6th Graders, Forced to Test Common Core, Demand Compensation

Sixth graders at a public school in Ipswich,
Massachusetts, are sick of working as conscripted product testers
for Common Core-aligned standardized exams—and have written a
letter demanding compensation.

The exams are administered by the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers, a non-profit state consortium
tasked with designing the testing component of the new Common Core
education standards. PARCC has been doing trial runs of its new
standardized tests over the last few months. The states randomly
chose which schools and classrooms get the honor of losing a week’s
worth of classes to be guinea pigs for PARCC.

But Ipswich Middle School’s A and B period math classes have had
enough,
according to the Ipswich Chronicle:

During class [on] Monday, May 19, a teacher jokingly
mentioned that the students should get paid for taking the test
since their participation helps the PARCC and at the end of class
the students pressed Laroche further on the idea.

“The kids proceeded to tell me that PARCC is going to
be making money from the test, so they should get paid as guinea
pigs for helping them out in creating this test,” said Laroche. “So
I said, ‘OK, if that’s the case and you guys feel strongly then
there are venues and things you can do to voice your opinion, and
one would be to write a letter and have some support behind that
letter with petition.”

At 8 p.m. that night Laroche received a shared Google
document with an attached letter from A-period student Brett
Beaulieu, who asked that he and his peers be compensated for their
assistance.

“I thought it was unfair that we weren’t paid for
anything and we didn’t volunteer for anything,” said Beaulieu. “It
was as if we said, ‘Oh we can do it for free.’”

Showcasing math skills that might have led to his class’s
selection in the first place, Beaulieu calculated that the sixth
graders should have earned $1,628 for 330 minutes of minimum wage
work. That money could be used to buy school supplies, he said:

Beaulieu thinks they will receive some type of reply. He would
be satisfied receiving school supplies, but he’s rooting for the
money. “I hope that we can get the money,” Beaulieu said. “I mean
it’s really not all about that, but I think it would be cool if we
could actually kind of make a difference.”

Laroche and Beaulieu eventually sent the letter to PARCC and
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. It doesn’t appear that
either responded. I called PARCC to find out if they intend to
answer. A spokesperson told me he would look into it.

Standardized testing is increasingly
controversial, especially now that two test makers—PARCC for
states in the south and east, and the Smarter Balanced Testing
Consortium for states in the north and west—have exclusive federal
mandates to administer Common Core-aligned testing.

Common Core is unpopular for many reasons, but a chief complaint
is the perceived erosion of local autonomy over testing and
curriculum decisions at the hands of federal bureaucrats and
regional testing consortia. Fears of a nationalization of schools
has led activists—including both left-leaning groups like teachers
unions and right-leaning groups like the Tea Party—to pressure
lawmakers in many states to cancel implementation of Common Core
and its related standardized testing requirements.

Regardles of ideology, it seems like nobody—not teachers, not
parents, not local officials, and certainly not sixth graders—likes
being a guinea pig in an expensive, national education
experiment.