If your child is a data point, don’t watch this short video.
Don’t watch it if you think your child can be summed up by a number or a test score.
But watch it if you see your child as a unique individual, different from every other child and precious to you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
After listening to this song, I found myself asking how to deal with those who would steal childhood from our children.
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Beautiful.
Thank you for sharing, Diane.
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Simple… oh, so very simple, yet says it all!
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Thanks for the video song.
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That video and song should be the national anthem for the resistance fighting to save community based, transparent, non-profit, democratic public education.
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Thanks Lloyd. I will be singing it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on July 8th. Save our Schools March.
Your comment sums it all up neatly. We want our schools back.
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The Prisoner (1967)
I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
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Thank you, Diane, for sharing our song. These are scary times, and we are grateful to people like you for keeping on speaking the truth. Here is another poem. You are welcome to use it as you see fit. – Amy
Time
They have no time for show and tell.
They have no time for play.
They have no time for read aloud
for they must work all day.
They have no time for puppet shows.
They have no time to rest.
They have no time to draw or paint
for they must take a test.
They know their reading levels.
They all have Google Drive.
They are making PowerPoints.
They are four and five.
They’re busy on those iPads
where they can’t make a mess.
They must achieve to please us.
We won’t take any less.
Soon they will be teenagers.
More quickly than we know.
Will they one day forgive us?
Where did their childhoods go?
© Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
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Thank you, Amy.
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Thanks for the songs, Amy
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Tomorrow 800,000+ children will take the NYSED ELA test in grades 3-8. Many of them are actually looking forward to it. Some are indifferent, or will be bored. Some are nervous or scared.
What they all have in common, even the ones who don’t live in districts that are 96% white, is that their parents love them and want the best for them.
Perhaps testing parents are put off by the insinuation that other people know better than they do what’s right for their child. Perhaps they are aware that there are many tests in life one can’t opt out of, like the licensing tests needed to become a teacher in New York State, e.g. Perhaps they sense the disconnect between the claims that the tests are abusive, and the fact that you can count on one hand the number of teachers who have opted out of *administering* the tests.
Perhaps they aren’t fixated on a single issue and are celebrating the amazing events that took place in the state this week–a $15 minimum wage and a family leave policy are now law: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-signs-15-minimum-wage-plan-and-12-week-paid-family-leave-policy-law. (One can only guess why this ground-breaking event wasn’t highlighted on this blog.)
I hope that tomorrow is wonderful for all kids in New York, regardless of what their parents choose for them.
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Sicky sweet platitudes (that last line) do not negate all of the errors, falsehoods and psychometric fudges that render standardized testing completely invalid. Any time, effort and resources spent on the process are time, effort and resources that are wasted and which could have been spent on valid pedagogical practices.
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Duane,
The teachers in New York State don’t agree with the idea that the tests are harmful or a waste of time.
As of this morning, fewer than five teachers in the entire state have opted out of *administering* the test, even with the nation’s most protective tenure rules and even when many work in districts where opt-out is being promoted and enabled by superintendents and principals.
Don’t you think it’s pretty incredible that New York will have a $15/hr minimum wage and a generous family leave policy; that fracking has been permanently banned; and that same-sex couples may freely marry and enjoy the associated workplace, health, and financial benefits? Lots of great stuff happening in New York State today.
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This is part of a much larger struggle against these totally meaningless expensive and harmful tests. Public schools are the last government run entities. There is much money to be made. Testing companies are akin to what Eisenhower warned about, a permanent military industrial complex that would continue to promote wars to stay in business. Test companies job is the declare public schools as failing, de-professionalize teachers by claiming to have superior data and turning schools into privatized test prep academies as we see in many well funded inner city charter schools.
As soon as teaching is no longer an art, it can be automated and teachers serve the program. KIPP academy is a great example of this type of school. They hire Teach For America , 5 week trained teachers and see teaching as McDonald’s might see cooking. When the buzzer goes off, flip the burger. Real teachers adapt, create and think on their feet: How do I reach this child? No one size anything fits all.
The next round of this, promoted strongly but the AWFUL ESSA law is Competency Based Education. Instead of the hated year end test, billions spent on daily computer tests that turn school into a video game.
Opt out is not just about rejecting a stupid test–it is about standing up for real education and the human art of teaching.
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Thanks, Barry. Great comment.
