An Open Letter to New Jersey Opt-Out Parents

An Open Letter to New Jersey Opt-Out Parents:

I’m one of you – except that I didn’t opt my children out of PARCC testing. But otherwise, I am. I am white, a progressive Democrat, and pay a lot of property taxes. We moved to our town because the schools lead New Jersey and the nation’s list of best schools. I’ve got kids in the public schools, which makes me an oddity amongst my neighbors. But, despite the warts, I believe in public schools. And yes, I do value teachers. I believe them to be well meaning, seeking to do their best on behalf of my children.

But they are not infallible. And it is my role as a parent to monitor their work with my children. I don’t always believe that they know what’s best. And truth be told, I often wonder about their mastery over the content that they teach. Many of our family’s dinnertime conversations have centered on correcting the day’s mistakes. For instance, my child’s third grade math teacher taught that the “product of three sixes” was 18 (3 x 6) versus the actual product of three sixes, i.e., 6 x 6 x 6.  A teachable moment at home that night with our eight year old: “No one – not even your teacher – is always right. Question everything.”

Have you ever emerged from a neighborhood party having learned a ‘secret’ about your school, shared by parents of older children? Yes? Took me a while to learn that the fifth grade teachers were running an unofficial ‘gifted and talented’ program in math. They were literally teaching material from the grade level above so that their handpicked students would do well on the DISTRICT’s placement exam in the spring and be placed in the advanced math track in middle school.

When I discovered that my oldest child wasn’t in the group of handpicked students in fifth grade, I scheduled a conference to discuss. The teacher said that my child hadn’t done well on her - the TEACHER’S – assessment (a homework assignment of 100 multiple choice questions) during the first week of school. I had however come prepared with my child’s fourth grade NJASK report  – with a perfect score of 300 – to demonstrate that my child in fact deserved to be amongst the secret group of students.

In third grade, my child didn’t make the cut for the advanced reading program. When I asked the teacher who had been assigned if she felt my child was in the right class, she said she didn’t think so and would ask what the results were of the DISTRICT’S second grade placement exam. Huh? A second grade placement exam? Turns out, my child’s score was incorrectly transcribed from the exam to the online record book. Oh, so glad I asked.

Yes, the adults in the schools are constantly making decisions about your children. And mostly, you – the parent – has no idea how they make these decisions. I sure didn’t. If you’re nervous about the way schools use data, good. You ought to be. You ought to be demanding to know how these decisions are made. It ought to be made public and not whispered about at cocktail parties.

I’m sorry that you bought into NJEA’s $15 million “No Teacher Left Behind” campaign to convince you that the PARCC assessments are useless and that there isn’t more to your child than what your child’s teacher can tell you. I hope that your trust in your child’s teacher isn’t misplaced because you’ve just given up the only available external piece of data that you could have used to verify whether they are making good decisions on behalf of your child.