On state test opt-outs
From The Adirondack Daily Enterprise:
Back in April, New York state education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia urged parents to have their children in grades 3 through 8 take the state tests in English language arts and math. She still feels they should, but now she is also sticking up for those parents’ rights to opt their kids out of the exams.
She is doing so in the face of a federal law and federal Education Secretary John King Jr., her predecessor as New York’s head of schools. In this snarled time in the state of education, we think she is right both to discourage opt-outs and to protect them.
Soon after the Every Student Succeeds Act was reauthorized as federal law in December 2015, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to chief state school officers, including Elia, that emphasized potential consequences for inadequate participation in the exams. Any state with less than 95 percent participation could lose federal funding.
New York had 79 percent this year and 80 percent last year. Districts in our part of the state ranged widely, from 23 to 100 percent.
The opt-out movement is a protest, although its message is mixed. Some parents feel the tests are overbearing and unnecessary; others oppose the federal, state and corporate meddling in schools.
We think the tests are bearable and don’t like parents making kids do their civil disobedience for them, but we also admit it has been an effective blunt instrument that prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to do a near-180 on so-called “reform” of education. While his first education commissioner was King, who was driven by ideology, his second is Elia, who is more attentive to people.
“Parents should make a decision to have their kids take (the exams), but it’s their decision. Children should not be penalized for that decision,” she said.
It’s sad that President Barack Obama thought King worthy of such a huge promotion, but at least New York now has someone who will stand up to him.
Nevertheless, there is only so much she can do since New York got itself into this mess by trying to “win” the president’s Race to the Top, in which states competed to implement the Common Core standards and tests the fastest and were rewarded with federal education money. Cuomo, running for governor in 2010, cheered New York on as it dove in for the full Monty.
After he was elected, his education commissioner, King, made state schools adopt the whole federal package in a single year, with tests farmed out to education corporation Pearson. That year was turbulent: Teachers got workbooks too late to prepare students for the exams, some of the test questions were preposterous, and math changed so much that parents often couldn’t help their kids with homework anymore. People got mad and lost faith, and New York leaders are still paying for that.
So yes, New York signed up for this, but because it clearly didn’t work, Commissioner Elia may be able to renegotiate from a position of some strength. If not, the feds may have to take their money and go home, with their reform a failure.