Hope all the Muscota, 187, CSS and D6 teachers are voting for MORE!!.... Parent/Activist Tory Frye on Facebook
An interesting piece in today's NY Post linking the MORE campaign against Unity to the parent activism movement. Having parents on our side is a positive thing. And if they talk to their children's teachers about voting for MORE, all the better, though I don't expect that would translate into all that many votes this time. While they may not do so openly because they have to deal with Mulgrew, most parents and groups active in the opt-out movement support Jia and MORE. Some are even teachers who vote (
Teacher is Motivated by Jia Lee Candidacy).
As the Cuomo administration tiptoes back from its testing mandates
for Grades 3 to 8, opt-out activists are trying to wrest control of the
United Federation of Teachers and the state Board of Regents to push
their anti-Common Core agenda to the limit.
Teacher Jia Lee, of Brooklyn, seeks to unseat powerful UFT President
Michael Mulgrew in spring elections. “There’s a huge disconnect between
leadership and membership,” Lee said. “We have a teacher evaluation
system based on flawed metrics that force us to rank and sort our
students. It’s totally counter to what brought us to the profession.”
The opt-out movement is a revolt against the Common Core — a set of
learning benchmarks that New York adopted in 2010 to claim $696 million
in federal education funds — and the matching standardized tests that
kids as young as 8 must take every year.
Parents complained the new standards were rigid and
age-inappropriate, and teachers hated that their annual evaluations
would be based on student test scores. Up to 240,000 students statewide
boycotted the tests in 2015, pushing Gov. Cuomo to announce a set of
reforms in December.
The union spent $1.4 million on an ad campaign claiming Cuomo and the
UFT have seen the light on testing. “The Common Core rollout was a
disaster,” a narrator intones. “And now, Gov. Cuomo’s task force is
doing what’s right.”
Activists say the ads just show how deeply the union and Albany fear backlash from parents and teachers.
“There are a lot of angry parents, teachers, and superintendents out
there who don’t see the changes that the governor claims are happening,”
said Lisa Rudley of New York State Allies for Public Education .
High-stakes tests are still scheduled, with only minor tweaks to length
and content, she said. Fifteen opt-out activists will interview this
week for seats on the Board of Regents.
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