Opting out of state testing?

[Satori]

dd is enroll in a virtual public school and we have the yearly state testing next month. Were out of town that entire week (hospital trip thats been scheduled for months and can't be rescheduled) and they want us to come down to the city to make it up. I am not thrilled with the idea of spending several hours on the bus to do this. Can't I opt out of this?

ETA: Problem solved Mentioned opting out and all of the sudden they offered to come to us Last year dd scored well, guessing they don't want to miss her helping to bring up scores

[Linda on the move]

in my state, you cannot opt out of the state test.

[peaceful_mama]

so what happens if your kid is sick that day? Or let's just say you are rebellious like me and you are keeping them home because you don't like all the stress and crap on such young kids....if I were to do that, would they force my kid to take it whenever he came back to school?

[Momily]

Originally Posted by peaceful_mama

so what happens if your kid is sick that day? Or let's just say you are rebellious like me and you are keeping them home because you don't like all the stress and crap on such young kids....if I were to do that, would they force my kid to take it whenever he came back to school?

We have a state testing window of 3 weeks, so yes, they'd be made to take it when you came back.

If you kept your child out for 15 days and couldn't provide a reason (I'm not talking about the OP, hospitalization is a very valid reason) I assume we'd exercise our right to deny your child readmission. I would imagine that a "geographic" public school might exercise their right to retain the child for unexcused absences.

The federal government has set a 95% testing target, that's 95% for each category -- if we, as a charter school, don't meet that we can be closed down.

I should point out that my fifth grader and his friends were telling me today how much they wish it was testing all year -- from their point of view the upsides of being tested (breakfast at school with your friends, no homework, extra recess, the whole afternoon spent on things like science experiments) far outweighs the stress.

OP, I'm sorry you have this headache, but think it's great that they're coming to you.

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by peaceful_mama

..if I were to do that, would they force my kid to take it whenever he came back to school?

yep. It's really a pain for kids who miss the test. they make it up the minute they get back into the school.


One of my DDs prefers test week to regular school, too. It's quieter!

[mattemma04]

The first time we did state testing with a virtual we had to drive somewhere. Now I hear many virtual schools are providing an online version. I would prefer that,or to have it mailed to me.

When we homeschooled I had the test mailed to us.Dd and ds completed the test,and I mailed it back to the company for them to check over and send me results.

Now the kids are in a Montessori school and they have about a 3 week window for the testing.

Personally I do not mind the testing,but feel the ones in the school are less accurate,because the kids are told to fill in all the blanks even if it means guessing.

I told the kids if you do not know how to do a section skip it(like if they have not learned division).They were given a hard time about skipping,so I said ,"Oh well just fill it in then."

Now I really don't look at the test as a good indicator of what they know or do not know when they can guess correct answers on subjects they have not learned.

I saw on the news recently how a school in GA was filling in correct answerS on student answer sheets so they could meet AYP.

[Tigerchild]

At least around here, all the kids who don't take the test are just assigned a 0 (not on them individually) and added to the pool of everyone else's tests. So they do majorly, majorly affect the overall scores/AYP of a school. Of course, in our state until fairly recently, the scores of kiddos with severe special needs (yes, they were forced to do testing too) and English language learning kids were added to the mix too, with no distinction.

I think this is one reason, if it's done similarly elsewhere, why test scores as a reflection of the school's "goodness" are worthless. If you've got a homogeneous population, I could see it being an accurate measure I guess. But that might be why some schools freak out about people not taking the test--every single person that doesn't damages the overall scores of the schools, which can trigger some pretty severe interventions in some areas.