The Opt-Out Option; Parental Protests Against Over-Testing

Bottom line: NYS wants to use "high-stakes testing" to see how well schools (and teachers) are teaching the material that can be readily tested. This is great, except that it forces schools (and teachers) to concentrate on that material to the exclusion of whatever has to be left off those tests, and sometimes the leftover material is crucial. "Teaching to the test" is inevitable -- and bad. A lot of parents choose to protest by having their children opt out of the evaluative tests.

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Our outgoing Superintendent posts Guidance for the Upcoming State Exams - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD

Recently, we have had a number of students ask questions about the school's reaction if a parent or child "refuses" to take the 3rd - 8th grade State Assessments. Attached please find a copy of the letter that was sent home to parents to clarify the district's viewpoint.

The crucial paragraphs:

   As per prior memorandum from the New York State Education Department (NYSED), please be aware that low assessment participation rates could adversely impact a school district's funding or increased state oversight of local school functions.

   Therefore it will be our practice to provide each student with a copy of each examination that students in that grade level are required to complete. Parents that wish for the child to be released from State testing must communicate their "intent of refusal" to HCS, before the exam is given. Upon receipt of the refusal, the district will arrange an alternative activity and the student will read quietly in an alternate location, rather than complete the examination. Their exam will be coded as "not tested." Although the student will not be penalized for the refusal, the school district may experience the effects described above.

It's pretty much what I remember her saying at the BoE meeting I put here but she did say a bit about the opt-out movement being even stronger downstate. Here's a video summary from NYS Allies for Public Education: They disagree with one point in Dr. Bowers' letter: they note that the threat of impact on school funding has not been carried through yet, and they don't believe it will be. A variety of web sites have more information, such as Opt Out CNY

dedicated to informing the Central New York public about the negative negative impact that high-stakes standardized tests are having on children and public education... How to REFUSE NYS Grade 3-8 TESTS

There are forums like the Onondaga Forum to focus on opting children out of state tests, other Common Core issues | syracuse.com As that "other Common Core issues" suggests, it's a national issue; United Opt Out National has a New York section, but there's nothing that special about us.

The Defiant Parents: Opting Out of Testing : The New Yorker

Last spring’s state tests were an entirely different experience, for children and for teachers. Teachers invigilating the exams were shocked by ambiguous test questions, based, as they saw it, on false premises and wrongheaded educational principles. (One B.N.S. teacher, Katherine Sorel, eloquently details her objections on WNYC’s SchoolBook blog.) Others were dismayed to see that children were demoralized by the relentlessness of the testing process, which took seventy minutes a day for six days, with more time allowed for children with learning disabilities.

Basically I see this as a protest against a trend: US education has been increasingly test-directed, which is great from a data-guy's point of view except for the minor fact that the most important parts of education aren't readily testable, so they tend to be squeezed out by teachers and schools who are evaluated on how well their kids do on the standardized parts. If this goes on, we could end up with an education system which generates excellent PISA scores but whose graduates are unable to think for themselves; really good at solving simple word problems but unable to create, unable to innovate, not even particularly good at working together. That's scary. If you're interested in the issue, I'd suggest that you check some of my posts mentioning Yong Zhao who spoke at HCS a while ago, or just watch the (long) videos at NYC Public School Parents: Video: Yong Zhao on how high-stakes testing is damaging our schools

Check out Yong Zhao's terrific (and funny!) presentation on October 12, along with the question and answer session, co-sponsored by Class Size Matters, GEM, Time out From Testing, and Parents Across America.

Prof. Zhao is the nation's most eloquent critic of high-stakes testing and discusses how the current education reform agenda is taking our nation's schools in entirely wrong direction.

Board of Education Meeting, Tuesday 2014-03-18

It's really nice to have the BoE meetings put up on YouTube; unfortunately there was no microphone in front of Diana Bowers (Superintendent until July) so that answers to some questions are not audible to me, except in bits and pieces. Also, some BoE members leaned back too far from the microphones, sometimes. Anyway, I'll set it here with notes below so that you can find segments for particular speakers or subjects. Umm, I skipped the FFA presentation somewhere early, I see...sorry, it's not what I was focused on. (But the state FFA convention will be here, with local schools including HCS as hosts; it seems to rotate among all the participating schools.)

