You know who are the biggest losers in this opt-out movement? The so-called "(de)reformers" and their faux grassroots organizations like StudentsFirst, Education Reform Now, Success Academy, Educators4Excellence and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

The irrelevance and slow death spiral of DFER was seen by all last week when DFER New York director Nicole Brisbane was quoted in the Journal News as saying;

"Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs. How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn't clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data,"

It really is quite simple. Look at SAT scores. Number of students going on to 4 year colleges. Number of students going to Ivy League colleges. Visit the school. Ask neighbors. Graduation rates. Teacher turnover. Home values. Really, there are so many reasons. In fact Nicole fails to grasp what did Scarsdale do before there were high stakes exams?

But please, don't listen to Nicole. Nicole claims she was somewhat misquoted and only using Scarsdale as an example, that her real thoughts were in a blog post on DFER that she had written ;

"Part of the draw of the suburbs is the high performance of local schools. How will suburban communities maintain their draw if there isn’t a measure of how the schools are actually doing in comparison to those across the state?"

Nicole, see above. But we here at SBSB suggest to Nicole that if she is really concerned about how others can measure up to one another to take Chevy Chase's advice.

Nicole does decide to deride the parents of not only Scarsdale, but of all affluent communities as well when she says on the DFER blog;

"The same parents are opting-in for other standardized tests like the ACT (not mandatory), the SAT (also not mandatory) and the Specialized High School Admissions Test (also not mandatory but absolutely necessary if you want your kid to go to a “choice” high school in New York City). Affluent parents aren’t opting out of optional tests, so why opt out of the state exams? Maybe it’s because the results aren’t what they wanted to hear."

See Nicole does not understand something here (And of course we can go into the the multitude of flaws with testing but we shan't tonight). These tests are a choice one makes for their child. These tests are not forced upon parents by a bully governor, a clueless chancellor of the Regents, or a faceless bureaucrat. The parents have ownership of their child's education. Such as my son made a choice to continue his Jewish education after his bar mitzvah after telling me and my wife for years he will stop once he became a bar mitzvah. HE HAD OWNERSHIP!

However after the missed opportunity at a testing analogy Nicole decided that it would be best to charm the parents of Scarsdale and all affluent communities by sharing;

"That their kids, or their kid’s teacher or their beloved (Emphasis by The Crack Team) neighborhood school isn’t performing as well as they expected."

What Nicole fails to realize, as the Journal News as reported, is that the vast majority of affluent communities (For this post will use Westchester County), Scarsdale, Chappaqua, Irvington, Bronxville, Ardsley, had quite low opt out numbers. WAY TO WIN OVER PARENTS NICOLE! KUDOS!

If you are left wondering who is this expert in education that is gracing the pages of this award winning blog we will share what The Crack Team has learned.

Nicole Brisbane is a former teacher, now a lawyer, and shared with The Crack Team that she was a reading specialist for 5 years at Allapattah Middle School in Miami.

Oddly, according to this link she only taught two years at Allapattah before entering law school. Only two years? Well, if you read the headline of that link she was with Teach for America.

So how can we believe anything she says, even when she told The Crack Team she won Rookie Teacher of the Year at Allapattah and in fact raised the grade level of her students (Who were 4 grades behind at the time of her ascension at Allapattah 2.5 grades in the very short time she was there?

We can't believe her even though we requested several times for some kind of verification or conformation to her outstanding teaching and her award. Is her story truth or fiction?

But according to Nicole, the affluent, or shall we stray into reality, the "regular people",  or strating from the test because,

"The people who are opting out of tests are largely those who already feel like their child has access to a high-quality education, and are doing so in a way that directly harms poor and minority students throughout New York. We should be supporting students and teachers throughout New York, whether they are in Scarsdale or the Bronx, and making sure all students have a fair shot at a quality education. Rather than maintain the status quo where wealth determines a quality education, data can and should highlight where the gaps are so we can invest in schools that need it the most. High property values shouldn't determine the quality of education for the neighborhood--and the way we are going to change that is through access to data that will allow us to make investments where they are needed"

 And she shares some links here, and here. Big deal. Hey Nicole, let's see how the students from Success flame out when they hit college, much the way they flamed out on tests for the NYC specialized high schools.

Nicole this is why the opt out movement is picking up steam. We are fed up. We are fed up with Albany and Washington DC deciding what is best for our children and our school districts. We are fed up with millions going to testing companies like Pearson. We are fed up seeing our babies go through 8 hours of testing when a bar exam is only 3 hours. We are fed up seeing our children stress out. We are fed up with the narrowed curriculum. We are fed up with teaching to the tests. We are fed up with our narrowed curriculum. We are fed up with Common Core. We are fed up with a governor that pockets $4.8 million from DFER and others like it instead of fixing our poverty and having the state pay its fair share to ALL school districts.

Mostly we are fed up with people of your ilk. You and yours are the modern day carpetbaggers, just this time it is education that you and yours needs to control. You truly believe that since you taught for two years this gives you some kind of street cred when it comes to education and the welfare of our children. You feel that you must share "stories" on how you raised students 2.5 grades and were Rookie of the Year. Guess what? Joe Charboneau was AL Rookie of the Year in 1980. What did it mean in the long run? Nothing. At least Charboneau can prove he was ROY.

Put your skills to good use. Sell Amway.

Rye, NY. A leafy city of about 15,000 hard by the Long Island Sound. The home of Playland, BJ Surhoff, and Wellington Mara. A city in which education is taken seriously by the community. Who would have thought that the police state of education would find it's way into Rye?

In May of 2013, 4 teachers were accused of "improper coaching" during state exams that April to a small group of students according to the Rye Patch. These four teachers then were removed from the classrooms and put on the Rye version of the Rubber Room.

Since then, the Westchester County District Attorney has investigated and found insufficient evidence to proceed.  One teacher, Shannon Gold a 4th grade teacher at Milton Elementary has resigned with neither party admitting wrongdoing. One teacher, Gail Topol, returned to school under what some are claiming preferential treatment, and two others, Dana Coppola and Carin Mehler are still reassigned not doing what they love and are trained to do.

The worst part is that Carin Mehler's daughter is a student at the Osborn Elementary School. The same one in which her mom, Carin, is a teacher.

Not only is this an awkward situation for the little girl, but worse, Carin Mehler is not even allowed to enter the school as a parent. The Rye City School District has told Carin that she cannot act as a parent and in the best interests of her child on school property. The Crack Team finds this most outrageous. Even Francesco Portelos is allowed to attend community functions at the school in which he was cast out of (He lives in the community).

But one thing bothers The Crack Team. Where was the Rye Teachers Association at the beginning of this? What did they have to say? RTA President Jamie Zung had this to say at the latest Rye City School District board meeting;

“For almost a year, I have resisted requests from the RTA to make a public statement. For almost a year, I have allowed the RTA to appear apathetic and weak in the public eye. For almost a year, I have maintained hope that the process would work. But after a year, you have failed to settle this case so I, and we, are here tonight.”

Yes, we here at SBSB do not know the inner workings the politics of the RTA, but it looks to us as a bit too little, a bit too late. This "strategy" appears to be taken from the UFT playbook, the chapter entitled, "We Don't Want Them to Get Mad at Us, Besides You Are Still Getting Paid So Shut Up and Stop Kvetching About Your Plight."

So what is a teacher with an exemplary record like Carin Mehler forced to do? Lawsuit.

Carin filed a federal complaint against the Rye City School Board, it's superintendent and her principal. When a school district becomes a police state what is one to do?

From reading the complaint, one wonders if the students in question had testing with modifications and that perhaps the students misinterpreted any involvement as "coaching." It is also reasonable to assume that the students misinterpreted or mixed up the practice tests in which the students were allowed to talk and to ask questions. One can also reasonably wonder that during administration of the test that the students were told preceding the exam to check all their work if that command was not somehow misconstrued.

Why when the Westchester County DA's office has found no abnormalities is this case still being pursued? What has the New York State Education Department's investigation uncovered? Why hasn't the NYSED or the Rye City School District been available for questions from the media?

How many hundreds of thousands of dollars will be wasted on the lawyers and possible settlements that the Rye City School District has and might in the future spend? Are such monies better off being spent on instruction and on the students?

Where is the true outrage from the parents of Rye? The Rye community is being played for suckers by administrators and board members more interested in covering their butts right now than doing the right and honorable thing.

One more thing. Were the parents of the children interviewed notified before hand and/or was permission given and parents present during the interviews?

And please do not forget to be at the board meeting tomorrow night at the Rye Middle School at 8 PM EDT

The federal complaint;