Katie Osgood teaches students with disabilities in Chicago. She teaches third-graders. PARCC testing begins soon. The reading level if the tests for her students are sixth grade.
She writes here about the harm these tests will do to her students.
Her students’ IEPs will not be honored. No accommodations!
She asks why children of 8 and 9 are asked to perform literary analysis.
She writes:
“The PARCC test is mind-mindbogglingly inappropriate and long. It gives NO USEFUL information for teachers or schools. It ignores IEPs. It is damaging to kids. It triggers our most vulnerable learners destroying trust and joy in the classroom. It robs classrooms of SO MUCH STINKIN’ TIME.
“Oh, and by the way, PARCC originally was in 24 states, but has now dropped to only 6.
“There is NO REASON for Illinois to continue using this test. None.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Couldn’t agree more!
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“There is NO REASON for Illinois to continue using this test. None.”
And there never was to begin with!
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Since an IEP is a legally binding document, is recourse through a lawsuit possible?
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Sure. Now find the lawyers and the parents willing to spend years working their way through the courts. The damage will have been done to the child well before the case is settled. How many have the financial wherewithal to fight these battles especially knowing they will be of no benefit to their own children anyway? I know it sounds selfish, but it is a lot of stress and expense. The child does not get to retake the years messed up. The damage does not go away if they win. I am speaking from ignorance, but does anyone see lawyers running around begging to handle cases like these? Are there any lawyers out there who can speak to this issue? It seems to me we are constantly asking where the law suits are? It is quite a surprise to find out that the state can break the law any time it damn well pleases if no one is willing to challenge them.
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I know the lawsuits have definitely increased in Chicago especially since the last round of special ed. cuts but it largely depends on the parents’ own education level and access to resources. It usually doesn’t cost the parent anything at least in the cases I’ve been aware of. If the case wins, the lawyer bills the city schools. If the parental case loses then I don’t think they pay.
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I know the treat of a lawsuit is enough to send some districts scurrying, but these are wealthy communities. In one district where I worked, they stressed that IEPs had to be letter perfect as did any correspondence with parents. All procedures had to be followed with exactitude. They were so afraid of lawsuits that they wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing a teacher under the bus. However, this was a high socioeconomic community. I didn’t encounter that level of anxiety in the low socioeconomic community I where I worked.
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You’re right that the cases probably do not include damages since they are more likely to be about denial of services. They either get the services or not. I am wondering how it might look, though, if parents sued to prevent certain “services” being provided/continued, like standardized testing. Then, a case of abuse may be easier to make.
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About twenty years ago my daughter was attacked while on her way home from school. The school stood by while she continued to be harrased and I called lawyer after to lawyer to see if there was anything I could do. Nobody would take the case.
We resolved the situation by moving.
My daughter graduated from college and has a very successful career (while the teens who beat on her ended up on the other end of the scale), but I duscovered it is almost impossible to fight the system.
With the rheformist movement, moving won’t make much of a difference (unless you send your kids to a private school or teach them yourself at home). Good luck to those who struggle to protect their children’s rights. Currently, opting out is the best way to buck the system.
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…and lawyers do expect to get paid.
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a good place to start is wrightslaw.com
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So, once again, the question is: Where the hell is OCR?????
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Money. Someone is making money.
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Plus data equal dollars.
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I just wanted to chime in here. I’ve been an Occupational Therapist with Chicago Public Schools for 15 years and am on the Chicago Teacher’s Union Negotiating Team. Requiring non-mandatory tests that stress out students is just another way that CPS could save money but chooses not to while claiming broke. I have been very upset in the past few years as it has been next to impossible to see any of my students taking PARCC who receive mandated IEP or 504 services. This year, there was also an extensive PARCC simulation they couldn’t be pulled from. This stresses them out and these kids take enough tests already. It’s absolutely heinous how giving money to billionaires like Pearson vs. kids is accepted in today’s world even while these same people claim they are broke.
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Kirstie, why can’t we get the NEA and AFT to put pressure on congress and school districts to fully fund Special Education?
As a reg ed teacher, I spent a lot of time and money to become fully aware of all the sped laws and interventions. I know that in theory my district’s budget cannot be a barrier to giving my students what they need to access their education. Yet in reality it does. It does so at every single IEP. And it is true in every single district across our nation.
Unless a parent has the time and money to fight the process, their child will not get what is needed. The IDEA is a sham. I’ve filed complaints with my state and with the OCR. They both accomplished very little and caused my district to restrict my access to disabled students.
Our sped teachers and school psychologists toe the line. It doesn’t matter which person is the superintendent or the sped director, they know the limits of their advocacy. It’s that way in EVERY district.
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off scrapping all semblance of special education and using that money for better purposes. As it is, I think of our sped department as the problem, not the solution. Our sped director makes twice what any teacher makes, yet harms the education of our students. She is paid to run interference. Administrators absolutely love her!
I pay $100 a month in union dues. My union represents me whenever I am written up for my advocacy, but they have never made it clear to the administration that it is not okay to target me. My uniserve rep says that the district cannot afford to give every sped student what they need because it would take away from the general fund, and that would hurt teachers.
WHY? Please tell me!
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I sense and feel your frustration. I also think there is a political based situation that varies from district to district depending on how each union sees special education. In Chicago, there have been a great deal of cuts but they are losing out on the IDEA funds because of it so it’s pretty insane to cut to save money but end up losing more money and lawsuits. It’s unethical but it’s also idiotic from a business standpoint and when you’re talking to a bunch of nihilistic businessmen, you’d at least expect them to get from their own budget data the fact that they’ve been losing millions of dollars since the special ed. cuts for clinicians since 2012…perhaps they need to go back to basic Math in a decent public high school.
Anyway, I digress. I think the situation you see with the special education director might be a specific situation but, at the same time, the special ed. director appointed in Chicago seemed to be tied to corruption and have little experience herself. It’s certainly not going to the kids.
Also, we have contracted out many clinicians (including nurses) to contract agencies and schools are getting “nurses” who are still in school and not trained in basic things like seizures and diabetes so families are being asked to pick up their children early or the school has to risk the kid being unsafe all day. Last I heard, the head contract agency supplying unqualified personnel literally risking the safety of kids with medical needs was tied to our mayor via a close relative so there you go.
Also, of course, in Chicago, we still have a privately appointed school board and many of those people even profit off of approving charters (which they are on the board of) and closing public schools..so where do you even start with that level of insane corruption?
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I also agree wholeheartedly as a CPS teacher and parent. I have started opting out for my son who has an IEP. Even kids I know who have enjoyed the challenge of tests feel frustrated and dislike the PARCC test.
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Notice the people making the decisions about other people’s children make sure their own children attend schools which get to skirt the rules they set.
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Every policy maker who mandates this form of abuse should have to proctor a teacher giving the test to a severely disabled student. It is unconscionable.
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I also think every policy maker whose decisions affect public education should be mandated to send his/her own children to a public school…I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a much different public school system if that were the case…
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The Warren Buffet way! That’s exactly what he told Michelle Rhee years ago. I’m paraphrasing… If everyone (meaning politicians) had the same public school education, medical coverage, social security benefits, etc., this would be a different country. There would be more parental involvement in schools, there would be more concern with educational issues, etc. So… When does Warren start his campaign?
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Kirstie, what a concept. I would extend it further. Isn’t there a certain logic to requiring every public servant– anyone whose salary is provided at public expense– to avail themselves of publically-provided services (at a minimum, public school for their families) while they hold the job? In recognition for services at lower-than-private-sector salary (& to sweeten the pot as necessary to attract good candidates), we should provide them free postage, highway tolls, public-health-clinic visits, & ‘vouchers’ for public tax inputs to schools, ‘grandfathering’ it in for older folks to insure a stake for elder job-holders.
The idea may seem outlandish given our current paradigm, w/ public schools mostly paid-for via property taxes [virtually ‘privatized’ already]– & other public goods like transportation/ infrastructure, library, public health, & postal completely unsupported until dysfunctional.
Yet think of the upside: poorly-paid teachers (& public librarians, & toll-booth attendants, public-health, court & postal workers, cops, firemen) given a salary boost via tax credits against municipal, county, state ed taxes in exchange for their kids’ & grandkids attending public schools. Plus elected politicians plunged into using the public goods over which they govern. With the budget-balance due to be paid via increased tax on all those entities which have so little stake in public goods, namely businesses employing [shall we say] 1000 or more employees?
Under such a system we might begin to see policy changes which value the public good.
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I agree. I believe that politicians would change their tune if they saw how much time is wasted in the classrooms for this PARCC testing. Children feeling like failures because of the developmental inappropriateness of this test. In Illinois, the political wrangling gets in the way of just about everything. More educators need to become politically active. This includes teachers from all over the state, not just Chicago. Teachers are well educated and trained to make appropriate decisions daily. It’s time for all teachers to make their voices heard!
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I don’t agree that ‘politicians would change their tune if they saw how much time is wasted in the classrooms for this PARCC testing.’ Politicians are pushing PARCC testing because they are lobbied by the ed-industry which fills their campaign coffers in exchange for legislation which mandates PARCC testing. TAXPAYERS are the ones who will change their tune when they understand how their hard-earned dollars are being misused, & organize to VOTE OUT the politicians who value campaign funds above the will of their constituents.
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To Marita, up there: Marita, the NEA & AFT will NOT do ANYTHING about the testing–it has come up through rank-&-file within state meetings (such as at ILL-Annoy Education Assn. conferences–the leadership absolutely IGNORED any attempts at making public statements as to testing being harmful–right at the beginning–when all this madness started). Your union LOCAL is undoubtedly good (has helped you), as are most of the union LOCALs I have belonged to, or those of friends I’ve known in other districts.
The AFT and the NEA have both supported Common Core & the E.S.S.A. (although, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you would have read Mercedes Schneider’s analysis (&–yes, she read the whole thing!) of the odious portions of the E.S.S.A. (while the NEA leadership has been giving itself a great big hug that the E.S.S.A. was passed!).
Any rank-&-file members in favor of feeding special needs kids to Goldman Sachs? No?
Thought not.
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I tried to make this comment on Miss Katie’s blog, but it didn’t appear: It’s beyond time to point the finger (although Class Size Matters did a great job of doing so at the Manhattan headquarters of Pear$on, showing up on a non-school day w/parents & their kids (some dressed up as pineapples–remember the infamous Pear$on-published “Pineapple Question?”) directly at Pear$on–as soon as the school year is over & the weather is nice, so we can get out the number of people we need, it’s time to revisit that Pear$on building, as well as any others (Katie, the one in our back yard–Glenview, ILL-Annoy, comes to mind), make it a field trip w/the kids, parents, teachers & community members, bring the signs–“ISBE (or whatever public school agency in your state) $igned a 4-year, $160 million, NO bid contract to te$t our kid$ to death!”–& point the finger.
Also, I recommend getting everyone those sponge pointing fingers they sell at ballgames.
A lovely media moment.
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“ISBE (or whatever public school agency in your state) $igned a 4-year, $160 million, NO bid contract to te$t our kid$ to death!”
Now if we can figure out how to shorten this statement or put it on several signs in sound bites, we have some great signs to wave in Glenview.
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