Andrea Rediske appealed to Florida officials to exempt children who suffer extreme pain from high-stakes testing.
This post contains her moving testimony about the ordeal her son Ethan experienced when he was compelled to take the state’s exam. Even when he was dying in hospice, the state harassed him to take the test.
The state imposed cruel and unusual punishment on this child, violating his Constitutional rights.
His mother, an experienced educator, explained:
“I have a passion for education and I know how to write an exam that accurately assesses the abilities of my students. Not only was the Florida Adapted Assessment inappropriate for the level of my son’s abilities, it endangered his health – the long, stressful testing sessions requiring him to sit in his wheelchair caused pressure sores, fluid to pool in his lungs, and increased seizures and spasticity that contributed to his deteriorating health. Only after climbing a mountain of paperwork and garnering media attention was Ethan granted a medical waiver for the FAA. Despite assurances at his IEP meeting that the waiver would be granted again for this school year, the school district demanded paperwork proving his continued medical fragility. The insult to this injury was that he was on his deathbed – the school district and the state of Florida required a letter from hospice care stating he was unable to take the FAA. This incident caused anguish to my family and his teacher, and shows a stunning lack of compassion and even common sense on the part of the Department of Education. His exceptionally talented teacher faced threats and sanctions because she continued to work with him even though he wasn’t preparing for the FAA. I wonder if these administrators are more concerned with policy, paperwork, and their bottom line than the children they have been elected to serve.”
She was right to wonder. Has the state of Florida no decency, no compassion, no capacity for thought? How can they teach critical thinking when they lack the capacity to do it themselves?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The writer should sue the crap out of Florida state government and its education department . . . . . The writer should pursue this suit with the wrath of Moses . . . . . .
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It’s obvious that the majority of elected politicians in Florida are all sociopaths and narcissists who care nothing about anyone else but how much power they have and how to achieve their political agendas.
They care nothing for the suffering of others. All they care about is power and how much money they can help their private sector supporters—for instance, Bill Gates—make off the backs of hard working Americans who pay taxes and to do this, they have to subvert Democracy.
Maybe it’s time for Americans to learn a lesson from what’s happening in the Ukraine.
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THIS IS OBSCENE.
But if you think that things are bad with a distant, officious, clueless state department running things, just wait until all the power is transferred to an unelected national Common Core Curriculum Commissariat.
It’s time for local communities to take back their schools. We need parents to organize to make this happen. Unfortunately, the organizations that should be leading this movement, the teacher’s unions, are abetting the centralization.
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Please “Like” and “Share” the Facebook page to draw attention to this terrible situation. https://www.facebook.com/Who.Is.Ethan.Rediske
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Their biggest fear is if they make an allowance for this young man than millions of students will claim to have severe/profound disabilities, join hospice in their last stages of life….just to get out of standardized state mandated testing. Seriously! Legislators are mostly our ‘C’ students with some charisma and ability to Schmooze anyone. We had them in our classes. We know them well!
#BadCaseOfSarcasmAndSadness
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I agree with Robert . I am totally stunned by the lack of humanity and stupidity of Florida state officials and the state education department. I hope a great lawyer will take this law suit on pro bono. I am deeply saddened by what this mom had to endure.
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This is a wake up call. An example on how far things must go before people take notice of such indecency. Is it so hard to figure out why we are giving such test to children who are working below grade level, let alone being in a fragile state? No cockamamie excuse is good enough. Thank you to Andrea for sharing her personal story to make testing senseless and insignificant. We need to rethink the whole school experience and what it should be like.
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As a principal at an elementary school in FL I can tell you the DOE and state legislature do not have any compassion or capacity for thinking. They are hellbent on continuing their high stakes testing and accountability system. They do not appear to care if it is harming children or not. Although we have been mandated to teach the CCSS this year, the state is still giving FCAT and grading schools and teachers based on those test scores. Oh yeah they did decide that, if scores and grades drop, don’t worry as there will be no consequences this year for being a D or F school. Other than that, oh yeah, you have been labeled an F school. We are living in an insane state!!
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As a longtime Florida teacher I have to agree with you.
It’s always been about what is best for Jeb Bush and his political career. The whole reform of Florida schools was a carefully designed program to make Bush the Education Governor and catapult him to a national stage while simultaneously providing a laboratory for the craziest of Milton Friedman’s ideas about education and standards far-right conservative hatred of public education, unions (especially teachers’ unions), and using taxpayer money to aide the poor and minorities rather than giving it the already insanely wealthy in their party.
It worked.
He now advises most state governors and education departments and has worked hand in glove with ALEC to pass legislation that favor his anti-teacher, anti-public school fever dreams to the detriment of all. Now they are farming out rumors that he will be the next Republican presidential nominee after Christie’s corrupt bullying drowned his aspirations.
Who would have ever dreamed that the AFT, the NEA, Barack Obama, and the “smartest people in the room” Ivy League neo-liberals would line up and provide Democratic party cover to Bush and his disgusting education destroying agenda? A few who were mocked, ignored, and relegated to the nether regions of the educational establishment.
Florida’s legislature will not do anything that doesn’t have Jeb Bush’s approval and the OK of ALEC. They are term limited so they don’t care about re-election prospects and besides, the state is so gerrymandered that it is all but impossible to wrest control from them.
We knocked back the attack on the Class Size Amendment twice and Bush vowed utter destructive revenge on the Florida Education Association for thwarting his plans. He’s succeeded. We stopped the Parent Trigger law once but Rhee is back with a more dastardly bill this session that will purportedly do something like rate schools for the “value” they provide per taxpayer dollar, determined, of course, by their school grade and test scores. UGH.
The Florida Department of Education is staffed with Bush disciples, cronies, and supporters and the one or two times that Governor Scott opposed Bush’s programs he flip-flopped immediately after Bush’s minions met with him.
When the state BOE had a meeting last week in Orlando, they were hissed and booed by various protesters against the Common Core implementation and the refusal of the Commissioner to allow a moratorium on school grades and punishments during the transition to CCSS and new tests next year. They honestly don’t care what the voters, citizens, parents, students, teachers, superintendents, and even business leaders think if it is contrary to ALEC and Bush.
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Andrea Rediske also says:
“(WE) call on the Florida legislature… to pass the Ethan Rediske Act, which would exempt disabled children from the rigors of high-stakes standardized testing, AND (WE) IMPLORE THE LEGISLATURE TO GO FURTHER AND TO ENACT LEGISLATION THAT ALLOWS ANY STUDENT WHO EXPERIENCES PAIN AND SUFFERING AS A RESULT OF STANDARDIZED TESTING, TO OPT OUT OF THESE TESTS.
Thank you.”
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Thank you, Andrea Rediske.
Unfortunately, this is not just happening in Florida, but I have heard of such cases in other states, as well, e.g., one involving a terminally ill child (fortunately, he had a human being for a principal, & told the hospital teacher to NOT give the test, even though directed to do so), & another concerning a child who had just attempted suicide who WAS administered the state assessments.
The Illinois tests will be administered in March–parents, OPT OUT NOW–THIS year, NOT next year. Google United Opt Out, go to their website, & download/print your state’s Opt Out information & OPT OUT!!!
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If true assessment doesn’t find a way to include asll children, it isn’t true assessment. Not all assessment the same but all different
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