Community Corner

What Kind of Education Does Your Child Deserve?

Stacey Young and concerned parents of Garden City submitted the following letter to the editor.

What kind of education does your child deserve? I ask myself that question as I watch my own children head off to school each morning. Of course, our children deserve to go to school feeling safe, cared for and surrounded by teachers that will do whatever it takes to help them learn and grow as young adolescents.

More than that, our children also deserve to be challenged each day, pushed to think critically, expand their knowledge and to see things from multiple new perspectives. Our children should be laughing and smiling throughout the day as they find true joy in learning with their classmates. The actual act of learning should be fun, exciting, and dare I say… INSPIRING!

Currently, New York State has imposed a testing program on our children that does not challenge them to think critically, to wonder or to be passionate about learning. Instead, it asks teachers to rush through more content at a faster pace without leaving time to explore, to wonder, or to think about how important concepts are relevant to the world around them. I do not believe this was the intent of the NYS Common Core Curriculum, which so appropriately pushes teachers to go deeper with content, teaching our students to think more critically as readers and writers of information, preparing them for college and career readiness in the 21st century.

In addition, policy makers (not a single public educator was part of the development process) now tie these test results to teacher evaluations, which pressures teachers to focus more on test preparation, endless worksheets, multiple choice questions and ways to “game” the test. The result of these policies across New York State has been learning through completion of test prep handouts, boring learning activities, uninspiring lesson plans and scores of teachers that are now afraid to take risks, to innovate or to create interesting and inspiring learning experiences for children. This should be unacceptable to all of us who have children in public school.

As residents of Garden City, we are aware of the importance of doing well on state tests. In fact, our students do extremely well on these tests already. We know that students need to be able to do well on Regents exams, AP exams and SATs. Our district already spends time preparing our students, helping them to learn how to succeed on standardized tests. However, our main focus cannot be and should never be focused so narrowly on the outcome of simple standardized test scores. Our schools must demonstrate an unwavering commitment to make learning fun, engaging, interesting and inspiring for your children. We must help to empower our district to create interdisciplinary connections, read high level texts and create authentic assessment opportunities for our children. The scores across NYS will go up and politicians will cheer. But what does “up” on poorly written formulaic tests really mean for our children?

This is not just about the numerous days that your children are now spending taking tests for New York State. This is also about how these new policies are negatively impacting the direction that instruction is taking in the classroom. As we fight this tidal wave of unfunded state mandates that affects our children and our wallets, we as parents must take a stand. We must learn more about how these state tests and these teacher evaluation systems are impacting our children. Read more about this by going to the following sample of news links:
1. http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/legislators - Please write to the legislators and Board of Regents
2. http://timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution/
3. http://www.schoolleadership20.com/profiles/blogs/dear-parents-a-must-read-by-donald-sternberg, Wantagh Elementary School Principal
4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/three-ed-reforms-
parents-should-worry-about-most/2012/08/23/88895c7c-ec95-11e1-aca7-
272630dfd152_blog.html
5. http://www.saanys.org/viewarticle.asp?id=3455
“Niagara Region PTA Adopts Resolution To Stop Over Testing In New York State
Public Schools”
6. www.SchoolsMatter.info and www.ParentsAcrossAmerica.org http://
parentsacrossamerica.org/why-more-standardized-tests-wont-improve-education/


Garden City and all of the communities around the state should be striving to challenge our districts to push students to think in interesting ways, to behave like young scientists, mathematicians, artists and musicians; to be great readers, writers, poets and journalists (not form letter writers as the tests seem to require).

We should be teaching our children to innovate, create and wonder about the world around them so that they can grow up with an understanding of our world and to develop amazing solutions to the problems we adults currently fail to resolve. Instead, New York State politicians will force us to develop a generation of students that know how to "game" short response and multiple choice question exams. How will this make America a stronger nation? How does that connect with the challenges our children will need to face when they become young adults? We must make a change in the direction our schools are heading. Teacher and administrator voices will NOT be heard, as it will be seen as a defensive act against being evaluated. Unfortunately this is not a fight they can win.

If we are going to impact change, it needs to start with the unwavering support and outcry of our parent base. It needs to start with the mothers and fathers that care so deeply about the education of their children. So I ask you, what are you prepared to do?


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