The Chicago parent organization PURE (Parents United for Responsible Education) called on Chicago school officials to de-emphasize standardized testing and pay greater attention to teachers’ judgment.
PURE issued this press release today:
Parents give district a “D” for its test-focused policy
Chicago, IL: Today, tens of thousands of Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
parents will flock to their children’s schools to pick up student report
cards and meet with teachers. They look forward to these meetings as an
important step in strengthening the home-school connection. Report card
pick-up day is the best opportunity most parents have to learn how to
help their children succeed in school from the people that know the most
about how to do that – their children’s teachers.
Parents take the report cards home and study them. They discuss them
with their children – sometimes those are happy discussions, sometimes
not so happy! Parents sign the back of the report card and slide the
cards into their children’s backpacks, often taking that moment to
resolve to do more to help their children learn and improve in the weeks
ahead.
This process has been meaningful to parents for decades, but it’s been
increasingly pushed aside as school districts like CPS give standardized
test scores more and more power over students, teachers and schools.
Parents from the Chicago group More Than a Score disagree with this
trend, and have presented CPS with an alternative promotion policy
http://chicagotestingresistance.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/promotionproposal10-13.pdf
that relies primarily on report card grades and uses standardized test
scores in the way they were intended to be used, as diagnostic tools and
not high-stakes “gotcha” measures.
More Than a Score parents give CPS a “D” grade for a promotion policy
that continues to focus too much on test scores and ignores the value of
report cards.
“Report cards are the only evaluations that look at the students’ work
over time and across all areas of learning. They are the only
evaluations done by experienced, qualified adults who personally observe
and assess each student’s progress,” said CPS parent Julie Fain.“That’s
the kind of information that makes sense to parents and actually helps
children. When we get our children’s standardized test scores at the end
of the year, we don’t get to see the questions or their answers. We have
no idea whether they missed a certain concept or were just distracted
for part of the test. In any case, our children are so over-tested that
these results have become less and less useful to parents.”
“The CPS promotion policy begins and ends with the state test score,”
said Julie Woestehoff, head of Parents United for Responsible Education
(PURE). “Most of the information from report cards is ignored by CPS
when end-of-the-year promotion decisions are made.”
“I believe standardize testing is a harsh way to keep a child from
thinking outside the box. All our children have different needs, speeds,
and challenges. I have witnessed up close and personal the emotional
stress testing causes – creating a lack of self-esteem while labeling my
children as dumb only because they did not meet your standardized laws.
I support my children by opting them out of testing,” said Rousemary
Vega, a CPS parent.
Parents who have opted their children out of standardized tests are also
confused and concerned because the new promotion policy just swapped one
high-stakes test (the SAT-10), for another (NWEA), making opting out
more difficult.
Since the promotion policy was first implemented in 1996 by Paul Vallas,
it has focused on test scores on the Iowa test, then the IGAP, ISAT, and
SAT 10. The new proposal substitutes the NWEA, which CPS officials say
is just temporary until they replace it with the PARCC Common Core
tests.
“How are we supposed to keep track of this alphabet soup of tests?” asks
Linda Schmidt, a CPS parent who notified her child’s school at the
beginning of this school year that she does not want her student to take
the NWEA. “Will my child be held back next August because I made a
decision last September?”
Policymakers often cite the subjective nature of teacher grades as a
reason for giving them less weight than standardized tests scores.
However, test questions are written by subjective human beings, too, and
test makers consistently state that their tests should not be used to
make high-stakes decisions about children. The manual for the SAT-10,
which CPS used last year to retain students, states that test scores
“should be just one of the many factors considered and probably should
receive less weight than factors such as teacher observation, day-to-day
classroom performance, maturity level, and attitude” – just the kind of
information in report cards.
“What’s wrong with report cards?” asked Wanda Hopkins, the parent of a
CPS high school student. “If CPS does not trust teacher grades, they
need to explain why and what they are doing to fix it. I trust my
child’s teacher more than I trust for-profit test companies.”
Parents with More Than a Score believe that our proposed promotion
policy
http://chicagotestingresistance.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/promotionproposal10-13.pdf
offers an alternative to the CPS test-based promotion policy that
respects input from teachers, avoids the pitfalls of standardized test
misuse and retention, makes sense to parents, and – most importantly –
provides a higher quality evaluation of each student’s progress and
needs.
Notes to the proposed alternative promotion policy here
http://pureparents.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PromotionPolNotes10-13.pdf
Link to this post on MTAS web site here:
Even the conservative Chicago Tribune says this in today’s paper! Read Dennis Byrne’s column, “It’s Time to Dump Standardized Tests.”
Oh–I might add–it’s not so much the NWEA people should opt out of, it’s the STATE standardized tests–as $old by Pear$on–in Illinois, the I$ATs, given in March, but prepped for ALL YEAR LONG!!!
Yes, this all goes back to Paul Vallas and now IL Governor Pat Quinn has selected Vallas to be his running mate. I let Quinn know that, although I have been a lifelong Democrat, I would NEVER EVER vote for a Quinn-Vallas ticket. Others should tell Quinn of their disgust over this choice, too: http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/Pages/ContacttheGovernor.aspx
What’s next from the neo-liberal, pro-corporation, anti-union “New Democrats” of Illinois? Arne Duncan for mayor of Chicago? OMG! Stop the madness NOW!
At last — some sanity!
Sandra L. Wickham Woodland Park, CO
If any of you would like to read the report mentioned above from the Chicago Tribune, it IS GOOD. I found it on line: Type in:
Dennis Byrne/It’s time to dump standardized test.
Good for the parents!
Actually, the NWEA MAP is now the high-stakes test for elementary students, schools, and teachers in CPS. Although they are still administering the ISAT this year because ISBE/IL state law is mandating it, CPS has changed the promotion policy for students and the performance policy for schools to use MAP results instead of ISAT results. In addition, part of teacher evaluation is dependent on MAP growth.
I would like CPS parents to consider opting out of both NWEA MAP and the ISAT. The ISAT will waste two weeks of school this year for no purpose whatsoever. The NWEA MAP is a flawed test that was not designed to be used as the basis for any high-stakes decisions. The questions are not available for inspection by parents or teachers; therefore, it is not even clear what we are holding everyone “accountable” to with respect to this exam.
Of course, CPS being CPS, there’s probably a dozen other standardized tests you can opt your child out of as well, depending on their grade and what their school is administering: (http://cps.edu/Performance/Documents/CPSSY14AssessmentCalendar.pdf)
Parents with questions about opting out should contact More Than A Score: info@morethanascorechicago.org
Thanks so much for publicizing this, Diane! Hope you are healing and resting!
Thanks, Cassie, for the clarification. Yes, parents–by all means, OPT OUT of BOTH tests! I$AT$ are mandated by ISBE because, of cour$e, there is that nice contract with Pear$on, and all of that money (which COULD have been spent DIRECTLY on students) has already been spent on the te$ts and the year-round te$t prep. curriculum (material$ by–who el$e?–Pear$on!). BTW–aren’t the MAPs the tests that the Seattle teachers refused to give (& 97% of the kids were opted out of by their parents?)?
Teachers know more about their students than any high-stakes test can provide.