GEM High-Stakes Testing Committee Meeting – Monday, September 26, 5-7PM

Bulletin from the Grassroots Education Movement

The next GEM high-stakes testing committee meeting is this Monday, September 26th at 5pm at the CUNY Graduate Center, room 5414. Please bring ID. We will be planning a launch of the Change the Stakes campaign in October, but we need to plan that together! We hope you will join us.

You may know that a petition in support of opt out has been launched for New York State, written by someone upstate. Sign if you haven’t already! http://signon.org/sign/opting-out-of-high-stakes-4?source=s.tw&r_by=233445

As the “national insanity” that is high stakes testing continues, we must continue to work to expose the use of high stakes testing as a cancer that is destroying real learning and thinking in our schools. As we all know, every child deserves an opportunity to think creatively, talk about ideas, and have time in their day devoted to art, music and science. Unfortunately, students who struggle to pass such tests, many of whom don’t speak English or traditional English in the home, are then subject to the treacherous test-obsessed changes that we all know too well. This is a racist practice that is serving to increase the divide between the schooling of those who are privileged enough to be born in a household that speaks traditional English and those who do not.

And of course the second layer is not just the individual impact on individual students, but the fact that these tests are then used to shut down schools and dismantle pillars of community, with the goal of privatizing education in mind. Again, a racist practice that is without question disproportionately impacting communities of color. We must struggle against these inequities, for our very well-being as human beings and the health of our society both depend on it. We hope you will join us on Monday!