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#WhyIRefuse. For the newbies out there who literally joined this week. I wrote this in 2014, which was the first year I refused the state assessments. I have updated it a bit to reflect the past four years. It's long, I know."Here’s a quick overview of why we are where we are: the era of test-based accountability.? It all began in 1965, with President Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, meant to help impoverished and at-risk children by giving federal money – known as Title 1 money -- to their public schools. Back then, schools purchased off-the-shelf tests, such as the Iowas and the Stanford Achievements. Remember them? There was no test prep. No stress. Teachers didn’t feed kids beforehand or give out treats and prizes afterward. There were no negative consequences. Tests were given every other year. Congress was required to reauthorize ESEA every 7 years.? Fast forward to Clinton’s reauthorization in 1994 – the Improving America’s Schools Act. This legislation changed everything. It encouraged accountability through testing, as well as the use of content standards as the foundation for tests and performance. Instead of buying tests “off the shelf,” states created their own tests, and based them on their own unique state standards. Consequences were not clearly defined and it was not unusual for schools to purposefully prevent low performing students, i.e., students with disabilities, ELLs, from participating in the assessments -- either by testing only high-performing students, or by not providing accommodations where needed. This would come to be termed as "systematic exclusion."? In 2002, George W. reauthorized ESEA with his signature educational legislation – No Child Left Behind. Testing requirements and associated accountability mechanisms were the most onerous ever, with exclusive focus on ELA and math. Entire schools could be closed based primarily on test performance. The law divided and compared children into testing subgroups defined by race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability, and ELL status. NCLB addressed schools' systematic exclusion practices by legislating that schools had to ensure that all students had an equal opportunity to participate in the assessments. That meant no cherry-picking of high-performing students. It also meant that every school was responsible for ensuring appropriate testing accommodations would be available to children who needed them. ? NCLB also required that every student in every school receiving Title 1 money be proficient – get a 3 or 4 -- in ELA and math, by January 1, 2014. A noble goal, but an impossible one, as history has now shown.? NCLB was supposed to be reauthorized in 2007. Congress could not get its act together and, by 2009, there still had been no reauthorization. Enter Race to the Top.? In 2009, Obama launched the RTTT competitive grant program, the most expansive, expensive federal school-reform initiative in U.S. history. On the RTTT grant application, states earned more competition points (and more money) for every box they checked off. One of the boxes NYS checked was agreeing to evaluate teachers based on student growth as measured by test scores. This is our “student growth” component of the APPR or Annual Professional Performance Review.? RTTT also brought us Common Core (another checked box), which the states committed to sight unseen and not completely written, as well as the promise to participate in one of two national testing consortia -- PARCC for NYS (another checked box). Government officials told us the new standards were high quality and rigorous and that the new tests were wonderful. We believed them. We’d later learn that the standards were developed as never before in the most undemocratic way possible – pursuant to confidentiality agreements, behind closed doors, by corporate testing executives and university professors, without appropriate public input, pursuant to copyright and trademark rights, with legal disclaimers, and that they had never been piloted or tested (making all NYS public school kids guinea pigs), were not properly written or benchmarked, and that Bill Gates, the major force behind CCSS, said that it would take ten years before we knew if “this stuff” would work. We’d also come to understand that this was a corporate driven top down education reform agenda, and that what the states had purchased sight unseen might very well be a lemon. This was the beginning of the loss of local control.? Around 2009, States across the country were anticipating not meeting the NCLB 100% proficiency mandate, and were applying for ESEA waivers. In exchange, a super NCLB was born as the federal government extracted more promises from state governments, which translated into further erosion of local control, all based around Common Core and testing and student test scores and growth tied to teacher evaluations.? 2012 saw a radical change in the NYS tests when NYS awarded foreign corporation Pearson a 5-year $32 million contract to overhaul what then Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch complained had become predictable and easy tests. This was the first year exams would have high stakes for principals and teachers, because evaluations would be tied to test scores. The infamous “Pineapple and Hare” nonsense reading passage and question appeared in 2012. The test question was removed from the exam after a blogger demonstrated its inappropriateness on the test and that Pearson had recycled it from at least a half dozen other state tests. than two dozen additional errors were found in Pearson’s NYS tests. In addition, more than 7,000 NYC students were wrongly blocked from graduation by inaccurate preliminary scores. Unlike in year’s past, NYS now refused to publicly release the tests. Errors abounded while transparency disappeared – as did public trust in the system.? In 2013, the tests were aligned to the CCSS. The tests were purposefully harder with reading content two and three years above the grade level being tested. The tests would include material that children in some schools had not yet been taught. Before any child put pencil to bubble sheet, then-Commissioner King predicted a 70% failure rate. That’s when I woke up. Children cried over these tests. They wet their pants. They grew anxious. Their sleep became erratic. They hated school. Something was drastically different and drastically wrong. Parents started seeking answers. And then the 70% failure prediction became reality. More parents woke up.? In 2013, passages from Pearson textbooks appeared in the Pearson-designed NYS test, giving an unfair advantage to students whose schools had purchased Pearson curriculum materials. Three Pearson scoring mistakes erroneously blocked nearly 5,000 NYC students from eligibility in the city’s gifted and talented program. A second error incorrectly made 300 otherwise ineligible students eligible for special programs.? In 2015, the news media reported that NYSED had secretly removed several problematic test questions from the 2014 Pearson tests after the tests had been scored. SED has never explained that action. ? The primary goals of test-based education accountability are (1) to increase student achievement, and (2) to increase equity in performance among the subpopulations and between poor students and affluent peers. The belief is that if we test kids, we will increase student achievement and close achievement gaps. This is all fine and good if taking tests actually accomplishes this. But 20 years of test-based accountability has proved it to be a resounding failure. Even the Board of Regents has acknowledged that NCLB was a failure. ? Nevertheless, in 2015, Congress finally reauthorized ESEA, with the bright and shiny Every Student Succeeds Act. The problem (or one of the problems) is that ESSA continue the mandate of grades 3-8 test-based accountability -- the failed cornerstone of NCLB.? That same year, 2015, NYSED awarded a new 5-year testing contract, valued at approximately $44 million, to Questar Assessments, Inc. (now owned by the Education Testing Service). Due to an extension of the Pearson contract, the two contracts overlapped for a time. The Questar contract allows NYSED to use Pearson R&D work, i.e., allows NYSED to use questions that were previously field tested by Pearson as 2017 and 2018 operational questions on Questar tests. ALL of the 2016 operational questions on the tests "administered" by Questar were Pearson questions. In addition, the Questar contract allows for operational questions for the 2018 tests to come not only from previous Pearson field tests, but from PARCC tests (which are Pearson tests), as well. Due to these contractual provisions, I have long questioned SED's claims about who is writing (not just reviewing) the actual operational NYS grades 3-8 test questions. The Questar contract further includes a district option to administer the tests on computers, which is what NYSED started doing in 2016. SED claims that CBT has the potential to further reduce the need for stand-alone field tests and make assessments better instructional tools for students with disabilities. However, NYS students who took computer-based exams in 2017 did worse? in seven of the exams and no different in two when matched with similar students who took the paper-based version of the exams.? This is revealed in a NYSED technical report dated Oct. 2017. ? In 2016, due to parental backlash, SED decided to make the tests untimed (although this was never a parental request) and to “shorten” the content of the tests. This translated into some students sitting for the tests literally all day, sometimes not taking bathroom breaks when needed. SED never collected data about how long children sat for the tests, and/or how their scores compared to their previous years taking the tests under timed conditions, or to those children who did not sit for all day. Overall, not much about the scores changed.? In 2016, due to parental backlash, the Board of Regents put a four-year moratorium on being able to use the composite student growth component and accompanying teacher rating (HEDI – highly effective, effective, developing, and ineffective) of a teacher’s/principal’s evaluation for employment decisions if the composite and rating were calculated using the grades 3-8 student test scores. The grades 3-8 test scores would still be used to calculate a “original student growth composite score,” and an “original teacher rating,” but a new “transition composite student growth score” and “transition teacher rating,” derived by using scores from alternative tests, would be used for employment decisions. So… although the grades 3-8 test scores cannot currently be used for teacher/ principal employment decisions, they are still