Bedeviled by technical glitches and the growing parent revolution against high-stakes testing, the Florida Department of Education announced it would suspend certain standardized tests for grades K-2, at least for this year.
The announcement came after school systems, including Miami-Dade, ran into technical troubles administering the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading to students in kindergarten through second grade.
This is only a temporary victory, and it is probably meant to quell parent anger as the state is in the midst of a hotly contested race for governor. Please note in the linked story that the refusal of a kindergarten teacher to administer the FAIR test to her students, announced in a widely publicized public statement, may have influenced the state’s decision to roll back the testing this year. Resistance to unjust mandates matters.
But it shows which way the winds are blowing, and how the pushback against testing is felt even in Florida, which has never met a test it was unwilling to administer to children of any age.
Any setback for standardized testing is test-crazy Florida is cause for celebration.
Miami-Dade schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho pointed out that Florida school districts are under pressure to develop scores of new assessments, some of which will be tied teacher pay.
The state, he said, was only “scratching the surface of a much bigger issue.”
Colleen Wood, founder of the public education advocacy group 50th No More, said she and other parents would continue to make noise.
“It’s a good day when the Department of Education recognizes that any test is not working correctly,” Wood said. “But they would be mistaken to think stopping FAIR is going to quiet the discontent of parents across the state.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/09/15/4350595/state-suspends-some-standardized.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I had read the response letter that was written as to why the test was no longer required. It seemed that its priority was to circumvent the anger should they fire that K teacher and continue on with the tests. They did not in any way mention that the tests are developmentally inappropriate and just plain “anti teaching”. They simply said that the test was cancelled due to technical issues in implementing it. I hope the kindergarten teacher and her supporters KEEP UP THE PRESSURE and say it like it is… “The test is not being cancelled for the right reasons… only to calm an increasingly angry public”!!!!
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Here’s Jeb Bush reacting to the news
that parents opting out led to cancellation
of standardized testing:
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Priceless! TY, Jack.
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The FAIR test, developed in partnership with Louisa Moats (I was told – and to be sold at a profit to other states), has been plagued by technical glitches from its inception.
Every year I administered the test the computer would freeze up and kick us off many times, invalidating the test results and requiring some children to be tested multiple times on the same material, making the results worthless. Those were the times we could actually log in. There were many times we couldn’t and after hiring a sub for the day it was a wasted opportunity. Testing took days and often required hiring subs to cover the classes because teachers need at least 3 full days to test a class, one student at a time.
FAIR was used for VAM scores for teachers in K-2 in my district last year but we have not received our VAM evaluations for last year yet so I don’t know the impact.
This test requires the teacher to sit one-on-one with each students for 45 – 90 minutes, going through a battery of Reading First-type exercises in word reading, vocabulary word identification through pictures, reading long passages and answering comprehension questions, and then another battery of subtests on phonemic awareness if a child misses even one word from the reading list.
The teacher script is strictly controlled and limited and serves to confuse at times. Parts of the test were very racist and classist. For example, the vocabulary pictures included things that poor children and immigrants would have no life experience of seeing but that upper middle class white children would know instantly. The stories are complex and not linked to real lives of the children I teach in any way.
A student’s score or ‘probability of reading success’ was based entirely upon their ability to read a list of 12 words that were ‘scientifically’ determined to predict reading success 2 years down the road. Everything else was supposed to support teaching them to read that list accurately so they would succeed on the third grade FCAT test.
I found FAIR data somewhat helpful for struggling readers but I had been collecting the same data on my own from other less onerous and time-consuming methods for years before it became a mandatory time waster. We were told at its launch that it would not be used to judge teachers and schools yet every time it was administered we had to attend a data meeting where the data was shared publicly and scrutinized with criticism of the results by the district and comparison between teachers and schools.
Good riddance and may it be the first of many to go!
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Maybe we can recruit highly-skilled, volunteer hackers to make sure online standardized tests never work. After all, these hackers would be attacking corrupt, profit mongering, corporate monsters and their master billionaires from the top 1-percent.
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There wouldn’t have to be any “hacking” involved. DDoS attack would do the trick; essentially, the difficulties they’ve had were mostly self-inflicted DDoS attacks by having too many people accessing their servers at the same time. They’re already teetering from regular use; it wouldn’t take much of an attack to tip them over.
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Parent power is building in Florida.
From: Diane Ravitch’s blog <comment-reply@wordpress.com> Reply-To: Diane Ravitch’s blog <comment+p6kq961q1760nna9k9at2y4n@comment.wordpress.com> Date: Monday, September 15, 2014 at 10:52 PM To: James McDermott <jmcdermott@clarku.edu> Subject: [New post] Breaking News: Florida Suspends Online Standardized Tests for K-2, Temporarily
dianeravitch posted: “Bedeviled by technical glitches and the growing parent revolution against high-stakes testing, the Florida Department of Education announced it would suspend certain standardized tests for grades K-2, at least for this year. The announcement “
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It’s about PROFITS! Greed = root of all evil.
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FINALLY someone is making a decision that is in the BEST interest of CHILDREN!! I agree with Chris in Florida…..”may this be the first of MANY to GO!!”
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We are the parents of Kindergartners and 2nd graders. After Susan Bowles from our school district (Alachua County FL) made national headlines by refusing to administer a computerized test, we felt it was time to get our voices as parents heard.
The whole process has been a truly eye opening experience. We never realized how excessive testing is and how much miscommunication is happening. During a town hall meeting teachers brought examples of tests and result print outs to the meeting. Shocking for us all.
On September 8 we launched a petition (Say NO to computer testing in K-2nd grades) and we have collected over 390 signatures so far, but we don’t want to stop. We have been actively lobbing newspapers, spoke out at town meetings, talked and contacted legislators, PTAs (district as well as state). We have also launched a FB page and trying to get our message out. We are now reaching out to other similar minded groups here in FL, but also within the United States as we believe this problem is not a local issue, but is and should be a national concern.
When we asked the school-board representatives and administrators what we should do and how to keep this discussion going the message was clear: Speak up! Write letters, emails, call legislators and sign/launch petitions.
And that is exactly what we are doing, we parents are tired of sending our kids to schools, where great teachers become test facilitators and computer technicians. We want our kids to have fun learning. We strongly believe that in early years good experiences with school will lay the foundation for a life long interest in education, learning and personal growth.
We have now launched a petition and invite you to sign it.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/say-no-to-computer-testing?source=c.em.cp&r_by=11297164
We have launched a Facebook page and are posting articles/resources to it as we come across.
https://www.facebook.com/Notocomputertesting
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