Jeannette Deutermann is the parent who founded Long Island Opt Out, and whose tireless activism inspired parents and education activists across the state. In this powerful video, she explains why she did it.
She saw that the tests were destroying her children’s spirit and love of learning. The more she learned about the uselessness of the state tests, the more determined she became to protect her children.
Jeannette is a gifted and passionate organizer. She joined with dozens of independent parent and educator groups across the state, which created a coordinating organization called NYSAPE (New York State Allies for Public Education).Through their efforts, 20% of the students in grades 3-8 have refused the tests for three straight years. They objected not only to the tests but to the developmentally inappropriate, highly standardized, lockstep Common Core.
In response to the Opt Out Movement, the state shortened the exams, which had stretched over two weeks for many hours and promised to revise the Common Core. State testing begins April 10-11, and the Opt Out Movement will once again reach out to parents across the state.
Opt out rates in the state have been highest on Long Island and upstate in rural communities. The Education Department in New York City has discouraged opting out and warned schools that low participation rates will harm their school.
Jeannette is a brilliant grassroots leader who is fighting not only for her kids but for all children in the state.
The test scores serve an insidious purpose: they are used to label and stigmatize students, teachers, and schools. They are essential to the privatization movement, which uses low scores as a pretext—not to help schools—but to close them and replace them with privately managed charter schools.
Please watch the video, tweet it, and share it on social media. Join the Movement to restore the joy of learning!
The video was filmed in Brooklyn and produced by professional videographer Michael Elliott with the assistance of Kemala Karmen. It was sponsored by the Network for Public Education.
https://www.facebook.com/carol.c.burris
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teachers are more than able to assess their students’ progress, making the testing spree, forced on the schools, superfluous. Students take the tests because they have to take it. They are bored, and sometimes barely there, just going through the motions but they are governed by rules which make taking the tests, at least it seems to them, mandatory.
These tests throw the schools out of alignment with primary goals and introduce a frenetic element into the school’s activity which enervates teachers lowering their vital energy, which they need to invest in their main purpose; achieving their learning goals with their students.
There is something else these tests do. Logic dictates they have to pass a certain percentage of people or face national ire. If we factor in the effort teachers have to make to prepare students to pass, then the results are a lie for they represent more teacher effort than should be, and the tests have to be made to allow a certain percentage to pass.
A sizable number of students will be told they are doing okay when their true performance is below what it should be. This is why Koretz speaks of ‘The Testing Charede.’
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If “This is why Koretz speaks of ‘The Testing Charade” then his opposition is weak and weaselly. Koretz’s defense of standardized testing is ludicrous and risible as he has been shown many times all the inherent onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychological fudgings involved in the standards and standardized testing regime.
NO, there cannot be any “better” standardized testing due to those myriad errors and falsehoods as shown by Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted 1997 dissertation, arguably THE most important piece of educational writing in the last 50 years: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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Thanks for your work Jeannette!!
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“Tyranny of Testing” – is it time to start building barricades? The video is emotional, but lacks information. The insidious purpose of the tests is not clearly spelled out. There are many things where kids or even adults cry and vomit.
The long high-stake tests are pointless, because the results come half a year away. They provide no useful information about what kind of intervention should be done if any to correct the problem. They give only one number in return. There is no way to obtain the exact questions asked, the answers given and the answer key. These tests do not help students and they do not help their teachers. Instead, they serve as a source for data collection companies, this is pure gold. And they serve as a reason for carroting/sticking teachers and for closing schools. These are some of the evils of these tests in a nutshell, not because some hyper-emotional kid throws a tantrum.
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Gruff,
If you don’t like Jeannette’s video, make your own. She has organized hundreds of thousands of parents to opt out, what have you done other than writing anonymous letters?
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You are right. If the goal is to enrage the public and get them onto barricades, then stirring up their emotions works best. Revolution 101.
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