Opt-Out 2015 - Part the Second

Well, we knew it was bound to happen: the school is refusing our refusal. LOL

Hi Mr. and Mrs. Crunchy,

As with state-mandated tests, all students enrolled in Maryland Public Schools are required to be administered the PARCC assessment this year. Monkey will be taking the PARCC Mathematics and ELA assessments as is required of all students across the state in tested grades and subjects. Given that we are legally bound to administer the assessment to all of our students, we cannot accommodate your request for her to not take the assessment. Regarding Monkey's assessment last year, she is referring to a make-up session. Monkey was absent from the first session of her MSA test administration, and we assessed her during a make-up session as was required of us by the state of Maryland. This make-up process is the same used for any and all students who are absent during testing sessions, and this same process is in place for this year.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

*sigh*

Next step: Our refusal of their refusal of our refusal:

Dear Mr. Principal:

We are aware that M**** School intends to administer the PARCC test, that Monkey will be given the test. However, that does not mean that Monkey will actually take the test. That is the distinction.

This is not a request for M**** to not administer that test, or to opt out; it is simply to inform M**** that Monkey won't be taking the test. Short of someone putting her hands on the actual keyboard or trackpad, she cannot be forced to take the test - and non-testing students should not, according to the PARCC manual, be in the room with testing students. We are informing M**** of our family's intention and decision in advance so that appropriate arrangements can be made. We are happy to send work with her, or to suggest alternate activities, if that is helpful; we know the school will be busy during the testing windows.

As to the makeup session last year, she was in fact absent for the third morning session of the MSA, with makeups scheduled (according to a testing calendar I'd seen) not until the next week; if the makeup schedule had been changed due to the snow days last March, the courtesy of at least a phone call would have been appreciated, but - water under the bridge and all that.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely
The Crunchies

From the PARCC manual:

http://avocet.pearson.com/PARCC/Home#7053

Opt Out 2015 - Part the First (And Hopefully the Last!)

And so it begins....The start of our 2015 Standardized Testing Refusal. If you've been following along long enough, you know that last year we refused the MSA (Maryland's predecessor to the PARCC, and that while our older child's middle school was able to work with us and ultimately honored our wishes, our younger child's elementary school did no such thing; the younger was given the test with her class and took 2 segments of it out of sheer boredom, and when we kept her home for the third morning out of four, they took her out of class that afternoon and tested her, alone except for a single staff member.

So without further ado, here's this year's letter to the same school. There's a different testing coordinator at the school this year, and a different administration in the school system, and this time we have access to some of the PARCC manual and procedures in advance, so it will be interesting to see how things play out this year. I've already had some folks ask on Facebook if they may use our wording as is or adapted; by all means, be our guest. :-)
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#OptOut - Part the Fifth

At last, the comparatively anticlimactic conclusion of the 2014 Opt-Out saga in a highly-regarded Maryland suburban school system, which I began recounting here (Part One), and continued here (Part Two) and here (Part Three). When last we convened (Part Four), my older child's middle school was working with out family to honor our refusal of the MSA's, while the younger child's elementary school went the opposite direction and pulled her from class to give her her own private makeup session. Neither school was in violation of Maryland's State Superintendent's directive to make sure that children who were in school were tested, and yet one school had the courtesy to work collaboratively with a family while the other, who could have done likewise without penalty to them, did the opposite - when they could have helped make the whole experience a lot less miserable for a family who had refused the test in writing, and for a child for whom human interaction and physical movement are like oxygen.

Had the elementary school worked with us and delayed the testing, held off on that personal makeup session, we would have had time to learn about and use "Page 113" of the MSA testing manual. It came across my Facebook newsfeed while I was following the story of another parent in the same school system who was refusing the tests for her children and was being given the same canned responses from the Superintendent and Testing Office. The mother from a neighboring county whom I mentioned in the last installment shared - as she had successfully worked out a deal with her school system to NOW administer the test to her child, NOR to have her "Sit & Stare" - a page from the testing manual which dealt with "student refusal" to take the MSA. There it was, at the bottom, clear as day: "If a student refuses to test, the student is given one additional opportunity to test during the make-up window. At the end of the make-up window, the student Test Books will be included with scorable materials and the student will receive a score on whatever portion of the test (if any) that he or she completed." Absolutely NOWHERE in that paragraph is it required that a student sit with his/her classmates if the test is refused, and in the event that this is mandated elsewhere in the manual, it also does NOT mandate that the child must "Sit & Stare" at the makeup session.

When I forwarded this to the middle school, the reply I got was that their guidance was that our written refusal counted as the initial refusal, and Bookworm not attending during the Monday makeup session would count as the second, after which she could attend school as usual; we only had to keep her home from the actual testing times (I am assuming that schools were still being directed to enforce the Sit & Stare during those windows) and we didn't have to worry about the makeup windows. As it turned out, another snowstorm closed schools on Monday, and she was allowed to attend school on Tuesday and NOT have to sit for any makeups through the end of the testing, so she simply didn't sit for ANY of the test. We had time to discuss and implement the procedural loophole, minimize absences and wear-and-tear on Bookworm, and our wishes were honored - but the way the elementary school handled it didn't brook any such discussion. And sadly, Page 113 didn't come up until Friday, which was AFTER Monkey's (uncalled-for) Personal Makeup Session.

Hubby and I conferred. We could see the stress in Monkey's entire demeanor over the whole testing thing, so we decided, as Page 113 had not yet materialized, to allow her to finish the test the next morning, like ripping off a Band-Aid. When we told her about this, the relief on her face was evident, so we know we made the right decision for her, at that time, with the knowledge we had. I don't think that I will ever live long enough to forgive the school for sneaking the test in on us, though, especially not when it could have been avoided without violating the State Superintendent's directive. Predictably, she was a mess over the following weekend, so we did our best to get her outside and run her silly, and we now - mostly - have our child back. Mostly, and getting better by the day, over a week later.

The tests have been and gone now, except for the last couple days of science tests for 5th and 8th grades. Millions of dollars and weeks of testing time have flowed under the bridge, along with any last vestige of trust in my local elementary school, where over the years I have happily volunteered and substituted, gotten to know hundreds of kids (who still come to my house Trick-or-Treating for Halloween :-)), and tried my best to give them a leg up in a system that seems designed, many days, to beat them down. Did they violate the law in any way? No, they did not - but they violated our family's trust, and that of my child, and things will never be the same.

Should *your* family refuse state standardized tests? That's a decision each family will have to make on their own, but there are a lot of reasons to at least give it serious consideration, and this graphic from the BadAss Teachers Facebook page outlines a number of them. Read, think, consider, and read some more.

Shared from the BadAss Teachers Facebook page. (Pardon the apostrophe in #8; it came with the graphic, and if it gets corrected, I'll post the corrected version.)

#OptOut - Part the Fourth

Hi again, Gentle Readers (and raisers of ruckuses too *grin*).

When last I updated our sordid saga of test refusal in our Maryland school system, we had been basically thrown under the Testing Bus by the superintendent, despite his nationally-aired disregard for this year's administration of an outdated test. The whole time we were exchanging these emails, we were also in touch with the individual schools, AND we were furiously researching online for loopholes. Well..... we found a couple, actually.

Another parent in neighboring Frederick County had successfully managed to get her daughter's school to allow her to read during the tests by filing a suit; the school system offered the deal just before it would have gone to court. Nobody here in Montgomery County was buying that, though.

From the MSEA Facebook page

At the individual school level, things were happening. They had to happen - the testing window was about to begin....and then, the first two days were snowed out as a monster late-season snowstorm swept up the mid-Atlantic.

Woohoo - TWO DAYS of NO TESTING!!! A sign from God, don't you think?

Once the snow had been cleared and school resumed, my kids' schools picked up where they left off, planning to add the missed days at the end of the testing window. The way the two schools handled our family's test refusal spoke to me as much as our superintendent's declining to intervene in any way.

A Child's Response to the Standardized Testing Madness

Originally published on Thursday, November 8, 2012

Yesterday morning as I was braiding Younger Child's hair for school, Older Child was in the basement at the computer furiously typing away. "I'm going to write a protest letter!" she told me as she passed the doorway on her way downstairs; this week, in early November, students at her school are undergoing the first round of practice testing for the MSA, Maryland's standardized test, which is administered in March. Yes, that is FOUR MONTHS away, and there will likely be another round of practice tests and countless sessions of "how to find topic sentences" and "how to summarize contrived articles" before the real thing. Test preparation last year took us huge and unwieldy chunks of time and upset schedules right and left, all while stressing teachers and students to the max. When Older Child asked me why there were so many practice tests, and what they did with that information, and why she would have to make up a practice test if she missed it (because in all honesty I was planning to let her stay home this morning and go back in to school after the practice test was finished), I had no answers for her, and suggested she ask the people with the answers, and so the letter below was conceived.  My only admonishment was, "Make sure I get to read it before you print, please!"

Here, with only the signature edited out, is what she took to school yesterday, and with her permission I'm sharing it here:
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To Whom It May Concern,

    What is the point of the practice MSAs? If they’re just to get us ready for the proper MSA, we already are. Most of the fifth-graders have taken it at least once, and the fourth-graders have usually taken it once before. I know there are some people who have just come to this school and are new, and the third-graders certainly haven’t taken it before. Maybe they should have the practice MSA, but it doesn’t mean all three grades should have to take it. It messes up schedules, and last year, I had to choose between instrumental music and my special. Nobody offered a make-up time, instructions on which to do, or even an apology I’d have to miss something. I don’t even think that’s a choice people should have to make.
    It also eats up our reading and math time. We don’t even get to read when we finish a section of the practice MSAs! Maybe it’s not allowed on the real one, but what about the practices? You’re supposed to check your work when you’re done. Okay. Once you’ve checked your work three times and you still have ten or fifteen or maybe twenty minutes left, is there any merit to checking it again? And then what are you supposed to do? If it’s still “good practice”, why is it as strict as the real MSA?
    Last year, among all the vocabulary quizzes, words of the day, and learning time spent reviewing strategies and going through packets, I think we got in more than enough practice time, and the tests really seemed unnecessary.
    MSAs are about reading and math, but instead of spending our time working up to the MSA focusing on reading and math(and science, in the case of the fifth-graders), we focus on test strategies. We’re learning how to take a test, not how to be good at reading and math.
    Altogether, I think we overload on MSA practice.

Sincerely,
[My 5th-Grader]
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I'm so very proud of her! :-)
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[addendum: She waited a long while (several weeks) for a response, and when FINALLY she was called to the office for a meeting with the principal and the teacher in charge of testing in our school, the first things focused on were her tone and delivery, NOT the message. To be fair, she was told by her classroom teacher to deliver it to the teacher in charge of the testing, and when she did finally encounter said teacher she was on her way someplace else, so the actual delivery was....perfunctory at best. That said, IMO she raised a valid concern that was not entirely addressed to her satisfaction, nor to mine. She was told that PARCC would replace the MSA (Maryland's current mandated standardized test) in the next couple of years and, according to my child, was then asked if she could find the stamina to handle one more practice test. In the end, we opted out of the second practice test (in January) and she hung out with me that morning.

For the record, I believe that her teacher and her school have done well by her. My biggest gripe is about The System which imposes these tests on schools and students in the first place. That said, I'm not sure at what level decisions about how much test prep and practice tests are made, even after this incident. This year, my younger child will be in her first year of high-stakes testing, and for a number of reasons I'm very conflicted about this. That'll be covered in a later post on its own.]