Education commissioner begins plan to combat opt outs
ALBANY — Education commissioner MaryEllen Elia already has begun a battle to stop the rapidly growing opt-out movement before next year’s state tests, reaching out to department attorneys and meeting with superintendents, she told POLITICO New York.
“We’re trying to pull together a tool kit, if you will, to support superintendents in how we can communicate in a much more effective way to people across the state,” Elia said.
That kit will include legal information, which is why she has reached out to lawyers, Elia said.
“I want the superintendents to understand the reflections and law that they can use as an information piece when they talk to people in their community … It’s important for them to be able to say, ‘Listen, it’s the law.’”
Elia said she already has been meeting with superintendents across the state and plans to have a review of the standards to get even more feedback.
“As you get more people involved in the process, you have more people understanding what’s going on and why you have assessments,” she said. “There are a lot of people that don’t know what the Common Core is."
Educators are hoping that the toolkit includes further guidelines, including what is and what is not ethical for teachers or school administrators to say publicly about the exams, an issue that has become controversial across the state.
In April, 20 percent of the 1.1. million eligible third through eighth graders statewiderefused to take the state math and English language arts exams.
Elia originally warned that the districts with the highest refusal rates could be penalized, potentially losing federal Title I money. Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch last week told the New York Times that there will not be federal sanctions, but did not rule out withholding money in the future if the state found district officials were encouraging opt outs.
When asked about possible sanctions, Elia said, “The bottom line is that at some point if it continues to rise, it’s against the law. Somebody could decide to do something. I can’t tell you what they’re going to do in Washington.”
At an Educators 4 Excellence event last week Elia said she believed opt out was “unreasonable,” and called it “unethical” for teachers to participate.
She told POLITICO New York that she anecdotally had heard teachers were calling homes and telling parents of low-scoring students to have their children refuse the tests.
“If this occurred, I don’t think that’s right,” Elia said. “I don’t have any proof that it occurred. I just don’t think that it’s appropriate for teachers to use their classroom and information about their kids to encourage people to opt out.”
The commissioner made those views clear when speaking with a group of education leaders in the Mohawk Valley last week, said Mark Vivacqua of the Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES. Those districts include Dolgeville schools, which had one of the highest opt-out rates in the state with 89 percent of its students refusing the English exam and 91 percent refusing math.
But the line of what is and is not ethical is unclear, Vivacqua said. For example, teachers shouldn’t tell their low-performing students not to take the tests because it would impact their evaluations. If, however, a teacher speaks out against education policy Education commissioner begins plan to combat opt outs | POLITICO:
