The Wyoming Attorney General issued an opinion that parents are not legally allowed to withdraw their children from state testing.
They can do it in other states, but not in Wyoming.
Wyoming does not believe that parents should control the education of their children. Wyoming believes that the state may compel parents and children to take exams that they believe are harmful to their children.
Parents of Wyoming, don’t let the Attorney General bully you. When you grew up, there was no annual testing. There were no harsh consequences attached to test scores. This is all nonsense. Stop it by your determination. Stand up for your children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think you blogged this before (where else would I have seen it!?) but someone should make sure to send this to the AG in Wyoming:
November 10, 2014
Deptford Township School District
2022 Good Intent Road
Deptford, NJ 08096
Attention: Paul Spaventa – Interim Superintendent
Reference: Nicholas and Zachary Carr – Refusal of all State Standardized Tests
Dear Mr. Spaventa:
We have read your response letter, numerous times in fact, and we are a little taken aback by it. We are in no way asking for your permission to REFUSE these standardized tests, assessments, questionnaires and surveys for our children. The Constitution and Supreme Court rulings supersede any authority you think you may have over our decision as taxpaying parents within this district. It is our right as parents to refuse to allow our children to take the state standardized tests because our parental rights are broadly protected by United States Supreme Court decisions (Meyer and Pierce), especially in the area of education. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that parents possess the “fundamental right” to “direct the upbringing and education of their children” and 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.) In Meyer, the Supreme Court held that the right of parents to raise their children free from unreasonable state interferences is one of the unwritten “liberties” protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (262 U.S. 399).
Please see additional rulings:
It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder. . . . It is in recognition of this that these decisions have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.
– Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944)
This Court has long recognized that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
– Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U.S. 632 (1974)
In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the “liberty” specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights . . . to direct the education and upbringing of one’s children.
The Fourteenth Amendment “forbids the government to infringe … ‘fundamental’ liberty interests of all, no matter what process is provided, unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.”
– Washington v. Glucksburg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997)
The liberty interest at issue in this case-the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children-is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.
In light of this extensive precedent, it cannot now be doubted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.
The problem here is not that the Washington Superior Court intervened, but that when it did so, it gave no special weight at all to Granville’s determination of her daughters’ best interests. More importantly, it appears that the Superior Court applied exactly the opposite presumption.
The Due Process Clause does not permit a State to infringe on the fundamental right of parents to make childrearing decisions simply because a state judge believes a ‘better’ decision could be made.
– Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000)
Furthermore, there is no “federal law” that requires the state or district to “implement” anything you referred to, or you would have included that paperwork as well. The state implemented common core standards and standardized tests voluntarily, to obtain Race to the Top federal funds. Period. It’s bad enough that the Federal Government has resorted to blackmailing the states to receive their own money, we will not allow the District to visit the States’ burden of obligation on our children. Your own paperwork on Title 6A:8-4.1 states that the District “SHALL” administer the tests; it does not say that our children have to TAKE these tests. We understand that neither of our children are of the age to be subjected to the PARCC test yet, but we REFUSE any and all state assessments that are common core aligned, up to and including it and the MAP tests.
You did not have to make this adversarial; you could have just accepted our refusal as many reasonable districts around the state and country have done. As we’ve stated in our original letter, we have the utmost confidence in the teaching skills of our son’s teachers and their ability to determine and calculate their grades from daily class participation, class work, home work, quizzes and tests. We believe these standardized tests to be developmentally inappropriate and contain questionable and often inaccurate material, and will not subject Nicholas and Zachary to the inevitable anxiety and stress that children all over the country are feeling.
We are prepared to go to the media, the ACLU and to obtain legal counsel if you do not comply, and our parental rights or the rights of our children are violated. That includes carrying out the “sit and stare” policy that some districts are enforcing, as this is psychological child abuse and will not be tolerated. We do not expect our children to be retaliated against or treated any differently due to our position on this subject. It is by no fault of their own that they are in this situation. Nor do we expect to have to repeat this every time a standardized test is administered. This refusal should go into both of our children’s files.
To reiterate: Deptford School District does not have our permission to compel our children to take any state / district standardized test or assessment. Under our guardianship, our minor children will refuse same. In addition, various tests / assessments will be properly scored as a “refusal,” will be considered “invalid,” and will not be included in the participation rate. Any attempt by your school district to otherwise code, score, or deviate from these instructions would constitute a due process violation of governmental procedure. Furthermore, during the administration of any and all make-up tests, my child will continue to receive a free and appropriate public education in his regular classroom environment, alongside the rest of his classmates. You are hereby on notice that any state agent who ignores my parental instruction, and/or who compels, harasses, intimidates, or otherwise forces my minor child, or attempts same, in any way, to participate in any standardized test or assessment, and/or who takes any action that causes my child emotional, psychological, and/or physical harm against these express instructions, will be in violation of federal and state constitutional law, statutory law, and common law.
I trust there will be no further need for clarification.
Sincerely,
Kevin W. Carr
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Well done!
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It looks like this was done about a week ago, but does anyone know how this ended up? Did the Deptford School District back down? What was their response?
Google didn’t turn up much.
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Some further clarification may be necessary. Consider a state law that that says no high school student may be awarded a diploma unless they pass a matriculation examination. If a parent informs a school district that she doesn’t want her child to take the exam but that her child should receive a diploma anyway, is the school district required by the Constitution to award a diploma to that student?
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FLERP!
Are all laws passed then considered to be part of the Constitution?
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I may not be catching your drift here, Duane, but certainly not. Only the Constitution and its Amendments are part of the Constitution, although case law instructs us on what the stuff that’s part of the Constitution actually means.
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So laws enacted by the legislature and signed by the governors/president aren’t considered to be a part of the constitution but have to “comport” with the directives of the constitution??
What is the legal term then for the body of legislated laws?
TIA!
Duane
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Right. The usual term for a legislated law is “statute,” which distinguishes it from common law made by courts, and rules made by the executive branch or its agencies.
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Thanks, just trying to keep it all straight!!
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More clarification is necessary because the precedents cited in the letter are mostly inapplicable to the question. Meyer and Pierce are closest, but Pierce was on an Oregon statute designed to restrict parochial education and Meyer was on a law prohibiting instruction in native languages other than English.
In Sandlin v Johnson (1981) the 4th Circuit refused to intervene when a student was not promoted to 3rd grade due to insufficient achievement on a reading test.
In Debra P v Turlington (1981, 1983) the district court supported the use of graduation tests provided the tests had instructional validity and students had advance notice of the role of the graduation test and the opportunity to learn.
It seems to me that courts try to balance the diploma as a property right with the state’s interest in education.
On the larger question of assessment opt-outs, I don’t know that there is much case law on the topic beyond the promotion/diploma cases. I would probably look to cases on required courses or curricular elements like Mozert v. Hawkins (1987) as general indicators. While courts recognize parental rights, they also recognize a compelling state interest, and try to balance the two on a rational basis. Of course, what courts may deem a rational basis may not be what each of us and individuals may agree with.
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“More clarification is necessary because the precedents cited in the letter are mostly inapplicable to the question.”
Yes, that is a much more direct way to put it.
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Reading legal language makes my eyes cross, but when I skimmed the link, I only saw reference to schools being held accountable for the results of these tests. Here in AZ, we’ve dumped PARRC after horrible experiences piloting it. Now they’ve picked a new test that they “assure” us is so much better. But, they’ve removed the requirement for passing it to graduate. They will still judge schools and teachers by this test. Please tell me how that makes sense.
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I agree about the precedents cited. An astute lawyer will be able to distinguish most of them in an instant — rightly so — from the present issue.
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Well at least I know where Big Brother is this week.
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cross-posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Wyoming-Attorney-General-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Consequences_Control_Diane-Ravitch_Education-141118-210.html#comment520795
with this comment, which has links, if you go to it, to Diane’s posts here.
“If you follow my posts about what is ongoing in the 15,880 school districts in 50 states, you will see the pattern and the plot.
