Cease and Desist the Next Generation of Assessments and Accountability Commission Report

PETITION
Cease and Desist the Next Generation of Assessments and Accountability Commission Report

We call upon The Governor of Texas, State Board of Education, Commissioner of Education and other elected officials to take immediate action showing responsibility in the governance of education. It is urgent and critical for the future of our children and Texas.

The National Assessment Governing Board has announced plans to assess mindsets and other subjective, socio-emotional factors in the 2017 version of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).

In addition, the newly appointed Texas Commissioner of Education, Mike Morath, has recommended to the Next Generation of Assessments and Accountability Commission that Texas formally put non-cognitive character standards into the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Please refer to the letter penned by Liberty Counsel, an international legal, media and policy organization with an emphasis on religious liberties protected by the First Amendment. This letter was sent to several congressional committees, signed by eight national organizations, including Texas based Women On the Wall, and 69 state organizations in 29 different states. Here is a summary of those concerns according to Liberty Counsel Attorney Richard Mast, the author of the letter : (http://edlibertywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Final-Ltr-NAEP-legal-and-privacy-concerns-06272016.pdf)

The NAEP is poised to violate federal law by collecting extremely sensitive psychological/socio-emotional data on children; it will do so in a necessarily subjective manner; it contains a substantial risk of exposing the subject children to possible negative consequences in their later schooling and employment careers, to the extent that even supporters of such assessments are concerned; and it will entrust extremely sensitive data to agencies that are no longer governed by serious privacy law and that have proven they cannot or will not keep personal student data secure.

These proposed changes constitute potential parental rights violations, and expose the children to a litany of harms in the present and in the future. Thus, any efforts to ask questions concerning mindsets and other socio-emotional parameters and to collect that data via the NAEP should be halted immediately.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has increasingly controlled our Texas education system.

• Federal grants and entitlement programs have come with strings attached.
• No Child Left Behind ("NCLB") legislation has moved more and more schools to a label of "failure," which is just wrong.
• Texas's waiver application for NCLB brought Common Core standards to our Texas TEKS and required teacher and principal evaluations to be tied to student test outcomes.

Now the TEA, its Commissioner of Education, the State Board of Education ("SBOE"), and the Texas legislature are prepared to implement the next phase of federal law, The Next Generation of Assessment and Accountability ("NextGen"). This new law will institute a new grading system of A-F to measure each subgroup of students, then give an overall grade to an entire school and school district. This can lead to loss of local control of our schools in as little as two years.

After 15 years of these federal mandates, many English and Math teachers now teach to the standardized tests. Many students suffer extreme anxiety from these tests, characterized as a form of child abuse by many psychiatrists. Parents do not understand this undue mental anguish placed on their children.

Also, many Texas students are not prepared for college or their careers after high school. Our students should not receive an inadequate education stemming from following federal policy. As parents and taxpayers, we demand better from our Texas officials.

Therefore, we, the undersigned Texas parents, taxpayers and educators, call upon the TEA, its Commissioner of Education and the SBOE to cancel all student accountability and assessment procedures currently planned. The NextGen Commission must be disbanded and not reassembled. Say "NO" to the federal government guidelines, "NO" to statewide standardized tests, and "NO" to a degrading A-F accountability system, until we the people can determine a new path for the students of Texas. We call upon on all Texas school board members and school boards to recommit to their oath of office and publicly state their commitment to fulfilling their responsibilities for governance in Chapter 11 of Texas’ own Education Code (TEC).

We will not accept continued inferior instruction in the classroom and flawed accountability when the teachers of Texas can offer so much more.

It's time for Texas to become a leader in the governance of education through obeying its own laws for public-based leadership and action in serving and saving Texas' children and students. Stop the harm to our children. We the people demand restoring "public" to public education.

The parents and taxpayers of the community that serves each individual school will serve as the accountability instrument represented through their elected Board of Trustees who are under oath to fulfill their responsibilities to provide an education of equal opportunity at success in life to the students in their local school district.

Hear our pleas: restore academics to the classroom and restore the opportunity for our kids to be well educated. Cease and desist the roll out of the Next Generation Assessment and Accountability System that will harm our teachers and students throughout the State.