The Ossining, New York, school district has a creative response to the federal mandate to administer tests at a time when children’s lives have been disrupted by the pandemic. The superintendent has asked parents to write a letter asking for their child to be tested, that is, to “opt in” to testing.
Gary Stern of the Lower Hudson news (Lohud) reports:
At a time when many school districts are peeved that they are being forced by Washington to administer standardized tests, the Ossining district is taking the provocative step of only giving the tests to students whose parents request it.
This “opting in” approach may mean that few students will take the state-run tests for grades 3-8, which are scheduled for April, May and June. But that’s fine with Ossining officials, who say the tests will be unacceptably disruptive during the pandemic and will yield little meaningful data.
“We’re in a pandemic, and there is a lot our students are going through right now, and our staff,” Ossining Superintendent Ray Sanchez said. “We’re fulfilling the requirements to administer the assessments, and we’re giving parents a voice in the process.”
Kudos to Superintendent Sanchez for recognizing that children belong to their parents, not the state, and that parents should make the decision about the tests, not politicians.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has yet to come up with a plausible reason for administering the state tests this year. The tests were suspended last year; there is no baseline data. The tests will not measure “learning loss.” If the Department wanted state and national data, it should not have canceled the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which gathers that data and has a 50-year timeline.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has yet to come up with a plausible reason for administering the state tests this year. ”
It’s more than that- he’s really struggling to explain it. I watched a clip of him responding to a question on testing and his endorsement was lukewarm, at best.
He just doesn’t have the true believer ed reformer zeal and enthusiasm for testing and ranking systems 🙂
Is it true that Success Academy is opting out? I read that. Amusing.
Ossining Superintendent Ray Sanchez is thinking out of the box. I hope that many others follow his lead. This is a brilliant move.
Privatizers believe that parents should be the main arbiter of what is best for their children. Empowering parents to decide what is best for their children puts parents in the driver’s seat. We need many districts to follow Ossining’s lead if this is to have the desired impact. A brilliant plan to stop the pointless testing mania and data collection.
Ha! The parents should have the freedom of choice to vote with their feet.
Put Superintendent Sanchez at the top of the honor roll. It’s so rare to see actual leadership among school administrators.
Better yet, parents should have to schedule their child/children for the tests on designated days at designated sites (free of charge). Paid Proctors should be used and teachers should be allowed to continue teaching the students remaining in classrooms. Let’s see how many parents really like the idea of these tests and the emotional harm it does to their children?
nicely presented: parents should be asked to make their preferences known simply by having to get involved
Just FYI, Fordham, a charter and voucher promoting think tank, opted voucher schools out of the testing mandates they impose on public schools:
“Tucked among these many provisions are a couple that alter testing requirements for private schools that accept voucher students. Under previous law, private schools were required to administer state exams to any student that attended via a voucher. Schools that had at least 65 percent of their total enrollment made up of voucher students were required to administer state exams to all of their students. The schools were also required to report the results to the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), which was supposed to compile and aggregate the scores, distribute them to parents, and post the results online.”
Private schools lobbied for the exemption, and as usual the Ohio legislature met each and every ed reform demand because our “lawmakers” outsource all their work to ed reform think tanks.
Ed reformers demand that your child take tests they won’t use in the private schools they promote and prefer:
“This change wasn’t widely debated—at least not outside the closed doors of conference committee—but it was likely made in response to two common complaints by voucher advocates. The first is that more private schools would be willing to accept voucher students if they weren’t subject to state testing mandates. Private schools are zealous in protecting their ability to choose their own curriculum, materials, and assessments, and consider administering the state test—even to a small number of students—an infringement on their autonomy.”
Private schools had a “disappointing” showing on state assessments so the ed reform echo chamber simply changed the law to allow them to opt out.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/ohios-voucher-students-no-longer-have-take-state-tests-heres-why-matters
Rye school district also decided to have parents opt in rather than opt out of testing this year.
Leonie Haimson
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I don’t even mind state assessments as much as many people do, but ed reformers lobbying to exempt the private schools they promote and prefer out of state testing while insisting on testing mandates for public school students is ridiculous.
They’re frauds on testing. If they really thought it was “essential” for equity they would insist it apply to the privatized systems they’re creating, and they don’t.
Public school students get all the sticks in ed reform. They offer no positive agenda or policy for any public school student, anywhere.
30 years of ed reform, thousands of full time, paid ed reformers and what did public school students get? They got tests and ranking systems.
I would think that Cardona would see how unfair and biased standardized testing is to ELLs. Standardized tests do not provide equity, nor do they provide teachers with useful information. They collect data that sorts and ranks.https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing
I would think Cardona was selected by the Biden Administration for many reasons, but one that seems obvious is that he is not going to challenge the corporations, think-tanks & dark money influencers who have captured the DoEd.
Not to worry, when ed reformers reach their goal of completely privatized systems standardized testing mandates will magically disappear.
They’re already exempting the schools and programs they prefer from their own testing schemes. That will accelerate as they privatize more and more of the existing K-12 systems because they’re not regulating any of these voucher schemes and it will be impossible to mandate anything in any of them.
The ideological commitment to deregulation will trump testing and now that they’ve told the public they can have no strings attached public funding for anything that can be characterized as “education services” they’ll won’t be able to mandate anything. They’ll be lucky if they can require the contractors they’re happily throwing money at to follow the fire code, let alone submit to standardized testing.
They can’t mandate schools accept students in the privatized systems they’re lobbying for and funding all over the country- they’re somehow planning on mandating standardized tests?
Ed reform is incoherent. It’s not consistent because if they applied their demands on public schools across the privatized systems they’re creating it won’t work. The only way it makes sense is as an ideology. If you accept it as free market economics it makes sense, but that’s the only way it makes sense. As far as an actual system? The thing is in conflict with itself.
This is just one example of the incoherence, where ed reform’s ideological fealty to privatizing education conflicts with another of their goals:
“The expanded program now in the works aims to make digital literacy something all Florida students get, at several grade levels, before they finish high school.”
Yeah, not “all students”. They aren’t going to be able to require 15,000 private educational services providers to do anything.
The ideology will trump content. All of the ed reform content requirements will only apply to public schools, and in their ideal systems there ARE no public schools so there aren’t going to be any standards or consistency at all.
None of them even consider the ramifications of privatization and fragmentation. They just cheerlead – even when the privatization they all promote butts right up against the rest of the dogma. It’s just shocking how little thought and planning goes into it- they have a near-religious devotion to free market ideology so there’s no longer term analysis at all.
I suppose the “liberal” ed reformers (ahem, if such a thing indeed exists) have a notion they will REGULATE the contract service providers so thereby gain some coherence in the systems, but are they watching the lobbying of their own “movement”?
They ALL lobby against regulation. They aren’t going to be able to regulate any of these contractors- the private contractors already call the shots in Ohio and other ed reform dominated states.
The ed reform dogma itself is anti-regulatory, up to and including things like background checks for teachers. They’re absolutely delusional if they think the privatized system will be regulated. Like all government contractors, the educational services companies will fight any attempt to regulate them at all. And they’ll win. They’ve already won.
Every demand the voucher lobby makes in Ohio is immediately met by our captured lawmakers. There’s no regulation at all.
“I suppose the “liberal” ed reformers (ahem, if such a thing indeed exists) have a notion they will REGULATE the contract service providers so thereby gain some coherence in the systems,”
By the “liberal” ed reform wing you mean Democrats, DFER & their go to think tank CAP, am I right?
Their talk about “regulation” is mostly performative. Arne Duncan & Obama did more damage to special education compliance than any Republican. With the stroke of a pen, Duncan dismantled 40 years of DoEd compliance infrastructure built out in all 50 states. All they really cared about was cracking down on public schools for low test scores & forcing kids with severe disabilities to take their invalid tests.
Duncan always made a big show in the press about cracking down on selected violations (e.g., restraint & isolation) but with a wink to charter schools, completely ignored far more persistent rights violations like suspensions, expulsions, and service denials to SPED children across the country.
It’s as if the IEP is just words on paper not to be taken seriously by anyone in the privatization business. The Obama administration was a perfect set-up for DeVos. She had a much easier time taking an ax to the rest of the agency.
I do not expect Cardoza will make substantive changes in SPED compliance, particularly if he’s taking advice from insiders in the Obama/Duncan world.
In ten years, if ed reform follows it’s current privatization trajectory, people will be considering demanding a “public option” for K-12 education.
They won’t get it either. The contractors will fight a public option in education just like they did in health care, and they will win, just like they did in health care.
I couldn’t open the article in the LoHud Journal. But I have three reactions to the idea of parents having to affirm their desire to opt into annual testing. Indeed, while states can assert that they are required to administer annual exams, it is reciprocally true and more powerful for children, with parental guidance, to decide not to take them.
First, kudos to Ossining District Superintendent Ray Sanchez for giving life to the idea of having parents allow their children to be tested. In essence, this gives them the first right of refusal. I have no doubt that Lisa Rudley, president of the Ossining Board of Education, was a spearhead for this action. She is a co-founder of the NYS Allies for Public Education network and a staunch opponent of the State’s deleterious testing program. There has been no better organizer and advocate for the opt-out movement in New York State. Witness the 20 percent anti-test rebellion in 2015.
Second, the Board of Regents to superintendents to principals have long relied on inertia, intimidation and confusion to perpetuate statewide testing, especially after NCLB, which spun into the Common Core misadventure. Making parents believe their children must be tested each year became the top-down default position authorities have relied on to keep the system going.
For years, whenever pockets of resistance arose, the State Education Department and administrators told parents there was “no provision” for opting out. In 2012, I began urging small groups of NYC parents to see through this ploy. My argument was simple: Would you would swallow poison even if there were no official mechanism enabling them to avoid it?
Third, it is gratifying to see Ossining exercise a forceful voice on behalf of parents (and teachers) in the educational well-being of their youngsters. This enlightened activism must spread to other districts and be amplified throughout the state in the coming weeks so the foolish attempt to test students in spring 2021(!) is thwarted. I would add that the Regents and district superintendents go beyond merely saying they are mandated to give the exams. They should explicitly inform parents that children are not required to take them. In other words, opting in should become a necessary pre-condition.
This is such a great idea.
Private schools have always had the option of opting in to state testing in New York — it’s just that very few of them do, and many that did (like some religious schools) had quite poor results.
It is apparent that OUR children do not belong to a state or the federal government, but there are billionaires most of us can name that think OUR children belong to them, not by name, but as a number.
Those billionaires also act as if most parents are too incompetent to be parents so the billionaires will decide how our children should learn and live.
I couldn’t open the article either. It’s behind a paywall.
Anyway, kudos to Supt. Sanchez, the Ossining School Board & to Rye, N.Y. for the same.
Learn a lesson from this: supes & school board members reading this, follow Ossining’s & Rye’s leads.
Here is the article that is behind a pay wall:
By Gary Stern, LoHud.com
At a time when many school districts are peeved that they are being forced by Washington to administer standardized tests, the Ossining district is taking the provocative step of only giving the tests to students whose parents request it.
This “opting in” approach may mean that few students will take the state-run tests for grades 3-8, which are scheduled for April, May and June. But that’s fine with Ossining officials, who say the tests will be unacceptably disruptive during the pandemic and will yield little meaningful data.
“We’re in a pandemic, and there is a lot our students are going through right now, and our staff,” Ossining Superintendent Ray Sanchez said. “We’re fulfilling the requirements to administer the assessments, and we’re giving parents a voice in the process.”
Sanchez said his district is considering take the same step with four Regents exams that the state is offering this spring to comply with federal requirements.
The U.S. Education Department has said it will not allow states to cancel standardized tests that meet federal requirements, which it did allow last year after the pandemic hit. Federal officials have said the tests are necessary to measure “learning loss” related to the pandemic, but can be condensed and do not have to be used to evaluate students or schools.
School officials across the Hudson Valley have made no secret of their displeasure over having to administer the tests for grades 3-8 in math, ELA and science, particularly at a point when many districts are bringing large numbers of students back to school on a more regular basis.
“To say hello, here’s a test, is not the most welcoming approach,” Sanchez said.
It wasn’t clear Thursday whether other districts in the region are considering an “opt in” approach. But districts are communicating to parents that it’s their prerogative whether their children take the tests, said Joe Ricca, president of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents, which includes school chiefs in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess counties.
“We want parents/guardians to know that the tests do not count and students need not sit for them if their parent/guardian chooses,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez sent a memo to parents Thursday morning saying they should tell principals by April 7 if they want their children to take the tests.
“While we are required by Federal regulations to administer this year’s state assessments, we believe that doing so is disruptive and misguided under the current pandemic circumstances,” the memo said.
The district will assume that the children of parents who don’t respond will not participate, it said.
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The state Board of Regents has requested permission from the federal government to cancel this year’s tests. But the Biden administration has insisted that the tests go on, while allowing that they can be condensed and administered later in the spring and do not have to be used to evaluate students, teachers or schools.
The state Education Department recently decided that students will take one session of the 3-8 tests, instead of the normal two. The tests have to be taken in school only, so students who are doing all-remote learning won’t take them.
The state is offering only four Regents exams this spring, all to comply with federal requirements. But students must only pass their courses, and not the tests, to get credit toward a Regents diploma.
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said March 15 said she still hopes the federal government will allow New York to cancel all standardized tests. She said she has been collecting information about how districts assess their students to help build her case with the feds.
Ossining Board of Education President Lisa Rudley said many are disappointed in the federal decision to further disturb a difficult school year.
“We are concerned about the well being of our students,” she said. “This has been a very disruptive year, and it’s a difficult time with kids coming back to school.”
Lisa Rudley is an Ossining parent and a founder of New York State Allies for Public Education.
Rudley is a founding member of New York State Allies for Public Education, an advocacy group that led the charge during the mid-2010s for parents to opt out of the state’s tests for grades 3-8, amid concern that “high stakes” testing was being overemphasized in New York.
“Historically the data that comes from these tests have not helped inform instruction the way our local assessments do or the work our teachers do with our students,” Rudley said.
On Wednesday, new U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on MSNBC that test results are needed to help make spending decisions regarding $130 billion in K-12 aid that’s included in the federal American Rescue Plan. “That state level data will ensure that we are providing the funds to those students impacted the most by the pandemic,” he said.
Since this year’s tests will not be used to evaluate students, many expect that large numbers of parents will choose on their own to have their children skip the tests.
“I don’t think a lot of kids are going to take these tests,” Sanchez said.
“test results are needed to help make spending decisions regarding $130 billion in K-12 aid that’s included in the federal American Rescue Plan.’That state level data will ensure that we are providing the funds to those students impacted the most by the pandemic,’ he said.”
By that I presume he means spending decisions about which outside contractors get a piece of that $130 billion this summer to “help students recover from learning loss.” The advertisements almost write themselves.
If there is any money left after the contractors take their chunk, poorer districts will get the left overs that can never replace the budget devastation caused by the pandemic.