From the Too Young to Test campaign:
Once again, thanks to those who submitted statements to the House Education Committee in support of HB 2318. There were over 50 submissions in favor of HB 2318!
The in-person testimony in support of “Too Young to Test” was powerful. It included a kindergarten teacher, a second grade teacher, a school counselor, a parent, a retired superintendent and a retired early childhood program administrator.
I’m including a link to the written submissions and to the hearing, if you want to see them.
Rep. Lively (the Chief Sponsor) will be meeting with Rep. Doherty (Committee Chair) this week to discuss next steps. These might include another hearing to deal with additional questions, an amendment proposal or perhaps a committee vote in the near future.
The opposition will continue to contact members of the Committee. Opponents include testing corporations, “testocrats” (who earn their paychecks collecting data and crunching numbers), district and state educational bureaucracies (who historically always advocate for testing), and early childhood education advocates (who have bought into the “imperative” of collecting more and more data about little children).
None of them talk about what all of this testing does to kids, to teachers or to a healthy, developmentally-appropriate education.
You and your friends can still send a brief message to members of the Education Committee. It would be greatly appreciated. I’ll include email contact link.
Thanks for your help with this. We are up against powerful forces. The kids are worthy of our effort.
— Roscoe
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We must protect young children from inappropriate and harmful testing. Just because companies want to collect data is not a good rationale for implementing testing. We must protect young children from the developmentally inappropriate testing juggernaut. Data is not a program that will help children. It is simply a measurement system that will invade a child’s privacy and cause frustration. We need to listen to early childhood teachers and do what is in the best interest of children, not corporations.
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In my district where I teach first grade, students in k through 2 are given the MAP test on computers 3 times a year. For the last several years this has been the norm. It is deplorable and should not be allowed. What a waste of money. We need a “too young to test bill” here in NJ to stop local boards and administrators from making ill- informed decisions.
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I worked with ELLs that were considered very “behind” compared to most young American students. I am opposed to pigeonholing young developing students based on some score. We need to give them time to grow and develop.
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may we see a push for this to be legalized NATIONALLY; may all language connected to ‘pay for success’ be forced out of government education policy, most especially for children in preschool, kindergarten and grades 1-3.
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Related, and quite dystopian. There’s plenty of money behind it, so we know how that will play out.
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“It is a model that outsources public services (via austerity-enforced privatization) to non-profits that are funded through “pay for success” contracts. ”
The goal is to track people from cradle to grave. These corporations are pure evil.
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We need some privacy laws. In the EU people own their data, but we have no such laws here. These companies are free to track and sell all data. This is bad for all of us.
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Yes to that link. Nobody has a better handle on the money behind the data-mongering and pre-schools pay for success programs.
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JIM CROW is well and alive.
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“None of them talk about what all of this testing does to kids, to teachers or to a healthy, developmentally-appropriate education.”
What else matters?
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Let’s start a “push up” effort starting with science based early childhood best practices and move it up through the early elementary years where the feds have not poisoned the system with their insistence on high-stakes testing. Local control needs to be restored and enhanced. The people making most of the major decisions have proven over the past 20 or so years to not know what they are talking about or are driven by ulterior motives such as destroying unions, making profits over students best interest, etc. The time to push back is now. Educate, cultivate and advocate before it is too late.
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As a parent of a child with anxiety, the test driven culture of our local school has made my third grader hate school. Every day is a battle to get her to school. Her tardy and absentee record is deplorable. She is sick with stomach and gastrointestinal illness much too frequently for a child with no medical conditions. The crime is this is a bright child who loves learning but hates school and is beginning to believe she is “dumb”. In particular, the time limitations on all of the screening tests are crippling.
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