Bottom Line, as I understand it: We can't save money by refinancing any of our debt; we can save some by not keeping our "resource officer" (policeman), we will probably save some with an "interim Superintendent" being paid less than Diana has been paid and we may save quite a bit if that interim Superintendent is part-time or shared with another district. We may save a trivial amount of money on the GEA if the House amendment to the NY budget goes through, or a small but non-trivial amount if the Senate goes through; the Senate version does end the GEA in 2016--2017, and they have different rules about going past the tax cap (which is 2.21% this year.) We have a long-term problem of sustainability in that our instructional budget has been rising more slowly than inflation for years, while the Special Education program has risen rapidly; it's not clear that anything can be done about that, but in a world of limited resources it is unfortunately fair to say that we (and other NY districts) have increasingly been doing special education instead of general education; resources have been redirected, and the tax cap says they can't be increased at the same pace. Perhaps it has to be that way. Meanwhile, we can certainly save money by cutting art, which doesn't seem to be covered in the testing which evaluates how well HCS is doing, so obviously it's not important. (end sarcasm)

6:50--13:55 Barbara Houze, retiring art teacher; she's unhappy at being replaced by a total of 0.7 part-time people who, by "magic math", will be able to cover the actual classes, but the art program will have no planner, advisor, or advocate; only the actual classes will be covered.
14:00-16:00 John Knecht spoke up as artist and educator, to say that art should be treated like chemistry or history or math or any other academic subject. (I doubt this; I think of art as a category of subjects, not as a subject; it's of very little importance if we're just training workers with specific skills, but immense importance if we want the creative class, the "black-collar" entrepreneurs/innovators/designers/scientists of the 21st century. Or if we want artists, I suppose.)
16:20--18:15 Denise Leone as a "visiting artist at HCS" said that we evaluate cultures based on their art, and she wanted to understand why art is among the first items to be cut ... to understand the process. Molly Johnson replied that it's not, (a) it's not decided if the art will be cut and anyway (b) we've been cutting a lot for a long time and (c) the process is open, working through open meetings and openly available documents like those at boarddocs for this meeting.
20:00--21 Audrey Miller spoke as a parent of a child who hates school except art/music; this is not about saving the art program, it's about saving the children.
21--22 An HCS art student whose name I can't hear (upd: Sydney Craven) said that a lot of kids need an arts background for what they hope to do with their lives, especially of course if that involves application to an art school. It was well-spoken.
22--24 Lynn Schwarzer talked about the amazing changes wrought by the art teacher who ought to be given a full-time position, after decades of relative inadequacy at HCS. She also talked about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education broadening into STEAM education (I just can't think what that "A" could stand for, but I'd be happy to buy an Evil Mad Scientist STEAM T-shirt for each BoE member; I did long ago link to STEAM Learning Network site: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, to STEAM: A Framework for Teaching Across the Disciplines, and just as an example to Maker Faire and Science Education: American kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests. - Slate Magazine.)

