In a story published in the New York Times, Kate Taylor and Motoko Rich describe test refusal as an effort by teachers’ unions to reassert their relevance. This is ridiculous.
Nearly 200,000 students opted out. They were not taking orders from the union. They were acting in the way that either they wanted to act or their parents wanted them to act.
I emailed with one of the reporters before the story was written and gave her the names of some of the parent leaders of the Opt Out movement, some of whom have spent three years organizing parents in their communities. Jeanette Deutermann, for example, is a parent who created Long Island Opt Out. I gave her the names of the parent leaders in Westchester County, Ulster County, and Dutchess County. I don’t know if any of them got a phone call, but the story is clearly about the union leading the Opt Out movement, with nary a mention of parents. The parents who created and led the movement were overlooked. They were invisible. In fact, this story is the only time that the Times deigned to mention the mass and historic test refusal that cut across the state. So according to the newspaper of record, this was a labor dispute, nothing more. Not surprising that this is the view of Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the Board of Regents, and of everyone else who opposes opting out.
By taking this narrative as a given, the Times manages to ignore parents’ genuine concerns about the overuse and misuse of testing. Not a word about the seven to ten hours of testing for children in grades 3-8. Not a word about the lack of transparency on the part of Pearson. Not a word about data mining or monitoring of children’s social media accounts. To the Times, it is all politics, and the views of parents don’t matter.
The great mystery, unexplored in this article, is why the parents of 150,000 to 200,000 children refused the tests. Are the unions so powerful as to direct the actions of all those parents? Ridiculous.
How could they get it so wrong?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is EXACTLY how I reacted when Motoko Rich tweeted her headline. She totally missed the point, and as I’ve been complaining about for years, another newspaper acts as if the only power pushing against school policy is the big bad unions.
I told her so on twitter!
@kwolfepack>> .@motokorich that’s not teachers unions. That’s teachers and parents. Big difference.
Quite frankly, the point hasn’t been missed, the point is crystal clear: continue to demonize unions (of any and all trades and professions) to depict parents as mindless, discarded tools for selfish ends who can’t think for themselves and simply allow anyone to tell what’s best for their kids. The average reader, if there are any left in America, would interpret this is a simply a union conspiracy and write it off as such, dismissing any possibility of seriousness.
The Times article is a pretty amazing piece of anti-union propaganda.
The subject of the first sentence in every paragraph is some variation on teacher’s union, followed by active verbs describing their leading role in opting out.
The implication is that all the parents opting out are merely easily manipulable automatons who are being exploited and misled by the teachers unions, with those parents having no agency of their own, and have no ability to form their own opinions, or take any actions on their own independent of their teacher union masters.
Paragraph 1: “In Florida, the teachers’ union has lobbied to limit the use of standardized tests,”
Paragraph 2: “The union in New Jersey financed an advertising campaign in which a grim-faced father talks about his son crying because of tests.”
Paragraph 3: “And in New York, where local unions have worked closely with parent groups that oppose testing, the president of the state union went so far as to urge parents to opt out of the annual tests, which began last week.”
Paragraph 4: “… they (teachers unions) have begun, with some success, to reassert themselves using a bread-and-butter issue: the annual tests given to elementary and middle school students in every state.”
Do you really think they missed the story? Isn’t it more likely that they simply chose to tell a story that better served their agenda?
Both!
In early March, Kate Taylor wrote an article about the NJ opt out movement that largely ignored the voices of parents. The article gave most of the space to a Superintendent in a wealthy district who was upset at the lack of control the opt out movement represented for the education establishment.
The Times is ed deformy and very corporatist and establishment oriented. I guess their reporters are incapable of seeing the world in any other way.
Parents speak to why they refuse the Common Core tests. Hint: unions are NOT IT.
http://blog.timesunion.com/rogergreen/parents-speak-to-why-they-refuse-the-common-core-tests-hint-unions-are-not-it/5096/
Here’s out Opt Out began. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bustedpencils/2015/04/19/united-opt-out-astroturf-or-grassroots
These NYT-pickers remind me every day why I unsubscribed 2 years ago. They are nothing but a corporate house organ.
If the unions were this powerful then the test and punish agenda would never have gained traction. Do they really think that parents are following the union’s bidding and not doing it to protecting their children? They need to do just a little bit or research. Is that too much to ask of journalists?
These are not journalists.
Opt out of The New York Times. Paper has sold out to Wall Street Democrats in name only. Canceled my subscription two weeks ago. Had enough of their misleading reporting on education issues.
hahaha. I love it.
We write the ads.
They buy the ads.
We write the ads.
Nothing but ads.
What did you expect?
We’re the New Urinalism.
We’re the main stream
In a trickle-down world.
Yes, but it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on . . . .
TAGO!
(Adapted from a previous post regarding the propaganda that the unions are the main impetus behind the opt-out movement)
Oh yes, it is indeed the nefarious teachers’ unions behind all of this opt-out, and parents have nothing to do with it. It is those ubiquitous, omni-present and all powerful teachers’ unions that have caused all of this.
Oh, wait a minute.
I was confused for a second. The AFT, NEA, and UFT have been busy collecting union dues while throwing teachers under the bus and sleeping with the reformers now for how many years?
Lily Eskelsen hides her pretty face behind pledges that are comprised of flowery, frilly, cheery, and incomplete language. Sorry, Eskelsen, but with such hopeful and sun filled prose that you put out and a lack of true labor and equity interests, there is no use in gilding your Lily here.
Weingarten is a master triangulator. The biggest and most important person she has lied to is herself. She wants to please everyone and in doing so, she has achieved justice for no one.
NYSUT is trying. But is it too late, too little, too real, too well intending, too disingenuous, too concerned about the survival of unions? One of those modus operandi, some or all of the above?
So, yes, New York Times, the unions ARE the cause of this opt-out because they have been excusionists, deniers, liars, and cooperative for almost 16 years. Instead of fighting the reform movements by enfranchising parents, they threw everyone under the bus and are now hiding behind parents’ apron strings as a shield for their own cowardice.
Too bad, because as I’ve said in other posts, I am completely pro-union . . . . .
. . . . That is, when unions behave like unions.
The unions in Northern and Western Europe: THOSE are real unions for adults, unlike the divisive, spoiled, bratty, immature, self indulged, self absorbed, and narcissistic organizations that used to be real unions here many, many years ago.
“I was confused for a second. The AFT, NEA, and UFT have been busy collecting union dues while throwing teachers under the bus and sleeping with the reformers now for how many years?”
I agree.
Why, Mr. Raj-ers, I’m glad we agree on something. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood . . . .
YES! They aren’t “professional unions”. The teachers unions are political machines…
I Was told today by our principal that the reason why they opted out now was because the first time they took the tests the kids didn’t do well and they didn’t want that on their record. So they opted out.
Remember Michael Winerip? When the Times reassigned him a couple years back following his outstanding education writing, I realized that they had lost my trust when it came to truth-telling in this charade of education reform. This is no surprise.
Yes, and the food critic, Frank Bruni, is just so qualified to “write” about education.
The power behind the reform movement write their own play book and rules. They are narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, frauds and crooks, and they control 90% of the traditional media so the message from that sector of the media will continue to do all it can to fool as many people as possible.
It will be up to the resistance and the other 10% of the traditional media to get the facts straight and then educate as many people as possible on what is really going on.
Our biggest weapon is word of mouth and six degrees of separation. The larger the Opt Out movement grows, the more mouths will be sharing what they know through that theory of six degrees of separation. Eventually, there will be a cross over point where more people will know the facts than those who don’t and scoff at the false propaganda being controlled and manufactured by a few billionaires oligarchs and corporations.
The reformers days are numbered. They are fooling themselves if they think they can control the message. It can’t be done—not even in Communist China where state controlled censorship is a leaky cauldron with several hundred million holes in it. Plug one and a thousand will appear to replace it.
“____ (adj that means ‘Misguided’) Movement Directed by ______ (adj that means ‘irrelevant’) Unions”
The NY Times writes ad lib
That fills in certain blanks
In very same old bad fib
That unions fill the ranks
Did they mention that Michael Mulgrew lead the Great New York Opt Out Parade down Broadway – riding a paisley unicorn, singing, “Andy, Andy, go away, come again no other day”
… not sure about paisley.
Then maybe you didn’t take L. Black’s maxim to heart: “I took acid when I was young just to prepare myself for times like now”.
To answer the question at the end of the post:
Because they’re paid to get it wrong!
Money walks, bullshit talks and it’s because the NYT is full of the second that they gather in the first.
But they did manage to mention and link to “a teachers group” (of course the BATS, you know those supposedly “badass” teachers must be affiliated with those supposedly vaunted unions).
NY Times is a rag. I cancelled my subscription years ago.
““It’s right at the point when we finally actually have the kind of improved tests that so many folks petitioned for and advocated for for years,” said Jonah Edelman, the chief executive of Stand for Children, an advocacy group that supports charter schools and teacher evaluations that incorporate test scores. Mr. Edelman said that the organization supports legislation to reduce unnecessary testing, but “encouraging parents to opt out is not an effort to reduce overtesting.” “It’s an effort to undermine accountability,” he added.
More lies from a lying dog.
Hey Jonah, how about a “debate”. You and two of your cohorts can debate three of us from this blog and we won’t even send in the heavyweight (NO!, not literally) owner of this blog.
If the NYT wants to “do” a piece on current ed deform perhaps they should read this blog for a while to get an effin clue.
“Mr. Edelman said that the organization supports legislation to reduce unnecessary testing, but “encouraging parents to opt out is not an effort to reduce overtesting.”
Except that’s exactly what it’s doing. They’re reducing testing in OH and FL so far. Direct result of the opposition to over-testing.
A labor dispute between child labor and the data cartel, no names mentioned.
The Unions are always the culprit. In a country where something like 10% of people are labor union members 🙂
Yes, why would some parent opt out there 8 year old who can’t type out of a typing test that is longer than a bar exam, unless they were being cajoled by a union enabled, nefarious grossly effective teacher?
In 2014, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were
members of unions–was 11.1 percent, down 0.2 percentage point from 2013, the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers
belonging to unions, at 14.6 million, was little different from 2013. In 1983, the
first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate
was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers. In 2014, 7.2 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with
7.4 million workers in the private sector
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
There are more than 146 million workers employed in the civilian labor force (59% of the total population)
Click to access cpsaat03.pdf
131.4 million workers do not belong to a labor union.
In addition, the median private-sector union member made $878 a week in 2011 compared to $716 for nonmembers, a nearly 23% premium. (The premium was somewhat smaller in the manufacturing sector: $836 per week for union members for $780 per week for nonmembers.) Such comparisons have limited value since there are numerous other variables that affect wages. But to the extent there is a union wage premium, the added cost of dues doesn’t appear to negate it.
Then there’s the question of benefits: 94% of private-sector union members have access to health-care benefits, versus 67% of nonunion members, according to BLS. And employers cover on average 83% of health insurance premiums for union members and their families versus 66% for nonunion members. Union members are also more likely to get paid vacation and sick time and retirement and life insurance benefits. BLS doesn’t put a dollar value on all those benefits, but worker benefits typically account for about 30% of employers’ compensation costs.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/12/17/closer-look-at-union-vs-nonunion-workers-wages/
So was the Senate testimony on over-testing “union led” too?
I don’t really get this. There’s broad recognition of over-testing, national and state. Is the theory that all came from labor unions?
“I will provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings.”
__Charles Foster Kane, Declaration of Principles
Ms. Taylor and Ms. Rich are deluding themselves if they think they write for the New York Times. They are merely hacks and propagandists on what has become the New York Daily Inquirer. Next assignment for this dynamic duo: The opera desk.
Neither could write an ad for McDonalds . . . .
I think you meant “The SOAP opera desk”.
Great post! It conjures up for me the wished-for image of all the Opt-Out parents and children amassing around the Times building … followed by Cuomo’s office … chanting “Can you hear us now?!”
TC
April 20, 2015 at 10:11 pm
Yes, why would some parent opt out there 8 year old who can’t type out of a typing test that is longer than a bar exam, unless they were being cajoled by a union enabled, nefarious grossly effective teacher?
It seems like there’s a timeline problem here, too.
Wasn’t there a lot of Common Core testing opposition in NY well before Cuomo’s anti-labor initiatives? All those contentious school board meetings? That was before Cuomo adopted the new teacher ranking rules, right?
The 5 responses that made the Times picks are equally biased, and this one has a glaring error that DRIVES TEACHERS CRAZY (there instead of their!):
Andy Clayterman NYC 20 minutes ago
Testing the kids is a way to see if the teachers are doing there job.. that’s why they are so against it.. and as for the “bad student” argument.. have something done about them early in the school year.. if they are disruptive have them removed.. teach classes.. not run daycare for teens. Also, it’s amazing in states where school choice or vouchers are being considered how the unions are apoplectic.. I thought it was about the GOOD OF THE CHILDREN.. not the good of the unions..
Reblogged this on Naked Teaching.
Randi was too pre occupied with going to the Ukraine. I wonder why.?
NYSUT didn’t get involved until late in the game. I can honestly say, that I refused the tests as a parent of my two sons first, then as an educator on behalf of my students. I concur, the authors of this article swung and missed.
Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
As noted in earlier posts, the NYTimes is misleading its readers by refusing to change its story-line. The opt-out movement is NOT the unions vs. “reform”… it’s PARENTS vs. standardized testing and, therefore, “reform”. Alas, unless “reform” loses, public education will suffer.
In my opinion the media has pretty much backed the reform movement. Sadly parents are being ignored because to acknowledge them would be to acknowledge the teachers and that would remove the scapegoat for the reform movement. Money talks and the writing backs the money. We must not give up, this fight has only begun…
I’m not defending NY Times reporters Kate Taylor and Mokoto Rich here, merely accuracy.
Here’s what the NY Times article that’s lambasted on this thread actually says:
“After several years in which teachers’ unions have been hammered on the issue of tenure, have lost collective bargaining rights in some states and have seen their evaluations increasingly tied to student scores, they have begun, with some success, to reassert themselves using a bread-and-butter issue: the annual tests given to elementary and middle school students in every state.”
The article continues with this:
“in New York, where local unions have worked closely with parent groups that oppose testing, the president of the state union went so far as to urge parents to opt out of the annual tests, which began last week.”
Are these not true statements? The article points out that teacher unions in several states are opposed to the testing that’s tied to Common Core. It also notes – in the title – that teacher unions “find diverse allies”, from conservative Republicans to parents, in their opposition.
What, exactly, about these statements is erroneous?
The article also notes that the two top teacher union presidents –– Lily Eskelsen Garcia (NEA) and Randi Weingarten (AFT) have NOT interceded and urged parents to opt out of Common Core testing. It points out that in Kentucky, the teacher union president said this about testing: “We have to have an assessment of standards.”
