Does Palm Beach County, Florida, have the nerve to follow the example set by Lee County, Florida, which voted last week to opt the entire district out of state testing?
The Palm Beach County school board is weighing that decision, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
“Palm Beach County School Board members want to opt out of state-required testing, a controversial move that could jeopardize funding, athletics and students’ ability to graduate.
“They say testing has gotten out of control and creates too much pressure for students and teachers. After discussing the opt-out idea at a recent meeting, board members asked their lawyers for further study. They will discuss it again at a workshop in the next few weeks.
“Sometimes it takes an act of civil disobedience to move forward,” School Board member Karen Brill said. “We must explore the consequences, but we cannot allow fear to hold us back.”
“Last week, the Lee County school board became the first district in the Florda to opt out, after hundreds of parents pushed them to do so.
“But Joe Follick, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Education, said opting out would create chaos. The tests help determine a school’s letter grade and can affect school enrollment, teacher pay and even the prices of homes.
“There’s no way to know how you’re doing if you don’t take a test every year,” he said.”
The state warned that it could suspend funding to punish the district.
Imagine, as John Lennon sang. Imagine if many districts opted out. Imagine if most districts opted out. Imagine if every district opted out. Maybe then the state bureaucrats would remember that they work for the public, not the other way around. Maybe then the legislators would listen to their constituents.
Imagine schools where children were tested every three or four years, at transition points, as in the world’s top-performing nations. Imagine schools where teachers wrote their own tests and used their professional judgment. Imagine schools that did not insist on giving tests to children in hospice care.
Imagine.
Imagine no data-based decisions, just human judgments, informed by professional education and experience, and a collegial ethic that made treating every student as a human being, wondrously made, warts and all, and as worthy of respect as the teachers who elect to enlarge their understanding of what life offers and may require beyond passing strictly academic tests.
Imagine there’s no Duncan
It’s easy if you try
No Common Core below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the children
Learning for today…
Imagine there’s no Coleman
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing at all to test for
And no ranking too
Imagine all the children
Learning life in peace…
Imagine no Rheeformsters
I wonder if you can
No need for greed and money
No demoralizing VAM
Imagine all the children
Sharing all the schools…
John Lennon would approve of your new verses to his song. Unlike the corporate reformers and educational bureaucrats supporting, forcing actually, these “initiatives”, Lennon had a vision and could in fact, imagine.
Amazing how many of the 60s songs (I consider the 60s to have lasted until Nixon resigned) resound today. Just imagine 2, no, 3 no, 50 school boards a day opting out. It’d be the anti-testing opting out movement.
“There’s only one thing you can do:
Walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in, say, “Shrink, . . . you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant”, and walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s
Really sick and they won’t take him.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out?
Friends,
They may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is”: The Anti-testing and student massacreeee movement-the opting out movement
FIXIN’ to TEST RAG
Gimme a T . . .”T” gimme an E . . . “E” gimme an S . . .”S” gimme another T . . .”T”
What’s that spell?
School!
What’s that spell?
School!
What’s that spell?
School!
Yeah come on all of you teachin’ folks
Billy Gates wants your hearts and souls
He got himself a brave new plan
Makin’ him the big money man
So put down your books and pick up a test!
We’re gonna rate ‘em worst to best
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin’ in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Well come on Pearson you’d better move fast
Your big chance has come at last
Gotta go out and write that test
Only trick items – a white hot mess
You know that kids should never have fun
Let’s test ‘em all to Kingdom come
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Well come on Wall Street, don’t move slow,
Its school deform lets go, go
There’s plenty good money on the way
By supplying schools with tests today
Just hope and pray that when the students bomb,
They drag all their teachers along.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Now Soccer moms throughout the land
Pack your kids off to test again
Come on fathers, don’t hesitate,
Send em off before it’s too late.
Be the first one on your block
To know your kid’s dumb as a rock
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Well Done to Duane Swacker and NY Teacher! Arlo Guthrie and Country Joe and the Fish were about as radical as you could get, and here we are in 2014 finding that the meaning in their songs is just as relevant today as when they were in protesting the Viet Nam war, and, not surprisingly, big government.
Once again I’m remembering Dead Poet’s Society. In the final scene, when it was just Todd Anderson standing on his desk, it was very likely that the consequences for him would have been very high. But as soon as the other boys started standing on their desks too, the potential consequences started diminishing – certainly the school couldn’t punish that many students without risking great parental backlash (and, consequently, their funding).
Same thing here. The more Florida districts join in the Opt Out, the less it’s possible to punish every one of them without risking overwhelming backlash. It’s the universal story of bullying – individually we can all be bullied. But when we stand together, the bully has to stand down.
Great analogy!
DIenne you are so right. I hope Palm Beach goes through with it and I hope more and more of Florida counties join in this battle. I keep hoping mine will.
That movie has been on my mind quite a bit of late (for obvious reasons). Your analogy adds to that. I believe I’ll be Facebooking that thought along with a youtube clip of that scene. Thank you for the great insight, Dienne!
As an aside, the other movie that is on my mind a lot when I think of the current state of education is The Lego Movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, give it a view and keep ed reform in mind while doing so.
Each act of courage and defiance of tyranny encourages others. Someone has to be first, but it is easier to join in. Here is hoping for a new movement. Eventually it may even reach Nevada.
What did schools do before all the test mania? They graduated kids, taxed the town, etc. Its time every state took back its schools. The dept. of education should be be making up financial deficits and assisting all public schools to pay their bills, etc., instead of dangling carrots and punishing, etc. all of the nonsense that Obama and Duncan and their predecessors through – Reagan? Bush? have done. Sickening. Enough already.
Bravo Diane for linking to John Lennon. He would have been appalled.
Also, I agree; when did we stop trusting the professional opinions of teachers? Did anyone ever consider that maybe students aren’t doing better because of the whiplash teachers get from every new “innovative” idea that comes down the pike being forced into their classroom? Maybe all the test prep is too much?
“’There’s no way to know how you’re doing if you don’t take a test every year,’ he said.”
In other news, Joe Follick doesn’t know which direction he’s going unless he wears shoes marked with “R” and “L” on them.
Palm Beach County School Board Remarks on Standardized Testing:
“The tests help determine a school’s letter grade and can affect school enrollment, teacher pay and EVEN THE PRICE OF HOMES.
Damn, that’s a pertty powarful test they have thar! They might be best selling that test on late night TV to reach the audience they need to in order to sell it, eh!
Yup. Look up “Campbell’s Law”
““There’s no way to know how you’re doing if you don’t take a test every year,” he said.””
Hey Joe, whatcha got goin on down there?
Hey Joe, who you gonna shoot down now?
Hey Joe, gonna put that board down, gonna shoot it all down?
Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyy JOE!
(apologies to Jimi)
Arne’s Haze, all in our brains
Lately school don’t seem the same
Teaching’s funny
But we don’t why
‘scuse us if we dis this lie
Creating wealth for Pearson at the cost of setting educational standards back 100 years need be stopped at all costs-“they must know, or be shown” that they are the servants and in actual terms the children are the “served”
When the Lee County School Board voted this week to ban state required high-stakes testing in their schools, shock waves were felt in every corner of the state. The earth especially shook at The Foundation for Excellence in Education. (Jeb Bush’s mouthpiece and lobbying group which has foisted 15 years of high-stakes tests down the throats of every Florida school child.) Imagine having the chutzpah to just say “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
There will be lots of fallout. There already is. The three school board members will be called irresponsible for endangering students’ graduation and scholarship opportunities. There are already threats to withhold state money. One of the three members already wants to change her vote. This from the Foundation’s Patricia Levesque, “We are deeply disappointed by the Lee County School Board’s vote to abandon Florida’s academic tests..The Lee County School Board is neglecting its duty to ensure a meaningful education for their students and uphold state law.”
Hold up! Meaningful education is exactly what has been sacrificed at the altar of bubble sheet mania. Billions of tax payer dollars and hours of lost teaching time have been squandered in the pursuit of school grades and the highly overrated Florida Accountability System. I’m sure all kinds of statistics can be produced to show the so-called marvelous results of this system; what can’t be measured so easily is who has been hurt and what has been lost.
There is a growing parent movement to “boycott the tests”, which has all kinds of ramifications. But, when things get as out of hand as they are now, when students and teachers spend more of their time worrying about standardized tests and less about teaching and learning real content- someone has to say “NO MORE!” Lee County just did that.
My hope is that common sense will prevail and the state will bring things back into balance. Standardized tests, used appropriately, can be helpful. I always liked to know how my child was doing relative to her peer group. Schools certainly need to have an objective measure to see how their students are performing. Teachers use tests as tools all the time to make sure their students are mastering the material. But, it’s gone too far. It doesn’t take a standardized test to tell me if the drama teacher is doing a good job; I just need to go to the school play. I knew as a principal when the teachers were doing a good job and I knew as a parent when my child was really engaged in learning. It’s a lot more efficient to diagnose and correct a problem up close than it is to make critical judgments about students and teachers from the results of a ninety minute test.
Educators have come a long way in understanding how different students learn. Let teachers and principals do what they’re trained to do– help develop the skills and talents of each of our very individual children. Quit wasting so much money on these big testing companies and divert the resources back into the classroom where they’re really needed. As Lee County school board member Don Armstrong said, “We cannot let fear hold us back. Sometimes it takes an act of civil disobedience to move forward.” Right On, Brother.
Rosanne Wood, Retired principal of award winning SAIL High School in Tallahassee, FL
Well, a week later and Lee County revoted and will now NOT skip out on the testing. Any update on Palm Beach County?