“Evaluate the teachers by student’s scores, and then, not only kick them out of their careers, ensure they never teach again… read what Massachusetts tried to do: “The Massachusetts Teachers Association is taking a militant stand against the state’s plans to tie teachers’ licenses to student test scores. If you live in the state–the most academically successful state in the nation–please help fight this insulting and educationally retrograde move against the state’s teachers.
Yet, Scholars: What Matters Most for Successful Teaching is Collaboration, Not Competition
“Most current models of school reform focus on teacher accountability for student performance measured via standardized tests, “improved” curricula, and what economists label “human capital” — e.g., factors such as teacher experience, subject knowledge and pedagogical skills. But our research over many years in several large school districts suggests that if students are to show real and sustained learning, schools must also foster what sociologists label “social capital” — the value embedded in relations among teachers, and between teachers and school administrators. Social capital is the glue that holds a school together. It complements teacher skill, it enhances teachers’ individual classroom efforts, and it enables collective commitment to bring about school-wide change.”
This , from an important article in the Shanker Blog by two scholars at the University of Pittsburgh. They are Carrie R. Leana, George H. Love Professor of Organizations and Management, Professor of Business Administration, Medicine, and Public and International Affairs, and Director of the Center for Health and Care Work, at the University of Pittsburgh, and Frits K. Pil, Professor of Business Administration at the Katz Graduate School of Business and research scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center, at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Some followup questions I’d like the AG to opine on:
* Is there *any* type of student assessment that the Board does *not* have the authority to require?
* What are the permissible penalties for a students’ refusal be assessed?
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Flerp –
How about this question:
Under Background:
“that the Board develop a ‘coherent system of measures that when combined, provide a reliable and valid measure of individual student achievement for each public school and school district within the state and the performance of the state as a whole…’ ”
Wouldn’t they have to demonstrate that these tests are indeed reliable and valid measures of student’s achievements?
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But they can’t demonstrate the reliability and validity of those supposed measures. Wilson has proven the COMPLETE INVALIDITY and therefore UNRELIABILITY of those supposed measures in his never refuted nor rebutted dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker
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Señor Swacker –
I’m on board with you and Wilson. That’s kinda my point – they can’t demonstrate this, so they can’t enforce this rule.
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Red state hypocracy? (Limited government interference and all that…)
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So, I guess that seals it. Wyoming’s AG favors the Federal intrusion into a state’s educational policies and plans and also accepts the belief that the state should meddle in and interject itself into family decisions. Wow! So much for my mistaken belief, in a parent’s right to choose what is best for their child and that western rugged individualism. Someone- quick, develop a meme for this AG.
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http://ag.wyo.gov/
Peter K. Michael
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Well, parents can instruct their child to practice the following testing skill. “Pencils down.”
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OMG, this is ridiculous. Wyiming citizens need to act in the best interest of their children and defy this nonsense. Their children do not belong to Wyoming’s attorney general.
And follow the $$$$$ trail!
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Talk about someone who needs to lose their license. This “opinion” should be categorized as gross malpractice.
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This just happened in ILL-Annoy, but came from State Supt Koch & ISBE. An article in the Chicago Sun-Times a few days ago–parents warned against opting out of PARCC (even CPS CEO Byrd Bennett talked about a one -year moratorium!). The anti-test, opt out local group, More Than a Score, disputed the truth of this (w/a link) in their newsletter/on their website.
What’s the saying? If you tell a lie enough–over & over again–it’s apt to become the truth. Bah, humbug!
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Needless to say, I disagree with the Wyoming AG’s Office.
Prior to the IASA (Improving America’s Schools Act), which reauthorized the ESEA under Clinton, specific accountability requirements did not exist, and schools realized they could best show achievement by systematically excluding (or preventing participation of) low-scoring segments of the population, i.e., ELLs and special education children. In other words, schools were gaming the system. The IASA began to put an end to that, and NCLB sealed the fate for school hanky-panky.
Based on what I have read, I have come to believe that the accountability provision in NCLB is directly specifically at the hanky-panky-playing schools, and that it was intended to hold the States accountable to the federal government and, ultimately and more importantly, for both entities to be held accountable to the parents and the children — not the other way around. Accordingly, I believe that the purpose of the accountability provision of NCLB is to prevent a school’s purposeful systematic exclusion of any individual or group of individuals from participating in an assessment, or even its inadvertent exclusion, i.e., by being unable to offer accommodations, of an individual or group of individuals from participating in an assessment. It is this exclusion and/or failure of inclusion on the part of the school that is illegal under NCLB. (This is supported by explicit language in the statute, the federal regulations, and in the legislative history.) By contrast, a parent deciding that he/she does not want his/her child to participate in the state assessment is not illegal. It’s called parenting in the best interests of the child.
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I don’t see how these federal statutes are relevant to whether a state agency has the authority to permit students to opt out of assessments that are required by a state statute.
As a matter of administrative law, this is similar to the question of whether the US DOE has the authority to waive the requirements of a federal law that it has been charged with implementing — i.e., whether RTTT is a permissible exercise of Arne Duncan’s authority to implement the provisions of NCLB, or whether it an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power that properly belongs to Congress.
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FLERP!, I understand. But, aren’t states pointing to NCLB as the legal mandate for the testing — for the Title 1 money????
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Sometimes, I suppose, in the sense that the assessments are something that needs to happen or else there’ll be financial consequences. The Wyoming AG’s opinion actually mentions that point as part of its rationale, although in passing and without making clear how that relates to the state education board’s authority. The real, specific mandate here is from the state legislature.
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How can a test that has NO VALUE OR MEANING OR ACCOUNTABILTY for a student be used to measure the State, School, and Teacher performance? Is this test designed for this purpose? What are the statistical reliability and validity scores for this test? Who did the work to measure these scores? It appears that the nation’s Public School children are being used as guinea pigs for the largest experiment in history. It seems that there Is a possible ethical question that should be discussed with greater transparency. The two primary writers of the new national standards, one in Math and one in English, are now leaders of the testing companies earning very large salaries. Are our children getting any benefits from the Billions of taxpayer’s dollars spent so far? Are there lines of people wanting to go into teaching to take the place of all the ones we are trying to get rid of through this process? Maybe we need to have a national discussion by real Professional Educators and somehow we need to get the media to give them a voice instead of politicians and Billionaires who may have an agenda that does not support our Public School system?
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First, ICYMI, just because a state is required to administer the test DOES NOT mean that students are required to take the test. Federal law on parental rights is quite clear and has many layers and redundancies on this point. When it comes to Wyoming, just how stupid do you have to be to try something like this in a state like that? Telling all the cowboys and other freedom lovers out there that the state has a greater say in a child’s upbringing than the parents? The pushback on this is bound to be harsh. THe first post on this references the Spaventa LEtter, truly a thing of beauty. Wonder what Wyoming will think of it when it goes viral there.
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Looks like the US Department of Education is planning a big charter building program:
Click to access 2014-27264_PI.pdf
Having failed to regulate charter schools at the local level, then at the state level, ed reformers will now try to regulate thousands of new schools in 45 states, from DC.
It sounds like the intent is to somehow force them to take the same students public schools take. It’s interesting that there’s now an implicit recognition that they’re NOT taking the same students with this regulatory attempt, although of course no public admission from policy people or lawmakers that it’s necessary to remedy this problem with regulation.
They’re not only federally funding a building program, it looks like DC will be out twisting arms to get states to increase funding for charter schools. Funny how no one in Congress or the Administration made the slightest effort to lobby on behalf of public schools the last six years, while 36 states cut funding for our schools.
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“. . . force them to take the same students public schools take. . . ”
That may be true but it’s not the same as requiring them to KEEP the same students.
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Writing rules also isn’t the same as enforcing them. They can’t regulate thousands of individual schools from DC. States can’t do it now, with charter schools.
There was probably a reason public schools had close-in regulation and oversight. They didn’t set up this elaborate jurisdictional and local governance system over 150 years because they were bored and wanted to invent school boards and hire city and county auditors. They did it because it made sense. It still makes sense.
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It’s also absolutely repulsive that the House education chairman is that corrupt, captured for-profit college shill, Kline, from Minnesota.
How much will he and his cronies rob from citizens this session?
It’s just an ethical collapse. They’re blatantly trading at this point. They don’t even try to appear as if they’re working for anyone except themselves and their donors.
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Why do public schools always get this hammer/nail approach?
They’re going to look pretty silly trying to force parents to turn over 3rd graders for mandatory testing, and it won’t work anyway.
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But the answer is simple…John Taylor Gatto, who wrote “Dumbing Us Down” years ago, has just written a new book, ” Weapons of Mass Instruction,’ and in an interview by Rob Kall
http://www.opednews.com/Podcast/John-Taylor-Gatto-author-by-Rob-Kall-100919-193.html
he points out the plan of those whose PURPOSE is to end democracy — not merely to monetarize the schools, but to end public education so they can use the media that they OWN and control to sell us our own destruction. “”Without knowing what their purpose is, and the METHODOLOGY to reach that purpose you are like some helpless intelligent fool as you pass through your daily life; you are absolutely disadvantaged because you’re unable to see how compellingly their ideology has written our laws, our customs, our preferences.”
The billionaires, the captains and the kings are ending public education by taking down the schools in the 15,880 districts in 50 states, and they can do it because the public is clueless.
We are watching it happen as everyone is chattering endlessly about opting out, and testing, and wondering why parents are the “helpless fools’ .
The public is blind to the grand plan, the larger PURPOSE and they do not see that the same methodology is at work in 50 states — remove the professional from the practice so their voices are silenced. Then, sell the public, over and over, the same lies in a national narrative about a core curricula that dumbs the kids down, while blaming the teacher.
The conversation AMONG real educators is about Learning…NOT TEACHING. It is not about VAMM or CC or PARCC the alphabet soup of magic elixirs and snake oil that subverts the real conversation of how are emergent learners enabled.
The important conversion as Barry Elliot pointed out must be bout education NOT SCHOOLS… AND THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THINGS.
THEIR PURPOSE IS CLEAR,and their plan is working. Utter confusion and charter schools that do not do the job that public schools once did, because it let the teachers TEACH!
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Read what the headline says: it is an opinion by Attorney General. It’s not the same as the state law. I guess somebody in the state Ed department is bluffing.
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This urgent national update from United Opt-Out might help some parents:
http://unitedoptout.com/2014/11/16/urgent-national-update-opt-out-of-all-online-testing-and-online-curriculum-for-under-age-13/
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“Parental choice” is a label far too often being misappropriated these days. Education of children is compulsory. Parents may choose to home-school, yet even then “standardized assessments” will be required to either 1) enter the public school system, 2) enter college/university. Many private schools require some form of admissions “test” as well.
Yes, there were standardized tests when I was in elementary school. Likely, those who comprise the majority of parents of K-12 students were assessed in such a way as well. In St. Mary Parish, we were assessed annually via California Achievement Test. When I attended private schools (1/2 of K-12 education), we were assessed annually with other standardized tests.
The primary question in my mind is why are these assessments used in an invalid, “high-stakes” manner. We should not confuse the purposes of assessing to teach and assessing to fail (or pass). Standardization only means that the assessment is given under certain conditions, with certain allowable directions/repetitions/time-limits to increase the reliability of the assessment.
Final consideration: If Louisiana students “opt-out” of testing, do those students receive “zero” scores? Would such negatively impact the “school scores” for students’ respective LEAs? The question is not whether they SHOULD negatively impact the school scores, but will they? If so, does this not increase the likelihood of a district’s overall score dropping and thereby legally opening the door for more charter schools or RSD schools? Again, the question is not one of agreement with current law but of the ramifications given current law.
Remember the destination before you jump onto the back of the bandwagon. Use your own GPS device. You always have the right to “jump off” if the driver-behavior becomes erratic.
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The Attorneys General must be all drinking the same Kool-aid, because the Attorney General for Utah has stated that the federal overreach of Common Core and the NCLB waiver is perfectly legal, because Utah “wrote its own standards” and so it doesn’t violate federalism.
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The NCLB law itself is unconstitutional and should be challenged.
Lets me try a simple analogy:
The town I live in has only one road and all cars are required to travel on it. A law is passed that implements a speed minimum of 500 mph. Any car that travels at a speed slower than 500 mph will be stopped and ticketed. Such a law would be deemed entrapment as100% of the cars that travel on the one required road have no choice but to break the speed minimum. No matter how hard people try to soup up their vehicles, with every effort and intention directed toward obeying the law – none can. Such a law could not possibly be valid and would have to be repealed. That minimum speed limit law is no different than NCLB.
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Your children belong to you when it’s time to decide if they should take the state test. When it’s time to decide which public school (funded by your hard earned tax dollars, no less!) your children will attend, they belong to the district.
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Interesting, sounds very socialist.
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J/K of course!!! I meant totaliarism, or as some would say, Duncariasim.
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“…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Thomas Jefferson
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My 8th graders and I just finished reading the Declaration, as we do every year, and I’ve been thinking about this exact paragraph a lot. I’ve also been thinking about the section that says, “But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to abolish it…” How much longer before the “long train of abuses” FINALLY catches up with the oligarchs that rule us now? May it be in my lifetime.
I am NOT advocating violence or anything. I am advocating change.
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The United States of America, where you’re free to do what you’re told.
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So mean!
Completely true!
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The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is pretty much telling parents that same thing as the Wyoming AG. Legal advice to the opt out community in Texas has been to NOT use the Spaventa letter (above) because the citations are used out of context. Legal precedent does say that the state may require tests be administered and impose consequences for students who do not comply with testing requirements. However, there is also precedent for the position that if a parent instructs a child not to participate in a test, the school MAY NOT compel that child to go against the parent’s instructions.
Advice to parents in Texas is:
1) Tell the school we are not asking permission, we are telling you that we will not allow our child to participate in testing.
2) Proceed with the position that “We understand that refusing testing is an act of civil disobedience and we accept the consequences of this act.” In Texas, these consequences may include threats of grade retention for 5th and 8th graders (there is an appeal process) and currently high school students will not receive a diploma for which there is no repeal process but there is hope this will be addressed during the upcoming legislative session..
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Alas, I don’t have time to read this whole thread.
But what I want to know is what will be the legal consequences to parents in Wyoming who opt their kids out of testing?
Charges of educational neglect?
Endangering the welfare of a minor?
Tax penalty?
Jail?
Anyone know?
Can anyone speak about this?
In a way, I personally and professionally celebrate moves by New York State to mandate field testing and the push for Wyoming to outlaw opting out. I say this because such moves will only foment the now out-of-control parents’ movement, such as Parents Across America, and continue to irrevocably motivate parents to rebel and act like the kind of civic participants they, for decades, thought to be useless.
Americans have a very thick threshold for pain and suffering. They are slow to respond to adversity. But their thick hides are finally being penetrated, and they are feeling it.
Connect the dots: Ferguson is a tinder box, misuse of testing will lead to an education spring, schools being defunded are connected to CEO pay that is taking on a life of its own, power and wealth being redistributed is the overall arching umbrella covering education, labor, and access to intellectual development, which will turn into little more than a commodity traded and wagered upon in the open market. Government is almost indistinguishable from the plutocracy out there and more top-down policies are meant to make people politically impotent.
But the more the overclass pushes, the more the underclass will wake up and act. In a way, the overclass is empowering the 98%. Gun sales have tripled in Saint Louis, MO this past week on average. This is a sign that people are alienated, disengaged with the 2% and elected officials, disenfranchised, and very afraid of the authorities. Where this shows a tremendous proactive spirit among such people in Saint Louis. it is also a horrifying parable of disconnect leading to violence and civil unrest. This is worse than Kent State because this time those victimized are armed. These sales are chilling. I am very, very frightened.
I am not digressing. What Wyoming is doing is in the spirit of oppressing people and not listening to, as DeToqueville observed, the will of the masses. Criminalizing parents for trying to advocate for the welfare of their children is no different, philosophically speaking, as refusing to indict a person of authority for wrongfully killing a youth.
Yes, one involves bloodshed and murder while the other clearly does not. But that is not my point. My point, in connecting the dots, is that our body politic is becoming ever more disconnected and oppressive. Soft version or hard version, the spirit and intention of the 2% does not change. We have fallen from grace, as we used to be a nation of “free to be” to “free to do what we are told”, if I may borrow from Mike Fiorillo.
How motivated to you feel to voice, vote, and be vigilant compared to 5, 7, or 10 years ago?
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I love where you tie it all together and would like to quote you at Oped
At that site it is common knowledge that we are no longer a democracy, and that the plutocracy that has taken over has as its overweening purpose to create 2 classes of citizens. one which has all the privileges and the power of access that wealth provided, and the other which serves them.
To this end, they have taken over the political parties, the legislature and the supreme court, and the polices that once provided for he common good,now impoverish and stress the citizens. Add to this their ownership of the media where they lie with impunity, and all that is left is to create an ignorant citizenry which is so confused and cynical that it elects the same criminals that rob them blind, and then defund every department and regulatory agency that oversees the health of the nation. We at Oped, connect the dots! You should get the newsletter.
To subscribe to OpEdNews:http://www.opednews.com/salsa_signup.php
You said this, and it bears repeating.
“Connect the dots: Ferguson is a tinder box, misuse of testing will lead to an education spring, schools being defunded are connected to CEO pay that is taking on a life of its own, power and wealth being redistributed is the overall arching umbrella covering education, labor, and access to intellectual development, which will turn into little more than a commodity traded and wagered upon in the open market. Government is almost indistinguishable from the plutocracy out there and more top-down policies are meant to make people politically impotent.
“But the more the overclass pushes, the more the underclass will wake up and act. In a way, the overclass is empowering the 98%. Gun sales have tripled in Saint Louis, MO this past week on average. This is a sign that people are alienated, disengaged with the 2% and elected officials, disenfranchised, and very afraid of the authorities. Where this shows a tremendous proactive spirit among such people in Saint Louis. it is also a horrifying parable of disconnect leading to violence and civil unrest. This is worse than Kent State because this time those victimized are armed. These sales are chilling. I am very, very frightened.
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Susan,
Please feel fee to take any or all of my post for Oped.
When you do, may I please ask you to send the link to my e-mail at artwork88@aol.com?
Thank you,
Robert
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Cx:
“Feel free to . . . . . . “
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“But what I want to know is what will be the legal consequences to parents in Wyoming who opt their kids out of testing?”
Presumably the consequences would be whatever academic consequences the district is authorized to impose on the student. For example, if state law says that students must pass a competency exam to graduate from high school, and a student decides to “opt out” of that exam, then that student won’t graduate from high school.
State education laws are not criminal codes. A prosecutor would have to be extremely aggressive and indifferent about his career to try to cobble together a criminal charge against a parent because she wouldn’t let her kid take a test. (Although some pretty crazy stuff has been done to parents of chronically truant children, in Texas and maybe other states.)
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In that case, FLERP, I move to criminalize the state for creeping into the living rooms of families and legislating how they should, within their own family culture, opt to protect the welfare of their offspring, who are still minors.
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Robert,
It seems to me that you are into a very controversial area of the law here. There are some times where the state might have a legitimate interest “creeping into the living rooms of families and legislating how they should, within their own family culture, opt to protect the welfare of their offspring, who are still minors.” When parents deny children modern medical care, for example, is one area where the state might be said to have an interest in doing a little creeping.
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TE (does that stand for “totally empty”?),
However did you escape from the specimen jar in the laboratory?
Medical care resulting in acute suffering or death may not be quite the same thing as taking standardized tests.
Good try, but you really show your abject stupidity and lack of awareness here with your analogy.
Please bore someone else with your low functioning interpersonal skills or set up an appointment with a good neurologist to discuss the right diagnostic for you. You may be on a spectrum, and unless you know how to form compensatory strategies, it will be difficult for anyone in the mainstream to take you the least bit seriously . . . .
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These autism jokes are uproarious, keep ’em coming, please!
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Robert,
I do understand that calling people names is far easier than engaging in a discussion, but you might want to try taking the discussion route this time.
You have hit on a fundamental root issue for this blog: what can the state compel students to do? What can parents compel students to do? Working out an answer would be very helpful in the discussion about a better education for all in a world where there are widely different views of what constitutes a better education.
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Hee, hee. and tsp, tsp,
…. but Robert, why bother. There are so many clueless people out there, BUT what gets me, is some of them are teachers. If THEY don’t get it, how can we expect anyone else to know how this conspiracy to end public education works. I read the interview that Rob did with John Taylor Gatto.
The old man was hardly erudite in that interview, but his main point was driven home in the 24 page transcription that I read.
THEY have a purpose… just like a religion has a purpose, a theology this ideology drives them.
Gatto says that we will be ‘helpless fools’ no matter how intelligent we may be, if we do not recognize BOTH their purpose and their methodology.
Their purpose is to end our democracy and to polarize our society,into 2 classes.
I would characterize these 2 as a servile class and the anointed barons at the top whom ethyl serve.
He tells how it used to be when teachers looked to find the genius in every child, and how it is today, when the masses are being dumbed down, and only the scions of the wealthy can get an education.
Their methods are to end real learning, and have th emedia that they now and conrol talk endlessly about teaching,… not about WHAT IT TAKES TO FACILITATE LEARNING, so kids meet the objectives for their age, and AS WELL develop thinking skills, and a way to access the best in them selves…. the genius that may lie in th emergent mind. (my words again, but his idea.)
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How perverse, FLERP, that you should make fun of TE and not take my advice seriously for him. You should have more compassion than that and should think of ways TE could improve his life and ability to think clearly.
How you can associate autism with “hilarious” is gross. I always knew you were a bland, blobby, white bread, vanilla, generic bore, but I never thought you were a jerk.
Oh well. I can’t always be right.
Not to mention, I was not referring to autism. Your comment clearly reflects that you were.
And TE, I was not seeking a didactic discourse of bored-to-tears questioning and digression from you. Do a close reading and don’t conflate medical attention with high stakes testing.
(Someone smack him . . . . or both of them).
Goodness, man! If you don’t get a life, then consider getting a brain . . . .
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Sorry, Robert. Being familiar with your old insult comedy routines (like the one about speech impediments, and the one about how Michelle Obama is “stinky”), I assumed your “spectrum” references were about autism. My mistake, and I should have known better, because you are a class act.
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I’m confused
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I am extremely proud to insult Arne Duncan and Michelle Obama.
I thought I was being far too kind in my language about both those cretins, but there are rules to this blog.
If you are going to be Secretary of Education, then your pronunciation, eloquence and grammar and syntax count. Those elements clearly impede Mr. Duncan as an orator, and the help of a good well rounded old school speech therapist can improve those behaviors. Is not the Secretary always seeking improvement through great teaching and learning? He should practice what he preaches. Referring to children from low income families as “the poverty kids” does not a credibility make for the Secretary of Education. And this is one of many. Refer to Susan Ohanian’s “Duncanisms”.
And the first lady is stinky, not because she is a lady, but because she stinks period: her politics and those of her husband stink to high heaven. They are both rotten, rotten, rotten. But so are other pols in D.C. I pointed out in that very old comment that my adjectives were aimed toward character and not gender, and I cited examples.
You remind of that episode of the Brady Bunch where one kids refers to another as a “stinker” and Carol and Bob treated the situation as is the name caller had tortured and killed a pet hamster with pure, deviant sadism.
Who am I to tell you to get over it?
But you might want to get over yourself. And your language hang-ups. The distractions and the trolling are at best amusing.
Getting back to Wyoming: I hope the good people of Wyoming fight this intrusive and fascist proposal of legislation. No one should tell parents how to fend for their children in education unless they are preventing their child from being educated in ANY normative setting.
Now, FLERP, crawl back onto that people-less logic board of yours where you live and inhabit your usual world of disconnect, where you can make more friends with the soldering and circuits.
Me, I’ll stick to people.
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It’s not a “proposal of legislation.”
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I am confused
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Don’t be . . . . .
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