Undermining Public Education Has Been A Bipartisan Affair |

Undermining Public Education Has Been A Bipartisan Affair |:

Undermining Public Education Has Been A Bipartisan Affair

“[T]he Obama administration, in education laid the groundwork for Trump and Betsy DeVos because they were big supporters of charter schools . . . [C]harter schools are the first step toward full privatization.” – Diane Ravitch, Democracy Now, December 1, 2016

If there is one thing Democrats and Republicans agreed on during the last two decades, maybe the only thing, it is how to undermine public support for public education. Misguided education policy is a bipartisan endeavor in the United States and set the stage for the Trump anti-education agenda.

As a teacher, as a historian, and as a citizen, I have mixed feelings about the Obama presidency. I remember every president since Dwight Eisenhower. I believe Barack Obama is the brightest, most thoughtful president since the 1950s. I will miss his efforts to think things through with us during his speeches and his wry sense of humor. However, I think Obama’s presidency was weakened during his first six years in office by his intellectualism and an essentially conservative view of the power of the president. For too long President Obama tried to compromise with a vote “NO” political opposition that had no intention of ever agreeing to compromise.

I think President Obama also did not want to be seen as a social activist and politically had to shore-up support from wealthy financial interests aligned with the Democratic Party who view privatization of education as an investment opportunity. This meant a narrow technocratic approach to education reform epitomized by ESSA rather than a social justice agenda. It meant support for the expansion of charter schools and continuing the Bush administration’s commitment to the high-stakes testing of students and the assessment of teachers and schools based on student test score.

Obama the symbol will always be an important figure in defining the United States as a more inclusive society. Unfortunately Obama as president failed to make significant improvement in education for students, their families, and for teachers. Instead it angered or alienated many sectors of American society, weakening support for the Democrats, and contributing to Trump’s election.

During the Obama presidency the United States never made it to the top, it was not possible given lingering racial and ethnic bias and growing social and economic inequality in the country. But I don’t think the American people are in an educational quagmire either. Most United States schools function well and most United States students learn and are Undermining Public Education Has Been A Bipartisan Affair |:

DELAINE EASTIN: California should not be a Scrooge when it comes to educating our young people | The Sacramento Bee

California should not be a Scrooge when it comes to educating our young people | The Sacramento Bee:
California should not be a Scrooge when it comes to educating our young people

At this festive time of year, one of my favorite short stories is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. In this story, Dickens reflects on a sour man named Ebenezer Scrooge who finds little joy in any aspect of life and who decries Christmas as a humbug. Then he meets the Ghosts of Christmas past, present and future and his perspective changes. He becomes a kinder, gentler version of himself and finds the capacity to be generous to others.

When I think of Christmas past in California, I think of an amazing generation of Californians emerging from our nation’s worst depression and the world’s most terrible war, and generously investing in K-12 education and in an incredible system of community colleges, state universities and a University of California that were individually and collectively the envy of the nation by 1965.

In the years since 1985, the systems have each suffered disinvestment. Our K-12 schools, which were fifth in per-pupil investment, dropped as low as 50th, but now linger around 42nd, adjusted for the cost of living in California. Our community colleges were free until 30 years ago, and the modest fees charged for CSU and UC have skyrocketed.

Sixteen states have mandatory kindergarten, but some California leaders say we cannot afford it. Preschool is more readily available not only in other affluent states like New York and Connecticut, but also in historically undereducated states like Georgia and Oklahoma. California is tragically underinvested in preschool.

Our child development services are inadequate and while we have First 5, remember it wasCalifornia should not be a Scrooge when it comes to educating our young people | The Sacramento Bee:

Killing the National Conference of Black Mayors: K.J.’s shadow coup - Sacramento News & Review -

Sacramento News & Review - K.J.’s shadow coup - News - Local Stories - December 22, 2016:

K.J.’s shadow coup

Former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson left office with a huge political victory—so why haven’t you heard about it?

Kevin Johnson wasn’t used to watching the big game pass him by from the bench. But with Darrell Steinberg standing in the wings to be sworn in as Johnson’s replacement, the suddenly lame-duck mayor ended his arena-building, shadow-government-installing, two-term run in quiet fashion on December 13.

