The entire structure of high-stakes testing in New York crumbled Tuesday, as tens of thousands of fed-up public school parents rebelled against Albany’s fixation with standardized tests and refused to allow their children to take the annual English Language Arts state exam.
This “opt-out” revolt has been quietly building for years, but it reached historic levels this time. More than half the pupils at several Long Island and upstate school districts joined in — at some schools in New York City boycott percentages neared 40%.
At the Patchogue-Medford School District in Suffolk County, 65% of 3,400 students in grades three to eight abstained from the test, District Superintendent Michael Hynes told the Daily News.
“There was a very strong parent contingent that spoke loudly today,” Hynes said.
OPINION: COMMON CORE TESTING IS NOT NEEDED IN NEW YORK
At West Seneca District near Buffalo, nearly 70% of some 2,976 students refused testing. Likewise, at tiny Southold School District on Long Island’s North Fork, 60% of the 400 students opted out; so did 60% of Rockville Centre’s 1,600 pupils. And in the Westchester town of Ossining, nearly 20% of 2,100 students boycotted.
“It’s clear that parents and staff are concerned about the number of standard assessments and how they’re used,” Ossining school chief Ray Sanchez said.
Here in the city, a Department of Education spokeswoman claimed the number of opt-outs won’t be known for weeks. But there’s little doubt the boycott totals in city schools will dwarf last year’s numbers, when fewer than 2,000 pupils abstained.
At Central Park East 1, a K-to-5 school in East Harlem, 59 of 76 children refused the test, according to Toni Smith-Thompson, co-president of the Parents Association and a leader of the boycott.
“We’re very concerned about the impact a new testing proposal will have on our teachers,” Smith-Thompson said. She was referring to Gov. Cuomo getting the Legislature to approve a new evaluation system that will base 50% of a teacher’s performance on student test scores.
At Public School 29 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, some 20% refused. And at Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, 36% boycotted, local parent leaders said.
“Every year, all these hours of testing, it’s too much,” said Michelle Kupper, parent of a third-grader at PS 29.
“We disagree with how the test scores are being used to sort and to punish,” Kupper said.
In Westchester, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino refused to allow two of his children to take the test.
FREDRICK HESS: WHAT TO MAKE OF THE TESTING OPT-OUT TSUNAMI
“Today, Sheila and I join over 100,000 parents across New York in opting our children out of the Common Core tests,” Astorino said in a statement, a reference to the new tougher curriculum adopted by New York and other states, on which the test is based.
“Common Core needs to be replaced with better standards developed with input from teachers and parents and vetted and tested in a fully transparent process,” Astorino said.
Conservatives like Astorino have formed an unusual alliance with liberal education advocates who claim the test, developed by Pearson PLC, does nothing to help assess students.
“They’re secret, you can’t even discuss the contents of the test with anyone,” said William Cala, superintendent of Fairport Central School District outside Rochester, where 67% of students boycotted the test Tuesday.
“Any good assessment is one where you get immediate feedback, but we don’t even get the results for months after they take the test,” Cala said, and even then, teachers and students are never told what questions the students got wrong.
So how will Gov. Cuomo’s new evaluation system work with so many students refusing to be tested?
The governor’s office declined to comment for now, and state ed officials wouldn’t say how big the boycott had been.
But this was not provoked by any politician or the teachers unions, as some want you to believe.
Tens of thousands of parents got tired of being ignored by the people in Albany. So one fine day in April, they simply said, “no more.”
联系客服
