March 28, 2017
• To Raise the Quality of Education, Refuse the Tests!
• Test Refusal = People Power • Say No to Receivership
To Raise the Quality of Education,
Refuse the Tests!
"The tests are not a means to assess progress or knowledge. They are a means to punish, to brand children, especially minorities, as failures and their teachers as failures. Testing is a means of control, of policing, not educating. Like prisoners, students are subjected to the humiliation of being a number, a 1, 2, 3, or 4, with 1 the lowest. Our children are not numbers, they are human beings with rights!”
The quality of Buffalo public schools and how to raise it is a concern of students, parents and teachers alike. This is especially true given the schools remain segregated and unequal. It is being said that the upcoming New York State standardized testing for grades 3-8 provide a means to assess how students are doing and thus provides a tool for raising quality. The testing takes place for three days, March 28-30 for English Language Arts (ELA). Testing for math will take place starting May 1. Since the tests are now untimed, it means many children will struggle for more than four hours each day to try and finish. Special needs students and English Language Learners all take the same test and are assessed the same as students without these difficulties.
Education Commissioner Elia, on a recent visit to the area, claimed the tests are a critical way for school districts and parents to evaluate the progress of students. A March 15 letter from Superintendent Cash similarly stated, “The tests are designed to measure what students know and are able to do…” Neither provides any factual basis for these claims.
Actual experience by students, parents and teachers has shown that the state tests are not a valid or accurate measure of students, their knowledge or their progress. On the contrary, much of the testing is not developmentally appropriate, including reading passages and questions often 2-3 grade levels higher than the grade being tested. The testing does not engage students in applying what they have learned. The tests also purposely include several answers that could be right, but only one that is acceptable.
In this manner, students are being taught to submit to the arbitrary dictate of the test-makers, without even being able to raise questions and explore content. Indeed, teachers are not permitted to even see the test or discuss any of its content, with most forced to sign a waiver agreeing not to discuss the test. Students, teachers and parents do not get the tests back or even any specific information back so they cannot assess what content was considered wrong, or why, or how to further strengthen a student’s ability in a given area. Teachers only get general information at the end of the school year, when it cannot be used to assist students. How then is this a means to assess progress?!
Further, students are subjected to the humiliation of being a number, a 1, 2, 3, or 4, with 1 the lowest. These rankings are often posted publicly in the schools, in the name of shaming students into doing better. Everyone is supposed to accept talking about the students as numbers, that “1s are hopeless and 2s have to be raised to 3s and 4s can be ignored” or “all we have are 1s and 2s.” Students’ abilities in music, art, sports, working together, investigating, finding solutions, resolving conflicts, engaging discussion, none of this is even considered.
Our children are not numbers, they are human beings with rights! A single test, especially those as flawed as the state tests, cannot assess progress or knowledge. Teachers, parents and students themselves are far more able to make such assessments, based on a wide variety of means over a period of time. No musician or writer or artist or athlete or scholar or organizer is assessed based on a single concert or game or book or protest — and none would accept such assessment. Yet that is what is demanded by the state. All would also recognize that teaching and learning in all spheres are collective efforts and need to be assessed as such.
The tests are not a means to assess progress or knowledge. They are a means to punish, to brand children, especially minorities, as failures and their teachers as failures. They are a means to force all concerned to accept and enforce what they know to be unfair and arbitrary tests that harm students. They are a means to eliminate the collective character of teaching and learning and an attempt to reduce them to individual matters of individual scores.
Testing is a means of control, of policing, not educating.
To counter this injustice, defend the rights of students and direct attention to raising the quality of education — Refuse the Tests! By refusing the tests students and parents can take a stand that they are to be decision makers in all matters concerning education, including how to assess progress and what knowledge is needed. Addressing such matters requires deciding on the aim of education more generally, and the content, methods, curriculum, assessments needed to meet that aim. Students are striving to be thinkers, innovators, problem-solvers, contending with today’s social problems so as to build a bright future. Education needs to arm students to change the world and move society forward. Testing is designed to do the opposite, to turn students and teachers into good and willing slaves.
Refuse the Tests! [TOP]
Demand to be Decision-Makers!
Demand Education to Change the World!
In recent months, social media has been ablaze with talk of regular folk taking action to resist the Trump agenda. Protests are a daily occurrence, and even those who previously paid little attention to politics are now hitting the streets with cardboard signs to express their outrage… While I wish more people had been ‘woke’ under Obama, this new wave of activism – with the message of #PeoplePower at its heart – gives me hope.
Since 2013, I have been strongly encouraging residents of New York State – and beyond – to refuse the Common Core-aligned grades 3-8 state tests in math and ELA. I still have nothing positive to say about them, and at this point I have escalated to practically demanding that you opt out this year. Even Betty Rosa, the new chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, said she would refuse the tests. Here is what Kate Taylor of The New York Times reported in March 2016:
“Dr. Rosa has suggested that the tests were designed so that many students would fail, giving policy makers a chance to point to a crisis in the state’s schools. She said that if she had children in the grades taking the exams, she would have them sit out the tests, as the parents of more than 200,000 students did last year.”
People, we have power. Refusing the state tests sends the message that we reject the further privatization of public education in this country. Under this umbrella, we:
• Say NO to poorly constructed, highly flawed and developmentally inappropriate standardized tests.
• Say NO to the lack of art, music and culturally responsive curricula in our schools.
• Say NO to the over-testing of our youngest learners, particularly English-language learners who must also take the grueling four-part NYSESLAT assessment AFTER the state ELA and math tests.
• Say NO to school segregation and the argument that a school is “bad” because of low test scores.
• Say NO to uninspiring test prep curricula.
• Say NO to a one-size-fits-all education.
• Say NO to test scores being used to label schools, students and teachers as “failing,” [and subject to state takeover and privatization].
• Say NO to data-mining.• Say NO to fear and threats! NY students are getting into competitive middle and high schools without test scores, and schools with high opt-outs are not being de-funded.
Opting out is not just to protect your own child. It also sends the message that we are looking out for all children. Peter Greene, a highly respected educator and blogger, recently published a piece on test refusal, Eight Reasons to Opt Out (http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/03/reasons-to-opt-out.html). It gives even more reasons to opt out including “the value of non-compliance,” my personal favorite. Greene writes, “In this day and age, it is never too early for a child to learn that sometimes people in authority will demand that you comply with dumb actions. Unthinking compliance is unwise. It’s good for all citizens to learn to say ‘no’.”
The New York State tests begin March 27. Please visit these websites (New York State Allies for Public Education, nysape.org; to download your opt out letter. It is not too late to say NO, and do not let anyone tell you that you cannot refuse the tests.
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Say No to Receivership
New York State testing begins March 28 for grades 3-8. Test results for a given school are the main way the state uses to take over public schools, using receivership. Buffalo currently has 15 schools in receivership. At the end of the school year, these schools are subject to being turned over to an independent receiver and possibly privatized, including by giving the buildings to private charters. The decision to do so is entirely up to State Education Commissioner Elia. The school board, the public as a whole, the teachers, students and parents of these schools, do not decide — appointed Commissioner Elia does. The receiver for the schools is accountable to her, not the public. Even if schools show what is called some “demonstrable improvement,” Elia still decides if they are to remain in receivership, whether to turn them over to an independent receiver and whether more schools are to be put in receivership. This is undemocratic and directly against public control of our public schools.
Given the test scores are the main means for imposing receivership, refusing the tests is a main means to refuse receivership. Now is the time to step up refusal. Get informed, discuss and take a stand for the right of parents, teachers and students to decide! These are our schools, not Elia’s!
Given that the state itself found the tests to be invalid in various ways, there is a moratorium on using test scores to evaluate teachers and principals. However, there is no moratorium on the testing itself or on receivership, based on these same invalid tests. So when the state and superintendent claim, “Student performance on the 2017 Grades 3-8 ELA and Mathematics tests will have no employment-related consequences for teacher and principal evaluations,” it is inaccurate and misleading. The testing is still being used to put and keep schools in receivership. For these schools, the receiver has the power to fire teachers and principals, to involuntarily transfer them, and more. These are significant “employment-related consequences,” based on the test scores. There needs to be a moratorium on testing and receivership. And since the state will not do so, refusing the tests is a means for parents and students to do so.
Refuse Receivership by Refusing the Tests
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