As I’ve noted here numerous times, both the NEA and the AFT have ENDORSED Common Core. And Randi Weingarten (derided here boy other commenters) wrote a piece with Vicki Philips of the Gates Foundation in which they opined that it was critical for American public education to adopt “a new paradigm” and “align teacher development and evaluation to the Common Core state standards.”
The NY Times reporters also pointy out this in their piece:
” union leaders have faced pressure within their ranks to take a harder line. A national group of teachers claiming more than 50,000 members has criticized both of the main unions for supporting the Common Core and is pushing for the abandonment of all standardized tests.”
Let’s be fair here. While the NY Times piece may not be stellar, and may well reflect the kind of education reporting that critics of the Common Core don’t particularly like, it’s also not a hatchet job. The reporters say that ” it is likely that many more parents in New York State are keeping their children out of the tests than did last year.” It also notes that the state teacher union is encouraging such action, and it made “automated calls to its members, encouraging those with children in the grades that take the tests, third through eighth, to keep their children out of the exams.”
In another NY Times article a week ago, Kyle Spencer – who helped produce ‘Separate and Unequal’ on PBS’ Frontline series – wrote a piece about the conflict that many parents, especially middle and upper-middle class ones, have about testing. The title of the article said it all: “Some Parents Oppose Standardized Testing on Principle, but Not in Practice.” Parents don’t like all the testing, Spencer wrote, but “even parents who are uncomfortable with the exams are discovering it is hard to push the button on the nuclear option — refusing to have their own children take them.”
What’s more, no mainstream article has yet discussed the ties between ACT and SAT testing and the Common Core. Are parents telling their high school children to opt out of these tests? Are unions?
I’ve said this before on this site, but it bears repeating. Teacher union “leaders” – if they can be called that – SHOULD have been opposed to Common Core and its testing component from the get-go. But they weren’t. They took the Bill Gates cash and went along with Common Core. Now, they’re playing catch-up. And while they are opposed – they say – to teacher evaluations based on test scores, they still favor Common Core. The NEA, for example, still says “NEA believes the Common Core State Standards have the potential to provide access to a complete and challenging education for all children,” and the standards standards provide “educators with more manageable curriculum goals and greater opportunities to use their professional judgment in ways that promote student success.”
The NEA and AFT still endorse an awful lot of educational nonsense, The NEA, for example, says this about STEM: “If the United States is to hold a competitive edge in a rapidly changing global workforce, bolstering the nation’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is essential.” Not true, The STEM field has a glut of workers and produces three times the number of STEM grads as there are jobs. And the U.S. already is globally competitive.
The AFT’s Weingarten says this about Advanced Placement courses: AP courses allow our students to earn college credit while still in high school. At a time when rising tuition is driving the cost of higher education out of reach for many, we can ill afford to close pathways to higher education…AP courses don’t require specific lesson plans or strict adherence to a ‘national curriculum’…they focus on building critical thinking skills and give educators broad latitude to teach.” Never mind that the vast majority of students taking AP courses does NOT get college credit; most students take AP courses to “look good” on paper; AP tests are geared to the AP curriculum; AP courses are NOT consistent with research-based principles of learning and, according to the National Research Council, are “a mile wide and an inch deep”; and, most importantly, research shows that AP courses are not nearly as good as the College Board says they are.
Teacher unions SHOULD be out in front of the opposition to Common Core and its testing component. Sadly, they are not. And that’s what Kate Taylor and Mokoto Rich should be writing about.
It’s interesting to observe the opt-out movement from the vantage of NYC, from the outside, looking in. It’s a completely different world from so many districts in the rest of the state. In NYC, opt-out is mainly sound and fury, probably because NYC parents have been living under a high-stakes test regime for as long as any current parent can remember.
No, NYC parents don’t opt-out because these test scores are used for middle school placements. Their hands are tied. Parents fear that if there are no grades on record for their child, they won’t be able to get into a good middle school.
See my earlier comment. (in ‘Older Comments’)..and the vast majority of middle school students don’t opt out because test scores are used for entry into ‘competitive’ high schools.
As I noted earlier, parents and kids aren’t exactly opting out of the ACT and SAT either. And both tests were produced by companies that were intimately involved in developing the Common Core. Both say they have “aligned” all of their products (tests) to it.
There’s that, too.
Parents aren’t opting out of the SATs because they are college admissions tests used simply to distinguish one student from another. And, more importantly, ALL students take the same test, regardless of whether they attend public schools, charter schools, private schools, or parochial schools. (To be more accurate, all students take either the SAT or ACT.) I have no doubt that if all public school students took the ACT and all private school students took the SAT, the ACT would suddenly become much more difficult so politicians could castigate public school teachers. Fortunately, that is not yet the case, and I have seen no evidence that public school students scores on those exams are falling drastically compared to private school students, which is what you’d expect given the so-called crappy teachers in public schools and their outstanding counterparts in private and charter schools.
If anything, COLLEGES are opting out of standardized tests – more and more no longer require them! Why? Do you think that they are concerned that the affluent students who can pay full tuition will lower their overall scores, and drop them in the rankings? Or do colleges just think that standardized tests are not a good judge of a student’s knowledge?
I have always thought that if public school students just took the same CPT-4 exams that private school students take, there would be far less controversy over the exam. I don’t know why there is a separate — and far LESS straightforward exam — that public school elementary school students must take, so that politicians can use their scores to denigrate their education.
Sorry, NYC parent, but your argument holds little water.
The College Board has been know to “recycle” tests. All students who take the SAT in a given year – from around the world – may or may not take the “same test.”
Moreover, the ACT and the SAT are different tests. They don’t equate, though some think they do. The ACT will be given online this Spring, and supposedly it will be the same version as the paper test. We’ll see how long that lasts.
And what about AP tests? The College Board openly says that it “develops and administers multiple versions of the AP Exam for each AP subject.”
Although more colleges ARE opting out of a required ACT or SAT, most still use them. The number of students taking those tests is INCREASING, not declining.
And by the way, the thing that the ACT and SAT measure best is family income.
democracy…not quite correct to say SAT indicates “family income” level. Many moderate incomes like mine as an educator produce students who ‘ace’ the SAT….so it is more an indicator of parental education level. My son got into every Ivy League university to which he applied…he turned down MIT, Stanford, Brown, Berkeley, in favor of Yale, and then graduated with a double major in chemistry and economics, and earned three concurrent degrees with honors, in only four years. From there earned a JD/MBA from U. of Chicago. Paying the bills for these 8 years was a challenge, but armed with this history, he paid off his student loans in only a couple of years. Yes…I am a very proud, modest income, mother.
However, inner city kids with parents who have far limited education and often language barriers, and do not have the ability for academic enrichment such as great pre schools through all other adjunct lessons, do face a slanted and unfair test with the SAT.
SAT scores mirror: 1) SES, socio-economic status – not income per se; and,
2) educational level of the mother – in my view.
Agree…
They can get it so wrong by choice.
Opt out is led by parents, teachers, students and citizens. When United Opt Out National began over four years ago we were simply a facebook page with a file for each state. Within hours our FB group page was flooded with opt out requests and now we have opt out leaders all over the country and grassroots opt out groups popping up everywhere. I think Florida has 25 at this point – probably more since I last checked – and mind you they did this all on their own. UOO has simply been a catalyst and a support. What is even more fascinating, and sad, is that UOO has reached out to the unions many times, and never received a response. You will notice that United Opt Out National is rarely mentioned in recent articles. I think that’s because we represent the people. The power of the people. UOO has no funding (heck I paid for our website for the first two years pretty much on my own). When our website was destroyed last year guess who helped UOO fund/rebuild it? The people. No corporations. No unions. The people – the citizens of this country – for free – and with truth and heart – have helped us to create fifty state opt out guides. The citizens have helped us to continually update and alert folks to opt out situations across the country. The people have helped us create essential guides, opt out letters, and social media campaigns. The fact that this is happening by the people, for the people, with no funding, is true democracy and is a dangerous thing. Folks would much prefer that we are sheeple and that we are incapable of strategically planning a nationwide opt out movement. Guess what? We did it. All of us. That makes us dangerous. That makes the media/corporations want to co-opt and shut down our work. A mass movement of civil disobedience that is running through our country like a tidal wave in an attempt to save our democracy is indeed a powerful force that no corporation can shut down. Let’s keep pushing forward. Solidarity to all of you.
Hi Peg,
In nYs, there is barely an mention on LIOO by the TIMES. Newsday has a pro Cuomo slant, and the TIMES, although it should know better, continually prints the party line. In my area, only Lo-Hud, the Lower Hudson Valley Gannett paper has an education editor and reporters who have researched the truth of the matter and have reported it far more accurately and have gone so far as to tell our NYS Chancellor to resign.
We should contact small community newspapers more regularly. Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced and one went to a small local paper outside Los Angeles for exposing corruption in a school district. It did not go to the education reporters of the Los Angeles Times who tend to go along to get along. But you better believe the LA Times reporters noticed who got the Pulitzer.
“Can’t be co-opted”
Co-opted it can’t be
Because it has no core
The opt-out movement’s free
And will be ever more
Love that!!! Did you see this??? Funded by Gates among others. http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/17/68/11768.pdf
I’ve said this many times on this blog…tesacher unions should have been out front in the opposition to Common Core and all it really represented, including the testing…. but sadly, they were not.
They are now playing catch-up, and trying to have it both ways on Common Core.
Journalism school evaluations anyone?
This newspaper is an example of how the most insidious ideas are spread. It has money, so can be large, and is influential because it does hire and employ many very bright, very good, very well-educated writers. But the strings are pulled at the top, and the top for the Times is the top for the government is the top for all of us. But it pretends to be about news, not money.
Writer Chris Hedges, a person of great integrity, left the NYT. He had won a Pulitzer while he was with them. Here’s what he wrote about what’s going on in education:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410
Here’s a great piece from South Bronx teacher:
http://www.southbronxschool.com/2015/04/democrats-for-education-reforms-nicole.html
A parent of a public school child himself, he goes after DFER-New York, and its leader Nicole Brisbane—a former TFA-2-year-wonder who now claims educational expert status—and Brisbane’s attacks on parents opting out, (with her clumsily smearing Scarsdale parents in the process… a la Arne Duncan’s “white suburban moms” quote).
Here’s the text:
————————————————-
————————————————-
Monday, April 20, 2015
Democrats for Education Reform’s Nicole Brisbane Rips Scarsdale Parents
SOUTH BRONX TEACHER:
You know who are the biggest losers in this opt-out movement? The so-called “(de)reformers” and their faux grassroots organizations like StudentsFirst, Education Reform Now, Success Academy, Educators4Excellence and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).
The irrelevance and slow death spiral of DFER was seen by all last week when DFER New York director Nicole Brisbane was quoted in the Journal News as saying;
– – – – – –
BRISBANE: “Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs. How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn’t clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data,”
– – – – – –
It really is quite simple. Look at SAT scores. Number of students going on to 4 year colleges. Number of students going to Ivy League colleges. Visit the school. Ask neighbors. Graduation rates. Teacher turnover. Home values. Really, there are so many reasons. In fact Nicole fails to grasp what did Scarsdale do before there were high stakes exams?
But please, don’t listen to Nicole. Nicole claims she was somewhat misquoted and only using Scarsdale as an example, that her real thoughts were in a blog post on DFER that she had written:
– – – – – –
BRISBANE: “Part of the draw of the suburbs is the high performance of local schools. How will suburban communities maintain their draw if there isn’t a measure of how the schools are actually doing in comparison to those across the state?”
– – – – – –
Nicole, see above. But we here at SBSB suggest to Nicole that if she is really concerned about how others can measure up to one another to take Chevy Chase’s advice.
Nicole does decide to deride the parents of not only Scarsdale, but of all affluent communities as well when she says on the DFER blog:
– – – – – –
BRISBANE: “The same parents are opting-in for other standardized tests like the ACT (not mandatory), the SAT (also not mandatory) and the Specialized High School Admissions Test (also not mandatory but absolutely necessary if you want your kid to go to a “choice” high school in New York City). Affluent parents aren’t opting out of optional tests, so why opt out of the state exams? Maybe it’s because the results aren’t what they wanted to hear.”
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See Nicole does not understand something here (And of course we can go into the the multitude of flaws with testing but we shan’t tonight). These tests are a choice one makes for their child. These tests are not forced upon parents by a bully governor, a clueless chancellor of the Regents, or a faceless bureaucrat. The parents have ownership of their child’s education. Such as my son made a choice to continue his Jewish education after his bar mitzvah after telling me and my wife for years he will stop once he became a bar mitzvah. HE HAD OWNERSHIP!
However after the missed opportunity at a testing analogy Nicole decided that it would be best to charm the parents of Scarsdale and all affluent communities by sharing;
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BRISBANE: “That their kids, or their kid’s teacher or their beloved (Emphasis by The Crack Team) neighborhood school isn’t performing as well as they expected.”
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What Nicole fails to realize, as the Journal News as reported, is that the vast majority of affluent communities (For this post will use Westchester County), Scarsdale, Chappaqua, Irvington, Bronxville, Ardsley, had quite low opt out numbers. WAY TO WIN OVER PARENTS NICOLE! KUDOS!
If you are left wondering who is this expert in education that is gracing the pages of this award winning blog we will share what The Crack Team has learned.
Nicole Brisbane is a former teacher, now a lawyer, and shared with The Crack Team that she was a reading specialist for 5 years at Allapattah Middle School in Miami.
Oddly, according to this link she only taught two years at Allapattah before entering law school. Only two years? Well, if you read the headline of that link, she was with Teach for America.
So how can we believe anything she says, even when she told The Crack Team she won Rookie Teacher of the Year at Allapattah and in fact raised the grade level of her students (Who were 4 grades behind at the time of her ascension at Allapattah 2.5 grades in the very short time she was there?
We can’t believe her even though we requested several times for some kind of verification or confirmation to her outstanding teaching and her award. Is her story truth or fiction?
But according to Nicole, the affluent, or shall we stray into reality, the “regular people”, or strating from the test because,
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BRISBANE: “The people who are opting out of tests are largely those who already feel like their child has access to a high-quality education, and are doing so in a way that directly harms poor and minority students throughout New York. We should be supporting students and teachers throughout New York, whether they are in Scarsdale or the Bronx, and making sure all students have a fair shot at a quality education. Rather than maintain the status quo where wealth determines a quality education, data can and should highlight where the gaps are so we can invest in schools that need it the most. High property values shouldn’t determine the quality of education for the neighborhood–and the way we are going to change that is through access to data that will allow us to make investments where they are needed”
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And she shares some links here, and here. Big deal. Hey Nicole, let’s see how the students from Success flame out when they hit college, much the way they flamed out on tests for the NYC specialized high schools.
Nicole, this is why the opt out movement is picking up steam. We are fed up. We are fed up with Albany and Washington DC deciding what is best for our children and our school districts. We are fed up with millions going to testing companies like Pearson. We are fed up seeing our babies go through 8 hours of testing when a bar exam is only 3 hours. We are fed up seeing our children stress out. We are fed up with the narrowed curriculum. We are fed up with teaching to the tests. We are fed up with our narrowed curriculum. We are fed up with Common Core. We are fed up with a governor that pockets $4.8 million from DFER and others like it instead of fixing our poverty and having the state pay its fair share to ALL school districts.
Mostly we are fed up with people of your ilk. You and yours are the modern day carpetbaggers, just this time it is education that you and yours needs to control. You truly believe that since you taught for two years this gives you some kind of street cred when it comes to education and the welfare of our children. You feel that you must share “stories” on how you raised students 2.5 grades and were Rookie of the Year. Guess what? Joe Charboneau was AL Rookie of the Year in 1980. What did it mean in the long run? Nothing. At least Charboneau can prove he was ROY.
Put your skills to good use. Sell Amway.
It’s possible that Nicole Brisbane’s claims to greatness – elevating student test scores by 2.5 grade levels in a short time, and being named a “rookie” of the year – are inflated and exaggerated.
No matter, she is one of those “data-driven reformers” that aren’t good for public education.
Still, she makes a valid point. As quoted in the piece you cite, Brisbane says this:
“…parents are opting-in for other standardized tests like the ACT, the SAT…”
The same companies who helped produce the Common Core (ACT, Inc, College Board) produce those tests and many others. Both companies have “aligned” their products with the Common Core.
Are parents protesting the ACT and SAT? Are unions? Are they speaking out about the problems with Advanced Placement courses and tests? Are teachers?
The problem is much bigger then we pretend it is.
The people who advocate for the status quo are the testing advocates.
Haven’t they had their way for much of the last 12-15 years?
Ms. Brisbane…Pot – Kettle, etc.
“The problem is much bigger then we pretend it is.”
Yes, democracy, it sure is.
But I do have the choice to fight it in the fashion that I can, no more no less. To me to fight the injustices that are the current educational malpractices of standards and testing is the only thing to do at the moment.
So Duane, why not fight them all, since they are all part-and-parcel of the same thing.
You cannot be against Common Core and its testing but favor the STEM and ACT and SAT and AP….it makes no sense.
Regarding South Bronx Teacher’s skepticism about her claims that she advanced her students 2.5 grades in just one year, here’s an article from an ex-TFA Corps Member—and current TFA critic—who sheds light on these bogus metrics and claims.
(Despite repeated requests from South Bronx Teacher that Ms. Brisbane produce some documentation to back up her claims, as well as something to prove her claim to have won a “Teacher of the Year” award, Ms. Brisbane has yet to do so.)
From:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/i-quit-teach-for-america/279724/
NOTE: it’s a TFA Research Director (former) freely admitting that claims like Ms. Brisbane’s—2.5 years growth in 1 year—are unsupported nonsense, and “do not stand up to external research scrutiny.”
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OLIVIA BLANCHARD: “Nor is the organization a stranger to controversies involving performance measurement. On its website, TFA claims that ‘Teach For America corps members help their students achieve academic gains equal to or larger than teachers from other preparation programs, according to the most recent and rigorous studies on teacher effectiveness.’
“But TFA’s ability to rate the performance of its own teachers has been heavily criticized; a Reuters article in 2012 pointed out that TFA’s 2010 federal grant of $50 million was based on the organization’s internal data ‘showing that 41 percent of its first-year teachers and 53 percent of its second-year teachers advanced their students by an impressive 1.5 to 2 years in a single school year.’
“When asked about the origin of these statistics, TFA’s former research director, Heather Harding, admitted that many teachers provide performance statistics based on self-designed assessments. Reuters quoted Harding saying, ‘I don’t think it stands up to external research scrutiny.’ ”
I’ve noticed a number of comments published online in this NYTimes article, have simply vanished. I might add that they were inoffensive comments that were in support of opt out.
If you really want to know about the origins of United Opt Out take 40 minutes and listen to this interview. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bustedpencils/2015/04/19/united-opt-out-astroturf-or-grassroots
Summary of United Opt Out
Just for the record (a lot more people read your record than mine).
United Opt Out formed after the 2011 SOS rally when Peggy Robertson, Ceresta Smith, Laurie Murphy, Morna, McDermott, Shaun Johnson and I met each other during the conference part at American Univ. Although Laurie Murphy and Shaun Johnson are no longer active in the group (new administrators are Rosemarie Jensen, Denisha Jones, Ruth Rodriguez and Michael Pena) we still remain simply a rag tag group of misfits with nothing more than a Facebook page and a website.
We meet every Monday on the free Go To Meeting service and all costs have always come directly from our own pockets. We have never taken money from either union at the national, state and local levels.
With teleconferencing, social media, and a webpage we have organized and pulled off two Occupy the DOEs, two United Opt Out action planning conferences and grown our membership to over 19,000 members (That’s not counting all the state affiliates).
I’m not sure how much more grassroots an organization can be.
And more than a huge thanks to all of you!!!
I just ran some stats on the data that provided by NYS Allies for Public Education http://www.nysape.org on opt out numbers. Using NYSED data, there was a highly significant, negative relationship between Percent on Free/Reduced lunch and Number of Opt Outs by School/District (R – .173, p<.000). If the unions were in on it, then I would have suspected they would've targeted parents of schools districts wherein state test score results might be most damaging. To me, the data suggests access to information about opting out on the part of parents rather than coordinated efforts on the part of Unions for the large numbers of opt outs. It also suggests that some of the most vulnerable populations of children are also those most likely not to be opted out. Shame on the NYTimes for yet another biased take on education.
This does and doesn’t surprise me at the same time. I think that NYT is missing the point of this movement and the frustrations of all involved.
Can someone on this blog inform me as to whether the teachers at magnet Schools are being evaluated based on these common core tests? Also, I know magnet schools do receive extra public funding to support their curriculum, but do these schools also receive extra funds that are allocated for the sole purpose of test prep? I am just trying to understand how a magnet school fits into this whole common core scheme. Charter Schools are accountable only to themselves it seems, but are magnet schools any different as it relates to these tests? Also, does anybody have a clue how much more money per pupil a magnet school receives from the federal or state government than does a regular public school per student?
We don’t have active unions in Texas and we have parents opting their kids out this week. How do you explain that?
Even some conservative Texas legislators are against more testing…how is that explained?
I didn’t realize that conservatives were all required to think the same way. So called liberals certainly don’t. As a first look, it may be convenient to assume a certain set of beliefs and actions as defining a group. If you depend on such labels without further investigation of individuals, there will never be anything but war. At this point in time, I would hesitate to identify myself as anything but independent. Neither “faction” appeals to me. At some point, though, we will have to identify people who have tried to act with integrity. Rebuilding public education is going to take the good will of people of widely varying dispositions. No attack on you intended, democracy. I am as “guilty” as any of assigning everyone a role in this debate based on broad labels.
Don’t let the truth get in the way for a “good” story. The Columbia Journalism Review several months ago had as their lead article: “Who Cares if it is True”. When 5 or 6 major corporations own and produce about 80% of the “news” for consumption it is small wonder that things get distorted. Real news is still available but one must dig for it. Slanted, promote “my” ideas of “truth” seems to have become the modus operandi of so much that is called news these days.
I walked to town to see the film True Story on Monday, and it was about a real New York Times reporter who manipulated the facts in one of his front page stories. For that, the NY Times fired him.
Will anyone at the NY Times be fired for the inaccuracies and lies in the Opt Out piece? I don’t think so. The corporate education reform movement protects its troops so they can lie all the time and get away with it. And any fraud that makes someone wealthy is also a free pass.
Lloyd, I asked this before but got no answers.
What exactly ARE the lies in the article that Diane cited?
The LIES: that the teacher unions are behind the Opt Out movement while ignoring parents and children who are the real leaders of the Opt Out movement.
For decades, oligarchs like the Waltons, for instance, have been demonizing labor unions through PR and propaganda to get rid of them, and that makes it easier for the corporate reform movement to make the Opt Out movement look evil and insignificant if it is linked to the teachers’ unions instead of parents and children.
Parents and children give the Opt Out movement creditability and the corporate reformers and their billionaire masters can’t afford to let that happen if they are going to succeed in destroying public education and profit off that public money.
The public schools are non-profit, transparent and democratic and to get at the money that supports those schools, the oligarchs and their puppets must demonize teachers, teachers’ unions and the public schools to justify their fraud and robbery.
If the frauds admit that parents and children of all ages are involved in the Opt Out movement that defeats their agenda.
(Heart)breaking news: ChiOptOut reported that HB 306–Parent Opt-Out bill crafted by IL State Rep. Will Guzzardi (& co-sponsored by many of our very fine Democratic reps.), died in committee today. And–even more unfortunate–this scenario was engineered by a Democrat (one Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie from Hyde Park–from whence *Obama & Arne came {wait, what?!}) I used to live in her district–when Harold Washington was mayor (those were the good days!), & she had been a wonderful representative. In any case, it was reported that she had gottenm a Republican rep to go out, talk to another Republic rep, & the two came in & voted down the bill.
Consequently, a rally was held outside of her Chicago office at 10 AM today. (I’ll be surprised if the news media even covered it.)
*Watch out, people, I’m connecting the dots again!
This is the FOURTH year that my son refused the test in New York State. We started in 2012 before teacher’s unions got involved and many teachers were very uncomfortable with our decision. That is just one example of how this has been a parent-led movement.
Yes, that is so disappointing. It is clearly agenda based reporting by the NYT at the expense of accuracy and integrity. For those of us who are close enough to the movement to know that teachers have been very slow to get on board, this is another reminder not to take what you read in newspapers, any media, at face value.