Four Long Island school superintendents took their objections to Common Core testing and related “reforms” on the road Monday night to a public forum at Sayville Middle School attended by about 150 parents, teachers and others.
The school chiefs, all from central or eastern Suffolk County, contend the state’s tough new tests in English and math, tied to classroom evaluations, have forced teachers to spend too much time prepping students for those assessments.
The result, these administrators say, is that students often have far less time than in the past for in-depth research on other subjects — for example, history and civics.
Cuomo's Common Core task force has called for a temporary de-coupling of state Common Core tests from teacher evals, but there's a catch - the de-coupling won't count for high school teachers whose students take Regents exams and "local" assessments will replace the state exams to make up the 50% test component for APPR.
So:
Local assessments will now b driving force in classrooms - get UR opt out letters in! Encourage others 2 do same https://t.co/a2kQo4H9Ov
— NYS Allies 4 Pub Ed (@NYSAPE) January 5, 2016
The powers that be want you to think a lot has changed in education post-Common Core task force.
The truth is, little has changed - "local" assessments replace state tests for many teachers, Regents exams continue to be a part of APPR for high school teachers and whatever Common Core tweaks the state plans will not disrupt the "instructional focus" of the Core.
In short, same old same old.
Every school uses the state exam as their local assessment, so this "change" is just bull. Yes, they will allow districts to supplant the state exam with a local one for teacher rating purpose, but, if a district chooses to do so then the kids would still have to take the state exam- the local one would be an extra one. The district would also have to pay for the local exam, while the state exam is free to the district.
ReplyDeleteSo, the local measure is a fake option - no district can feesibly do it: public outcry about the added cost and the added test days prevent any local school board from choosing that option.
I truly appreciate that these educators took Elia's handy-dandy Common Core promoting tools and threw out their window. Now if NYSUT would take the same courageous stand--informing the public that you can put lipstick on a pig--but you still have a pig!
ReplyDeleteSomehow its been an aim of every students to think about and put their best effort to start about their projects and to ready at once if they have been unable to find the errors.
ReplyDelete