These remarks were delivered by a parent in Brooklyn at the Opt Out rally:
“Good morning and welcome to Brooklyn!
“My name is Kemala Karmen and I am the parent of a 4th grader at PS 146, the Brooklyn New School. In recent years, our borough has earned a reputation as a trendsetter in everything from Indie music to urban farming to participatory budgeting—pioneered in NYC by Council Member Brad Lander, who is here today to support us.
“Now we can add one more way in which Brooklyn is blazing a trail: the parents of Brooklyn, outraged by the hijacking of our childrens’ educations, outraged by the assault on our public schools and on our public school teachers, we parents of Brooklyn are taking a stand. Whether we live in Brownsville or Cobble Hill, Ft. Greene or Greenpoint, we are saying ENOUGH! Stop using the blunt instrument of the state ELA and math tests to rank and sort our children, our teachers, and our schools.
“Maybe it’s our city, state, and federal policy makers who need to take the ELA test! When we delivered petitions or wrote letters about the misuses of the tests, they didn’t seem to be able to read—or heed—our urgent concerns about our children.
“Our policy makers also flat-out ignored experts in child development and test design, experts whose published research “warned against attaching severe consequences to performance on any test.” And, sadly, even the teachers’ union has been slow to protect its members from the stranglehold of testing.
“So now, we parents are invoking the only tool we have left. In growing numbers, we are refusing to let our children take these tests. No test score means no data. No data on which to base teacher evaluations. No data on which to justify school closings. No sensitive, personal data that follows our children from year to year, from school to school.
“This morning parents at our District 15 school stand together with parents at other Brooklyn schools to announce the explosive growth of test resistance in our borough, a movement that is gaining momentum elsewhere, too—in the city, and the state, and, really, anywhere in the country where parents see the joys of teaching and learning constrained, the spark of curiosity and creativity snuffed out.
“At 3 Brooklyn schools that we know of—our school, District 23’s PS 446/The Riverdale Avenue Community School (which is in Brownsville) and the Academy of Arts & Letters, located in Ft. Greene in District 13—this year there will be far more children NOT taking the tests than taking them. What that means in stark numbers: at PS 446 48 out of 60 children will REFUSE THE TESTS. At Arts & Letters 44 out of 53 3rd graders will REFUSE THE TESTS. At PS 146, Brooklyn New School 243 out of 306 students will REFUSE THE TESTS.
“It may be April Fools Day, but these tests and, indeed, the whole edifice of corporate “education reform” built upon these tests is no joke. It is no laughing matter when millions are diverted away from our children’s classrooms and into the hands of for-profit companies. It fails to amuse when our class sizes become so large that even our best teachers are hard pressed to know each child.
“I am happy to report that at Riverdale Avenue Community, Arts & Letters, & BNS, our families will no longer blindly default to taking the tests. We are fortunate, because the administration and teachers at our schools have supported us in exercising our rights as parents to make informed decisions about “opting in” or “opting out” of the tests. We hope that others will take heart from what is happening at our schools, that other parents will understand that they have the right to direct their children’s education—and not be afraid to exercise that right. And we hope more principals will not be afraid to stand up for their families.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bravo!
Kerala karmen’s articulate and passionate message should be made available to parents and real educators everywhere. It is beautifully written and speaks the truth. Bravo, indeed!
We need a clone of Kamela Karmen in Los Angeles. Parents are their children’s first teachers, but too many abidicate the role. Trying to get many parents into the school house to meet with teachers can be ‘dreaming the impossible dream’ and tilting at windmills. I applaud all the parents comments here today…even those that differ from my opinions.
I also opted my son out in the Rochester city school district. After NY state would potentially allow Inbloom to publish the names and ages of children without parental consent. I am DONE!!!!! I am Done forever. They have completely broken any form of trust that might have been there. I will never give them a second chance. Will they next tell children who can go to college or not? It is truly criminal. Arne Duncan should be put in jail along with Bill Gates for violating the rights of children. I am a parent disgusted by this system.
AMEN for your post, Zenqi. Vote 3rd party. I am sick of the politicians and their greed for power and money. They make policy that hurts the masses, and enriches them and their friends. It’s SIC. Wonder what Duncan’s and Gates’ transcripts look like?
Demand for Gates, Duncan, King, Rhee, Murdoch, Joel Klein and Tisch take the Common Core tests and publish their scores. Create a data base for “reformers”, lobbyists and certain legislators who promote the for-profit nonsense.
The Green party is looking better every day and just might stand a chance next elections as the other two parties seem to have joined together as one giant public education crushing machine.
Sadly the Green Party could not win a National Presidential election. But we have some good candidates who could run as Dems.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (who is a Democratic Socialist)
would be excellent. Warren is so well respected and is my fav.
She should really run against oligarch Hillary Clinton for the Dem choice for Prez. She could beat Jeb Bush who represents ALEC and the Tea Party, or the alien from planet Moron, Paul Ryan.
The problem with running as a Democrat is that you have to represent the party agenda. Bernie Sanders would do much better as a third party candidate so that populist ideas really get a hearing. He won’t win, but if he makes a showing, his ideas will influence the democrats who want that populist vote. I am taking these ideas from an article I read online probably from Nation of Change or Daily Kos, but I can’t find it. If someone else saw it, please give credit to the author. I don’t know if Elizabeth Warren could run from inside the fold or not.
Video coverage from this press conference is available here: http://bit.ly/1onasAd
Bravo!
Hallelujah! and thank you!
Rythmns of rhetoric and punch as good as Diane Ravitch. I can hear this with a Brooklyn Accent. I am forwarding this to at least one parent group in Cincinnati.
Go Brooklyn!!!!
Kemala – I appreciate your though provoking article on state testing. As articulate as it is, I find an alternate solution missing. How are we to measure schools, administrations and teachers? It can’t just be because we think or feel that they are doing a good job. It can’t be more of the same. Our schools are failing our children. The Common Core is highlighting how far behind we truly are from our global friends. As parents we should be using the performance as proof that our schools need to step up. If teachers had the proper training and curriculum, these test would not be a big deal. It would just be another set of assessment for kids. I know this to be true because I moved my third grader to a school this year which has fully prepared my child not just for a test but for his educational future. My son couldn’t wait to take the test to show off how much he has learned. I know if we kept my son at his traditional public school that he attended last year in a G&T program, this week would be very stressful for us. I imagine I would feel what you are feeling. It is not because the teachers aren’t capable, they just have not been provided with the right tools and training.
“Laurie”, you’re hysterical. “I appreciate your though provoking article…” No, it’s a speech, from an empowered parent to hundreds of other empowered parents.
“I find alternative solutions missing”. That’s right, corporate sock puppet hack, there’s no alternative solution. Pack up and go home, get your hands and your tests off their children. They aren’t accountable to you.
How’s that for a new status quo?
How are your comments helpful to the many parents fighting for quality education? If we want people to listen then we can’t just say what we don’t want. We need to propose how we are going to hold our educators at every level accountable. I found the writers article thought provoking but I only wished the article went further in detailing what we should do instead.
Chemteacher…once again you slash and burn folks who disagree with you. Not a way to change minds.
Laurie, although I totally disagree with you about CC and testing, and from your post assume you are well educated and at least middle class so that your child has many socio economic and academic advantages, the same is not true for at least half of America’s public school students. The math and language arts curricula of CC even baffles professional educators. They were not designed by experienced educators and are not age appropriate for almost any grade level, but certainly not for third graders.
The many fine teachers at this site have offered so much factual material on these issues that I recommed you read some target posts in Diane’s backlong to day one of this site. Particularly suggest you read all of Mercedes Deutsch who is a high school teacher in New Orleans and a educational statistian. She can give you real facts as would a careful reading of Diane Ravitch’s book Reign of Error.
Please ignore Chemteacher’s rudeness…your comments are welcome at least to me, as long as you listen and research mine.
Laurie, I am glad that you found my speech thought provoking, but I think you missed, or mischaracterize, some of my points. I actually never said the test was “stressful” or that I thought it was a “big deal” for children or that my child (or others) was somehow unprepared.
