Looking for Help with Certification Assignment on "Opt-Out" Movement

[LostOne4Ever]

Hello!

I am currently enrolled in a certification program and was looking for some help with an assignment. This assignment is ungraded but I wanted to attempt it anyway so that I could be as ready as I possibly could for Teaching this fall. The assignment is on Standarized Testing and the "Opt-Out" movement.

Now for the assignment, I am supposed to research my State's use of Standardized testing and the "Opt-Out" movement and then after writing the pros and cons state whether I support or oppose the movement. What I would appreciate help with on this assignment is deciding if I want to support this movement or not. From my initial research I have found that it is against standardized testing and is trying to have parents opt out of them to force reform. It looks to be supported by many teacher unions which I generally agree with.

HOWEVER, it is opposed by many civil rights groups including NAACP...who I also greatly support. Apparently, it is mainly made up of upper middle class white people and what it advocates disproportionally hurts poor communities. Especially poor communities made of primarily of minority students.

I am currently set up to start working at a school in a part of Texas that is (while not impoverished) lower on the economic scale than the state average and is made up primarily of Latino students. This makes me worry that the movement could hurt many of the students at my school. Further, I, myself, am both White and middle class. As such, I am aware that I often have blinders of priviledge when it comes to these type of issues. That said, the movement seems like something I would generally support.

I was hoping that some kinda and experienced fellow DU Educators would mind sharing with me their thoughts on the movement. In particular, I would like to hear from Educators with experience teaching in poorer minority schools.

Thank you for any replies!

[BigmanPigman]

1. I stopped teaching before 2015 but my union,

which I was a site rep for, has some good info in this article. San Diego Unified is one of the countries largest districts in the US and most of it is Title 1 and urban.

https://www.cta.org/our-advocacy/opt-out-of-standardized-testing

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sdut-san-diego-schools-rebuke-testing-2015apr15-story.html

As a teacher in K-6 for almost 20 years I grew very opposed to standardized testing. For 1st graders I spent at least 50% of my time testing students 1:1 while the rest of the class educated themselves. This started on the first week of school, even though they had been tested at the end of the year before...they hadn't been in school over vacation but we had to test anyway. This was throughout the year, constant testing. It was beyond ridiculous.

[LostOne4Ever]

5. Thank you this helps!

Especially the links!

Thank you again!

[JT45242]

2. Opt out movement really a cover for grade inflation

Overwhelmingly, the oot out movement was pushed by white parents who were afraid that their children's test scores would not live up to their inflated grades. This was especially true after states adopted the more rigorous common core state standards (CCSS) which replaced many states standards which expected far less from students.

At the high school level, down to 8th grade the CCSS were based on decades of research by The SAT and The ACT on what skills students who were successful in college were able to do. It used the PSAT and lower grade ACT tests (EXPLORE and PLAN) to back map those skills to tenth and eighth grade. Further back mapping of the CCSS was based on published research on teaching skills and things like learning trajectories and learning progressions.

There were two parts to the push back on CCSS. There was the thinly veiled racist attacks from the far right (Obama core)-- which was spit out with such vitriol that it wasn't hard to hear the implied n-word at the beginning. This was where a lot of the opt out movement came from.

The second part was from policy folks who opposed the use of standardized tests to make funding decisions. One if the bad consequences of NCLB and it's follow up ESSA is that schools that perform poorly on standardized tests can be penalized by losing funds. The same law allowed extra money to go to schools and school districts that scored well. This was the worst and most problematic part of those laws. We know that test scores are highly correlated to average family income in a district, not because the tests are biased but because of societal factors. Children from homes with middle class income and at least one college educated parent enter school knowing tens if thousands more words than children from a family near the poverty line. There is also the access to opportunity to learn gap. Middle class families can afford to take their children to museums, zoos, libraries, etc that help the kids learn a lot of stuff before school. Sadly, the research shows that the gap widens with increased schooling usually.

Back to grade inflation. When I started teaching in the mid 90s, the average HS GPA was about 2.7. now that average is about 3.5. Are kids really a letter grade better than they were 25 years ago? This is where standardized test scores come in. They give a fair and equal measuring stick for all students.

Research shows that grade inflation is more prevalent the higher percentage of white and Asian students in a school. The more BIPOC students, the less grade inflation and the lower the average GPA, even for schools with equal standardized test scores. So, removing standardized testing actually codifies the higher position of traditionally served students (whites and Asian) and harms black, Latino, mixed race, and indigenous students.

If white students opt out, we don't see the man behind the curtain, helicopter parents who bully schools, teachers, and school boards for higher grades.

The systemic problem of using test scores for funding needs to be addressed. But opting out only allows suburban (studies above with white and Asian kids and grade inflation) kids to hide behind inflated grades and not prove what they know and can do.

[LostOne4Ever]

7. This is EXACTLY the type of insight I was looking for!

I have had so many times when privilege has blinded me to the reality of people who haven’t had my advantages.

The moment I saw that civil rights groups opposed this and that it was made up primarily of white middle class parents I had a BAD feeling something was up!

Thank you for helping clear that up for me!!!

[3Hotdogs]

3. Thank Dog we didn't have standardized certification requirements when I got my certificate. 1970.

Alls we had to do was keep our bodies awake in boring education courses for 12 credits and student teach for one semester.

Useful information would have been about preparing lessons, maintaining discipline and how to survive HOURS of record keeping each week that had little or nothing to do with teaching a class.

Oh, and learning how to keep awake during weekly faculty meetings. Faculty meetings--- meetings for the same of meetings. First school I taught in, three meetings per month. No limit on time. I recall one that went from 3:15 to 6:50.

Second school, union negotiated two meetings per month, limited to 1 hour, each.... and holy shit. The school didn't fall apart with only four hours per month of meetings.


Anyway, good luck with your career.

[LostOne4Ever]

6. Thing have changed a lot even from when I was a kid

Thanks for the reply and insights!

Those meetings sound incredibly exciting

[LostOne4Ever]

4. Thank you all. This helps! (N/t)

Last edited Thu Jul 1, 2021, 04:47 PM - Edit history (1)