Good morning -
I am an English Learner Program Coordinator in District 26 Cary. I have worked for over 15 years serving multilingual and multicultural communities in Lake, Cook, and McHenry counties. In alignment with administrators across the state, I want to advocate for the cancelling of ALL required state testing this year.
For students and families, this year has been challenging as we transition back-and-forth in between hybrid and remote instruction. Just now, based on current COVID-19 metrics, are we able to safely offer hybrid instruction. Hybrid instruction means that students will attend two days per week, two days with asynchronous activities, and one day of remote instruction. Families and communities have advocated strongly for in-person instruction to improve instruction, support the social-emotional development of students, and help students overcome the isolation of the last year.
Please cancel mandatory state testing this year. Planning in advance, administration of ACCESS and IAR will require six full days of assessment. There are currently 30 in-person days scheduled for hybrid instruction; thus, these assessments will consume 1/5 of the remaining in-person days, which will severely handicap schools' abilities to support quality instruction, meaningful classroom assessment, and the social interaction that students direly need. Based on ISBE school designations, lower than 95% rate of completion of this assessment will have a detrimental impact on the summative designation of these schools. This lowering of summative designation will be due to nothing other than families and schools supporting a democratic approach to community health during a global pandemic.
Additionally, although families can opt-out of IAR instruction, our multilingual families do NOT have the option to opt out of ACCESS testing despite a significant percentage of multilingual families opting for fully remote instruction. Reviewing COVID-19 metrics, we know the disproportionate impact of medical/economic consequences for communities of color, multilingual communities. Therefore, while ISBE and your office support an equitable approach to supporting historically-marginalized communities, this additional testing will put the students at further health risk AND reduce the number of days that they can engage in meaningful instruction and peer interaction.
Additionally, COVID-19 hit us all by surprise: government, private sector, and schools. Even though schools rapidly innovated in collaboration with community and state/national guidance, we all know that remote instruction did not provide the same levels of engagement and academic learning that occur in the school setting. Who are the victims? Students, children. Why do we want to subject them to rigorous standardized assessments for which they are not prepared due to no fault of their own?
Families want their students in school for meaningful instruction and peer-to-peer interaction. None of these goals are supported by mandatory standardized testing. Instead, the inevitable outcome is 1/5 less days of quality instruction/interaction, penalization of schools, and the anxiety of academic underperformance in a year where children were the victims of unprecedented circumstances.
Please cancel all mandatory standardized testing this year.
Best regards,
Ryan Zak
ryan.zak@cary26.org
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