“Pro-Test” or “Protest”? The dash makes all the difference, making one word into two that, taken together, describe polar opposite worlds. If you are “pro-test,” you favor the Common Core State Standards tests. Remove the dash, and you are aligned with those urging families to opt-out and refuse to take the PAARC and Smarter Balanced Common Core tests, which will be administered in March.
Are you in one of these camps?
Or are there even two camps? It’s hard, maybe impossible, to measure the strength of the “protest” movement, if indeed there really is a ‘movement.’ It could be thousands and thousands of tiny, grass-roots organizations and loose gatherings, or it could be just a few hundred. If it is a national movement, it’s one that lacks a ‘command central,’ although three organizations, Save Our Schools (SOS), United Opt-Out, and Badass Teachers Association, do have modest national profiles. Every week FairTest publishes a report of anti-testing actions, but the list gets repetitive and sometimes includes newspaper stories and blogs that merely ask tough questions–hardly evidence of a full-blown revolt. Is there a genuine bandwagon, or is FairTest trying to create the illusion of a bandwagon where none exists? Hard to say.
In some places, local and state politicians are taking note. Colorado’s legislature is holding hearings, and there’s ferment in Philadelphia, for example. And Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to stop the testing.
We know the protesters have different motivations. Some are upset about what they see as excessive testing in schools, while others are vociferously opposed to the Common Core State Standards, which they have labelled “Obamacore,” his plan to take control over public education.
Protest politics makes for strange bedfellows, with lefties and righties coming together to agree on this issue (and probably on just this one issue).
As for the other side, the “Pro-Test” camp has the appearance of substance. With unofficial “headquarters” in Washington, DC, the Common Core test defenders include the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council, the Education Trust, the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education.
The basic message: “If you don’t take the test, you won’t be counted–and you won’t matter.” The “Pro-Test” group has an impressive roster with money and power, but perhaps it’s mostly Chiefs and very few followers. Impossible to say now, but we will find out before long.
Just last fall, the establishment was agreeing publicly that we might be subjecting our children to too many tests. The President spoke out, and his Secretary of Education noted that testing was sucking the air out of classrooms. Now, they’re saying, “OK, perhaps schools do test too much, but these tests–the Common Core tests–are essential.”
I haven’t found overwhelming evidence that hundreds of thousands of students are going to boycott the Common Core tests, but people in Washington appear worried. How else to explain their going on the offensive to trumpet the importance of these tests?
What do they know that we don’t? Or are they seeing dragons under the bed at night?
In other states, educational leaders have been issuing threats: “Boycott these tests and you will suffer the consequences,” is the tone of these messages. “I know some of you have already received questions from parents who would like their children to be able to opt out of taking the test. Opting out of PARCC is not an option,” Illinois State Superintendent Christopher A. Koch recently wrote to district administrators, a message he expected they would share with their principals. Some schools are going to force kids who come to school but opt-out of the tests to ‘sit and stare’ all day long, instead of offering them alternative learning experiences. “Sit and stare”–Now that’s enlightened leadership, teaching kids what it means to live in a free and democratic society!! Teaching kids how power responds to principled action.
So, the establishment is dropping the hammer. Will that backfire?
We will find out in March, when the PAARC and Smarter Balanced tests are administered over a 2-3 week period.
The great Dinah Washington song I am riffing off, “What a Difference a Day Makes,” ends with the line, “And the difference is you.”
Care to make a prediction as to what will happen?
The Merrow Report 
Since many have already posted more eloquently what I believe, I am posting simply to add to the numbers. One additional piece of info–PAARC has lost half of the states that originally signed up to use it. Common Core has lost several states, so that now only 40 states are signed on. Along with everything else, that is a sign that the movement to eliminate high-stakes testing is not just a fad or something championed by a few.
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We might be able to have a reasonable conversation about standardized testing and tying those tests to teacher evaluations IF the tests themselves were not so incredibly flawed AND the IF the evaluation systems were not completely fraudulent AND IF poverty was not the primary reason for “failing” schools. As has been repeated quite often, Finland has as extraordinarily successful public school system and they do not do ANY of the things that our current crop or “reformers” are mandating. They also have a 3% child poverty rate while ours is approximately 25%. So the corporate “reformers” can come up with all of the silver bullet approaches they want, but tragically none of those will fix the problem, and it will likely make it worse. The entire project is a farce and none of it is based upon sound research, even though this gang likes to pretend they are all about the data.
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I have opted out my children.
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Common Core and over testing subscribes to a very good old boy mentality that everything needs to be run like a Corporation. Schools are not corporations. You cannot measure, predict and evaluate them based on needless data, one size fits all curriculum (Common Core) and hours of needless testing (I beg all of America to please look at the actual PAARC tests – mindless!). Schools cannot be fixed or elevated by the Corporate model. Schools are diverse communities of a wide range of learners, socio-economic backgrounds, vastly different home lives and beautiful individual minds. All of the very people at the top pushing this bland, grey corporate agenda on our schools did not achieve their success using the models they are forcing on us. America has more awards, patents, inventions, nobel prize winners and globally historic life game changers than any other country on the planet. The schools need support and always adjusting, but taking the student out of a solid, creative and basic curriculum is taking the spark out of our future. Kids need to play, need to memorize (despite the internet), need to build, create, solve problems, work alone, work in groups and deal with failure (their are winners and losers in all walks of life). Where you can address the number one issue wrong with our schools is providing simple healthy food – from 7-4pm. For all students (regardless of class). That is the best way of leveling the playing field for the children of the United States of America. After that, each child will become exactly who they are to become with a K-12 education filled with ups and downs, wins and losses. Some kids will drive a recycle truck, others find success as a plumber, some will become teachers, others will build new super computers and create software that blows you mind – but hopefully those who go into politics will appreciate the educators and education they have (without Common Core and data mining computerized bubble tests) – and they will allow educators to love their job, be honored for the heroes they are (I know EVERY professions has a few bad eggs – too bad they get all the press) and note that teachers educate because they are drawn to creating a brighter future for our nation. Keep big business profiteers out of public education. Quit giving our tax dollars to corporate money minded individuals looking to make a buck. Return public tax dollars to our schools, the educators and the voice of their communities…. and give some extra funding to the inner city and low income schools. Wake up America! We are being turned into a China model of education – JUST SAY NO! OPT OUT!
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The numbers you list are not accurate and thankfully they grow everyday. As more and more teachers get brave enough to speak out, more and more parents realize the abuse that’s occurring to their child, more and more administrators get tipped over the top with the ridiculous requirements and enormous expensive of testing, and more and more legislators “see the light”, the numbers will continue to grow as they are doing now daily.
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Mr. Merrier,
I’m a big fan of your work and am very excited to hear that you will be covering the opt-out movement. My son is only two years old, but I plan to opt him out of high stakes testing when he enters the NYC Public School System. I do not want him fed a steady diet of tests or taught by test obsessed teachers in a test obsessed school. I see the opt-out movement as a way to put a stop to the testing insanity. I know what the culture of testing is like in our schools because I’ve worked as a social worker in the NYC public school system for over 15 years now. I’ve witnessed the abusive effect they have, especially upon the most vulnerable and special needs children. I am a huge supporter of public education, but am frightened by how high stakes testing has warped our perspective on children and diverted our focus from their humanity. The over dependence of educational leaders/reformers upon test score data is hurting the process of education while sucking the joy out of learning for so many children. Look no further than the thousands of children who are being drugged in order for them to tolerate this unhealthy process. It is only going to get worse if we parents and teachers don’t put a stop to it.
Thank you again for covering this very important movement!
Darren Marelli
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Sorry about misspelling your name Mr. Merrow..
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I’ve had worse, believe me. My all time favorite misspelling was “John Moron.” But that one may not have been a typo, because the letter began, “You are an asshole” and went downhill from there. That was pre-internet, in my NPR days.
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John,
Here is a dash that doesn’t make a difference. The current standardized tests are a booby trap set by our government to falsely catch failure rates that are built into the test. So,to booby-trap our children by giving them flawed tests is educational abuse. My children will be opting out.
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Please look at #WhyIRefuse on Twitter.
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i came here to say something that would make a difference. Something that would boost this movement. But I am in tears from reading these comments. You all have said it all and eloquently. I just need a print out of these comments to explain to people who don’t yet know what is happening in education. I feel so sure we are at the tipping point!
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Yes, John, there is a real opt out movement.
Check out the facebook page of the Louisiana movement – Opt Out Louisiana. We focus on local information, seek answers to local questions and promote the news stories, letters, and blog posts about parents who are opting out – and by parents who are opting out.
Parents come to the conclusion that opt out is right for their child for many reasons.
For many it concerns not only the impact of the high-stakes unaccountable accountability tests have on their children at test time, but also the loss of a rich curriculum with art, music, PE, science and social studies for test prep instead.
For many it is also the state accountability system that ties school letter grades and teacher evaluations to these unaccountable accountability tests. Tests that teachers and parents never get to see. We will never know if the PARCC test questions are just as awful and age inappropriate as the PARCC practice test questions we can take on line.
For many it further ties into the waste of money that goes into tests, test prep, data-storage programs, test remediation packages – all material sold by test prep, test-making, and test grading corporations. We parents would like that money pipeline stopped and the money used to actually help children learn in the classroom! Especially children who struggle in school.
For many it also ties into the use of aggregate scores to label schools as failing and prime them for a takeover, often by for-profit charter schools, or in some states such as Louisiana, by providing a means to siphon tax dollars into private schools.
For many parents they do not like Common Core State Standards or Eureka math curriculum.
It’s many things for many people. The one common denominator is that parents are awake and are determining that state annual testing does nothing to benefit their children in the classroom.
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DearJohn ,
The difference between pro-test and Protest is simple, those that are pro -testing are all the people that seek to destroy public education, people with no educational back ground whatsoever like politicians, hedge fund people and charter schools who seek money to line their greedy pockets , while pretending to give children an “education”. Testing conglomerates like Pearson who make billions creating ridiculous tests (without actual teacher input) that intentionally fail children and our education system. The powers that be label our school’s as failing when in fact they wouldn’t be if they were properly funded.Money has been siphoned from our public schools and given to charter schools (like charter school usa). Public schools take every kid, smart, disabled, poor, rich,regular, non English speaking etc, public schools are subjected to all the ridiculous testing when private school’s are not, charter schools are not either. Charter and private schools measured by a different standard why ? Thats what protesters ask? Why can’t teachers in public school’s teach their students in an enriched environment and not be forced to teach to an impossible ridiculous test of which their are many ? Why can’t children be tested on what they have learned in the classroom on a test that there teachers have created? Why can’t the powers that be and you understand that poverty, non English speaking and disability factor into the equation of how a child learns ? We simply need to properly fund our public schools, teach the way each child learns.Education is not a once size fits all and nobody will hire a professional test taker. Our children all children need to be educated and well rounded so that they may lead the way to the future. You may think that our protest numbers are minut when in fact you couldn’t be more wrong.
I am Badass Parent who supports Badass Teachers because I can .
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Dear Mr. Merrow,
I believe you know EXACTLY what is going on; you are simply to smart and we’ll-informed not to. Serving corporate masters is problematic. The last time you spoke truth to power regarding Michelle Rhee, it appeared you got a spanking from those powers. In my heart, I believe you are a closet opt outer.
The problem, in terms of academic achievement as measured by invalid tests, is poverty. Period. Why that elephant continues to be ignored is obvious. If not ignored, then that would mean politicians would have to do something about it. They would finally have to be serving the people rather than corporations and billionaires.
I think you have been very successful in your life, Mr. Merrow. You did this without being subjected to high-stakes testing. You did this without being subjected to a rigorous (as in death-like) set of standards. You were allowed to be a kid. You were allowed to play. I think you are doing well in the 21st century. Though younger than you, I, too, am a highly successful person not raised in the restrictive environment that children have been subjected to since the standards movement, NCLB, and now CC$$. I actually liked school. Sadly, I cannot say the same for children today.
It is well documented at this point that the CC$$ were not created by classroom teachers or early childhood professionals. David Coleman has stated that he and the others were unqualified to create the Language Arts and Math standards. His hubris allowed him to freely admit that in a presentation that was being filmed. Coleman admits, on film, that he had to go around the country to sell the standards to states. State adopted the standards before they were written. It was all part of the Raise to the Top bribery scheme. This is all very we’ll documented, so all the spin to the contrary is complete and utter bullshit.
The idea that the CC$$ are fewer seems like another load to me. I live in California. Additional loads from the CC$$ propaganda machine would include: teacher freedom, and less focus on testing. Yeah, right. Whoever came up with those claims surely must’ve been smoking something powerful. So that kids will be well-prepared to eventually take the SBAC, in kindergarten I am expected to give 18 district mandated ELA and 14 district mandated Math tests. Since kindergarten testing is 1:1, that means I am no longer a teacher but a tester, testing kids on things I’ve been unable to teach because all I’m doing is testing. The rigor the district has insisted on for these kindergarten assessments has resulted in bad tests. Still we are expected to analyze the bad data produced by these bad tests. And so it goes. Teacher voice? Teacher freedom? Maybe in someone’s mirage but not in my reality.
Comedy is, however, alive and well in Arne’s Circus. Like he actually believes that at-risk kids will remain in school despite the effects of theses standards and high-stakes testing? Feeling like failures as early as age 5 will not incentivize (Arne loves this word!) kids to stay on school. I predict that they will simply drop out sooner in greater droves.
So here we are, forcing the CC$$ on our nation’s children without even piloting them to find out if they will work. Even billionaire puppet master, Bill Gates, freely admits on film that it will take ten years before we know if the standards have been successful. But he doesn’t care if another generation of our kids fall prey to the reformers. His children will never have to experience this bullshit. What does he have to lose? Nothing. Now what he has to gain is a different $tory. The only winners in this story are the money makers.
Mr. Merrow, the pressure being felt due to the real grassroots movements aligned with United Opt Out has intensified. In California, the State Superintendent od Education, Tom Torlakson, is no longer referring to the CC$$ by that name. He now simply refers to them as ‘the standards’. He and others are finding that the term CC$$ has become toxic. The California Teachers Association is following his lead. But the stink is still there. We will not be fooled.
Poverty matters. Tests don’t. If poverty’s not going to be addressed in any meaningful way, and sadly I’m not hopeful, then can we just let our kids have happy lives in school? Our kids deserve to experience an engaging, we’ll rounded curricula that addresses the whole child. Can we honor children where they are and celebrate where they move from there? Can we teach our children to be good people – to be kind? Can we show them how to get along with each other and work together? Can we teach them how to positively resolve conflicts? Can we teach them to care for others as well as themselves? Can we allow them to be creative and follow their own passions? Can we allow them to question and to listen? Can we encourage them to take risks and value failures? Can we honor the unique gifts that each child possesses? If we can, then were are truly teaching them 21st century skills. It’s ironic that those skills, the most important ones, cannot be assessed.
Resist the tests. Opt out!
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Closet opt outer? sorry, had to chuckle. Life is NOT about College and Career readiness. This philosophy ignores our country’s great history of entrepreneurship. Life IS about the pursuit of happiness. People (a.k.a. the humans that are missed as the actual point in data point driven education reforms) strive to do work that makes them happy. I don’t agree with Coleman that “No one gives a sh*t” about kids. I choose to believe that Americans do care about kids (our future citizens) and the end of the oligarchical for-profit reforms on public education that have clearly been duplicated through same/similar (a.k.a. ALEC) lobbied laws in all states will come to a crumbling end once the people have gained the knowledge of what has and is really happening…a war for public education tax dollars. The people are many. I think the question to the post above is best represented as “Who do you represent: corporations or true journalism representing both sides?” I am wondering if you wrote this article to see if there actually is another side and protect your job? Hum, kinda sounds like what my kid’s and our nation’s teachers are going through to keep a roof over their heads….asking the obvious questions.
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If the powers that be tell you that you can’t “opt-out” rephrase the argument and let them know that you are “refusing” to let your child participate in the testing.
This isn’t about education because these tests don’t really measure that. These tests are about Pearson gaining more and more of the education marketplace while siphoning much needed dollars away from schools. It’s about closing public schools which are accountable and opening charter schools that don’t have to follow the same rules or service the same students that public schools do. It’s about destroying the credibility of teaching as a profession and removing the unions so that all that are left are under-trained McTeachers who are reading from a script and don’t understand what pedagogical best-practices really are or how to actually teach.
Refusing the tests is the first step to taking back our schools and opposing the corporitization of education.
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The simple yet glaring way to view the disingenuousness of the fake reformers is with basic math/logic. If you want to close a gap (real or imagined) stealing 10-12 weeks per year from learning to test, prep, & pre-test will result in a very obvious and much bigger gap as kids will have lost MORE THAN ONE WHOLE SCHOOL YEAR by the time they graduate. This, of course, only works well for those who wish to more easily control the masses. The standards/testing/privitizing crowd are all lying as this has nothing to do with children.
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Testing is about control and compliance, not about actual learning and wisdom, something the chiefs and CEOs would know if a) they were teachers; b) their own children were subjected to the same battery of tests. I’m beyond fed up with the classist nonsense they parade about as “opportunity.”
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No country tests itself to excellence. Continual measurement does nothing to improve instruction. Test and punish is about politics not students. Education should be run by educators.
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Our testing regime is created by paper pushers in cubicles with no clue about real schools or the culture of schools. I have been a special educator for 21 years. I am NOT anti testing-just anti federally controlled, Federally developed and federally mandated high stakes testing. This current testing regimen is punitive, expensive and incredibly disruptive to students. There is a better way. Talk to teachers on the ground, not bureaucrats with their heads in the clouds and the last time they graced a public school hall -way was when they were tiny tots. Not to mention that the current testing regime provides no actionable, helpful information to teachers. The scores are only used to divide, shame and punish.
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My reasons for disliking standardized testing are simple. High test scores, not active learning, have become the goal of education. Schools have been punished and teachers have lost autonomy. But the biggest sin is that they truly hurt the neediest children.
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The reason the pro-test folks are making so much noise is because ESEA is finally in danger of being rewritten, and a removal of the federal mandates for large scale standardized testing would mean a huge loss of revenue for the testing companies. That’s why we are currently being treated to so many pieces in praise of the Big Standardized Test. The groups you listed are not so much pro-test as they are pro-money.
Meanwhile, we’ve seen not a shred of evidence that the big standardized tests measure anything except a student’s ability to take the big standardized test. They are wasting prcious time and money and giving nothing useful in return.
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My son will not be taking the standardized end of the year exam in Florida. It is designed to fail, and the corporations distributing these tests are making money off our children. This test is not valid, and is still an experiment on our children. If 3rd graders don’t pass it here, they might not move on to 4th grade. So even if they got A’s all year, it doesn’t matter. High stakes tests are wrong, and unethical. I will not subject my son to an experiment for the benefit of corporate agendas.
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I know also the focus of any good test should be data to help students. Yet, results are delayed nearly 6 months, and educators never get access to the test, or student answers to the test. Based on limited transparency of the data alone these tests should not be used.
Then there is the use of these very tests to evaluate teachers, and to decide if students should be held back a grade. Both uses go far beyond the scope of using the tests to “help” teachers reach, and help students.
The only purpose PARCC/Common Core serves is to weaken public education, and profit textbook/testing companies…
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I can’t say that I have seen any pro-test organization increase in size like the protest (Opt Out) movement has. New York had over 20,000 opt outs last year. Colorado students hit the movement hard this year and Opt Out of the State Test: Indiana’s facebook page has increased by over 1,000 new likes to the page and over 32,000 post reach in the last week alone. Yes, I have seen many corporate bought cheer-fests for charter schools and vouchers, but never for standardized tests. So absolutely, it is the “you”s, a.k.a. me and thousands of other parents [some with money, some not], across America that are seeing our children, their teachers and local communities being harmed by the high stakes of standardized assessments and taking a stand against the unethical assessments and corruptness of the high stakes attached. As a mother of 3, one with Asberger’s (high ability Autism), I have had to learn to advocate for my son and went through the I.E.P. processes to Opt him out of these unethical one test assessments. I welcome all other parents with special needs children, and teachers and school administrators willing to take a stand even though their teaching licenses may be threatened, to use the guide I wrote for Case Conference Committees to legally opt out a special needs child from these unethical assessments. It is the Case Conference Committee’s right and responsibility to determine the free and appropriate assessments for special needs children, not our federal government, state governments, or school districts. Even the testing profession’s own ethical standards state you do not use one test to assess learning, but this is what is unethically happening across America…unethical and corrupt conduct that is harming our children, our future citizens. Also, as a Human Resources professional, I do not want to hire a good test taker. I want to hire humans with compassion, passion for what work they want to do, good judgement and critical thinking skills…things not measured on standardized tests. http://unitedoptout.com/essential-guides/opt-out-for-special-needsexceptional-students/
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Merry, I am unable to print a copy of your guide for parents of special needs children without sharing friend lists, etc. Can you please tell me how I might get either a digital or hard copy? Thank you so much for your help and work towards ending this nightmare.
And John…I retired this year after 34 years of teaching, 30 in public education. While I am still committed to helping to stop this testing madness, I no longer felt good about what I was doing. Until a few years ago I used to think almost daily about how blessed I was to love my chosen career so much…teaching children with special needs was all I ever wanted to do and I felt lucky to be paid for doing something I enjoyed so very much. But then I watched the students I had delicately nurtured for months dissolve into tears because the tests were so developmentally inappropriate. I watched as the students colored in those little bubbles before I had completed reading the question to them and I saw their self confidence decrease day after day every time they faced another test. I saw teachable moments fall by the wayside because preparing for the test was more relevant. Recess was abolished, important classes in music and art were as well, classes that were the only way for some students to excel. My abounding appreciation goes out to everyone who is working to stop this abuse of our children. And John, I would love to hear your thoughts about the issue after hearing from so many of us.
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Jill – I fixed it – here is the guide http://unitedoptout.com/essential-guides/opt-out-for-special-needsexceptional-students/
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In general, I reject an oversimplification of any issue that ends with bifurcation. The question is not “protest” or “pro-test” (although it is a clever headline). Rather, the question is: test reasonably and responsibly, or test excessively and irresponsibly. As a career educator, a parent, and an educational researcher, I am not in protest of assessment, but I am in protest of the bastardization of education in the name of data collection. I protest the loss of teacher authority in the classroom in favor of district and corporate created tests. I protest the use of summative assessments that do not drive instruction over formative assessments that provide valuable feedback to teachers, students, and parents. I protest the pedagogically inappropriate use of classroom time: the demands of six year olds to silently sit for 60-90 minutes taking a district literacy test.
I also reject the statement made in this blog: “The basic message: “If you don’t take the test, you won’t be counted–and you won’t matter.” My children will not take the test and they matter. In fact, they matter very much. Here is our story:
http://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/education/2015/01/23/brevard-students-caught-middle-test-refusals/22223977/
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A,student of mine, before the CCSS, put it most clearly: Teach don’t test. His name was Carlos, and he learned by doing. He needed to be active and have i mediated feedback. He loved projects.
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Testing is being challenged in Oregon as well. Local town halls are alive and well with the message from the people that we are not only doing too much testing, but that tests are wrongly high-stakes and don’t serve students and teachers. Legislative bills in our state to curb and refute these tests, protests kids with data privacy, and to stop CCSS are here in Oregon. The people are rising up—legislators are listening, this house of cards is ready to fall. Opt out is growing by the day, teachers are willing to publicly challenge the SBAC and high-stakes of everything. We are at a tipping point: corporate or public control of our schools–that is the question.
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All parents should refuse state mandated testing that have punitive consequences that are detrimental to public schools, categorize and jeopardize students and holds a teachers salary as well as their job hostage based on the results of these tests. Cut scores are made then later manipulated. What information can really be gleaned from that. NOTHING. High stakes testing and the VALUE ADDED MODEL are all a joke. Teachers and Parents are uniting.
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Hello John,
I’ll be brief because all of the commenters that commented before me stole all of the points I wanted to make…
The federal government ordering states to force children, as young as five, to take tests in exchange for school funding, is wrong. Really wrong.
It’s important to know the reasons why this is being done and there are only two: data and profit. Nothing more.
Parents and teachers of conscience who are active in the opt-out movement will not allow their children and students to be used as a tool to make others profit.
Today’s standardized assessments and state tests make these people billions of dollars. They profit off of children… all children, of every socioeconomic background… especially those kids living in poverty that come to school with no socks on in the middle of winter.
Parents are angry. Teachers are angry. That’s why we opt out. That’s why we refuse the out-of-control tests that teach kids nothing.
Thanks for your time, John.
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Right to the point. We are talking about our federal government holding funding of our children’s (future citizens) education hostage.
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The only forces in favor of this mess, and I mean the whole mess of so called “reform” are those self interested and well funded. They have money, access to power and front organizations that are not stocked with ardent supporters. Just ask to look behind the curtain and you will not find educators, researchers, parents, but rather a cynical batch of opportunists and exploiters…….
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I don’t why the issue of the “protest” movement is any more valid if it’s an organized movement. I think the real strength comes from people learning about the damaging effects of this high stakes testing that does drive instruction, and making that personal choice to opt-out/fight it. The public education deform movement is dependent on a public that listens to the hype and are good followers. We need to stop just following and become informed!
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I’m greatly encouraged to see the opposition building to the misuse of standardized testing for “accountability.” I first researched psychometrics as a college assessment committee chair 10-15 years ago, and it’s only gotten worse since that time. Fill-in-the-bubble tests do *not* measure college readiness — in spite of whatever claims the test vendors may try to make about designing metrics for critical thinking, etc. At best, K-12 test scores correlate with parents’ education level and family income by ZIP code. The “pro-test” people (with the hyphen) are well funded and have much to gain financially from test-driven corporate school reform, but in the end it is founded on junk science, and PARCC. Common Core, NCLB and the whole apparatus will collapse of its own weight. The only question in my mind is whether it will destroy our system of public education before that happens.
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This testing is so incredibly out of control. I am a parent of a third grader in Indiana who will have to deal with 18+ hrs. of ISTEP testing plus an additional reading test called IREAD-3 which students must pass in order to be promoted to fourth grade. It’s such a waste of time when her school and teachers already know exactly how well she performs in all subjects. My daughter also has to take the NWEA tests 3 times a year. I really want to opt out of the testing, but as a teacher myself, I can’t put her teacher in jeopardy of a poor evaluation or the school in jeopardy of a lower letter grade. I’m very torn.
As a fifth grade teacher, these tests are completely altering education. The high-stakes attached to them make schools and teachers spend way too much time on test prep. And no teacher can ignore the tests. The pressure and consequences from these tests force teachers into poor educational decisions. I’ve never use the test results for much of anything.
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You are right about one thing, John. The pro-test people have money and power. What they are scared of is that the protest camp has numbers. Whether they have enough voices this year, or if it will take another year, I think you can rest assured, the protest people will be heard.
Who is doing the protesting? People who have deep convictions about children and childhood. People who are passionate about removing the immense amount of stress off of the often very small shoulders of our elementary students. Parents, teachers, grandparents, social workers, pediatricians, mental health workers and others are all beginning to speak out.
The power hungry money grabbing pro-test people should run scared. They’ve been seen. There is no validity or rationality to their claims – many of which are outright lies. We have seen them for who they are. The Emperor wears no clothes. And the truth is beginning to spread.
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As a parent of a child who has to take this test I would like to say that it needs to be ended. I watch my child struggle to learn things that she probably isn’t ready for maturity wise and then feels like a failure when she doesn’t understand. My child is not the failure. The system is failing her. Our children are not cattle being raised to meet a productivity standard. The very system entrusted with growth and learning should not be a system that mass produces children with low self esteem because they can’t pass a test written to line someone else’s pockets.
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Standardized testing is akin to measuring yourself repeatedly and thinking it will help you grow. We could save billions of dollars by simply asking the teachers about their students. I can tell you with almost exact precision how every one of my nearly 200 students will do on a standardized test. For that matter, you could simply predict the scores based on zip codes or parent income levels. We all know what the scores will tell you, they always have told the same story. Since this is the case, wouldn’t it be better to spend this money improving the conditions of the classrooms and the lives of the students we are testing rather than continuing to think that a test is going to be some great equalizer for students who live in poverty? If you want to grow, you do not keep measuring yourself, you eat. Yet we just keep measuring and never feeding.
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It is with some professional risk, but no reservation that I speak publicly against the Common Core and its associated tests.
From 1999-2001 I was a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching in the former Soviet Union, where I was told that it was part of my job to help teachers incorporate creativity and critical thinking skills into their lessons as this was not done under Soviet rule. Essentially, students were given information to memorize for tests, but were given few opportunities to think, question, reflect or create. A fact that was all to apparent both in the schools and elsewhere.
After returning from the Peace Corps, I jumped at the opportunity to teach here. You can imagine my dismay when now confronted with the fact that standardized testing and teaching to the test have increased exponentially with NCLB and Race to The Top. Imagine my dismay with scripted lessons and teaching to the test. I would be unsettled even if the standards students were being tested on were proven standards that teachers had been given the opportunity to work on and approved by states. Sadly, this is not the case. The standards, while having there good points in some areas, are vague or developmentally inappropriate in others. Two of the original CC committee members refused to sign off on them, and now speak against these standards. The associated tests are written by profit-driven companies. States were forced to accept the standards or lose precious funds.
Our schools are not perfect, but they are not failing the way that some would like you to believe. Having lived abroad, I do question the validity of statistics comparing the United States to other countries. Not all countries educate everyone or test everyone the way we do. With this, come challenges that I gladly accept as a teacher.
Teachers need time to collaborate, not just with other teachers, but with parents, nurses, doctors and social service agencies . They need money for good supplies, hands on experiments and field trips that bring learning to life. Teachers need respect and support for what they do. What they do not need is to be punished and vilified while watching their students suffer through standardized tests designed by a profit-driven company.
Passionate teachers that inspire learning, questioning and creativity are what make this country great. This is what has helped to create a nation of scientists, engineers, doctors, business owners, political leaders and future teachers.
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Mr. Merrow, I have long hoped–sadly, in vain–that you might weigh in on this issue in a truly open way. You have spent more time in schools than most education reporters, and in years past, you seemed to “get it.” I no longer hold out such hope.
I have been following the educational “standards and testing movement” (and you cannot, in good faith, separate them) for over twenty years. What we have now is the apotheosis of the dreams of the coalition of quasi-governmental groups (CCSSO, NGA), business-oriented think tanks, and philanthropic groups, and neoliberal politicians of both stripes that jumped started this whole boondoggle after the A Nation at Risk report. The history–political and intellectual– is there for you to read. I said to my thesis advisor, when I started researching this (about 1992), that this path could easily lead to the end of public schools as we know them. He was startled, and said that surely parents would mobilize if it came to that.
It has, and they have done so.
Many of the criticisms of the CCSS and their attendant examinations are indeed strident. These parents–the oddest of bedfellows–are not mistaken about what is at stake. I implore you to take a step back from the Gates et al. party line and explore this history and this present day for yourself.
Interesting, too, in this comments thread, to whom you decide to respond and to whom you do not. Do you have a thought about that? Mis-spell your name? A response! Take the ground out from under your assumptions? Silence.
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Kim
I am not assuming anything. I’m asking questions and am grateful for the answers being provided.
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These high stake test are nothing other than child abuse!!
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More and more parents are opting out/refusing the test! This movement has a come a long way in the past year. Testing is hurting our children. Teachers are being attacked and cannot truly teach in many cases. Opting out/refusing is the ONLY way to destroy the testing machine!
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Suburban Philadelphia is waking up from our slumber. If the cities were the appetizers, the suburbs are the main course of hedge fund dreams. Parents are opting out and fed up with federal over-reach. We like our schools, trust our teachers, and love our kids. We aren’t playing their game anymore. Our kids are so much more than test scores.
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I’m a public school teacher. I teach music to children in grades kindergarten through five. This is my 23rd year teaching. When I began, we had band and strings in grades 4-12 in my district, as well as chorus in grades 4-12, as well as an Orff instrument (classroom xylophones and other percussion instruments) ensemble in grades 4-12. As the years have gone on and the stakes of standardized testing have gone up and up, all of those things have disappeared. There are no string instruments in our district at all. The band students begin in grade 6 in much larger groups. The choral program begins in grade 6 and is shrinking at an alarming rate in grades 9-12. Visual arts programs have disappeared at a similar rate.
My students are far less creative and interested in learning than the ones I taught 20 years ago, and I don’t chalk it up to “this generation” of kids. I truly believe that they have been drilled and skilled so much that their abilities to think for themselves and create new ideas have dried up due to lack of nurturing.
Classroom teachers in elementary grades do not have the time or the academic freedom to assign projects, to integrate art and music into their subjects, to take students on field trips, and many other things. They are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time on testing, test preparation, and incredibly time consuming but mind numbing curricula, in some cases literally scripted. They are told to make their students parrot back their objectives in the form of “I Can” statements, as in, “Boys and girls, after today’s lesson, you will be able to add three digit numbers. Repeat after me: I Can add three digit numbers.” And heaven help the teacher if during a “walk-through” or a formal observation an administrator asks a child what the objective is in this lesson and the child does not parrot the exact words, “I Can add three digit numbers.” The evaluation gets a ding, and the teacher, no matter how well that student actually understands math, is rated “developing” or even “ineffective.”
The over reliance on standardized tests in the United States is not making our students any more “college and career ready.” It is making our students less excited about learning, less creative, less able to solve problems, less proficient in world languages, less knowledgeable about ancient and current global civilizations, less knowledgeable about art, music, literature, science, and anything that isn’t on THE TEST. Parents and teachers know this to be true. When will legislators listen?
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Consider what happens almost every time the “impressive” side of this tries to use social media to amplify their messaging. In short order the fake grassroots organizations they are funding get overwhelmed by actual parent and teacher activists who do not have money but have passion on their side.
Real grassroots activism has a natural energy that cannot be faked. I think your hypothesis that there are big names but not a lot of people behind them on the pro-testing side is very, very likely.
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Nobody defends the current regime of tests because they are too long, too inappropriate, designed to confuse and frustrate, and most of all, they’re written to ensure failure. They don’t inform instruction, and they’re a waste of precious time for educators, and most importantly for the children who must suffer through their imposition.
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The corporation-based “de” form movement of Common Core and standardized testing is the holocaust of education in our country! Parents and teachers must stand together to triumph against the rich “few”.
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I am a Kindergarten teacher and, while my 5 year olds aren’t yet taking standardized tests, many thousands across the country are. It is ludicrous and it is detrimental. The standards and testing are particularly discouraging, inappropriate and harmful to our youngest learners. All across the nation, Kindergarten students are losing recess, play opportunities, PE, music and the arts because of the over emphasis on reading and math due to the standardized testing craze. This is a common sense issue. Teacher morale has never been lower. Enrollment in colleges of education is down, veteran teachers are leaving, and new teachers aren’t staying. We have politicians and corporate leaders who have never taught a day in their life dictating these punitive and un researched policies. Early Childhood experts in American are decrying what is happening and asking for policies that show efficacy based on research and appropriate policies based on what we know about childhood development. It is wrong for corporate dollars to mean more than the welfare of little children.
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We are “PROTEST”!!!! I will NOT subject my son to this test, or allow him to be intimidated by anyone who might think to threaten him with consequences over refusing.
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Here in Florida, testing season in full swing. As an employee of the school system the past 13 years, I have seen what high stakes testing has done to countless children, teachers and schools. It is time to take back our schools, and let the teachers teach. So sick and tired of everything, and I mean everything, focused around a test that does nothing for students. It is all about data, and the money these testing companies make. I am so happy that the Opt Out Movement has made its way to Florida and hope that parents and students will do their research on how its done. Opting out/Refusing the tests is the ONLY way this will ever stop. My 11th grader will NOT be taking the new FSA this year, and I am telling everyone that I know to stand up to this madness. Enough!
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These tests are ridiculously inappropriate for special needs students, language learners, and slow developing students. Testing has not improved scores over time and have definitely harmed education.
I challenge you to spend a week actually teaching in a variety of public schools, particularly those who work with children living in poverty and daily trauma. I am certain you would change your view on testing as a true measure of social and academic growth.
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Catherine, as a kindergarten teacher, although I was not required to give a standardized test, there were so many “formative” assessments required by our district, I had NO time to teach!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/kindergarten-teacher-details-lunacy-of-standardized-tests-for-kids/2011/07/24/gIQApZjNXI_blog.html
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Today, testing is about a parasite, the Testing Industrial Complex, trying to gain access to all of the places where it can gorge itself on tax dollars meant for public education. Like many parasites, it also seeks to change the behavior of it’s host, in this case our schools, to better serve it’s needs. It’s small consolation that this parasite needs it’s host to remain alive in some fashion, though it cares not for it’s health, ultimately for the quality of education our children receive. Be aware that there is a variety of the parasite that does in fact kill it’s host, the one that is opposed altogether to the very idea of public education. Both types are especially devious as both have infiltrated and co-opted what passes for government, welcomed by venal politicians hungry for campaign contributions. This is the beast we must slay.
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