In this brilliant article, Marc Tucker explains why the civil rights community is making an error by supporting annual testing as a “civil right.” He knows their leaders believe that poor and minority children will be overlooked in the absence of annual testing. But he demonstrates persuasively that annual testing has done nothing to improve the academic outcomes of poor and minority children and that they have actually been harmed by the pressure to raise scores every year.
Tucker writes:
First of all, the data show that, although the performance of poor and minority students improved after passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, it was actually improving at a faster rate before the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Over the 15-year history of the No Child Left Behind Act, there is no data to show that it contributed to improved student performance for poor and minority students at the high school level, which is where it counts.
Those who argue that annual accountability testing of every child is essential for the advancement of poor and minority children ought to be able to show that poor and minority children perform better in education systems that have such requirements and worse in systems that don’t have them. But that is simply not the case. Many nations that have no annual accountability testing requirements have higher average performance for poor and minority students and smaller gaps between their performance and the performance of majority students than we do here in the United States. How can annual testing be a civil right if that is so?
Nonetheless, on the face of it, I agree that it is better to have data on the performance of poor children and the children in other particularly vulnerable groups than not to have that data. But annual accountability testing of every child is not the only way to get that data. We could have tests that are given not to every student but only to a sample of students in each school every couple of years and find out everything we need to know about how our poor and minority students are doing, school by school.
But the situation is worse than I have thus far portrayed it. It is not just that annual accountability testing with separate scores for poor and minority students does not help those students. The reality is that it actually hurts them.
All that testing forces schools to buy cheap tests, because they have to administer so many of them. Cheap tests measure low-level basic skills, not the kind of high-level, complex skills most employers are looking for these days. Though students in wealthy communities are forced to take these tests, no one in those communities pays much attention to them. They expect much more from their students. It is the schools serving poor and minority students that feed the students an endless diet of drill and practice keyed to these low-level tests. The teachers are feeding these kids a dumbed down curriculum to match the dumbed down tests, a dumbed down curriculum the kids in the wealthier communities do not get….
It turns out that there is one big interest that is well served by annual accountability testing. It is the interest of those who hold that the way to improve our schools is to fire the teachers whose students do not perform well on the tests. This is the mantra of the U.S. Department of Education under the Obama Administration. It is not possible to gather the data needed to fire teachers on the basis of their students’ performance unless that data is gathered every year.
The Obama Administration has managed to pit the teachers against the civil rights community on this issue and to put the teachers on the defensive. It is now said that the reason the teachers are opposing the civil rights community on annual testing is because they are seeking to evade responsibility for the performance of poor and minority students. The liberal press has bought this argument hook, line and sinker.
This is disingenuous and outrageous. Not only is it true that annual accountability testing does not improve the performance of poor and minority students, as I just explained, but it is also true that annual accountability testing is making a major contribution to the destruction of the quality of our teaching force….
The evaluation systems recently created has serious flaws. Their goal is to fire teachers, and those likeliest to be fired are teachers in minority communities. Meanwhile applications to professional education programs are plummeting. This is a very bad scenario for children and teachers alike; it harms teachers by putting the fear of failure in their minds, and it harms the children by giving them a stripped-down schooling and a revolving door of teachers.
Time to think again, says Tucker. I agree.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I disagree that these tests are low level and “dumbed” down….or we would not have such high failure rates. The tests are deliberately difficult, confusing, convoluted (which is why they are so secretive) and age inappropriate. Yes, I agree that the purpose is to see kids fail so teachers can be fired and destroy the profession that it used to be.
Agreed, but the skills measured are dumbed down, and NOW students have to be taught how to think like a standardized test maker, which is even less of a useful skill than the skill of how to take a standardized test that we already have to teach.
“. . . but the skills measured are dumbed down,”
NO! No skills are measured in any fashion, any meaning of the word measured in any way. The tests are not measuring devices. My god we’ve got to get out of this insanity of thought that “we are ‘measuring’ anything” with this educational malpractice of testing-yes all testing not just standardized testing.
We may be assessing something (usually quite vaguely defined) in very inadequate ways but we are definitely not measuring anything in the process. There are no agreed upon “standards” with which to fashion a “measuring device” for the teaching and learning process.
And I argue that to insist that we can develop those standards and then make a measuring device and then use that measuring device with any accuracy is a chimera, a duende, a falsehood, a figment of the imagination and is a fiction-that we can measure the teaching and learning process is indeed stranger than reality. It is a Manx cat chasing its tail.
Of course, you are right, Duane.
Even the new NY tests, as confusing and above grade level as they are, promote dumbed-down test prep, as no standardized test can truly assess critical thinking. Kids get drilled on the way to think like a test maker and think like a test scorer, and since skills tested are above grade level, instead of activities to develop understanding, kids memorize meaningless steps to get points on their answers. They’Re specifically taught not to incorporate outside knowledge in their answers, (I.e. synthesize info from various sources, and develop independent thought) and instead to use only the text or texts before them, spend lots of time analyzing the craft instead of the ideas of a piece, and where they are asked to make inferences, only make the inferences the test makers deem correct, among several “possibly correct” answers.
Math problems are worded confusingly, and a lot of the complexity stems from parsing the words, and learning how to think like the testmaker, not on complex mathematical thinking, and even where kids have problems where they explain their work, mathematically creative kids may not get full points for their explanation, if the scorer doesn’t follow how the child has solved the problem, even if it’s correct. I’m thinking of how 4th grade son’s teacher did not get son’s arrow and ordinal number explanation in one of his test prep worksheets. And teacher is diligent, smart and hardworking, not a time pressured test scorer.
So new, allegedly “higher thought” -assessing tests promote more robotic thinking, robotic test prep, and continue to harm kids. Poor kids who depend most on school for their intellectual development are most harmed.
“I disagree that these tests are low level and “dumbed” down….or we would not have such high failure rates.”
NO! You’re conclusion does not necessarily logically follow your statement.
The reason for the “high failure rates” is the simple reason that cut scores for “passing” (whatever the hell passing and failing mean to begin with) are set to achieve that “high failure rate”.
For example, if I were to give a 100 question test and in order to “pass” the student had to get 95% of the answers correct (and there may be legitimate reasons for requiring that number of correct answers) then the “failure rate” will more likely than not be very high, especially if the realm/scope of the test includes thousands of questions on thousands of objectives (which is basically the case with all standardized testing where no one other than the test makers know what those objectives and questions are).
This whole dumbing down thing becomes irrelevant if you bring assessment to the local level, based on individual gains and whole child assessment.
Thoroughly agree!
It is very contradictory that our society has decided that it
is somehow “wrong” to place any blame for a child’s learning capacity and success on the parents who brought the child into existence, yet it is “right” and necessary to blame the teachers and other educators who have taken on and been given the responsibility of becoming surrogate parents, filling in all the gaps in the childrens’ lives while being evaluated for the students’ academic success based on a test that is structured to be intentionally developmentally inappropriate and misleading to young readers.
Oh, I see parents blamed a lot, too. The problem is that many of the parents truly care, but the cannot get as involved in their children’s education as they would want because they have to work two or three jobs to survive. At least, that’s the experience I have in my medium-poverty school. Most of the time, the parents are VERY concerned, but they have true barriers in getting involved.
I didn’t mean my comment in that way. I know that all parents are too busy or not able to be involved. I know that. The point is, circumstances DO prevent a child from being ready to learn at school. Sometimes the teacher has to “start from scratch” with kids that haven’t been read to, taught basics, don’t know proper grammar, don’t have hygiene or even potty training skills. Teachers have to be surrogate parents. And, if that is the case, the powers that be can’t just “blame the teachers” and strip them of their careers based on tests!!!
I have empathy and understanding for parents. I know many are trying as hard as they can, but it seems that there is this idea in the techno world that if you let a kid sit in front of a computer, magic always happens. And they feel that if teachers aren’t “just like the computer” then there is something lacking in their communication skills or knowledge.
There is much more than “academic learning” that takes place in elementary schools and middle schools, and even high schools. But, these changes due to technology cannot be attained by everyone. First of all, not everyone is even interested in the same things. Some people HATE technology. We can’t prescribe education like a pill. (In fact, even doctors don’t get their prescriptions perfectly assigned!) One size fits all, blame the teacher, etc. is absolutely a copout. We aren’t everything to every person. And a core curriculum doesn’t fit all learners, especially not at the same pace and level of understanding.
All of us would have to admit that there are things that WE have trouble understanding because of whatever processes go on in our adult brains. MAYBE someone could have “gotten through” to us … but not ALL at the same time. It takes from 1 – 27 or so repetitions for kids to learn a skill. Some get it quickly. Some don’t. Some never acquire it all. These tests that are above the reading level of the average student, with “close reading” that doesn’t take into consideration their abiltiy to process and relate the material to their own understanding, does NOTHING to help those kids that lack exposure to those things in their homes or in their early environment.
It isn’t that I want to “blame” parents … I want them to stop blaming TEACHERS.
Pete Seeger wrote a song called “where’s the trouble at the bottom” That is appropriate here as everyone is pointing fingers at parents, kids, teachers. unions. That is all crap. The trouble is the system of education designed in the 18th century was never designed to serve all kids. It was designed, as Thomas Jefferson stated, “to rake a few geniuses from the rubbish”
How pitiful is that but we are still doing it
Deb… poverty (chronic poverty) is a societal problem not a parental one. Blaming teachers…blaming parents… is too easy.
I think we could ask whether data-based policing has led to more equitable results in criminal justice (I would say “no”) because the two theories, data-based education and data-based policing, have a lot in common.
If collecting more and more and more data leads to a more equitable result, then why didn’t that happen with data-based policing? Didn’t the reverse happen?
Has relying on data collection to increase equity worked in any other sector or area?
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=1839&issue_id=72009
The same can be said for Charter Schools too but you don’t hear Tucker making that argument do you? Tucker is evil and is why have national standards today.
The evidence against Marc Tucker’s “brilliant” plan laid out in his Dear Hillary letter has been available for a long time. Where has Tucker been? Cashing in at the bank, that’s where.
Now that it is obvious to everyone that his plan has failed spectacularly, he is changing his tune to distance himself from ownership and maintain marketability.
I agree with SomeDAM Poet. Too late for Mark Tucker to have credibility on any issue.
This is not Tucker saying “i am personally guilty of serious errors in judgment” in promoting the standardization of public education and reifying test scores as if these had some MAJOR correlation with the economy of this and other nations.
For more than a decade and a half Tucker has been at the center of everything that has done serious damage to public education.
His sudden conversion needs to be accompanied by a public statement taking personal responsibility for being wrong and doing great damage to the profession of education, to countless principals and teachers, to students and parents, and the institution of public education.
Does he have the moral courage to follow the lead of the owner of this blog?
With Hillary in line for POTUS, why would Tucker suddenly trash the policy that she supports? He’s got to be angling for something…
Maybe Hillary is hearing New Yorkers et al. and realizing how unpopular her pro-testing stance is, so she’s planning to reverse herself, but after elected she’ll pull a bait and switch like Obama did. I don’t trust anyone in this bunch!
Civil rights leaders should understand that standardized test scores reflect the socio-economic level of the student taking the test. Since many minority students are poor, many are often in the bottom quartile. If the rankings are then used to determine access to programs, these students are then denied access to higher level courses which in turn determine future opportunities. Therefore, these tests work against many poor, minority students. This is why my school district chose to detrack our admission to higher level courses in our high school and put intensive summer workshops in place for our poor students. We wanted to give more poor students a chance to enter challenging courses, and many minority students gained access to higher level courses as a result.
Civil rights leaders must realize that by supporting high stakes testing, they are promoting the narrative that allows the people in charge to cast a narrower net to determine access to opportunity. They should support the opposite. They should support more open admissions and inclusive programs for more, not fewer, students. This gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their readiness to tackle a challenge. Standardized tests do not measure motivation, resourcefulness and social maturity. Test scores alone deny students a chance to demonstrate their willingness to work toward a goal. Research points out that standardized scores are partial to white males.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/etc/gap.html
What is some of the auxiliary damage from high stakes testing–the collateral cultural damage, to use a military metaphor?
I teach at a small public high school, 11th grade English, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. I teach all the test prep for the juniors. We have wonderful 9th and 10th grade ELA teachers, so my kids arrive in my class strong in writing and reading–but the amount of testing they have to undergo in their junior year boggles the mind.
This year and last, my students have worked hard to learn the various skills for up to four high stakes ELA tests–in one year! The Comprehensive Regents Exam, the Common Core Regents Exam, the SAT, and for some, the AP Literature and Composition test (and that’s not to mention tests periodic assessments the city issues or the midterms and finals our school generates). In addition, in their junior year, they take the US History Regents. Many will also take a Chemistry, Earth Science, or Physics Regents and the Algebra II/Trig, and some might take another AP Exam. Although I try to spend most of the year not teaching to the test, but teaching reading, writing, and thinking skills, I have to admit that I teach with those tests in the back of my mind.
But I’m saddled with this inner conflict: So many high stakes tests, necessary to get into college, ignore the best things about the English Language Arts: How to process, through writing and speaking, the world around us, and how to find ways to broaden the imagination, sharpen thinking, increase analytical skills, and find touchstones to one’s life in fiction and poetry, written 500 years ago or now.
I’m linking test-o-rama to the mentality with which most of my students are going off to college. They believe English and many of their high school subjects are just stepping stones to careers. In some ways I don’t blame them, for 80 percent of our students report living below the poverty line, and a good job and career is a wonderful goal.
What is lost, however, when one thinks of school as merely a door to walk through to a job, is learning for the sake of intellectual, social, cultural, political, and emotional growth–learning about the world, where it is, what it is, who is in it, and the many ways to interpret it. We are worried about the test in high school because we are worried about college. And we are worried about college because we are worried about work, jobs, careers. Yet our kids should be trying to solve problems–in their classrooms, schools, communities, cities, the country, and our world. They have a myriad of technology available to them, and multiple languages–language many of the kids who fail the Regents but are more than proficient in–to use to discuss those problems. Yet that’s not what school is about.
Whether we opt out or not, whether or classes include some form or forms of high stakes testing, we must teach our kids the skills to navigate the world, understand the world, and heal the world. We have to subvert the national passion for high stakes testing so that real learning can go on in our classrooms.
One of the contributors to the problem that Mark Tucker identifies is cynicism. Few appear to believe anymore that government will do anything more than the meager attention effects of annual testing to address inequity. As a country, we have forgotten that it was the collective action of the labor and civil rights movements that has mediated inequality, not punishment regimes or the individualism inherent in the so-called choice notion behind charter schools. It’s not federal overreach that’s the problem, but reaching for the wrong things. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/13/u-s-education-policy-federal-overreach-or-reaching-for-the/
It doesn’t have to be this way. We Can Be Better than the Audacity of Small Hopes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-camins/we-can-be-better-than-the-audacity-of-small-hopes_b_7284458.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Since the Reagan era, the Democrats have been on the defensive, and have run away from collective action for equity. It’s time to re-embrace community responsibility rather than selfish-individualism.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
When we look at the education of children, we must analyze education and its results without excluding factors that affect and effect that learning !!!! We must understand the learning process: learning theory, human development characteristics and its stages and the learning styles of children and how they may change at the different stages of their human and learning development !!! We must also NOT exclude factors like family setting, nutrition, poverty, economic inequity, racism and factors of gentrification !!
To make decisions about children or education without wise consideration of all of these factors is not wise and will lead to flawed and uninformed conclusions, all to the detriment od the well being and learning of children !!!
What is an “Education Laureate”?
Tucker could improve his argument by including himself in the “Civil Rights Groups” he calls out here. His tone is condescending at best and interferes with his stated intent to change minds in this “other” group. Even the best arguments are tainted with an obvious inability to relate to their target audience.
Actually I find this article far from brilliant. Although the argument against the test is strong, the solution is extremely weak. Testing a sampling of kids is not a solution to anything.
I support civil rights groups in their effort to assure all students get fair and equitable treatment, however, the test is not the solution in any manner. I do understand that since the test is the only choice out there, civil rights groups must support it. Lacking a viable alternative, the test, today, is the only option.
Enter the Collins amendment to ESEA. This amendment allows selected states to use innovative assessment in lieu of the test. Implementation of this concept is not the be all or end all of the problems of education but it can be a game changer. Once whole child assessment is used, that concept will snowball from one state to all others and the concept of the test will have a slow and painful demise.
Yes, I support opt out. Yes I support protesting the test. However, without a viable alternative, civil rights groups are handcuffed to the test. The Collins amendment allows for that viable alternative. And a viable alternative is the only way to eliminate the test.
Now the question becomes, which side are you on? Will you support a viable alternative to the test, protesting and speaking up for it? Or will you simply be against the test thus ducking accountability as your goal?
