Here is more or less what I said to the Montclair Board of Education tonight (they actually changed the agenda so I ended up commenting before the policy was voted on, but you get the gist and yes, the policy passed, 6-0).
I just want to take a brief moment to thank you for passing the PARCC
refusal policy. You are volunteers for a difficult job, and I don’t
envy you. So, now that we have a growing refusal movement here in
Montclair, let’s talk about what can be.
I know what you have to do. I’ve read statutes, regulations, and your
ethics code. You’re often stuck, because you’re required to implement
state and federal law. I have no quibbles with that.
But implementing state and federal law doesn’t require you to remain
silent when those laws are counterproductive. You can implement AND
speak out. Just look at Acting Superintendent Jim O’Neill in
Livingston. Look at BOE President Dan Anderson in Bloomfield. Look at
Superintendent Carol Grossi in Hanover Park.
You’ve got options. For instance, instead of a strategic plan that
requires us to test our kids four times a year to see if they’re ready
for a fifth test, you could ensure accountability with a system where
teachers and students to work together to build portfolios demonstrating
kids’ growth toward achieving our community’s high standards. I admit
— portfolios can’t be easily converted to numbers on a bar graph, to
quantitative analyses of our kids’ qualitative successes. But numbers
aren’t everything. And portfolios are proof of whether our schools are
doing their jobs.
We had a portfolio program where I taught, and the New York Performance
Assessment Consortium uses portfolios instead of testing today. There
are other options. Other visions.
Where I taught, our seniors presented capstone projects to panels of
evaluators. One senior presentation I attended was by a young man who’d
never read a whole novel when he entered my junior English class. But
that year he discovered a love of literature. His senior project was a
prizewinning independent study of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. After the
awards ceremony, this kid told me that this was the first time his
father had ever said, “Son, I’m proud of you.”
So I stand here today to ask: can’t we advocate for better laws for you
to implement?
Can’t we encourage broad-based community engagement toward finding
better ways to assess our kids’ growth?
Can’t we publicly build consensus about our vision for our kids, and
reject the views of those who regard public comment as something to be
endured, rather than as a cornerstone of our democracy?
Thank you again for passing the PARCC refusal policy. It’s a step in the
right direction. But let’s make this a first step toward a better
vision. Thank you.
parentingthecore 