Faced with a widespread parent rebellion against the Common Core testing, the New York Board of Regents declared they have no intention of making any changes. It’s full steam ahead!
Stay tuned. Rough waters, unseen obstacles, captain not at the helm.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Looks as if parents are beginning to take matters into their own hands.
PARENTS REFUSE HI-STAKES TESTS–TESTS CANCELLED
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/parents-opt-city-test-article-1.1492127#ixzz2iPXyKEue
Yeah for parents!
2old2tch: I second that emotion!
🙂
A little humor to lighten things…
What occurred backstage with John
King and his advisors after King fled
the stage:
This is hilarious, Jack!
The Natzis destroyed 1930s Germany which was only a moderately sucky country, whereas the “school reform crowd” is destroying democracy in America. I think somebody made up a law that says school reform is so heinous that it’s unfair to compare anything to it. 🙂
When will the rest of the parents across the state realize the power they have?
Banning all K thru 2 tests would be a nice gesture…. just sayin’.
Let’s not stop at Grade 2.
As the ship of fools spreads its deadly pollution.
If I am not mistaken, the first line of parent outrage started in Texas a few years ago. Now it’s New York’s turn to catch up. Go Parents!!
The Regents mistakenly believe that they will look foolish if they back down. They look even more foolish planning forums that they have already declared they won’t pay attention to. Who decided that rigidly sticking to a plan when the evidence requires flexibility is a good idea? I know Diane gets chided periodically for having changed her position on school reform, and the regents would certainly take some heat, but in the end an honest admission that there must be a legitimate reason for the current opposition is critical. They will lose whatever credibility they have left if they continue to ignore the outrage.
That’s what I think too. I think they’d rather just go down with the ship than admit any fault or misguided judgement.
While it is true that there is a perception of weakness with the proverbial “flip flop,” I think Bob Dylan had it right with “when something’s not right it’s wrong”—and while that may be hard to swallow, it is a more admirable and honorable move to say, “wait. we had this wrong.”
50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Outspoken parents, same.
Time to start exposing the Board of Regents. How many parents know who they are, how they are appointed and what power they have? What qualifies any of them to make decisions about education?
Not tone deaf. Just follow the money.
and that too.
But I don’t see how this money trail is endless. It is not a sustainable model, in my estimation.
Sustainable isn’t a goal with predatory capitalism. The goal is to strip out all usable resources and leave the prey for dead while going on to the next prey.
And what is the goal of government ownership of the enterprises? Milk the peons for the benefit of the party faithful and never do anything in their real benefit?
Over time it will generate huge profits for the “billionaire boys club”. The money spent now is an investment for that. InBloom, the organization set up by Murdoch, Gates, and Bloomberg will charge $3 per student for record keeping I think around three years from now. So with about 55 million students that would lead to a nice business with a guaranteed flow of income. Isn’t that a great business model? Private gain from a riskless social source of funding
Michael– but if it preys on tax payers, while meanwhile the middle class tax pool is diminished, then what?
I just think we will change course before we reach any desperate point. Otherwise we are not America.
Good for the parents of Washington heights School!
To all other parents….OPT OUT! That is our best hope for stopping this nonsense.
I think that tone deaf is precisely the right phrase. Much of what is passing for “reform” in the country today seems to me extraordinarily crude, and the metaphor of tone deafness begins to capture that.
Think of how many different ways there are in which one might grow up to be a literate person. Think of the breathtakingly many different learning progressions that there might be in English literary studies, for example. Then compare that richness, that diversity, to the attempt to make every student, teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country employ a single set of measures of attainment of ability in English–a breathtakingly amateurish set of measures at that, the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] in English Language Arts.
I have many, many reasons for detesting the new “standards” in ELA. It’s particularly appalling to me that they seem to have been written by amateurs in seemingly complete ignorance of what we know of the sciences of language acquisition. And I know very well how distorting these “standards” are of both curricula and pedagogy. And I know how they are bringing innovation in curricula and pedagogy to a halt and how they are abetting the Walmartization of U.S. education (Arne Duncan’s office says, without shame, that the purpose of the new standards is “to create national markets for products that can be brought to scale”).
But underlying all my reasons for detesting the CCSS in ELA is a visceral disgust for the very idea of imposing one extraordinarily crude regimen on everyone when there are so many other, better approaches than those instantiated in these “standards.”
The reformer mantra seems to be, “One ring to rule them all.” We are to replace the rich natural environment of competing ideas with a monoculture, the sweet cacophony of voices that one would expect in a diverse, pluralistic society with one voice, that of a centralized, unaccountable authority.
And in every part of the current “reform” movement one finds this “tone deafness”–this lack of sensitivity to the range of possibility that is being killed by an authoritarian demand for uniformity–one set of standards, one set of tests, one set of evaluation criteria for teachers–as if there were not many, many ways in which to read and write well; as if there were not many, many ways in which to be a great teacher.
The current reforms have all the sensitivity of panzers overrunning peasant villages. The rhetoric of the reformers has all the charm of a straight razor. There is something fundamentally inhumane, fundamentally anti-democratic, fundamentally totalitarian about the entire enterprise.
And, of course, it’s all being pushed by a few corporate interests. Mussolini defined fascism as the merging of corporate and state interests.
If that’s what you want for the future of U.S. education, then by all means, go to the polls and reelect the plutocrats’ wind-up toys who are pushing these “reforms.”
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” –George Orwell, 1984
Somewhere, in one of his delightful essays, Randall Jarrell quotes poet Theodore Roethke as saying, “I long for the administrator who will pound the table and say, ‘What we need is a little more disorganization around here!'”
We have a choice between two visions for the future of U.S. education–the fascist one or the democratic one. If you like distant, unaccountable, all-powerful authorities making the decisions for everyone else, then you will LOVE the new national standards, the new national tests, the new national teacher evaluation systems, the idea of a national database of student responses and test scores serving as the portal for curricula, “teachers” with five weeks’ indoctrination following LDC scripts–the whole “reform” package.
There is a reason why equivalents of ALL of these will be found in any fascist state.
What is painfully ironic is that the Democrats are in favor of fascist education whereas the Republicans are in favor of democratic education. How can that be? My answer is that the Democrats want a fascist state. How can that be?
“And in every part of the current “reform” movement one finds this “tone deafness”–this lack of sensitivity to the range of possibility that is being killed by an authoritarian demand for uniformity–one set of standards, one set of tests, one set of evaluation criteria for teachers–as if there were not many, many ways in which to read and write well; as if there were not many, many ways in which to be a great teacher. ”
New product: “Teacher (Student) in a Can”
I am guessing that there is lots of pressure being applied by the moneyed interests–behind the scenes, with no paper trail. A lawsuit releasing the tests would allow the whole thing to self destruct. Or how about a lawsuit forcing the test designers to prove that the tests were developmentally appropriate? Or aligned to curriculum?
The Regents are deaf to the public backlash because they do not serve the public. The arcane way that they are chosen after announcing their candidacy ( even the legislators find it mysterious and non-sensical ) suggests that they really aren’t answerable to anyone but the governing body who essentially appointed them ….indirectly, the governor and the legislature. I’m not sure to whom they think they are answerable…..it seems nobody…
Below is an article about the Regents selection process. Neither they nor the New York State Education Commissioner are directly answerable to those whom their decisions most affect. Moreover, many of the Regents, and the Commissioner himself, have little or no personal or professional experience working in sorts of schools that the vast majority of the students for whom they are responsible attend. Many of the Regents attended private schools and sent their children to private schools, including the Chancellor, Merryl Tisch. Many have no experience whatsoever as public school educators.
The Regents appoint the Chancellor. He is a charter school operator with three years of teaching experience, exclusively in private and charter schools. His own children attend a private school. He has zero experience working in the sorts of public schools that the vast majority of children in New York attend. His personal experience in public (non-charter) education is limited to his experience as a student many decades ago.
Know nothing politicians appoint people with limited or zero direct experience, either personal or professional, with the educational institutions which they have been appointed to oversee. Only the politicians are directly answerable to the people who are most affected by the decisions of all of the aforementioned.
All of this defies common sense. What is it about public education that leads people to believe that no experience whatsoever is required in order to understand it or oversee its development?
http://gothamschools.org/2011/03/08/albany-votes-in-new-regents-amid-complaints-over-selection/
It would be difficult to find, a hand full of public school teachers, who would agree that the last 10 years of NCLB and now RTTT, are mandates in the best interest of school children in the US. It these policies were in the best interest of children, the educators would be the first ones to shout their support for them.
The regents are like the captain of the Titatanic, who, upon seeing the ice berg in his path, cries “full steam ahead” instead of “reverse, reverse”.
The Titanic would have been better off if they had gone full steam ahead – then it would have had the momentum to turn and avoid the iceberg. Reversing without turning would have been the next best option – it still would have hit the iceberg, but only the front compartment would have been damaged and the ship would have stayed afloat. The problem was trying to reverse and turn at the same time. Sort of like Gates who has no clue what he’s doing, so he tries out a bunch of half-baked schemes all at the same time.
The Regents are tone deaf, but the NY legislators and Cuomo will listen like the Texas legislators and Perry listened to Texas parents who formed TAMSA. Ignore the Regents and King. Organize and make presentations across the state in schools, community centers, libraries, and churches to inform parents about the harmful impact of high-stakes testing, Common Core, scripted curriculum and the related inBloom database. Name the legislators who receive campaign contributions from the testing and database companies.
Readers will find the TAMSA overview helpful.
http://www.tamsatx.org
Parents haven’t been told anything about CC in Ohio, but this made me laugh out loud:
“Cropper was one of five panelists at a forum on the Common Core held recently by ideastream’s education department and StateImpact Ohio.
Another panelist, Kirtland Local Schools’ superintendent Steve Barrett, compares navigating the Common Core to building a plane while it’s flying through the air.”
It is nuts how they all use the exact same phrases-over and over and over.
This robotic repeating of slogans really doesn’t give one a whole lot of confidence that there is any independent thought going into either adopting or rolling out these standards.
I’d love to see some transcripts of (any?) legislative discussions that were held at the state level. Did anyone ask any questions at all, or were they all just nodding along?
No parent in Ohio has any idea what the CC is about or what the new(est) testing regime will look like.
If 70% of New York students failed the PARRC, then the students in Arizona, are doomed to even greater failure. My state spends about $6000 per pupil, half of what New York spends per pupil, and our poverty rate is higher. Our results will be disastrous. When 70% of students fail a test in a decades old, successful state system, it says much more about the validity of the test than it says about the school system.
It really depends where your state ed department decides to set the p/F cut scores. NYS predicted a 70% failing rate then set the norm referenced cut scores to match their prediction. A crystal ball works great when you can actually control the future.
More and more parents on Long Island know that the “cut scores” that predict success in first year of college are set so high to be valid predictors of success in college and not to help teachers and parents understand how well a child is learning. Since New York State Edication Department and the Board of Regents are not willing to listen to parents, parents are withholding students from the testing in greater margins and seeking relief from their legislators.
NYSED just sent out emails informing school districts across the state that they are officially SUSPENDING THE PARCC EXAMS for 2014-2015 and the future of New York state’s commitment to the PARCC exams is very much in doubt. The email cited reasons for the suspension including, cost to districts and technology logistics. Ding-dong the . . .