In case you missed it on News 12, you can view the story about Beth Dimino refusing to administer the state tests here.
In related news, you can watch the video below of sixth-grade teacher Jennifer Rickert from upstate New York as she announces her decision not to administer state tests this year.
Sheldon Silver, who likely would have provided the only resistance to Cuomo’s agenda that will destroy public education, has been arrested today on federal corruption charges.
Silver, the long time speaker of the New York State Assembly, will likely be replaced with a Cuomo ally. With the Republican controlled Senate backing Cuomo’s agenda, it is now reasonable to expect that the governor will get everything he demanded yesterday.
The last layer of defense for students, teachers, and citizens who value locally controlled schools is the opt-out movement.
A message from PJSTA President Beth Dimino…
Governor Cuomo is wrong. He used junk science today to support his nonsensical theory that public education in NY is broken and that he alone has the “fix”. We can and will dissuade him of that opinion by each of us doing some or all of the following;
1) Refuse to allow your child to take the 3-8 tests.
2) Convince everyone you know to refuse to allow their child to take the tests. Last year, 60% of the students in Comsewogue did not take the tests and therefore the teachers could not be judged based on the student’s scores. No students take the test = No data to judge teachers. The opt out movement is the single best option to stop Cuomo’s testing agenda. Direct people to nysape.org for answers to their questions and a printable version of the IREFUSE letter.
3) Go to your local school board meetings and demand that your BOE pass resolutions against testing and in support of teachers and parents who refuse the tests.
4) Write letters, call, fax, and/or email your representatives and tell them some or all of the following;
Cuomo’s public school agenda is wrong, how public education is working in your district, that you will not support them if they do not support local control of your district schools, that funding should not be tied to testing or a teacher evaluation system, that you are refusing to allow your child to take the tests because they serve no educational purpose, and that forcing children to sit through developmentally inappropriate tests for the sole purpose of evaluating teachers is hurtful to students and an ineffective way to judge effective pedagogy.5) Get on Face book and Twitter daily for the purpose of staying up to date on current educational issues and to push a pro student, teacher and public education agenda. Go to thepjsta.org and read my emails daily for current PJSTA happenings.
I appreciate your support of me and my choice to refuse to administer the tests. I took this stand in defense of you and our students and yes I am fully cognizant of the personal risks that are attached to this choice. Together, we can and will stop the Governor and the deformers!
In Solidarity,
Beth Dimino
We have seen this coming for a while, but that didn’t lessen the sting of Governor Cuomo’s plan for public education that he laid out in his 2015 State of the State and budget proposal today.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s combination State of the State and budget proposal includes tough reforms that would overhaul the teacher evaluation formula, require two more years on the job for a teacher to attain tenure, and make it easier to fire ineffective educators.
On evaluations, Cuomo wants to see the current formula — 20 percent based on state testing, 20 percent on a local standard, and 60 percent based on qualitative measures such as classroom observation — swapped out for a system that gives equal measure to state testing (or, in certain cases, some other standard that measures work over an academic year) and 50 percent based on at least two observations performed by an administrator, an independent evaluator or an appointed faculty member at a SUNY or CUNY school of education.
While teachers can now attain tenure after three years, Cuomo would push that to five years and require them to maintain ratings of “effective” or “highly effective.”
On teacher removal, Cuomo would reform the “3020-A” hearing process by creating a presumption in favor of administrators in cases of educational incompetence, and an expedited 60-day process for teachers accused of physical or sexual abuse of a child.
In another shot across the bow of state teachers unions, Cuomo wants to increase the current cap on charter schools by 100 schools (to 560), and dissolve the regional caps to make that number a statewide tally. New York City has only two dozen charter slots remaining under the current inventory.
To summarize the overall education proposal…
Overall Cuomo called for an increase in state aid of $1.1 billion. However, there is a catch. If the legislature does not pass Cuomo’s reform agenda the budget will only include an increase of $377 million. In other words Cuomo is bribing the state lawmakers to pass an agenda that is abusive to children and that seeks to eviscerate our profession.
Plenty more to come on this…
Governor Cuomo, who yesterday said that public education, “Probably has been the single greatest failure in the state,” gives his state of the state address today at 1:30 pm. I am sure there will be plenty of reaction afterward as Cuomo launches his plan to eviscerate public education. While we wait for that a few links from the past few days…
So, what does “state,” as opposed to “local,” control mean? First, as a result of previous legislative action, namely the 2 percent cap on tax levy increases, democracy is out the window because a minority of residents has more power than the majority when it comes to deciding how much money will be spent in a given district.
