Back in November, I wrote about the inflammatory and propagandistic language that Oregon Department of Education had included in their creation of the form intended to a uniform process across the state for parents wishing to opt their children out of state testing. Parents across the state reacted with anger and promises to rebel against signing a form that included, in particular, the statement, "I understand that by signing this form I may lose valuable information about how well my child is progressing in English Language Arts and Math. In addition, opting out may impact my school and district’s efforts to equitably distribute resources and support student learning," in bold letters directly above the signature line. Parents need worry no more about signing this disagreeable statement. 

Earlier this week, a Troutdale parent who objected to signing the form sent an inquiry to the Oregon Department of Education's Interim Director of Assessment Holly Carter objecting to the language  and asking if instead of signing it, she could submit an opt out letter. She was told that she would need to use the state's form. She communicated this to another parent, who communicated it to Eugene parent  Jerry Rosiek. (Yes, that's right: parents are sharing information. They are angry and they are organizing.) Below is Mr. Rosiek's letter to Ms. Carter.   

Ms. Carter,

Jerry Rosiek here.  I am the parent of a 4th grader in an Oregon public school, the founder of Eugene Parents Concerned about High Stakes Testing, and a professor of education at the University of Oregon.  

(An) email exchange (between ODE and a Troutdale parent) has been forwarded widely among those of us considering opting our children out of the SBAC tests this year.  I read it with interest and have some questions.

The official state form includes the statement “I understand that by signing this form I may lose valuable information about how well my child is progressing in English Language Arts and Math. In addition, opting out may impact my school and district’s efforts to equitably distribute resources and support student learning.”  I consider these statements to be false.  They are empirically false—in that these consequences have never followed parent voluntary withdrawal from the testing process anywhere in the nation.  They are in principle false, given that the reauthorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act removes federal penalties for low participation rates in these tests.   

Are you saying that I am required to sign a form saying I accept as true what I believe to be false statements before I can opt my daughter out of the SBAC tests?

Are you saying that if I complete the form, with the offending statement redacted, you will not honor my wishes?  Does this mean you will instruct superintendents, principles, and teachers to force my daughter to take the test over my express objections?

I respectfully request a simple yes or no to each of those questions.

Jerry Rosiek

The following reply was received in return:

From: CARTER Holly [mailto:holly.carter@state.or.us] 
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2016 8:26 AM
To: Jerry Lee Rosiek 
Subject: RE: ode opt out questions--web page link not working as well

 Dear Mr. Rosiek,

Thank you for your inquiry. To clarify, if you wish to opt your child (sic) from participating in the statewide math or English language arts tests, you will need to sign and submit the ODE-developed opt-out form to your child’s school. If you feel you must redact language on the form at the time of signature, the school will still honor the form, but the form is needed.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance. Regards,

​Holly Carter 
Interim Director of Assessment
Office of Learning | Inst., Stand., Asmt, &Acc. Unit | Oregon Department of Education
Phone: 503.947.5739 | Fax: 503.378.5156 | *holly.carter@state.or.us


So get out your pens, redact away, and opt out. 

The US Department of Education is currently in the process of setting the regulations that states must follow with the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). They are accepting public comment here. I hope everyone who cares about what our schools will look like for the next decade will take the time to comment. Here are the comments I submitted today.
​

I have been a teacher since 1987, working primarily in settings that serve English Learners, and have witnessed the damage done by NCLB and Race to the Top over the past decade and a half. As you write the regulations for the new ESSA for states to follow, I ask you to avoid repeating those past mistakes by not over reaching again with federal power into what should be the purview of the states. Local families, educators and community members must have input into and control over what happens in the schools that are funded by their taxes if any educational reform efforts are to work in our democratic society. It is particularly important to have educator voice at all levels of policy discussion, as teachers and principals who are actually on the ground implementing policy will have great insight into what some of the unintended consequences of such policy might be that may not be evident to those who have not been inside a public school other than as a student or visitor in many years, or perhaps ever. Top down mandates have not worked for the past 15 years and they will not work in the future. The law allows for over a year for states to develop a plan for what works best for their children in their local area. The federal government should not do anything to try to either rush nor impede that process. 

I also urge you to honor the diversity of our student population and to respect other laws that were hard fought for and won when setting regulations. IDEA is an example of such a law. It protects the rights of children with disabilities to a free and APPROPRIATE education. An appropriate education may look different for many children with disabilities in the ways that goals are set and in how instruction is delivered and progress assessed. Our students who are on Individual Education Plans have a right to have those plans, which are determined with the collaboration of teachers and parents who know the children best, kept as a focus of their instruction. 

Our students who are English Learners and Emergent Bilinguals must be allowed the time they need to develop their new English language as well as their native languages fully without pushing for acquisition of English at a speed that is developmentally unreasonable for the vast majority of these students or devalues or denies their opportunity to maintain and improve their native languages. Just as we cannot push a child to learn to walk or talk before the child is ready, we cannot force quicker English acquisition. The average amount of time necessary for a student to acquire academic English has been determined by researchers to be an average 5 to 7 years. That trajectory may be longer when students' native language is being maintained and improved as well. I also urge you not to inappropriately require English Learners to be rated on their academic attainment by assessments given to them in English until they have acquired a level of English proficiency that is comparable to their peers for whom English is a native language. Assessing students in that way violates their civil rights, as does denying them access to some programs unless and until they reach a certain level of English proficiency. 

Finally, I urge you to recognize the shared responsibility that we all have for educating our children. We must assure that all children have equitable inputs before insisting on equal outcomes. Accountability cannot rest with teachers and schools alone. We must all work to ensure that children's basic needs are met so they can learn. 

Insisting that all children must be at the same place at the same time has been very damaging to individual students. It has labeled them failures before they have had time to show what they can ultimately achieve. Clearly we want all our children to be successful, but we must allow for student and family voice regarding what "successful" means and how students move along their different paths to reaching their own individual goals. The ultimate consumers of public education are parents and children. They are not, as some have asserted recently, corporate interests. Thomas Jefferson said, "Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." Jefferson did not speak of the need to provide workers for industry but of liberty and a watchful, diligent citizenry in virtually every quote we find from him regarding his advocacy for public education. We must not reduce our public education system to a mere lapdog taking orders from multinational corporations regarding training their future workforce. Our children deserve better. They deserve an education that will allow them to not merely try to regurgitate the one "correct" answer but rather to create their own questions and answers regarding the many issues they will face after all of us who make these decisions today are long gone.

Today I am posting the full text of a letter written by Lake Oswego High School Social Studies teacher Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. A shortened version of Ms. Wolfe-Rocca's letter was published in the Lake Oswego Review earlier this week. The letter was shortened due to publishing constraints of the Review. I felt that the entire letter should be published somewhere, as it does a marvelous job of expressing many of the points that teachers have been trying to make about the inefficiency, cost effectiveness, and usefulness of SBAC. 

Unfortunately, it seems that Lake Oswego School District is echoing the talking points put forward by our state and federal governments in order to maintain the status quo, which should by now be painfully obvious to all, is part of a corporate agenda that has nothing to do with what is good for children. Thanks to Ms. Rocca-Wolfe for trying to keep the community informed by responding to the propaganda. 

In the December 11th issue of Lake Oswego School District newsletter, The Current, the District delivered what it called “background information on the Smarter Balanced state assessments, which students took last spring for the first time.”  I have taught in the District for 15 years.  As both a teacher and a parent with a child in public school, I have been grappling with the meaning and value of this new battery of tests.  In reading the District’s missive, I was disconcerted to find not the “information” that it promised, but a hard sell of the assessments.  This sales pitch left out important concerns that many teachers, parents and community members share about the tests.  Indeed, it was just these concerns that led to the drafting and passage of House Bill 2655 this year, which requires school districts in the State of Oregon to provide parents information about the tests as well as of their right to opt out.  Since I believe the District’s “informational” letter has obscured more than it clarifies, I have taken the liberty of offering some responses, from a teacher’s perspective, to the District’s assertions.  

• The Smarter Balanced assessments are aligned to the Common Core State Standards, which were adopted by the Oregon State Board of Education in 2010. Lake Oswego School District curriculum, which is developed by district staff and approved by the Lake Oswego School Board, is also aligned to the Common Core State Standards.

These tests are part of what has become a dangerous move toward privatization in education.  Taxpayer dollars are being sucked out of the public sector to fund millions of dollars of contracts with testing companies and their subcontractors to find our what TEACHERS can already tell administrators and parents more precisely and effectively than a raw score. Yet more money is spent to pay for the scoring of the non-multiple choice parts of the test, which is being done for hourly pay by workers of dubious qualifications, a practice that raises serious questions about the validity of student scores and undermines the status of TEACHERS as the best equipped and trained to evaluate student work.  

• Unlike earlier state assessments, the Smarter Balanced assessments go beyond multiple-choice questions and include different types of questions that allow students to construct their own answers, better demonstrating their communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills.

These tests are decontextualized and, therefore, inauthentic. Real learning happens when we are curious, motivated, inspired or confused; in other words, learning happens when we have a good reason to inquire, investigate and problem solve.  If we are lauding this test for its beyond-multiple-choice questions, you know who else creates assessments that “go beyond multiple choice questions and include different types of questions that allow students to construct their own answers, better demonstrating their communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills”?  TEACHERS.  Every single day.  


There is already plenty of assessment happening in the classrooms, labs, auditoriums, studios and choir rooms of Lake Oswego schools. We TEACHERS have a wealth of information about our students. We know our students.  We know their strengths. We know their weaknesses. And since we are humans, we can deal in nuance. 


For example, a teacher can tell a parent: “Jill is always right on point in class discussions, but seems to lose her train of thought when she begins to write.” A teacher can tell a parent, “Jorge has an awesome command of addition when he uses manipulatives, but when he reads the abstract problem on a worksheet, he returns to guessing.” Why are these teacher- and classroom-based assessments superior to a standardized test like Smarter Balanced? On a standardized test, Jill would have failed to meet writing standards and Jorge would have failed to meet math standards. But a human teacher can recognize strengths, not just weaknesses, and can use those strengths to build a possible next step toward student learning growth. For Jill the teacher can have a classmate take notes on the board during class discussions, keeping an outline of class members’ points, so that when Jill begins to write she can refer back to her comments from the discussion.  Jorge can be taught and encouraged to draw or make his own manipulatives on scratch paper so he can “see” the numbers.  The point?  Human TEACHERS can assess and address human learners more precisely and effectively than any standardized test. 

• The purpose of the Smarter Balanced state assessments is to show individual student growth over time and to provide student-specific data that teachers can use to ensure each and every child is on track to reach goals for college and career readiness.

This statement assumes the validity of the test as a measure of college and career readiness.  I would love to see evidence that this test has been held to scientific scrutiny, say a longitudinal study demonstrating that students who do well on SBAC do better in college and career. I have not seen such a study or any other research that bears out its validity.


Based on my experience with Smarter Balanced so far, I can see each of my students’ scores — this is the extent of the “student-specific data” available.   After a number of years, teachers will be able to see whether students’ scores are rising, falling or plateauing — that is the extent of our access to “individual student growth over time.” But ask if we can see how students scored on individual questions or areas of focus (that is, the information that might actually inform our practice) and the answer is no, we cannot see that information. This test does not provide much information to teachers and the information it does provide is so opaque as to be useless. 


Moreover, the content focus of these tests reflects only a fraction of the subjects we teach.  By using these tests as the primary indicator of “college and career” readiness, our District is sending a message that only math and English matter, undermining the centrality and value of art, music, dance, theatre, athletics, history, foreign languages, and science.

• The data from state assessments is not used to judge students or evaluate teachers. Instead, the data provides important and valid information that benefits students by helping teachers improve individual pathways and target instruction to the needs of students who aren’t on track, as well as those who are ready for more advanced work.

Once again, this presumes, but does not demonstrate, the validity of the test.  Once again, the test cannot help us target instruction because the test results are not broken down by skill or question.  And once again, guess who can identify students who are not on track as well as those ready for more advanced work?  TEACHERS!  In fact, if you were to ask teachers at my school, “What do you most need to help student learning and success?”, we would say, “More support options for struggling students, please.”  We know who our struggling students are; but we do not have adequate resources to help them.  

• When all students in a grade level, program, or school take the assessment, we have better visibility to common areas of strength and weakness. This helps us focus time and resources on best instructional practices at all schools for all students.

It is unclear to me how Smarter Balanced can help us identify “common areas of strength or weakness” when each student is reduced to a score.   These scores may tell us information about subgroups relative to other subgroups, but guess what?  Teachers already know our English Language Learners (for example) need more support; what an inefficient and costly way to gather information. Isn’t it cheaper and more efficient to simply ask TEACHERS?

• The Smarter Balanced assessments use the same testing format as other performance-based assessments, including the PSAT, SAT and ACT. We believe that student familiarity with the Smarter Balanced format from a young age will be advantageous for those college entry exams.

This is not true.  I took the Smarter Balanced practice test and it was not delivered in the same manner as the PSAT or the SAT.  But even if this were true, by this reasoning, the District is proposing this test as practice for other tests.  You know what else prepares kids to do well on exams like the PSAT, SAT and ACT?  TEACHERS!  Class curricula!  What schools do every day by teaching math, science, reading, writing . . .

• When the Smarter Balanced assessments were introduced last year, there was concern that a more challenging test would be too difficult and stressful for students. This did not prove to be the case, as students across the district performed above expectations and well above state averages.

Whether this test is stressful and whether our students perform well on this test should not dictate whether we invest into it our valuable time and resources.  What should dictate the investment of our time and resources is whether it provides a valuable experience for our students and whether it provides valuable information to teachers, students, administrators and parents.  It does not. Additionally, it should be no surprise that our students did well on the tests.  Outcomes on such tests are so strongly correlated with family income and educational attainment of parents that researchers have been able to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the scores of populations of students based on census data alone.  These tests reflect the complex impact of inequality in America, and to celebrate Lake Oswego’s high scores is to, in some fashion, celebrate our own privileged position relative to many other neighborhoods and cities across our state and the nation.  

• On a national level, there has been discussion about the potential disadvantages of excessive “high-stakes” testing. The district recently completed an audit of the time required annually for state and national testing at all levels to ensure that costs do not outweigh benefits, and that tests provide useful information relative to student growth and instruction.

Reviewing this audit is not heartening.  At a minimum, it looks like Lake Oswego High School students are being subjected to 80 hours of out-of-classroom assessments.  One wishes the District’s audit had included some substantive questions for stakeholders.  For students: “Were these tests valuable experiences?  Did you gain insights into yourself as a learner?  Were you provided new information about your own strengths? Weaknesses?”  For parents:  “Did the information you received about your child’s performance on these tests provide you valuable information?  Did you gain new insights into your child’s strengths and weaknesses?  Were your child’s scores the springboard for conversations with your child and your child’s teacher about the learning process and curriculum?”  For teachers: “Have these tests provided you useful information about your students, your teaching practice  or your curriculum?”  Surely the answers to these questions matter as much as, if not more than, the number of hours students are testing; it is a shame these too were not part of the audit.  

A recent Fortune article entitled “How Business Got Schooled in the War Over Common Core Standards” is a revealing look at how big business views children and public education. It begins with a dinner date between Bill Gates and Charles Koch, in which Gates attempts to convince Koch to support his $220 million dollar investment in the Core. After discussing this meeting, the article continues:


“This extraordinary tête-à-tête is just one example of how the war over Common Core has personally engaged—and bedeviled—some of America’s most powerful business leaders. Hugely controversial, it has thrust executives into the uncomfortable intersection of business and politics.

In truth, Common Core might not exist without the corporate community. The nation’s business establishment has been clamoring for more rigorous education standards—ones that would apply across the entire nation—for years. It views them as desperately needed to prepare America’s future workforce and to bolster its global competitiveness. One measure of the deep involvement of corporate leaders: The Common Core standards were drafted by determining the skills that businesses (and colleges) need and then working backward to decide what students should learn.”


This is what many of us have been saying for some time: these standards are backed, and were initiated, by business. They admit as much, finally, in this article. Not mentioned is how a few businesses stand to gain from the sales of curriculum designed to teach to the standards, nor how much the testing industry is making delivering the tests of the standards. But let’s leave that for another time. This article contains even more disturbing ideas about how our children should be used as profit making fodder. Those ideas come from Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil. 
​
Tillerson apparently agrees with Gates and, as the Education Chair of the Business Roundtable, has been supporting and promoting the Common Core. And Tillerson, like Gates, reveals a lot about how he views our children when he speaks. While Gates speaks of education as a process that is easily measured and needs to be standardized like any manufacturing process, Tillerson goes even further and speaks of our children as the product of that process: one to be consumed by Exxon Mobil and the rest of corporate America.

“Tillerson articulates his view in a fashion unlikely to resonate with the average parent. ‘I’m not sure public schools understand that we’re their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer,’ said Tillerson during the panel discussion. ‘What they don’t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation.’

The Exxon CEO didn’t hesitate to extend his analogy. ‘Now is that product in a form that we, the customer, can use it? Or is it defective, and we’re not interested?’ American schools, Tillerson declared, ‘have got to step up the performance level—or they’re basically turning out defective products that have no future. Unfortunately, the defective products are human beings. So it’s really serious. It’s tragic. But that’s where we find ourselves today.’ ”

That’s right. Children, human beings, are “defective products”. According to Tillerson, our job as parents is not to raise healthy, happy people. As teachers, our job is not to assist parents in that endeavor. It is all of our jobs to assure that corporate America has access to non-defective products, ready for their consumption.

Sorry, but this doesn’t inspire belief that they only want what’s best for our “defective products”.  I believe what they want is to have the “defective products” sorted from the “superior products” via a system of scoring children 1 through 4, a scoring system that has been promoted around the country. Check your kid’s SBAC or PARCC scores and see. The thing is, when we sort human beings on any basis, it often looks something like this.  

Below are two letters sent by Oregon State Representative Lew Frederick to Oregon's Deputy Superintendent of Education Salam Noor regarding implementation of HB 2655 which Frederick co-sponsored. The first was sent on October 30, as ODE had released their first draft of the document required by the law to provide uniform information to parents across the state of their right to opt their children out of testing. 

The second letter was sent to Dr. Noor following the Department's revision of the parent information. Having participated in a parent focus group, I can attest to the fact that the objections brought up by Representative Frederick are identical to those brought up by many parents. 

This isn't over. Parent and citizen groups are already planning actions. Stay tuned.