Despite a major effort by state and federal officials to threaten or cajole parents to let their children take the tests, despite a media campaign by corporate reformers to persuade parents that testing is good, the New York opt out movement is back again. A Twitter site created by reformers (@optoutsowhite) mocked the opt out as being the white suburban moms that Arne Duncan ridiculed. A parent (@africaisacountry) responded with #optoutmademewhite.
Carol Burris reports here on the first returns.
The effort to stop opt out failed, she writes.
“The campaign had little, if any, effect. In some schools, only a handful of students took the test. Eighty-seven percent of the students in Allendale Elementary School outside of Buffalo, New York opted out. Eighty-six percent of test eligible students in the Long Island district of Comsewogue refused the test, and 89 percent of students in Dolgeville in the Mohawk Valley said “no.”
“Long Island continues to be the hotbed of testing resistance. Newsday reported that 49.7 percent of all Long Island students refused the test Tuesday even though the Newsday editorial board has repeatedly urged parents to have their children take it. Patchogue-Medford Superintendent Michael J. Hynes characterized Opt Out as “a thunderclap” sent to Albany. Seventy-one percent of the students in his district refused the Common Core tests.
“There is also evidence that the Opt Out movement is gaining ground with parents of color, with many no longer willing to buy the spin that taking Common Core tests will improve their children’s life chances.
“Ninety-seven percent of the more than 1,000 students who attend Westbury Middle School in Nassau County are black or Latino, and 81 percent are economically disadvantaged. On Tuesday, 50 percent of those students were opted out of the tests by their parents. Last year, the number was 2 percent.
“Last week, Westbury parents filled a forum sponsored by Long Island Opt Out in order to learn how to refuse the test. When a district official tried to convince those in attendance that testing helps improve educational opportunities for minority students, one mother pushed back. “Don’t you dare tell parents that these tests will help them… these tests tear our kids down. They don’t lead to success.”
Jamaal Bowman is the principal of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a highly regarded middle school in the Bronx. Ninety nine percent of his students are black or Latino and 84 percent are economically disadvantaged. Last year, only 5 of his students refused the test. On Tuesday, 25 percent opted out.”
Looking good. An incredible snapshot of a possible huge surge in Opt Outs. If these increased Opt Out numbers hold and spread across the country, this could mean the edu war has reached the point-of-no-return for the corporate education movement based on greed to profit off of our children and public dollars at the expense our children’s education and the destruction of millions of jobs in the pubic schools and the teaching profession.
The losers will be the high tech industry, billionaire oligarchs and corporate profits—the 1%.
The winners will be our children, parents and teachers—the 99%.
Here are the top five opt out numbers for Rockland County so far.http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2016/04/05/common-core-top-5-districts-opt-out/82659878/
In my district upstate, fewer students opted out at the 3rd grade level than last year: this year a whopping 19 out of a class of about 300 refused (last year it was 25). Middle school refusals (all of grades 6-8) increased from 134 to 161 out of about 900 students total. What ignorant comments from school administrators in today’s newspaper coverage (“no consequences” to anyone for taking the tests? Ha! How about the consequence of affirming a horrible curriculum and months of graded test prep?): http://poststar.com/news/local/students-opt-out-of-common-core-state-tests/article_553147ac-5cc9-5fb1-872a-64082e14cd78.html
On the other side, I am worried when I attend meetings and hear non-teachers say “there will be no consequence for opting out” and I think back on the abuses levied inside our low-income schools whenever ANYTHING negative happened. It is not only the students but the teachers and staff who pay the long-term price for NOT opting out…and, then,frighteningly, they pay a different price for those who ARE opting out.
Aren’t those leading the education “reform” movement (with the the exception of Michelle Rhee) all white?
Not at all.
The edudeformers and privateers know that skin color doesn’t matter when large amounts of pieces of silver is involved. And they know it’s to their “advantage” to have non-Caucasian faces on the folks who accept that money and do their bidding.
No, there are plenty non-white. John King, Shavar Jeffries and Steve Perry come to mind immediately. Oh, not to mention the king of reform policies, President Obama. — You don’t just mean the funders do you?
Torches and pitchforks. Remind these politicians they work for the people, not money.
Talk about torches and pitchforks. It seems the NJBoE is about to make opting out impossible. PARCC is going to become a graduation requirement.
http://www.nj.com/education/2016/04/nj_likely_to_make_parcc_a_graduation_requirement.html#incart_river_home
is it 1 out of 7 or 6 states still pushing this agenda? NJ must be in really financially deep to keep jamming this down our throats….there will be backlash – parents will sue – and NJ will have to retroactively issue diplomas – isn’t that happening somewhere else?
California retroactively issued HS diplomas
Why should the parents of New York be out of step with what’s happening all across the nation?
Of course, this opt-out resistance is about education. But it’s also about what’s boiling folks from coast-to-coast … this never-ending, ever-intrusive, arrogant, and ruinous involvement of government to be front and center in the lives of every man, woman, and child.
This test-refusal effort is a scream at the federal and state governments to back off … retreat … and leave folks alone to craft the sort of society that will be … not the society envisioned by a few.
Parents want their schools back … among other things. This current effort … withholding kids from academic assessments … is way more complex than just a pile of lousy exams spawned by a wretched educational reform. That’s the surface stuff. The roots are much deeper. Only the daring will squint hard to see the links that are so obvious.
This society is set to explode … one way or another.
These tests are serious stuff for parents … and more serious stuff for children. This resistance has fired up lots of pretty ordinary folks into becoming very active managers of their own lives … and it will carry over into other issues soon enough. This election season is already the most bizarre of my long life … and it looks to get even more memorable in the months ahead.
Why? Because government … and a slender class of autocratic fops … has made it their business to be in everyone else’s business. We have these self-appointed wind-bags who have this neurotic, messiah complex that results in chaos for everything they touch.
They’ve ruined healthcare, border and homeland security, law enforcement, illegal immigration, the economy, education, and just about everything else they’ve knocked up against. Why are folks so surprised that people are fit to be tied?
The new Know-It-All class … the self-anointed oligarchs … have imposed their norms and values and programs and reforms with absolute ease over the last several years … but the breaking point is here. The signs are all about … just look at the sort of political figures who have captured the attention of the people. They’re not oligarchic types at all .. in fact, they’re the antidotes to the giant itch that troubles this nation.
The really amazing thing about this reform/test counter-action is the resistance to the resistance. The educational oligarchs … just like the social and political absolutists … will not admit what is underfoot. They will not concede that the agitation is THEIR fault … caused by THEIR ineptitude and THEIR arrogance. That is a sure-fire fuse that will easily flame up. Nothing pisses off good people more than being played for dummies.
And the people are plenty pissed off.
This moment … in education … is an early prelude to what’s in store for this political season. I’m certaint these parents … who stood tall for their children and their neighborhood schools … won’t vanish for a long while. They’re just warming up.
The oligarchs have blown it … big time. And it all began with the biggest dummy of all … Arne Duncan … that mother-bashing fop who lit that fuse.
This Duncan quote about suburban moms might be the most memorable educational gaffe of recent decades: ” … “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
Duncan is still in search of the world’s largest vacuum … but those words have stuck in the craw of every parent from Long Island to Los Angeles. And now those moms … and dads … are the first in battle against the snob class. And they’re winning.
Denis Ian
Common Core testing in NYS has officially jumped the shark. It is less than pointless. and has become a total embarrassment. Opting out is going viral for reasons far removed from the original objections (Bad tests. Hyper-failure rates. Test prep focus. Narrowed curricula. EngageNY. Etc.) to the Common Core tests. The moratorium has completely backfired. The administrators “tool kit” and all the veiled threats that went with it are just another FAIL. None of this has fooled the high information parents. And now the low information parents are hopping on the bandwagon. This is getting very ugly down in the trenches and is becoming more and more senseless with each and every day of “testing”. Its time for every administrator in NYS to take a long hard look in the mirror and answer this simple question: Which side of history do you want to find yourself on?
Teachers who have SLOs based on NYS Regents exams will still have students’ scores on those exams tied to their evaluations.
I’m not sure how any opt outs will decide to opt back in. You can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube.