oregon department of education ode

Cross-out ODE statement on the opt-out form

optoutoregon opt-out optout, SBAC, Testing

We have it from the ODE that if you redact the wrong-headed language on its opt-out form for the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium), the form will still be accepted by your school. That’s welcome news!

The false language meant to dissuade people challenging high-stakes testing that appears above the signature:

“I understand that by signing this form I may lose valuable information about how well my child is progressing in English Language Arts and Math. In addition, opting out may impact my school and district’s efforts to equitably distribute resources and support student learning.”

We’ve commented on the problems with this ODE form (“ODE sniffs at the law and thinks you’re stupid for opting-out“), and some parents cleverly created a mock form to make fun of ODE and emphasize the importance of opting-out of high-stakes testing.

So, let’s cross this language out on our opt-out forms!

OptOutCrossOut

ODE sniffs at the law and thinks you’re stupid for opting-out

optoutoregon Education, opt-out optout, SBAC, Testing ,

Don’t be patronizing to parents, students, and teachers. Easy enough? Yet education bureaucrats misunderstand the opt-out movement and do things that antagonize and build up the movement further.

The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) was given a simple job: provide school districts with an Opt-Out FAQ and Opt-Out Notification form that is factual and unbiased. Similar to the information provided by the Albuquerque Public Schools. Now ODE has put Oregon school districts and school administrators in the unenviable position of having to intimidate, coerce, and misinform parents and students about our constitutional right to opt-out of the SBAC tests and their potential consequences. Shame on ODE for pitting parents and students against their school leaders.

Our nation has had 15 years of high-stakes testing due to No Child Left Behind and has sunk millions/billions of dollars only to prove…students in poverty do worse than other students. That’s it. Over and over again.

But these people don’t want to talk about shamefully high student poverty and inequality, they’d prefer to fund more high-stakes testing that, even if done well, will only get the same result and keep us away from fixing student poverty and inequality.

Yet ODE has messed up this simple job, and cops an attitude while doing so, claiming that it knows better than students, parents, and teachers who see high-stakes testing as the waste of time and resources that it is. Check out this from above the parent/student signature line of ODE’s new opt-out form (red ink comment is not from ODE):

ODEoptoutform

Does ODE truly have no idea how many teachers and educated parents and students object to high-stakes testing? Does ODE not sense how many administrators and testing experts are talking to each other about the harmful effects of test-and-punish approaches?

As in other states, Oregon will start to see building principals, district administrators, superintendents stepping forward about the harmful effects of high-stakes testing. School board members, teachers, specialists, parents, and students have been speaking up, and the numbers continue to grow. ODE adding that phrase above the signature is not only misleading, it’s obnoxious, and on the wrong side of history.