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Leave My Son Alone Several children with special education needs sit in a room, and prepare to take the

NYS Math exam. As per each of their Individualized Education Plans, they are in a separate location to minimize distractions, and have been granted extended time to accommodate their needs. Instead of the 90 minutes allowed for the test, they will have 135. As the students begin taking part one of a three-part test, they begin to fidget and look around the room. One of the students asks how long they will have to stay in the windowless room. Another asks what will happen if she doesnt know the answers. 20 minutes go by and one childs blue eyes begin to well up with tears. She bites her lip and says, Im frustrated. I dont know any of this. What do I do on this page? The teacher proctoring the test is powerless to help her, and gives her the standard response, Just take your time and do your best. Thirty minutes go by, and another child lays his head on the table and says, Im an idiot. I give up. There are 85 minutes to go, and he is 9 years old. Thousands of children are being subjected to the corporatization and homogenization of the American education system. If the state has its way, our children will become not individual learners, but a uniform product, cranked out by teachers who have been stripped of their intellectual autonomy and professional judgment, and by well intentioned administrators who are nonetheless forced to adhere to draconian, educationally unsound testing policies by fear tactics and sanctions imposed by the state. Teachers are often compelled to go against their instincts, often compelled to teach only to the test in order to receive satisfactory evaluations. Obviously, there must be a place for assessments in excellent teaching. How else can teachers and administrators know if what they are doing is working, or if the districts policies are effective? However, no instrument for assessing teachers or schools should compromise the quality of the students education.

I am an educators and the parent of a 3rd grader with Autism. In recent weeks I have been trying to exercise my parental right to opt my son out of high stakes testing in New York State. These tests are detrimental to all children, and even more so for students with disabilities. As parents, we agonize over the decisions we make for our children, both great and small. We do our best and hope that by virtue of the fact that we make our decisions after much thought and with great love, we are making the right ones. So when we are suddenly told that our right to make a decision for our child is being stripped away by the institution that we entrust our child to on a daily basis, it feels like a violation. The realization that the decision is not based on love, thoughtfulness, or the wellbeing of our child, and which is completely outside of, and supersedes our parental jurisdiction, both shocks and outrages us. Since he is a student with a disability, our sons right to a fair and appropriate education is protected under the auspices of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. IDEA defines an appropriate education as one that is commensurate with a childs developmental level and ability. This year, our son will be compelled to take the NYS Math and ELA exams, regardless of the fact these exams are not developmentally appropriate for him. Presenting my son with a test that he cannot access due to issues with pragmatic language, abstract thinking, decoding, and attention, is both immoral and educationally unsound. The potential damage and regression that can be caused by the demoralizing experience of being administered a test that he cannot read, complete, or compute, for 90 minutes, three days in a row, is a cruel and unusual act an experience that would be compounded by the refusal of assistance from faculty and staff whom he has come to trust and love. You can imagine the ramifications this would have for his self-esteem, his feelings about school, and his trust in his teachers I am convinced that being subjected to these assessments would represent a violation of our sons human rights. After informing our school district that I do not give permission for my son to partake in these assessments, I was informed that the district cannot accommodate this request, and that should our child walk through the doors of his elementary school during any of the testing or make up days, the exams will be administered against our wishes. This flies in the face of common sense and reason, especially in the wake of the New Paltz Board of

Educations recent unanimous vote to adopt a resolution calling for the repeal of high stakes testing. I am now being compelled to keep our son home for the 12 days that encompass testing and makeup exams for both the NYS 3 rd grade ELA and Math Exams. This loss of instruction would represent a violation of his right to an appropriate education and violates the principal of do no harm. The only other recourse that I have to maintain my parental right to not have our child tortured by unnecessary and inappropriate testing is to take legal action. Ultimately, our state is required to provide students with disabilities with an education, in the least restrictive possible environment, and one that does not force parents like us to go against the deeply-held belief that every childs dignity should be protected and should take precedence over one size fits all, highstakes testing. Children should be given opportunities to learn and develop at their own pace, following educational standards that are imparted under the guidance of education professionals, and should be assessed using tools that are developmentally appropriate, taking into account their individual needs. My childs situation is just one example of how high-stakes testing is detrimental to our children, our schools, and our community. These tests do not meet the individual intellectual needs of students, and are not based on valid science. In fact, they fail to follow the U.S. Governments own data on learning. These tests present a racial and economic bias that gives an advantage to white, middle/upper class students, and disadvantages second language students, impoverished students, students of color and students with disabilities. And then there are the fiscal implications of this Race to the Top, and the NCLB testing mania. As taxpayers, we will be asked to pony up more money in taxes to support the technological infrastructure needed to test all children, including kindergarteners, on computers, almost simultaneously. In addition, we must consider the costs associated with training educators to teach to and administer these tests. In this economy, taxpayers cannot be asked to bear the brunt of funding these testing measures. As a result, we are facing teacher lay offs, larger class sizes and reductions in programming. Parents who have misgivings about these tests are being told that opting their child out will lead to their schools and districts losing funding, and that as a result their child will not have access to needed academic intervention services and perhaps fail to advance to the next grade. These are scare tactics, plain and simple. While it is complicated, the notion that schools will lose state or federal aid should they test less than 95% of students is simply not true. What will happen is that the talented and dedicated teachers, like the ones who work with my son, will have to reconsider working with challenged populations as they are being judged on an impossible criteria that fails to recognize their hard work and innovation. I urge families to consider the implications of high stakes testing and to view this as not only a civil rights issues, but a human rights issue in which parental rights and students individual needs and dignity are being undermined and violated. I urge you to consider the financial implications and to take action to

protect our schools, our teachers and our children by writing letters, sharing information, and opting your child out of high stakes testing. And lastly, I urge you to consider the question, who do these tests really benefit?

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