Katie Lapham, a teacher in New York City, here recounts the disaster of Common Core testing in New York state.
She wonders why children who don’t speak English are supposed to pass a high-stakes exam, with only one exemption.
She wonders why she, their teacher, will get no information about student performance except a score–no information about what her students learned and what they did not learn, just a score for each of them.
She wonders why anyone thinks this regime is good for children or for education.
When Katie returned from the Network for Public Education meeting in Austin last week, she was shocked to learn about the state’s policy for testing newcomers to our country:
When I returned from Texas, I discovered that the New York State Education Department (NYSED) had released its School Administrator’s Manual for the 2014 Common Core Math and ELA tests for grades 3-8. It is a whopping 86-pages long, and its treatment of ELLs is particularly draconian. Here’s an excerpt.
page 9 – Testing English-language learners
- Schools are permitted to exempt from the 2014 Common Core English Language Arts Tests only those English language learners (including those from Puerto Rico) who, on April 1, 2014, will have been attending school in the United States for the first time for less than one year.
- Recently arrived English language learners may be eligible for one, and only one, exemption from the administration of the 2014 Grades 3–8 Common Core English Language Arts Tests.
- Subject to this limitation, schools may administer the New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSESLAT) in lieu of the 2014 Grades 3–8 Common Core English Language Arts Tests, for participation purposes only, to recently arrived English language learners who meet the criterion above. All other English language learners must participate in the 2014 Grades 3–8 Common Core English Language Arts Tests, as well as in the NYSESLAT.
- The provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) do not permit any exemption of English language learners from the 2014 Grades 3–8 Common Core Mathematics Tests. These tests are available in Chinese (traditional), Haitian-Creole, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. The tests can be translated orally into other languages for those English language learners whose first language is one for which a written translation is not available from the Department.
That’s right niños, only ONE exemption is allowed from the ELA. After just 12 months in our school system, you will be subjected to the same horror show as the rest of the state’s public school students in grades 3-8. Don’t worry, the state has generously offered to give you extended time (time and a half) on the tests; instead of 90 minutes per day for six days (3 days for ELA, 3 days for math), 5th grade ELLs, for example, are entitled to 135 minutes each testing day. That’s a total of 13.5 hours! As for the Common Core math test, there’s no getting off the hook the first year you are here because state provides translation services! And after all that, in May we are going to assess your English-language proficiency level by giving you a lengthy, four-part test in speaking, listening, reading and writing. NYSED has been hard at work aligning the NYSESLAT (New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test) to the Common Core State Standards. It’s now more rigorous than ever before!
New York state has already become the poster state for botched implementation. It looks like it will get worse, certainly for the students and teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What about ELL newcomers from grades K through 2nd? Do they still have to take the NYSESLAT if they enter the school system and are attending that entry year for less than one year?
Grades K through 2nd also take the NYSESLAT, btw . . .
From your article, the exemption seems only for grades 3 through 8, but not for grades prior to that . . . .
Any direction on this?
K-2 ELLs take the NYSESLAT too. For the reading, listening and writing parts, they bubble their answers directly in the test booklets. While NYSED has called for an end to standardized tests in K-2, they claim they can’t do anything about the NYSESLAT because it’s federally mandated. Excuses, excuses.
Good. Let’s call this what it is: child abuse.
These tests are extraordinarily abusive. The best thing that can happen for education deform is for the implementation of these tests to be delayed, for if this CCCRAP were rolled out everywhere in the coming school year, according to the original plan, then there would be a repeat of the NY experience nationwide, and the people would be hunting the deformers to their lairs.
Or, to use different metaphors, there would be a policy meltdown, a policy supernova.
NCLB with its high stakes testing has been child abuse for a long time. This is an intensification.
Everything about how Common Core was rolled out points to only one conclusion. The billionaire oligarch control freaks behind this launch and others before it want only one result: an easy way to claim teachers and their public school are failures and must be replaced by private sector charters.
In addition, for decades, the word “Charters” has been promoted as the only save-all choice that fits all, the super-hero school that will come to the rescue and save America from legions of incompetent public school teachers and their horrible failing school—according to most standardized tests the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street promote in their propaganda.
To achieve their goal, they need a number they can point to, a number designed to promote failure. a number, on closer examination, is meaningless, but most of the people in America don’t know that.
Abraham Lincoln pointed at the goal of this madness: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
The billionaire oligarchs are counting on fooling enough Americans long enough to achieve their goals and make it extremely difficult to return to democratically run public schools that are held accountable by law.
How about giving everyone a voucher and letting the schools be accountable to the parents who can exercise democracy by enrolling or not enrolling.
Isn’t that more direct democracy that accountability through school boards elected by a minority of the voters in small turnout elections where teacher lobbying can prevail.
Look what happened in NYC. DeBlasio got elected by the teacher unions, and now he’s doing just enough charter closing to pacify them. Is THAT what we would call “democracy”?
Democracy has become a shibboleth sometimes leading to tyranny. One only has to offer President Obama’s electoral career to make the case that democracy doesn’t always work as it’s supposed to when the electorate is too ignorant, indifferent, or wishful thinking to be able to differentiate a fraud from a real leader. Or perhaps too corrupt, and vote out of self interest as part of the bureaucracy or as part of the dependency population.
De Blasio was elected by a citizen majority landslide of 70%. . . . if every teacher union member voted for him only, it would not have been enough to get him elected . . . .
What ARE you blabbering about here . . . . . . ?
I think it is interesting that you begin by asserting that vouchers are more democratic and end by asserting that democracy doesn’t always work.
Sounds like Pennsylvania. We had an exchange student last year from Thailand. They insisted he take remediation courses to retake the Keystone because he was in 11th grade. So I put my foot down, and he was excused. My ELLs just took the Access test of English language proficiency in February. I didn’t see my beginners for 2 weeks. Most of them will be taking the PSSA in a few weeks, too. I wish we could drop our congresspeople in a different country and make them take a test in a completely new language. Or just leave them there and elect new people more responsive to the electorate.
The problem with elections is that the major political parties decides who runs for election and most of the time it doesn’t matter who the people vote for because both candidates are hand picked to represent the interests of an element of the party.
If this doesn’t make sense, I suggest you read “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin and you will see the machine in action as Teddy Roosevelt moves up the political ladder. Roosevelt was too honest for the machine and they told him that they would not support him for a second term as governor of New York. Instead they offered him the vice presidential spot on the ticket—a dead end without power where he could get nothing done to end corporate and political corruption.
No one in the GOP expected President McKinley to be assassinated. The GOP machine thought they had finally made Roosevelt powerless and had removed an honest nuisance they couldn’t control.
The same policies are already in place for ELLs in Tennessee with the TCAP. I assume they will not change for PARCC. Also, no translations or interpretations are provided. A bilingual dictionary can be used by the student, and they’re given extras time. There’s a modified version of the TCAP called the ELSA that claims to have simplified language, but in the years I’ve administered the test I have seen very little difference between the TCAP and the ELSA English only state. Check the practice tests online. Source: ESL teacher.
At some point, teachers of the USA, we have to stand up and find our integrity, remembering that our prime directive is to nurture learning in children, not abuse and harm them. We must stand together and stand strong, refusing to abuse children with these meaningless tests that measure family income and little else.
WAKE UP TEACHERS! We must unite against this abuse and stop it cold!
The teachers, united, can never be defeated! We will walk side by side with parents and all caring citizens and send these billionaire reformers and their minions to the trash heap of history where they belong.
FIND YOUR VOICES! FIND YOUR COURAGE! FIND YOUR TEACHER SOUL AGAIN!
NO MORE TESTS. NO MORE TESTS. NO MORE TESTS.
Great Post!!
YES!!!!
Chris you are a wise teacher and can see through the manipulation of being used to promote the twisted agenda of impostors. Until I retired last year, I felt that I was being “prostituted” for an immoral purpose. The teachers and parents are the only ones who can stop this abuse to children, and too many of them have become “sheep” and submissive to abusive authority. Keep up your protest because you are a great model for others! Those of us in NY are doing the same! Come join us on March 29th. It’s time for civil disobedience!
Yes, Hey, wake up, New York! Breaking News from Carol Burris, via Ednotes Online:
BREAKING NEWS: the Assembly will do last minute interviews on Monday because Democrats are saying they will VOTE NO on incumbents.
Dear friend of public education ,
On Tuesday, the legislature will vote yea or nay on the re-appointment of the 4 incumbent Regents. Often we hear that the legislature does not control education policy and therefore there is little that can be done to influence the course of testing , data collection and the Common Core.
This, the appointment of the Regents, is your representative’s best and most direct opportunity to influence educational policy and to be responsive to the thousands who came out to express their unhappiness at forums across the state.
BREAKING NEWS: the Assembly will do last minute interviews on Monday because Democrats are saying they will VOTE NO on incumbents
Please write to your representative and send a simple message: Vote “no” for the re-appoinment of the four incumbents. Follow up with a phone call. Send a message on twitter.
Let them know you will be watching.
You can find their contact information here:
Assembly: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/
Senate: http://www.nysenate.gov
Thank you,
Carol
I for one welcome the first, complete, full-bore, guns-a-blazin’ round of nationally administered, on-line PARCC and SBAC testing. Bring it on David!
And when it does, the blog sphere, twitter, facebook, and meetings in school cafeterias and auditoriums will becoming an inferno of outrage. Long Island to the power of infinity.
The two-headed failure will unfold as follows:
1) On-line meltdowns of every conceivable type, both human and technological
2) Really bad tests written to trap and trick, confuse and tire young defenseless test takers into failing at a rate that is unprecedented. The same really bad tests wil be scrutinized by experts and debunked for the junk that they are.
Parent love their children too much to let this go on.
Parents will act to defend their kids from the madness, and some of them will hire very good lawyers who will help bring this immense house of cards down into the ash heap of failed reforms where it belongs. And some will ask now what? And teachers will say what they’ve been saying all along, just let us teach. Trust us as professionals to do what’s best for children.
And if I’m wrong, my David have mercy on our souls.
may (not my)
New Yorkers appear to be smarter than the rest of the nation, or at least more courageous in advocating for their children and standing up to abusive authority.
Maybe those of us in California will follow your lead. In the past, Cali has been a model for civil disobedience, but now Common Core is creeping in here on “little cat feet”.
Good luck with March 29th !
Have you seem this:https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/07/fairy-princess-explains-child-abuse/
Tweet it in memory of Dr Suess birthday this month as a symbol against CC.
As teachers, are we not required BY LAW to report instances of child abuse – even suspected child abuse? And are we not protected for having to report such suspicions, or has that changed or been replaced by just do what you are told and be quiet?
I think that you have perhaps hit on an organizing idea GE2L2R. I am going to look at the definition of child abuse as it is written here in NY State. I believe that we are doing great harm to children, particularly children with disabilities and ELL students, here in NY state. Since testing corporations are not considered people they couldn’t be charged with abuse but perhaps those elected officials who have dictated NY state education policy could be.
I moved to NYC the end of March with my kids for work. As a government contractor, we have done hurricane recovery work twice now and it’s usually pretty seemless to move the kids. I even waited until the marking period was over before switching. Biggest mistake I ever made. I wish I would have waited a month or longer.
My daughter took the test a few weeks after coming from excellent Virginia and Michigan schools that don’t teach “common core”. When I say excellent, I mean that they all have high test scores and great accede mic programs highly sought after school districts.
My A/B student was just informed she did not graduate 5th grade and will need to attend summer school because she did poorly on her exam. Even with summer school she will need to have a portfolio put together and will not pass 5th grade until the end of summer. When I asked what happens if we move home before summer, they said they “think” Viginia would accept her portfolio and their recommendation over the NYC testing……”They think!”
I have had to watch my great student, my oldest most reliable child, the child who always gets average to above average grades, in tears for the last few days. They let her walk with her class, but I had to watch her fight tears and shamefully hide her folder so others wouldn’t see she didn’t have a certificate. While others ran around excitedly she stood there with eyes shining with unshed tears and downcast. What should have been the most happy day of fifth grade has now become one of her lowest and I am sure will stick with her forever.
Her teachers said she took a few weeks to catch on to the work they were doing, but that she is a good student and grasps concepts well. They said had the test been a month or two later she would have passed, but without having learned some of their concepts and having practiced the test formats she didn’t have much of a chance.
She has had to endure this all because I accepted a job in this horrid school system. There was never any doubt of her passing 5th grade at all this year. Her teachers from Virginia were appalled when I told them. When I called Michigan to check her records since I didn’t have a copy here, the office was shocked that she was being failed. She was only there 3 months but they said she was very sharp and had done excellent.
So now my A/B student will be attending summer school and my hopes to move back home to Virginia are being delayed. (We close on a home in Viginia next week.) All of this because of one test that students spent months prepping for and that I was never informed my daughter had the option to opt out of. I will never make the mistake of taking a contracting job in this city again. Failing a child that doesn’t understand is one thing. Failing a child that had 3 weeks to learn new common core concepts and has since grasped them…it’s beyond child emotional abuse.