Opt-Out Campaign Must Continue
The parent and teacher campaign to have children opt-out of high-stakes Common Core aligned testing is remarkably successful. In New York, 20% of students refused to take the high-stakes tests last April. The campaign is so successful that politicians on national and state levels from both major parties want to diffuse the movement before it can reshape education in the United States, overthrow the testing regime, and break the hold of test companies over school curriculum.
The much-applauded federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by President Obama last week strips away federal authority to impose Common Core or any other curriculum on states or to punish states where students perform poorly on high-stakes testing. However, ESSA does not eliminate federally mandated standardized testing. In fact, ESSA largely keeps the high-stakes testing regime in place requiring that 95% of students in each state take whatever new exams are created or else a state can lose Title 1 funding. Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides federal financial assistance to local education districts and schools with a large number of children from low-income families. The big shift is that states can make their own tests.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, claimed the law, which severed teacher evaluations from student test scores, represents "a new day in public education." But a number of Civil Rights groups fear the new law, by severely limiting the federal role allows low-rent Southern and Southwestern Red Opt-Out Campaign Must Continue | Alan Singer:
