Top 10 Reasons to Rally for Public Education in Albany, New York, on June 8

Testing in New York has turned into the Monster that Ate the Children.

Teachers plan to rally at the state capitol in Albany on June 8 to support public education and protest the deluge of high-stakes testing.

This was written by the leader of the teachers’ union in the Averill Park school district in upstate New York.

TOP TEN reasons to March on Albany in the Rally for Public Education:

10. You have realized public education is being hi-jacked by for profit organizations.

9. You are tired of reading about how ineffective you are at your own profession by people who know nothing about education.

8. You believe high stakes testing is out of control in NY.

7. You believe you have not had enough time to learn the Common Core yourself, let alone have your students tested on it!

6. You believe your students’ personal information, including their state assessment results and their IEPs and other personal data should be kept confidential.

5. You believe your effectiveness rating should be kept confidential, and don’t want a link on the district web page to this information or directions given to get this information.

4. You believe that NYS should report to the public the amount of tax payer money spent on developing, administering, grading and reviewing state assessments.

3. The word PEARSON makes your skin crawl.

2. You work in Averill Park (Insert your own school district.)and have lost about a quarter of your faculty due to unfair state budget cuts!

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON….

1. You are a caring professional who wants the BEST public education for your own students, children, and grandchildren and you know this isn’t it!

Michelle Smead

Averill Park Teachers’ Association

David Greene says:

May 2, 2013 at 10:33 am

May I add my comments from the letter I wrote to the NYT yesterday on the Art of Teaching. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/invitation-to-a-dialogue-the-art-of-teaching.html?_r=0

spring says:

May 2, 2013 at 10:56 am

11. You are a parent who does not want your child to be subjected to hours of test prep.

Collete Johnson says:

May 13, 2013 at 10:55 am

I’m a parent who had my children refuse the test & I plan on going with the whole family as a learning experience as well. They have never been to our capital & what better way for them to learn how people who believe in something so strongly can come together to make a change in our Government. They don’t have to sit & take it.

Duane Swacker says:

May 2, 2013 at 11:01 am

Said in my best Richard Dawson voice a la Family Feud: “The the number one answer in our survey is: You understand that educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students is an abomination of educational malpractice that is so fraught with errors that the whole process is completely invalid”.