No, Commissioner Elia, We Don't Trust You

NYS Education Commissioner Elia made a concerted effort to "stamp out" the opt-out movement with her "tool kit" to schools, letters to editors of media, and visits to schools statewide.  In spite of her pleas, all indications as of the first day of ELA testing show that parental refusals either stayed the same statewide, or may have even increased overall.  

For a second year, a small group of activists, including myself and four other educators and parents, crowdsourced a fundraiser to pay for a robocall to NYS parents that was sent on April 3. William Cala, former superintendent of Fairport Schools and an education advocate, recorded the calls in English.  Aixa Rodriguez, an educator, recorded the calls in Spanish. 

The robocall group raised $5,000 in a week, from over 200 donations, in order to pay for the calls. This year's call was sent to 234,000 parent households.  The message is clear, nothing has changed in the harm that developmentally inappropriate tests is doing to our children.  

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Commissioner Elia is misguided in asking NYS parents and educators to “trust her.” She is blind to the fact that “education reforms” have been proven a failure, and that parents overwhelmingly say no to high-stakes tests. She is also tone deaf to changes from the Regents, specifically new Chancellor Betty Rosa who said “I would absolutely opt (my children) out of the tests.”

Elia says: “The tests are shorter.” The reality is that students are facing tests that are designed to take nine hours. Students with IEP/504 extended time accommodations may be facing twice that length. In addition, Elia has made the tests “untimed,” meaning that students could potentially test for the entire school day...for six days. These are not substantive changes, and do nothing to protect children from the stress or loss of academic self-confidence.

Elia says: “We have a new test vendor.” But Pearson’s NYS contract remains in full force until June 2016. All questions on this year’s test are Pearson questions, meaning that students can expect the same confusing equally plausible answer choices, the same developmentally inappropriate reading levels (as high as 9th grade on a 3rd grade test), and the same head-scratching stories such as the “sleeveless pineapple.”

Elia says that there are no consequences for teachers or principals but the reality is that test scores are being used to rank schools and push them into receivership, removing local control. The end result of the receivership process for many schools is turnover to a for-profit charter corporation of the resources we have paid for with our tax dollars.

Elia says, “This year’s test was reviewed by 22 NY state educators.” Twenty-two educators from the entire state is a tiny sampling. But more importantly, at least one of the teachers on the panel expressed disappointment. It appears that the selected educators were not allowed to make changes, suggest improvements, or write alternate questions. They were simply asked to rubber stamp the test questions that were already written.

Elia says that tests help teachers plan and are an “essential part of student experience” Teachers are still being forced to focus on test prep while play, art, music, science, social studies, physical education and even recess take a back seat. As for planning, every teacher uses their own assessments for that task. They do not need state test scores that have no validity, are not received for months, and have many questions that teachers never see.

Elia says tests are the only objective measure to compare student progress. A measurement is only as good as the tool being used for the measurement. These tests have been proven to be flawed, hence the results cannot be used objectively for any comparison.

Elia says that the concerns of parents who opted out of the tests last spring have been addressed. But changes are not substantive, and her words are misleading. Trust her? I don’t think so. The reality is that nothing has changed. Opt out is the one message that NY legislators are hearing loud and clear. If we as parents want real change, we need to continue to send that message - and OPT OUT.

Don't You Dare Call This Opt Out Movement a Labor Dispute

A Guest Blog by Lily Alayne Owen

Lately there is constant discussion about the relevance, efficacy, and morality of the NYS tests. I met someone at the gym a few weeks back, who described the children in her 3rd grade class last year, who had vomited, sobbed, and shown obvious signs of distress. I had heard of these things before, when I read similar accounts on the internet. Before meeting this teacher, I had assumed it was all rhetoric, based on a mere handful of kids. When I spoke with her, I realized that this distress is not an isolated incident, but a widely observed phenomena. Children everywhere are seriously struggling with these tests. Children want to please the adults around them, because they generally want to do well on whatever tasks are put in front of them. Children trust parents and teachers to present them with appropriate challenges and they trust us to help them through those challenges. They don’t expect to be tricked, deceived, or abandoned during a difficult time. What must it feel like to a child experiencing these NYS tests?

It seems that those who are in power in NY State feel that our children belong to them, to be used at their discretion. It also seems that these same people, elected officials, have become drunk with their power and have taken from children the basic rights that all humans deserve and which are increasingly even afforded to animals. Children have a RIGHT to be protected from unnecessary suffering and psychological and emotional abuse. Do politicians and education leaders believe that children are not capable of mental anguish? Do they believe that children are not capable of suffering, of emotional distress, of understanding complex situations? Do they think kids can perform as well in a high pressure situation?

Children are capable of seeing and sensing the shades of gray. They have the same emotional attunement that has guaranteed the survival of our species and they know when the adults around them, particularly the adults to whom they have strong bonds, are struggling. This is a relevant component of empathy. Children can sense the seriousness of high stakes tests, even if they don’t know the implications of these tests. No child should feel responsible for any adult, they should not be saddled with the tremendous responsibility of helping to determine which of their beloved teachers get to keep their jobs, and which ones get fired. The burden of that responsibility would be oppressive to most adults, and it is absolutely crippling to the compassionate hearts and delicate minds of children. It is unconscionable for any adult to put this weight on a young child’s shoulders in the name of education.

Knowingly causing another human to suffer is abuse. When a private individual, a parent for example, abuses a child, the state sees fit to remove that child from his parents for protection. What, then, should we parents do when we see that the state is abusing our beloved children? Should we not take the same action and remove the state's access to our children so that the state, too, can be prevented from harming and abusing our youth? This is what the OPT OUT movement is all about. Parents reclaiming their Constitutional right to protect their children and raise them in the way they see fit. We parents intend to keep refusing until officials and legislators reconnect with the empathy, compassion, and basic understanding of human development needed to contribute in a meaningful way, to a discussion about education. Children are not robots. They are complex, beautiful, disorganized, spontaneous, creative, magnificent little creatures. They are not miniature adults. They are not inanimate objects. Misusing governmental authority for the sake of the profit of private companies is an unscrupulous corruption of power. Doing so at the tremendous emotional and psychological expense of children, is unforgivable.

I find it strange that politicians and government leaders assume that children cannot experience emotional distress in the chokehold of high stakes testing, when they also assume that children in 6th grade are capable of comprehending and manipulating language that is at a 10th grade reading level. Children ARE, in fact, capable of incredible suffering when put in a difficult position.

The job of a child is to wildly engage with life; to conduct a constant series of passionate experiments with his or her surroundings. To try out behaviors, to learn self control, to ask millions of questions, to create hypotheses and constantly test them in dialogue with adults and with their environment. It is the job of children to make mistakes, sometimes huge ones, in the service of learning. It is their job to be imperfect. They are works in progress. Their progress comes from an ever more complicated set of mistakes.

In order to fly an airplane, you can’t just set off in a straight line, in the direction of your destination. You have to aim in the general direction and then you must make a series of corrections of little mistakes as you get closer and closer to your destination. So it is in learning, too. The best we can hope for is that our children will be bold enough to make the essential mistakes in life that will guide them to their greatest discoveries and learning. My hope for my children is that they will have a growth mindset. I want my children to know that people are not born brilliant mathematicians or architects or doctors or writers or artists. Babies are born with potential and children and adolescents hone skills and follow passions, which turn them into great mathematicians, architects, doctors, writers, and artists. And how do children hone these skills? How do inexperienced little people know how to follow their passions in a way that becomes gradually more sophisticated? Their parents. And their teachers.

As a mother I see teachers as one of my biggest allies in life, in raising my children, in teaching them how to be good humans, to help them think critically and be knowledgeable about the world around them. An attack on teachers is an attack on my family, because teachers and schools are simply an extension of parents and family. I hope that this comparison will help people understand why this is such a deeply personal battle: a battle, for which some of us would offer our lives.

In my life, there has been no greater gift, than that of my parents and teachers.   As a child my mother educated us in hundreds of fascinating topics during the summer, after school, and on weekends. She dragged me on insufferable house tours, charming architecture walks, to darn near every national park in the United States, and she and my grandmother taught me the name of every flower in our backyard gardens. My mother stocked our house with craft kits and science kits. She took us to musicals and played Dvořák records around the house. My mother taught me what it was like to love learning. She made the world come alive.

When I entered school I found that there were others like her, who were absolutely obsessed with the joy of learning. These special people were my teachers. From elementary school to graduate school there have always been teachers who made my head swirl with difficult ideas and excitement. It just makes sense that when learning is fun, it creates motivation and a virtuous cycle. The intrinsic rewards of joyful learning guarantee that a happy student will never stop wanting to learn and grow.

 

Now I have my own children, four of them. And they are wide-eyed and excited and making messy mistakes all over the place. Now I watch as they experience the miracle and joy of imagining, hypothesizing, modeling, and refuting. I set out everyday to model for my kids that learning is a lifelong adventure. I trust their teachers to give them room to grow and the courage to take risks as they explore their world. I know their teachers have the best possible knowledge and skills to help fan their curiosity, develop their critical thinking, shape their character, and teach them to find answers to their most burning questions.

Which brings me to the point of this whole post.

Parents and teachers are more alike than different.

We love our children. We want to protect them. We know what is best for them.

Don’t you dare call this Opt Out Movement a Labor Dispute.

This movement, most definitely is a Dispute about Love.

Refuse the Tests Robocall Campaign

Over the last ten days, I worked with four very dedicated education activists and teachers to crowdsource funds for a robocall to all NYS parents.  We were successful, and believe it has had an impact on the number of last-minute test refusals that came into schools on April 13th as well as those that came in on the day of the ELA test, April 14.  The following is the campaign's final press release.  For more about our process, visit our guest blog on Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue.

A small grassroots committee of education activists, teachers, retirees, parents and grandparents raised nearly $17,000 in only ten days to pay for a robocall that informed parents that they have the constitutional right to refuse Grades 3-8 state tests.  Two different versions of the robocall were delivered on Sunday, April 12th.  State English Language Arts tests begin on April 14, and math tests that will begin April 22.   

Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor and candidate against Andrew Cuomo in the last gubernatorial primary, recorded the message in English.  In order to reach the large Hispanic and Latino population of the state, Aixa Rodriguez, an educational activist and high school teacher, recorded the message in Spanish. The results of a poll taken at the conclusion of the call indicated that more than 50% of parents who responded intend to refuse the tests.

Last year, more than 60,000 parents across New York State “refused” their children out of testing.  This year, tens of thousands across the state have expressed their concern about the increasing emphasis on tests that are ruining the education of their children, but many parents do not know they have the right to refuse testing.  Supreme Court cases have upheld this right that is based on the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, stating in the case of Meyer v. Nebraska that parents possess the “fundamental right” to “direct the upbringing and education of their children.”  

Some school districts respond to parents with confusing information that can be interpreted as threatening and punitive, as well as intentionally misleading. Letters to parents often claim that if the school does not achieve 95% student participation on the test, their school district will incur loss of funding. Ken Wagner, Senior Deputy Commissioner of NYSED, admitted in a television interview that those penalties would not occur for “several years.”  Parents in many districts are given inconsistent information on the effect test refusal has on selection for alternative instruction services (AIS) or other programming.  NY State Part 100.2 regulations allow individual school districts to “develop and maintain on file a uniform process by which the district determines whether to offer AIS…,” and these procedures can be different in every school district. State regulations do not discuss test refusals resulting in the mandated provision of AIS, or the elimination of students from other programming.   

Many districts mislead with semantics, telling parents that there is no “opt-out” provision for the tests in NYS.  In reality, parents always have the right to refuse the tests for their children.  A test refusal is scored as a “No Score - Code 999” on the test, and has no repercussion on the student, the teacher, or the school.  Though school districts like to be informed ahead of time so that they can make alternate arrangements for students, test refusals can be made right up to the day of the test.  

The tests themselves are designed for failure, calibrated to an SAT score of 1630, with “passing” cut scores adjusted after the tests are scored.  Literary analysis indicates that test reading passages and questions are often three grades beyond the age of the children.  “Equally plausible” answer choices (favored by the Pearson tests), require abstract thinking, a cognitive skill that usually does not develop until age 12.  70% of New York State children fail these tests.  Only 5% of students with identified cognitive disabilities, and 3% of English language learners, achieve proficiency on the tests. Test scores are negatively correlated with zip codes, with impoverished communities having higher failure rates. The result is that teachers lose their jobs, and schools are wrongly declared failures, while the real issue confronting schools in trouble is poverty and lack of funding.  The ultimate goal of the Governor’s “reforms” appears to be the replacement of public schools with for-profit charter schools.  

