iRefuse! Give our teachers and students back their instruction time!

High-Stakes Testing Questions – Owasso School Board Meeting

1.       Why do we need a $34.4 MILLION testing consortium to prove that our children deserve to go on to the next grade level? Isn’t 9 months worth of independent assignments, teacher assessments, and report cards or progress reports enough? Shouldn’t a student and teacher’s entire year of hard work and effort account for something and carry more weight than any given test?

2.       Who grades these tests? Especially the writing portion? What 3^rd party vendor is responsible for this? What is the grading criteria? Where do these tests go to get graded?

3.       Do we ever get the test results back or just a score? If we only receive a score then what is the purpose for the test in the first place? Especially if we can’t ever get them back in order to use them as a teaching tool to help students and teachers learn and grow.

4.       Does a parent have a right to refuse these tests?

5.       If a parent does choose to refuse these tests what is the school district policy or protocol? Is there an alternative option for that student?

6.       What are the ramifications and repercussions to the student, teacher, principal, superintendent and our school district?

7.       I looked up the definitions and there is a huge difference between mandated and mandatory! Which tests are mandatory NOT mandated for a student to graduate high-school?

8.       Will students be testing on PASS standards or Common Core/Oklahoma Academic Standards?

I have certainly learned a lot in these past few months, most important, I have learned that our local authority has been stripped away. At one point I blamed you as administrators and our school board, but I must say that I deeply apologize for that. I have gained a ton of respect for each of you realizing now that you are simply caught in between a rock and a hard spot!

 However, I also realize now that it is NOT the school district’s duty to protect our children. It is our duty as parents first. I am here to awaken our community of parents, these are our children and they are our responsibility. We need to start paying attention and start standing up for them. I’m not here to cause strife, I’m not here to do any harm to the district, and I’m not here to cause tension. I am simply here because these are our children, our babies, and our future. Yesterday while sitting in Church the pastor reminded all of us of one thing, and it certainly hit home for me.

It is much easier to train up a child in the way that they should go rather than attempt to repair a broken adult.

When is enough, enough? I am here tonight to urge every single parent across the state of Oklahoma to do our due diligence and stop allowing our children to be human capital and instead demand teachers the ability to spend classroom time teaching NOT testing!

Lastly, I would like to play for you a very short clip of our house representatives discussing the testing errors back on Feb. 17^th while a bus load of us Owasso parents had the painful experience of sitting in on the meeting and witnessing this first hand…Kim Ritchey is the General Legal Counsel for the State Department of Education.

http://okhouse.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=867  (start at the 1:27:00 mark)

Therefore, out of our 9,500 students enrolled here in Owasso essentially 950+ students will NOT get the correct or accurate result of their efforts, 10%!!! Children as young as 8 years old, enduring the increase in stress and anxiety for nothing, and at what cost? That is one entire grade level of students, essentially the entire 3^rd grade!!! And according to statisticians this would essentially declare these tests as invalid, wouldn’t you agree? I am not willing to gamble on whether or not my child moves on to the next grade level if I don’t even know if he got the right results!!  

Kristal Picolet (Owasso Parent Refusing the Tests)