The parent leaders of New York state’s powerful Opt Out movement are taking the next step in their campaign to protect their children and their schools: they are supporting challengers to their own state legislators.
The stronghold of the Opt Out movement is Long Island, the counties of Nassau and Suffolk, where about 50% of all children in grades 3-8 refused to take the state tests. As it happens, Long Island is represented by Republicans who strongly support charter schools (but not in their own districts!), high-stakes testing, Common Core, and test-based teacher evaluations.
The parents have had enough!
Test refusal forces have taken an interest in the race for the state’s 5th Senate District, and they’re using the organizing tools that have been effective in driving New York’s test opt-out movement to try to oust longtime incumbent Republican Sen. Carl Marcellino.
“We’re using all of our skills that we’ve learned over the last four years and we’re applying that to helping candidates who are going to advocate for us,” Jeanette Deutermann, administrator of Long Island Opt Out and co-founder of New York State Allies for Public Education, told POLITICO New York.
With the help of NYSAPE, an anti-Common Core coalition of parent groups from across the state, last spring more than 21 percent of the state’s approximately 1.1 million eligible third- through eighth-grade students refused to take the state standardized, Common Core-aligned math and English language arts exams.
The 5th Senate District, which includes portions of Nassau and Suffolk County, falls in the heart of the test refusal movement.
About 55 percent of public school students in Suffolk County opted out of exams in spring 2016, making the state’s eastern most corner a test refusal hot spot. About 43 percent of students opted out in Nassau County during that period.
Marcellino, who first won his seat in 1995, is the current head of the Senate Education Committee. His opponent, Democrat Jim Gaughran, has turned that position against Marcellino, running a campaign largely focused on education, setting it apart from most other races in the state.
Gaughran, the Suffolk County Water Authority chairman, has hosted listening tours on community education concerns throughout the district. Gaughran is announcing the end of his tour Wednesday, which included 25 events, at least one in each of the 17 public school districts in the Senate district, according to a news release provided to POLITICO New York.
Parents have no money to give, but they are supporting Gaughran with door-to-door campaigning and a social media campaign. They understand now after four years of organizing that they must fight for better leadership in Albany, where decisions affecting their children and their schools are made with no parent input, no evidence, no expertise, no knowledge. Petitions and rallies can be easily ignored. Real change requires better representation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Not entirely off-topic, just a heads up.
I receive POLITICO Morning Education updates. Everyone should know that this website is now a major outlet for content from the infamous Campbell Brown’s operation “The 74.”
Here is a recent example of the advertorial content.
On Oct 31, 2016, at 10:02 AM, Morning Education morningeducation@politico.com wrote:
** Presented by The 74: The gloves have come off in the escalating fight between Massachusetts’s teachers unions and public charter school advocates over raising the state’s charter schools cap. Richard Whitmire writes today about a nasty turn in the scuffle, with union officials beginning to target the 30,000 parents on charter waitlists in and around Boston. Read the full story here and sign up for The 74 newsletter to get the best education news and commentary delivered to your email inbox. **
I have registered a compaint about The 74 advertising. The 74 ads are placed at the beginning of the news, and at the end of the post, creating the impression that The 74 is the source of the content on POLITCO
Of course, there was no reply. They are just doing business.
But forget any idea that POLITICO will be a trustworthy source of information in every case. This is a version of the capture of EdWeek content by bloated foundations who pay for coverage of their preferred topics, and special reports.
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The charter waitlist numbers are questionable:
http://news.wgbh.org/2016/10/31/local-news/charter-school-wait-lists-may-not-be-what-they-seem
They must know this. It’s been reported for a year or more.
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Laura, that upset me too
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This is very similar to an election in Delaware. Our 8th District Senator, David Sokola, is the Chair of our Senate Education Committee. We want him out (those of us who care about public education). Our state education union did not endorse him, but they didn’t endorse his opponent either. Apparently she didn’t pass the Right To Work test even though she really doesn’t know enough about it either way. But our state education union, in collaboration with other big unions in the state, paid for a political ad for Sokola with PAC funds. I posted this on Sunday night and it has turned what should be ousting a very bad education policy Senator into a huge thing on Right To Work. That is what the 2016 election season has become in many races: strange alliances and ideals that aren’t good for the long-term best interests of kids.
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And then this from yesterday… https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/sokola-ebola-vs-right-to-work-which-is-the-bigger-danger-to-education/
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Eventually ed reformers will have to improve public schools, since that’s what ed reform politicians run on.
They don’t actually run on replacing public schools, which is a bit of a problem because that’s all they work on.
People are probably starting to notice after 15 years.
I don’t think it’s all that complicated. If they run on improving public schools people will be upset if they instead switch to replacing public schools. That isn’t what they promised.
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I think, they run on powerful words. Their best is choice. In people’s minds, it automatically gets combined with other powerful words, and they are ready to fight for their rights.
I want to have my freedom of choice: I want to preserve my rights to choose a doctor. Look at Canada or Germany: their choice in doctors has been taken away, and look how long they have to wait for a liver transplant!
This is a free country, and, as a citizen of a free country, I want to be able to choose the best education for my children. As it is, I don’t have a choice in schools. As a mother of 4, all I can do is take my children to my neighborhood public school. That’s not a choice, is it?! How come the government took away my right to choose a school for my children?
I really start feeling like I live in a communist country like Russia or Canada.
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Local communities need to organize to do exactly what Opt Out New York is doing. They need grassroots campaigns to shift the power structure to favor those that support public schools. Only then can public school students get fair representation in state legislatures.
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Amen!
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If the Opt Out organization in Long Island gets rid of Common Core, corporate charter education supporting elected reps, hopefully, the rest of the country will wake up and learn from them. This is probably the only way, other than a bloody civil war, to defeat the billionaire oligarchs and stop their agenda to destroy the U.S. republic and its participatory democracy.
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