Parent Coalition
Parents in the Press

New York Students, Parents, Teachers Rebel Against State Exams
By Wayne Ross, professor, SUNY Binghamton

The testing resistance movement in New York State reached a new level of intensity on May 7th as students, parents, teachers and principals marched on the State Education Building in Albany and held a boisterous rally on the Capitol steps -- the largest protest seen at the Capitol this year.

Twenty-seven buses full of students, parents, and teachers poured into Albany the morning of the rally. Most protesters were from alternative high schools in the New York City area, such as El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, Manhattan Village Academy, and Beacon High School. But representatives from schools in Rochester, Buffalo, and Ithaca, as well as parents and concerned citizens from Albany, also marched and lobbied lawmakers in their offices.

Carrying signs and banners with slogans such as "High Stakes Tests are Anti-Enlightenment" and "Schools Should Teach About Fascism -- But Not By Example," over 1,500 protestors marched from the Capitol grounds to the block-long colonnade of the State Education Building, where they picketed for 45 minutes.

The student marchers offered penetrating critiques of the barrage of testing they currently face. A student from the Institute for Collaborative Education (ICE) said he was marching because "Regents decide our fate." Sardae Wilson of Beacon High School in Manhattan described the "Regents test for all students" initiative as a threat to "alternative schools [that] use rigorous portfolio assessments, not Regents tests that stress insignificant memorization."

Sam Logan, a student at the Urban Academy . . . said that the Regents exams would end "a way of life, a way of learning at my school." The Urban Academy is "more focused on analysis and figuring out your own opinion through class discussions, debates, research," according to Logan. "We learn to respect" what other people think, he added.

Alejandro Negron said he was marching and meeting with legislators because he wanted to preserve portfolio evaluations at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, rather than just "bubbling in tests" that don't add anything to the learning experience.

The picket was followed by a rally where students and parents made impassioned speeches describing how the emphasis on testing in New York schools was destroying authentic learning and turning teachers into test-prep technicians. . . . Saying that state-mandated tests force teachers to abandon in-depth projects for test preparations, protesters called for boycotts of the state tests and passage of a law mandating multiple forms of assessment for high-school graduation, rather than the use of the Regents exams.

Jane Hirschmann, chair of the Parents' Coalition for High Standards and Performance-Based Assessment, was a primary organizer of the demonstration. Hirschmann opened the rally by declaring, "We will not allow our children to be reduced to a single test score. Tell [New York State Education Commissioner] Mills: 'Keep your hands off our children! We will boycott! Don't put our children through the Mills!'"

Students, parents, and other testing critics, including author Alfie Kohn and State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky repeatedly argued that high-stakes testing trivializes the curriculum; forces teachers to teach to the test; does not measure high-level thinking; turns poor test-takers into liabilities for teachers and schools; and results in increased grade retention and dropouts.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who is sponsoring a bill that would allow for multiple forms of assessment in New York schools, said, "This is a grassroots movement against a mindset." Brodsky told the students lining the Capitol steps and stretching out onto the lawn that "if there was a portfolio in civics education this [demonstration] would be the best evidence that you've all got an 'A'."

Brodsky noted the contradiction that 90 percent of alternative schools' students meet the state standards and go on to college, yet the state insists that these schools abandon successful programs and conform to standardized, time-pressured, written tests. He maintained that high standards and alternative assessments can co-exist and said that "bureaucratic rigidity is undermining the best of our educational system."

Marcella Barrientos, one of several high school students to address the throngs gathered at the Capitol, gave perhaps the most powerful speech of the day. The Urban Academy student reminded her fellow students that "our most powerful weapon is our mind." Barrientos then asked, "We are working to meet and exceed high standards by using hands-on projects and analysis. Why is this a threat? For the rich there is choice, for the rest of us, there's standardized tests," she continued.

Alfie Kohn, anti-testing advocate and author of "The Schools Our Children Deserve," told the crowd that the clash between test critics and the state is not a fair contest. Testing critics "offer nuanced arguments for multiple assessments," said Kohn, while the state repeats slogans like "'accountability, tougher standards and raising the bar' to push their idiotic agenda."

Kohn urged the protesters to "peer through the fog of rhetoric. You know what good classrooms look like. They are not test-prep factories."

As students wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the message "We Support High Standards Not High-Stakes Testing" and carrying banners reading "More Testing Does Not Equal Better Schools" marched by, Jon Lee, a student teacher in Binghamton, New York, described the students as refusing "to take no for an answer." Lee said, "We know that they are here to protest the tests. But rather than focusing on that, these students are pleading to be prodded to the fullest of their abilities, and demanding to have their brains worked to the bone. They want a system where they have to justify their work and defend their actions, not one where they simply fill in a bubble sheet and start summer vacation. They want to learn."

(Excerpted and reprinted from Substance)

SPONSORS of the march included: The Parents' Coalition for High Standards and Performance-Based Assessment; SEIU 1199/Employer Child Care Fund; United Federation of Teachers (UFT); New York Performance Standards Consortium; STOP (State Testing Opposed by Parents); FairTest; Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; The Association for Children with Learning Disabilities; CUNY ESL Discipline Council; The Center for Immigrant Families; Advocates for Children; The Center for Inquiry in Teaching and Learning; Coalition for Common Sense in Education; Rouge Forum; Whole Schooling Consortium; National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching (NCREST); SCORE (Students and Communities for Options and Resources in Education); Jews for Racial and Economic Justice; Coalition of Essential Schools; CUNY Is Our Future; Community for Asian Americans Against Violence; Charas Community Center; Good Old Lower East Side; Same Boat Coalition; Coalition for Fair Assessment; People's Coalition to Take Back Our Schools; Solidarity Committee of the Capital District/Jobs With Justice; New York Immigration Coalition; ACORN