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THANK you for arguing that teaching is an art. The creative energy which so many teachers experience while teaching is what makes them truly great — and yet it is a trait never valued by Statistics Fanatic school reformers. ciedieaech.wordpress.com TAKING MEASURE OF THE UNMEASURABLE
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“The teachers in New York State don’t agree with the idea that the tests are harmful or a waste of time.”
And???
That proves no point in any fashion. For centuries most medical practitioners believed in the four humours much to the harm of patients. For centuries most believed in a geocentric model of the universe (and that belief caused less harm to individuals than the belief that standardized testing isn’t “harmful or a waste of time.”
As my mom would say when I’d try to talk her into allowing me to do some cockamamie scheme with my friends; “Well, if everyone was jumping off a cliff would you? The answer is no because I won’t let you!!”
“As of this morning, fewer than five teachers in the entire state have opted out of *administering* the test. . . ”
I believe it was Upton Sinclair, pre-eminent muckraker around a hundred years ago who stated: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Quite frankly the teachers who believe that the testing regime isn’t harmful (if indeed there really are any) are dead wrong.
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I’m sorry, but I can’t fault teachers for administering the tests when it may mean the loss of their jobs if they don’t. Any action really needs to be school and preferably district wide. Parents opting their kids out have a much bigger effect. There is a lot teachers can do quietly to make the experience less traumatic for kids whose parents don’t opt them out. I do find it hard to understand why any teacher might subject their own children to the tests.
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“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglas
None of these things happened without a struggle and people doing the same kinds of things that parents who choose to opt out of testing are doing now. Why do you think that gay marriage is now legal or the minimum wage is $15? It’s because people devoted their lives to fighting for these things and making others see the injustice. This is how democracy works.
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Tim alleged, “Many of them are actually looking forward to it.”
Really! How does Tim define many and prove they actually look forward to take these tests that can destroy their future?
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2016/04/8595589/opt-out-fight-continues-state-tests-begin
If Tim is referring to the pro-Common Core parent group, New York Parent Alliance for Learning Standards, I suggest he learn who is funding and supporting this group.
“NYPALS currently is represented by one of the state’s most prominent public strategy firms, Mercury Public Affairs, whose noteworthy education clients include High Achievement New York, a pro-Common Core nonprofit coalition of mostly business groups, and Success Academy. Mercury senior vice president John Collins said the firm is representing NYPALS pro bono.”
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/tags/new-york-parent-alliance-learning-standards
I think it wasn’t that difficult for the corporate public school demotion derby to find a few New York parents that work for them that, to keep their paychecks coming, will fall into line and do what’s expected of them and make sure they believe or act like they aren’t being pressured.
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Lloyd,
The PR firm representing the pro-testing people also represents Gov Rick Snyder in the Flint water crisis.
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Thank you. Every time one of these new groups with a misleading name pops up, they are linked and interconnected in the same web of deceit.
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Here is a blurb from Mercury ( the PR firm’s super slick website) Crisis Management
translated ( when people are angry at you) This is how you manage them.
“Mercury manages crisis situations in a multitude of industries through transparency, honesty, relentlessness and speed. We deftly craft strategies that put our clients ahead of rapid political and regulatory changes, competitors, critics, and changes in the external environment. Styled from the highest-level political campaigns and our own experience in running and covering those campaigns, our crisis management is based on what will work, without guessing. We monitor how our clients are being talked about in real-time across multiple platforms and develop timely, effective response plans to deal with negative news and information.”
It’s all politics 24/7
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Now I see a new connection. In both cases no one in the power elite listens to the cries of parents. Testing is not about what children know but about how obedient their parents are. How little they question. It is all an elaborate PR scheme designed to gaslight the unwitting populace.
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You got that!
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Public schools should bask in the glow of attention from the national ed reform lobbies, because it begins when the testing season begins and it ends when the tests are in the can.
Just produce and hand over the data. Then your kid has fulfilled their entire purpose for this school year and “the movement” both within and outside government will go back to promoting charters and vouchers for the other 11 months of the year.
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Thanks for sharing our song Diane. Here is the whole album. Download for free during test season. https://barrylane.bandcamp.com/album/more-than-a-number-songs-for-sane-schools
Here is Barry Manilow at Pearson describing his job.
https://barrylane.bandcamp.com/track/i-write-the-tests-i-write-the-tests
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Thank you, sir!
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