Superintendents – You will held responsible for misleading parents and students on the SBAC Opt-Out Issue
Last year Governor Dannel Malloy’s State Department of Education sent out an inappropriate, offense and disrespectful memo to local school superintendents instructing them on how to mislead and hassle parents into falsely believing that they did not have the right to protect their children from the new Common Core SBAC Testing Scheme.
After the memo received media attention here at Wait, What? and elsewhere, the memo disappeared from the State Department of Education’s website (You can find it here: State Department of Education SBAC Memo)
This year Malloy’s Education Department is ducking the issue but it continues to communicate with superintendents through the director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS).
Using last year’s memo and information provided by CAPPS, some Connecticut school superintendents continue to mislead students, parents, teachers and the public about the fundamental right that parents have to opt their children out of the inappropriate, unfair and discriminatory Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Testing Program.
Superintendents who are claiming that parents cannot opt out their children from of the Common Core SBAC test because there is, “No opt out provision in Connecticut law,” are intentionally overlooking the fact that parents have the fundamental right to remove their children from the Common Core SBAC Testing program and that there is no federal or state law, regulation or policy that allows the government or local school district to punish a child (or parent) who decides to opt their children out of the Common Core SBAC Test.
Superintendents who continue to mislead parents are placing themselves and their local Boards of Education in significant legal jeopardy.
Any attempts to place inappropriate barriers in the way of parents implementing their legal right to opt their children out of the test will be met with swift legal action, including the potential use of lawsuits alleging that superintendents are intentionally violating the constitutionally protected civil rights of parents.
In addition, superintendents who fail to adhere to Connecticut’s Code of Professional Responsibility for School Administrators (Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies Section 10-145d-400b) will face extremely serious complaints that their behavior violates their legal duty to follow the code associated with their state certification and that disciplinary action is needed against those individuals
As every Connecticut school superintendent knows, according to state regulation, that superintendents and otehr professional school administrators must;
- Respect the dignity of each family, its culture, customs and beliefs;
- Promote and maintain appropriate, ongoing and timely written and oral communications with the family;
- Respond in a timely fashion to families’ concerns;
- Consider the family’s perspective on issues involving its children;
- Encourage participation of the family in the educational process; and
- Foster open communication among the family, staff and administrators
In addition, the code requires that professional school administrator, in full recognition of obligation to the student, shall;Superintendents – You will held responsible for misleading parents and students on the SBAC Opt-Out Issue - Wait What?:
