Tag Archives: invalid

HILLARY CLINTON admits NH Dept. of Ed is Breaking State Law?

We’ve been trying to warn everyone that the assessments used in our public schools are in violation of state statute. New Hampshire Families for Education has blown the whistle on this but it seems no one is listening.

According to their web site:
To top it all off, under state law, RSA 193-C, statewide assessments must be valid, appropriate and objectively scored. Smarter Balanced Assessments are not and can not meet these criteria, so they must be rejected

State statue says that assessments must be “valid” and yet the NH Dept. of Education has never made available independent validity studies.

Chapter 193-C:
Screen Shot 2016-02-16 at 5.05.50 PM

The NH Dept. of Education is also involved in new PACE assessments that will replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Where are the independent validity studies?

Hillary Clinton while campaigning in New Hampshire a few weeks ago stopped to talk to a New Hampshire parent who brought this to her. Even Hillary Clinton admits the Common Core assessments are not valid assessments.

“I asked her if she was aware that the current [Common Core-aligned] tests are not even validated, and she replied, ‘yes,’” Lawless said.

This was confirmed in a letter to the editor: School testing unethical, invalid
“I regard Smarter Balanced as part of a nationwide system of compulsory participation in unethically managed, invalid research.”

When will someone hold the New Hampshire Department of Education and schools across New Hampshire accountable for breaking state law and using unethical and invalid research?

PARENTS: It’s almost time for schools to start administering the standardized assessments. This is a good time to NOTIFY your local school if you want to REFUSE to let your children take these assessments.

NEWFOUND, NH VIOLATES Testing Protocol? Are Their Assessments Now Invalid?

A parent in Newfound NH who REFUSED the Smarter Balanced addressed her School Board regarding the following issues:
1) A new policy for the students who do NOT take the Smarter Balanced Assessment
2) the BREACH in SECURITY on the Smarter Balanced Assessment in her district because students who did not take the assessment were required to sit with the students who did take the assessment (that’s against Smarter Balanced Protocol)
3) Lack of Communication from her elected board members

Start at 1:43:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5TxKtX0rN4&feature=youtu.be&t=6163&hc_location=ufi

There is still time to REFUSE the Smarter Balanced Assessment!

We have been warning the alarm about the Smarter Balanced Assessment for a while now. We URGE parents to read the following letter that appeared in fosters.com recently.
There is still time to REFUSE this assessment if your children have not taken it yet!

School testing unethical, invalid
To the editor:

I am writing to commend Shawna and David Coppola of Madbury for their decision to opt their children out of the Smarter Balanced assessment at the Oyster River School District, and to invite other families to follow suit. It is my intention to do the same with my own children.

I am a PhD level educational researcher who studies learning. My opposition to Smarter Balanced is driven by two main reservations: (1) U.S. families have, since 2001, been unwitting participants in a educational research project at an unprecedented scale, with activist reformers and legislators pushing market-based reforms underwritten by a punitive system of testing. Smarter Balanced represents the latest wave of data collection in this widespread experiment. As a researcher, I am subject to Institutional Review Board scrutiny anytime I use psychometric assessments of learning, and it is required practice to secure consent from research participants and to let them opt out at any time with no penalty. Smarter Balanced is such an assessment and should be held to the same ethical standard as all research on human subjects, in which seeking consent is mandatory.

(2) Smarter Balanced is claimed to be a valid assessment of learning. This is false in one crucial respect: Standardized tests have been shown repeatedly to lack ecological validity. In educational research, validity refers to a test’s ability to measure what it claims to measure, and not something else. Above all else, standardized tests measure children’s ability to take standardized tests. There is little correspondence between this ability and the ability to proficiently learn and perform complex tasks in normal environments. I do not necessarily fault the designers of Smarter Balanced for this problem, as it is a common mistake in educational research due to inadequate training. Nonetheless, because Smarter Balanced – and all similar metrics – cannot approximate real-life situations in which people are called upon to learn, it lacks validity in precisely the domain it purports to measure.

I regard Smarter Balanced as part of a nationwide system of compulsory participation in unethically managed, invalid research. The Coppolas are wise to exercise their rights to opt out.

Jayson Seaman
Durham

http://www.fosters.com/article/20150407/NEWS/150409532