UPDATE.
Fred Smith, testing expert, warns parents that New York begins using their children as guinea pigs starting tomorrow when field tests start in 869 schools in NYC and 2,490 schools across the state. More than a quarter million children will be forced to take a useless test.
The tests are meant to field-test future test questions. They don’t count. They waste students’ time for the benefit of the test publisher.
The kids could be learning something, reading something, doing something. Instead, they are working without pay for the test publisher.
This is a good time for all parents to tell their children to refuse the test.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How beef-witted. I could not be forced to waste my students’ time with this. Parents should opt out their children and teachers should refuse to give the field testy test. The AFT should encourage teachers to refuse and work to protect them from retaliation. This is a great opportunity to build OptOut while the punishments are not in play.
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An excellent suggestion!
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A great many people in K-12 education actually take the high-stakes standardized testing in ELA seriously.
Many think that the high-stakes ELA tests from Pearson and others are valid and reliable (they’re not).
Many think that these tests actually validly and reliably measure the “standards” that they purport to measure (they don’t).
Many also think that these tests are valid and reliable measures of reading and writing ability generally (they aren’t).
Many think that those “standards” are somehow “higher” (that’s entirely laughable, and saying it over and over and over doesn’t make it so).
Many are under the bizarre impression that these tests provide valuable, rationally actionable “data” (they don’t).
Many think that these tests will somehow drive educational improvement (that’s demonstrably, based on 20 years of experience with them, NOT the case).
The level of ignorance of assessment, of reading, of writing, and of ELA generally necessary for people to hold such views is very, very high. That these views should be fairly widespread among administrators and state department officials (most English teachers know better) is a shocking indictment of those officials’ and administrators’ ignorance and gullibility and lack of training.
The high-stakes ELA testing is A NEST OF SCAMS INSIDE A BOX OF OBFUSCATION, and the problems lie in the details, which many know nothing about. They can’t be explained in sound bites. The test publishers are very accomplished liars, and they are very generous with kickbacks to politicians, and we’ve let them get away with this crap for too long. Think of the opportunity cost, in terms of wasted money (billions), time, energy, effort, and loss of instructional time to test prep and to narrowed, dumbed-down test-based curricula and pedagogy. Look, folks, the evidence is in, overwhelmingly in: standards-and-testing-based Ed Deform was an UTTER FAILURE. Insist that your state legislators end it now, and, if at all possible, opt your kids out.
High-stakes standardized testing has been a gift of a grift to the educational publishers. It’s easy to sell snake oil to those who know nothing.
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It’s like the testaholics never read “The Lottery”
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Why we doin’ the Lottery? We’ve always done the Lottery. LMAO. Exactly.
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Please write this in an op ed to a major newspaper(s). We need this expressed over and over, by a variety of articulate professional, educators in publications that are read by non-educators. If you are not in the classroom, and don’t have young children, you just do not get it.
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Agreed, Gentlemen. The SED should be forced to suspend the stand-alone field testing until this approach can be justified (wink, wink). The Board of Regents, the chief education policy makers in NYS, should take the bull (pun intended) by the horns and ORDER their SED subordinates to cease and desist.
By the way, there is nothing sacred about testing in late May or June. This is notably the worst time in the school year to test kids who have been over-tested and lack any motivation to perform well on extra no-count field tests. C’mon Regents, break the mold.
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In Utah, the field test items are embedded in the actual test. Only 15 parents in the entire state get to see the test. We have NO IDEA what questions aren’t scored because they are field testing.
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