While opponents of the Common Core standards and other special interest groups were using this year’s state English Language Arts and math tests to score political points, parents in New York’s largest urban school districts reinforced their support for those same tests. A recent analysis from our coalition, High Achievement New York, showed that 98% of students in the state’s five largest cities took these assessments.
In New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers, parents demonstrated through their actions that they believe the tests are a valuable part of our educational system. Those students make up more than 40% of test-takers statewide. And even more important, these are the districts that need rigorous assessments aligned with higher standards the most.
The opt-in rate in New York City alone, with more than 420,000 students eligible for the tests, was 99%.
These cities are our most diverse districts, with African Americans and Hispanics comprising significant portions of the student populations.
That tells us something powerful. For far too long, too many minority students were allowed to slip through the cracks of our educational system, and the assessments are an important tool in changing the game.
In an April survey released by our organization, African-American and Hispanic parents supported the assessments by a 2-1 margin. Beyond that, they also recognize the destructive nature of the opt-out movement. In that same poll, by a margin of 75% to 12%, African-American parents believed that the opt-out movement was having a negative impact on children.
The movement of some parents and teachers urging kids to opt out puts our most vulnerable students at risk of losing badly needed resources. The federal government has threatened to pull Title I funding where test refusals are most pervasive. Across the state, and especially in urban districts, hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding are on the line.
Pushing kids to opt-out en masse essentially risks an educational funding crisis in our cities.
What gets lost in all the noise surrounding state assessments is the simple fact that the higher standards associated with the Common Core are starting to work — especially in previously forgotten communities. The number of African-American and Hispanic students proficient on the assessments is going up.
Graduation rates increased for the first class of students that spent their entire high school careers learning under the Common Core — which is a good first step for us to continue building on.
This success is not an aberration. Instead, it is the result of dedicated work from our state’s educators to push their students to reach the ambitious goals set by higher standards. The assessments also help identify where help is needed for students and get that help to them before it’s too late.
The end result is that our most vulnerable children are finally getting the focused and consistent attention they need for a successful future.
Opponents of the Common Core have made it clear that they want to use the largely suburban driven opt-out effort to weaken these standards. We cannot allow that to happen. Moving backward to an old, failed system would be downright devastating to the children who need an improved education system the most. Opponents of the Common Core and the state assessments are not offering constructive ideas for improvement; they are simply looking to tear down higher standards.
We can all work together to make the assessments and the implementation of the standards better. There are good ideas from teacher groups and others to, for example, offer and fund extra development time prior to the beginning of the school year, develop adaptive tests that change degree of difficulty based on a student’s responses, and make public more test questions.
But we must stay the course on rigorous standards for our students, because they are beginning to work and they are the best way to prepare all our children, no matter where they come, for a better future.
Sigmund is executive director of High Achievement New York and Rice is president and CEO of the New York Urban League.
