photo courtesy of WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show
Live streaming the Common Core forums taking place throughout New York state has become a type of spectator sport for me. While chopping vegetables for dinner, I cheer on my fellow advocates as they speak the truth about corporate education reform to a panel of policymakers that include Commissioner John King and Merryl Tisch, NYS Board of Regents chancellor.
On Monday, October 28, 2013, around 70 parents and educators spoke to the panel at Port Chester Middle School in Westchester County, New York. There are thousands more of us in social media, in classrooms, in offices, and in homes who share these speakers’ sentiments. We are organized and unwavering in our mission to protect our “special interests”: the children of New York state. The next forum will take place in Suffolk County, Long Island on November 6, 2013. Here is a complete list of scheduled forums.
For those of you unable to watch the video of the Port Chester forum, I share with you two powerful testimonials.
Susan Polos:
“Dr. King, I’m Susan Polos, resident of Katonah-Lewisboro district. I am a National Board certified school librarian in the Bedford Central district.
I was appointed by Regent Cohen as a practitioner to review and revise the ELA/ESL Standards, work that was close to finished when NY accepted the Common Core Standards as a requirement for Race to the Top money. The district where I work was at first glad to accept the funds but soon realized that the costs were greater than the reward. I am talking about more than monetary costs.
In the race to ensure “college and career readiness” (as though there is one path, one type of college, one type of career), we have sacrificed the arts, music, librarians, time for interdisciplinary connections, project-based learning, experiential opportunities – all diminished or disappeared as time, money and human resources have been redirected to data collection and data analysis. In the eyes of the state, our children are numbers, our teachers are numbers, and the numbers have been clearly sorted and cut to achieve a talking point. Then those numbers – attached to names – are sold to the highest bidder.
The national obsession with competition hurts our most vulnerable children. Our children deserve play, time to grow, school librarians and much more. They are more than numbers. They are writers (and not to the test, which is how they are now taught), they are builders, they are dancers, they are dreamers. Our teachers are living through a nightmare, following directives they deplore while trying to make each day the best for every child, knowing they are the convenient scapegoat for poverty, racism, and equitable access to resources.
You would not subject your children to what you subject the masses to. We all know that powerful forces are buying our politicians and thus education “reform” has become the bipartisan gift that keeps on lining the pockets of the rich while destroying the middle class and poor and threatening Democracy itself.
Please stop this train. Not by eliminating one or two tests as appeasement, but by listening to teachers, parents and students, and by ending corporate profit’s vise on our most precious resource: our children.”
Bianca Tanis:
“This is my son and your reforms have hurt him. You mandate schools to share sensitive student data. You force students with disabilities to submit to inappropriate and humiliating testing. Only now, 5 months later, after you have had to endure public outcry, are you willing to consider changes. Where was common sense and decency 5 months ago when parents begged to for their children to be exempt and when children with disabilities were being tortured. You should be ashamed.
These reforms are not about education. They are about the agenda of billionaires with no teaching experience. The fact that your close advisors are the mysterious Regents Fellows, individuals with little to no teaching experience, who are paid 6 figure salaries with private donations by Bill Gates and Chancellor Merryl Tisch, speaks volumes. Private money comes with a price tag and that price tag is influence. We reject leadership that allows public education to be bought. That is not democracy. By the way, the Regents Fellow job description does not mention teaching experience as a requirement.
It has been said that parent opposition is typical when change is introduced. There is nothing typical about the present response. The incompetent roll out of the common core and the naked disregard that has been shown for developmentally appropriate and educationally sound practice is unacceptable. Your recent concessions are disingenuous and a case of too little too late. They do nothing to reduce the hours of testing or the inappropriate level of test difficulty. They do nothing to make cut scores reasonable or address serious problems associated with high stakes testing.
In addition to hurting children, your policies promote social inequality. Private school parents, such as your self have the opportunity to say to no to harmful testing and data sharing while public school parents are not afforded the same rights. Are you afraid of what would happen if you gave all parents a choice?
The inadequacy of our schools is a manufactured crisis. Poverty is the number one indicator of student achievement. When you factor in poverty, US schools are at the top. New York deserves real leadership that addresses real issues. If you won’t provide that leadership, we need someone who will.”
Here is the video of the Port Chester forum: http://www.lohud.com/article/20131029/NEWS08/131029001/Common-Core-Watch-a-replay-of-the-forum-in-Port-Chester
Here are blog posts about the Port Chester forums:
http://nyceducator.com/2013/10/reformy-king-john-pretends-to-listen.html
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/29/parent-these-reforms-are-not-about-education/
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2013/10/not-one-speaker-supported-common-core.html
Critical Classrooms, Critical Kids 
Great piece. The Albany forum online viewership was nearly 3000 according to the counter on the site. Any idea how many viewed the Portchester forum feed? I talked to people from all corners of the state that were watching. It would be interesting to keep a running total of online viewers as these forums take place.
I, too, watch each one, tweeting my thoughts, while cheering on the “special interest” speakers!
Reblogged this on InterACT and commented:
Taking a look at this blog post regarding the Common Core transition in New York state, I’m struck by the disconnect between the policy and the practitioners. That gap is certainly not unique, but it seems particularly wide in New York right now. How about here in California? Do you think we’re dodging the worst of what’s happening in New York? Do you think we’re headed down the same road, just further behind? Share your thoughts here if you like – I’ll write my own post on the topic soon!
I have children in the Milford school district in Ohio, which evidently is the one other district in the nation that jumped on this train. I just attended my son’s parent teacher conference where his teacher went through a folder of worksheets with me and pointed out what questions he got wrong and why and then assured me he would be fine on the test. In fact, that was the phrase she used over and over… “On the test”.