Opt-out students are being punished# Parenting - 为人父母
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How some students who refused to take high-stakes standardized tests are
being punished
By Valerie Strauss
SIDEBAR PHOTO: A school bus passes a sign encouraging parents to refuse
that their children take state tests on Monday, April 13, 2015, in Rotterdam
, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
What has come to be known as the "opt out" movement has become something of
a a force in the education reform debate. Hundreds of thousands of parents
have refused to allow their children to take federally mandated high-stakes
standardized tests, including those aligned with the Common Core State
Standards, and education officials don't like it.
In 2015, 20 percent of parents in New York City opted out; this year's
numbers are not yet known. Parents who chose this course did not know if
there would be personal consequences for their kids, but knew they were
possible. Now, in some districts, they are finding out what they are.
Why would states and districts want to take action to stop the opt-out
movement? The U.S. Education Department has been warning of possible
sanctions if at least 95 percent of all students are not tested - a
threshold set in federal K-12 education law, first in No Child Left Behind
and now in its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act. Last month, the
department issued proposed rules that includes punitive options that states
should take to ensure 95 percent student participation rate on federally
required state-selected standardized tests.
In this post, Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is
now executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education, writes
about what is happening to some opt-out parents. Burris was named the 2010
Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York
State, and in 2013, the same organization named her the New York State High
School Principal of the Year. She has been chronicling botched school reform
efforts in her state for years on this blog, and this is her newest piece.
-------------------------------------------
By Carol Burris
Nearly half a million families across the country made the decision to opt
their children out of Common Core state exams in 2015. As a result, most
districts are scrambling to come up with ways to adjust their policies and
processes when decisions about students are made on the basis of test scores
. Sadly, some refuse to adjust and seek to punish opt-out students instead.
Recently, Florida opt-out parents accused their districts of retaliation by
issuing threats of retaining young children, or excluding older students
from early college programs. A California high school principal went so far
as to deny opt-out students parking privileges, participation in senior
activities and off campus passes.
Now it appears that one of the largest school districts in New York State,
the Buffalo School District, has denied students entrance to its selective
schools based on their parents decision to opt them out. But a small group
of families and a member of the Buffalo Board of Education are pushing back.
Buffalo residents, Gretchen and Jim Cercone, are career educators. Gretchen
is a middle school principal in a first-ring suburb of the city, and Jim is
a professor of education. Staunch believers in public schools, they entered
their two sons in the Buffalo Public Schools hoping that would be where
they would remain through graduation.
Last year, the Cercones decided to join the more than 220,000 New York
parents who refused to allow their children to take the New York State
English Language Arts and math assessments. For the Cercones, it was a
matter of conscience. They made that decision after exhausting all remedies-
from writing letters to attending forums-hoping to convince the New York
State Education Department to abandon the Grades 3-8 Common Core tests. As
educators, they knew the tests were flawed, and they considered opting out
to be the only way to be heard.
A few days before last year's state assessments, they received a letter
stating that a student's admissions profile for the district's selective
schools could be "impacted" by a lack of Common Core scores. The Cercones
decided to test the system to see whether the district was complying with
New York State education law regarding the use of Common Core test scores by
having their fifth grader apply to the city's most competitive schools-
Olmsted and City Honors.
What the family uncovered was startling. Not only were the state Common
Core tests being used in a way they possibly violates the law, the district,
without the passage of policy, had been quietly giving private school
students access to the competitive schools without state test scores, even
as opt-out students were shut out.
Admissions criteria for Buffalo's most selective schools
The Buffalo School District has two highly selective Grades 5-12 schools -
City Honors and The Frederick Law Olmsted School. Both are designed to meet
the needs of gifted students. In a school system in which 67 percent of the
students are black or Latino, these two highly selective schools have
student bodies that are disproportionately white and Asian. Only 26 percent
of the students at City Honors are black or Latino; at Olmsted the
percentage is 58 percent[1]. Standardized test scores, including the New
York State Common Core exams, weigh heavily in deciding who can get in to
the schools. [SEE http://www.cityhonors.org/ AND http://www.buffaloschools.org/Olmsted64.cfm ]
In 2014, the New York State Legislature, in response to questions regarding
the validity of the exams, amended education law to protect students from
the effects of the Common Core tests. The following amendment was passed:
"[N]o school district shall make any student promotion or placement
decisions based solely or primarily on student performance on the state
administered standardized English Language Arts and Mathematics assessments
for grades three through eight. However, a school district may consider
student performance on such state assessments provided that the school
district uses multiple measures in addition to such assessments and that
such assessments do not constitute the major factor in such determinations."
NYS Education Law, Section 305, subdivision 47.
The passage of the amendment was quickly followed by regulations issued by
the Board of Regents that required districts to comply with the law, as well
as to provide notice to parents regarding how 3-8 test scores would be used.
In a 2016 letter updating parents on the Common Core tests and the process
for opting their students out, Buffalo Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Kriner
Cash, explained that three schools - City Honors, The Frederick Law
Olmsted School and Leonardo Da Vinci High School[2] - would use state test
scores as part of their admission process. You can read the superintendent'
s notice to parents here [SEE https://roundtheinkwell.files.wordpress.com/
2016/06/parent-letter-from-dr-cash.pdf ]. The relevant section is on Page 2
. Cash stated that the lack of a score would "impact" the student's ranking
for admission, but then claimed that the lack of a score would not
disqualify the student.
The problem with that last statement is that it is not true. Students are
indeed disqualified if they do not take the Common Core tests.
The district website explains that in order to be admitted to The Frederick
Law Olmsted School, students must have a score of 3 (proficiency) on the ELA
and math tests. That statement itself makes scores on the state test a
major factor, a clear violation of the amended law.
Further, how the score is factored into the admissions criteria results in
student disqualification. That is because both City Honors and Olmsted
assign a score of zero to students who do not take the test, therefore even
with a perfect score on all other criteria, the best an opt-out students can
do is to achieve 21 out of a possible 31 points, making it impossible for
them to rank high enough to earn a seat at City Honors. On the Olmsted
application, opt-out students can only earn 11 points out of 20, also an
insufficient score. [SEE http://www.buffaloschools.org/files/83779/cumulative%20scoring%20description.pdf ]
Will Keresztes is chief of Intergovernmental Affairs, Planning & Community
Engagement for the district. As such, he has been handling the complaints
brought be the Cercone family and other parents.
He agreed to speak with me by telephone on May 26. During that conversation
he admitted that the present system, intentionally or not, made it
impossible for students who opted out to be admitted.
"It turns out to have the effect it is quite assured that those kids will
not have a seat," he said, stating that the only scenario in which they
would not be disqualified is one in which "every applicant" opted out of the
state tests.
What was even more remarkable, however, was his admission that the district
has quietly allowed private school students, as well as students from other
countries, into the competitive schools without state test scores. For these
students the district either used another test, or simply doubled the
students' score on the entrance COGAT test - a request that was denied when
opt-out parents suggested it as a solution. This was being done without
policy or notice to public school parents.
The privilege afforded private school students
During a March 10 meeting, with the Cercones, Keresztes told them that
private school students in the area were allowed to submit other
standardized achievement test scores in lieu of the state tests-specifically
mentioning the Standford Binet (which is an IQ test, not an achievement
test) and the IOWA test. Although there is no evidence that scores on these
tests are comparable with the Common Core scores, all tests are converted to
stanine scores for student ranking purposes.
It was not until the board meeting of March 30 that Keresztes admitted that
still another group of private school students were allowed to apply without
any additional test score at all. In those cases, the COGAT score was
doubled.
Barbara Nevergold is a former teacher and historian. She has served on the
Buffalo Board of Education since 2012. Since December of 2015, she has
repeatedly asked the district to create a fair policy to accommodate
students in the admissions process if their parents opted them out of the
state test. Cognizant of state law as well as the practices of other school
districts, including New York City, Nevergold knew that other places made
accommodations. On March 23, after three months of administrative evasion,
she submitted a resolution to the Board to direct the staff to provide a
recommended solution to resolve the problem. The resolution was tabled, and
then later passed by the Board, when no progress was made. [SEE http://barbaranevergold.blogspot.com/ ]
Through her persistent questioning, it was discovered that 14 children who
opted out would rank high enough for admission if their COGAT scores were
doubled, like the private school students without achievement scores.
Meanwhile, students continue to be moved into the competitive schools from
wait lists, even as these opt-out students are denied.
For Nevergold, whose own granddaughter opted out, it has been an exercise in
frustration. "We are still waiting for the promised recommendation from
staff," she said. "I keep asking to see the policy that allows private
school students to be treated differently. No one can show it to me. This is
even more remarkable given that we are under investigation from the Office
of Civil Rights."
A district appointed task force is recommending that state test scores not
be used in the future for admission to the competitive schools. As yet, no
remedy has been provided for the fourteen or more students who fell through
the opt-out cracks. Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law allows
citizens to seek judicial relief if a governmental body has acted in a
manner that is arbitrary and capricious. Clearly the disparate practices of
the district, absent policy, would make it easy to make such a claim. [SEE http://www.albanylawreview.org/Articles/Vol77_1/77.1.0127-Castiglione.pdf ]
What has occurred in Buffalo, a district in which the majority of students
are of color and come from homes that are poor, would never happen in an
affluent, suburban district. Stalling and dismissiveness would not be the
way the problem is resolved. As a district administrator who wishes to
remain unidentified told me, "We are engaging in a form of
disenfranchisement that walks like punishment and talks like punishment." I
think that sums it up pretty well.
----------------------
[1] The Office of Civil Rights is monitoring the district's enrollment
practices in some of its selective schools after a discrimination complaint
was filed
[2] Despite the superintendent's claim, Da Vinci does not use State test
scores anymore in the admission's process.
---------------------------------
Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.
********************************************
being punished
By Valerie Strauss
SIDEBAR PHOTO: A school bus passes a sign encouraging parents to refuse
that their children take state tests on Monday, April 13, 2015, in Rotterdam
, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
What has come to be known as the "opt out" movement has become something of
a a force in the education reform debate. Hundreds of thousands of parents
have refused to allow their children to take federally mandated high-stakes
standardized tests, including those aligned with the Common Core State
Standards, and education officials don't like it.
In 2015, 20 percent of parents in New York City opted out; this year's
numbers are not yet known. Parents who chose this course did not know if
there would be personal consequences for their kids, but knew they were
possible. Now, in some districts, they are finding out what they are.
Why would states and districts want to take action to stop the opt-out
movement? The U.S. Education Department has been warning of possible
sanctions if at least 95 percent of all students are not tested - a
threshold set in federal K-12 education law, first in No Child Left Behind
and now in its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act. Last month, the
department issued proposed rules that includes punitive options that states
should take to ensure 95 percent student participation rate on federally
required state-selected standardized tests.
In this post, Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is
now executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education, writes
about what is happening to some opt-out parents. Burris was named the 2010
Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York
State, and in 2013, the same organization named her the New York State High
School Principal of the Year. She has been chronicling botched school reform
efforts in her state for years on this blog, and this is her newest piece.
-------------------------------------------
By Carol Burris
Nearly half a million families across the country made the decision to opt
their children out of Common Core state exams in 2015. As a result, most
districts are scrambling to come up with ways to adjust their policies and
processes when decisions about students are made on the basis of test scores
. Sadly, some refuse to adjust and seek to punish opt-out students instead.
Recently, Florida opt-out parents accused their districts of retaliation by
issuing threats of retaining young children, or excluding older students
from early college programs. A California high school principal went so far
as to deny opt-out students parking privileges, participation in senior
activities and off campus passes.
