Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Defiant Parents: Opting Out of Testing : The New Yorker

The Defiant Parents: Opting Out of Testing : The New Yorker:



THE DEFIANT PARENTS: TESTING’S DISCONTENTS

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Anna Allanbrook, the principal of the Brooklyn New School, a public elementary school in Carroll Gardens, has long considered the period of standardized testing that arrives every spring to be a necessary, if unwelcome, phase of the school year. Teachers and kids would spend limited time preparing for the tests. Children would gain familiarity with “bubbling in,” a skill not stressed in the school’s progressive, project-based curriculum. They would become accustomed to sitting quietly and working alone—a practice quite distinct from the collaboration that is typically encouraged in the school’s classrooms, where learners of differing abilities and strengths work side by side. (My son is a third grader at the school.) Come the test days, kids and teachers would get through them, and then, once the tests were over, they would get on with the real work of education.
Last spring’s state tests were an entirely different experience, for children and for teachers. Teachers invigilating the exams were shocked by ambiguous test questions, based, as they saw it, on false premises and wrongheaded educational principles. (One B.N.S. teacher, Katherine Sorel, eloquently details her objections on WNYC’s SchoolBook blog.) Others were dismayed to see that children were demoralized by the relentlessness of the testing process, which took 
Opt-Out/Refusal Guides for each State | United Opt Out National
Opt-Out/Refusal Guides for each State | United Opt Out National: OPT-OUT/REFUSAL GUIDES FOR EACH STATEAll documents are for informational purposes only and do not substitute as legal advice or legal counsel. The information contained in these documents and this website may or may not reflect the most current developments in education policy within our nation or within each state. Information share