When Ethan Rediske was on his deathbed in January of 2014, the state of Florida wanted him to take a standardized exam. A severely disabled 11-year-old, Ethan was blind and mostly deaf. He had never talked or walked and was fed through a tube.
In his final weeks, his special-needs teacher, who had become attached to him and he to her, came to his home to work with him, read to him, and lift his spirits.
But then, in mid-January, the school district said that Ethan needed to take the annual educational progress exam or get a waiver. A simple note from the doctor would not do. The only way Ethan was getting out of the test was if his parents could provide full medical records and evidence of the boy's current physical problems.
And so in Ethan’s final weeks, the family scrambled to file paperwork so he wouldn't have to take the test. The final letter from the hospice to the school was dated Jan. 28. Ethan died on Feb. 7 from complications of cerebral palsy.
“The school had a choice to make,” Ethan’s mother, Andrea Rediske, said. “They could say, ‘We love Ethan. We are so sorry, and don’t worry about this anymore and let his family spend their last days with him in peace.' Or they could insist on the paperwork. They chose the paperwork.”
Ethan’s case is an extreme example of one of the central tensions playing out in America's schools today: how the push for accountability and a noble desire to improve schools in the most underprivileged neighborhoods has resulted in a byzantine system of standardized testing that strikes many as counterproductive.
Florida is ground zero for America’s standardized testing movement, a distinction that reaches back beyond George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind to the state-level reforms of his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
It was Jeb who pushed through the hard-nosed policy changes that inspired the Obama administration’s $4 billion Race to the Top program, which was announced in 2009 and offers cash incentives for states which adopt test-based school and teacher performance standards. Jeb’s reforms included grading schools based on test scores, requiring passing scores to move to the next grades and performance pay for teachers.
With the 2002 passage of NCLB, the federal government got behind the accountability movement, using the carrot and stick of federal education funds to control state and local education policy to an unprecedented degree. The Obama administration followed the direction set by the Bush White House, imposing stiff requirements for curriculum, testing and teacher accountability.
As states floundered under NCLB's ambitious demands, the Obama administration offered waivers to schools that used standardized tests to measure teacher performance and requiring that states adopt (and test) curriculum standards geared to “college and career readiness.” For most states, this has meant adopting the controversial Common Core program, which determines what students should know in English and math by the end of each grade.
As a result of these attempts at reform, over the past decade high-stakes standardized testing has become the central salient aspect of public education — not just in Florida, but through much of the country. Many parents and teachers have had enough.
Why so many?
The magic number is 113. Pending minor adjustments to the data, that’s the number of standardized tests that a student in a major metropolitan district will take from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Those numbers come from the Council of Great City Schools, which represents 67 of the largest U.S. school districts in the country. CGCS is now finishing its study, but a spokesperson for CGCS confirmed that the preliminary finding is 113.
Even defenders of high-stakes tests think this is too many. Peter Cunningham, director of Education Post, a Chicago-based nonprofit promoting education reform, notes that NCLB requires precisely 17 tests from kindergarten through 12th grade.
NCLB, which passed in 2001, marked the first time in U.S. history the federal government mandated standardized tests, and those mandates came with strict consequences for states and schools that underperformed, including shutting down the school, firing administrators or enforcing a state takeover.
As director of a group that supports NCLB, Race to the Top, the Common Core and the other accountability efforts, Cunningham is nonetheless critical of excessive high-stakes testing.
"We should do as little testing as needed, just as much as is necessary," he said. "If a state or district is over-testing that's a state or local problem, and the solution is entirely in the hands of local educators.”
Cunningham argues that states could avoid it if they chose. “The solution is entirely in the hands of local educators,” he said. They are, he argues, under no obligation to pile on layers of teacher accountability and baseline tests.
And yet, as Cunningham himself notes, states use the baseline tests throughout the school year because they fear the consequences of failure on the federally mandated year-end test. No state is willing to wait for a year-end high-stakes test to find out how students are doing. Hence, the baselines.
Additional testing stems from teacher accountability pressures. The Obama administration is pushing states to evaluate teacher performance using standardized tests. The State of Washington recently rebelled against this pressure, refusing to tie its teacher evaluations to standardized test scores, leading the administration to revoke the state's NCLB waiver, which could result in government takeover of schools.
Teacher evaluation tests have a tendency to quickly metastasize, critics note. If every teacher must be evaluated, but not every teacher teaches math or English, soon standardized tests creep into every field. “So now you have a history teacher who says, 'Well, give me a history test,' ” Cunningham said, “ 'Don't evaluate me based on an English test.' ”
In short, critics argue that almost all of the excess testing derives from federal pressure. This is what drives Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, to call for an end to high-stakes standardized tests.
The annual NCLB tests for grades 3-8 and grade 10 should be retained, he argues, because they provide valuable insight into how schools are performing. But the federal sanctions and financial incentives that turn them into high-stakes tests should end. With the federal hammer removed, Hess argues, the baselines and other excess subject tests would disappear.
"This is why I find impassioned defenses of NCLB unpersuasive," Hess said.
Starting early
Testing begins in kindergarten. Last fall, a 26-year veteran kindergarten teacher at Chiles Elementary in Gainesville, Florida, refused to administer the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading, or FAIR test, which was supposed to assess reading readiness 5-year olds, demanded under Florida but not federal law.
The test was poorly structured, prone to error, required one-on-one time with the teacher, and would have consumed a full week of instructional time, wrote Susan Bowles in her letter to parents.
Bowles listed many other tests required by the state. “Usually at this time of year at Chiles, we would have children in their reading groups,” she wrote. “This year we have assessments mandated by the state which are so time-consuming, it will be weeks before we can instruct.”
In short, she argued, rigorous tests to assess reading readiness would significantly delay reading instruction.
“There is a good possibility I will be fired,” Bowles added. She wasn’t. Her story quickly attracted national attention and support from local school leaders and parents, and in the end she faced no discipline. Under pressure, and acknowledging the heightened attention, Florida Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart agreed to suspend the FAIR kindergarten exam.
Bowles won, for now. That’s one fewer test for Florida’s kindergartners.
Opting out
Bowles is not the only Floridian resorting to civil disobedience to protest the rise of excessive testing. She has good company in the 26 groups statewide that help parents legally get their kids out of mandated tests. The opt-out groups are tied to a specific metro or county, and all are loosely linked to a national network of similar groups targeting high-stakes tests nationwide.
For example, Florida law requires that children take the annual high-stakes exam, now known as the Florida State Assessment, or FSA. It covers reading, writing and math. There is no opt-out option, state school officials say. But there is a loophole. Students who break the seal on a paper exam or log onto a computer but do not answer any questions comply with the law but do not generate a score. The opt-out groups promoting this avenue say they and the students going this route are acting within the letter of the law. Kids “take” the exam, but do not generate a score.
“We are trying to initiate change through civil disobedience,” said Cindy Hamilton, a cofounder of Opt Out Orlando. “It’s not that we are anti-testing. This is how we will deny the data that feeds the machine. If we do nothing, we know that nothing is going to change.”
Hamilton said her group’s numbers have been burgeoning, with over 900 new members on the group's Facebook page in the past month.
For most kids, refusing the test is a harmless matter, but Florida has two high-risk years on testing, Hamilton said. If you fail the state test in 10th grade and don’t pass it on retakes, you’ll need to provide a passing ACT or SAT score to graduate. “Last year we had 9,000 students who did not graduate because they failed the test,” she said.
In third grade if you fail the test, you repeat the grade. The state offers alternatives, including a summer boot camp, additional tutoring, or a portfolio assessment for students who fail the test or refuse to take it. Hamilton says the primary purpose of the opt-out groups is to help parents navigate alternatives without suffering consequences.
High pressure
Hamilton's effort to "deny the data that feeds the machine" is directly at odds with Florida’s school districts, which face severe pressure tied to testing results. Every school is graded, largely based on test scores. Schools that get an A rating or that improve year on year get cash awards of up to $100 per student.
"The 2014 Florida School Recognition Program has recognized 1,543 schools and provided a total of $124,108,278 in financial award," the Florida Department of Education reports. Florida law states that the cash productivity awards are to be divvied up by joint agreement among staff and teachers, and in the absence of such agreement the awards go directly to the classroom teachers.
Given these incentives, schools can play hardball. Nanette Cruz of Orlando found that out when her 15-year-old daughter, Vanessa, opted out from the FSA exam at William R. Boone High School.
“She’s a gifted child, always does well on tests,” Cruz said. “But she went to a private school K-8 and was suddenly overwhelmed with testing at her public high school.”
"I began to look into it and decided the testing was excessive and damaging,” Cruz said, ultimately deciding to have Vanessa opt out of the annual FSA exam. The principal, Margaret McMillen, told Cruz that Vanessa would then have to sit quietly for 90 minutes without leaving — even if she came to pick her child up.
“I told her that was abusive and I was going to find out if they had legal authority to do so,” said Cruz, who is an attorney. Cruz says the district confirmed that she could pick Vanessa up.
But the school wasn’t through. When Vanessa made it clear she was opting out, Cruz said one proctor walked to another, pointed at Vanessa, and said, “That one!” loudly enough to startle the whole classroom. Then, as she waited for her mom to arrive, the proctor leaned over to her and whispered, “Are you dying yet?” Vanessa reported that they then hovered over her in an intimidating manner until she her mom arrived. Cruz has filed a formal complaint with the district.
In one case, a school principal initially refused to release a child to her mother, after the mother had arrived with the child and was waiting for her to opt out and return. It was only after another parent called 911 that the principal relented. Many parents reported similar incidents of misinformation, embarrassment or outright intimidation.
Orange County Public Schools spokesperson Shari Bobinski said she could not comment on specific cases, but said that it is district policy to never refuse to release a child to a parent unless the school is in law enforcement lockdown or there is a custody dispute.
High anxiety
Even after Ethan's death, Andrea Rediske still struggles with Florida's testing regime. She has two younger boys in Orlando public schools, one 9 years old and the other 7. They have tests every week, she says; some are formal, others are practice tests for the big ones.
Like most of the parents interviewed for this article, Resiske contrasts her kids' experience with her own more relaxed school experience. “They live in a state of constant testing,” Rediske said. “They take it in stride. That’s their reality. That’s all they know. They don’t realize there is something different, that (it's) not the way school is supposed to be."'
Others do not take it so well. “I have friends whose children are vomiting because they are so stressed,” Rediske said. “They’re having anxiety attacks.”
Case in point: a mother across town whose 11-year-old son is having the very anxiety attacks Rediske describes. Her name is Heidi Ramirez, and she says her son, Mateo, used to love school.
Mateo has always excelled on standardized tests, she says. “But this year the level of stress is so high that he’s had several anxiety attacks and now frequently says that he hates school.” Sunday nights, Mateo is sick to his stomach, Ramirez said. By Monday morning, he’s crying and asking, “Do I have to go to school?”
The doctors have diagnosed Mateo with Asperger’s Syndrome. “But the only diagnosis the school recognizes is 'gifted,' ” Ramirez said. The school, she said, wants him to take the state achievement test because he will help its score.
Ramirez said she started researching options this fall when she noticed that the kids waiting for their parents to pick them up after school looked exhausted — even though school had just started. “They were completely burnt out, and it was just one month into school,” she said.
“It almost averages to one test a day,” Ramirez said, “between the practice tests, and the benchmark tests, and the getting-ready-for-the-test tests.”
Ramirez says her daughter, a fourth grader, used to cheerfully say goodbye every morning on her way to school. Now, she often will look up wearily instead and say, “How many tests do you think we’ll have to take today? I hope we don’t have to take that many.”
Email: eschulzke@desnews.com