The most amazing thing is happening. The Common Core tests were made so “rigorous” that most students were expected to fail, and they did. Less than a third across the state “passed” the tests because the passing mark was set very high and the content of the test was so challenging that many students couldn’t finish the test.
But parents didn’t get angry at their children’s school or their children’s teachers. They got angry at the New York State Education Department, which set the cut scores or passing marks. They got angry at Pearson, which constructed the tests.
And as a result, the opt out movement is growing by leaps and bounds. Parents are outraged, especially in the suburbs, where the local schools are an integral part of the community. Suburban parents know that their children are not “failures,” and they reject the labels that the state put on them.
And the movement to boycott the tests next spring is growing.
Even in Buffalo, not a leafy suburb by any means, the local community is furious. A few days ago, an amazing 2,500 people turned out to protest the tests. The audience included parents, teachers, administrators, and scholars from local universities. It was not just parents from Buffalo, but also suburban parents. They joined in common cause.
Here is a quote from the article about the event:
Reform of high-stakes testing for schoolchildren, a groundswell movement of lawn signs and small-scale protests, became an earthquake Wednesdayevening.
The Summit for Smarter Schools, organized by a group called the Partnership for Smarter Schools and hosted by State Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo; Assemblyman Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo; and State Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, filled Kleinhans Music Hall with more than 2,500 parents, teachers and school administrators.
Cheers erupted as Kennedy and Ryan called out the names of districts represented in the audience. It sounded like a school closing list in the middle of a blizzard, encompassing schools from Barker to Allegany-Limestone, with a couple from the Rochester area thrown in for good measure.
“We’ve had a lot of quote-unquote educational reform in the past decades aimed at poor schools in the cities,” Ryan said before the session started, “but now all schools are feeling the pain, regardless of their previous performance. This is why you see a lot of suburban parents here tonight. They’re all being treated poorly. They’re mad about these tests.”
The stage, decorated with a banner that read, “Get Testing Right,” looked like a Western New York State Legislature roll call. In addition to the hosts, there were Assembly Members Ray Walter, R-East Amherst; John Ceretto, R-Lewiston; Michael Kearns, D-Buffalo; and Jane Corwin, R-Clarence. State Sen. Mark Grisanti, R-Buffalo, was in the front row of the audience.
After the introduction by Kennedy, Ryan and Amherst principal Mike Cornell, a succession of speakers laid out the case against standardized testing in a series of 12-minute speeches that were followed by standing ovations.
West Seneca School Superintendent Mark Crawford charged that the tests fail to provide a diagnosis of student strengths and weaknesses.
“They only create a lot of anxiety for students and parents and teachers,” he said. “Why do we want to bunch children into groups of 1, 2, 3 or 4?”
Tonawanda Principal John McKenna argued that testing doesn’t take into account differences among students and communities, a point illustrated by Naomi Cerre, principal of Buffalo’s Lafayette High School, who talked about the difficulties of getting resources to work with and test students from 30 nations who speak 45 different languages.
Jaekyung Lee, dean of the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, gave a PowerPoint outline that showed how high-stakes testing does little to improve student performances and how high-achieving nations like Japan and Korea are de-emphasizing testing and encouraging creative thinking.
Maybe I am overly optimistic, but I feel the ground shifting. I feel the tide turning. I feel the beginning of a grassroots rebellion that will sweep away the bad ideas that are ruining the lives of children, teachers, principals, and communities.
Get ready, friends. The Common Core testing may be the death knell for corporate reform.
Let common sense prevail!!!!
Oh… my… God… this is a funny
parody created by some NY parents
opting who are out:
“a banner that read, “Get Testing Right,”
If I may upgrade the message on the banner to “Get RID OF STANDARDIZED Testing Right NOW!”
There, that’s better!
Absolutely Duane!!! – Maybe we can add – “Keep Out, No Trespassing”.
Yes! Let us keep voicing our concerns! And not be placated if standardized testing happens to “improve.” Let us not forget that standardized testing has always had limitations and has not worked as a reliable measure of the success of many students.
Uh-oh, is that Duane Swacker’s music I hear?
MY ANSWER IS NO!!!!!!!
Saw David Coleman on Education Nation yesterday on the Student’s Town Hall. Why did he lie to the young lady form DC and stipulate that no states were withdrawing from Common Core?