Now comes the chancellor’s suggestions that locally elected school boards should no longer have control over determining whether teachers and principals do a good job and that all teachers and principals who do not meet the state’s standard of successful teaching or supervising two years in a row must lose their jobs.
Chancellor Tisch suggests that the content all children must learn and the methods teachers must use to teach that content will be determined by the state, not local residents in accord with professional educators, acting through democratically elected school board members. She suggests that charter schools, over which local residents have little if any control, would be completely free to flourish (or not!) and to replace democratically run local schools.
These charters, it should be emphasized, do not have to serve all children the way local, democratic and free schools must. And, as we all know by now, the education department will use tests purchased from private companies as the principal tool to determine whether kids are thriving, and thus whether their teachers ought to remain in the classroom.
So the non-elected chancellor and the current governor believe local control of education has failed. The great experiment is dead. What will take its place is a technocratic process so complex that it is almost impossible for parents, residents and educators to understand — much less embrace.
This opaque and exceedingly cumbersome and expensive process will be orchestrated from Albany. Education department bureaucrats in charge of this new system have little useful knowledge of the institution they will operate.
Local school boards, residents and parents and the staffs hired by the school boards will no longer play a central role in educating the young. This radical change, sadly, rests more on the arrogant self-regard of the chancellor, the governor and their allies than it does on any realistic assessment of the problems facing children around the state.
Poor children, regardless of race, suffer the ill effects of an education system that fails them, and has failed them for generations. But replacing democratic, local control of education with state technocratic education being pushed by a group of wealthy, non-elected reformers whose plans to improve education make sense to few people other than themselves and their paid acolytes, and whose concrete proposals come largely from for-profit companies hungry to profit off public funds, is deeply anti-democratic, not to mention foolhardy. Ms. Tisch and Gov. Cuomo have lost faith in democracy.
They would rather rely on people whom they regard as smart and well-connected — whether or not they know anything about schooling — rather than on parents, residents, experienced educators, scholars and students. To them, education must be taken out of the hands of teachers, principals and superintendents chosen by parents and residents, and instead be entrusted to companies that know one thing very well: how to make profits.
PJSTA President Beth Dimino has notified the Comsewogue School District that she is refusing to administer state tests this spring.
Via the Long Island Press…
“I find myself at a point in the progress of education reform in which clear acts of conscience will be necessary to preserve the integrity of public education,” she writes. “I can no longer implement policies that seek to transform the broad promises of public education into a narrow obsession with the ranking and sorting of children.
“I will not distort curriculum in order to encourage students to comply with bubble test thinking,” continues her letter. “I can no longer, in good conscience, push aside months of instruction to compete in a state-wide ritual of meaningless and academically bankrupt test preparation. I have seen clearly how these reforms undermine teachers’ love for their profession and undermine students’ intrinsic love of learning.”
Dimino hopes other local educators will follow her lead and oppose subjecting their students to the tests by refusing to administer them.
“The next logical step has to be the movement of conscientious objectors,” she tells the Press. “I believe, and I said this to [New York State Education Commissioner John] King and [state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl] Tisch and [state] Senator [John] Flanagan at the Three Village Rally [in November 2013], that this is child abuse. I believe that it is child abuse. I believe that giving these tests to my students makes me culpable in the abuse of children and I can no longer do that.”
Dr. Rella supports and respects her decision.
“I have known Beth for over 20 years,” he says. “This was not something she has done lightly. There was a lot of soul searching that went on and she said to me, as a matter of conscience, she cannot participate. She cannot proctor this test. And I support that.”
…
To help clarify this, she’s also putting forth a proposal before the New York State United Teachers Federation (NYSUT) asking that all teachers who have school age children refuse to let them take the exams.
This resolution, which Dimino co-authored, passed her union unanimously, she says, and will be brought to the NYSUT general assembly meeting in April, and aims to coordinate local teachers unions across the state in opting their children out of the tests in solidarity.
Be sure to read the full article at the Long Island Press. More to come on this.
The Stronger Together Caucus has authored a letter to the NYSUT officers, Board of Directors, and members. The letter addresses NYSUT’s seeming reluctance to push back against Governor Cuomo and Merryl Tisch regarding their APPR agenda.
Click here to view the letter.
Click here to contact the Stronger Together Caucus.
I’d like to take a bit of a break from our typical posts on here, consisting of news related to unions and public education in general to focus on something new. Across the school district we are employed in, PJSTA members can be found doing extraordinary work of all different varieties. Much of this work tends to go unrecognized as it is fairly ordinary for teachers to do extraordinary things all under the umbrella of “doing our jobs.”
I am on Twitter and tend to follow any PJSTA members who I discover to be on there. Early this fall I followed one of our members, Matt Drucker, and quickly discovered something very cool that he was working on. At the time Matt had very recently started blogging and was starting off by taking on a challenge titled, “Reflective Teaching: A 30-Day Blogging Challenge.” The challenge asked teachers to write a reflective blog post each day for thirty days in regards to our profession. Matt decided to give it a try because he was new to blogging and thought that it’d be a helpful way to get started.
” I feel that this blogging experience has opened my eyes to a whole new way to make connections with other teachers from all over the world. It’s great to see that we have so many things in common and it has provided an additional support system. It has also helped open my eyes to new ways to integrate and use technology in and out of the classroom.” Matt said.
Following that initial challenge Matt has gone on to continue blogging about his teaching experiences while at the same time taking on additional blogging challenges. I highly recommend that you check out his blog Sig. Drucker’s travels through education…
Over the course of my career, as a teacher at Clinton, Norwood, and Terryville, I have had the chance to work with the overwhelming majority of our elementary teachers. I have gotten to know many of the others through meetings, professional development, and other district related activities. However one of my regrets is that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know many of the secondary teachers outside of my union work. As is the case with our elementary teachers, it is clear that there is some really outstanding work going on at both JFK and Comsewogue High School. Social media has given me a bit of a window into some of the exceptional work that our members are doing at the secondary level. As an elementary teacher it is both comforting and exciting to see my students heading into such capable hands.
If you have examples of PJSTA members doing great work in your buildings (and I know there are many examples in every building!) feel free to pass it along to me. Additionally if you want to share some of your own best practices I would be happy to publish them here on the blog as well. You can contact me via email at wogteacher@gmail.com
Yesterday NYSUT held a Moral Monday rally on the Million Dollar Staircase in the state Capitol. Kudos to them for protesting funding inequities that rob our students of the education they deserve.
One thing I noticed in the coverage of yesterday’s events was that, deservedly so, there was lots of tough talk aimed at Governor Cuomo. From Andy Pallotta to Mike Mulgrew to Randi Weingarten, Cuomo was being called to task for his record as an ed deformer. What was unfortunate, however, is that none of this tough talk came last year when it mattered most. When there was a viable alternative to Cuomo in the race for governor the three aforementioned “unionists” weren’t talking tough about Cuomo. Instead Mulgrew was threatening the Working Families Party with dissolution if they didn’t endorse Cuomo and marching with the governor in the Labor Day Parade. NYSUT was hiding under a rock and throwing their money at reformy John Flanagan and Randi Weingarten was making robo calls on behalf of Cuomo’s running mate. So pardon me if their tough talk now rings a bit hollow to me.
Our friend Reality Based Educator had a good observation yesterday as well. Lost in all of this talk about funding inequities has been the fact that there has been little if any talk about the Cuomo and Tisch APPR agenda. As RBE points out on his Perdido Street School blog, it’s likely due to the fact that a big APPR sellout is on the way.
The union leadership puts together a rally with a message focused on the inequities between rich and poor districts.
Speaker Silver says education funding will be a “top priority” in this legislative session.
But there’s little-to-no pushback on the damages of test-based evaluations or redoing the evaluation system to make tests 40% of the entire rating (and really 100%, since if you come up “ineffective” on 40%, you’re ineffective overall.)
You can see how this will play out in negotiations, can’t you?
If you’ve been a teacher and have watched these kinds of fights for a while, I bet you can.
The unions and Assembly Dems will trade Cuomo’s evaluation, tenure, and 3020a “reforms” for more “education funding.”
And of course Cuomo will get his increase of the cap and funding for charter schools – that goes without saying.
…
It’s a lot of noise meant to fool the rank and file into thinking the union leaders plan on trying to protect them in upcoming negotiations.
Make no mistake – they don’t.
They plan on selling you out, giving Cuomo and the charter school entrepreneurs most (if not all) of what they want on the charter cap and charter funding, giving Cuomo and Tisch most (if not all) of what they want on the evaluation system “reforms” and 3020a changes in return for a few extra dollars in “education funding.”
We’ll hit on the coming sellout more in the coming weeks. For now one other thing to note…
Why is NYSUT giving VOTE-COPE money to John Flanagan? The Republican senator, who chairs the senate’s K-12 education committee, is a noted ed deformer and member of ALEC. He is on the take from reform group StudentsFirst and has been in the news for backing changes to the APPR that would take local control away from school districts. Flanagan has supported the idea of eroding tenure rights. He was also the senator who complained to Comsewogue’s administration that Beth Dimino needed to speak to him in a more deferential tone. He was not endorsed by NYSUT as there was literally no reason to endorse him. So one certainly wonders why NYSUT contributed $7,750 to him in this past election. That made them one of Flanagan’s top donors. Not issuing an endorsement is sort of pointless if you are going to then fill the coffers of that candidate anyway.
New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), NY BATs, Lace to the Top (LttT), STCaucus, Long Island Opt-Out (LIOO), and the Port Jefferson Station Teacher’s Association (PJSTA) have collaborated to write the following Test Refusal/APPR Resolution. The above organizations are in full support of this resolution and encourage its use as a working template for your local chapters. It will be presented at the 2015 NYSUT RA.
PLEASE bring this to the attention of the members in your local and make sure it is discussed in your Rep Council meetings. The more districts who sign-on, the better! There is strength in our numbers and in building MASSIVE test refusals for state assessments this Spring. Please encourage ALL your teachers to refuse testing for their own kids as this action will send a powerful message to other parents, that we support their right to opt their child out of developmentally inappropriate, non-diagnostic, high-stakes testing. We have provided a link at the bottom of the resolution for the purchase of Test Refusal car magnets and stickers to help build recognition and support within our communities. We encourage teachers to send in their child’s “I REFUSE” letter and display the magnet or sticker on their car to show support for students, teachers and public education!
Resolution to Support the “The I Refuse Movement” to oppose High Stakes Testing
WHEREAS, the purpose of education is to educate a populace of critical thinkers who are capable of shaping a just and equitable society in order to lead good and purpose-filled lives, not solely prepare that populace for college and career; and
WHEREAS, instructional and curricular decisions should be in the hands of classroom professionals who understand the context and interests of their students; and
WHEREAS, the education of children should be grounded in developmentally appropriate practice; and
WHEREAS, high quality education requires adequate resources to provide a rich and varied course of instruction, individual and small group attention, and wrap-around services for students; and
WHEREAS, the state assessments are not transparent in that–teachers and parents are not allowed to view the tests and item analysis will likely not be made available; and
WHEREAS, the assessment practices that accompany Common Core State Standards – including the political manipulation of test scores – are used as justification to label and close schools, fail students, and evaluate educators; therefore be it
RESOLVED that the PJSTA opposes standardized high stakes testing that is currently pushed by the Federal and State governments, because this testing is not being used to further instruction for children, to help children, or to support the educational needs of children; and be it further
RESOLVED, the PJSTA advocates for an engaged and socially relevant curriculum that is student-based and supported by research; and be it further
RESOLVED, the PJSTA will embark on internal discussions to educate and seek feedback from members regarding standardized high stakes testing and its impact on students; and be it further
RESOLVED, the PJSTA will lobby the NYS Board of Regents to eliminate the use of high stakes testing; and be it further
RESOLVED, the PJSTA will ask that all of its members have their own children refuse to take the Grade 3-8 assessments: and be it further
RESOLVED, the PJSTA will organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to high stakes testing; and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution will be sent to the NY State Board of Regents, the Governor of NYS, and all members of the NYS legislative branch; and be it finally
RESOLVED, that after this resolution is passed by the PJSTA Representative Council, an appropriate version will be submitted to the American Federation of Teachers for consideration at the AFT July 2016 Convention and to NYSUT for consideration at the 2015 RA.
Please encourage your members to purchase/replicate these bumper stickers/magnets to support test refusal as a way to stop corporate education reform. http://www.cafepress.com/nysalliesforpubliceducation
The Official Website of the PJSTA 