A Teacher’s Perspective Your child can refuse to take grade 3 - 8 state tests! (However, NYS Regents exams must be completed in order to graduate.) What is the best way to stop this runaway train called the Common Core? Legislation seems to be too slow. No Child Left Behind waivers, which every governor signed, cemented the CC or similar standards into place. Don’t be fooled, the CC, Pearson tests and the data mining of our children are here to stay unless parents take a principled stand against all of it. Parents, you have the power. The amount of money that is riding on the continued implementation of the Common Core provides a tremendous incentive to ignore detractors. The people who have made investments based on the presumption that the Common Core is here to stay are not going to give up easily. There are tech companies ready to sell school districts a tablet for every child. There are publishing companies that have developed CC aligned textbooks, test prep, and computer software that are all in. There are charter schools opening daily, threatening to end public neighborhood schools and locally elected school boards. Teachers who understand children and know how the human mind works know that the Common Core with its requisite high-stakes testing is a dumb idea that will eventually die a natural death. However, the people who are deeply invested in pushing this stuff will continue to do so until somebody actually turns off the money spigot and sends them a cease and desist letter. States can no longer decide which tests they will administer and when. Superintendents can no longer allow principals and ultimately teachers to create their own curriculums to support their own state standards. FERPA laws are no longer protecting our children from invasive data collection schemes and the abuse of personal student information. Everything has changed slowly but surely starting with the roll out of the federal Race to the Top funds offered in 2009 to the states in return for their cooperation. What situation could possibly arise that could throw a monkey wrench into these ironclad plans? Considering the entire system relies on the collection and (faulty) analysis of student data, it seems that if the system were deprived of this data, the system would come to a grinding halt. Parents, pay attention. Your child can refuse to take standardized tests in grades 3 – 8 in ELA, Math, and Science. There will be no consequences for your child, your child’s teacher or your child’s school for refusing to take these tests. Despite the fact that you may have heard that if less than 95% of the students participate in testing, a school district can lose funding, not one school district has actually lost any funding even when large percentages of students refused to take the tests. In 2014 roughly 60,000 parents boycotted NYS testing. Students cannot be held back or placed in AIS because there is no score to base these decisions on. Refusal does not garner a zero on the test. It receives a code #999 which alerts the system that the child refused the test. The child cannot be administered a makeup test because the child was not absent. Parents can insist that other measures be used to assess their child for promotion and placement. If enough students do not take the tests, there won’t be enough data to analyze. No data, no “failing” students, no “failing” teachers and no “failing” schools. If there is no data to collect and analyze, the school districts will not have to spend all of their professional development days discussing data and testing. Teachers could get back to collaborating with each other to share best practices that they have discovered by trying innovative things in their own classrooms. Students could get back to having fun in kindergarten and experiencing art, music and social studies as important disciplines in their own right. Elementary teachers would no longer have to waste time and attention taking attendance every period of the day. They might have time for conversations with students about a new baby sister or a loose tooth. Every minute of the day would not have to be focused on preparing for …the tests. School districts could design budgets that include enriching experiences. There are plenty of resources to assist parents who decide that they do not want their children taking standardized tests. Here is a useful one: wnyforpubliced/tools.html This website provides a sample refusal letter to address to the principal of your child’s school, a flyer with bullet points to communicate why excessive testing is problematic, a petition to circulate in your school district and then submit to your district’s Board of Education, a list of addresses of government officials, a document showing rights that parents have through existing laws and Supreme Court cases, and a document titled “What you need to know about refusing the state tests.” The National Academy of Sciences reviewed America’s test-based accountability systems and concluded, “There are little to no positive effects of these systems overall on student learning and educational progress.” They reported this fact to congress in 2011. And congress did nothing. Parents, it is up to you. Here are some facts from the “Western New Yorkers for Public Education” website that parents may want to consider when deciding what to do about the present state of affairs in the schools. State exams are loaded with poorly written, ambiguous questions. How can your child’s answers to such questions provide any valid data? New York State cut funding to public schools while pouring millions into new computer systems designed for Common Core tests. Despite its high costs, high-stakes testing is designed to make education more “efficient” by machine-sorting students and teachers. The tests are largely punitive: they punish teachers, students, and schools that don’t perform. Low test scores can be used to hold good students back and rate strong teachers as “ineffective” despite high ratings by their principals. One-size-fits-all tests punish and discourage students who are already vulnerable. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that parents possess the “fundamental right” to “direct the upbringing and education of their children.” Furthermore, the Court declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State: those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534-35) The Supreme Court criticized a state legislature for trying to interfere “with the power of parents to control the education of their own.” (Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 402.) The New York State ELA Grade 3-8 tests will be administered on April 14-16, 2015. The Math tests will be administered on April 22-24, 2015. Parents, you have the power to bring down this house of cards. What are you going to do? Dawn Hoagland can be contacted at commoncoreisnotok@gmail
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:46:37 +0000
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