Worse than the straight-up, out-and-out falsehood were the hidden ones–referring to the amateurish Common Core in ELA as “high standards,” for example. That nonsense gets parroted a lot by journalists who assume that the issue with these junk “standards” is that they are tough rather than that they are junk. The journalists ask questions like, “Is it appropriate to hold our students to high standards?” instead of, “Why didn’t these receive any professional vetting?” and “Did anyone who knew anything at all about the teaching of English have a hand in these? If so, then why do they evince no understanding whatsoever of best practices in the teaching of English and of the sciences of language acquisition?”
Please. Let the journalists take the 8th grade Common Core English and math tests and publish their scores. Better yet, how about Governor Cuomo?
I administered both last April. I know why NYSED is afraid to release the Pearson/CCSS tests in their entirety.
The fundamental flaw of the exam schedule itself should not be overlooked. Six days. Nine hours. Unless you’re an extended time student: Six days. Eighteen hours. The test fatigue we witnessed was more than palpable – many simply quit because it was just too much. CCSS tests test are more demanding than high school Regents exams (true high stakes tests that determine graduation) as far as perseverence and test taking stamina are concerned. Cuomo wouldn’t dare go near either exam because he couldn’t pass either one.
We were told that the 9th grade ELA test this year for CC in Utah will be 250 minutes. That’s a full week of class time! Disgusting.
Have any states dropped the Common Core Standards? Several have withdrawn from the consortia, i.e. PARCC and SMARTER BALANCE. What is the distinction and what is the result in practical terms? It is frustrating that the moderators allow assertions that are ambiguous or misleading to go unchallenged.
The furor in New York is a very small taste of what will happen when this stuff is rolled out nationwide.
I can’t say that it will be amusing to watch the standards-and-testing machine collapse under its own stupid dead weight. The interim cost of all this nonsense in disruption of our schools will have been far too high.
But the collapse will be quite an astonishing spectacle. As Christopher Frye says in The Lady’s Not for Burning, since Babylon fell there will not have been a better (louder?) thump.
Common sense will prevail over the Common Core and these extraordinarily misconceived national tests. And then a LOT of politicians and pundits will rush to explain how they didn’t REALLY buy into a notion as ridiculous as invariant, one-size-fits-all, summative junk testing.
Given I failed many of the SBAC 6th grade language arts questions because i’m handicapped in picking out the most correct of four correct answers, I doubt i’d fare any better on the 8th grade. In NC, it seems Judge Mannning the equality for all judge who presided over the landmark ‘Leandro case’ strongly opines that it is the vested right of the student as an individual over what he terms are whining and ignorant parents to be tested. Unsure I have the money or resources to fight opt out consequences in these highly conservative courts.
You’re dead on Robert. It just hit our fan first (KY too).
Parents love their children too much to let this madness continue.
“It wasn’t the airplanes, it was parents that killed the beast.”
Thank you, Diane !! As a parent who opted out my kids in April, it seemed like I was
so alone in my actions. Parents are becoming more educated. The opt-out movement is growing! We are not going away!!
Only parents can get rid of this thing, lots of parents! That won’t happen in California for at least 2 years because the state is keeping secret the students’ tests scores this spring! They make the students sit for a field test (only 1 test, English OR Math) but will not release scores. Of course this will protect CCSS from any backlash from parents for almost 2 years!!! So, everyone should simply OPT out of field test, ha!
“So, everyone should simply OPT out of field test, ha!”
Yes, and if your child has to sit through it demand payment for his/her time, oh, to the tune of at least $50/hour. Better yet, unenroll them for the testing time frame for home schooling and then re-enroll them after the testing window closes.
You are so right, charge them for using our kids as guinea pigs!!
The demise cannot happen fast enough
You are not overly optimistic Diane. The ground IS shifting, the tide turning! Western New York students are opting out of tests already this year. Like many other students, my kids are refusing any test used to evaluate a teacher. This is our way of protesting current education “reform.” But this battle will be won with everyone using their voice, and showing opposition, in their own way. The Partnership for Smarter Schools does not promote opting out or public protest. They are committed to bringing about real, common sense reform through legislation. They are playing an important role in the fight against the use of standardized, high stakes assessments.
A very important distinction between opting out of CCSS math and ELA v opting out of any test used to evaluate a teacher. Here in NY our APPR requires that students take pre (formative) and post (summative) exams in virtually every subject – at every grade level (K – 12). The madness is NOT limited to CCSS assessments.
While no longer here in body, I think Henry David Thoreau is present—in spirit—at all the Opt Out events.
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
“Men have become the tools of their tools.”
I wonder if Thoreau will get more than a passing nod when Common Core reigns supreme?
🙂
I’m loathe to quibble, but a quick look at the article and the organization that sponsored the gathering reveals that it is indeed primarly based in Buffalo’s leafy — and intensely hypersegregated — suburbs. The public school parent whose children said the pledge also happens to be a public school teacher, something the Buffalo News failed to discover (or she failed to divulge).
A retired NYSED Regent living in Westchester bluntly but honestly summed up the motivation behind the suburban testing backlash: our schools are fine and shouldn’t suffer because the schools in our big cities stink. This is more of the same.
Tim,
You are wrong. When the suburban parents get angry, they enlist their legislators and they don’t stop organizing and demonstrating until they get change.
When only urban districts are dismantled, privatized, and over tested, the rest of the state doesn’t care. They think the inner-city kids are fine subjects for experimentation.
But when you take the same harmful policies to the suburbs, everything changes.
That is what happened in Texas. It was the suburban white moms who rolled back the crazy testing mandates (kids had to pass 15 tests to graduate).
That’s why it is wonderful that suburban parents are joining our fight for better education. That is why we will win!
Sadly, cities have to fend for themselves. But when urban problems become suburban problems…well that’s when change is coming.
Thanks as always for the response, even though it’s not clear to me what you believe I got wrong in my post. It seems we are on common ground in our belief that segregated suburban districts mostly couldn’t have given two hoots about reform when it was limited to the inner cities, even the ones just a stone’s throw away.
What happens, then, after the suburban soccer moms successfully repel the menace of spreading urban district reform?
These districts have been happy to ignore (that’s putting it charitably) hyper-segregation for decades and decades. As you stress throughout “Reign” and in particular chapter 31, segregation, poverty, income inequality, and stressed school environments are all thoroughly intertwined. A nearly all-white suburban district located close to a nearly all-minority inner city district is part of the problem–it “creams” via real estate (with all of its ugly historical baggage) and it isn’t educating its fair share of at-risk kids.
You’ll have to excuse my doubt that once the testing battle is won (and the jobs of suburban folks who work in inner city schools preserved), the leafy suburbs will eagerly focus on the issues of segregation. I’m happy to have one of these districts/movements prove me wrong: fight for not having choice where you live, but don’t get in the way of choice for at-risk kids, e.g. Offer opportunity scholarships for kids living in neighboring/nearby disadvantaged districts. Something. Anything!
Diane is absolutely right but it’s too bad some of our policy makers don’t see it that way. In Los Angeles, instead of joining the fight that benefits all schools–suburban and urban–middle class (many white) parents left the system and sent their children first to private schools, now to charters. This eliminates a powerful resource for change. Now, it’s mostly a conversation about largely poor, urban schools that legislators and the public at large cannot even relate to. As a white, middle class parent advocating for LA’s public schools, I’m usually laughed out of the room by policy makers who think I’m not representative of our schools.
Let’s add some fuel to the fire:
PARCC tests, scheduled for 2014 -2015 include a required battery of math and ELA (on computer) athe 70% point in the school year AND at the end (100%) point of the year. PARCC offers districts optional START and MID year tests as well. When parents get wind wind of this I can only (gleefully) imagine the resistance.
Eight year olds typing essay responses in a timed test. Really?
School taxes soaring so districts can meet the technology requirements. Really?
The school district my children attend received $15,000 in Race to the Top money and they are now projecting a cost for technology upgrade for PARCC tests at $300,000.
I think I would be passing the hat to return that money.
It’s your money. Keep It. And let the feds know that you are no longer interested in the Race to the Bottom.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the dummies always go with the sports metaphors.
PARCC is estimated to cost a district anywhere from 5-10% of their budget…in new money. I’ve been warning folks about it’s pending implementation for 2 years now here on Long Island. No one is listening…yet. It is madness. Under PARCC kindergartners will be taking exams on the computer. Yeah, that’s helpful in preparing them for the world.
Too many districts in NY will find the money or desire to meet these ridiculous computer testing upgrades. It is a logistical nightmare on an epic scale. For this reason the PARCC exams are doomed.
This speaks volumes about just how clueless the CCSS architects really are. They couldn’t imagine a system without the nearly limitless resources they are used to having available.
Timed keyboard writing tests for 8 year olds. Brilliant!
To Mark Collins above: Why, indeed, did Coleman lie about no one opting out of Common Core? Well, Mark, of course he’s a spin doctor & a polished liar (ooo, the absolute smarminess of the man as he gestured & looked directly into the camera, as if he were some pretentious movie star & it’s all about him & them & the $$$$! &–of course–he couldn’t even look Noa in the eye {M.O. of liars}).
Yes, an out-and-out lie. On the day that Florida (Rick Scott) announced that it was pulling out of Common Core, a colleague of ours–now an adjunct professor–joyfully e-mailed us the news.
And that announcement was made WELL before Coleman’s appearance on “Ed. Nation.”
I feel for the young girl. She followed up a question to David Coleman, directly. Remember how MHP jerked back and commented. You could almost see the how the young girl , whose name and how to spell it correctly escapes me; just wanted to call him out on it. Truly appalling behavior on his part. If you lie to a child, there’s no telling what else you’ll lie about. But then we know the truth and all his lies.
Oh–forgot the most important comment–wasn’t Noa’s face wonderfully expressive in response to his non-answer? It spoke volumes…volumes of intelligence.
Something which Coleman lacks in spades.
It’s refreshing to hear that the parents upstate are standing and willing to fight for their children’s education. I wish that truth and understanding would spread to Long Island. Parents here need to come to the realization that this testing does not inform instruction and cannot benefit their children. To date, it is stressing out their students and demeaning their teachers. What happened to “Kids First?” Get those signs out and Opt-out LI! K. Keevins
How about testing Kindrgarten students taking tests on computers in English and math the first month of school?
No joke! it will happen!
It’s already happening in Ossining, NY. Last week the iReady ELA, and this week the iReady Math. After a proctor gave students directions for the iReady ELA, one smart young lady raised her hand and said, “Um, excuse me, but we’re kindergarteners. We can’t read.” Like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, this little girl sees the insanity that the adults are denying.
Watkins Glen School District tests 4 year olds on the computer using the STAR Early Literacy Program. Additionally the bus the Head Start kids to the computer room to take this test….
Common sense, not common core! The wheels are starting to fall off of the corporate wagon!
Love it …love it … love it… and it cannot come soon enough.. the notion of “common core as the death knell of ‘corporate ed reform”…..
And please please remember the 2% of our students(special needs) who are being subjected to “test” to these common core tasks…..where is the freedom these kids earned to have individualized education programs that VERY righteously afforded them the opportunity to be educated by trained professional in areas that they need to survive……like social, communication and life skills? The common core does NOThING for these children regarding being ” left behind”…it simply ignores their rights!!! And wastes their precious time ( as well as their teachers!!!!!)
And yet my district gave us some new Pearson materials to add to our to do list. Oh and lets not forget our new test prep / practice materials now being called “rehearsal” materials.
A pilot I work with moved his family of 7 here from Texas last year – his kids are bored to tears in our NY schools. He says that they were close to 2 years ahead in their curriculum in Texas. When did we fall that far behind here in NY?
Concerned parent, I don’t believe this for a Texas minute. Maybe he enrolled his kids in a test prep academy. Just like those in Texas. He could put them in a charter where they will get even more test prep.
Or the kids could just be all gifted and talented (G&T). One of the common threads about G&T students is if they are not academically challenged they will find “challenges” of their own, some of which may not be conducive to good morale and discipline in the classroom. I was a terror until I was recognized and challenged, as were my kids.
I would love for more parents to opt out of the state tests this spring. The only problem is that it is mostly the parents of the bright kids !! As long as test scores continue to count towards the teacher’s evaluation, this will certainly create unfair results and teachers, as usual, will pay the consequences.
I just got chills! Please let this turn around. I love teaching special education students and it sickens me to see how this testing obsession has demoralized them and wasted everyone’s time. Parents can turn this around.
The problem with what’s happening in edu politics is that nobody in control – since at least the inception of NCLB and the beginning of modern big testing – is matching up their actions with desired goals. If they’re trying to improve teaching and learning, testing won’t do it. If they’re trying to hold teachers accountable and make room for profit-driven tests, curriculum companies and charter orgs, they may at least be closer to their mark.
My question for the opt-out movement is about its goal and what they believe will be the short and long term results of not meeting attendance requirements. What happens to scores for teachers and schools? Will the policies be changed?
Computerized tests for tots are not at all uncommon.
All the educational publishers and PARCC have created what PARCC is calling Technology-Enghanced Constructed Response (TECR) item types. These usually involve dragging and dropping something, cutting and pasting something, or highlighting something. Here’s the hype that PARCC uses to describe the new question types:
“This ELA/Literacy item uses technology to capture student comprehension of text in authentic ways that have been historically difficult using current assessments.”
I will put aside the awkwardness of the wording of that statement (“have been historically difficult using current assessments”) and address the more significant issue:
The creation of these question types had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with an attempt “to capture student comprehension of text in authentic ways” and EVERYTHING to do with the limitations of what can be done with current computer technologies. Basically, the publishers and PARCC have created new item formats that are equivalent to what creators of written tests used to call “objective” item types. On those tests, students would answer multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blank questions. Sometimes they would be asked to underline parts of the text, to list items from the text, or to write items from the text into some graphic (e.g., in a sorting or ordering question). As EVERYONE knows, these “objective question” types are problematic for a number of reasons, one of which is that they don’t delve as deeply into whether a student has “comprehended” a text as does a well-written essay question. The new item types belong to the same category of assessment item as do multiple-choice questions. They are equivalent to bubbling in those bubbles, filling in that blank, underlining, etc. They are not some sort of major advance in testing. But if you read the PARCC website, you will get the impression that these people think that they are Fermi in Chicago. The website hypes and hypes and hypes the great advances in assessment that PARCC is making. Much of the site is devoted to that site. One suspects that these people even believe their own BS. What they are creating is breathtakingly convoluted and overthought and cumbersome and justified by some of the most egregious EdSpeak gobbledygook that I have ever encountered. Lean on that gobbledygook the slightest bit and you will find that the EdSpeak masks a lot of really sloppy thinking.
BTW, the new TECR item types are being used a lot these days in tests for preschool and kindergarten kids. Students will be given some pictures and will be asked in a voice over, for example, to “Drag the item that begins with a B into the box.” (That’s an actual question from a publisher’s diagnostic test.) Of course, it’s not the item that begins with a B but the word that refers to the item, but no matter. My point is that
those standardized tests for tots are already with us.
I guess it’s never too early to start sorting and classifying kids into Alphas, Betas, Deltas, and Epsilons to fit them into the proper slots in the meritocracy. O Brave New World!
Next: The new Common Core intrauterine ELA tests for fetuses.
cx: Much of the [PARCC] site is devoted to that hype, that self-promotion.
another cx: Technology Enhanced, of course
And yes, for the new intrauterine tests in ELA and math, student fetuses will be expected to input their answers. The accommodations are being developed. LOL.
If a blastula could type – they would test it.
YUP. LOL.
I pulled my kids out and put them in private. I believe in public schools and teach in public schools and use my public-school paycheck to save my own children from testing.
If I were not a public-school teacher, I would be all over the opt-out movement. The parents and students hold so much power!
North Carolina Superintendent June Atkinson and the N.C. State Board of Education has purposefully delayed releasing test scores until November 7, 2013 which will be two days after major school bond votes across the state. They knew if these failing scores were realized before the November 5 school bond vote that the public would be so upset and vote against these bonds. I am SSOOO sick of the “powers that be” feel ike parents have no say so in their childrens’ education.
Hey, out here in Iowa we can be 99% smart and use the “Opt Out Movement” on No-Child-Left-Behind tests to shoot Iowa schools to the very top of all school in the nation and beyond. All that is needed is for Iowa parents of kids that may not score at the 99% level nationally opt their child out of taking the tests.
And the bonus would be for teachers to be able to concentrate all of their time and effort into helping kids be the best they are at feeling good about being who they are as a worthwhile kid doing his or her best at school and as a part of families, communities, the nation and human race..
WARNING: Officials that think these tests are worthwhile should not be allowed to take them and have their scores averaged in with those of the kids or all of Iowa will be marked down and placed on Academic Early Warning Status.
It is pretty sad that our children can not have Fun in school while learning because there is No time. Teachers can not be creative teachers because of the strict guidelines. But Most Important, our children such as mine, who have been diagnosed with Anxiety disorders and now says he’s stupid Thanks Common Core for shooting down children’s self-esteem and confidence. Way To Go
Thank you for articulating what I have been feeling every night when I sit down and try to help my grandson muddle through this poor quality core curriculum and then listen to common core supporters refer to this as “challenging”. Poor quality is poor quality poor quality no matter how much you try to paint over it.