Featured Letter: Opting out sends a message

To the editor:

Last week, your reader provided a list of interesting and thought-provoking suggestions for possible lessons as an alternative for students who opted out of the state assessments. While an enticing idea, to have done so would have excluded those who did take the tests from those same lessons. The local schools, as agents of the state, were obligated to deliver the tests, and did so. It was not a time devoted to instruction.

To have provided an alternative might very well have been viewed by the state as an abrogation of school officials’ responsibility, and sworn oath, to uphold state law. The decision to opt out was not made by the schools.

The widespread movement to opt out was made by, and belongs to, the parents. They sent a message that was heard loud and clear around New York and, most significantly, in Albany.

Dan Creedon
Mr. Creedon is president of the Greenport Board of Education.