Seattle Opt-Out Having Press Conference On Tuesday

From Seattle Opt-Out:
Press conference on SBAC testing:
Opt Out Movement Biggest in Seattle’s History

A new gathering of community groups, parents, teachers, and students from across Seattle question the equity and validity of SBAC testing and including:
  • Garfield High School teachers and parents to announce their opposition
  • Technological malfunctions creating testing chaos in schools
  • Seattle/King County NAACP to announce position on the new exam 
  • Opt out numbers from schools around Seattle will be revealed
Who: Parents, students and teachers from schools across Seattle, including Nathan Hale, Garfield, NOVA, Franklin, Chief Sealth, Dearborn Park, and more.

· Seattle Opt Out group

· Parents Across America (PAA), Seattle Chapter

· Social Equality Educators (SEE)

· NAACP, Seattle/King County Chapter

When:
Tuesday April 7, 4:00pm

Where: Seattle NAACP Headquarters, 715 23rd Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144
At the press conference, the newly formed organization “Seattle Opt Out” will reveal the numbers they have collected so far of how many students have opted out of the exams. Parent opt out leader Anastaisa Samuelsen said, “Our newly formed Seattle Opt Out group has grown significantly, and raised parent's awareness in every part of our District. We have organized several regional forums around Seattle--and more are forthcoming--attended by dozens and dozens of parents. Parents who vote. Many have shared heartbreaking stories about the undue stress testing brings, and the dislike of school their children are developing. We are very concerned about this.” Parents from several of these schools will be on hand to explain why they have opted their students out of the tests including:

· SPED parents who will talk about how these tests unfairly punish and demoralize their students

· ELL parents who will address why these tests are not culturally or linguistically appropriate

· Parents of color who will talk about the way these exams maintain institutional racism

Comments

Elephant's Memory said…
Do you remember when the district gave all 11th graders "free" SAT tests?

Opt-Out your 11th grader from SBAC.

From SBAC regarding validity studies:

Recommended studies based on relations to external variables. The previous section described some options for conducting validity studies based on relations to external variables and summarized some of the research that has already been done in this area. To relate current college readiness standards and other pertinent information to the grade 11 Smarter Balanced summative assessments, three types of studies are possible. The first two types of studies are concurrent validity studies. In the first variation, students would take both Smarter Balanced and external assessments at around the same point in time. For example, grade 11 students could take the Smarter Balanced summative assessments, or a subset of items from them (e.g., in the pilot study), and the SAT or ACT, at a reasonable point in time (e.g., March). Regression or equipercentile methods could be used to determine the Smarter Balanced scores that corresponded to the SAT or ACT readiness benchmarks. The second type of concurrent validity study would involve college students taking Smarter Balanced assessments (or subsets of items) near the end of a relevant course, and their final course grades could be used as the validation criterion. The Smarter Balanced scores that are associated with the pre-established readiness criterion (e.g., grade of B-) could be established via regression or equipercentile procedures, or probability tables could be set up to relate the Smarter Balanced scores to specific grades. The third type of study that could be conducted would be a retrospective study where students who took the Smarter Balanced assessments would be followed longitudinally to see how they perform in college (see, for example, D’Agostino & Bonner, 2009).
Elephant's Memory said…
More:

"It is likely that data-sharing agreements that maintain student anonymity can be worked out between the Consortium and external examination programs, such as ACT and the College Board, and among state colleges and universities within the Consortium."

Student privacy no longer exists.
Anonymous said…
The zip code on the address is incorrect. The correct zip code is 98144.

I only point this out because it makes finding the address on Google maps difficult (there are a bunch of 23rd Aves with a variety of zip codes).

Cheers,

North End Parent
Anonymous said…
Correct zip code is 98144 - the press conference is at the NAACP's office on 23rd Ave S near Dearborn St. Sorry for the confusion, this was corrected in a follow up email to media.

Seattle OptOut

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