Amid massive parent protests against Common Core testing in grades 3-8, NY Commissioner John King announced the state’s opposition to K-2 testing, which was never mandated.
He said, “”We support the drive to prohibit standardized testing of pre K through 2nd grade students.”
That’s a step forward. Now let’s hope that he takes the next logical step and eliminates the dysfunctional educator evaluation program and throws out the state’s disastrous Common Core tests for grades 3-8. Any testing program that declares 70% of the children of the state to be failures is on its face absurd. If educators are declared “ineffective” when their students fail, then Commissioner King must be held accountable for this massive failure.
But let’s be glad for the end of the indefensible K-2 bubble tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
King is talking out of both sides of his mouth, once again blaming local districts for the testing policies he is pushing. There are standardized testing requirements for grades K-2 demanded for satisfaction of APPR teacher evaluation data that do nothing to inform instruction. NYSED puts out the list of allowable tests to be used- all are developmentally inappropriate for K-2 children. Yes, I guess you can state that districts are “free” to choice from among these- but all are poor and have NO validity in judging teacher effectiveness. King also keeps stating that only 20% of APPR is from state assessments- but he neglects to say that if that score is in the failing range, the teacher MUST be rated ineffective, even if all other measurements of teacher performance are perfect. Awful and Catch 22. Child abuse will continue despite his announcement, and he knows it.
Here is link to state approved measurements for APPR.
http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/teachers-leaders/assessments/approved-list.html
King’s supposed support of an end to K-2 standardized tests is meaningless unless he gets rid of the APPR. It requires teachers to show growth by testing their students in the fall and then again in the spring (part of the so-called “SLOs”, with no educational benefit. In many districts the teachers are not allowed to even be present when the students are being tested, nor are they allowed to grade their own tests. With or without state standardized tests the students will be marched all over the building taking tests for two months out of each year.
It’s a start. But this guy is a spineless, clueless functionary, appointed to do the bidding of his masters in GERM. Cuomo would never appoint anyone with guts. So what this means is that Cuomo and whomever pulls HIS strings decided that they could appease parents by getting rid of preK-2 testing and start with grade 3, which was about standard recently. But still criminally insane, quite frankly.
The whole high-stake testing game as currently conceived has to go. Period. Punitive use of tests is unconscionable.
Cuomo does not appoint Commissioner King. The Commissioner of Education in New York is appointed by the board of regents, who in turn are appointed by the NYS legislature. You don’t like King? Call and write your state legislator.
Oh, I thought Cuomo appointed King. Does Cuomo appoint the Board of Regents?
The State Assembly appoints the Board of Regents. The Assembly is controlled by its leader Sheldon Silver. The governor does not appoint either the Regents or the commissioner.
And it is well known that Sheldon Silver and Merryl Tisch are very, very, very good friends.
Now… will NYC abandon these? Or will they continue using these as the basis for determining who’s “gifted and talented?”
New Yorkers need to attach this agenda to the one who proposed and enforced it; and that is not the Board of Regents or John King or the legislature. As long as King takes the heat, the real imposer remains unscathed.
The real imposer hides behind a pile of techno-babble that roughly translates: “”Its not, technically, my job” Yet the real imposer lurks in the background, wet finger in the wind. Ready to take credit if it helps, and more than willing to point his finger if it doesn’t. And our mystery imposer is . . .
King John can say SED never required these types of tests for very young children, but SED–through him–signed off on every school district’s APPR plan. Districts followed the direction given them by SED. That direction was not clear–or timely–but based upon their reading of regulations school districts turned to these types of tests. You cannot weasel out of the indefensible spot your are in King John. You and Cuomo own this fiasco–remember threatening that no school district would receive an increase in state aid without their APPR plan in place. The APPR process was designed in a hurried manner and you signed off on the agreements. You own them John KIng–You and Lil’ Mario both own this fiasco.
King owns it because he knows he has to. Andy owns it because he will do anything to be president. I think he will try to wash his hands of it. Parents/voters must insist on the death penalty for this failing governor – at the polls.
This new slideshow just appeared on the EngageNY website this week:
Assessments in Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) – November 2013
Click to access assessments-in-annual-professional-performance-review.pdf
The narration in the accompanying video sometimes contradicts the text on the slides:
http://www.engageny.org/resource/assessments-in-annual-professional-performance-review-appr
It seems the more King speaks, the less he appears to understand. Have to wonder if he’s thinking 700 NY districts using APPR plans he authorized with assessments he approved are really going to change everything based on his latest whim.
#crickets #lawyers #elections @NYGovCuomo …
The Board of Regents is scheduled to meet Monday and Tuesday, 11/18 & 11/19.
http://www.regents.nysed.gov/meetings/2013Meetings/November2013/1113agenda.html
I’m sorry, but this sounds a lot like Obama saying he opposes teaching to the test.
Exactly. The equivocations begin at the very top.
And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense. –Shakespeare, Macbeth
Let’s hope that if NYS “wins” Race to the Top Early Leaning Challenge grant money (for which it recently applied), there will be no mandated testing — if there must be any at all — prior to 3rd grade.
Ask John King if he opposes Rupert Murdoch’s inBloom data mining operation for the purpose of creating profits for corporations based on the misuse of students’ personally identifiable information.
Name one parent who would give Rupert Murdoch, Joel Klein, corporations and the reformer/data mining cheerleader Arne Duncan access to their children’s personal information, family information, test scores, and medical records.
“Now, after receiving an enormous amount of negative feedback from Jeffco parents, the board on Nov. 7 voted to pull the plug on inBloom, a company that has received resistance from other school districts nationwide.
“It’s really important that we come together as a community and do what’s best for our 85,000 kids,” said board member Jill Fellman. “And it was real clear to me that as long as the words ‘inBloom’ were in play anywhere in our district, that wasn’t going to happen.”
http://www.ourcoloradonews.com/arvada/news/jeffco-schools-unanimous-vote-uproots-inbloom/article_1032f5d2-a38b-54cb-a53e-05af93df8edf.html
Stephanie Simon @StephanieSimon_ 1h
.@arneduncan says foes of Common Core = white suburban moms who find their “child isn’t as brilliant as they thought” & “that’s pretty scary”
Could reformers get more patronizing?
I suggest they all go to these meetings and tell the “moms” this.
That’ll go over well.
Duncan of course will be safe from any direct interaction with parents, unlike local public school leaders.
How ironic that Arne Duncan, of all people, would be making light of other people’s intelligence. What a hoot that is!
Not to stereotype white peope or anything, unless he’s talking about moms who drive a white Suburban, where I can kinda see that…
To summarize the secretary of education., moms are stupid, dads are smart. O.K., I can’t argue with that.
Duncan hasn’t met the Texas Moms – yet. He will shrink in their presence like Gov. Perry, Sandy Kress, Bill Hammond and Pearson. Hope to see it soon.
http://www.tamsatx.org
“TAMSA is a statewide, grassroots organization comprised of parents and other community members concerned with the overemphasis on high stakes STAAR tests and the misallocation of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the tests that should be going to the classroom. Our mission is to improve public education in Texas through the use of meaningful and effective student assessments that allow for more productive classroom instruction and more efficient use of public funds.”
That’s great. I also like “over-test and under-invest”
Don’t mess with those Texas moms! 🙂
Notice how everywhere the deformers or their shills say they oppose testing from K – 2, it is not aligned with the recommendation of the NAEYC that testing not be done from K – 3. They have ‘disappeared’ a year of being test free for the benefit of the testing companies, holding on to 25% of the early childhood testing market.
Parents in New York must send John King and the Regents news about how Colorado dumped inBloom/Murdoch/Klein. Has John King listened to one parent in New York?
“Now that the Colorado Board of Education has decided to terminate its relationship with inBloom … it shows that Commissioner (Robert) Hammond is listening to parents,” Flynn said.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/15/parents-against-student-data-mining-notch-victory-in-colorado/
If you have followed Commish King lately, this press release denouncing k-2 testing continues to blame local districts for increased testing when it is NYSED’s policies that drive schools into testing young students with APPR, SLOs, and Data-driven instruction.
It’s all well and good for him to say he is opposed to testing K-2 but it is meaningless given the APPR requirements in NY that require 20% of the score be from state growth measures or SLOs which have to be based on demonstrated student growth AND 20% of the score that has to come from local measures of student growth.
It is as ridiculous as his completely insincere (or unbelievably ignorant) comment that testing only takes 1% of the time in a given school year. Perhaps taking a couple of the state tests takes one percent of the time but only an idiot thinks those are the only tests kid take, particularly in the new “data driven instruction/APPR” environment. We’ve got pre-assesments, post-assessments, benchmark tests, Regents exams, the new Common Core soon to be PARCC tests PLUS any testing that is actually relevant to instruction. Nearly every district I’ve heard of in my area puts children at all grade levels through standardized testing to conform to the requirements of state mandated APPR evaluations (NWEA, STAR etc.) and at the secondary level, where kids are taking classes with six or seven different teachers they are getting pre and post tested in all of them. APPR has required growth testing in subjects like PE, Art and Music and in order to comply with the “no one tests or scores their own students”, and for reliability and calibration, those have become pen and paper tests out of sheer necessity.
So Commissioner King is either disingenuous, lying or ignorant. I’m not sure which of those things is worse.
The Board of Regents have suspended their commitment to the PARCC consortium. Computer based PARCC testing will probably never become a reality in NY. For some reason this decision has been kept very quiet. Guess NYSED doesn’t want to advertise this new chink their armor.
NY teacher, what the state is saying is that it is going to administer its own tests next year, but as far as PARCC is concerned, it’s still ALL IN.
These people know that they can’t survive another fiasco like the one this past year. So, they are going to wait to see what happens with the PARCC tests elsewhere. They won’t have to wait long. Just have a look at the sample questions that PARCC has posted. These tests are going to be an utter disaster, nationwide.
Not sure why you think PARCC testing will happen in 2015 – 2016? The reasons cited by the Board of Regents included cost to districts regarding technology required for implementation. I’ll be very surprised if we see computerized PARCC or SBAC testing on a national scale. They simply don’t understand what a logistical nightmare it is.
Besides, the opt out movement combined with political pressures and legal challenges will result in the collapse of this mess well before the spring of 2016.
How do I opt out my daughter from the 2014 nys ela and math tests? She is in fifth grade and I do not want to subject her to another round of tests. I have been unable to find clear information about how to do this. I am a teacher so I can’t keep her out of school for the testing period and I can’t send her to school late or pick her up early to avoid the testing. I am looking for a legal option where I won’t have to go round and round with the school over this. Does such an option exist in NY?
Contact Peg Robertson at United Opt Out for information.
http://unitedoptout.com/
Parents teachers and now some legislators have been piling on to King, and for the most part, King has been digging his heels deeper and deeper. Yes he now supports ending standardized tests for Pre-K – 2 yet the alternative assessments still remain somewhat of a Mystery. The NYSED still needs to approve these and the state has recently begun cracking down and NOT approving many revised APPR plans that have been renegotiated. This is the real dirty little secret.
It’s time to apply all the pressure towards Cuomo. Cuomo lives by the polls, he monitors constantly. That how he governs, by poll results.
It is time to be relentless.. it’s time to unleash the power of mothers, fathers, teachers, and children. Let’s drive Cuomo’s polls down into the mud where they belong.
Fortunately he’s enough of a worm to make this work.
He’s a vile human being and deserves all that’s coming his way.
Live by the votes , die by the votes
Think hydro-fracking.
I agree with you all the way.
But why only point your finger at him?
Merryl Tisch is his sugar mommy/puppeteer, and she is jus as if not more vile and dangerous because of her connections to Wall Street through her husband.
She and her family can do all the philanthropizing that they want, but the bottom line is that policy and politics are very heavily attached to their donations, and Tisch only sees a blur between private charity and public governmental responsibility. Therein lies her villainous traits . . . .
We MUST oust her!
I agree. However the ultimate buck stops with the man who wields all the power. He is a bully and I just cant stand the sight of his smirk or the sound of his slimy voice. He will do anything to anyone for political gain.
NY Teacher,
Slime is connected at the hip to nuclear waste. . . . .
Why gut one area of the disease when you can cure more of the patient but excising more?
Bonnie and Clyde.
Robbing our children blind.
Yes… has anyone noticed how very quiet Cuomo has been… hasn’t touted his recent application for RTTT Early Learning Challenge grant money, nor has he come forward to back up or defend King and Tisch who, most likely, are doing what they’re doing only because of RTTT, which was a gubernatorial project…..
Recently his office released a statement saying that he had no control over NYSED – that educational issues were under the jurisdiction of the Board of Regents. What a dick!
Nothing like going after federal grant money (a la Patterson) and then passing the buck.
The NY moms will defeat Cuomo if he does not change course. Cuomo needs to understand that NY children will not be exploited by Murdoch’s for-profit inBloom and E.D. Hirsch’s for-profit Core Knowledge scripts promoted by King.
Cuomo will say and do almost anything to get the votes. However, he cant shut off his money pipelines.
NY Teacher,
Your anger and words are justified, but perhaps we should refrain from certain verbiage . . . . there are more colorful things to call John King and company without – as a gentle suggestion only – utilizing locker room lingo.
Just an encouragement, nothing more . . . . .
How about “John King Midas without the gold”
“King and Tisch as Albany’s very own Norman Bates and his mother”
“John-I’ve-hardly-taught-King and Merryl-I’ve-hardly-thought-Tisch”
Just a few examples of intense language that would make you point. Always good to provide exemplars as comprehensible input per the SIOP model of teaching and learning . . . . . .
Point well taken.
Frustration occasionally gets the best of me.
The Texas moms used facts and made presentations all over the state to discredit the Pearson for-profit machine. I’m still laughing about how the moms defeated Pearson’s chief lobbyist, Sandy Kress during the last legislative session. Governor Perry could not stand up to the moms – LOL!
http://www.tamsatx.org
Well, the proles have control over him. ABC. (it’s an allusion- are they allowed in commom core?) Where is the students’ “greatest” champion on this issue? Apparently, not with the students.
Reminds me of the song Kings, by Steely Dan
We seen the last of Good King Richard
Ring out the past his name lives on
Roll out the bones and raise up your pitcher
Raise up your glass to Good King John
While he plundered far and wide
All his starving children cried
And though we sung his fame
We all went hungry just the same
He meant to shine
To the end of the line
Oh, this is brilliant. John King comes out against Tests for Tots. I suppose he is also against high-stakes tests for fetuses. Such brilliant, insightful, informed leadership! Kinda takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
John King, visionary. Seer of some tiny portion of the obvious!
The walls are closing in on this helpless little man.
John King is anti-testing for children who have not yet been conceived. He also is against testing abuse and bad educational policies for people post mortum.
What a hero . . . . .
Correct me if I’m wrong but I also believe he opposes the standardized testing of meal worms, petunias, amoebas, wood chips, and clouds
Not only that, but he opposes high stakes testing for door knobs, bags of nails, and furniture.
He is also forming an anti-testing committee for road kill.
What a guy . . . .
Not so sure that NY should be exempting road kill.
That was funny.
You guys are on a roll!!! Too funny;-)
Laughing to keep from crying
I’m crying because I can’t find anything to laugh about . . . .
Parents and grandparents need to be united in one message that encompasses this entire mess. It focus is in too many places, no area gets full strength to enact change. I think the focus must be on NO TESTS and NO REPORTING K-8. Once the teachers know what skills need to be taught, they are the best people to decide how students are doing and then decide the next step in imparting the information the students need to advance. These outside folks have been arrogant and intrusive.
I agree 100% with doing away with K-2 testing. Too much time is taken by testing and too little on teaching.