When the Cuomo task force announced that there would be a revision of the Common Core, a review of testing, and no consequences for teachers as a result of test scores for as much as four years, many parents breathed a sigh of relief.
But it is too soon to throw away your pitchforks. The state has already announced the testing schedule for 2015-2016, and the testing will go online.
Some people think that the task force report was intended to deflate the opt out movement. Others think it is a great step or a small step forward, away from the punitive testing culture of the past five years.
Watch and wait. And be prepared to return to the barricades if promises are broken.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Seems to me as if the moratorium is an attempt to “perfect” the evaluation system with as little disruption as possible.
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TRUE. Follow the $$$$$. It’s disgusting.
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I don’t trust Andy Cuomo as far as I can throw him. And he never seems to let teachers get close enough to throw him anywhere.
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Once again, politicians planning curriculum they do not know anything about…do anyone of them know anything about developmental appropriate educational practices? That testing is a sliver of time, and that Engage NY is a “gotcha” curriculum that has big gaps and unaligned vocabulary. In essence, it does not follow the real common core standards. I hope the task force wakes up and sees the forest through the trees. Mr Cuomo stop destroying the education of our youth. We see your vengeance on education and educators!
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Even our large suburban district is in no way prepared, technologically for this. For example, we have over 1200 8th graders in my school with around 400 student computers available. Even if you put a student at each teacher’s computer station you would still need 700 more.
I cannot wait to see how this all plays out…
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So as things stand now, your school administers the paper and pencil test to all 1200 8th graders at exactly the same time, with no staggering? How does that work?
I am not thrilled with idea of 3rd graders having to type in ELA responses, but we only had to look to the elite private schools to see this coming: Sidwell, the Lab School, Lakeside, etc administer their annual standardized tests on tablets, desktops, and laptops.
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rockhound 2, don’t forget that Cuomo won voter approval of a $2 billion bond for technology. This will ease the transition to learning and testing online.
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Tim, that is exactly what happens. We area grade 8 and 9 junior high. Every 8th grade teacher in every discipline has a classroom full of around 30 students. They all take the exams simultaneously. Kids with extended time are placed in rooms with others like themselves.
My 9th grade schedule is disrupted to accommodate the testing schedule. We have a 20 minute first block, then a 2.5 to 3.0 hour second block, then school resumes with our last two regularly scheduled blocks. Over the course of the April testing (6 testing days for Math and ELA) I lose 6 instructional days for my first block class. Not a lot you can do in 20 minutes when the first ten are the Pledge and announcements. Guess how well those students do on the Regents exam in June, the exam I’m graded on?
We’ve been doing this for the entire time of NCLB. It won’t change in the future, even if every student gets their own computer or tablet to use.
Diane, that’s what they tell us. Our district is also promising Wi-Fi in our school, but that also remains to be seen.
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In good old Florida we had glitches, malfunctions, cyber attacks, outages, and general mayhem yet our Tea Party political hack education commissioner Pam Stewart insists that the scores be used to evaluate teachers and schools though VAM. Students will be held harmless.
The legislature pretended to throw a bone to opt-outers and passed a law that required the state DOE to ‘prove’ the new tests were valid and reliable. They hired another for-profit testing company which, of course, insisted that the tests were valid it was just that all the mistakes and foul-ups indicated that the scores should not be used for high-stakes decisions like VAM or graduation or school grades.
The state DOE and Commissioner Stewart ignored that part and said, “See! The tests ARE valid! nanny nanny po po!” and proceeded to calculate VAM scores with them so that teachers can be fired and privatization happen much sooner than anticipated.
Beware! Cuomo is following a reformer scam ‘evaluation’ model that was used here in Florida. These people have lots and lots and money and little to no scruples or morals and they will create whatever diversionary grift they can to maintain momentum.
There is no winning without politics and social annihilation here folks. Those are the rules our opponents have set. They are working on eliminating public schools. teacher unions, teacher-preparation programs, graduate schools of education, and all semblance of professional teachers from the public sphere.
The sooner everyone acknowledges that the sooner we can make plans to fight back effectively.
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This was the real reason Andy pushed the technology BS. It had nothing to do with helping children learn. I remember telling everyone I could to vote no on that proposition. I knew it was for testing, not for kids.
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