Some parents in New York have devised a creative way to protest the absurdly hard Common Core tests that most kids “failed” last spring. They are sending the scores back to the State Commissioner John King.
The word is getting out. The tests were designed to create failure. Test makers know exactly how each item will “function.” Whether the question is hard, easy, or in the middle. When they assemble a test, they know what proportion of students will faIl or pass. They typically design a bell curve. Why did New York commission tests that were supposed to make the public schools look bad? The joke was that the charters performed even worse than the publics!
Send ’em back.
Better yet, plan now to opt out in the spring.
Make this your watchword: Not with my child!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Even better: send them back, postage due!
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Love it! Perfect response.
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Great news from Toledo:
http://www.ourtownsylvania.com/Education/2013/10/02/shrinking-school-budgets-reviewed.html
“Toledo area school district treasurers Wednesday participated in a panel discussion reviewing the shrinking budgets of public school funding, coupled with increasing state-mandated programs.
Hosted by the newly formed organization, Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education, four treasurers from the Sylvania, Perrysburg, Washington Local, and Springfield Local school districts presented figures at the discussion at Southview High School in Sylvania, and discussed how the state mandates are negatively affecting the Ohio public education system and its bottom line.
“This is a critical time in the education of the community about these issues … Our state superintendent has said he hopes to live to see the day where every student in Ohio has money to go anyplace they want to go,” Perrysburg Superintendent Tom Hosler said before the panel discussion began. He said the results of that philosophy, providing money for charter or private schools, can be seen in the public school system.”
These are districts that are outside Toledo. They’re strong public schools with a real individual and unique community identity, each district.
I’m not surprised they’re finally pushing back back on the damage being done to their existing public schools by “reform”, because that is the issue in my rural district: reform is damaging our existing public schools. We’re being sacrificed to reform.
What’s amusing is this is where Michelle Rhee is from, what is called “suburban Toledo” by national media but what are actually individual towns that aren’t really “suburbs”. Rhee of course attended the pricey and exclusive Maumee Valley private school rather than attending the public schools she derides, but this is her backyard.
This is the Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education Facebook page. It looks like they’re allied with the group in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Ft Wayne is about 2 hours from Toledo.
https://www.facebook.com/NWOFPE?filter=1
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Great news from Toledo:
http://www.ourtownsylvania.com/Education/2013/10/02/shrinking-school-budgets-reviewed.html
“Toledo area school district treasurers Wednesday participated in a panel discussion reviewing the shrinking budgets of public school funding, coupled with increasing state-mandated programs.
Hosted by the newly formed organization, Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education, four treasurers from the Sylvania, Perrysburg, Washington Local, and Springfield Local school districts presented figures at the discussion at Southview High School in Sylvania, and discussed how the state mandates are negatively affecting the Ohio public education system and its bottom line.
“This is a critical time in the education of the community about these issues … Our state superintendent has said he hopes to live to see the day where every student in Ohio has money to go anyplace they want to go,” Perrysburg Superintendent Tom Hosler said before the panel discussion began. He said the results of that philosophy, providing money for charter or private schools, can be seen in the public school system.”
These are districts that are outside Toledo. They’re strong public schools with a real individual and unique community identity, each district.
I’m not surprised they’re finally pushing back back on the damage being done to their existing public schools by “reform”, because that is the issue in my rural district: reform is damaging our existing public schools. We’re being sacrificed to reform.
What’s amusing is this is where Michelle Rhee is from, what is called “suburban Toledo” by national media but what are actually individual towns that aren’t really “suburbs”. Rhee of course attended the pricey and exclusive Maumee Valley private school rather than attending the public schools she derides, but this is her backyard.
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This is indeed great news. Finally some bit of sense.
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Mark them
Junk Science: Return to Sender
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Brilliant!
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The leading charterites/privatizers and their accountabully underlings writhe in paroxysms of laughter when the we are the butt of their cruel jokes.
High-stakes standardized tests for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN? A laugh riot.
High-stakes standardized tests for THEIR OWN CHILDREN? No more ad hominem attacks! [or any other diversionary tactic]
It is about time that the joke is on them.
Yes, Lehrer & Robert D. Shepherd: send them postage due, marked “Junk Science — Return to Sender.”
🙂
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Are there stories of families who DO opt out? And then the consequences of doing so. I’m really wondering what it looks like when one does make this choice for there child. Here in Massachusetts it begins something like this….
7. Can parents refuse their child’s participation in MCAS tests?
Parents may not legally refuse their child’s participation in MCAS tests. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 76, Sections 2 and 4, establish penalties for truancy as well as for inducing unlawful absence of a minor from school. In addition, school discipline codes generally define local rules for school attendance and penalties for unauthorized absence from school or from a required part of the school day.
But this is just commenting on the unauthorized absences, which every family does from time to time.
There is probabaly more, at this time I just have not investigated further.
Thanks
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But Kay, what if a majority of families or a large number of families or EVERY family opts out? Would the powers-that-be even be able to respond to such large resistance? Please discuss your wishes with like-minded parents–spread & share the word. They did it in Seattle–when just 12 teachers refused to give tests, 97% of the families kept their kids home as administrators gave them anyway.
They could do nothing with only 3% participation–no data there.
So–talk to others, get together & OPT OUT NOW!
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I hear what you are saying. I just never hear anyone talking about it in “real life” in my area. Families have expressed their dislike towards the standardized tests but I have never been part of a discussion where someone stated they were going to keep their child from taking them. Twice I did hear parents state (during MCAS testing week) that they didn’t care about the tests and didn’t encourage their child or prepare them in anyway. But these are families that are most likely sending their children to private school for middle and high school where it won’t matter anyway.
Yes, it would be great if something like what happened in Seattle could happen here too.
Thanks
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Rumor has it that some superintendents are talking about a vote of no confidence to oust King.
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How a about a vote of “highly INeffective”
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Nice touch, NYS Teacher
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What to Do with Your Child’s Test Scores: Send ‘em Back! Every Superintendent should be required to read this. What a horrible thing to continue to do to the students as well as teachers.
When will this obsession with tests stop?
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This was on Diane’s blog— in the same vain as Tony’s note–Beckie
________________________________
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Once parents, the Sleeping Giant, awaken, the so-called reformers are finished.
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Let us not forget…standardized tests are designed to allow a fixed percentage of failures. If too many fail, the test is revamped. It’s been this way for a long time. Mind you, valid, legitimate tests. The tests that are coming out now are designed for a high percentage of failure, so the edufrauds can label public schools as failures, thus generating an artificial demand for charter schools. Not only would I send these scores to the State Commissioner, I would also enclose a xeroxed copy of my middle finger.
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“Mind you, valid, legitimate tests.”
Hah, Hah, HAH, He, He, He, HA, Ha, Ha, Hah, Hah, HAH, He, He, He, HA, Ha, Ha,Hah, Hah, HAH, He, He, He, HA, Ha, Ha
Thanks! I needed a good laugh!
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Refusing to accept standardized test scores is one way to “starve the beast” (the educational-industrial complex).
Another way is for all public teachers to simply stop collecting data for our principals and superintendents. In a Thoreau-like protest, we should call it “principled disobedience.”
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not “principaled disobedience”??
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I feel horribly for parents. They are doing what any normal parent would do: protect their offspring.
But I also feel badly for teachers, who are increasingly forced to teach prescriptively and with scripts, forced to narrow curriculum and teach to the test, and forced to use new assessments that they have no access to and therefore cannot prepare their students for testing.
Oh, and among the most egregious aspect of this all is the fact that the de-autonomized teacher, after doing everything and beyond he/she was supposed to do, now gets his/her employability to be judged using test scores – local and standardized – as a huge part of the criteria.
It was the national and state teachers’ UNIONS that gave in to tying test scores to employability, rendering these leaders as pernicious, if not worse than the policy makers themselves. I have only the harshest of words and sentiments for such leaders.
So every time a parent sends back a test score to John King, let that be a send-back protecting teachers as well. Our work environment and educational policies become our children’s learning outcomes.
Don’t forget that.
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Excellent thoughts!!
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Reblogged this on Mostly Technology & Teaching and commented:
Thinking of my grandchild’s future….
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What if your kid gets a perfect score on all three math parts? Is the test still invalid? What’s wrong with tracking achievement?
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Tracking achievement is critical. Agreed!
But what kind of focus is on achievement?
How is achievement defined?
What happens when 70% of the testing population bombs on the new tests? Does it mean the tests were not developmentally appropriate and that there were inevitably some outliers who performed really well on them? Or does it mean that all of a sudden, this 70%, which was always proficient on such tests, became cognitively slow and challenged within one year?
Also, what happens to schools that are severely under-resourced and contain large populations of low income children whose family cultures do not facilitate education in the house despite tremendous family outreach and engagement from the school and teachers?
What happens to the teachers in such schools who are adept at pedegogy but have class sizes that are too large and sparse teaching materials and supplies . . . . . how is it that test scores should be tied to their employability? As it stands no other nation – or almost none – ties scores to teacher evaluations.
The United States is a shameful cesspool of inequity, unequal opportunity, and severe, imbalanced disconnect from elected officials.
But let’s not blame polticians alone. The American people are far too uninformed, passive, and mired in this banal acceptance of the status quo. There are pockets of foiling exceptions to this, and they are indeed growing faster and stronger. But the mainstream culture of Americans needs to change so that “protest”, “demonstrate”, “mobilize”, and “boycott” become as American as apple pie, baseball, and Mom.
We are in critical need of waxing European . . . .
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