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To Arthur Hu and other opponents of high-stakes testing in Washington
state.
To: Peter Farrugio and San Francisco Bay Area educators and parents 
pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu 


Parents United for Responsible Education in Chicago supports your
efforts to oppose high-stakes testing. Since 1996, the Chicago Public
Schools have used single cut scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills
to decide if students will graduate or be promoted, retained, sent to
summer school, or sent to transition centers until their test scores
reach the mandated cut off point. 


Nearly 50,000 students have been retained since then, many of them
twice in the same grade. The data shows that retention has not
improved the academic levels of the children who are held back. In
October, 1999, PURE filed a complaint with the U. S. Department of
Education's Office of Civil Rights. We charged that the CPS testing
policy has had a discriminatory impact on African-American students,
who are nearly five times as likely to be held back as white
students, and on Latino students, who are more than twice as likely
to be retained. The Office of Civil Rights is currently investigating
the Chicago Public Schools testing and retention policies. 


Additional serious problems with the CPS use of the ITBS for
retention decisions have been raised since PURE filed our complaint. 


? The margin of error in the ITBS is so wide that one wrong answer
can make as much as NINE months difference in an eighth grade
student's grade equivalent score, yet CPS refuses to allow students
to graduate with their class if they are even one month below the
graduation cut-off score. 


? CPS officials are running out of creative ways to cover up the fact
that ITBS scores are used by themselves to make graduation and
retention decisions, a use which is expressly described as
"inappropriate" by the test makers, and which violates U.S.
guidelines for test use. 


? The waiver process has finally been exposed publicly to be no more
than an arbitrary exercise of power by Region officers. While waivers
could provide an educationally-sound look at a student's overall
record, in fact they are given out in a process that more closely
resembles the way trash carts are distributed by ward committeemen. 


? Educators have pointed out that the ITBS is not aligned with either
Chicago or Illinois learning standards. 


? Rampant ITBS cheating is essentially encouraged by CPS which
insists that schools "clean" all student test scores sheets before
turning them in, which is considered tampering in any other system,
and they ignore reports of ITBS copies circulating in schools. 


CPS is clearly concerned about the outcome of the OCR investigation.
They have authorized $100,000 in legal fees to the powerful Winston
and Strawn law firm (whose partners includes former governor James
Thompson) to protect them from PURE's complaint. Our tax dollars at
work! 


Good luck in your efforts! 


Julie Woestehoff, PURE Executive Director 312/461-1994 


Peter Farruggio wrote: 


 Dear List Members, A group of parents and teachers has formed in the
San Francisco Bay Area to fight against the high stakes juggernaut.
We are holding a public meeting on May 3 in Oakland to rally public
opinion.  We need the event to be as big as possible to attract media
coverage for our ideas.  California is in Year 1 of it's high stakes
program, and so far there has been no major protest nor any publicity
for the anti-high stakes side.  We are not even sure where the
prominent civil rights figures stand on this issue. 


Our featured speakers include two gutsy UC Berkeley academics (Eugene
Garcia and Pedro Noguera) and a MALDEF lawyer (Aisha Qaasim) 


We want to show our audience and the local press that: 


high stakes programs do NOT improve our schools 


these programs are a cheap way for politicians to AVOID school reform
and to deflect blame onto the victims of underfunded public ed 


these programs have already done harm to children in other states 


parents and students have begun to organize elsewhere to protect
their children from this harm 


Here's what we need from you: brief, cogent letters of solidarity to
our meeting, statements about the harm you have seen, and the ways
you have organized to resist.  Actually anything you want to
communicate to the people of California to encourage them to fight
back for their children. 


I put this call out to this list a few weeks ago, and only one person
responded.  Please help us.  This high stakes mania is a national
phenomenon, and we need to help each other any way we can. 


You can send your statements to me via email, for now. 


Thanks, 


Pete Farruggio Coalition for Authentic Evaluation & School Reform