Arizona Attorney General Says Parents Have No Legal Right To Opt Children Out Of State Standardized Tests

From the Arizona Capital Times:

Parents of students in public schools have no legal right to withdraw their children or opt out of statewide standardized tests, Attorney General Mark Brnovich concluded today.

In a formal opinion, Brnovich acknowledged that state law does permit parents to exempt their children from certain learning materials and activities they find objectionable. That even includes keeping them out of a class or lesson where the material is being used or discussed.

But Brnovich, in response to a question raised by state schools chief Diane Douglas, said standardized tests are “separate and distinct” from such materials or activities. And he said nothing in the exemption law specifically includes a right to withdraw from standardized tests.

The attorney general also rejected Douglas’ suggestion that parents gained new rights in 2010 when the Legislature passed a “Parents Bill of Rights.”

That law, he said details the obligation of local school boards to ensure they inform parents about their rights to opt out of certain assignments. It also includes the ability to refuse to have children immunized and the right not to have children taught about AIDS.

But nowhere in that law, Brnovich said, did lawmakers include testing.

“The Legislature’s failure to include such a right is especially telling because the statute specifically mentions the ‘right to review test results’ and the `right to receive a school report card,’” he wrote.

Yet Brnovich pointed out that, even in amending the law in 2010, the Legislature did not see fit to include opting out of testing in that list. And he said that when lawmakers make an extensive list like this, it is presumed they know what is not on it.

So in Arizona a parent has a right to opt their children out of immunization and AIDS education but not the state tests.

Think about that - think about the values inherent in such a "law".

No Need To Worry For The Educrats And Their Shills In The "Non-Profit" World

Frank Bruni has another education reform column today that fetishizes the Department of Education, the educrats who run it and the reforms they impose, complete with quotes from Joel Klein, Kati Haycock and Michael Petrilli.

Gee, that's not rigging the column much, is it?

I'm not quoting from the column - you can read it yourself if you want.

But I did find this response in the comments relevant:

Six family members are teachers. Can anyone cite any measure by which initiatives instituted over the last 15 years achieved any success? No child left behind, common core, student growth objectives, over a hundred hours of standardized testing and teacher evaluations, just to name the ones I know. No child left behind resulted in half of my daughter’s 8th grade math class performing at a 2nd grade math level! These initiatives require so much administrative paperwork that the teachers don’t have enough time to prepare creative lesson plans. All six of the teachers I know work 60-80 hours per week. A substantial portion of the year is devoted to standard tests instead of teaching. Our children are at the greatest disadvantage in the history of this country and falling further behind. To what end? Do any of these decision-making bureaucrats/administrators ever speak with the teachers to learn what they would do to improve classroom effectiveness? Teachers are given unrealistic goals by which their performance is measured. For example, 2-3 grade level improvement in the students. I attended school in the sixties and believe the quality of my education is light years ahead of what our children get today. At that time, the teachers had a loose-leaf book with guidelines for each day’s lesson plan. There was at most, one standard test during the school year. Get rid of all the layers of six figure administrators and restore responsibility for the classroom to our teachers.

One big difference between the school experience the commenter mentions and now is the number of education "experts" in education "non-profits" who weigh in with the news media with their "expertise" on education issues.

There's an awful lot of money to be made shilling for corporate education reform, that's for sure.

And of course those "experts" in education working for the "non-profits" are all funded by very wealthy interests like Bill Gates or Eli Broad.

Frank Bruni need not worry for his beloved educrats and their reforms.

So long as the wealthy interests continue to back them, they'll be around.

Sandra Stotsky: Don't Let Yourself Be Bullied By State Education Officials

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—A former Massachusetts state education official who has emerged as a national critic of the Common Core standards told parent-lobbyists at the Capitol on Tuesday that they should fight for their rights and empower their older children as activists.

Sandra Stotsky, who helped developed Massachusetts' academic standards when she served as association commissioner of education in that state, traveled to Albany as part of a national tour to state capitols to denounce the Common Core. She spoke at a lobby day for parents who are pushing lawmakers to abandon the standards.

“Parents have the right to do what they feel is best for their children, and they have been bullied by state officials,” Stotsky said to the parents, who wore T-shirts declaring themselves as “Common Core warriors.”

“Parents have the right to keep their kids home when they're sick,” continued Stotsky, who is a professor at the University of Arkansas. “And they can simply keep them home on days when there are state-sponsored tests.”

Stotsky also attacked the Common Core:


She also encouraged the parents to engage their children in the fight against the Common Core.

“You need to start now recruiting your own secondary-level kids, so they understand how the Common Core standards are going to cheat them out of the education they should be having, which they may be having already in their communities, but which will gradually disappear in the next few years,” Stotsky said. “Unless there are changes made in the high school curriculum in both English and math, your children … are going to be the victims of Common Core. That's the experimentation that needs to stop.”

The harm that is being done to children by the educrats and the wealthy funders that back them must be stopped.

The Endless Testing regime that forces children to engage in two forms of schooling - test prep and test-taking - must stop.

The Common Core agenda that strips children of the joy of learning and turn school into soul-sapping drudgery must stop.

The Danielson rubric that forces teachers to teach one way or be declared "ineffective" must be discarded as an evaluation tool.

And we must stop being afraid of both the politicians and the state educrat bullies who push these reforms on children, parents, teachers and schools.

They are deliberately harming your children while keeping their own children away from the CCSS/APPR mess by sending them to private schools or Montessori schools.

The education revolution - both parent-driven and teacher-driven - is gaining momentum and growing all across this nation.

Let it grow far and wide and take the Common Core experiment, along with the ancillary testing, data tracking and evaluation reforms that have gone with it, and dump it into the trash bin of history where it belongs

Governor Cuomo Blames NYSED Commissioner John King And Regents Chancellor Tisch For Common Core Mess

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal pulled his state out of both the PARCC tests and the Common Core today.

Here in NY State, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo still loves the Common Core, but put the blame for the problems associated with the implementation squarely at the feet of NYSED Commissioner John King and the Board of Regents:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted teacher evaluation adjustments remain a top priority in the final days of the legislative session, adding that the problems over the Common Core implementation lay at the feet of the state Department of Education.

“We’re working on a bill that would make adjustments to teacher evaluations,” Cuomo said at a news conference. “We’re literally working on them as we speak.”

Cuomo added it’s the state Education Department’s roll out of Common Core, however, that has created the effect of needing to change the evaluation law, which is tied to Common Core-based testing.

The state budget agreement slowed the roll out of Common Core implementation for students, and Cuomo earlier this year said he wanted to make adjustments to the 2013 teacher evaluation law accordingly.

“In truth, the reason we’re in this situation is because the Board of Regents and Mr. King didn’t handle it,” Cuomo said, referring to Education Commissioner John King. “That’s how we got here. These are problems that have developed because of the improper roll out of Common Core in my opinion. We addressed the issues with the students and now we’re trying to address the issues with the teachers.”

Cuomo added he would be willing to issue a message of necessity if a deal is reached on an teacher evaluation change.

Okay, so here's a question I have.

If Cuomo wants to make sure his APPR teacher evaluation system stays in place so that "ineffective" teachers can be fired from their jobs, why isn't he calling for the "ineffective" bureaucrats at NYSED and the "ineffective" policymakers at the Board of Regents to be fired too?

I understand the Legislature appoints the Regents who then appoint the NYSED commissioner, but I guarantee you that if this governor put some pressure on the Legislature and the Board of Regents, the incompetent John King would be gone in short order.

For that matter, if Cuomo's blaming the Board of Regents for the shoddy CCSS roll-out, why he isn't he calling for Tisch's resignation as well?

Are teachers the only people in education held accountable for performance these days?

It seems that way.

After all, the CCSS tests don't count for the students (though they do count for the teachers) and the poorly-designed CCSS roll-out doesn't seem to affect the job statuses of King, Tisch, the Board of Regents or the educrats at NYSED.

Get Ready For Another NYSED Commissioner King Speech

Last time he gave a big speech, he compared the Common Core to the Civil Rights Movement.

This time, given the venue for the speech, we'll hear more about how his education reform agenda is indispensable for making New York State into an economic powerhouse in the 21st Century economy:

Also at noon, state Education Commissioner John King delivers remarks at a luncheon hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Harvard Club, 35 West 44th St., Manhattan.

King has the support of very few parents or teachers in this state, but he continues to have the support of the hedge fundies and corporate types who donate to the politicians.

Thus he's still around to make these inane speeches.

No Accountability Measures In Place For NYCDOE Educrats

Accountability, it seems, is only for the little people:

Top administrators at the city's Department of Education haven't been subject to formal evaluations during the Bloomberg administration, a break from past practice and an unusual occurrence among school districts across the U.S.

The disclosure follows the culmination of a yearslong battle by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to implement tougher teacher and principal evaluations in the district.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who has been on the job since April 2011, said formal job reviews weren't necessary because he informally evaluated his staff daily, and he was evaluated daily by the mayor. Teachers, he said, were in a different position.

"They're in front of the classroom and teaching our children, and we need to have a sense of how well they're doing," he said. "With us, we're not teaching children directly, we're setting policy. And I don't think it's hypocritical at all."

Oh, yeah - that's not hypocritical at all.

Teachers are in front of a classroom teaching "our" children while the NYCDOE educrats/hypocrites are in Tweed courthouse setting policies that affect those teachers who are in front of a classroom teaching "our" children - but that doesn't affect "our" children at all.

Who's Walcott kidding?

The Wall Street Journal goes on to show that none of the top officials at Tweed get formally evaluated ever:

The Wall Street Journal filed a public records request in February 2012 seeking the senior-staff evaluations after the department successfully fought to release scores for individual teachers' performances based on students' test scores.

In a response dated June 11, the department's public-records officer said no evaluations had been created since at least 2001 for the following positions: chancellor, chief of staff, chief academic officer, senior deputy chancellor, chief schools officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, deputy chancellor and general counsel. Mr. Bloomberg has appointed three permanent chancellors.

...


Superintendents across the U.S. are usually evaluated under a formal process, generally by elected boards of education, said Bruce Hunter, associate executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. The reviews are intended to help superintendents improve, he said. An increasing number of superintendents are also judged by their staff and community members, he said. "The jargon for it is a 360 evaluation," he said. "Almost nobody goes without evaluation now."

Superintendents in several other districts controlled by the mayor, such as Boston and Washington, D.C., also receive formal evaluations every year.

Before Mr. Bloomberg won control of the school system in 2002, evaluations of chancellors were comprehensive and touched on many areas under a superintendent's purview.

Former schools Chancellor Rudy Crew's last evaluation praised him for progress on issues such as reading scores and the expansion of prekindergarten but criticized him on several points, including the school-construction plan, according to media reports at the time. Mr. Crew, who was fired in 1999, couldn't be reached for comment.

Klein and Bloomberg (through his spokesperson) defended the lack of formal evaluations for the top Tweedies by saying that Tweed educrats were informally evaluated daily and anybody who wasn't up to snuff was "terminated."

That claim may not stand up to scrutiny, as it has previously been demonstrated that Tweed rarely fires a principal for misconduct, incompetence or anything else that might lead to termination in Bloomberg's beloved private sector.

What's worse, in negotiations with the DOE, UFT President Michael Mulgrew says the Tweedies were always promoting the need for formal accountability for teachers because everybody needs to be evaluated:

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the DOE would argue during teacher-evaluation negotiations that "all workers get evaluated."

"It's a monument to hypocrisy," he said. "They're setting policy and making decisions that affect over 1 million children, and they don't feel they need to be evaluated in any formal way whatsoever?"

Indeed it is.

But not a surprise in the Bloomberg administration, where a lack of accountability for the people in power has been a hallmark of his governance.