Ken-Ton Schools Yield To State Pressure

The Kennmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District (generally known as the Ken-Ton district) has decided to stand down.

You may recall that about a month ago, the Ken-Ton board president decided to float a resolution to consider opting out of New York state tests as well as the state's teacher evaluation program. After a false start, the board met in front of a highly supportive public crowd, and over the objections of their superintendent, voted to pass the resolution. Push back from the state came almost immediately in the form of threats from Senior Deputy Commissioner Ken Wagner.

This week the standoff came to an end. Tuesday night the board voted to back away from the boycott proposals.

Considering the letter from the state and the gloomy predictions of Superintendent Dawn Mirand, board president Bob Dana was quoted by Joseph Spector at lohud blogs

“With all of that in mind,” School Board President Bob Dana said, “I can’t honestly sit in front of you today and push for a continuation of these proposals.”

Pete Stuhlmiller, the president of Kenmore Teachers Association, had been supportive of the threat to consider the possibility of a test boycott, but he was supportive of the backing down as well. "We realized that our board members faced incredible intimidation from the state Education Department and  threats from the governor's office," he said.

There's some question about whether the Ken-Ton board ever really meant to take this fight to the wall. But by being the squeaky wheel for a month, they added to the growing chorus of objections and resistance to the Big Standardized Tests. The board reportedly plans to form a coalition of local schools to fight back, and they have now given themselves a higher profile for feistiness which may aid in those efforts, and they forced the state to show its face, to publicly show itself depending not on reason or right, but on power, intimidation and bullying.

Ken-Ton schools did not win this battle, but as with hundreds of other tiny battles being fought around the country, they made one more little chink in the reformy status quo armor. Hats off to them for that.

Ken-Ton Schools Receive First Official Threat from State

Well, that didn't take long.

The Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda school board adopted a resolution Tuesday night (two nights ago as I write this) to "seriously consider" boycotting both the state's test for grades 3-8 and the state's teacher evaluation via testing results.

This afternoon, WGRZ (and other Buffalo newmedia) reports that Senior Deputy Commissioner Ken Wagner delivered the state's threat to the board members and the district superintendent (who was never a fan of the resolution to begin with).

You can read a full copy of the letter here.  This particular copy is addressed to school board president Bob Dana at the district's central office, but you can see it has been cc'ed to all the important folks. Cause if you're going to make a threat, make sure you get the maximum number of people involved.

Wagner makes the assertion that administering the grade 3-8 tests "is required under federal law" and also by the state's accountability system and I am wondering, hmmm, exactly which federal law might that be. It could be ESEA's original NCLB requirement, or maybe the waiver requirement, which is sort of an end run around ESEA. What's really fun here is to play the game of what penalty, exactly, the federal law carries. What exactly is he threatening the board with? So, interesting assertion there, Senior Deputy Commissioner Wagner, and one sure to mollify people who are already pissed off about the state government pushing them around. Just wait till your Uncle Sam gets home.

Wagner says this "may result" in a loss of funds from the state, to the possible tune of maybe $1.1 million, perhaps. Between all these conditionals and the board's "seriously consider" resolution, we have a real battle of the possible maybe mights going on here.

Wagner also notes that while the board is only now considering becoming a bunch of rogue scofflaws, should they actually choose outlaw status, "the members of the Board responsible will be subject to removal from office by the Commissioner of Education pursuant to Education Law §306 for willful violation of law, the Rules of the Board of Regents and the Regulations of the Commissioner."

The Buffalo News carried a response from Dana.

“I didn’t see anything in there that we haven’t shared with the community in terms of what the ramifications could be,” Dana said Thursday. “He addressed them specifically and he seems to have a good grasp of what’s going on. Obviously, it would seem that they mean business. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

So, no in-boot shaking as yet. The board today scheduled a meeting for April 8 to decide what comes next. Their testing is supposed to begin on April 14.


In the meantime, Dana and the board had intended to send a message to Albany. Clearly, the message was received. We'll see who considers throwing the possibility of what at whom, perhaps, next.

Opt In and Think of England

As we enter testing opt-out season with its ever-increasing rising tide of test opposition, the
fans of test-driven accountability have had to use every weapon in their arsenal to try to beat back the non-testing hordes who threaten modern educational progress (and corporate revenue streams).

