Roy Turrentine, a teacher who frequently comments on the blog, wrote this commentary on how testing warps teaching:
“When I first started teaching, I would occasionally get off the subject for days. One geometry problem sidelined us for three days. Children would offer solutions and I would publicly follow their logic until it obviously failed, then we would take another suggestion.
“It has been years since I had this experience. A friend who taught in a neighboring county shared the same experience. One day we were talking and realized when this stopped happening. It was with the group of children who had gone through the mid 1990s with an emphasis on test scores. Even without the draconian emphasis on testing that came with NCLB, it was affecting the way our students were behaving.
“It made me recall my cousin’s experience in Germany. He was an English teacher in California. Early in his career, he got a chance to teach in Germany for a year on some kind of exchange program. He was struck by how respectful the German kids were and how attentitive as well. But he noted that they were so focused on the exam they had to take to pass the class that anything else would lose their attention.
“Why is it so impossible to convince some of our leaders of the deleterious effects of testing?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Of horses and testing”
Can lead a horse to water
But sure can’t make him drink
The testing my be slaughter
But horse will never blink
The obsession with high stakes testing that started in some states even before NCLB and the Common Core Crap that followed might not have started out as weapons for the autocratic, for profit, often child abusing and inferior corporate charter schools, but it’s being used as a weapon now.
High Stakes tests used as justification to rank and close community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools with unionized teachers, and turning those children over to the autocratic, for-profit (even when they are labelled non-profit), secretive corporate charter school industry with underpaid, overworked and soon to be burned out, non-union teachers causes more damage than dropping MOAB on targets in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Amen, Lloyd!
A true lack of economic logic exposed in the fact that the growth of the United States has always been much aided by having produced the largest number of entrepreneurial patents — patents brought into the economy by creative outside-the-box thinkers. In our current effort to produce generations of non-creative tech workers, as we stifle creative thought we undermine economic stability.
Please call me re: situation in Richmond, Virginia 804-972-2156
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I’m so sorry, but HOW long have we been testing these kids to death?! For decades???
& just HOW much money has been absolutely WASTED on te$t material$??? AND–even if record #s are opting out, doe$ that even stop the absolute THEFT of our kids’ education$ by te$t prep after te$t prep after te$t prep???
I ju$t cannot stand yet another post on testing (& I’m really sorry, Roy, because I know you are probably an excellent teacher, & you need to vent, but you’re preaching to the choir.
It is BEYOND time to STOP this nonsense. It is summer. Can we not begin a massive protest? EVERYWHERE there is a Pear$on campus or that other company–we need to do what Class Size Matters did in–holy cow–waaayyy back in 2012 (?) after the “Pineapple ?” How many such Pineapple ??? have our kids had to endure since then?
And are your schools STILL being rated as “failing” due to these RIDICULOUS NON-tests
(time for a Wilson rant, Duane)?
Parents, educators, communities–get out there–out to those Pear$on & other te$ting campuses–& PROTEST. It’s summer–organize, don’t agonize. Do it NOW–forget about All Star Baseball & other such distractions. Why do we have to have martyrs like CPS’ Sarah Chambers, a sp.ed. teacher who was removed from the classroom because she led the fight to STOP her kids & the kids in her school from being subjected to punitive, useless tests, graded & scored by unqualified people hired off Craig’s List?
What if EVERY teacher in a district, in a village, in a town, in a city, in a state, &, then, in EVERY state REFUSED to TEACH the tests? &, what if EVERY parent joined in & supported those teachers? And how about YOU, adminimals (yes, I will use Duane’s term, for that’s what many of you are), supporting non-test preps & endorsing REAL education?
What are the state boards of ed going to do–fire 100s of 1,000s of people? Kick parents & their kids out of the schools? Parents & other taxpayers OWN the schools–they PAY the salaries of the administrators, especially the state supt. of schools.
It’s interesting that, in earlier posts, we have been criticizing the Dems for not talking about K-12 education, & the crisis of public school privatization. &–we are correct in that criticism. Yet, here we are, talking & talking & TALKING about how useless & terrible this testing is. LET’S DO SOMETHING–or there is NO end in sight. Parents–as Class Size did in NYC, PLEASE start this–NOW. Grab retired teachers, & we will help.
Meetings & workshops won’t do it–action will.