Reply to How do I opt my child out of testing

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "How do I opt my child out of testing"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^ While I would agree that the test should be diagnostic, it seems most of your objection is based on a flawed premise that the standards were developed "without consulting ANY experts in early childhood education and the luminaries in a variety of fields - educators, psychologists, etc" when that is absolutely FALSE - in fact, they had a massive amount of input from such experts as well as from many front-line teachers.[/quote]

please direct us to the massive input.[/quote]

It's a fact - the Common Core standards development process started out with looking at a number of existing state standards that had already been developed with input and vetting from experts, and then had several series of committees, workgroups and review/input periods, they had people from academia, child psychologists, experts on pedagogy and many other fields and in fact they received and addressed over 10,000 comments.  Politifact looked into the claims that there was no input from front-line teachers and ruled it to be false:  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/oct/21/fact-checking-common-core-school-standards/

The claim that the standards were developed in a closed back room with no input is an outright lie being aggressively circulated by Heartland Institute and a few other conservative front organizations.[/quote]

So -- now an attempt to sway liberal DC parents (i.e., the majority of public school parents) by saying opt out is a conservative conspiracy.   Please just google "opt out"  "standardized testing" to get a wealth of information to decide for yourselves.   Also -- it appears the above poster has conflated the concept of common core with opting out -- they are related but different ideas -- don't be taken in.  [/quote]

Look, not sure what would satisfy your need for evidence. Here are a few more news outlets that have been allowing a voice to educators and experts:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/parcc/

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action...&pgtype=Homepage#/PARCC%20test

http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=PARCC+test&mod=DNH_S

Here is Illinois honored teacher speaking out

http://twitchy.com/2015/02/17/illinois-2012-teache...speaks-out-against-parcc-test/

Not sure what you want....

These, and the links I followed from these articles, are what convinced me - and I am not conflating two things - what I am saying is that having NEVER (with 4 kids in DCPS or DCPCS) opted out of the NAEP or the DC CAS, I am going to opt out of the PARCC for my academically high performing 3rd grader who does not know how to type and or really navigate a computer screen.

My older kids are getting grades now, and she recently came home with a math test where most of her answers were correct but she did not fill in the "explain your answers" part, and got what my older kids consider to be a bad grade.  The "explain your answers" "explain your reasoning" "show your work" is completely reasonable in an older grade or in a class other than math - but this format, which I have never seen on a test before this (and the kids all went to the same highly rated WOTP ES), is geared clearly to the PARCC.

I was conflating two threads, however, and I do apologize for that.  On the other thread about "would you move back to private b/c of common core" is where mom talked about at least a week in an EOTP school being spend on trying to learn how to understand [b]how to follow the instructions on the test, which allegedly in 3rd grade are not age appropriate even where the test is[/b] and that, to me, is a wasted week of test prep.  Test prep that covers actual common core content?  Maybe.  But on that other thread someone also said this was trickling down to 2nd grade because the teachers and principals have so much riding on it.

My husband, who is a math guy, and does not like the math program they are using at the school we are at, says that they are trying to push the kids too far too fast in math b/c of the PARCC.  Our kids are very good at math, always scored advanced, I'm sure on the DC CAS this one would as well, but they just blew through some really key foundational concepts to try to catch up to get everyone ready for this

self described non diagnostic test where there can be more than one right answer (how do you score that and how can you have teachers' careers riding on answers to those questions?),

and after the reading I have done IMO non age appropriate (in math) test, which apparently also contains instructions that are so difficult to understand for kids that maybe are a bit behind that [b]they spent at least a week focused on trying to help the kids adjust to the format, not learn the information in at least one EOTP school[/b], and our kid is not going to adjust to this format.  My third grader will learn to type over the summer of third grade, same as my other kids, not earlier, not because of the PARCC, because typing means access to a computer and once that door is opened it is very difficult to shut it especially in a house full of older kids who are playing all sorts of interactive games with friends who have left this transient city, but set dates to play so that they still stay in touch.

So not an opt out test person, have never had kids opt out of a test before, and not opting out my older kids, just my 3rd grader mostly because the format of this test expects kids this age to be able to type.  And especially in predominantly poor cities, that is just ridiculous - maybe there are third graders who can text, but that is a different skill, and not one my kid is learning either.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics