Add Spackenkill to the list of districts in New York that will not administer the Pearson field tests in grades 4 and 8. More are on the way. When districts realize that they have the power to say no, that’s when we begin to clip the wings of the testing industry and begin to restore reasonable balance to education as well as a reasonable balance of power between the state and localities.
Boycotting districts:
Babylon
Bellmore/Merrick CHSD
Comsewogue
Fairport
HFL
Glen Cove
Great Neck
Happauge
Jericho
Manhasset
Merrick
Mount Sinai
North Bellmore
Ossining
Pittsford
Plainview Old-Bethpage
Rye Neck
Rocky Point
Spackenkill
Syosset
West Irondequoit
Webster
White Plains
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So exciting to see this starting. The sleeping giant of public ed has awakened!!
It is time. It is long past time for local educators to start saying no.
We are a free people.
One of the ancient commandments is not to pass your children through the fire to Moloch. LOL.
I think that applies here.
Good for these districts!
Incredibly long day for you, but what a gift to see this starting.
Let’s hope it becomes a tidal wave, or more “waking giants,” or what ever images people want to conjure.
I am most heartened by the courage and integrity of these administrators and the support they are gathering
Forment rebellion! I suggest sending emails to the superintendents of the districts assigned to administer the field tests with a link to Diane’s posts about the boycott.
The complete lists of NYS schools assigned to administer the Pearson fields tests can be found here: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/assessment/fieldtest/
Be careful they don’t embed the field questions in the actual test the students take to show their accountability like they do in my state. Our tests typically have ten extra questions that are just field questions. I am proud to see so many New York districts pushing back at this testing madness.
There are field test questions embedded in the regular tests here in NY State and then more field testing after the tests.
Sorry hear that — way too much testing.
Good for these New York districts! I hope that districts in other states take notice.
And let’s keep the momentum going by boycotting the actual tests, especially because, no matter how many “field tests” Pear$on prepare$, their consistent failure to appropriately gather & use data for the purpose its intended will NEVER, EVER render Pear$on produced te$t$ either valid or reliable. Therefore, we need to demand that state depts. of education STOP wasting OUR tax dollars on their never valid, never reliable worthless tests.
P.S.–Does anyone know how much Pear$on was paid for their “field tests?” Even though they well should be, I’d be very surprised if the tests were provided for…free.
We are giving a field test tomorrow in US history. If teachers make the test, there would be no need to test the test.
“We know of course there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
-Arundhati Roy
As Francis Fax Piven discusses in her book, Challenging Authority How Ordinary People Change America the “refusal to cooperate” can be a highly effective strategy for pushing through “deliberately silenced and preferably unheard.” “Ordinary people” do have means for empowerment and I applaud all those parents, students, teachers, administrators, and legislators who are choosing to opt-out and to take risks by refusing to cooperate in other ways.
I am a former science teacher of 19 years and live in NY. I have attended rallies and do my best to share the truth, to expose the turgid underbelly, of the reformist agenda.
wonderful
Add Middletown, NY
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140606/NEWS/406060339