April Fools’ Day: How Governor Cuomo and the Legislature Tricked the Parents of New York

5 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

1. David Gamberg says:

   April 1, 2014 at 11:48 am

   Wonderful piece Carol!
   David

   Reply
2. NYS Teacher says:

   April 1, 2014 at 12:46 pm

   From the Carol Burris article:

   “Equally as meaningless is the bill’s mandate that state testing not consume more than 1 percent of a student’s instructional time each year. Even though time on state testing has ballooned in the past few years in New York State, the commissioner clocks the time spent on state testing as “less than 1 percent.”

   One percent of our MS student’s instructional time = 7.2 hours.
   (Six, 40 minute classes per day at 180 days = 720 hours)

   Cuomo should’ve applied those critical thinking math skills he’s so enamored with.
   Every regular ed, MS student is spending 9.0 hours on testing this year.
   Special needs (IEP) students up to 18.0 hours!
   That’s 2.5% of instructinal time lost to testing for our most needy students.

   Reply
   • NYS Teacher says:

     April 1, 2014 at 12:51 pm

     At 7 classes per day, 1% of instructional time = 8.4 hours.
     The actual school year does not include 180 full days; not even close. Subtract for half days, assemblies, fire drills, bus drills, go-home-early drills, two hour weather delays, and more.

     NYSED out of compliance. Shocking.

     Reply
   • NYS Teacher says:

     April 1, 2014 at 12:59 pm

     And when PARCC tests arrive, the number testing hours will DOUBLE! As testing is required TWICE per YEAR

     Reply
   • Dienne says:

     April 1, 2014 at 1:01 pm

     And of course that only counts the actual test time. When the test becomes the curriculum, which it pretty much has, that’s about 100% of instructional time lost to the tests.

     Reply