Notice a theme in these headlines/stories (click on the links to read the full stories)?
Yahoo.com: Detroit Public School To SUSPEND KIDS If Parents Miss Common Core Test Meeting
“Teachers at Coleman A. Young Elementary in Detroit, Mich. sent a letter home with children last week threatening the little kids with suspension if their parents do not show up to a parent-teacher meeting. In the letter, the taxpayer-paid teachers described the meeting as compulsory for parents, reports local NBC affiliate WDIV-TV.
“Neither the meeting nor the comments regarding ‘student suspension’ were made out of ill intent, but rather to express the level of importance of students’ progress,” school officials explained, “as they prepare for the upcoming M-STEP test.”
Fox News: 8th Grader Suspended for Informing Classmates of Standardized Test ‘Opt-Out’
“A New Mexico eighth-grader said on “Fox and Friends” she was suspended from school for letting her classmates know that they could opt out of the state’s new online standardized test. 12-year-old Adelina Silva printed out the forms from her own school’s website and was rewarded with a trip to the principal’s office.
The school district released a statement, saying, “Santa Fe Public Schools supports a parent’s right to opt his or her child out of state-mandated standardized testing … no students in the district have been disciplined for supporting or promoting this district policy of a parent’s right to opt their child out of testing.”
NY Times: As Common Core Testing Is Ushered In, Parents and Students Opt Out
“A new wave of standardized exams, designed to assess whether students are learning in step with the Common Core standards, is sweeping the country, arriving this week in classrooms in several states and entering the cross hairs of various political movements. In New Jersey and elsewhere, the arrival has been marked with well-organized opposition, a spate of television attack ads and a cascade of parental anxiety.
Colorado’s Board of Education voted in January to allow school districts to skip portions of the state tests, only to be told by the state’s attorney general that it did not have that authority. At a testing information session for parents in Sparta, N.J., according to a local news report, an assistant superintendent repeatedly said: “I’m not here to fight with you. I am here to give information on the mandate.”
While some superintendents have condoned or at least tolerated the opt-out movement, others have not. William Petrick, for example, schools superintendent in Little Falls, New Jersey, said his district would handle refusals “the way we handle any other disciplinary issue.”
DCG