On Friday, February 26th, CPS central office shared documents with principals and assessment coordinators that outlined that they will continue a policy of attempting to suppress parental and student rights of opting out of PARCC.  Copies of these documents are provided below.

CPS instructs principals to ignore parents’ written requests to opt out their children out of testing and to force students to refuse PARCC testing up to seven times—once for each individual unit of the test. (There are seven units for grades 3-5, six for grades 6-9.)

Although the instructions say refusing students may be provided with alternative activities and moved to a non-testing room, it does not explicitly prohibit the use of sit-and-stare.

This policy is in line with the federal and state government’s own policies of using threats and intimidation to bully schools and districts into bullying parents and students.

For accurate information on how to refuse PARCC, see our toolkit page.

Education authorities should be devoting ever-more scarce resources to support and expand the use of authentic assessments designed and administered by professional educators who know your child and interact with them on a daily basis.

Instead, they are dumping millions of dollars into the coffers of companies like Pearson for unreliable, invalid standardized tests, siphoning money away from the classroom. The IL State Board of Education is requesting more than $47 million for PARCC for FY2017, an increase of almost $18 million (37%) over the previous year.

One final note of concern, CPS recommends that principals point parents with questions about PARCC to the Great Kids PARCC Score Report guide.  This guide is provided by Great Schools, an organization funded almost entirely by billionaires whose goal it is to privatize the public education system.

CPS documents on PARCC refusal policy for 2016:

• CPS PARCC Refusal Policy Resources SY15-16 2.26.2016
• CPS PARCC Facts 2.26.2016 (Read our annotated version MTAS Fact Check: CPS PARCC Facts)
• CPS PARCC Principal Letter 2.26.2016
• CPS Parent letter 3.18.2016 (Read our annotated version MTAS Fact Check: CPS Parent Letter)
• CPS directives to principals and network chiefs 3.23.2016
• CPS guidelines on disciplining teachers and staff for supporting opt out 3.23.2016
• CPS directives to principals and network chiefs 4.5.2016

For comparison, here’s last year’s letter from former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to principals in March 2015.