This statement was released today by the Alliance for Quality Education in New York City.
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This is a link to an article on Leonie Haimson’s blog that describes the public school parents’ rally on the steps of City Hall.
You will see a photo of a parent holding up a handmade sign: “MY CHILD IS NOT YOUR CUSTOMER.”
There is a post and a video. The post begins:
This afternoon, in front of the NYC Department of Education headquarters, NYC public school parents told Mayor de Blasio to stop bowing to the charter school lobby and halt the practice of giving charters access to student personal information to market their schools. Instead, they said, he should listen to parents’ concerns, stop violating their children’s privacy, and cease this practice, which by helping charters expand, causes the loss of funding and space from our public schools.
In recent weeks, Chancellor Carranza has repeatedly promised parent leaders, both publicly and privately, that this practice would be discontinued, but the Mayor has yet to make a commitment to do so, and in the last few days he has said that he has not yet made a decision.
Said Johanna Garcia, public school parent and President of Community Education Council in District 6 in Upper Manhattan: “It is unconscionable that this practice continues. For more than a decade, parents and advocates have complained to DOE about the privacy violations incurred by allowing charters to access our children’s personal information without our consent. I filed a FERPA complaint to the US Department of Education about this practice in November 2017. Moreover, I am not aware of another school district in the country that voluntarily makes this information available to charter schools and undermines our public schools in the process.”
NeQuan McLean, co- chair of the Education Council Consortium and the President of Community Education Council in District 16 Brooklyn said: “My mailbox is continually flooded with deceptive promotional materials from charter schools. As a result of expensive marketing campaigns and the damaging co-location policies of the DOE, my district has been overrun by charters. The Mayor repeatedly says he listens to parents; we are saying loudly and clearly that he should end this practice now.”
“Not only is personal student information unnecessary for appropriate marketing, providing access to it is an unacceptable violation of student privacy,” said Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Counselor of School Supervisors and Administrators.
Shino Tanikawa, the co-chair of the ECC and a member of NYC Kids PAC, agreed: “For years, DOE has ignored parents’ complaints about this practice, which started in 2006 when Joel Klein agreed to help Success Academy charter schools expand their “market share” as Eva Moskowitz put it in an email. The result is that this year, more than two billion dollars has been diverted from our public schools. Why should our supposedly progressive Mayor continue this practice, when he promised parents he would defend our public schools in the face of charter encroachment? “
Please note that the parents were not wearing matching T-shirts. Their children were not let out of school for the rally. They paid their own way to the rally.
For years, the charter industry in New York has boasted about its superiority compared to public schools and claimed that there were long waiting lists of students clamoring for admission to charter schools. We now know that there never was a waiting list. The charters were given access to the names and addresses of public school students so they could bombard them with marketing materials in search of new students. Even Success Academy, the biggest boaster of all the charters, relied on the harvesting of public school lists to recruit new students.
Tomorrow, parents in New York City will Rally to urge Mayor DeBlasio to stop the practice of sharing their children’s data with the charters.
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After months of threats and bribes and warnings, the New York State Education Department released a statement affirming that students have the right to opt out of state testing.
This is a victory for the Opt Out movement, the parents, superintendents, principals, and teachers who have said that the exams are flawed and of novalue to students.
This is the statement:
Numerous studies have shown that students do better on paper and pencil tests than on computer tests. For the record, the tests are a massive waste of time. But students often get lost online. They scroll up and down. They lose their place and their train of thought. Online testing is so flawed as to be useless.
Some states, like Tennessee, have had computer testing ruin the whole testing process.
Yet MaryEllen Elia clings ferociously to computer testing because she just plain loves it. She believes in computer testing no matter how much it fails.
Many know that it wastes students’ time, steals instructional time, and wastes millions of dollars.
Wise parents Opt Out.
Computer testing is so yesterday.
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Last year, a majority of juniors at Palo Alto High School did not take the state tests. State law protects the right of students to opt out. The tests have no value other than to prop up the testing regime.
Now the district superintendent, in an all-Out effort to break the opt out, is pulling out all the stops and offering prizes and awards to students who take the tests.
“All juniors at Palo Alto High School will be required to participate in the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress this year, in an effort by the school board to assemble a higher participation rate, according to Supt. Don Austin.
“The Palo Alto Unified School District is offering incentives to students who complete all of the CAASPP examinations next week, according to an email forwarded to Paly parents by Assistant principal Tom Keating, from Superintendent Austin.
“Through a raffle, students will be able to win student parking permits for the 2019-20 school year (which usually cost up to $100), athletic passes for the 2019-20 school year, 2018-19 yearbooks or VIP parking passes to the 2019-20 graduation ceremony.
“Regardless, all students who complete all of the testings will win one item of Paly “swag,” according to the letter.
“Last year, only 40 percent of Paly juniors completed the test, compared to the 95 percent required participation rate, Austin stated in an email to parents on Feb. 28.
“In the email, Austin stated that although parents are highly encouraged to permit students to take the exam, parents or guardians are able to submit a written request to the principal of their student’s school to excuse their child from any or all parts of the CAASPP summative assessments.
“Compared to Henry M. Gunn High School, which had a parent-guardian exemption percentage that fell from 64 percent in 2016 to 28 percent in 2017, Paly has a previous history of having an abnormally low attendance record compared to other schools, according to an article by Palo Alto Online.
“In the email, assistant principal Keating also stated that one of the major benefits of taking the exam is state recognition and awards upon graduation. Students are able to earn three additional awards or seals with the completion of the exam.”
The local paper claims that the tests are “mandatory.” But they are not.
Opt Out lives!
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/education/schools-ela-opt-outs-test-boycott-1.29381145
Meanwhile computer glitches across scattered districts caused student answers to disappear and other problems.
Computer-based assessment is a dumb idea.
Citizens for Public Schools issued a statement today calling on the state to stop lying about parents’ right to opt out of state testing:
For immediate release, April 3, 2019
Contact: Lisa Guisbond, Executive Director 617-959-2371 (cell)
Citizens for Public Schools Calls on MA DESE to Remove Misleading Information on MCAS Participation Immediately
With MCAS testing season upon us, Citizens for Public Schools calls on the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to immediately delete misinformation on its web site and provide clear, consistent and accurate information to parents who choose to refuse testing for their children and to school officials charged with administering the test.
Specifically, we demand that DESE remove language falsely implying that it is illegal for students and/or their parents to refuse to participate in MCAS testing. On a page titled Participation Requirements for Students in Grades 3-8 and 10, it says: “The 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Law, state law M. G. L. Chapter 69, section 1I, mandates that all students in the tested grades who are educated with Massachusetts public funds participate in MCAS.”
This is not accurate.
The law requires the state to administer the test. There is no mention of students being mandated to take it. Former Commissioner Mitchell Chester often said there is no provision for opting out in Massachusetts law. But when asked by WBUR whether it was illegal to opt out, Chester answered, “I haven’t used the word ‘illegal.’ There is no provision to opt out. Parents have in the past had their students refuse to take the test… That’s always been part of the landscape.”
But the new language on the state website–saying students are “mandated” to take the test, does suggest that refusal is illegal.
For more than 25 years, since the introduction of the high-stakes use of MCAS testing, thousands of parents in Massachusetts (and millions across the country) have chosen to opt out or refuse testing for their children.
Parents opt their children out of the test for varied reasons. Some do it to protest the harm to children’s education inflicted by the state’s laser focus on test scores. Others do it because, for their children, because of disabilities or for other reasons, taking the test is a trauma. It is cruel and unfair to tell parents that their effort to protect their children from harm violates a legal “mandate” when no such law exists.
In the past, DESE guidance for MCAS administration has promoted participation in state testing, but has also explicitly advised school officials to respect the wishes of parents who refuse. For example, a 2017 memo from former Acting Education Commissioner Jeff Wulfson says, “Students should not be forced to take the test against their will.” A 2016 memo said, “We ask principals and test proctors to handle refusals with sensitivity. Students should not be pressured to take the test, nor should they be punished for not taking the test.” (See http://bit.ly/refusethetest.)
There have been no state or federal laws passed since DESE provided that guidance (and Commissioner Chester made his statement) that make it illegal to refuse MCAS testing.
Therefore, we demand that the record be corrected and accurate information be disseminated ASAP so that no student or parent is pressured or threatened for exercising their right to refuse testing.
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CPS’s mission is to promote, preserve and protect public schools and public education. CPS opposes any political or social initiative that seeks to infringe on or endanger such a vital resource as our public schools. For more information on the CPS mission and goals, see www.citizensforpublicschools.org.
The New York State Allies for Public Education issued this statement in opposition to State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia’s efforts to “bribe, coerce, manipulate, and threaten students and parents into complying with a broken assessment system.” NYSAPE has led the opt out movement for several years. About 20 percent of eligible students in grades 3-8 do not take the state tests. About half the students on Long Island boycotted the tests. In some schools on Long Island and upstate New York, more than 75% of students refused to take the tests. Commissioner Elia doesn’t listen to parents. She doubles down and tries to force them to take the tests, which provide no information about individual performance to teachers. The tests are meaningless other than as punishments for students, schools and teachers, and they require far more time than taking an SAT for college admission.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 1, 2019
More information contact
Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com
Kemala Karmen (917) 807-9969; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education – NYSAPE
NYS Education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia Creates a Culture of Fear, Intimidation, and Misinformation in our Schools
The Every Student Succeeds Act (the federal law known as ESSA) gives states authority to design their own unique accountability plan regarding the state tests. Unfortunately, Commissioner Elia has used that authority to misinterpret ESSA, and has used ESSA as an opportunity to impose a culture of fear on our administrators and teachers, and our children. Under Commissioner Elia’s direction, the State Education Department (SED) at best turns a blind eye to, and at worst encourages, school districts to bribe, coerce, manipulate, and threaten students and parents into complying with a broken assessment system.
As we head into the first round of 2019 grades 3-8 state testing, NYSAPE is receiving an unprecedented number of reports from parents statewide about morally objectionable, educationally unsound, and in some cases, illegal policies and tactics that local schools and districts are using in attempts to suppress test refusal. Parents are reporting bribery with prizes, parties, and exemptions from district course finals. Students are threatened with removal from or ineligibility for honors programs, retention, and summer school; schools are threatened with closure.
Misinformation and scare tactics are coming from school districts, administrators, and even SED itself (see NYSUT’s rebuttal to the Commissioner), and range from claims that refusal students will be scored a ‘1’ and that the tests were created by teachers to statements that the assessments are “vital” and more. The New York City Department of Education even sent out letters–which they later had to retract–informing parents they could transfer out of their schools. Whether the city acted on its own or at the behest of SED is unknown, but SED’s endorsement of “public school choice” for the NY ESSA plan, along with its reductive test-based criteria for identifying these schools as in need of “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” (CSI) certainly paved the way for this debacle. The panic and humiliation caused by identifying schools as CSI was not limited to the city, but was felt in districts all over the state.
Most concerning is the resurgence of purely punitive policies like “sit and stare” (a cruel practice where test refusers as young as 8 must sit in the room with the testers with not so much as a book or a pencil to divert themselves with) and forcing elementary refusers to do old state assessments throughout the testing administration hours. Outraged parents have questioned these abusive actions, and the response many have received from their districts is that these tactics were suggested and encouraged, incredibly, by Commissioner Elia of the New York State Education Department.
A letter from the principal of the Oswego Middle School to her students perfectly illustrates that the NYS grades 3-8 testing system has gone completely off the rails. The sole purpose of the letter was to convince children “why you should say yes to the test.” Given out during the school day, for students to sign while still in school, the letter indicated they should “feel free to share with your parents.” It invoked a warped child psychology, attempting to manipulate students with phrases such as, “you love OMS, and we LOVE YOU! So, you WANT TO HELP!” “If you take the NYS ELA Assessment…you can be exempt from the English Final Exam in June!,” and “Daily Drawings for FABULOUS prizes for all ‘YES’ slips.” And, finally, as a way to single out any child whose parents had decided they wouldn’t be participating, “…a school-wide event if we can hit 100%! Something like a Spring Pep Rally….your favorite teachers will do something FUNNY ‘like’ KISS A PIG.”
Any policy that singles out, discriminates against, rewards, or punishes school children for the decisions of their parents is cause for deep concern. It’s appalling and disconcerting that Commissioner Elia/SED is encouraging these unacceptable policies. SED must immediately admonish these policies, and address the many flaws, complaints, educational issues, and legal questions raised by this deeply flawed testing program—for years the most highly boycotted state testing system in the nation.
NYSAPE calls on the NYS Legislature to pass legislation, before session ends, that reinforces a parent’s right to opt out, protects students from punishment, requires districts to notify parents at the beginning of the school year about those rights, and forbids SED and school administrators to bribe, punish, lie, and manipulate as a way to increase test participation. Neither students, administrators, schools, nor districts should suffer retaliation or negative consequences as the result of parents exercising their right to refuse the state tests.
NYSAPE and parents statewide will continue to monitor the policies and tactics encouraged by SED and implemented by school districts who have chosen to comply with misguided directives rather than advocate for the students in their care. We believe the time has come for the Board of Regents to bring in a Commissioner who values a whole-child education, respects parental rights, and places our children’s best interests at the forefront.
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NYSUT, The New York State United Teachers, issued a blistering fact check of State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia’s claims about the state tests.
You have to open it to get the full flavor because NYSUT, not normally outspoken, shreds Elia’s claims.
Elia writes in Orwellian Newspeak about value of the tests.
NYSUT response: Because of the lack of movement by SED on NYSUT’s suggested changes to the testing system, the current tests do not provide any useful information to parents or teachers or any real information on how a district is performing. The results do not accurately predict future student success. In fact, the tests mislabel more than half of the test takers as failing, while more than 80 percent of students go on to graduate from high school. The results of the current tests are not only useless, but also damaging to students.
There are several such exchanges.
Bear in mind that no one but the testing company is allowed to know student responses to questions. So teachers learn NOTHING about the strengths or weaknesses of their students. Teachers, students, and parents get a score but nothing of any diagnostic value.
All students in grades 3-8 should OPT OUT of these pointless tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 