SC Parents Fight Common Core

PARENTS CHARGE EDUCATION OFFICIALS WITH BULLYING, COVER-UPS OVER REFUSAL OF COMMON CORE TESTS, Posted on May 5, 2015 Written by breitbart.com

As par­ents of thou­sands of stu­dents across the nation are refus­ing the stan­dard­ized tests aligned with the Com­mon Core stan­dards, state edu­ca­tion offi­cials are dig­ging in their heels and attempt­ing to use author­ity and, in some cases, intim­i­da­tion to keep test par­tic­i­pa­tion rates up and par­ents in line.

Grass­roots groups of par­ent activists who have been refus­ing the Com­mon Core-aligned tests for their chil­dren have cited the due process clause of the 14^th Amend­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion – upheld numer­ous times by the U.S. Supreme Court – with the under­stand­ing that chil­dren belong to their par­ents, not the state.

In South Car­olina, a memo for­warded to Bre­it­bart News that state Super­in­ten­dent Molly Spear­man sent to dis­trict super­in­ten­dents regard­ing “Test­ing Require­ments for All Stu­dents,” stated:

There is no statu­tory pro­vi­sion for par­ents to opt their chil­dren out of test­ing. The State, dis­tricts, and schools are required by state and fed­eral law to admin­is­ter assess­ments to all pub­lic school stu­dents. Please ensure that your dis­trict and school lead­ers are con­sis­tently com­mu­ni­cat­ing that the schools’ oblig­a­tion is to admin­is­ter tests to all stu­dents. Because of that oblig­a­tion, it would not be appro­pri­ate to pro­vide alter­na­tive activ­i­ties for stu­dents in lieu of testing.

“Par­ents are required to make chil­dren of the appro­pri­ate age attend school. S.C. Code … 59–65-20,” the memo con­tin­ued. “There­fore, it is not appro­pri­ate to sug­gest that par­ents ‘opt out’ by keep­ing their stu­dents at home on test­ing days.”

The sec­tion of the law referred to in the memo, the “Penalty for fail­ure to enroll or cause child to attend school” sec­tion, specif­i­cally states:

Any par­ent or guardian who neglects to enroll his child or ward or refuses to make such child or ward attend school shall, upon con­vic­tion, be fined not more than fifty dol­lars or be impris­oned not more than thirty days; each day’s absence shall con­sti­tute a sep­a­rate offense; pro­vided, the court may in its dis­cre­tion sus­pend the sen­tence of any­one con­victed of the pro­vi­sions of this article.

At a local press con­fer­ence, Tamra Hood, a mem­ber of South Car­olina Par­ents Involved in Edu­ca­tion (SCPIE) who attended the April 16th meet­ing of the South Car­olina Asso­ci­a­tion of School Admin­is­tra­tors, said that, dur­ing the meet­ing, the State Edu­ca­tion Department’s Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Eliz­a­beth Car­pen­tier specif­i­cally threat­ened par­ents with “crim­i­nal account­abil­ity” and reports to police if they refused the test for their children.

Hood reported Car­pen­tier said that par­ents could be charged with tru­ancy and could spend 30 days in jail if even a sin­gle day of test­ing is missed. Addi­tion­ally, Hood said Car­pen­tier noted dur­ing the meet­ing that groups that encour­age par­ents to refuse the Com­mon Core-aligned tests could be charged with aid­ing and abet­ting a crime.

Sheri Few, a SCPIE leader who was a can­di­date for state super­in­ten­dent of edu­ca­tion last year, told Bre­it­bart News, “Carpentier’s egre­gious threats to dis­tricts, par­ents and stu­dents are inexcusable.”

In an email exchange with Bre­it­bart News, Dino Tep­para, direc­tor of the Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Office for the South Car­olina Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, responded for Car­pen­tier, stat­ing, “Let me pref­ace them by first not­ing that the state­ments made in response to Ms. Carpentier’s com­ments were issued by an orga­ni­za­tion led by a can­di­date who ran for state super­in­ten­dent of edu­ca­tion last year. So they should be taken in that context.”

Tep­para denied all of the state­ments Hood reported Car­pen­tier made at the meeting.

Regard­ing a state­ment attrib­uted to Car­pen­tier that school dis­tricts are not to give in to parental requests to refuse the tests, Tep­para said:

No. Ms. Car­pen­tier said that schools have a statu­tory oblig­a­tion to admin­is­ter the tests. She was pro­vid­ing guid­ance on schools’ duties. She specif­i­cally stated that the statutes refer to our oblig­a­tions to admin­is­ter tests, and make no ref­er­ence to whether par­ents have a right to refuse the tests for their stu­dents. More­over, there is no way schools admin­is­ter­ing tests can force a stu­dent to take the test, or do their best on the test. The statutes address what the edu­ca­tion sys­tem must do in con­nec­tion with tests, and are silent on what par­ents may or may not do.

In addi­tion, there is no express “opt out” pro­vi­sion in our state or fed­eral statutes.

To Hood’s state­ment that Car­pen­tier said that school dis­tricts should deny all parental requests for alter­na­tive accom­mo­da­tions for stu­dents, and keep chil­dren refus­ing the test in a test room in hopes they will go against their par­ents’ wishes and take the test, Tep­para said, “No. Ms. Car­pen­tier said that schools had no oblig­a­tion to sup­ply alter­na­tive edu­ca­tional activ­i­ties for stu­dents because of their statu­tory oblig­a­tion to admin­is­ter the tests.”

Tep­para also denied that Car­pen­tier said if a child is kept out of school on test­ing days, par­ents can be held crim­i­nally account­able and can be reported to police.

“No,” he said. “She sim­ply noted the tru­ancy pro­vi­sions in state statutes.”

Regard­ing jail time for par­ents, Tep­para again denied Carpen­tier made a state­ment to that effect.

“No. … There is no auto­matic jail stay in our crim­i­nal statutes, and of course, she never would have said that,” he responded.

“The bur­den of proof is on South Car­olina Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion (SCDE) to prove that par­ents can’t refuse–not that tests have to be administered–which SCDE hasn’t done despite numer­ous par­ents’ requests to do so,” Hood told Bre­it­bart News. “Lack of an ‘opt out’ clause in South Car­olina is irrel­e­vant because there is no law that requires every stu­dent to take a cer­tain test.”

Hood also noted that Car­pen­tier “strongly pres­sured school dis­tricts not to go under the 95 per­cent test par­tic­i­pa­tion rate needed for Title I funding.”

“New York hasn’t received any such ‘sanc­tion’ and they have over 150,000 stu­dents refus­ing test­ing this year,” she added. “South Car­olina will not lose fed­eral fund­ing because we were granted a waiver to No Child Left Behind from the Obama administration.”

Hood charged that Spear­man is hid­ing behind Car­pen­tier, and that both have been hid­ing from par­ents who request infor­ma­tion about test refusal.

“Instead of tak­ing the lead, fir­ing Car­pen­tier, and instruct­ing par­ents of their right to refuse, Ms. Spear­man has taken a back­seat, gone MIA, and tried to blame Sheri Few,” she asserted. “By keep­ing Car­pen­tier employed, she is hyp­o­crit­i­cally advo­cat­ing for a bully. Because Ms. Spear­man has not stood up for par­ents and the chil­dren she has promised to serve, she can be con­sid­ered com­plicit and should lose her position.”

“It is truly a sad state of affairs when our State Super­in­ten­dent of Education’s office is will­ing to lie to cover up their mis­takes, thereby accus­ing inno­cent par­ents of lying instead,” Few said in a state­ment to Bre­it­bart News.

She added: Rather than lying about what was said and attempt­ing to dis­par­age the char­ac­ter of those who exposed the truth, it would be wiser for Super­in­ten­dent Spear­man to make a pub­lic state­ment denounc­ing the threats made by her COO, apol­o­gize to the par­ents of South Car­olina, and fire Ms. Carpentier.

Few said Carpentier’s atti­tude reflects the sen­ti­ment of edu­ca­tion elit­ists who have no regard for par­ents and treat them in a con­de­scend­ing manner.

“This shame­ful atti­tude, and the bla­tant dis­re­gard for parental con­cerns, is what moti­vated the move­ment to refuse the test,” she con­tin­ued. “The sim­ple fact is, the test that par­ents are refus­ing is aligned with Com­mon Core, and most par­ents are moti­vated to refuse because the sys­tem con­tin­ues to ignore their dis­ap­proval of the Com­mon Core standards.”

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