Art/music/theatre good, tests bad. (All right, all right -- tests are good for some things, just not for all we now use them for. Art/music/theatre good.)
24-- Carolyn Hsu wanted to know about the specific rules and limits for donations...I could hear Diana's response when I was sitting there, but I can't hear enough of it on the video.
28:15--Stephanie McClintick, as a local artist, wanted further clarification....
31:10--Molly (BoE) Somewhat into the next phase, thanks for and acceptance of the Sports Boosters donation.
31:30--40:00 Embarking on search for the next Superintendent; nothing solid yet, but looks like it has to be an interim.
40:--46 Molly, Diana, Bud -- policy on testing and opt-outs chosen by students or parents.
46--Aaron on opt-out consequences; if fewer than 95% of students participate for two consecutive years, there might be financial consequences but it's not clear in the regulations; there will be a reclassification of the school as not being "in good standing" which might hurt college applications, but (Diana) there may be a lot of downstate schools in this situation and college admissions people will understand.
47 Kevin Ellis continues same topic, but I can't hear him.
52--1:00:30 Matt Crumb on 2.21% tax cap calculation, on failure to save money by refinancing debt, and on House and Senate bills to amend the Governor's proposed budget. Get Your Protests In Before April 1st!
1:00:30 Bill Dowsland on Senior class trip to Hershey Park.
1:01 Susan Marafino pointing out that the "resource officer" is costing us $20K/year, which may be money well spent but it might be money better spent e.g. on keeping the art program going, and that a part-time rather than full-time Superintendent might save even more. (Molly replies that there is some savings implicit in having an interim Superintendent anyway, who will get a lower salary than Diana has received.)
1:05:40 Ellen Larson on testing and teacher evaluation, which ought to be separate.
1:07:50 Ryan Solomon contrasts South African actual violence with American over-protectiveness and would rather spend the resource officer's cost on art; applause suggests that this is a popular view.
1:08:50 Ferdinand von Muench talks about the art and strings programs which seem to be at risk; we just need to follow the library's example with a 3.6% tax increase. He wants to encourage people to go to the next public Finance Planning meeting, but it hasn't been rescheduled yet. He makes two major points: our Administration costs are high, with 6 people to do the admin that other similar-size schools do with 4. (Note that the most expensive of these is of course the superintendent; as he knows but does not say, "School superintendents get paid more than governors in a dozen states: New Jersey, New York,...". So a part-time or shared superintendent might be a really good buy for a financially stretched district. And Special Education of which he is very much in favor, but there is a question of sustainability. (See "bottom line" above, or better yet listen to what he's saying. The recent growth in special education is substantially larger than our deficit; the GEA is larger than our deficit; life is difficult.)


Well, I guess I ran out of steam (not STEAM) as I approached the end, but I'll post this and hope it's somewhat useful to somebody. Error-correction would be appreciated.

Update: Radio Free Hamilton reports here. Sadly, the first comment is "Are these all the same people that voted against the merger. Do they truly not get it and see what they caused". This appears to reflect a failure to realize that some of us turned against the merger when we realized that according to the merger study, it wasn't actually a money-saver -- the economy of scale (reduced staff) and diseconomy of scale (more transport) were quite close to balance. It's certainly probable that most or all of those speaking voted accordingly--I dunno. Obviously, most of Hamilton did. (It was a money-shifter, and that gets complicated. Never mind.) So it goes.

Kids' Creativity Trending Down

It's common to focus on facts and skills, as being readily measurable. Still, there are ways to try to measure creativity, and they tell an uncomfortable story...

As Children’s Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity | Psychology Today

Kim, who is a professor of education at the College of William and Mary, analyzed scores on a battery of measures of creativity—called the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)—collected from normative samples of schoolchildren in kindergarten through twelfth grade over several decades. ...

According to Kim’s research, all aspects of creativity have declined, but the biggest decline is in the measure called Creative Elaboration, which assesses the ability to take a particular idea and expand on it in an interesting and novel way. ... more than 85% of children in 2008 scored lower on this measure than did the average child in 1984.  Yikes.... ...

the TTCT seems to be the best predictor of lifetime achievement that has yet been invented. It is a better predictor than IQ, high-school grades, or peer judgments of who will achieve the most.[6]  The correlation coefficients found between childhood TTCT scores and real-world adult creative achievements have ranged from a low of about .25 to a high of about .60, depending on which tests are included and how adult creative achievements are assessed.[6]

So, the decline in TTCT scores among school-aged children indeed does appear to be cause for concern.  Kim herself calls it the “creativity crisis,” and that term has been picked up in a number of articles in popular magazines.

Well, surprise, surprise.  For several decades we as a society have been suppressing children’s freedom to ever-greater extents, and now we find that their creativity is declining.

Of course, maybe it's not freedom, maybe it's excessive fructose or excessive worry about fructose or too much or too little television. But it does seem like an issue worth considering, when we consider options for American schools.