Rhinebeck School District Officials: SED, State Pols In Denial Over Opt-Out

From the Daily Freeman:

RHINEBECK, N.Y. >> School district officials are convinced that state lawmakers and education officials are in denial about the high rate of refusals for standardized tests and the reasons parents are upset.

The comments were made during a Board of Education meeting Tuesday. Trustee Dierdre Burns contended that state Education Department officials are refusing to take the problem seriously and have developed alternative methods to compensate for low-test participation.

“I thought their reaction to it ... was almost comical,” she said. “It’s like intellectually embarrassing this idea that teachers now have to write student learning objectives after the year is over ... (in a) convoluted effort to come up with data instead of asking the question how do we create school systems that (are) improving education.”

Burns was also critical of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s comments that the test scores “are meaningless to the student” and said it was an example of how lawmakers are missing the message from parents.

“The government’s response to opt out is just completely undemocratic,” Burns said. “We have an issue in the state, and you don’t just run roughshod over what people are trying to communicate through opting out. You should try to address what this means.”

Gee, government in Andrew Cuomo's New York responds to the high rate of refusals for standardized tests in an undemocratic way that completely what people are trying to communicate through opting.

Who'd a thunk that would have been the response?

Well, anybody paying attention to how the SED, the Regents, the state legislature or Governor Cuomo has handled education policy these last few years for starters.

They really don't care what people think or how unpopular the education policies are, so long as they can maintain power and keep all that yummy yummy ed deform/hedge fundie money coming in.

Now it's true some Albany pols have acted a tad nervously after they voted for Cuomo's ed deform budget with heavy hearts and heard an earful from parents and teachers.

And it's also true that they're paying lip service to addressing the concerns of parents and teachers during the waning days of the legislative session.

But very few pols are talking about getting at the root of the problem - the test-driven system bolstered by the Endless Testing regime and the teacher evaluation system that ensures what gets tested and evaluated (and thus what gets taught.)

They'll tinker at the edges of that, but they won't dismantle it because it would make all of their hedge fundie and Wall Street donor friends sad and that's the last thing most politicians want to do.

We have to keep the pressure on the Abany pols to make sure they know there WILL be a political price paid for supporting the Endless Testing regime.