Policy Didn't Do the Job
Cindy Rose and a group of like-minded parents thought they’d scored a victory last summer with a successful bid to change a testing policy for disabled children. Their relief was short-lived, however, when it came time to test the policy change passed by Frederick County’s Board of Education in August 2016.
Rose’s son Ben, 11, attends Rock Creek Center, and is a nonverbal disabled child. Rose has made a career of fighting for her children’s education and civil rights, and institutional transparency. She twice ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Board of Education.
In this case, Rose sought to refuse standardized testing on Ben’s behalf. The testing serves no purpose other than to check a box on a form, according to Rose and her supporters, and puts unwarranted stress on Ben and students like him. [Watch here for more on testing severely disabled children.]
The policy change that Rose and others pushed forward would allow parents to refuse testing on behalf of their child. What they discovered, however, is that the policy would allow parents to refuse, but that the children must communicate that directly to the school.
“FCPS principals are once again saying that parents may not refuse for their students,” Rose wrote to Board of Education members on Dec. 20, 2016. “Please explain to me how the language in 511.6 . . . has come to mean that parents can ‘bar’ or ‘refuse’ for their children, however, the children must still do the refusing? This is exactly what we had "before" the amendment.
BOE President Brad Young’s immediate response was that the policy meant students may refuse, but parents may not refuse for them. “The main reason that we wanted to amend the policy was to give consistency to how each school was handling refusals,” Young wrote in an email.
Rose, who had given interviews to the media following the passage of the policy, wondered why no one corrected her interpretation of the policy.
“FCPS’ own documents state parents would be refusing "for" their children. If this was never their intention, or they changed their minds, they should have been informing me and/or the public,” Rose said in an email. “This was the goal we were working for. We talked about it before, during and after. Why not take the time to set the record straight if it was something other than what we were saying publicly?”
Rose foresees a circle of appeals, filings and ping-ponging between the Maryland State Department of Education and Frederick County Public Schools. Calling the process “an insane circus of surrealism,” Rose said in an interview that she thinks the bureaucratic handoffs are designed to make people give up.
Vogt Hopeful Over Revised Bens Rule Bill
But, if a proposed law from Del. David Vogt (R-Dist. 4) is passed this year, Rose won’t have to appeal. A previous, similar bill didn’t pass in 2016’s legislative session. Dubbed “Ben’s Rule,” HB1141 would have allowed parents of children with disabilities to exempt their children from PARCC, and other standardized testing. The bill, local to Frederick County, didn’t pass.
This year, Vogt’s [pictured left] reworked the bill, and vetted with the relevant state agencies, including the state’s department of education. “Maryland State Department of Education won’t oppose it,” Vogt said.
The bill, HB705 has several cosponsors, including colleague, Del. Karen Lewis Young (D-Dist. 3A.) Key differences in this year’s bill include specifying nonverbal disabled students, documenting the parents’ preference in the child’s Individualized Education Program [IEP], and making it a statewide bill.
Vogt said he, too, thought the issue of parents refusing for disabled children was “dealt with” in FCPS’ policy amendment last year. Subsequently, he said it “seemed to be a bit of a sleight of hand.”
BOE members Elizabeth Barrett and Colleen Cusimano testified in support of the Ben’s Rule in 2016, and supports HB705. By applying to all Maryland children, the bill would remedy part of the issue the BOE had in amending its assessment policy last year, Barrett said.
The BOE was restricted in what he could do last year, she said. “The State has made it clear that parents cannot refuse a test for a child, any child,” she said in an email. “As such, our Policy 511 was crafted to honor a student's right to refuse, regardless of the student's ability to refuse via her own voice or via an assistive device.”
At least three BOE members, including Barrett and Cusimano, all speaking as individuals, spoke favorably about Vogt’s bill. Newly elected Michael Bunitsky said in an email that “national and state assessments of nonverbal students does not add to the school data in any meaningful way, and has the potential of being disruptive to the students’ well being.”
The key difference between Vogt’s proposal and the policy amendment passed by the BOE last year is that it’s statewide. The original intent of the policy amendment and Vogt’s bill do essentially the same thing, but narrow the group to small group of disabled students, and let parents make the decision, BOE member Collen Cusimano said in an email.
Time – that of teachers and students – is too valuable to waste on assessments, whose results, said Cusimano “are deeply questionable to many families and professional educators.”
The Board will likely discuss HB705 soon, and decide to support it or not, like it did with the Ben’s Rule bill, Barrett said.
BOE members Brad Young, Ken Kerr, Joy Schaefer, and April Miller did not respond to a request for comment.
HB705 had a first hearing with the Ways and Means Committee on Feb. 2. A House hearing is scheduled for March 10 at 1 p.m. To follow the bill, go here.
