In the second round of Common Core testing, devoted to math, the early counts from Long Island indictate that more students will skip the exams than did so for the ELA.
Crack reporter Jaime Franchi has reported on the movement. which has been active for years. The moms in the movement have been active for at least the past three years.
“Fueling the mass rejections are a litany of complaints among parents and teachers, two being that their objections are falling on deaf ears and that Common Core supporters continue to mischaracterize them as frightened of academic challenges and what state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch dubs as students being caught in the crosshairs of a “labor dispute” between teachers unions and the governor.
“This is a governor who is just fixated on firing teachers and breaking the union,” slams Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School and 2013 New York Principal of the Year, in a phone interview from the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago April 25. “There’s no other lens to see it because it’s not in the best interest of the children.”
“Other gripes harbored by parents opposing the Common Core tests include their belief that the exams lack diagnostic value, as test scores are returned during the summer and cannot be used to further instruction. Zephyr Teachout, Fordham professor and former Democratic gubernatorial primary challenger to Cuomo, tells the Press: “The tests have no pedagogical value, so parents are opting out because they aren’t helping the kids.”
“Opponents are concerned that with such a heavy focus on high-stakes testing, teaching in the classroom would resort to an increasing amount of test preparation at the expense of various other learning opportunities and a more diverse curriculum. They contend the assessments are age- and grade-level inappropriate, charging as proof that several reading samples for the recent ELA tests were coded two to three grade levels above appropriate reading levels.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Opt Out Movement – REAL parental choice!
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Ratcheting up the stress on children is not good for them or society.
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Were the Common Core tests always intended to be high stakes for students? I recognize that some states are giving students “safe harbor” for some period of time, but I’m curious whether the “high stakes for students” was part of the plan that was just wasn’t revealed to parents during the national marketing of the Common Core tests, or whether it came after the marketing campaign.
I think it makes a huge difference if one tells parents “this is just to see where they are” or if one tells parents “the eventual objective is to rely on these tests to make high stakes decisions for students”. Obviously those are two very different objectives.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/15/04/29/opinion-is-making-peace-with-parcc-an-idea-whose-time-has-come/
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Chiara,
I believe the goal from the start was a fully-aligned system of standards, curriculum, assessments, teacher evaluation, college entry exams, and teacher education. You can see it in the roll-out. Read about it in Mercedes Schneider’s new book “The Common Core Dilemma.” Note that testing corporations were well represented in the CCSS writing committee, and “architect” David Coleman now leads the College Board.
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I wonder how parents would have received that had it been presented to them in its entirety. I think there would have been a lot more opposition.
I feel as if we were told the opposite in Ohio- we were told again and again that it was “to see where they are”. I only knew they planned on high stakes consequences for students because they rushed out a “safe harbor” law.
There was never any mention of high stakes to parent at the outset. Ohio has the teacher ranking so I knew it would be used there, but “high stakes” for teachers is VERY different than high stakes for students.
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I totally agree with this statement: “Opponents are concerned that with such a heavy focus on high-stakes testing, teaching in the classroom would resort to an increasing amount of test preparation at the expense of various other learning opportunities and a more diverse curriculum. They contend the assessments are age- and grade-level inappropriate, charging as proof that several reading samples for the recent ELA tests were coded two to three grade levels above appropriate reading levels.”
All this testing is just for $$$$$$ and control.
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Thank you for communicating the reality. I often feel like I am living in an alternative universe. I have felt like Don Quixote for the past 3-4 years. People like you and other resistors need to continue to spread this accurate information since most mainstream media outlets aren’t covering this with fidelity to the truth. I even have issue with NPR but of course they accept money from the Gates foundation and Walton family. The newest attempt to marginalize the opt out movement is to claim those participating in civil disobedience are just following a fashion trend. Even some educators aren’t aware of the accurate development of the movement.
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You can hop on my Quixotic Quest Bandwagon to rid the world of educational standards and standardized testing. The first step is to read Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted treatise on those educational malpractices:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.”
The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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Student: When am I ever going to use this _____?
Math teacher: Every time you have to solve life’s problems.
Math is not just about getting the right answer. Sure, if you are building a bridge, that is critically important. But math should be the journey to that right answer. Math teaches students a way to think. The Reformers, with their obsession about right answers and tests, destroys that most important aspect. Apply math and you begin to describe our world. Describe our world, and we can try to understand it, together.
I always joked with students that if aliens appeared, and assuming they did not view us as food, the two best, universal ways we could begin communicating is music and math.
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I know you’re a math teacher, but this is part of what they’ll need to know going forward:
“We’re looking at a system where our democracy is being owned by a handful of billionaires.”
Go Bernie. Give ’em hell 🙂
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I am so grateful that Bernie Sanders is running.
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If Democrats actually started acting like Democrats, Bernie would have a chance.
But I suspect few will support him because they just know that he has no chance (because they are all more expert than Nate Silver on predicting election outcomes)
It’s the same old tired “We can’t support and vote for X because then Y will get in” — even though Z, whom they end up voting for, is actually Y in a disguise.
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Yes, Bernie is my guy.
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“Apply math and you begin to describe our world. Describe our world, and we can try to understand it, together.”
If I may add to your thought MathVale:
Expand your vocabulary and you can describe your expanding world more accurately together.
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Indeed. I do wish I was a better writer. I always view the world through the green-matrix-neo-numbers projection and need to step out for air at times. But never fear, my spouse and daughter are true ELA practitioners and keep me human.
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“Common Core supporters continue to mischaracterize them as frightened of academic challenges” = VICTIM SHAMING, plain and simple. Grotesque.
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