In light of today’s A1 New York Times story about the Bloomberg administration’s plans to administer a dozen new standardized tests in order to evaluate not students, but teachers, Queens City Councilmember Mark Weprin is out with a statement blasting the mayor and the Department of Education.
“These tests will do nothing to improve education in our public schools and will only continue to sap time and resources that should be going toward helping our children learn,” Weprin said. ”Enough is enough. It is time for parents to rise up and give the DOE a wake-up call. Stop the insane obsession with testing.”
Weprin noted that the city planned to use $64 million it received in federal Race to the Top money in order to pay for the increased testing regimen during a time when schools are losing arts, music and phys ed classes, especially since the money is going not toward students, but towards teachers.
“At a time when DOE is planning to lay off teachers, choosing to spend sixty-four million dollars on additional standardized tests is truly an outrage,” said Council Member Mark Weprin. “In short, the children are being used.”
Weprin, it should be noted, is not a particular fervent critic of the mayor, but has often disagreed with his reliance on high-stakes tests.
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When was it that teachers became the major obstacle to education, the enemy of the students? When was it that we began to hear about the large numbers of “bad” teachers? When wAs it that so many parents gave up on supporting their children’s education?
I say we pull together as parents and OPT OUT of testing……..
http://queensteacher2.blogspot.com/
For someone who claims to be a devotee of Data collection and the efficacy of numbers the Mayor fails to read the data that shows that an over dependency on testing does nothing to drive productivity in the academic workplace. In fact a case can be made that an over reliance on testing has an inverse effect on teacher performance and academic success.
It’s time to BOYCOTT the tests. They are making kids sick. They are making the educators sick. Enough is enough.