Badass Teachers Association Blog: DEBACLE: Opt Out 2019

Badass Teachers Association Blog: DEBACLE: Opt Out 2019

DEBACLE: Opt Out 2019

The drama now unfolding in New York in response to this year’s testing troubles could foreshadow a national tipping point. In the ongoing national parent revolt against high-stakes standardized testing, New York has had the largest test refusal movement by far, with approximately one in five students refusing each year since 2015. The first round of this year’s grades 3-8 tests began last week amid fresh outrage over punitive new regulations and an official misinformation campaign designed to intimidate and confuse parents.

Feeling their concerns ignored, New York parents began publicly sharing district letters showing threats, bribes, and false information. The chaos and contention was compounded by a large online system crash almost immediately after testing began last Tuesday; reports emerged that the state’s computer-based testing platform would not let some students log on or submit tests they had worked on for hours. By day’s end, headlines from Long Island to Buffalo and everywhere between declared the online testing a “debacle”.

According to the NY State Education Department (SED), some 6,600 students were affected; all online testing was postponed one day as experts scrambled to troubleshoot the problem. Because a similar crash plagued New York schools last year (along with student data breaches), the NYS Council of School Superintendents, the largest state teachers’ union NYSUT, and the NYS PTA immediately called for the firing of the testing vendor Questar. The Minnesota-based testing corporation has also presided over disastrous system crashes in Mississippi and Missouri, and in Tennessee where the legislature responded with a multi-year moratorium on online exams.

Leading up to test time, SED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia touted shorter tests, CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association Blog: DEBACLE: Opt Out 2019