Gary Stern and the Lo-Hud education editors and writers have been on top of this issue for a long time. They listen and do not take the Party Line (Republican or Democrat) offered by Albany or Washington DC.
Gary Stern, veteran education writer in the Lower Hudson Valley, has an insightful well-informed understanding of the New York opt out movement. He knows why it started and why it continues: parents want real changes, not promises of change.
In contrast, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post ridicules the parents as crybabies who refuse to accept that their children are not so smart after all (shades of Arne Duncan!).
Stern writes that the State Education Department imposed the new standards and tests without adequate preparation. The result was distrust and opt out.
“The state should have anticipated this year’s high opt-out rates (in some places, even higher than last year when 20 percent of kids statewide sat out exams). We had Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who once passed himself off as the state’s “lobbyist for the students,” bashing the tests and calling them largely meaningless. We saw the election of a new…
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DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing 