You may have noticed in our article today (March 10) on the advent of Smarter Balanced testing a line about a teacher in Central Kitsap School District who plans to opt his own daughter out of the new state standardized test.
Robert Reynolds, a Silverdale Elementary teacher, will dutifully give the tests to his students, but he’s opting out his eighth-grade daughter on principle.
“I just think there’s so much time preparing for this test, months actually, it takes time away from the classroom with the teacher,” Reynolds said.
To get an idea of the district’s testing schedule, see documents
embedded below that show not only the schedule for Smarter Balanced
testing, but all standardized and other tests, such as screening
tests for gifted students. As you can see, there’s some kind of
testing going on pretty much throughout the year. State
Superintendent Randy Dorn is among those who have proposed
legislation to pare down the amount of testing to which students
are subjected.
I asked Reynolds if he knew the process for opting out. He did not
believe there was a formal process and anticipated no problem
accomplishing his goal by simply telling the district his daughter
would not be taking the test.
According to a Washington Post article published March 9, states are far from uniform in their response to the growing “opt-out” movement. “The lack of clear rules and information has left plenty of uncertainty about how and whether parents can opt out of tests and what the consequences might be, not only for individual students, but for schools and school districts,” the article states.
The article cites a recent analysis by the Education Commission of the States, an organization that tracks education trends, showing that few states explicitly allow or prohibit test refusal, Arkansas and Texas being two exceptions to the latter. Legislation recently was introduced in New Jersey and North Dakota to allow opt-outs. Similar legislation in Mississippi failed to move forward, according to the ECS report. State laws in California and Utah allow parents to opt their children out of state assessments for any reason. Michigan’s Department of Education “discourages but does not prohibit” opt outs, the report states. Oregon and Pennsylvania excuse students from state testing to accommodate religious beliefs.
And in other recent coverage of the issue, we find
in the Denver Post Colorado’s State Board of Education voting
earlier not to hold districts accountable if not enough students
take the tests. In Illinois, “The latest guidance from the state
suggests that a note from a parent won’t work. A child must be
presented with a paper testing booklet or a “test ticket” to a
computer-based exam, and refuse to take each section of the test,
records show,” according to
a March 4 article in the Chicago Tribune.
If you look on the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s website under “assessments” there’s nothing that jumps right out and says, “Opt out; here’s how.”
“It’s not really optional,” said Robin Munson, the state’s assistant superintendent for assessment and student information. “But,” she added, “it’s not mandatory every student must take it.”
In short, parents can opt their student out but there are consequences to the student and the state, Munson says.
While most students taking the test this year won’t need it to graduate, the state needs their results to comply with No Child Left Behind, the federal act that sets accountability standards for schools. State Superintendent Randy Dorn has warned Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School that its decision to boycott the test for its 11th-graders, citing over-testing, could cost the state federal money.
The feds this year will look at scores of students in third through eighth grade and 11th-graders to determine if schools have made Adequate Yearly Progress. (Washington State schools all will fail miserably due to being out of compliance with federal requirements under NCLB, but that’s another story.)
Tenth-graders will take the English language arts Smarter Balanced, which will be a graduation requirement for them in 2017 and the Class of 2018. Those classes will have several options to meet the state’s math testing requirement, including Smarter Balanced. The Class of 2019 is the first that will be required to pass both the math and ELA Smarter Balanced tests.
On a side note: Graduation testing requirements are slightly different for each class between now and 2019, as the state phases out the HSPE and EOC (end of course exams in geometry and algebra) and phases in the Smarter Balanced test. To see what your child will be required to do, visit OSPI’s testing page.
Technically 10th graders could wait to attempt the Smarter Balanced English language arts test (those who meet the “cut score” — a 3 or 4 on a scale of four — don’t have to take it again in 11th grade). But, says Munson, “You don’t want to be the school that doesn’t give your students the opportunity.”
Students who score a 3 or 4 on the tests will automatically be placed in college-level math and English language arts classes, through an agreement with the state community and technical colleges, and public four-year universities. This will save students the need for placement tests, and save families the cost of students taking remedial courses. Students who score below that will get extra help through coursework developed by the Smarter Balanced Consortium to get them up to speed and ready for life before they graduate from high school.
Finally, said Kristen Jaudon, OSPI spokeswoman, “Not having students take the new tests robs educators of a fair and equitable measure of student progress. They won’t be able to see gaps between groups of students, which means the students who most need help may not get it.”
Adding to the confusion over why students in high school should or shouldn’t take the test, 10th grade formerly was the federal accountability year; now it’s 11th. And this fall OSPI and the Smarter Balanced Consortium agreed that both 11th and 10th graders would take the same assessment, which has been referred to all along at the 11th grade assessment. Too far into the weeds? OK, I’ll stop here.
Bottom line, Munson said, “I do think it’s mandatory to test all students.”
So now I’ll put it out there to parents, teachers and other educators, “What do you think?”
Chris Henry
(360) 792-9219
chenry@kitsapsun.com
https://www.facebook.com/chrishenryreporter
From the article:
Finally, said Kristen Jaudon, OSPI spokeswoman, “Not having students take the new tests robs educators of a fair and equitable measure of student progress. They won’t be able to see gaps between groups of students, which means the students who most need help may not get it.”
I’m not sure that it is well understood that the state test, SBAC, or Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, does not measure student progress. It is not a fair and equitable measure because it is one test on one day with very little feedback to the educator. The teacher signs a document that they will not even look at the test questions. A good test has to show growth between two points of time. That means the SBAC would need to be given at the beginning of the year and at the end. This will show growth. It does not, therefore is an unfair and inequitable measure of student progress.
“Not having students take the new tests robs educators of a fair and equitable measure of student progress. They won’t be able to see gaps between groups of students, which means the students who most need help may not get it.”
The true crime is not parents robbing educators of information by protecting their children from this travesty and farce of a test. The true crime is test-pushers robbing children of educational opportunities that might be more in line with their interests and skills but are not one of the narrow constructs assess by the Test.
First, as Mr. Reynolds pointed out, these tests do not provide educators with information on progress. They are a snapshot of a student’s proficiency at a specific point in time.
Second, Teachers and districts have available many, many less obtrusive and more effective measures of student proficiency and progress than the SBAC or the PARCC.
Third, the real purpose of these tests is to generate data for cross district, cross-school, cross-state comparison. This is an invalid use of the test. The tests are designed to measure the proficiency of a student a given point of time. Using for a purpose other than that warps the utility of the test. Because it becomes a measure of teacher, school, district, and state educational system effectiveness, perversions are introduced, such as test preparation, which now goes on at nearly every district in every state that has adopted the test. The more test preparation, the higher the test scores. So the measure becomes a measure of the effectiveness of schools, districts, teachers, and states at implementing preparation.
Fourth, given point above, the perversions lead to further divisions in the inequalities of the educational system. Students with parents who can afford test preparation materials are likely to do better than students who don’t. Because standardized test score correlate with SES, poorer schools will likely be forced to implement more test preparation, devote more time to it, taking away more opportunities to engage in learning according interests and talents. There are a great many jobs available for talented artists but there is no national assessment to see how we as a nation are developing our artistic talent. I honestly believe standardized testing is part of the New Jim Crow described by Michelle Alexander.
I hope others can see through the false propaganda that is being pumped out by the test publishers and all the “educators,” many of who are paid consultants of the publishers. Money is flowing and that usually does not make for good policy.