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
