LEW FREDERICK

State Representative
House District 43
North and Northeast Portland

October 30, 2015

Dr. Salam Noor
Deputy Superintendent
Oregon Department of Education
By email: salam.noor@state.or.us
Dr. Noor,
I want to urge you in the strongest terms to go back to the drawing board to develop an
Opt-Out form more consistent with the intent of the law. The draft that has been
distributed has a number of basic defects that must be addressed.
The first page, the 2015-16 Notice, reads like a marketing piece for the Smarter Balanced
brand. It makes numerous claims about the benefits to flow from new standards and
the tests that ostensibly measure them. These claims are sufficiently controversial to
characterize them as inherently political and commercial. In following the requirements
of Section 3. (6) of the bill, the department should offer statements based in verifiable
fact, not conjecture or wishful thinking.
It is often pointed out, in defense of the new, higher standards, that standards are not
curriculum. I agree, but I also see places in the draft notice in which benefits are
attributed to the standards that can only come from learning. I continue to urge more
rigor in how we think and talk about teaching and learning. Standards do not prepare
a student; learning does. The notice portrays much more confidence that somehow
more or better learning will result from this approach than is supported by evidence.
The box Participation Matters makes statements that are curious. Proponents of a
universal, inflexible mandate have claimed both that students in need of support may
get left out if allowed to be excused, and that students from well off families will be
excused in greater numbers, skewing data toward more needy students. Across the
country, participation/excusal has not been easy to characterize in terms of need.
The law calls for the information to include, The amount of class time required for the
statewide summative assessments; the draft notice says, Our new tests take about the

Office Address: 900 Court St. NE, Salem, OR 97301 Phone: 503-986-1443 Email: rep.lewfrederick@state.or.us

HB 2655 Notice of Summative Assessments and Excusal Form

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same amount of time as previous state tests. That doesnt answer the question. The
rest of Section 3. (6) is addressed with similar sloppiness. I believe we can do better.
To the opt-out form itself:
Im not sure why the Department chose to substitute the informal term opt-out for
excuse in the Description of Rights. Why not use the language in the law?
What is the justification for the January 4, 2016 deadline for submission of the form?
The law requires that the notice and access to the form be provided to parents at least 30
days prior to administration of the tests. Unfortunately, it does not prescribe how much
time parents should have to act. It appears that the plan is to provide this information
just prior to the holidays, and set a deadline the first day back, a predictable way to
cause more families to miss the deadline. Why do the forms need to be submitted
several months before administration of the tests?
Finally, the bold statement above the place for the Parent/Guardian signature is
unconscionable. It is inappropriate to require parents or students to sign below a
statement with which they may profoundly disagree in order to exercise their rights.
This form should be an instrument by which parents make their wishes known, not
one by which the Department tells them they are wrong. We should not insult the
intelligence of parents who are in the process of making informed decisions about
their children.
I understand that individuals in the Oregon Department of Education disagree with this
law. That is no excuse to use its implementation to insult parents or to repeat talking
points in opposition to it. Again, I urge you to go back to the drawing board to develop
information that answers the requirements in the law without making a sales pitch for
the Smarter Balanced brand and without coercing parents to sign off on propaganda in
order to exercise their rights.
Sincerely,

Rep. Lew Frederick

House District 43
North and Northeast Portland
Copy: State Board of Education
c/o Jessica Nguyen-Ventura