Steven Singer notes that standardized testing season is upon us.

While he is at school administering useless standardized tests, his daughter will be home, inventing, playing, using her imagination.

“In school I have to proctor the federally mandated standardized tests. But I’ve opted my own daughter out. She doesn’t take them.

“So at home, I get to see all the imaginative projects she’s created in her class while the other kids had to trudge away at the exam.

“Daddy, daddy, look!” she squeals.

“And I’m bombarded by an entire Picasso blue period.

“Or “Daddy, will you staple these?”

“And I’m besieged by a series of her creative writing.

“My daughter is only in second grade and she loves standardized test time.

“It’s when she gets to engage in whatever self-directed study strikes her fancy.

“Back in kindergarten I missed the boat.

“Even as an educator, myself, I had no idea the district would be subjecting her to standardized tests at an age when she should be doing nothing more strenuous than learning how to share and stack blocks.

“But when I found out she had taken the GRADE Test, a Pearson assessment not mandated by the state but required by my home district in order the receive state grant funding, I hit the roof.

“I know the GRADE test. I’m forced to give a version of it to my own 8th grade students at a nearby district where I work. It stinks.

“Ask any classroom teacher and they’ll tell you how useless it is. Giving it is at best a waste of class time. At worst it demoralizes children and teaches them that the right answer is arbitrary – like trying to guess what the teacher is thinking….

“I have studied standardized testing. It was part of my training to become a teacher. And the evidence is in. The academic world knows all this stuff is bunk, but the huge corporations that profit off of these tests and the associated test-prep material have silenced them.

“I have a masters in my field. I’m a nationally board certified teacher. I have more than a decade of successful experience in the classroom. But I am not trusted enough to decide whether my students should take these tests.

“It’s not like we’re even asking the parents. We start from the assumption that children will take the tests, but if the parents complain about it, we’ll give in to their wishes.

“It’s insanity.

“We should start from the assumption the kids won’t take the test. If parents want their kids to be cogs in the corporate machine, they should have to opt IN.”