FRACKVILLE — Dawn Thomas’s 12-year-old daughter, Asha, is opting out of the tests that are an April tradition for most Pennsylvania pupils — the PSSAs.
As a sixth-grader at North Schuylkill Elementary School, this will be the second year Asha has not taken the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment. The PSSA math and reading tests are administered every spring to third- through eighth-graders. A science test is also given in grades four and eight.
“I was really nervous and wondered how it would affect my grade,” Asha said, describing the anguish she felt previously completing the tests.
Finding the appropriate educational accommodations for her daughter has been a journey, according to her mother. Thomas said her family moved to the Frackville area in 2012. Thomas allowed her daughter to take the PSSAs in fourth grade. In fifth grade, and again this year, she is opting her daughter out of those standardized exams for religious reasons.
“In fourth grade, she was so stressed out about them. I’ve been told by many teachers that they don’t like Common Core and they don’t like the PSSAs,” Thomas said. “In fourth grade, she was so stressed, thinking these tests were like the SATs. She’d cry every night and couldn’t sleep and complained about them. She was told if she didn’t do well, she wouldn’t progress to the next grade level.”
Thomas reviewed the PSSA tests Asha would be taking in fourth grade.
“I didn’t see a problem with them, although I knew there were things on there that they hadn’t learned yet. I let her take them in fourth grade,” she said.
However, Thomas said after she saw the stress on her daughter, she began perusing websites addressing PSSA options. That’s where she discovered that she could have her daughter opt out. Thomas said the websites that provided her valuable information were www.optoutpa.blogspot.com and wwww.unitedoptout.com.
When her daughter was in fifth grade, Thomas said she called the guidance department and was also given an opportunity to look at the tests.
“I signed the paper to opt out and asked the teacher what Asha would be doing instead. They said she’d sit in the guidance office or main office and read. I said she’s not going to be punished. I asked if I could come in and sit with her and they said no. I suggested she could help the younger grades who weren’t taking the test and they said no.”
She also met with North Schuylkill Superintendent Robert J. Ackell.
“I went to Dr. Ackell and had copies of my request and I signed my name. I asked him what she could do or if I could bring her in later. They said, yes, she could come in later, but that would count as an unexcused absence or a tardy,” Thomas said.
Asha said, “I wanted to help with the little kids who weren’t testing and didn’t want to be sitting in the guidance office reading a book.”
Thomas said there were questions on the test her child had not learned and when she asked about that, she was told that it was to challenge students.
“As a child, that could stress them out,” Thomas said.
Instead of sending her daughter into the school to sit in an office on the testing days, Thomas said she got an educational field trip request form to fill out and kept her daughter home 10 days last year.
To any critics who may argue that children need to learn to take tests, including the PSSAs, Thomas said, “I know my child can take a test. She’s on the distinguished honor roll.”
Thomas stressed that she likes the school district and her children’s teachers — her problem is with the test itself, the time spent prepping for the tests and pressure placed on scoring well to secure school funding.
“They bribe them with snacks and extra play time, and let them watch a movie or have a party (when they’re finished),” Thomas said.
“There are other states that have opted out of their state’s test, which is similar to our PSSAs,” she said.
“I hope other parents will see that I’m not opting my child out because she’ll fail. I just don’t like that they’re using our children to get funding. I want them to see that there is a choice. I’m sure some of them are afraid that they or their children will be treated differently,” Thomas said.
Because her husband is working and she’s a stay-at-home mom, Thomas will be able to spend time with her daughter during her “educational field trip.” If both parents had been working full time outside of the home, that could pose a problem for some parents considering the opt out, she said. Instead of the 10 days she took off last year, Asha will only have to be at home six days this year — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week — until the tests are completed, her mother said. Asha will still be able to participate in chorus, which is held on Mondays, her mother said. Last year, she missed chorus.
“I’m requesting the school district make accommodations for her,” Thomas said. “My child needs to be provided with an alternative learning environment.”
Ackell said as of Wednesday, there were no students in high school who opted out of this year’s testing. At the elementary level, there had been a request from parents of two students, with one student requesting to opt out of two tests and another student wanting to opt out of three tests for a total of five tests, he said.
Anyone making the opt out request has to go through the proper protocol before they would be approved. That includes parents or guardians undertaking a three-step process: submitting paperwork seeking the opt out in writing and alerting the building principal of their intent; signing a paper stating that they will not discuss what’s on the PSSA tests that they could review and submitting a letter stating the tests are against his or her religious beliefs.
Ackell confirmed that children who are not taking the PSSA test will be accommodated by the district.
“The students will be involved in academic enrichment when testing is occurring,” he said, noting those students will be located in a different room from where test takers will be.
North Schuylkill is slated to start the PSSAs on April 12 and continue the testing over the following three weeks, according to Ackell.
Ackell said he hadn’t discussed the opt out situation with any of his colleagues or fellow district superintendents.
Diane Niederriter, executive director of Schuylkill Intermediate Unit 29, said Wednesday that the member districts do not report the number of PSSA tests opted out of each year to the IU.
According to the state Department of Education website, the “PSSA, measures how well students have achieved in reading, mathematics, science and writing according to Pennsylvania’s world-class academic standards. By using these standards, educators, parents and administrators can evaluate their students’ strengths and weaknesses to increase students’ achievement scores.
“According to the federal No Child Left Behind Act, students must be 100 percent proficient in reading and math by 2014. The PSSA results allow schools and districts to evaluate their students’ progress to make full proficiency a reality. The federal No Child Left Behind Act also requires states to determine annually whether schools and districts in Pennsylvania make Adequate Yearly Progress, also known as AYP. Performance and participation on the PSSA are among the components used to make AYP determinations.”
Requests to opt out of taking the PSSA tests nearly tripled from 2014 to 2015, according to The Republican-Herald archives. In five years, parental requests grew from 624 in 2011 to 7,890 in 2015.
Thomas has two other children, a son, Elliott, 8, and another daughter, Frankie, 7. They weren’t old enough to start taking the PSSAs yet, but Thomas said she will probably sign the paperwork in the upcoming school years to also opt them out of taking the PSSAs.