Preliminary figures indicate that at least 33,000 students opted out of state tests in New York.
This is a huge increase from last year, when only a few hundred students refused to take the tests.
Given the growing criticism of the tests, which many teachers and principals say were “terrible” or developmentally inappropriate, the opt put movement will continue to grow.
It is an awful burden to place on children to tell them–and, yes, they know– that their test score will determine whether their teacher will be fired or their school will be closed.
As more states begin taking the Common Core-aligned tests, more parents will say no. We have heard from industry spokesmen that the online tests will be data mining, collecting information about children for future use, perhaps for vendors. Parents will say, “No thanks.” And they are right.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The reading research literature contains many examples of strong, positive relationships between certain kinds of cognition and reading ability….The prospect of a society in which all but a minority of the population exhibits a high degree of textual alienation is a frightening one… I am suggesting that such textual alienation effectually “depowers” one in a society which values literacy. A reading citizen stays a client, a consumer of a culture, a writing citizen become its creator or destroyer.”
Brain Cambourne, 1988
Presently, children’s writing uses “graphic organizers”, the prison bars of creativity.
This is a behavioralist method of writing associated with ELA, the model
that learning is habit-forming, like Pavlov’s experiments with rats in a cage
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Right on!
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How are the schools treating students who opt out? In my school district the kids have to “sit ans stare” while the others take the test. There must be a better way.
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NYC==under its new leadership–said there would be no mistreatment or punishment of children who opt out.
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Hi Diane, Here is the article indicating that Washington State Teachers Union supports families opting out of state testing. Please let me know that you have received this message. Thanks.
http://kuow.org/post/washington-teachers-union-supports-families-opting-out-state-testing#.U0RD1KWxcgU.facebook
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Until this post, I had not read anything from the “industry spokesman” Jose Ferreira, CEO of Knewton. After watching the disgusting youtube–Knewton Education Datapalooza (2012), I checked out his blog, The Knewton Blog. Even more disgusting than the youtube was his entry, The Digital Divide and America’s Achievement Gap, posted January 22, 2014. Here he says, “The most important driver of learning outcomes is teachers. Take PISA scores. Improving the bottom 10% or so of American teachers to be more like 50th percentile teachers would vault the U.S. to near the top of the global rankings.” And, of course, then he adds, “We can’t improve education by curing poverty. We have to cure poverty by improving education.”
In the youtube video he spoke of the low-scoring “poor schmuck.”
I know a true schmuck, Jose Ferreira!
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I picked- Ferreria’s inference to the “poor schmuck”, also. Gross guy.
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