Opt Out Now

Catch up on my last posts about my issues with standardized testing: Are Standardized Tests the Voice of Our Generation? and United We Test, Divided We Rebel.

These days, more and more parents are realizing that standardized tests are not truly benefiting their children in the long run and that these tests only view their talented and brilliant children as data.

How exactly are these parents fighting back against the education system and the tyranny of standardized testing? Ever heard of the Opt Out Movement? Together parents, educators, and social activists are speaking out against the unfairness of standardized testing and pushing to opt out of the tests. This community of people are fighting against the laws of No Child Left Behind because they are finally questioning the value of standardized testing.

Working in numbers, and with many proponents across the United States, the Opt Out community is seeking equality in education. They refuse to have children be viewed as numbers and want to bring back the value of education, which seems to have been lost ever since No Child Left Behind required excessive testing in all educational settings.

This advocacy group is doing an admirable job at getting information out there to concerned parents and educators across the states. On the National Opt Out website, materials are accessible for each state to see how to opt out in that particular state. For example, I can click on  “Opt Out Pennsylvania” and will be provided with a guide of how to opt out of PA state tests such as the PSSAS and the Keystones. The Opt Out website guides provide the exact process a parent would need to go through in a specific state in order to have their refusal reviewed and accepted at a school. They also offer talking tips and points that can help strengthen a parent’s refusal. The fact that the Opt Out website provides this detailed information shows how dedicated the Opt Out community is to decreasing and eliminating high stakes testing in the United States. Their set-up is brilliant. Parents can no longer say they wish they were able to do something about it…because now they can. All of the necessary materials and guidelines are laid out for them. All they must do is act. All they must do is opt out and refuse America’s obsession with high stakes testing.

Educators refusing at the very source of the issue.

With all of this information available to anyone with Internet access, you may be wondering how successful it has been. CBS News reported on the movement in New York on April 15th, sharing just how quickly this movement is sweeping across America. According to the article titled “Thousands of Students Opted-Out of Standardized Tests“, 49% of students who go to North Rockland school in Stony Point, NY opted out of the Common Core tests. 49% of students in the entire school equates to over 1,700 students. But the Opt Out Movement didn’t stop there; it seeped into other counties and affected many other schools. In Clarkstown, 31%, about 1,200 students, opted out; 50% opted out in Mahopac, 41% in Ramapo Central and 38%  in Pearl River did not take the tests. You do the math. I think it is pretty clear that the Opt Out Movement is spreading and spreading fast. These statistics represent New York and New York alone. Imagine the numbers if it were to spread to other states across the United States. Students, parents, and educators are finally beginning to see justice and equality in the education system.

Parents, teachers, and students are protesting the Common Core tests in New York, choosing to opt out of the unfair high stakes testing that students are subjected to.

During these protests and boycotts, parents, teachers, and students are in no way seeking the easy way out by choosing to refuse standardized testing. Opting out is one of the only means available at the moment for the public to take back control of education in the United States. A website titled NYSTOPTESTING brings up several important points that may need to be clarified for some of what the Opt Out Movement is not. I have listed them below:

OPT-OUT is: 

1.  NOT an easy way out for students. Opting out is not a method to go easy on our children to prevent failure in any way.  Failing at a task can build character, look at some of our greatest inventors-they failed and tried and tried again.
2. NOT an attack on our children’s teachers. Boycotting high-stakes tests is not a way to hurt our teachers, in fact most teachers support opting out because they see the harm in the testing culture that is controlling our schools.
3. NOT an attack on our children’s schools. Opting out our children will save our schools from financial and educational harm caused by corporate high-stakes testing machine.
4. NOT a protest against using tests in our classrooms.  Tests given by our teachers, grade levels and schools are one way to assess our children.  Evaluating our children properly requires a variety of methods that our teachers complete on a daily basis. Sadly the high-stakes state exams focus on one test score to determine the progress and quality of our children, teachers and schools.
5. NOT a way to avoid teacher evaluation. As one test score should not judge a student, the same applies to our educators.  Using a variety of methods with professional observation, peer mentoring and collaboration will help develop highly effective teachers.
Opting out IS a way to take back control of our schools.  The latest policies such as Common Core and APPR teacher evaluations in New York State will lead to an explosion of high-stakes standardized tests.  The time devoted to testing and test preparation will grow to previously unheard of levels in the next few years.  Parents need to say no to the “testing culture” and say our children’s education needs a diverse curriculum, creativity and  critical thinking.

It is crucial, in order for the Opt Out Movement to keep spreading across the United States, that everyone be aware of the true intentions behind the Opt Out Movement. Like any movement, there are many misconceptions which may prevent it from spreading. Get educated on the Opt Out Movement and take a stand against American education’s obsession with standardized testing.

If you are a student, take a stand for your educational rights. You have every right to have a say in your education, so why stay silent? Get educated and Opt Out. Save education in America and be realized as who you really are: a student, not a test score.

United We Test, Divided We Rebel

To learn more about educational topics such as standardized testing, NCLB, and Common Core, visit my older posts!

The standardized testing debate is nothing new in education. If you search for it on the Internet, thousands of resources, debates, arguments, and articles will pop up. However, I have noticed that lately more and more of the articles coming to the media’s attention are those that are beginning to see something else in standardized testing, something rarely spoke about before. While doing research on the debate, I tended to find more articles with titles like “Standardized Testing is Ruining Education” or “11 Problems Created By the Standardized Testing Obsession.” Several of these articles truly reinforced many of the issues that I have with standardized testing. Even more so, they helped define the problem: that there is an obsession with standardized testing.

I think this has to do with the fact that schools have pushed standardized testing so much that many people have snapped. I believe it is not just students, but teachers as well. Around testing time, teachers are typically expected to “teach to the test”, AKA drop everything they are doing in class and start teaching meaningless information that the students will either forget or find useless in their life paths. This standardized testing obsession of American education is affecting everyone.

Ron Maggiano, a now retired teacher, admits that testing had a large influence in his retirement. When talking about why he left the job he had loved more than anything in the world he explained, “I can no longer cooperate with a testing regime that I believe is suffocating creativity and innovation in the classroom. We are not really educating our students anymore. We are merely teaching them to pass a test. This is wrong. Period.”

Alarming and disheartening, Maggiano is an example of only one of many teachers and educators who have chosen to leave the field due to the ruling era of standardized testing.

Watch below as a fourth grader explains why these tests do not matter and how they are disturbing her education.

It is amazing that a fourth grader can speak out on these issues, but many others still are not. If she can do it, why can’t the rest of us? We have all been through the same experiences as her: being taught to a test that is seemingly invalid, signing that paper that says we absolutely 100% cannot talk to anyone about the test.

You may still be wondering what can be so wrong about standardized testing that educators quit or retire, that fourth graders are making presentations at board meetings. (Or maybe not, maybe you’re in agreement with me.) So what are some of the major issues that standardized tests pose?

1. Standardized tests stifle creativity. Because each test is the same and requires a very low level of thought, students are not able to show their brilliance in the classroom. Anyone can pick A, B, C, or D. Anyone. Students are far more creative than picking a letter from the alphabet and have no way of accessing their higher level skills on these objective tests.

2. The same test is handed to every student. Some states push that even students with severe disabilities need to take the test. This is assuming that all students are the same, that they are all just a number, just some data. It assumes that all students learn the same way and at the same speed. It assumes that all students are at the same cognitive ability. And you know what happens when you assume…

3. Standardized tests are used to measure student and teacher ability. Again, how can the same test measure the abilities of millions of different learners? How can theses tests measure the teacher’s effectiveness, if a majority of the curriculum is not dictated towards the tests, except for the required two weeks prior to testing?

4. Teachers fear that they must teach to the test in order for their students to receive high scores (and for the school, district, etc. to receive money…money that never seems to benefit the needs and wants of the students). Of the many teachers I have worked with and become acquaintances with, not one looks forward to the standardized tests; many of them see it as a disruption in the curriculum and their classroom.

5. Testing scores are looked at when students are applying for college. So what if Suzy didn’t score a perfect 2400 on the SATs? That doesn’t mean she’s stupid and unfit for a school. These tests fail to measure all student abilities and qualities, looking only at numbered data from a cloned test that says nothing about the students themselves. These test scores mean nothing, and are doing nothing to prepare students for the world ahead of them!

image source: http://www.principalspage.com

How can opponents of standardized testing speak out? What can we do to fix this obsession that America has on standardized testing and replace it with a worthwhile curriculum and testing system that not only educates each student properly and effectively, but has the ability to show and help develop every student’s individual abilities?

Check out my next post, which delves into the Opt Out Movement, a movement that is becoming larger and larger each day and that could potentially break down the American obsession with standardized testing.

Are Standardized Tests the Voice of our Generation?

Are standardized tests the voice of our generation? Do these subjective test scores define who we are? Is that all there is to education? I often wonder such things as I watch the educational world become dependent upon testing. Ever since No Child Left Behind was passed in 2002, standardized tests have become a large part of education. But why? I remember hating standardized tests, such as the PSSAs, in elementary, middle, and high school. The questions were always the same; they never required me to activate my higher order thinking. Instead, I could just lazily circle A, B, C, or D on my test and quickly move on to the same goddamn question. A, B, C, or D. A, B, C, or D. A, B, C, or D. And so on… Despite the fact that I did well on the PSSAs in the past, I never saw their worth. I always hated them and would groan along with the chorus in my class when testing time came around. No one liked it. No one cared. I liked school and I didn’t even care. Standardized testing made me feel like a robot, programmed to answer question after question, all of them the same, all of them lacking in depth and application. Anyone could’ve answered those questions. Anyone could have circled A, B, C, or D. This test was not personal. And it certainly didn’t define who I was as a student and a person.

I know I am not alone in feeling this way. Countless students have spoken out about standardized tests, angered that these tests determine their future, whether they go to college, or not, whether they are successful in the eyes of America, or not.

For my own personal interest, I created a two question survey to send out to my fellow peers at Kutztown University asking if they liked standardized tests and if they felt that standardized tests define their total abilities.  Out of the 25 people that participated in the survey, only 2 people said they liked standardized tests. The other 23 people expressed their strong dislike for standardized testing. Interestingly enough, all 25 people who responded said that they believe that standardized testing does NOT define their total abilities. I’m not alone after all.

Check out the Youtube video below to see one very ambitious student refusing to have test scores define his fate in the world.

He is not alone on this issue, but needs our support. Students, educators, and parents must band together to break this belief that standardized testing defines students’ total abilities and who their fate in this world. Our education is our responsibility. Let’s take back what is ours.

---

Check out my other posts in regards to high stakes testing in American education: United We Test, Divided We Rebel and Opt Out Now.

Answer the Question: A) Common Core B) Standardized Testing C) All of the above

Check out my last post about Common Core to get up to date!

Being that Common Core is taking over education in America, there is no use in avoiding it. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t vocalize my faults with it. Aside from the fact that I believe the Common Core initiative is too politically motivated, I feel that Common Core has some other issues.

Because Common Core requires students to be taught to the standards, there needs to be some way to evaluate these students’ knowledge and progress. And what easier way than a good old standardized assessment? America is no stranger to the standardized tests, especially after they became a requirement for districts in order to receive Title One funding from the federal government due to the No Child Left Behind Act.

Common Core continues the tedious task of implementing standardized tests for students, something which I simply hate. Throughout my education, I have never seen the benefit of standardized tests. Whenever PSSA time rolled around, I remember groaning and being miserable. I was only excited for the free cartons of orange juice and soft pretzels. Other than that, PSSA was boring and laborious. For the time prior to the tests our teachers only taught us “what we needed to know for the PSSAS.” The curriculum was dull and didn’t seem important to me. There was no point to the tests; the material it covered was so different than what we normally learned. And yet our teachers made it seem like the most important thing in the world.

Why? What good are standardized tests and why do American educators keep pushing it upon us poor students who are tired of spending three weeks on something that is not important or relevant to our lives? I asked this to a few of my professors from Kutztown University’s Education Department and got an assortment of replies. One said, “Standardized testing is easy. It’s easy to just slap the same test down for every student and grade them all the same way. I’m not saying it’s the best way, but it’s the easiest, so it remains.”

Another Professor, who asked to not have their name be included, shared, “Standardized testing says nothing about a student. It is so impersonal and assumes that all students learn the same and test the same–which is not the case.”

I couldn’t agree more with my Professor. Standardized testing is, in my opinion, an unfair measure of student achievement and growth. Each student learns in their own way and at their own pace. Some students are terrible test-takers. Other students have IEPS or are English Language Learners. But proponents of standardized tests don’t care; to them, this one test can honestly evaluate every student.

It is easy to say, then, that the educators and administrators behind Common Core also believe there is good in standardized testing. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be working to develop standardized assessments that will evaluate students progress in reaching the goals of the Common Core standards. In fact, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium have been working together diligently to create the ‘common’ standardized test. The ‘common’ assessment may eventually replace any previous statewide summative assessment (standardized test) to better compare to the requirements and expectations of the Common Core standards. These tests are slowly becoming available in many schools across America.

Being that I inspire to be a future educator in America, these Common Core assessments may soon be very real to me-in a classroom of my own. This concerns me because I am not an advocate for standardized testing.  I think that standardized testing too quickly assumes that students are just a number or a percentage; it says they are not individuals and diverse learners. Because I believe all students are individuals and learn at different intervals and due to different strengths, I simply cannot agree that one test can judge the achievement and growth of each and every student.

I decided to ask a few of my education major peers, who are in the same position as me, to give their input on the new Common Core assessment or any standardized test that they are familiar with. Out of the ten people I talked to, eight disliked that fact that Common Core is continuing on with standardized testing. The other two people had no true hatred towards standardized testing and seemed to tolerate just because “they have to.”

The eight that disliked standardized testing and the Common Core assessment had similar opinions to mine:

“I am an opponent of Common Core, even though I think that it was a good thought. My feelings are similar to those behind No Child Left Behind. Of course I want every child in my classroom to learn what they need to be successful in life and move through their education to advance in their thinking. But I cannot let children grow up to think that these standardized tests are what make or break them. So many children get very upset about performing well that they forget that they can be smart in other areas of life other than test taking.” –Bethany H.

“I believe that students should not just be taught information in order to pass a test. Students should be taught information at school that they can take with them for the rest of their lives. Students should be given information that will help them succeed in the real world, not just on a test.” –Kaylee R.

Despite the fact that Common Core and standardized testing is still a staple in American education today, I do believe there is a glimmer of hope for myself and any other proponents to Common Core assessment/standardized testing. More and more states are allowing parents to “opt out” of standardized tests, meaning that their students will not have to take the test at the parent’s request. Before, this was a tedious process and typically required a religious or medical reasoning to accompany it. Since, this has begun to change. Interestingly enough more and more parents are pushing for this “Opt out movement.” It should be interesting to see how it affects the future of standardized testing, especially the newly created Common Core assessment.

Get involved and get educated on what is happening in American education today. Realize the potential we could have if we joined together to fight standardized testing and Common Core–the ideas that all students are common and the same. Opt out of testing and Common Core.

---

To learn more about the Common Core assessment check out this article.

See how parents are getting involved in the standardized testing/assessment debacle by researching the Opt Out Movement. A few websites are listed below as resources:

• United Opt Out
• “Opting Out”
• “Opt Out Movement Against Common Core Grows”
• “Opt Out Movement about More than Tests”