In an effort to slow or stop the opt out movement, Néw York State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia announced that she would punish schools with high opt out numbers next spring.
About 20% of all eligible students in grades 3-8 opted out in 2015. Leaders of the opt out movement have promised to increase the numbers in the next round.
Commissioner Elia says she listens to parents, but right now she seems to be listening to Governor Cuomo, who is contemptuous of public schools and teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A very ugly declaration by Elia, she has no shame, going to war on parents who refuse, not surprising given who brought her here and pays her.
Perhaps NY students can take the test (to save their school funding) but intentionally bomb the test. They could answer “A” for every question and say “A is for ‘Absurd’: it’s absurd to rate our teachers based on these tests!”.
I’m afraid you’re on to something there! I can see the placards now!
I’ve often thought about this. The problem with parents instructing little kids to intentionally bomb a test is that it puts very young children in a horrible situation. High school kids have rebellion and moxie in them and would find it fun. Our littlest test takers take things very seriously; they are still in the “rule-following” stage and lack confidence and maturity to rebel. Can you imagine if a proctor caught them? They’d be driven to tears and fear, etc.
Punish, Punish, Punish…
Force, Force, Force…
Fire, Fire, Fire…
EVIL!
Parents, protect your children. Start networking NOW!
America’s children and their welfare is at stake – highest alert!
We have been warned!
We have been warned all along, but it was impossible to believe.
They mean it – no doubt!
Protect and shelter…
Resistance is futile. You will be assessmolated.
You must take the BORGG test.
What arrogance and disdain she is showing for parents! I predict this will backfire on Elia and Cuomo in a spectacular fashion.
Education bureaucrats will never win a war against parents, especially when their children are pawns in the war.
Earth to Elia: 2016 is an election year, wouldn’t be prudent…
There many, many parents who will acquiesce out of fear, unless they begin to believe that they have the power to organize a strong and viable resistance. Besides, Elia is not threatening individual parents directly, she is threatening sanctions against their children’s schools. This puts school districts, especially the ones who have been supportive of parental rights, in an untenable position.
Parent push back and rid New York of this monster. I’m sure New Jersey will welcome her.
Thanks Steve! We would love to have Elia in New Jersey.
Speak for yourself, please.
Punish opt outs? What is she going to do make us watch A Clockwork Orange?
Thanks for the visual rratto. I’m still laughing.
Parents need to figure out a way to continue to resist and put her misinformed head on a platter.
No one can force a person to take one of these foolish exams maybe a more direct strategy for sabotaging this nonsense is to send your kid to school and have them intentionally answer incorrectly! Keep fighting!
Elia is the highly paid “hit woman” du jour that will handle Cuomo’s churn and burn so he can polish his image for the national stage and distance himself from the mayhem. After all, there are only so many prison break photo ops.
I think we all knew this was coming – everywhere. But at least it’s anbelection year.
I will huff, and I will puff…and I’ll blow your house down! Next year 50% Opt out rate with Elia fanning the flames. It is time for local Superintendents to tell this fool where to get off! Saw NYSED report where they could not bring themselves to use the term Opt Out–instead used Test Refusal. If they cannot bear to use OPt Out maybe next year they could use Paretnt Waived!
In New York State districts with high numbers of parents opting out, Elia is going to try to be nice at first. When that doesn’t work—and it won’t, believe me—-she will then get tough, and shut off funding to those disobedient districts like a hand turning off a faucet. This, in turn, will trigger massive lay-offs, ballooning class size, and a general chaos and turmoil, both at the school sites and in the communities themselves.
Elia then expects the parents in those districts to respond by crying “Uncle!”, shutting the-Hell up, and ceasing all opting out.
Fat chance of that happening!
However, Commish Elia better watch out, because in those middle and upper middle class districts she goes after this way, the highly-organized parents there will not accept this fear-based and outrageous extortion passively. (Meanwhile, the parents in working class or poor districts are not as energized, and will probably accept this without much of a fight.)
