Principal: ‘There comes a time when rules must broken…. That time is now.’ - The Washington Post

Principal: ‘There comes a time when rules must broken…. That time is now.’ - The Washington Post:

Principal: ‘There comes a time when rules must broken…. That time is now.’

In this photo taken Feb. 12, 2015, sixth grade teacher Carrie Young guides her students through an exercise on their laptops as practice for the the Common Core State Standards Test in her classroom at Morgan Elementary School South in Stockport, Ohio. By the end of the year, about 12 million children in 28 states and the District of Columbia will take exams that are expected to be harder than traditional spring standardized state tests they replace and take hours of additional testing time. (AP Photo/Ty Wright)

Last year the parents of about 60,000 New York state students decided to opt their children out of high-stakes standardized testing, putting the state at the forefront of an “opt-out” movement that is growing nationally. That movement will be put to its own test as new Common Core testing are scheduled to begin shortly in states around the country. In this post, award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York explains why she is now calling for parents to choose to keep their children from taking high-stakes standardized tests even though it breaks the rules.

Burris, who has written frequently for this blog,  was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, was tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. Burris has been exposing the botched school reform program in New York for years on this blog, and it is worth reading. Some of her earlier posts are listed at the bottom.

By Carol Burris

It has become increasingly clear that Congress does not have the will to move away from annual high-stakes testing. The bizarre notion that subjecting 9-year-olds to hours of high-stakes tests is a “civil right,” is embedded in the thinking of both parties. Conservatives no longer believe in the local, democratic control of our schools. Progressives refuse to address the effects of poverty, segregation and the destruction of the middle class on student learning. The unimaginative strategy to improve achievement is to make standardized tests longer and harder.

And then there are the Common Core State Standards. Legislators talk a good game to appease parents, but for all their bluff and bluster, they are quite content to use code names, like the West Virginia Next Generation Content Standards,  to trick their constituents into believing their state standards are unique, even though most are word for word from the Common Core.

The only remedy left to parents is to refuse to have their children take the tests. Testing is the rock on which the policies that are destroying our local public schools are built. If our politicians do not have the courage to reverse high-stakes testing, then those who care must step in. As professor of Language and Composition, Ira Shor, bluntly stated:

 Because our kids cannot defend themselves, we have to defend them. We parents must step in to stop it. We should put our 

Principal: ‘There comes a time when rules must broken…. That time is now.’ - The Washington Post: