Why we support the Every Student Succeeds Act
Susan Bowles, a kindergarten teacher in Gainesville, Fla., was fed up with all of the testing she was required to give her 5-year-old students.
As an act of civil disobedience, for which she was willing to take the consequences, she refused to administer one of the several tests for kindergartners — the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading — which her kids had to take on a computer three times a year. In a letter to parents that went viral, she wrote, “I am not opposed to assessments and am for accountability in schools. But enough is enough. I keep asking, when will the insanity stop? When will someone speak up?”
She noted that she understood her defiance could mean she would get fired. Actually, a few months later, Susan was named Alachua County, Fla., teacher of the year.
Susan spoke for thousands of educators, parents, students and others who have had it with the testing obsession that has taken over public education — a strategy that began with No Child Left Behind, expanded with Race to the Top, and has limited classroom instruction, narrowed the curriculum and been used to unfairly evaluate teachers.
Speaking of consequences — and we have seen many, like teacher demoralization, a growing teacher shortage, and student and parent anxiety — it’s no wonder the most recent Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup poll shows that the public is fed up with the overuse and misuse of testing.
In New York state alone, 20 percent of students opted out of high-stakes standardized tests. And it’s not like the test-and-punish policies of the last 15 years have helped with performance. In the last decade, National Assessment Why we support the Every Student Succeeds Act — Medium: