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It is wrong for the New York Board of Regents and the State Education Department to Punish kids for opting out!
Children are not the property of the state. When the state abuses them by demanding that they sit for hour after hour of standardized testing, this is child abuse.
Parents have the right to say no.
Write today. Open the link to see a sample letter and addresses.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Done. Thanks for the reminder.
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Well ,if one lives in MD, there is NO opt-out clause. It is a REFUSAL which is considered an act of civil disobedience….we have to fight tooth and nail with school administration. It’s a daunting task for most parents and they just give up.
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Q .
Parents have the right to say no.
END Q
I agree. Parents should also have the right to withdraw their children from public schools, which are clearly conducting policies, that are not in line with the parents wishes. And the parents should receive a rebate on the costs that the public school would have spent!
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Charles,
Public schools are doing what the federal government forces them to do. Charter schools have to give the tests too, in most states.
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Another reason to abolish the federal dept of education, and get the feds OUT of running local public schools. Public school administrators from sea to shining sea, are complaining (justifiably) about the burden of these tests.
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Parents have a right to a fully funded public school in their community. They can go to private school if they want to and can afford it, but they still have a right to public instruction and support. Public schools have a responsibility to teach the children of those parents, a responsibility not to waste their time with meaningless tests. The federal government should have no right to force anyone to waste their time. If the only thing the US Dept of Ed exists to do is to force standardized tests on states — it should not be, but if it is — then and only then, you’d be right, there is no justifying the existence of the Department. End the testing, and people’s rights will be returned to them.
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I must be missing something. I would think that parents would want their children to be tested, at least to some degree. Isn’t that how teachers determine what grade to assign to the student? And then the child is given a report card, to bring home to the parents.
And isn’t the school administration, and school board entitled to an objective and unbiased metric, of how the school teachers are performing?
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NYS tests are neither objective nor unbiased. That’s why we have the statements below as a cya for the state.
From NYSED
“However, State law and Regulations of the Education Commissioner prohibit districts from making promotion or placement decisions for students based solely or primarily on their performance on the Grades 3-8 ELA and Math Tests.”
Statement from Cuomo
That’s their option,” Cuomo, referring to parents who have participated in the unprecedented boycott of state exams, told reporters after an Association for a Better New York breakfast in Manhattan. “What I don’t think has been adequately communicated is, we passed a law that stops the use of the grades on the test for the student. So the grades are meaningless to the student.”
Politico 4/24/15
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If these exams are so biased and not objective, they should be modified or abolished.
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Actually, Charles, the exams are far above the grade level of most students. Even though you are an engineer, I bet you would fail the 8th grade math test. It’s very hard.
Kids sit for up to 20 hours or more of state testing every spring. Don’t you think that is excessive?
When I was a kid in school, we were tested regularly using tests our teachers wrote. No more than one hour per test.
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I believe you. If you say that the tests are above the grade level of the students, then that is definitely wrong. What is the point of putting students through a testing regime, that almost everyone agrees is inappropriate?
I am not an expert, but 20 hours of testing every year, sounds excessive to me.
I attended public schools, and we were administered standardized “achievement tests” every year, that were purchased from a commercial vendor. Of course, the teachers administered their own tests.
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ParentNY,
Is there a pre-written letter that anyone can sign and send in, like a petition of sorts? If so, can you provide the link so that I can sign?
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Charles:
“If these exams are so biased and not objective, they should be modified or abolished.”
Charles, I agree. But NYSED is not listening at all to the notion; it has deaf ears on that policy despite all the facts based on a research and despite the parent discontent.
Just because the tests are the way they are does not mean that state government is listening to the majority of constituents and their common cause.
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Charles
You can take Diane’s 8th grade math challenge here.
Link to 2018 NYS math and ELA test items grade 3 to 8:
https://www.engageny.org/resource/released-2018-3-8-ela-and-mathematics-state-test-questions
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I think it might be helpful if folks could define what “grade level” is. I imagine it might be that the exam is inappropriately difficult for 25% of the students taking it, inappropriately simple for 25% of the students, but appropriately difficult for half of the students, but that is just a guess.
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TE, you are wrong. The Common Core exams chose a passing mark that is beyond the reach of the majority of students. Their cut score is NAEP Proficient, which the majority of students in the nation have never reached. It is the equivalent of A performance. Massachusetts is the only state where as many as 50% have met the goal of NAEP Proficient. It makes no sense to have a passing mark that most students can’t reach. Cut scores are not set by objective measures. They are arbitrary.
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There is an additional problem with so-called grade level appropriate standards and test items. The Venn diagram for ELA reading and writing skills for grades 3, 4,and 5 would have more overlap than isolation. Brain development at these ages (8 – 10) is all over the map.
