PARCC Refusals and Doing the Right Thing

Last month, I wrote about some ridiculously punitive actions being taken against students whose parents had refused PARCC and the PARCC practice exercises. You can read about 3rd graders in detention here. As it was last year, as soon as the PARCC testing window began, so did the stories of intimidation by administrators to force students to participate in PARCC. Some examples of last year's craziness can be read here and here.

But what about districts who treat parents and students with just simple, common decency? Fortunately, those stories are out there too. They tend to be quiet. I certainly cannot blame any administrator for not wanting the punitive NJDOE spotlight on them. 

Here are just a few quotes from parents. I am not naming parents, students, or districts on purpose. Thanks to the parents who came forward to share their experiences. I hope their stories serve as examples to follow for the districts who are not treating students and parents like this. 

From Union County:

"I know there are lots of angry posts about treatment by opting out of PARCC, so I'd like to share positive experience... yes I said positive.We have a 4th grader in the XYZ district and we have opted him out of PARCC testing this coming week. We met no resistance from his teacher and none from his principal. In fact, his teacher provided us the following details so that both my son and I could be prepared for the testing week:

1. Exact testing time so that if we wished to bring him to school late we could, but he would be marked tardy for all days late to school (fair enough)

2. Where he would be while testing would be conducted

3. What he would be doing/allowed to do during the testing time: His teacher has gone the extra mile to give him work sheets and assignments on areas that he has needed a refresher on (not busy work) and reading assignments that are aligned with his reading enrichment teacher. In addition he may bring reading material, word searches crossword puzzles etc to do if he has extra time.

4. Pack a snack and a water bottle.

I know this is typically not the norm and I feel that this organization is more on the part of the individual teacher rather than the school administrators, but I appreciate the fact that we were met with zero resistance and so far no unpleasantries from the start of the opt-out process to present. Maybe it's because we discussed this with his teacher first, expressing our concerns about PARCC, then sent an email to both his teacher and principal, and finally the formal written letter as requested by the school.Thank you for letting me share our experience so far..."

From Essex County:

"There are other districts with humane and respectable practices. I live in one. It's important to note that it can be done if the administration is competent, courageous and ethical."

From Somerset County: 

"I have a positive experience with teachers, and administration in XYZ district. I sent written request.. it was approved n teacher told me that the school is having a separate room for opt-outs! Superintendent office tried to non-pushy to tell me why I should opt-in but I said no thanks n they said ok."

From Morris County:

"Positive experience in XYZ district. Even skipped most of the school form they provided (you're supposed to initial next to various statements (I understand and agree that Parcc is not a high stakes test, etc). Last year I attached a second file explaining why I wouldn't initial them. This year I just left blank and waited to see if they pushed back. Received a confirmation email from our elementary principal for our 3rd grader, and a phone call and email from the Asst Super for our 6th grader. I do think the call was in part to feel me out on how confident I was about refusing (just a hunch), but when she said 'I'm calling in regards to your refusal for Parcc for student name removed', I said 'Okay great, thanks' and then she stumbled over some words and said she was calling just to confirm."

From Cape May County:

"Positive experience here as well, in Cape May County. This marks the 3rd year for refusing PARCC (8th, 9th, and 10th grades; both intermediate and high school) and I've had nothing but pleasant experiences. This year, I was actually notified that I could bring my son into school after testing was complete for the day. I enjoyed spending the extra time with him, and driving him into school, for once. 

Everything has always been kept hush-hush in our particular school district and I believe it's because they realize the more resistance the school creates, the more students that figure out you can actually refuse PARCC. Unfortunately, the parents in our district aren't well informed, or simply don't care. I'm not sure which, probably a bit of both? But, each year, my son usually 'spills the beans' and has a couple groups of friends asking me how to refuse PARCC. 

I just simply direct their parents to the SOS, NJ, website to find the pre formatted refusal letter." 

The link to the Save Our Schools NJ (SOSNJ) information about refusing PARCC can be found here. In 2015, 233 districts were handling refusals without incident. SOSNJ created a list which can be found on their Facebook page here. Delran and Bloomfield Boards of Education were early leaders on this.

Our kids deserve more like this. 

If you have a positive story to share, please post in the comments. 

To: NJ State BOE: I Can't Believe We Still Have to Protest This Crap

Tomorrow, the New Jersey State of Education is taking its last public testimony on the use of PARCC as the graduation requirement. It took a long time to decide what to write about. What more can possibly be said that has not already been said by me and many, many others? A friend joked that he would simply state, "Please refer to my previous few testimonies" and then icily stare them down for the rest of the allotted speaking time. I was thinking along those lines, but this came out instead. 

1 June 2016New Jersey State Board of Education 
Testimony on PARCC for graduation requirement: I can’t believe we still have to protest this crap.

The title of this testimony is not meant to be disrespectful to this Board, merely a demonstration of my frustration with having to continually appear before this Board and provide testimony that will only fall on deaf ears. Whether that testimony is heartfelt, stemming from personal experiences that none of you currently sitting on this Board would have any first-hand knowledge of, because (1) you don’t have children in public school, and/or (2) you aren’t the parent of a student with a disability. There is barely a hint of recognition on your part that you are missing a great deal by not listening to and engaging with the actual stakeholders in this mess, namely, parents and their children. 

It also hasn’t mattered when testimony has been presented with hard facts and figures. Unbelievably, there appears to be no curiosity at all about why there is so much pushback on Common Core and PARCC testing. This isn’t just some little hiccup. This is a monumental policy failure that will impact schools, teachers, and students, actual people, for a very long time. Your response? Do more of the same. It is remarkably lazy policy.

So here it is. PARCC is a failure. All of that time and money for a failure. Last October, Mathematica released the results of a study comparing PARCC to MCAS, the Massachusetts state standardized test, and their predictive validity for college and career readiness. This is highly relevant since you are about to make PARCC the gatekeeper for a high school diploma in this state. The education policy that you endorse is only about that insipidly narrow focus on the yet undefined term “college and career ready” as determined by a score on PARCC.

The Mathematica study looked at Grade 10 Math II, Algebra II, and ELA. (Let me remind you here, that Drs. Tienken, Kim, and Sforza took a look at that grade in a study and found the Common Core Standards to be well below the former NJ standards. See my testimony from 10 February 2016. note: I wrote about it here.) The result, from “key findings” on page ix of the report, “Both the MCAS and PARCC predict college readiness. Scores on the assessments explain about 5 to 18 percent of the variation in first-year college grades…” What does this mean exactly? It means that 82 to 95 percent CANNOT be explained by the results of the PARCC test. So how can that possibly, validly, predict “college and career readiness”???  Answer: It can’t. It doesn’t. 

Dr. William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the state of New Jersey, Director of its Educational Assessment program, a design consultant for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and for six states, had this to say about the Mathematica report in a Washington Post article on 27 May 2016, “A tour through the literature shows that predictive validity coefficients are quite low in general and commonly run in the 0.30’s. One conclusion is that the PARCC is just about as good as any other test — which is the report’s finding in regard to the MCAS. On the contrary, the more correct conclusion is that standardized tests can predict scores on other standardized tests (which this report confirms) but it cannot validly predict college readiness at any meaningful level.” 

He also said, “With such low predictability, you have huge numbers of false positives and false negatives. When connected to consequences, these misses have a human price. This goes further than being a validity question. It misleads young adults, wastes resources and misjudges schools.  It’s not just a technical issue, it is a moral question. Until proven to be valid for the intended purpose, using these tests in a high stakes context should not be done.”

The response to Dr. Mathis, from the creators of the Mathematica study, “Mr. Mathis is also correct that the correlations are low enough that many students (and parents, and colleges) would overestimate or underestimate their true college readiness—if they relied only on the test score to make the judgment. Fortunately, students have lots of other information available to inform their judgments alongside the test scores (most importantly, their high school grades). We wouldn’t recommend that anyone rely exclusively on the test score for high-stakes decisions.”

So, why would this Board consider, even for minute, further wasting time and tax-payer money on PARCC? Let alone use such a faulty measure as an obstacle for the students in this state? It is your obligation to the public to not allow PARCC to be used as a graduation requirement. 

Thanks, Mike Simpson, for the picture.

New Jersey Admins Have Lost It - Updated!

I've been watching in horror as the PARCC testing "season" began in New Jersey last week. I am unabashedly in the Opt Out corner. Oh, sorry, forgot, this is New Jersey, where we play word games. "Refuse" was the word of choice last year, as opting out is not "allowed." This year "refusing" is getting kicked back to parents too. NJDOE has been in full spin mode for several months and we know the districts with the highest refusals rates from last year have caught an earful. 

First, though, let's be crystal clear about something. When a parent opts out /refuses /insert your choice of it's-never-going-to-happen here, they are NOT asking for anyone's permission. They are very simply informing you of what they are choosing for their child. You are expected to respect that decision. End of story.

Parents aren't opting out because the test is hard. Amazingly, that insipid thought is still floating around and a "news" source published it (I refuse to link to the NYPost. Go Google that hot mess of "journalism" if you must.). They. We. I. Am doing it because public education has become a marketplace for the next best shiny, never-been-tested, device, curriculum, test, insert latest crap your local board of ed got suckered into buying...Chromebooks anyone? None of which has anything to do with educating our children. 

Leading up to the testing window, there were stories of stupid stuff...reward parties, bids for prom, getting out of taking the English final exam, the cheer on PARCC videos...demonstrating the level of desperate these people have sunk. 

Once the testing started, truly awful stories started pouring in, and continue to this week, about how districts were handling students whose parents refused PARCC. You really have to wonder what is going on inside the heads of these teachers, principals, superintendents, and county superintendents. 

I wonder if they have thought about the real damage done to the trust that any really good school must have with its students and parents. Listen carefully, hurting children is not going to get you that trust. You're going to lose it immediately, and there will be nothing you can do to get it back. 

The first completely crazy story came from a mom whose elementary school-aged children were made to sit in the main office during testing, along with a few other students. She kept her kids home during the scheduled morning testing window. Unfortunately, there were "unforeseen" technical issues (gee, shocking) and so the school administered the test later in the day.

For 130 minutes..."they were NOT allowed to read a book under any circumstances because they would "disturb other people if they read a book". They were also NOT allowed to lean back in their chairs- they could only sit straight up and not move at all for two hours! My son's back was sore after this cruel and unnecessary punishment! Additionally, they were only allowed to look ahead, they could not turn their heads to the left or to the right, because this is what elementary school children are supposed to do: sit straight up and not move a muscle or make a sound for two hours, just like little soldiers! My daughter "got in trouble" for attempting to tie her hair back in a pony tail! Another kid was yelled at for looking at a monitor screen (the ones showing the visitors by the front entrance). My kids were so traumatized by this experience, I feel like crying right now! I just got finished writing and sending an email to our superintendent describing today's events and asking why our children were treated in such an unnecessarily cruel way, as if they were criminal offenders, just because my husband and I chose to exercise our parental rights to refuse a test for them we believe is fundamentally wrong!"

She and another mom met with the superintendent the next morning. He was clearly prepared and had contacted his county superintendent seeking support for his poor judgment. He did not think the way the children were treated was wrong. He told the moms the children "were not his problem" since they weren't testing. And, declared that next year he would not accept any refusals at all (good luck with that). 

By the end of the discussion, he did apologize and promised that his staff would have clearer instructions on how to handle the children. Not much of an apology. Leaves me wondering what kind of place this is if staff at an elementary school don't know how to act in a humane way towards children.

I also wonder if this superintendent knows those children can't sleep at night. Are now afraid to go to school. I wonder if he realized one of those other students made to sit there for two hours is a special ed student with an IEP. And that particular student missed their speech lesson while sitting in the office, not being allowed to move or speak. 

In another district, a special ed student with anxiety was made to take the test even after the parent had refused. The school pulled the student aside and told her if she refused to take the test, she would have lunch detention, and if she stayed home during testing, she wouldn't move up to the next grade. Under duress, of course, she took the damned test. 

When the mom asked why her refusal was ignored, she was told that because "testing skills" is in her child's IEP, so she had to take PARCC. (I call bullshit.)

Let's just process that for a sec. A parent refuses. The admin decides that some obscure reference to "testing skills" (whatever that is) in an IEP is reason to go against the specific wishes of a parent. And, they did that while bullying a student with a disability and anxiety. Seriously? Have you no shame? 

Did it ever occur to you to fight back? Parents, I promise, would have backed you up! 

Why is this happening? Well, NJDOE and our State Board of Ed are incapable of admitting a mistake and have twisted themselves into knots in order to sell Common Core State Standards and the aligned test, PARCC. They in turn have clearly put the screws to the districts.

Our legislature (really, the NJ Senate Education Committee) utterly failed us last year by not putting the bill in front of the governor that would have protected our children from this nonsense.

This whole mess is an abject failure in leadership. Time to clean house. 


Edited to add: A little while ago, a mom got in touch with me about her 9th grade son's experience. Mom had turned in her refusal to the district superintendent two weeks before PARCC began. It was acknowledged and her son was told to bring a book, he would be sitting in the testing room, but would be allowed to read. 

Day one came along, "he came prepared to do so Monday morning, only to find the admin plop a chrome book down in front of him. He said "I'm not supposed to take the test, My mom sent in a refusal letter" and the teacher completely ignored him. He raised his hand and said it again, this time to have a proctor say "that's not how it works." At that point he was feeling totally defeated and intimidated, so he went ahead and took the test. He was so upset when he got home. He said he was actually afraid to say or do anything further for fear of getting in trouble. Frankly, 2 days later I'm still speechless."

19 April 2016 Edited to add: The crazy continues. This time a student getting detention for attending her regularly scheduled classes. From the mom:

We had refused PARCC and received a letter from her principal, XXX, confirming her refusal. On March 23, 2016 a letter posted to the school website stating "Our test schedule has been designed to minimize disruption to the normal school day. Students in these classes have been assigned to a testing cohort and room and will be required to remain with their cohort through the conclusion of each test session. Students not enrolled in these classes will attend full school days throughout the testing window."

PARCC testing began yesterday. She attended all her regularly scheduled classes without a problem. TODAY, during Math class, they were doing a review of the benchmark assessment test when one of the teachers, XXX, pulled my daughter out of class and told her she needed to go sit in the library instead.

My daughter said didn't understand why she has to go to the library. Ms. XXX called the principal, XXX, down to the library and he told my daughter that she was supposed to be in the library because she refused the PARCC. He said she shouldn't have gone to her regular class and it was considered 'cutting class'. Therefore, he is sending a note home to me explaining that she has a 3 day after school detention she needs to complete as disciplinary action. (emphasis mine)

I find it ironic that all of this happened on the tails of me receiving a letter of accolades (along with a voucher for a free ice cream at Applebees) for my daughter on making the Honor Roll.

Way to go WMC for building her up before you tear her down.(insert sarcastic tone here...)....ummmm....sooooo...tell me again about your Harassment/ Intimidation/ Bullying policy XXX High School?I've left a voicemail for XXX informing him that I will be in first thing tomorrow morning to discuss this. ‪#‎ToBeContinued...

In a district where a personal friend's daughter attends, a teacher decided to call out every student in her (honors) math class who is refusing PARCC. She told them if the still refused come the first day of testing, they would be made to sit and stare at a wall. She further belittled their parents' choice by snidely remarking "good luck" in attending college if they didn't take the test. And, a final remark about how students in another class aren't as smart as they are and she expected them not to take the test. 

Needless to say, my friend is really angry about that exchange with her daughter and her classmates. The trust I mentioned above is now gone. Initially, her daughter didn't want my friend intervening and asked to take the test. My friend, bless her, spoke with her daughter about doing the right thing, about not acquiescing to bullies. Upon reflection, and armed with accurate information about the test, her daughter is very angry too. Good luck to that teacher getting her trust back. 

I'll close out this post with an example of how districts should be handling opt outs/refusals. When a parent sends in a note informing the school administrator their child will not be taking PARCC, the response should be, thank you for letting us know your decision. We will provide an alternate setting and allow your child to work on homework or read a book. If you should decide to bring your child in late/after testing is done for the day, they will not be marked absent or late. That's it. It's really simple.

Here's an example of how that worked in one district:

Wanted to share my experience from today. We have moved to a new school in a whole new district just recently and learned that the Refusal movement didn't take off in our new school. I found out after asking around that not a single student in this school refuses testing. I mentioned twice to the teachers and very little response just "okay". My daughter has mentioned to the teacher that she doesn't participate in PARCC testing during practice tests and it was met with "okay". After all of that I was a bit nervous of how they would handle it considering that she would be the only student refusing but after going to the school in the morning and a brief talk with the principal he said no problem just email me your letter and [my child] will be able to spend testing time in the Library. I asked if I should send the email elsewhere too and he said no just him and he would take care of it. As nervous as I was about how this would unfold I must say her principal handled it so well and did not make her feel any bit uncomfortable or like the "bad kid" that we had dealt with in our previous school.
I am very pleased this year how this has turned out so far.

Last year, NJ Senator Ruiz decided to only pass a resolution (SR137) against bad behavior by districts, but it was very clear: 

The Commissioner of Education is urged to develop guidelines by September 1, 2015 that identify a range of appropriate policies  that may be adopted by a school district when considering how students not participating in the Statewide assessment will be supervised and what, if any, alternate arrangements will be provided to them during the test administration. The guidelines should prohibit a school district from taking punitive action against a student including, but not limited to, the adoption of a sit and stare policy in response to the student’s refusal to participate in the Statewide assessment. (emphasis mine)  The guidelines should also address how and when the district’s policy will be communicated to parents, students, and school district staff.

Clearly, the resolution wasn't enough. 

Julie Goes to Washington Part 2

Otherwise known as, It Was Supposed To Be Testimony on ESSA, But Really Was Testimony To The Influence of Gates Money. How's that for a title? Perhaps it's a bit wordy. However, it is how it felt walking into that conference room at USDOE on January 11th. If you missed watching the testimony on their livestream, I've posted a link to the day's testimony at the bottom of this post.

The synopsis of most of the testimony was, not surprisingly, test so there is equity, test so students with disabilities and English language learners have their civil rights upheld, test because we need accountability and without testing we won't have accountability, test so we have more data, test so we know which teachers suck, and when all else fails, what the heck, just test some more.

That's your plan? Testing, pseudo-accountability, and test some more? Could anything possibly be lazier? 

I'm going to piss off a few people by what I say next, but here's the deal, standardized tests are not going close educational gaps. It's not a civil right to be tested. If anything, it is a violation of your child's rights to be subjected to these tests especially if they are a student with a disability or/and English language learner. Tests that have not be validated, that are developmentally inappropriate, that serve no purpose other than to rank and sort them, their teachers, and their schools, are certainly not an example of a civil right. It’s more like a violation of FAPE.

It was appalling to listen to the policy directors from The Leadership Conference, La Raza, and MALDEF talk about testing, data, more testing, accountability by using the data collected from the tests. That's the best you can do for your constituents? It is LAZY.

It makes no sense until you look at who contributes money to them. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars donated to them from The Gates Foundation to specifically push Common Core State Standards and the accompanying tests. I understand they need the money for all the really good work they do for the communities they serve. To say the least, it’s a shame their education policy flies in the face of all that other work.

When it comes to the National Urban League and Business Roundtable, I expect to see the business push. I expect them to be inappropriately forceful about testing and accountability because they very wrongly think they should have a say in P-12 education. Unsurprisingly, National Urban League has taken about $6.5 million from Gates to push their education policy agenda.

Are you seeing the pattern here? Lots and lots of money in exchange for influencing education policy at the highest level. They could have swapped their testimony it was that close in language and nature.

The majority of testimony ignored the very people these educational policies will influence – the children. It was shocking to listen a policy maker from the National Association of Charter Authorizers glibly tell all of us that if a charter school is failing to just close it. That’s it. Don’t have the charter participate in whatever the state’s version of a turnaround program is. Just close the school. I have no particular love of charters, but that statement lacked any recognition of the harm it would bring to the children in that school. This was about a business transaction, not about education, and certainly not about the negative impact of “just close the school”.

So where were the representative voices for the students? The parents? The teachers in the classrooms? Three teacher and two parents are certainly not enough. However, as far as I could tell, we were the only ones not being paid to be there.

When asked what I’d like to see in education policy, I say this, I want policy that is not LAZY. What we have had for 15 years is lazy. Shaping 13 years of a child’s education around standardized tests is lazy. I want to see joy in learning. I want students to be the center of education policy. I want teachers leading the way – they are after all, the people who are the experts. I want to see programs that look like the NY Performance Standards Consortium. I want students to be engaged, love to learn, love to share and demonstrate what they’ve learned. I want existing laws pertaining to special education to be enforced. I want school environments to be inclusive, to the largest extent possible, for all students. I don't think I'm asking for too much.  

  

See the full day's testimony here. Me at 55:00, Jamy Brice Hyde 1:16:23, Marla Kilfoyle 3:20:18, Melissa Tomlinson 4:55:32

A Good Education Day in New Jersey

It's really great to have something good to write about. Today there are three! Quick. Go but a lottery ticket! 

This morning, Chris Tienken tweeted out a teaser for a report on Common Core Complexity, which will be released in January. The gist of it is this:

"[Webb's] Level 1 and 2 Depth of Knowledge complexity accounted for 72% of the high school English language arts Common Core State Standards. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of the 9-12 CCSS English language arts standards were rated at Level 1. Almost 3/4 of the high school English language arts standards do not require creative or strategic thinking as currently written." 

Pretty damning when Common Core cheerleaders have been selling it as the best thing to happen in public education in, well, forever. Seems that may have a been a bit of a stretch. Anyone surprised? Thought not.

With the NJ Assembly elected and back to business, the governor had to follow suit. Today, Governor Christie signed into law two bills a lot of us have been working very hard to get on the books. S2766/A3079, which limits standardized testing in grades K-2 to diagnostic purposes only. No high-stakes standardized testing for our youngest students. And, S2881/A4485, which prohibits the NJ Department of Education from withholding state aid from school districts for having high opt out/refusal rates. 

Since it seems that New Jersey refusal numbers are around 125,000, that law will come in handy. 

No more excuses, New Jersey. Opt Out! 

New Jersey PARCC Scores *yawn*

From the Dyin-From-Not-Surprise Column, the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) announced today that the majority of students who took the PARCC exam failed. If you're like me and you've been following/studying/banging your head against the wall while this crap unfolded over the last several years, you're not fazed. Here's why. 

We have watched New York go through this already. My New York friends have been warning me to "brace" myself. I'm braced. The scores look as expected. This is a multi-million dollar yawn. 

The spin will be that it was really good first try. We have a new benchmark (Really? You are setting a benchmark using a test that hasn't been validated? Explain how that works exactly...). Our kids can do better. The teachers suck, but Pearson is going to sell you a few more millions of dollars worth of test prep, teacher prep, and prep for the prep. And, if that doesn't work, well, the children clearly have issues with lack of grit and we can test for that too. 

The sections in the NJDOE explainer (page 7), comparing scores to NAEP and SAT are really interesting. They forgot to tell the average reader that "proficient" in NAEP-speak represents a very high level of achievement. They also forgot to mention that SAT, beginning with last week's in-school data-mining project delivery of PSAT, is now aligned to Common Core, like PARCC. So, very nice of them to explain SAT, but going forward, for students who are a junior or lower, this does not apply. They have no idea what PARCC scores will look like compared to SAT. 

Note to parents of juniors: Brace yourselves.

And, I can't let this go. What the heck is up with NJDOE making this announcement to only invited guests on the front lawn of New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Company? And why did the list include (frankly, continues to include) the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the New Jersey Business & Industry Association? Those two, even more than the Gates and Prudential money taking PTA, really bothers me. They clearly have a fair amount of influence over NJDOE and our legislators. Why aren't parents and students afforded that kind of access? 

So, practically speaking, what does this all mean? Standardized tests don't teach. As parents, we need to speak up. Our children deserve so much better than this. Oh, and Opt Out of the tests. 

I'll leave you with a nod to Chris Tienken:

Standardized Tests and Students With Disabilities

This is a touchy subject. Civil rights and disability rights groups would have us all believe that by not having our kids tested, their rights would be violated. I understand the history. I get it. As a parent, I’m telling you it’s wrong. That thinking, as well meaning as it may have been at the beginning of No Child Left Behind (I'm being generous), is simply wrong.

For many with IEPs, who are not educationally at/near grade level, standardized tests are completely inappropriate. The scores do not reflect what a student has learned, nor do they demonstrate actual growth and achievement during any given year. And, really, when you get right down to it, the Federal cap of 1% being allowed to be eligible for alternate assessment completely contradicts the purpose of an Individual Education Plan. Here's why...

Standardized tests do not provide meaningful feedback. A designation of "not proficient at grade level" tells the parents and teachers nothing about the student they don't already know. Maybe more basic than this, why would you give a test on something the student hasn't learned?

Since no one gets to see the questions or answers on these standardized tests, how can anyone (not just special ed) determine any specific strengths or weaknesses? The answer, of course, is they can’t.

Accommodations tend to be more time, separate testing environment from general ed classmates, and frequent breaks – none are actually helpful if the student is not working at grade level.

Accommodations, like reading passages to the student, may be moderately helpful, BUT, then it may mask reading level issues – we experienced this problem with 7th grade NJASK. Oh, look! Her ELA score is so much higher than last year! (Nevermind, it still wasn’t “proficient.”) Funny thing about that -- it wasn’t that she couldn’t comprehend, it’s that she couldn’t really read.

We know these scores, regardless of arguable validity, are used to withhold services. A student does moderately well, but maybe not quite "proficient," or has an unexplained jump in scores from one year to next (see above) and that not-quite-proficient score is used as an excuse to deny evaluation for classification, or to directly deny a requested service (like reading – Orton Gillingham, Wilson, etc.), because that score was "good enough."

For the parent who is looking for an evaluation, the story goes like this. They ask for a meeting. The child study team brings out the test score and tells the parents, "Look how close he is to proficient! Johnny doesn't need an evaluation. He's doing so well, he's so happy, and gosh, he just has the nicest smile. We'll give him Basic Skills Instruction (BSI)." The parents, completely not savvy, think "Oh, ok. Johnny will be getting help. Thank goodness they want to help."

What's so insidious about that scenario is the student doesn't get a proper evaluation. The standardized test score doesn't actually tell anyone anything useful. And, BSI is a general education placement, not special education. We know that teaching to the test in that smaller environment does work to raise test scores. My sparkly district has been spending at twice the rate of our neighbors doing exactly that for years. The student does not get what they actually need and somewhere down the line, the parents figure it out, are mad as hell, and they finally (hopefully) get the evaluation they should have gotten to begin with.

How do we fix this? Because, I can't stress enough that assessment in general is not the issue. Of course, we need to know how our kids are doing. Standardized tests, like PARCC and SBAC, aren’t going to inform us of what we need to know. Personally, I prefer the use of portfolios. I would much rather have my daughter’s progress monitored by her teachers throughout the school year – using both the teachers’ own assessments and projects. I would rather she demonstrate what she CAN DO, rather than just failing a test that is inappropriate for her to begin with. Why is this such a difficult concept?

This isn’t rocket science. Really.