Anonymous wrote:I’m just surprised parents who want to opt out haven’t started telling their kids to intentionally get all the questions wrong if they’re forced to take the test.

Sounds like admins and teachers would be champing at the bit to get the kids out of school rather than bring down test scores.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

At least we'll be able to exercise choice on the standardized test taking front down the tack. We'll leave it to the kid to decide which tests to take as a teen, including International Baccalaureate exams graded by the non-profit IB organization. The child can always apply to test optional colleges if s/he wishes. There are many more of them with every passing year.

So when the stakes benefit your kid - civil disobedience doesn't apply. Got it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fair point.

The first group of parents who opted out on NCLB mandated tests, at a MS in Scarsdale NY, faced many barriers. Flash forward 15 years and opting-out has become so commonplace in the State of NY, the national opt-out epicenter (where 20% of students refuse to take state standardized tests), that the test has been re-designed to induce parents to opt-in. This year, results in NY are not linked to teachers evaluations for the first time, and there are no longer testing time limits.

Here in DC, the opt-out movement hasn't gained much traction. The small number of families (1%?) who opt out should expect headaches and hard work as local opt-out pioneers.

Wow. Opt outs in NY are changing the obsession with testing? Great!!

Anonymous wrote:DCPS teacher here. We were given documentation that said the policy is to not allow opt outs. So we aren’t this year.

Anonymous wrote:DCPS teacher here. We were given documentation that said the policy is to not allow opt outs. So we aren’t this year.

Anonymous wrote:DCPS teacher here. We were given documentation that said the policy is to not allow opt outs. So we aren’t this year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a pain.

Civil disobedience is not supposed to be easy, or free of repercussions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

At least we'll be able to exercise choice on the standardized test taking front down the tack. We'll leave it to the kid to decide which tests to take as a teen, including International Baccalaureate exams graded by the non-profit IB organization. The child can always apply to test optional colleges if s/he wishes. There are many more of them with every passing year.

Anonymous wrote:Fair point.

The first group of parents who opted out on NCLB mandated tests, at a MS in Scarsdale NY, faced many barriers. Flash forward 15 years and opting-out has become so commonplace in the State of NY, the national opt-out epicenter (where 20% of students refuse to take state standardized tests), that the test has been re-designed to induce parents to opt-in. This year, results in NY are not linked to teachers evaluations for the first time, and there are no longer testing time limits.

Here in DC, the opt-out movement hasn't gained much traction. The small number of families (1%?) who opt out should expect headaches and hard work as local opt-out pioneers.

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the anti-corporate;anti-Pearson sentiment completely.

Brace yourselves for college prep and application process during which you will fuel the College Board's seemingly bottomless bank account with SAT testing fees. You will then voluntarily tell the College Board every last detail about your family's finances through its CSS Profile (required by about 300 colleges and universities.)

You may also pay the ACT corporation for the right to test your kid. And, then, you'll pay all these entities AGAIN for them to send your information to the colleges your kid may want to attend. Just trying to till the earth a bit that the fight against the corporatization of educational testing extends through every tentacle of the U.S. system.

Anonymous wrote:

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.