The Opt Out Update: From the Northwest to the “anti-testing tsunami” in New York to Pennsylvania where the hallways and classroom walls are covered with brown paper for three weeks
Update to the update, April 17, 2015:
Jessie Rothenberg, age 8, holds a sign while sitting on her father’s shoulders while protesting Gov. Cuomo’s education policies in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in March.Thousands of students opt out of state mandated English Language Arts exam as families from Brooklyn to Buffalo boycott tests
It’s an anti-testing tsunami.
Thousands of families across the Empire State said no to standardized testing, boycotting the state-mandated English Language Arts exams which began Tuesday.
While accurate figures were hard to come by, testing opponents, parents groups, and school officials from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, to Buffalo all agreed the number is likely to far exceed the 60,000 students who refused to take the test last year.
“From what I’m hearing from other superintendents, it could be at least 300,000 students across the state that opted out,” said William Cala, superintendent of Fairport Central School District near Rochester.
Rachel Cohen, mother of a fifth-grader at Public School 261, said she thinks at least 66% of the 817 students in her Boerum Hill school refused to take the English Language Arts test — the first of the exams administered to third-through eighth-graders across New York State this week.
“Essentially I see no diagnostic educational benefit to my child,” she said. “I see no compelling evidence this is a fair and accurate way to assess children or teachers. All this emphasis on testing actually interferes with meaningful learning and assessment.”
Other parents whose kids opted-out echoed Cohen’s complaints that teachers are being forced to “teach to the test” to preserve their jobs — and their kids were being short-changed as a result.
“We’re not against assessment, we believe in meaningful assessment,” said Jody Alperin, whose children are in the second and fifth grade at PS 10 in South Park Slope, Brooklyn. “Test results should not be punitive.”
To read the article in full, go to The Daily News.
There is a lot of opt out activity occurring around the country during this Common Core testing season which begins in earnest in April and continues to June. Practice tests were administered in March taking two to three weeks to for all students to take in each public school here in Seattle and around the country. It’s an inordinate amount of testing which is one of many reasons parents are opting their students out of the Common Core testing.
Starting in Seattle, 200 students and counting have opted out of the Common Core Standards’ SBAC test at Garfield High School and because of the number of students who are opting out, the teachers will not be required to administer the test. More students The Opt Out Update: From the Northwest to the “anti-testing tsunami” in New York to Pennsylvania where the hallways and classroom walls are covered with brown paper for three weeks | Seattle Education:
