#caasp

New Post has been published on http://citizensjournal.us/common-core-assessment-opt-out-lawsuit-filed-in-two-districts-more-to-follow/

Common Core Assessment OPT OUT Lawsuit filed in two districts, more to follow . .

By Tony Dolz

Concerned Parents file complaint against CVUSD

The Concerned Parents of California, representing parents and guardians of students K-12 in the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), filed a complaint in the Ventura County Superior Court. Case: 56-2015-00472621-CU-WM-VTA.

The complaint, filed on September 24th, alleges CVUSD violated parents’ legal rights protected under California Code of Regulations Title 5, Section 852 and Education Code 60615.

Parents represented by Concerned Parents of California have misgivings about the pedagogical value, implementation and constitutionality of the national educational standard commonly referred to as Common Core.  In particular, the plaintiffs oppose the collection of vast amounts of personally identifiable data on students K-12 and their families, required by the funding mechanism underlying the adoption of Common Core in California.

The collection of personally identifiable data comes in many disguises, for example, assessment and tests created by data mining specialists, surveys and questionnaires.

Fortunately, Federal and California law protects the privacy of students and their families.  In addition, California law and the Education Code gives parents the right to opt out of part or all of Common Core aligned federally mandated assessment test.

Parents argue that the CAASPP (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) test, for example, does not affect the classroom grade, advanced placement nor graduation.  Since students are pulled out of the classrooms to take the CAASPP assessment test, those are many hours that the students are denied instruction on the approved curriculum for which they are responsible.

Since there is no individual benefit for the students but there is the threat of data mining and prying into personally identifiable data collected and kept by agencies of the state and government for the life of the students, there is no downside to opting out.

The lawsuit alleges that the California Department of Education (CDE) and many school district failed to notify the parents of their legal right to opt out, as the law requires.  Further, the suit alleges that the CDE created and provided the school district a “notification template” that is obviously defective and clearly in violation of the law.

The Walnut Valley School District in Los Angeles County and the Conejo Valley Unified School District in Ventura County are the first two of a series of school districts that were named in the lawsuit.

Updates will be available at www.ConcernedParentsofCalifornia and www.PacificJusticeInstitute.org

Thanks to a great number of activists having filed California Public Records Requests on many school districts in California, we have a wealth of details on school districts’ failure to notify the parents or giving parents a defective notification pursuant to California Code of Regulation Title 5, section 852.

One of two CA lawsuits on Common Core op-out filed by Pacific Justice Institute on behalf of Tony Dolz. Click link below in text to see details.

The law requires that school district inform parent that, essentially, the CAASPP (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) assessment, surveys and other data collection tools, that ask certain protected areas of privacy, is voluntary and that all requests to be exempt shall be granted.  In other words, that parents have the legal right to opt out.

YOU can opt out your kids: California Privacy Protection Opt Out Form 140422_1500

The California school district failure to notify or to notify with a defective notification designed to mislead the parents is both widespread and uniform in its appearance.  The uniformity of the defective notification pointed to the California Department of Education as being behind the effort to mislead.  The school districts have been using to this day a defective notification template created by the CDE.

Many activists worked on documenting the illegal activity by means of California Public Record Requests.

The time has come now to file the law suits.   Our legal counsel, Pacific Justice Institute, has now filed a lawsuit: Ventura County complaint – Conejo Valley USD against one district in Los Angeles County (Walnut) and one district in Ventura County, the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD).

If you have served one or more districts a California Public Records Acts document request, you already have what is needed to proceed.  Read the enclosed filing against CVUSD and put together a set of documents similar to it, specially three documents (1) the defective notification (2) the CPRA document request and (3) the response from the district to your CPRA document request.

  REGARDING Ventura County and the CVUSD

I have contacted my local newspaper and a very popular Ventura County online news portal (Ed: that would be http://CitizensJournal.us) to cover the story and also submitted a letter to the editor that will be published next Thursday.  When it is your turn, you can do the same.   Eventually we will blanket the state with these Writs of Mandamus demanding compliance with the law.

News of these legal actions will serve to INFORM PARENTS THROUGHOUT the STATE about their legal right to opt out of the Common Core aligned assessment tests and data mining surveys.

In the coming days we will file complaints with two Grand Juries and you will be update on that later.

The more plaintiffs the better.  If you know of a family that allowed their children to take the CAASPP assessment test because they did not know that they could opt out (school’s failure to notify) or because they were mislead by a defective notification (one that did not use the legally required language advising the parents of their legal right to opt out), please let me know immediately.  Their cases can be easily added to the law suit.

  The CAASPP assessment test.

In case parents in your school district do not know: The CAASPP is voluntary.  The results/scores do not influence the classroom grade, advanced placement or graduation and the schools are not allowed to reward those that take the assessment or punish those who opt out.  In other words, the CAASPP is an uncompensated marketing study for the federal government and their for-profit and non-profit education partners.   It is totally worthless for the individual student and only a source of frustration, stress and time stolen for approved curriculum instructions.

  SHARE WITH OTHER FAMILIES . . . .     and don’t forget to Opt Out.  It must be done every school year.

Look at the law suit filed in Ventura County . . .  PDF file: Ventura County complaint – Conejo Valley USD

Please share this article with friends, relatives, acquaintances.

Best wishes,

Tony Dolz www.ConcernedParentsofCalifornia.com www.Facebook.com(concernedparentsofcalifornia

[email protected]

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