Response to Obama Administration Testing Statement – The Network For Public Education

PRESS RELEASE: Response to Obama Administration Testing Statement – The Network For Public Education:

Network for Public Education Fund Response to Obama Administration Statement on Testing

This weekend the Obama Administration released a statement calling for states to “cap testing” time in an effort to stop the parental outrage against annual, high-stakes testing. The suggested 2% cap represents nearly 24 hours of state-mandated standardized testing, for students as young as 8 years of age. To put that time into perspective, the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) represents less than 6 hours of testing.
The Network for Public Education (NPE) is disappointed by the limited response to what it views as a national education crisis.

Anthony Cody, who serves as the vice-chairperson and treasurer of NPE, responded to the announcement by saying, “Limiting testing to 2% is a symbolic gesture that will have little impact so long as these tests are used for high stakes purposes.”

While the Department of Education remains wed to annual high-stakes tests, it is time for states and districts to call their bluff regarding flexibility. The research coming forward is clear. The overuse of standardized testing is educational malpractice. States should drop the destructive pseudoscience of VAM, empower educators to create their own meaningful assessments of learning, and get off the testing juggernaut.”

Network for Public Education President, Diane Ravitch agrees. “The Obama administration’s PRESS RELEASE: Response to Obama Administration Testing Statement – The Network For Public Education:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Correct Number of Standardized Tests

CURMUDGUCATION: The Correct Number of Standardized Tests:

The Correct Number of Standardized Tests

The national conversation will now swing around to figuring out exactly how many standardized test should be given in schools. What, we will all wonder, is the correct number of standardized tests necessary for every student to experience in a year, or in an entire school career.

Here's the correct answer.

None.

Zip. Zero. Nada.

Students need standardized tests like a fish needs a bicycle. Standardized tests are as essential to education as a mugging is essential to better financial health.

Is there a benefit to the child to be compared and ranked against the rest of the children in the country, to be part of the Great Sorting of children into winners and losers? No. Having such rankings and ratings may advance the agenda of other folks when it comes to writing policy and distributing money, but those benefits are for those folks-- not the children. The mugger may benefit from mugging me, but it does not follow that I enjoy a benefit.

Are there standardized tests from which a classroom teacher can glean useful information? Sure-- but those tests are best chosen to fit the needs and concerns of one particular teacher and one particular collection of students. A diagnostic test might help me with Chris, but there's no reason to believe it would help me better understand Chris if it were given to every other student at the same time.
  
Do the poor children of some non-white non-wealthy neighborhood need to take the Big Standardized Test just like the rich white kids so that we have equity? Maybe-- but you know how else we could even that out? We could have all the public school kids do what the very wealthy private school students do-- take no BS Test at all. That would also provide equity. 
Can I squeeze some useful information out of some standardized tests? Sure. I can grow and learn CURMUDGUCATION: The Correct Number of Standardized Tests:

The BESE Battle Continues. (Please support Kathy Edmonston and Mary Harris) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog

The BESE Battle Continues. (Please support Kathy Edmonston and Mary Harris) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

The BESE Battle Continues. (Please support Kathy Edmonston and Mary Harris)

To everyone who supported and believed in me and the other FlipBESE candidates you have my utmost respect, thanks, and gratitude.  With your help we terrified our opponents into outspending us in the 100’s to one range, to fabricate and promulgate lies about us, and to actually adopt OUR platforms to defeat us. 

None of the LABI backed candidates ran on platforms claiming Common Core and PARCC were outstanding or that the state should confiscate and run all of our schools, because they knew those claims would cost them the elections. So while LABI and their allies claim education reform got a mandate in Saturday’s election, nothing could be further from the truth. You won’t see LABI’s remaining lapdogs doing anything to promote the agenda they claim they have a mandate for in their runoffs.

That means it is crystal clear (even to our opponent’s highly paid political consultants) that it was FlipBESE that won Saturday, October 24th, NOT corporate ed reform and Common Core.

Now that LABI has most of the BESE seats, and has deceived and bribed their way into unseating two of our greatest champions (Carolyn Hill and Lottie Bebee) it is more important than ever to rally around our remaining champions.

