Scandal-Ridden TN DOE Lies to Parents about Opting Out of Tests

Andy Spears recently shared a memo from the TN Department of Education denying denying parents the right to opt out of annual state testing.  Even though the invalid, unreliable, and racist tests have never been morally defensible, they are particularly indefensible during the present pandemic. 

Tennessee's corrupt Education Commissioner and former charter school CEO, Penny Schwinn, continues to circulate a one-page lie that tells parents that opting out of state testing is prohibited by state and federal laws. Any parent receiving this ridiculous memo should ignore it and keep their children safe from these irrelevant, racist, and mideducative tests that only companies that use public education as another vast revenue stream. 

Speaking of revenue streams, Broad Center alum Penny Schwinn has an established reputation for using her office to arrange lucrative no-bid contracts for her cronies in the ed industry. Before coming to Tennessee, she was caught up in a Texas-sized scandal based on playing favorites and passing out no-bid contracts.  

Since coming to Tennessee, Schwinn has continued her corrupt practices in awarding a no-bid management contract for a school voucher program and, more recently, another multimillion dollar no-bid contract for a  company to screen results on third grade reading tests.

As Bill Lee's mentor always said, only the best people. 

How Opt Out Could Remain Legitimate, But Won't

The last national conference held by United Opt Out in February featured Green presidential candidate, Jill Stein, long-time radical educator, Bill Ayers, and radical intellectual, Chris Hedges.  The line-up for the conference scheduled for next month in Houston is quite different.

The October UOO conference at the Hilton will be be co-sponsored by an AFT affiliate, the Houston Federation of Teachers, and the headliners will contain no radicals, free or otherwise.  Featured will be education economist and KIPP sympathizer, Samuel Abrams, along with Diane Ravitch's lieutenant at NPE, Julian Heilig.  In short, UOO has become the latest casualty of cooptation by the corporate unions, and just in time, it seems, for AFT/NEA/NPE to, perhaps, claim a victory of sorts for the opt out movement that they now control.

Even though the annual testing requirement for public schools remains a part of the ESSA federal statute going forward, the ominous plan for future testing accountability would impose test data gathering, storage, and sharing every day, rather than just once a year.  Assessment, under the new scheme that will receive federal millions under ESSA, will be as ubitiquous as getting on and off the bus.  So even as Randi and Lily are already leading testing victory laps for a false win not yet won, such a "victory" would come at an expense that no parent, student, or teacher can afford to pay.

You see, the new personalized testing paradigm on the horizon, if implemented, will not only change the face of school as we know it, but it will jeopardize the physical and mental health of children, as well as abridge their rights to privacy and the integrity of children's future goals.  The dystopian dream by the dangerous crackpots who are advancing the new "competency based" business model for schools will be realized when graduating teens have electronic dossiers that include longitudinal testing data, behavior data, attitude data, and character data, all of which will be available for steering young adults into the most appropriate cell to serve the global economic hive.

So, you see, if the marriage of Opt Out and AFT yields its best possible result, which would be the end of annual testing, the real challenge of the next corporate education horror show will be left entirely unaddressed and, thus, with viral dimensions surging.

Why, then, you may ask, will not the new union-partnering UOO move to urge parents to opt out of all digital student data gathering, storage, and sharing, which would bring down this new most hazardous scheme?  In short, it is because of the deal with the Devil that the corporate unions made with the corporate reformers a long time ago.  It involves survival of a union bureaucracy that the corporate state allows to exist as long as union misleaders remain complicit in the corporate reform agenda.  It involves national politics at the highest levels, and the choosing of a predictable corporate presidential candidate over one that is not.  It involves an elite pay-to-play scheme that required, most recently, the AFT/NEA support for the reauthorization of ESEA in 2015, which we know as ESSA.

The implicit support by rank and file teachers for ESSA's passage was assured by propaganda from NEA, AFT, NPE, and other second and third tier corporate union hangers-on who comprise the liberal group-think blogger group, Basecamp (think permanently ensconced with no summit in sight).  One of NPE's board members, Julian Heilig (the same Julian who is headlining at UOO in October) bragged on FB of knowing the details of ESSA's awfulness prior to passage, but he, like others who "felt" like they could not affect the outcome, kept their mouths shut about how truly dangerous ESSA really was.

