Using the Power of Litigation to End the Addiction to Testing and to Further Student Voice
Now that educators and parents are on a full revolt against the addiction to testing in the United States when it comes to public education, we have to arrive at a point where we have to consider the possibility of suing the U.S Department of Education and a few SEA’s. The suits would occur on the premise that NCLB and RtTT do not grant administrators, parents, and students due process protections when it comes to opting out of federally mandated tests and that the initiatives enacted create hostile learning environments.
The suit on the basis of the lack of or the practically nonexistence of due process protections would have to argue that in cases where students, parents, or administrators want to opt out of testing they are not given the chance in some cases to due process so that they can argue their cases. School officials and SEA officials are literally running around scared of the implications they can face if they allow students to skip these exams and that fear is inhibiting their access to an appropriate public education. The suit can further argue that when teachers and school administrators have professional objections to the tests that they do not have access to a due process discourse under NCLB, which allows for the forcing of testing onto children when such testing is not beneficial.
The second suit based on sponsorship of a most restrictive (learning) environment can follow the same discourse in argument but further elaborate on how the tests cause anxiety and thus can trigger other physical or psychological impairments in the classroom. It can argue that both NCLB and RtTT promote a learning environment where fear of failure and the drive of competition become central to the learning environment and clouds judgment, which hinders education from taking place in the Least Restrictive Environment that IDEA guarantees.
Simply refusing to take these tests, staging boycotts, and homeschooling children out of frustration with these tests and the lack of voice