The tests are asking students to take 70 minutes when the module would require 300 mins…

If your children have been instructed in the Common Core they will not be prepared for the NYS Test.

A typical module lesson is 60 minutes. The focus of the module is a close reading of text and answering of questions that sends the readers back to the text for evidence to support a claim. It is a laborious process that requires the entire 60 mins.

Students will be taking a 70 minute test. They will be asked to critically read 6 passages. They will then answer 30 questions that will allegedly send them back to the text for additional close reads.

The tests are asking students to take 70 minutes when the module would require 300 mins…

 

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If my child is going to sit for 500 minutes to take a test there better be a good reason.

 

If my child is going to sit for 500 minutes to take a test there better be a good reason. To date, I have not heard of any.

 

What we know:

 

-The results are given in 6 months.

 

-We can never see the test.

 

-We are told every answer is “plausible”.

 

-We are told the text is above grade level.

 

-Only15% of ELA standards are tested. Writing, listening & speaking are left out.

 

-Field test questions are on the test.

 

-Prepping for this test has taken a month (or more) out of our children’s education and fractured a love of learning.

 

-There is no proof that this is a measure of college/career readiness.

 

-We are not preparing them to become “good” test takers, because this is the only 500 minute test they will ever take (regardless of college/career).

 

-We love our children and when we hear so many say something is wrong, we need to know what our children are about to be exposed to.

Wear green laces knowing that children will be happier and their education will be stronger because of your commitment to their future.

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common core, education, parents, testing

One year ago, a symbol to protect kids from high stakes testing was conceived. It was a few pairs of green laces that measured less than the length of a classroom. The symbol spread in that year through compassion and humor and beautiful truths emerged. Strangers became friends. Moms became heroes. A superintendent became a legend. Politicians became allies. Kings became fools. Isolated refusals became school-wide norms. Sit and stare became stand and refuse. Whispers became roars.
Lace to the Top was conceived one year ago as a symbol to unite good people to protect their kids against bad tests. A group of 2 has become 13,000. Less than the length of a classroom has become more than 18 miles of bold and impossible to ignore green laces. The tests are still here but there are more people united against them than were anticipated and the numbers are growing rapidly.
Education, children, teachers, and parents can be ready for college and careers without testing. It is testing that cannot exist without us. Wear green laces and be a part of the return of school to the people in the school house.

As one

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Lace to the Top Endorsement of Richard Iannuzzi

 

Dear Fellow Teachers,

 Dick Iannuzzi was a teacher and the president of my local when I first started teaching. His leadership and professionalism set the tone for our members then, and still resonates today.

 When charter schools tried to invade our district, he organized a forum, spoke to the crowd, and crushed the charter supporters in a debate that ended with thunderous support from a packed auditorium.

 Dick’s election as NYSUT President did not remove him from the members and community he led for so many years. He went on a listening tour around the state and responded honestly to members’ questions as well as criticisms.

 Dick hosted a NYSUT rally in Albany fighting the corporate take-over of public education with a focused passion that united support of close to 20,000 educators. Among the masses were two teachers dressed as a pineapple and a hare.

 Dick was part of our grassroots and student-focused movement from the beginning. He proudly held up a pair of green laces at the rally hosted by Dr. Joe Rella, because the idea that kids are more than a score is something he has believed since his days as a teacher.

 He has publicly and powerfully denounced the SED for its positions on sit and stare as well as parents’ right to opt their children out of high-stakes testing.

 Dick Iannuzzi makes leadership look easy because his vision is clear and his motives are just.

 

We endorse Dick Iannuzzi as NYSUT President.

 

 

Sincerely,

 Dr. Anthony Griffin & Kevin J. Glynn

Teachers, Dads, Lace to the Top Co-founders

 

Stop legitimizing something that calls our students failures, when they’re really not.

Teachers, as you fill in your plan books for the upcoming school week, please take inventory and see how much time you’ve set aside for test prep. Even if you’ve disguised it by trying to call it something with a cuter name… Ask yourselves if that’s the best way for you and your students to spend your time at school for the next month; doubling up on math lessons, desks separated, sitting for extended periods of time, filling in bubbles to questions from a practice test from 2007? How can you prepare your students for the tests anyway? The tests contain text passages with lexile levels YEARS beyond the grade being assessed. You would probably have to give them multiple choice questions on Virgina Woolf’s, Mrs. Dalloway, (I’ve wrestled with that one for years,) in order to properly prepare.

Now I realize many teachers have been given the directive to test prep. But for those who were never given that directive, like me, don’t do it. If you do, you are contributing to this systemic problem and are validating the legitimacy of these state tests. And for what? For 34% of your students to pass? Just a smidge higher than the state average of 31%? Is that really worth wasting an entire month of valuable class time in which you can actually teach and the students can learn?

No matter what you call it, or what cute and fancy cover you put on the packet that you need copied for your students, extensive test prep is all the same- an absolute waste of creativity and progress. Stop legitimizing something that calls our students failures, when they’re really not.

From Taryn Kirk Glynn

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“The saddest thing in life is a waste of talent.”

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education testing students parents

Yesterday, I took my dog, Pickles, to the vet. My mind was focused on Pickles and her health. When the vet asked how things in education were going I gave a quick response, “Not so great, but hopefully getting better.”

The vet assured me that Pickles would be ok and then he proceeded to give me his input on education. Perhaps because he knew I was from the Bronx, he started with a quote from the movie Bronx Tale, “The saddest thing in life is a waste of talent.”

He went on to explain the real shame in education is that test scores are defining our children and their teachers. The true talents of the children and their teachers are lost. Everyone simply becomes a number. He questioned, “And who even knows what that number represents?”

He shared with me that he didn’t do well on tests. Here is a vet that I have trusted with my dog’s life for 11 years. I never bothered to ask to see his scores. Come to think of it, I don’t know the scores of the doctor that takes care of my children.

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The School Year Doesn’t End In April

NYSED provides guidance on which standards will be covered on the state tests.  They are even so kind as to notify administrators and teachers as to the extent these items should be covered. 

 

The problem we all come across is that the NYS list is created for convenience sake, but does not make much sense if your school is following a Math program that has any sort of sequential order (lessons that build upon each other).

 

Teachers and administrators are in a mad scramble to pull lessons out of order and even double up because NYSED has provided guidance that these topics might be on the test.   

 

While the students become “exposed” to the concepts, any hope for building a foundation of learning that will last is lost. 

 

This practice is widespread.  We need to stop worrying if our students are ready for the test in April.  We need to stop teaching to the test and start teaching to the student.    

 

Lace to the Top

 

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We Have the Answers

“Our problems exist in the present, and it is only in the present that they can be resolved.” J. Krishnamurti

The call for college and career readiness is a manufactured problem that abuses kids, frustrates parents, and demoralizes educators. It a hostile take-over of the most despicable kind; punishment of families and extortion of communities in the guise of philanthropy and the goal of profit. It is not seen that way because the questions and conversations at the dinner table and faculty rooms have been replaced by the fear and rhetoric of reformers.

The reformers misdirect and confuse with their questions which have dominated the education dialogue. They ask, If not high-stakes testing, and standardization, and Common Core, data-mining, modules, APPR, John King, and Pearson then what? How can we hold teachers accountable, measure student progress, and compare the US education system with the rest of the world without these pieces to the education reform plane that is being built in mid air with our children inside? How can we teach our students to be college and career ready without standardized tests?

These are not my questions. They are the ones that disrupt the conversation about how to ensure the best teaching and learning in our schools and intentionally limit our potential for success.

My questions are simple. What do students need? Why do they need it? How should they get it? Did they learn it? What can be done to make it better next time?

What “it” is, is as differentiated and as authentic as each child in front of each teacher in each classroom and cannot be forced to fit a standardized test no matter how rigorous, internationally benchmarked, or well-funded the messenger is.

We cannot have honest dialogue answering their questions with their words and within their framework. It is time to move forward and pose the questions and provide the solutions for our children in our schools in our communities. We have the answers as parents, educators, and community leaders to the important questions that affect our children. We just need to change the questions to the ones that matter to the people that matter the most to us.