NPE/AFT/NEA's insider strategy of going along to get along, while preserving that proverbial "place at the table," required that the ostensible protectors of public education like Diane Ravitch to effectively dissemble and obfuscate enough to keep opposition to ESSA at a minimum.  The rest of the pack kept their mouths shut.

Both national parties wanted ESSA to provide for the next generational serving of corporate welfare charter schools and high tech gadgetry built on archaic learning models, this time lavishly garnished with big dollops of "blended" classroom bullshit, de-personalized "learning," and computer-assisted everything, topped off with every data hoarder's dream of never forgetting a student mistake or teacher screw-up.

This is what NEA/AFT/NPE did for the movement to stop the corporate onslaught.  And these are the same folks now calling the shots at Opt Out.  Do you think they will urge parents to opt out of the new omnipresent "personalized" testing coming to a school near you?  To boycott all digital testing stored on corporate government servers? To refuse to send kids to school where blended bullshit is being served?  All these miseducative notions are in full swing, by the way, in Houston, where HFT President, Zeph Capo, pleads ignorance about what has been going on for the past four years.

If you do think UOO will lead the boycott against big data, then I urge you to keep reading from the Ravitch script.  Closely.  While you are doing that, I hope you will form new reading habits, too, with people who know what the hell is going down here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Despite the lies. . .

Opt-out in New York is thriving.

Contrary to what we were led to believe by state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia in the spring after the standardized achievement tests in English and Math were taken by public schools across the state, the number of those refusing to take the tests went up, not down. From 20 percent in 2015 to 22 percent this year.

Read on here.

Earth to NPE: There is NOT an Opt-Out Provision in ESSA, So Stop Pretending

Appearing this morning is a hand-wringing appeal at the NPE website, urging teachers and parents to request changes in USDOE Regulations governing the implementation of ESSA.  If readers were to believe the dissembling and phony interpretations by the corporate union front groups, FairTest and NPE, the ESSA is being hijacked by Team Obama to do awful things that were not intended by the Senate's lead education privatizer, Lamar Alexander.

From NPE:

Although the intent of ESSA was to put an end to the “test and punish” regime of NCLB and give more flexibility to the states, in some ways the draft regulations are even more punitive and prescriptive than under NCLB.

For example, although ESSA permits states to pass laws allowing parents to opt their children out of taking the state tests, the draft regulations would require states to harshly punish or label as failing, schools in which more than 5% of students opt out.T

This is a false statement, pure and simple.

ESSA mandates annual testing in grades 3-8 and twice in high school, and ESSA mandates state remedies for schools scoring in the bottom 5 percent.  Which remedies?  It's left up to the states, but the ESSA offers unprecedented piles of cash to states with "failing schools" in the bottom 5 percent to expand charter chains and to start new ones based on the "no excuses" pumice-based pedagogy.  And there will always be a bottom 5 percent.

Contrary to NPE and FairTest claims, ESSA does NOT say anything about permitting "states to pass laws allowing parents to opt their children out of taking state tests."  The draft regulations requiring 95 percent participation in state tests is entirely consistent with the same ESSA that FairTest, NPE, and Ravitch supported.

Here is what the ESSA says with regard to opting out:

At the beginning of each school year, a local educational agency that receives funds under this part shall notify the parents of each student attending any school receiving funds under this part that the parents may request, and the local educational agency will provide the parents on request (and in a timely manner), information regarding any State or local educational agency policy regarding student participation in any assessments mandated by section 1111(b)(2) and by the State or local educational agency, which shall include a policy, procedure, or parental right to opt the child out of such assessment, where applicable (p. 56).

Notice that there is nothing here that "permits" states to do anything other than to report information to parents about existing state law or local policy, and there is nothing here that allows state law or local regulations to overule or take precedent over the federal law, ESSA.

NPE and FairTest are stuck with the policy they supported, which doubles down for another generation on the same loser policies that have decimated public education in the U. S. No amount of wheedling or pretending is going change that, and no amount of appealing is going to change the next Clinton's priorities if elected.

Half of Long Island Students Opted Out of Testing Last Week

from the Wall Street Journal:

The number of students who opted out of state tests in Long Island rose to more than 97,500 this week, according to tallies by test-refusal advocates—or about half of the students in grades three through eight.

Long Island Opt Out, which has promoted the movement, said Friday it had volunteers cull numbers from officials and teachers in 124 districts this week. The group lacked data for six districts.

