I just
finished giving the NYState ELA tests to 14 of my 25 students. (The other
11 refused.) It was a very strange position to be in as a teacher where
you wanted to support every child's/family's rights to choose to test or not to
test, but you only had 56% of a class taking the tests. It made me even
angrier that the State (meaning the Ed Dept, the Board of Regents, and the
governor) is using our students as pawns in their struggle for power. How
dare they accuse us of not having our students' best interests at heart!!
I'm
currently working on my own "Governor Readiness" exam to give Mr. Cuomo.
It will require him to provide verifiable evidence for all his
responses.
In the meantime, I sent the following letter to my state union:
Dear _______________,
Thank you
for all you do for members. Your action and organizing work on
behalf of teachers (and students) in NYS is appreciated and critical for any
success we can have in saving our public schools from corporate take-over.
I am hoping
it would be okay to suggest some possible ideas for actions in the future...
I think our
only chance for success in our efforts is to have the full support of parents
and other taxpayers. Although the "Opt Out" movement and the
significantly increased number of families who chose to refuse the tests this
year is a sign that more parents are listening, I think it would be
helpful if we designed a campaign of "the truth about testing" rather
than just a general statement to refuse the "high stakes tests."
The fact is, not everyone agrees that teachers shouldn't be held
accountable by way of test scores. Not everyone opted their children out
of testing for the same reason. But if we act as educators of the public and
started a massive "truth telling" campaign that focuses on facts not
personalities (I think using the angry face of Cuomo on so many union messages
isn't necessarily in our best interests,) I think we could garner the support
of many more people. I think we need to create new informational sound
bites that offer different focus than "stop high-stakes testing."
I would be willing to help work on such an information campaign, if that
would be appropriate/helpful.
For
instance, can we focus on these simple facts:
•
Jonathan Burman from the State
Education Department was quoted this week as saying: "Test refusal is a mistake because it eliminates important
information about how our kids are doing." The
truth is, there is NO useful information provided to parents, students, or most
importantly, teachers. The scores are shared many months after the tests are
administered when the students have moved on to the next grade. The
numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4 are tied to arbitrarily assigned cut scores set by the
State. Information from the most important part of the ELA tests
- the written responses, are not shared with teachers. How are we to
know if our teaching has been effective? How will we know what skills
students were able to apply from the instruction we provided? How can we
improve our teaching, and therefore student learning, without this critical
data? Without this data, the scores are little more than random numbers
that serve no other purpose than to provide a false sense
of "important information."
•
Jonathan Burman was also quoted as
saying: "Those who call for opting out really want New York to opt out
of information that can help parents and teachers understand how well their
students are doing." Parents have chosen to refuse testing for
their children for many reasons. One argument that has not been
proven with verifiable evidence by the State Ed Dept is that there is
information generated by the tests that will help parents and teachers understand
how well their students are doing. What "important
information" exactly is the SED referring to? They need to
follow their own instructions to students - "Be sure to include evidence
to support your response."
•
This is perhaps the most ironic
of the SED's recent comments: “We can’t go
back to ignoring the needs of our children.” While I think they're implying the "we" includes
all of us in education in NYS, it really is the SED, the Board of Regents, and
the Governor who have been ignoring the needs of our children. Several
years of teachers and parents speaking out about the flawed roll-out of the
Common Core Curriculum, unreasonable, age-inappropriate tests given for
inappropriate lengths of time, and demands that teachers jobs will be dependent
upon the scores of the ill-conceived tests (but that no one should be teaching
to these tests) provide ample evidence that it is our own education
"leaders" and policy makers that have been ignoring the needs of our
children.
I am a firm
believer in speaking truth to power. As a fifth grade teacher tasked by
my district with implementing the State's engageny ELA Module 1 on human
rights, I've spent many months teaching my students about human rights, civil
rights, the power of peaceful, non-violent protest to effect change, and the
impact of many voices speaking truthfully in the face of unjust laws and people
who bully their way to power. How can I not apply these same lessons to
our real life situation here in NYState? Law makers and policy makers are
bullying parents, students, and teachers into obeying illogical dictates that
are not based on anything we know to be true about how children learn and what
constitutes great teaching. None of their policies are supported by research
proven knowledge. These leaders insist we all blindly follow their
decrees, and ignore common sense, our own professional knowledge of what
constitutes "best teaching practices," and even our personal
ethical/moral compasses. They denounce us publicly, try to shame us into
blind obedience, and threaten that we will lose funding, lose our jobs, or
worse yet - ruin the lives of the children we love.
Please, can
we start a new campaign that provides verifiable factual evidence to all our
fellow New York State citizens?
Help lead us all to stand up to the insanity
with truth as evidence to light our way.
Thank you very
much for reading!
~veteran
elementary teacher
