A reader writes:
“In the non-public special education field, we generally feel the residual effects of educational policies and changes. Right now we’re feeling the effects of Common core and PARCC and not in such a positive way. Common Core Standards “do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade-level expectations,” but our students with disabilities must participate at the same level and with the same rigor as their “non-disabled” peers in PARCC assessments.
Our IEP’s must be standards-based, aligned to their grade level and our teaching must be aligned to the Maryland CCR Standards at the students grade level. The problem, however, is that the majority of our students are functioning 3 to 4 grade levels below their non-disabled peers and our teachers are struggling to help them acquire and demonstrate a few skills successfully.
How then do we prepare our students effectively for an assessment that will test them on the very standards they fail to understand? Our students with ED, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and autism have already been formally tested by teachers and related services providers multiple times before even reaching PARCC season. When is enough enough? There has to be a better way to assess their learning.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is not a special educator, active or retired, who does not share your head shaking disbelief at the utter stupidity of the current testing policies and standards requirements.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally agree, 2old2teach. I am a retired Special Education teacher, and I cannot imagine my former students being subjected to such idiotic standards and testing.
Most of my kids could not read at all, except for a few survival words in some cases. (I did have a few over the years who could read at a first grade level.)
Many of my students were non-verbal.
The vast majority of my students were way more than 3 or 4 grade levels below their age peers.
I am glad I’m retired now, although I miss all my kids. But I cannot fathom, as a teacher, being forced to make them participate in what amounts to gross educational malpractice. And psychological abuse, as well. 😦
LikeLike
I agree 2old2teach..I would shake my head in disbelief when I was “ordered” (according to law) to write goals for special education students that I knew they could never reach. It’s not about expectations here, it’s about reality.
@Zorba I agree with you also. I’m a “laid-off” Special Education teacher (Speech/Language Pathologist). I “tried” to “imagine” my former students reaching those standardized goals. All of my students couldn’t read. Many were non-verbal. Some I could teach to say or sign or point to a picture for “Drink, please.” Many of the students just cried or threw themselves on the floor.
Zorba, I am glad I’m laid-off now, although I miss All my kids. Yes, I call them my kids. Not just the professional term of students.
Zorba – “But I cannot fathom, as a teacher, being forced to make them participate in what amounts to gross educational malpractice. And psychological abuse, as well.” But that’s what we are forced to do. Or are we?
Now I’ll reply to jeanhaverhill.
LikeLike
http://blog.ucsusa.org/gretchen-goldman/abuse-of-power-exxonmobil-chairman-lamar-smith-and-the-first-amendment?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=fb please look this over… we should have learned from the tobacco lawsuits — fraud is not protected speech. Yet, we know Pearson is using power to stop teachers from discussion the tests and to abuse students and parents as well. There is no predictive validity to the experimental PARCC tests — until they have validity they should not be marketing the “product”… Just look this over for the understanding of the thoughts presented.
I spent over 50 years with special education in MA and i will be glad to talk to anyone about the flaws in this experimental testing for our student… I just wanted to show the relevance of the concept of corporate abuse as written by the Concerned Scientists…
One thought that came to me for my niece’s step-daughter in Albany … for every child that scores below the 50th percentile on the PARCC or SBAC put in an immediate request for special education services and resources. Swamp the administration … a deluge of requests on purpose as a statement…. (make the administrators and school boards in the local district deal with the issues.) I know when they were inventing experimental MEAP and MCAS tests in MA the Superintendent of Somerville spoke up at that time… he was indicating that the tests were giving him tremendous problems in resource starvation when he had so many students who were below a certain percentile.
That being said, the experimental tests are useless for special education populations if all the students are scoring 25% percentile or lower — they tell you nothing about the student’s program or curriculum…. That is why Chapter I (formerly Title I) would permit “out of level testing”…. If you are concerned about students you will make those judgments….If your only concern is to get data into the computer on every kid so you can validate your test, then that is a giant experiment…. the kids are guinea pigs and they should be advising the parents of that so the parents can refuse to sign to allow an experiment being performed on their child.
http://blog.ucsusa.org/gretchen-goldman/abuse-of-power-exxonmobil-chairman-lamar-smith-and-the-first-amendment?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=fb
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your comments apply to intermediate ELLs as well. If they follow the research, ELLs should not be required to be tested for five to seven years, but the moratorium on standardized testing in some cases is only a year. This is absurdly unfair. https://morecaucusnyc.org/2016/03/22/heres-the-truth-about-the-2016-nys-tests/
LikeLike
I appreciate your comments and links. I read them and the embedded links and where they all go take me.
