“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 
The excessive testing of our children and treating them as data points are the educational crises of our time. Teachers, administrators, and students are forced to spend valuable time with useless interventions and punitive meetings instead of spending time in the classroom teaching and learning! Standardized tests are great predictors of zip codes, but students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are just as capable of success as privileged students, given REAL learning opportunities. opportunities. Stop wasting their time jumping through hoops and let us teach!
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The tests themselves are flawed w/mistakes, are never seen after they are administered and therefore cannot even be used to drive instruction, are being used to evaluate teachers who cannot possibly control all the variables leading to a test score, stress kids out, and suck millions of tax payers dollars from our pockets. Need I say more?
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I teach English as a Second Language in New York State, and if you are an immigrant who comes in one day before the New York State Math Test — then you must take the New York State Math Test, even if you can’t speak, read or write a word of English. Maybe the new immigrant would have a chance if the test were straight computation, but it’s not. It’s almost all word problems, often with multiple steps, and the students also have to write about why they solved the problem the way that they did. Why on Earth do we do this to kids who have not even had the opportunity to learn English!? It makes no sense! The test scores show us nothing about the child except that he or she has not yet learned English — which we already knew. And they say nothing about the school’s math instruction — because the child has not been HERE to be instructed. Think of yourself, having to take a test in Arabic, Chinese, or Russian, when you have had zero exposure to the language. For the New York State English Language Arts Test, new immigrants have a year’s grace, but a year still is not much time, especially if the student is not literate in his or her home language. If they come to the United States at age 12, they may be placed in sixth grade, and they will take the ELA exam in seventh grade. In one year, New York State expects a child to learn a new language — and to go from illiteracy to reading at seventh grade level. Can a native speaker of English make seven years’ worth of growth in reading in one year — without even having to deal with learning a whole new language? If that were possible, we could just eliminate kindergarten through sixth grade and just let everyone start school at age 13. The ESL students try very hard to do these impossible tests, and many end up crying and saying that they’re stupid. They trust their teachers, and assume that if we gave them the test, then they should be able to do it….and if they can’t, something is wrong with them. These new kids, who simply need time to actually learn English, get labeled as failures when they can’t do the impossible — and so do the teachers and schools who serve them.
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They do the same thing here in Texas. It is heartbreaking to see children’s self esteem destroyed because of unreasonable expectations. I studied Spanish in college and in Mexico for 8 years and I still wasn’t fluent enough to pass a test to become a bilingual teacher (which is why I am a ESL teacher). How can they expect kids to become fluent in 1 year is cruel and inhuman.
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As a teacher since 1987 and a parent since 1992, a yearly state test has never told me anything about a student (or my own children) that I didn’t already know. I am currently a special educator. These tests do nothing for my students except wipe out months of work building in them the confidence to take educational risks. I have watched (and shed tears with) students who have cried as they faced a test grade levels above their documented reading levels. What is the point of this? It is nothing less than abusive.
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There is growing anger related to the amount and length of tests given to students Indiana. I am not against a standardized test. I am against the overuse, misuse, and abuse of high-stakes standardized tests.
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Common core & the tests that come along with them have already done so much damage to the experience of learning & education. It must be stopped in it’s tracks NOW. Children are being abused & us, the parents & educators will NOT stand for it!
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I’m seriously worried about the terrible results we’re seeing and are going to see from the Standardized Testing revolution that’s overtaken the US. Opt Out is a GREAT initiative, and I support it.
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Our current toxic testing environment has created an all time low morale for schools across our country. This strongly impacts a child’s leaning.
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I am a teacher of ELL students. After being in the country for only one year, they are being required to take the ELA and Math assesments in NY. Research has proven that it takes 3-5 years for academic language to be learned, yet we are testing after only one year. What kind of results will we get? Our students and their teachers will be penalized because they will NOT pass the exams.Our schools will be under scrutiny because of a low passing rates. How will one test, given once a year, adequately show the progress these students have made? Wouldn’t a better system of assessment be the daily progress the students have made throughout the year as assessed by their teacher, someone highly qualified to assess the students’ academic growth?
Another point here is that teachers do not receive an analytical breakdown of the scores and scores are NOT received in the current academic year. How can this be useful to drive instruction when the teacher no longer has those students in class and doesn’t know which questions or what type of questions the students are getting wrong? This makes the testing results virtually useless. Forget the fact that the cureent ELA 3rd grade test was wriiten on a 5th grade lexile level.
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I had a realization a short while ago that changed the way I viewed the high stakes standardized testing that our children have been subjected to for the last 10+ years. I am a high school Spanish teacher, not a tested area. So, while new teacher evaluation systems and having to create more assessments to give my students to “prove” that they are learning have been bothersome over the last few years, I have been able to continue to teach my students using the best practices I have learned over the years and by gearing our activities to their interests.
But then I imagined myself as a literature or mathematics or science teacher, which are currently the tested areas. I looked back at the last few years and thought, okay, when I was required to create additional assessments to prove my students were learning, I can shape them into our current studies so they are not harmed. When demand increased by administrators and State and Federal legislation and regulations to teach to that test, I could still teach my students using the best practices I have learned and they will still do well on their standardized tests and my students will not be harmed. I may get in trouble for not doing standardized test prep for my students, but my students would not be harmed.
Then came the announcement that the new PARCC exams (which as I’m sure others have stated are flawed to say the least) would be a graduation requirement for high school. I was in my car by myself and I actually said out loud, “They’ve got me.” I can no longer shield my students from test prep and pressure, because now if they do not do well on the exam, they will not graduate high school. Now my students will be harmed, and I must teach to that test to ensure they graduate from high school. I can no longer protect them from the effects of high-stakes testing in my classroom.
And then I thought, this was the plan all along. And that my students would be held accountable to a set of standards written not by educators, but by politicians and businesspeople, which standards were then interpreted by a for profit company, Pearson, and inserted into a series of extremely flawed exams that would determine if they graduate high school or not. I suddenly felt the hand of the federal government directly in my classroom. I suddenly realized that my local school no longer had control over our curriculum. That the local control of education that has long been the standard and law of the land for public education in this country had been eroded away.
That was when I first decided that not only would by own daughter not participate in these exams, but that I would do what I could to educate my fellow parents and educators about the right of parents to refuse these exams as a statement of protest against the federal governmental infringement on our local education. Since that time I have begun to educate myself about how all this came about. I have joined several local opt out groups and have been amazed by the dedication and resolve of so many parents who have had to educate their local boards of education on the state of the law with great results.
Many school districts have changed their stance on making students sit and stare at the screen during the testing periods or forcing parents to keep their children home on testing days as unexcused absences from school to allowing the children of parents who refuse testing for their child to be in an alternate location and read or do other school work. It feels like democracy in action to me. It feels like parents taking their power back when it comes to the education of their children. It feels good.
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I pulled my daughter out of public school and enrolled her in an online charter school in Ohio – not because I think charter schools can do any better than a public school and not for any other reason than common core. I wanted control over what my daughter was being taught and what she was learning. Common core math is a year behind what she already knows and was taught in public school before their curriculum changed. She may be required to complete her too simple math assignments for school, but we focus more time learning above the standards in math. Language Arts is now a joke – there is no joy in reading, it’s informational text. While I understand that there is importance in knowing how to decipher informational text, my fourth grader could care less. She still believes in Santa, the Easter bunny, etc – she has an amazing imagination. But her Pearson published text book is full of informational text, making reading a chore, something she is required, not wants, to do.
Now the government wants to test her on this garbage?!? School districts want to punish teachers if their students don’t perform well on these tests? How is this fair to students and teachers? If my daughter had to take the PARCC test she would likely fail miserably. Not because she doesn’t know anything, but because she doesn’t draw millions of dots, or squares, or some other picture to solve a math problem. On the language arts portion of PARCC she will get a 50% or lower – she can answer part A of each question no problem, but because she has a communication barrier that she gets speech therapy for, she struggles with being able to explain herself.
How do I know how she will do? She has been doing PARCC test prep weekly for the past 11 weeks! She has been subjected to this so much that there is no reason for her to sit for hours testing just to tell me and her teachers what we already know! It’s a waste of time that could have been spent getting her to improve on areas that she struggles. It’s a waste of tax payer dollars. But by all means, let Pearson score our children and teachers with their PARCC tests – maybe they will learn something in order to improve their failing online charter school Connections Academy.
This is why my daughter will not be taking the PARCC test and why we refused. Kudos to all the teachers out there standing up for what you believe in – you are all worth much more to me than my child’s state mandated test scores!
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As a teacher in Washington State who has opted my own children out of SBAC, these tests are not a one size fits all. Students learn at different rates and have different strengths. A teacher would be privy to the student needs and strengths, but these tests do nothing to improve student growth. Let’s get rid of them and put the money into allowing students to use their imagination and exploration skills, not practicing for another high stakes test!
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Those that trumpet Common Core do so because it “teaches critical thinking”. And many of the Standards do exactly that. Why, then, are these same people so gung-ho about a test that has nothing to do with these critical thinking Standards at all? The only thing these tests measure is income level. If your children go to a school with a low percentage of free/reduced lunch students, chances are they will do well. Students in high poverty areas, not so much.
Also, we are now being told that these test scores will have a direct impact on our evaluations and the decision on whether we remain employed or not. Yet the only subjects tested are ELA and Math. Is it truly fair to tie a Music teacher’s job to test scores for students in a subject he doesn’t even teach?
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As a resident of Florida where a school accountability program, with its associated high stakes testing and school grading system, has been in place for over a decade, and as a mother of two boys who were subjected to the narrowed, worthless curriculum and over-testing with a faulty test and inconsistent annual cut scores, I can tell you this system does not work and does the opposite of what those pushing accountability says it does. Being accountable means being able to be trusted to do what is right, but since school accountability actually prevents kids from getting individual needs met in the push to make every child learn the same thing the same way, school accountability completely fails to do what it is purported to do. I’ve seen too many kids badly affected, including my own gifted kids who got a dumbed down, grade-level-only, one-size-fits-all education that didn’t prepare them for college. When my son applied for college, an admissions representative told a group of parents at the school tour that the school hated all the testing because kids were coming into college unprepared, and from what I saw after my kids and their friends went to college, that was a true statement.
School accountability is derived from business accountability systems. Motorola developed the Six Sigma system, but also died by it. Motorola engineers at the Florida plant had several mantras they repeated continuously as they watched Motorola implode due to over-reliance on an accountability system with a base philosophy similar to the school accountability system. These mantras were, “be careful what you measure”, “the metrics become the goal”, and “we’re just chasing the metrics.” It is not true that if all standards or metrics are measured at an acceptable level then the overall, broad goal is met.
Accountability systems initially were designed for the manufacturing of products to reduce defects so all units are exactly alike. However, people (teachers, students, employees) are not products, don’t have defects that need to be eliminated, and are not all the same with the same needs, abilities and desires. Joseph Juran first introduced the human element to the Six Sigma system, but there are big differences between applying these systems to human beings as opposed to inanimate objects in a production line, and even Juran knew that adjustments had to be made. Just ask the 3M Corporation because it had to abandon Six Sigma when the program impeded creativity and discovery and almost killed the company, similarly to what happened to Motorola (another firm dependent on tech research requiring engineers to exhibit creativity and engage in discovery.) Young children learn by discovery, so what does 3Ms experience and Motorola’s experience indicate about how a similar system affects learning? Decision-making for something as important as a child’s education cannot be reduced to a simple black/white or yes/no answer without consideration of nuances and special conditions that affect each unique child. School accountability systems do not and cannot measure what the public thinks they measure and they do not and cannot encourage a nurturing environment where children’s individual needs can be met so they can learn not only subject material, but also learn to think and to think critically.
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“At this point, the discussion is no longer about testing, it’s about learning and how we propose to be responsible about it—especially with reference to historically under-served children and their families.”
You certainly will not be responsible about learning by pretending test-based accountability is sound education policy. Education research tells us what works. The current nonstop blitz of high-stakes, misused, and overused standardized testing could not be farther away from that.
Those who set education policy have allowed blind worship of metrics to replace human judgment and wisdom. Why? Because when you pretend to have quantified a problem, then you can sell a quantified solution.
Education “reform” as now practiced is not about education. It’s about building and sustaining markets for education products and services.
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A year ago, I would have been stunned by the number of responses to your question, John. I would have thought that the Arne Duncan argument for accountability would have people nodding in agreement. If this is the reponse today, could you imagine where this will be in 2016 as the presidential race is really underway?
Teachers have been the punching bags for politicians over the last couple of decades. They have sat quietly by, working to meet an increasing number of mandates that have created a mess in public schools- and it’s those mandates that have resulted in the stagnation that people always seem to point to as some sign that there is a problem in our school systems. And there is a problem with our public schools- too much political game-playing, fancy regulations that take time away from the children who need to taught, and an increase in oversight that seeks to create an unnecessary homogeneity in a country that prides itself on its diversity.
It seems to contain a bit of irony, to me, in that one of our key tools in knowing our students- assessments- has become a weapon in the hands of those who seek to privatize schools. I won’t restate the numerous points people have made about how we use authentic assessments in our classrooms in ways that benefit students and teachers, or talk about the money trail to the various corporations and philanthropic organizations that seek to make a buck off of kids. There’s no more need to point out Secretary Duncan’s disconnect with a public schools system that he was never a part of or how the data collected by these tests only continue to show that the differences between schools and students reflect only their zip codes.
As for the “accountability” piece that usually comes up when standardized tests are discussed…. Yes, taxpayers fund schools and as teachers, we wish to make sure they get their money’s worth. But we feel an even deeper level of accountability- we are morally and ethically responsible to and for every child that walks in to our classrooms. They come for an education and a development of their minds. Whether they become doctors or painters, scientists or dancers, engineers or musicians- they should each have the chance to learn to explore their own interests in the safety of acceptance that we give them. Parents trust us to help their children learn how to see and understand the world, and we are obligated to them to do so. We are also accountable to the teachers who have had our students before, to continue the lessons they learned before us; to those whom we share our students with each day to make sure we continue to connect the lessons they learn throughout each day; and to those who will have our students in the future, so that they can continue to open new doors to understanding as the student moves on in life.
The carrot-and-stick approach to strengthening our public school system wil never work. Teaching is a “calling”, as I’ve heard so many times. We shed the same blood, sweat, and tears each school year as our students do- and there’s no test that can measure that. No multiple-choice science assessment can measure a student’s ability to do science- science is a process, not a regurgitation of facts. No test can measure how a student can apply meaning to a reading passage, for our understandings of the written word are filtered through our own individual experiences. No writing test can ever measure the simple beauty in constructing meanings out of words, how we put them together, and how they may be interpreted by the reader.
To standardize those processes is a moral crime to the work we do with our students, and parents are awakening to that knowledge. Hundreds of thousands? Here’s to hoping that number grows much higher when it comes to parents opting out of the tests- and to teachers giving them.
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For three long years I have poured myself into this cesspool of CCRAP. I now know Corespeak, I can sniff out a pro-CCRAP troll a mile away and could have a PhD in this subject. What I’ve found is when I separate and then DQ anyone because they are tied to and therefore prostitute themselves for the money, there is nobody left to talk to. On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands if not a million parents, teachers and advocates with nothing but children in their hearts; trying to fight this evil for profit abuse of children for nothing but that. Add to the anti side all those that can and do Refuse by way of private or homeschool. We refuse because it is the right thing to do for the children and everything else is just evil noise.
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Since last June, Opt Out Orlando has helped parents, teachers and former teachers to start their own local Opt Out groups in 26 separate districts across the state of Florida. In this way, parents and teachers have become empowered to address their specific concerns and to advocate for their children and students in their local communities.
When parents make the decision for their child to opt out, some have expressed fear or hesitation; others say they are repudiated, even accused of placing the burden of opting out on their (often young) children. But the burden of excessive, punitive high stakes tests on the children is a far greater burden for children to bear, which is not imposed by their parents. Children are really on the front lines for matters that have nothing to do with their actual learning.
When we ask children, especially young children, to bear the burden of performing on a single test, or else… in order to ensure their promotion, graduation, possible retention and/or remediation, whether their teacher’s contract is renewed, whether their school stays open, whether their school gets the right grade to ensure adequate funding, it is oppressive and abusive. There is no way that it cannot be.
Those are adult concerns and have no place in any child’s education.
Far more important than the FACT that high stakes testing does NOT serve the educational needs of children and does NOT inform or improve teachers’ instruction, is the FACT that it CAUSES REAL HARM to children, their teachers and their schools, and it needs to STOP.
To allow children to participate in this farce is to condone and perpetuate these oppressive and abusive policies.
I harbor no illusions that our education leaders would publicly support the Opt Out movement. Many do so quietly, and are only quiet out of fear. I am hopeful that they are understanding and supportive of parents as we advocate for multiple measures of authentic assessments for our children AND teachers. We as parents must do what we can to protect our children, their education, their very health, well-being, and best interests, which, because children are our most vulnerable population, must morally supersede any state mandate or law. Our current education accountability laws are, at best, misguided, and at worst, abusive, and must be overhauled. We advocate for lasting relief from punitive laws for our children and teachers. I am confident that our success to that end will only strengthen public education in Florida.
Opting out is not easy. It is not an action parents “choose” without great consideration of all of the consequences. It truly is our last resort, in order to bring to bear the appropriate pressure on legislators to effect positive, meaningful and lasting change to the laws governing public education.
We are grassroots and we are growing.
Sandy Stenoff
Opt Out Orlando
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As someone who grew up poor in the era of high stakes testing and an educator, I can speak to the massive destruction testing has done to our communities and children. Testing replaced real leaning and authentic assessment, especially for poor children, whose scores were essentialized and turned into a tool to label these children as deviant and in need of a less rich education. What limited money the schools had was now going towards testing, instead of equalizing education resources for the poor. The scores were then used to justify the closure of neighborhood schools which were promptly replaced by charters that lack accountability and engage in horrible practices that criminalize the poor and don’t improve the quality of education. My high school was one of the first to be closed down, we had no textbooks, no AP classes and a revolving door of under qualified and over stretched educators and the charters are the same, but they also have the power to kick children out of school for minor infractions or refuse entry to the most difficult kids.
When I got to Stanford I began to see just how different the education my peers received and the one I received was and it is a travesty of justice. I have yet to see high stakes standardize tests measure anything of value and provide anything of value and anyone else who went to a public school in my generation is keenly aware of how awful and stupid these tests are. So even if there aren’t the numbers now, Millenials will eventually mobilize and challenge these tests and then you will see widespread generation revolt, the early stirrings of which we’ve seen in places like Seattle.
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I am protest. Every reason why has already been stated.
Where are the Pro-Test people and their reasons why they are ? I would imagine the answers you may get is accountability. They will never say, look at all the money we are making. Then we must ask the question, where is their accountability, credibility and morality ?
One may like to create a “test” so to speak to hold them accountable. I’m certain the pro-testers would fail miserably.
Research who the Pro-Testers are and you may understand how we got to where we are today.
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I am a New York State teacher. I have been a teacher for 22 years. The New York State Common Core Assessments administered over the past 2 years are a farce. They differ significantly from the state assessments given during the previous 10 years. They are designed to make your child FAIL! PROTEST the test!
Reading levels on the assessments are well above grade level. Archaic language is used. Math is embedded within long reading passages making it hard to know whether it’s a math or reading error. On the multiple choice section, answers are so close, it can be a guessing game even for the teacher.
Assessments used to be released afterwards to be used to improve instruction. They are now held secret and teachers must sign gag agreements which prevent us from even speaking about the questions with anyone. Administrators cannot even see the questions on the assessments. To be fair, NYS did release some questions last year.
Should parents and administrators see the passages and questions our children are being expected to read and process, all hell would break lose–and SHOULD. This is why teachers are upset. WE see all of the questions. WE see our students and their successes DAILY. Then, during the 6 days of assessments, WE see their shoulders sink in defeat as they sit through these assessments. WE see their tears. WE see them feel stupid. WE see them think of themselves as failures. Our students are NOT stupid or failures. Our political system is failing them. This country is no longer functioning as a democracy as far as education is concerned.
The politics and money surrounding the Common Core need to stop. We are damaging a generation of children. OUR children. Mr. Obama, Mr. Gates, Mr. Duncan, please, let teachers get back to our jobs of teaching this next generation of children.
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John,
Make sense of the testing calender for Hillsborough County please and then explain to me how this is not complete madness. Once parents fully realize what is happening in our schools, then the idea of “opting out” will seem far less radical…
Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screening (FLKRS) Aug 19, 2014
Postsecondary Educational Readiness Test (PERT)-11th-12th grade Aug 19, 2014
Math Formative 1 – 3rd-5th grades Aug 25, 2014
Kindergarten Readiness Test (KRT) Aug 25, 2014
Writing Formative Assessment-6th-8th grades Aug 25, 2014
Science Formative – 5th grade Aug 25, 2014
Science Formative Assessment-6th-8th grades & Biology Aug 26, 2014
Writing Formative Assessment-9th-11th grades Aug 26, 2014
FitnessGram (PE Formative)-2nd & 5th grades Sep 2, 2014
Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading (FAIR)-K-10th grade (11th & 12th as needed) Sep 2, 2014
ACT Testing Sep 13, 2014
Fall Adminstration of End of Course Assessments-US Hist, Bio 1, Alg 1, Geo Sep 15, 2014
Fall Pretests (entry level 1/credit earning courses)-7th-12th grades Sep 16, 2014
Kindergarten Readiness Test (KRT) Sep 19, 2014
FCAT 2.0 Reading & Math Retakes-10th grade(retained/as needed) – 11th, 12th, Adult (as needed) Oct 6, 2014
SAT Testing Oct 11, 2014
Math Formative/Diagnostic Test A-6th-8th grades Oct 13, 2014
Math Benchmark Formative/Diagnostic Test A (high school students) Oct 13, 2014
ReadiStep-7th grade Oct 15, 2014
PSAT-9th-11th grades Oct 15, 2014
ELA Interim Assessment-2nd-5th grades Oct 21, 2014
ACT Testing Oct 25, 2014
ACT Testing Oct 26, 2014
Writing Formative-6th-8th grades Nov 4, 2014
SAT Testing Nov 8, 2014
Math Formative 2-3rd-5th grades Nov 10, 2014
Social Studies Formative (US History-honors & regular) Nov 10, 2014
Science Formative-5th & 8th grades Dec 1, 2014
Writing Formative Assessment-9th-11th grades Dec 1, 2014
Personal Fitness Exam (select students) Dec 1, 2014
Winter Administration of End of Course Assessments (EOC)-US Hist, Bio 1, Alg 1, Geo Dec 1, 2014
FSA English Language Arts Writing Component Field Test-select schools only Dec 1, 2014
Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading (FAIR)-K-10th grade (11th & 12th as needed) Dec 1, 2014
FitnessGram (PE Formative)-6th-8th grades Dec 1, 2014
SAT Testing Dec 6, 2014
ACT Testing Dec 13, 2014
ACT Testing Dec 14, 2014
ELA Interim Assessment-2nd-5th grades Jan 12, 2015
Mid-year and Semester Exams-6th-12th grades Jan 13, 2015
SAT Testing Jan 24, 2015
NAEP / TUDA-selected schools (4th, 8th, 12th) Jan 26, 2015
ACT Testing Feb 7, 2015
Math Formative 3-3rd-4th grades Feb 16, 2015
Spring Pretests-7th-12th grades (entry level 1/credit earning courses-Art, CTE, English, Drivers Ed) Feb 17, 2015
Florida Alternate Assessment (FAA)-(3rd-11th grades, ESE non-FCAT) Feb 23, 2015
SAT-11th grade Feb 25, 2015
Florida Standards Assessment (FSA)-4th-11th grades Mar 2, 2015
Comprehensive English Language Learner Assessment (CELLA)-K-12th grade (ELL) Mar 2, 2015
SAT Testing Mar 14, 2015
Science Formatives-Bio 1 enrolled students Mar 16, 2015
Social Studies Formative (US History-honors & regular) Mar 16, 2015
Math Formative B-6th-8th grades Mar 23, 2015
FCAT 2.0 Reading Retakes-10th (retained), 11th, 12th, & Adults (as needed) Mar 23, 2015
Stanford 10 Complete 1st-2nd grades Mar 23, 2015
Florida Standards Assessment (FSA)-3rd-4th grades (ELA & Math-paper based) Mar 23, 2015
Algebra EOC Retakes-10th-Adult (retakers only) Mar 30, 2015
Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading(FAIR)-K-8th grades Apr 6, 2015
Florida Standards Assessment (FSA)-5th-8th grades (Math); 5th-11th (ELA) Apr 13, 2015
FCAT 2.0 Science-5th & 8th grades Apr 13, 2015
Stanford 10 Abbreviated-3rd grade Apr 14, 2015
ACT Testing Apr 18, 2015
ACT Testing Apr 19, 2015
Biology EOC (FSA)-Bio 1 enrolled students Apr 20, 2015
Algebra II EOC (FSA)-Alg II enrolled students Apr 27, 2015
KRT Posttest-Kindergarten May 1, 2015
FitnessGram-PE Posttest-2nd & 5th-8th grades May 1, 2015
Art, Music, PE, Dance District Assessment-1st-5th grades May 1, 2015
SAT Testing May 2, 2015
Geometry EOC (FSA)-Geo enrolled students-first time testers only May 4, 2015
International Baccalaureate (IB) Testing-11th-12th IB students May 4, 2015
Personal Fitness Exam-select students May 4, 2015
Advanced Placement (AP) Exams-9th-12th grade AP enrolled students May 4, 2015
Algebra I EOC (FSA)-Alg 1 enrolled students May 11, 2015
End of Year Math-Kindergarten May 11, 2015
End of Year Science-K-4th grades May 11, 2015
Civics EOC (NGSSS)-7th grade May 18, 2015
US History EOC (NGSSS)-9-12th grade (US History enrolled students) May 18, 2015
End of Year and Semester Exams-6th-11th grades; 12th grade (as needed) Jun 1, 2015
SAT Testing Jun 6, 2015
ACT Testing Jun 13, 2015
ACT Testing Jun 14, 2015
Stanford 10-3rd grade Jul 7, 2015
Summer Administration of EOC’s Jul 13, 2015
Printed on Feb 8, 2015
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60K opt outs in NY state aren’t insignificant, and will only grow!
