Reply to PARCC... is this test still relevant at all???

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The loss off Federal funding if families don't submit to ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2012) mandated testing is an idle threat.

Name one case where the Dept. of Ed pulled a school's Federal funding because parents opted out. You can't. There is none although more than one-quarter of the families in various school districts have opted out since the legislation came on line (in NY, NY, WA, OR, IN, OH etc.). Why do you believe that this is happening?

The new head of Standardized Assessments at OSSE has made it easier to opt out of PARCC this year than in 2019. You can make an arrangement with your school to remove your kid during testing blocks freely this year. Some of the DCPS elementary schools in NW will be providing supervision for families opting out in April & May.  Ours plans to.[/quote]

Sure, but Sections 1111 and 1116 of NCLB are clear, even if they may not be enforced.  A lot of people cheat on their taxes too.

If your kid would do well on PARCC and you opt out of testing you are only hurting your kid’s school and making it harder for DCPS/PCSB, parents, and others to evaluate schools based on a common standard.   PARCC scores factor in a school’s rating and reputation, and schools with high scores attract better students and teachers.  Plus, PARCC will be especially useful this year to see which schools suffered the most Covid-19 learning loss.  And what else is your kid going to do while his or her friends are testing?  Watch TV?  Play Minecraft?
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Cheating on taxes is a weak analogy for opting out. Are you familiar with the the writings of Diane Ravitch, one of the architects of No Child Left Behind?  She turned against NCLB mandates back around 2010, emerging as one of their staunchest critics with her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."  In the years since, Ravitch has become a tireless advocate for ditching the testing system she helped create.

The point of seeing which schools suffered most during Covid-19 learning loss is what, exactly? If Bowser and WTU leaders cared about Covid learning loss, they wouldn't have ensured that DC was among the last several big cities in the country to re-open schools (along with San Fran and LA).  Our ed leaders wouldn't have given up on virtual learning a month before the school year ended in 2020 (no other city did this; Philadelphia never even closed its public elementary schools). They wouldn't have failed to provide strong supports to help poor kids who fell far behind during school closures to catch up in the last year.

I don't believe for a minute that most middle-class parents in the District care half as much about PARCC scores in selecting schools as they care about demographics. If high test scores were needed to attract better students and teachers, heavily UMC DC public schools with lackluster PARCC scores, like YuYing, Hearst and Brent, wouldn't have become wildly popular in recent years.  Parents wouldn't buy million houses on Capitol Hill to access Brent, which boasts among the highest teacher retention rates in the system.

What is my kid going to do while her friends are testing?  I'm going to take her out during testing blocks, with school's permission, like I did with her older sibling in 2018 and 2019. She wants to learn more about the Revolutionary War, so we're going to head to the public library near the school to do research on the Founding Fathers. To each his/her/their own.
  [/quote]

Disagree.

1) NCLB passed Congress overwhelming and, regardless of what Diane Ravitch or you think, it is still the law.  Basically, you are making it harder for schools to comply with current law and putting them at risk at sanctions.  That is no different than encouraging people to not comply with the tax laws because you disagree with how the government spends money and because you think that the government won’t go after tax cheats.  It is too bad if OSSE is going along with this and turning a blind eye to people opting out because they don’t like their precious snowflakes taking a standardized test.

2) Diane Ravitch has changed her mind on NCLB.  So what?  Her critique is that we shouldn’t shut down schools that have low test scores because these are often in poor and/or minority communities.  
As you concede, no one is shutting down any schools in DC.  In fact, schools such as Coolidge and Ideal have extremely low PARCC scores and no one is closing them.  But at least, because of PARCC, we know how bad these schools are doing.  Plus, Ravitch is now against charter schools.  In fact, charter schools have been one of the few bright points in DC and have prevented at least some parents from rushing to NW DC or the burbs for better schools.

3) DCPS/PCSB is very interested in seeing what schools suffered the most Covid-19 learning loss.  Don’t be obtuse.  This is important data for the schools.

4) Please don’t claim that you speak for “most middle-class parents in the District.”  Plenty of parents care about PARCC scores and these are important datapoints for rankings/awards (e.g., USN&WR, Blue Ribbon, etc.), which lots of parents care about.  If you look at the last PARCC scores, Ross was at 91% 4+ ELA and 76.1% 4+ math, Brent was 73.6% and 70.7%, and Hearst was 60.8% and 60.0%.  Those numbers generally correlate to the school’s quality/ranking.  For example, USN&WR puts Ross as the #1 elementary school, Brent as #13, and Hearst as #26.  These schools generally fill up with in-bounds kids, so the lottery waitlist is largely meaningless.  So, your point about the “popularity” of these non-charter schools doesn’t amount to much because most people have to buy or rent in bounds.

5) Your Yu Ying example isn’t compelling.  Anyone choosing that school is doing so in spite of the school’s test scores because they want their kid to learn Chinese.  In fact, the test scores at Yu Ying are poor: 55.9% 4+ ELA and 57.4% 4+ math.  Understandably, kids taking some of their classes in Chinese aren’t going to excel on ELA but what is the excuse on math?  It is very difficult to get into Yu Ying after PK3 and parents at that stage aren’t really focused on PARCC scores.  In contrast, the fact that schools like SWW and BASIS have some of the best PARCC scores in DC is a reason why parents consider those schools for 9th and 5th grade, respectively.

6) Parents buy in the Brent district because it is a great place to live, Brent is a good school (with good PARCC scores, see above), and they can try to move to BASIS or Latin for 5th grade.  However now with BASIS ranked the #1 middle school in DC by USN&WR (Latin is #14) and winning the Blue Ribbon award last year, it will get harder and harder to get a slot there.  We’ll see what happens with Latin 2.

7) My kid studied the Revolutionary War for 2 weeks in school, visited the Revolutionary War exhibition at the American History Museum a couple of times, read a couple books about the Revolutionary War, and has visited multiple sites involved the war over the years.  He/she knows it well and will still find the time to take the PARCC test.  Your kid can just read up on the war at the library over the weekend.  Apparently, the war wasn’t covered in your kid’s school.

8) No one thinks that the PARCC test is perfect but a standardized test is required by law and, for better or worse, DC contracted to use PARCC.  In my view, parents like you who send their kids to publicly funded schools, participate in LSAT and PTA, and then undermine the DCPS/PCSB’s educational mission by opting out of the PARCC and encouraging others to do so are wrong and selfish.  You are just hurting DC schools and, in particular, hurting your own kids’ school(s).[/quote]

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