As to attendance and subgroup measurement, isn’t the point of the test to know what is happening? Based on my experience in public schools, it is no doubt true that you as a teacher do not have the ability to make sure Johnny comes to school.

But that doesn’t say anything about the testing. It says only that the testing has revealed a problem. Now the question is, what to do about that problem. The quote was not disingenuous at all.

Personally, I’d like to see teachers given absolute control over the classroom. Then it would be in the teacher’s control, because they could eject the student. The hand-wringing response is that children can’t be abandoned, but this is the opposite of abandonment. It’s dealing with the problem. Abandonment is when students are allowed to continue attending but the problems that have been identified are not fixed, or we quit identifying the problems, which achieves nothing except making it easier to pretend the problems don’t exist.

But the test also has attendance requirements, and population and subgroup requirements (minimums). These requirements must be met to make AYP, and they are out of the hands of school personell. I have no way, as a teacher, of making sure Johnny comes to school, especially on test day, especially if his parents opted out of the test, which is their right.

So, your quote above is either disingenuous or uninformed. I’m going with disingenuous!