Scarsdale Teachers Rally Against Mandates in Albany

Thousands of people, including 15 Scarsdale teachers, gathered at the Empire State Plaza in Albany on June 8th to make their voices heard on the course of educational policy in New York State and nationally. The rally was coined "One Voice United" and featured over twenty speakers including students, parents, social and religious leaders, principals and union presidents.

Scarsdale Teacher Association President, Trudy Moses, who organized a group of teachers to attend the rally said one of their main concerns was New York State's rapid rollout of the national Common Core curriculum. "New York State districts are in the process of aligning their curriculums to the Common Core, along with the set of expectations that come with it", Moses said. "Not all districts are aligned yet and there are concerns that a quick rollout of tests will result in low test scores which will be blamed on teachers."

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers has praised the standards themselves but said "The Common Core is being implemented in New York in" the worst possible way" and repeated her call for "a moratorium" on tying scores associated with the new system to high-stakes decisions. Dick Ianuzzi, the president of the New York State United Teachers echoed that call telling policy makers to "get it right".

Other attendees were more critical of the standards and see it as a growing trend of decision making power being shifted away from communities and towards federal initiatives. Teachers waved banners decrying cuts in arts programming and denouncing Pearson, a private educational publisher that took part in developing the Common Core and is producing much of the testing materials.

According to the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the new national standards in mathematics and English language arts have been adopted in 45 states. They were released in June of 2010 and the federal Race to the Top initiative gave states incentives to adopt the standards. The new standards apply from kindergarten through high school and are designed to emphasize student skills such as critical thinking, and problem solving rather than specific content knowledge. Their stated purpose is to "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them."

There was some sign that policy makers heard at least part of what was said at the rally. On June 11th, three days later, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents offered some concession on a separate possibility of further increasing the weight of the test scores in teacher evaluations, saying "I think we've heard very carefully from teachers [and] principals about the need to go about this cautiously,"

"In Scarsdale it's business as usual" says, Ms. Moses. "We(teachers) are fortunate that they have not been pressured to teach to the test. Anyone can do test drill, and raise scores. That is not the same as good education. We'll look at our results and see what we need to move around. We believe that in continuing a rich curriculum, tests will take care of themselves."

Scarsdale's Melanie Spivak, who was featured in the NY Times when she with other PTA leaders championed a campaign against state testing over ten years ago, offered her perspective on the protest. "As one of the original leaders of STOP (State Testing Opposed by Parents), I applaud the Scarsdale teachers for their efforts in Albany. It is so important that we continue to work together as a community to regain local control of our schools. Scarsdale is a district that is lucky enough to have the resources along with the support from parents and teachers, to provide our children with a quality education, preparing them to be productive citizens. The corporations that make the standardized tests, like Pearson, are not educators and do not recognize the individuality of each of our districts or our students. It is imperative that we don't give up."

This article was written by Alec Lichtenberg