Tag: Opt-Out
Guest Post: Opt-Out Ends The Madness Of High-Stakes Testing
Kevin from Exceptional Delaware asked if we could share his post. The State Board of Education is having their monthly meeting at 1:00pm today. The Parent Strike press conference will begin prior to the meeting at 12:30pm in front of Legislative Hall in Dover. If any of our readers attend, let us know in the comments.
As a proud advocate of parent opt out, I watched in horror as Governor Markell vetoed legislation created for parents and their fundamental rights. The News Journal refers to House Bill 50 as giving parents the right to opt out. This is wrong. It’s about honoring a parental right that already exists, an attempt to codify that right and stop schools and the Delaware Department of Education from punishing schools over parent opt-out.
Today, the State Board of Education will have their monthly meeting, and they will discuss Regulation 103. To give some quick back-story here, Regulation 103 covers school accountability. Born out of Race To The Top, Delaware won in the first round partly because we already had this regulation in place. Race To The Top was an abject failure. But the DOE and the State Board are attempting to further legitimize this program under the guise of the Delaware School Success Framework. This “school report card” is nothing more than Federal mandate PLUS the many layers of complexity the DOE added to it. This regulation will put any Title I school in jeopardy if the students don’t perform well on Smarter Balanced. This week, we will hear about the creation of 10 new so-called “Focus Schools” and 4 “Focus Plus Schools”. The DOE will attempt to sell this as yet another way of “fixing” these high-need schools. The truth is, these labels are punitive in nature and are just another step before they become “Priority Schools”. We all know how that went a year ago.
Time for a Separation
And by that I mean, a separation of Delaware’s Democrats in the General Assembly from Governor Jack Markell (D). On Friday, the Governor went on Rick Jensen’s show on WDEL and stated that he would veto House Bill 50 (the opt-out bill) if it passed the House and Senate. HB 50 would allow parents to opt their child or children out of state standardized testing. The bill cleared the House Education Committee last week and it awaits a vote by the full House, which may come this week.
“I never say what I’m going to do to a bill in advance, but I can say I absolutely do not support that bill,” Markell said. Markell said it’s his job to do what’s best for Delaware kids, and he said opting out of the Smarter Balanced assessment isn’t the way.
“Civil rights communities across the country, the NAACP, the urban leagues have been very, very focused on not allowing opt out because they’re concerned that if the kids are allowed to opt out they’ll fall through the cracks,” he said. Markell also stood behind Delaware’s adoption of the Common Core standards.
They are falling through the cracks now because they are not learning. They spend all their time trying to prepare for an impossible test. But I digress.
These standardized tests are very unpopular with parents across the country and here in Delaware. They are very unpopular with teachers, and educators. They are only popular with those who want to “reform” education so as to either 1) privatize it, or 2) enrich themselves or their benefactors, or 3) both. So General Assembly Democrats have a decision to make.
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