Here are a few of the companion Common Coerced ELA standards for grades 3, 4, and 5:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.3
Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.3
Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.3
Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g., Herculean)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.7
Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.7
Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.7
Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.9
Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.9
Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.9
Compare and contrast stories in the same genre (e.g., mysteries and adventure stories) on their approaches to similar themes and topics.
If you know an 8, 9, or 10 year old child you can be the judge of grade level appropriateness.
Now imagine you are the test developer and you have to write test items that accurately asses the differences. Ha!
One of the most egregious false assumption in the NCLB/CCSS/RTTT era has been the mistaken belief that reading and writing skills could be accurately parsed by so-called “rigorous” standards and their companion tests in these early grades. The common sense solution would have been grade span testing at say, 3rd, 6th, and 8th
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Common Core tests are not aligned with grade level.
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Regarding the CC standards above, they are mostly subjective. The companion tests from PARCC, SBAC, Pearson, and Questar use MC items to asses the reading “comprehension”. This is a flat out misuse of the MC format, leading to teachers and even authors being unsure of the one correct response regarding tone, intent, beauty, mood, meaning, etc. B.O.G.U.S. – to the CORE
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Rage,
Is you point that “grade level” is not a meaningful concept, at least when it comes to ELA?
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The Common Core tests are not related to “grade level.”
They are explicitly aligned to NAEP proficient, which as I wrote before, has never been attained by most students in any state except Massachusetts, the highest scoring state in the nation.
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TE
Grade placement is largely determined by age:
K = 5, 1 = 6, 2 = 7, 3 = 8, etc.
Grade level standards are arbitrary.
The CC standards do not match the NEAP “frameworks”
Here is a link to the NEAP “Reading Frameworks”
Click to access 2017-reading-framework.pdf
NEAP has 11 different subject area tests:
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/assessments/frameworks.aspx
Good, clear, concrete objective standards can be fairly assessed through testing.
Imagine a K -4 EOGS test that includes this math standard:
Students will be able to multiple any two single digit numbers without the aid of a calculator.
Imagine a K -4 EOGS test that includes this ELA standard:
Students will be able to identify a pronoun a sentence.
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Should a 5-year-old know what a pronoun is? Should kindergartners learn the parts of speech?
I don’t think so. The time to learn parts of speech is upper elementary or middle school.
Children can learn to speak correctly without naming the parts of speech.
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TE
When it comes to ELA, writing standards and tests that accurately delineate grade specific skills is a fool’s errand. An EOGS test, as described, with zero punitive strings attached, would be reasonable.
This makes the David Coleman and Co. nothing but a bunch of ignorant and arrogant fools.
Math is a little simpler to delineate as they involve very concrete and direct skills. However the CCSS in math missed this important boat by trying to get 8 and 9 year old brains to develop deep and meaningful mathematical understandings instead. Another bunch of fools.
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Rage,
I do understand that grade placement is primarily by age (though I believe academic “red shirting”, especially among boys, is becoming common). Interesting to see that you see grade level standards as arbitrary, while Dr. Ravitch sees them as being empirically determined (half always above, half always below).
Once again let me emphisise that my question did not have anything to do with CC standards or NAEP Proficient scores. I am just trying to understand what commenters mean by grade level. It appears that different folks here mean different things.
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I was referring to standardized testing, Rage was referring to grade placement. Two different concepts.
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Diane
I think you misunderstood, m sample standard “identifying a pronoun” was for a K – 4 grade span exam . So. no a kindergartener should not, but by the end of grade 4, a nine year should.
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Rage,
I don’t really give a hoot whether a nine-year-old knows the names of the parts of speech. That can be learned easily in 5th, 6th,7th, 8th, or 9th grades. For many years, teaching the names of the parts of speech simply disappeared, so I am glad it is returning. But it is not necessary in the early elementary years.
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I also am a fan of diagramming sentences, but I have no power to make anyone agree with me. I just think it is a fun learning tool. When my younger son was in fifth grade many years ago, I taught him how to diagram sentences and he enjoyed it. It was like playing the word game “hangman.” Within a matter of weeks, everyone in his class asked the teacher why they couldn’t learn to diagram sentences too. And she taught them
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Maybe the pronoun standard belongs on a grade 6 or 8 GS exam. The larger point was that clear concrete and very specific standards can be tested – unlike the nebulous CC standards.
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TE
Here are the NCTM expectations for K-2. Math standards have been developed using these expectations for decades:
Pre-K–2 Expectations: In pre-K through grade 2 each and every student should–
count with understanding and recognize “how many” in sets of objects;
use multiple models to develop initial understandings of place value and the base-ten number system;
develop understanding of the relative position and magnitude of whole numbers and of ordinal and cardinal numbers and their connections;
develop a sense of whole numbers and represent and use them in flexible ways, including relating, composing, and decomposing numbers;
connect number words and numerals to the quantities they represent, using various physical models and representations;
understand and represent commonly used fractions, such as 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2.
So by the end of second grade, a child should be able to connect a teacher saying (and showing) her “TEN” fingers, with the representation “10”. Thus an arbitrary “grade level” determination.
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Diane
Do you think this is an appropriate standard for a 4th grader?
“Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.”
I don’t teach elementary English, but this seems like a preposterously difficult task for all nine year olds.
Point being, grade level standards which act as the framework for curricula, are completely subjective and arbitrary. Yet this standards based approach now has so much institutional inertia that it will take far too long to the ship back on a reasonable course for our kids.
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NO! NO!
Children should learn to love books. They should love books so much that they plead to stay up a little while longer to finish the chapter.
They should not be forced to do literary analysis or “refer to the structural elements of poems.”
That is horrible, beyond horrible. That is garbage written by someone who never fell in love with a story or a poem.
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Chiming in late, Diane: I LOVED diagramming sentences in 5th & 6th gr. I was a good memorizer & could have regurgitated defs of parts of speech if reqd, but I question the usefulness. It was diagramming that showed me how each part of speech functioned in a sentence. It’s like the difference between sight-reading and chord structure.
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https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Intelligence-Testing-and-the-Beginning-of-Eugenics
It’s called Eugenics! Army Alpha, Army Beta, Robert Yerkel. Please educate yourself before you want to doom everyone’s children to what should be considered child abuse…..child abuse mandated by the federal government.
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My question had nothing to do with the common core exams. Rather it was a question about what defined “grade level”, a term that is often used when describing exams. I had hoped that some of the people who used the term could offer a definition of what “grade level” means.
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Grade level is average. Half are always above, half always below.
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TE
Why don’t you try writing just one math and one ELA standard for children in grade 4 (age 9). Seriously give it some thought and post them here. And if you are feeing up to it, why don’t you write companion test items. See why this is so difficult, especially in ELA.
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“I would think that parents would want their children to be tested, at least to some degree. Isn’t that how teachers determine what grade to assign to the student?”
I think that parents want their children’s learning to be assessed in some fashion but certainly not using a supposed standardized test as THE assessing device.
And no, testing was never how I assigned grades, at least certainly not a major part of the grade (and actually about 25% of the points available in the assigning of grades). The primary goal of tests should be to help the learner know more about their learning. It is a malpractice in my mind to design a test for “grading” purposes. To do so is to bastardize the teaching and learning process into a sort, separate and rank students, discriminating against some while rewarding others. Should the state via its public schools be in the business of discrimination, albeit via mental capabilities? I certainly don’t believe so.
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Confirming from this end Duane – as a Mom of 3 who did K12 in NJ between ’92-’10 – testing as 25% of grade was typical. They missed the annual stdzd 3-8+1h.s. yr assessments, which were being implemented a few grades at a time just behind them. They had stdzd assessments every 3 yrs or so (not for grades but to check progress & help choose future courses) – plus a hisch exit exam.
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If something is harmful to children, parents should ultimately be responsible for refusing to subject their children to useless over testing.
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“Children are not the property of the state. When the state abuses them by demanding that they sit for hour after hour of standardized testing, this is child abuse.
Parents have the right to say no.”
Yes, the language of child abuse is the correct language to use when talking about these education malpractices.
Yes to “children are not property of the state” (and I would add neither is their personal information/data) and to “parents have the right to say no”.
While schooling is mandatory to age 16, that doesn’t give the state, in the form of its public schools the right or mandate to “control” and/or force students to do activities in which the student and/or parents/guardians believe is not in the best interest of the student. Now, I can hear the but buts already about “you can’t let the inmates run the prison” and that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about legitimate concerns, even when those concerns, i.e., religious ones, that I personally might consider to be strange, seem outrageous. It should be the parents’ decision that is honored.
Unfortunately, too many public school educators, especially administrators, demand that their controlling mandates be obsequiously adhered to. Those types of administrators (truly adminimals) believe in the stong(man) education líder cannot usually handle any challenges to their authoritarian ways. The bad part is that so many of that type have learned how to stab the parents who challenge them in the back all the while smiling in their face. They give all appearances of playing nice. They have forgotten that they should be the servants in service to the children, not the other way around. (But boy can they put on a good front in insisting what they demand is best for the child and that they are “doing it for the children”, usually with laced with some tripe about equal treatment for all.)
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BINGO….been there with those administrators! I smiled back…..because they knew I had the knowledge to make it very hard on them. They gave me everything I asked for. Unfortunately, I couldn’t refuse the whole test prep curriculum that is Common Chore.
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Well said.
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Thank you! This is especially true to remember, as you wrote: Children are not the property of the state. When the state abuses them by demanding that they sit for hour after hour of standardized testing, this is child abuse.
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