Peter Greene keeps watch on the drivel that comes out of the corporate reform public relations’ maw. He has discovered that a group of them has proclaimed for all the world to see “a Testing Bill of Rights.”
You can be certain that one of the “Bill of Rights” is not the student’s right not to take the test.
This “Bill of Rights” is intended to protect and ensure the future of standardized testing as a central feature of American education.
The website is #testbetter.org.
It is sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP), High Achievement New York (which promotes high-stakes testing and charter schools), Educators 4 Excellence (a Gates-funded astro-turf group of short-stay teachers), the National PTA (a Gates-funded group that opposes opting out), the New York Urban League, America Achieves (a Gates-, Bloomberg-, Arnold-funded group devoted to data), and the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
Greene describes the “Testing Bill of Rights”:
Tests that provide an objective measure of progress toward college-and career-readiness.
There are two problems with this right. First, while students may want to know if they’re progressing toward college or career, there are better ways to find out because, second, there is no test anywhere that provides an objective measure of progress toward college-and-career readiness (yeah, their last hyphen is mistaken). There is arguably no test that is actually objective, and there is inarguably no test that can measure college and career readiness for all students considering all colleges and all careers.
Testing schedules, policies, and practices that contribute to meaningful teaching and learning.
No disagreement here. Of course, the BS Tests does not contribute to any of these characteristics.
Have student learning assessed based on an array of measures.
True-ish, if we define “measures” in the broadest possible way.
An education free of excessive test prep.
Oops. You messed this one up, guys. “An education free of any test prep.” There, fixed that for you.
Have their personally identifiable information protected.
You know the best possible way to protect it? Don’t collect it in the first place. This would be a good time to remind you of what a lousy job the USED has done safeguarding data. The old adage still applies– if you want to keep something private or secret, don’t tell anybody.
There are many more “rights” that you should be aware of. Read Greene’s post to learn what they are and what they mean.
The best response to this sort of testing propaganda is to opt out of the tests. Exercise your rights as a parent not to be used by corporate reformers to supply their data. Your child is more than a score.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Testbetter or tastesbitter?”
“The good, the bad and the ugly”
We’re only for the Good tests
And really hate the Bad
And certainly the Ugly tests
Were nothing more than fad
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hahah! You really should tweet this #Testbettertastesbitter?
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As expected, most of the all access “rights” go to the corporations. As for the students, they get to be lab rats that can be tested all the time while corporations try to snow job on parents telling them it is “valuable information.” It has value, mostly to the corporations, that can turn around and sell it to marketeers.
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This caught my eye: “Have student learning assessed based on an array of measures.”
Another bit of misleading pap from the enforcers and beneficiaries of the self-styled “education reform” movement.
Anthony Cody, THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH (2014) has a concise explanation of how the “multiple measures” argument fails to mention that the “multiple measures” circle back to the one Holy Grail of the High Holy Church of Testocracy—
The scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests.
And how does that work out in practice? Read Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION (2014) for the details.
😎
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Cheeze. That’s the best the Martha’s Vineyard crowd came up with? They don’t think very highly of their constituents.
For those who want a refresher on the Clinton/Podesta (e.g. CAP, etc) education strategy event here’s the link:
http://schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com/2015/10/camp-philos-at-vineyard-my-invite-must.html
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Here are 6 questions to ask about Common Core to see if student rights are real. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2016/03/six-questions-to-ask-about-common-core.html
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The problem with this kind of stuff is that it’s intended target, the vast bulk of parents and voters, won’t see it for the bullshit that it is. They will simply see it as “oh, all that testing drama is fixed now!” Obviously, for us, we see it for what it is….but we aren’t the vast bulk of parents, teachers, voters.
What the reform movement is eager to do is return the whole Ed dialog to that blurry, technocratic space where few voters really enter. The reformers made their boldest and deepest advances when the general public was outside of their backrooms and heavily curated spaces of dialog. The opt out movement and test resistance in general has gone deeper into the general public than they are comfortable with. (Dont get me wrong, I still think that in spite of the resistance, the reform movement is still winning….it’s just a comfort issue on their part and a desire for cleaner, swifter change without too much democracy stuff)
I don’t take much solace in the fact that us here, in these small spaces of resistance, get that things like this testing bill of rights nonsense are seen for what they truly are. It’s everyone else, regular non-engaged parents, voters, teachers even, that will buy this stuff and help thrust the reform movement and their agenda right back to that blurry, mostly-out-of-view place where they can do the most damage.
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