Franziska Raeber describes how parents in Florida are organizing resistance to online testing of children in K-2. Please be aware that the purpose of online testing is to enrich the testing industry and tech corporations. The best tests are written and evaluated by teachers, who know what they taught and can use the tests for instant feedback, not to rank students, but to help them. This is true not just in K-2, but throughout education, whether K-12 or higher education.
Raeber writes:
“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”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How about stopping *all* testing for K-2? Kindergarteners should be playing, they shouldn’t be learning anything testable. Even first and second graders who are learning “testable” skills aren’t ready to be tested on those skills because all kids learn at different rates and in different ways.
How about stopping *all* online testing? Different kids have different access to and familiarity with computer use, so ability to use the computer itself is part of what is being tested. Also, computer equipment is expensive, as is the software for running the tests. Computer use in schools should be greatly reduced in general and to the extent computers are used, they should be reserved for learning, not for testing.
And, oh heck, how about just stopping *all* testing? There was a time when I would have agreed with a once-annual (at most), no stakes, diagnostic only standardized test in certain key grades, but it has been amply demonstrated that even that can and will be abused. There’s little if anything a standardized test can tell about a student that even a half-way competent teacher can’t tell just by getting to know the kid.
Quite correct, Dienne, quite correct!!
Learning should be fun. In elementary school foundations are laid that will influence life long time of learning. If learning is a fun and happy experience early it will part of your life forever.
I don’t know if they were subjecting kindergartners in NY State to this testing, because nobody would tell me and my son who was in Kindergarten (until I pulled him out mid-year to homeschool) would clam up and shut down whenever I asked him about his day – all he would disclose was how he hated kindergarten and he would cry and beg to not be sent back. He is still traumatized by whatever they did to him there. So far I only know that they’d make him stand up against a wall and take away recess if he displeased them. I also know that last year was the first year our previously EXCELLENT school district went all-in with Common Core and changed Kindergarten to a full day affair when it was always a half day before. When my daughter attended kindergarten 3 years before my son it was a joyous experience for her and every day we got a sweet “newsletter” from her teacher about what the class had done that day and what they needed to do for homework. I received no such happy letters when my boy went to kindergarten, but he did come home with very thick packets of grueling homework that were all marked “Common Core” and included CC’s nonsensical unmath.
PS The happy little class newsletters for my daughter had continued to come home from subsequent teachers, in 1st & 2nd grade, but ceased entirely in 3rd grade, which was the year they fully inflicted common core on the kids and their teachers. I loved the teachers in my kids’ elementary school, and I do not blame them for the fact that my children were so utterly miserable 3 months into Common Core that I could not in good conscience continue to subject my kids to it, I saw the sadness in they eyes of my kids’ teachers & principle when I had to attend conferences regarding the difficulty my kids were having, and every time I had to go to the school last year I’d see so many more crying kids waiting at the nurse’s or the counsellor’s office than I’d ever seen before, by the way.
We can’t afford private school, and before Common Core my daughter had perfect grades and she LOVED school (and her teachers always told me that they loved having her in their classes because she was so enthusiastic about learning); I would send my daughter back to school in a heartbeat if the great teachers at her school were freed from Common Core and could go back to using the excellent methods that they had developed over the course of their professional careers, and I might even put my son back in if I thought his teachers would have the freedom to teach in the manner that they thought would work best. My son HATED Kindergarten. I always thought kindergarten should be a happy time for children and a GENTLE introduction to formal education, IMHO if children HATE kindergarten, then the school is doing something very wrong.
I would love to hear from other parents (and teachers) in NY State to see if I am not alone in my feelings that Common Core has been detrimental in what had always been regarded as some if the best school districts before this nightmare was inflicted upon us all – without our consent.
I think this would be an effective letter to Congressional and state legislators. Parents have far more power than anyone else in fighting this. You can’t be bought (like the media) or ignored (like teachers).
Politicians and policy makers are chcken. They prefer to hide behind numbers than address the real problems in education. The finger points to them..The nonsense might stop if all of them are required to get 100% of all kids in a class to do a full-scale and fully proctored test.
I think the parents are starting to push back. Great post on testing in Fl. Alison
Sent from my iPhone
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I think you’re winning on testing, though.
You can tell when there’s a huge rush of politicians to the issue, and there’s a huge rush of politicians to the issue. They ignored it for a decade. All of a sudden they are all GRAVELY concerned about all this testing they pushed for 15 years.
They’re ALL saying it now. You did that.
When think tanks start writing “open letters” purporting to “solve” the testing problem think tanks created that means you won 🙂
Click to access Statement_Guiding%20Principles%20on%20Accountability.Sept2014.pdf
To me it’s a measure of how little attention they actually pay to public schools that none of them noticed that testing was completely out of control. Do they ever actually enter any of these public schools they’re busy “reforming”?
On Mon. evening, Oct. 6th at 6pm , my entire school of GH Reid in Richmond Public Schools will gather at the School Board meeting to support our principal Mr. Vincent Darby. He is being victimized by our school superintendent, Mr. Dana Bedden, to resign because our SoL scores dropped as did many schools. Just when we have begun The Leader in Me training, he wants our leader removed. Children are no longer humans, they are just data points in the world.
Encouraging news from Florida! FYI Defending the Early Years is a non-profit project working to mobilize the early childhood community to speak out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices. We offer Action Mini Grants to help community organizing efforts such as what these Florida parents are doing. Check it out at deyproject.org. If we can help you (parents and/or teachers) please let us know.
Onward!
Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin
Director,
Defending the Early Years