Happily, my kids have been receiving an excellent education in their public schools. I consider them quite well prepared for the future and even by the metric of the tests, which each of them has taken in the past, they would be considered high achievers. Most important, they love school and think it is fun.
My opposition to the tests, as I hope I made clear, arises primarily from their costs (diverting resources from the classroom) and their improper use as a tool to evaluate teachers and rank and sort children (since they cover only 2 subject areas and give us no information about how the child is developing socially or emotionally).
While I did not address alternative solutions directly in my speech (I had just 4 minutes!), they are out there and there is nothing to stop policy makers from sitting down with teachers, administrators, experts in child development, parents, and even students to brainstorm even more. For evaluating schools, we have the existing School Quality Review (though keep in mind that I am a parent and not an administrator so maybe there are downsides to this that I don’t know). This could possibly be augmented by sampling a school population through testing. Sampling would mean less disruption for the entire school and results would not attach to a particular student. Alternatives to evaluating students also exist. At my younger child’s elementary school, teachers are organically assessing the children all the time. They meet in grade-level teams so they have a yardstick beyond just their own classrooms. Self-reflection is built into the children’s work as well. When a kid completes a project, she thinks about what was the most challenging, what she might have done differently, where she needs to improve, etc. My older daughter attends a Consortium school. The Consortium schools, which use performance-based assessments, graduate kids at higher rates than the city average and graduates succeed in college at higher rates, too. They do this without taking the Regents and, increasingly, because of test refusal, without taking the 6-8 exams. This article provides a pretty good description of the Consortium model: http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-04-02/news/nyc-high-school-state-regents-exams/
Of course, I am aware that not all city kids have access to the wonderful progressive schools I am talking about (and not all parents want them either–you said your kid went to a G&T, for example. My kids’ schools fervently believe that it harms kids to track them.) But my hope would be that instead of your child being eager to show off what he knows on a test, he would instead be eager to pose and solve some problem of his own devising, that he would create rather than react. It is this creativity and innovation that has traditionally set American schools apart. (I disagree with what you say about being behind our “global friends” since I have read numerous times that when you control for poverty, US schools actually perform pretty well. Schools alone cannot address the fallout of poverty, sadly.)
What I was proud of was when our kid was age 12 and she could hold her own in a conversation about literature with Pulitzer Prize winning authors because instead of hours of TV and video games daily while she grew up, most of her free time was spent reading books—lots of books. It’s amazing what one learns from books that TV and video games can’t teach you.
She graduates from Stanford this year.
Sorry, Laurie but what kind brand of cool aid did you buy? It’s not the teachers or the curriculum. We learned with less curriculum than today. So, what is really going on? Maybe, less parent involvement and more poverty than there was 30 years ago. You are discussing lame excuses and giving Charter schools a leg up they don’t deserve. My son was in one of those so called wonderful Charter’s and he never received one actual book!!! What about that? How DISGUSTING!!!! They hoard all there money can’t afford to buy the kids books. You know what my son got? DITTO SHEETS. Millions of pieces of paper that would be difficult for an adult to handle. Please, Laurie use your brain. Use common sense. Your theory above does not stand up. More testing is NO answer for a better education. I do not understand what point you are even trying to make?
That is terrible that you had such an experience at your child’s school. Hopefully that school was held accountable. My point is as parents we need to work together. If we don’t want testing as a way to hold schools accountable, then what as parents do we want? I now know what is possible. I see it every day at our current school. I want all families to have the same level of quality. I just met with a parent from our old school. We were discussing how we can get parents working together to help kids get the quality education and respect they deserve. How is it allowed to have kids watching movies every day for 30 minutes because it is too cold outside for recess? How is it allowed that when a teacher is absent, the kids are placed in front of a TV. One time when we did get a substitute teacher, a parent was so concerned about the quality of the teacher that the parent stayed in the classroom the entire day. Another time when my child’s teacher had jury duty, the kids were split up among classrooms. My kindergarten spent three days in a dual language 2nd grade classroom. How do we hold the schools accountable? This was happening in a desirable school. I can’t even begin to imagine what happens to kids in the less desirable schools. So again, my point is if we move away from standardized testing then what is the suggested alternative solution?
