|
Parents and school officials across Long Island and New York State were met with more than the typical back-to-school anxiety following spring break this year.
Tuesday marked the first test in the latest round of controversial Common Core examinations for grades three through eight, and parents who hadn’t yet made the decision to opt their children out were running out of time, while letters from parents who had were piling up across the desks of school administrators. More than 50,000 students across the state refused to take the Common Core standardized tests last year--more than 30,000 of those on Long Island—and local education activists tell the Press they expect even more opting out this time around. Though exact figures were still rolling in as of press time, preliminary numbers on related social media sites Tuesday afternoon, such as anti-Common Core Facebook group “Long Island Opt Out,” tallied several school districts as having a more-than 50-percent opt-out rate among test-eligible students. Yet where a good deal of opponents’ vitriol against the Obama administration’s education reform program last year was born of its botched roll-out, what parents deemed to be the detrimental effects on their children, and the testing’s accounting for a high percent of teacher evaluations, among other gripes, Common Core opponents now credit Gov. Andrew Cuomo with pouring more gasoline on the already scorching anti-Common Core inferno. Read More here............ Starting in the fall, for the third year in a row, New York City teachers will be judged by a new evaluation system. Gov. Cuomo suggests we don’t want to be evaluated like professionals, but that’s wrong. What we want is to be evaluated using a reasonable system that will help us improve.
Read more As the dust settles, a closer look at Gov. Cuomo's education budget proposals shows they are premised on the same principle that Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein used to promote—that individual teachers alone, without the necessary tools and resources, can ensure the success of every child, every year, as measured by that child's test score. And that if the teacher can't, she should be labeled a failure.
This ignores the importance of adequate funding, teacher voice and support, as well as the consequences of poverty. Even economists recognize that teachers are only responsible for about 10 percent of student Read More here When I hear Andrew Cuomo attacking teachers these days, blaming them for their students’ low test scores, my thoughts turn to Rex Ryan.
Not that I really know enough about building a football team to be able to discuss this topic thoughtfully, but what I’m hearing suggests the governor doesn’t really know enough about classroom instruction to be able to discuss what makes kids learn, either. So we’re on equal footing. Read More here BREAKING: Governor Cuomo's war on public schools is nothing new. For years, Governor Cuomo has ignored the landmark decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equality lawsuit, in which the state's highest court ordered the State to provide the school funding necessary to fulfill its constitutional obligation to public school children. And his latest budget proposal is just more of the same.
Find out how much Governor Cuomo and New York State are stealing from your school district Read More here Stephen Mucher, director of the Bard Master of Arts Teaching program in Los Angeles, warns about the precipitous decline in enrollments in teacher preparation programs.
Teachers are demoralized by scripted curricula and overemphasis on testing. They feel their voice doesn’t count in their workplace. Given the tide of teacher-bashing and mandates, they are right to feel demoralized. “Career-minded college students are not oblivious to these developments. Read More.............. As hundreds of people congregated at the south end of the Empire State Plaza concourse, conversations crescendoed to a loud rumble. It was like standing on a crowded uptown platform while the downtown express is barreling through.
But when organizers at Monday's "Call Out Cuomo March on Albany" got everybody pointed in the same direction and chanting in unison — "Fee Fi Fo Fum, look out Cuomo here we come!" — it felt more like a freight train pulling everyone along. "We are here to make some noise!" said Tracey Gold of the Ichabod Crane Teachers Association. Read More here BLOOMFIELD, N.J. — On Monday morning, a few hundred students will file into classrooms atBloomfield Middle School, open laptops and begin a new standardized test, one mandated across New Jersey and several other states for the first time this year.
About a dozen of their classmates, however, will be elsewhere. They will sit in a nearby art room, where they will read books, do a little drawing and maybe paint. Read more................ |
ArticlesCheck out these current articles. Click MORE to see the whole article. Archives
January 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed