March 8, 2011

Michael Hardy

Acting Superintendent

State College Area School District

131 W. Nittany Ave

State College, PA 16801

Dear Mr. Hardy,

After consulting with attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center, speaking with the Director of the Bureau of Assessment and Accountability at the Pennsylvania Department of Education in Harrisburg, and much soul searching, I am informing you that my children will not be participating in this years PSSA testing. Additionally, I am informing you that I have been actively encouraging other parents to arrange religious exemptions for their children. Again, I have spoken with education attorneys at the SPLC as well as Mary Bauer, the SPLC Legal Director. What I am doing is perfectly legal.

On Monday last, as per PA Code Title 22 Chapter 4, Section 4 (d)(5), I inspected the testing materials shipped from Data Recognition Corp, a Minnesota private company to which the state pays $30 million annually to have these tests printed and then scored. These tests are scored by armies of temporary workers with no training in education. If you do nothing else, please read this article: http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/. I also highly recommend the book, Making the Grades, by Todd Farley. Anyone involved in education and in the administration of these tests should be informed about the fraud being perpetrated on the American school system and the American taxpayers by the private testing industry.

I have signed the confidentiality agreement and informed the principal of my decision.

I refuse to have my children take part in the testing because it is in conflict with my religious beliefs. The PDE advised me that even a medical or psychological concern meets this criteria, as long as I claim it’s religious. However, in this case my Catholic faith teach me that it is a sin to participate in an action I know to be a fraud and to be harmful to my children and to my community. Ten years of research and analysis by academic experts working at universities from Penn State to Harvard (as opposed to politicians like Michelle Rhee or college drop-outs like Bill Gates) conclusively prove that high stakes like the PSSA testing harms children, undermines and restricts curriculums, and punishes schools that serve the most vulnerable members of our society — kids with special needs and kids in poverty. There are mountains of documentation out there. For a beginning reading list, I suggest you contact Dr. Timothy Slekar, Head of the Division of Education and Human Development at Penn State Altoona. You can contact him at tds12@psu.edu.

Under the law, you cannot deny my request. I have also confirmed this with the PDE. My children are a fifth grader at Park Forest Elementary and a third grader at the same wonderful school. I am opting them out of testing even though I know that this action will result in the school failing to meet AYP for the second year. I believe in public education. For years we have all known that NCLB is a bad law. In 2014, every school in the country must be at 100% proficiency. You and I both know that is not going to happen. We all keep hoping that the law will be changed even though it is long overdue for reauthorization, yet given the partisan grid-lock in Washington right now, thinking that it will get fixed any time soon is a fantasy. My faith tells me that the only way to do the right thing for my children, their school, children with disabilities and/or living in poverty, and the future of public education in this state is to call for a boycott of the testing, hoping against hope, that if enough parents join in, like the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1965, our voices will finally be heard.

I understand that you and others in the administration here really have your hands tied on this issue. Under the law you must get 95% of kids tested. But it’s wrong, sir. It is all based on lies and deceit and greed and corruption. My faith demands that we must fight against this. As an undergraduate at Santa Clara University in California I saw members of our university community including priests, going down to help the people in El Salvador, even after six priests were assassinated by right wing death squads. That’s my religious and educational tradition.

I know that everyone is terrified of a school failing to make AYP. But to continue to participate in this corrupt farce is to undermine the very core of public education. Those pushing for ever increasing testing and “accountability” have made their agenda crystal clear: school closings, vouchers and eventually privatization, turning over education to for-profit companies. Private schools run by the Catholic Church and the Friends Council on Education are not for profit; they do not participate in this testing; their students receive a great education. For-profit schools run by large Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) have a dismal record, but that is the next step as more and more schools fail to meet AYP as we approach 2014. Eventually all schools will be closed down, reorganized and ultimately turned over to private for-profit EMOs.

We are told that private for-profit companies can do a better job than you and others who are committed to public education because of the free market. The free market resulted in scandals ranging from Halliburton and Blackwater in Iraq, to the Enron debacle, to the recent outrage in our own backyard with private for-profit prisons for kids. When our tax dollars are involved, greed and corruption run rampant in the “free market.”

Please think about your role in this and if there is anything you can do to take a stand against the Big Lie that is NCLB and high-stakes standardized testing which threatens the future of the kids you serve.

From the Official PSSA Handbook

 Student had a parental request for exclusion from the assessment: Section 4.4 of Chapter 4 provides for the right of any parents or guardians to excuse their child from the state assessment if, upon inspection of the testing materials, they find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious beliefs. This is the only basis for a parent or guardian to excuse his or her child from the statewide assessments.

 Two weeks prior to each testing window, each assessment must be made available for review by parents and guardians. The assessment must be reviewed on school district property and district personnel must be present at all times. Districts must provide a convenient time for the review. This may include an evening review time, if requested. Proper security and confidentiality of the assessment must be maintained at all times throughout the review process. District personnel may remove the prompt seals from one copy of a writing booklet to facilitate a review of the writing assessment.

 Parents and guardians must sign a locally prepared statement concerning the requirements of assessment security and confidentiality. A copy of this should be locally maintained. (It is not necessary to send this statement to PDE or DRC.) Parents and guardians may not photocopy, write down, or in any other manner record any portion of the assessments, including directions.

 After reviewing the test, parents and guardians must provide a written request addressed to the Superintendent or Chief Academic Officer to excuse their child based upon religious conflict. The parents and guardians do not have to defend their religious beliefs, nor do they have to identify specific test content to which they object. Simply stating that they are requesting exclusion based on religious grounds is sufficient.

If the student is excused from the state assessment due to parental or guardian request, school personnel must provide an alternative learning environment for the student during the assessment and complete the “Non- Assessed Students” grid on the student’s answer booklet by marking “Student had a parental request for exclusion from the assessment.”

2011 PSSA Handbook for Assessment Coordinators (All Subjects) Page 12

Two options to not take the PSSA

There are two ways to not take the PSSA. One involves parents. The other is for students. Both will work. After reading the information here, please like us on Facebook and help spread the word.

Option 1: For Parents

(PA Code Title 22 Chapter 4, section 4 (d)(5) states : “If upon inspection of State assessments parents or guardians find the assessment in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied upon written request to the applicable school district superintendent, charter school chief executive officer or AVTS director.”)

I called the Pennsylvania Department of Education and spoke with the Bureau of Assessments. A religious belief can be as simple “I have a moral objection to upsetting my kids for no reason.” I told him that one of my kids had testing anxiety, and he advised me to get a religious exemption. I have also spoken with the legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In order to get a religious exemption, a parent must first make a quick visit to the school office to review the tests. After reviewing the tests, you have to sign a confidentiality agreement. Then you can either give your letter to the principal or send it to the superintendent at the district office. The important thing is that your request cannot be denied. The school district MUST provide a convenient time for the review, which may include an evening review time, if requested.

Taking the religious exemption is not lying or using religion. Every education expert in America has been telling us for years that NCLB is taking resources from the most vulnerable members of our society — children who live in poverty and children with disabilities. (Matthew 25:31-46) Please visit NCLB Testing: Stop the Madness Know the Truth for tons of links to research and commentary on these issues. Show your parents this article if all else fails.

Download and print out an article and give it to your superintendent or principal. And please know that even if they huff and puff, they are on our side. They are caught in an impossible position. They know this is bad for kids, bad for education, and bad for schools, but their jobs could be in jeopardy for saying so.

Option 2: For Students

The Bartleby Project. If you are a student in Pennsylvania and your parents, for whatever reason, don't go for the religious exemption, then you can join the Bartleby Project. First, however, visit the Facebook page and try to get your parents to read some of the information linked there. Print up some articles for them to read. Try to educate them. Be sure to educate yourself. Print up copies of articles to bring with you to show your teachers and your administration when they question you about refusing to take the test.



Again, I spoke with the PDE. There is nothing that the state will do to you if you refuse to take the test. There is nothing they can do. Your graduation requirements can be met in other ways. This is the law.

