Despite the claims by top officials that parents were free to make the decision to opt out, the new Cuomo law will place struggling schools into receivership if they don’t reach a 95% participation rate in testing.
If this requirement is extended to all schools, Commissioner MaryEllen Elia will be in charge of hundreds of schools, including some of the best schools in the state. More opt outs, more chaos.
If opt outs should increase next spring, the whole system will collapse.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dang.
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Who would be to blame? Elia and Cuomo. No way they put successful schools (outside of testing) in receivership. Another Bluff!
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They are belligerent enough to try it and more than stupid enough to not see how it will fail no matter how good they think their messaging is. Looking forward to seeing them shoot themselves in both feet.
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In Utah, the first year of grading, a school with less than 95% participation automatically got an F. That changed when a highly regarded high school in an affluent area got an F. The next session, bills allowing opt outs that don’t affect the school grade appeared and were passed.
I hope New Yorkers see this naked power grab and rebel–80% opt out, anyone?
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I don’t think it’s a bluff. Destroying public education is their goal.
I see a boycott of taken-over schools in the future, devastating for everyone, especially politicians. I also see another recall in my crystal ball.
My deepest sympathies to the people of New York.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Yes, well, this would not surprise me at all. 😦
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Is it possible our whole political system will collapse? Chaos in the Republican party. Intransigence on the far right. Congressional approval rate near single figures.
The Atlantic Monthly this month has an article on our Constitution even. Is it working etc?
With so very many problems, climate change is a biggie, what does the future of our country look like. I am not the only one who fears for my children and grandchildren. What is happening in “education” and [deform] is a symptom of the whole rotten mess right now in my opinion.
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Well put; exactly the angst I feel.
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Cuomo is a disgusting person. I hope that half the state op’s out.
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Agree totally, Helen.
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It’s time to march on Albany to stop Cuomo’s bullying of students, teachers, parents, schools and school districts. I guess Cuomo didn’t hear the pope say, “Turn the other cheek.”
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Maybe Cuomo had another cheek in mind
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I wonder if the “other cheek” was offered or not.
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But retired…Cuomo has promised the tests won’t be used against students at all, and even is suggesting an extension on that clause. He feels the parents’ pain about the botched implementation and is prepared to take over and fix the damage done by legislators and SED, because as you know: he has no control over education policy.
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Putting schools in receivership for “insufficient test capital” instead of for real monetary debt sounds like grounds for impeachment or recall if I ever heard any.
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That would indicate that Cuomo and Elia put the financial interests of the testing companies ahead of the educational interests of the students and community. I want them to go there, I really do, as that would be an EPIC FAIL of epic proportions.
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Schools with low test scores are put into receivership.
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Why is the plan always fix it yourself or fold. Why can’t resources be used to help schools improve? Always the nuclear option, blow it up and start again. Guess it creates more charters with nuclear option than with providing assistance.
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Blowing up things is the manly-man thing to do.
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Blowing thing up is the profitable thing to do.
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Disaster capitalism at its finest!
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Good plan, make more of the poor students take the test and let better ones opt out to bloat the data toward the “public school is a failure agenda”.
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On what legal basis?
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Cuomo wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on. The legal backlash from Long Island alone will be enough to call his empty bluff.
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From Wikipedia, with just a few changes:
School reform (circa 2012) is a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with school decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by unleashing compensatory cults of data, rigor, and righteousness, in which a corporate-based party of committed national extremists, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with the super-affluent, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive force and without ethical or legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing (teacher evaluations; receivership) and external expansion (charter schools).
The original, from Wikipedia:
“Robert Paxson says that fascism is “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
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perfect
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Are you saying Cuomo is Schoolsolini?
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Cuomussolini
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TAGO!!!!!
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a l specifically designed to blackmail and intimidate and another ploy to take over democratic public schools and give them to autocratic corporations.
Proof that no school is safe from the greed is good and greed is god mob.
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Is this article saying that “the new Cuomo law will place” *all* “schools into receivership if they don’t reach a 95% participation rate in testing”?
