In Buffalo schools, opt-out bureaucracy continues

Next week educators will begin administering the next round of the controversial New York State assessments to public school students to grades three to eight. The opt-out movement announced itself last year when 20 percent of eligible students statewide declined the minimum six days of half-day testing. Like Bartleby the Scrivener, they preferred not to: They stayed home and were marked absent, they sat and stared, or they read quietly—however each individual school decided to handle their noncompliance.

Defending the assessments, last April Governor Andrew Cuomo made waves by pointing out that parents didn’t understand the tests were academically “meaningless” as they weren’t tied to a student’s grades. (They also aren’t tied to curriculum or the kind of peer review that most standardized tests require.) What Cuomo missed in his statement was that most parents who opted their children out did so precisely because they realized the tests had no bearing on their child’s grade or chances for further academic advancement.  

The opt-out movement has been led by teachers, especially those with children in elementary school. What’s often assumed by places no less powerful than theBuffalo News editorial board is that self-interest is the teachers’ primary motivator. What they deliberately don’t ever say is that teachers with kids in elementary school are probably the most informed citizens in our communities on the appropriateness of these assessments. And as the wider public becomes more informed, they opt out. 

Just last week, after the newly appointed chancellor of the Board of Regents—Betty Rosa, a lifelong educator—stated that if she had kids in grades three to eight currently, she would opt them out, the Buffalo News wrote that Rosa “may or may not be a union shill,” which is just a way of saying “We may or may not be shills ourselves.” Despite the formidable power of the state’s teachers union, NYSUT, the so-called “reform” movement has routinely outspent teachers unions on campaign contributions to state legislators and school board members and on public relations. For most parents, opting out isn’t about supporting the teachers unions; it’s about the state wasting their kids’ time.

Although the assessments are “meaningless” and the effort to bind them to teacher performance has abated, they continue to carry considerable weight. Last week, the principal for Charter School for Applied Technologies—which serves students from both the Buffalo and Ken-Ton school districts—distributed a letter that included a soft threat to opt-out parents: “In other words, if your child would like to continue to be enrolled at CSAT and is in grades 3-8, they NEED to take the NYS math and ELA assessments in April.” One blogger, activist, and parent, Eric Mihelbergel, took exception and quickly returned fire with a press release to local media: “Ken-Ton charter school threatens to EXPEL students opting-out of tests.” 

The school’s principal, Efrain Martinez, quickly redacted the language and emailed a response begging all to not hate the player but the game. Martinez pointed out in the letter that families choose to send their children to that school and in order for that school to stay open, they need to show positive results in their state assessments. 

Academically meaningless, yet bureaucratically potent. 

Just ask any Buffalo parent who opted their child out and then tried to apply to either Olmsted #156 or City Honors. State assessments are heavily weighed as part of each school’s admission criteria. According to Buffalo Parent Teacher Organization co-chair Larry Scott, who cites “explicit evidence,” the assessments are worth 29 percent of the application to City Honors and 45 percent at Olmsted #156. Students who opt out receive a zero, effectively barring them from admission. 

Buffalo parent James Cercone ran smack against this exact situation. After receiving notice that his son was not accepted to City Honors, Cercone met with district officials and was told there was a mechanism in place for students entering the district without a history of state assessments, but no such mechanism for a student opting out. “The current admissions system grants privileges to one group of students that it does not afford to others,” Cercone wrote in a prepared BPTO statement. “The system favors students from private schools that do not administer state exams and punishes students whose parents opt their children out of those tests.”

Add Cercone’s complaint to the longstanding BPS policy of admitting out-of-district students to Buffalo’s criteria-based schools as long as they move into the district, and an all-too-familiar narrative emerges: Thank you for applying, we will place your name in a waiting pool should space for equitable advancement ever be demanded.

This article was first published on The Public on March 29.