One of my personal commitments is that I take the time to bring my voice to
issues that I care about (or at least some of them ... there are so many). I also like to help others in their efforts to amplify their support for or opposition to shared issues of concern.
Today, instead of working on my own writing endeavors, I've taken the time to get informed about some key educational issues being considered by our state lawmakers, and to bring my voice and my perspective into the conversation. Today I wrote to lawmakers to share my
support for four Senate Bills that are currently before Oregon's Senate Committee on Education:
SB 456 (that removes the current standardized testing requirement for high school graduation);
SB 433 (that provides further support for those parents and adult students who want to opt their child out of standardized testing),
SB 428 (that calls upon the Secretary of State to perform an audit of standardized testing methods in Oregon schools), and
SB 664 (that adds a requirement to include education about the Holocaust and genocide in Oregon school curriculum).
Thanks to fellow community advocate, Lisa Shultz, I learned how to navigate through
OLIS to read about these bills, and to review public testimony that's been delivered thus far, etc. If you click on this
OLIS link, for example, you can see the different SBs that were before the Senate Education Committee at their February 27, 2019 meeting (which I was unable to attend). If you click on a SB link, for example
SB 456, you will see where the bill is currently, and that there was a hearing on February 27, 2019. If you click on the
2-27 Public Hearing link, you will see a page full of links to the written testimony that was given on that date (on the left side of the page). If you click on the little arrow on the right side of the
Senate Education Community summary page next to the 2/27/2019 date, you will be taken to a
recording of the hearing on that date. Pretty cool.
As I said, I wasn't able to attend the hearing on February 27th, but I did want to weigh in on the issues. I wrote the following letters, and sent them to the Education Committee members. I've copied them below in case they are helpful to you as you formulate your own opinions and/or choose to follow/lend your voice to these issues as well.
Here goes:
Letter One:
March 5, 2019
TO: Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee
RE: Support for SB 456
Dear Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee,
I am a parent, community volunteer, children’s author, and
vocal library and literacy advocate in Portland, Oregon. I am writing to share
my support for SB 456 and my strong
opposition to standardized testing as a requirement for high school graduation.
My two children have attended all levels of public school in
the state of Oregon (my oldest is currently a sophomore in college, and my
youngest is a junior in high school). I have been a guest author and/or
community volunteer in a variety of schools throughout the state. During the 15
years I’ve been involved with Oregon’s schools, I’ve witnessed a significant shift
in our public education system, focusing more and more on standardized testing
and less and less on meaningful areas sadly deemed “extras” in our
budget-challenged environment (e.g., art, music, reading for pleasure, library
services, and even information literacy skills).
Our state is routinely strapped for funds, limiting our
ability to provide a robust and well-rounded public education for our children,
but yet, we continue to find the funds to pay for aggressive standardized
testing protocols that have not been shown to benefit our children, our
teachers, our schools, or our communities. The only stakeholders that have
arguably benefitted from aggressive standardized testing protocols are the
organizations whose business models depend on the endless loop of
testing/consulting/ training/ and re-testing we have allowed our education
system to fall prey to. While these profiteers lobby for more and more testing
(so they can sell more test guides and more consulting services to help
teachers teach to the test and help schools improve their test scores), our
students, teachers, and schools suffer.
Yes, students should be able to demonstrate a basic level of
proficiency in the essential skills of reading, writing and mathematics to earn
a high school diploma. Students do this most effectively by receiving
instruction and regular evaluation and grading reports from licensed teachers. Linking
standardized tests to high school graduation requirements implies that these
tests hold value for our students and their future. They do not.
Please support SB 456.
It is time to put an end to Oregon’s unhealthy relationship with standardized
testing and the special interest groups that profit from ongoing support for this
testing.
Sincerely,
Dawn Prochovnic
Washington County, Oregon
(I have also provided letters of support for related SB 433
and SB 428)
Letter Two:
March 5, 2019
TO: Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee
RE: Support for SB 433
Dear Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee,
I am a parent, community volunteer, children’s author, and
vocal library and literacy advocate in Portland, Oregon. I am writing to share
my support for SB 433.
As a parent who has long been opposed to standardized
testing (see my letter in support of SB 456), and who has opted my own children
out of “Smarter Balanced Testing,” both to exert my rights as a parent, and to
shine a light on the controversial issues surrounding standardized testing
(call it civil disobedience, if you will), I was pleased with the successful
passage of the Student Assessment Bill of Rights (HB 2655). Unfortunately, HB
2655 is not being implemented in a way that adequately protects students or their
parents who wish to opt their children out of standardized testing.
Prior to the passage of HB 2655, I opted my children out of
“Smarter Balanced” testing based on the religious exemption that was available
at the time. To quote in part from my opt out letter at that time:
“…According to
the Oxford Dictionary, religion is ‘a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.’ We ascribe supreme
importance to [Our Student’s] access to a comprehensive education.
Strict
adherence to state and federal high-stakes standardized testing, including the
extensive classroom preparation that occurs prior to test administration,
prevents our child from receiving a comprehensive education. Until focus on
testable skills diminishes to a reasonable extent, we will continue to withhold
our child from participation in the testing program, and we ask that you honor
that decision.”
Our local middle
school honored my requests to opt out of Smarter Balanced testing without
incident. The situation has been different at the high school level—likely
because the stakes are now higher for our schools and our school’s
administrators, (especially since standardized testing is the current go-to
method for Oregon schools to ascertain that students are proficient in certain
essential skills and thus eligible to graduate high school—again, see my letter
in support of SB 456).
I am a capable,
intelligent and engaged parent, yet every school year it takes me hours of phone
calls, web searches, and networking with other likeminded parents to find out
where our school district’s current opt out form is buried, when and where it
needs to be turned in, and when the testing will take place at my child’s
school. This is inappropriate, and it circumvents the intent of HB 2655, the
current Student Assessment Bill of Rights.
I’ve been vocal about my decision to
opt my student out of Smarter Balanced testing, and I’ve been vocal about how
others parents have the right to do the same (or at the very least, I’ve shared
with other parents where the opt out forms are buried on our school district’s
website, and where and when they need to be turned in by). I’ve been publically
shamed at parent meetings at my child’s school for my decision to opt my
student out, and I’ve been privately contacted by school administrators with
requests to revisit my decision to opt my student out. I’ve also been asked by
administrators to please consider how my decision negatively impacts our
school, our teachers, and our students who are at risk of not graduating
because they have not yet demonstrated their achievement of essential skills.
I’m
confident and courageous, as are my children, and yet I’ve found it to be uncomfortable
and intimidating to assert for my child's rights on this topic. (It is not lost
on me that writing this public letter in defense of opting out could arguably impair
my relationship with the administrators at my child’s school. I hope not.). Furthermore,
my child’s school is now referring to the upcoming standardized testing by a
different name, (no longer the Smarter Balanced test), so I don’t even know if
HB 2655 protects my student’s right to opt out at this time.
Please support SB 433. HB 2655 was a nice
start, but it is inadequate.
Sincerely,
Dawn Prochovnic
Washington County, Oregon
(I have also provided letters of support for related SB 456
and SB 428)
-->
Letter Three:
March 5, 2019
TO: Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee
RE: Support for SB 428
Dear Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee,
I am a parent, community volunteer, children’s author, and
vocal library and literacy advocate in Portland, Oregon. I am writing to share
my support for SB 428.
It is time for our state to take pause and audit/evaluate
how it is we evaluate our students. As our schools continue to place greater
and greater emphasis on the preparation for and implementation of standardized
tests, we rob our children of the robust and well-rounded education they
deserve, an education that includes the richness of art, music, reading for
pleasure, library services, and even information literacy skills.
But that’s not all. Our testing protocols aren’t even
logical, practical, or efficient.
Consider for example, the experience of my two children.
Both of them passed their reading and math essential skills benchmarks via OAKS
testing during middle school (the writing test was not offered in middle
school). My oldest child, who is now in college, got strong A’s in the college
level, AP/Advanced Placement English and writing classes she took in high school,
and she tested in the top percentiles in her college entrance exam pre-tests.
This would suggest to a reasonable person that she was on track to (easily)
pass the “alternative” writing essential skill benchmark when she took her
college entrance exams, (which she did). However, she was still expected to sit
for the Smarter Balanced standardized tests during her junior year in high
school. Why? What a waste of resources.
Even though our family took the time and energy to opt her
out of the duplicative Smarter Balanced testing, (see my related letter in
support of SB 433) she was robbed of valuable instructional time and learning
opportunities while her teachers prepped her classmates for the standardized
tests. Further, she was robbed of valuable instructional time leading up to
national Advanced Placement (AP) test dates because of several days worth of
“essential skills” standardized testing. To note, Smarter Balanced testing
would have yielded her zero benefits. Successful AP testing resulted in several
college credits being earned, and THOUSANDS of tuition dollars being saved.
Fast forward three years later, and my son finds himself in
the same boat. He’s already passed one AP English test (with the highest score
possible, which will earn him college credit at nearly any university in the
United States), yet the protocol for his high school is that he is expected to take
the standardized test later this school year to assess that he has met the
essential skills benchmarks. We are opting him out, too, but I continue to be
frustrated and disappointed at all of the learning he is missing out on because
of this duplicative standardized testing.
Please support SB 428.
It’s time to re-evaluate our evaluation methods in our schools.
Sincerely,
Dawn Prochovnic
Washington County, Oregon
(I have also provided letters of support for related SB 433
and SB 456)
Letter Four:
March 5, 2019
TO: Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee:
RE: Support for SB 664
Dear Chair Wagner and Members of the Senate Education
Committee,
I am writing to share my strong support for SB 664.
Our family descends from Henry Prochovnic, a Holocaust
survivor. Henry’s name and the name of his parents and siblings who did not
survive are written on the Holocaust Memorial in Portland’s Washington Park. My
children have learned about the Holocaust because we have talked about it as a
family, but I’ve been genuinely surprised by the number of students that do not
know very much at all about this period of history. Case in point, just
recently our local high school presented a student production of the Diary of
Anne Frank. I was taken aback by how little the high school students knew about
this time in world history prior to seeing this production.
The Holocaust is a bleak and dark stain on humanity, and it
is a time in history that we as a society cannot afford to forget or repeat. It
is mind boggling to me that this subject is not already a required topic for Oregon’s schools. Please work to
change this. Please support SB 664.
Sincerely,
Dawn Prochovnic
Washington County, Oregon
Please feel welcome to use these letters as a resource and guideline or inspiration in your own advocacy work.
