New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 parent and educator groups, issued a statement denouncing New York state’s plan to punish schools where participation in testing drops below 95%.
The state ESSA plan says that such schools may be humiliated with low rankings, lose their Title 1 funding, be closed, or turned into charter schools.
This is clearly a harsh, unreasonable, almost fanatical effort to punish opt outs. Since the opt movement is strongest on Long Island, where some of the state’s best schools are located, the state is threatening to punish its best schools, principals, and teachers because of the decisions made by parents.
My view: the New York State Education Department is acting like a bully. Whoever made this decision should back off and remember that they are public servants, not masters. This is a democracy, not a tyranny. This behavior on the part of state officials is outrageous. There is nothing holy or sacrosanct about the state tests. Reasonable people can differ about their value. Parents have the right to withhold their children from state testing if they so choose. Almost 100 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children do not belong to the state. (Pierce v. Society of Sisters [1925]). This ruling overturned an Oregon law that required all children to attend public schools.
The NYSAPE statement begins:
“This afternoon, Class Size Matters and NYS Allies for Public Education sent the below letter to Commissioner Elia and the NYS Board of Regents, expressing our strong objections to the draft ESSA regulations that were released last month.
“These regulations violate assurances that were given parents that NYSED would continue to respect their rights to opt their children out of the state exams. Instead the regs would allow the Commissioner to wrongly identify their children’s schools in need of “Comprehensive Support,” withhold Title One funds and even close these schools or turn them into charters if the opt out rates were judged too high. NYSUT, the state teachers union, sent a similar letter of protest on May 29.
“The Regents will be discussing these regs at their meeting on Monday, June 11. Feel free to contact Elia at Commissioner@nysed.gov or your Regents member to make your voices heard. You can also submit comments through July 9 to ESSAREGCOMMENT@nysed.gov”
Please read the full statement here.
https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2018/06/class-size-matters-nysape-protest.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is part of the flawed by logical progression as the autocracy, carried away by their alleged sense of success, flexes its collective muscles.
LikeLike
To whom it may concern:
I am an immigrant. I and many other immigrants preferred to risk our lives (to die in ocean or to leave our countries for an unknown and dangerous journey) more than to live under dictatorial leadership.
All corrupted corporate rob people’s manual labor under the name of creating jobs. Employers/corporate buy their power through their wealth and through a control of all druggy/lusty officials so that they can silently manipulate legal system and educational system in order to bully WORKING people.
I do not DESIRE to go to Ivy League universities NOR to work for all corporate. Please DO NOT destroy Public Education.
WORKING people WHO give birth to surgeons, commanders, nurses and teachers, are willing to fight for our younger generations for their freedom, their free spirit and their dignity.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT WORKING PEOPLE WORK WITH CORPORATE for our mutual survival. Without us, you will be harmed by foreigners mercilessly.
Working people work with you, NOT WORK FOR YOU. We mutually respect each other within a relationship that represents our dignity, our free spirit, and our freedom.
Corporate is not MASTER, and does not OWN the work force!!! Historically, yin-yang has shown the sine wave form of peak and fall of all dynasties and rural farmers through all bloody rebellions and wars (Civil and Wold War). Back2basic
LikeLike
That is why we need strong unions so that those that work with their hands do not get exploited by the people in the suits. There is power in numbers and management knows this. That is why they oppose unions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re not finding it in NYSUT. Give that one up . . .
LikeLike
The surface problem is the ESSA plan.
The ESSA plan is drastic measures problematic because students are opting out.
Students are opting out because of 1) excessive testing and 2) no final resolution to back off the evaluation/test score pairing.
Excessive testing is is driven by faulty logic that hours and hours of testing will provide information to improve learning.
(SOME testing is necessary to get a picture of how schools are doing but that does not require dozens of hours – schools measure kids all year long)
There is enough research on vam and faulty pairing test scores and evaluation to finally declare that is history. Beef up evaluations other ways if necessary. The drawn out decision on ending using scores bought time to prove the point. It’s proven.
Fight the ESSA provisions but they are not they problem – the testing regimen and evaluation link are the problems. The shared goal of assessing schools objectively and evaluating teachers fairly and objectively can be achieved without excessive testing.
LikeLike
The testing is also about accumulating data that they then sell.
LikeLiked by 1 person
and what society may not quite grasp is that this fact may be the true master: collecting, manipulating, organizing and selling data has grown into such an overwhelmingly massive business, connected to so much money, that choosing to avoid it — to shake off its yoke, as it were — appears to be not only less and less possible, but less and less probable.
LikeLike
I’m not as anti-testing as some here, but I think it’s great that anti-testers forced ed reform to engage in a real debate.
A lot came out of it! Ohio government officials had to hold hearings all across the state to get local input into what was going on with testing in actual schools.
The one and only reason that happened, after 20 years of lock-step pro-testing. was the anti-testing uprising.
It would have gone on forever. There was every incentive to test them more and more- it’s a whole industry with a whole cadre of experts and ed reform want a privatized system so they need a “measure” or they’re just closing and opening schools arbitrarily.
I’ll never forget hearing Arne Duncan on the radio selling VAM. He presented it like it was as proofed and certain as gravity. Just incredibly misleading.
LikeLike
Arne is a bone head.
LikeLiked by 1 person
and so adept today at pretending that his words of the past do not exist
LikeLike
Parents should picket in Albany and NYC, and call the media to draw attention to these Gestapo tactics from the Cuomo administration.
LikeLike
Depressing. How does one defy an unjust law if 100% participation in the boycott is required to make it work?
LikeLike
Here’s some good news that ought to be rattling NY privatizers:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/08/cynthia-nixon-new-york-governor
She’s making huge gains in the polls.
LikeLike