The resounding success of the opt out movement in Néw York state prompted a state senator to introduce a bill to exempt the highest-performing districts from Governor Cuomo’s test-based teacher evaluation plan.
Presumably the advocates of the plan hope to take the steam out of the opt out movement. Divide and conquer. Apparently high-stakes will be for the middle class and the poor, not the affluent high-performing districts.
Call it segregated testing. None for the rich. Only for peons.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More cluelessness from Albany. Legislators, if you (or any of your minions) are reading this blog, NO ONE is fooled!
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Unbelievable!
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If the affluent districts are largely white, and the poor districts are largely black and Latino, isn’t this what we like to refer as “discrimination?” If the test is evil for white students, it is even more evil for black and Latino students. The real problem is that this is a bad test for all students. Wake up, Albany!
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I think this is where the only hope lies – lawsuits for discrimination. Or maybe they’ll foresee that and either can the idea or come up with some devious loophole.
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“. . . lawsuits for discrimination. . . ”
YES! For discrimination by schools against “mental feebles” (yes, I wrote that on purpose to show just how insidious this type of discrimination is). Mental abilities are not” controlled” by the individual in the same way that sex, race and sexual orientation are not “controlled’ by the individual.
Those that score on the bottom end of the scales (no matter which supposed scale is used) on these tests are almost always “sanctioned” in some manner while those at the supposed top of the scale are rewarded.
Why are public schools in the business of discrimination of individuals by, through and/or of inherent mental capabilities? Why are there allowed to be laws that promote such discrimination??
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“Why are public schools in the business of discrimination of individuals by, through and/or of inherent mental capabilities? ”
Take out the “inherent.” While I knew some of my students were developmentally disabled, too many people who come from backgrounds where mental capacity is assumed to be deficient manage to accomplish far more than anyone would ever have predicted. No blanket statements. I know you didn’t intend that, Duane. The rest of your post indicates a disdain for discrimination based on test scores that you have made more than evident is other posts.
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Ohio ed reformers made a similar proposal. This is part of why I don’t think limiting the power of the US Secretary of Ed will make much difference for public schools.
The think tanks and lobbyists who are drafting this stuff are national. It doesn’t make much (practical) difference if it goes in at the federal level or the state level if it’s the same agenda in all 50 states. In Ohio sometimes it is literally the same people-individuals- our “charter reform bill” was written by Fordham and they also lobby DC.
Bush/Obama/Cuomo and Bush/Obama/Kasich ed reform looks the same because IT IS the same.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/high-performing_school_distric.html
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I Totally AGREE with you!!! It is getting to the point that it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Democrat or Republican is for our benefit. They think we are all stupid!!!
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Various sources report Fordham Institute and the Center for American
Progress share donors, Gates, Walton and Hewlett.
A 2013 tax form, posted online by Fordham, shows the Institute gave $45,000 to CAP.
Among others, the Campaign for America’s Future (David Sirota), is focusing the spotlight on organizations, their donors and actions.
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Guess where that idea came from:
Board of Regents head wants to exempt high-performing schools from teacher evaluations
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/regents-head-top-schools-exempt-teacher-evals-article-1.2171949
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So they’re looking to invalidate their last argument for testing; that it allows parents to compare their child’s scores to students in other districts. (As if we wanted to do that in the first place.) When I lived in Massachusetts, the people in the town who most looked forward to reading MCAS results were real estate agents in affluent communities.
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Jamieliz, this is a great comment. Enlightening observations.
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Yes, one of my private jokes has long been, skip the tests, just ask a real estate agent where the “best” districts are.
Although you don’t even have to leave your computer, really. When we were house-hunting fourteen years ago, my husband found a house on-line in the area that we wanted to move to that was priced rather attractively. He couldn’t believe that a house in Highly Regarded Suburban District was so affordable. Then he looked a little more and saw that although it was on a street that went through the school district, it was a few houses down from the district’s border. It was located in Not So Highly Regarded District. Mystery solved.
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Bill Gates has done all the dirty work for real estate agents now. He funds Great Schools and Zillow shows a list of schools with their ratings based on test scores on every single real estate page. It’s a well funded scheme for promoting segregation brought to you by our greatest racist billionaire DINO.
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Test Scores are real estate agents’ Bread & Butter.
When I was still working in a large Metro system in ATL, I would regularly receive calls from realtors to give them tours of schools, provide available program information for SWD & Gifted, and make myself available when their clients flew in from everywhere to provide tours again to select schools & zone.
You may surmise that these schools were schools in the wealthiest areas with high achieving students. ATL grew quickly and real estate agents always understood that $$ & high scores were always linked. Their teachers were also viewed as highly qualified.