LI Opt Out Info on Facebook is a huge group. Take a look.
And watch this teacher’s testimony to the US Senate:
http://dianeravitch.net/2015/02/07/jia-lee-a-teacher-of-conscience-speaks-out/
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Here’s a thought experiment:
A kindergarten teacher’s students are going to take a test that impacts her performance evaluation, job security and salary. (Though her own classroom-based assessments that show how many of her students are at grade level for literacy and math, while useful in guiding her own curricul planning, don’t count.)
Does she continue her rich, experiential curriculum in which children play while learning academic content, social and personal skills (which research is showing lays the most powerful foundation for academic and lifelong success – see the new Alliance for Childhood report)?
Or does she stop and take time to prepare them to take the test – how to answer bubble questions, use the computer programs, how to sit quietly and “show what they know” while they are used to talking and interacting as they think?
She’d be a fool not to prepare them with so much on the line! It’s a horrible position to be in.
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There’s definitely a movement in Florida. Too much time is spent on test prep. Common core dI want take into account the different learning styles of children. How can that benefit them?? It holds teachers accountable for MANY mistakes on tests and holds teachers a accountable for students they have NEVER TAUGHT!
It is ludicrous. My oldest child just started school this year and she will REFUSE every high stakes test. My child, MY choice.
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As others have noted, the various groups you note as being rather small are growing. And, they are not they only groups working to change the mandatory testing requirements. If you talk to educators, all will agree some testing and measuring is necessary and can be very helpful when done properly. Students involved in these tests will spend 12 plus hours each year due to the number of mandated tests. In some instances the teacher and student will never get to see the actual results or missed questions, and some results will take at least a year to come back. More and more people will join this fight as the real picture is shared with them.
If you want to learn more about other issues related to how these tests may fail our students, please read the testimony share with part of the Ohio Legislature by the Superitendent of the Mentor Ohio School District.
Click to access Testimony%20on%20Testing.pdf
keep watching — we may look small now, but things are changing
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When our teachers are no longer gagged and bound, our movement will no longer seem like a “thousand tiny grass-roots”. There are hundreds of thousands of parents that don’t understand what’s happening here. And their first line of defense, those men and women that are in the trenches with their kids, can’t speak up. If my son’s teachers came to me and said “there’s something bad happening in our classrooms and we need your help” we wouldn’t have questions about legitimacy. Instead we hear “we’ll be doing what we need to, to prepare your children for the test.” because they’re afraid to speak up, afraid to lose their jobs. We need to take our classrooms away from the politicians and ‘for profit’ companies and give them back to the educators. The ONLY people who really know what our children need.
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I am a parent of three children ages 7, 12, and 14 in GA. I am also a psychologist with expertise in children, families and schools. My former work includes serving as an elementary school counselor, teaching at the university level as an assistant professor, play therapy, and coordinating projects in schools that focused on building children’s social, emotional and academic competencies- especially through relationships with their teachers. I am appalled at the turn in education over the past decade and especially in the past few years. NCLB put us on a train headed for destruction that sped up with RTTT. My reasonable nature had me assuming things would slow down, shift, turn- I could not have imagined where we would be. I live in a district with a Broad trained superintendent hired by a Broad trained board. They follow the ideas of Broad, Michelle Rhee, Gates, etc. The corporate reform plans unfold one after another. I can’t see much or any of it being for the good of children and teens. It has also been a terrible shift for teachers. GA’s new teacher evaluation system is insulting micromanagement and has everyone obsessed with data to the point that it is hard to “see” the students. Test scores will account for 50% of teacher evaluations beginning next year. I have tried to play nice in the sand box, working with leaders to communicate concerns and advocate for better. Those many hours of effort only paid off occasionally with small changes. It is clear few to none who are part of the system are going to protect our children (and I don’t count teachers as part of the system bc so much of this is aimed at them). So parents have to stop the train. Some teachers can also risk stopping the train. Even students can help stop the train. We are refusing the tests. In PROTEST. No dash.
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Our school library has become nothing but a testing center. We have tested the kids to the point we can determine their reading level down to the month but they have little access to the books in the library because of the endless testing going on all year. (See the testing calendar above. Our district is no different.)
Test defenders claim that testing only takes a few days out of the school year per child but that is not the true picture. We have district mandated tests and state mandated tests in every subject. We test in order to predict how we will do on the BIG test. (Who knows? The test itself has yet to be tested in FL.) It creates a school environment that affects everyone, whether they are testing that particular day or not. It dominates the classroom conversations and the faculty conversations. It has caused recess to be eliminated and turned libraries into testing centers. All monies go toward computers for testing and curriculum that teaches to the test.
The effects of this toxic testing culture has permeated public education to disastrous effects. Parents see the stress in their children and the teachers that stay are frustrated and demoralized. Charter school management companies are making fortunes while public schools are starved of resources. What little we have must be spent on the tests. It is time for the public to take back public education from Pearson, Gates and the Waltons. It is time to refuse the tests!
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Just a few points:
1. Any test that is used to punish teachers and students is a misuse of assessment. The standardized tests yield nothing that educators can use to improve the teaching and learning of the student who take the tests.
2. It isn’t just the seat time of individual students. I will have to administer the equivalent of almost 25,000 tests between March 2 and May 22 this year. That negatively impacts every single one of the students in my school for the duration of the assessment window.
3. Ed reformers are so tied up on “objective” measures (and no test is objective) and quantifying students that they have lost sight of the fact that there is no “standardized” student, teacher, classroom or school and that a large and vital part of education defies quantification – it is qualitative. This is the reason many (most?) successful educational systems like Finland do not try and quantify much. Evaluations of both teachers and students are done via qualitative measures.
4. Most of this is about money. Don’t kid yourself. When your state school board and members of the senate have ties to charter school companies there is motivation to do as much damage as possible to public schools to justify the transfer of public funds to private corporations. And many will shout “competition” but having spent a good deal of my life in various competitions, this is the first one where all competitors do not have to play by the same rules. I’m not sure I agree that education should be a competition, but if it is shouldn’t everyone have to play by the same rules?
5. As an educator I am obligated to adhere to the laws that our legislators make. I cannot advocate Opt-Out etc. to my students. And since our legislature has made teaching an “at will” occupation it is unlikely that there i going to be a large scale uprising among educators. You didn’t really believe stripping educators of due process was about getting rid of bad teachers or improving schools, did you?
6. As a parent, any system that tests kindergarteners or causes my son t come home crying in 2nd grade about a test in 3rd grade that may keep him out of 4th grade is a system that I am obligated to protect him from. Every parent has a moral obligation to protect their children from harm and abuse.
There is plenty more to say and almost none of it is positive.
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My husband and I are both teachers. We find it necessary to refuse testing for our kids. I have taken the tests and corrected the new cc tests. They are abusive. The focus of a school year should not be on one test. Sadly, it is.
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Last year, I discovered that my 10 yr old daughter was scheduled to take 45 standardized reading tests during her K-8 school years. This included the ever-changing Florida state tests and a slew of both state and district mandated “progress monitoring ” tests (which I like to call “the test you take to test whether you’re ready to take the test”). This is in addition to the almost weekly reading tests her teacher required. All this for a little girl who has always read well above grade level and spends hours reading everyday. The state and progress monitoring tests, because they assess grade level proficiency, provide little to no information regarding the academic growth of my, above-grade-level, reader. They do, however, cause undue stress on my child, her classmates and her teachers and they narrow the focus of instruction to the point that passing the state test appears to be all that matters (she spent a good deal of time in 3rd grade learning “test taking skills, like “eliminate the wrong answers”, etc.). Since my daughter could presumably have passed the 3rd grade reading test before third grade, what does that narrowed focus mean for her right to a “free and appropriate education”? On top of all of that, our schools and district are spending huge portions of our school budget to improve the technology in our schools but the computer lab is almost constantly used for testing, test prep and remediation, so little real computer education, which might, actually, prepare my child for a career in the future, is ever provided. I say PROTEST!
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Those who are “protesting” these tests are not inherently “anti-testing”. Teachers believe in the value of assessing their students and monitoring growth. What we are against is the dangerous implementation of developmentally inappropriate standards and high-stakes standardized tests that haven’t been actually tested prior to implementation and were designed by people who obviously have no background in child development.
These tests in NY state are designed with cut scores – that’s right, the test is designed with a specific percentage of failures. The children are being set up to fail. On the new NYS ELA exams, children are being tested with reading passages that are two, sometimes THREE grade levels ahead of the grade that they are currently in. That is not “rigorous”, that is unfair and invalid assessment. One test included a poem written in British syntax for a third grade ELA exam, a READING comprehension exam. How is that fair?
The questions are specifically designed to trick the children, the actual directions say that students will be presented with more than one plausible answer, and must determine which one is “more correct”. Third grade. But of course, the general public doesn’t really know this, because educators are strictly told to NEVER discuss the test with anyone (not even our own coworkers), and the tests themselves are not released to the public (even after they are scored).
I could go on here, but I will leave you with this: teachers are not anti-assessment, we are anti-unfair, developmentally inappropriate assessment.
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If a math book has 14 chapters, you would think students would be finishing chapter 6 in the waning days of December as they head into winter break. Try chapter 9 instead. The high stakes of standardized testing has forced teachers and schools to condense an entire year’s worth of learning into the 6-7 months of school before the big test. Countless days within those 6-7 months are eaten up by required school or district tests used to project how students will do on the big test. Students are individual people; no two are alike, and therefore no two learn in exactly the same way or at the exact same pace. Teachers are forced to choose between teaching at a pace that allows students to master the material–but leaving entire concepts untaught when the big state test rolls around or teaching at a pace that will expose the students to all of the material before the test–but leaving some students woefully lost because they didn’t have enough time to internalize and master the concepts. It doesn’t take much though to see how either option poses problems.
It’s all because so much rides on the results of that one big test: whether third graders move on to fourth grade, whether high schoolers graduate, a student’s ability to take electives which might spark a passion or double reading/math with a triple dose of test prep, the school’s grade, local real estate values, the amount of funding the school receives, their teacher’s evaluation, whether their beloved teacher gets to keep his/her job, and (eventually) said teacher’s salary. To put this kind of pressure on children, whether they are 8, 11, or 16 is a ridiculous burden. From an academic sense, children should only need to worry about whether they understand the concepts. That way they can focus on the serious work of childhood: how to play, how to take turns, how to respect others, how to show compassion for all, how to be a good friend, how to take responsibility for one’s words and actions, how to care for one’s mind and body, how to be an ethical person, and how to speak for those who have been silenced.
Come to think of it, many of the above traits seem to be lacking among the politicians and the powerful who are behind these high stakes tests. Perhaps they never mastered the serious work of childhood and therefore do not value other people’s children’s right to do so.
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Whoever suggested the “sit and stare” approach clearly doesn’t know students. This will never work and parents won’t tolerate their tax money being wasted. If a student opts out they would tend to have the support of the parent and would more likely keep them home. There is too much politics tied to the tests. Simply implementing the standards without these rushed and questionable exams would have accomplished a great many of the goals and kept both sides tolerant.
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Thank you for bringing to light that there are so many who are concerned with how our government is providing education. The misnomer is that it is pro-test vs. con-test. That argument is a symptom of the problem – not the cause.
Currently our government is looking to gauge whether we are providing an education that can properly prepare our children for life in a global marketplace. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that goal. We’re all worried about our children and the future. It’s incredibly scary considering we don’t know what the next 5 years is going to look like, how can we imagine what the future will look like for my 8year old?
Unfortunately, the way we are trying to discover with our children is not only inaccurate, studies are beginning to show that it is exactly the OPPOSITE way to prepare a student for logical thinking or abstract problem solving (MIT study funded by GATES Foundation). The punitive repercussions to the child, the teacher, the schools and the districts based on the results of these tests have literally hijacked the curriculum. We are no longer teaching and then evaluating. We simply just teach to the test.
But the test providers are saying we are using them wrong.
Pearson Company (makers of PARCC) “The customer agrees and understands that our products are intended to be used in the overall assessment process, and are not designed to be used alone or to replace the customers professional judgement”.
Why isn’t that common knowledge?
Not only aren’t we giving the results WAY too much power, we are assuming the results are accurate measures of a student’s knowledge. In reality these tests are designed to get a result of a certain percentage in each level. No matter what the schools do, the tests are designed to produce the same results.
And what of the children on either side of the standard curve? What measures are in place to measure the children who are already known not to be standard…. do these tests measure them against themselves so we can see growth? My children, students in Florida, are in the 99.999% in IQ. We have a terrible time finding them appropriate educational environments because Florida has an anemic gifted program. They also “under perform” on these tests. This is because the high IQ test taker can get bogged down on the semantic errors and vagaries (intentionally placed in the questions as detractors) and lose sight of the time, or the intention of the questions. With low test scores, regardless of their other achievements (of which there are many), they are ineligible for educational opportunities. An unintended consequence for many, the repercussions of the one test- one opinion approach to our students, ineffectively and expensively puts them in the wrong classrooms.
And what happens when you don’t participate? If the real goal is to evaluate the children to make sure they’re meeting the standards, then why is the result of a missing score immediate punishment rather than an established process to garner that information in another way? Are we really suggesting that EVERY person can use the SAME tool in the SAME way? How is there not already an alternative approach simply as a matter of common sense? Why such a vehement and aggressive response from the government when parents simply ask for an alternative? It sort of begs the question of their intent in the first place.
I am not against trying to make sure we’re doing right by our kids. We all want the best for our children’s future. But I’m not so focused on their future that I’ve lost sight of making sure their present is pretty good too.
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I keep thinking about this issue like this.
Pro-test: Astroturf groups with large amounts of resources and power.
Protest: The people
If it’s about numbers in each it’s obvious that the Protest group represents far more thousands of real people truly concerned about the future of public education. Can the Pro-test group even claim a single “person?”
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Great point Tim!!
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The very idea that a standardized test measures learning is completely opposite to the extensive research that has exposed how the brain learns! The idea that school districts are spending in some cases 45 or more days per school year on standardized testing is obscene! These children are being robbed of so many opportunities to grow and explore learning! Recess is being cut back for test prep! Can you imagine not have time on the playground in elementary school? I would have felt like I was in prison! I am a high school teacher of AP students along with regular ed and mainstreamed special education students. I have been teaching this grade level since 2000. I teach in an affluent community where education is valued by all stakeholders and almost half of my students have college educated parents. From 2000 to 2008 my high school students were innovative, creative thinkers ,enjoying collaboration and many truly loved to read. Then in 2009 i started to see a difference these were the kids that were a product of NCLB (test and punish stage one). I suddenly observed kids that feared and exhibited tremendous anxiety during quizzes and unit tests. Common requests as i shared the wonders of history multiple times during a class “is this going to be on the test?” The focus of students on test scores obscure their love of learning! As time marched forward and my first group of students arrived from RTTT and I am witnessing significantly high levels of anxiety,. Students actually asked, “does this test count against you?” along with “i can’t do these tests” RTTT is NCLB on steroids creating a test and punish environment here in NY that borders on child abuse. I am seeing a drop in performance instead of increased success. By the time I get these kids the system of test and punish has beaten our most vulnerable students into believing they are not capable. The CCSS high stakes tests administered here in NY were not age appropriate . Students who excelled in school were told they were failures in need of academic intervention services. Parents reported elementary students who told them they were not smart anymore! Local counselors have seen a rise in children with anxiety issues, some even calling it Common Core Syndrome. Teachers had to sign gag orders on tests that public tax dollars had paid to design. Teachers were provided no feedback on tests at all or useful data. The following school year in October when a new academic year had already commenced they may see some data but nothing useful to assist them in better serving their students. The data provided was about students they no longer served. The most disturbing component of these high stakes tests is that students no longer think creatively. I have observed a significant drop in ability to analyze, innovate and collaborate here among my high school students. They just want to know what is on the test and be able to regurgitate that information. This is not preparing students for colleges where a majority of your work is analysis, innovation, presentation and collaboration. There are few courses in college where bubble tests drive the curriculum. The idea we are preparing students for college is a sham! High stakes testing provides them with zero skills for the real world. As a matter of fact many colleges are no longer using SAT and high stakes test scores for admittance as they have found them a poor indicator of success in college! So why have we gotten to this point? One prominent businessman said, “Public Education is a 500 billion dollar untapped business opportunity.” These test do nothing but line pockets of wealthy corporations while our children starve for the rich education you and I were afforded.
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I live in CA, where we were sold common core standards separated from the Common Core State Tests. Our Govenor and state superintendent rightfully refused to both field test and state test our students. They refused to use the data of a test that was being field tested for placement, evaluation purposes. This move is now applauded as CA getting it right, but the grand cognitive disconnect is that the Common Core Standards can be viewed separately. They can’t be, they weren’t. My district adopted the Common Core Standards with “aligned” curriculum and tests. The whole package…I challenge you to find a district that didn’t. (Exception is Orange County) Districts’ budget hands were forced in order to receive their portion of Local Control Funding. What that translates to is this; I teach first grade, this year all our children k-6 were tested in our brand new computer lab to establish growth data, by September all teachers had a meeting with their supervising principals regarding their student scores. The results were invalid, children cried, looked at each other’s screens, lost screens yet we still had these meetings because it was a directive from the top. A month later teachers received a new “aligned” report card that included a section to record the computer reading &math score. The reading score showed parents a Lexile reading level equivalency. Look up Lexile levels…they measure complexity of text not grade level. When both teachers & site administrators complained the district finally walked it back so we do not have to test our k-1 students this way. Another product we received is the “aligned” curriculum. It has been a nightmare. It came directly from the reform ideas of New York. It is called Engage NY. In first grade it is a 30-50 minute daily Read Aloud lesson instead of a real book selected by the teacher. In math the worksheets are horrendous. The publishing company (Rupert Murdoch, Amplify) has no incentive to incur costs of improvement, make user friendly because the fix is in…we had 0 choice to purchase. At a testing meeting this week our Testing, Data Director gave teacher leaders a 90 minute session regarding the California’s new state specific test site. (CAASPP) we are to encourage our teaćhers to use this site to practice taking the tests. Originally SBAC offered interim tests that were just as long as the SBAC so students could feel & “build stamina” when taking the real test in the spring. Since SBAC just released that version, are requiring local districts to incur costs of scoring. it is no longer an option. We were told we will not receive scores until the end June. How is that better than paper pencil tests? We were told EDT has the contract to score the whole state. Yes, $15 per hour job will determine placement, ranking teacher effectiveness, & school. We can’t verify scores. Since when do taxpayers have to fork out billions to companies’ without testing out the product? Verifying its utility? Common Core Standards emphasize children cite sources for their “opinions”, what if the source is no more worthy of citation than Rupert Murdoch’s English paparazzi sourced Mag rags? Is this who we want to own and distribute the content to our children? Are we going to I trust them to keep our children’ private data safe? Ask Sony how safe it is…Teachers don’t have the energy or time to question, fight ill conceived mandates that are a direct result of bad federal policy. By the time anything is corrected (if) the damage is done. The front line site professionals are the ones that take the “heat”. There is no accountability at the district level for million dollar mistakes. Poverty schools need great teaching not computer assessments, they need music, art, science camp, computer lab that is used for more than test training or skill reinforcement. On another note, is this a movement or a little ripple…There will be a time when ALL citizens will have to take a side. Despite the lack, silencing, buying off of every education organization by Bill &Melinda Gates foundation and affiliated non profits…the word is out, PR will not trump school closures, illigetimate data, insecure data, children hating school, misuse and abuse of tests. Teachers are parents, parents are employed by many organizations, we are connected in more ways now than ever before. One ripple creates many more…the question is when will the tsunami hit?
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HERE HERE!
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The false premise offered by those that a test can measure learning is an antique idea. When tests are announced, students cram their heads with a brutal attempt at mass memorization. The same is true of standardized tests. Students are tested and protested to boredom and disinterest in academia. Not only is this approach ineffective for testing and learning purposes, it wipes away student interest in school completely. Multiple measures, most often driven by educators from the classroom, more accurately assess learning. This approach and anything resembling it have been swept aside for profit-based testing for the purpose of moving out of the public education system to a market-driven system being accompanied by the privatization movement. As teams of lobbyists converge on D.C. and state legislatures, educators are lost in the shuffle. They do not have the resources to combat the false propaganda constantly pushed to the public by testing companies and billionaires bent on school “choice”, technology replacement of teachers, and privatization methods. As educators fight for the students, some fall prey to the attention and money offered for their cooperation, instead of resisting the increasing onslaught of mixed messaging. The true tragedy is one that happens every day. Students are nothing but pawns in the eyes of the corporations and privatized. They are used to show the “ineffectiveness” of schools. The losers, students, society, and democracy, are hopelessly injured. The answer, a continued rise of educators, parents, students and community members to stop the wrong approach and put the education system back in the classroom. This is our charge. This is our fight. For the students’ sake, we cannot fail!
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Corrections for my comments: pretested, has, corporations and privatizers
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John,
I honestly wouldn’t mind “practicing for the test”… IF they were being tested on academics! Who minds practicing math and reading the classics? Not me.
Have you looked at the poorly written & “tricky-tricky” wording on any of the standardized test questions? There is zero academic value to these tests.
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Good morning John,
Please see what the #Renton4 teachers did on Wednesday, January 28th. We are part of a few, but growing global movement writing Teachers’ Letters of Professional Conscience.
See more here: Teachers: A Call to Conscience http://wp.me/p5Fvz8-a
We hope teachers around the globe will join us.
As Dr. King says: “My conscience leaves me no other choice.”
Albert Einstein says: “Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.”
Teachers, when you are ready, right to us in the comment section of the blog link above. We will post your letters. Follow your conscience.
We must do what is right for children.
End toxic high stakes testing.
Susan DuFresne
Integrated Kindergarten Teacher
WA BAT, NPE, REA, #Renton4
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Considering the needs of students first, the most beneficial assessments a teacher can make are authentic and in class so that instruction can be directed for student’s needs. Standardized tests on the other hand offer no benefit to students. The “money trail” behind standardized testing is easy to find and has glaring hazard indicators for children: those along this trail have little or no experience as educators and worse, are in a network which stands to benefit financially at the expense of school budgets. This trail is draining precious dollars away from schools.
The rising voices from experts in child development are loud and clear that the direction of education away from “developmentally appropriate” is a crisis.
So which voice should you listen to? The experts in education and child development, or the non-experts in education- politicians, big business people? Is this not abundantly clear? THE EXPERTS IN EDUCATION AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR CHILDREN, SO LISTEN TO THEM.
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The only beneficiaries of the pro-test fraction are those that are lobbyists, corporatists, and politicians that have financially gained from exploiting public education tax dollars for personal gain. Can we expect them to admit publicly to the test fraud, the VAM fraud, and the CCSS fraud?
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I am in favor of testing by teachers for instructional purposes! What other reasons are valid? To fail children? To privatize education? To punish schools? (or reward them for their zip code?) To evaluate educators? These folks are out to make a quick and recurring buck- test, remediate, retest, test prep, etc. In the meanwhile they will decimate public schools and their resources for the above worthless mania, technology and all. This is not what education is about. They are bastardizing a foundation of democracy- free quality education for all.
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One only has to peruse the NYTimes, Salon, and a variety of other mainstream online news sources to understand that questioning standardized testing, and opting out, is no longer a marginal phenomenon. It’s a growing wave of discontent, originating with parents who are also voters, and it’s only a matter of time before it begins to affect political realities. Meanwhile institutions of higher education are increasingly questioning the value of standardized tests in making admissions decisions – the list of schools who have made the SAT optional grows by the week.
The time when American parents uncritically accepted the notion that these tests are meaningful instruments of assessment is now over. The sooner the political establishment gets this, the better of they’ll be.
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We have refused the tests for our kids. They are otherwise excelling in regular education in an “excellent” school district in an affluent suburban town in CT. Our decision is based in our beliefs that:
1. Practice, preparation for and administration of standardized tests takes away precious time from other more meaningful learning and arts activities;
2. Standardized tests do not advance our children’s learning or overall school experience in any positive way;
3. Tests developed by for-profit corporations rather than our children’s teachers and administrators are not in our children’s best interests;
4. Standardized tests should not be high-stakes instruments for teacher evaluation;
5. Testing is an invasion of privacy and presents extensive opportunities for identity theft.
This is in addition to our view that CCSS, especially at the youngest ages, includes standards that are NOT age appropriate. Focus on testing and preparing for the tests at all ages reduces time for age appropriate activities such as free play, recess, arts and PE. Focus on testing by teachers and communities adds to an already inexcusably high level of stress for children. Educators need to be deeply involved in efforts to improve education. For profit entities should be removed from education entirely.
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As a school superintendent in Long Island, NY… When parents refuse the tests for their children, I respect their right to do so. I agree with the notion that we are over testing our children and destroying public education as well. This child abuse needs to end.
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