Statement in Response to NYSED’s Testing Waiver Proposal
Dear Commissioner Rosa, Chancellor Young, and Secretary Cardona,
Our grassroots coalition of families and educators, NYC Opt Out, writes to support New York State Education Department (NYSED) in its request to be waived from certain ESSA obligations for spring 2022. However, the state’s draft waiver request falls far short of what it should be asking. The primary and significant shortcoming of this draft is that the state has not asked to be waived from the requirement of having to administer the tests, period. In last year’s waiver request the state asked that the US Department of Education (ED) completely waive the annual grades 3-8 requirement and partially waive the NYSESLAT testing requirement for learners of English as a New Language. (This year’s waiver request does not even mention NYSESLAT.) While we applaud the state asking to be relieved from having to identify new CSI and TSI schools based on data from 2021-22, we find it unacceptable that it once again fails to ask ED for a non-test-score or test-participation based off-ramp for schools who wish to exit the CSI or TSI designation. As one parent put it:
My child's school was placed on this [CSI] list because over 75% of the students refused to participate in state testing in 2019, as is their right. The school has been stuck on this list since then because of cancelled state tests in 2020 and essentially no testing in 2021. It is absurd to evaluate schools on these senseless tests. And it is even more absurd to put a highly functional school on one of these lists based on extremely limited testing and then create no path for that school to ever be removed from the list. The burdens placed on our school are immoral and detracting from the important work going on in our classrooms. The charade of Participation Improvement Plans, which essentially force schools to coerce children into participating in testing, needs to be stopped immediately. It is essential that NYSED request a waiver from both identifying new schools to be placed on the TSI or CSI lists and that NYSED immediately release all schools currently trapped in that status. ENOUGH!
The case NYSED makes to ED for being waived from having to identify new schools or districts for accountability labels could just as easily be made for why it should be asking to be waived from test administration entirely. After all, we remain in pandemic, with classrooms or whole schools closing temporarily and students and staff being periodically quarantined, or worse, falling seriously ill themselves or having family members who are seriously impacted by COVID, whether that manifests economically, or in the direst of instances, in long-term illness or even death. (Just between 9/13/2021 and now, in New York City alone, over 12,000 classrooms have been fully or partially closed. Source: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/health-and-wellness/covid-information/daily-covid-case-map)
Quoting the Center for School and Student Progress, NYSED includes the following in its draft request:
As daily life increasingly returns to ‘normal,’ we must confront what this means in the context of education...next year [2021-22] cannot be a ‘normal’ year. We cannot return to the classroom and do things the same as they have always been done and expect to see a different outcome. Instead, we must use this critical moment in education to radically rethink how programs, policies, and opportunities are designed and fiercely commit to prioritizing the communities most impacted by the pandemic and distributing resources accordingly. (https://www.nwea.org/content/uploads/2021/07/Learning-during-COVID-19-Reading-and-math-achievement-in-the-2020-2021-school-year.research-brief-1.pdf)
The state goes on to say, this time in its own words (emphasis ours):
Restarting the accountability system prematurely based on 2021-22 school year results will hinder, if not preclude that much-needed rethinking. During numerous conversations with stakeholders across New York State, district leaders, school leaders and classroom teachers have noted feeling compelled to divert their attention away from engaging in critical social-emotional learning (SEL) work to focus on ELA and math assessment preparation more narrowly, which may, in the longer term, reduce student achievement and growth. At the local level, waiving the requirements in ESSA Sections 1111(c)(4) and 1111(d)(2)(C)-(D) for the 2021-22 school year will allow all school communities with needed flexibilities to identify student needs using more reliable measures of growth and progress during pandemic-impacted years and to intensify the socio-emotional development supports, services, and opportunities that students need to achieve academic growth and, while still maintaining high expectations for achievement. (http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/2021-22-accountability-waiver-letter-draft-120121-public-posting.pdf p.12)
It is difficult to conclude that giving the tests will help “intensify socio-emotional development supports, services, and opportunities” students need; rather, it’s more likely that their administration will simply detract from the time teachers and schools can devote towards these ends. And it’s absolutely wishful thinking to believe that, if the tests are given, schools won’t be “narrowly focused” on test preparation, especially as the state asks to be excused from using 2021-2022 data to identify new TSI or CSI schools this year, but does not ask to be waived from using this year’s data from providing a growth baseline to be used in coming years.
In its draft waiver request, the state makes a promising start, recognizing the importance of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion framework in promoting student achievement, and even going so far as to say that “discussions of New York’s ‘achievement gap’ can be misinterpreted if we fail to account for the lack of student opportunities to learn.” (http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/2021-22-accountability-waiver-letter-draft-120121-public-posting.pdf p.2)
The families and educators of NYC Opt Out have been saying a variation of this for years, and it is why many of us have refused to have our children participate in a system that has not only failed to account for these inequities, but actively perpetuates them.
In summary, we implore NYSED, when advocating for our children with ED, to ask for more than crumbs. In addition to being waived from the accountability provisions in the current draft, we ask you to expand your request to ask for:
a waiver from having to administer any federally-mandated tests (grade 3-8 math and ELA, the NYSESLAT, etc)
an off-ramp that does not rely on test scores or test participation for schools who wish to exit from accountability designations (TSI, CSI, etc)
a request that if New York State is irrationally forced to administer tests, despite the ongoing stresses of the pandemic, that the 95% participation rule be eliminated
As rationale, you have your own statement, with which we wholeheartedly agree:
Throughout New York State, educators and students are still facing significant challenges and struggles in seeking a return to normalcy. Those stressors are manifest in reports of widespread student behavioral issues, increased need for mental health and academic interventions and difficulties in recruiting and retaining school personnel. It is critical that the Department mitigate rather than exacerbate stress on fragile communities that need time to recover and heal from the pandemic. (http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/2021-22-accountability-waiver-letter-draft-120121-public-posting.pdf p.11)