The group said the boycott grew from last spring, when it said 82,492 Long Island students opted out of at least one of the three days of English language arts exams. Next week will have three days of math tests. . . .

Thompson Gives Ravitch Credit for Opt Out Movement

Following NPE's very late “call” for “a national opt,” it is not surprising to see the history of the opt out movement already being revised to give credit to education’s “American Idol,” Diane Ravitch.  John Thompson writes at Huffington Post,

Three cheers for the Opt Out movement! When the history of the collapse of data-driven, competition-driven school improvement is written, the parents and students of the grassroots Opt Out uprising will get much - or most - of the credit for driving a stake through the heart of the testing vampire.

Of course, leaders like Diane Ravitch will be justifiably credited for guiding embattled educators through the dark days of the corporate reform era. . . .

Hearing this speed-of-light revisionism, however, from historian, John Thompson, is both surprising and disappointing.  John is clearly not too young to remember that "during the dark[est] days of corporate education reform,” the few good guys like Susan Ohanian, Gerald Bracey, Kathy Emery, and David Berliner were doing their best to counter the propaganda by “crisis mongers” and voucher/charter advocates like Diane Ravitch and Paul Peterson, who were, at the same time, wining and dining at the Hoover Institute and Manhattan Institute with other doyens of corporate education reform. At a Manhattan Institute soiree in 2000 that featured all the corporate ed rock stars, Ravitch waved off the dire warnings about school privatization that were being offered by Bracey and others:

"Vouchers and charters will not destroy public education. This is an incredible and fantastic fear. There are more than 45 million children in public schools. There are about 12,000 receiving vouchers. There are 350,000 in charter schools. This is like an elephant complaining about the mosquito on its shoulder, saying that that the mosquito is going to destroy it. Why are people so frightened of such an insignificant prospect? It is hard to understand the hysteria stirred by the fear of choice with regard to the public schools."

Apparently, Ravitch could not foresee, or chose to ignore, the deadly virus that the little mosquito carried.  Regardless of whether her innacurate assessment of the threat was due to bad judgment or the kind of stealth duplicity that had earned her a reputation when she was working for GHW Bush, today 18 states have approved school voucher laws and two and half million children are enrolled in charters, with millions more planned as a result of the new federal legislation that Ravitch and her new NEA/AFT patrons supported in 2015.  Of the 90,000+ public schools in the U. S. when Ravitch made that statement above, 7,000 of them are now charter schools.  Quite the mosquito, it turns out.

If Ravitch’s judgment could be relied upon to represent the best interests of children, teachers, and parents, it would matter not if she got credit for a movement that she came to four years after it began and only after it had reached national proportions.  Sadly, however, her judgment cannot be relied upon, as she has shown with her full-throated support for the ESEA reauthorization, ESSA, which will set back education policy by at least a half century, according to civil rights lawyer, Gary Orfield.  

However, Ravitch can be trusted to maintain a blind loyalty to AFT and NEA misleaders, who have an established history of selling their members down the river repeatedly, with support for NCLB testing, charter schools, and value-added teacher evaluation.  It would seem that Ravitch wants everyone under her tent, even if there are well-known arsonists in the crowd.

Ravitch’s epiphany that she had been wrong for so many years about corporate education reform came only after it had dawned on most educators, policymakers, and a sizable percentage of the general public that NCLB was an unsustainable privatization charade from the beginning.  Her quiet contrition and guarded confessions expressed in her two books after 2009 earned her the hero status that she enjoys today as someone who saw the errors of her ways and came over from the dark side.  For teachers it is thrilling to hear, especially from a conservative, that they were right all along about matters felt so deeply. 

No, Ravitch is not the hero of the Opt Out movement, and she deserves credit only for coming four years late to the party that others worked their guts out to make happen.  I would suggest that the historian, John Thompson, dig a little deeper into the history of the opt out movement before he adds another jewel to the Ravitch crown.

NPE's Attempt to Coopt Opt Out

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The world of anti-corporate education reform is a small one, and the fiercest and most effective elements are represented by the non-negotiating and in-your-face teachers, students, and parents who comprise the high stakes testing opt out movement. 


Their disobedient presences have been the tiny drops of life in a dead sea of testing, from Long Island to Colorado, from Florida to Washington State.  But one thing is for sure: when these overwhelmingly out-financed troublemakers sweat or bleed or cry into that vast dead standardized ocean, the colors change, the sun can once again be seen beneath the surface, and the waters start to move again with life. 


In New York, for instance, hundreds of thousands of parents, in defiance of unjust laws that would require abusive tests for their children, have opted out of tests in recent years without legal permission to do so.  Last year, 20 percent of New York children refused to take the racist, classist, and, otherwise, useless tests that are mandated by law.

The end of the testing fixation, however, poses a trillion dollar threat to the testing-industrial complex, which is comprised of the textbook and testing companies, the technology companies, corporate foundations, Wall Street politicians of both parties, and the professional development and management industry with its innumerable spinoffs.  

Because the survival of the corporate unions depend upon the graciousness of politicians who owe their survival to Wall Street, the heads of the NEA and AFT have become tools of the billionaires who are interested in increasing revenue streams and pursuing "market solutions"  in public schools. The union misleaders' chief task, then, in recent years has been to present and control the false image that they are acting on behalf of students and the teachers who send them hundreds of millions of dollars every year. 

Enter, once again, their good friend, the ever-dependable Diane Ravitch, and her Network for Public Education (NPE):

After careful thought and deliberation, the Network for Public Education is calling for a national Opt Out because of the harmful effects of annual high-stakes testing on children and schools.  We enthusiastically support those parents who refuse to have their children take the 2016 state exams.  

The alleged purpose of annual testing, federally mandated since NCLB was passed in 2004, is to unveil the achievement gaps within schools, ostensibly to close them.  Twelve years later, there is no conclusive evidence that NCLB high-stakes testing has improved the academic performance of any student... 

First off, someone needs to proof the copy that the NEA and AFT lawyers have prepared for Ravitch, the historian.  NCLB was signed into law in 2002, and it has been fourteen years since that time.  

More importantly, let's look at the timing of this "call" for a "national opt out." In most states, testing is already underway or already done--as in Massachusetts.  In New York, state testing starts tomorrow.  If this were a decision arrived at "after careful thought and deliberation," would NPE have waited until testing was either done, underway, or about to happen to call for a "national opt out?"  I think not.

Then, there is this caveat offered in the NPE statement:

We acknowledge that there is a legitimate role for standardized tests, if they are limited in frequency and time, developmentally appropriate, well-designed and reasonably scaled with realistic cut scores and provide useful instructional feedback. High-stakes tests given for school accountability purposes, [sic] do not meet those standards. They are undermining the public school system that is the pillar of our democracy. We believe that opting out of state tests as an act of direct protest will help turn the tide and eliminate damaging policies.

This is so classic NEA/AFT that it could have been written by either legal team.  In fact, the same caveat was offered when NEA and AFT embraced NCLB testing and value-added testing for teacher evaluations.  Sadly, of course, we know that the majority of the tests were and are junk tests, and that corporate union stipulations meant nothing, either then or now, except, of course, as a way to remind angry members that the unions never really endorsed the awful system that came to be but, rather, a fair system that didn't. 

And then there is this invitation to not opt out but, rather, to speak out:

We recognize that some parents will find it difficult or impossible to have their children refuse the exam due to punitive state laws or district policies.  We urge those who cannot opt out to speak out and demand their right to do what is best for their children in the face of harmful testing. The brunt of testing for school accountability is falling on children. Our elected leaders must address this broken accountability system and provide relief. 

For those who can, we ask that they break ranks, join us and not comply with testing. Policymakers cannot ignore the voices of the public when we speak together. Opt Out gives us that voice.

What's amazing about this "call" to opt out, at least where "punitive state laws or district policies" preclude such action, is the sheer meaningless of the rhetoric, since the ESSA, which Ravitch supported until after it was passed, requires states to have 95 percent of their students to take the tests.  Any "punitive state laws or district policies" will be necessarily aligned with the federal requirements that Ravitch and the unions supported all the way to passage.

The time to urge parents to press their elected officials was last year during the writing of ESSA.  Unfortunately, that was when Ravitch was pressing for passage of the Alexander plan, and there was no mention by Ravitch, FairTest, NEA, or AFT about including a statement on the rights of parents to opt out.  Nothing. 

Now that the ESSA is a done deal, are parents supposed to call their congressmen and begin asking for change??  Changing the law that Ravitch and FairTest embraced just a few weeks back that had the 95 percent testing requirement in it?  Or are the brave parents now supposed to defy the law that NPE supported? Or maybe that would be too "difficult or impossible," in which case parents may come to Raleigh later this month to speak with Diane about their plight.

This kind of counterproductive nonsense may satisfy the autograph seekers and the hangers-on that make up Ravitch's network that she has put together to benefit NEA and AFT, but those who are in this fight to end testing, segregation, and corporate control will not be appeased.

In the end, this NPE "call" for a "national opt out" represents another attempt by the corporate union and their spokesperson, Diane Ravitch, to water down and coopt the opt out movement by presenting a false and confusing image of testing resistance. 

Ravitch surely knows our elected leaders will only change when they have to, and the most effective way to force change is to defy the unfair and immoral laws that require children to take these tests.  And that is exactly the required action that NPE seeks to tamp down with more circuitous rhetoric and bullshit proclamations.

Opting Out Is a Form of Free Speech

Massachusetts has always preferred the democratic sounding "school committee" to the corporate sounding "school board."  The statement below reflects a deep democratic commitment.

From the Amherst-Pelham, MA School Committee (posted by R. Rosa at Facebook):

By law, students, in consultation with their families, have the right to opt out of state-wide standardized tests such as MCAS and PARCC. Consistent with prior practice, students along with their families, who choose to exercise a student’s right to opt out of these assessments—either by a statement or a note from parents or guardians—will not be subject to any form of negative consequences from the school district.

Opting out will not have negative implications for grades or class placement of any individual student. High School students should be aware that Massachusetts regulations dictate that a passing score on the tenth grade level MCAS is a graduation requirement. Educators who choose to discuss the right to opt-out with their students or with parents shall not be subject to any form of retribution by anyone in the Amherst or Amherst Regional public schools.

We are pleased to reaffirm that free speech is a fundamental right of all members of our educational community.

Almost Half of Chattanooga School Opts Out

WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports

The ODOR at ODOE

Thanks to the work of concerned parents, teachers, and students, Oregon has a strong Opt Out law that explicitly allows parents to opt out their children from the racist, classist, and otherwise worthless state standardized tests.

Now we find the State's DOE has crafted an opt-out form that has this on page 2 just above the signature line:

Story from the Oregonian.

Guest Post: Jose Lara's Open Letter to Parents on Common Core Testing Results

“We can get the same information from low-pressure testing of small samples of students every few years, each student taking only a part of the test, and extrapolating the results to larger groups.  This will save taxpayers’ money, reduce testing anxiety, and give teachers more time to teach. When you go to the doctor, they don’t take all your blood. They only take a sample.” — Professor Stephen Krashen

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The Honorable José Lara is a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Vice President of the El Rancho Unified School District. He is the Coordinator for ethnicstudiesnow.com and recipient the National Education Association's 2015 Social Justice Activist Award.

Open Letter to Parents on Common Core Testing Results

Dear Parents,

Soon California will release the results of your child’s Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC tests. These tests are also known and the new Common Core test that California and states across the country implemented last year.

Please know that as you receive the results of your child's SBAC scores our child’s results may show up as failures. This does not mean that your child is not intelligent, that your child's teacher is doing a poor job or that the school your child is attending is failing.  However, it does mean that the SBAC test is achieving expected results. You see, the SBAC test is a failure by design.

The testing company, who was hired to design the SBAC tests,with no input from educators, has purposely designed it to produce a high failure rate. This is so those same testing companies can now sell your child's school the "new" curriculum, test prep materials, intervention programs, textbooks, apps, technologies, etc.to bring up test scores. Not only that, they also hope to fool enough people that they start demanding "better" schools (mind you the problem is the test not the school). Corporate Charter Schools can then come in and takeover. All the while the fat cat CEO's of these corporations make a killing off of our tax dollars.

This moves hundreds of millions of dollars from the public to the private sector where the focus is not in educating our children, but instead making a profit. After all, that is purpose of the business model.

So I write you to take heed of the your child’s results. The results are not a true measure of anything except that the test is working, as it was designed to produce failure. Do not be fooled. 

I write to you as a parent of two public school children and as a teacher to warn you of what is coming and to tell you that, no your child is not a failure and yes your child is more that just a test score. A test does not teach students anything, but teachers and schools do.

Lastly, if you are as upset as I am of this planned failure and the enormous about of money that is being wasted on this tests, then join me in opting out of school testing. There is a growing national movement to stop to over testing of our children and you actually have the right to opt out to have your child in a meaningful educational experience instead of testing. It is time to join this quite revolution against wrongful and over-testing of  our children. 

You can find more information about on the website here at www.unitedoptout.com

Sincerely,

Jose Lara

Karen Lewis Speaks at FairTest Event June 4 2015

California Parent Shares Excellent Opt Out Information

Link

Liberty is the freedom to exercise our constitutional rights and not be bullied. State assessments are voluntary. In California, the right to opt out of standardized testing is a parental right guaranteed by Ed. Code 60615 which says, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent’s or guardian’s written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all part of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted.” State tests are mandatory for districts to administer but optional for students to take (with a parent opt-out).

Why opt-out? Assessment scores do not affect class grade, help or hinder grade level progression or graduation. Data, some personally identifiable, is kept for the student’s life, and data mining results are shared with government agencies and private companies. According to Tony Dolz, standardized assessments are “an uncompensated market research initiative by the education establishment in collaboration with private company partners.” Every dollar used for standardized testing drains funds from our classrooms. 

“Bullying” against the right to opt out has gone on in our schools for years. Time and again parents, teachers, and students are “bullied” into compliance and students are forced to submit to these extensive batteries of unproven standardized tests. Consider Phillip Brown’s story:

Our family has been opting out of these types of tests since the beginning. At first, we were met with little to no resistance from the schools. However, during the 2006-07 school year, my son passed out “Just Say No to STAR Testing” forms at Rodriquez High in Fairfield and was constantly threatened with suspension and other punishments from the school’s administration. 

I am a 35 year ACLU member and past board member. I contacted the ACLU attorneys in San Francisco and they intervened on our behalf and under threat of legal action allowed my son to pass out the flyers. Although FSUSD relented to his 1st amendment rights of free speech, the school’s officials were not happy. They were so unhappy that they watched his every move and looked for any reason to punish him. He was harassed by teachers and administrators who spoke publicly against him and to other students during class.

A school vice principal actually told us that our son should go to another school should he wish to graduate. At which point he changed schools and we filed a civil rights lawsuit in Solano County against FSUSD. (FCS031361 - Brown, Phillip K. etal vs. FF-SS Unified School) FSUSD made an undisclosed cash settlement.

The right to opt out applies to every parent regardless of their reasons. Should any child or parent encounter resistance from any school district, I would be happy to provide contacts that we used to enforce parental rights.

Recent developments in the opt-out movement include more bullying from the federal government and more parents standing up and opting out. In Chicago, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said wide spread student boycotts of standardized tests are not acceptable, and if state governments don’t stop them, the federal government will intervene. Why is he concerned? In New York so far, more than 185,000 students have refused to take the state’s English tests. In Seattle not a single 11th grade student showed up to take the SBAC test at Nathan Hale High School. Parents are waking up across the country and are choosing to opt out of standardized testing. Join them. 

Download “opt-out” forms and instructions. http://www.pacificjustice.org/california-common-core-data-opt-out-form.html 

Colleen Britton, Vacaville

Duncan Blames Parents for Testing Trauma--Threatens Federal Intervention for Out Out

If there is anything that can turn an opt-out firestorm into a complete conflagration that could consume the entire testing-industrial complex, it would be threats from the corporate bureaucrat, Arne Duncan.   

And sure enough, he delivered on Tuesday:

 U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that the federal government is obligated to intervene if states fail to address the rising number of students who are boycotting mandated annual exams.

Duncan’s comments come as an “opt out” advocacy group in New York reports that more than 184,000 students statewide out of about 1.1 million eligible test takers refused to take last week’s English exams. In New York City, nearly 3,100 students out of about 420,000 test takers opted out, according to the group. (Math testing begins Wednesday.)

Last year, 49,000 students statewide did not take the English exams, while just over 1,900 New York City students sat out the tests, state officials have said. State and city officials have not yet released their own opt-out counts this year or verified those of the advocacy group, United to Counter the Core, whose unofficial tally is based on information from district superintendents, school employees, and media reports.

Those estimates suggesting that more than 15 percent of students refused to take the tests have raised questions about the consequences for districts. Federal law requires all students in grades three to eight to take annual tests, and officials have said districts could face sanctions if fewer than 95 percent of students participate. On Tuesday, when asked whether states with many test boycotters would face consequences, Duncan said he expected states to make sure districts get enough students take the tests.

