In New York, several school districts announced an “opt in” policy for state testing, led by the Ossining School District. The deal: If parents want their children to take the tests, they must write a letter asking for them to “opt in.” Other districts followed. Now the entire state of New York will allow districts to have an “opt in” policy. If parents want their child tested, it will be done. If they don’t, they don’t have to “opt out” or do anything. Some districts may prefer to stick with the old way of requiring everyone to take the tests.
This is a remarkable turn of events!
The U.S. Department of Education has denied waivers to states that don’t want to administer the tests. This was an incredibly tone-deaf decision that brought an outcry from educators and parents, who know it is unfair to administer standardized tests in the midst of a pandemic. During the campaign, candidate Joe Biden promised to get rid of the annual standardized tests. But his test-happy minions in the Department of Education issued a decision breaking his promise, even before Secretary Cardona was confirmed. He has had to explain and try to justify an very bad decision.
May New York’s Opt-In strategy travel far and wide!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Brilliant move. Hope this becomes the new Normal.
This is such a great idea. I will be interested to see how many NYC parents decide to opt in to have their child tested.
hopefully many parents will simply think to themselves “this is irrelevant” and let it slide
Wow! Love it.
I imagine the parents who opt in will mainly be parents of 4th- and 7th-grade students who think on balance that it will help to have test scores on hand for next year’s middle-school and high-school applications.
Way to go New York. I hope you lead the way.
Second that. Lead the way, New York!
This approach puts the responsibility for the decision where it belongs : on the parents who decide to oot their children in.
They won’t be able to blame anyone else if it causes grief for their own children.
And the parents who don’t want their children taking tests won’t have to feel guilty about making their children susceptible to bullying by singling them out.
Its been known for several months at the least that covid is only deadly to .02% of the population who lack a gene for making markers for infected cells for the immune system to identify infected cells. And yet we’re seeing no one change their vax policy or their hypochondria. People could take a simple dna test to see if they’re even vulnerable to covid at all. For fact: that expiramental covid vax is being distributed without first checking this gene, this is a violation of hippocratic oath. .02% does not constitute a “pandemic”. The rest of us just get a fever for a few days and lose the ability to smell or taste cigarettes for a few days more. This hypochondriac reaction is ridiculous. Covid otherwise very nicely cleans out opiate and hiv infected from the population (~60% of swiss population(home of the guardian “news” website)) You’re going to learn one way or the other that even altruism is toxic if taken in the wrong dose.
Every rule has an exception.
Exception: everything is a poison, it’s simply a matter of dosage.
Topic, just looks like statistic manipulation.
[…] like what New York is doing this year. They are offering the state tests, but parents who want to participate are required to opt-in. A […]
Eliza Shapiro covered this here but it’s a short and sweet article, only four paragraphs??
This is article endorses standardized testing now more than ever. . . from the Washington Post. From what I read, most of the “comments” took the opposite view.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/07/schools-need-standardized-testing-now-more-than-ever/?utm_campaign=wp_week_in_ideas&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_ideas
My admin is saying it does not apply to all of NYS. I can’t find anything at NYSED. Is this true for all of NY and why hasn’t it been picked up by News agencies?