The countdown is on!

We're now just five days away from the official launch of COUNTERACT [false] ACCOUNTABILITY...

In just a few days, we'll be inviting you to join us in making an impact by submitting creative projects for consideration. Those projects will be used to reach people in your community and beyond with the truth about what reformers actually mean when they use the word "accountability" how [false] accountability works, and the damage it does to students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers--not to mention society more broadly.

In the lead-up to that official announcement and sharing the full guidelines of this project-based initiative, we're going to do two things today, just as promised: 1) We'll introduce you to the first of five individuals who'll be sitting on the five-person project-evaluation panel; and 2) We'll share a tweet with a meme attached that you can use to start waking people up and getting them interested.

First things first.

Drum roll, please... 

The first of our five judges is...KRIS L. NIELSEN!

For those who aren't yet familiar with Kris, he's gained a remarkable profile in the fight for true education--which is precisely why, when we went looking for people to contribute essays to our book Common Ground on Common Core, he was one of the first people we sought out. The piece Kris penned for that volume, "Teaching the Common Core Is Not Teaching," is a testament to the battles that teachers fight in their classrooms every day on behalf of both their craft and the kids they teach.

Kris has worked in education for approximately a decade and is an expert on national education “reform.” He holds a master’s degree in education, with emphasis on child development and motivational learning. He is a dedicated activist against corporate education reform. Upon leaving a post as a science teacher at a school in North Carolina in 2012, Kris penned a resignation letter concerning the hidden and serious circumstances that daily plague students and teachers in the current education environment. The letter went viral globally in the space of a week. Kris has since written two books on issues within the education system and the need to find a better way, Children of the Core and Uncommon (both published through CreateSpace, 2013). He continues to work diligently to inform parents and citizens about the real dangers that are already resulting from the failure to create an environment in which teachers can authentically teach and students can truly learn. He has also helped lead parent and student opt-out movements in New York, Colorado, and New Mexico. 

We are incredibly pleased and privileged to have Kris on the COUNTERACTING [false] ACCOUNTABILITY panel. His insights into the realities of corporate education reform and his experience in education activism will prove invaluable in choosing projects that can make a real impact in the fight for true education. 

Which brings us to...

Our promised daily meme, featuring...ARNE DUNCAN

We'll be tweeting this meme out today, with a message about the 5-day countdown to launch and a link back to this post. We'll also be sharing the information on Facebook. Any help you can provide in spreading the word on social media and elsewhere would be appreciated. Feel free to grab our messages and share them or create your own. Doing so should not only start to inform others about the true nature of [false] accountability and provide a valuable sense of why it's necessary to fight it. It shold also start to generate some buzz about an initiative that aims to support individuals and grassroots organizations from all over the country in pushing back--in creative and co-ordinated ways--against the dangers and damage that [false] accountability continues to wreak.

Be sure to check back tomorrow. There's much more coming in the countdown to... 

COUNTERACT [false] ACCOUNTABILITY.