Re: testing and opt-out rights

[aburke5054@aol.com]

The social, educational, and testing landscapes have changed 
dramatically since Florida sprung an off-the-shelf standardized test on 
its students as a graduation requirement in the late 70s.  One of the 
precedents that Debra P established was that a test could be used for 
graduation purposes only if students had an opportunity to learn the 
material that the test covers.  Today's state assessments are designed 
to closely align with the curricular goals that all their schools are 
supposed to address.  MALDEF challenged TAAS on the grounds that it had 
"adverse impact" on minority students.  The Court ruled that the fact 
that more minority students fail to pass the test than white students 
is not itself illegal discrimination, particularly since the state 
provided remedial help to students who did not pass the test and since 
the test was part of an overall program for improving schools for all 
children.  Whether today's state tests can be successfully challenged 
in court I do not know, but challengers are going to have to come up 
with different theories than the ones that courts have already rejected.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Dorn, Sherman <SDorn@tempest.coedu.usf.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 3:43 am
Subject: Re: [arn-l] testing and opt-out rights


In this case, Art Burke is factually correct: lawsuits challenging 
graduation
tests usually fail. The general precedents to follow here are Debra P. 
v.
Turlington (Florida) and the MALDEF lawsuit in Texas. In the case of 
Florida,
the plaintiffs did convince the courts that imposing a graduation test 
was not
defensible when substantial portions of the population had been victims 
of
segregation, and the court delayed implementation in Florida until 
after the
cohort of children who had entered school before the Swann (1971) 
decision, a
Supreme Court case that pushed federal judges in Florida to rewrite 
almost all
of the existing desegregation orders.

For more information on graduation exams, see the Center on Education 
Policy's
series of annual reports (http://cep-dc.org) and the High School Exit
Examination database (http://www.hsee.umn.edu/).

Sherman Dorn

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:43:38 -0400
From: aburke5054@aol.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: Re: testing and opt-out rights
Message-ID: <8C9B2E1F5AB8B7B-B74-7E8B@WEBMAIL-MA16.sysops.aol.com>

I am not aware of any federal law granting general "opt-out" rights in
the context of achievement testing.

Graduation tests have survived legal challenges - Arizona and
Massachusetts relatively recently....

-----Original Message-----

From: Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>
To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
Cc: arn-l@interversity.org; ca-resisters@interversity.org
Sent: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:46 am
Subject: [arn-l] testing and opt-out rights

OK, here's a civil rights question.  Maybe somebody can consult a
friendly lawyer who specializes in federal education law...

I thought that CA had the parental opt-out provision because such a
right is guaranteed to families by federal law....






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