Update on the testing of a third-grader

After discussions with numerous people, including lawyers, we decided we were not in the right position to opt our son out of the state test this year. Our son took the ISAT this spring. According to Chicago Public Schools Promotion Policy, if he scores below the 24th percentile in the small nationally normed subset of math or reading, he MUST attend summer school, despite the fact that he has had excellent grades (A’s and B’s) in these subjects all year.

We have filed a FOIA request for a copy of our son’s test, answers and scoring.

We have also requested the promotion and retention data and report that Chicago Public Schools is supposed to make available to us, according to their own promotion policy. Our request was first made in the fall of 2008. We have yet to receive it.

We are aware the Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) has filed a FOIA request for the CPS retention and promotion data. PURE has also requested information regarding how many students last year were affected by the rescore, and whether the state standard scores and categories align to the subset of nationally normed standard scores and categories that CPS uses for promotion. In addition, PURE has requested from ISBE the psychometric data with regard to individual students (i.e. is the test valid and reliable at a per-student level, or only when aggregated?).