One of the most effective ways to throw a monkey wrench into harmful mandates is to resist. Say no. Refuse to participate. When they tell you to walk the plank into a sea of sharks, don’t do it.
In the case of high-stakes testing, a growing number of parents are keeping their children home on testing day. If enough parents opt out, the numbers for the school and for the district become invalid. The machine can’t run without the willing participation of those it harms.
Think about it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How very much I would like to see millions of parents opt their kids out of this nonsense. And they should mark the test reports “Junk Mail Based on Junk Science. Return to Sender.”
Robert D. Shepherd: yes.
And like the civil rights movement there are going to be stubborn difficulties to overcome and painful sacrifices to make in order to bring “testolatry” (as Banesh Hoffman put it, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING, p. 217, the very last word in his exposition) to an end.
But I think it fair to ask: what kind of legacy do you want to leave your children and your community and your nation and this world?
That you knew better—and remained silent and docile, letting your failure to speak and act be used to impose compliant mediocrity on the vast majority?
Or that you refused to “go along to get along”?
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” [Frederick Douglass]
Still good advice.
🙂
Here’s the dilemma some NYC parents (like my daughter in Brooklyn) face: If you keep your child home during test week it could adversely affect their chances of getting into the middle school they seek because– preposterously– the test scores could be a deciding factor. Parents like my daughter who are committed to keeping their kids in public schools but question the testing machine are stuck… and I’d rather have her stick to her principles of keeping my grandson in public education that stick to the principles of keeping him out of testing… There needs to be some mechanism to help parents express their concern… though it appears it is possible a vote for diBlasio might do the trick…
That’s why EVERYONE has to opt out, wgersen. Surely other parents at your daughter’s school feel the same way–start talking to each other–I’ll bet you’ll find many, many parents who do NOT want their kids wasting their precious education on test prep & days & days of testing. Remember–there are at least 24 teachers who risked their livelihoods (the Garfield 12 & the Curie 12–in Seattle & Chicago, respectively)–thus affecting their children–who refused to give the tests, & were able to influence the powers that be to stop the tests (not to mention that, at Garfield, 97% of the parents kept their kids at home, thus invalidating the scant data derived from the few tests administered).
Go to United Opt Out, & find out more.
It’s easy for me to argue that we adults should be prepared for serious sacrifices, especially in this pivotal year. Kids, though, not so much.
For a specific child or grandchild, we have to thread your way through careful choices with ONLY the child’s well being as our navigation instrument. Let’s think through what we’re “choosing”, though.
The fraud of “school choice” has turns out to mean fear-driven competition and helplessness for parents. Wgwersen, you say,
“it could adversely affect their chances of getting into the middle school they seek …”
So, does that mean this child is expected to test well, and be chosen by a school which is grooming a high-scoring student roster? Or, is this a reject child, who will test poorly and drag down a middle school’s AYP?
In either case, I would opt her out of the test as a matter of the highest principle. Cherry-picking schools are going to have a hard time making score-based admissions decisions if their cherries aren’t in the basket.
A bad middle school experience can be so personally devastating to a child as to constitute a health emergency, but your kids and mine actually do have choices. The choice is to opt out of the destruction of public opportunity, then use our comparative privilege to pay for a safe haven for our own child or grandchild, if necessary. I find that more principled than fighting less-resourced parents for a ticket to a public slot machine.
This specific school was my choice, twelve years ago. My son came home from college for Thanksgiving week and found his little sixth grade brother crying himself to sleep. He disappeared into his computer for four hours and brought me an appointment for Michael to visit this school:
http://www.odysseydayschool.org/
He was completely dismissive of any complaint that we couldn’t afford it, or that I couldn’t make the drop off and pick-up drives. “Nothing else you buy or do matters to Michael.”
Thanks for posting this, Diane. I was very glad the reporter hung there and didn’t forget about it. She did these interviews in the Spring.
I believe that opting out is the strongest message I can send to my district and to state. I arrived “here” because of a daughter with special needs who was devastated by the state exams. There is no way she could perform well on a grade level exam. I was fortunate to have an educator friend who told me how to opt opt. And, quite frankly, I was lucky to have a supportive Superintendent. He helped make the process as painless as possible.
Going forward, I will continue to opt out. Now, it’s no just a matter of my daughter, but an act of civil disobedience, meant to stop the money grinding machine that is Common Core and its testing.
I just changed my email signature…
“…a growing number of parents are keeping their children home on testing day. If enough parents opt out, the numbers for the school and for the district become invalid. The machine can’t run without the willing participation of those it harms.” Diane Ravitch, September 9, 2013
So our local news mentioned it today, and THEN, naturally, stated that AP poll that supposedly showed that 75 percent of parents think that standardized tests are a great idea. Basically making the opt-out people look like cranks. Even when we win, we can’t win.
All parents must ignore media knowing about back room testing contracts with matching legislation that are connected to Pearson’s lobbyists and political donations.
The opt-out parents will win the marathon.
Yeah, and the media will have you believe there is growing support for bombing Syria too. ANMAL FARM needs to be required reading these days.
Using test scores, as the sole factor, to get into schools or programs (like AP) is nothing but poor policy.
Not just poor policy (I would have put another “p” word in front of the poor) but it is educational malpractice that serves as a sorting and separating mechanism whereby some students get “more” educational rights than others. Totally UNETHICAL and WRONG! Taking part in this sorting and separating process is akin to being a “good German” or as Acker says “Doing the wrong thing righter”.
“Doing the Wrong Thing Righter”
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people from trying to do the wrong thing righter.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management/administration consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan (Viet Nam) did when he wisely noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
Here’s my response to the NJDOE spokesman quoted in the article.
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2013/09/will-2014-be-year-of-full-on-revolt.html
Thanks for posting this Diane. May 2014 be the year of “full on revolt!”
We can only hope this becomes a big movement . This action will clearly makes a difference.
We have a growing number of parents of disabled students opposed to CCSS and the requirement in our state for high stakes testing. I am advising parents in my district to organize, develop a united plan for requesting new IEPs a month before testing to opt out via IEP, then prior to the test call a press conference announcing their decision. The special Ed community is smaller than regular Ed, has a number of support groups, and have an excellent communication capacity making an opt out choice viable. I don’t believe there is any way state Ed officials will challenge this or render any “punishment.” Spec Ed has federal law behind them. I recommend all districts do this.
Teachers too need to lead by example. The old adage about leading the horse to water seems to apply here. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6347169
Parents still trust the teaching profession but increasingly find that locally they fail to spot the warnings.
This letter to the UK Times Educational Supplement criticising the editor on his support for useless PISA league tables and warning of future problems fell on deaf ears.
“Gerard Kelly’s polemical editorial, “Pisa is not perfect but rankings are here to stay” (26 July), failed to inform readers that for more than 150 days, Pisa failed to provide any rebuttal of the conceptual (not technical) flaw in the Rasch model.
Mr Kelly’s bizarre suggestion that the UK government should continue to use scarce taxpayers’ funds to prop up Andreas Schleicher’s empire will not fool those who have sought a full methodological debate within the international research community on the validity of inferences drawn from Pisa rankings.
The grandeur of Pisa has toppled. Amid the rubble, if only Mr Kelly had looked, are approaches to pedagogy that owe more to rhetoric and ideology than careful research and scholarship.
The first results from the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) advocate a pedagogy that has at its core the notion that students must be enabled to construct meaning for themselves. However, the world’s largest education experiment – Project Follow Through in the US, which monitored the attainment of low-income children for 20 years from the late 1960s – identified the teaching methods advocated by Talis as locking disadvantaged children into a life of poverty.
Talis misconstrues the predicate “learn” exactly as Rasch misconstrues “ability”. Without a robust challenge concerning Pisa’s Rasch-generated plausible values, we risk a future OECD blueprint for “world-class teaching” that could damage the life chances of disadvantaged children across the world.”
Stephen Elliott, Retired researcher, Antrim, Northern Ireland.
I am a former elementary art teacher and I am thrilled parents are taking matters into their own hands. The testing culture is madness. I had to sit in too many staff meetings, and watch as the administrators devote all professional development time to students passing the standardized tests. It did not matter that students did not take tests in art, the specialists still had to sit there and listen for hours about how to teach to the test. All resources were put toward classroom teachers teaching to the test. All professional development days were used for classroom teachers teaching to the test. The specialists were told to find something to do on those days. I thought to myself, we as educators need to just say no. I am glad someone finally is saying no!
Paceni, I’m not sure who is being quoted in which part of your study but this assertion doesn’t hold up:
“However, the world’s largest education experiment – Project Follow Through in the US, which monitored the attainment of low-income children for 20 years from the late 1960s – identified the teaching methods advocated by Talis as locking disadvantaged children into a life of poverty.”
Project Follow Through did no such thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Follow_Through
New Yorkers are at a distinct advantage in the opt out movement–we have test results that prove developmentally inappropriate content. If we can use the courts to release the tests, parents will jump on the opt out bandwagon in droves. How do we find the lawyers willing to challenge this madness??
To answer your question: Dangle lots of money in front of their noses.
I talked with my 5th grader about opting out this year and he doesn’t want to do it. He says he’ll have nothing to do during test prep (the kids here call test prep “papers” because the test prep consists of strips of paper with questions).
He understands that he can participate in test prep without then taking the test, but I see his point that it becomes even more dispiriting and grim if he’s spending hours preparing for something he’ll never complete.
He likes school, he (generally) trusts the adults there, and maybe most importantly, he doesn’t know anything else. He’s our youngest. The older three went to the same public school but attended prior to the obsessive testing focus, although it was ramping up each year over the last decade.
It’s funny, because he “gets” the arbitrary nature of a lot of this “reform” stuff. Ohio went to a third grade “guarantee” which I don’t fully understand but seems to be a punitive measure where children who are behind in reading are held back. Apparently some 4th graders talked with some 3rd graders who were aware of it and the consensus was it wasn’t “fair” because everyone who was past third grade when the latest fad went in escaped this new punishment.
I thought it was great they had a little solidarity/sympathy thing going on there among themselves. Apparently they don’t (yet) think that if the new 3rd graders “lose” they win (!) in our new “market based”, cut-throat school system 🙂
Chiara,
Plan “educational field trips” for any of those days that are devoted to testing and test prep. Not all learning occurs in a classroom. That way your son won’t be bored.
At the risk of attempting to counter the rolling stone on this blog, I must ask: Is the opt out movement gaining traction the same way the “Bad Ass Teachers” group is losing members/followers?
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2013/09/from-badass-to-batty-activist-teachers.html
Again Diane, transparency supported by compelling evidence is not a strong suit of this blog and is the primary reason too many of your contentions are being ignored. As anxious as I am to read your new book, it must be more convincing than pieces such as this one.
Paul,
Have you read Noel Wilson’s work that I cite daily?
If so, I’d be interested in reading what you have to say about it.
Thanks,
Duane
Duane,
I’d be interested in reading what Noel Wilson has to say but you’ll have to provide me with a link. Be glad to respond after I’ve read it.
Paul Hoss
Paul,
I’ll put it at the bottom of the thread so as to not “stringbean” my response.
Duane
What is not very compelling are generalizations Paul Hoss, such as asserting “compelling evidence is not a strong suit of this blog”.
How about some specificity? Please inquire as to what evidence you need. There are many here armed with evidence for our approach and stance.
My comment from a couple of days ago to Diane regarding a 500 word opinion piece she wrote for one of the NY papers.
I honestly would like to see the decision/policy makers listen to some of Diane’s contentions, honestly. I simply don’t believe much of what she’s espousing can tolerate strict scrutiny; and then she, unfortunately, continues to be ignored. She’s too bright, has too much wherewithal, has too important a body of work to continue to be ignored. However, based on much of what I read here, there’s a reason for that.
As I stated a couple of days ago, I hope her book is more compelling and convincing. The skeptical policy/decision makers will have to listen then.
I have heard from a colleague that parents in her town in northern westchester asked her all kinds of questions about the exams that revealed how little they understand about the whole process. Then she was asked why there are no charter schools in their area because they don’t want their children tested. She explained how charter schools operate and they started talking about the possibility of starting their own charter school. I haven’t heard parents from my area of Westchester talk about it, but the school superintendent from this school district wrote in her letter to parents about the low scores, “our students always perform well and the list of prestigious schools our graduates are accepted to are evidence of that.”
Since, in theory, a charter school is a public school, it would be required to administer the state tests. The charter could decide not to do any prep for the tests, but I don’t think they could say they weren’t going to do standardized testing because that is a state level mandate.
Chiara’s 5th grader is making the important point. Yes, begin by opting out on day of test but also deal with the reality that for too many children, the entire curriculum is test focused. That is the sum total of their year and there are no alternatives to this punitive, pathetic excuse for education.
Idaho has a NCLB waiver. What does this mean? If I opt my kids out, it will have consequences with funding?
I think a great way to promote the Opt-Out Movement to parents is to alert them to the fact that the assessments will be UTILIZING MACHINES TO SCORE STUDENTS’ WRITTEN RESPONSES! This should create the kind of horror in parents that is needed to get them on board rallying against the ludicrous practices being put in place! Let’s spread the word on this to help “dismantle” their testing scam as a counter attack to the assault on the teaching profession!
I will be opting my son out of all benchmark tests and state testing again this year. There is absolutely no way that I can allow him to participate in this shameful, corrupt system of testing where scores seem to be all that matter. I’m glad to see that more parents are waking up and realizing that opting out is the only weapon that parents have to fight this mess.
Good on ya!
Take your out of school those days and go on more interesting and educational “field trips”.
In how many states is there not yet a legal “opt out” process re: school testing? My state (DE) does not yet allow this, though some parents are beginning to talk about what legal measures would be needed to make opting out possible, or at least to draw public attention to the many issues surrounding mandated standardized tests. Is United Opt Out the place to begin?
I think there needs to be a legal opt out measure that allows the student to go to school and participate in alternative activities for the day. In my district there are many single parents or both parents work and they just don’t have the vacation time to take several days off to opt out.
Is opting out something that could be put on a ballot?
In the meantime, it may be worth looking into loopholes. I have a strong feeling that in my district, proctors were used that did not go through the volunteer screening process (which includes a background check). I wonder if it would be possible for people to go to the schools on test day and ask for verification that all proctors have been approved via the volunteer process.
I’ve supplied a summary but that is like reading the cliff notes for Moby Dick. Quite a bit is lacking (although Noel has “approved” my summary). Here tis:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Thank you Duane, again and as usual.
ME,
You’re welcome. I just wish more people would take this study to heart and realize just how corrosive, unjust and unethical the concepts of educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students are. So much harm caused to innocent victims, the students.
Noel Wilson’s piece attempts to debunk tests and grades. He’s clearly entitled to his views, perhaps more so in his homeland, Australia where he appears to spend much of his time attempting to find a publisher for his essays and novels.
If he’s still seeking employment at seventy years old, he might try contacting Monty Neill at FairTest, here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wilson’s views appear to be congruent with the way folks at FairTest think. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world believes otherwise.
Wilson’s piece is not compelling evidence. It’s an opinion of someone not likely to positively impact many of Diane’s views.
Paul,
Did you read the entire dissertation and not just skim it over? That’s the starting point, actually reading it and understanding what Wilson has to say. Wilson doesn’t “attempt to debunk”, he thoroughly destroys educational standards, standardized tests and the grading of students. Unlike your effort here.
I’m not sure why you bring in such straw man arguments as his “attempting to find a publisher for his essays and novel” and that “he’s still seeking employment at seventy years old. . . ” nor what FairTest has to do with any of this. Not a good argument does a straw man argument make.
If “Wilson’s piece is not compelling evidence” then please refute/rebut what he has epistemologically and ontologically shown to be the logical errors in the making of educational standards, the use of standardized testing and the disseminating of the results of those processes that render the whole process invalid.
Your opinion that there is no “compelling evidence” lacks compelling evidence of “no compelling evidence”.
Duane,
You appear frustrated that someone could possibly disagree with you or Wilson. People are entitled to disagree, at least where I come from.
Standards, grades, and testing are the way most of the academic world works and that’s not about to change anytime soon. Parents and taxpayers want to know how our students, teachers, and schools are performing.
The fact that Fair Test and their apostles condone/sanction such policies is why I referenced them. Theirs, and apparently yours and Wilson’s, endorsements of such unaccepted policies is not helpful to Diane and her cause of saving public education (which I believe is a very honorable cause, indeed). Being published on Diane’s blog is yet another example as to why folks are essentially ignoring her concerns.
The fact that I included facts about Wilson that, in my mind, raised questions about his credibility, diminished the piece and his thesis. In reading the piece you asked me to read, those facts were included in the section “About the Author.” In my experience it’s always been helpful to investigate and consider the source. These were not a straw man argument. They were repudiations against the individuals credibility.
People are looking for pragmatic and REASONABLE solutions to reforming our schools. Attempting to sanction the elimination of standards, grades, and testing, again, is a minority opinion; as in the majority of stakeholders do not hold these beliefs.
As I’ve attempted to state over the past several days on this blog, Diane’s contentions need to be compelling and convincing. Eliminating standards, grades, and testing is not a reasonable approach to win such a debate.
I haven’t read that Diane wants to eliminate standards – she has repeatedly stated her concern is that the standards have not been properly field tested before all these states adopted them.
I haven’t read that she wants to eliminate grades.
From what I read the reason why she is against current standardized testing is because too much time, money and weight is given to these tests.
As a parent and a taxpayer, my concerns about test are the same. Can’t these tests and the stakes attached to them be scaled back significantly?
I don’t understand the rush to cram so many facts and concepts into our sweet children. If we give our children some space, we just may be amazed at the questions they have for us.
In all the years I worked, I was never presented with a multiple choice question or an open-ended question with a rubric. Most days, I had to work to make sure I knew what the questions/goals were. In my opinion, working together and asking questions (more than answering questions) is where the magic is.
However, I am open to the pro-test argument. At one point, I didn’t understand why so many people had issues with tests. I thought if a students knew the material, they should do fine. Then I read Diane’s book The Death and Life of the Great American School System and the book Making the Grades. I am working through other book recommendations from this blog. Currently, I am convinced these tests are a waste of time, but if you can share good resources with a counterargument, I will read them. Please recommend some books. I will put them in my reading queue.
Concerned Mom presents some reasonable contentions. More of these kinds of entries are needed here. Although she hasn’t exactly responded to the gist of my entries, she’s raised some logical points for consideration. More of these kinds of posts would greatly enhance the credibility of Diane’s blog as opposed to so many followers under blind allegiance to anything and everything Diane presents. That’s the benefit of hearing both sides of a debate and also considering the REST of the story. Truth is a much better approach than smoke and mirrors.
A letter from a teacher in Ohio regarding his/her concern about too much testing, or an entry from a professor from Scotland worried about the outlier effects of Gates, Rhee, or Kopp are, in fact, Diane’s beliefs. They wouldn’t be posted here if they weren’t. These are all understandable but they don’t exactly get to the heart of the matter in all cases. Getting to the heart of the matter is as an effective way of getting to the truth as any.
In Missouri, opting out is not an option. There is no provision to do so. My suggestion to parents/students is to withdraw from school during the testing window and “home school” the student. Then re-enroll after the testing period. It doesn’t solve the problem of all the prior “benchmark” (what a misnomer) testing but at least it throws a monkey wrench into the testing apparatus per se.
And in my school/district there is a huge amount of pressure put on the staff of being in support of the “home team”. And since it is a rural poverty district ($8,000/student/year) our “scores” have a tendency to be in the bottom quartile since that is where our funding is. We are at the cut point of being unacredited so the pressure is on!
Remember to report any bullying to the bullying hotline/website. I just don’t know what the number and/or the site to turn in the state department of education for bullying the districts.
I had a dream that students used the “one option” remaining as means of sending a dissenting vote against using student testing as a measure of their teacher’s performance.
Answer “one question” with the correct “one option” and wait for the test to be collected.
I print out the template letter from UnitedOptOut and give it, and the website info to my students parents after school, off school grounds
Diane (and readers), I’m wondering if anyone has had success opting out at a charter school (specifically NHA in Michigan).
In Iowa only:
The “Opt Out Movement” applied to No-Child-Left-Behind tests is a great idea that will shoot Iowa schools to the very top of all school in the nation and beyond. All that is needed is for Iowa parents of kids that may not score at the 99% level nationally be opted out of taking the tests. Hey, are we Iowans 99% smart or what?
And the bonus would be for teachers to concentrate all of their time on helping kids be the best they are at feeling good about being who they are as a worthwhile kid doing his or her best as a part of families, communities and the nation.
WARNING: Officials that think these tests are worthwhile should not be allowed to take them and have their scores averaged in with those of the kids or all of Iowa will be marked down and placed on Academic Early Warning Status.