This is a great story from Florida, where legislators are test-crazy. Sammy Addo, a third-grader, did not take any of the required tests. His mother is a teacher and a strong opponent of high-stakes testing. Sammy took only the tests that his own teacher gave, based on what she taught in class. Sammy was promoted.
He says, in part:
My name is Sammy Addo. I am finishing third grade at Port Malabar Elementary this week. Next year I will be in fourth grade even though I did not take the Math or the Reading FSA.
I also did not take any of the three FAIR tests this year. I did not take either of the two BELLA tests, either of the two district math tests, the district science, or the district social studies tests. There are a lot of tests!
Even though I didn’t take those tests, I took all the tests that Mrs. Kelly gave me about things that she taught in our class. Those tests were how I proved what I learned. I did well and that is why I am going to fourth grade – my report card proves I did my job as a third grader.
Lots of people at school said I would have to stay back because I didn’t take the FSA, but I knew they were wrong.
I knew that my mom and dad wouldn’t tell me to do something that would be bad for me. They always say that one test on one day does not prove anything about me.
Read the link and watch the video. Sammy is one smart little guy!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If all teachers opted out their own kids, then what a statement that would make. One by one.
Absolutely, Della! It is both our right and our obligation as educators to refuse this pedagogically inappropriate practice. Denying instructional time for test-prep, putting evaluations of professionals on the backs of children, and rewarding or sanctioning schools and districts based on assessment data is education malpractice. Those of us who know better must do better. Until we take the lead we cannot expect others to follow.
What is the purpose of school? What does it mean to be educated? Education of any value is the ability to think critically, discern value, and articulate your position. Why, then, do we coerce, manipulate, and extort students and families into buying into state-mandated tests, from these silly common core things all the way up to regents exams? Are hypothetical essays on whether or not we should have school uniforms the absolute upper extent of empowerment we want to give to kids over their own lives?
Our testing obsession is out of control. Standardized testing is part of the “one size fits all” need to rank and stack. No one has ever proven it benefits students. At this point the amount and misuse of testing obstructs teaching and learning and serves only to enrich testing companies, and the money would be better spent helping to rectify some of the inherent inequities in schools.
If our leaders think testing has such great value why do they only inflict public schools with endless testing. They should share the “great value” of endless testing with charters.
If high-stakes, mandatory, standardized testing were such a problem, we would have seen the same civil disobedience ten years ago. The tests are a symptom; a nasty symptom, but a symptom. The problem is that control is valued over freedom, predictability is valued over risk, the collective is valued over the individual, and institutional systems are valued over family and culture.
Good for them! Opt all kids out of CCRAP or PARCC tests.
Sammy “did his job.” His Teacher did their job and the child moved on to the fourth grade. We’re doing our “jobs.” The CorpED Vandals job?? To siphon as much money as they can from our schools and students in order to enrich themselves. Time to remove the CorpED menace from our schools . . .
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Just listening to Sammy’s speech and paying attention to the content tells you this child is ready for fourth grade.
“Testing Irony”
He passed the test
By opting out
And proved his zest
For truth, no doubt
From “A DAMthology of Deform” (read it here)
@outlawlearning
“If high-stakes, mandatory, standardized testing were such a problem, we would have seen the same civil disobedience ten years ago. The tests are a symptom; a nasty symptom, but a symptom.”
Yes, testing existed ten years ago, but the high stakes attached now, we’re not so attached ten years ago. My younger children are 9 and 10. My 19 yr old also went to public school and it was never like it is now. The degree to which children as young as eight years ago are now held “accountable” is abusive. What is on the line for teachers, for the almighty school grade is what causes the excessive test prep. There are pre-tests for THE tests. There are benchmark tests, which serve double duty as predictor tests and teacher evaluation tests, which do NOTHING to help children or their teachers to do their jobs better. NOTHING.
Mandatory, high stakes, standardized testing are the fuel that drive the machine of corporate education reform. THAT is the problem. The symptoms are the children throwing up in hallways, being bored out of their minds from mind-numbing test prep, being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, clinical depression, outrageous numbers of children being diagnosed with ADHD – because they no longer get recess, veteran teachers foregoing full retirement benefits to quit early, teachers on antidepressants just so they can cope with the bullying from administration.
School today is rife with an insidious, parasitic disease. It’s called corporatitis aka privatitis.The most effective treatment is to #OptOut. We are hopeful for a cure.
As long as these high stakes are attached to the tests, my children will NEVER take them.
When I left teaching four years ago, the testing and data driven decision making was just beginning to ramp up. At first, the access to data was rather benign although it bit me early on. PARCC was not an issue yet although they were beginning to get frenetic about things like AIMSWEB and MAP testing. No one had yet started to use it to make high stakes decisions on more than a very tentative basis. I think I was one of the first ones to be accused of having students who did not show enough growth in reading (high school special ed). Fortunately, my students were never aware that their performance was being used against me.
Look, I agree with you guys and the general sentiment that things have gotten worse. But it’s a “first they came for the…” scenario, isn’t it? In NY at least HS kids have been required to take 5 regents exams to graduate. ELL kids get 6 hours each, they often fail, and so they sit for a hundred hours of standardized testing before they prove to the state that they’re good enough to be grown ups. That’s been going on for at least 10 years. It narrows the curriculum and reduces learning to a weird trivia contest.
So yes, the scope and stakes have increased, and I agree that dragging elementary kids through this is worse than what I described above. I’m just saying we should have “opted out” of any “mandatory” test a long time ago, because it’s not the tests themselves that are so evil – tests are just pieces of paper, they can’t be evil. It’s that the tests are a tool to measure our conformity and obedience to the state.