online presence in the fight for public education.
  3. Save the date for the Can’t Be Neutral Teach-In planned to run all day on Friday, Oct. 19 in the Cape Cod Room.
  4. Most importantly, please sign this petition. We need your voice.

Please consider including a statement about your reaction to her termination, the threat to academic freedom, or your thoughts on the privatization of education – at UMass and beyond.