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    PARCC Myths & Facts: Meet the “Misinformed”

    The subject of hundreds of area parents removing their children from state PARCC testing has been the focus of intense media and online scrutiny over the last two weeks. Referred to as “opting-out”, a widely circulated letter characterizes the opt-out participants as “right wing”, and implies they have a general disdain for public education. An editorial ran in the local newspaper, describing the behavior as “overreaction” of a “misinformed backlash”, suggesting that the opt-outs were aligned with opposition to the national standards for education (Common Core).

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    The editorial also characterized standardized testing as a foundation for “making schools better”. If true, that claim would represent a new discovery in the world of education. While testing might be a means of measurement, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for making schools better.

    So, does reality match the hysterical* PARCC lobbying rhetoric? Are the opt-out families fringe elements determined to destroy all testing and the standards?

    It’s time to meet a few parents…

    Meet Christine Creagh, a faculty member in Early Childhood Education at Columbus State Community College:

    “We opted out for many reasons. The test has not been shown to be valid as an assessment tool. The test takes way too much time away from direct instruction in the classroom. The test results are not coming back in a timely manner so they will not be useful to support children in their current grade.

    We talked about this with our son quite a bit. We wanted him to be a part of the discussion and a part of the decision. He knows sometimes people have to play along. For example, he has to do homework sheets even if they don’t interest him because we trust that his teachers only give him important work to support his growth and learning. He also knows that we should not ALWAYS play along, that sometimes resistance is importance, and that sometimes the status quo should not be tolerated. He knows that concerned groups of people organizing can affect real change. I think this has been a great learning experience in many ways for him.”

    Lyen Djackov and her husband are University of Pennsyvania graduates and she serves as an alumni interviewer for the college’s applicants from central Ohio:

    “I don’t see myself as anti government or as a “protest lover”. I even am okay with some standardized testing; I’m not a huge fan of them, but I understand that they exist, and that if kids want to go to college, they are going to have to take the ACT or SAT or both, so I guess I see the elementary and middle school tests as a sort of test prep. I have a master’s degree, so I’ve certainly taken my share of standardized tests, and as an adult, can see how they are designed to test only a particular type of learner.

    The main reasons I have a problem with these tests in particular is that they are being administered over such a long period of time; time that could be spent actually teaching my child. For my 5th grader, it would have been about 12 hours of testing, and that is just the actual time taking the tests.

    When you take into account the time it takes to get the kids ready for the tests, it turns into much more time. It is ironic that while these tests are supposed to evaluate the quality of teaching and learning, they actually take so much time away from these very things. I also object to these tests because from what I understand, they have not been validated. So the kids taking the test are actually test subjects being used to research the test. Normally test subjects who are underage have consent forms signed by parents…and sometimes receive some sort of payment for participating in research, but none of that has happened here. In fact, the CCS district, which doesn’t have much cash to speak of, has probably spent a ton of money on these tests.

    Furthermore, I feel that using standardized tests to this degree to evaluate students, teachers, schools and districts completely misses the mark. These types of tests are only able to evaluate very specific types of learning. They do not capture whether a student has learned to love learning, or whether a student knows how to use reference materials to get the information s/he may be lacking, or whether the student is a creative problem solver, or whether the student has a strong work ethic. These are the elements that have been found to correlate with success in college and career.”

    You may have already heard of Stephanie Groce. She’s a former Columbus City Schools Board member. Her background is in Quantitative Research, Evaluation and Measurement in Education. She’s a current board member for School Choice Ohio:

    “I am pro CCSS (Common Core State Standards). I am pro standardized testing. Her current math and ELA teachers are rock stars. I would be happy to have my daughter tested in math and ELA as often as the Great State of Ohio sees fit. In return, I would like the following.

    Please make sure that her school has the technology to support these standardized tests. It does not.

    Please make sure that the curriculum provided by her district is rigorous, well written, and fully addresses all of the standards. It does not.

    Please make sure that she has access to textbooks aligned to the standards so that we can help her at home. She does not.

    Please make sure that throughout my child’s K-12 academic career she will be placed in classrooms with teachers who are prepared to teach these standards, understand my child’s learning needs, and do not require substitutes more than twice per month. Some have not.

    Please make sure that her principals are interested in meeting the needs of all students in the school and have high standards for learning. Some have not.

    When these conditions are met, test her all you want.”

    Over in Bexley, John Millard and his wife opted their children out too…

    “Our children, 5th and 7th graders, don’t suffer from any test anxiety; on the contrary, they’ve always performed very well on standardized tests. We do not seek the repeal of Common Core or all forms of standardized testing. We love our district and the wonderful teachers and administrators there, and we haven’t complained about anything in the seven years our kids have been in school. We are not serial rabble-rousers, anti-government or anything of the sort.

    We have friends and family members who are teachers in various Ohio school districts and throughout the year, we heard hushed tales of how disruptive, pointless and unnecessarily expensive the PARRC/AIR testing would be. After weeding through a lot of information and misinformation, we initially were against PARRC testing because, simply, it is a faulty product – a boondoggle in every sense that has been rushed to “market” untested and unready by people who have never so much as run a homeroom. What strengthened our resolve is the manner in which school districts, teachers and parents have been bullied and intimidated into accepting all of this. Teachers told us how they’d been muzzled and had careers threatened, and misleading ODE language attempted to make us all believe there was no alternative but to sit back and take it. It was appalling on too many levels to ignore.

    Our interaction with the Bexley School District over the matter has been frustrating, to say the least. I won’t bore you here with the entire story, but after a somewhat surreal “meeting” with the District Superintendent about an unwritten “policy” that disregards our parental rights and offers a choice of forced testing or forced truancy, we are moving on to the School Board. As a side note, last week our children and others who refused testing were made to sit and stare at every test even though we had firmly notified the District of our objection.

    At the risk of oversimplifying our position objecting to PARRC testing, the battle seems to have evolved into two fronts: one over what would be product negligence in any other business sector, and another for parental right of authority as granted by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

    Back on the north end Rebecca Schammes doesn’t mention Common Core in her objections, either:

    “I have a 5th grader with a 504 plan for ADHD that is supposed to make accommodations for testing — except with PARCC. I also have an 8th grader who is academically gifted and tests very well. We decided to opt them both out (writer and physician) because we decided as a family to make a statement about unnecessary and unhelpful testing in public school.”

    Nor does parent of two, Terri McKean Jones

    “When it comes to voting on issues and candidates, I do my research on them and vote my conscience accordingly. I never vote a blind party line. I’ve never protested anything in my life before. I’ve never even been upset enough to publicly disagree with anything the kids’ schools have done or made the kids do. I hate making waves, I’ve never wanted to be “that parent”. I prefer to have a low profile. So for me to get involved in the anti-PARCC movement is completely out of character for me.

    But ever since returning to school after winter break, Kate had been coming home complaining about this test they had to take. Sometimes she’d be in tears, sometimes she wouldn’t be able to sleep because she was so worried about it. The closer it got to the test days, the worse her anxiety got. She would talk about how her teachers were telling her these tests were SO important. She thought her grades depended on them. She’s never been prone to test anxiety, and she’s marked as gifted in math and reading, so the fact that she was so upset over these two tests concerned me.

    So I started doing some research about PARCC. I’m married to a teacher who teaches at a private school which opted out, so he was able to tell me a little bit but not much. The first thing I discovered was that I could opt her out, she didn’t have to take the test. That was good to know, it was a way to solve the immediate problem of her anxiety. So I looked into what opting her out would mean. That’s when I discovered that it wouldn’t mean anything if she didn’t take the test this year, it literally didn’t matter. But the problem was, she’d just have to take it next year. So then I became torn. I could either opt her out this year, knowing she’d then wind up taking it next year without having had the benefit of a “practice” year, or I could make her take it as practice since she would have to take it next year. My husband thought she should go ahead and take it as practice since she’d just have to take it next year.

    After a couple of days of reading the posts of people who were on both sides, that I decided I was going to opt Kate out. Especially after I discovered the practice PARCC website and took a first-hand look at those questions. Wow. So I sent my husband some of the links posted in the group, as well as the practice site. After he’d had a chance to look at them, I told him which way I was leaning and asked him if he was okay with that–and he was. He was just as dumbfounded at the tests as I was.

    So I officially opted my daughter out of the tests. I don’t believe the tests serve any viable purpose. There is so much wrong with these tests and so very little right. And the pressure the school administration is putting on these kids in a year when the results don’t really matter–wow. We’ve essentially shortened the school year from 9 months to 4 months due to all the prep and practice. Other countries ahead of us in the educational “race” are moving away from standardized tests like this, but here we are embracing them. And it’s all due to people who aren’t educators. That really irks me. We’re letting people who don’t know how kids learn decide how our kids are going to learn. Enough is enough.”

    I’ll add the author to the list. My husband wrote the refusal letter for our children. He thought the testing time commitment was ridiculous. He’s been in IT operations for more than ten years. The kids just finished up flag football league. We’ve never been described as an overacting, misinformed backlash before.

    Anecdotally, in tests that are supposed to last around 75 minutes, our children have clocked more like 2 hours outside of the classrooms for each exam. To get an accurate idea of lost instructional time for children, remember to add extra minutes for set up and tear town of the system: a lot of extra minutes.

    My background is in ethics, logic and reasoning. It’s a field that’s focused on distinguishing rational positions from irrational overreactions. It’s a professional opinion that the positions of parents who opt out are thoroughly rational.

    The position of pundits who conflate the opt-out movement with test-haters and Common Core haters: sub-rational.

    Are there misinformed people out there? Probably. It just happens to be the case that more of them appear to be overwrought* PARCC aficionados. It’s unfortunate that their misrepresentations of the PARCC boycott undermine the credibility of their positions supporting things like national standards.

    * Typically, using non-quantifiable descriptors such as “overwrought” and “hysterical” would be avoided. In this particular case, the adjectives were selected to be consistent with the terminology of the PARCC advocates. Enjoy the symmetry.

    To read more updates on School Issues, CLICK HERE.

    For more ongoing discussion on Columbus City Schools, CLICK HERE to visit our Messageboard.

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    Miriam Bowers Abbott
    Miriam Bowers Abbotthttps://columbusunderground.com
    Miriam Bowers Abbott is a freelancer contributor to Columbus Underground who reviews restaurants, writes food-centric featurettes and occasionally pens other community journalism pieces.
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