Opting out of 2017 PARCC - Who has Experiencing with Opting Out? How did it work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the PARCC is not perfect but has some value. Otherwise you cannot really compare school to school or schools in different states. You need to have some common parameters to know what is going on in different schools. Also, reading and math skills are critical to future success. This might not be a big deal to your upper middle class kid but it is critical to the vast majority of kids in DCPS. Maybe you can keep your kid home. It certainly won't affect your child but it might be nice for all DCPS kids if everyone just took the test and we ended up with a high participation rate and scores that will help D.C. figure out how to do better.

The evidence simply does not indicate that high PARCC participation rates and scores will in fact help DC and the states figure out how "to do better" in spending finite ed resources. It's worth considering that the world's highest performing public school systems, including those in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Singapore, outperform the US by a wide margin in math without giving standardized tests to pre-teens, or spending as much per capita on instruction. The enthusiasm of politicians for data points should not drive our ed agenda.

We don't live in Norway, the Netherlands or Singapore, which has far less income inequality and overall cultural inequity than we do. If we fixed those issues we wouldn't have the education issues we have.

[Anonymous]

Right, but Pearson's and McGraw-Hill aren't fixing these problems. They're raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from school systems who buy their textbooks and tests without necessarily having aligned their curricula to the tests. Teaching to these poorly designed assessments hurts poor kids most. Read about the NY Consortium Schools for Performance Based Assessment if you want to learn about what useful 3rd-8th grade assessments look like. The fantastic sums going to American corporate testing entities and their bubble sheets would be much better spent on teacher training and better pay, enrichment, tutoring to provide remediation, better school libraries, smaller classes supporting collaborative student work, thoughtful field trips etc. The reality is that high performance countries are making much smarter investments in their poor kids than we are. The Netherlands population comprises a higher percentage of hard scrabble immigrants than ours, yet they clobber the USA on PISA exams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teaching and practicing contrarianism might also be helpful. I never took a standardized test until the PSATs. I was a National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist and graduated from an Ivy.





If you think the PARCC is worth it for your family, terrific. Kindly leave those who differ alone.

Where the hell did you go to school? Even back in the late 1970's, we took standardized tests in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn't you want your kid to take the PARCC? It's a good exam and sets a high academic standard for our schools.

On the very, very small chance that this isn't trolling...because the tests are meaningless, invalid, and distract from learning for weeks or months at a time. They're just one of a great many examples of the privatization of public education.

No, not a troll. Have you taken the exam? I have taken about 30 sample questions from the English and math tests. They're good! There is no way to do well on the English portion without being well read. Similarly, a student couldn't do well on the math portion without having a deep, fundamental understanding of mathematical principles. Ironically, with the PARCC, it is possible to know, for certain, whether a school is actually teaching children valuable skills that not related to just doing well on tests.

Last year's results were very telling, with supposedly good schools that showed poor results. The exam reveals how well differentiated learning is working at elementary schools. If all students do poorly, well, that's one thing. But if there is a small subset of students who perform exemplary in an otherwise low-score school, that means that when the high-scoring kids get to middle school, as a parent, I can be confident they will be just as knowledgeable / prepared as kids who went to other, overall higher scoring schools. And if we move to a different state, which also uses Common Core and PARCC, I know my kid will have learned the same things as the other kids and wouldn't be behind.

The exam is rigorous. It cannot be passed just by memorization or by being a good test taker.

As far as I can tell, the only parents against the exam are those: (a) whose children are not able to well on the exam; (b) who have not taken the time to actually review and try the exam themselves; and/or (c) who, well, are not able to recognize the value of the exam, because they do not have sufficient expertise themselves. For example, a former liberal arts major may not have the background needed to recognize the value in the math test (which is really well done). To these parents, I ask, before ruining the best thing to happen to DC schools, make sure your protest is at least informed.

OP again. To each her own, no paternalism needed. I've reviewed models of the 3rd grade exam on-line and decided that I don't want my child to take it. I strongly prefer the SCAT for her (mainly because it does the job in an hour, and leads to access to CTY camps). I don't want to protest anything, I just don't want my super curious and creative, bilingual and biliterate kid anywhere near the PARCC. I fail to see value in bullying parents and educators who wish to opt out for whatever reasons (if 95% of the students in your school don't submit to this particular test, you'll pay!). What, exactly, are we "ruining" by marching to our own drummers in small numbers? Apparently, hardly anybody in DC opts out. By contrast, in NY, epicenter of the opt-out movement, 20% of families walked away in 2016.

If the exam is as well-crafted as you claim, why aren't private schools serving the rich beating down the door to gain access?

Private schools use the erb which compares them to other independents. You don't sound cut out for public education given your insistence on the curriculum matching your personalized preferences. Maybe home school as even privates don't dictate to any one parents desires.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teaching and practicing contrarianism might also be helpful. I never took a standardized test until the PSATs. I was a National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist and graduated from an Ivy.

If you think the PARCC is worth it for your family, terrific. Kindly leave those who differ alone.

Where the hell did you go to school? Even back in the late 1970's, we took standardized tests in elementary school.

You might have taken standardized tests in elementary school, but every school system in the country didn't use them before NCLB forced the issue. My rural county in New England didn't bother, on purpose. Amen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn't you want your kid to take the PARCC? It's a good exam and sets a high academic standard for our schools.

On the very, very small chance that this isn't trolling...because the tests are meaningless, invalid, and distract from learning for weeks or months at a time. They're just one of a great many examples of the privatization of public education.

No, not a troll. Have you taken the exam? I have taken about 30 sample questions from the English and math tests. They're good! There is no way to do well on the English portion without being well read. Similarly, a student couldn't do well on the math portion without having a deep, fundamental understanding of mathematical principles. Ironically, with the PARCC, it is possible to know, for certain, whether a school is actually teaching children valuable skills that not related to just doing well on tests.

Last year's results were very telling, with supposedly good schools that showed poor results. The exam reveals how well differentiated learning is working at elementary schools. If all students do poorly, well, that's one thing. But if there is a small subset of students who perform exemplary in an otherwise low-score school, that means that when the high-scoring kids get to middle school, as a parent, I can be confident they will be just as knowledgeable / prepared as kids who went to other, overall higher scoring schools. And if we move to a different state, which also uses Common Core and PARCC, I know my kid will have learned the same things as the other kids and wouldn't be behind.

The exam is rigorous. It cannot be passed just by memorization or by being a good test taker.

As far as I can tell, the only parents against the exam are those: (a) whose children are not able to well on the exam; (b) who have not taken the time to actually review and try the exam themselves; and/or (c) who, well, are not able to recognize the value of the exam, because they do not have sufficient expertise themselves. For example, a former liberal arts major may not have the background needed to recognize the value in the math test (which is really well done). To these parents, I ask, before ruining the best thing to happen to DC schools, make sure your protest is at least informed.

OP again. To each her own, no paternalism needed. I've reviewed models of the 3rd grade exam on-line and decided that I don't want my child to take it. I strongly prefer the SCAT for her (mainly because it does the job in an hour, and leads to access to CTY camps). I don't want to protest anything, I just don't want my super curious and creative, bilingual and biliterate kid anywhere near the PARCC. I fail to see value in bullying parents and educators who wish to opt out for whatever reasons (if 95% of the students in your school don't submit to this particular test, you'll pay!). What, exactly, are we "ruining" by marching to our own drummers in small numbers? Apparently, hardly anybody in DC opts out. By contrast, in NY, epicenter of the opt-out movement, 20% of families walked away in 2016.

If the exam is as well-crafted as you claim, why aren't private schools serving the rich beating down the door to gain access?

Private schools use the erb which compares them to other independents. You don't sound cut out for public education given your insistence on the curriculum matching your personalized preferences. Maybe home school as even privates don't dictate to any one parents desires.

Every taxpayer who wants public education is cut out for it. In New York state, more than 20% of families "insisted" on opting out last year. More than 10% opted out in NJ, South Carolina and Wisconsin. The opt out movement is gaining strength nationwide for good reason. State standardized tests are not well designed or used. If wanting well designed and useful tests for my tax dollar, or none, constitutes a personalized preference, guilty as charged. As things stand, teachers don't see PARCC questions or answers on Common Core based tests, and don't get the scores until kids have already advanced to the next grade, making it impossible for them to use the tests to intervene to help struggling students. This wasn't the case with the IOWA tests and others used in my generation.

It's a bad system that parents should challenge as they see fit, or live with it, no judgment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the PARCC is not perfect but has some value. Otherwise you cannot really compare school to school or schools in different states. You need to have some common parameters to know what is going on in different schools. Also, reading and math skills are critical to future success. This might not be a big deal to your upper middle class kid but it is critical to the vast majority of kids in DCPS. Maybe you can keep your kid home. It certainly won't affect your child but it might be nice for all DCPS kids if everyone just took the test and we ended up with a high participation rate and scores that will help D.C. figure out how to do better.

It's a free country and we should be free to opt out if we don't support the corporate reform agenda.

Nevertheless she persisted. Let's resist.

This country's looking a little less free with each passing week.

We should be able to opt out for whatever reasons, including those we do not care to articulate. The freedom to legally opt out should come with the freedom to do so without being called names.

Nobody has to convince me that public schools put parents of proven "advanced" learners (e.g. Johns Hopkins CTY campers who cleared a SCAT test score bar) under more pressure than others not to opt out.

Oh god, spare me. Yes, you are on a noble civil rights campaign to defend your child against the marauding administrators trying to make her take a test. PS how many more times do you want to mention CTY?

[Anonymous]

don't take the bait

[Anonymous]

If you're considering opting out of the PARCC and your kid has taken, and scored high on the COOP, erb, OLSAT, STB, Wechsler or SCAT, keep this to yourself. Admins have incentives to twist the arms of parents of kids likely to scores 5s.

Haven't met any noble opt-out crusaders in DC, but know a bunch of parents who'd really like to be left alone where the PARCC goes.

[Anonymous]

I just think it's extremely anti-civic to opt out of the PARCC. EVERYONE uses PARCC scores now to select schools in DC. The PARCC scores are showing some important differences between schools that are not attributable just to race/SES. For example here on the Hill there are schools beloved by gentrifiers that seem to be doing worse in some respects than schools avoided by gentrifiers (or are doing the same). If you opt your kid out of PARCC you're distorting the metrics. I get all the objections to PARCC (Pearson, big money in ed, etc etc) and I understand them. So fight for a better metric or better use of them. But to just opt out because "my kid is CTY" is extremely arrogant.

[Anonymous]

Under ESSA, parents are only "distorting the metrics" if more than 5% of the kids in the testing grades opt out at a particular school. Under current rules, if more than 5% opt out, the no shows receive a 0 on both sections of the test. States can ask DoE for overrides on the 5% (DC hasn't asked). Looks like the Trump administration is going to push to change the 5% rule from next year. A GOP controlled Congress may or may not cooperate.

According to OSSE, there's never been a case where more than 5% of the kids in a DCPS elementary school haven't shown up for the DC-CAS or PARCC. Not even close. The school with the most students opting out last year was Janney, where roughly 2.5% opted out, or didn't show for other reasons. The opt-out movement is very weak in DC for reasons that, to my knowledge, haven't been studied or considered by the media.

My suggestion for anybody who elects to opt out on principle in this particular town is that you keep your choice under wraps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just think it's extremely anti-civic to opt out of the PARCC. EVERYONE uses PARCC scores now to select schools in DC. The PARCC scores are showing some important differences between schools that are not attributable just to race/SES. For example here on the Hill there are schools beloved by gentrifiers that seem to be doing worse in some respects than schools avoided by gentrifiers (or are doing the same). If you opt your kid out of PARCC you're distorting the metrics. I get all the objections to PARCC (Pearson, big money in ed, etc etc) and I understand them. So fight for a better metric or better use of them. But to just opt out because "my kid is CTY" is extremely arrogant.

Right, everybody uses PARCC scores to select schools in DC. It follows that if a raft of high SES parents opt out we'll see a rush from Upper NW DCPS schools, Ross, Brent, SWS, Maury, Watkins etc. to other public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just think it's extremely anti-civic to opt out of the PARCC. EVERYONE uses PARCC scores now to select schools in DC. The PARCC scores are showing some important differences between schools that are not attributable just to race/SES. For example here on the Hill there are schools beloved by gentrifiers that seem to be doing worse in some respects than schools avoided by gentrifiers (or are doing the same). If you opt your kid out of PARCC you're distorting the metrics. I get all the objections to PARCC (Pearson, big money in ed, etc etc) and I understand them. So fight for a better metric or better use of them. But to just opt out because "my kid is CTY" is extremely arrogant.

That poster apparently lacks the self-awareness to realize how annoying and self-absorbed she is. Chance of changing her mind--zero. Just hope your kid doesn't have to go to school with hers.

[Anonymous]

The only parents I've known who have opted their kids out of the PARCC at our JKLM school are bat shit crazy and a PITA.
It's pretty much a given.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only parents I've known who have opted their kids out of the PARCC at our JKLM school are bat shit crazy and a PITA.
It's pretty much a given.

I'd edit your post to say "and/or" but otherwise agree. All were a PITA but not all crazy.