Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
...special education teacher Julie Cavanagh
doesn't think that's enough with regard to the Common Core. She firmly
believes that the new standards have made learning more difficult across
the board, especially for special educations students... Cavanagh,
who teaches third and fifth grade at PS 15 Patrick F. Daly in Red Hook,
Brooklyn, said the new standards represent a "developmentally
inappropriate curriculum" for special education students and has had the
additional effect of "taking away from schools' and educators' ability
to really focus on differentiated and individualized sort of goals for
those students."... CBS TV Report, Common Core: What's right for special education students?
One of the things I love about being involved in MORE -- the people who get it - that the small stuff will never be addressed without also addressing the big stuff.
Years ago at an ICE meeting Jan. 2009 - we were talking about setting up a committee to fight for ATRs and closing schools. John Lawhead said we should add high stakes testing as the big enchilada since that was the instrument being used to close schools and create ATRs.
Some of us in ICE had been involved with a NYCORE testing committee and we invited them to work with us -- and thus was born Grassroots Education Movement - GEM - a bigger idea than just a caucus focusing on narrow issues - which enabled us to attract such high quality people like Julie after we added fighting charter schools. The alliances built in MORE led to our movie, which I still consider the single most effective piece to fight ed deform I have yet seen as we took up every single issue related to deform -- we had stuff in there on charters not back filling as a way to keep scores high - we even had graphs showing how the drop in students in each successive grade related to higher scores. I think we were the first to point that out in such a public manner. Now that is a hot issue.
And GEM led to MORE and Change the Stakes, where the MORE people can focus on union related issues and the CTS people - parents mostly - but also progressive principals like Carol Burris - aim at testing.
Being involved in groups like this is enabling for both teachers and parents, who are equipped to go forth into battle with the deformers and the UFT semi-deformers. (There is a MORE general meeting tomorrow at noon.)
A recent powerful addition to MORE is special ed teacher Mindy Rosier, who made this comment on the assault on spec ed students:
I am not going to be quiet on this. Why have we NOT heard about any
differentiation for our special education teachers and students? Our
kids are the most neediest. Why isn't there more attention to this? Why
are we continually ignored? Let's also not forget about ESL teachers and
students, thanks to Arthur Goldstein's
article in the NY Daily News. If the powers who be won't scream from
the mountain tops, if the mass media won't cover this, then WE need to.
If something is not done about this, ultimately our kids will suffer and
our livelihoods are at stake. I will NOT go down without a fight!
Now, back to the CBS piece with the comments Julie makes. I am not including the charter take on special ed - go to the link - if you can stomach it. Julie commented on the piece on facebook:
Lots to say about this piece. So much important conversation was cut
out, but even given the charter slant, I think it sends a clear message.
Special
education students in the United States have what is called an
Individualized Education Program (IEP). It provides support and services
for each student depending on their learning needs. Some of that
support comes in the form of accommodations during test-taking like
getting extra time, having some questions read out loud (depending on
the test), and being in a different testing location.
However,
even with these accommodations, special education teacher Julie Cavanagh
doesn't think that's enough with regard to the Common Core. She firmly
believes that the new standards have made learning more difficult across
the board, especially for special educations students.
Julie Cavanagh (Left)
CBS News
Cavanagh,
who teaches third and fifth grade at PS 15 Patrick F. Daly in Red Hook,
Brooklyn, said the new standards represent a "developmentally
inappropriate curriculum" for special education students and has had the
additional effect of "taking away from schools' and educators' ability
to really focus on differentiated and individualized sort of goals for
those students."
Cavanagh specifically teaches students who take
alternate assessments, which means they don't take the same standardized
tests as everyone else. These special education students also have IEPs
but might receive more accommodations and modifications than other
special education students because their learning disabilities are more
significant.
Alternate assessment allows Cavanagh to write her
own version of the end-of-the year state tests - still based on the
Common Core, but modified for her students. However, some special
education teachers think the basic accommodations for their students -
the IEPs - are enough to help them succeed within the Common Core framework. "I
believe that given the opportunity, special education or not, the
standards should be set high because once we're out of school, the
standard is set high. So there is no real benefit for the child to set
the standard low in their early life so that when they get out of school
they are now not functioning as well as they could have," said Dan
Blackburn, who teaches special education for kindergarten through fifth
grade at Amber Charter School in Manhattan. ----Even
Cavanagh agrees there shouldn't be a two-tiered system where children
who have IEP's are working toward one set of standards and children who
don't have IEP's are working toward another, but feels the Common Core's
"over-emphasis" on testing "really undermines the work of that
individualized, differentiated experience" that has become the hallmark
of special education.
Cavanagh also says the focus on teacher
accountability can be counterproductive. In New York, 20 percent of an
educator's evaluation is based on students' standardized test scores.
Cavanagh said this puts an immense amount of pressure on the teachers as
well as the students. "I think where we run into a problem is
expecting that children with or without an IEP are going to be able to
demonstrate proficiency on those skills at the exact moment that the
state or some [policymaker] has decided that they should be doing that."
Opt Out (of tests)
Movement Causing Panic in the Streets - and Halls of Power
By Norm Scott
I was gratified to get a message from Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder
that he had voted NO on the Cuomo budget with its destructive impact on public
education. It passed anyway and “Hall of shame” lists of state legislators who
voted for it have gone viral nationally. It was good to not see Phil’s name on
that list. Phil and I have a lot we disagree on when it comes to education. He
supports choice, charters and the income tax credit that would allow people to
get a tax break for private schooling.I
won’t get into the weeds on why I disagree with him at this point. As I write
this on the morning NY State testing begins, there are other fish to fry.