At this point, all Hell will certainly break loose, and spark mass protests the likes of which New York state has never experienced in its history. Indeed, those protests will make the Pougkeepsie open forum debacle—where her predecessor John King got royally pummeled in fall 2013—look like a mosquito bite in comparison.
To refresh everyone’s memory, here’s the video of that:
With an eye towards the next election, Cuomo will then truly be between a rock and a hard place.
Yowsa!
I just watch that parent forum video, and I wholeheartedly agree, Jack. Those parents are not going to be the type who will respond to Elia’s defunding their districts as punishment by capitulating and supplicating to Elia:
“You win, Commissioner Elia!!! We give up!!! We’ll shut up and stop complaining!!! Our kids will be happy to take those tests!! We’re sorry for being so difficult earlier!!! Please forgive us and refund our district!!!”
On the contrary, these folks are highly intelligent, have some money, lawyers—heck, some of them, like Ms. Leaderman’s husband, may even BE lawyers—and also connections. There’s no way those folks in the video, and others like them, will let such tyranny prevail.
They’ll fight Elia to the death!
I am disgusted by Ms. Elia, who claims to have the best interests of the children at heart. She apparently has the best interests of our dear governor and big money at heart instead. It is so unfair to punish school districts for something they have absolutely no control over. Parents have the right to reuse these tests, and punishing districts already starved for funds is a very low blow. Ms. Elia is already not listening and she doesn’t even care.
What will be a “hight opt out rate” according to Elia?? And why punish an entire district for the actions of some? How can she justify that? She should be punishing the PARENTS who are making this decision for their children. I wonder how she would do that!
And tell us exactly how should parents be punished Mamie? Parents make a lot of decisions for their children, and declining to take a developmentally inappropriate test that could unduly damage their self image and make even some bright children doubt themselves should be resisted. No one should be subjected to or punished because of these poorly written and ill conceived tests.
I was being sarcastic. 🙂
instead of resisted, make that encouraged.
Sorry, my sarcasm meter is not working! Like you, I can’t wait to see her try punishing parents. Will she use sit and stare, maybe with music torture provided by Miley Cyrus.
Next year promises to be interesting. Gird your loins, everyone!
Come on, NYers–channel your inner Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and George Washington.
They fought back against petty tyrants, and you can too!
Didn’t take long for her to come out of the closet. But at 250 grand a year she’ll do what Andy says to do. We used the EngageNY modules this year in 5th grade. About 80% weren’t proficient. We worked our asses off. Bottom line is the tests are not developmentally appropriate and readability is off the charts. A massive waste of energy and time. Common Core, the Titanic of Education Reform and Cuomo a disaster. Parents, Opt Out! Ms. Elia, resign.
In a democracy, the people debate and decide on the laws and how much to punish with courts/judges interpreting what the people and their elected reps, who are supposed to represent everyone, decides. Instead only a few like Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, Eli Broad and a handful of other billionaires—some who manage hedge funds and with help from some state governors and legislatures they own, are emptying public pensions with outrageous and opaque fees and methods.
In a dictatorship all of those decisions come from the top, the dictator. In a democracy, all of the eligible citizens are part of the decision making process.
It doesn’t sound like the United States is a democracy anymore.
How do we get rid of these tyrants and especially those who were trained by Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy that turns out too many kings of disruption?
And this why I support Bernie Sanders. The only one not bought and paid for by the 1%.
Except that I believe Bernie supports ed deformers…
He DOES NOT!!!!!!!! And there is something wrong with you because?
I will be sending my children to their first day of school with a refusal letter.
Teachers, school secretaries, and principals have so much on their minds the first day. It would be considerate to bring in the letter(s) either a few days before school opens, or a few days after opening day.
Can’t wait for the AFT to admit they screwed up endorsing Hillary so early. NYSUT I hope you’re listening.
I’ll work on that one. I have no evidence of that so far. He certainly does support Wall St., so I suspect he’ll get some solid advice.
I meant does NOT support Wall St. Big mistake there! I;m organizing for Bernie Robert! Thanks for catching that omission!
Parents are too well researched, districts will have to deal with the sanctions, children not for sale. Stand firm, refuse the tests, threats are so ineffective in having people follow a leader, that is not leadership. Three will be no luck for this new commissioner. Sorry. Did not work in Florida, will not work here, try another state.
It’s not leadership; it’s extortion with sanctions, very fascist like in delivery.
At what Point do we separate testing from compulsory attendance laws.
Believe me I am all for parent opt out. – the counter argument is precisely the straw man Elia trots out (ignoring the multitude of ways teachers could organically and demonstrably evaluate students with a bit of trust from the state.
It is also patently unfair to demand a particular result when they don’t know themselves how to achieve it or what materials are necessary. VAM lets them dictate the expectation as does test difficulty, conversion charts and cut scores.
Why is there so little trust in teachers and where did this belief in our innate laziness and consistent failure come from (excepting for the moment a nation at risk – since when does a single gov’t report stoke 3 decades of hatred)
Think of “A Nation at Risk” as the declaration of war by the Milton Friedman worshiping neo-liberals on every job in the public sector. The neo-liberals are not only after the public schools, they want to turn the Veteran Administration, the public roads and bridges, the military, public prisons, public pensions, the U.S. Postal Service, etc., over to private sector corporations to profit off the public tax payers dollars.
Milton Friedman was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Genomics and in 1983 war was declared on the public schools.
In 2006, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman criticized Friedman, writing that “he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It’s extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose.”
In her book The Shock Doctrine, author and social activist Naomi Klein criticized Friedman’s economic liberalism, identifying it with the principles that guided the economic restructuring that followed the military coups in countries such as Chile and Indonesia.
Both Klein and Noam Chomsky have suggested that the primary role of what they describe as neoliberalism was as an ideological cover for capital accumulation by multinational corporations.
GlobalResearch.ca focused on The Consequences of Globalization and Neoliberal Policies, and asks if there are alternatives to plundering the earth, making war and destroying the planet?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-consequences-of-globalization-and-neoliberal-policies-what-are-the-alternatives/7973
This sounds like a job for Senators Pat Murray and Lamar Alexander! Maybe Capitol Hill can’t force states to inform parents and students of their rights, but can still eliminate this new form of test and punish.
This will blow up in her face!
She hasn’t established trust with parents. Her threats won’t stop the Opt Outs
I guess she failed chemistry?
Elia said that a possible consequence might be a call to the district superintendents? Ooooo, that’ll strike fear in their hearts for sure!!
Actually, it will.
You’re a mean one, Ms. Elia.
So she is required by law to inform parents of opting out but at the same time she will threaten sanctions if they do??
Hang on, why are the feds collaborating with the state to figure out how to punish districts?
I thought the days of the federal big stick policy were through. What’s up with that?
Whatever happened to freedom to choose. I guess that applies to only those reforms that politicians like… charters, vouchers, and the like. What about the freedom to save your child from these tests.
20% of NY students opted out. http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/239737/state-releases-ela-math-test-scores-about-20-percent-of-students-opted-out/
When is the ESEA rewrite going to be official? At this point, could they change their minds and add in a penalty for high opt out schools?
“But here is the important takeaway:
There will be no federal revoking of Title I funding for states or districts that provide for parents to opt out of mandated testing under ECAA, and there will be no revoking of Title I funding for parents who opt out of mandated testing under SSA regardless of state opt-out policy.
Neither House nor Senate opt-out sets states up to have to choose between allowing students to opt out of testing and meeting the federal, “95 percent of students testing” requirement.”
I hope there’s no revoking of federal money. Actually, maybe I do. In states, like mine, where opt out is actually codified in the state law, it would cause an uprising if money wasn’t given.
That’s the point, really. Deformers think that they control everything. BUT, they can’t control people. I hope that reality bites them. Hard. And soon.
I’m surprised more people haven’t latched on to the 10% Federal funding but 100% control. I’d pay more in taxes if I had more control. Maybe others agree and this could start something?
That’s exactly what I’ve been hoping that my state would do–just opt out of the federal money entirely. It’s more expensive to pay for all of the federal requirements than it would be to just skip the federal money.
Maybe she should first focus on helping Florida find the millions of dollars that were inexplicably missing after she left. I’m just saying.
An excellent suggestion.
I don’t believe the money is missing. It was used for paying teacher salaries and benefits (just like in many other districts around the state) to help the district meet the constitutionally required class size limits since the legislature refuses to fund the new teacher salaries.
The state refused to fund the new teaching positions because the legislators and republican governors opposed the class size amendment despite it being passed twice by the citizens.
Most districts are between a rock and a hard place. The state has cut funding year after year, while claiming to increase it. The increases all go to charter schools though, and districts without a wealthy, high property tax base are sinking into financial whirlpools.
The CFO of my district explained it quite well: between the state and federal unfunded mandates, the requirement for online testing at a high price for the actual tests, the computers to take them on, and the infrastructure fixes required to install high-speed Internet, and the class size amendment requirements to hire more teachers due to massive growth of student populations, many districts are reaching a critical money shortage.
The state won’t give more money; we are already one of the lowest per pupil funded states in the nation. The districts are extremely limited by state law as to what they can do to make up the state shortfall. And the band plays on . . . .
I’m not giving Elia a pass but I also believe that it is important to get the truth out there.
She claims the board OK’d her dipping into the reserve fund (intended for financial emergencies) to pay new teachers. Some board members (former and current) claim they never saw those budget items and she did it on her own, assuming rubber stamp approval.
My own district lost a popular superintendent to resignation when he dipped into the reserve fund to pay for new teachers to the tune of a few tens of millions of dollars over a period of a few years and the local media made a tempest in a teapot out of the situation.
State law mandates the reserve fund remain as a percentage of the general budget and there are few ways to make up the shortfalls either way.
It’s an impossible task: violate the class size amendment (which the legislature LOVES so they can, once again, point at that it’s too expensive) and have huge class sizes, paying fines and receiving state DOE censure to maintain the required reserve fund OR honor the wishes of the voters and maintain the constitutionally required class sizes while finding money to pay those extra teachers, usually from the reserve fund for less wealthy districts.
The Board did not OK Elia diminishing the reserves fund by half in 2 years (about $180mil), and the financial person publicly stated that discussion of this fund was never conducted at Board budget workshops. The funds were used for recurring expenses in payroll due to miscalculations about the Gates program new teacher pay scale, as well as for continuing previously grant-funded programs, not class size. It took the Board hiring a new superintendent to even be made aware of this information.
The new opt out slogan will be, “Just answer all”. If you fill in all the bubbles for all the questions, the same clear message will be sent to SED and no sanctions because everyone took the test.
What would that do to teachers, though? It would really hurt their scores for evaluation. Do opt outs count against teachers in New York? They don’t in Utah.
Opt outs don’t count against teachers in NYS – at least not up until this point. Who knows what “punishment” Evilia will mete out in the future.
This could get ugly. (I hope.) I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Yesssssssss!
ALOT of good discussion here.
But one simple thing to take away/know:
Next year, if opt outs are 19.9% Elia/State Ed will be emboldened and see that their extreme positions kept the opt outs contained and that they could and should go further. Even a repeat of 20% they’d be that way.
Opt out NEEDS to grow to stay powerful and relevant as a movement. And it also needs to grow more strongly beyond white suburbia/LI/HV.
The game is simple now. Opt out has to go 25% and beyond for 2015-2016. Period.
Everyone on this thread has a certain amount of doubt about what Elia can do, but it is only a matter of time before one or more of these things is put into place in NY State if a family has their child opt out:
1) State aid gets reduced or withheld to schools
2) Child tax credits are withheld
3) Disability payments to families of children with severe IEPs are reduced or withheld
4) Tax refunds from paying too much throughout the year are reduced or withheld from parents
5) Schools that apply for any kind of shortage waiver for teachers or administrators with regard to full credentialing or licensing reciprocity will be denied
6) Tuition aid to older siblings for higher education will be reduced or withheld if a younger sibling opted out.
7) College savings programs that offer tax advantages for families will be reduced or denied
8) Funds within the school district that are raised from township tax revenue will be impounded by Albany and set aside until opt out is reduced or eliminated.
Any or all of the above are possible, and more. However, any such attempts will also likely result in a sizable number of lawsuits which will only add to the bureaucracy and messy war.
While on the job, educators cannot push or persuade for opt-out; it’s illegal. At least in NY State it is. Educators should not, therefore, be offering any editorialization favoring opt-out to anyone on the job ever. But as private citizens off the job, anyone can advocate any way they want per Constitutional protections. When the latter becomes not the case in some parts of the country, then law suits are ripe and ready and most plaintiffs who voiced themselves as private citizens prevail in court.
The best thing citizens can do now, as civic participants, is to hound their elected officials 24/7 from every angle and in every nook and cranny of political life so that they can have an influence on NYSED, the Board of Regents, and Count Dracula himself, Cuomo. Ask for concrete proof from your elected official of exactly what he/she is doing to advocate as such, to what extent, and with what kind of endurance.
Remember that your wishes and vote have a lot to do with your elected official maintaining his/her job. It’s called populism, and DeToqueville recognized it as powerful force in a healthy democracy . . .
The fight is only over when you say it is and if you, as a civic participant, believe it is.
They have more money than we do; we have far more people than they ever will.
In Utah, we have been told that teachers cannot voice support for opt out, even on our own time as private citizens. I had to take all of my opt out information off my own personal Facebook page (no parents from my school are friends on FB). The NEA Utah affiliate’s lawyers told me that it’s legal for the state to do that.
@ Robert Rendo: I could be wrong, but sanctions can be neither made up nor ad hoc; they must be based on the law and, to my knowledge, the various sanctions that you have listed above are not provided for in any law of which I am aware. Do you have other information?
Deborah,
Let me be more clear:
What I meant to express is that Albany always has the option to attempt to pass legislation that would allow for these measures, and one never knows if the feds and the state could corporate with each other and clarify each other’s jurisdictions to ensure that such an agenda gets actualized.
Just because something is passed into law does not always mean, believe it or not, that it is legal. . . . That’s why we have a judicial system, lobbies, and advocates.
I do apologize if I caused confusion.
@ Robert Rendo. Given recent comments by various NYS legislators — that they don’t want to see districts lose Title 1 money (wouldn’t that be just so very counterproductive and harmful) and that they support a parent’s right to refuse the tests — I don’t see that happening. Or, maybe I’m just naive.
And, yes, I agree about laws not necessarily being legal. As a lawyer, one of my favorite mantras is: “laws are not always legal!” Or… “not all laws are legal!”
Threatened Out West:
Facebook pages probably can be controlled because they associate your image with your agenda. It has far more universal access, although I would venture to say that if it is a private page and you are posing as a citizen and NOT as en educator or employee of a local educational agency, then you may very well have a case that is controvertible and should be tried.
However, what about private meetings helps in one’s home or backyard? Or at a privately rented hall, and such meetings are attended by people who only identify as private citizens?
If your state forbids that, they are violating the Constitution and someone or come people should put them in their place in court.
I’ve been nervous to meet with opt out groups in person because people around here know I’m a teacher. I already have an anonymous “colleague” trying to get me fired. I’m the primary wage earner for my family. I wish I knew what I could do. I still quietly tell people about opting out, but I don’t know if I dare do more. Teachers around here have been fired for less:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57790672-90/students-florence-
district-parking.html.csp
This is not my district, but close by. The test in question was dropped by the district at the end of the 2014 school year, but the teacher still lost her job. And only this commentator even spoke out about it. The other news organizations didn’t even touch it. The UEA did nothing about it, either. She was totally on her own, and lost. That’s what happens in schools in Utah.
Looks like the link broke:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57790672-90/students-florence-district-parking.html.csp
How dare she!? If the public doesn’t like what the government is doing, it is not the government’s job to punish the public. It’s the government’s job to change to reflect the public will. These people represent us. Not the other way around. This desperate move just proves that Parent power can end the Testocracy – and the government is scared witless: https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/parent-power-can-crush-the-testocracy-and-the-government-is-scared-witless/
All I can say is keep.electing your government based on those with the most money and those who the media will tell you can win and you get what we have now. A group of elected officials who have become a ruling class of rich people who feel they know better than the public and coerce you to do.as they say not as you want. It is not a government of the people by the people for the people. It is a government of the elites by the elites for their corporations and wealthy interests.
The message has to get across to the inner city population. Too many people there are gullible enough to believe that these tests and charter schools actually help their children.
Ironically, it’s the urban areas which are being hurt the most by CC, yet which have the least resistance from the minority parents. They believe that low test scores will get them additional funding and “better” teachers and schools.
There is a law suit in Buffalo by a parent whose child did not get accepted into the Gifted and Talented School. She did transfer to a different school in good standing, then transferred to another school in good standing, and finished at an additional school in good standing. Makes you wonder why one child bounced through four schools prior to the beginning of her Freshman Year in High School. The parent is moving forward with her lawsuit to “help other parents”.
With attitudes towards education such as this (where parents don’t recognize that perhaps it is their child who is causing the problem, not the teachers or the school), Common Core is only one check off point on the list of issues the district faces.
Elia seems to be all tact, followed by cluelessness then ruthlessness.
Early Cuomo, no?
1st of all–reply to M up there: Your proposal might seem like a solution, but the bottom-line fact of the matter is that these tests (as Duane keeps writing over & over) are neither valid nor reliable &, as such, are a complete waste of educational time AND for all the time spent on test prepping and the taking of them, a hugomongous form of child abuse (esp. the actual testing). Aside from that, Pear$on et.al. are $TEALING $$$ meant to go to public EDUCATION–EDUCATION, NOT te$ting. So, the point being, NO KIDS should be taking the test–not a one. Numerous parents who opted their kids out made arrangements for them to be educated at home or with relatives, friend or neighbors; children were taken to libraries, museums and other such institutions whereby REAL learning took place; in some ILL-Annoy school districts & schools, mindful principals & administrators set classrooms/areas aside where children could actually have a regular, REAL school day, replete with…creative, instructive LESSONS!
(Gasp!)
Secondly–reply to Threatened Out West (& every time I read one of your posts my heart breaks again): no, you should not be handing out opt out information. Get hold of some retired teachers you might know or contact your UEA-Retired. They should be helpful, & will hand out opt out info. Again, a number of us went to various Chgo. Public School campuses & handed out such info. (Only a few principals attempted to chase us away, but we were armed w/a lawyer’s letter, indicating that it is legal, w/in the parameters of the Constitution, to hand out lit. on public property {i.e., the sidewalks outside of the school}. One principal actually called the police; the responding officer read the letter & told her, “Ma’am, these people are w/in their rights to give hand outs.”
The next time we came to the school, we heard not a peep from her.) The retired group to which I belong, in fact, hosted 2 representatives from public education advocacy groups to explain to suburban parents how to opt their children out–the meeting was well attended, & successful in spreading the word to many other parents, who opted their kids out. Lots of word-of-mouth, organizational strategies & further meetings were spawned. So, T.O.T., do contact retired teachers. At the Chicago N.P.E. Conference, Diane stated that retired teachers are one of public ed’s most helpful resources.
Tis true!
Yes, WE have, yes WE can & yes, yes WE WILL!
And ultimately, since the state controls the passing rate, it is almost impossible for the schools to show a statistically valid improvement. 1 to 2 percent, even 3, is still within statistical variability and does not indicate progress.
Why are they surprised with the results? They’ve already predetermined the outcome.