We NEED Mary Harris and Kathy Edmonston to defend our teachers, parents, and students.

For this reason I am proud to endorse and support Kathy Edmonston for the BESE district 6 runoff race against LABI owned Jason Engen.

Please support her as you would have supported me had I made the runoff. She will need all the help she can get for the evil that is coming.

Kathy has assured me she will remain steadfast and confident in her role as one of the lone voices on BESE against Common Core, and the deceitful state Superintendent John White. 

Kathy has recommitted herself to the fight and has steeled herself to be ready for anything her opponents will try to throw at her, but she can’t do this alone.

Please consider a donation to get Kathy through these final weeks.  Her donation page is:http://www.kathyforbese.com/donate.html

Please also consider donating to Mary Harris of district 4. Her donation page is:http://www.harrisforbese4.com

Thank you again for all you’ve done, and all you will do.  While some of our candidates may have lost their races due to the unscrupulous tactics of our opponents and out of state billionaires using their obscene wealth to play god with other people’s lives, our ideas actually carried the day. 

The general public does not realize they just voted to enshrine Common Core and PARCC testing, and to continue the destruction of our public schools, the maligning of our  teachers, and the mental abuse of our children. The public will understand soon enough, and when they do we will need Kathy Edmonston and Mary Harris sitting on the board to explain why.  We will need Kathy and Mary to hold these liars responsible, and to inform the media what is really going on.  Please make sure our folks get to where they are needed.

Thank you, and good luck Kathy and Mary.The BESE Battle Continues. (Please support Kathy Edmonston and Mary Harris) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

Honoring Lilly Eskelsen García: Because The Teachers Were Right

Honoring Lilly Eskelsen García: Because The Teachers Were Right:

Honoring Lilly Eskelsen García: Because The Teachers Were Right

In 2004, Democrats were enraged when Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, called teachers unions “terrorist organizations.”

According to accounts written at the time, Paige made the remark “in a private White House meeting with governors while answering a question about the National Education Association.” He was speaking “at length” about the implementation of the relatively new, back then, law called No Child Left Behind.

That law rolled out unfunded mandates for nationwide testing and unreachable “accountability” goals for the nation’s schools. At the time Paige made his remark, the NEA had said the law was “practically impossible to implement,” under-funded, and in need of more “flexibility” – criticisms today generally regarded as true.

Responding to the insult, Move On posted a petition, co-sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, on its website that got millions of signatures demanding Paige resign – something that indeed eventually happened as controversy after controversy dogged the secretary.

CAF stood by the NEA then and is standing by it now in honoring NEA President Lily Eskelsen García as a progressive champion at an upcoming event in Washington.

Other honorees include Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Wallace Global Fund Co-Chair Scott Wallace, and the National People’s Network, a network of grassroots organizations running local campaigns to keep people and the planet first.

Honoring a teachers’ union leader – especially one as dynamic and outspoken as Eskelsen García – comes at a time when many prominent Democrats have become prone to criticize teacher organizations and question their progressive values.

When Democrats Turned Their Backs On Teachers

Liberal Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter has called teachers’ unions “Paleolithic.” In the union bashing documentary “Waiting for Superman,” Alter said they were “a menace.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has accused teachers’ unions of “protecting elements of a broken and unaccountable school system” and “turning a blind eye to a ‘separate but equal’ education system.” New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait has accused teachers’ unions of “turning against Democrats,” even though, obviously, the reverse is true. Left-leaning columnist Matt Bai has compared teachers’ unions to the National Rifle Association.

Throwing slights, even downright insults, at teachers and public schools, which have always been a feature of political rhetoric from Republicans, are increasingly common among Democrats.

Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called schools “public monopolies” that are in need of “real performance measures” like test-based evaluations and “competition” from charter schools. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has said teachers get their secure employment status, frequently called “tenure,” simply by showing up for work.

The 2012 Democratic convention opened with a pre-release screening of an anti-union drama Honoring Lilly Eskelsen García: Because The Teachers Were Right:

Where did Obama administration’s 2 percent cap on standardized testing come from? You won’t believe it. (Or maybe you will.) - The Washington Post

Where did Obama administration’s 2 percent cap on standardized testing come from? You won’t believe it. (Or maybe you will.) - The Washington Post:

Where did Obama administration’s 2 percent cap on standardized testing come from? You won’t believe it. (Or maybe you will.)

(Update: Where New York legislature got its 2 percent testing limit)

You won’t believe this. Wait. Maybe you will.

The Obama administration has issued a Testing Action Plan that it says should help reduce over-testing in public schools. That plan includes a cap of 2 percent on the classroom time students spend on mandated standardized tests. The plan says:

Time-limited: While it is up to states and districts how to balance instructional time and the need for high-quality assessments, we recommend that states place a cap on the percentage of instructional time students spend taking required statewide standardized assessments to ensure that no child spends more than 2 percent of her classroom time taking these tests. Parents should receive formal notification if their child’s school exceeds this cap and an action plan should be publicly posted to describe the steps the state will take to review and eliminate unnecessary assessments, and come into compliance. States and school districts should carefully consider whether each assessment serves a unique, essential role in ensuring that students are learning.

The 2 percent is not much less than the 2.3 percent that a new two-year studyon standardized testing says kids now spend on these mandated exams, a figure deemed excessive by the report issued by the nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools. Is 2 percent a wholesale change from 2.3 percent?

[Confirmed: Standardized testing has taken over public schools. Who’s to blame]

Where did the administration come up with its 2 percent recommendation? Was it borne out of research? Was it taken from a place where the 2 percent cap has been successful in freeing up instruction time, reducing test prep and allowing schools to stop obsessively focusing on math and English?

Well, no. It turns out, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, it came from New York State. That’s where standardized testing administration and Common Core State Standards implementation have been so mishandled in recent years that 20 percent of students opted out of the tests this past spring, and the governor, Andrew Cuomo, turned on John King, the commissioner of education who resigned late last year and this year turned up as No. 2 to Duncan. Now, King is the designated successor to Duncan when he leaves his post at the end of this year.

At a gathering at the National Press Club on Monday, a reporter asked where the 2 percent limit came from. Duncan said to ask King because New York had passed a 2 percent standardized testing cap. The New York State legislature last year passed a series of changes involving public education, including on test-taking (1 percent for local standardized tests and 1 percent for state-mandated standardized tests) and test prep (2 percent, though not for charter schools, just traditional public schools). The Testing Action Plan says:

New York has worked to limit the amount of time students spend on required state- and district-level standardized tests – no more than 1 percent of instructional time for state-required standardized tests, and 1 percent for locally required standardized tests. To support this work, New York also established a “Teaching is the Core” competitive grant which supported teams 

Where did Obama administration’s 2 percent cap on standardized testing come from? You won’t believe it. (Or maybe you will.) - The Washington Post:

President Obama’s Testing Remarks: What about Students with Disabilities?

President Obama’s Testing Remarks: What about Students with Disabilities?:

President Obama’s Testing Remarks: What about Students with Disabilities?

The President suddenly cares about children and too much testing. What about all the students with disabilities that have been tested poorly or unnecessarily for years?

I shouldn’t say his sudden remarks. As many bloggers pointed out over the weekend, he has a long list of comments against high-stakes tests from the past. His actions have been different than his words on this issue since he took office. Here’s just one example from ProCon.org:

…[O]ne thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you’re not learning about the world; you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math. All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that’s not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in. They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring. Univision town hall meeting on education, www.whitehouse.gov (transcript), Mar. 28, 2011

In special education, most parents and teachers understand the value of some testing, but it should be relevant and lead to results that say something useful. It should also involve teacher and parent input. Teachers know what kinds of tests their students President Obama’s Testing Remarks: What about Students with Disabilities?:

Standardized Tests are a Form of Racial Profiling - Living in Dialogue

Standardized Tests are a Form of Racial Profiling - Living in Dialogue:

Standardized Tests are a Form of Racial Profiling

By Christine Brigid Malsbary.

Several days before writing this blog post, I visited a 12th grade class that I have been following since the beginning of their 11th grade year. I am a researcher and I study how education policy affects teachers and students in their daily lives. The youth I work with are all immigrants, students of color, and learning English as a second language. I sat next to student I didn’t recognize and asked the teacher who he was. The teacher explained the boy was simply in the class to try to pass the NY Regents’ exam—the test all high schoolers in New York state have to take in order to graduate from high school.

