Tory Frye on why parents are so angry about testing & how we can fight back!
The following is by Tory Frye, a NYC public school parent and a member of the Community Education Council in District 6. She explains why parents are so angry about the systematic erosion of learning conditions at their children’s schools in recent years and what we can do about it:
Why have so many parents across New York City decided that this year’s state standardized tests have finally crossed the line from distracting, educationally valueless, and overly determinative experiences to damaging, twisted and intolerable ones? How have they become this year’s radicalizing experience for thousands of new parent-activists determined to change the direction that education policy is taking in New York?
Last year, the threatened teacher lay-offs and across the board budget cuts galvanized organized opposition and sparked the realization among tens of thousands of NYC public school parents that the Governor and the Mayor’s Office do not hold the interests of “students first.” This year new parents are joining a growing and increasingly organized activist group that is opposed to high stakes standardized testing. The parents and guardians of whom I write, from Williamsburg, Bed-Stuy and Park Slope in Brooklyn, East Tremont and Riverdale in the Bronx, Washington Heights/Inwood and the Lower East Side in Manhattan,