How in your wildest imagination are standardized tests going to hold schools accountable for inadequate substitute teacher policies? Standardized tests are the last instruments to which you should be looking. In the example you gave, an examination of district sub plans would yield you much more useful information. I’m sure your concerns go beyond the quality of substitute teaching, but I really question how you think testing is going to address those problems or even help identify them. Standardized tests paint with an extremely broad brush.
Laurie, I am sorry if it seemed like I judged your comment harshly. I too would be upset if my child was given a movie to watch because the teacher was out sick. If I felt they were not teaching correctly. I think the school principle needs to explain that behavior about those teachers. More tests are not an answer. Maybe a child has a good memory and then forgets all the material over the summer. What are the tests good for? What’s important is how much are they retaining? Did the teacher make learning fun so that they did retain the information? The creativity in teaching is lost? That is what testing is doing. It’s taking the joy out of teaching. I feel sorry for teachers today. I would not want to go into the teaching profession today. Talk to teachers and see how they feel. Take a look from there perspective.
My mother told a story of teacher conferences in the olden days when parents dressed up to go see the teacher. One of our neighbors put on her Sunday best complete with hat and gloves. Her normal daily attire was blue jeans back in the day when jeans were not a fashion statement. I can’t tell you how important it is to teachers to have parents taking up the fight not only to protect their children but to protect their teachers as well. It is nice to feel valued. Teachers don’t forget the respect you owe parents as well.
Most principals will stand up against this testing if the district administration and school board stands with them.
Without job protection of any kind, most principals would have to have another source of income to stand alone if district administration and the elected school broad had been bought out be the fake reformers.
Bravo!
The parents are demonstrating GRIT, CHUTZBAH, DECENCY, LOVE, INTELLIGENCE, STRENGTH, BACKBONE, WIT, RESOURCEFULNESS … none of this is currently found in corporate reformers and legislators.
This cannot last or continue much longer. Social media is our friend and makes this possible. If we only had Twitter & cell phones in the 1960s. Our demonstrations would have been even more powerful.
Bravo! Bravo! It is working! Gusto!!
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted an entire year, although, the citizens were inconvenienced. They won!
I love it. When will Cuomo’s autocracy bring down the iron first?
I was just admonished because the I have been posting opt-out information on my personal Facebook page. I happen to be Facebook friends with a couple of parents from my school and one of them mentioned it when she opted out her children. I expressed surprise to the assistant principal who talked to me that what I post personally could be used against me, and he said I just have to be “careful” because I’m a school employee. I think this is coming from higher-up, because he himself sort of agrees with me.
I agree with everything except the part saying that “even the teachers’ union has been slow to react…” While the media may be to blame here for never portraying the correct viewpoint, the union of professionals (NYSUT) has FOR YEARS argued that these tests were 1) bad for children and 2) bad for teachers and 3) educationally unsound. The AFT & NEA may have embraced the initial idea of common core, but when they saw the agenda that the likes of Pearson testing & Bill Gates foundation members were pushing, educators backed away. So, slow to react? Not exactly correct. But again, just blaming the teachers seems to be the “soup d’jour” these days. And the teachers’ union IS the same thing as the teachers.
Kathleen,
I wrote those remarks. I did not say that the teacher’s union was slow to “react”, but slow to PROTECT its teachers. In other words, I was most assuredly not “soup du jour” blaming teachers. I believe that my kid and all kids will do best when teachers have comfortable and stimulating working conditions. I am absolutely pro-union. But the leadership of this union is not doing its members any favors. It agreed to the teacher evaluation law that tied test scores to evaluations! How exactly is that helpful to teachers? How does it help a kindergarten teacher to be evaluated on 4th graders’ test scores? How does it help a music teacher to be judged on the math teacher’s students’ test scores? The union says things like “We want a moratorium on Common Core because we haven’t received a curriculum.” That is demeaning to teachers who are professionals and who have the smarts and wherewithal to create their own curricula! As a parent, I wish the NY teachers’ union acted more like Chicago’s union under Karen Lewis. The teachers that I know who have been most supportive of parents in this test refusal movement agree with me about the ineffectiveness of their union and support alternative leadership (i.e. MORE).