You can find the Collins amendment at http://www.wholechildreform.com
You’re either with us or your for the testers, is that what you’re saying?
Actually I am saying, you are either with those who support a viable alternative or with those who are ducking accountability. 🙂
What if the viable alternative is local control – elected school boards that have to answer to the community? Schools that have to be open to parents and other community members coming in and looking at the books, asking questions, observing classes, speaking to teachers and administrators? Schools hosting concerts, school plays, science fairs, art nights, open houses and other opportunities for the community to see how their own students are doing?
Guess I’m with the terrorists, er, testers, eh?
Now that’s what I’m talking about. Take it a few steps further with the Collins amendment allowing innovative assessment (for amendment go to http://www.wholechildreform.com.) And then taking kids from where they are. Real, “Wholechild”assessment can only be done locally
To paraphrase The Shawshank Redemption, here’s what “accountability” is: “I know what you think it means, sonny. To me, it’s just a made up word. A politician’s word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job….Accountabilty? It’s just a bulls— word.”
“Now the question becomes, which side are you on? Will you support a viable alternative to the test, protesting and speaking up for it? Or will you simply be against the test thus ducking accountability as your goal?. . . Actually I am saying, you are either with those who support a viable alternative or with those who are ducking accountability.”
Cap, you keep on repeating that false dichotomous thinking, that it’s and either/or situation when it is not. So when you do I have to call “bullshit”.
Please explicitly explain who are those folks who have been “ducking accountability” all these years and who haven’t been/don’t support a “viable alternative” to standardized testing as a means of assessing the teaching and learning process.
that it’s an not and
I don’t think teachers duck accountability, however, I do think that is the perception and it is used well by the opposition. Wake up!
You are quite correct Cap in that the perception is there and not only used by the opposition by originally proposed and propagated by them. I agree that many teachers (and especially the top “leadership” of the supposedly vaunted teachers “unions” need to be the some of the ones who need to recognize those facts and properly deal with them as they should be doing. But not only them but all public school educators should be continually fighting those false memes.
Just saying “NO” to a test solves nothing. That’s a tea party approach, say no to ACA but have no viable solutions. We must get out of the tea party mode and present that solution. Bullshit is saying no w/o solutions.
What I am saying BS to is the dichotomous way that you have framed the issue. Your suggestions in response to other of my comments show that there can be multiple ways of assessing student ability with the best ones being in the classroom setting. As far as assessing teachers, the same thing applies, the closer to the classroom and what goes on are the best.
Agreed! My question is why aren’t we supporting that kind of viable alternative. Sometimes we need a wake up call, & that’s what I do
How do we guarantee that students who live in lower socioeconomic communities have access to the same resources as their peers in wealthier communities? Project based, whole child initiatives sound wonderful, but they can look very different depending on the resources available in a community. I have seen some simplistic, very crudely executed “projects” on display in a high school that could have passed for elementary school projects in wealthier communities. I would hate to see those projects being used to judge the critical thinking skills of those high school students. To be fair, I have also seen some absolutely beautiful work displayed, especially in the fine and vocational arts, that are on a par with anything produced by their more affluent neighbors.
Periodic sampling tests like NAEP that are not used for high stakes can help us see whether we are doing anything to equalized opportunities, but they cannot give us the nuanced understanding that we need. Monitoring the quality of opportunity will take a much more sophisticated hands on system. We are all shaped by our own experiences and judge others through lenses drawn out of that experience. On a simple level, when I was isolated in my special ed classroom, my understanding of what was happening in regular classrooms was distorted. I had a much better understanding of where my students were going when I spent time in inclusion classrooms. On another level, my moving from teaching in an affluent district to a low income community opened my eyes to a whole new world and a different no less valid way of viewing the world. The question becomes how do we come together to provide a quality education for all children gleaned from what we have seen work from across the spectrum, affluent or poor, urban, suburban, or rural, north or south, east or west. While we seem to hold expensive private schools in awe, they do not have anywhere near a monopoly on what quality education means.
“Periodic sampling tests like NAEP that are not used for high stakes can help us see whether we are doing anything to equalized opportunities. . . ”
NO! 2o2t*, the NAEP suffers all the same epistemological and ontological errors and falsehoods identified by Wilson that render any such test COMPLETELY INVALID and any results “VAIN AND ILLUSORY”, in other words pure BS (I think that’s why Peter Greene calls them BS Tests-ha ha!).
There are many ways to evaluate/assess the teaching and learning process and environment that have been conveniently and purposely pushed aside by the edudeformers, things like student teacher ratios, facilities comparisons, access to health care for the students, etc. . . in their quest to have a supposed “measure” of the output of the teaching and learning process be the end all be all in assessing the teaching and learning process. By using the output focus of the edudeformers, i.e., NAEP and any other standardized tests instead of evaluating the input of facilities, faculty, curriculum options etc. . . we will continue to lose the battle to wrest control of the discourse back to those who should be the ones in control-THE TEACHERS, PARENTS AND STUDENTS and to bring a semblance of sanity back to the public school teaching and learning process.
*I don’t often disagree with you 2o2t but got to on this one.
I thought of you as I wrote it, Duane, but I am not sold on the complete uselessness of standardized testing. I am sold on the idea that it is frequently badly misused. The mistake is in assuming that a number means something without an extensive background narrative. The mistake is in thinking that that number in and of itself tells us anything useful about an individual student much less a group. I have told this story before but I will tell it again. I sat at a table with a history teacher in a regular class who was grading an in class, teacher made exam. He was grading the exam of one of his LD inclusion students and was pleased and surprised to see how well she did on the first page. I told him to wait until he got to the second page. As I predicted, she tanked. Now if we just looked at her score on that test, our conclusions would have been much different. The background narrative, however, painted a different picture. We have to be very careful what conclusions we draw from a single piece of information especially when that information is a number on a test. NAEP tells us something. I would argue that there is no simplistic answer to what.
Periodic sampling is useless. The only test that could possibly be used is a small pre and post test done in the classroom and thus easy for the teacher to utilize. The test is a snap shot in time and must be used as such. Have you ever heard of an 8 hour snap shot?
Even back when photography, and its predecessors were just starting I don’t think it took eight hours to get a “snapshot”.
Children growing up in poverty do not have access to the same resources as their more affluent peers. I have students who have never been to New York, have never been on a train, have never been to the beach. All of these experiences are accessible to Newark residents. I showed kindergarteners a picture of an escalator in a book and they said it was an elevator. Another kid asked what a television was. A more informed child patiently explained that television is TV. A girl didn’t know what a doll is. I will not bore you with further examples.
“Children growing up in poverty do not have access to the same resources as their more affluent peers.”
And that lack of access continues when they get into the public schools. But the edudeformers want people to think that everyone has equal access to equal educational resources. Ain’t nuthin too much further from the truth.
To address those issues, the differences in and lack of resources ARE/COULD EASILY BE within the control our society if we wanted it to be. But obviously we don’t.
To put it bluntly, paraphrasing David Coleman, “We don’t give a shit about the multitudes of downtrodden poor children, we only give a shit about our own privileged children and they’d better have all the advantages we can give them”.
When will we ever learn? All kids are different. If they are slowed by the affects of poverty, then we must adjust to that in the new style school system. They are not nor would we want them to be the Stepford Kids!
Confused by this new stance by Marc Tucker. He spear-headed national standards to benefit the economy. As benign as that may sound, it is damaging to local control and requires federal control which can only be had by enforcing standards with high stakes testing. The reforms he promoted in his “Dear Hillary” letter are a dangerous because to accomplish its ends it will require authoritarian behavior. It proposes that each child is built the same and can be molded into the perfect worker. There is a deep misunderstanding of the varieties of human potentials and skills that cannot fit into a uniform mold across every school. We need variety. We need freedom. We need local control so that each child can find the right fit in a school for his/her interests and innate talents. It should be the individual that chooses the career and not the career that chooses the individual.
For every comment made by Duane on this post–yes, yes, yes, yes & yes!
(The other 2 comments were a correction & a question.) This discussion is redundant & tiresome. In this almost fully dystopian present, there is NO “standardized” testing. Period. So we fruitlessly continue to discuss…nothing. It’s all about $$$, it’s all about keeping 99% of us down–it has NOTHING to do w/helping children or parents or the majority of our society. So, parents (& h.s. students–an ENTIRE 11th Grade in a school district refused to take the test!) keep opting out–no one to take tests=no testing, no data, no more tests. End of discussion.
Indeed, David Bremenstuhl, Education Laureate, what, in fact does the “Education Laureate” after your name mean?