NJ Education Report

Buried at the bottom of today’s New York Times front page article on the opt-out movement is this:

Many local parents, however, said they had their children skip the tests not because they were afraid of the results, but because they felt they put too much stress on students, for example, or because they wanted to make a statement on behalf of teachers. 

In March, Governor Cuomo, dismayed at the large percentage of teachers getting high ratings, succeeded in tying teacher evaluations and tenure decisions more closely to the tests. If fewer than 16 tests are available to apply to a teacher’s score, however, which appears quite likely in many cases this year, districts will have to produce an alternative rating method, such as using the scores of other students in the school.

Certainly, New York State’s teacher union isn’t nearly as militant as NJEA, which has  has taken on as its raison d’etre a richly-funded campaign against N.J.’s 2012 teacher tenure law that ties 10% of standardized test scores to teacher evaluations, and which NJEA leaders supported.  In New York it’s 50%, so the tests are clearly high-stakes for teachers and the ire more understandable.

Fifty-percent is too much. Gov. Cuomo overshot that one. But 10% renders the testing-evaluation link low stakes for everyone, including teachers, and makes NJEA’s stance untenable. It also places union leaders in direct opposition to major civil and human rights groups that support accountability.

The  Times article notes this opposition :

Of particular concern is that without reliable, consistent data, children in minority communities may be left to drift through schools that fail them, without consequences. 

This month, a dozen civil rights groups, including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, released a statement saying they were opposed to “anti-testing efforts” because tests provide data crucial for catching and combating inequities in public schools. 

“When parents ‘opt out’ of tests — even when out of protest for legitimate concerns — they’re not only making a choice for their own child, they’re inadvertently making a choice to undermine efforts to improve schools for every child,” the statement said.