Trip to Albany

On November 20^th Dave, Lynn and I attended the Education for Action Summit, presented by the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) in Albany. Our day began in a large auditorium to “Kick-off the No More Excuses Campaign” with hundreds of other attendees. The auditorium was crowded with people who had arrived from all over New York State to advocate for our students. Many high school students were also present to participate in the day’s events. The moderators were Zakiyah Ansari, AQE’s Advocacy Director and Angelica Rivera, parent advocate with Citizen Action of New York and AQE. Both women spoke passionately about the struggles that New York students are currently facing in terms of their education, including the shortage of resources, the inequity in school funding and the lack of engagement from state leaders to make the public education of students in New York a priority.

Senators Kevin Parker and Cecilia Tkaczyk and Assembly Members Barbara Russell, Addie J. Russell and Karim Camara attended the Kick-off and they all spoke about the importance of funding NYS public schools and why they will be focusing their efforts on education this year. My favorite speaker was Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell who told the audience a story about growing up in a home with five siblings. Every year, for her family’s Thanksgiving feast, they would bake a pumpkin pie and  all the kids would argue and fight over the biggest piece of the pie. The lesson her parents taught her was it that it doesn’t matter who is oldest, who helped bake the pie, or who was the best behaved at dinner - they all would get the same size slice because everyone in the family is equal. She expressed the importance and value of this lesson for her work as a legislator, “Everyone deserve the same size slice of the pie, no matter what the circumstance. It is the governments responsibility to be equitable in how they are distributing funds to our schools.”

Two high school students also spoke at the event.  One was from a school in NYC and the other was from a school in the North Country. Each student presented their view of their high school experience and they were vastly different. The student from the city compared his school to a jail complete with metal detectors and guards who greet the students by yelling, ‘Get in line, take off your coat and open up your backpack!’ “How can we start our day feeling good about coming to school when it starts like this?,” he said, and then he painted a bleak picture of crowded classrooms, lack of books and materials and teachers who were unable to do their job because they have inadequate resources.

The student from the North Country expressed his experience, which was vastly different from the first high school student. He felt safe and supported in his school, the environment was conducive to learning and he thought his teachers were excellent, but his school district could not afford to have extra-curricular activities or offer many AP courses for high school students. This student was worried about his chances of getting into a good college because he would be competing with other students from across the state that have had more educational opportunities. Although these student’s presentations were different they both ended with, “I want to be educated, teach me!”

The last presenter was Billy Easton, the leader of AQE. He presented the 2014 Legislative Priorities, No More Excuses: Educate Every Student Campaign. The main priorities for this year are:

1. Calling for $1.9 billion in School Aid

• $1 billion in new classroom operating aid distributed equitably (foundation aid)
• $225 million for full-day pre-K
• $110 million for college-ready community schools
• $300 million for curriculum restoration and improvement
• $20 million for supports and interventions to build a positive school climate
• $250 million in expense-based aid

     2. More teaching, less testing

     3. Raise NYC's millionaires' tax to pay for quality full-day pre-k for all NYC 4 years olds and
         after- school programs for all middle school students.

Mr. Easton stressed the importance of advocating now before the January State of the Union address. Attendees all received postcards to fill out that were addressed to our governor, who this campaign is primarily focused on. Every person who attended the kick-off filled out a card by completing this sentence, “In order for our students to excel in college and careers, they need…” (list the programs, classes, extra-curriculars, etc. that are vital to your student’s education).  We brought home a stack of postcards and AQE said we could request more to distribute to parents in our district and region.

Mr. Easton also urged participants to come back to Albany on January 14^th and to each bring five friends with them because January 14^th is statewide action day in Albany and they want to show huge public support for quality public education. This will be the final big action before the Governor releases his Executive budget. Another date to save is March 12^th for the statewide budget rally in Albany- Parade for Public Education and Lobby day in Albany.

After lunch we were able to choose a workshop to attend. The following workshops were offered:

•      Organizing your community- learn to organize to build a bigger, stronger movement in your community.
•      Recruiting Legislative Champions- learn to organize and lead lobby visits as well as engage elected representatives in the New More Excuses campaign.
•      Youth Track- students from across the state will share their experiences and learn how to fight for their education.

      Dave and I attended the Recruiting Legislative Champions workshop, which was excellent. We learned a great deal and are excited to pass on our experience and information to our district's Advocacy Committee and to our Regional Advocacy Committee, Fair Funding for Our Schools.

Lynn was invited to participate in a meeting with Governor Cuomo’s education staff, which included Deputy Secretary for Education, DeShawn Wright, as a representative of Fair Funding for our Schools. While Dave and I attended our workshop Lynn met with the lobbying team to plan out their visit.

Next, we participated in the March to the Capital for “No More Excuses Speak-Out.” Approximately 400 people signed a giant diploma and wore graduation caps as we marched to the Million Dollar Staircase chanting, “2, 4, 6, 8- We want our kids to graduate!” The day closed with the “No More Excuses Speak-out” and featured the Legislators who were present in the morning. After the speak out we marched to the War Room and delivered the diploma to the governor’s office which was entitled, “Educate Every Student.” 

After the Speak-Out the crowds left and the government building became very quiet. Twenty plus advocates from across the state stayed to meet with the Governor’s Education staff. Representatives had a chance to speak about the education climate in their home district or region. Lynn said that every report that was given was worse than the previous speaker. Her statement focused on the bleak situation in Hudson Valley school districts: school closings and their affect on the community, the dismantling of programs, laying off valued teachers and in some cases cutting kindergarten. Especially heart wrenching were reports from the inner city school districts where one representative spoke about her school having a library in it without a single book. She said, “How can our students pass these state tests that you are requiring without having books for students to read and learn from.” These stories were dramatic reminders of the inadequacy of funding for education, and a reminder of the need for urgency in out fight for fair funding. ALL representatives agreed on and demanded equity and adequacy in education and expressed the consequences of doing nothing.

Overall, we came away with a lot of information and ideas for advancing advocacy efforts in our region. We agreed that the day brought on a feeling of sadness for us because of the level of despair some of our neighbors are feeling throughout the State. However, it made us want to do more and we left feeling energized by all of the organization and activity of the advocacy groups from throughout the state. Dave captured the moment by saying, “Maybe a groundswell is happening and something might change.”

To stay current on regional advocacy events check in at: Fair Funding for Our Students

Submitted by: Shannon, Dave and Lynn

Common Core Cliff Notes

Common Core Cliff Notes:

I don’t believe there has been a more confusing or chaotic time in public education than the past few years- at least in New York! It becomes difficult for those of us who are not professional educators to navigate the challenges coming at us in the midst of all this change, so here is my cheat sheet:

Common Core:

A set of National Education standards adopted by 45 states, not a curriculum but a set of expectations. 

This came from the CCSS website:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics.  The standards are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit bearing entry courses in two or four year college programs or enter the workforce. The standards provide a clear understanding of the expectations in reading, writing, speaking and listening, language and mathematics in school.

The nation’s governors and education commissioners, through their representative organizations the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead the initiative. Teachers, parents, school administrators and experts from across the country together with state leaders provided input into the development of the standards.

APPR

Annual Professional Performance Review- the framework within which teachers and administrators are evaluated.

RTTT

Race to the Top- a federal grant for which New York State applied. Acceptance of the grant required that certain initiatives be in place to be eligible. The short list is that states who won RTTT grants were awarded points for satisfying certain educational policies, such as performance-based standards (often referred to as an Annual professional performance review- APPR) for teachers and principals, complying with the Common Core standards, lifting caps on charter schools, turning around the lowest-performing schools, and building data systems.

This is how RTTT has been operationalized in New York State via the Regents Reform Agenda:

1.  Implementing Common Core standards and developing curriculum and assessments aligned to these standards to prepare students for success in college and the workplace

2.  Building instructional data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practice in real time.

3.  Recruiting, developing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers and principals.

4.  Turning around the lowest-achieving schools.

Complaints have been made about the developmental appropriateness of the standards in the early years- I have heard many teachers, on the other hand, tend to agree that the standards themselves support higher order thinking skills and shift from a broad coverage of content to a narrower but deeper understanding of material at each grade level. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Most of the pushback to these changes comes from the pace at which they are being implemented, which is certainly ahead of the states ability to provide support to local districts. All districts have had to provide (and pay for) Common Core training for their staff as well as training on the new APPR model- also paid for by each district. In Warwick, these initiatives have cost us approximately $600,000 over the past two years.

For districts that chose to rely on the State developed modules to deliver curriculum aligned to the common core, the past year has been frustrating to say the least. The modules that the state developed to support the Common Core Standards have been months behind in their rollout, in some cases modules were published in the spring for material that had already covered in the previous fall. Here in Warwick our teachers selected our own common core aligned resources and materials which are not dependent on the state’s supporting materials.  However, teachers are using the modules as supplemental resources.

In addition, the state decided to test students against the common core standards before there had been time to fully integrate them into curriculum, hence the drop in last years test scores across the state. This has created enormous frustration for students and teachers, so parents and educators have been voicing their concerns across the state. However, the increase in testing is actually connected more to APPR  than the Common Core Standards themselves. Implementation of the new APPR plan requires additional testing in order to evaluate teachers and administrators. It’s important to recognize what the three components are (Common Core Standards, APPR and RTTT) on their own and how they are tied together for student outcomes.

For an excellent outline of these issues read the New York Council of School Superintendents report on State Education policy.

Submitted by Lynn Lillian