The boy had all the credits necessary for high school graduation, but hadn’t passed the Regents’ exams in math and English. Without passing scores, youth do not receive a high school diploma, their only other option to study for GREs. Now in his fifth year in the high school, the teachers had created a specialized plan for the young man so he only had to attend math and English classes to prep for the Regents’. “He isn’t going to graduate,” the teacher whispered to me. The teacher continued, “he is going to age out of high school in January when he turns 21. He won’t be able to get his scores up in time, his English is too weak. He has only been in the country for three years, and we think he may have some special needs as well.”

I asked the teacher what would happen to a young man of color and English Learner with no high school diploma in a neoliberal city like New York with a shrinking middle class. “I don’t know,” he said. “It breaks my heart. And guess who is going to have to tell him that he won’t graduate? Me. The policy makers won’t tell him. The people who are in the classroom with these kids have to deliver the news. After they moved here, got to class, did the work and learned English … that they won’t graduate. And then they evaluate me based on my students’ test scores when my kids barely speak English … it is not fair. The system is designed for these kids to fail.”

Of the 22 young people in the class of students I have been studying for 14 months, 22 will be attempt the Standardized Tests are a Form of Racial Profiling - Living in Dialogue:

End To Excessive Standardized Testing? Why Teachers Students and Parents Are Saying BS

End To Excessive Standardized Testing? Why Teachers Students and Parents Are Saying BS

For almost 15 years Teachers Students and Parents have been saying that there is too much emphasis on Standardized Testing!

Nothing got through the Corporate Education Reform Bubble!

The Oligarchy

In Their Bubble They Refused To Hear Teachers Students and Parents !

The Presidents 

In Their Bubble They Refused To Hear Teachers Students and Parents !

Governors 

In Their Bubble They Refused To Hear Teachers Students and Parents !

THE DEFORMERS

In Their Bubble They Refused To Hear Teachers Students and Parents !

Corporate Education Reform Bubble!

TODAY: Did Arne Duncan Just Surrender on Standardized Testing?

Days ago, the U.S. Department of Education announced a dramatic policy shift on standardized testing of public school students. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, echoed by President Obama, admitted that a Council of the Great City Schools study was right—there is too much reliance on standardized testing, hurting schoolchildren, teachers and administrators. The Education Department, therefore, published a Testing Action Planwhich they claim will help states and school districts to roll back over-testing, at least to some extent.

This about-face is astonishing because Arne Duncan is substantially responsible for our schools’ overreliance on standardized tests. He made evaluating teachers by student test scores a condition of both federal Race to Top funding and his Department’s waivers from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). And it was Duncan who forced states to add standardized tests in subjects like social studies, science, languages, and even physical education.

So what will the Department of Education actually do? Will future policies match this new rhetoric? The only specific change is to support the two percent solution—that schools should not spend more than two percent of classroom hours per year giving standardized tests. This idea is already enshrined in the U.S. Senate’s proposed rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law.

But such a requirement would be nearly meaningless. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average school day lasts 6.64 hours and the average number of school days is 180 per year. Do the easy math and you’ll find that two percent equals 23.9 hours of testing in a year.

Compare that to the number of hours that students sit for tests, according to Council of Great City Schools. Remember, these are the hours that even testing advocates now say are far too many:

Grade	Hours
Pre-K	4.8
K	8.5
1st	10.4
2nd	11.9
3rd	20.6
4th	22.1
5th	23.2
6th	22.4
7th	23.2
8th	25.3
9th	22.6
10th	23.9
11th	22.5
12th	15.9

Clearly, the two percent solution very marginally helps average 8th graders, but doesn’t help anyone else. In fact, it allows schools to increase the amount of testing in 12 different grades.

But entirely besides that nearly meaningless requirement, it isn’t the time spent taking tests Did Arne Duncan Just Surrender on Standardized Testing?

10 Years ago Wapo's Uncle Jay Mathews Warned Us ALL

Let's Teach to the Test

Just Whose Idea Was All This Testing?

