New York

UNITED OPT OUT COORDINATORS:

• Chris Cerrone
• Susan Horton Polos
   

ORGANIZATIONS AND RESOURCES:

• NYC Opt Out recently launched a "toolkit" website to help parents organize their own school communities. It provides a handy introduction to the state tests (delineates the arguments against them), sample flyers, talking points, and organizing tips. In the next two months, we'll be adding more handouts and sample presentations (including a downloadable audio presentation for parents who can't make it out to public forums) and more Spanish translations. If you have a blog or website, please link to us to help boost our search engine traffic: http://www.optoutnyc.com/

   

• Children Should Not Be a Number - http://www.nystoptesting.com/
   
• NYS Allies for Public Education: http://www.nysape.org/index.html  This website has links to many other testing reform websites and materials.
   
• Websites for NY Performance Standards Consortium: http://www.performanceassessment.org/
  and Time Out From Testing http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/
   
• Long Island Opt Out Info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/141680156005331/
   
• See this guide to organizing by Jeanette Deutermann, leader of the hugely successful Long Island Opt Out.: http://www.fairtest.org/guide-organizing-jeanette-deutermann
   
• See the October 2012 FairTest Examiner Story: Performance Assessments Succeed in New York
   
• Websirte for Change the Stakes, http://www.changethestakes.org
   
• Website: "Re-Thinking Testing: Mid-Hudson Chapter" ReThinkingTestingMidHudson.blo and email: ReThinkingTestingMidHudson@gmail.com
• Website for Students Against Testing: http://www.nomoretests.com
   
• The NY Performance Standards Consortium has won victories against the state's H.S. Regents exams. Read in the FairTest Examiner
   
• Brooklyn parent Jeanne Heifetz's research into the Regents English exams uncovers significant alterations of literary excerpts taken from the work of major authors that remove "virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason." See New York Times story. Contact Jeannebis@aol.com for more info.
   
• Myths about Regents in comparison with Performance Assessment Schools
   
• Web site for Coalition for Common Sense in Education: http://www.freespeech.org/ccse ;
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