issue that we consider to incredibly important and from our perspective we just want to let you know that we oppose as b a c it is the position of the seattle king county branch of the end of a c p to come out against the smarter balanced assessment test common referred to  where and know that our students of color are disproportionately underfunded and would disproportionately label failing by the new aspect test for this reason we view the opt out movement as a vital component of the black lives matter movement and struggles for social justice in our region using standard i've tested label black people and immigrants in lesser systematically funding their schools has a long and hughley history in our country it is true we need accountability measures as we all know but that should start with politicians being accountable to fully funding education and ending the opportunity gap i would like to introduce our education chair ms reed agree and she will state to you the full intentions of what opposition i on the reason why we oppose asked back and we calling on all parents to opt out of opt out now to come out against the smarter balance assessment commonly referred to as s back seattle and washington state public schools are not supplied with proper resources and a lack of equity within our school continue to exist the state of washington cannot hold teachers responsible for the outcome of student test results when these very students are attending schools in a state that ranks forty seventh out of fifty states in the nation when it comes to funding education that is the third lowest in the us furthermore washington state cannot expect for the majority of students to perform well on an increase targeted performance assessment while the state continues to underfund education in direct violation of washington state supreme court order the cost tied to the test this year is approximately two hundred million dollars if the state really want students to achieve academic performance at higher levels these dollars should be put in our classrooms and use for our children's academic achievement improvement instead of putting dollars in the pockets of test developers we urge families to opt out of s back tests and to contact their local and state officials advising them to abide by the supreme court decision the cleary act thank you welcome everyone thank you for coming today my name is just to go be and i teach history garfield high school i love black student union call advisor garfield high school i'm an editor for rethinking schools magazine there for rethinking schools magazine and i'm the editor of the new book more than a score the new uprising against high stakes testing and you know bill gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars to rush through the most radical education change in u s history the common core standards on the high stakes standardized tests that came shrinkwrapped with those standards and he's been round criticized by educators and parents and students across the snow nation and fact we're in the middle of the largest uprising against high stakes standardized testing in the history of the united states some sixty thousand parents in new york state alone opted their students out of the state house and we've seen thousands of parents across the country thousands of students the largest rock out in  history of students against high stakes testing happened earlier this year and colorado we saw nearly a thousand students walk out of the santa fe schools against the new common core testing and this movement is spreading all across the nation like wildfire and many people have believe that bill gates is using his fortune to undermine the democratic nature of the public schools and to impose his will that is not based on an experience with public schools onto our public schools our students and our teachers but today i actually want to congratulate bill gates and not focus on all of that negativity i want to congratulate bill gates for taking a very bold step for assessment justice because bill gates  the school sent bill gates sent his students to a school lakeside and that lakeside you might say they started the opt out movement against smarter balance testing because at lakeside they don't use the common core standards or the smarter balance testing and so i want to congratulate bill gates for making a very wise decision to send his kids to a school that don't use smarter balance testing and i think what's good enough for his kids is good enough for our kids in the seattle public schools who knows you knows what students really need is a nurturing classroom small class sizes he knows what's best for his kids is a classroom where the teacher gets to drive instruction based on their passion not based on what's on  bubble test he knows that the best way to educate children is to flood the school with resources allow study abroad programs wonderful campus and enriched curriculum with all kinds of electives that we can no longer afford in the seattle public schools and we say again what's good enough for his kids is good enough for ours so i want to let you know that aspect testing in seattle has been an unmitigated disaster we have had reports across the city of absolute testing melt down and building after building you're going to hear today from some of the people who have experienced that first hand they've experienced the technological glitches that have wasted hours of instructional time they've experienced their computer labs and their libraries shut down for weeks at a time unable to be used for research and they've experienced the human disaster of labeling kids failing and seen the impact that that has on children and crushing their spirits turning them off to education and you'll you'll hear that i think it in graphic detail but i want to make one thing clear today teachers in the seattle public schools are not against tests in fact teachers invented tests and we rely on assessment to understand our students thought process and help scaffold their understanding to the next level of their development in a given subject and to that end the teachers that garfield high school have built a partnership with the new york performance based assessment schools and you're going to hear more about that partnership from a colleague of mine so you can really understand what authentic assessment means what the leaders in research across the country will tell you about authentic assessment and a little bit about the project that garfield is on they're going to replace these tests with truly authentic measures right things that get that critical thinking skills because i think we have made a grave error in our society today we are training our nation of youth to believe that wisdom is the ability to eliminate a wrong answer choice rather than to think critically to question to be creative to imagine right to collaborate to to a dental problem in your community and work together with someone else to solve it that's what our school should be about not bubbling in a b c or d i want to say that this these tests are invalid back test isn't invalid that's a bold statement how can i make that claim it's not based on my own estimation it's based on the smarter balance consortium itself the smarter balance consortium has acknowledged in a memo that the test has not been proven to be externally valid and yet our state rushed to implement this test all across the state any rational educator would know that you do a sample size to get validity before you mandate that every single school roll out a test that could very likely be invalid i also want to say that these tests are purposefully designed to punish our students they're purposefully designed to deny our kids graduation to label our schools failing what do i mean by that the smarter balance consortium said a cut score that they proudly proclaim will fail sixty to seventy percent of our kids in the seattle public schools they call that accountability i call that a political decision that was not made with any educators in mind and when you can label schools failing then you can shut them down when you can label schools failing you can open up charter schools and i think the privatization movement needs to stop labeling our kids failing and listen to what educators say about authentic assessment very very last comment is about garfield high school in a moment you're going to hear from a teacher of conscience who is deeply troubled by these tests and is going to explain to you why it's against her conscience to administer these tests and you should know that teachers at garfield high school have been wrestling with what to do with the smarter balance task for some time people know and thirteen the staff of garfield high school collectively refused to administer the map test and we were flooded with thousands literally thousands of letters of support and emails of support and signatures of support on petitions and then the movement spread across the country as other teachers in chicago and new york refused to administer as students walked out of tests in portland and chicago and as in rhode island students held let's make the adults take the test event and set of this is the measure of career and college ready lets see if the professionals are ready and the rhode island student union found that sixty percent of the doctors lawyers politicians that came to take this for this test failed and in fact were not ready for their post and so the action we took our garfield high school helped inspire people across this nation in the movement for authentic assessment and we knew that we had a responsibility to act again with this new flawed test being imposed on our public schools and so we debated what to do but then an amazing thing happened you see the students who stage sit ins in their own classrooms during the map test and the parents who flooded our class and our our school with opt out letters that year against the map test are the very same parents and students who are being asked to take the eleventh grade asked back test and so the decision for us as educators about whether to administer this test or not was taken out of our hands because the parents spoke first dozens and then hundreds of opt out letters have flooded garfield high school opting the students out of the eleventh grade asked back  i'm proud to say at current count we have two hundred twenty one opt out letters i garfield high school officially and what that means is that so many students in the eleventh grade class are not taking the exam that they can't actually be led to the computer labs to take the exam by the teacher because you can't have a lot of students who are not taking the exam sitting around the computer lab distracting that's against the testing policy so in fact we no longer are being asked to administer the exam and only the few students who did not get out out letters in will be pulled out of classes and taken down individually to administer the exam who are in the struggle for quality assessment and saw i would like to bring up doug edelstein doug is an award winning teacher at nathan hale he serves on the executive board of the seattle education association he's a member of the social equality educators a leader at nathan hale high school and we know nathan hale was the school that kicked off this revolt against us back and i'm proud to have him here speaking today tha everybody first thing i want to want to correct some mischaracterizations that have occurred in the press around nathan hale nathan hale didn't it's been characterized in the press as sort of a smack down between nathan hale teachers about however after due diligence research and doing our homework the nathan hale senate which consists of parents students ministre toure's teachers and these are teacher leaders who are department heads or or team leaders decided after after reviewing the literature after getting expert testimony after after looking at the program the way it's being rolled out after looking into the test itself decided  that the eleventh grade s back test would be of no use to our students and would be a waste of their time essentially i'm paraphrasing there are a number of specific considerations that that took place including pressure on infrastructure the equity of the test that is to say is this a fair test the answer that that i think is a clue that anybody who looks at the test can draw is that it is not and the question became should we administer it and i don't think nathan hale was interested in becoming the epicenter of a of an earthquake i don't think that that was it at all we teach our students to become honorable thinking skillful citizens that's our goal and we try to model that behavior ourselves so after doing our homework  decided that the s back tests as iterated in the in the eleventh grade should not be given at our schools so we decided not to that is still the policy however to those who must have it will be it will be  matters of conscience and social justice dr king in his letter from the birmingham jail said that that he teaches us that that that blind obedience to law is a is not as important as as concerned and responsible citizens making decisions of conscience professionally and in terms of the equity of the situation in terms of the the justice or injustice of ministering an inequitable test and i don't speak for the hail but i can be the senate decided not to reduce or not to offer this or not to administer this test and not to force its teachers to do so so in the meantime  i want to report that as of as of now almost fifty percent of our students in the eleventh grade of opted out we've  heard and that and that that that number is growing this is not because teachers have been urging them to do so it's because they can heal students are honorable thinking skillful citizen and the thinking part of it as critical thinkers they evaluate what's best for them as well as we do in their families do so as a human being and i'm a member i'm on it adjunct instructor at c l universit masters in education school and social studies methods i am a member of the advise teacher advisory group of the fastest growing black history website in the country which is black passed out or thanks can tard taylor and  experience that the tenth grade aspect test offers as much hazard to our students and possible harm as the eleventh grade and this is the challenge that we face the tenth graders will be taking this test very soon  actually in may and i'm concerned about the effects of those of that test on the welfare of those  s i think you i became interested in the issue of testing and opting out recently what attracted my attention about six weeks ago with the knowledge that my child's teachers were not allowed to discuss with me anything about testing besides the schedule this is an immediate red flag for me and i began researching and attending informational meetings what i found was disheartening last week i opted my child out of this year's testing for several reasons i don't believe that the high stakes standardized testing currently being administered are the result of responsible informed decision making these tests and standards were decided upon by state legislators who don't know what's happening in the classroom as opposed to educators who do i have confidence in my child's teachers and i trust them to teach evaluate and inform me of results through conferences and report cards this is how my child and her teachers should be spending their time i don't believe the tests are equitable they're administered on computers not every child is computer literate they are administered in english concord has a high population of english language learners as do many south and schools these children will be taking the test in english t cut rate is around sixty percent how many ill kids will fall into that feeling category because they are tested in a language in which they are not  am finally and most importantly i don't believe this is an efficient use of my child's time she's at school to learn she has six hours a day to study all the normal subjects half of them in spanish at concord as well as to squeeze in a few minutes to eat lunch play outside and learn to make friends when i dropped her off yesterday one of her classmates asked if they would be allowed to go to the library to check out books since they had missed it last week because the library was full of testers the teacher repl you won't get to go this week either that's the problem with testing in that show children are asking to to learn but instead they're being tested there are four seats on the school board that will be open in the next election current and potential board members will listen to the growing chorus of parents who oppose high stakes  i've had the displeasure of administering the test for the last four weeks i just want to talk a little bit about how much time it's taking out of our instructions time because franklin only has two sets of classes language arts and history that are grade specific it all the testing has to take place in my language arts class or in the history classes so here's how it worked we spent two days a few weeks ago with my tenth graders taking a practice test so they would understand how to use the program so that was two days then we spent two days  where we were supposed to be testing however the state we we got all logged on and we were trying to start the test and for two days in a row those were the first two days allotted to testing the state failed to put up the test so through through a computer glitch we had two more days that we wasted then we for those who don't know there are two different language arts kinds of tests there's one that's a computer adaptive test which means the computer started response to their level and goes up or down depending on how they answer the questions and there's a second test which is supposed to test where they write an essay basically so what happened with us is the state predicted that students would take two cost periods for the first test two class periods for the second test well my students after day two on the first test not a single one of them had completed it and they were about halfway through which meant that for that test they were going to have to be pulled out randomly from other classes throughout the following weeks missing education in those classes as well then we did that the computer test the same thing happened to kids finished on time and so the rest of the kids have have their being tested throughout the weeks pulled up from their math class pulled from their history history class pulled from wherever they can be polled in order to to finish the test so that's that's the waste of time that's occurring there are some other problems that that that i discovered through administering the test  headaches from met numerous children i feel dumb this test makes me feel dumb from numerous children and well here's a case of  i don't know if you guys know the demographics of franklin in my first period class for instance eighty five percent of the students speak a language other than english at home so i had one student i'll call her an and came to into my class as a mainstream student just two months ago she's from vietnam and she's only been in the country a bit excellent student so excellent that after a few months in in classes they sent her to a mainstream class the way that she has been an excellent student in my class is that every day she goes home and spent several hours looking up the words that we were reading in our books so that she can keep up with the class it takes or couple hours every night so she goes into the lab to take this test and first day she says she's typing along and then she looks up and she says can i get a translator for this and we're like no i'm sorry you're not allowed to have one in the only way you can use addiction the only time you can use a bit i mean english dictionary is on the essay you can use one that so she keeps going and it's taking her hours and hours even to do this and then finally on the last day of the essay writing it was two twenty and they closed the lab and it was her last chance so even though it's a one time test supposedly she had run out of the window where she could possibly work on this but this test so she came down to my room friday sobbing and sobbing and sobbing i don't want to fail that test mr richmond i don't want to fail the test streaming with tears and this is a girl who wants to be a doctor this is a girl who who is so studious she would put the rest of us to shame but she's worried about failing a test the other thing one last thing i want to say about just pure low just sticks is that one of the english language learner teachers at my school informed us that on the math section of the test there is a glossary for non english language learners or speakers and but unfortunately it's a limited glossary it has ukrainian and it has a few other languages has vietnamese i think i but it forgot the continent of africa and many of our students are from somalia and from ethiopia and those languages are not represented on the in the glo so i just leave it at that lost on anybody here if there's confusion about what it means that there wasn't a glossary and any of the african languages are somali kids are eritrean kids are ethiopia but none of that huge population gets access to the my name is heather robison or robeson and neither one is i actually i wrote a letter of conscience to superintendent niland and washington state legislatures and any other policymaker and in this way i say that i am a national board certified teacher with a master's degree in english and two years of doctoral level coursework and curriculum instruction at twelve years of teaching experience ten working in public schools and two at the university level i am passionate in my work and have rigorous expectations for my students and myself i currently teach at garfield high school where half of my day is spent with advanced placement students who represent some of the most privileged and highest performing children in our city the other half of my day is spent with general education students over a quarter of whom receive special education services across all sections i have homeless students students with restraining orders against abusers students who read and write below grade level students who currently read and write at a college level and students who vacation in europe every spring from this vantage point my conscience demands that i publicly and phatic lee assert that high stakes standardized tests like the s b a used as graduation requirements and teacher evaluation tools are detrimental to the meaningful education of all of my students administering such exams goes against my professional and moral judgment for all of my students these tests are a waste of time in which they are forced to be passive test takers rather than active knowledge creators this year's proposed test took over two weeks of instructional time from classes superintendent niland recent email stated quote the amount of s b a testing time for each individual student is relatively small about eight hours depending on grade level and quote what a drastically skewed perspective that sentence reveals eight hours is an enormous time investment for an unreliable and in appropriately used assessment enough to push an entire unit from this year's curriculum for my students who are victims of the opportunity gap the s b a disproportionately hurts their identity as capable learners and instead reinforces an identity of failure these exams can only ever show a limited sample of student ability and the cultural bias inherent in any standardized assessment exacerbates the s b a inability to reveal what my students truly know and can do even if the a were a more reliable valid and culturally responsive measure of student ability the learning environment created around it devalues true intellectual curiosity risk taking and critical thinking for all of my students high stakes tests breed a reductive mind set of will this be on the test and myopic focus on points rather than learning yet students do crave authentic challenges and on a g level they recognize the faults of a test based system when i first announced the upcoming s b a exams to my eleventh graders students shot their hands up and asked can we opt out of this these are high performing students who are the most likely to succeed on this test yet they were frustrated at the prospect of losing class time for this detached and inauthentic measure of their performance we need high standards for educational systems and we must do more to prepare all of our students to be successful in a demanding and complex world exams like the s b a do not take us in that direction my teaching practice and that of my peers ask students to do far more than these exams do we crave authentic and challenging modes of assessment just to mention the new york performance standards consortium which i have been lucky enough to be able to travel to new york and attend some of their conferences and trainings and i ask policymakers to please consider the work of the new york performance standards consortium which has opted out of standardized tests since  and instead built an assessment system developed evaluated and continually revised by actual educators instead of taking tests students are given ownership of their own project based learning which includes evaluation by community professionals in the discipline this group of schools has some of the highest rates of college admittance with one of the lowest rates of college attrition this success was achieved with a true range of students pulled from the economic and cultural diversity of new york city neighborhoods policymakers in teaching and learning there are no short cuts exams like the s b a attempt to short cut streamline and profit the education system this benefits test makers but not students the schools are a reflection of the social problems of the larger society if we truly want to close the and in equities in our social institutions we must address issues of poverty and income inequality that is a tall order but the work of the consortium schools shows an alternative that can offer a meaningful success for all students at home i have a three year old son he is an exuberant boundary pushing little boy who will enter kindergarten the fall of two thousand and sixteen i feel such anxiety at the thought of subjecting him to a learning founded on tests like s b a he is filled with joy and innate curiosity to learn and experiment a joy that i seek to foster in my own students i challenge you to go online and take the practice tests of the s b a compare that experience to the approach described of the new york on the new york consortium of schools website which would you prefer for your own child finally to the policymakers please listen to me please recognize my expertise and consider my professional opinion i work to challenge my students and myself with reacher research the ported best practices for all students trust and consider the informed opinion of so many of my peers who ask to end high stakes testing on a daily basis we see the damage testing wreaks on our efforts for authentic education and the disproportionate damage inflicted on our most vulnerable students thank you and what an honor to give to each other garfield was really powerful and if you members of the media here have not gone to a poor performance of susman dot org then you're missing a piece of what observation should be about because this network of some thirty schools the how they're detailed in new york they're all public schools they're not charter schools they're in new york city was sought they have more out risk students and special needs students than the general population of the new york public schools but they have a waiver and they don't give the standardized to us so the measure of the politicians these schools should be at the very bottom of new york city's public schools because they don't use the important accountability measures but in fact they're at the very top they have the highest graduation rates the most as heather pointed out the most color determinants and stay stay in call it longer than the rest of the schools because they teach critical thinking they're what's actually valued in when you get to college and we you're going to be hearing a lot more about the new york performance schools because we are in partnership with them in developing those standards here i got to move on i'm here today to share insights and facts that are prohibiting our community are children of color and the majority of students in the nation and in the seattle school district to exercise their civil rights to be educated fact from the curriculum and instruction seattle school board special meeting c back test only gives a numerical score teachers cannot see growth of a student c back is not aligned with scope fact washington state is not doing the c back test is valid the sit back test is propter it via the internet and parents that have opted their children out of using the internet and not being asked in writing if their children may take this test seattle is a technology hub and we all know that everything we do on the internet is permanent and has a digital footprint that lasts forever and w follow our children currently our teachers cannot express their concern over this test for being developmentally inappropriate for our children in fact they are being threatened to be disciplined or fired if they choose to not proctor the exam we value our teachers as parents we look for them to provide professional assessments of our children and also freedom to have a dialogue i am a member of the parent teacher student association and right now the three pillars of education cannot communicate honestly this is not democracy this environment that is being created by mandated laws recreate an unhealthy environment where teachers will be pushed to increase test scores to keep their jobs and benefits like we saw in atlanta and the high stakes testing will also label our schools as failing the sea failing and seattle may indeed end up like chicago with predominantly all the schools that teach children of color to be closed no one can understand why the educational industry will be willing to assume sixty percent of our children to fail we are in a capitalist country and many times we forget what drives decisions we are current we currently have an educational system that is publicly subsidized which i call a public these subsidized private industry and then we explain so publicly subsidized by all taxpayers meaning our taxes fund public education now these private corporations offer assessment tools like seat back so our publicly funded public school districts pay dollars for these tools which has been the case for a long time so what's new that the private sector has funded and shaped our public policy on education like for example the council chief state school officers and they are funded by pro private corporations usually a private company has to market their products and earn their business now they have legally made every child in this state and in this nation a customer with their lobbying power they have written state and federal mandating their assessments and curriculums despite public outcry they don't have to listen to parents teachers or students concerned they willingly fail fifty one percent of children across the nation and six and in seattle sixty percent of the entire student body and gladly take instructional time away from our children because the opportunity gap is not a priority for them our children are just a numerical test score it is unprecedented in education to have the private sector mandate their customer base our children and now our public office there is some public educators are mandated to proctor the seat back exam teachers may be disciplined or worse fired and are not able to discuss their concerns with parents because of these laws the public has no voice we have limited funds in education washington state oh s p i needs four point five billion and our house of representatives are fighting our senators for one point eight which is less than half but still private money flows for the c back tests knowing that sixty percent will fail o economics is an equitable and there is not an equitable policy for students of color for special ed students for our poor children for english language learners and for children who have not been trained to use technology computers due to these state laws which is why stay in the education we have a publicly subsidized private industry these private dollars follow and mandate that we that our children perform product development by validating the seat back exam for them that is why i'm here today this is about our children civil rights to education which is not happening this is about the private sector mandating that our children get on these computers silenced the teachers take time away from real learning real instructional time furthering the opportunity gap so that the data from these tests can be used to validate their test and continue to use our children as child labor to develop their products and line their pockets  that is why we are here today because we know our children are not learning we know there is a huge opportunity gaffe and every day they lose their love of learning before we fought jim crow and now we have a new set of laws that perpetuate the same results and opportunity gap but this is not just a problem for children of color now we are fighting for democracy and education for a voice we have publicly elected officials afraid because of the law and we are fighting for the human rights of our children i invite america and marry the seattle city council the washington house of representatives and to washington and washington senators to work with the federal congress to stop making our children work on developing products for private companies by using them for data mining we are asking leaders to have courage and stand up against a marketing brand that campaigns for a standardized nation called smart a balance there's nothing smart about lose in a democracy and tearing apart the honest dialogue among parents teachers and students and there is nothing balanced about failing sixty percent of our children thank you i call our next speaker i want to alert you to something that's in the press packet if you don't have one you should grab it on the table there there is a statement written by a teacher who was worried about the repercussions of giving her name or her school because of the threats that have been issued by the school district so she wrote up what happens in her school anonymously but you should know what happened and she also thinks that this is happening at several schools she said and i'm paraphrasing i'm taking a quote from the top she said i was so proud of my students for working through the test and trying their hardest despite the challenges we were all glad when the long week of testing was over and we could get back to learning we later learned that the directions we received from the district about how to access the test and what the test was called were incorrect we were told that this was not an isolated incident but that occurred at several schools the look on my students faces when i told them we had to do the test again was heartbreaking due to the challenges students have had navigating the testing interface i question the developmentally appropriate notice and the equity of this test due to the many issues we've seen with the rollout this year i question the validity of this test to evaluate our schools our teachers and arse students if if multiple that this is happened at one school it's a scandal if it's happened at multiple schools where they took the entire test wasted a week of education and then turns out they were given the wrong logging code and have to go back and do the test all over again those scores are not only invalid and on reliable they have really destroyed that kid's year of education taking two weeks away from the curriculum and that's a scandal that i think the press should investigate and find out which schools are this is happened at and ask the districts what they're going to do about this and i think it's a real testament to the fact that this test was rolled out it was rushed without the proper support the proper technology as many of us in this room  alluded to before the testing so like jesse said my name is carolyn lee and i'm a member of the seattle opt out group i'm also a parent of a third grader at olympic view elementary already third graders  few have spent six hours of class time taking the english language arts portion of the s back when testing season is over a third graders at olympic view will have spent a total of twelve hours taking test six hours through the n l a portion and six hours for the math assessment i find it deeply disturbing that the smarter balance consortium feels it's developmentally appropriate for eight and nine year olds to spend twelve hours testing at olympic few we heart work very hard to create a loving and caring school community given our schools values i'm very worried that the s b a test will discourage our communities most vulnerable learners according to a report by the smarter balance consortium i'm only fifteen point eight percent of third graders with i e will pass  e portion of this test for english language learners the pass rate is thirteen point six percent overall only thirty eight percent of third graders will pass this test because of these reasons i have opted both my children out of the back i can't in good conscience allow my children to participate in a flawed assessment which will unfairly label students and schools i'm not alone in this decision parent leaders across the city are opting their students out of the stats we have staff counsellors librarians and teachers who have opted their own children now more than a hundred students have opted out and groom high school more than fifty students ever opted out of tops k and pathfinder elementary this year we are actively witnessing more opt outs of standardized testing than in any other point in the history of the seattle public school district these are conservative numbers just from those parents who have stepped up and shared their stories with us and we saw strongly suspect that there are many many more stories after the test sans the student the school district will have more exact numbers which can be requested by the public and i suggest we do that this is an unprecedented event happening just before the school but or to elections which i would like to remind everyone will happen this fall for secret four seats will be vacant on the school board savvy candidates would do well to recognize seattle's growing opt out movement parents know your rights become informed advocate for your children and everyone else's child and please vote thank you you excellent we are going to be joined next by society or mccormack from the seattle council p t s a not speaking on behalf of them but speaking on her own behalf and she is the special education area director i just wanted to say a few words when you drill down into the details of the spac pilot results ninety percent of students with disabilities and yellow students will fail this test yesterday i attended the school board curriculum and instruction committee meeting and i'll just say that i am appalled that the majority of directors on the school board refused to open and i think take conversation about whether with our kids should be subjected to this test students with disabilities have many have poor fine motor skills controling a mouse there are many dyslexic and looking at a screen with pop up windows and you know letters flashing by you many students have dyscalculia this cow q ria math learning disorder and they will not get any accommodations so they will fill it's incumbent upon parents and the teach the brave teachers to open up this discussion about this test because our school board will not thank you see asked me to talk about the history of common core standards in the us back and this will be very brief i have it's basically six sentences for any kind of backup backup you need any kind of rep reference material you can either go to parents across america org or to c l education twenty eight wordpress dot com for any additional information and links  k first of all the coming course standards was created by private entities and paid for by bill gates number two the us constitution does not allow the federal government to mandate a national curriculum others took it upon themselves to create a national curriculum with the blessing of the union of the united states department of education the names of the number three the names of the two private entities have names that sound like government agencies but they are not these two entities have been used to push come a core standards throughout our states these two entities are the national government governors association and the council for chief state school officers these are private entities there is nothing public about them at all in fact there is nothing public about the entire process that was that was used to create the common core standards number for the common core standards were not written by educators in our state or for our state they call them the common core state standards because they want you to think that they were created by educators in our state for students at our state that is faults number five the test has not been calibrated or tested for external validity and those happening right now by using our students they are being used to produce or refine a product number six and yet even though this  the espec has not been calibrated or tested it is being used to determine graduation funding of schools funding of public health programs for children m possibly teacher evaluation if some of our state legislators have anything to do with it parents across america seattle which also includes several other chapters in our state has taken the position that washington state should pull out of the common core standards and use a more authentic and equitable approach to education thank you