Or is it saying that the law will place the *144 “struggling/persistently struggling” schools in receivership* if they don’t reach a 95% participation rate?
I read the article as saying the latter. If it’s saying that every single school that doesn’t have 95% participation will be placed in receivership, it’s not saying it very clearly at all.
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My school is a persistently struggling school. The way the State Ed Department explained it to us, the 95% participation rate only applies to the “struggling schools.” Which is masterful because there is much less uproar about testing in very poor communities (because they are worrying about food and stuff). so this rule is likely to fly under the radar of the opt out community.
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You are so right Susan. People living in Urban school Districts with high minority populations and rampant poverty often don’t have the wherewithal to realize they are being “abused”.
Suburban parents don’t have any qualms about raising a stink over real or even perceived slights. There is no way they will accept the concept that their child or their neighborhood school (with its high property values) are subpar.
Speaking of property values, if these go down in affluent neighborhoods because of Cuomo’s or Evilia’s policies – WATCH OUT.
At this point, I’m assuming Cuomo is tired of being Governor.
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Typical. Blame the school for something outside of its control.
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That’s the very definition of VAM: “To blame a person or organization and hold them accountable for something that is beyond their control”
VAM is the only thing these people know how to do. It’s their full repertoire of responses. It’s how they “solve” problems.
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This seems like a set up for a lawsuit.
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And Cuomo and Elia will lose–they’ll get slapped down big-time.
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“While we seek to not impose any fiscal consequences on schools that fail to meet participation requirements, there are school accountability consequences when insufficient percentages of students are participating in state assessments,” the state education department wrote in response to a question from POLITICO New York.”
Accountability for kids and schools, but none for the architects of this. Business as usual.
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Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
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Let’s see… Parents exercise a federal right but schools and districts are punished for them doing so. It’s classic school reform.
And these mob-like tactics reveal the truth about reform: It’s about power – not reform.
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YES!!!!!
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Is this a joke? How on Earth can a school district be responsible for parent decisions?
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How on earth can a teacher be responsible for their students’ decisions?
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Here here!
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There’s a precedent from the NCLB years.
A school was labeled a School in Need of Improvement if 95% of any individual student population did not take the assessment. So when a neighboring suburban high school did not meet the 95% mark for the Special Education students (even though the overall total was over 95%), they were given the above designation.
CC is simply jumping on the bandwagon of absurd determinations.
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Policy so dumb and malicious it punches itself in the face. No need to transport Christie through a tunnel.
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This is the team of Elia and Cuomo working together? To be the most despised and blatant puppets for the 1%? Bring the Pope back to reassess their commitment to humanity.
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In the case of Cuomo, I’m not sure whether an excommunication or an exorcism is needed, but I’m pretty sure it starts with “ex” and that the Pope is eminently qualified to perform it.
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How about both?
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So lets get this straight. If a small rural district like the one my kids attended, has 30 students opt out (5 per grade level), out of 540 possible test takers, then our entire elementary (K to 5) and middle school (6 to 8) population (800+) and teachers/administrators will be put into receivership. And then the new powers that be will force those 30 kids (and their parents) to take the Common Core tests by exactly which legal means.
Do these people even bother to think before they speak?
Are they trying to enrage every parent in NYS on purpose?
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As I noted above, it’s not at all clear to me that this story has anything to do with schools other than the struggling/persistently struggling schools.
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FLERP, if you read the story, the schools that don’t reach a 95% participation rate will be taken over and put into receivership. Most such schools will be in the suburbs and upstate, where opt out rates are highest. The lowest opt out rates occurred in big cities, especially NYC, where the struggling/persistently struggling schools are located.
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If you read my comment above, you’ll see that I read the story, and that I tried it explain how it is not clear that the reporter was talking about schools other than the 144 struggling/persistently struggling schools.
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FLERP, I re-read the story and I can see your point. I think state officials must clarify if they referred only to the “struggling/persistently struggling schools” or to all schools where participation in testing falls below 95%. I made some changes in the post to reflect the ambiguity.
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Thank you!
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My kids go to a school that is affected by this rule. As it stands now, it only applies to schools that are entering the receivership process – at this point, 144 schools across the state. Some of these schools do not have grades 3-8, so I suppose they are not affected by the rule.
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FLERP!:
Good catch!
😎
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Flerp, I see that reading too. Which is, in a way, WORSE. They are telling schools that are largely in high poverty areas and in receivership that they have no chance of getting out if the parents “get out of line”. Meanwhile, suburban parents are untouchable.
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Start talking up homeschooling during the testing window for when it comes down to that “forcing” students to take the test.
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In the small city school I teach in we have been cited by NYSED with SINI (under NCLB) and now FOCUS (RTTT) labels since the very beginning. We have sub-groups with very small sample sizes which makes it difficult. Just a handful of student in a particular sub-group can keep a school on the NYSED bad-school list. After tremendous efforts on the part of administration and teachers, after jumping through every BS hoop that SED threw our way, after managing to finally get through every moving goalpost, after 14 years of relentless harassment by state ed, we thought we finally made it! WE checked off every stupid box they had . . . except for one. Failure to reach 95% test taking participation is now the only reason we have to continue jumping over their ever-changing hurdles as we must maintain our *bad-school status. I’m sure there are many schools in our position, and it’s time for a class action suit.
Here is a test item for the folks at NYSED:
Schools that fail to meet AYP
and/or 95% testing participation
rates are branded
with a *F__CUS status.
The answer bank for the missing letter: A E I O U
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I was under the impression that if the sample size is very small, the statistics can’t even be reported. Where are the psychometricians? This is so awful it makes my blood boil. I hope you are serious about a class action suit.
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I believe the minimum sub-group size is 30 students. Bear in mind, the AYP requirement under NCLB involved showing improvement with a new sub-group, over the previous year’s sub-group. NCLB listed ten different sub-groups, and failure to show AYP in any one group resulted in SINI status. Under RTTT there are “priority” schools and “focus” districts, all based on contrived sub-group scores improvements.
When a representative from NYSED visited my school in the early years of NCLB I commented that sub-group sample sizes were too small to draw any conclusions. Her response was, “Tough”.
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‘ When a representative from NYSED visited my school in the early years of NCLB I commented that sub-group sample sizes were too small to draw any conclusions. Her response was, “Tough”.’
Was it tempting to get in her face and show her what “tough” is?
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Yeah, and those kiddos will probably just bubble whatever answer in they want. What a great use of time.
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Most of the “poor” performing schools had low opt out rates to begin with. The opt out movement is primarily a phenomenon happening in “better” school districts. Putting already struggling schools into receivership due to opting out is not going to be a big deal. The big deal is that the opt out movement is going to grow massively in the next school year in the better off districts.
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It is a HUGE deal. Our persistently struggling school had 20% opt outs last year. Even if we meet every other goal set during the grueling process we are currently going through, we cannot get off the receivership list if we do not meet 95% test participation. At least that is the way it was explained to us at a recent meeting. Everyone, even State Ed, seems very confused by what this rule means.
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Further intimidating “struggling” schools, and the parents of students in these “struggling” schools, into forcing their children to submit to these atrocious tests, along with the incessant test prep, is Dickensian.
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And at the same time asking: for public input for Cuomo’s kinder gentler common core standards revision/reform commission. Unbelievably transparent.
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They can’t make good on this threat. Politicians should never threaten the public if they can’t follow up. These two can’t make good on their threats.
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The right to Opt Out is a Civil Right. Encroachment on this right is alarming.
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Absolutely…..the conspiracy theorists out there saying we are living in a de facto oligarchy rather than a democracy are gaining ground!
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This corruption must end… At least 70% statewide must refuse the tests… I also fear for the future of my children.. As an educator, I think the only option left is striking… It’s time to bring some common sense back to public education in ny… The inappropriate standards need to be revised, high stakes testing needs to end and public education needs to be funded properly
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A wildcat strike is our only chance. And unfortunately, that will never happen.
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Where is the news coverage on this?
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There is none which is why striking is the only way to shed light on this corrupt state
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Yes I agree that we need to “strike” in some manner. If we will unite as one voice we could “strike” by refusing to administer the test as was done in some of the schools in Washington. But we can also “strike” at the 1% by boycotting the businesses that give them their millions. How about starting a boycott of Walmart. Can you imagine what that might do if millions of New Yorkers stop shopping at Walmart. That’s if you have Walmart in New York. But we need to hit them where it hurts them the most their wallet.
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I already boycott Walmart.
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Is there a way for N.Y. taxpayers to recover education spending for charter schools, if students/teachers participate in Eva’s rally, on Sept. 30?
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Ms. Ravitch, I hate to say it but you can feel the angst through the screen on the refusal movement – this is really scaring many parents, even those in “great” school districts. I do hope that these threats don’t work and make more parents drop out of the refusals this 2015/2016 year.
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I almost hate to put this in writing. My small rural district had one of the highest refusal rates in the county this past year. I worked very hard to help make that happen. Unfortunately, I am not getting the same enthusiasm, effort, interest, or cooperation this year. There seems to be a lot more confusion, fear, and uncertainty from parents and teachers alike, despite our efforts to quell any misgivings about refusing.
Those of us in the know, know. We still have our work cut out for us.
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What would a civil rights firm do with this?
Even a Out Sick is not an option for children of the working poor due to lack of childcare.
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Ms. Ravitch, our Super and a contributor on your blog – his reply to me regarding the receivership baloney: “Do you really think that the state has the capacity to manage all of these schools? They cannot even manage the revised evaluation plan. That’s their immediate problem. Their other problem is the potential increase in opt outs. The new commissioner has cited addressing this as a priority. First, she needs to better understand why there are opt outs and that it is not just about teacher unions. It is so much more complex.
Those schools in receivership are in the most impoverished communities in the state. The state will have its hands full addressing their needs. If a district, such as X & X, goes into receivership because of scores affected by opt-outs, the state’s credibility, and the governor’s, will sink to even lower depths.
Also, expect more appeals, lawsuits, and procedural entanglements because of the poorly designed evaluation systems.
This ‘new’ Common Core commission will roll out some broad recommendations and will perhaps make changes to language in the standards and topics; however, if they did it right, there would a very strong research-based review with experts – not generalists – but researchers who have studied the standards movement and the relationship between learning standards (not high expectations) that drive curriculum and student outcomes; experts on early childhood and adolescent cognitive and emotional development; experts on learning environments with a look at the science of addressing needs of students with cognitive disabilities and children learning a new language. Finally, there can be no real understanding of the Common Core unless there is a frank discussion of how a punitive testing system is corrupting learning environments across the state.
The work of the American Educational Research Association, The American Statistical Society, and other research organizations should be carefully studied. These are apolitical organizations in search of truth and accuracy of effective teaching and learning, not about ways to find efficiencies and garner public approval for pseudo-accountability measures.
Don’t get me started. 🙂
Hope this helps.
And from “stopcommoncorenys: Efforts to help parents see through the threats……….
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As Flo56 noted above, “Schools with low test scores are put into receivership.”
So how hard is this to figure out, targeted schools? Heads (take the tests) you lose, tails (opt out) you lose.
NY Teacher provides heartbreaking detail on the many different ways in which targeted schools are mandated to try to erase the target bit by bit over 14 years of hoop-jumping. But it all boils down to taking the tests– PI’s, sub-groups compared for gaps, bla bla. The all-important AMO’s are just same-old NCLB Shangri-La Year (100% proficiency measured by test scores) divided by how many yrs state thinks it should take you to get there.
If targeted schools were to opt out in force, they would at least show a voting bloc that sees through the government’s outrageous attempt to deny funds to their neediest schools.
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