By CHRIS BUTERA
Angry teachers and parents gave New York state senators an earful on Tuesday, blasting what they called “high-stakes testing “ and “student data mining” at a State Senate Education Committee hearing in Lower Manhattan.
Witnesses complained of very young students taking frequent assessment tests under the state-mandated Common Core. The tests are extremely difficult and given consistently, resulting in highly stressed out students. air jordan 3 femmes The youngsters and their teachers are then evaluated for their scores, which produce negative feedback for many instructors as well as children being held back. Parents then receive confusing letters saying that their children are not proficient, but it’s not a problem.
“The Common Core is a good idea,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. But he said it should be banned from kindergarten to second grade. “There is more to education than just a test score.”
“Children are not robots. Neither are teachers,” said Senator Simcha Felder
Teachers also complained that they were not allowed to see the tests.
“There has to be a more flexible set of rules,” said UFT member Shale Polkowsky. “We need more flexibility around the policy. We need to focus on early childhood. We need more time for teachers to train in this way of teaching.”
“I think many of them (teachers) are frustrated with the Core Curriculum and their modules,” said Senator John Flanagan.
“Results need to come back to the teacher,” said Senator Elizabeth Little. “If we want the students to benefit from these tests we have to give them back to the teachers.”
They also expressed displeasure about the companies backing the plans (notably Pearson) who, they contend, have not designed a curriculum aligning with the tests, dooming children and their teachers to poor evaluations.
“There is no curriculum related to the tests being given,” Mulgrew said. “Teachers need a curriculum. Otherwise, test scores are going to plummet. This is not the NYSED’s (New York State Education Department) responsibility. The Common Core should be separate from evaluation.”
Mulgrew also said that the responsibility of the curriculum design is the school districts. However, not all districts can afford the curriculums they need. The designers of the tests are notably not educators but testing companies. air jordan 4 femmes Districts are filling out waivers because the Common Core rollout was distributed unevenly.
Some parents also criticized the program.
“It is very, very upsetting to watch,” said Nancy Cauthen, mother of two. “I’m glad that my children are passed the third grade tests.”
“Where is the time for themselves?” said Lisa Shaw, one of the mothers who testified. “They’ve gone from loving school to asking why it has to be so hard.”
Parents not only dislike the extensive testing but said they were concerned about collecting data on their children, particularly the “In Bloom” program, which collects complete information on children and stores them in a database to be traded and viewed by multi-party vendors.
“We want more transparency,” said Shaw. “Identity theft is the largest growing crime in the country.”
“You can track children for the rest of their lives,” she said. “If children grow out of their disabilities, why should that follow them to their high schools, colleges, and employers? It’s insulting.”
“By the time we found out about this our children’s data was already uploaded,” said Karen Sprowal, who showed the room a picture of her son Matthew, a special needs student. “There were no hearings, no consent, no notifications. I was in disbelief.”
Parents have the right to opt their children out of data input programs but it is not a well- known law.
“My solution is to refuse data input,” said Shaw. “We don’t want our privacy out there.”
Photo: UFT President Michael Mulgrew
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