By Lucy Wells
Educational fads usually have names that sound like perfect solutions to our failing educational system. People are inclined to assume good intentions, so they give these fads a chance. Yet the fads, tragically, victimize generation after generation. [read more]
Under the federal education law, No Child Left Behind, at least 95% of the state’s students must take the state assessments. However, this year Washington state students in various parts of the state opted out in large numbers, resulting in only about 90% of the students taking the assessments. Exact numbers have not been released yet. This is an unexpected and unprecedented occurrence. It is uncertain how the federal government will respond. Read the KPBS article.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015, despite many phone calls from citizens against the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill which helps cement the Common Core, its assessments, and intrusive data-collection into place. Also a prominent feature of the bill is an emphasis on the social emotional aspect of students even though parents want more emphasis on academics.
The vote was 218-213. All 218 of the “yes” votes were cast by Republicans.
See the voting results. Read a commentary by Emmett McGroarty here.
This means it is even more important than ever to stop the corresponding bill in the US Senate. Call your U.S. Senators, and tell them to vote “No” on the “Every Child Achieves Act,” S1177.
The Capitol Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121, or toll free (877) 762-8762
Please call your Congressman/Congresswoman and federal Senators to stop the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA – S 1177) in the Senate and the Student Success Act (SSA – HR 5) in the House. These are updates of the No Child Left Behind Act. Federal moneys to the states started with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, begun—unconstitutionally—by Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The Tenth amendment states that the powers not delegated by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Control of Education is one of those powers not delegated to the federal government.
Read the alert notice from our friends at Education Liberty Watch here.
It would be better if the ESEA were left to expire and control of education was returned to the states.
After our post of May 4th, even more students have opted out of the Smarter Balanced Assessments which align with the Common Core Standards. Students, parents, and teachers are not quietly accepting the new Smarter Balanced Assessments which have no track record, rob students of countless hours of school time, and squeeze out other subjects which are not in the Common Core Standards.
Bellingham students have opted out by the hundreds. See the article.
Also, students in University Place’s Curtis High School are opting out, many citing testing overload as the reason. Read about University Place here.
Diane Ravitch, education researcher, posted on her blog a resolution by teachers in Everett, Washington, disapproving of the Smarter Balanced Assessments.
King 5 News did a story on the wave of opt outs in the Puget Sound area.
We hope the education policy-makers are watching and listening.
As in previous posts, we repeat, the Smarter Balanced Assessments are NOT STANDARDIZED, even though the media, administrators, and legislators use the term. For one thing, the assessment is adaptive. They explain on their website: Based on student responses, the computer program adjusts the difficulty of questions throughout the assessment. For example, a student who answers a question correctly will receive a more challenging item, while an incorrect answer generates an easier question.
You can see that each student is receiving a different set of questions. If each student is taking a different assessment, how can that be called standardized?
Please read more about the difference between “standardized tests” and “assessments” in our commentary, “Lies, Damn Lies, and the Myth of ‘Standardized’ Tests.”
PARCC, which stands for Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, has come out with a statement on their spying, or as they say, “monitoring” policy.
Education researcher and writer, Mercedes Schneider, has commented on PARCC’s statement. Read her comments….
We also know that SBAC, the other testing consortium, also recommends spying on students’ social media. (SBAC is the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.) Washington State is a member of the SBAC.
Here are just a few concerns, and you can probably come up with many more:
If students are posting about the assessments on social media, even if they don’t reveal any test questions or answers, they are presumed guilty. Does this “infraction” go on the student’s permanent record?
Many testing companies release their test items after using them for the public to see. Do PARCC and SBAC plan to do this, and if so, will they hold back some of their more intrusive questions?
The people at Pearson, PARCC, and SBAC are being paid with our tax dollars; they are supposed to be delivering us a service, not controlling and spying on our children. How did they become our overseers?
Opting out is looking better and better.
What a difference a year makes! We first linked to Truth in American Education’s resistance map back in March of 2014. Here is an update.
The Common Core landscape has certainly changed. Many more states have pending legislation in to reject the Common Core. Several states have also terminated their membership in their Common Core assessment consortium. More parents are becoming aware of the problems with the Common Core standards, assessments, and especially with the data collection.
Keep up the resistance!
At first 46 states and the District of Columbia signed on to the Common Core State Standards, but Minnesota soon rejected the Common Core math standards while retaining the English/Language Arts standards. Now, more states are re-examining their decision and are taking steps to reject the Standards. States are realizing they have given up state control over their own education system and have committed themselves to spending billions on an unproven education plan. Truth in American Education has updated their resistance map. Read their commentary.
Would you let your children reveal their innermost feelings and thoughts to a perfect stranger? No?
Yet when they take the Common Core assessments, they are asked to reveal their thoughts and beliefs to a computer which will track, record, and retain every response. In fact, the school need not use just assessments to mine this information. They can use any assignment done on a computer or tablet, or even use an “education game” as a stealth assessment.
Please be aware, that the Common Core assessments are not “standardized tests” as we knew them from the past. The Common Core assessments are adaptive to each child, so each child receives different questions–this is not “standardization.” (We have explained the difference between standardized tests and assessments in a previous post.)
Education expert Mercedes Schneider comments on the use and abuse of power surrounding the assessments. She refers to the PARCC assessments, but the comments can also be applied to the Smarter Balanced assessment used in Washington State. Read her blog post, “The Powerful, Enforced Silence around Standardized Testing.
Yesterday, we posted that Pearson which administers the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) Common Core Assessments spied on students’ social media and wanted to suspend a student whom they thought had breached test security.
Now it has come out that the other of the two Common Core assessment consortia, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), is also advising state education departments to spy on student social media. Washington State is a member of the Smarter Balanced consortium.
See Smarter Balanced Assessment’s guidance sheet.
(Photo- courtesy of photoexplorer at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
It was confirmed that Pearson, a United Kingdom-based testing company involved in the development of Common Core Assessments, was “monitoring” the social media accounts of New Jersey students taking the PARCC Common Core Assessment. A student had sent a tweet about the PARCC assessment after school, and Pearson contacted the New Jersey Department of Education (NJ DOE) to have the student suspended, ostensibly on grounds of the student having breached test security. There was no evidence that the student had cheated. Pearson’s monitoring of the students’ social media was done in cooperation with the New Jersey DOE.
This is alarming on so many levels. Apparently, this is not the only student whom Pearson asked to be suspended. Why is a multinational testing company in cooperation with a US state governmental department delving into the social media of the students in New Jersey? Is this happening in other states as well?
PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) is one of the two consortia producing Common Core Assessments; the other is the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) of which Washington State is a member. We do not know if Washington state students will also be “monitored?”