Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Ras Baraka, Newark, and the Future of Public Education

By:  Dr. Mark Naison


Friends of public education. The most important election in the nation regarding the future of public education is happening right now in Newark, New Jersey. On one side is Shevar Jeffries, a lawyer and a huge charter school supporter getting millions of dollars in contributions from Hedge Fund advocates of school privatization and on the other side is Ras Baraka, a high school principal who has been in the front lines of community voices resisting Chris Christie "One Newark" plan and the school closings and mass teacher firings which have accompanied it. Rarely has there been a clearer choice for defenders of public education and those who think Big Money Interests should not determine the future of our schools. Ras Baraka is not only the right choice for Newark students, teachers and families, his election will inspire candidates like him to come forth in cities like Philadelphia and Chicago and Los Angeles where pro privatization Mayors currently are in office. And he is not just strong on paper. His is a brilliant speaker, someone who inspires those who hear him to step forward in the struggle for justice, and take on the Special Interests who are deforming our democracy.

Any way you can help this campaign will help our entire movement. We need Ras Baraka as Mayor of Newark, and we need more people like him to run for office in every urban center in the nation
https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=246039618866448

Saturday, April 26, 2014


Separate and unequal: The charter school pedestal the public can’t reach
By:  Trymaine Lee


There are two pathways for children at one of the largest school buildings in Harlem. One route, reserved for a select few, comes with new carpeting, bright paint and a banner: Welcome to the Harlem Success Academy. But for the vast majority of students, that stairway is off limits and they know it. Their path is lined with cracked tile and pockmarked concrete. 

The Success students, known around the building as “scholars,” tap away on new laptop computers. They come to school each day in beautifully pressed blue-and-orange uniforms, ready to enjoy the bounty their charter school has to offer. Their academic proficiency rates are among the best in the city, belying the educational disparities that hobble many of their peers in the largely impoverished neighborhood. 
“It’s like our children have their noses pressed up against a store window seeing things they can’t afford,” said Gay Zacerous, a speech therapist at the Sojourner Truth School, a resource-strapped public school that shares a building with Harlem Success Academy 1. “It kind of makes us feel a little devalued and demoralized.”
As the broader debate over charter schools whips across the country, the epicenter is in Harlem, home base for the Harlem Success Academies, the city’s most successful and well-funded charter school network. Despite their relative success in offering a quality education to a small number of students from some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, the network’s sharp elbows and aggressive expansion has created a toxic dynamic as traditional public schools languish.

Critics say that charter schools—publicly funded but run by private organizations—are being used as a means to privatize public education at the expense of the vast majority of students. They say the charter movement is a Trojan-horse riding under the guise of school choice, used as an instrument to break teachers unions.

Exacerbating matters in New York City is a complicated dance called co-location, in which traditional public schools and charters co-exist under a single roof. The policy has become a lightning rod issue that has vexed the young administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio, a self-styled progressive and public school parent, campaigned on curbing the expansion of charter schools. Much of de Blasio’s ire was aimed at the Success Academies and their CEO, Eva Moskowitz, a longtime political nemesis who’d been given unprecedented access to city-owned property by the administration of former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

For the better part of a dozen years under Bloomberg, charters were offered free rent in city-owned school buildings. The city’s charters were favored institutions of the billionaire Bloomberg and wealthy Wall Street donors who have poured millions in cash and resources into them. Just as charters were on the ascent, Bloomberg shuttered dozens of traditional public schools, displacing thousands of other minority students, a generally prized demographic for charters.

Where charters operate in independent buildings, the differences in resources are less stark. But co-location forces each side to contend with the fact that the charters are able to offer their students far greater advantages while siphoning off resources from children on the other side of the building. In New York, it is particularly acute as students at traditional schools are in dire need while charters enjoy the spoils of both public funding and wealthy private benefactors. It may be co-location, more than any other factor, that has frayed the nerves of parents, teachers and students, and stirred a debate that has taken a decidedly polarizing and political tone.

“It makes it kind of hard when you have to work so hard on kids’ self-esteem issues and their self-concepts,” said Barbara Darrigo, principal of Sojourner Truth, also known as PS 149. ”It’s even harder when in their face is what they don’t have.”

What’s playing out at the PS 149 and Success Academy 1 co-location is part of the larger narrative of dueling school systems, separate and certainly unequal.

Their Harlem building is also shared with two other public schools, creating a logistics tangle for students and teachers alike. PS 149 and the Success Academy both serve students from Kindergarten-8th grade. The Mickey Mantle School, known as PS 811, serves special education students and Harlem Gems is a pre-K program.

While traditional public schools are hamstrung by city department of education regulations, the charters have relative autonomy. Charter administrators can make quick decisions about structural changes like painting walls and removing dangerous lighting. Public schools must run through red tape: make a case for changes, request funding and then join the long line of other schools in varying degrees of disrepair. Charter schools are also unencumbered by teachers unions or antiquated rules and regulations that can choke innovation.

“In the traditional public schools any changes have to be mediated through democratic processes. So it’s harder to get broad policy change,” said Jeffrey Henig, chairman of the Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis at Columbia University. “They also have legal obligations to educate any kid that comes through their door.”
 
Growing Pains
Success Academy’s move into PS 149’s building was gradual. In 2006, Success Academy opened its very first charter there, taking a few classrooms on the side of the building occupied by special education students. As it grew to include more grades and more students, it expanded even further. Within a couple years it took over about half of the third floor.

Success Academy gutted classrooms, fixed-up the bathrooms and modernized the infrastructure on their side of the building.

Staff at PS 149 said they returned from summer break that year and found some of their rooms filled with discarded furniture and detritus from the Success Academy renovations. They peeked into the Success Academy bathrooms, in awe as the light from new fixtures sparkled off the pedestal sinks and ceramic tiles.

“When they came in they started ripping up the walls, we came back thinking we would have nice stuff too,” said Sonya Hampton, the president of the PTA at PS 149 and the mother of a 7th grader at the school. “But we didn’t and we sucked it up. But when she said that my child couldn’t use the same bathroom as her students, that was it for me.”

Success Academy’s growth meant a crunch for the traditional schools. Specialists lost office space. Teachers were moved to smaller classrooms. Logistics around the shared cafeteria and gymnasiums spaces became a headache. Special education students were shuffled here and there, displacing PS 149 kids. Many of the special education students have severe autism and various auditory sensitivities, and the changes forced some on longer routes through a maze of sensory landmines.

In the coming years Success gobbled up the remainder of the third floor on one side of the building and the second and third floors on the other.

The impact of the expansion is still felt today. A PS 149 speech therapist has to offer therapy in a back corner of a noisy library. A school counselor has confidential conversations in an open office space frequented by teachers and staff. On many days students with disabilities receive physical therapy in a stairwell because there isn’t anywhere else to go. And when the music room was eliminated, the music program went too. Dozens of instrument are stacked in a messy closet collecting dust.

The pangs aren’t evenly spread. The Success Academy has a room to play chess, a dance studio and a room used primarily for children’s building blocks.

Harlem Success Academy spokeswoman Ann Powell insists the expansion in the building has filled underutilized space and saves taxpayers new school construction costs.

But what doesn’t show up on an audit sheet are the therapy rooms for disabled students, state mandated SAVE rooms where children in crisis are taken to calm down, or other space used for non-classroom activity.

“For some reason our special education kids are not treated with the same dignity and respect or kindness as other students are being treated,” said Lynn Manuel, a special education teacher with PS 811, standing in the small, windowless room she was moved to after being relocated due to an earlier Success Academy expansion. “The emotional part is that our kids can’t speak up for themselves.”
The situation at the co-location took an emotional, precarious turn recently when Mayor de Blasio halted plans approved in the final days of the Bloomberg administration to relocate 200 additional charter students into the building. De Blasio said he rejected the plan because it would have displaced PS 811’s special education students.

By the city’s own estimates, the proposed expansion would have swelled the student population in the building well beyond capacity in the coming years. (The Success Academy has since sued the city, claiming that the civil rights of the students who were turned away were violated.)
De Blasio’s actions may have offered only a tentative reprieve. A new state budget deal mandates that the city either find space for charter students in city-owned buildings or help pay the charters’ rent in a private space.

The legislation, signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is a major victory for charters. Advocates of traditional public schools called the deal a slap in the face, one that puts charter interests and their big-money benefactors above the majority of city students.

“The three percent of the kids in charters are basically being favored. They are being protected while the 97% of the kids in public schools are not,” said Noah Gotbaum, who has been a vocal critic of charter school expansion and is a vice president of the district 3 Community Education Council, which includes PS 149. “The governor, the state senate, they are responding to the fact that they have received millions of dollars from the charter lobby,” he added. “The kids at 811 and 149, their parents don’t have the money to support them.”

Separate and Unequal
The charter debate is as much about the influence of private dollars in public education as it is about how best to educate black and Latino children living in some of the most rigid and hard to penetrate communities. African-American and Latino students are the majorities in urban charters across the country. Some say the similarities of the children at the charter and traditional schools mostly end with class and color. Charter school families are largely a self-selecting, willful group who often are savvy in navigating systems. Their enrollment in charter schools often requires increased involvement in their student’s school life, while in traditional public schools parental participation is often lacking.

”They don’t have the homeless kids, they don’t have the special needs kids, they don’t have the English language learners,” said Gotbaum. “They don’t have the same level of poverty, not even close.  And they especially don’t have the parent involvement. These parents are struggling to get by.”

Indeed, the differences at the Success Academy and PS 149 co-location aren’t limited to space and assets alone.

Harlem Success Academy 1 is one of the city’s best performing schools and in 2012 earned a national Blue Ribbon Award for academic excellence, one of the nation’s top education prizes. According to its website, 80% of Harlem Success Academy 1 students passed the 2013 state math exams, ranking the school among the top 2% in the entire state. About 56% passed the English Language arts test and 100% passed the science exam.

By comparison, in the 2013 state testing results in English and Math, just 5% of PS 149 students were proficient in English and 3% in Math. Across the country most charter schools perform no better or worse than their traditional public school counterparts. But in New York City, charter schools tend to perform at or above the same level of neighborhood schools. Harlem Success Academy is among that group.

According to a recent data analysis by the New York Daily News, admission to the Success Academy last year was 20%, making it more competitive than getting into New York University.

As traditional public school enrollment in the city has trended flatly, schools in the Success Academy network have had difficulty creating seats to meet increasing demand. This past year the network received five applications for every open seat. And officials said that one out of 10 eligible kindergartners in the entire city applied for enrollment at a Success Academy school.

Critics say they skim cream from the top, recruiting the best and brightest students but rejecting those with the extreme special needs, behavioral issues or severe disabilities – the very students who drag down test scores that measure school performance. The Success Academy said it relies on a lottery system and that at 15% its special needs population is on par with the district average.

Darrigo said her school has nearly twice that number. About 30% of PS 149 students are special education, a typically high number in high poverty neighborhood schools. Every PS 811 student is. A disproportionately high number of PS 149 and PS 811 students from these schools are homeless, many of whom are bussed in from shelters all across the city.

Their children can’t read
The freedom afforded a charter school is supposed to spur innovation, scalable models and best practices that could be shared and replicated. That’s not always happening, even when the only thing separating schools is a flight of stairs.

Principal Darrigo and Danique Day Loving, principal of Harlem Success Academy 1, say they’ve never even sat down and had a conversation.

On a recent morning, Loving stood in the doorway of her school’s dance studio, watching a group of her students performing to Pharrell Williams’s hit song, “Happy.”

The dance studio is across the hall from an arts studio and down the hall from the school’s blocks room where teachers use blocks to bolster students’ creativity, math and communication skills.

“Whatever we can do to make children successful, we will do,” said Loving, who has served as a principal at two other co-located Success Academy schools. “We are not going to let rules stop us, and we’re not going to let anyone tell us no and we definitely let our kids know that your zip code, your demographic, your color, your parents job is not going to determine what you can do and who you can be.”

While charters have become the boogey men of public education, the real culprit, Loving said, is the New York City Department of Education, allowing public schools to fail generations of poor and minority students without any pushback.

“They are complaining about a blocks room and their children can’t read,” Loving said of her building mates. “There are many different arguments. ‘Co-location is bad because it’s the haves and have-nots. That is not a good way to look at it. If you are a have-not, why are you not standing up for your rights.”

The stark differences under the roof Success Academy 1 shares with PS 149 and PS 811, Loving said, are a result of dedicated teachers, a model that embraces innovation and a creative use of space. The daily regimen is decidedly militaristic, with teachers snapping their fingers to form lines, handshakes ahead of every class and timed walks between classes.