NOW

Big Education Ape: Obama meets with educators to talk about standardized testing - The Washington Post http://bit.ly/1Wegkr3

Big Education Ape: Obama encouraging limits on standardized student tests - Yahoo News http://bit.ly/1WegnDi

Big Education Ape: Study: Students Burdened By Local, State and Federal Tests - US News http://bit.ly/1Wegpel

Big Education Ape: Suspicions Confirmed: Testing Action Plan is Trojan Horse | Save Maine Schools http://bit.ly/1S69Hqr

Big Education Ape: Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan | U.S. Department of Education http://bit.ly/1OZZUlM

Big Education Ape: How Should Educators Respond to the Obama Administration's Concession on Test and Punish? | John... http://bit.ly/1OZYUOy

Big Education Ape: Education Lessons From A Sparkly District: USED's Latest Nonsense http://bit.ly/1Wegz5r

Big Education Ape: Oh what a tangled web we weave…. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing http://bit.ly/1WegzT4

Big Education Ape: Reading Between the Lines: Obama's Testing Action Plan - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Cor... http://bit.ly/1WegAGF

Big Education Ape: CURMUDGUCATION: Obama's Testing Action Plan Sucks (And Changes Nothing) http://bit.ly/1OZYYxP

“How to Ruin or Revive Public Education,” My Speech at Wellesley College | Diane Ravitch's blog

“How to Ruin or Revive Public Education,” My Speech at Wellesley College | Diane Ravitch's blog:

“How to Ruin or Revive Public Education,” My Speech at Wellesley College 

On October 22, I spoke at Wellesley College, my alma mater, to inaugurate a new annual lecture series on the subject of public education.

Here is a link to the speech, preceded by three introductions: one by Barbara Beatty, chair of the College’s Education department; Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association; and Linda Gottlieb, producer of the classic film, “Dirty Dancing,” a classmate of the class of 1960 and dear friend.

My purpose was to describe the current state of American education, the errors of the status quo, and what we must do to transform education for the future.

I am also funding student internships and research, and one day there will be a professorship. My hope is that one day Wellesley will be a center for generating sane and thoughtful education policy.

Next year’s speaker in this series will be Pasi Sahlberg, the great Finnish educational authority, who is a Visiting Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

I am hopeful that the initiative at Wellesley will eventually grow to sponsoring scholarly work, seminars, and visionary thinking about a better education for every child.“How to Ruin or Revive Public Education,” My Speech at Wellesley College | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Obama meets with educators to talk about standardized testing - The Washington Post

Obama meets with educators to talk about standardized testing - The Washington Post:

Obama meets with educators to talk about standardized testing

South Valley Academy students protest new academic assessments after leaving class, Monday, March 2, 2015, in Albuquerque, N.M. (Roberto E. Rosales/AP)

President Obama is scheduled to discuss standardized testing with a group of educators at the White House on Monday, two days after acknowledging that his policies have helped lead to widespread overtesting in the nation’s public schools.

Obama is set to meet in the Oval Office with officials from the Council of the Great City Schools, which released a study Saturday that found standardized testing is overwhelming U.S. public schools.

Also expected at the private meeting are two teachers, Farida Mama, a 5th grade math teacher at UP Academy Dorchester , a Boston charter school, and Bootsie Battle-Holt, a math teacher at Marina Del Rey Middle School in Los Angeles. Both teachers are policy fellows with Teach Plus, a non-profit organization that aims to amplify the voices of teachers in education policy.

“We all have to look in the mirror and say what have we done to contribute to the issue,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday morning, speaking about the new study during a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington.

[Standardized tests are overwhelming public schools, study found]

A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade, the study found. By contrast, most countries that outperform the United States on international exams test students three times during their school careers.

But Duncan and other panelists emphasized that the time students spend testing is only part of the problem. Just as critical is the finding that the tests students take are disjointed, redundant and often fail to provide teachers with meaningful and timely information that they can use to improve instruction.

“For me, the biggest issue is not time, it’s the lack of instruction,” Duncan said.