Your link here refers to the First Amendment, which pretty much states that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, of press, of religion, or of assembly. When you interpret that Amendment as you state, “…fraud is not protected speech”, the First Amendment doesn’t legislate “protected speech”. Nor “fraud”. It protects your freedom to speak, write, worship and meet.
You state, “…we should have learned…”. And we are (particularly those of us here on Diane’s blog) learning how our rights as American citizens are presently being comprised. What better place to start but education. Otherwise, we will not know about the lies and fraudulent behaviors of our governance.
I particularly enjoyed this one with the links – http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/03/anti-intellectualism-terrorism-and-elections-in-contemporary-education-a-discussion-with-noam-chomsky/
I’ll take the freedom to paraphrase Zorba (above): It is indeed very difficult to even imagine FORCING people (especially children) to participate in terrifying things that abuse them physically, mentally, psychologically and spiritually.
I thought Congress was the legislative body in the United States that only could declare a war
Truly a Reign of Terror!
LikeLike
See worthlessness of PARCC as predictive of college and career readiness…even when the special education and ELL matters are not. Same for SBAC. For a detailed discussion, go to the report from Mathis cited in the following.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/05/27/alice-in-parccland-does-validity-study-really-prove-the-common-core-test-is-valid/
LikeLike
Many teachers in MD thank Lillian Lowery (Broad grad and PARCC BoD, I believe – MD is the PARCC financial agent) for saddling us with this PoS, pardon my language. We further thank our governor who ran on an anti-Common Core platform but then appointed Finn & Smarick to our State BoE.
And by “thank,” I of course mean “revile.” >:-(
LikeLike
Thomas Jefferson said, “If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it he is obligated to do so.”
Maritn Luther King. Jr. “Never Forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
Also, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Abusing children is cruel and unjust.
LikeLike
Yes, it is child abuse.
Love the quotes, Mary. I would also add, from Mahatma Gandhi:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Of course, both Dr. King and Gandhi were assassinated……. 😦
LikeLike
Unjust laws exist. …If a law requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, …then I say, break the law. — HD Thoreau
LikeLike
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? …If the injustice is …of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. …What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.–HD Thoreau
LikeLike
Remember that the IEP and IDEA is the law. Common Core is a suggestion. How can you be insubordinate if they are breaking the law and you are following it. Would love to see every special educator challenge that.
LikeLike
So would I, caplee, and I would love to see parents challenge that, as well.
IDEA mandates an individualized and appropriate education (and evaluation) for each disabled student. How can the Common Core and current testing requirements provide anywhere near the individualized and appropriate education (and evaluation) for these students?
And the IEP’s must be based on those standards as well? Parents are, by law, supposed to be equal members of that IEP team, and have input into that IEP. How are the parents being coerced into agreeing to such inappropriate standards for their children? They need some trained parent advocates to accompany them to the IEP meetings to advise the parents on their, and their children’s, rights under the law.
LikeLike
Absolutely correct! And if I can help in any way let me know http://www.wholechildreform.com
Under my plan there would be an IEP for all called My Action Plan (MAP). For your reading pleasure 🙂 http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
LikeLike
caplee, I am saving your websites to share with parents who have Special Ed students, as well as other concerned parents, who contact me.
After I retired from classroom teaching, I did some private tutoring and educational consulting, as well as, later, volunteering as a parent advocate during IEP meetings. If I was physically up to it (I have a variety of physical and heart problems), I would still be doing the parent advocacy. If I have anybody asking me, I will send them to your websites.
LikeLike
My best to you tell them I will go anywhere to help
LikeLike
but read this little tid bit about how much money the feds actually kick in for IDEA
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/05/idea-unfunded-mandate.html
LikeLike
They need to fully fund IDEA as they did in the 70’s. Gone down hill ever since then
LikeLike
When I read about high stakes testing and the effect it has on children I find myself thinking about sports. It seems that education has truly lost its way by forgetting the very key things that have worked so well in both the classroom and on the playing field. 1- Imagine the outcry IF a coach could no longer provide immediate and targeted feedback BUT instead had to input data so the player could do an interim online drill and practice. 2-Imagine the loud protest IF all of us had to play golf from the same tees. 3-Imagine how many of us would even want to play golf IF we were not allowed to use handicaps in our scores. If these practices became the norm in sports, no one would play. It would be the death of sports. It is these very same practices that are causing the death of learning. What child is going to be inspired to take risks to explore, to question, and to think critically if they are sent to a machine for a drill, held to standards that are inappropriate, and sorted on a data wall?
LikeLike
sort of on subject:
When current public school leadership claims that Race to the Top has ended, what is the take-away? That they want to leave it in the past because they know it was no good?
How can someone say Race to the Top ended when we are still dealing with CCSS issues? Aren’t those two efforts entangled?
Please answer, someone (preferably Dr. Ravitch also).
LikeLike
RttT was all about grant money(from tax payers!) and how to obtain it. Accepting the Common Core was one of the qualifications to receive this “grant” money. The money is all gone, so RttT is gone….but Common Core was meant to stay. It’s a long and winding road with paths crossing along the way and lots of forks in the road in a hellish kind of way. Dr. Ravitch probably has a better way of explaining.
LikeLike
Lisa,
RTTT was a bribe to states to get them to expand the number of charters, to increase the stakes attaching to tests, to collect more data on students, and to adopt Common Core and its tests. The money is gone, RTTT is gone, and one day Common Core will be gone too.
LikeLike
Involved Mom,
RTTT is gone. The money is gone. The mandate to evaluate teachers by test scores is gone. But RTTT left behind many failed ideas. Common Core is one of them. As states wake up and realize they are not required to have CCSS any more, it will be gone too. But it will take time to clear the cobwebs from state officials.
LikeLike
Sadly there are still states following common core and PARCC that also go along with the cookie cutter evaluation system (a la Charlotte Danielson and linked to “growth” gathered by high stakes tests and “data” collection)! When will these states FINALLY FIGURE IT OUT? Guessing that all the money spent on this fiasco is what causes the nonsense to prevail. Just the expense spent to get the computer infrastructure adaptable and up to speed for testing WAS ENORMOUS. Ughh!
LikeLike
All states are still operating under the requirements of NCLB waivers and RTTT. The new ESSA takes effect as of July 01, 2016. It will take states a year or two to recover from the burdens of punitive testing.
The Board of Regents in NYS is evaluating the current policies and will be making their recommendations to the legislature next year. Cuomo’s Regents Reform Agenda will be relegated to the smoldering ash heap of failed reform. Unfortunately, the damage inflicted on a generation of students cannot be undone.
LikeLike
RageAgainstThe Testocracy… yes July 1 cannot come fast enough but for some unfortunate states even after July 1st students will be taking the PARCC test. In fact, in MD students will need to pass the PARCC in order to graduate. That test along with Pearson should be BANNED!
LikeLike
“You state, “…we should have learned…”. And we are (particularly those of us here on Diane’s blog) learning how our rights as American citizens are presently being comprised. What better place to start but education. Otherwise, we will not know about the lies and fraudulent behaviors of our governance.” in the anti-war movement we had good priests/religious scholars and then of course lawyers that were on the side of the anti-war movement. We is all of us and we need to create a larger coalition — include some lawyers. The civil rights groups are aware of this. There is still a majority at the Commissioner’s level and in MA he says “join up with Jeb Bush and Sir Michael Barber”…. that is difficult to defeat when the leader of the DESE (Board of ed) is pushing them in that direction…. Parents, teachers, students have organized and we are hoping to get the issue on the ballot in November (there are some mighty powerful forces even exposed to that — with expensive lawyers). The Comissioner of Ed Mitchell Chester says : “constituents are impervious to facts” but he is dealing only with the facts from Jeb Bush or Sir Michael Barber. We have a different set of facts as teachers/parents… and when Commissioner brings his lawyers to the fight against the parent’s ballot initiative you have to ask “Whose Lawyers”… and of course we need some of our own as they learned in the Civil Rights movements and the Act up groups.
LikeLike
Here, here. My students are Severely Handicapped. They are not able to access i-pads without hand over hand assistance. The teachers all had to go through hours of training (3?) certificates? and all to test our students who look at us in amazement as they are asked high verbal questions. I am so sad that our students are now required to do even more nonsensical tasks that take-up so much instructional time and have nothing to do with their IEP goals. When will the insanity stop?
LikeLike