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Money seems to be the name of the game in education these days. All districts seem to be more interested in making extra money through food programs and testing than in educating students.
There's quite a bit of hyperbole and misunderstanding in that piece. First, the BASC and other measures like it have been used for years as an observation form that is part of a psycho-educational assessment battery. Long before Common Core, teachers were asked to fill these out when a child was evaluated because otherwise the evaluation wouldn't contain data from the people who actually work with the child in school. I've done dozens of them over the years, they ask teachers to indicate the frequency of certain behaviors in a child on a gradual scale. That data is tabulated and included in the psycho-ed report. These are typically not done on every child, though there may be districts that do that - I just can't imagine why. The BASC provides quantitative data that supplements qualitative teacher input for evaluations. Evaluations may be done for any of a number of reasons - most of the ones I have done were in connection to diagnosis for a learning problem.
In this case, it looks like the test is being re-normed, which all standardized measures need to do in order to be valid. When norming a test, you need a sample population that reflects the overall demographics of who will be taking the test. These sample populations often consist of a small number - maybe in the hundreds or thousands - so selecting who is part of the sample is done carefully. In all likelihood, this school has been chosen as being representative of a segment of the overall population.
Now I can understand why people might not want to participate, and I'm certainly no fan of the grip that Pearson has attained on education, but this is a practice that has gone on for generations. The alarmism of the article is misleading and ill-informed.
This is the new American way. Embrace it like millions of others.
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