I’ve been working with groups critical of high stake testing
for many years. One of the groups here in NYC that I helped found is Change the
Stakes, a mostly NYC parent group that has led the way in urging parents to opt
outof the tests.(8 Reasons to Opt Out and How to Do It: tinyurl.com/la9t5s8).
Slogans like “My child is not a test score,” have been sweeping the nation as
part of a “deny them the data” movement: data this is not being used to assist
teachers and students (scores don’t come back until after the school year ends)
but to punish them.
Two years ago we had a handful of people in NYC opt out.
Last year it began to catch on. This year there has been a storm of requests
for information. In Long Island and the rest of the state there has been a
storm totally the tens of thousands.
I represented CTS at a PTA meeting in Brooklyn recently where parents wanted to
know more about opting out. Most won’t because of fear – and threats floating
out there that the school will lose funding if too many parents opt out – a lie
being floated by the people in power whose entire fabric of phony education
reform (deform) that will to their main goal of privatization is threatened by
the growing parent rebellion against the oppressive tests and the negative
impact on so many children, teachers, and entire school systems.
Schools must make provision for the children who are opting
out by finding a space for them – though some districts have what is called a
“sit and stare” policy, which forces opt outers to sit with the class and stare
at the walls. These policies are being fought.
Entire swaths of Long Island and upstate are having
thousands of parent opt out while I expect the movement to grow more slowly
here in the city- CTS is trying to
tally the numbers.
I know some non-educators who grew up taking tests, are
scratching their heads. The public is still unaware of the insanity going on in
NYC schools since Bloomberg took over in 2002. But this is a national problem
due to federal intervention by both Bush and Obama. That has caused a right
wing/teaparty counter reaction against
the testing and the common core – partially a states rights movement. On the
left, there has also been a reaction from the progressive parent movement.
The general public is often not aware that test results
don’t come back until the summer when kids have already left the class, so the
teacher gets no useful information. People say that kids have to get used to
tests and show they are college ready. I get that for high school kids. But nine
year olds in the 3rd grade?
I have often advocated that tests be given in September. But
then ed deformers like Cuomo would lose their main motivation for the tests –
using them to rate 50% of a teacher’s work based on these tests – and issue
that has outraged parents and teachers. Parents get it that when a teacher’s
job is on the line, the focus will be on test performance – and tests by the
way that have been disparaged as being faulty. In addition, the system used to
rate teachers, known as VAM, has been proven to be completely inaccurate. Cuomo
better be ready for more than a few law suits from tenured teachers who are
terminated based on faulty tests and faulty measures.
And speaking of tenure, the Cuomo bill extends tenure from 3
to 4 years. Not a big deal some of you are saying, but principals have the
right to extend non-tenure year after year, forcing some teachers to wait 6 or
7 years with the sword hanging over them. Why is tenure so important? It is not
a lifetime guarantee but offers protection from arbitrary termination because a
principal doesn’t like the color of your tie. We have reports of numerous
non-tenured teachers being discontinued by psycho principals, who keep getting
support from the DOE.
The parent opt out movement has been causing panic amongst
the deformers who are (falsely) blaming the unions, which in reality have played
a minimal role. The NY State union (NYSUT) did issue a call to opt out but the
UFT here in NYC has been a supporter of testing, common core and rating
teachers based on test scores.
Get more information from my daily blog: ednotesonline.com
Here is the announcement from AQE -- and of course, due to the closeness to the UFT, expect to hear the scummy press screaming bloody murder at the outrage. The UFT is so nervous about bad press they are keeping their fingerprints off this - at least on the surface. Imagine if they called on pissed off teachers to join in?
As some of you already know Eva Moskowitz is hosting one of her
many fundraiser's at Cipriani's this coming Monday, April 20th.
Hedgeclippers, AQE, VOCAL are having a rally outside of the restaurant
at 6 pm. Will you join us?
Let's greet the billionaires who fund privatization and don't have to pay their fair share.
It was a cold, rainy Tuesday evening, but we had a blast. Reminds me of the old GEM days of street theater. The takeaway: teachers make too much money if they can afford to wear fancy mink.
https://youtu.be/y4YBnEyGwtA
Before you look at some stills from Pat Dobosz, consider this from Perdido Street School blog:
Monday, April 20, 2015
Success Academy Charter Schools
Third Annual Spring Benefit.
6:30 pm.
Cocktails and dinner.
Business attire.
Honoring Eli Broad.
Chaired by Campbell Brown, Joel Greenblatt, Daniel S. Loeb, John Scully, Regina Scully.
Tickets from $1,250.00.
Tables from $15,000.00.
Cipriani 42nd Street.
New York.
Contact: Julianna Harder.
(212) 245-6570.
Event address: 110 East 42nd Street, New York.
Event web address: www.successacademies.org.
CUOMO TO HEADLINE SUCCESS ACADEMY BENEFIT—Capital’s Eliza Shapiro: Governor
Andrew Cuomo will be the keynote speaker at Success Academy's annual
spring benefit this April, according to an invite sent to Success
employees this weekend. Cuomo and Success C.E.O. Eva Moskowitz
officially became allies last winter, when Cuomo stepped into a battle
between Moskowitz and Mayor Bill de Blasio, declaring he would ‘save
charter schools’ at a massive Albany rally partially organized by
Success. The event will be held April 20 at Cipriani 42nd Street in
Manhattan, and will be co-chaired by Success board members Campbell
Brown, Daniel Loeb, Joel Greenblatt, and Regina and John Scully. http://bit.ly/1tT6Edx
Don't
forget, Cuomo was scheduled to speak at the Success Academy Charter
Schools Spring Benefit on April 20th; 6:30 pm at Cipriani (42nd St). If
he does attend it would be a great place to demo/rally/press.
