From the local school boards in Texas to the teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle to the Providence Student Union, the movement against high-stakes testing is growing everyday.
The Washington Post reports here that the public is rising up against the Bush-Obama education agenda.
Across the nation, students, parents, and teachers have had it.
Officials keep pouring millions into testing while cutting the budget for everything else.
Anthony Cody met teacher Michelle Gunderson at Occupy the DOE. When he heard her ideas about testing, he invited her to write a guest blog.
Gunderson explained that she has seen test used to sort children, to punish children, and now–to privatize schools.
She has developed her own credo for the ethical use of tests.
Please read it.
The essence of the pledge is that a student’s test scores should be treated as confidential.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I would go farther.
We don’t expect our doctors to turn over our test results to the state, why should teachers give children’s data to anyone but them and their parent or guardian?
This letter comes from three teacher educators at the State University of New York
In the assault on public education, New York State is in the midst of a battle. The growing movement to opt out of state testing has caught the attention state leaders and school administrators, who have a stake in supporting assessments. The New York State Teacher Union (NYSUT) represents public school educators. As a public union, it claims to support the best interests of students. In fact, NYSUT has sponsored a petition to limit high stakes testing and a forum for teachers to “tell it like it is” about testing. And on April 13, NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira led a rousing call for teachers to “ratchet up our collective voice.”
But earlier in the week, NYSUT President Richard Ianuzzi sent a memo to local union leaders. This memo acknowledges the growing opt out movement, as well as the complex role of teachers in this era of “over-emphasis on standardized testing.” However, the memo goes on to inform local leaders that:
• Locals and individual union members who advise parents or students to “opt out” of state tests may face risks.
• A teacher who, in conversations with students or parents, takes a position on testing contrary to the school district’s educational program may potentially be charged with misconduct or insubordination and could be subject to disciplinary action.
• A local speaking as a union or an individual member speaking as a parent or citizen about educational concerns over standardized testing for instance, in a letter to the editor or in a statement to the Board of Education is protected as long as they are not encouraging parents or students to opt out from a scheduled test.
As activists, scholars, and teacher educators who are working with parents and teachers to inform the public about the current “reform” movements, we find this memo chilling. How easy would it be to perceive that a teacher speaking out about the negative effects of high-stakes testing would be encouraging parents or students to opt-out?
Public educators have always occupied a complicated place in society. We are agents of the state who are working to improve the system. To improve the system, we must critique it. These critiques can be perceived as insubordinate; this perspective explains the importance of academic freedom. Teachers are experts in the field of education. As Neira states, their voices must not be silenced: they should be invited and amplified. NYSUT, as the union representing teachers, must support the needs of students by supporting the expertise of teachers. They should be encouraging teachers to speak out and giving every level of support to those who do.
Expectations for professionalism or propriety, such as those supported in this union memo, silence teachers. To silence teachers prevents educators from being activists in their own field. It dismisses their expertise and their commitment to the public good.
Imagine if doctors, lawyers, or engineers were discouraged from sharing knowledge that would benefit their clients? This would not be tolerated, and it should not be tolerated in the profession of education. Our future depends on it.
– Julie Gorlewski, Barbara Madeloni, and Nancy Schniedewind
In the past few days, education officials in New York have made some breathtakingly hostile comments about children.
Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, responded to reports about test anxiety by saying that it was time to jump into the deep end. By that, she meant that it was time to throw these little children in grades 3-8 into the deep end, as I presume she will not be jumping in with them.
Dennis Walcott said with relish that it is time to rip the Band-aid off. Is that something that a caring adult does to a child?
Why the fierce urgency to inflict pain on children?
I am not suggesting that students should not take tests. Of course, they should take tests.
But before they are tested, they should have the opportunity to learn what will be tested. Their teachers should have the opportunity to learn what they are expected to teach.
The test should not fall out of the sky on unprepared students and teachers, like a scythe intended to mow them down.
Our state officials should be held accountable for rushing students, teachers, and schools into tests for which they have not been prepared.
And they should be ashamed by the rhetoric they use, in which they express indifference to children and a barely disguised glee about the harm they are inflicting by tossing kids into the deep end whether or not they know how to swim and, to add injury to injury, “ripping off the Band-aid.”
This is a classic case of what the noted psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl called childism.
Dennis Walcott and other city and state officials in New York announced that they expect test scores to fall by 30% this year because of the switch to the Common Core.
They keep saying, almost too gleefully, how hard the test is. (Reader, remember that the test is “hard” only because state officials decided to raise the passing mark.)
Walcott said, “It’s time to rip the Band-Aid off, and we have a responsibility to rip that Band-aid off.”
Readers, I have been trying to figure out what that statement means.
Clearly, the chancellor thought it was profound so he said it twice.
What is the Band-aid?
What wound is it protecting?
Why is it good to rip it off?
Doesn’t it inflict pain when you do that?
Why would the chancellor want to inflict pain on so many children?
I welcome your deconstruction of this deep exclamation.
Who deserves credit for creating the anti-testing movement in New York State?
Governor Andrew Cuomo.
He is so devoted to standardized testing that students in third grade in New York will have “six straight days of tests, 90 minutes a day.”
Cuomo loves standardized testing and high stakes, though not for his own children, of course.
Mark Naison also credits State Commissioner John King, who shares Cuomo’s devotion to tests and punishments and regularly displays a “contemptuous attitude…towards parents, teachers, and principals who question the usefulness of so much testing.”
Friends, we do not have to tolerate what we know is wrong for children.
Opt out.
Willa Powell, a member of the school board in Rochester, New York, will keep her child home on testing day.
Buried in this story is a very strange comment by State Commissioner John King.
“As we looked at flat test scores in New York and across the country, it was impossible to ignore a few sobering facts,” said state Education Commissioner John King in a video message to parents. “We’re not faring as well as we should be in the new global marketplace. Too many of our graduates aren’t prepared to succeed in college or their careers. The Common Core state standards are the answer to this problem.”
Help me understand.
He says the scores are flat, so we will adopt tests that we believe will cause the scores to go down.
He says too many of our graduates are not ready for college or careers. We think the new standards–though no one has any evidence– will solve this problem.
What am I missing here? Logic?
As this article in the New York Times explains, elementary schoolchildren are frightened by the tests that start this week, based on the Common Core.
The article points out that neither the students nor the teachers are prepared. Some of the material was never taught. “But the standards are so new that many New York schools have yet to fully adopt new curriculums — including reading material, lesson plans and exercises — to match. And the textbook industry has not completely caught up either. State and city officials have urged teachers over the last year to begin working in some elements of new curriculums, and have offered lesson plans and tutorials on official Web sites. But they acknowledge that scores will most likely fall from last year’s levels.”
Merryl Tisch, who head the state Board of Regents, toured a school and heard about how upset the students.
“Believe me, I relate to test anxiety,” she said during a visit last week to the Academy of Arts and Letters in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, one of several schools that city and state education officials visited to express support for the new tests. “We can’t wait,” she said. “We have to just jump into the deep end.”
“We” have to jump into the deep end? No, your child must.
Think about it. As a parent, would you throw your child into the deep end, even if he or she can’t swim?
Opt out.
School officials across the nation keep warning that the new tests are “harder,” and passing rates will drop by 30% or more.
Why?
The passing mark–or cut score–on tests is not determined by science. It is a judgment call.
Those who are in charge decide where to place the passing mark.
If the scores go down on a test that is new, it is because the officials set the passing mark with foreknowledge that scores and passing rates would fall.
In addition, the state education department piloted the questions, and they know with a high level of precision which are hard and which are easy.
If the scores fall, they were designed to fall.
This is what they want.
Why? I don’t know. Ask them.
The movement to opt out of state testing is spreading in Néw York. State leaders are threatening parents and schools with loss of funding; teachers are threatened with disciplinary action if they encourage parents.
PARENTS, DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED.
It is your choice.
If everyone stands together, the petty tyrants in Albany can’t do anything.
Here is an email from a parent in Long Island:
*****
I want to make you aware of a movement happening on Long Island, NY.
The NYS ELA standardized tests are are set to begin this Tuesday, and there are many parents who are choosing to opt their children out of the tests.
NYSED is trying to bully the schools into bullying the parents by saying that schools will lose funding if more than 5% op out. Some districts are playing along with the state, but many are cooperating with parents and making accommodations for children who will not take the test. One district even issued a resolution condemning the tests. Isn’t that great?
It would be great if you and your readers would support us. We are on Facebook at “Long Island Opt-out Info.”