being used to calculate the original student growth composite score and teacher rating. And this original student growth composite score and teacher rating are still being used to evaluate schools for federal accountability purposes; are still being used in aggregate data that is released to the public; are still being used by the schools when parents request to see teacher evaluations; and are still recorded in a teacher’s/principal’s personnel file. Other than that, they can be used for “advisory purposes only,” whatever that means. In other words, if someone tells you that student growth scores and teacher ratings using the grades 3-8 state assessments are a thing of the past, and that the tests don’t affect our teachers and principals, they are WRONG. The moratorium is set to expire at the start of the 2019-2020 school year. In the meantime, and until the moratorium ends (unless something changes), the law remains on the books and a composite student growth component and teacher rating is still being calculated using the grades 3-8 test scores. ? In 2017, due to continued parental backlash, SED announced that it would shorten the duration of the 2018 tests from three days per subject to two days per subject. SED claimed that with fewer test sessions, “each test will have substantially fewer questions than in recent years, lessening test fatigue for students and better enabling them to demonstrate what they know and are able to do.” The reality is that the number of passages and questions PER DAY has not changed significantly. SED further claimed that, this year, “the assessments will feature many test questions written by New York State teachers specifically for the annual New York State tests. THE FUTURE GOAL IS FOR ALL TEST QUESTIONS TO BE WRITTEN BY NYS EDUCATORS.” (my emphasis.) What further proof do you need than this admission that the tests are still corporate tests???? And I remind you about the provision in Questar’s contract that allows NYSED to use previously field-tested Pearson questions as operational questions in the 2018 tests. think that brings us up to date!So, #whyIrefuse: My response to education reform is this: first do no harm. Because I believe that the current testing regime is doing far more harm than good, I refuse the tests. In no particular order: ? I refuse because I don’t want my child subjected to a standards-based test that was not created, designed, or scored exclusively by NYS teachers and educators.? I refuse because NYS paid $32 million to a foreign corporation (Pearson) with a history of testing problems, and in return our kids get poorly constructed, flawed, uninspiring tests with questions and answers purposefully worded to be ambiguous and confusing, and which do not accurately reflect the skills and knowledge that students gain in the classroom. And now $44 million to Questar with little to no improvement.? I refuse because the tests are excessive and pedagogically unsound, especially for children in grades 3-5. Before 2017, children were made to sit for close to 90 minutes each day for 6 days. The third grade common core tests are twice as time consuming as the SAT. Children with accommodations, i.e., special needs, ELLs, get extended time - from 1 1/2, to double, to unlimited time. In 2017 and now in 2018, children are given ALL DAY to sit for four days of testing, and many children actually do sit for all day, some even being told it’s better not to take bathroom breaks.? I refuse because despite the many standards that are taught, and the number of hours spent testing, on average only 15% to 20% of the standards are actually tested.? I refuse because neither the teachers nor I ever see the test alongside my child’s work product. I don't know what my child got right or wrong and why – and neither does she or her teachers. There is no “real time” opportunity to learn from mistakes.? I refuse because the tests are developmentally inappropriate. Aside from the ambiguous and confusing language, Lexile levels for test passages for some grades are at least two and three grade levels above the grade being tested. That might be fine for in-class or leisure reading, but it serves no valid purpose on a test where the objective is to assess whether a child has learned a grade-level skill.? I refuse because with tests at the center of grades 3-8 education, curriculum has narrowed. What gets tested is what gets the most attention. We all see it. Content areas that are not tested, such as art, music, social studies, and science have gotten far less attention than ELA and math. Learning in those subject areas suffers, as do the students who would excel in them. There are fewer enrichment and project-based learning opportunities. Beginning in kindergarten, students are taught test-taking strategies, most notably the close reading technique. Writing is formulaic.? I refuse because the NYS Education Department (NYSED) lacks transparency and ethics. Testing experts and statisticians have reported at length about NYSED’s unreliable test data, specifically its delayed release of the technical reports surrounding the Common Core tests; about secretly deleted test questions and predetermined test results. Cut scores are constantly changing; NYSED manipulates them by setting them after the tests have been scored (many times the scorers are people hired from Craig’s List). NYSED manipulates the cut scores in order to legitimize its claim that our schools are failing, and to uphold the corporate education reform agenda to privatize public education not only by perpetuating the false narrative that our schools are failing, but by ensuring the failure.? I refuse because the tests require our teachers to spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for the state tests. Teachers are frequently absent in order to learn about testing policies and procedures, to proctor, and for scoring. And, of course, there’s the test prep.? I refuse because some of my child’s otherwise proficient and capable peers struggle through the test and don’t score well, and because ELLs and special ed kids have been thrown under the bus. ELLs must take the Common Core ELA test IN ENGLISH after just one year in the system. Special education students are required to take grade-level, rather than developmental level, tests unless they qualify for an alternative assessment, which itself is flawed. And then NYSED has the gall to claim that 97% of ELLs and 95% of students with IEPs in grades 3-8 are “failures” in ELA.? I refuse because I don’t want the tests used to evaluate, rank, and fire our teachers and close our schools. The current teacher evaluation system on the books is deeply flawed. Up until 2016, and after the moratorium ends (unless the law is changed) 50% of a teacher’s evaluation was and will be based on invalid tests scores, from highly flawed assessments, input into a computerized evaluation model that was originally developed for the agricultural market and which has been resoundingly rejected by expert statisticians and organizations for evaluating teachers. Did you know that a computer has already predicted how your child must score on the upcoming tests in order to “show growth,” and that if your child does not achieve that secret computer predicted raw score, she will show negative growth, and her teacher will be blamed, notwithstanding your child may have scored a 4, or that her teacher is outstanding? ? I refuse the tests because I don’t want my child ranked, sorted, and tracked into the workforce (which is exactly what SED and the federal government is doing with the data). I don’t care how my child compares to other children and I don’t want her tracked beyond the school district level.? I refuse because struggling schools don’t need more tests and measuring; they need smaller class sizes, wraparound community services, restoration of the arts, guidance counselors, social workers, school nurses, etc.? I refuse because my child’s teacher won’t have the results in time to improve instruction before my child moves to the next grade level. SED “plans” to have instructional reports returned to teachers by the end of the school year (June????), and to release at least 75% (but not 100%) of the test questions again.? I refuse because taking these tests does not benefit our young learners. Kids in private school do just fine w/out ever taking these tests, do well on the SATs, and get into elite colleges without these assessments.? I refuse because I want our teachers to have control over their classrooms and be able to engage in authentic teaching from September through June, and because I want my child to engage in 10 months of authentic learning. I can’t stand the test prep packets that have supplanted classroom work and homework.? I refuse because I see great school districts experiencing lower test scores without any valid correlation to what is occurring in the classroom. Flawed tests are yielding lower than necessary test scores which, in turn, affect school district ratings and, eventually, property values.? I refuse because it is wrong for State Ed to define my child and her teachers by two tests and two scores.? I refuse until the grown-ups in State Ed and in our legislature put our public school kids first and get it right.Rarely does one see administrators, school boards, educators, parents, advocates, and even students, so united against an education reform agenda. The top down corporate-driven agenda is clear: a hatred of public schools and public school teachers and the perversion of our kids’ test scores in order to dismantle the public school system and privatize it. The agenda is toxic to our schools and, therefore, to our children. Our students and teachers are not failures; rather government has failed them.In order to save public education, a cornerstone of democracy in this country, we must start thinking communally rather than individually. We – as parents and educators working together – can regain local control by refusing these tests. Over the past four years, I have become more convinced that the most effective way to stop this madness and reclaim public education is for parents to refuse the tests. Refusing in large numbers is the most powerful way for parents to let policymakers know that we reject what they are doing to our public schools. It is up to the parents to reclaim public education. Until the State and feds gets it right... until the tests are properly designed, administered, and scored; fully disclosed to teachers and parents; disassociated from teacher evaluations; and used for diagnostic purposes -- not to rank, sort, and punish kids, teachers, and schools – I will refuse the tests. These are just some of the reasons #whyIrefuse the state tests for a fourth (and final) year. ................
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