Sometimes the infidels can be combated locally. The head of the Ken-Ton School Board, a district near Buffalo, NY, roused a bunch of local rabble by calling for New York to stop holding money hostage and demanding pointless testing for teacher evaluations and threatening that the district just wouldn't give the tests. The superintendent was able to scare the board into compliance  speak reason to the board by suggesting that the state might cut funding, defrock board members, and decertify teachers if such crazy talk led to crazy action. But the motion, which had been tabled till April, just passed!  

Sometimes the big guns must be called out. Chicago Public Schools had threatened to give the Big Standardized Test to only 10% of their students. The feds told the state to tell CPS that they would take a gigantic financial hit, and the district reluctantly gave in, much to the disappointment of many who had backed the testing slowdown.

In recent days, test-o-philes have also unleashed the power of ridicule. Mike Thomas, over at reform-loving FEE, put up a blog post that artfully wrapped the technique known in the sales biz as "assuming the sale" in a carpet of wacky mockery.

"I Wish I Could Opt-Out of Writing This" makes the same old point-- some things in life are unpleasant but necessary, and whiners should just suck it up and do what they have to. In fact, oddly enough, Thomas suggests that he would rather not write this blog post in favor of testing, but he's being paid to do it, so he must. Way to show your deep support of testing, Mike.
Thomas presents (and borrows from a Twitter thread that Amanda Ripley started in a similar vein) a list of unpleasant things that people have to do even though they don't want to. The list includes colonoscopies, teeth cleanings, lice checks, braces, lockdown drills, and watching romantic comedies with your wife, and it's a swell list. It's just that the list has nothing to do with the Big Standardized Test.

The items on the list only occur when there is a particular reason for them. You get a colonoscopy when your doctor, a trained medical professional, says it's time. You get braces when a trained professional says they're needed. You go see a movie with your wife when she asks you to (though if that's a chore for you, you have other problems). And like all the other items on the wacky list, these are annoyances you endure because you know there is some good reason to endure them.

The "well, you just have to suck it up and do some unpleasant but necessary things in life" argument assumes the sale. It focuses on the "unpleasant" rap on testing so that it can pretend that the "necessary" part is not in doubt. But of course it's the notion that the Big Standardized Test is necessary that is at the heart of the opt-out movement.

Why are Big Standardized Tests necessary? BS Test fans have lost some of their classic arguments. For instance, they can no longer say that test results are needed to do national comparisons that run across state lines because the dream of a single national test is dead, dead, dead. VAM has been debunked far and wide. From the test quality to test validity to every justification given for testing-- as ESEA has heated up, they've all been subject to responsible, data-based, professional attack.
Writers like Thomas have been reduced to justifications like this:

And that's why I'm an opt-in on testing. I want to know how well my kid is doing in algebra. I want to know how smart she is compared to all the other kids in the state. The same goes for reading, writing and science...This information will let me know if she is on track for being first in line when the University of Florida opens its doors to incoming freshman.

Is Thomas suggesting that all students everywhere should be tested so that he can brag about his own daughter? Or is he suggesting that his daughter's teachers keep all her grades, school work and achievements a secret from him? And does he really mean to suggest that he's an opt-in, because if that's what he wants, I'm sure we can find support for a system where people can opt-in to testing if they wish, but would otherwise be in a no-testing default.

That system would have great support, but it's not what Thomas and FEE and other reformsters and testing corporations want-- they want a system in which all students are compelled to test, not one where they have a choice (though oddly enough, they are huge fans of choice when it comes to charter schools).

Here's the other thing about colonoscopies and braces-- the government doesn't compel you to have them, whether your professional expert thinks you need one or not. You opt-in, voluntarily, weighing the advice of trained experts and the advantages of the procedure. You don't need to come up with a justification for not having a root canal today-- you only have one if someone (or your tooth) presents a reason to opt in.

Reformsters would like us to skip all of that. Just take their word for it that tests are a necessary unpleasantry, like vaccination shots for babies or sex for Victorian ladies. Don't ask why. Don't question the necessity. Just lie back and think of England.

Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats

- See more at: http://excelined.org/2015/03/09/wish-opt-writing/#sthash.oACr3jPH.dpuf