In Louisiana, this mother reports, her 17-year-old autistic son will be required to take the ACT and EOC (end-of-course exams).
As she writes, “These children are also being forced to take the EOC. or “end of course” tests for high school courses that they have never taken. Allow me to reiterate. They are forced to take high-stakes, final exams for classes in which they have never been enrolled because they cannot meet the prerequisites.”
What will this prove, she wonders? Will it prove that her son’s school is a very bad school with very low test scores?
She says this is child abuse.
Her son is being subjected to tests that he cannot possibly pass to satisfy someone else’s political agenda.
That’s wrong.
I hope that journalists in Louisiana will investigate and report about whether this practice is general.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Forced” implies an “or else”. What would happen if she simply said no? She says in her letter that she’s known since he was in fourth grade that he wouldn’t graduate high school. So they can’t hold his graduation over her. So what else could they do if she opts him out? I don’t mean to blame the victim, but unless there is something else they have on her, she is participating in the abuse if she allows it to proceed. It’s her job to protect him.
Note: None of the above is in any way meant to let John White or anyone else off the hook. But people like White can only get away with it because we let them.
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The Orwellian rhetoric of the “reformers” is that all students should be provided with the same challenging, rigorous curriculum, and all students should be performing at the same high level. While unfortunately it has been true in the past in some places that some have assumed that special needs students are not capable of handling the regular curriculum, and so have not sufficiently challenged them, in cases such as the family in this post, the teachers (who are specially trained) are meeting the needs of the individual student (as mandated in the Individualized Education Plan), and are providing the best quality education for that student’s strengths and needs, as attested to by the parents. To force this student to take tests for which he or she could not possibly be prepared is abusive. I can’t understand how the administrators can go along with it. Special needs students, children in poverty, and English language learners all need to be provided with challenging curricula that address their individual interests, heritage, talents, and needs. They need to be inspired and encouraged. These authentic curricula and the students’ progress through them cannot be measured by standardized tests created for the average non-special needs student. In the name of providing equal opportunity for these students, the students are being subjected to inhumane practices that accomplish nothing other than further eroding their self-esteem, causing their teachers to appear to be ineffective and risk being terminated, and pulling down their schools’ scores. This is a serious issue that must be addressed. I’ve heard that the DOE is thinking of scrapping the IEP altogether and monitoring special ed students’ progress by their scores on standardized tests. This would be a horrible injustice, and would wipe out 40 years of progress.
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Florida does this, too. It’s demeaning, demoralizing, and just plain wrong. Even the kids know that.
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Dienne,
Force is the accelerations of mass. She only says force is being applied to him, not how that force is going to be handled. Unless she is with him in school everyday, I am not sure there is much she can do about testing, except to write letters and vote these people, who want to destroy how our schools are structured, out of office. As Jindal is the bright star in the Republican Party, it up to you to consider, what she has written, before forcing these guys in office.
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I guess I, as a parent, would find out what day(s) those tests will occur and, unless I could secure a promise that my kid would be doing other things, my kid would not be present that/those days.
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And sadly, your child would be subject to a make-up test upon his or her return. It happens all the time, not just for EOG/EOC etc but Benchmarks as well. The Powers That Be are very patient. This goes on all the time.
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I hear what you’re saying, and I understand it’s difficult. But here’s the thing, you can’t, as a parent, raise the child abuse banner and then turn around and throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do. If you found out your child’s babysitter, nanny, daycare provider, teacher, coach, clergy, etc. were physically, sexually or otherwise abusing your child, you would raise heaven and earth and do whatever it took to make it stop. It wouldn’t matter how inconvenient it was, how many days off work you had to take, how much you had to pay, who you had to piss off, or whatever else you had to do. You’d protect your child. Period.
If we’re going to say that excessive testing, or the wrong kind of testing, or testing of the wrong kids at the wrong times is child abuse (and I don’t dispute that it is, which is why my child attends a school that does no standardized testing), then we, as parents, need to make it stop, at least for our children. If enough of us protect our own children, then eventually there will be at least some protection for all children. When enough parents stand up and forcefully say no, then more schools will rethink it, and testing won’t be nearly as profitable.
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Maybe if varies widely by area or state, but several of my coworkers and I have opted out of testing for our own children. It is our right to decide if our children take that test. If enough people did the same thing, there wouldn’t be much for the testers to stand on, would there?
If they tried to test them on another day, without telling me, they know that there will be a law suit. They only bully you when they know that you won’t stand up to them.
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I have never heard of opting out of a “required” test. I will have to inquire locally. I figured that a requirement is just that. Clearly I am entirely too compliant. It may all be linked to government money (Oh noooo!) – Title I schools perhaps?
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It is not only a student such as this autistic boy who are forced to take a high stakes test that does not measure what they are learning. Here is an example that has been going on for years… If a student is an English language learner they too are forced to take these tests and well before their English is proficient. So when they are (for example) taking the math section of the test and come across math word problems.. this is not a test of their math first and foremost but is a test of their English comprehension skills. For students whose native language is English these math word problems are a math test (that is if they have the requisite reading fluency/comprehension skills). I had an English language learner who was a very studious student, throw up and start crying hysterically during one of these tests because her English was not good enough to comprehend what she was being asked and yet the rules required her to take the test! There are SO MANY examples of how these tests don’t measure what they intend to that they should be stopped!
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Dienne, I am jealous that your child gets to go to school where there is no standardized testing. If your child had autism as involved as the mom in Louisiana’s son has, you might not be able to find a private school that would accept him, or know how and what to teach him. We IEP moms often find that our options are very limited.
On another note, my state, Ohio, also forces children on IEPs to take standardized tests that they can’t possibly do well on, although the law does provide for a very small percentage of children to receive “alternate assessments”; IIRC it is less than 3%. Of course, the percentage of students with disabilities is many times that amount.
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I taught in a public alternative school for emotionally/behaviorally challenged young men and the most cruel thing there was the demand to test at age level. For years we had tested students upon entrance and then tested them at their instructional level. Progress showed and was more individualized and helped change instruction. Testing at age level brought no meaningful data, demoralized the students and teachers. It was a time of stress, tears and fist fights during the week of testing. Everything we tried to build was torn down during this horrible week. I agree with this Mom it is abuse and should ended. How about an ACLU lawsuit on discriminatory testing?
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Same thing is happening in Pennsylvania. This year for the first time there are no modified state tests and teachers have to sign that we’ve read a thick booklet from the state that says that all students, if properly taught, should be able to be proficient on grade-level state Reading, Math, Writing and Science tests. What about IEPs? Is anyone tracking this disgrace? My bet it is yet another pernicious attack happening nationally, which requires a national response.
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Am I to understand that the state of Pennsylvania has cured mental deficiencies? Where is the press when you need them???
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It happens in NYS where students are identified as being behind in reading and math (and have IEPs) but must take the same tests at the same time as their age peers. I agree that this is tantamount to child abuse…I have watched some of these children sit and cry because they cannot perform.
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This is a IEP team issue only – this can not be done without IEP agreement.
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I think that it is important to note that not all IEPs are for academic areas. Some of my students only have specially design instruction in one or more of the following areas: social-emotional, behavioral (not necessarily the same as social), adaptive, organization (study skills, executive functioning, gifted–nonproductive). Those areas can and often do seriously impact learning and test performance, despite the actual intellectual capacity these children have. Students may rush, shut down, melt down, distract, disrupt, or do fine. Other students on my caseload have some or all of the areas above, and academic disabilities.
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Perfect! Now the ed-reformers will have another piece of “data” to show people that public schools; and their unions, are failing our special needs children.
As long as educators remain silent in their classrooms, commiserate on ed. blogs, there will never be positive, genuine, democratic changes to our public education system or to the rest of our society for that matter.
As long as we remain silent, we’re teaching our children the worst lesson possible; that it’s ok to let an unrepresentative minority take advantage of the public and their children solely for profit. We are consenting to this tyranny by not actively defying and fighting it.
Teachers and sympathetic administrators must “go to war” with the Bloombergs, Emmanuels, Gates, Duncans, Rhees etc.
We have to start to organize regular marches outside of schools, wear teacher union or other teacher solidarity colors, pins etc everyday. March in solidarity with other striking unions, . TEACH TO THE CONTRACT; start at exactly the time you are being paid to start, stop at exactly the time you are stopped being paid, don’t volunteer for anything. When confronted with the canard of “but it’s for the children” offer our own by saying “it’s for the children that we’re fighting you and insuring that when they are the next generation of teachers and workers, they won’t be be working with less rights, for less pay, less benefits and with little or no dignity.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
-Frederick Douglass-
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” that it’s ok to let an unrepresentative minority take advantage of the public and their children solely for profit.”
The minority you talk about are not doing it for profit. The Educational system in the US is a centralized-distributed system. The minority you talk about want to decentralize, which means to get rid of assets like IEPs.
A node in a decentralized system does not need friendly assets to maintain itself, so the training becomes more individualized and local.
The profits are still in the system, they just go towards those that need them (the people who make the books) and away from those who don’t need them (the people who can’t afford the books).
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our contract states, ” and all additional duties assigned by the principal to include attending training during the summer, weekends and off hours as needed.
So much for teaching to the contract!
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