Children are the pawns in this political game, and their education is short-changed.  In his zeal to “break the monopoly” of public education, Cuomo’s education “reforms” double down on testing by weighting test results more heavily in teacher evaluations.  This will surely force even more test preparation as teachers fight to keep the careers they worked hard to establish.  As creative and authentic types of instruction are lost to testing, our children lose their self-confidence along with their enthusiasm for learning.  More class time is now devoted to practice for testing with workbooks and worksheets, instead of authentic learning through projects, experimentation, and constructive inquiry.  Music, art, social studies, enrichment, and science is crowded out to make more time for language arts and math, the only two subjects that matter on the tests.

Eric Mihelbergel of the New York Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) believes that test refusals may double or triple this year.  A large increase in refusal numbers will send a powerful political message to New York State, as well as to our federal government, that parents will no longer allow their children to be used as a profit market for testing corporations, politicians, and government bureaucracies.  For more information on refusing tests, visit www.facebook.com/NYSmorethanatestscore or www.nysape.org.

Refuse the Test

When I was in third grade, I took the Iowa standardized tests.  Within a short amount of time, we received the results in a teacher-parent conference.  Because my mom was told that I needed "a challenge," she immediately bought me the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  I read them for hours, lingering on zoology, nature, and history entries.  When my interest started to wane, a set of Greek Mythology books appeared.  I spent hours curled up in a chair, reading and pondering each myth.  Then, a set of classics – Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Little Women, Treasure Island, and others…all books that broadened my world and my background knowledge.  I was given access to a typewriter so I could write my own newspaper.  My zest for learning, reading, and writing exists to this day.  My guess is that little of that would have happened at home without the feedback that was received because of a standardized test.  It quite possibly changed my life.

Fast forward to today, because the tests our children take in school are nothing like the Iowa’s.  Here are my best reasons (there are lots more) why refusing the test is the right thing to do, for your student, for your schools, and for the teachers in our state.  

#1.  Analysis of the text and questions on the Pearson-created exams show that reading lexile levels are sometimes three, four, or five grades beyond the student's age.  Kevin Glynn, a former test developer with Pearson and NYSED, does an outstanding assessment of third grade ELA tests here.  Russ Walsh, a literacy expert, has found similar reading levels on the PARCC ELA and math tests.

#2.  According to a teacher test instruction manual on the EngageNY website, questions for the third-grade ELA test are written with "equally plausible" answer choices.  What that means, is that students have to use abstract reasoning skills to discern between answers to pick the "one best choice."  Cognitive research based on the work of Jean Piaget states that abstract reasoning does not develop until age 12.  Simply, these type of questions are not developmentally appropriate for those under 12.

#3.  Even if the tests were written fairly and on grade level, which they are not, there is the huge matter of cut scores being manipulated.  According to a letter written by 500 New York State principals, "New York State Education Department used SAT scores of 560 in Reading, 540 in Writing and 530 in mathematics, as the college readiness benchmarks to help set the “passing” cut scores on the 3-8 New York State exams. These NYSED scores, totaling 1630, are far higher than the College Board’s own college readiness benchmark score of 1550. By doing this, NYSED has carelessly inflated the 'college readiness' proficiency cut scores for students as young as nine years of age."

As if that were not enough, cut scores are manipulated after the tests are scored to give the state the results they want.  John King announced in 2012 that 70% of students would fail the test, and after cut scores were set, that's what he got.  Last year, cut scores were adjusted downward very slightly in order to show a small amount of "improvement" from Common Core reforms.  The bell curve that they use to set these scores means that NO MATTER HOW WELL STUDENTS DO, there will be a bottom standard deviation, a middle (which is the average), and a top.  Even if all students scored above 90 on the tests, they would still rank them with a bottom 16%.  And NYSED adjusts that bell - to get the deviations they want.  The main point, is that scores are worked by NYSED to prove whatever they want them to prove.  And right now we seem to have a governor and a State Education Department, that want to prove public schools are failing, so they can privatize and push their charter school agenda.  

#4.  There is no transparency.  Pearson protects the questions to maximize their profit, even though NYS has paid for the questions.  A test cannot be valid without transparency.  A test cannot "inform or assist instruction,” if the item analysis is never given to teachers.  Test creators cannot be held accountable for poorly written questions and misleading answer choices if we never see the questions.   Anyone who tells you that these tests are to help your teachers teach students better, is blowing hot air.  It is simply not true.

#5. Pearson embeds product placement within the tests.  New York State Ed claimed this was because they were “authentic text.”  Not true.  I did research on the 2012 exams that proved a financial interest between Pearson and the companies that were mentioned.  The product mentions are disjointed and do not flow with the text.  Have you ever read a children’s story where the waiter dropped MUGS Root Beer?  No. 

#6.  According to the NYSED ELA Educator Guide, provocative and "emotionally charged" passages are used in the tests.  Normally, a teacher would have a class discussion around such passages and help students to analyze various perspectives and come to an understanding about the meaning of such literature. Our State Ed Department, however, has a gag order preventing teachers from discussing questions, even after the test is completed.  What this means, is that students never get to ask questions about this content and therefore never get a chance to pursue full understanding.  This has the potential for skewing student opinion and could potentially be manipulated for a political purpose.  We have a right to know what our students, the captive audience, are being led to believe.

#7.  Students are being data mined by the tests.  As students complete the tests, personal information, and each click during the time they are online, records data points on the student.   In OH in 2013, the state contracted with PARCC and that contract allowed PARCC to ask personal noneducational questions about the lives of students.  Questions like, “Does anyone smoke in your house?”  Or “Do your parents get along?”  True this is an extreme case, but federal FERPA laws are being weakened to allow data collection on children, and the sharing of that confidential information to “third parties."  Pearson also apparently monitors the social networks of students before, during, and after the test to check for “test breaches” or “brand mentions,” as apparent during a recent event in NJ. This is not okay. 

#8.  The tests are too long.  NY Reading and Math tests in 2014 took about 7 hours.  In comparison, the GRE and SAT takes less than 4 hours, and the MCAT for medical school – about five hours.  Test fatigue becomes a factor in student performance.  The length of the exams also leads to greater student stress.

#9.  Teachers are unfairly assessed using test results, and according to Cuomo's education reform proposals, may lose their jobs if rated "ineffective" for two years in a row.  These assessments are produced using what is called VAM - Value-Added Measurement.  VAM has been called "junk science," and has been criticized by the American Statistical Association and in a joint statement by the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education.  Fully one-third of teachers vacillate from one effectiveness rating to another, from year to year.  There is no rhyme or reason to the outcomes, and it does not do the job of giving verifiable feedback regarding a teacher's aptitude for their job.  Our best knowledge tells us that teachers have at most, only a 1-14% influence on standardized test results of their students.  VAM results are highly correlated with the poverty of the district, with teachers in impoverished communities receiving the lowest evaluations. Teachers most at risk of being fired based on faulty test scores, are those who are most needed - special education, teachers of English Language Learners, and of course, teachers in impoverished communities.  What new teacher will want to go into these jobs, knowing they have absolutely no job security.

#10.  Schools are labeled failures and targeted for takeover by the state, absolving locally elected boards.  School districts that have been taken over in other states have been doled out to for-profit charter investors, with little oversight or accountability.  There are many cases of charter fraud nationwide.  Cuomo's plans for "receivership," will eliminate local control.

#11.  As teachers strive to retain their jobs, more and more emphasis will go to test prep, reducing the amount of time that students can be engaged in projects, authentic assessment, and creative activities.  What do you remember most about school?  Taking a test, or perhaps a medieval fair your class acted out?  Sadly, there is little time left in the schedule for the all-day learning and enrichment experiences that my own now-grown children have as memories.  Test prep is crowding out the humanities and arts - social studies and even science are relegated to second or third fiddle status, with classes usurped for the almighty test prep.  Life is more than just ELA and Math.  So much more. And our children are missing out.

#11.  Perhaps the most compelling reason in my mind – and I think about my grandchildren – is the emotional/psychological component.  What does it do to our youngest learners to sit and take a test that is much too difficult for them?  Children know when they “don’t get” something.  Do they feel like failures?  Do they feel like they are letting their teacher or the school down?  Do they blame themselves and believe they “aren’t smart enough?”  These are questions that I know are first in the minds of parents and grandparents, because we want our children to grow up as confident learners who know they can grow, and who have the motivation to try.

For all these reasons and many more, REFUSE THE TESTS.  Starve the beast.   It may be our one best hope for our public schools and our children.  Write a letter, and/or send a note in with your child stating that they refuse the test and their test should be scored as a "999" refusal.  For more information, and forms, visit NYSAPE.