Principal to parents: ‘We don’t need to get used to this. We need to stop it.’
Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National
Troy LaRaviere is the principal of Chicago’s Blaine Elementary School and a leader of the Administrators Alliance for Proven Policy and Legislation in Education. He has been outspoken about school reform policies that he thinks are harmful to children or a waste of Chicago Public Schools money. Here’s an example, from this interview with him:
CPS just spent $20 million that should be going to the children of Chicago and put it towards principal training to be provided by an organization called SUPES Academy. Now I don’t know a principal who hasn’t said that it’s horrible. It’s poor quality and it’s a waste of our time. I believe in training when it’s effective but this is ineffective.
Here’s another example of how outspoken LaRaviere is, from this post published b y LaRaviere in 2014, about Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel:
The administration’s interaction with principals is often insulting. During the debate over the longer school day, some principals questioned its merits. CPS officials were then dispatched to tell the principals their opinions didn’t matter.
Here’s something new from LaRaviere: a letter he wrote to parents of students at his school about the Common Core test known as PARCC, created by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, one of two new Common Core tests created by two multi-state consortia with some $360 million in federal funds. Illinois is a PARCC state, and the new tests are being given this spring.
In mid-January, Chicago Public Schools district chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett said that the system would not give all students the PARCC, as expected, but instead would give it in a fraction of the more than 600 schools in CPS. She said that she had big questions about the value of the test, as well as about whether the district had the technological capability to give the computer-administered test to all students. But this week, shortly before the PARCC was to be given in Illinois, she said that pressure from state officials had persuaded her to reverse position and give the test to all students. The Chicago Tribune quoted her as saying:
“There are huge, huge financial sanctions that have been very clearly delineated to us. It would be irresponsible for me to even put us in that position of danger, of losing the funds, given our financial conditions now. … I continue to personally and professionally believe that to administer PARCC this year is absolutely not in the best interests of our students. However, given the threat from [the Illinois State Board of Education], there is absolutely no choice that I can present to this board and to our community.”
This is from LaRaviere, as posted to his blog (and which I am publishing with his permission):
On March 2nd, members of my school’s PTA sent letters home to parents encouraging them to opt their children out of the PARCC Test. Their effort was covered in an article by Lauren FitzPatrick in the Chicago Sun-Times. Many parents asked my position on the matter. As a result, I released the following letter to our parent community.============================I am writing to make it clear that the Blaine administration fully supports the PTA’s effort to maximize Blaine students’ instructional time. As a result we will respect and honor all parent requests to opt-out their students from the PARCC. Students whose parents opt them out will receive a full day of instruction. Teachers are developing plans that will provide enriched learning experiences for non-testing students during the testing window. I want to clearly state that whether you opt-out or not, Blaine’s administration and teachers willPrincipal to parents: ‘We don’t need to get used to this. We need to stop it.’ - The Washington Post:
