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In our Aug. 16 press release on statewide test scores, OSPI incorrectly reported some numbers.

OSPI released the SBAC scores today.  Scores increased but then again, you have to see where they started. The high school scores for LA went from 26 to 76% which is quite a wild swing but the scores for math are dismal.

Update: read this blog thread below from Wait What and then appreciate that the Seattle School Board recently passed a resolution, 5-1 (with Director Blanford voting no and Director Geary not at the meeting), to ask the state to allow districts to be able to select/create an alternative summative assessment framework to show academic mastery.  (Their discussion is in Part Two of the video of the board meeting. Here's the cue-up from the Seattle Education blog .) end of update From the Wait What? blog by Connecticut writer, Jonanthan Pelto with Wendy Lecker, news that PARCC is not as advertised.   (bold his) In the most significant academic study to date, the answer appears to be that the PARCC version the massive and expensive test is that it is an utter failure. William Mathis, Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center and member of the Vermont State Board of Education, has just published an astonishing piece in the Washington Post. ( Alice in PA...

Update: Former state legislator, Larry Seaquist, has dropped out of the race for state superintendent.   He has decided to try to shore up Dems in the state House. 

Update 2: this story falls into the category of the "Streisand effect" which is a meme I had not heard of before. From Know Your Meme : Streisand Effect refers to the unintended consequence of further publicizing information by trying to have it censored. Instead of successfully removing the information from the public, it becomes even more widely available than before as a backlash against the censorship attempt. end of update Update: the great public ed researcher/writer Mercedes Schneider penned a letter to the head of PARCC, Laura Slover.  I'd say it hits the mark brilliantly. end of update Jonathan Pelto is a fellow public ed blogger out of Connecticut who writes the blog, Wait What ?  He writes about an event that happened recently when another blogger,  Professor Celia Oyler at Teachers College, Columbia University posted a blog thread at her blog, Outrage on the Page, from an anonymous teacher writing quite openly about the 4th grade PARCC tes...

Check out the most recent Friday memo to the Board for the test requirements for graduation. It includes this entry: Is this correct? If students have already taken and passed the EOC exams for algebra and/or geometry, they do not need to take the SBAC Math assessment to graduate. Yes. If students pass the Algebra or Geometry EOC assessments, they would meet the graduation requirement. However, the Smarter Balanced Assessment would still be required by the state for accountability. I guess we'll be seeing a lot of students opting out of an unnecessary test again this year.

 Update 4/1: more than a dozen states are also having testing problems.  From KSL.com:

Opt Out Bus Spring Tour   (Starting at Garfield HS,  Thursday March 31 st , 2:20 pm ) As the spring high-stakes ,  common core tests begin, the Opt Out B us will be touring Seattle schools to provide families with information on their rights to opt out of standardized testing.  

Update 2: Useful chart from Ed Week on how each state does its testing. end of update  Update: Education Week is reporting that only 21 states are continuing on with Common Core tests (SBAC or PARCC.) end of update From Soup for Teachers' Facebook page; Did you know that students in our district who opt out of standardized tests receive a zero rather than a more statistically accurate null score? Please join me in asking our board to make the change to a null score to increase the statistical accuracy of test scores in our district.

 An op-ed from school board members from the Orange County Register on Common Core and data mining: The California Department of Education last week informed school parents of a federal judge’s decision to release up to 10 million student records to a plaintiff’s attorney. The case, Morgan Hill Parents Association v. California Department of Education, could allow student records to be released that contain “names, addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers, as well as sensitive information on behavior, academic performance and health.” The future of this legal case remains unclear What is generally unknown by parents, and far more egregious than the data release requested in the Morgan Hill lawsuit, are similar data-mining requirements by federally and state-authorized Common Core programs. Parents want their children to learn academic material without the psychological conditioning, data mining, tracking and analyzing of behavioral patterns. These fed...

An elementary school principal in Brooklyn apparently went overboard in her zeal to prevent students from opting out . After finding a fifth-grader handing out opt-out fliers at her Williamsburg elementary school this week, a principal confiscated the materials, pulled the student into her office and then hastily convened a meeting for students, parents told DNAinfo New York. Principal Sereida Rodriguez-Guerra of P.S. 84 chastised the fifth-grader, sending the student into tears, before telling an auditorium full of third- through fifth-graders, “You’ve got to get this opt-out stuff out of your head,” according to multiple parents of students pulled into the impromptu tirade against refusing to take next month's state English and math tests. Rodriguez-Guerra went on to lecture the students about the controversial opt-out movement, telling them not to believe what their parents tell them and that the state exams given to third- to-eighth-graders were good for them...

 Update: a Huffington Post column from the Vice-President for Advocacy for National PTA is not getting much support.  Read those comments; rank and file PTA does not seem to like National telling them what to do. It's getting to be testing time and BOY, are there a slew of states and groups and people worried that the opt-out movement will continue to grow. First, for great information on opting out, United Opt Out is a national group. There are two interesting developments on this front.

Apparently not, at least when it comes to charter schools.  My second batch of public disclosure e-mails raises more troubling questions. In my first batch, I explained how a couple of other districts' lawyers were worried about running afoul of state law in signing interlocal documents to allow students within their district borders to have an ALE with Mary Walker School District. This batch reveals more concerns from other people. Among them was the overarching role of Washington State Charter Schools Association. Who are they?

Update: here's a bit of the discussion from the last Board meeting on EEU where Director Peters asks a very direct question to Sped head, Wyeth Jessee. End of update Via the Support Big K Facebook page: I'm very sad to report the below update on EEU -  "I'm in disbelief that we are asking people to join us again (at the next School Board meeting.) Despite all of your incredible support at our last meeting, the powerful moving testimony, the passion, and the unanimous support of the school board- no solution has been reached. The Executive Director and Director of Special Education stated at a Special Education PTSA meeting 'no solution will be reached by open enrollment.'

A couple of items to consider. Update 2: SPS teacher (and parent and activist) Jesse Hagopian's essay on why he is opting his 1st grader out of MAP testing.

Fortune Magazine Fortune magazine has a special report that came out this week on Common Core - Business Gets Schooled. It provides a window into the thinking of big business and public education and folks, it is, by turns, sad and horrific.  This being Fortune, they kind of "tsk tsk" but more over the naviete of some (see Bill Gates) than what these titans of industry say about children and learning. Please - if you don't read the article, don't read my entire thread - scroll down to read what Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil has to say to you as parents about your children. (I'll highlight it in red.) What's equally fascinating is that any dissent mentioned in the article by ordinary folks gets the "blogger moms" attitude with a complete brush-off of what noted education experts have said about CC.  It's like all the dissenters are just the anonymous, ignorant and unwashed masses.  You know, the little people. They also chose to l...

(Editor's note: I seem to recall that some were saying that "Common Core was here to stay." Read on.) This reads like it's from The Onion but nope, it's from the NY Times regarding a taskforce that Governor Cuomo of New York created around Common Core:

Update: another parent wrote AL and asked this question about taking the SBAC or MAP as a requirement: "And what if a parent has opted their students out of those tests?" AL: I believe that this year only, we will offer achievement testing to students who do not have district administered achievement scores but have CogAT scores in the qualifying range. It is my understanding that in the future, opting out of district achievement testing may constitute opting out of Advanced Learning.  

Update: Want some really deep-dive thinking on SBAC and PARCC versus ACT/SAT for reading comprehension? From the We are Mor e blog by Gerri K. Songer: A Lexile analyzer is available at www.lexile.com to confirm the findings below. I am using the Lexile score needed for students to read independently since Lexile scores reflect only 75% comprehension .   Students should ideally independently comprehend 100% of text in order to accurately respond to assessment questions. RECOMMENDATION: A research study published in 2008 indicates the possibility that repeated and targeted brain activity to specific parts of the human brain may weaken, or eliminate the use of, other areas of the brain. The brain only has so much neural support. If the brain is trained through repetition to narrow this neural support to a specific region of the brain, then neural activity will supply less support, or perhaps no longer support, other very important areas of the brai...

As I had previously posted, there is a Work Session today with the Board.  The topic had been "Alternative Calendar" (along with a closed Executive Session) but the topic is now "Closing Opportunity Gaps."    The topic part of the Work Session is from 4:30-6:00 pm with the Executive Session after that. Looking at the presentation, it has the district-wide SBAC results on page 4. Good news - SPS did better than the state-wide results - across both ELA and Math - in every grade level, many times with a 10-point gap.   For 7th grade math, the gap was 12.4%.  Most of the scores were in the high 50s to low 60s. This is quite a difference with the MTSS scores from previous years.  Staff says it's because of "leadership," "teaming and collaboration," and "data/analytics."  They don't explain if this is at the district level or school level. But to the subgroups, there a slide...but no data.  Then, the presentation goes from a ...