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New Rochelle Teachers Union Organizes Against New York State Tests

Written By: Robert Cox

FUSE President Martin Daly urged members of the FUSE to opt-out their own children and help spread the word about opt-out efforts. Daly said FUSE will be organizing  more public opt-out events in the near future.

Over 220,000 students in grades 3-8 refused to take part in New York State’s 2015 Common Core assessments. This fall, parents, educators and students will continue to reject testprep driven education by submitting their refusal letters during the first weeks of school. In New Rochelle almost 20% of eligible students refused the grade 3-8 tests.

NYSUT and FUSE have adopted resolutions to encourage our members to opt out their own children from grade 3-8.

Common Core assessments. As educators, we know first hand how harmful these flawed tests are, how much harm they do in narrowing our curriculum and how developmentally inappropriate these measures are. Refusing the tests sends an unmistakable and powerful message to the Governor, the Regents, the State Education Department and all those who want to replace real teaching and learning with a narrow, test based curriculum: we do not support your efforts to undermine public education and we will not subject our children to these tests until the Regents and the State Education Department work with parents and teachers on any and all future actions needed to fix a system of testing and evaluation that is clearly broken.

I urge our members with children in grades 3-8 to refuse the state assessments for your children. The momentum begun last year needs to continue into this new school year if we are ever to see any substantial changes in the state’s “test-and-punish” mindset.

New York State Allies for Public Education a parent led activist group that in the way in last year’s overwhelming success in getting the word out about “opt out” has many resources on its website. You can download the 2015-2016 refusal letter here: http://www.nysape.org/20152016nysrefusalletter.html

There is a great deal more information about the “opt out” movement with many more resources available at its website http://www.nysape.org/.

Send in your refusal letter today!