Archive: Author: w

United Teachers Los Angeles is boycotting the district mandated tests.

From http://utla.net/pab

Periodic Assessment Boycott
STARTING JANUARY 27th!
Don’t turn in the tests!
Assessment should be between you and your students, not you and the bureaucracy!

On January 27, we launched a boycott of periodic assessments.
UTLA is calling for a complete boycott of all periodic assessments, Open Court Assessments, and any other district mandated tests that are NOT required by State or Federal law, or that aren’t needed to determine appropriate placement for a student, such as CELDT tests. We are boycotting the submission of the test data to the District. The first day of this boycott is January 27th.

See their site for more.

Unsurprisingly, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has refused our request to opt our son out of the high-stakes test, known as the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), stating they must follow their own policies. However, CPS does NOT follow their own policies. They base promotion for third-graders on only one year of tests although their policy requires two years, and have yet to send me the required annual promotion review and promotion data that shows this policy is fair across race and ethnicity. In addition, I question the statistical reliability of these tests on a per-student basis, and have requested this information from the state.

More generally however, the basic problem is that CPS uses one or two 40 minute tests given on Math and Reading to undermine thousands of hours of teacher-student efforts.

We are still attempting to find other ways to opt our child out of the test. See below.

Following are the details.
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All students must take test

My principal received this email regarding our request:

I did find out and just confirmed with Dr. Alice Painter of OEAS. I will assume that this child does not have an IEP and is not an ELL student. The answer is no, they cannot opt out of the ISAT for their third grade son. CPS is bound by the policies that they approve and pass, and we as CPS people must follow the policies. I’ve attached the policy for you here. The definition of DWA on the first page and the top of the second page pretty much say it all. Please let me know if you have questions.

The parent’s letter that you faxed to me mentions that other parents in Illinois have opted out – but we at CPS must follow our own policies. Hope this helps!

Susan S. Paik
Management Support Director
Area One Office, Chicago Public Schools

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Promotion based on test score

However, Chicago Public Schools is NOT following their own promotion policy (referenced above, available here: elementary-school-promotion-policy-07-0926-po1).

First, according to their own policy they must use the last two annual assessments, yet 3rd grade is the first time they take this test, so that is simply not possible. Thus, they are basing promotion on one (not that two is much better) 40-minute nationally norm-referenced test in math, and one 40-minute nationally norm-referenced test in reading. If my child scores in the bottom 24th percentile in either one, he must go to summer school.

In the promotion policy, section I, it states that:

“District-wide assessment (DWA): The district-wide assessment will be either the norm-referenced component of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) (using the highest score from the last two annual assessments) or other norm-referenced assessment administered by the district or the summer assessment.”

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Promotion data by race and ethnicity

In addition, CPS promotion policy section V states:

“The District will maintain all testing data by race and ethnicity of test-takers and shall annually review this data in regard to students who are promoted and retained pursuant to the requirements of the policy in order to ensure that there is no disparate impact based upon race or ethnicity created by operation of the policy. All such data shall be made available to a parent upon request.”

This information is not available online, and has not been sent to me as requested.

Yes, there is data on the Office of Research, Evaluation and Accountability site, such as the ISAT data for all schools in relation to the meets, exceeds, etc. categories. But that is criterion-referenced, while CPS uses only the Stanford10 norm-referenced data for promotion. I could not find that data anywhere, let alone broken down into subgroups. I found a promotion report, but not broken into subgroups.

What I am waiting to receive is a copy of the annual promotion review that CPS conducts, as well as the promotion data as described in section V of the promotion policy.
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Opting out by not attending

The problem with just keeping my son home during the tests, as the Gills did, is that CPS misuses the tests for promotion purposes, and therefore he might have to go to summer school, which is viewed by students as punitive. So I have requested that he not go. Here is my email.

I guess my next question is what happens if I transfer him out for two weeks, home-school him, and then transfer him back in? What will happen to him if he does not have a standardized test score but meets all other promotion requirements (attendance, grades)?

My principal is currently checking with Central Office on this matter.
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Statistical reliability of one test

Based on the reading on standardized tests that I have done, I seriously doubt that these tests are statistically reliable at a per-student level. I am writing the state to request this information. (Also remember that last year the scores from the state were incorrect and had to be rescored months later. In the meantime, students at Chicago Public Schools went to summer school based on the faulty test scores.)

• Is the Illinois Standards Achievement Test statistically reliable enough on a per student basis that it can be used by a school district as the sole factor in determining student promotion, trumping all other factors?
• Is the nationally norm-referenced subset of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test statistically reliable enough on a per student basis that it can be used by a school district as the sole factor in determining student promotion, trumping all other factors?
• Is it the intention of the state that the ISAT, or a subset of the ISAT, be used by a school district as the sole factor in determining student promotion, trumping all other factors?
• Is it the intention of the state that nationally norm-referenced data be used by a school district to determine student promotion by establishing a cut score based on their percentile ranking?
• Is it the intention of the state that if a student does not have an ISAT score they will not be promoted, despite other available information such as grades, teacher’s assessments, and attendance?

(Scroll down for video. Below are direct quotes from the video:)

• Innovative curriculum: the staff has the freedom to create original lessons based on the needs of their students
• Non-competitive environment: student progress is evaluated on an individual basis
• Shared responsibility: everyone, including students and parents, has a voice in what happens at their school.
• To get a teamlike organization, you have to have a school with control over its own destiny, with autonomy from too much outside control.
• Autonomy does not come easily to America’s schools.
• Students select projects and topics which intrigue them, and then study those. (43:50)
• Students’ need to be needed.
• (Students have) gone out and done something important, that was seen as important in the world outside of school.
• The curriculum was developed by the teachers themselves.
• Close your textbook and teach.
• The real program development has to come at the school level. If we could move our school systems towards encouraging schools to really be unique or distinctive, you’re going to heighten the commitment because its something the people there are creating and love and want to nurture. (54:50)

(It takes a minute to load… The public school segment of the video begins around 34:00.)

Why Do These Kids Love School (1990)
Dorothy Fadiman
http://www.archive.org/details/why_do_these_kids_love_school

Today, yesterday and Monday I am required to administer the Chicago Benchmark Assessments. My third-grade son is also taking them at his own school. (I’ve only written Chicago Public Schools to opt him out of the high-stakes ISAT for this year.) Here’s an overview of some of the disruption to learning they cause.

• My classes are shortened from about one hour to less than a half-hour. The tests are 90 minutes, plus setup time. They affect the entire school day’s schedule, not just those two hours – the time must come from somewhere! On the other hand, the persuasive writing test asks students to write a persuasive essay in “10-25 minutes”. What seventh-grader can write a formulaic five-paragraph essay in that amount of time? We gave them enough time to finish.
• Writing is destroyed of any independent thought or creativity. The idea of adding writing to the test might seem good – a chance for students to show more of themselves than what a bubble does. However, the essays are assessed (and thus taught and learned) according to strict 5 paragraph rules of introduction, three examples, conclusion. According to teachers who have been to the training, diverging from this could result in a lower score. Ironically, the written portions of the “standardized” test are supposed to be graded by classroom teachers. If classroom teachers wanted to give a written test, we would give one! And it would relate directly to what our students were doing, rather than being some surprise topic handed to us 30 minutes before we give it to our students.
• Special education students are exposed: I have numerous special education students who are included in my general education class. In general, no one knows specifically who they are. Until this test in which they are pulled out to a different room, carrying their own chairs and desks.
• Coordinated schedules are destroyed: In addition, the special education teacher that comes to help my students also helps other grade levels at other times. The schedule was hard to figure out. It is impossible for her to help all of her students on testing days, because each grade level must alter their schedule to account for hours taken for testing.Students are so tired from an intensive 90 minutes of actual testing (per day) that it is difficult to get full attention during my short time that I have with them.
• Students are confused as to why they are tested on things they haven’t learned. Or learned last year. So am I. Do I really need a test to tell me my students don’t know what we haven’t got to yet? Should I provide only topical instruction so as to cover everything on the test?
• Students question why we need all these tests. What am I to tell them?

Next week: ACCESS testing! English Language Learners will be pulled from my room to take that test.

Short explanation of some of the tests:

In Chicago Public Schools, there is much confusion as to the naming of the tests. The Benchmark Assessments used to be called Learning First and are give two or three times a year. They do not count towards the cut score that CPS uses for promotion policy. The writing portion supposedly counts to 50% of a student’s writing grade.

The ISAT is the state test that CPS misuses to determine promotion to the next grade level for certain “benchmark” years (3rd, 6th and 8th grade). Note: they only use a subset of the ISAT that is nationally norm-referenced to determine the promotion criteria. Thus, the promotion policy is based on your student’s performance in competition to national performance. If your student only scores higher than 23 (or less) out of 100 students, s/he goes to summer school regardless of grades, attendance or behavior.