Last year, Jeff Nichols and his wife Ann Stone wrote an article that appeared in the New York Times about taking the “practice” version of the third-grade English language arts test. The test was sent home with one of their children as “vacation homework,” an oxymoron in itself.

Both college professors, they did it for fun with two friends. All have Ph.D.s. they couldn’t agree on the right answers and concluded the test was ridiculous. They became activists in the opt-out movement.

Recently, Jeff wrote a high-ranking official at the New York City Department of Education to inform him that his children will not be taking the tests this spring. The official (who was once an anti-testing activist when he was a teacher long ago) replied that parents have the right to t out but their school may be punished if the participation rate falls below 95%. Is this not a profile in courage? By the way, there is no risk that anyone at the DOE will see this blog, because the computers are set to block all WordPress sites.

Jeff Nichols wrote this letter, which he sent to many others, including me:

“Dear Mr. Suransky,

“An email you recently sent to various CECs in the city affirms that families in New York City do have the right to substitute a portfolio assessment for the mandated state tests, yet seems to hold over those families the threat that such individual acts of conscience can cause adverse consequences for schools:

· State accountability: Under No Child Left Behind, New York State measures each school’s rate of participation in state tests. If 95% of a school or one or more of its subgroups of students (e.g. Hispanic students, students with disabilities, Limited English Proficient students) do not take the assessment, the school does not make Adequate Yearly Progress – which has funding and intervention consequences for schools.

I am just a parent with a child in the NYC public schools. That is my only standing to challenge this statement. But I believe if the era of “accountability” in which we find ourselves is to mean anything at all, then education officials must be held accountable to children and the parents who raise them. So I would appreciate a forthright answer to the following questions:

Is it not a distortion of the original intent of NCLB’s 95% rule to penalize schools, not because the schools are concealing low performance on the part of their students (by having their least capable students stay out of the testing in order to receive a more favorable rating by the state), but because parents who are deeply involved in and concerned about their children’s educations (and whose children therefore are, if anything, likely to perform well on state tests) are choosing to opt their children out of a regime of high-stakes testing that the best minds in education in our country have long since repudiated?

And if the actual effect of a federal law as upheld in our state is not only destructive to schools but also directly contrary to the original intent of that law, then why would you and your colleagues not seek all means to mitigate the situation? In my opinion, local education officials with decision-making authority should be exercising their powers to the utmost to prevent such unjustifiable and unintended consequences from being realized, rather than passing along to parents a passive, worst-case interpretation of the potential impact of this malfunctioning federal law on their children’s schools.

My wife and I will not be allowing our children to take state-mandated standardized tests until those tests are designed and implemented in a manner we regard as consistent with best educational practices. This is our constitutional right, and we do not appreciate the DOE’s continuing efforts to intimidate parents with threats against schools that, given the mayor’s policy of shuttering dozens of schools for no discernible reason other than low test scores, are all too credible. The opt out movement is not going away and it is time for city officials to treat those of us taking this conscientious and proactive step to better our children’s educations with the respect we deserve.

Thank you for taking the time to consider these questions.

Sincerely,

Jeff Nichols
father of: Xxx, grade 3, and Xxx, grade 4″

Parents in NYC called on Chancellor Dennis Walcott to pledge not to use this year’s tests to punish students, teachers, or schools.

Change the Stakes (www.changethestakes.org), an activist group comprised of parents, teachers and teacher educators – argues that this year’s tests are so fundamentally flawed that the scores should not be used. Here’s our letter to the Chancellor:

OPEN LETTER TO CHANCELLOR WALCOTT

By Change the Stakes

March 20, 2013

Dear Chancellor Walcott,

In four weeks, public school children across New York City will begin two weeks of intensive, high-stakes standardized testing. Change the Stakes – an organization of parents and educators committed to replacing such tests with more meaningful forms of assessment – urges you to publicly pledge that scores from this year’s state English Language Arts (ELA) and math tests will not be used to penalize students, teachers or schools. The upcoming testing cycle represents an unprecedented grand experiment: the exams, and the standards on which they are based, are new and untested.

Educators, parents and students alike are painfully aware that this is a “transitional year” in the state testing program. Two years ago, New York State adopted its own version of the new national education standards known as the “Common Core” and this year’s tests are the first to be aligned with them. Not only are the standards new and unproven, the heart of the program – the curriculum – is still being developed. Teachers haven’t been given sufficient time to transition students to the new learning standards, yet children are being tested on them next month anyway.

You yourself acknowledge the serious challenges inherent in using scores from the looming April 2013 exams to assess student performance – and presumably, by extension, the performance of teachers and schools. In a recent letter to parents, you state:

“In past years, decisions about summer school were made based on estimates of each student’s performance level on the State tests: 1, 2, 3, or 4. This year, because the tests are new, we cannot predict how the State will determine performance levels.”

If the purpose of your letter was to reassure parents, you did not succeed. As far as we can tell, the letter has had the opposite effect by setting off alarms among parents who weren’t already focused on the sweeping changes taking place. Another Department of Education (DOE) document developed for parents, Tips for Talking with Your Elementary School Child about the Common Core Standards & Changing State Tests, is even more disturbing: it says that young children should be told to expect school work and tests to be more difficult this year and that feelings of struggle, anxiety and nervousness are common reactions. These new pressures are likely to be particularly onerous for English Language Learners.

In short, the DOE has acknowledged the harmful nature of the abrupt transition to the Common Core – in a year when schools and families also endured a devastating hurricane, a bus strike and a mass elementary school shooting in a nearby community – and yet offers only platitudes about how to help children, parents and educators cope.

Given the poorly managed phase-in of the Common Core and the experimental nature of this year’s assessments, we call for you to immediately and publicly announce that:

§ All student promotion decisions will be made on the basis of a range of indicators, including a review of a substantive portfolio of work representative of a child’s academic progress throughout the year.

§ Teachers will not be evaluated on the results of this year’s tests as the scores are not comparable to last year’s.

§ School Progress Reports, which are almost entirely based on student test scores, will be either suspended or significantly changed to incorporate additional evidence of student achievement. No schools will be closed using this year’s test scores.

§ Parents have a right to opt their children out of the tests, as Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky has publicly stated, and the DOE will put in writing procedures about how to do so.

It is unacceptable for city students, teachers and schools to be judged by the results of these new exams, which are unpredictable by your own admission, especially when other means of assessment already exist.

The time has come for the DOE to finally acknowledge and respond to the growing concerns among public school parents about high-stakes testing. The current direction of policies and practices MUST change.

Sincerely,

The Members of Change the Stakes

http://www.changethestakes.org