Katie Lapham (MORE, CTS): Testifying at Cuomo Common Core Task Force and Goes Head to Head with Deform Slugs from Students Last and E4E (Hii Evan!)

One of the things I love about working with people in MORE is that they see the big picture. Katie Lapham certainly does and she shlepped over on a Friday after school with her daughter to make sure the deform slugs would not be the only voices heard. She was joined by other MOREs/CTS - David Dobosz, Fred Smith, Nancy Cauthen, Jane Maisel. Here is a link to Nancy's testimony: New York City Common Core Listening Session

And Katie's full report from her blog.

https://criticalclassrooms.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/testifying-before-cuomos-common-core-task-force-in-queens-nyc/

Testifying Before Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force in Queens, NYC

Last night I testified at one of NYS Governor Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force (aka Farce) sessions. The New York City event took place at LaGuardia Community College in a hard-to-reach section of Long Island City, Queens. Incongruously, it was held in the cramped Poolside Café, located deep inside the college building. Afforded to us, while signing in, were glimpses of swim team practice. It was as if Cuomo’s team deliberately chose an inconvenient time and location for the event in order to deter people from attending. To the best of my knowledge, there was no media presence at LaGuardia Community College. Unlike the Long Island session, which was covered in today’s news, I saw nothing reported about the NYC session.  Therefore, I will try to be as comprehensive as possible, but my six-year-old was with me so, unfortunately, I was unable to give all the speakers my full attention.

About 25 people testified; a balance, more or less, of Common Core opponents and supporters. I was speaker 18. MORE-UFT and Change the Stakes members shared the front row with pro-Common Core Educators4Excellence (EFE) teachers, including its founder Evan Stone. High Achievement NY, a coalition of businesses and education deform organizations such as E4E, was represented by its executive director, Stephen Sigmund. The main message of the Common Core supporters was that the standards are good but the tests need to be tweaked. They repeatedly used the term “opt-in” and recommended computer adaptive testing for students with special needs.

As a critic of the Common Core package, I was happy to see so many MORE-UFT and Change the Stakes allies (and friends!) who had shown up despite the challenges of getting there on time: David Dobosz, Fred Smith, Jane Maisel, Alliance for Quality Education‘s Zakiyah Ansari, blogger Peter Goodman, a Class Size Matters representative who read a statement by Leonie Haimson, and sociologist/public school parent/blogger Nancy Cauthen all testified. My apologies if I inadvertently omitted someone.



Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, and Kishayna Hazlewood, 3rd grade teacher at P.S. 156 in Brooklyn, chaired the event. Hazlewood was mostly stoic while Nolan shared with us – from time to time – her personal views, citing a recent conversation she had with Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education Fund. Nolan seems to get it. NYC City Council member Danny Dromm opened the event with a statement that was critical of Common Core.

Dromm in foreground listens to David Dobosz’s testimony; seated at the table are Nolan (on left) and Hazlewood (on right). Photo by me. 

As was the case when John King came to NYC in 2013 on his “listening” tour, StudentsFirstNY bussed in a large group of charter school parents who sat in the back as audience members – not speakers. This time, it seemed StudentsFirstNY wanted Educators4Excellence teachers, not parents, to do the testifying. Interestingly, after corporate education deform critics Dromm, Smith and Dobosz spoke, the StudentsFirstNY parents all rose and left the poolside café en masse. I asked four parents why they were leaving, but not one had any idea what was going on. Finally, a woman told me, “This isn’t for us. We support Common Core.”

 

The quick and confusing departure of StudentsFirstNY parents. Photo by me. 

Once it became clear that well-informed, dissenting voices were being heard, StudentsFirstNY organizers instructed the parents to leave immediately. Presumably they didn’t want their brainwashed parents to be contaminated by the opposition. The exodus puzzled the young Cuomo staffers so I told them what was going on. One of them, David Contreras Turley, director of Constituency Affairs, gave me his card and told me that the governor’s office was neutral on Common Core. I challenged him by pointing out Cuomo’s support for education deform and charters. David did not respond. I was grateful to Cuomo’s representatives, though, because they were very accommodating of my restless daughter and the dozens of math manipulatives strewn all over the floor.



After the departure of the charter school parents, a Queens mother passionately testified that the Common Core had brought anguish and frustration to her home and that her son had gone from a level 3 to a level 1 student in math. Immediately after her testimony, Assemblywoman Nolan reminded the audience to be respectful. Apparently, an Educators4Excellence teacher had laughed at and/or made faces at the mother while she was delivering her moving testimony. Nolan even got out of her seat and confronted the teacher who denied out loud that she was misbehaving. Nolan also gave High Achievement NY’s Stephen Sigmund a look that said “watch it, Buster.” I did not witness their alleged crimes.
Here is my testimony, which I also intend to submit online. If you were unable to attend one of these task force sessions, consider sending your statement to the task force via their website. Let’s inundate them with our message.

November 6, 2015
I’m a NYC parent but today I’m speaking to you as a NYC teacher. I stood before John King in 2013 and got no reaction from him. I am more hopeful today and feel compelled – once again – to speak up on behalf of NYC educators and students who are suffering under corporate education deform.
We detest what the Common Core package has done to instruction. This July 21, 2009 quote from Bill Gates will clarify what I mean by package:
Bill Gates said, “We’ll know we’ve succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards. Arne Duncan recently announced that $350 million of the stimulus package will be used to create just these kinds of tests–next generation assessments aligned to the common core. When the tests are aligned to common standards, the curriculum will line up as well–and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better…”
We are given poor quality, scripted curriculum that is not developmentally appropriate. Education deformers have turned critical thinking and rigor into an extreme sport, frustrating and boring teachers and students to the point where – for example – a large number of us dread teaching math. Close reading has become tedious and is killing the joy of reading. The chief purpose of schooling nowadays is to teach skills that kids will need to know for the Common Core tests. Independent reading, through which students experience joy in having the freedom to discover a wide range of books regardless of level, is now viewed chiefly as a tactic to build students’ stamina for the absurdly long Common Core tests.
Our freedom to teach and to facilitate the development of whole child is curtailed. Due to the high-stakes nature of testing, those of us who work in a Title I school face immense pressure to raise test scores. Virtually every decision made at the school level is done with testing in mind.
No educator I know finds any value in the Common Core ELA and math tests. They are poorly constructed, developmentally inappropriate, decontextualized, confusing and deliberately tricky. Equally flawed is the new Common Core-aligned NYSESLAT, which is an ELA & content assessment, not a language test. Not only does the NYSESLAT fail to consider cognitive development stages but it also disregards what we know about second language learning. Our English-language learners, in particular, are being subjected to excessive testing that does not accurately measure what they can do. These bad tests are an insult to our intelligence.
Parents – please know that teachers – like myself (and there are many of us) – support your right to opt-out. We would opt-out of administering these tests if we could. In fact, a few bold teachers have. We hope that in 2016, opt-out numbers will reach 500,000.

Nothing short of a revolution is needed if we want true education reform. The Common Core package – all of it – has got to go. Revisit the lost standards, have teachers create diagnostic standardized assessments, stop using test scores to evaluate teachers and to punish schools, invest more in social services for our school communities.
Be brave and stand up to corporate education deformers. Let’s all stop being complicit in this costly, wrong-headed experiment that’s designed – in large part – to weed out so-called “bad teachers” and so-called “failing” schools. There are more effective and humane ways to improve our schools and to support the diverse needs of the children of New York State. Start by asking a teacher.
-Katie Lapham, NYC public school teacher