Calling to order a special council session by playfully banging his gavel so hard the city clerk chuckled out a warning, Johnson appeared loose and cheerful last Tuesday night. He accepted two final tributes, both protected against misuse—an honorary badge wedged in cut glass and a fire helmet in the Kings’ purple and black—and endured one last free-form-jazz lecture from perennial council attendee Mac Worthy (which K.J. greeted with a “Perfect”). And then it was all but over, with Johnson offering one final message before calling it a political career in his prodigal town:

“Last council meeting. Sacramento, I want to say thank you for all the unbelievable support. All city staff, you guys rock. To my colleagues on the council, you are the best. I am just a phone call away if I can ever be helpful. God bless you, love you.”

Humble. Gracious. And making zero mention of the huge political victory Johnson scored hours earlier.

On that very same day, several states over, a federal bankruptcy court in Georgia removed the final hurdle blocking Johnson’s multiyear campaign to dismantle the historic—and historically troubled—National Conference of Black Mayors and replace it with a version more to his liking.

The attorney for the losing side confirmed to SN&R that the ruling spelled the end of an epic legal tussle for the soul of a national political alliance steeped in civil rights lore and badly mismanaged into a vulnerable financial state, ripe for the overtaking. And it began like so many K.J. stories do—with Johnson trying to expand his political reach beyond Sacramento.

“It all started because Kevin Johnson and some of the people with him wanted to take over the organization,” said Kenneth Muhammad, a Georgia attorney who presided over the last gasps of the historic NCBM. “And the plan ended up working because the people who were fighting it ended up running out of money.”

That self-described “coup” that Team K.J. had drawn up more than three years ago, using city staff and resources to advance a noncity power grab? Yeah, it worked.

So why haven’t you a heard a peep about it?

The attempt to forestall bankruptcy and save the NCBM was mounted on the grounds that Johnson got himself fraudulently elected president in 2013—a claim a judge later rejected—only to tank the struggling nonprofit so he could replace it with a version under his control and sharing his corporate education goals.

The ruling comes about two months after a separate judgment in an Atlanta circuit court against Vanessa Williams, NCBM’s former executive director and Johnson’s chief adversary in trying to keep the black mayors conference alive.

In both cases, the rulings were based less on the merits of Team K.J.’s legal arguments and more on the fact that the other side simply stopped fighting.

In his 19-page order issued last week, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Paul Baisier ruled that the effort to stop the liquidation from going forward was “moot,” as the bankruptcy trustee had already sold NCBM’s assets and naming rights for $65,000 to the African American Mayors Association, the competing organization that Johnson founded in May 2014.

The law firm representing Team K.J., the bankruptcy trustee and AAMA, all free of charge?

Ballard Spahr LLP.

Williams, who learned of the bankruptcy ruling from SN&R on Tuesday, claimed Ballard Spahr’s representation of the party that wanted the bankruptcy, the trustee responsible for overseeing it and the organization that stood to replace the NCBM constitued “a conflict of interest.”

A Ballard Spahr attorney disputed that there was a conflict, since her firm wasn’t receiving payment for its work.

Baisier also ruled that Williams and the 14 NCBM mayors trying to save the organization lacked standing Sacramento News & Review - K.J.’s shadow coup - News - Local Stories - December 22, 2016:

Walter Kawamoto 2017 Assembly District Delegate Candidate AD 07 | California Democratic Party

AD 07 Male Candidates | California Democratic Party:

Walter Kawamoto 2017 Assembly District Delegate Candidate AD 07 | California Democratic Party

I am an Adjunct Professor at American River College and the PAC Chair of the Los Rios College Federation of Teachers / AFT 2279.  I also had the honor of serving Twin Rivers USD as a Trustee from 2012-2016.  I have been endorsed for Trustee or ADEM delegate in the past by the following Dem clubs: Wellstone, Green, Latino, API, Stonewall, Fem, Vets, Women, Young, & JFK.  I am excited to share that I am advising the newly formed Progressive Democratic Club of ARC. I have been an active member of the party in a variety of ways all my life, from helping my father campaign for his friend in Hawaii when I was 10 years old to actively helping Jesse Jackson run twice to numerous local races.  My values include Labor Solidarity, Social Justice, Public Education, and Diversity/Inclusion.  I ask for your vote for ADEM delegate

Convener InformationConvener:Kerri Asbury Phone:(916) 607-8241 Email:Tchrkerri@gmail.com

Meeting Details Date/Time of Meeting: Sunday, January 8  Candidate Speeches Begin: 30 minutes before registration Registration & Voting Begin: 10am-12noon Counting of ballots begin: TBD Location: Please Note: Barbecues and open flames are not permitted in the parking lot. California Teachers Association Region 2 Office 4100 Truxel Road Sacramento, CA 95834 Cross streets/landmarks: Prosper Road Onsite Phone: (916) 288-4900

Location Map

AD 07 Male Candidates | California Democratic Party:

‘You are all our kids, no matter what’: Award winning teachers band together, speak out to protect students - The Washington Post

‘You are all our kids, no matter what’: Award winning teachers band together, speak out to protect students - The Washington Post:

‘You are all our kids, no matter what’: Award winning teachers band together, speak out to protect students

In the wake of the presidential election, dozens of the best teachers in the nation have banded together to say with a unified voice that public schools are valuable and that they must be safe places for students of every background, ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation and gender identity.

“You are all our kids, no matter what,” says the group, Protect Public Ed, in a video posted this week on its new website, protectpubliced.org.

The 44 teachers are all state teacher of the year award recipients. They said they were moved to speak out after a rash of troubling bullying incidents — at their own schools, in some cases, and in news reports nationwide — following Donald Trump’s presidential election victory on Nov. 8.

“Right after the election, we started seeing people inside and outside of the classroom feeling emboldened to say racially charged things to many of our students,” said Ryan Kaiser, Maryland’s teacher of the year. “That really started galvanizing how quickly we needed to get something done and get the message out there.”

Daniel Jocz, of California, said even in liberal Los Angeles, his students expressed fear of harassment and deportation.

[Video shows Pennsylvania teenagers celebrating, shouting ‘white power’ after Trump win]

The Southern Poverty Law Center documented nearly 900 hate incidents in the 10 days following the election, many of them in schools. Because the organization wasn’t tracking incidents before the election, it’s impossible to know whether Trump’s campaign — marked by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric and by allegations that he had sexually assaulted multiple women — coincided with a rise in such acts of hatred.

Many teachers have reported a change in the tenor and intensity of harassment on their campuses and in their communities. Talya Edlund, an elementary school teacher from Maine, said she and her colleagues wanted to create “a launchpad for teachers to feel like they could ‘You are all our kids, no matter what’: Award winning teachers band together, speak out to protect students - The Washington Post:

Teacher: A one-size-fits-all approach to instruction is stifling our classrooms - The Washington Post

Teacher: A one-size-fits-all approach to instruction is stifling our classrooms - The Washington Post:

Teacher: A one-size-fits-all approach to instruction is stifling our classrooms

Lily Howard Scott is an educator who first worked with children as a teaching artist, visiting schools in Brooklyn and using playwriting and creative drama to help kids access curricula in unconventional ways. She decided that she wanted to continue  creative, child-driven work in the context of her own classroom, so she earned her masters degree in literacy and childhood education from Bank Street College of Education.

Scott has taught first through fifth grade in New York and California, and currently teaches third grade at PS 321 in Brooklyn. Lily says she believes that the most meaningful learning occurs when teachers design or adapt curricula to meet the needs, strengths, and interests of their students. The current trend of standardized learning, she said, harms students and teachers alike. In this post, she elaborates on this idea, exploring how schools can attract — and retain — great teachers. The answer, she says, “is so intuitive as to seem absurd.” Yet it has eluded many school “reformers.”

By Lily Howard Scott

Everyone has an opinion about what’s wrong with American education. Classrooms are overcrowded. Funding is misallocated. Segregation persists. Politicians, principals, and academics have rancorous debates over how to best fix our schools. On at least one issue, however, everyone agrees: Students deserve great teachers. But how can we attract — let alone retain — them?

One solution to recruiting better teachers, often mentioned but rarely implemented, is to pay them more. That would certainly help. But even with a higher salary, those who would make excellent teachers will never enter the profession — or remain in it — unless schools offer them something else: the freedom to put their judgment and talents to use to help students as best they can. This is so intuitive as to seem absurd.

But, as I’ve experienced as an elementary-school teacher, this freedom is increasingly at risk. The current trend toward standardized learning — scripted curricula and prescribed classroom-management routines — is shackling educators around the country and Teacher: A one-size-fits-all approach to instruction is stifling our classrooms - The Washington Post:

Schools Matter: Mass Customized Learning Comes to Central Pennsylvania

Schools Matter: Mass Customized Learning Comes to Central Pennsylvania:

Mass Customized Learning Comes to Central Pennsylvania

This post was originally written this past fall as a FB note, but I am posting it here now so that it can be more widely available.

“Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning” is a book and an educational program developed by education theorists Charles Schwahn and Bea McGarvey. Is is one of a number of “personalized” digital education programs popping up in schools across the country. The program, implemented in several communities in Maine, has been widely criticized and resulted in large numbers of teachers leaving those districts. Concerns included the fact that there are no traditional grade levels or letter grades, students could advance only upon “mastery” of the standards, and that instruction was highly-fragmented as teachers were meant to be “guides on the side.” Ultimately it was impossible to provide the level of differentiation required by the program.

I have known for some time that CBE or “personalized” hybrid-blended learning is being incubated in south central PA. It first popped up in the Johnstown/Bedford area and now seems to be creeping over into Lancaster, York, and Harrisburg. It is being pushed by Appalachian Intermediate Unit 8. The Intermediate Unit is working in concert with the Pennsylvania Leadership Development Council. PLDC has close ties to Dusquene University via Pat Crawford (professor of education emeritus and now Director of Professional Development for the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators) and Franny Serenka Associate Professor and Director of the School Administration & Supervision Program in the School of Education. Crawford presented at Mass Customized Learning conferences in South Dakota in 2013 and in Maine in 2014.

Besides the fact that that area is a bit out of the way and less high profile than other districts, I could not figure out why south-central PA was being targeted. Now I think I have now found the link. The push for mass digital learning came when Bill Schools Matter: Mass Customized Learning Comes to Central Pennsylvania:

 

Teacher traveled statewide to capture the spark in California classrooms | EdSource

Teacher traveled statewide to capture the spark in California classrooms | EdSource:

Teacher traveled statewide to capture the spark in California classrooms

David B. Cohen, a veteran English teacher at Palo Alto High and columnist for Education Week, spent a year crisscrossing California observing some of the state’s best teachers. The result was Capturing the Spark: Inspired Teachers, Thriving Schools, an insightful look at talented teachers, effective practices and promising schools, from Arcata to El Centro. Some interviewees were California Teachers of the Year or, like Cohen, have their national board certification, a distinguished designation. Others are well-known teacher leaders or have word-of-mouth reputations as gifted instructors.

EdSource’s John Fensterwald interviewed David Cohen recently about the book and his findings. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Besides having a great time doing this, why did you write the book?

I was involved in teacher-leadership projects and networks and building up a mental database of really skilled, talented, dedicated people. At the same time, the public discourse around schools and teaching was turning more negative – or that was my perception of it – due to an accumulation of stories, legal actions, ballot propositions. I felt that it might help – certainly help my sanity – and maybe other people if I could find a way to share some of what I know.

You wrote that it was an “antidote to pessimism.” Explain that.

I’m one of those people for whom professional is personal. The accumulation of bad news kind of gets into your system. The idea was that I would need a volume of positivity to outweigh some of the negative.

Part of it is wanting to complicate the thinking of critics who assume, “Well, if our children aren’t turning out the way we want, as a society, and they’re going through a school system, then the teachers must be responsible for the end result.”

We have some very skilled and talented teachers in a school, doing their absolute best, working against the odds, and within some constraints that are beyond their control. We need to take a more complex view of things.

You take the reader into the classroom and show the personal connections that teachers have with students and how important that is, which may be lost in Teacher traveled statewide to capture the spark in California classrooms | EdSource:

When A School's Online Eavesdropping Can Prevent A Suicide : NPR Ed : NPR

When A School's Online Eavesdropping Can Prevent A Suicide : NPR Ed : NPR:

When A School's Online Eavesdropping Can Prevent A Suicide

Ken Yeh thought his school was buying software to keep kids off of certain websites.

What he didn't know was that it could help identify a student who might be considering suicide.

Yeh is the technology director at a private K-12 school near Los Angeles. Three years ago, the school began buying Chromebook laptops for students to use in class and at home. That, Yeh says, raised concerns from parents about what they'd be used for, especially outside of school.

He turned to a startup called called GoGuardian, which helped the school create a list of off-limits sites: porn, hacking-related sites and "timewasters" like online games, TV and movie streaming. The software also has another feature: It tracks students' browsing and their searches.

And that's how Yeh was alerted that a student appeared to be in severe emotional distress.

The Mental Health Crisis In Our Schools

He recalls getting an indicator at work that a student had been searching for suicide and several related terms. "I then went in to view the student's browsing history around this time period."

The more he saw, the more Yeh was convinced that this wasn't an idle or isolated query.

There were other warning signs in the web browsing of this student as well: searchers for specific methods of self-harm and "terms that strongly suggested that the student was struggling with certain issues," he says.

Yeh alerted the principals and the student was brought in to speak with a guidance counselor. That conversation, Yeh says, led to positive interventions. "It was a little unexpected. We weren't thinking about this as a usage for GoGuardian."

Yet in the nearly four years that GoGuardian has been in use at this school, this type of incident has happened four separate times, he says. And GoGuardian says that across the 2,000 districts where its software is in use, it has heard similar anecdotes dozens of times.

Rodney Griffin, the Chromebook coordinator for the Neosho School District in When A School's Online Eavesdropping Can Prevent A Suicide : NPR Ed : NPR:

Charter schools controversy will only grow under Trump - CNNPolitics.com

Charter schools controversy will only grow under Trump - CNNPolitics.com:

Charter schools controversy will only grow under Trump

(CNN)President-elect Donald Trump hasn't been coy about his vision for public schools: He wants them to become more like their private counterparts.

Trump proposes spending $20 billion to allow for "school choice" -- the ability for families to use federal dollars in the form of vouchers on their school of choice, be it a charter, a magnet, private or a traditional public school.

Trump has not laid out a detailed plan, nor has he specified where the money will come from. He proposes "reprioritizing" existing federal money, a gambit experts say is sure to face bipartisan opposition from lawmakers who don't want to lose existing funds for their district.

But his pick of billionaire donor Betsy DeVos to be education secretary suggests an aggressive approach to reshape education.

In her home state of Michigan, DeVos is a forceful proponent of charter schools. She and her husband have lobbied for them and other nontraditional alternatives.

Charter schools are publicly funded and independently run, sometimes operated by for-profit companies. That means they don't have to follow the district's rules, even though they may receive funding from them, or hire unionized teachers -- a distinction that has put them at odds with teacher unions.

Advocates say that freedom lets charter schools sidestep policies that lock troubled schools into a cycle of failure, and allows for a more flexible, innovative curriculum.

As far as DeVos is concerned, charters are "an extension of public education," not "anti-public education," said Matt Frendewey, national communication director for the American Federation for Children, the school choice advocacy group DeVos co-founded. She resigned as chairwoman in November.

Critics, however, say the promised outcomes don't always live up to the hype. Charter school administrators have too much unchecked power, they argue, while money is siphoned from the poorest school districts to benefit charters at the expense of the area's other public schools, where the majority of children remain.

Some studies determined that charter schools are not necessarily better, as a rule.

"We believe that the chance for the success of a child should not depend on winning a charter lottery, being accepted by a private school, or living in the right ZIP code," said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the largest teacher's union, in a statement after DeVos was nominated in November.

Charter schools are accountable to the local bodies that oversee them, known as authorizers. In some states, it's the local school district; in others, it's an independent organization created by state law.

DeVos herself has faced criticism in Detroit over the lackluster performance of charter schools she championed in Michigan.

A Detroit Free Press investigation, for example, found that charter school students in Michigan tended to score lower on achievement tests than students at more traditional schools. DeVos has been accused of pushing charter schools there despite their poor performance and lack of accountability.

"When I hear her name and I think about education, I think about choice without quality," Tonya Allen, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, part of a coalition to fix Detroit schools, previously told CNN.Charter schools controversy will only grow under Trump - CNNPolitics.com:

Many Americans Live in ‘Education Deserts,’ New Research Shows - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Many Americans Live in ‘Education Deserts,’ New Research Shows - Real Time Economics - WSJ:

Many Americans Live in ‘Education Deserts,’ New Research Shows

Prospective college students in rural areas often live miles away from programs offered in a given career field

Call them education deserts.

In vast parts of the country, Americans in need of skills training often live many miles away from a community college. And for those who do live close to one, course options are often limited, covering a narrow range of fields. Many of those fields lack reliable data on expected earnings after graduation, preventing prospective students from making an informed choice of what and where to study.

That’s the conclusion of new research from the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. The report shows the lack of choices—geographically, at least—for students across higher education but raises the biggest concerns about Americans who generally can’t get into four-year schools. Namely: Recent high-school grads who never took the SAT or ACT and older workers who can’t move around because they have children or can’t leave their jobs.

Researchers Kristin Blagg and Matthew Chingos use “education desert” to describe the predicament of a prospective student who lives at least 25 miles away from an associate’s degree program in her desired field. They use “choice desert” to describe the situation of a student who lives within 25 miles of one or more programs, but only one of them—or perhaps none—have earnings data. The ideal situation—”true informed choice”—is when students live within 25 miles of at least two programs in a given field with earnings data, allowing them to compare and choose the best option.

The authors looked at Virginia, which collects earnings data for majors at public and nonprofit colleges. They examined programs in a range of majors and calculated their average proximity to students who graduated from high school in 2011 or 2012.

The biggest group is those who never took the SAT or ACT and thus couldn’t get into most four-year colleges. Across all majors examined in the study, an average of 35% of such students lived in an education desert. Sixty-one percent lived in a choice desert. Only 4% had “true informed choice,” living within 25 miles of at least two competing programs in a given field for which state earnings data was available.

Mr. Chingos says the research shows the shortcomings of recent federal and state efforts to help prospective college students. Those efforts focus on empowering students as consumers, providing cost and earnings data to help them make smarter choices about where to go to school.

That strategy certainly helps students weighing options at various mid- and upper-tier Many Americans Live in ‘Education Deserts,’ New Research Shows - Real Time Economics - WSJ:

County board overrules LAUSD to keep the embattled Gulen Magnolia charter schools open - LA Times

County board overrules LAUSD to keep the embattled Magnolia charter schools open - LA Times:

County board overrules LAUSD to keep the embattled Magnolia charter schools open

A Little-known county board overruled its own staff and the powerful Los Angeles Unified School District this week to allow three embattled charter schools to remain open.

The reprieve represents a full turnabout for Magnolia Public Schools, which faced the shutdown of its campuses after L.A. Unified moved against them in October.

The L.A. Unified board voted 6 to 0 to shutter the schools at the end of the current school year. But the charter group had the option of appealing to the board of the L.A. County Office of Education, and that body reached a different decision Tuesday, by a 4-1 vote, after three hours of testimony and discussion.

As a result,  Magnolia Science Academy 1 in Reseda, Magnolia Science Academy 2 in Van Nuys and Magnolia Science Academy 3 in Carson will remain open.

Charters are independently run and exempt from some rules that govern traditional campuses, but they must be authorized by the local school system, the county or the state. Once L.A. Unified rejected Magnolia’s bid to keep the schools open, the county was the next agency with the authority to step in.

The county staff report echoed the school district’s concerns, concluding, among other things, that Magnolia failed to provide investigators, auditors and financial overseers with requested documents in a timely fashion after years of poor fiscal management.

The county review team also contended that the charter was top heavy in management, had a high student attrition rate and scheduled board meetings that were difficult for the public to participate in or see. 

José Cole-Gutíerrez, head of the charter school division for L.A. Unified, also appeared before the county to make the case. The county education office is headed by Debra Duardo, who until recently was a top L.A. Unified administrator. 

But a board majority was swayed by Magnolia’s reasonably strong academic record and County board overrules LAUSD to keep the embattled Magnolia charter schools open - LA Times:

Students who opted out of PARCC cost N.J. more than $1M, state says | NJ.com

Students who opted out of PARCC cost N.J. more than $1M, state says | NJ.com:

Students who opted out of PARCC cost N.J. more than $1M, state says

TRENTON -- An enthusiastic testing "opt-out" movement, fueled in part by the state's largest teachers union, cost New Jersey taxpayers more than $1 million in 2015, according to the state Department of Education. 

New Jersey paid testing giant Pearson $1.4 million for tests not taken in the first year of the PARCC exams because it overestimated the number of students who would take the math and English tests by nearly 60,000 students, state auditor Stephen Ells found in a report released this week. 

The education department said in a written response to the audit that the estimated number of students taking PARCC was based on previous years of testing. It attributed the million-dollar mishap largely to parents who held their children out of testing. 

"An unforeseeable number of parent refusals reduced the number of test-takers, accounting for the disparity in the estimated number of tests and the number of tests actually taken," Assistant Education Commissioner Karin Garver wrote to Ells. 

Because New Jersey's estimate was not within 2 percent of the actual number of students who took the tests, it was contractually obligated to pay for the number of tests it originally ordered, according to the department's response to the audit report. 

PARCC tests were supposed to cost New Jersey about $25.50 per student, the Department of Education said in 2015. The state paid Pearson a total of $20.8 million for the first year of tests for grades 3-11, called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exams.

In the months leading up the computerized exams, parent groups and the state's Students who opted out of PARCC cost N.J. more than $1M, state says | NJ.com: