Why Are Teachers and Students Opting Out of Standardized Testing?

[xchrom]

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/08-1


Second-grade student reads in preparation for a test. (AP Photo/ Jose F. Moreno)

After years of drilling, assessing and scoring youth to exhaustion, more than 25,000 kids in New York have defied the educational establishment in a test of wills. The “opt out” movement has exploded in schools across the state and other regions of the country, as students, parents and teachers resist the standardized testing regime that has fueled a free-market assault on public education.

Some New York teachers have placed themselves at the vanguard of test resisters, alongside student and parent activists, and are now using their professional leverage to deepen the battle lines in the ideological conflict over education reform.

The rebellion stirring in city classrooms was presented recently to New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña in an open letter from a group of “Teachers of Conscience” at the Earth School, an elementary school in Manhattan. Accompanied by a philosophical position paper detailing principles of a progressive education, the teachers declared their opposition to English language exams for third-to-eight graders:

We can no longer, in good conscience, push aside months of instruction to compete in a city-wide ritual of meaningless and academically bankrupt test preparation. We have seen clearly how these reforms undermine teachers’ love for their profession and undermine students’ intrinsic love of learning.
And there’s something to hate for everyone in these standardized tests. Students become miserable and bored with constant test-prep; parents and caregivers grow frustrated with curricula that seem to be failing their children (inspiring them to organize likeminded families to facilitate their children’s test resistance); and teachers have raged against the imposition of formulaic, stress-inducing reading and math drills on their classes. The latest batch of English tests left educators and students feeling “outraged,” “defeated” and “devalued,” according to reviews on an online teacher forum. (At several schools, including the Earth School, the majority of students refused the exams.)

[Dorian Gray]

1. We live in Brooklyn

and we've signed our daughter up for school at a Montessori school (pre-k-8). She won't be tested much there, which I love.

Our local public school (a great one) had a teacher and parent protest the other day about the ELA tests, which the principal sent a letter home to the parents complaining about the content. (That's PS 321, one of the top scoring public schools in the state on these tests.) The amount of time that these schools spend on testing is infuriating. We chose to go to the Montessori bc of that. Despite 321 being an excellent school with wonderful teachers, we didn't want our daughter's education dictated by state testing.