Yes to SBAC opt out request brings Bristol CT off the SBAC Wall of Shame
Connecticut school district reverses decision and recognizes a parents fundamental right to opt their child out of the Common Core SBAC Test!
Thanks to a courageous mother and son, Bristol’s superintendent has recognized the fundamental right of a parent to opt their child of children out of the discriminatory, unfair and inappropriate Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing scam.
Featured here at Wait, What? and on the local NBC affiliate, Christine Murphy stood up and spoke out in an effort to protect her child and children across Connecticut from the Common Core SBAC test that is intentionally designed to ensure that up to 70 percent of Connecticut’s children are deemed failures.
Governor Dannel Malloy is not only a key supporter of the Common Core and the Common Core SBAC Test but his administration cast a vote in favor of implementing SBAC pass/fail (cut-scores) at a level where the vast majority of Connecticut students will fail.
In Bristol, when Christine Murphy informed her son’s school that she was opting him out of the unfair Common Core SBAC test, local education officials – using faulty directives from Malloy’s Department of Education – told the mother that she did not have the right to remove him from having to participate in the Common Core SBAC testing scheme.
But since then, Bristol education officials have seen the light and have informed her that they will follow her directive and that her son will be exempted from the Common Core SBAC tests.
As reported in the Bristol Press,
A Bristol mother was granted the right to have her son not take the new standardized state test, even as school districts and the state want to discourage other parents from opting out.Christine Murphy said her son, Justin Edgar-Murphy, 17, a junior at Bristol Central High School, would be at a disadvantage in taking the test because he is a special needs student with anxiety and ADHD.The Smarter Balanced Assessment will replace the familiar paper-and-pencil CMT (Connecticut Mastery Test) and CAPT (Connecticut Academic Performance Test) with a computer adaptive test for English and math that is essentially a different test for each student taking it.The test, commonly known as SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, for the group of states that developed it) stems from the Common Core State Standards, a national education initiative that seeks to bring the varied curricula taught in each state into alignment with each other.
As the Bristol Press goes on to explain,
On Jan. 23, Murphy sent an e-mail to Marisa Calvi-Rogers, BCHS assistant principal, stating that she wanted to “opt out” Justin from the SBAC.Calvi-Rogers wrote back, saying that state statute mandates all students take the test. “By law, we will make all necessary arrangements andYes to SBAC opt out request brings Bristol CT off the SBAC Wall of Shame - Wait What?:
