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By Deb Escobar.

Refuse the Test Robocall 2016 Committee:  Katherine Brezler, Deb Escobar, Lisa Kollmer, Lorri Gumanow, and Loy Gross.

Last year, a handful of grassroots education activists had an idea to crowdsource the financing of a robocall to NY parents, advising them of their right to refuse the state ELA and math tests. It seemed the project was a long shot. We had less than two weeks to raise a stated goal of $20,000. The effort was very successful and raised $17,500 in ten days. Zephyr Teachout, the progressive challenger to Governor Cuomo in the NY State 2015 gubernatorial primary, agreed to record the message, and Aixa Rodriguez translated and recorded in Spanish. Hundreds of thousands of calls were placed, and the campaign received much positive publicity. The streamed message was picked up by media, and the attention generated enthusiasm and furthered awareness for the test refusal cause.

We believe that the contributions of all of our donors, and of course the hard work of anti-common core and opt-out parents and many grassroots organizations led to over 200,000 parents in the state refusing the Grade 3-8 Common Core aligned high-impact state tests for their children.  When those parents acted, they sent a powerful message to our Governor, Legislature, and Regents. That message made the mountain move against the corporate backed education reforms that have hurt our public schools, students, and teachers.

Since the test refusals last year, there have been some hopeful signs that our voices were heard by those in Albany. Common Core forums across the state received testimony from parents and educators and gave hope for needed changes to the standards, and an end to the test and punish regime that they ushered in. A four-year moratorium was placed on using test scores to evaluate teachers. New members who were named to the NYS Board of Regents seem to be more understanding of the inequity problems confronting our public schools, and cognizant that the “education reforms” that former State Education Commissioner John King and Governor Cuomo steamrolled in have been a failure. The Board of Regents elected Betty A. Rosa, a former NYC principal and superintendent, as Chancellor. Rosa publicly admitted that if she had children in the grades taking the exams, she would have them refuse the tests.

However, in spite of these positive changes, not much has really changed. The tests are “somewhat” shorter, with unlimited time given for completion. These small testing concessions are not the substantive change that is needed. Our children are still taking tests that are too long, grade levels beyond their abilities, and cause stress and anxiety while stealing valuable time out of their classroom learning. Our schools are being labeled as failures and put into receivership or “focus school status” based on test scores from measures that are “designed to fail.” The damage to academic self-esteem falls hardest on students with disabilities and English Language Learners, who are forced to take the same grade-level test as their class peers. An assessment by Kevin Glynn of readability level for some questions from the Grade 3 NYS ELA test revealed an average reading level of Grade 8. Though the state has contracted with a new vendor for next year’s tests, the 2016 exam questions were written by Pearson, who intentionally created “equally plausible” and confusing answer choices that require abstract thinking that does not develop until children are about 11 years old. We have heard nothing about recalibrating the cut scores, which were previously correlated to a score of 1630 on the SAT. How does it make students feel during and after experiencing a test that is too difficult for them? Do they lose their academic self-confidence and motivation to learn? Recent guidelines issued by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) state that high-impact testing may increase the risk of educational failure and drop-outs, and that it replaces curricular instruction with test preparation.

Additionally, though there is a moratorium on using the scores for teacher evaluations and student achievement measures (our Governor said the tests are “meaningless”), they are still being recorded as “growth scores” for use after the moratorium ends. To date, nothing has happened on changing the Common Core, in spite of letters from school administrators falsely stating that teachers are now actively involved in assessing and changing the standards. We need to not only move the mountain, but bring it tumbling down.

This year, we joined forces with Loy Gross and the United to Counter the Core team. We also enlisted the help of two prominent NY educators to record the messages. Jamaal Bowman is the founding principal of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action Middle School and has been an educator in Title 1 schools for fifteen years. He is a devoted advocate. William Cala is a lifelong educator and activist who has spoken out on standardized testing, Common Core, the Urban-Suburban Program, Governor Cuomo’s education policies, and other important issues that affect New York schools. We will also once more send messages recorded in Spanish.

Many parents are still unaware of the need to refuse tests for their children. Calls will be placed strategically throughout the state, with areas that had low refusal rates last year being targeted first. To make that happen, we are once more asking for donations to fund our message and counteract the pressure and inaccurate information that has come from Education Commissioner Elia in her “tool kit” to schools, passed on to parents by some school administrators. Donations are being accepted at www.crowdrise.com/ny-refuse-the-test-robocall-2016/. 100% of donations go to support the phoned message, with each dollar funding 25 calls.  Our hope is that continued or increased test refusals this year will send a message that cannot be ignored.

Author

Anthony Cody

Anthony Cody worked in the high poverty schools of Oakland, California, for 24 years, 18 of them as a middle school science teacher. He was one of the organizers of the Save Our Schools March in Washington, DC in 2011 and he is a founding member of The Network for Public Education. A graduate of UC Berkeley and San Jose State University, he now lives in Mendocino County, California.

Comments

  1. rbeckley58    

    Anybody know how much robo calls cost?

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