At a May Day rally in New York City’s Union Square, teacher Rosie Frascella said she was among those standing up against academic standards known as Common Core, which have been federally approved and adopted by states including New York. Teachers at Frascella’s school in Brooklyn are refusing to administer an English Language Arts test designed to measure Common Core standards.

Rosie Frascella: “My name is Rosie Frascella. I’m a 12th grade English teacher at the International High School at Prospect Heights. And today I stood with 29 other teachers and staff members, and we’ve refused to give the ELA performance-based assessment. The reason we refused to give it is because the first assessment was traumatizing for our students. They were demoralized. They put their heads down, and they cried. It was way above their reading level. And the city was careless and took no consideration in the needs of English language learners. And we refuse to demoralize our students.”