PA Code Title 22 Chapter 4, section 4.24 (a) Requirements through the 2013-2014 school year. Each school district, including a charter school, shall specify requirements for graduation in the strategic plan under § 4.13 (relating to strategic plans). Requirements through the 2013-2014 school year must include course completion and grades, completion of a culminating project, results of local assessments aligned with the academic standards and a demonstration of proficiency in Reading, Writing and Mathematics on either the State assessments administered in grade 11 or 12 or local assessment aligned with academic standards and State assessments under § 4.52 (relating to local assessment system) at the proficient level or better to graduate. The purpose of the culminating project is to assure that students are able to apply, analyze, synthesize and evaluate information and communicate significant knowledge and understanding.

In other words, since the state allows parents to opt their kids out for religious reasons, it has to provide an alternative for those kids. And if the alternative is good enough for them, it's good enough for you.

Please educate yourself on these issues. Do not refuse to take the test just because you hate taking the tests. Also please share this information, this site, the facebook page and the links there with your friends and their parents. Only the united voices of students and parents can tell Harrisburg and Washington that these test are bad for kids, bad for education, and bad for school. It's time to let teacher teach.

March Madness: 'My name is Luke and I refuse to take your test'

This is a reposting of an article column in the Washington Post yesterday.

March Madness: 'My name is Luke and I refuse to take your test'
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Timothy D. Slekar, head of the Division of Education, Human Development and Social Sciences at Penn State Altoona, and a parent. This appeared on The Huffington Post.

By Timothy D. Slekar

"I'm inviting you to join a real conspiracy, call it an open conspiracy, with real consequences on millions of real lives. I know that sounds megalomaniacal, but be patient. If we pull this off, a great many will bless us, although the school industry few will curse us. This is about a project to destroy the standardized testing industry... This adventure is called 'The Bartleby Project.'" John Taylor Gatto. (Weapons of Mass Instruction, New Society Publishers 2008)

My 11-year-old son loves the show Myth Busters. From the first time he put two Legos together he was hooked on constructing intricate things (200 piece Bionicles at age 5). He creates Rube Goldberg contraptions and loves animals. He can manipulate through different technologies (Google Earth, iPad, iPod, Facebook, Sims, etc) and he doesn't need instructions because his curiosity enables him to navigate and learn new technologies. He also loves football. He watches the NFL channel around the clock and can give you just about any statistic related to the game or players. This is just a snapshot. A quick glimpse of my son outside the insidious institution we call public schooling today.

I am currently thinking hard about asking my son to participate in the Bartleby Project and to write "I prefer not to take your test" across the top of his state test in March. In Pennsylvania we don't celebrate March Madness. Instead we practice it. March is the month when Pennsylvania schools administer the Pennsylvania State System of Assessments (the PSSAs). The entire school year comes down this one week in March. This is when schools and students across the Keystone State are held accountable. This is the big time. This is what it's all about.

Please read the rest of his column here.

Dr. Slekar will be at the screening of the film "Race to Nowhere" tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the Young Scholars of Central PA Charter School located at 1530 Westerly Parkway. After the film, he will be taking part in a panel discussion of these issues.

Bartleby Project 2011: Do not take your state tests!

Pearson Education

The industry leader is Pearson, a multi-national company headquartered in London. It's the largest publisher of educational materials as well as the biggest educational testing company.

In our community we have a major university, Penn State. At Penn State you can get a Ph.d. in Education and/or Mathematics. Our school district purchased the Pearson Math Curriculum. The Pearson logo is at the bottom every homework sheet my son brings home. Everyone in town hates this curriculum.

For more than a year, parents have called for the removal of the district’s elementary conceptually-based math curriculum, “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space,” saying it does not provide enough rigor and is responsible for declining rankings on state-standardized tests.

Pearson has just announced their newest line of products: The Nation's First Elementary Grades Common Core Math Program. But will it actually be better. Maybe not. According to Farley, who has actually seen the new materials it's the same old program repacked.

But are the Common Core Standards really "revolutionary"? Or are they fundamentally the same as the sets of standards that currently exist in each of the 50 states, different only in their wording? That is the question I recently set out to answer, when -- in an heroic act of corporate espionage that I undertook for you, dear readers -- I stealthily broke into the computer item bank of an assessment company I used to work for to look at their test questions and standards.

What did I find? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I found the Common Core Standards look a lot like every other set of state standards I worked with over the years (that is, a list or grid of overblown educational rhetoric describing the simple skills American students should have mastered). For instance, the following multiple-choice question (written to a passage about feuding neighbors) is aligned to the Common Core Standards.

Garbage in. Garbage out.

The PSSA tests are prepared and scored by a private firm in Minnesota called Data Recognition Corporation.

The actual test booklets arrived in boxes last week all over Pennsylvania. Right now they are being sorted and stacked in every principal's office in every school. Parents have the right to review the tests before their children take them. At least that is the law in Pennsylvania. We just have to sign a confidentiality agreement. I reviewed the ones at my children's school on Monday.

The taxpayers of Pennsylvania pay $30 million every year to Data Recognition Corp (DRC) to develop, print and score these tests every year.

In May of 2009, the Pennslyvania Department of Education (PDE) signed a $200 million contract with DRC to create and administer the Keystone High School Graduation Exams. (Patriot News 5/15/2009, confirmed on 2/28/11 in phone call to reporter at the Patriot News.)

The CEO of DRC, Susan Engeleiter, is a Republican who ran for the US Senate in 1988. Bush Sr. appointed her to head the Small Business Administration, and then she was VP for Government Affairs until 1998, when she goes to DCR. In Dec 2008, she becomes CEO of DRC, and boasts of how she landed a $110 million contract with Ohio for their new high school tests. "When I arrived, we were not particularly profitable," Engeleiter said. "We've aggressively gone after new clients."

Then she donated $6,000 to Democrat Ed Rendell’s reelection campaign. DRC Chairman, Russ Hagen, also a Republican in Minn, donated $16,000 to Rendell. $10,000 of which was donated to Rendell in 2007 (record 257) — AFTER he had already won reelection and had a surplus over $1 million in his reelection fund. Lobbyists for DRC in Harrisburg have served in the administrations of Ridge, Rendell and now Corbett. I spoke with Tim Potts of Democracy Rising PA, a government watchdog group. Mr. Potts told me in a phone call on 3/1/2011 that the term for this kind of deal is "pay-to-play".

The tests are scored by temporary workers with no training in education in what some have described as “sweat shop conditions.”

DRC annually hires 4,000 temporary workers at $11-$13 an hour to score these tests. I called the human resource department of DRC (1-800-835-4697). To be hired as a test scorer one only needs to claim a four year degree, provide a short writing sample, solve two math problems, and attend an orientation/training session. The person from personnel told me that the "training session" was actually more of a recruitment event. DRC is now actively hiring scorers for the PSSAs.

There is a shocking article in City Pages, a Minneapolis weekly. The reporter interviewed people who had worked as scorers. The stories they recount clearly demonstrate how arbitrary and capricious the scoring is. Every parent, teacher, and student needs to read this article at a bare minimum.

The article described haphazard grading by people who have no idea what constitutes good writing. Those who do care are cancelled out by those who don't. For supervisors, pressure is extreme to create a bell curve so that no matter how well schools or students are actually doing, a certain percentage will ALWAYS be on the wrong end of that curve. Supervisors just changes scores to get the desired results so that they will get paid.

[Todd] Farley now understood the reasons why, when he'd been a scorer, his team leaders would tell the room he wanted to start seeing more 3s or 4s or whatever. Supervisors were expected to turn the test scores into a nice bell curve. If his room did not agree at least 80 percent of the time, the tests would be taken back and re-graded, wasting time and money. The supervisor would be put on probation or demoted.

When Farley complained to a fellow supervisor about his problem, she smiled wryly and held up a pencil.

"I've got this eraser, see," she told him. "I help them out."

So Farley simply began changing Harry's scores to agree with his peers'. The practice soon spread well beyond Harry.

"I'd just change a bunch of answers to make it look like my group was doing a great job," Farley says. "I wanted the stupid item to be done, and so did my bosses."

I have spoken now with serveral people who have done this kind of work. They all confirm the details.

To see an actual example of how repetitive, confusing essays are given perfect scores, while clear, concise writing is penalized look at this example of actual tests and how they were scored.

For more information also see Dan Dimaggio's article of his experiences as a test scorer. Or read Making the Grades by Todd Farley