How to opt out of PARCC at Deal?

[Anonymous]

Scattering testing times at short notice is a calculated strategy to deter from parents from opting out/cutting into the tester's bottom line. It's used by school systems to raise hurdles to civil disobedience. Some DC schools will let students come to school, be marked present, stay in the building supervised by an adult caregiver registered with the school, then return to class once testing has been completed that day (no unexcused absence incurred). Other schools expect parents opting out to keep students home on testing days, but not on make-up test days (without trying to push a make-up test on your kid). I don't know how Deal handles opt outs, but our new ES principal has been pretty reasonable this year (former head wasn't).

As was pointed out on the other thread, your child's teachers' assessments won't be impacted if a few of his or her students don't take the PARCC - the Dept. of Ed, school systems and schools do not strive for 100% compliance, particularly for white or Asian high SES students. Moreover, hardly anybody in DC has opted out since the DC-CAS was introduced in the late 90s. If you're going to opt out this year, you don't have to worry about teachers assessments. Your kid's PARCC won't be graded (because your kid will have no PARCC).

If you want to try to help individual teachers as you opt out, you can send your principal and admins up the DCPS chain a a signed letter, cc'd to the teacher, offering a family recommendation for the instructor. The letter mentions that you are opting out of the PARCC although you very much appreciate the teacher's excellent work. We do this every year.

[Anonymous]

I'm not convinced that schools scatter testing times as a calculated strategy. More like incompetence.

Perhaps in a couple years when online test administration is been the norm they will figure out how to disrupt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Scattering testing times at short notice is a calculated strategy to deter from parents from opting out/cutting into the tester's bottom line. It's used by school systems to raise hurdles to civil disobedience. Some DC schools will let students come to school, be marked present, stay in the building supervised by an adult caregiver registered with the school, then return to class once testing has been completed that day (no unexcused absence incurred). Other schools expect parents opting out to keep students home on testing days, but not on make-up test days (without trying to push a make-up test on your kid). I don't know how Deal handles opt outs, but our new ES principal has been pretty reasonable this year (former head wasn't).

As was pointed out on the other thread, your child's teachers' assessments won't be impacted if a few of his or her students don't take the PARCC - the Dept. of Ed, school systems and schools do not strive for 100% compliance, particularly for white or Asian high SES students. Moreover, hardly anybody in DC has opted out since the DC-CAS was introduced in the late 90s. If you're going to opt out this year, you don't have to worry about teachers assessments. Your kid's PARCC won't be graded (because your kid will have no PARCC).

If you want to try to help individual teachers as you opt out, you can send your principal and admins up the DCPS chain a a signed letter, cc'd to the teacher, offering a family recommendation for the instructor. The letter mentions that you are opting out of the PARCC although you very much appreciate the teacher's excellent work. We do this every year.

Maybe..... But at the Title I DCPS my kid attends, it's because there aren't enough computers for all the kids to take it at once.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Scattering testing times at short notice is a calculated strategy to deter from parents from opting out/cutting into the tester's bottom line. It's used by school systems to raise hurdles to civil disobedience. Some DC schools will let students come to school, be marked present, stay in the building supervised by an adult caregiver registered with the school, then return to class once testing has been completed that day (no unexcused absence incurred). Other schools expect parents opting out to keep students home on testing days, but not on make-up test days (without trying to push a make-up test on your kid). I don't know how Deal handles opt outs, but our new ES principal has been pretty reasonable this year (former head wasn't).

As was pointed out on the other thread, your child's teachers' assessments won't be impacted if a few of his or her students don't take the PARCC - the Dept. of Ed, school systems and schools do not strive for 100% compliance, particularly for white or Asian high SES students. Moreover, hardly anybody in DC has opted out since the DC-CAS was introduced in the late 90s. If you're going to opt out this year, you don't have to worry about teachers assessments. Your kid's PARCC won't be graded (because your kid will have no PARCC).

If you want to try to help individual teachers as you opt out, you can send your principal and admins up the DCPS chain a a signed letter, cc'd to the teacher, offering a family recommendation for the instructor. The letter mentions that you are opting out of the PARCC although you very much appreciate the teacher's excellent work. We do this every year.

Teacher here.

While I detest the PARCC for a number of reasons, I think you give DCPS too much credit in the strategy and planning department. My school did scattered testing because we didn't have enough laptops for everyone. I thank you for fighting this fight. At some point we have to wrangle back control of our schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Scattering testing times at short notice is a calculated strategy to deter from parents from opting out/cutting into the tester's bottom line. It's used by school systems to raise hurdles to civil disobedience. Some DC schools will let students come to school, be marked present, stay in the building supervised by an adult caregiver registered with the school, then return to class once testing has been completed that day (no unexcused absence incurred). Other schools expect parents opting out to keep students home on testing days, but not on make-up test days (without trying to push a make-up test on your kid). I don't know how Deal handles opt outs, but our new ES principal has been pretty reasonable this year (former head wasn't).

As was pointed out on the other thread, your child's teachers' assessments won't be impacted if a few of his or her students don't take the PARCC - the Dept. of Ed, school systems and schools do not strive for 100% compliance, particularly for white or Asian high SES students. Moreover, hardly anybody in DC has opted out since the DC-CAS was introduced in the late 90s. If you're going to opt out this year, you don't have to worry about teachers assessments. Your kid's PARCC won't be graded (because your kid will have no PARCC).

If you want to try to help individual teachers as you opt out, you can send your principal and admins up the DCPS chain a a signed letter, cc'd to the teacher, offering a family recommendation for the instructor. The letter mentions that you are opting out of the PARCC although you very much appreciate the teacher's excellent work. We do this every year.

Teacher here.

While I detest the PARCC for a number of reasons, I think you give DCPS too much credit in the strategy and planning department. My school did scattered testing because we didn't have enough laptops for everyone. I thank you for fighting this fight. At some point we have to wrangle back control of our schools.

Thanks for weighing in, teacher. Yes, we do need to wrangle back control. I don't feel like I owe Pearsons Education shareholders and their tycoon CEO a dime- I'd rather that corporate testing entities were not getting our hard-earned tax dollars without parents or teachers having any say in the matter, especially for 3rd-5th graders. As a parent pushing 50, I've been feeling increasingly nostalgic for my low-stress public elementary school days in the 70s. I have a PhD from an Ivy League school and a happy life here in DC, so I don't feel like I missed out for lack of standardized testing heavy experience in grade school.

[Anonymous]

DCPS math teacher here...
I'm surprised more families don't opt out of standardized testing.
If my students do well, I get a big bonus but only families that are engaged enough to know to opt their kids out would actually go through with opting out. So we are not incentivized to ask parents to do that.
However, my instruction in class would be a world different if scores were not linked to standardized testing. We would do more projects. We'd take more trips. We'd have more presentations and events. So in that way I wish parents got together to really demand an end to this high stakes testing that ISN'T SUPPORTED BY ANY DATA. In no world is it best practice to plunk students down for upwards of 3 hours a day to take a mind numbing test.
It's not not the purpose of education.

[Anonymous]

I just want to flag that if you opt out of PARCC in 7th grade you will limit your child’s ability to apply to a number of the application high schools. Receiving 4s or 5s on PARCC is a threshold requirement to apply to several high schools.

[Anonymous]

Yes, and my child was having a panic attack about that this morning. That his/her life was going to be ruined.

A test and a testing regime that is completely unproven. What a shame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Scattering testing times at short notice is a calculated strategy to deter from parents from opting out/cutting into the tester's bottom line. It's used by school systems to raise hurdles to civil disobedience. Some DC schools will let students come to school, be marked present, stay in the building supervised by an adult caregiver registered with the school, then return to class once testing has been completed that day (no unexcused absence incurred). Other schools expect parents opting out to keep students home on testing days, but not on make-up test days (without trying to push a make-up test on your kid). I don't know how Deal handles opt outs, but our new ES principal has been pretty reasonable this year (former head wasn't).

As was pointed out on the other thread, your child's teachers' assessments won't be impacted if a few of his or her students don't take the PARCC - the Dept. of Ed, school systems and schools do not strive for 100% compliance, particularly for white or Asian high SES students. Moreover, hardly anybody in DC has opted out since the DC-CAS was introduced in the late 90s. If you're going to opt out this year, you don't have to worry about teachers assessments. Your kid's PARCC won't be graded (because your kid will have no PARCC).

If you want to try to help individual teachers as you opt out, you can send your principal and admins up the DCPS chain a a signed letter, cc'd to the teacher, offering a family recommendation for the instructor. The letter mentions that you are opting out of the PARCC although you very much appreciate the teacher's excellent work. We do this every year.

You rock, PP. We're quietly opting out of PARCC at our EotP DCPS. Child has perfect attendance record this year and admins are working with us, though doing some arm twisting. We've made a plan with admins to remove our child from school during the testing blocks, returning her to class the minute testing is done.

We refuse to be forced to increase profits for Pearsons Education Ltd. shareholders and executives as public school parents via 10 hours of annual PARCC testing. When our child was tested to qualify for a Johns Hopkins CTY summer program, Hopkins only needed one hour or testing to determine that she is gifted. Pearsons, and 800 million dollar corporation, is able to rake in profits from public school systems because the overwhelmingly majority of parents cooperate. Most couldn't handle the logistics of opting out, as you point out. We consider forcing us to increase profits for a major corporation to be a form of tyranny, however mild.

We don't care if DCPS winds up dragging us to social workers and before judges - we won't support this sort of privitization of our public schools. We want our kid to learn to stand up for our deeply held family values. We've developed our own little curriculum for the 10 PARCC hours - the history of civil disobedience in America.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and my child was having a panic attack about that this morning. That his/her life was going to be ruined.

A test and a testing regime that is completely unproven. What a shame.

And I'm guessing you were the cause of the panic attack, because you've probably made them believe that their life will be over if they have to go to Wilson. Maybe take a look in your elitist mirror.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Scattering testing times at short notice is a calculated strategy to deter from parents from opting out/cutting into the tester's bottom line. It's used by school systems to raise hurdles to civil disobedience. Some DC schools will let students come to school, be marked present, stay in the building supervised by an adult caregiver registered with the school, then return to class once testing has been completed that day (no unexcused absence incurred). Other schools expect parents opting out to keep students home on testing days, but not on make-up test days (without trying to push a make-up test on your kid). I don't know how Deal handles opt outs, but our new ES principal has been pretty reasonable this year (former head wasn't).

As was pointed out on the other thread, your child's teachers' assessments won't be impacted if a few of his or her students don't take the PARCC - the Dept. of Ed, school systems and schools do not strive for 100% compliance, particularly for white or Asian high SES students. Moreover, hardly anybody in DC has opted out since the DC-CAS was introduced in the late 90s. If you're going to opt out this year, you don't have to worry about teachers assessments. Your kid's PARCC won't be graded (because your kid will have no PARCC).

If you want to try to help individual teachers as you opt out, you can send your principal and admins up the DCPS chain a a signed letter, cc'd to the teacher, offering a family recommendation for the instructor. The letter mentions that you are opting out of the PARCC although you very much appreciate the teacher's excellent work. We do this every year.

You rock, PP. We're quietly opting out of PARCC at our EotP DCPS. Child has perfect attendance record this year and admins are working with us, though doing some arm twisting. We've made a plan with admins to remove our child from school during the testing blocks, returning her to class the minute testing is done.

We refuse to be forced to increase profits for Pearsons Education Ltd. shareholders and executives as public school parents via 10 hours of annual PARCC testing. When our child was tested to qualify for a Johns Hopkins CTY summer program, Hopkins only needed one hour or testing to determine that she is gifted. Pearsons, and 800 million dollar corporation, is able to rake in profits from public school systems because the overwhelmingly majority of parents cooperate. Most couldn't handle the logistics of opting out, as you point out. We consider forcing us to increase profits for a major corporation to be a form of tyranny, however mild.

We don't care if DCPS winds up dragging us to social workers and before judges - we won't support this sort of privitization of our public schools. We want our kid to learn to stand up for our deeply held family values. We've developed our own little curriculum for the 10 PARCC hours - the history of civil disobedience in America.

I sincerely hope that you will similarly eschew test scores and STAR ratings when choosing a middle and high school. Will you similarly opt out of APs, SATs and ACT when it comes time to apply for college? These are just enriching the College Board and the ACT organization.

[Anonymous]

In our school, the principal sent out like 10 messages on PARCC, but keeps stressing out how "this is just another day" and students should be stressed about it. Well, my kid is in 4th grade and the pressure to perform well is definitely on. Hell, all they've been talking about since the beginning of the year is PARCC. I am not going to make him abstain from taking the test, but I really do think PARCC sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and my child was having a panic attack about that this morning. That his/her life was going to be ruined.

A test and a testing regime that is completely unproven. What a shame.

And I'm guessing you were the cause of the panic attack, because you've probably made them believe that their life will be over if they have to go to Wilson. Maybe take a look in your elitist mirror.

Wrong. I had always hoped and assumed DC would go to Wilson, for many reasons.

It is DC who is adamant that Wilson is not an option, based on social experience at a Wilson feeder.

Please do not reject this experience, our truth, just bc it doesn’t conform to your world view.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and my child was having a panic attack about that this morning. That his/her life was going to be ruined.

A test and a testing regime that is completely unproven. What a shame.

I'd try to help my child deal with their anxiety since it's clearly out of proportion, rather than skipping the test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, and my child was having a panic attack about that this morning. That his/her life was going to be ruined.

A test and a testing regime that is completely unproven. What a shame.

I'd try to help my child deal with their anxiety since it's clearly out of proportion, rather than skipping the test.

DC is not skipping the test. In retrospect, maybe that’s the problem.