Who we are and what we do
For those of you who are new to Long Island Opt Out, I thought I would take a minute to properly introduced you to who we are and what we do!!
This organization started with an idea that if parents knew what was happening inside our public school system, why it was happening, how it was affecting our kids, and what we could do about it, we could change the system and move things in the right direction.
In the beginning…
What started as a few hundred parents refusing to allow their kids to be administered the 3-8 state math and ELA assessments back in 2013, quickly grew to 250,000 parents by 2016, with 50% of Long Island students opting out. To this day we still have close to 20% of NYS students opting out each and every year.
We had all decided that we wanted authentic teaching and learning, rather than a test prep curriculum.
- We decided that science, social studies, art, music, and physical education, was just as or EVEN MORE important than ELA and math.
- We decided that testing an 8 year old for 15+ hours over 2-4 days was cruel and unnecessary. We decided that using test results to punish our schools, teachers, and students was not ok. We decided that our kid’s personal data was not for sale.
- We decided that we wanted a child centered education for our kids. And we figured out that if we all stand together, we could stop and reverse the policies that were being fueled by billions of corporate dollars.
We have parent leaders all across Long Island and NYS helping to educate parents and ensure that we have access to information that SED would rather we didn’t know. Most assumed we would give up after a few years. We didn’t. We’re not going anywhere.
Thanks for joining us!