Education Week - April 13, 2016 - 25

LETTERS to
the EDITOR
Former Schools Chiefs Counter Criticism
Of State-Run 'Opportunity' Districts
To the Editor:
The recent Education Week Commentary "When
'Opportunity' Is Anything But" (Jan. 27, 2016), which
argued against state opportunity school districts, is a
hyperbolic warning built on distorting the facts and
attacking straw men.
In our states, Louisiana and Tennessee, staterun opportunity districts that develop new options
for students in chronically low-performing schools
have raised student achievement. These states are
mentioned, and their progress is discounted, in the
Commentary.
In New Orleans, where the Recovery School
District has been working for more than a decade,
academic results are strong. Tulane University
recently reported that students in New Orleans
schools overseen by the RSD moved "up by 0.2 to
0.4 standard deviations and boosted rates of high
school graduation and college entry. We are not aware
of any other districts that have made such large
improvements in such a short time."
In Memphis, where the Achievement School
District has been working for three years, there have
been both bright spots and challenges. Bright spots
include students in ASD schools making double-digit
proficiency gains in math and science and growing
their achievement faster than the state average, in
an era when Tennessee is the fastest-growing state
in the nation in student achievement. While ASD
students demonstrated strong growth in math and
science, improving literacy rates remains a challenge
both in the ASD and across districts in Tennessee. But
Vanderbilt researchers who recently assessed the new
ASD schools concluded that negative judgments-such
as those drawn by the Commentary's authors-were
premature because of the short time frame that the
program had been in place.
We don't think opportunity school districts are
the answer to every problem. And we wouldn't
urge Georgia or Pennsylvania to ignore such
complementary actions as funding students
more equitably, encouraging serious district-led
improvements, and strengthening teacher training
and recruitment.
But when the lessons learned from Louisiana and
Tennessee are embraced, future opportunity school
districts can be more successful than these promising
ones have already proven to be.
Paul Pastorek
Public Education Consultant
New Orleans, La.

Chris Barbic
Executive Coach
Nashville, Tenn.

Paul Pastorek is a former chief state school officer in
Louisiana. Chris Barbic is a former superintendent of the
Achievement School District in Tennessee. Education Post
submitted this letter on behalf of the authors.

U.S. Military's Career-Aptitude Testing
Raises Student-Privacy Concerns
To the Editor:
I appreciated your recent article on the Armed
Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB
("Military Eyes Wider Access for Career-Aptitude
Test Under ESSA," Feb. 24, 2016). As the only school
testing program exempt from the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act, the armed-services test
battery deserves much greater scrutiny than it has
been getting thus far.
I would like to clarify, however, one point. Citing
Pentagon data, the article notes that taking the
ASVAB was mandatory for students in approximately
1,000 schools during the 2012-13 school year.
Shannon Salyer, the national program manager for

the ASVAB Career Exploration Program under the
U.S. Department of Defense, claims that the testing
program is "always voluntary," and that students may
be required to sit for this testing, but are not forced to
complete it. This is a distinction without a difference.
Three hours of a student's day are still consumed by
a military-recruiting exercise, and the student has no
choice in the matter.
It's also important to remember that military
recruiters are ordered to try to get as many schools
as possible to require ASVAB testing. For example,
the U.S. Navy's recruiting manual offers this bit of
advice: "Request the school make [ASVAB] testing
mandatory or at least publicize it sufficiently in
advance to maximize participation." Similar guidance
can be found in the U.S. Army trade magazine
Recruiter Journal.
Scores of high schools in the Lone Star State
continue to practice mandatory ASVAB testing.
But in Austin, the state capital, the school board
passed a policy last fall barring high schools from
automatically sending ASVAB scores to recruiters.
Hopefully, more communities will follow Texas' lead
and make sensible policy changes to better protect
student privacy.
Diane Wood
Texas Coalition to Protect Student Privacy
Fort Worth, Texas

Organization Takes a Stand Opposing
Proposed Report Cards for Parents
To the Editor:
The Mississippi legislature is considering a proposal,
House Bill 4, that is attempting to prescribe criteria
to measure and ensure parents' involvement in their
children's public education ("Mississippi Lawmaker:
Give Parents Grades Along With Their Children," K-12
Parents and the Public blog, www.edweek.org, Feb. 19,
2016). The blog post notes that the author of the bill,
Rep. Gregory Holloway, a Democrat, has said he hasn't
met with any resistance to the plan.
Parents for Public Schools, the organization I
run, vehemently opposes this bill and its recent
amendments.
Mississippi HB 4 proposes that parents be graded
on their children's in-school behavior as well as what
is defined in the bill as "parent involvement." Grades
would be based on criteria that include children's
tardiness, attendance, homework completion, and
preparation for tests and parents' attendance at inperson parent-teacher conferences and maintenance
of correspondence with their children's teachers.
The parents' grades would be included on their
children's report cards.
Unfortunately, this type of legislation is developed
when parents from diverse families are not
intentionally and actively involved in helping to write
legislation that would directly impact them.
Mississippi HB 4 ignores the real challenges of
parents who work multiple jobs and of families in
poverty who won't always have the resources, such
as money or transportation, to meet the criteria in
the bill.
There is a lack of evidence to support that the
criteria in the bill are an effective means to increase
parent involvement or improve a child's academic
success.
Parents for Public Schools will not support any
parent-involvement legislation that lacks a sense of
equity and excludes the voice of parents. We oppose
Mississippi House Bill 4.
Catherine Cushinberry
Executive Director
Parents for Public Schools
Jackson, Miss.

COMMENTARY POLICY
Education Week takes no editorial positions, but
publishes opinion essays and letters from outside
contributors in its Commentary section.
For information about submitting an essay or letter for
review, visit www.edweek.org/go/guidelines.

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Education Week - April 13, 2016

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