The Oregon state legislature passed a law permitting parents to opt their children out of state tests.
The state Department of Education is not happy. It sent out a form to parents interesting in opting out. Before signing the form, they must read a warning that parents will lose access to valuable information about their child and may harm their child’s school.
An article by Betsy Hammond in The Oregonian captures the parents’ reaction:
The portion of the form that has testing opponents most livid are the two sentences above the line where a parent must put their signature to get their child out of testing:
“I understand that by signing this form I may lose valuable information about how well my child is progressing in English language arts and math. In addition, opting out may impact my school and district’s efforts to equitably distribute resources and support student learning.”
Steve Buel, a Portland school board member who is a leader in the anti-testing group Oregon Save Our Schools, called the forms “maliciously misleading.”
Opt Out parents don’t like to be intimidated or condescended to.
This parent predicts:
As in other states, Oregon will start to see building principals, district administrators, superintendents stepping forward about the harmful effects of high-stakes testing. School board members, teachers, specialists, parents, and students have been speaking up, and the numbers continue to grow. ODE adding that phrase above the signature is not only misleading, it’s obnoxious, and on the wrong side of history.
“VALUABLE” INFORMATION? Telling how they use the word “valuable” to describe the information they get from tests. They don’t say “useful” information or “actionable” information, rather “valuable” information as they refuse to acknowledge the complaint that parents don’t want for-profit vendors diverting money from our school budgets. The “value” is the pay-for-play that infects our government.
OPT-OUT OF THEIR OPT-OUT: We should notice also the way Oregon created a hoop for parents to jump through to opt-out of the tests, requiring agreement with the mischaracterization that the tests provide valuable information AND forcing them to accept blame for any resources their school may be denied.
Opt-out parents will probably ignore this form completely, opt-outing with their own letters which correct the record – the tests are NOT helping kids learn, they are narrowing learning.
Also, any funding formulas tied to test participation can be easily proven unconstitutional because they punish everybody whether they opted out or not and it’s unfair to the families who DON’T opt-out.
It’s also creepy for them to identify and profile opt-out parents at the state level so they can make a giant list for propaganda and targeted ads.
They left out, “Then again, it may not.”
This is similar to what was done in Seattle Public Schools last year, almost to the word. Diane actually reprinted the letter verbatim in an earlier post if you’d like to see it. Getting that letter really did feel like being called into the principal’s office for a moralizing sermon. “You can do this — this is your choice — but, if you do, you should realize…”
Thank you, Diane, for publicizing this situation. I’m in Portland, Oregon, and I am disgusted by the change in what we must focus on when we teach now, not to mention the weeks of instruction time we miss for this “not smart, not balanced” test.