Now it appears that one of the largest school districts in New York State,
the Buffalo School District, has denied students entrance to its selective
schools based on their parents decision to opt them out. But a small group
of families and a member of the Buffalo Board of Education are pushing back.
Buffalo residents, Gretchen and Jim Cercone, are career educators. Gretchen
is a middle school principal in a first-ring suburb of the city, and Jim is
a professor of education. Staunch believers in public schools, they entered
their two sons in the Buffalo Public Schools hoping that would be where
they would remain through graduation.
Last year, the Cercones decided to join the more than 220,000 New York
parents who refused to allow their children to take the New York State
English Language Arts and math assessments. For the Cercones, it was a
matter of conscience. They made that decision after exhausting all remedies-
from writing letters to attending forums-hoping to convince the New York
State Education Department to abandon the Grades 3-8 Common Core tests. As
educators, they knew the tests were flawed, and they considered opting out
to be the only way to be heard.
A few days before last year's state assessments, they received a letter
stating that a student's admissions profile for the district's selective
schools could be "impacted" by a lack of Common Core scores. The Cercones
decided to test the system to see whether the district was complying with
New York State education law regarding the use of Common Core test scores by
having their fifth grader apply to the city's most competitive schools-
Olmsted and City Honors.
What the family uncovered was startling. Not only were the state Common
Core tests being used in a way they possibly violates the law, the district,
without the passage of policy, had been quietly giving private school
students access to the competitive schools without state test scores, even
as opt-out students were shut out.
Admissions criteria for Buffalo's most selective schools
The Buffalo School District has two highly selective Grades 5-12 schools -
City Honors and The Frederick Law Olmsted School. Both are designed to meet
the needs of gifted students. In a school system in which 67 percent of the
students are black or Latino, these two highly selective schools have
student bodies that are disproportionately white and Asian. Only 26 percent
of the students at City Honors are black or Latino; at Olmsted the
percentage is 58 percent[1]. Standardized test scores, including the New
York State Common Core exams, weigh heavily in deciding who can get in to
the schools. [SEE http://www.cityhonors.org/ AND http://www.buffaloschools.org/Olmsted64.cfm ]
In 2014, the New York State Legislature, in response to questions regarding
the validity of the exams, amended education law to protect students from
the effects of the Common Core tests. The following amendment was passed:
"[N]o school district shall make any student promotion or placement
decisions based solely or primarily on student performance on the state
administered standardized English Language Arts and Mathematics assessments
for grades three through eight. However, a school district may consider
student performance on such state assessments provided that the school
district uses multiple measures in addition to such assessments and that
such assessments do not constitute the major factor in such determinations."
NYS Education Law, Section 305, subdivision 47.
The passage of the amendment was quickly followed by regulations issued by
the Board of Regents that required districts to comply with the law, as well
as to provide notice to parents regarding how 3-8 test scores would be used.
In a 2016 letter updating parents on the Common Core tests and the process
for opting their students out, Buffalo Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Kriner
Cash, explained that three schools - City Honors, The Frederick Law
Olmsted School and Leonardo Da Vinci High School[2] - would use state test
scores as part of their admission process. You can read the superintendent'
s notice to parents here [SEE https://roundtheinkwell.files.wordpress.com/
2016/06/parent-letter-from-dr-cash.pdf ]. The relevant section is on Page 2
. Cash stated that the lack of a score would "impact" the student's ranking
for admission, but then claimed that the lack of a score would not
disqualify the student.
The problem with that last statement is that it is not true. Students are
indeed disqualified if they do not take the Common Core tests.
The district website explains that in order to be admitted to The Frederick
Law Olmsted School, students must have a score of 3 (proficiency) on the ELA
and math tests. That statement itself makes scores on the state test a
major factor, a clear violation of the amended law.
Further, how the score is factored into the admissions criteria results in
student disqualification. That is because both City Honors and Olmsted
assign a score of zero to students who do not take the test, therefore even
with a perfect score on all other criteria, the best an opt-out students can
do is to achieve 21 out of a possible 31 points, making it impossible for
them to rank high enough to earn a seat at City Honors. On the Olmsted
application, opt-out students can only earn 11 points out of 20, also an
insufficient score. [SEE http://www.buffaloschools.org/files/83779/cumulative%20scoring%20description.pdf ]
Will Keresztes is chief of Intergovernmental Affairs, Planning & Community
Engagement for the district. As such, he has been handling the complaints
brought be the Cercone family and other parents.
He agreed to speak with me by telephone on May 26. During that conversation
he admitted that the present system, intentionally or not, made it
impossible for students who opted out to be admitted.
"It turns out to have the effect it is quite assured that those kids will
not have a seat," he said, stating that the only scenario in which they
would not be disqualified is one in which "every applicant" opted out of the
state tests.
What was even more remarkable, however, was his admission that the district
has quietly allowed private school students, as well as students from other
countries, into the competitive schools without state test scores. For these
students the district either used another test, or simply doubled the
students' score on the entrance COGAT test - a request that was denied when
opt-out parents suggested it as a solution. This was being done without
policy or notice to public school parents.
The privilege afforded private school students
During a March 10 meeting, with the Cercones, Keresztes told them that
private school students in the area were allowed to submit other
standardized achievement test scores in lieu of the state tests-specifically
mentioning the Standford Binet (which is an IQ test, not an achievement
test) and the IOWA test. Although there is no evidence that scores on these
tests are comparable with the Common Core scores, all tests are converted to
stanine scores for student ranking purposes.
It was not until the board meeting of March 30 that Keresztes admitted that
still another group of private school students were allowed to apply without
any additional test score at all. In those cases, the COGAT score was
doubled.
Barbara Nevergold is a former teacher and historian. She has served on the
Buffalo Board of Education since 2012. Since December of 2015, she has
repeatedly asked the district to create a fair policy to accommodate
students in the admissions process if their parents opted them out of the
state test. Cognizant of state law as well as the practices of other school
districts, including New York City, Nevergold knew that other places made
accommodations. On March 23, after three months of administrative evasion,
she submitted a resolution to the Board to direct the staff to provide a
recommended solution to resolve the problem. The resolution was tabled, and
then later passed by the Board, when no progress was made. [SEE http://barbaranevergold.blogspot.com/ ]
Through her persistent questioning, it was discovered that 14 children who
opted out would rank high enough for admission if their COGAT scores were
doubled, like the private school students without achievement scores.
Meanwhile, students continue to be moved into the competitive schools from
wait lists, even as these opt-out students are denied.
For Nevergold, whose own granddaughter opted out, it has been an exercise in
frustration. "We are still waiting for the promised recommendation from
staff," she said. "I keep asking to see the policy that allows private
school students to be treated differently. No one can show it to me. This is
even more remarkable given that we are under investigation from the Office
of Civil Rights."
A district appointed task force is recommending that state test scores not
be used in the future for admission to the competitive schools. As yet, no
remedy has been provided for the fourteen or more students who fell through
the opt-out cracks. Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law allows
citizens to seek judicial relief if a governmental body has acted in a
manner that is arbitrary and capricious. Clearly the disparate practices of
the district, absent policy, would make it easy to make such a claim. [SEE http://www.albanylawreview.org/Articles/Vol77_1/77.1.0127-Castiglione.pdf ]
What has occurred in Buffalo, a district in which the majority of students
are of color and come from homes that are poor, would never happen in an
affluent, suburban district. Stalling and dismissiveness would not be the
way the problem is resolved. As a district administrator who wishes to
remain unidentified told me, "We are engaging in a form of
disenfranchisement that walks like punishment and talks like punishment." I
think that sums it up pretty well.
----------------------
[1] The Office of Civil Rights is monitoring the district's enrollment
practices in some of its selective schools after a discrimination complaint
was filed
[2] Despite the superintendent's claim, Da Vinci does not use State test
scores anymore in the admission's process.
---------------------------------
Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.
********************************************
