Pearson Rally Pics here
What a day. What a rally this morning. I'll just let the press stories and the pics I took tell the story. Video is processing tonight and I'll try to get a piece up tomorrow. Look for Jaisal Noor's professional version next week. I met loads of new people today and would love to write about it but too late and I need some sleep. I did head up to Central Park after to hang with some of the amazing parent activists and then over to the MORE education committee meeting that covered 2 chapters of Diane Ravitch's book -- we had a great session talking about high stakes testing and accountability. I stopped by the E4E meeting with John King on the way out and of course I was banned for not being a member and when I tried giving out my leaflet they called security on me and thet told me I had to stand outside despite the fact this CUNY is a building I pay taxes for and not a play tool of private interests. Then I saw press going in - E4E doesn't allow teachers in who don't sign the pledge but anyone in the press can go -- except me of course. Evan Stone lied to security by saying press had to sign up in advance to be allowed in but every member of the press told me that wasn't so. Should E4E be banned from CUNY events for making up stories to security? I will file an official complaint.Here are some stories on the protest. My pics are here. See more on Facebook: https://www.facebook.
http://www.ny1.com/content/
http://www.nytimes.com/
WSJ: Parents Protest High-Stakes Exams Outside Testing Company Offices
NY Daily News: Parents and students protest dummy exams by ‘talking pineapple’ test-maker
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Fox 5 just ran a piece at 5:35--I'd say a three-minute piece about the
burgeoning anti-test feeling.
It starts out with a mother and her 6th grade son who refused to take the
test (described by her as a waste of time). It mentions resistance in a
number of schools. The the scene shifts to our splendid protest on
Pearson's doorsteps. Much camera time on kids, signs, parents and
chanting. Priceless. Terrific coverage from Fox. Go figure.
Only thing, they had to balance story with SED spin. So we have a
statement that the tests only take 40 minutes and schools are giving them in
only a grade or two. This red herring is intended to make people say to
themselves--So what's the big deal? The big deal is the fact that it is a
complete waste of time and money that propels Pearson's cycle of profit via
invalid testing.
Then someone with a suit says: That's why SED needed to do embedding
items. (He doesn't mention what a lousy job they did.)
My new chant: Hey. Hey. What's The Word? Parents and Kids Must
Be Heard.
fred
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Parents in 59 Schools Boycott Field
Tests for High-Stakes Exams:
Fed
Up With Over-Testing, Parents Protest at Pearson Headquarters
“Enough
is enough – we want more teaching, less testing!”
New
York City –Parents
across New York City and New York State, fed up with
high-stakes and excessive standardized
testing in public education, are boycotting the “stand-alone”
field tests
scheduled for middle and elementary schools this week. And
many are joining a
protest at the headquarters of Pearson, the state’s for-profit
test development
contractor, to demonstrate their anger as well.
From
June 5th to June 12th, children across
the state are
being forced to give up learning time solely to serve the
research purposes of
billion-dollar test publisher Pearson, which has a $32 million
contract with
the New York State Education Department. But parents in 59
schools – an
unprecedented number – are fighting back by refusing to allow
their children to
take these field tests. In support, the Chancellor’s Parent
Advisory Council
(CPAC) passed a resolution on May 31 endorsing the boycott and
urging all
parents to opt their children out of the field tests. The
Community Education
Councils (CECs) of District 3 in Manhattan (Upper West Side)
and District 20 (Bay
Ridge, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, Kensington) in Brooklyn
passed similar
resolutions.
“All
this testing is out of control,” says Dani Gonzalez, a Bronx
parent who is
protesting at today’s demonstration. “Real learning happens
when children can
explore and experiment and do projects, when they can read
books and discuss
them. All this testing is crowding real learning out of the
classroom. My
children can’t learn when all they do is prepare for tests and
take tests.”
The Pearson field tests follow April’s state-mandated
English
Language Arts (ELA) and math exams, tests that were twice as
long as those
given in previous years--largely because they contained
embedded field-test
items. Over a two-week period, students in grades 3-8 had to
sit for tests 90
minutes a day for six days. Students with special needs
had to sit even longer – up to 180 minutes each day.
“It was
horrible,” says Tony
Kelso, a boycotting parent from Manhattan. “My 8-year-old
son’s tests were
about as long as my finals were in college! Then he couldn’t
even take recess
on those days because the period conflicted with the time the
students in the
other school in his building were taking their tests. Friends told me about
how their children were stressed out and crying. This is
simply too much
pressure to put on children."
Parents are especially outraged by all the high
stakes attached to
these tests. In New York City, grade promotion, school report
card grades, and
school closings hinge on state test score results. With the
new state teacher
evaluation law, teachers’ jobs will be dependent on their
students’ scores as
well. Parents see a narrowing of the curriculum and an
increased focus on the
tests as a result.
“More and more, state testing
determines what children learn in school, how teachers teach,
and even whether
or not teachers will remain in the classroom,”
says Sonia Murrow, a 5th grade parent who is
boycotting in Brooklyn.
“We want a rich curriculum for our children, not teaching to
the test.”
Fueling parent anger is the fact that Pearson, a
for-profit
company that made $800 million dollars in its North American
Education division
alone last year, is using valuable classroom time for product
development
purposes. “Children shouldn’t be used as guinea pigs to enrich
private
companies,” says Jeff Nichols, a Manhattan parent from a
boycotting school. “Our
schools are being cut to the bone, but city and state
education officials always
manage to find money for all these tests and test prep
materials.”
Disclosures about the
poor quality of this year’s state tests – 29 questions have
been invalidated so
far, including two associated with the infamous “Pineapple and
the Hare”
passage – have raised questions among parents about the
validity of the entire
testing enterprise. Parents are further enraged that Pearson
and the state
refuse to make the tests public, as they were in the past.
Lisa Edstrom, parent
of a 3rd grader in Brooklyn, contends, “The proponents of
high-stakes testing
always talk about accountability – but who’s holding Pearson
and the State
accountable?”
Since opting-out of the stand-alone field tests will
have no
negative consequences for parents or schools (as opposed to
April’s tests), parents
see this boycott as an opportunity to communicate the
widespread resentment
public school parents feel towards the untrammeled growth of
high-stakes
standardized testing. This growth will only intensify with the
new teacher evaluation
law, which promises testing in more subjects and more grades,
including
kindergarten – 2nd grade.
Organizations
supporting this
demonstration include: Alliance for Quality Education, Change
the Stakes, Class
Size Matters, Coalition for Educational Justice, Edu4, Parent
Voices New York, Public
Education Matters, Restore Education Funding – Nyack/Valley
Cottage, Time Out
>From Testing
#
# #
Schools Where Parents Are Participating in
the Field Test
Boycott
Arts & Letters
The Center School
Central Park East I
Central Park East II
The Earth School
East Side Community School
East Village Community School
Ella Baker School
Institute for Collaborative Education
MS 51
MS 54
MS 74
MS 245/The Computer School
MS 250/Westside Collaborative Middle School
MS 311/Amistad Dual Language
MS 447/Math and Science
MS 448/Brooklyn School for Collaborative
Studies
PS 8
PS 9
PS 10
PS 29
PS 32
PS 75
PS 84
PS 87
PS 102
PS 107
PS 132
PS 139
PS 146/The Brooklyn New School
PS 162
PS 165
PS 192
PS 230
PS 242
PS 261
PS 295
PS 314/Muscota New School
PS 321
PS 361/Children's Workshop School
PS 363/The Neighborhood School
PS 372/Brooklyn Children's School
NEST+M
School of the Future
Tompkins Square Middle School
Schools Outside of NYC
Cottage Lane Elementary School
Felix Fests Middle School
Liberty Elementary School
Link Elementary School
New City Elementary School
Nyack Middle School
R.P. Connor Elementary School
Scarsdale MS
Sloatsburg Elementary School
Sourth Orangetown Middle School
Strawtown Elementary School
Upper Nyack Elementary School
Valley Cottage Elementary School
Woodglen Elementary School
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