The heaviest testing load falls on the nation’s eighth-graders, who spend an average of 25.3 hours during the school year taking standardized tests, uniform exams required of all students in a particular grade or course of study. Testing affects even the youngest students, with the average pre-K class giving 4.1 standardized tests, the report found.

The study analyzed tests given in the country’s 66 largest urban districts in the 2014-2015 school year. It did not count quizzes or tests created by classroom teachers, and it did not address the amount of time schools devote to test preparation.

It portrays a jumble, where tests have been layered upon tests under mandates from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and state and local governments, many of which the study argues have questionable value to teachers and students. Testing companies that aggressively market new exams also share the blame, the study said.

In response to the study, Duncan released a “testing action plan” that calls for capping the amount of time that students spend testing at 2 percent of overall instructional time. A similar proposal is part of an education bill pending in the Senate.

But Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said that Duncan’s proposed testing cap could have the perverse effect of making the testing system more incoherent.

“There is a very strong possibility that people will eliminate the tests that are actually useful,” Casserly said. Casserly said, for example, that the Boston Public Schools has decided to reduce its testing by half in response to the study’s findings.

A better approach, he has said, would be a coordinated effort among all players — federal, state and local — to come up with a more thoughtful system.

Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami-Dade schools, has significantly reduced the number of tests his students take. But he too said that a focus on the number of tests, or the time spent testing, is too simplistic.

“The next phase of the conversation cannot be about a cap,” he said. “It’s really a quantitative analysis. ... Can they actually improve teaching and learning? Are they useful to teachers, and do they transparently inform communities and parents about performance?”

Duncan was asked at Monday’s event whether the administration’s mea culpa Obama meets with educators to talk about standardized testing - The Washington Post:

As school districts across Florida continue grappling with the state's class size restrictions, some are questioning whether the law is being misused. - Sun Sentinel

As school districts across Florida continue grappling with the state's class size restrictions, some are questioning whether the law is being misused. - Sun Sentinel:

Class size rules frustrate parents, districts

 As school districts across Florida continue grappling with the state's class size restrictions, some are questioning whether the law is being misused.

A father is suing the Palm Beach County School District for putting too many children in his son's kindergarten class at Boca Raton's Addison Mizner Elementary School. A state senator is asking whether districts are misapplying a loophole meant to exempt innovative schools by saying all of their schools meet that qualification.

In Broward County, meanwhile, school board members are looking at restricting the number of late-enrolling students who an be assigned to a teacher after October.

That's because state policy allows each core class at the high school level to have up to 30 students, above the normal cap of 25. What concerned board members was a teacher with seven class periods could end up getting 35 new students.

"It's almost like taking on an additional class by just adding additional students to each class," chairwoman Donna Korn said at the board's meeting Tuesday.

The school district has historically struggled to meet the class-size restrictions and in 2011 was hit with initial penalties of $8.4 million. Only half of the classrooms complied with the law at that time.

Administrator Leslie Brown told board members no penalty is expected this year and that 91 percent of classes are currently within the state's parameters.

Many districts have faced similar challenges since Florida's class size law was enacted in 2002, after voters approved a constitutional amendment. It limits classes to 18 students in pre-kindergarten through third grade; 22 in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in ninth through twelfth grade.

To parent Paul Kuhn, who filed his lawsuit against the Palm Beach County School District last month, those restrictions help create a better learning environment for students.

"Even 18 kids is a lot of kids to control and to get one-on-one time and give attention to," he said. "The more kids you have, the less attention each kid gets."

His suit accuses the district of misapplying a state policy that gives class-size flexibility to schools of choice --charter schools and others that offer specialized education programs. Using that policy, the school placed 21 students in his son's class.

"They're not trying to comply," Kuhn said. "They're trying to find ways around compliance with the constitutional amendment."

Palm Beach shool district spokeswoman Kathy Burstein said administrators are responding to the suit and will continue defending the matter.

Senate Education Committee Chair John Legg is taking issue with the same provision. In a letter sent Monday to Education Commissioner Pam Stewart, he wrote that some districts have "expanded the intent of state policy by naming themselves a 'district of choice' or a As school districts across Florida continue grappling with the state's class size restrictions, some are questioning whether the law is being misused. - Sun Sentinel: