A View from the Edge — We’ve Been ‘Opted Out’ — Really!?! article by Rob Miller, an Oklahoma Educator

March 12, 2014 — SCrosnoe

We’ve Been ‘Opted Out’—Really!?!

We have known since October that Oklahoma districts would be expected to participate in “item tryouts” (field tests) for our new Grade 3-8 testing vendor, Measured Progress, along with the End-of-Instruction field tests conducted by CTB/McGraw-Hill.

In a state department bulletin released last month, districts were told that students would be randomly selected to participate in one of these field tests, and that the testing would be scheduled after the operational testing window was complete in early May.

Honestly, it was a pleasant surprise when we found out last week that students and schools in the Jenks district were NOT randomly selected to participate in ANY of these field tests. However, when we discovered that Owasso Public Schools had also not been “randomly selected,” several of us became a little suspicious. As you may have heard, some parents and educators in Owasso made some waves recently because of their vocal opposition to implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in their district. Therefore, this news was way too coincidental for random chance.

So, I took it upon myself to make a few inquiries by phone and email. It did not take long to discover that we and Owasso were unique and that every other district in our area had been selected for this field testing.

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