Seattle may top Long Island as the epicenter of opt out.
95% of students at Garfield High School–the very same school where teachers refused to give the superfluous MAP test–opted out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.
“None of the students at Nathan Hale took the test, and at both Roosevelt and Ingraham, 80 percent of students opted out.
“Earlier this month, more than 100 juniors at Garfield submitted “opt out” slips.
“Many parents and teachers believe the state-required Smarter Balanced test is unfair, that it sets up the majority of the students to fail, and that it’s a high stakes test that could penalize the teacher or the school.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
When the scores from SBAC and PARCC are published and performances are compared, school, district, state there may be a shift in the willingness of parents and polices leaders in the various states to think “all is well” with the CCSS and associated tests.
Now is a great time to make people aware that Acheive, Gates and his billionaire buddies want the PARCC and SBAC scores to be accepted for college admission–overriding SAT, ACT and the independent judgments of faculty–and by that intrusion also damaging academic freedom in higher education.
The worst part is that senior officials in higher education associations have jumped on this bandwagon, and with no obvious flow of information to faculty about the CCSS and test, or serious debate about the implications of scores from these online tests functioning as key criterion for admission.
This new ” billionaires know best” messaging campaign is dubbed “Higher Ed for Higher Standards.” I urge readers of this blog to go to that website and poke around. There are multiple messaging campaigns in play, perhaps because resistance to these standards and tests is becoming more visible, and not easily dismissed as purely left-right political posturing.
“Acheive, Gates and his billionaire buddies want the PARCC and SBAC scores to be accepted for college admission–overriding SAT, ACT and the independent judgments of faculty…”
More of the continuum of invalidating the input of professional educators. The last high school I taught at had a large immigrant population of which 2/3 of kids spoke English as a second language, 85% low SES, so naturally they didn’t post high scores on the SAT’s or ACT’s.
By directing kids to opportunities to build resumes in work and as volunteers and being selective about applying to schools which were interested in more than scores, we were able to open a pipeline to selective colleges, which had the money to offer the kids good support, financial and otherwise. These colleges relied on teacher and guidance counselor recommendations, which they understood to be accurate assessments of kids’ potential.
Hooray for the Garfield High students. What the FEDs and States are doing in the name of … let’s face it … $$$$$ for the few and horrors for the rest is a crime.
And our state Supe threatens us….
Isn’t “Smarter Balance” some kind of fake butter?
Yes, “Smarter Balance” is margarine, which, according to most nutritionists is the absolutely worst thing you can ingest.
Keep Smarter Balance out of our children’s stomachs and keep Smarter Balanced out of our children’s minds.
I’m not sending my child to her school to become “better trained” so that mega corporations can profit from her narrow, focused, confined “pragmatic” instruction. That’s indoctrination; not education.
I’m sending my child to school so that she’ll be prepared to read, write and understand enough mathematics so that nothing she encounters in her adult life is beyond her ability to inquire about it, ask the right questions, and enter into a public dialogue.
It’s called learning. And I want her to learn in such a way that her learning will continue, and develop, throughout the rest of her life. What the “job market” might be craving today might be obsolete a decade from now, or pay virtually nothing given how many kids were told to chase that “sure thing” when they were all younger, thus glutting the market and reducing compensation.
What IS essential is that my child acquire the ability and the confidence, and the intellectual curiosity to take those building blocks and use them to build a foundation for life.
Job training is ephemeral. But knowledge, wisdom, good judgement and genuine engagement with everything around you is eternal. And beyond measure.
I want my child to enter life with an ability to make fine distinctions, express herself articulately, be discerning and even skeptical when appropriate, and to have the education to make good judgements and participate to the fullest in our democratic form of government.
Standardized testing is inimical to all of the above. It’s time to reassess these tests themselves, and who they’re REALLY helping, more than anything else.
WA Teacher, I was about to post the same thing. From the always excellent “Save Seattle Schools” blog…
Dorn Gets Desperate
Posted: 28 Apr 2015 11:34 PM PDT
State Superintendent Randy Dorn appears to be quite upset about the opting out of the SBAC in Seattle high schools. So much so that the (Seattle) Times granted him an op-ed to write about SBAC where he says “few 11th graders are grappling with refusal to take the test…”
That would be almost a thousand juniors opting out of testing in the largest school district in the state. That’s not “a few” student “grappling” with anything.
I just had a thought. I’m sure others have too.
If Diane had not changed course and stepped up to bat, where would the corporate fascists who want to profit off our children and destroy the public schools be in their agenda today?