Heather Vogell, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has spent a year studying the testing industry.

The series she is writing about testing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution should receive a Pulitzer Prize. See here and here.

What she has uncovered is that the tests are flawed, that errors are common, and that students are denied a high school diploma because of errors made by the testing companies.

When I read about students who dropped out of school because they failed a test–because the test answers were wrong or mis-scored–it makes me feel that the testing companies should be subject to criminal prosecution.

Those students will not have a diploma, they will not be able to go to college, they will not be able to get a good job to support themselves and their family, because of a bad standardized test.

Let me repeat: Testing companies that inflict real harm on real people should be subject not just to fines, but to criminal prosecution.

The testing industry is ruining the lives of other people’s children while they rake in profits.

And they suffer no consequences. Only the students do.

Let’s face it, folks.

Our nation is overdosing on standardized tests.

Why?

Because the people in charge–in Washington, D.C. and in the state capitols–don’t trust teachers.

They don’t trust teachers to make their own tests, as teachers did for generations, and as teachers in other nations still do.

This has to stop.

Start planning now for the spring testing season.

Opt out.

Do not let your child take the state tests.

Do not administer the tests.

Encourage your school to opt out.

Encourage your entire district to opt out.

Stop the machine.

Stop the destruction of the lives of children and  young people.

Take control away from the technocrats and demand a real education, not a system whose only purpose is to rank and rate students based on flawed instruments.

As readers know, John Merrow decided yesterday to post a blog in which he gratuitously insulted me by comparing me to a politician on the far right and implied we represented extremes and neither of us was a hero. This came out of the blue. I used to think of John as a friend, but friends don’t insult friends. He also insulted readers of my blog, suggesting that like Senator Ted Cruz’s followers, they are all closed minded. We are, he says, on “the left,” while Cruz is at the other extreme. He much prefers Dave Levin, one of the founders of KIPP, whom he holds up as an exemplar of “the messy middle.”

The insults came so thick and fast that it was hard to sort them out. My readers are not leftists. They are teachers, parents, students, administrators, and ordinary people who don’t like to see their local public schools closed down or taken over by a private charter corporation like KIPP.

I am a scholar and a historian. I don’t like the status quo of the past dozen years. I think our policymakers are doing serious harm to children, teachers, schools, and communities. It is outrageous that they call these policies “reform,” when it would be more accurate to call them “destruction.” They are destroying childhood. They are destroying creativity. They are destroying love of learning. They are maligning public education. They are demoralizing teachers and principals and destroying the education profession.

Through my blog and my books, I have tried to present evidence and research, not just opinion. When I express opinion, it is based on evidence. Dispute the evidence, if you will, but don’t resort to ad hominem attacks.

I invite my readers to read the comments following John’s post. Not many agree with what he wrote.

A reader writes:

In my daughter’s Kindergarten class here in Palm Beach County, Florida, she just had her first test–in Kindergarten!!! Each student was separated by a cardboard wall of blinders around them and they were given a five page test on numbers one through five. They had to write the number, the word for the number and draw how many dots represented the number. At a local union meeting, I asked a Kindergarten teacher from another school if she did that in her classroom–surround each student by blinders. She nodded in affirmation. We’re told “They have to be prepared to be tested in first grade.” I remember when I went to Kindergarten in the sixties. Kindergaraten was a half a day. We played with blocks, wooden choo choo trains, had snack and naptime. The teacher tried to teach us how to tell time, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I never went to preschool. About midway through first grade, my learning clicked and I took off and I haven’t stopped learning ever since. What’s the rush? Why can’t the kids have a chance to be kids? We’re told they have to be prepared for 21st century jobs, for a global workforce? You mean, the global workforce that ships American jobs over seas for dirt cheap wages? You mean the global workforce that hides their money overseas in various tax shelter schemes to avoid paying taxes to help the American people (or people in any country!). You mean the global workforce that exploits people rather than serves them? You mean the global workforce, led by bankers, that created a casino economy, wrecked the entire global economy and received a bailout at public expense while people who purchased homes were left with underwater mortgages? Is that the global workforce we’re preparing our kids for? No thanks. I want my daughter to develop a kind heart, to think of others and to make the world a better place for all, not to be a pawn for profit-making schemes of education testing vultures.

A reader sent the following comment, which includes a very disturbing document. The founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, Pennsylvania, was indicted and accused of siphoning some $8 million from the school’s accounts. The school has (still has) over 10,000 students and an annual income of $100 million. Bear in mind that virtual charters do not have the expenses of brick-and-mortar public schools: no library or librarians; no school nurse or guidance counselors; no custodians; no heating bills; no fields to maintain; etc. Yet they collect the same state tuition as if they had all the same expenses.

Here is the reader’s comment:

Speaking of cybercharters, the affidavit in the PA fed case was unsealed. It’s a good read. Trombetta boasts that he is moving into Florida. It appears to me that they intended to shut down the PA and OH operations and move to a state where there was less, ahem, HEAT.
You’ll come away wondering why it took a decade to conduct even a cursory review of the financial transactions, or why there was no action by the state of PA.
They wiretapped phones, so there’s a lot of dialogue.
My favorite part is where the digital learning pioneer tells one of his criminal associates he can no longer accept bags of cash in the Pizza Hut parking lot.

http://ae3b703522cf9ac6c40a-32964bea949fe02d45161cf7095bfea9.r89.cf2.rackcdn.com/2013/261/187/affidavit-unsealed-in-the-nick-trombetta-criminal-investigation.pdf