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8/19/2019 Dear Ms Boland - PARCC - Livingston, New Jersey
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From: Justin Escher Alpert <[email protected]>To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; "[email protected]"<[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; "[email protected]"<[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; "[email protected]"<[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2016 10:39 AMSubject: PARCC Testing - Livingston, New Jersey
Dear Ms. Boland:
Thank you for your attached letter concerning PARCC testing.
You say, "They [our children] should get exposure to this model and begin to achieve inthe areas above because that is their future."
Seriously?!? Is not their future.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding about what the parents of 130,000 Garden Statechildren did last year when they opted-out (refused). They are fighting toexercise their rights to fairly change that dystopian future of testing. They are fightingfor responsible Local Control over Public Education.
Let us be very clear what happens during robust education... Innovation is capable ofoccurring at any time, at any place, amongst any people involved in the process. Ideasand People reflect off of each other and new Standards of Excellence takeshape. PARCC, however, is a top-down model that imposes standards (standardswhich were set by our suburban children, who have been richly exposed to TheWorld ). While PARCC standards may be considered objective, they
were subjectively chosen. What's important? Test results correlate to the wealth andeducation of the parents of the test-taker. The underlying problem is socioeconomic innature. PARCC takes a tiny sliver of the infinite well of knowledge and uses test scoresto undermine underfunded urban Public School Systems. To the extent that PARCCbrand test results are used to usurp local Control of a publicly elected Board ofEducation, PARCC turns out to be nothing more than an institutionalized poll literacytest imposed on entire communities.
We have a moral duty to NOT follow unjust laws. If our children learn that one lesson byrefusing to take the PARCC exam, that lesson will outweigh all of the knowledgecontained in PARCC by the sum of infinity and itself over again.
There are other more tangible reasons to refuse to take the PARCC exam. PARCC isunaccountable. PARCC is poor science. The PARCC questions are inane. The testingdrowns in negativity. Its methodology is flawed. PARCC imposes one Pygmalionstandard across the board when different districts may have different needs andgoals. The line of failure is drawn at an arbitrary point on a standard distributioncurve. PARCC ostensibly tests on facility with the Common Core, but under GovernorChristie's leadership, “Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey.” States
8/19/2019 Dear Ms Boland - PARCC - Livingston, New Jersey
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have dropped PARCC. NewsCorp has dropped PARCC. NCLB, the law under whichPARCC was organized, has been replaced by ESSA, which no longer requires theseinter-state tests. PARCC focuses attention on solving made up problems when wecould be focused on building relationships and solving REAL WORLD problems.Testing distracts from what is truly important.
Robust Education is hands on. It is not measurable. Robust Educationis interdisciplinary , passionately colliding subjects against each otherand engaging students to create new knowledge. Robust Educationforges tangible connections in the safe space where learning happens. RobustEducation shows children how to go out and be responsible members of theircommunities.
If our children should refuse to take this year's PARCC test, the hope is that during suchperiod, they will be provided with the kind of Robust Public Education that we wouldcome to expect from Livingston Public Schools were it not for
this corporate intrusion. May our children have self-directed futures that are verydifferent from this testing-based model that has been pre-selected for them.
Thank you for your Leadership going Forward.
Very truly yours,
Justin Escher AlpertLivingston, New Jersey
