NYSAPE Survey Shows New Yorkers Overwhelmingly Reject Common Core Standards, Tests & Evaluation Policies

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 4, 2015

More information contact:

Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com

NYS Allies for Public Education www.nysape.org

Link to Press Release

NYSAPE Survey Shows New Yorkers Overwhelmingly Reject

Common Core Standards, Tests & Evaluation Policies

In response to NYS Education Department’s AimHighNY survey on the Common Core that many parents and teachers found excessively complex and not open to general comments, New York State Allies for Public Education created a user-friendly survey and posted it online between November 23 and November 30. Close to 12,000 New Yorkers filled out our survey in just a week’s time.  According to Commissioner Elia, only 5500 completed NYSED survey in three weeks’ time.  Governor’s Common Core task force has received 1,798 submissions since December 2, according to Politico.

The respondents to the NYSAPE survey overwhelmingly reject the Common Core standards, believe the state exams and test-based teacher evaluation system are flawed, and that these reforms have worsened instruction in both English Language Arts and Math at the classroom level.

Parents, teachers, administrators, school board members and concerned NY residents all took part in the NYSAPE survey.  Of special note, 11 percent of our survey respondents also completed NYSED’s survey and 32.9 percent attempted to complete NYSED’s survey but gave up.

Of those who responded to the NYSAPE survey, 70 percent oppose the Common Core standards, 4 percent support them, 23 percent have concerns with them, and 3 percent are undecided.  An even higher percentage --83 percent -- believe the Common Core standards in both ELA and Math have worsened instruction. 83 percent also disagree with the shift to close reading strategies.

Over 80 percent of respondents indicated that they believe ELA and Math standards in grades K-3 are developmentally inappropriate for many students. Fewer than 4 percent of respondents say that the ELA and Math standards for grades 4-8 are well designed.​

For grades 9-12, only 2 percent of respondents approve of the ELA and Math Standards. Only 6.2 percent agree with the Common Core’s quota for informational text versus literary text.  

An overwhelming number  – 91 percent –say that the Common Core exams in grades 3-8 are flawed, while fewer  than 1 percent believe they are valid or well-designed. Among those who find the tests to be flawed,​  many believe the tests are developmentally inappropriate, too long, not useful for assessing students with disabilities and/or English language learners and that reading passages and questions are too difficult and confusing.

Of our respondents, 54 percent indicated that high schools should use the previous NYS Regents exams rather than new exams aligned to the Common Core standards, while roughly 40 percent believe that students should not have to pass any high stakes exams to graduate.

Those who took the NYSAPE survey are nearly unanimous, at 96 percent, that test scores should not be linked to principal or teacher evaluations.  86.5 percent say that the state should abandon the Common Core standards and return to the New York’s former standards until educators can create better ones. 

The full results of the survey are posted here:  http://www.nysape.org/nysape-cc-survey-results.html  

“NYSAPE’s findings are in line with the poll results and most of the testimony to the Governor’s Common Core Task Force.  There is no way around this; the Governor and the legislature must eliminate these Standards, revamp the tests, and reverse the harmful education laws,” said Lisa Rudley, Westchester County public school parent and NYSAPE founding member. 

One of the survey respondents said, “As a teacher who trained at Bank Street College of Education, I find the standards developmentally inappropriate. As a reading specialist, I find the kindergarten standards far too high in reading and writing. As a parent, I am very concerned because I have a child who hates reading because it was pushed so hard at his school.” 

"The results of the survey confirm that the vast majority of parents and teachers do not approve of the Common Core, and oppose the rigid quotas for informational text and ‘close reading’ strategies that have straitjacketed instruction throughout the state. They want to abandon these standards, and return to our previous ones until educators can craft better ones. We hope that state policymakers, including the Commissioner, the Governor, the Board of Regents and our legislators, will listen,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters. 

“The tremendous response to NYSAPE's survey underscores that parents and educators are eager to be heard. The fact that the Commissioner Elia could not create an accessible survey only fuels concerns about her competence and willingness to truly engage parents and practitioners,” said Bianca Tanis, Ulster County public school parent, Rethinking Testing member and educator.

"Vice Chancellor Bottar attempted to portray the appointment of Commissioner Elia as a positive change, assuring the public that she would be able to communicate more effectively with parents and educators to find common ground. Vice Chancellor Bottar's continued poor judgement and complicity with the failed reform agenda can no longer be tolerated; it is time for him to step down," said Jessica McNair Oneida County public school parent, educator and Opt Out Central NY founder.

NYSAPE, a grassroots organization with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state, is calling on parents to continue to opt out by refusing high-stakes testing for the 2015-16 school year.  Go to www.nysape.org  for more details on how to affect changes in education policies. 

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What we talk about when we talk about the Common Core

Several publications have recently picked up on the controversy over the way in which the Common Core standards prescribe 50% “informational text” for assigned reading in grades K-5 and 70% thereafter.  We have written about this silly and damaging quota ever since we heard about it last year: here, here and here.

Now the critique has gone main stream; in recent days, it has been written up in Time magazine, the Washington Post, and Salon.

First, this quota was weakly justified by its supporters that it reflects the distribution of questions on the national NAEP exams (which turns out not to be true.)  Now, Gene Wilhoit, Executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers and a supporter of the standards, claims that that the demand for more “Informational text” was made by “CEOs and University professors”. I doubt the accuracy of this statement too.

David Coleman, the main author of the Common Core, fiercely defends this directive by pointing out that the 70% rule is across subjects, and cites a footnote on page 5 of the 66-page standards in order to back this up. In other words, non-fiction or “informational” text could also be assigned in history, science, and math as well as English classes to make up the 70% quota.

As an example, he proposes that “math students could read Euclid’s “Elements” from 300 B.C.” I haven’t read much Euclid lately, but even if appropriate, this text would likely be very dense.  Only one or at most two pages of geometry can be absorbed per night, along with proofs, problem sets, etc. 

Coleman’s comments lead me to suspect that he and other supporters of the Common Core have not thought their prescription out carefully. Traditionally, in high school English classes, two novels, at least one play and several poems are regularly assigned; that works out to 700 pages of text or more. In order to achieve the 70% ratio without sacrificing huge chunks of literature that would mean that more than 1500 pages of non-fiction would have to be parceled out across all subjects.

And what about K-5 grades? Clearly, the 50% quota in these grades means that half of all assigned reading must be non-fiction in every classroom.  Starting in about third grade, for their independent reading, my son and his friends used to read at least four novels per year, each of them at least 350 pages. They would then have to be assigned 2000 pages of non-fiction in homework to “balance” this out – or else sacrifice the novels which absorbed them and drew them away from video games for at least 40 minutes a night.

David Coleman, who never taught a day in his life, yet was given the power to make these irrational and arbitrary prescriptions for the nation’s schoolchildren.  Who appointed him Czar: Bill Gates?

Now, Coleman says all this discussion of these quotas are a distraction and we haven’t yet got to debating the really difficult aspects of the Common Core, and he may be right.  For example, the Common Core exams are likely to be even longer than the endless tests that our children are already subjected to, and probably two to three times more expensive.  He correctly notes that parents and teachers have lost confidence in standardized testing, but then suggests that these “longer but more thoughtful” exams will “redeem assessment in the hearts and minds of teachers and parents.” Want to bet?  One wonders if he’s ever spoken to any of the parents who have risen up in anger about the amount of time that is already absorbed by testing in our schools.

And what is all this for?  What is the evidence that more informational text, more rigorous standards or more “thoughtful tests” help kids learn? In a recent column  in Ed Week, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute compares the Common Core to the “Dr. Pendergast's miracle cure for everything that ails you”.  

He proposes that the real underlying purpose of the Common Core is to persuade parents in suburban school systems that after their children flunk these new exams, that their schools must be failing too: “Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace 'reform.' … Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the "reform" agenda.” 

It is unlikely, Hess opines, that this will newfangled Shock Doctrine will work to persuade suburban parents to fall in line with the radical reform agenda of test-based teacher evaluations, free market competition, more charters, vouchers and the like.  Yet privatizing our urban school systems is not enough for the corporate reformers; they want to expand their grasp into middle class communities as well. Shall we talk about this, now, David Coleman?