S EA N A .

M AT TH E WS
STATE REPRESENTATIVE
10th District

HOUSE OF REPRESENTAT IVES

STATE OF DELAWARE

C O M M IT T E E S
Education
Health & Human Development
Housing & Community Affairs
R e v e n u e & Fi n a n c e
T e l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n , In t e r n e t &
Technology

4 1 1 LEGI S LAT I VE AV ENU E

DO VE R, DE LAW ARE 1 9 9 0 1

February 18, 2015

Secretary Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education, U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20202
Secretary Duncan,

Thank you for taking the time to visit Delaware. We know that you share our desire to ensure
that all students receive an excellent education.
However, it is our sincere belief that many of the policies currently coming from your agency are
harmful to students in Delaware. The standardized testing agenda over which you preside has led
to a situation where testing corporations are reporting record profits while school districts and
states struggle for basic resources.
No doubt your itinerary will be carefully planned; however, if you would like to get an authentic
view of the impact of your polices on Delaware we invite you to visit one of the so-called
"Priority Schools." Under directives from your department, these schools have been labeled as
"failing" based solely on standardized test scores. The children, parents and teachers in these
schools have spent months hearing that their schools are failing and have been threatened with
takeover and closure.
It didn't matter that an independent study by the University of Delaware said that there were lots
of great things going on in these schools. It didn't matter that there were highly qualified and
highly rated African American administrators to whom the students looked up to in some of
these schools. It didn't matter that the average percentage of low income students in the "Priority
Schools" was over 90%. It didn't matter that recent brain-scan research has shown that growing
up in poverty has a profound and physiological impact on the structures of the brain needed for
learning. All that mattered was that on a norm-referenced, standardized test that doesn't account
for poverty or student background, these students performed worse than their more affluent
suburban peers.
It's time for a real conversation about our schools. Simply adding more charter schools will not
solve these persistent problems. The root of this problem is the overuse and misuse of
standardized test data to label students and schools. In an effort to bring about this change, we
are encouraging all parents to consider "opting-out" their students from the Smarter Balanced
test. We hope enough parents "opt-out" so that there will not be sufficient data to continue
misguided school and student rating processes. Our "opt-out" legislation will be filed shortly.

2517 Justin Lane, Wilmington, DE 19810

Wilmington: 302-577-8476 Dover: 302-744-4351 Cell: 302-331-1020 Sean.Matthews@state.de.us

If you are interested in talking further or visiting some of the "Priority Schools," please reach out
to our offices.
Sincerely,

Representative Sean Matthews

10th District
(302) 577-8480

Representative John A. Kowalko, Jr.

25th District
(302) 577-8489