Steps of Tweed Courthouse, New York, NY
On September 16, the Save Our Schools (SOS) coalition, a grass-roots group comprised of parents, educators, union leaders and elected officials, held an emergency education action plan news conference on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan.
CSA Executive Director of Operations, Anita Gomez-Palacio, joined the coalition in support of the organization’s initiative. “We are fully supporting CEJ in this initiative; we need to stop this high stakes testing immediately,” she said.
The campaign demands that the Department of Education (DOE) address the needs of the 20,000 underperforming third to eighth graders whose English scores were recently released. The advocates also want the DOE to provide more student intervention services and less test preparation.
Michael Mulgrew, UFT President, criticized the Bloomberg Administration’s accountability measures. “When the Progress Reports came out years ago, we said there was a complete overreliance on standard test scores for making high-stakes decisions,” he said.
Esperanza Vasquez, a Bronx parent of a former middle school honor student says her son was was ill prepared for high school. Her son, who earned high standardized test scores, attends a private high school, where he takes remedial courses.