Poor areas were associated with poor children, low scores & not so highly qualified teachers. Same system, same HR making teacher selections. Now, these teachers are blamed for poverty. Teachers do not chose their school or neighborhood. They sign a contract with the system.
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Jamieliz,
The report card from the Common Core tests contains only two individual items: the child’s score, and the score compared to others in the same grade in the state. It contains no item analysis, no reference to what kinds of questions the student got wrong. There is nothing more. It is a useless piece of paper. Is it worth hundreds of millions of dollars and many hours of class time to find out where he/she ranks?
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Diane,
That is absolutely correct!! I got a piece of paper with my child’s name on it and his score and a comparison score. That was it!!! That does not help me as a parent or the school how to help my child to improve. Thanks for including that little but important piece of information.
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Of course it’s not worth it. Common core testing is much like the MA state MCAS test. It’s useless to parents, teachers, and students and I’m completely against it. Even worse than it’s uselessness, what small amount of data we received might have been completely erroneous and there was no way to check, and the drilling and testing probably harmed our daughters at a developmental stage when self-esteem was already declining. At the time of testing, we worked with our children through the testing anxiety as best we could, but they would not opt out because they didn’t want the stigma.
As parents we know full well how our children are doing in school without any assessment testing, but the real estate agents sure love it. Perhaps these are the “taxpayers” meant to benefit from these tests.
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Thanks for keeping us up-to-date on this. I knew Tisch had proposed this, but there was such an outcry that I didn’t think a legislator would actually introduce such a bill. Back to my letter-writing and calling campaigns.
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Dr. Ravitch, Thank you for posting this important information. Are you aware of a database that would list New York public schools according to assessment outcomes? It would be interesting and valuable to see concrete evidence to support how this bill truly impacts rich vs. poor school districts.
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When Cuomo’s failing list appeared on this blog, I spent several hours combing through the data of the failing schools (I’m retired so I have the time), all the failing districts I saw had a poverty rate of 50% to 99%.
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Thank you!
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This link to this list was on this blog in February. https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/governor.ny.gov/files/atoms/files/NYSFailingSchoolsReport.pdf
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Michael Shaver, I will try to find such a list. I have seen a scatter plot that shows the very tight relationship between family income and test scores for NY schools.
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I have a Excel file containing the information you seek for Nassau and Suffolk schools. I would be happy to share. Send request to nickmangieri@hotmail.com
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I teach at one of the schools on the list and we have a free and reduced lunch rate over 74%. My kids certainly are living in poverty and it breaks my heart that Cuomo wants to shut down our school and ruin the one true chance of my kids getting an education that can help them break the cycle. My kids are making progress, just not at the insane rate that Cuomo thinks they should.
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“International tests show achievement gaps in all countries…”
Economic Policy Institute:
“test scores in every country are characterized by a social class gradient—students higher in the social class scale have better average achievement than students in the next lower class—”
http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/
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So the kids will still take hours of a useless test that will provide no information of use to classroom teachers, but teachers won’t be evaluated with the test? Districts pitted against each other to see who qualifies as “good enough” to not have to evaluate their teachers using this abusive instrument. We have a national test, NAEP, that gives us a snapshot of student performance in a reasonable, nonintrusive manner. It does not disrupt learning or warp curriculum. It doesn’t demand adherence to questionable standards. Enough of the national crisis rhetoric.
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It’s also been fun to watch a spike in lawmaker interest in Ohio public schools with the arrival of the Common Core tests, and then the precipitous drop-off the moment our students completed the first round of tests. We’re back to all-charters and vouchers, all the time.
I’ll make a bold prediction- our public schools will get no on-going support for this new program, because the whole point was the tests.
The Common Core support in this state will = support for The Common Core tests. They’re already cutting funding for public schools again, and increasing charter school funding as they continue to layer on ed reform mandates. So much for “good faith”. Get the assurances in writing and agree to no reforms until the funding is secure.
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Hmmm…let’s see…attempt to placate already upset parents and teachers by suggesting that over-testing, eliminating the arts, and forced teaching to the test only negatively affect the privileged. Do these “powers that be” just never read any of the current studies on the true causes of poor school performance?! On the junk science that is “value-added measures”? They are NEVER going to acknowledge poverty and low socio-economic status as key factors in low student achievement, are they? It’s as if they have a vested interest in ignoring them…ya think?! It’s ridiculous!
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All this is going on, yet the NY Times, which has reported not a single story this week on the huge numbers opting out, publishes THIS op-ed today:
I posted this comment:
It’s so interesting that the NY Times publishes THIS op-ed at the end of the first week of the New York State ELA and math assessment tests, whilst not publishing one reported article about the tremendous success of the grassroots, parent-led opt-out movement this week. Meanwhile, papers around the state are all reporting that *at least* 155,000 students (it could easily rise to 300K when all the numbers are tallied) opted out across the state, with many districts seeing over 25% opt out, and not a few with over 50%. This is a huge act of civil disobedience, and yet readers of this paper would only know this if they read today’s letters.
Mr.Miller makes some interesting points, and it would be great for more principals to be trained on how to develop excellent teachers. In New York, Governor Cuomo is trying to change the teacher evaluation system to one where the principal’s assessment of his or her employee is irrelevant! Cuomo wants principal observations to count for a whopping 15% of a teacher’s rating, and for 50% of the rating to come from value-added measures of the teacher’s contribution to the change in student test scores. (Of course, the VAM models has been completely discredited. You probably wouldn’t know that EITHER if you only read the New York Times!)
What’s most remarkable to me about the educational “reform” movement is that has been getting away with completely ignoring the people who actually work in education. This is why parents have had to opt out of high stakes testing.
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Lauren,
I have searched the New York Times and like you, have not seen any stories about the historic numbers of parents who opted out of the tests. The Daily News and the New York Post are both owned by billionaires who support the reformers yet their newspapers have covered the opt out movement. The New York Times pretends it doesn’t exist.
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The “thought leaders” and enforcers of corporate education reform are beginning to be shamelessly open about the double standards that accompany their double talk and double dealing.
This blog, 3-23-2014, “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”—
[start posting]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
This posting attests to the actual, not figurative, mandates of “education reform.”
Summed up in one of their most cherished aphorisms: “to comfort the comfortable, to afflict the afflicted.”
Opt out of the vicious hazing ritual known as high-stakes standardized testing.
😎
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These sorts of proposals will never get through the assembly or be approved by the governor, so . . .
The opt-out rates in the state’s wealthiest and highest-performing districts have generally been very low, sometimes startlingly so, even on Long Island. Perhaps these districts don’t actually want to be exempted.
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Tim, funny you should say that the highest performing (most affluent) districts don’t have high opt out rates. One of the reformers’ talking points is that the opt out movement consists of only the high-performing affluent districts.
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Tim himself has made that argument.
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I have made the point that the opt-out movement is concentrated mostly in non-integrated districts that are funded overwhelmingly by local property taxes. As I’m sure everyone knows, Long Island is home to the nation’s most segregated traditional district schools, and the other suburban areas across the state aren’t far behind.
I also don’t know off the top of my head what the rates were in the most elite burbs last year. Maybe the tiny number of opt-outs in some of these places is in fact a big increase over how many opted out last year. In any case, it’s odd that the opt-out rate is so low at the subset of districts that would benefit from the legislation.
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Thanks for posting this Diane.
I am a local teacher association President in Senator Jack Martins’ legislative district and I can tell all of your readers that this will not fly in his home district. Even when a majority of the school districts in his district would benefit from the exemption, we all know it’s wrong headed idea.
The premise that NYS’s APPR plan is good for any district is wrong. The current plan will devastate school districts across the state, especially those districts in need of support. Teachers working in those districts would be forced to jump through reformers hoops to meet their peril.
Martins bill would exempt the high income mostly white districts, while everyone else would be subjected to Cuomo’s abusive policies. This is a civil rights issue.
Parents and teachers have been relentlessly protesting Martins yes vote to Cuomo’s reform agenda. This is his attempt to silent us. It won’t work.
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Rratto: the best response to this brazen proposal is to find a candidate to run against its sponsor at the next election.
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Jack was just elected, could be a while, plenty of time to make amends. Is the glass half full, or half empty?
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Jack barely won his last two elections.
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So how is testing poor and middle class children until they cry helping them ??
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They can learn how to use an old fashioned handkerchief!
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Despicable. Unfortunately, divide and conquer tends to be very effective.
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This is evidence that politicians know the tests measure family income. It also reveals how committed they are to using testing as a tool for privatizing schools in the most vulnerable and disempowered communities, as they want to continue to use the data to justify handing over schools to their profiteering cronies. It’s all a distraction so that politicians don’t have to address the wealth gap, which they are fully aware is at the bottom of test score disparities between higher and lower income groups in EVERY country.
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It also shows that they know that more affluent families VOTE at higher rates than lower-income families do.
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FYI: It was announced in a press release Thursday that “The Illinois State Board of Education moved unanimously Wednesday afternoon to make a leadership change, replacing one of the nation’s longest-serving superintendents with a former professional football player who spent recent years at the helm of a high poverty, urban district in California that faced a multi-million-dollar deficit. The selection of Anthony “Tony” Smith — GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner’s recommendation to the board — sends a message about the new Republican governor’s priorities for the state’s 860 school districts and its outdated school funding formula during an ongoing financial crisis.”
