It’s been
almost six weeks since I initially wrote SED Commissioner Elia, the Board of
Regents, the Governor and members of the New York Legislature about significant
questions arising from the Common Core Task Force’s Report and
Recommendations. On January 24th
I wrote a second letter, which included the names of 115 supporters requesting
that: “the Board of Regents
authorize the State Education Department to conduct a detailed, open and
transparent review and analysis of the use of the ELA/Math standardized tests
results as determinants to assess school qualification for receivership; to
invite parent, educator, student and other stakeholder input and feedback in
the process; to clarify the recommendations of the Common Core Task Force as
they apply to the state assessments and use of assessment data, and to develop
future recommendations for appropriate determinants for school receivership.” True to form, as of February 7th, I haven’t heard
a single word from any of these educational and political leaders (except for
Senator Kennedy).
As an
individual, who researches and writes about African American history, I do not
confine my recognition of the importance of Black Americans’ contributions to
American History to one month. But I
would admit that the advent of African American History Month 2016 influenced
my reflections on the continued lack of respect and simple courtesy of state officials’
ongoing failure to respond to the concerns of nearly 700 education
stakeholders. There are many African
Americans, men and women, whose lives provide instructive, inspirational and
timeless examples for current day activists, but Frederick Douglass quickly came
to mind. An ex-slave, freedman,
abolitionist, author, journalist, statesman, orator, businessman, etc Douglass
was a towering example of
self-advocacy.
In a letter
written in 1849, he said: “If
there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom,
and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or
it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be
a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never
will.”
So what
would Frederick Douglass do if he was in our shoes? Continue the struggle! And the demand for answers to the questions
we have about the use of standardized tests (high stakes tests) to label our
children as failures, defame our teachers; disenfranchise our communities by
vesting control in Receivership and ultimately undermine public education.
The online
petition posted on the January 24th has garnered over 525 signatures
and comments. The following are a few of
the comments left on that petition. I
have omitted the names, but the petition is on-going and I am still encouraging
public education advocates to sign this petition and join us. We
are not voiceless even though the Commissioner and the Regents have chosen to
IGNORE our call for accountability.
“Not only is it ridiculous to use these
tests - found to be unreliable and unfair to students across the board - as a
measure of student or teacher success, to use them to still rank schools to the
extent of determining which should be classified receivership schools while
admitting it's unhelpful in several other areas is both nonsensical and
inappropriate. The issue of how we handle receivership schools in general is
already fraught with problems; there is no reason part of determining that
classification should include scores from these tests.”
“Closing a school doesn't help anyone
but those who are looking for excuses to fire people. Schools reflect their
communities, so if a school is struggling, so is the community. The state
should recognize this relationship and throw every resource it has at uplifting
and supporting the families, the infrastructure, and the employees already
working in the school and community. That the vast majority of schools in
receivership serve low income populations shows that it's not necessarily a
problem of bad apples, but of challenges insurmountable with the limited
resources those schools have.”
“The Common Core Aligned Standardized Tests have been
manipulated for political use and do not meet psychometric standards. As an
educational psychologist, I urge that they no longer be used to identify receivership
schools or for any other high stakes decisions.”
“I ask only to point out, that rarely
does the public hear of an alternative to the current testing system that we
view schools in receivership. How do we go about schools that need to improve
for all students? What is the direction to identify fairly the schools that
need the most help? If not via test scores and data, then how? Now that the
state is final admitting that we have a flawed system of evaluation within the
state, where do we move from starting today?”
“As a former Buffalo Public School
teacher I feel for my former colleagues. The number of challenges the inner
city teachers face daily, (some minute to minute) are insane. No TEST nor
standards are going to magically make these challenges disappear. Instead these
Standards and Tests are just adding to student, teacher, administration, and
parent frustration and setting the children even farther behind in life.”
“There have been many years shed over
the prep work to get the kids prepared for these tests. My children are losing
their zest for learning. It is very sad that as a parent I am unable to help my
children due to the rigorous teaching of extra steps and analyzing sentences in
chapters. Reading should be fun and educational. Math should be challenging and
useful, and age appropriate.”
“Our high school is proud to have over
45 (over 59) languages spoken by its students. I am happy to be part of such a
diverse community. Stop the testing, and stop expecting everyone to be the
same. Diversity is strength.”
“In the three years that Common Core
standards have been around students, teachers, and schools have only gotten
worse. The standards and the tests are terrible. My children who used to love
learning and school now dread it. They are over tested and stressed out. They
are not learning in a way a child learns naturally. I live and teach in a
community that is in the lowest poverty range with a large population of
refugees and immigrants. They are left behind with these standards. Shame on
the politicians, governors, and big businesses that have stripped the education
in this country of all that was good. The damage is irreparable. Stop this now!
Have a conscious for God’s sake!”
“As an educator, these are the types of
dysfunction that are causing parents and educators lose faith in education.
Making changes constantly and then not expressing what the expectations are,
shows the ineptness of the Board of Regents and the NYS Department of
Education.”
“I believe that the correlation between
poverty and performance in school (testing results) is a simplistic and wrong
direction for decision-making in education. Fix the class sizes, create
community(ies) around schools with the necessary supports both before and after
school is a more practical, common-sense approach to addressing the educational
needs of all children.”
Finally, the message to Albany is: you can be silent; you can ignore us, but we’re
going to stay in the struggle; we’re going to demand a response and we will be
heard – sooner or later. After all March
is Women’s History Month!
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