Its unlikely to be valid in terms of what its trying to do. I do believe there is ability. Parents who come into kindergarten, when you have a child they always say children will develop at their own weight and age. Whats important is that theyre thriving and happy and then all the sudden that rhetoric comes to a halt and if you dont learn to read by third grade youre doomed forever and wont ever go to college. I hope you buy the book and give it to all the parents you work with. I was reading about this thing called a racial button law where the children are in control of their own content because their children and they put content online and the idea is they own their content and could get rid of it. Its being proposed in other states as well but it is here. However it doesnt affect what happens in the rooms of the school so when kids are taking their test the system knows whether their parents are divorced. They dont take into account good days or bad days or that we know the kids going through a tough time. The concern is and i think there are laws being proposed but as technology starts coming into the School System this is a bigger concern, especially with Identity Theft and misuse and mishandling of information. Thanks for bringing that up. This is an enormous issue and its going to get much bigger before it goes away. Its not just for student, but student privacy is at the forefront of the overall privacy issue. Some of the best minds in the world are working on student privacy because these are our children and it really matters. California is considered to have the strongest law. This law will be modeled by others and its in the house of representatives right now. It tries to follow on what some of California Law does but not all of it. The student privacy issue isnt just about testing. Although testing is an important one because theres consequential information about the students performance. Here the potential issues theres different issues about students and schools collecting data and the agencies they work with. Theres the concerned that it will be stolen or mis used or used for Identity Theft or use to make money. Then theres commercialization which is my students data is available to a Third Party Vendor who will use it for advertising products. Products. My student will be advertised to win shes doing her homework or whats very difficult to defined in some ways in commercial misuse is schools have already outsourced things to a thirdparty vendor. Whatever goes into a forprofit vendor is going to be used to improve the product itself. The more people that use google or google docs, the better it becomes so in some sense weve already turned our students information into commercial gain. Thirdly, i think most to the point of what were talking about here is privacy of my student but in the sense that he has a permanent record. The information stored in my kid is going to be used to make decisions about him in a way i cant control it. You can see this in predictive analytics. Predictive analytics is what target uses to try to tell us your pregnant before you do. They look at your searches and then sell your products. Predictive analytics and schools is, i look at the data and i have a low income kid and they have this grade and middle school and so i believe they are at risk to drop out. Now you look at the data and you make a decision or prediction about a kid and that prediction could be used to help them and intervene on their behalf. Its also inevitably shaping the beliefs about that kid on any professional who looks at that file. So the file is going around and when teachers are giving information about their student they are led to believe that the students are really gifted, then they treat the students differently and the students achieve more. The impact of having this information on the student the readout at the bottom said this kid is a potential dropout. That is the kind of question that the law is so far away from getting at and even in the court of Public Opinion theres a lot of division about where is this helpful, when is this helpful, should they be forgotten should they be able to tear up this record when they leave high school. Is it non personally identifiable and can we change policies to reduce dropout rates. Its totally complex and fascinating and a little scary as well. It depends where youre sitting, its extremely scary. Say its 25 years from now and youre on a book to her with the test sql, what would you be talking about . I would love to be talking about how the next generation of assessment really opened up her eyes to each persons capabilities and each student would be graduating with a robust record of their own learning that they control and they could qualify to a future employer. That schools would be robust and embrace creativity and use dashboard conductivity to figure out what really motivates them. If i could magically call up the sum of all papers i wrote in first grade through high school i would have such an interesting record of my own thinking in my own skills as they evolved and my own interests. The power of the data is really in how you use it. I dont i dont know how they deal with standardized testing but in learning competency models, masters mastery is there some synergy between that model and incorporating that into standardized testing . There is and its a very odd alliance. Im getting interest in this book from companies that believe they are the ones that will reduce the burden of testing by making it invisible. They talk about invisible integration. They want to do an experiment that would do away with state tests in favor of five questions a a day. Five question a day for a year knowing zaidi, this is a low steak game and the importance of the question could change from student to student to get a more adoptive model. You can you can cover many topics in many ways to learn more about what they know, and theyre also looking at as a next level to this, could a teacher create an activity that would satisfy that question or that construct such that you wouldnt have to ask these given questions but you can have a teacher created assessment. It takes a really, some of the software doesnt necessarily make for better teaching and learning but when you get these mines on a problem, as long as you have unified mines i think theres interesting potential there. I didnt realize that a lot of this is about how much can i know but its not how much are you teaching me to think or to see that and think about it this way, and this way way, and this way and bring this in. Is there anything thats developing that part . Test creators have been in credibly creative and coming up with rubrics to define what that means. And what i mean by that the oss and world war ii was trying to figure out who would be a good spy. They created a several day long battery of tests. There was one that there was one that someone had to build a box and they had two helpers. One of the helpers was a incompetence dude stooge and one was a jerk. They had tools and was incredibly stressful. Very few people pass in the time allotted and the test was really about could you not lose your cool and wail on the other people. You had a come up with a cover story and keep it for several days, there are all sorts of challenges within the test. With the performancebased assessment you cant imagine that happening in being mandated for a couple a couple weeks a year unless you had some Crazy Society that was trying to produce a a nation of stat spies. If you integrate teaching and learning and the teachers are engaged in their integrating their own selfworth flexion, i flexion, i think thats really important. I was really struck by the student being prompt by their achievement and how they got where they were. That was a really huge part of it. You can make students do that and that can be part of the outcomes youre trying to assess and create, for sure. Was there anything that while you were in the process of writing this book, changes you as a parent the way you dealt with your daughter . I was inclined in this direction anyway but i was led to downplay her intellectual growth for her social emotional growth. If anything i learned and this i learned and this might be helpful to anyone who has kids if youre educated people, if you and your partner and you both went College Chances of your child not graduating college are pretty small. Once you factor out the impact of Family Income theres only no almost note difference in private school. Based on math performance Public Schools do much better because her teachers are better trained. What can negatively affect your child is anxiety surrounding the idea of achievement in entering the 21st century world. The achievement ladder gets narrower and narrower at the top. It freaks parents out because theres so much competition. Ive strive to work on that as a parent and say where am i really not making space for my child to develop socially and emotionally so that she can be the happiest she can be and calm and make home as a refuge. Reading and indulging her interest is very important and so is opting out of madness of what looks like a really great goal which is getting a really great education for your child. Well see, shes only three. Score and a history teacher at Garfield High School in seattle takes a critical look at standardized testing. This is about an hour, 20 minutes. [applause] thank you. Welcome everybody for braving the elements in making it up here. My name is brian jones. Im an educator and activist in new york city and as jason said im going to moderate our event to just say a few words about the event and we will kick about. I will introduce our panel of some of them kick it off and we will have discussion after that. We are here, no doubt you understand for a very important reason. A, to mourn the decision, the fateful decision to not run Marshawn Lynch on the oneyard line last night he. [laughter] v to protect Jesse Hagopian from future pepper spray incident. C to talk to pineapples. Or d to celebrate the launch of this book more than a score the new uprising against highstakes testing. Now obviously c is a distractor question. Theres nothing relevant theyre obviously so you can eliminate that one right off the bat but a a b are possible. Either of those acts would make sense and if youre confused many the things i have said just google them and they will make sense to shirley. In all seriousness we all know probably everybody in this round has taken a test, standardized test even at one point or another in your life are you test are nothing new. They have been around around for along a long time but it seems we are living in the moment where the stakes attached to tests have never been higher. Not only to standardized tests determine a childs future in many places but they can determine the future of the teacher working with that child. They can determine the future of principals and administrators. The guidance counselor the gym teacher the music teacher in the art teacher. Everybody has spent sometimes the whole school to be bound up with the results of a test or even the fate of whole districts. Whats interesting about this moment is that trend towards raising the stakes higher and higher can you hear me . Has finally been confronted by a movement and perhaps its auspicious we are meeting on february 2. Every first, 1960 was one for College Students in North Carolina sat in and direct action in 1960 that sparked a whole new era in the civil rights movement, and mass civil disobedience era. Here we are talking about civil disobedience, talking about people refusing to take a test. Students, young people refusing to take a test that they are told by everyone in charge that they are supposed to take. In some cases we are talking about parents refusing to allow their children to take a test. Just opting out its called or we are talking about very courageous teachers risking their jobs in some cases to refuse to administer standardized tests. All of those risky behaviors refusing to do what you are supposed to do in taking direct action to stop the standardized test machine read all of those things are on the rise and this book capture stories not just by the four by the four of us but i havent counted how many many people have contributed to this book but many stories from across the country firstperson stories of students, parents and teachers who have been taking these actions and trying to figure out where to go from here. Towards that end we have a fantastic panel for you. Let me introduce the mall and asked him to save some room opening remarks. First first up we will hear from dao x. Tran. Dao as a parent of an Elementary School. He she is the coeditor of the book 101 changemakers rebels and radicals who have change u. S. History. Dare i say she is one of them. [laughter] she is working on a World History teacher project right now among other things and she was on her childs pta in the 2013 14 school year. After dao will be Diane Ravitch historian and Professor Emeritus emeritus. Not emeritus. Sorry diane. [laughter] scratch that from the video. Professor at new york university. Diane was the former u. S. Assistant secretary of education and the author of the book reign of error the hopes of privatization of the danger to americas Public Schools. And lastly we will hear from Jesse Hagopian. Sub by visit teacher of history at Garfield High School in seattle and the codirector. Advisor to the black Student Union at that high school. He was in 2013 the winner of the secondary teacher of the year by the Education Association of arts and sciences and most importantly for our purposes was the leader or one of the leading figures in the 2013 math test boycott. That was national news. [applause] and before we start off with dao i would be remiss if we did not acknowledge there are other testers sisters in the audience anchor jupiters to the beauprez somebody who testified in the u. S. Senate gina lee an Elementary Schoolteacher and parent and in the upper deck over their rosy and lee giles teachers at rustic heights who led a protest last year. C rachel ailes is here and what other bulldogs . And riosa roe from Garfield High School. These were two of the leaders of a math test boycott. C fantastic. Welcome all. Dao tell us your story of the boycott at your school. My daughter is seven now but in new york city if you want to send your child to a Public School you have to start thinking about and looking for a school when they are like three. So we started looking for a school for her and i live in the south bronx and was committed to sending her to a Public School. I wanted to send her to our Neighborhood School which was right on the block which was a beautiful idea. Send your kid a amok with him to School However when i went i actually put her in a school i was to say the least super disappointed because basically school, her first School Experience was basically one of massive amounts of homework, sitting at a desk listening to a teacher talk at the front for a 15 minute blocks of time. No recess. If they were good at the end of the day they would get to do choice time which to me was what most of the school day shouldve consisted of which was playing which is how i think young kids actually learn. So it was not a great experience for her. She was super sad. She would wake up every morning and say that her stomach hurt, that she fell sick and it was clear to me that there was something going on that i needed to address. And i think what i came to understand was that it wasnt just her classroom or her particular teacher. They were actually really lovely. Her teacher was super sweet but felt like she was doing what parents expected and the School District expected and the school expected which was to prepare our children to take the standardized tests. So therefore they structured the day in a way that was completely inappropriate for any kind of joy, any kind of solid basis in wanting to go to school and or learning anything in school. There was no play, there was no imagination and there was no hands on the experiential learning instead of learning how to count by say counting buttons they were learning how to count by counting stars on a page which is a very different experience and completely ineffective because you get kids who then get frustrated that they are not smart or they are not doing what all these grownups who care about them are expecting that they should be able to do. So we basically went through that for a year and felt like we had to try something different. We looked for Different School and we were able to find an Amazing School which was not in her neighborhood called castle bridge located in washington heights. Its a dual language english spanish Progressive School which was completely based and also a Public School thankfully completely based on the idea of handson arts infused music musicbased joyful learning. We were super super excited to get her in their city can imagine how i felt at the beginning of her second year her second year when we were told cocoa by the way she is going to come along with the other kindergartners through secondgraders, have to take a standardized test and its not to measure what they know or what they are learning but actually to score and rank and evaluate her teachers. I was shocked. We have never been told way the city School District or by the states, by the state School Administration that they were going to have to do this test. And i tried to find out what was g