Quite courteous of the prosecutor's to wait until Rahm's re-election to
announce this... or is it going to follow the Nixon/watergate scenario,
where re-election is followed by a steady flood of allegations? One can
only hope...Michael Fiorillo
Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett is the subject of a
federal criminal probe into possible contract irregularities, sources
close to CPS and City Hall are reporting.
CPS so far is
declining to comment on the involvement of Ms. Byrd-Bennett, who would
supervise contract awarding in her capacity as the system's chief
executive. But earlier in the day
Board of Education President David Vitale released a statement saying
CPS was "cooperating" with federal agents in their investigation of
possible "misconduct" within the system. Earlier: What are the feds probing at CPS?
One top CPS source says Byrd-Bennett has said she has done nothing wrong, but the investigation is continuing.
News of the probe comes at a time when CPS faces a hole of more than
$1 billion in its budget for the 2015-16 school year. It also comes just
a week after Mayor Rahm Emanuel was re-elected to a new term. 4:45 P.M. UPDATE: Catalyst Chicago also is reporting that Byrd-Bennett is under investigation and has some details on what the probe is about.
Citing “sources,” the education journal says the feds are reviewing a $20 million no-bid contract Byrd-Bennett awarded under controversial circumstances to a principal-training academy for which she once worked.
The
report also says CPS Inspector General Nick Schuler has been reviewing
the matter for some time. IGs and federal prosecutors often end up
working together on corruption cases.
this was not provoked by any politician or the teachers unions, as some want you to believe. Tens of thousands of parents got tired of being ignored by the people in Albany. So one fine day in April, they simply said, “no more.”.... Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, April 15, Fed-up parents revolt against state's standardized tests
Yes, the big lie of the deformers and much of the press -- that teacher unions are behind the opt out movement because they don't want teachers to be accountable. See NYC Educator DA Report--Mulgrew Warns Against Opt-Out - to see how Mulgrew uses Tisch-like threats to try and kill the opt out movement.
Here in the city, a Department of Education spokeswoman claimed the
number of opt-outs won’t be known for weeks. But there’s little doubt
the boycott totals in city schools will dwarf last year’s numbers, when
fewer than 2,000 pupils abstained.
Gonzalez:
At Central Park East 1, a K-to-5 school in East Harlem, 59 of 76
children refused the test, according to Toni Smith-Thompson,
co-president of the Parents Association and a leader of the boycott.
Think the UFT had anything to do with that?
I've been involved in the NYC opt out movement from Day 1. You know what funding Change the Stakes has gotten? From the Ed Notes checking account using the surplus money from our film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.
In Westchester, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino refused to allow two of his children to take the test....Conservatives like Astorino have formed an unusual alliance with
liberal education advocates who claim the test, developed by Pearson
PLC, does nothing to help assess students. “They’re secret, you can’t even discuss the contents of the test with
anyone,” said William Cala, superintendent of Fairport Central School
District outside Rochester, where 67% of students boycotted the test
Tuesday. “Any good assessment is one where you get immediate feedback, but we
don’t even get the results for months after they take the test,” Cala
said, and even then, teachers and students are never told what questions
the students got wrong.
The latest ed deform argument is that we don't need no stinkin' results or diagnosis. This is not about children but we adults who need the tests to tell us if our tax money is being spend wisely. But only for teachers. Police, fire, politicians, construction companies on the city dole, corporations on the govt dole -- we don't need no stinkin' accountability.
I was speaking to a delegate yesterday at the DA. She is from Long Island and her husband works in a school district that had massive opt outs. She told me she has a big opt out sign on her lawn.
Pete Farruggio, an old colleague at PS 16 - in 1969-70 - and a member of Another View in District 14 for a while, sent me this comment he was trying to leave on the Gonzalez column, where the anti-union folks are out in force.
It’s scary how many well intentioned folks in the US consider themselves experts on educational policy because they once went to school. As in this comments space, many weigh in effortlessly with criticism of educational professionals, mainly teachers, while they wouldn’t dream of similarly criticizing professionals in other fields, such as medicine or engineering.
Equally troubling is the tendency by some to criticize parents who have opted their children out of these flawed standardized tests in order to protect them from the continued emotional and cognitive harm they have witnessed that is caused by the yearly “test and punish’ regime. Subject my kids to testing-induced tough love in 3rd grade so they can prepare for life in a cruel cold world? How about let’s show them how to fight back against the heartless plutocrats and their puppet politicians as a way to CHANGE this cruel, cold world?
And to get the revenue to pay for a better society, let’s lighten up on the underpaid teachers and public service workers, and instead demand a fair tax rate from the gluttonous billionaires and their polluting corporations.
As for the myth of the poor performance of US schools compared to other countries, don’t believe the hype in the corporate media. Poor kids everywhere score poorly on these biased standardized tests; but few countries test their poor kids, while the US does it bigtime. Middle class US schoolchildren consistently score near the top in all international comparisons (see below).
If you worry about poor kids, as we should do, then attack poverty, not teachers.
Here is the Diane Ravitch piece on the Gonzalez column:
Juan Gonzalez has a front-page article in the New York Daily News about the historic opt out that swept across New York State. He writes: The entire structure of high-stakes testing in New York crumbled Tuesday, as tens of thousands of fed-up public school parents rebelled against Albany’s fixation with standardized tests and refused to allow their children to take the annual English Language Arts state exam. This “opt-out” revolt has been quietly building for years, but it reached historic levels this time. More than half the pupils at several Long Island and upstate school districts joined in — at some schools in New York City boycott percentages neared 40%. At the Patchogue-Medford School District in Suffolk County, 65% of 3,400 students in grades three to eight abstained from the test, District Superintendent Michael Hynes told the Daily News. “There was a very strong parent contingent that spoke loudly today,” Hynes said. At West Seneca District near Buffalo, nearly 70% of some 2,976 students refused testing. Likewise, at tiny Southold School District on Long Island’s North Fork, 60% of the 400 students opted out; so did 60% of Rockville Centre’s 1,600 pupils. And in the Westchester town of Ossining, nearly 20% of 2,100 students boycotted. “It’s clear that parents and staff are concerned about the number of standard assessments and how they’re used,” Ossining school chief Ray Sanchez said. The final numbers are not in, and may not be in for a few days, but it is already clear that the number of opt outs will far surpass last year’s 50,000. Contrary to the official line that this is “a labor dispute between the Governor and the unions,” the opt out movement is parent led. Parents don’t work for the union, and parents aren’t dumb. Parents protect their children from tests that have no valid purpose. Parents protect their children from tests that were designed to fail them. Parents protect their children from tests that force schools to cut back on the arts, on recess, on anything that is not tested. Bravo, New York state parents! Bravo especially to the New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 organizations of parents and teachers who have testified in Albany, held community forums, informed PTAs, met with their legislators, and raised funds to pay for billboards and roving trucks with banners, plastered towns with car magnets, opt-out stickers, and lawn signs, and been truly herculean in their dedication to bringing down the state’s mean-spirited and pointless testing regime. Go to their website to learn how they mobilized the Empire State to say no to the Governor and his misbegotten plan to bring down public schools and teachers. This is grassroots democracy at work. The hedge fund managers have millions to buy allies, but they can’t buy millions of parents, whose first and only concern is for their children. As a parent said earlier today in the Long Island Press,“The most dangerous place on Earth is between a mother and her child. Cuomo has crossed the line.” Make no mistake. This is parent resistance to high-stakes testing and to Andrew Cuomo’s plan to make the stakes even higher than they were. He was able to push his plan through the legislature, but parents have just thrown a huge monkey wrench into his ability to make it work. It won’t and it can’t. That is how democracy works. Only with the consent of the governed.
The latest line of attack on the opt our movement, as evidenced by Tisch in the debate with Ravitch is that the tests are important for tax payers to know that their money is being spent effectively. In other words, the test critics are winning the battle to convince people the tests are not about kids but adults and now the deformers are saying the same thing.
Pretty interesting flip of the deformers claim that unions, etc were about adults and they were about children.
And also note how the charter "choice" argument is being flipped on its head as parents call for choice in opting out.
The Chalkbeat roundup
on the first day...
From P.S. 321 in Park Slope — 35 percent opt outs — to P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill — 66 percent — to the Institute for Collaborative Education on the Lower East Side — 85 percent — New York City parents were among the thousands expected to opt their children out of taking the state's English and math exams this month, which began on Tuesday.
Rob Astorino, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate, writes that he opted his children out of taking the Common Core-aligned tests because of concerns about how the standards were developed.
Juan Gonzalez: "Tens of thousands" of parents refused to allow their children to take the annual English language arts and math exams, including a contingent of New York City schools where a majority of of students opted out.
It would be a "huge mistake" for defenders of required testing and the Common Core testing to dismiss the concerns raised by parents this week because their reasons are worth listening to, Frederick Hess writes.
Amid the flurry of headlines about parents opting out, a pro-Common Core organizations will spend "six figures" on a radio and digital advertising campaign, featuring teachers and parents urging other to allow their children to take the exams.
Here is the Wall Street Journal article. The comments are interesting between the usual WSJ anti-teacher suspects and a parent who makes great points.
Here are Sarah Russo's points:
WSJ care to share why you didn't post my previous comment? Is it perhaps the deeply embedded association you have with this issue that might prevent you from posting comments from dissenting voices? "Last November, News Corp. dropped $360 million to buy Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn-based education technology company that provides software, assessment tools, and data services. 'When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching,' Murdoch said at the time."
None of this is about children or education. It's about money. Those of you who think your tax dollars are well spent on these tests are woefully mistaken.
@Douglas Marshall The tests don't do what they say they do. If the test don't accurately show what a student has learned how can you base employee evaluations on them? This is a long article but worth reading if you want to understand the tests and their uses better. http://www.texasobserver.org/walter-stroup-standardized-testing-pearson/
One key point, in case you don't bother digging into it more closely:
"The paradox of Texas’ grand experiment with standardized testing is that the tests are working exactly as designed from a psychometric perspective, but their results don’t show what policymakers think they show. Stroup concluded that the tests were 72 percent 'insensitive to instruction,' a graduate- school way of saying that the tests don’t measure what students learn in the classroom."
The tests are poorly designed and it would seem intentionally so, to further a very specific agenda that is costing tax payers a fortune.
@Douglas Marshall p.s. I'm not anti-testing. I took them as a kid. Testing isn't a big deal, frankly, and we should have an effective standard to gauge how kids are doing across the board.
But these tests aren't doing that and we're wasting billions of dollars on them and time. 3rd-8th graders will sit for 7 hours this year. That's 2x the NYS BAR exam, 3x Med Boards, 2x the Actuary exam. That doesn't factor in all the test prep time.
@Paul Sussman@Sarah Russo@Douglas Marshall #1: It's not just the typographical error, although the materials are riddled with those too. What does that "model" represent? Explain it to my like I'm a 3-year-old because the "new" math as Pearson has dubbed it is beyond my Calc 2 skill set.
#2: It is not 1% of the school year. They have been test prepping for the last 6 weeks. Drilling, practice tests, all the garbage Pearson feeds them so kids can score well on the trick questions the tests are filled with. It is two weeks of disrupted class schedules for testing--that's 5.6% of the year, plus 16.6% on test prep. That's a whopping 22.2% of the school year lost.
Thousands of Students Expected to Opt Out of N.Y. State Tests
Parents are protesting standardized exams that they say are too time-consuming and stressful
At the Brooklyn New School, the principal said 95% of eligible children didn’t take state tests on Tuesday.
In West Seneca Central School District in western New York, 70% skipped them—roughly double the amount last year.
But in some places just about everybody sat down to fill in the bubbles. At P.S. 171 in East Harlem, only one student opted out.
During a spring when test refusal has become a trend in pockets across the country, Tuesday marked a moment of suspense across New York state. Many expected at least tens of thousands of children to stay away from exams that critics see as too time-consuming and deeply flawed.
Backers of the tests say they reveal important clues to the strengths and weaknesses of students and schools, improve instruction and highlight achievement gaps so they can be addressed. Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch has called it a “terrible mistake” to miss out on that information.
New York education officials said more than 1.1 million children in grades three through eight were supposed to start the annual standardized tests in reading and math, given during six days this week and next. The official tally of students who skipped them won’t be known until scoring is complete.
State education officials say that last year, about 67,000 children skipped the math tests and about 49,000 didn’t take the language arts exams without giving a valid reason.
Some children who took the English language arts test Tuesday weren’t fazed. Dakota Swart, a fifth-grader at P.S. 234 in Tribeca, said she approached her exam with confidence after weeks of test preparation and a performance-boosting plate of waffles.
“I’ve been doing this since third grade and we’ve been preparing for a while so I was comfortable with it,” she said.
Courtney Simon, a fourth-grader, said she was scared beforehand because last year she couldn’t complete it.
“This time, I finished 30 minutes early,” she announced proudly.
“Thirty minutes?” asked her mom, Ann Simon.
“I went through and checked it three times,” Courtney assured her.
ENLARGE
Students who are opting out of the state tests sit in the auditorium of William S. Covert Elementary School.PHOTO: ANDREW HINDERAKER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The opt-out movement has become a way for some parents to vent frustration with state and federal education policies that they see as unfair intrusions on local control. Some said they were driven to protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s April 1 budget deal, which continues to make test scores a substantial, and possibly increasing, part of teachers’ evaluations. Some researchers say computer models that aim to isolate a teacher’s impact on student growth are unreliable.
Test refusals were high Tuesday in spots where school leaders or parent activists crusaded for the cause. In Rockville Centre Union Free School District on Long Island, high school principal Carol Burris was a pioneer in the movement, and officials said the share of test refusers had jumped to 60%.
Many parents said tests ate up too much learning time. Fourth-graders sit for a total of seven hours of tests, and scores aren’t available until late summer.
Rockville Centre Superintendent William Johnson said his district got much more nuanced feedback using online assessments; they cost $12 a child, take less than an hour for each subject and generate scores within days. “We don’t use the state test data for anything,” he said. “It’s a waste of time.”
In spots across New York and elsewhere, parents have mounted social media campaigns encouraging families to boycott tests. In the past week, New York State United Teachers reminded members of their right to opt out; the group’s president, Karen Magee, has said the teacher evaluation system will be invalidated if enough children do so.
Some parents complain the pressure on schools to show high test scores has spurred too much test preparation in language arts and math, and cut time for untested subjects such as social studies, art and music.
Lisa Rudley, an Ossining mother and a leader of New York State Allies for Public Education, which promotes opting out, said one of her main concerns was the narrowing of the curriculum.
Some principals say the exam results are illuminating when combined with other data, and some parents say poor scores have triggered helpful tutoring.
Just watched Ravitch and Tisch on MSNBC. Tisch is one very ignorant, arrogant and harmful human being.... former Fairport Supt Bill Cala
Here's a quick compendium of news and views as they came in today and tonight from MORE and CTS people. But first a word from our sponsor:
In addition to sharing your opt out numbers (please include school name & # and district #), please let us know about any interference with refusals. Were kids asked to verbally refuse even after parents had sent letters? Any other last-minute obstacles to refusing the tests? Feel free to send any such reports to NYCOptOut@gmail.com. You don't have to identify the school if you're not comfortable doing so. Thanks!
Now back to our program.
Testing news in Eva World: Overheard a Success Academy teacher telling her students how disappointed she was in them this afternoon, loudly in the hallway. She continued by saying that if they did not get 4's tomorrow and Thursday, they would not pass the test. Real nice! -- from a co-located public school teacher
That is AWESOME! The reports coming in statewide are incredible! No wonder NYSED was scared and engaging in so many last-minute ploys to dissuade parents from opting opt... report from cts
The numbers aren't important. The trend is. And it's overwhelming. Year to year -- are we doubling, tripling or in order-of-magnitude territory? Let's remember, thousands upon thousands still believe the draconian and totally empty threats from state officials and are held in compliance by fear. Those threats will be utterly ineffective next year, because with the level of attention this is getting, EVERYONE by then will know there were no consequences for the many schools that had majority opt outs. The testing emperor has no clothes and this year's tests are a spotlight revealing that condition.... cts parent
The entire structure of high-stakes testing in New York crumbled Tuesday, as tens of thousands of fed-up public school parents rebelled against Albany’s fixation with standardized tests and refused to allow their children to take the annual English Language Arts state exam.
This “opt-out” revolt has been quietly building for years, but it reached historic levels this time. More than half the pupils at several Long Island and upstate school districts joined in — at some schools in New York City boycott percentages neared 40%... Juan Gonzalez, Fed-up parents revolt against state's standardized tests.... Daily News
let’s see if the NYT manages to ignore this hugely historic grassroots rebellion, as is their wont....
Fred Smith on Tisch after MSNBC debate with Ravitch (If you missed it go http://www.msnbc.com/all and click on "To test or not to test" -- I wanted Ravitch to punch her in the face):
Ravitch post-debate comment:
I am bummed out that Tisch got the first word and the last word. It is insulting to parents to say that opt out is a labor dispute. Parents don't opt out to help the union. They opt out because they want to protect their children from a test that is designed to fail them.
I blame Chris Hayes, who as pretty much the entire press corps is awful on ed issues. Throwing the red herring of comparing opt out to anti vaccine people. OK - here's Fred:
I would have to agree with Tisch. She says the Common Cores Test are Diagnostic. That's true. The diagnosis is that she, SED and Pearson don't know what the hell they're doing. Opting out of the tests is the vaccination parents want in order to spare their children from this disease... My take is that she mixed up cause and effect. Perhaps she meant that parents were getting caught up in the union's political fight. She put this piece into play as she was urging parents not to opt out on Day 2.
A parent responds:
.....parents and teachers spearheaded this movement, and NYSUT is now finally following our lead. It's one thing to be pro-"reform" -- but honestly who can lie so baldly as to say this is a union-led political movement? Is that Tisch's stance?
Back to Fred:
It's a slam at the union. And I wonder if that would have been her dodge if Sheldon Silver was calling the shots. She seems a bit off balance as she figures out her position. No doubt having to sit next to Diane Ravitch and listen to a few facts must have rattled Her Pearlship....
Too bad Chris Hayes didn't give Diane the last word--as Tisch postured that the resistance is a matter of the union not wanting teacher evaluations. In the same breath, while she's reducing everything to "politics," she's also mouthing the party line that parents have been duped.
If you can't fire parents, why not try to deny their individual and collective intelligence and ignore the authenticity of their cause.
Penetrating East NY, District 19:
5 kids from my school opted out!!! I had no idea. ... teacher in Dist. 19, one the most poverty stricken areas in East NY, Brooklyn (where I grew up.)
And from a MORE in Park Slope:
250+ opt outs at PS 321 this year. I'll get more exact numbers tomorrow, but that's around 37% of the kids in testing grades. Way to go, all! ... teacher
Thanks to Michael Elliot for coming to Jackson Heights to capture this morning's press conference.
As always, we are so very grateful for his tireless energy. Norm, you have an awesome partner here!
Our school has 14, up from 5 last year, and I am hearing about more from D3. One more year, then I opt out my third grader.... parent
95% at BNS (298/314 opted out). 80% opted out at BCS- the 6th-12th grade sister school upstairs from BNS.
...so far one child has opted out at my school...a special needs child whose parent used a doctor's note to back up her opting the child out... teacher in district 14
....reporting from, district 3 school, MS421 we have 6 (including my son) students/parents who opted out in protest of standardized testing.
Still waiting to hear from a few other schools in the district I've requested numbers from.... parent
9 from PS 11. I'm a little disappointed, but that's a 120% growth from last year :)
For D6 ps178(K to 4th) there were #3 students to opt-out. All were sent to the cafeteria.
For D3 ps163 there were #6 students to opt-out and all were sent to the cafeteria.
Castle Bridge got to 100 percent
Hamilton Heights, D6. They had 50 of 104 students opt out this year. 21 3rd graders, 24 4th graders, and 5 5th graders.
I don't have hard numbers yet either. I know of 8-9 at Muscota (the tireless work of Helena Rincon), 17 at Amistad, a dual language K-8 (!!! Hurray for Gretchen Mergenthaler!!!), at least 5 at PS/IS 187, and a few more scattered around D6. I have not heard from Castle Bridge, expected to have a huge percentage of opt outs, and Hamilton Heights, where close to 70% opted out last year.
I can also report at least 3 at Manhattan East middle school in D4. While our numbers are still small, they've got to be double what they were last year. And the "noise" as Meryl Tisch called it is becoming deafening. Perhaps she'll actually hear it some day. Not counting on that. Perhaps the people we vote for will actually hear it some day. Carl Heastie just sent an email touting the work he did around Cuomo's education proposals in the budget process. That it came out today says to me he gets how passionate this debate is becoming. Okay, so I might feel a little competitive with the suburbs, whose numbers so outstrip ours, but thank goodness for them!
Also, let's not discount those who did not end up opting out. Let's encourage them to write their legislators and Cuomo and tell them why they felt he's made them an offer they could not refuse. I definitely see a pattern where numbers climb at schools where teachers become outspoken against the tests. I know many parents don't want to "hurt" their kids' teachers or their schools. There are way more people who decry the test-based ed reforms but don't opt out... Parent
Fairport NY refusal numbers: 1820 refusals = 67.1% -- Superintendent Bill Cala
I'm not in NYC, but my kids' elementary school in New Rochelle had 65 this year...up from ONE last year! I also heard that 25% of one of the middle schools opted out...about 250 kids (don't know last year's numbers) and promising numbers in some of the other elementary schools. That's huge!
Here is an excellent analysis of what is behind the Opt Out movement. Last year, 50,000-60,000 students opted out in Néw York. The figure will be more than double that this year.
Parents are reacting against the overuse and misuse of tests. They are reacting against Governor Cuomo's harsh and punitive education legislation.
In a democratic society, parents can't be pushed around by public officials who are more interested in politics than in children. It makes parents angry.
My favorite quote:
“The most dangerous place on Earth is between a mother and her child. Cuomo has crossed the line,” declares GiGi Guiliano of East Islip, a mother of three who will refuse the test. “We want our classrooms back. We want our teachers to be able to teach again. I want my kids to enjoy the love of learning, not how to fill in bubbles. I want them to be lifelong learners.”
It's an anti-testing tsunami.
Thousands of families across the Empire State said no to standardized testing, boycotting the state-mandated English Language Arts exams which began Tuesday.
While accurate figures were hard to come by, testing opponents, parents groups, and school officials from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, to Buffalo all agreed the number is likely to far exceed the 60,000 students who refused to take the test last year.
“From what I’m hearing from other superintendents, it could be at least 300,000 students across the state that opted out,” said William Cala, superintendent of Fairport Central School District near Rochester.
Rachel Cohen, mother of a fifth-grader at Public School 261, said she thinks at least 66% of the 817 students in her Boerum Hill school refused to take the English Language Arts test — the first of the exams administered to third-through eighth-graders across New York State this week.
“Essentially I see no diagnostic educational benefit to my child,” she said. “I see no compelling evidence this is a fair and accurate way to assess children or teachers. All this emphasis on testing actually interferes with meaningful learning and assessment.”
Other parents whose kids opted-out echoed Cohen’s complaints that teachers are being forced to “teach to the test” to preserve their jobs — and their kids were being short-changed as a result.
“We’re not against assessment, we believe in meaningful assessment,” said Jody Alperin, whose children are in the second and fifth grade at PS 10 in South Park Slope, Brooklyn. “Test results should not be punitive.”
Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Education, said it will be several days before they know just how many public school students balked at taking the tests.
“We collect opt-out data (as we do every year) by tabulating what is bubbled on the students’ answer sheets during the test administration,” Kaye said. “For this reason, we do not have figures until after the test administration is completed, including makeup test dates.”
About 1.1 million students statewide were eligible to take the exams. The ELA exams run through Thursday and the math tests are next week.
Chris Cerrone, of United Opt Out, which has been leading the charge against the testing, agreed it will take some time before they get a true picture of how widespread the boycott was.
“The numbers are still coming in,” he said.
But reports of large numbers of students boycotting the tests were pouring in from public schools across the state.
Westchester County executive Rob Astorino, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate, refused to allow two of his kids to take the test. He estimated some 100,000 parents did the same statewide.
Further north in the Lower Hudson valley, school officials reported that a quarter of all students in third through eighth grade ditched the test.
Up in the Buffalo suburbs, the superintendent of West Seneca School District reported 2,074 out of 2,976 students — nearly 70% — refused to take the test.
“Last year, we had 30% who refused to take the test,” said Mark Crawford, whose district has five elementary schools and two middle schools. “So it was a surprise to me.”
In the nearby Lake Shore School District, Superintendent James Przepasniak said half of their 1,000-plus students opted out.
“I am not surprised,” he told The Buffalo News. “I believe that the parents groups, the teachers groups have been communicating to parents through many means and I think our parents are more aware of the options they have.”
Gov. Cuomo, a strong supporter of the standardized exams, declined to comment on the apparent anti-testing movement sweeping the state.
But parents like Michele Greeley, 44, of Staten Island, said the anti-testing sentiment is not widespread at her kids’ school — and the state needs some way to measure teacher and student performance.
“I had to take tests when I was in school,” said Greeley, who has kids in the fourth and fifth grades at PS 8 in Staten Island.
“I want to make sure they are learning. It didn’t even cross my mind to opt out. Every parent is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t really know anyone who opted out here.”
Critics, however, say the tests are a poor measure of academic achievement and rob students of valuable school time.
This year New York State United Teachers got behind the opt-out movement after the state Legislature passed a law backed strongly by Cuomo that made test scores the basis of tougher evaluation standards intended to kick poor performing teachers out of classrooms.
Widespread boycotts, pro-teacher groups believe, would undermine the credibility of teacher ratings.
There are no penalties for refusing the tests, but in the past relatively few parents chose to have their kids skip the exams.
In 2014, just 1,925 city students opted out of either one of the state reading or math tests given to students in grades three to eight.
That number represented less than 1% of all students tested that year, but it included only kids who attended school on the days of the exams and formally refused them.
With Glenn Blain
and Juan Gonzalez
lcolangelo@nydailynews.com
Take a look at this morning's Rise and Shine and what do you see? All anti-opt out but not much from the other side -- and there is so much out there I can't even keep up. But we know the so-called press supports the ed deform agenda. The deformers have not only bought Cuomo.
These in particular, expose the bias at Chalkbeat:
Errol
Louis writes that the teachers union's call for parents to withdraw
their children from taking the tests threatens to undermine the
movement, which he argues is wrongheaded anyway because "high-stakes
testing is, for better or worse, the norm in our complex modern
society."
Really? I know the people at Chalkbeat know full well the union, in particular the UFT, has played little role in what is a grassroots parent movement (as opposed to the astroturfs so often promoted by Chalkbeat). Yet this headline without comment allows the lie to go out -- a distortion of the real world. Chalkbeat reporters contact Change the Stakes asking for opt out information. (They won't get that from the UFT, which has done nothing to assist the opt out movement - and in fact, has obstructed it - see the turn down of the MORE testing reso at the March DA.)
In fact, CTS has so much info unbiased reporting would lead to offering the alternative view.
They can't use the excuse that they are just listing articles in the news without any comment -- in the old days of Gotham they at least used to offer the counter arguments from the blogs in their evening report.
I would tell you to go comment but really, why bother?
gut check
Parents
who have been outspoken critics of the state's testing policies say
they won't go so far as to opt their children out of taking the exams
when they are administered this week.
Assembly
Speaker Carl Heastie raised concerns the growing push by parents to
keep their children from taking tests, questioning "if the system can be
looked upon fairly if some kids are taking (tests) and some are not.”
In
an editorial, the Daily News offers a similar argument, writing that
tests "are the sole apples-to-apples tool" for comparing teacher quality
and "the only way to know whether 1.1 million kids in city public
schools, including many hundreds of thousands who are in veritable
educational wastelands, are really learning."
Part of the reason the teachers are blaming the principal is that they had been rated “effective” based on their students’ improvement on state exams. But when subjective observations by Elvin and her fellow administrators were factored in, their grades sank. “She has a personal vendetta,” the teacher said. “She’s using the teacher observations as a weapon against teachers. It’s her way to force teachers to leave or retire.” ... NY Post
How about this? A NY Post piece taking the side of teachers.
Of course ed notes has been on the Elvin/Dewey case. (For background see links below the Post article.)
Teachers at Brooklyn’s scandal-plagued John Dewey HS say they are being punished with bad performance evaluations for standing up to the principal, who they say lets students slide with a grade-inflation system nicknamed “Easy Pass.”
A Post analysis found that half of the teachers at the school were given failing grades from Principal Kathleen Elvin, even though the graduation rate has been soaring.
State education records show that out of 101 teachers, 16 earned “ineffective” ratings and 35 got “developing” ratings last year, a failure rate of 50 percent.
Only 8 percent of teachers citywide received marks that low, leading some Dewey teachers to claim that the game is being rigged by the administration to get back at educators who object to alleged grade inflation.
“This doesn’t make sense. Something is wrong here,” said one teacher, who was rated “ineffective.”
Part of the reason the teachers are blaming the principal is that they had been rated “effective” based on their students’ improvement on state exams.
But when subjective observations by Elvin and her fellow administrators were factored in, their grades sank.
“She has a personal vendetta,” the teacher said. “She’s using the teacher observations as a weapon against teachers. It’s her way to force teachers to leave or retire.”
He said some of the teachers who got the bad reviews were the same teachers who would not alter grades to pass failing students.
The school is under investigation for fixing grades with easy extra credit so it could post higher graduation rates. Students derisively call the system “Easy Pass.”
“I have integrity,” the teacher said. “I refused to give kids credit who didn’t deserve it.”
Only 49 percent of Dewey teachers surveyed by the city agreed that Elvin is an effective manager. She declined to comment and directed inquiries to the Department of Education.
Department spokeswoman Devora Kaye said “Principals must rate teachers fairly and accurately,” but did not address the dispute at Dewey.
United Federation of Teachers grievance director Ellen Gallin Procida called the poor ratings a “red flag.”
“This is the first year we have had this process, but the fact that one school stands out the way it does is noteworthy,” she said.
Dewey has one of the highest number of ineffective rated teachers by Elvin while at the same time she claims enormous success due to fraudulent credit recovery schemes. Red flag anyone? Here are the latest comments:.
Gerard Papa, 61, who runs Flames, a basketball tournament and mentoring program for 700 kids ages 8 to 19, says Kathleen Elvin, the principal of John Dewey High School, closed off the school's secondary gym last ...
Based on the comments, a major issue is a phony credit recovery scheme and some ridiculous work rules imposed by the Elvin administrators, some of whom seem to be so awful. Hearing about how these slugs continue to ...
Are Elvin and Creveling the local version of ISIS, using this teacher as a hostage in retaliation for actions taken by the union - beheading the teacher, economically, by taking her job. The actions of Principal Elvin, along with ...
...special education teacher Julie Cavanagh doesn't think that's enough with regard to the Common Core. She firmly believes that the new standards have made learning more difficult across the board, especially for special educations students... Cavanagh, who teaches third and fifth grade at PS 15 Patrick F. Daly in Red Hook, Brooklyn, said the new standards represent a "developmentally inappropriate curriculum" for special education students and has had the additional effect of "taking away from schools' and educators' ability to really focus on differentiated and individualized sort of goals for those students."... CBS TV Report, Common Core: What's right for special education students?
None of this is about children or education. It's about money. Those of you who think your tax dollars are well spent on these tests are woefully mistaken.