“We think most states will do that,” Duncan said during a discussion at the Education Writers Association conference in Chicago. “If states don’t do that, then we have an obligation to step in.”
Duncan also said that students in some states are tested too much, and acknowledged that the exams are challenging for many students. But he argued that annual standardized exams are essential for tracking student progress and monitoring the score gap between different student groups.

He also said the tests are “just not a traumatic event” for his children, who attend public school in Virginia.

“It’s just part of most kids’ education growing up,” he said. “Sometimes the adults make a big deal and that creates some trauma for the kids.” . . .. .

Great Letters on Testing and Opt Out from NY Times

Link here 

 

To the Editor:

Re “Some Parents Oppose Standardized Testing in Principle, but Not in Practice” (news article, April 14):

On April 15 and 16, the days after a record number of students “opted out” of New York State standardized tests in English language arts, not a single word in this paper was dedicated to this groundswell of grass-roots opposition to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s testing and evaluation scheme.

While statistics are difficult to compile, it is clear that parents, in large numbers, are openly protesting what they see as state political leaders eroding the quality of public schools and siphoning local control away from them. It is also an example of politically strange bedfellows, liberal and conservative, acting in concert.

It is one thing to disagree on the merits of these arguments, and perhaps to ignore the pleas of teachers who can be seen as acting in self-interest, but it is quite another not to follow up your April 14 news article — at least, not as of this writing — with coverage of this unprecedented act of civil disobedience by parents who are justifiably concerned about the welfare of their children.

DANIEL SULLIVAN

Huntington Station, N.Y.

The writer is a public school teacher and the parent of grade-school children.

To the Editor:

If Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, wants to compare the state exams in English and math to annual medical checkups, let’s do so.

My doctor uses thorough tests that are considered accurate and are endorsed by experts in the field. Kids take state tests that educational experts agree are inaccurate assessments of student ability.

My doctor reviews my personal medical history and adjusts the exam accordingly; it’s not the same one given to the next patient with very different needs. Kids take state tests that use a one-size-fits-all approach.

My doctor returns test results within a week, so we can immediately begin any treatment or behavior changes necessary to improve my health. Kids get test results in the late summer or fall, after they’ve moved on to the next grade.

And my doctor gives me a comprehensive assessment of my health, with specific numbers and details to guide my progress. Kids get a score of 1 to 4.

If doctors ran their practices the way the state runs education, most people would opt out of their annual checkup, too.

GREG MARANO

Liverpool, N.Y.

The writer teaches seventh-grade English in a public school.

To the Editor:

My wife and I opted our daughter out of standardized testing as an act of political protest against using unreliable tests as a basis for teacher evaluation.

The so-called value-added measures for determining teachers’ evaluation scores are not statistically sound; they lead to arbitrary scores for teachers that do not accurately reflect the quality of their teaching. Moreover, the lack of any transparency in the design and scoring of the tests makes it impossible to hold anyone publicly accountable for their flaws.

Schools with high numbers of low-performing students and untenured teachers double down on test prep at the expense of authentic intellectual and artistic enrichment, thus disproportionately widening, not shrinking, the achievement gap for low-income students.

Increasing the stakes for these tests, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposes, will do little to remove poorly performing teachers from the classroom. But it will potentially drive good teachers from the classroom and discourage promising candidates from becoming teachers.

To compare this misguided system to a healthy “vaccination,” as the chancellor of the State Board of Regents does, is highly deceptive.

BEN WIDES

Brooklyn

The writer is a New York City public school history teacher.

Democracy Now's Coverage of Opt Out

And here is Juan Gonzalez' editorial in New York Daily News today.

In NY, 13.6 Percent of Students Refused ELA Tests This Week

This impressive number of test refusers is sure to jump when the Math Common Core testing starts next week in New York.  

More Refuse News!

High Anxiety and High Profits

NY State ED Losers Plan to Use Invalid Test Data: So What's New

Call this posturing by fuming Cuomo stooges at the state department of ed after this week's repudiation of Common Core testing by refusers, but it will only serve in infuriate parents who are already gathering their pitchforks and torches:

A NYSED spokesman said Wednesday that the state would still go ahead with its planned use of the data.

"We are confident the department will be able to generate a representative sample of students who took the test, generate valid scores for anyone who took the test, and calculate valid state-provided growth scores to be used in teacher evaluations," spokesman Jonathan Burman said in a written statement.

Relying on the test data in schools where the majority of students did not participate is sure to raise the ire of the swell of parents leading the charge.