No Child Left Behind required states to have a 95% participation rate in state testing; so does the new Every Student Succeeds Act. However, the U.S. Department of Education recently sent a letter to states with high opt out rates warning that there would be serious sanctions if their participation rate drops below 95%. The only reason this would happen is if large numbers of parents opted their children out of the testing. The Education Department that sanctions might include withholding federal funds. This is ironic: suburban parents opt their children out, so urban children (the main recipients of Title I funding) will lose funding. Good thinking, bureaucrats!
Randi Weingarten sent a letter to John King calling on him to back off:
January 7, 2016
The Honorable John King
Acting Secretary Department of Education
400 Maryland Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20202
Dear Acting Secretary King,
I am writing to express my disappointment and frustration at the Dec. 22, 2015, letter signed by Acting Assistant Secretary Ann Whalen regarding participation rates on state tests and the U.S. Department of Education’s planned enforcement of the 95 percent participation rate requirement.
This Dec. 22 letter signals intent to vigorously enforce the 95 percent test participation requirement and outlines consequences that include withholding funds. The letter goes against the spirit of a Dec. 18 letter from Acting Assistant Secretary Whalen, issued less than a week earlier, indicating that the department would fully support states, districts and schools as they transition to implementation of the new Every Student Succeeds Act. As you are well aware, while the new ESSA requires states to test 95 percent of students, it allows them to decide how they will factor this requirement into their accountability system. States are now working out how they will move to new accountability systems, and they need the flexibility and support offered in your Dec. 18 letter, not the threat of sanctions contained in the Dec. 22 letter.
Make no mistake, the opt-out movement—the reason that so many states did not meet the 95 percent participation requirement in 2014-15—was a referendum on this administration’s policies that created the culture of overtesting and punishment. Your October 2015 “Testing Action Plan” admitted as much, and the overwhelmingly bipartisan passage of ESSA was a strong signal that the page must be turned on these policies.
With one year left in your administration, we ask that you step away from business as usual. America’s schools don’t need letters threatening to withhold much- needed funds. They need support as they work to figure out their new accountability systems, including how the 95 percent participation requirement will be included.
Congratulations on your new role, and we look forward to working with you this year on ESSA implementation.
Sincerely,
Randi Weingarten President
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I doubt that this letter will make a difference, but it is good to have it as a matter of record.
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Every word that he writes is hollow… because
he’s spending tens of thousands of dollars
of his own money to make sure
his own kids are, figuratively speaking,
kept as far away from the Common Core
he’s pushing as his money will
allow him.
Here’s an old post I directed at
Lawrence Steinberg at an old
thread here:
What if a U.S. Surgeon General
told the nation’s parents that a
great new vaccine has just been
invented, and it’s going to
revolutionize the health of
children and their ability
to fight off disease … blah-
blah-blah…. all the while
the Surgeon General is
being handsomely
compensated for pushing
this vaccine.
And then someone asks,
“Mr. Surgeon General… why
don’t you give that new vaccine
to YOUR OWN children? If the
vaccine is so great, why do
you spend tons of your own
money so that your kids get
an entirely different, and—
by all measures—a superior
vaccine?”
“My children’s vaccination is
none of your business, and
not fair ground for discussion.”
And to add insult to injury,
the hypothetical Surgeon
General intones, “Your kids
are all going to be forced
to take this vaccine whether
you like or not.” With the
power of the state behind
him, he says that, figuratively
speaking, he and the state
will shove it down your kids’
throats, or strap them to
a chair and forcibly inject
into their biceps whether
or not their parents desire
such a vaccine.
“This is what we’re doing,
and there’s nothing you can
do to stop us… so just shut
up and accept it.”
You can see how parents
might be a little vexed by
such a prospect.
Of course, you know I’m
talking about New York State
Ed. Commissioner John King
and his forcing Common
Core on other people’s
children, while keeping his own
children… figuratively
speaking… as far away from
Common Core as his Gates-
originated salary can afford.
Seriously… if Common Core
is the greatest thing ever
for a kid’s education, why
does King spend tens of
thousands of dollars on
expensive private school
tuition to make sure his own
children are kept away from it?
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Jack, I’d like to reblog this comment on brittanytfields.wordpress.com, but I can’t seem to click on your blog. Can send your url, so I can give credit?
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You are absolutely right, Laura, this letter will not make a difference, nor is it seriously intended to. It is a “matter of record” only insofar as Ms. Weingarten will point to it when the demoralized teachers she ostensibly represents ask her to do something about high stakes testing run wild, and the terrible consequences it foretells for teachers and public schools.
Meanwhile, as she reliably tries to deflect and misdirect her members, her sock puppet in NYC, Michael Mulgrew refuses to support opt-out, threatens teachers who might inform parents about it, and maintains that a teacher evaluation system that is 50% based on test scores is a “victory.”
Like the so-called reformers she enables, this woman wouldn’t know what the truth is if it fell on her from Heaven.
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Jack: John King, rheephormista, mandates for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN something very different from what he ensures for HIS OWN CHILDREN?!?!?
😱
This blog, 11-3-2013, a posting entitled “Montessori Teacher to John King: Montessori is Not About Testing and Common Core”:
[start posting in full]
I received an email from a Montessori teacher in Wisconsin. She asked me to publish this so that Dr. John King, State Commissioner of Education in New York, understands that the Montessori school to which he sends his own children does not have a philosophy aligned with what he proposes for Other People’s Children.
[end posting in full]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/11/03/montessori-teacher-to-john-king-montessori-is-not-about-testing-and-common-core/
But then again, Mr. King is just reflecting the mindset of his rheephormista peers, as in this posting from this blog of 3-23-2014, “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”:
[start posting in full]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting in full]
Wow! Next thing you know you’ll be telling us that Rahm Emanuel (and soon Arne Duncan) send their kids to U of Chicago Lab Schools and Bill Gates to Lakeside School and that places like that don’t revolve around CCSS and its aligned test-to-punish standardized hazing rituals…
😎
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I have a feeling the Acting Secretary’s home state will have as much respect for this edict as they did when in charge of New York.
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Randi’s ending in this letter should not have included…”Congratulations” and “we look forward to working with you next year”… REALLY?? I cannot think of many teachers who would end a letter with this!
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Agree.
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Kiss, kiss, wink, wink!
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She always very good at playing the field for whatever purpose and AFTER the fact. Bravo to the ever shape-shifting union “leader”.
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The AFT needs leadership!
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Let us not forget, that if Trump wins he vowed to get rid of the Dept. of Ed. As much as I love Bernie…… man this will be a hard decision.
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He will also get rid of dignity and many of our human rights.
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I AGREE! But the Democrats don’t seem to get it do they?
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95% is not a “new accountability system”, it’s the continuation of the old one at the same level. There’s nothing to “work out”. Not sure why she bothered to write something so meaningless.
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Randi come lately. Seems you think our memories are short. You championed passage of ESSA. You knew the accountability written in. You KNOW it tosses blame on States instead of Feds technically we will see the volley back and forth. No one has any idea how to enforce or what to enforce. What ESSA did is cement FedLedEd. Shell game is not hidden. We know. The districts in NY are towing reform intimidation line and pushing back already against parents to squash “refusing” it’s not opting out there is no provision to “allow” it. Good grief! Enough ALREADY. King was ousted from NY a vote of no confidence and he was promoted and you congratulate him. Got your eye on his job eh?
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“Got your eye on his job eh?”
Bingo, bangle, boingle!! You win the booby prize, Michelle!
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The mandate of a 95% participation rate for flawed and meaningless high stakes tests with threats of lost federal funding means that ESSA is no different than NCLB. All that changed was the wording.
The wording that alleged control of public education belongs to the states is misleading because federal oversight from the DOE led by another fraudulent supporter of the corporate public education demolition derby means nothing has changed.
The ESSA was another attempt to mislead the public and buy the autocratic, opaque, greedy, often fraudulent, lying, profit hungry corporate private education sector parasites more time to destroy the community based, transparent, Democratic, nonprofit public schools and the jobs of several million middle class Americans that work in the public schools.
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Here’s an excellent post from Peter Greene in which he explains some of Mark Garrison’s work on the current misunderstanding and misapplications of assessment. He addresses the 95% passing rate issue as a confusion of ranking versus measurement. He also criticizes close reading as applied ‘behaviorism.’ His viewpoint is worth reading. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/01/metrics-and-behaviorism.html
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“Garrison addresses the issue of just what can be measured, and why the current educational measurements are doomed to fail.”
Depends on what the goal of high stakes testing really is. If the goal is to use high stakes tests as a fraudulent tool to destroy the community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools and replace them with autocratic, opaque, for-profit corporate charters, then maybe that goal is working, sort of.
If the Common Core Crap and its high stakes tests were really meant to rank schools and label some as failures, that is doomed to fail.
The job of schools is to teach children but schools can’t be held responsible for what children learn. Teaching is one process and learning is another. Teaching is the responsibility of the teachers. Learning is the responsibility of the child and his or her parents/guardians. If a child makes little or no attempt to learn what is taught, it makes no sense to punish the teachers.
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retired teacher,
This is regarding participation rate, not passing rate.
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Don’t know why, but I’m stunned to read this letter written by Randi. (I didn’t receive it through my usual AFT emails so this is the first I’ve seen it.)
With the Friedrichs v California teachers case being heard on Monday, union responsiveness to members seems a timely and important issue.
Randi’s “leadership” of one of our nation’s largest labor unions has been borderline shameful. Her words to King are hollow and hard to believe, honestly.
Not only did she champion the new legislation knowing the language it contained and then urged all members to personally contact congressmen and women to ask them to vote in support of ESSA, she went even further when it was passed. She actually had the audacity to call for celebration when it was passed – urging all AFT members to send a personal message of THANKS to Congress. (Does anyone else receive the AFT newsletters?!)
From every side it seems like CRAZY is winning out over common sense and the common good.
Time for revolution anyone?
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We won…remember?
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Oh my . . .
Another position paper from Randi Weingarten . . . Like the fox warning John King how he better leave the chickens alone and how they need his protection instead of his destruction.
Oh, Randi, if only you were for real.
You’re a very, very bad person, Randi, and you simply won’t be taken seriously by your members or your enemies. You are a one-woman show with a one-woman audience, and you play both actress and theatergoer . . .
The SCOTUS decision made this month will do you in. You have lowered peoples faith in unions instead of raising it, which is why this teacher is suing. Teachers have not destroyed unions.
The overclass and you have, however . . .
What will you do?
Where will you go?
Who else will pay you your $450,000+ salary?
Randi, you must have really hated your mother to hate teachers this much . . . .
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Randi Weingarten is a reformer and should have enough decency to not open her mouth even a little and simply sit in her comfortable traitor’s chair and make her deals with the reformers and their politicians.
She is an embarrassment and the personification of everything that is wrong with our side and why we will inevitably lose the whole game.
Nothing she said adds anything to any conversation.
I can’t stand even seeing her name in print.
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CBS, which is now run by a former Fox guy, had a promo this morning, for an interview segment this week, with Dept. of Ed. Secretary King. The interview features the same Norah O’Donnell, who had no comment nor, emotional affect, after watching the cringe-worthy video of children of color, in uniforms chanting to authority, in unison, which was presented as the positive spin on charter schools.
Expecting no mention of the privatization assault, by oligarchs seeking population dominance, I’ll skip the interview and work for Bernie’s election.
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And, the legitimacy of federal funds for Columbia University’s Teachers College?
How does the College’s recent charter school research (1) carrying an “embargo” date (2) written by a member of a plutocratic charter school prize review board (3) co-written with the Walton-funded Fordham Institute and, (4) paid for, by Walton and John Arnold, differ from the work product of oligarch-owned think tanks and industry trade groups?
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Again, I ask, Time for a revolution anyone? Seriously.
It is intolerable that our public school system is being destroyed not just by corporate “philanthropists” but worse, by people who masquerade as “us.” When do we organize the movement to dethrone the union leaders who are working against us from the inside?
As bad as it is to see the Gates/Walton/Broad et al crowd dismantling our common good, our own hard-earned union dues are paying for the destruction from within.
We can’t just keep blogging about this and talking about it. We need to DO something.
(And if something is being done, please let me know about it.)
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Did you join NPE?
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If everyone on this Blog wrote to Randi or asked for her resignation maybe she’d get it-
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It’s never about what Randi says!! It’s what she does!!!
I for one cannot congratulate her after years of ignoring opt out.
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