The charter’s school day is longer than the traditional public school, with classes beginning about an hour earlier and ending as much as two and a half hours later on some days. There is considerable teacher training that often spills into weekends.

Down a couple flights of stairs, Darrigo lamented the disparities among the schools in her building. She simply doesn’t have the power, funding or resources to compete with the Success Academy, as scrappy and determined as her staff may be.

On most days she said she puts on a brave face for her staff. But behind her closed office door, tears often stream down her face.

“On a day to day basis the things that we grapple with are heavy duty,” Darrigo said. “We may have kids who are having outbursts who can’t control themselves, who are in great need, who are in crisis. And that’s what we’ll be focused on as [Success Academy students] are walking by in their nice, neatly formed lines.”

You can find the article here http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/charter-school-debate-new-York
You can follow Trymaine Lee on twitter here https://twitter.com/trymainelee

Friday, April 25, 2014


BATs WEEKLY ROUNDUP
By: Marla Kilfoyle, General Manager of BATs and Melissa Tomlinson, Asst. General Manager

Ohio BAT Dawn Neely Randall
and Ohio Democratic Chairperson Chris Redfern

BATs had an amazing week.  On Sunday we learned that Civil Rights Hero James Meredith agreed to do a phone-in message to kick off our DC Rally.  On Tuesday, BATs swarmed Highline School District in Burien, Washington for contracting with TFA.  Highline has a very high number of NBCTs.  As a result of that action, many BATs received return emails from the BOE of Highline acknowledging our concerns about hiring TFA to teach children.  Tennessee BATs were among those teachers that have fought very hard to get their teacher evaluation system reversed. They were successful this week!  Tennessee BATs and FCEA also hosted gubernatorial candidate John McKamey.  Ohio BAT Dawn Neely Randall had a nice chat this week with State Representative AND Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, Chris Redfern. She was vocal about her local district's testing schedule and other educational issues.  Also, we learned from Ohio, that Janet Garrett, a major supporter of BATs and a teacher, announced she was running for U.S. Congress, 4th Congressional District.   Allen J. Cannon, a N.J. BAT, is also running for Congress for the 12th District.  BATs were active on twitter this past week.  A Thunderclap was set up for Wednesday, 4/30/14, to stop Rowan University from honoring N.J. Governor Chris Christie.  The hashtag, #nodegree4Christie, will be used.  BATs are angry that a University, known for its teachers college, is hosting an anti-public school governor.  On Friday, we were contacted by the AFT to help with the Pearson: Stop Gagging our Teachers campaign and supported their petition which saw over 7000 signatures in just one day ~ And that’s the BAT Weekly Roundup ~ week ending  4/25/14!

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Time to BREAK THE CHAINS! School Reform is Not Civil Rights
By:   Dr. Mark Naison


All over the country, inner city parents and teachers are being deprived of their rights to have community input into management of public schools, while their children are moved from pillar to post by school closings, and then pushed into charter schools which often impose zero tolerance discipline policies.
That this is promoted as Civil Rights is a travesty. It is in fact the opposite. Here are some of the consequences of Reform policies pursued in Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia and many other places
1. Community voices smothered. Parents mocked and silenced for trying to have input into management of schools
2. A sharp reduction in the number of teachers of color, especially Black teachers
3. The proliferation of charter schools that impose zero-tolerance discipline policies that strip students of their basic rights, marginalize and occasionally expel Special Needs students, and create a prison like environment that inhibits creative thinking and challenges to authority
Taken together, these represent nothing less than collective socialization of poor communities and communities of color to a subordinate position in American society-heavily monitored, heavily policed, and condemned to more of the same in years to come.
Time to BREAK THE CHAINS! School Reform is NOT CIVIL RIGHTS

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

WE ARE JUST BEGINNING!
BY: Cheryl Gibbs Binkley

Several people have been asking recently what standards we would support to replace those we are protesting. A sensible response is--

 What we need are not "standards." The concept of required standards in and of itself is destructive. We certainly will always have ways of describing the basic tasks of learning, teaching, and growing, but the concept of "standards" is based in an arbitrarily imposed and rigid model that cannot serve the wide range of our students' and communities' needs.

However, we can approach goal setting, design, and planning in a very different way.
I recently sat on a committee for my district to design a "portrait of a graduate." The idea was to go back to square one, come together as a community, and decide what we wanted our young adults to be like, to know, and to be able to do.

The group of over 70 included parents, business people, school employees including teachers and support staff, clergy, and representatives of community sub-groups like sports groups, ethnic organizations and disabilities and service organizations. Everyone had a voice.
What was surprising was that across a series of facilitated conversations, we all wanted very similar things for the young people of our community. We collectively wanted our children to become capable adults, but we also wanted them to become purposeful, well-balanced and resilient, creative, problem-solvers.

From those agreements we came to, we will be redesigning everything we do, from curriculum and instruction content, to school day design, to assessment, grading, and reporting, and special programs or activities. Everything is on the table for optimization.

These types of conversations need to be happening all around the country for a lot of reasons;
-to reestablish community connections with our schools,
-to clarify what we want "education" to do and be,
-to share the knowledge all the different constituencies bring to the task,
-and to own our public schools as we have not in a very long time.

Each system's design should not necessarily look like another. Each facilitator might be different. But each system should be a reflection of the community it serves, and an expression of their fondest hopes and dreams for their children and the future of their community.

We need to beware of packaged programs, labels, and outside directives. Someone who wants to sell us their package of 21st Century Skills, or Learning Community systems or Technology integration only tempts us to easy fixes that won't work. We can use facilitators, and ideas, and supporters; but in the end we must do the hard work of sharing our ideas, asking questions, and earnestly listening within our own schools, pyramids, districts and communities.

We are just beginning. There is much work to be done, but if we do it together, what an amazing life we can facilitate for our children as young people, and as adults.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

 In What World Does the Common Core Make Sense?
By:  Paul Kimmel




"In what world does the Common Core AS IT IS make sense?" This includes thinking about much more than the standards themselves. Why would a group of businesspeople with no classroom experience seek to write a national set of standards? Who funded them and why? Why have billions of corporate dollars been spent promoting it? Why were the states bribed to adopt it sight unseen? What is Exxon's role in Common Core, that they are throwing their weight around? There are dozens of questions just like this that need to be answered. I think the ever-insightful Dr. Ravitch has provided the best explanation for all of this when she calls CCSS a "business plan."

They are "standards" in name only. My best definition of them goes like this: CCSS is a government-backed corporate monopoly on educational standards, materials, and testing. This doesn't apply just to the classroom, but to teacher education and evaluation, as well, as demonstrated here (http://nepc.colorado.edu/.../pearson-comes-teacher...). But more than this (and perhaps most importantly), it includes the data generated by all these tests, which will be owned and controlled by the same corporations, to use as they see fit. In order to approve of Common Core, you have to believe that this kind of monopoly is what American public schools need.
Posted on our Facebook page 4/20/14
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
GAME ON!!!!
By:  Dr. Mark Naison


Teachers never were treated with much respect in the United States, but until recently they weren't demonized or singled out as responsible for the nation's problems and weaknesses. What has changed? That public education is now viewed as a major opportunity for profitable investment if it can be privatized or reorganized to allow for continuous testing and assessment. When the housing market tanked, Wall Street and Silicon Valley started looking at Education as a... new frontier for creative entrepreneurship, but to take advantage of it, teachers unions had to be neutralized or destroyed, teachers voices had to be silenced, parents had to be seduced by the prospect of enormous new opportunities for their children through advanced technology and civil rights groups had to be convinced that these reforms were a step toward greater Equity.

The program they unleashed on the public almost worked. Leaders of both political parties were persuaded to back it, and commercial media gave it their complete support. But they underestimated two things. First, that many of the nation's teachers were talented, committed professionals who were not going to give up their jobs and dignity without a fight; and second, that many parents liked their local public schools and resented having corporations and government unleash a coup d'etat that turned schools into Test Factories.

Resistance began building to the School Reform Juggernaut in the middle of Barack Obama's first term in office, but it really hit its stride in the last year when a cross section of the nation's politicians and business leaders tried to impose Common Core National Standards on the nation's schools without preparing the public for the deluge of testing this would bring in its wake. The result--a full scale Revolt of parents and teachers TOGETHER on a scale the nation had never seen.
Now, the Profiteers and Privatizers have no place to hide. The are going to have to defend their policies to an outraged public. And since none of their policies are evidence based, and many of them are manifestly corrupt, they are going to have a hard time doing so.

And even though the Reformers have leaders of both political parties in their pocket, they are now on the defensive all over the country.

Game on, Reformers. No where to run, no where to hide.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Evaluate That!
By:  Cathy Sproul


Little over a year ago at school where I worked, we went into a hard lockdown. My classroom was a 40-year-old portable located in a remote area of the campus. Because the lock didn’t work right, I couldn’t secure the door from the inside, so I stepped outside (to try to lock it from the outside and then pull it shut from the inside). Immediately I heard a voice warn, “Get back in!”

It was happening right outside my room. I pulled the door shut and turned off the lights, and we waited.

Didn’t know it at the time, but one of my students (from an earlier period) was taken down in the gravel 15 feet from my door and arrested for a murder that had happened over the weekend. The police recovered the murder weapon in the student’s vehicle, parked 40 feet away.

With Sandy Hook fresh on my mind and twenty-five students in a unsecured classroom made of dry-rotted plywood, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. Still, through it all I sat with the kids in the relative darkness and downplayed it. Evidently the tactic worked, because not only did the students remain calm but a number of them actually completed and handed in their assignments. Evaluate that.

Monday, April 14, 2014

My son, 8 years old, 3rd grade
By:  April Gredder DeFrancesco




 Hello, I am so sorry I missed your call yesterday. I understand that you both have some serious concerns regarding the message, retold to you by my son, about his homework requirements, and how they relate to the decision made by me, to refuse him taking the CCLS state tests, and whether or not he was accurate in relaying my message. You also notified me that you "knew what kind of parent I am", and that "surely I think he needs to continue his work, to continue to progress nicely so he can meet Common Core standards, and how important it must be to me that my son does well."

Let me begin by saying, I am quite impressed with my son's capability to relay my message to you pretty accurately. When he asked if that's what he can tell his teachers, I advised him to yes, stand up for yourself, as long as it is done quietly and respectfully. However, I did not tell him he didn't have to do any more homework because he is not taking NYS CCLS exams. I did advise him however, that we will no longer be tortured every single night, to complete pages in books that state their purpose is to be a review program for the Common Core Learning Standards for Mathematics or ELA tests. But other than that, he nailed his answer to your question right on the head. These books are filled with practice tests, each practice test had 69 Math questions, (61 multiple choice, 5 short response and 3 extended response questions), stating that going forward the teacher will explain how you will do the practice tests, and they will record your answers. Making sure to fill in bubbles completely in the process. Also, throughout the book, their are little testing tips for answering questions. My reasoning is... Let's return to the homework matter in a bit.

On January 13, 2014, I sent in letters to the school administration, and his teachers, alerting the school of my intention to exercise my parental rights regarding this matter. Just to be clear, District 31, does not have my permission to administer any state or district mandated standardized benchmark assessments to my child, Grade 3. It is my understanding that in place of these, my sons progress will be assessed using a portfolio, a gathering of all of his teacher directed tests, writings, reading levels, etc. for him to be evaluated on. And, no, my child cannot be held back, based solely on the fact he refuses state tests, unless he is taking regents exams. Also, District 31 does not have my permission to administer to my son:

•Any surveys, or “field tests” given by corporate or government entities or testing companies.
 •Any progress- monitoring or RTI assessments such as Aimsweb
 •Any exam used to formulate an evaluation or score for our children’s teachers or their school.
•Any state assessment •Any so-called “benchmark” exams, whether they are teacher-designed or not, since these exams are imposed by entities other than the individual teacher. I trust the teacher, not the entities.
 •Pre-assessments connected to “Student Learning Objectives”. Citing the law of this country, remember when we used to learn about laws?..."Federal law states that parents possess the “fundamental right” to “direct the upbringing and education of their children.” Furthermore, the Court declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State: those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” In recognition of both the right and responsibility of parents to control their children’s education, the Court has stated, “It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for the obligations the State can neither supply nor hinder.”

