Kristina Rizga in “Mother Jones” explains why the Opt Out movement is becoming a national phenomenon.
She focuses on the story of Kiana Hernandez, a student in Florida. She made the decision on her own, but she was inspired by seeing TV coverage of students opting out.
“By her own estimate, Kiana had spent about three months during each of her four years at University High in Orlando preparing for and taking standardized tests that determined everything from her GPA to her school’s fate. “These tests were cutting out class time,” she says. “We would stop whatever we were learning to prepare.” The spring of her senior year, she says, there were three whole months when she couldn’t get access to computers at school (she didn’t have one at home) to do homework or fill out college applications. They were always being used for testing.
“Kiana had a 2.99 GPA and is heading to Otterbein University in Ohio this fall. She says she did well in regular classroom assignments and quizzes, but struggled with the standardized tests the district and state demanded. “Once you throw out the word ‘test,’ I freeze,” she tells me. “I get anxiety knowing that the tests count more than classwork or schoolwork. It’s a make or break kind of thing….
“Students in American public schools today take more standardized tests than their peers in any other industrialized country. A 2014 survey of 14 large districts by the Center for American Progress found that third- to eighth-graders take 10 standardized tests each year on average, and some take up to 20. By contrast, students in Europe rarely encounter multiple-choice questions in their national assessments and instead write essays that are graded by trained educators. Students in England, New Zealand, and Singapore are also evaluated through projects like presentations, science investigations, and collaborative assignments, designed to both mimic what professionals do in the real world and provide data on what students are learning.”
Rizga’s book “Mission High” was just published. I intend to review it soon. It is the story of a so-called “failing school” in San Francisco where students and teachers work hard to beat the odds against them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mission High is a wonderful read about dedicated teachers supporting students in overcoming odds the old-fashioned way: with time, support, dedication, and affection. I predict it will be your kind of book.
Kristinfont, I have read Mission High and agree. I will be reviewing it.
Thank you, Diane for highlighting my story and for reading Mission High! I look forward to your review and reponses from readers.
Here’s a 2011 video of Matt Damon recounting the story of how his rmother, a teacher, opted him out:
(2:45)
(2:45)
” … I did have a brush with standardized tests at one point. I remember my mom went to the principal’s office and said, ‘My kid ain’t takin’ that… It’s stupid. It won’t tell him anything, and it will just make him nervous.’ ”
watch the whole video… I was there in D.C. that day. Teachers were crying by the end of this speech.
Thanks for the link.
I wish the army of millions really did have our back or rather realized that now more than ever they need to have our backs if they want what we gave them for their children. The privatizers are insidiously manipulating the national narrative not only on public education but on the nature of democracy itself. They have no concept of common good but are driven by an insatiable greed that demands winning while the rest of us lose. Matt Damon has a life to live beyond our struggles, but his words bring tears to my eyes. Teachers can be sappy. I wish we could mobilize those millions before it is too late.
I remember Arne Duncan trying to get Matt Damon to meet with him in the White House before he gave that speech purportedly so that he could be “convinced” to stop. I remember President Obama lambasting Damon at the Correspondents Dinner after that speech. I believe Matt Damon was bullied into silence like many of us. I think he is one of us, and I love him, and I love his movies.
No one bullies Matt Damon
Love Matt Damon and his mother, Nancy.
I never heard that Obama or anyone else had tried to talk Matt Damon out of speaking. I’d love to hear more details, or a confirmation of that.
However, I do remember some controversy during that that SOS weekend. Leading up to Sunday’s rally at the Ellipse field next to the White House, there were events and modules held at American University. There was also a protest held outside the Dept. of Ed. on Friday morning, if memory serves.
Everyone was stunned that morning when SOS leaders were invited in to meet with DOE officials, including a promised meeting with Duncan. After being led in and treated with refreshments, the SOS leaders laid out all their objections to the Dept of Ed’s policies… and alll these were met with nods… and uh huh… yeah… uh huh… from DOE functionaries.
Near the end of the meeting Duncan stopped in for a few minutes, basically saying hi and bye, then leaving. There was a promised longer meeting on Saturday afternoon with DOE officials, possibly with Duncan.
And then at the end of the day Friday, the DOE put out a release giving an account of the meeting that differed from reality. They said that the DOE and SOS were all in almost complete agreement on everything, with only minor differences… the meeting was a love-fest…. blah-blah-blah… Duncan said, that “we’re not far a apart” on most issues… “we have much common ground'”….
The SOS leaders went ballistic at this late Friday news dump, saying that there was no such love-fest, that the DOE gave no indication that they agreed with anything that SOS’s positions… as any such agreements would reflect a major 180-degree policy shifts. The SOS leaders then cancelled the longer meeting to be held on Saturday… as they would not allow themselves to be betrayed and manipulated any further. I can recall the exact words, but it was something like this…
“If Secretary Duncan or anyone else in the DOE wants to know what what the SOS is all about, they can come on Sunday to the Ellipse field (just across from the South Lawn of the White House) and hear for themselves, along with everyone else.”
It was in that context that Matt Damon gave his speech.
Jack, yes, I remember that Matt was invited to meet with Duncan before he spoke and he turned down the invite.
Duncan should have saved the move he used on SOS for Damon. Instead Damon was forewarned as to how he would be used. I never quite developed that early warning system necessary for dealing with people hellbent on their own agendas. Believing in the basic goodness and/or goodwill of people comes in handy in teacher-student interaction, but I was oblivious to most of the machinations of the adults around me.
The article also reports that high school students in urban schools are subjected to 266% more tests than their counterparts in suburban schools.
I mailed a copy of the article to a director of the American Association of University Women, an organization that supports Common Core. If the group’s members are aware of the privatizing and corporatizing of public education, I doubt they would support a plan that facilitates the linking of standards and, for-profit curriculum and testing, if for no other reason, than that their profession is next in the cross-hairs.
A former AAUW education foundation senior program officer followed the career path,
Gates Foundation, Duncan Chief of Staff, Director of the Joyce foundation, Review Board for the Broad Prize and then, the move to Parthenon, a company founded by Bain.
If AAUW leadership is advocating a policy position inconsistent with the interests of its members, shame on them.
SHAME is RIGHT. Follow the $$$$$.
I watched her on CSpan 2 and was extremely impressed with her subject matter. This is a topic that should be the vocal point of anyone in education.
My hope is she will get her voice heard and change will occur.
It’s a great piece. I’d love to hear what the older students who were given the Common Core test with minimal exposure to the Common Core standards think.
Not the survey questions the contractor came up with- real questions. Was it nerve-wracking to take such a long test and one that was so heavily promoted when they really hadn’t been prepared on the new standards? I think it would be.
“assignments designed to mimic what professionals do in the real world”
Ha!
Then the corporate RheeFormers better create a job sector where all the workers do is take tests all day and get paid for taking those tests. Imagine getting up and going to work 8 hours a day for five days and earning at least minimum wage plus bonuses for just taking tests—the bonuses could be linked to improved test scores?
Is there a job sector with millions of jobs like that out there? How many tests could be taken in a 45-year career as a professional test taker?
What should we call this job sector?
More essays and essay exams and fewer multiple choice-tests. I would love to see that. Students won’t improve at writing by taking and prepping for multiple choice-tests. The Europeans have the right idea about minimizing multiple-choice tests.
This is the way it should be done but
>multiple choice tests earn more profits for the corporations who create them.
And for essays, most of the money goes to the people hired who grade them and those people are usually teachers.
For instance, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I went through a full day’s training and then spent a week one summer with hundreds of other teachers doing nothing but reading and grading essays from other schools where none of us taught using a rubric. Every essay was read by a team of teachers and the rubric score was averaged.
Using essay exams cuts out the test prep companies like Pearson and there is no profit for them. Instead, teachers are offered an opportunity to earn some money during vacation time when they aren’t earning anything. The RheeFormers would hate that because it is obvious they are only in this for the money and don’t give a hoot for the children’s education.
Lloyd,
I usually agree with everything you write, but I differ on this one.
Did the teachers write that rubric? Was the ‘training’ preparing you to give a better (for the student) assessment, or was it designed to promote the view of the ‘trainer’. Where is the data to support either scenario? Would the ‘rubric’ have identified (or encouraged) the genius of a Melville, a Whitman, a Fitzgerald, a Kerouac, a Jackson? Why do teachers have to operate in a ‘team’ of hundreds (or even six or seven) in order to offer their assessment? And, why, exactly, does there need to be an obsession with ‘national standards’, when the cumulative GPA from individual teachers turns out to be at least an equally valid measure.
Yes, I used ‘rubrics’ when I graded the complex physics problems I gave my ‘advanced’ students, but I designed them (as every teacher does when grading something other than “yes/no” on order to be consistent [fair], though not always an accurate measure). The point is that we don’t need a corporation defining the rubric.
One of the values of a school is that it exposes the student to a much wider world. That world includes not only classmates with different backgrounds, but also teachers with different ideas and styles. This stretches the student, literally ‘educates’. When teachers march in lockstep, it indicates that there is a known ‘right way’. Are you sure there is?
And, do you really think most of the money ETS rakes in goes to pay the teachers it uses?
Before NCLB, California mandated that to graduate from high school students had to demonstrate they could write an essay from a prompt and earn a set rubric score and pass tests in English and math that demonstrated that their skills were at last at 9th grade level in those areas. This was back with G. W. Bush was still governor of Texas where he set the minimum competency level of Texas students at 4th grade so he could brag at how many students met those competencies when he ran for president. California had one of the highest competency levels in the country.
The rubrics for the California essays were written with the prompts that were used in mind. All of this material was created through California’s department of education in cooperation with involvement from stake holders in California that included teachers, parents, students, etc. Unlike Duncan and Pearson’s Common Core Crap, California planned to take at least 10 years to develop these standards, the multiple choice tests, the essay prompts and the rubrics, and the state was committed to revising material as feedback from all the stakeholders was taken into account. Some parents even went to court and there were compromises made.
Most of the teachers in the state if not all of them went through workshops in their districts on how to write rubrics that focused on what the prompts asked the students to write.
There were two rubrics. One focused on grammar and mechanism and one on content. From what I remember, the rubrics were reasonable and made sense. After that summer, I taught my students how to write the rubrics we used in my classes for the essays they wrote and the students used those same rubrics that had created working together to help them improve their own writing.
What happened in California back then included teachers, administrators, parents and student focus groups—-nothing at all like the Common Core Crap that’s been pushed by Pearson so they could rake in American tax dollars to boost their profits.
I don’t remember any teachers that I knew who complained about the state’s standards maybe because we were all included in the development process. If any teachers in the state didn’t like what was going on, I didn’t hear it from anyone I knew. In addition, those tests were never used to rank teachers, fire them and close public schools like the Common Core Crap.
To focus on Kiana’s story only us to miss what I think even more important in this piece: the story of how the teachers worked together in meaningful ways to help students. Teachers are being forced to partcipate in Professional Learning Communities without being shown how it works. The Japanese have been doing Lesson Study to great success but we can’t replicate their success in our PLC. This story is about how PLC can be successful. I forwarded this piece to my superintendent last week.