Change the Stakes and GEM Invitate you to high stakes testing meeting this Wednesday

The Change the Stakes Committee formed by GEM last July has picked up a massive head of steam in fighting high stakes testing both locally and nation-wide. You know our theme in GEM has been: we have to do things like make a movie defending teacher and union rights and fight testing and teacher evaluation reports, etc, etc, etc because the UFT doesn't.

Thanks again for your support of the petition to Give New York State Parents the Right to Opt Their Children out of High Stakes Testing.

Anyone interested in joining other parents and educators working to challenge high stakes testing is invited to the next meeting of the NYC-based Change the Stakes Campaign this Wednesday.

What     Change the Stakes Meeting
Where    CUNY Graduate Center, 34th Street and 5th Avenue, Room 4204 (the Urban Education Lounge)
When    Wednesday, May 9th, 5:30-7:30 PM

For more info on Change the Stakes please visit the website or email changethestakes@gmail.com.

For more information on the upcoming boycott of June field tests please visit Time Out From Testing.

Thanks again,

Andrea from the Change the Stakes Campaign

 Here is the TOFT petition on field testing to the crooks at the NY State Ed Dept:

It has come to our attention that the State Department of Education (SED) wants our children to work for the testing company, Pearson.  Right now our children are being tested in English, math and science. They have spent many hours prepping for and taking these tests. This year the tests are much longer because Pearson Publishing has embedded field test questions in the existing tests.  These questions do not count toward your child’s grade but rather help Pearson write future tests.

The SED has awarded a $32 million contract over the next 5 years to Pearson. The DOE is mandating every school to give stand alone field tests the week of June 5th. Our children have become lab rats for this multi billion dollar testing company.

Parents want to boycott the field tests. In NYC we have 5 short weeks to get going.  We hope that many of you can convince your schools’ parents to join in and tell your principal that there should be no field testing that week. We would rather that the week of June 5th be devoted to real learning rather than test taking devoted to aiding a testing company do its job.

We have posted on our website at www.timeoutfromtesting.org both a parent letter and a boycott Fact Sheet for you to use (Spanish versions will be up soon.) The fact sheet is a way to enlighten your parent body since we have learned that most do not know about the field testing. In addition, parents are signing the letter and handing it in to their principals so that their schools don’t give the tests. Please let us know if your school is on board. We hope there will be many schools boycotting. To the best of our knowledge since these are field tests, there will be no ramifications for our children, our teachers or our schools.

Feel free to write us or call if you have questions.

Regards,
Jane Hirschmann and Dani Gonzalez
917 679 8343             646 701 4014