Teacher Tom: Opt Out!

Teacher Tom: Opt Out!

Opt Out!

In mid-December 2019, on the eve of the the plague that changed our lives, the New York Times reported under the headline "I Just Isn't Working":

The performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000, accordion to the latest results of a rigorous international exam, despite a decades-long efforts to raise standards and help students compete with peers across the globe.

Here is most of the cruel failings of American public education, all packed into a single lede: high stakes standardized testing, the blind assumption that curricular standardization is a good thing, the corrosive notion of competition amongst children, and the narrow, narrow, narrow focus on reading a math. Yet even here, where the journalist has apparently bought into all the make-believe theories of the corporate education dilettante "reformers," their efforts have been a disastrous failure, even when measured by their own precious measuring tool: the standardized test. For decades now, through No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Common Core, and Every Student Succeeds, those responsible for education policy at every level have turned our schools into test score coal CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Opt Out!