Now, the changes brought upon public education by the Common Core Standards, that's a whole different story. The people who made these decisions claim that the goal of the Common Core is to ensure that all children are college/career ready. It's a nice sentiment. On some level, I get it. Even the playing field and teach the same core standards to kids across the board to narrow the gap. It makes sense on paper. But in practice? Not so much. So far, the Common Core appears to be putting fear into dedicated teachers -- they, the very people who care about, teach, and protect our children. I happen to know a lot of teachers. These are people who used to stay up entirely too late each night planning fun and engaging lessons for the following day. These are people who hide first grade students in cabinets and sing them songs to keep them calm while a shooter wreaks havoc on their school. Sadly, sometimes sacrificing their lives for the lives of their students, whom they feel a love and a deep responsibility for. Forget about all of that. Dedication and sacrifice mean nothing anymore in today's world.

Today's teachers are being forced to follow a script. They "teach to tests" and fear job loss if they don't see the expected results. The result of this test giving, job loss fearing style of teaching is written all over the faces of the little kids caught in the transition. The people behind the Common Core might think that they are ensuring college/career readiness, but what they are really ensuring is a generation of anxious robotic children who can memorize answers but don't know how to think. Many teachers say pressure to prepare students for more rigorous Common Core tests means the youngest children are now required to do work that is wildly age-inappropriate. Examples include reading passages and questions that until now would be assigned to much older students, as well as confusing, overly difficult math problems. The tests and test prep, say parents and teachers, are crushing morale and self-confidence, while generating hatred of school. As far as my son goes, it is turning him off of school and if this trend continues, he will be far from college- and career-ready because he will want nothing to do with college. Is it wrong to say Common Core is ruining childhood? Hmmmmm... Increased stress: Yes, tests and quizzes are part of school, but the pressure to perform is very high right now. Stress trickles down. When teachers are under stress, kids internalize it. They really are smarter than we think. With this hyper-focus on the core areas of learning and the constant testing to ensure that the material is being memorized (I mean understood, of course), kids are constantly under pressure to perform. Add a trickle down stress factor to that and kids begin to fall apart. Anxiety disorders among children are already on the rise. But who cares if those statistics skyrocket, right? In a few years, Valium and Xanax will be the normal coping mechanism for a school day. Creativity is dead: Learning has always included textbooks and spelling tests at the elementary school level. That's part of the deal. But it used to be that kids were given the opportunity to tap into their creative brains. I wrote my first "hardcover" book in second grade. I still remember how confident I felt when my little story about a magical teddy bear who could fly, evolved into an actual book. Ahhh, those were the days.

Busywork is the name of the game with the Common Core. Kids need to write and rewrite spelling words and sentences until their hands practically fall off, but if they do fall off, don't be absent. You are missing 4th grade level algebra. They need to correct sentences that they didn't write because they don't really have the time to come up with their own sentences. Homework includes work packets with more of the same. And don't forget to study for those practice tests! Forget about problem solving, group work, and thinking outside the box, these kids need to memorize the core curriculum first. It's as if creativity holds no merit. Are you familiar with Steve Jobs? There are people who do exactly what they have to do to get by, and there are people who work harder and end up changing the world. Don't we want to inspire kids to be thought leaders and world changers? Inadequate time to socialize: You know what's really taken a hit in recent years? Recess. Some schools don't have it at all. Recess is when kids truly practice social skills. They take turns. They negotiate. They initiate friendships. They learn to cope with disappointment. Sometimes they work together. Sometimes they don't. But either way, they learn to work it out. But not if they don't have recess. Not if they don't spend any free time with their peers. There's just not enough time in an instructional day, duh! Makes me wonder how in the world there is so much bullying, physical altercations, and school shootings occurring on a daily basis. I wonder??? Poor eating habits and insufficient exercise: You can't turn on the TV or open a magazine without hearing about obesity in America these days. It's a problem. And yet, a school lunch is often 15-20 minutes long, forcing kids to wolf down food before the bell rings. So much for listening to hunger cues and chatting with friends -- there is no time for that. TEST PREP COMES FIRST, PEOPLE! TEACH TO TEST!! And then there's PE. Some school districts have completely cut physical education due to budget issues. Where is all that money going? With little recess and no PE, kids are not getting enough exercise. Don't worry, you will get "adequate exercise" in high school, right? No time to decompress: Kids need downtime, experts stress. There is a lot of talk about over-scheduling and the stress that results from too much going and not enough resting. But kids today are faced with a lot of homework. There are third graders with 2-3 hours of homework each night, my child is an example. And that doesn't account for long-term projects. Even if you do manage to under-schedule your kids, many of them have to come right home (Other than Monday and Tuesday, mandated extended day ends at 3:40 P.M., and Wednesday, religious instruction ends at 5:00 P.M., and Thursday, my son needs tutoring because he cannot seem to grasp that knowing that 4x6=24 isn't enough anymore, without showing his work for it with graphs, charts, arrays, drawings, etc., paying for a great tutor with our savings but she's worth every penny, that ends at 5:00 P.M.), then he finally gets home, does his homework, study for a CC practice test, eat dinner, shower, and basically pass out at 9:30 p.m. What are we missing???? Ohhhh, family interaction! Where is the downtime in that scenario? Here are some facts:

 1. When students, teachers and schools are rewarded for high test scores and punished for low ones, the tests themselves become the focus of education. Class time is devoted to test prep, which robs children of their natural desire to learn.
2. The state exams test only two subjects: English and math. That encourages schools to give less and less time to social studies, music, art, world languages, physical education, and even science.
3. High-stakes testing undermines important learning. In 2011, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed America’s test-based accountability systems and concluded, “There are little to no positive effects of these systems overall on student learning and educational progress.”
4. State exams are loaded with poorly written, ambiguous questions. A recent statement signed by 545 New York State Principals, noted that many teachers and principals could NOT agree on the correct answers.?.....?....?....
5. While New York State is paying Pearson millions of dollars, it is massively underfunding NY public schools (lack of physical education is a prime example). This is part of a national trend: states cut funding to public schools while pouring millions into new computer systems designed for Common Core tests.
6. High-stakes tests don’t help students learn or teachers teach. The results come too late for that. The tests are largely punitive: they punish teachers, students, and schools that don’t perform. Low test scores can be used to hold good students back and rate strong teachers as “ineffective” despite high ratings by their principals. Really???
7. High-stakes testing undermines teacher collaboration. Teachers are judged on a curve, which discourages them from helping students in another teacher’s class.
8. High-stakes testing encourages “teaching to the middle.” Educators are pressured to focus on the “2” and “3” students, where the most progress can be made on scores, and ignore the 4s (where gains aren’t measured) and 1s (whose needs are too great to raise scores easily).
9. Many middle school admissions offices are ignoring state tests. Many NYC principals signed a letter last year stating that they would no longer be considering test scores. Most schools already have practices in place for admitting students who don’t have scores. But this isn't what we are lead to believe. We are lied to, and informed that standardized tests score are mandatory to attend middle school!
10. One-size-fits-all tests punish and discourage students who are already vulnerable, including students of color, English-Language Learners, children with special needs, like my son who has an active IEP, and students from families living in poverty.

Some examples of what we are allowing to happen: Spring 2014 Day 3 of the Common Core NYS ELA is absurd. The third grade test includes an excerpt from a book that, according to Scholastic, is written at a Grade Level Equivalent of 5.2. Its Lexile Measure is 650L, and it’s categorized as a Level X Guided Reading selection. Yet, it appears on a test that has been written for third grade students. Day 3 of the Common Core NYS ELA is incongruous with Common Core Learning Standards. The same third grade test asks students to identify how specific paragraphs support the organizational structure of a selected piece of literature. The Reading Standards for Literature in Grade 3, with respect to Craft and Structure, state that Grade 3 students should be able to: Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections. It is not until Grade 5, according to The Reading Standards for Literature, that students should be able to: Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.

Why doesn't anyone ask the parents what homework time is like? Do you think it's like a 7 day trip to DisneyWorld weekly? Yea, no. Because of the fact that his teachers were never given the time or opportunity to LEARN how to TEACH this great new curriculum within an adequate timeframe, ahead of the fast paced rollout, teachers for the most part are learning WITH their students. In my home, my son comes home, ill equipped with enough knowledge from the days classwork, to completely understand that nights assignment, and is CLUELESS! Then come the hysterics, the self loathing, " I hate my life, I hate school, I'm dumb, I'm too stupid to do this" followed by the self inflicting joy of nightly banging his head down on the GLASS dining room table, followed by an understandable painful headache. This really helps move homework time along, I have to tell you. Is not crying while doing HW the new measure of success? Sitting for over 10 hours of testing without having stomach pains, vomiting, diarrhea, hysterics, and anxiety, is that our new success? Or do we want more? Do we want to see our kids classrooms filled with projects and fantasy. Finding the love of reading from fairy tales and fiction classics. Where social and emotional development is just as, or even more important as a test score. A classroom where our 8 year olds find a love of science that carries with them throughout life. Where social studies can take them right into the time period they are learning about. Where they are challenged rather than frustrated. We need to raise our expectations and need to ask ourselves "Does my child's classroom look the way I want it to look?" If not, what are we going to do about it? Because, god forbid we ask questions, or make decisions regarding homework based on a test my son IS NOT TAKING. Maybe, it's time to rethink the Common Core? Stress is dangerous and impacts physical and emotional health. It's no way to live, and it's NOT the way I will raise my child. Incidentally, can anyone tell me what kind of career requires people to spit out the answers to 20 math problems in two minutes or less?

I think today’s system isn’t generating kids who are independent thinkers and ready to contribute to the world. I think we have to ask ourselves whether we want to create a generation of test-takers and resume-builders, or do we want problem-solvers and life-long learners and healthy young adults. There is a film called "Race to Nowhere” documenting how America’s schools have become test-obsessed, high-stakes pressure cookers. They’re churning out ill-prepared adults short on creativity and ethics, and stripping humanity from kids. Here's some more fun facts:

 1.Standardized Testing takes away approximately 25% of our children's academic school year.
2.Standardized Testing gives teachers incentives and forces teachers to "teach to the test" instead of nurturing higher order thinking skills. 3.Standardized Testing teaches children that there is only one right answer in academics and in life.
4.Standardized Testing costs millions of dollars of taxpayer money to produce and thousands of dollars of our school district's money to implement.
5.Standardized Testing encourages our best teachers to seek other careers where their expertise is actually valued. So who is losing out? Our kids.
6.Standardized Testing is developmentally destructive for specific age groups.
7.Standardized Testing is creating corruption among schools where school districts are cheating on test scoring.
8.Standardized Testing is creating corruption among students where students are purposely scoring poorly to negatively affect teachers that they don’t like.
9.Standardized Testing gives teachers incentive to care more about their teacher evaluation than they do about children. Do you want your child in a classroom with a teacher who has this type of attitude????
 10.Standardized Testing uses our children as tools to evaluate school districts, schools, and teachers. Students do not even get a chance to learn from their mistakes. In fact, they never see the test after they take it. Now that makes sense!?!?

I've seen firsthand my child go from loving learning to being worried, anxious and stressed about these tests. These tests...which have no real bearing on his future...these tests...which take up months of test prep time instead of teaching time...these tests...which are making corporations VERY rich and children VERY stressed...these tests...which are being used to grade teachers who got into teaching to make a difference, not make children miserable. Our children are spending way more time testing with no benefit to them. Do we want them to spend more time learning over testing, practice tests, and all the other assessments they endure. They've lost all time associated with projects and hands on learning. NYS standardized testing has become excessive and extraordinarily harmful to students, teachers, and our schools in general. It has changed the culture and climate of schools for the worse. When last year's grade 3-8 tests were realigned with Common Core, less than one-third of students earned passing scores. This year, they lowered the grade to pass. ????? I believe in our students, teachers, administrators, and my knowledge of my own child.

I believe in standards. I believe in teacher based assessments. I believe strongly in public education. I do NOT believe that private companies, like Pearson, have the best interest of our children, our future leaders, in mind. $$$$$$$$$ I do NOT believe in high-stakes standardized testing. And, most importantly, I DO believe that the current implementation of high-stakes standardized testing will bankrupt and destroy public education. High-stakes testing already pollutes our classrooms. There are test prep, SLOs, and Common Core There are Contact Standards that are not developmentally appropriate, and set our children up to feel like failures from the start. High stakes testing is also expensive. It is a tremendous financial burden which will bankrupt the public school system. As our resources are directed towards these mandates, they are taken away from the arts and other non-mandated elements of our curriculum which negatively impacts our students’ ability to be truly college and career ready- or more simply said- their ability to be happy, healthy, and wise. I believe that we are at a crucial point in public education. I do NOT believe that we can hunker down, do our best, and wait for these “tough times” to pass. If we do not take a stand now, we may not have anything to stand for at all. Public education as we know it could disappear in the near future leaving us with a hierarchy of charter schools ranging from the “have-it-alls” to “never-had-a-chance”. I believe in and trust our highly qualified and dedicated teachers and administrators. I believe in the high quality of teaching and learning that occur in my child’s school. I hope my efforts will be understood in the context in which they are intended: to support the quality of instruction promoted by the school, and to advocate for what is best for all children. Our schools will not suffer when these tests are finally gone, they will flourish. I will continue to stand up against the corporate and government takeover of our schools and advocate for what is best for children, teachers and administrators.

I will not stay silent and do nothing while these unjustly abusive mandates and policies are setting up our children and our schools for failure. I believe in and trust our highly qualified and dedicated teachers and administrators. I believe that my child's education should be trusted to those who are most experienced and who personally know the needs and individual requirements of each child. Teachers already know how to determine those needs and requirements without mandated standardized assessments. While I understand the district is legally required to administer these tests, I have determined that the present testing system is grossly excessive, poorly designed, punitive to students, teachers and our schools. I can no longer sit by and watch the corporate and government takeover of our schools. I believe in our dedicated and qualified teachers and administrators and need to advocate for what is best for my child. I want our teachers to be able to teach again. I want my child to be able to learn again, in all ways, I want the schools to be places children can grow and socialize in a calm and supportive environment. Having a child in third grade, I have knowledge of how much rigor children at such a young age are forced to endure. The CCSS are depriving my child of a meaningful education and deterring him away from developing a love for learning.

The Common Core State Standards are designed for the common students where does that leave the student who is uncommon? By uncommon, I mean the student who it may take a while to learn and grasp the concepts of what is being taught, like my son or the student who has emotional difficulty adjusting, like my son, or the student who is disadvantaged and worried if he/she will have dinner on the table that evening. We live in a society filled with uncommon people. What defines the Common student? What traits does that common student hold? We live in a great nation where the common is not so common and teaching to standards that are geared toward the common student is setting our kids up for failure.

As a parent, as a U.S. citizen, it is wonderful that I am able to coach my son to refuse these tests. And I will continue to do so, as long as there is a single breathe left in my body. Because, he is NOT common. Now, my reasoning is.....I will not torture my son for another twenty two more days, practicing and completing test prep assignments, trying to make him explain why and how he just knows 6x4=24, especially when correct answers aren't so important, for a test that he is not and should not be expected to be scholastically prepared for, putting him through three dates of testing, and anxiety, just so his teachers can be scored unfairly by his bogus score. In addition to his already low self esteem and nervousness suffering further. To be honest, the hypocrisy of receiving a call of such concern over homework not done, which never happens, because this homework is based on a test that I am refusing him to take, that you were all aware of, boggles my mind. Give him as much reading, writing, non CC based graded math, science, and social studies work as you see fit. And yes, you know what kind of parent I am, a pretty good one. And I do think he needs to continue his non-based Core Curriculum work, wanting him to progress nicely, not needing to meet Common Standards. And most importantly, as long as my son tries the best he can, and is on a normal/meeting grade level, he's a rock star in my eyes.

Thank you so very much for your concern,
DEDICATED AND INFORMED PARENT

Are Reformers Smarter Than a 12th-Grader?

Full disclosure: I work at a good school. My admin team is supportive of teachers. My colleagues are, by and large, total pros who work their posteriors off every day. The students come from a solidly middle-class community. There are some kids whose parents could easily afford to send them to private schools. But our fairly new, hi-tech facility with its full arts programs and artificial grass stadium and building-wide Wi-Fi located directly across the street from an upper-middle bedroom community attracts a good number of those kids. I’m know one of the more fortunate (and privileged) teachers in the country, and truth be told, that makes me feel a little guilty from time to time. I’m pretty sure that’s a big reason why I am currently making noise about the rape of public education courtesy of the privatization and corporate reform crowd.

Today, that privilege was brought into some fairly sharp relief courtesy of a current student, who reinforced a long-held belief of mine about what it means to be poor.

For the past few days, my 12th graders have been presenting their senior capstone projects. Senior Capstone is essentially a year-long inquiry project in which students conduct field work and research in a chosen discipline and deliver a formal presentation at year’s end detailing their experience and the results of their research.

Many students choose to focus on careers. Today’s presentation from Lena was a summary of her field work in a local elementary school, a Title I school in a decidedly poorer end of our district. Yes, ladies and gents, for better or for worse, Lena wants to be a teacher.

The presentation itself was adequate, though nothing to write a song about. But at the Q&A portion, an audience member asked about the biggest challenge she had to take on during her experience. She replied that the class of fifth graders she was working with had really lousy writing skills, and that she felt helpless because she didn’t know enough about writing instruction to provide any real assistance.

Now, being an English teacher, any talk of written expression from young folks gets my attention, so I engaged Lena in a little follow-up in the hopes of getting her to flesh out this observation and maybe provide the audience a bit more insight into life “on the other side of the desk”.

Me (gently querying): What was it about the writing that was so awful?
Lena: Well, it wasn’t really just the writing, it was everything. There weren’t a whole lot of good students. The school is ghetto.
Me (cautiously treading): Hmm…I dunno if I’m OK with that word. Could you try again?
Lena: No disrespect. I’m just saying these are poor kids with issues. A cop came in one day to arrest a student. A fifth-grader. Some kids didn’t have homes. It’s nothing like our school where parents are around and care and don’t normally have to get their son out of jail in the middle of the school day.
Me (blatantly posing a leading question): So are you trying to tell me that poverty impacts a kid’s capacity to succeed in school?
Lena: Of course! Everyone knows that.

I wish Lena was right, that everyone knows which way the wind blows when it comes to poverty and its relationship to the data that so many empty suits, hedge-funders, and ideologues are currently using as a yardstick to measure what they consider success (read: test scores).


But what really burns my waffles about this whole issue is that it took Lena a mere four days of volunteering in this classroom to figure this out. No college degree, little knowledge about they way kids learn. Just by coming in and working with the student and teachers, she bore witness to a truth that people who have never spent a moment in a public school classroom can’t see two feet in front of them.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

The Committee to Restore Childhood
By:  Dr. Mark Naison


"Nothing Without Joy"
Everywhere we look, self-titled "School Reformers" are driving every ounce of joy and spontaneity out of the childhood years


.*They are evaluating teachers as early as Pre K and Kindergarten on whether their pedagogy contribute to their charges "college and career readiness."


*They are putting so much emphasis on testing in rating schools and teachers that recess is disappearing in schools all over the country


* The are introducing rubrics for rating teachers that result in any sign of idleness or contemplation on the part of their students will result in negative ratings


* They are forcing students as young as the 3rd grade to sit through tests that are 3 times more time consuming than the MCATS and LSATS


* They are putting so much emphasis on testing and spending so much money on tests and assessments that art, music, plays, talent shows, field days and school trips are disappearing from many of our schools


As a result

Children all over the country are starting to hate school and dread going to class

Large numbers of children suffer from such acute test anxiety that they have to get medical attention.

Health problems are multiplying because many children no longer have the opportunity to get adequate exercise and because they are under constant stress


It is time for Parents, Teachers and Students to Fight Back
To Help do this, we are creating a "Committee to Restore Childhood"  that will fight for the following.
* No standardized testing AT ALL before 3rd Grade


* No unnecessary tests


* A maximum of 90 minutes TOTAL for all tests


* No use of recess or physical education for testing or test prep


* No rating of schools or teachers on the basis of test scores


* Restoration of art, music, school trips, field days, plays and talent shows to our schools.


* Scrap the CC$$


If you agree with these, begin fighting for these demands in your local school district.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Do it for the 70%
By: Lorri Gumanow

Having a child attending public school in New York City is a very different school experience from the one I had growing up as a child on suburban Long Island. My parents picked the community we lived in primarily on the quality of the public schools. And they were great schools! I participated in accelerated academic classes, and music and drama were part of the school curriculum. The majority of families that lived in the community shared similar values, and enjoyed a similar socio-economic status. Yes, there was school board politics, and budget battles to save the football team vs. the band. But the bottom line was that we went to our local public schools and they were excellent. My parents made their school choice by signing the mortgage documents with the real estate agent.
My husband and I live, by choice, in a very diverse urban community in Brooklyn, NY. We are white, middle-class retired educators. We love living in the city, with its cultural institutions instantly available, and the vibrant 24/7 culture we could not have in the suburbs. But, a trade-off is that we don’t have a neighborhood middle school or high school that we can just send our child to. We have “school choice.” We have to research schools in a huge directory, visit school review websites, go on school tours, and ask a lot of questions. As parents, we feel compelled to choose schools that mesh with our philosophy of education and child-rearing, and so there is a lot of “shopping” for the perfect school at each transition point where we can make a choice (Kindergarten, middle school and high school). Schools that don’t quite “fit,” don’t make our list.  In addition, the schools get to go “shopping” for students that would be a good fit for them, and many of the schools that we would choose use test scores on state tests to select the students they would like in their school. Choosing high scoring students vs. low-scoring students, students with disabilities, and/or English Language Learners keeps a school’s overall test scores and ratings high. The “desirable” schools on our list choose children with higher test scores, good attendance, good report card grades, and low suspension rates.  
     Isn’t this what most parents would want for their children:  A good public school that provides a structured, warm environment, with strong academics, balanced with arts and student supports? (And of course, underlying the choice are all of the –isms that we try to pretend don’t exist for us – race, class, social and cultural norms, and socio-economic status, to name a few. You know, the “elephant” in the room?) So as children approach the next transition point, the scores a child achieves on the standardized tests are of utmost importance to parents who “must” have their child gain entrance to one of the “desirable” schools. If they don’t get in, what will their friends and other parents think? Or, my child needs to be in a “safe” school. Higher test scores could make the difference between attending a great, supportive, academically challenging school vs. one with a metal detector and a high dropout rate. Families are pitted against each other, in competition for the “best” seats. Parents provide expensive tutoring, audition prep - anything to give their child an advantage for admission, and to avoid a placement in an undesirable school. And sadly, our children are observing us, their parents, getting caught up in all of this competitive and discriminatory behavior.
Children will also interpret test scores from their point of view. “If I score a 4, then I am better and smarter than those other kids and will get into a better school.” It tells them that their classmates who score poorly are stupid, and will go to a “bad” school. It teaches them that to get ahead they have to score the highest. It teaches them that academic talent is the only thing valued in school. It teaches them to only be friends with the smart kids. This is what the tests are teaching our children. If they don’t score well, they feel stupid, pitied, rejected, depressed, they let down their parents, and their teacher will get fired. Is this what we want our children to learn? Is this how we want our children to treat others? Is this world really only about a Race to the Top? Do we want our children to learn that competition and winning are everything? Winners and losers – is that what is most important in life?
 
Unfortunately, my loving, amazing, talented child scores poorly on tests.
          Unfortunately, my child has a disability that affects him academically.

Inclusion in elementary school was great, but now that he is older - no one cares anymore if he fails! And he is now failing a subject for the first time, as an 8th grader. From my son’s perspective, it’s no longer worth it for him to keep trying, have a good work ethic, or complete his homework – because he will still fail and no one cares. The saddest part of this scenario is that my son’s newfound failure is exactly what the corporate reformers are looking for. It is what they have created for most of our children and our schools. This is their vision for school, not ours. Their goal is to have most of our schools fail for their economic gain. Their goals do not involve the success of our children at all!

So, in this testing season, if you are on the fence about opting out/refusing, especially if your kids would have no problem doing well on the test, do it for the 70% of children in New York state, and across our country, who have been set up to fail ON PURPOSE. Do it for your child's teachers who work so hard to have children succeed, but then get blamed for being bad teachers because most of their students "fail" these inappropriate tests. Do it for the parents who are watching the bright lights go out in their children at an early age because they are not "gifted" enough to get that 4. Think beyond your own child's situation to see what is really going on here. We are teaching our children that 70% of the children in this state are failures, and they might as well give up. Trying harder on these tests will not help them pass! The questions are written for high-achieving students to get right, and everyone else to get wrong. Please send messages to our elected officials that we will not allow this discrimination and bullying to be acceptable for our children, for corporate profit and exploitation. Opting out/refusing sends the strongest message, in addition to voting elected officials out of office. Please use your parent power and opt out/refuse, if not for your own child, then for mine. He deserves an education too! And his teachers have more than earned the right to keep their jobs!

Lorri Gumanow, Ed.M. - Special Education
Parent
Brooklyn, NY