The press release doesn’t specify what it means when “the selection…sends a message” but Bruce Rauner loves the charter school movement. This will be his solution to the financial crisis facing school funding: privatize them. And I fear the people will fall for it.
Rick Johnson Wonder Lake, Illinois
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Rauner also said this week that the Chicago Public Schools should declare bankruptcy…
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Rick Johnson, as you know, Governor Bruce Rauner is an avid supporter of charter schools. He even has one named for him. That is the practice of the Noble charter chain; they put the names of big donors on a school, presumably to thank them and perhaps to help raise more private money.
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Yep, US Secretary of Commerce billionaire DINO Penny Pritzker has a Noble charter school named after her, too.
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So black and brown children get tested and tortured and white and Asian don’t??
Can anyone say DISCRIMINATION
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So, this country is returning to the equivalent of a poll tax and literacy test in order to vote? Anyone with even the smallest bit of patriotism should be reaching for the Constitution and yelling! ACLU? NAACP? Anyone?
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Bill Gates bought off the NAACP, such as with this, from the Gates Foundation website (hence their support of Common Core and testing):
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Date: June 2011
Purpose: to promote education policy reform at the state and federal level, engage the Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE) partners in advocacy efforts, collaborate with CHSE to produce and develop communications strategies to increase public awareness, maximize the NAACP’s convening power by seeking supplemental support for critical convenings, and develop its fund development capacity
Amount: $1,006,106
Term: 43
Topic: Global Policy & Advocacy
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Grantee Website: http://www.naacp.org
“Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
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So if that is the case when will NYSUT step up and sue the state for its outright racism and segregation!
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When did separate but equal become not ok, but when we differentiate for the needs of each district that are de jure segregated, this is not considered to be discrimination?
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Edit: I meant de facto not de jure
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The rich get to keep their wonderful teachers while the poor get to lose theirs. This proposed law is so blatantly biased that anyone who votes for it will expose him/herself as the emperor without clothes. Good luck!
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This just sounds like pre-white collar exemption bill for future billionaires, corporatists, politicians, elitists, etc., who think they are always well off, spoiled, and better than the rest of the people in 95%. Oh wait, they don’t have to waste their time away on ineffectual, meaningless teaching-to-test instruction to sit out for high-stakes testing. Why bother? That’s because it’s kind of job rank-and-file employees do by working their butt off to make ends meet -but no extra pay for overtime work, like “Black Corporation” in Japan.
Exemption for ‘Black Education Corporation’ in NY. Ick.
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But… but… but… how will the testing advocates KNOW which districts are high-performing without standardized test scores from those districts? It seems to me that the testing zealots just revealed their true stripes by de facto admitting that test scores are nothing more than a proxy for wealth and parental education level.
If we can magically “just know” which districts are high performing without test scores, can’t we also magically “just know” which districts/schools are low performing without test scores? Doesn’t this reveal that the test scores themselves are a sham, and that all arguments about how much policy makers “need” this data are just great steaming piles of horse poo?
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The data on schools in low income areas are wanted by politicians in order to justify shutting them down and handing them over to their privatizing cronies, so they can become profitable (whether for-profit or non-profit) boot camp charters for poor children of color.
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Did they suggest cancelling the testing or just the draconian teacher evaluations?
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Meeting with the Senator Monday.
These should be our demands.
We now know that change is coming
:
What might that look like?
1. Ms. Tisch stepping down from the Regents.
2. A moratorium on Math and ELA testing for three years.
3. Suspension of the Common Core Curriculum and the States “Engage NY” agenda, to be replaced by the former NY State Curriculum.
4. Suspension of agreements with Pearson and other
companies producing Common Core Materials and testing.
(This must be done soon, before the Transpacific Partnership Fast Track legislation is approved by Congress, which would hold the States and school districts liable for any possible losses by these companies “into the future”, should these agreements between corporations and governments be suspended.)
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Can you please explain number 4? This is HUGE and needs to be publicized on social media!!!
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5. IMMEDIATE repeal/repudiation of the newly passed teacher evaluation which is a complete farce and mockery of the word “evaluation,” not to mention, common sense, logic and intelligence.
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Wow . . .
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I’m surprised on one commented on this concluding sentence:
“NYSUT and their associated groups have supported the movement to have students opt out of the tests in order to dilute the impact on evaluations.” From everything i’ve read NYSUT is an innocent bystander to parent groups.
Oh, and the NYTimes DID write about the opt out movement in this article:
After reading it one gets the impression that the opt out movement had little or no traction… I’ve not seen an update since this article on Monday.
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