Pro-Common Core group takes issue with blog post — and the author responds
South Side High School Principal Carol Burris ( Thomas A. Ferrara/Newsday)
Regular readers of this blog are familiar with Carol Burris, an award-winning principal in New York who has written repeatedly over the past few years on school reform in her state. She chronicled the botched adoption and implementation of a new educator evaluation system and wrote about her conversion from a Common Core supporter to an opponent. She has also written about her support for the opt-out movement, in which many parents and educators are resisting certain high-stakes standardized tests. Last month, she wrote a post about why she is retiring early and planning to advocate for public education in different ways.
Burris is the principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District. Before she took that position in 2000, she taught at the middle- and high-school levels and earned a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation, which studied her district’s detracking reform in math, received the 2003 National Association of Secondary Schools’ Principals Middle Level Dissertation of the Year Award. She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and was tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.
Burris is one of the many guest writers I publish on The Answer Sheet.
Recently I received an e-mail sent to The Post by Jon Weinstein, vice president of Mercury, a lobbying firm, in its New York office, where he specializes in media strategy. Weinstein said he was writing on behalf of High Achievement New York, a coalition of business and civic leaders and educators that promotes the Common Core State Standards. Weinstein wrote, among other things, that “it is evident” to High Achievement that I have “ceded” my blog to Burris.
He also attached a letter from Steve Sigmund, executive director of High Achievement New York, who takes issue with Burris. Sigmund, according to this City and State article, was appointed executive director earlier this year to “oversee communications, public policy and government outreach efforts for the organization which represents Association for a Better New York, Business Council of New York State, New York Urban League, Educators 4 Excellence, America Achieves and StudentsFirstNY.”
Following is the letter from Sigmund, and then a response from Burris.
From Steve Sigmund:
In your May 3rd blog post on the Answer Sheet, “Why the movement to opt out of Common Core tests is a big deal,” the author, Carol Burris, promotes selective facts that don’t tell the real story.Burris cites a number of suburban Long Island districts where opt-out numbers were high, and then spuriously uses those very small towns to conclude that African Americans and Hispanics are a major part of the opt-out movement. This is fuzzy math and categorically false.In New York City, the largest school district in the state, fewer than 1 percent of students opted out of this year’s tests. Across allPro-Common Core group takes issue with blog post — and the author responds - The Washington Post:
