Parents are not allowed to see the Common Core tests. Teachers do see them. Here is what the teachers at PS 29 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, say about the tests.
Dear Diane,
WOOHOO! Don’t you feel we’ve reached a turning point? It is amazing to see all of the incredible acts of resistance bubbling up all over the country!
Thank you,
Michelle Kupper
CEC 15 member
Parent, PS 29 Brooklyn
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At PS 29 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, teachers could not wait any longer to speak their minds about the tests. For too long, they had felt the curriculum growing more restricted, the pressure mounting to get their students to perform, and an increasing dissatisfaction with the profession they so love. A group of six progressive teachers wrote a strong position paper on testing with the intention of moving the conversation along in the neighborhood and forging a path of resistance against the testing machine.
Last year, a forum was held at the school about high-stakes testing. Teachers voiced their concerns about the high-stakes nature and growing prominence of the exams. This year, a group of like-minded teachers and parents came together to form an Education Action Committee. The teachers on this committee drafted the resolution and presented it to the staff as test prep was getting underway. They had the resolution ready to go before the tests began. Out of respect for the community and the families helping to ready their children for these stressful exams, however, they decided to delay its release until after the exams were over. It became clear – with the ELA’s incredibly developmentally inappropriate content and ambiguously worded questions – that they could wait no longer to go public with their sentiments.
They advocate for parents to join the movement against high-stakes tests; they advocate that parents raise their voices and take meaningful actions such as contacting legislators and making informed decisions for their children about the tests; and they advocate for parents to gain a better sense of teachers’ sentiments about high-stakes tests and make public the conversations about tests that have been happening in private for years.
The full resolution is below. Thank you to the growing throngs of parents, students, and educators all over the country raising their voices TOGETHER!
PS 29 Teachers Resolution
April 4, 2014
Over the past decade, standardized tests have taken on greater importance in New York’s public schools. New York City’s students now take state ELA and math exams in grades 3 through 8, and their performance on these tests is linked to promotion, middle- and high-school admissions, teacher evaluations and school progress reports.
Because the tests are now aligned with the Common Core State Standards, they have become more difficult, resulting in much lower passing rates across New York City and State. The tests have also become longer: elementary school students will spend between seven and nine hours taking the state tests this month and next, and students with testing accommodations may have to sit for as many as eighteen hours of testing this spring. Moreover, during March and April, students in testing-grade classrooms can spend up to three hours per day preparing for the state tests.
As teachers, we feel the impact of these changes in our classrooms. In testing grades, the anxiety that students and teachers have about the state exams is palpable. Some students break down in tears during testing and related test-prep sessions, knowing that their performance impacts not only their promotion to the next grade, but also their chances of getting into choice middle and high schools.
Compounding the emotional turmoil, teachers in testing grades must narrow their otherwise rich curricula in order to make room for test prep. Subjects like social studies, word study and read aloud are cast aside, and valuable social-emotional learning and exploration must be limited in order to make sure that students are ready for the exams come spring.
High-stakes tests require that teachers narrow not only their curricula but also the skills they emphasize. As teachers in testing grades prepare students for the state exams, they must often put aside their emphasis on skills like elaboration and creative thinking in order to teach kids to write formulaic responses and find the one right answer.
Even the lower grades have been affected by these high-stakes tests. The pressure to prepare students for their upcoming years of testing has cut time for exploration and play. Additionally, that pressure has increased the need for students to meet, at times, developmentally inappropriate milestones in reading and writing.
Beyond the scope of individual classrooms, high-stakes tests have significant consequences for a school as a whole. As teachers are pulled from their programs to accommodate the proctoring and scoring of exams, a number of critical support services, ESL periods, ICT classrooms and specialty programs are disrupted for nearly a month.
When used correctly, we believe that assessment is a powerful tool. At PS 29, we constantly assess our students, collecting meaningful data that informs our day-to-day instruction. Unlike the high-stakes tests, our assessments improve the education we provide.
Across grades, we feel with great certainty that the rise of standardized testing—and most specifically, its high-stakes nature—has eroded real student learning time, narrowed the curriculum and jeopardized the rich, meaningful education our students need and deserve.
As such, we, the undersigned, believe that it is crucial for teachers to raise our voices on these issues, and we resolve to stand together to advocate for the elimination of the high-stakes nature of standardized tests.
Sincerely,
Kim Van Duzer
Leah Brunski
Rachel Knight
Peter Cipparone
Sara Thorne
Susannah Sperry
Liz Sturges Cosentino
Carolyn Rivas
Sophia Soto
Kristen Adamczyk
Sarah McCaffrey
Mollie Lief
Chantelle Luk
Melissa Bandes Golden
Frank Thomas
Jackie Lichter
Tristram Carver
Jessica Albizu
Hana Pardon
Lisa Cohen
Dan Turret
Lauren McGivney
Adam Gerloff
Bradley Frome
Izzi Kane
Molly Dubow
Kathy Nobles
January Mark
Jasmine Junsay
Nadira Udairam
Aaron Berns
Monica Salazar-Austin
Rachel Certner
Alice Pack
Marisa Noiseux
Now that these teachers have had the courage to list their names, the fake ed reformers will be sure to put them on a list for elimination. I’m sure that Arne, the chief of Obama Education Gestapo, has already written a memo to his troops with directives on how to go about this.
In fact, Arne may have people looking at the blueprints for the prison camps used to house Japanese Americans during World War II—-with expensive high tech upgrades of course with software supplied by Microsoft or another Bill Gates company—-and have agents already out scouting remote desert locations on federal land.
Those are already built by the HSA: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/new_nationwide_fema_camps_should_raise_eyebrows.html
And when they come knocking without warning, we probably won’t have any time to offer an armed resistance. The element of surprise as we vanish one by one and just like Nazi Germany, everyone on the street watches in fear from their homes behind curtains or blinds thinking, “Thank god it wasn’t us.” That is until someone knocks on their door just because they lived on the same street.
Building FEMA camps costs money and creates jobs. These things are unacceptable. Instead, lets just have a trickle up economy and rent the houses back to their former owners who have to spend so much time working that rebellion will not be an option for them. Just sayin’
So proud and yet so concerned for these teachers!
Brave souls
Role models for the Resistance. Stay fierce and fearless.
The Ravitch Underground continues to stand its ground.
THE NETWORK for PUBLIC EDUCATION
Saying NO to Punitive, Test-Based Reform
Together We Can Stop the Madness
If you are being beaten mercilessly, you should not ask to be beat with less force or frequency, or with a smaller stick. Nor should anyone demand that you provide an alternative.
“The Ravitch Underground [RU] continues to stand its ground.”
So we’re waiting for the day when the edudeformers “RUe the day” for having awoken the common folk to the unCommon Core.
Teachers in Texas are forbidden to view or discuss the STAAR tests. We can be sanctioned for talking to each other about it. Another way for Pearson to control the message.
Sent from my iPhone
They don’t forbid you from discussing the tests with your students do they? They certainly don’t require that you cover your ears when your students provide unsolicited comments. Nor can they tell the difference between all three.
Cudos to those teachers….you are brave…you are front line advocates…you are role models!
I am impressed. I truly hope this kind of Resistance spreads, and the better if like wildfire.
What you said.
Perhaps a piece of advice from someone who said NO to the accepted wisdom of his day [aka Commoners Core] and was successful at achieving change:
“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” [Benjamin Franklin]
😎
Heroic people!!! Yea!!!
Like the teachers in Seattle who said no more MAP testing and won! The district will back down once the test scores are published. How else can they back it up?
Diane,
Perhaps the teachers at PS 29 can request others teachers to join them…we can fight together.
M.Perez
Thank you, each and every one of you, for not only standing up to this crime against children, but for being brave enough to sign your names. We know how career-risky this is.
PS 29 teachers are in great company with teachers from The Earth School, BNS and PS 321. There is strength in numbers and other teachers from around the city and state will be emboldened to speak out against these specious tests and the entire damaging learning environment they engender. Great work teachers!
From a former PS 29 parent.
Don’t forget to recognize those brave CPS teachers at 2 Chicago schools–Saucedo & Drummond–whose ENTIRE faculties REFUSED to administer the IL State Achievement Tests (Pear$on)! Bravo! AND–even earlier than that (1999? During Duncan’s tenure as CPS CEO)–the Curie 12, who bravely refused to administer the useless CASE (Chicago Academics Standards Examination). It was discontinued shortly after. (You can read about this in the excellent book, Educational Courage: resisting the Ambush of Public Education, by Nancy Schniedewind & Mara Sapon-Shevin.) As Katie Hogan–one of the 12 (who were not, BTW, disciplined/fired for their actions) states in the chapter, “I have always maintained that teacher activism is the essential ingredient for student activism…no job is worth having if it comes at the price of checking your beliefs at the door. If teachers are not willing to stand up for their students, who will?”
They say it all. Well done.