Senators O’Laughlin & Arthur’s ‘22 Ed Bill Forces Tech-Based Assessments on Kids.
Senators O’Laughlin(R) & Arthur(D) passed 2022 SB 681/662 that mandates, for the first time, state-approved only literacy assessments on children with no option for parents to opt out.
Edit: Added 9/11/23.
This author has recently been sent a letter from a principal telling parents that their request for opt out of K-3 assessments has been denied due to the new law. 👇
Here is the Opt Out form parents sent in.
Why is this happening?
In 2022, Senator Cindy O’Laughlin carried a bipartisan bill for literacy. The women of Senate traveled the state and even wrote a book about female leadership working together to sell the idea statewide.
O’Laughlin continued to work her bill, SB 681, through the chamber until end of the 2022 session. It quickly gained momentum, and in order to gain Democrat votes, O’Laughlin allowed Democrat Lauren Arthur to merge her bill, SB 662.
This created a 166 page Education Omnibus.
The bill passed with few Republicans voting no.
This massive bill is a MO DESE dream and we are now seeing the residual effects from this irresponsible legislation. A Republican supermajority let this happen. Let that sink in.
No wonder we can’t trust them with school choice legislation, they would put it all under MO DESE!
Why give the State Board of Education and the Missouri Commissioner more power? Who keeps doing this?
This author wrote about the existing issues with State Education Board and MO DESE leadership here 👇
SEL (Social Emotional Learning) is being implemented through the new authority granted from this same O’Laughlin/Arthur’s Ed Omnibus bill.
Read more about that here 👇
Now, at the beginning of this 23/24 school year, Parents, students, and tax payers are now seeing what else they sold them out for. Data.
Data is the new oil.
The new law forces schools to assess students with only state (MO DESE) approved programs.
MO DESE gets to pick the assessment vendors. They are all tech-based assessments that your child, K-3, will be mandated to take at the beginning at end of the year. There is no pencil/pen and paper option for the teacher to use to assess the child face to face.
Here are the current MO DESE approved options 👇
Parents have been opting their children out of the excessive tech-based assessments for years. Missouri MAP is the only one until now that the state would not allow an opt out.
These assessments do not help improve outcomes and do not replace a real teacher conducting an assessment.
These are predatory data collection vendors that collect PII (Personally Identifiable Information) on students.
Note: 2023 MO Legislature passed a bill making the PII data of children in state funded child care available to contractors and vendors. They are pushing for state funded child care big time at the capital and at speaking events. The Missouri Chamber and Governor Parson specifically.
Missouri also funded P-20 Council that sends child data from PreK to 20 years old to a national data base. More on P-20 coming this month. Be sure to subscribe. It’s free.
Just remember… Data is the new oil. And it’s your child’s data they want. Cradle to Grave.
What can we do? Call your state reps. Ask them to stop this madness and repeal these tyrannical laws on children that they keep letting pass every year.