Discussions of common core, teacher evaluations and opting out of state tests have been prevalent the last few months. For several residents, those conversations moved into action last week with a rally outside Sen. Jack Martins’ office. Parents, educators and local residents rallied outside his office in Mineola to protest his approval of the state budget—which they feel contains several unfair education reforms—as well as to voice their disdain for Common Core tests.
Carle Place mom Andrea Bergin was shocked to found out that Martins voted in favor of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s state budget.
“He was completely against high stakes testing and the unfair evaluation process [at a forum last year]. And now with his yes vote, he went against everything he stood for,” Bergin said. “A lot of us parents and teachers feel like he betrayed us and let us down.”
“His vote left the evaluation process in the hands of the New York State Education Department and the board of regents. We need Sen. Martins to petition them and tell them we need fair evaluations,” Bergin continued. “50 percent of the teacher’s score can’t be based on student tests. If it is, all these children are going to learn is how to take a test.”
However, Martins said he remains opposed to Common Core, and continues to believe “we must reduce high stakes testing on our children…and that Governor Cuomo’s education proposals were wrong for our students and teachers.”
“The budget I voted for reflects all of that. We specifically required the State Education Department to find ways to reduce high stakes testing of our children, rejected the Governor’s 50-50 teacher evaluation plan and took the politics out of teacher evaluations by requiring SED and the Board of Regents to develop the criteria with a public comment period where parents, teachers, and all other stakeholders can offer their input,” Martins said in an email.
“They are the education professionals responsible for setting state education policy; they should be setting this as well, not the Governor.”
According to Martins’ office, the adopted budget requires SED to come up with recommendations on how to reduce the amount of state and local testing for students by June 1. The budget also rejects the evaluation system proposed by Cuomo, which included his suggestion that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation be based on standardized tests, and leaves the evaluation system up to the SED and Board of Regents.
However, Matt Jacobs, regional staff director for the Nassau chapter of the New York State Union of Teachers, says that these claims are “deceptive.”
“They’re dodging the issue because the law has determined how ratings are done. The Board of Regents and Commissioner can’t change that you can only consider state growth and [classroom] evaluations,” Jacobs said. “You can’t consider anything else a teacher does. With the old APPR there were lots of things that were considered and there was a lot of local control. Now there’s practically nothing they can collectively bargain so all of this is being imposed by the outside. Local control has been almost completely eliminated.”
In the meantime, parents remain frustrated with the tests. In Carle Place, several parents are having their students opt out of the standardized tests; the ELA assessments take place this week and the math assessments take place next week (April 22-24).
In Carle Place last year, 636 students were eligible to take the assessments and approximately 7 percent (45 students) opted out. The numbers varied slightly between the math and English tests. Carle Place superintendent Dave Flatley says this year, there are 634 students registered in grades 3-8. He expects the number of students opting out this year to be somewhat higher, based upon parents who have already indicated their children will not be sitting for tests. Flatley says that while there is still no “official” state authorized process for an opt out, the district does respect the requests of parents who do not want their child to sit for the tests.
“We honor these requests and provide reading material for these students as an alternate activity while their classmates complete the assessments,” Flatley said.
The opt-out movement goes far beyond the reaches of Carle Place. Jeanette Deutermann heads up the Long Island Opt Out Facebook group (which has over 21,000 members) and says she expects 30 to 40 percent of Long Island students to opt out of the tests this year, up from about 20 percent last year.
“It’s been an explosion that’s happening,” Deutermann said. “Parents are starting to understand the only way to protect their kids from having a test focused curriculum is to say they won’t participate. If they don’t participate they can’t use tests as a punishment tool. We’re denying them the data.”
However, a spokesperson for the NYSED says there can be consequences if enough students don’t take the test. They say that under federal regulations, if a school has less than 95 percent of its students participating in the assessment, the school could lose significant funding.
“The state education agency is expected to consider imposing sanctions on that district, including—in the most egregious cases—withholding programmatic funds,” a spokesperson for the NYSED said. “What sanctions to impose must be decided on a case by case basis, taking into account the degree and length of time the district has failed to meet participation rate requirements and the reasons for such failure.”
But Jacobs said that legally, there is no connection between state aid and students taking the test.
“There is no provision in the law for the schools state aid or state funding to be reduced in any way, based on the number of students taking the test,” Jacobs said. “We had schools last year where significantly more than 5 percent of students opted out, and [the district] didn’t lose any funding.”
