February 2014

BOARD OF EDUCATION, CALEDONIA-MUMFORD CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

We, the undersigned, represent parents, grandparents, teachers and community members in the Caledonia-Mumford Central School District (hereinafter “CM”). We believe that high educational standards are critical to the successes of our students. We believe that control of our school district should remain local and that curriculum should be approved by our trusted local school board. We understand that CM must, by state mandate, align CM’s curriculum and assessments to meet the Common Core Learning Standards adopted in 2010 through state acceptance of Race to the Top grants.

With the above stated, make it known that we are opposed to the use of ANY Common Core ELA or Math curriculum/modules available through EngageNY to teach to these standards for the following reasons, including but not limited to:

1. Developmentally inappropriate lessons;

2. Untested curriculum;

3. Poorly designed/written and “scripted” modules that offer little flexibility to teachers;

4. Poor lesson pacing;

5. Error-riddled modules and homework sheets;

6. Content created by non-educators;

7. Lack of textbooks;

8. Modules offer a single instructional, one-size-fits-all approach;

9. Cause of undue stress, frustration and disinterest and

10. High cost.

We additionally are opposed to the collection of personally identifiable student data that is slated to be sent to the cloud-based company inBloom and high stakes testing with scores being misused in a system of accountability that unfairly rates teachers, principals and school performance and does not realistically or fairly assess a student's knowledge.

We thereby implore the CM district to end the use of EngageNY Common Core modules and return the curriculum decision-making back to the local control of our educators. We believe in our dedicated and qualified teachers and we want our teachers to be able to teach our children again. We want our children to be able to learn again, in all ways, and we want our school to be a place where our children can grow.

We also ask the Board to suspend the release of any student level personally identifiable information to the State. And finally, we ask the board to respect and accommodate any parental requests to decline their child's participation in the New York State Common Core Assessments.