I Opted My Kids Out of Standardized Tests

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/03/standardized_testing_i_opted_my_kids_out_the_schools_freaked_out_now_i_know.html

by wallflower • 12 years ago

31 72 12 years ago

slate.com

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

The school system in America isn't getting better it's just becoming more and more kafkaesque over time. It's amazing anyone manages to eke out a real education out of the system as it is.

greatsuccess2• 12 years ago

Yes and you see it in full grown adults, whose only capability was ingrained in them to conform to social norms until they got their degrees.

Once they have done this, and therefore are completely entitled, they take out their entitlement anxieties on everyone else who was smart enough to learn what they needed to and didnt give a shit about social conformity or status entitlement.

Their collective anger at themselves is what creates homelessness.

nknighthb7• 12 years ago

In Colorado, kids are required by law to test. The “refuse testing” option on the enrollment forms? It’s “being phased out” because it’s “confusing.”

Then the option isn't confusing at all, it's quite clear. What's confusing is this: Why was it there in the first place?

dragonwriter4• 12 years ago

It was probably there before the law was changed to make the testing mandatory.

vacri2• 12 years ago

Surely a tenured Associate Professor of Law has a better idea of how to fight a bad law than just throwing her hands up in the air and saying "I wish there was more I could do that just opt out of testing"?

dragonwriter4• 12 years ago

I am sure she is aware that fighting a bad law is usually a political action, and one of the first steps is publicizing the existence of the law in a way which leads the audience to conclude that it is bad and should be opposed.

In fact, I think she demonstrates that pretty well.

vacri2• 12 years ago

A fair point, but it's not how she's painting herself, and she makes no mention of what the next step is.

vizeroth2• 12 years ago

I generally just assume a tenured professor (or associate professor) of anything can write papers that will get accepted in certain journals. Making any further assumptions about what they can or can't do has been proven to be well outside the realm of possibility. Clearly, though, this one can write an article that got some attention, which may be more useful than anything else they might have attempted.

Tehnix4• 12 years ago

Not an American, so don't know much about your school system tbh, but what is bad about these tests?

The benefits of them (I guess), is that you can collect data on how kids are doing around various parts of the country, and maybe look at some areas where the kids are doing poorer than others to see if the education is lacking.

I don't see any downsides at all other than "my kids might get stressed" which is rather silly.

edit: just to clarify, I am all for the ability to opt-out if you want, but it seems these testings are generally disliked.

unethical_ban2• 12 years ago

There is far too much weight put on a handful of tests. It can pass/fail kids for the year in courses, depending on location. And since the standardized tests, now being created by quasi-federal coalitions like C-SCOPE, are so important, everything in a curriculum is focused on teaching to the test. No exploration, no flexibility in how to teach.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

If the test does not cover the material that is supposed to be learned, is it the particular test that's at fault, or is testing at fault? I suspect the former.

After all, would you get on an airliner where the pilot flunked the written pilot's exam? Would you see a doctor that flunked the medical board exam? Do you think people ought to get drivers' licenses even if they fail the written exam?

avalaunch• 12 years ago

I believe the problem is that schools end up pandering to the standardized tests, creating curriculum designed specifically to help students achieve higher test scores. This is bad because the tests have a narrow focus and anything not within that focus is deemphasized, or not taught at all.

Other objections are that the tests are biased towards or against certain segments of the population and that they don't accurately assess the quality of education.

nknighthb7• 12 years ago

They force teachers to teach to the test if they want to keep their jobs. School becomes rote memorization. And there's no allowance for poor areas, non-English-speaking areas, or special-needs kids.

The response to poor test results is not more funding for underprivileged schools or real reform, it's to fire teachers and close "under-performing" schools.

Standardized testing isn't used as a feedback mechanism to learn what works and what doesn't, what can be improved and what's doing fine. It's used as a weapon against public education.

yummyfajitas13• 12 years ago

I can't find an example Colorado test, but here are NY and CA tests:

http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1... http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261... http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf

Please explain with specifics how to "teach to the test" in a manner that doesn't increase student knowledge.(If "teaching to the test" increases student knowledge then it's a good thing.)

I have no idea why you believe measuring outputs is a "weapon against public education". Are clinical trials a "weapon against pharmacy"? Is a sales board a "weapon against salesmen"?

Your critique that "there's no allowance for poor areas, non-English-speaking areas, or special-needs kids" is simply ignorant. If anything, modern testing systems are more difficult for teachers of top students (who have nowhere to go but down). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_modeling

xux• 12 years ago

This reminds of the Churchill's famous dictum:

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

No, standarized tests aren't ideal. But what do you propose instead. Let each of the millions of teachers create his/her own standard?

zmmmmm2• 12 years ago

The benefits of them (I guess), is that you can collect data on how kids are doing around various parts of the country, and maybe look at some areas where the kids are doing poorer than others to see if the education is lacking.

The thing is - this is easily achievable by sampling. You don't need to test every single kid to figure out broad trends. The tests reveal nothing at that level that couldn't be ascertained through other means.

I don't see any downsides at all other than "my kids might get stressed" which is rather silly.

The biggest downside is that inevitably the minute such a system is introduced nearly the entire educational program becomes bent on preparing kids for the test. If it can't be tested, it just falls through the cracks and isn't taught. But we all know schooling, especially in younger years, is about so much more than being able to reproduce a small set of measurable skills.

I also think your "rather silly" comment is a bit flippant. For someone who is not bothered by tests this might seem reasonable. But for kids that are not ready, introducing them to high stress testing situations can scar them badly and impair their performance for life. For a child that does not react well (through lack of maturity) to a testing environment, it means inevitably they will do very poorly on the test, which will feed back into their self esteem and have a high risk of setting back their educational progress.

yummyfajitas13• 12 years ago

You don't need to test every single kid to figure out broad trends.

To determine the performance of an individual teacher, you pretty much do. You want to measure teacher performance from a sample of 5/30 students? Too noisy. Even 30 students is far from ideal.

Testing every child is also a great way to prevent schools from "randomly" cherrypicking which students take the test.

Tehnix4• 12 years ago

I also think your "rather silly" comment is a bit flippant. For someone who is not bothered by tests this might seem reasonable.

It's not like I love exams myself? This is simply something people should learn to deal with.

But for kids that are not ready, introducing them to high stress testing situations can scar them badly and impair their performance for life.

If your kid gets scared for life by a test, then I'm afraid you simply haven't prepared them for life at all. Test might be frightening, I'll grant you that, but it's such a normal part of the education system and a lot of other things, that it simply is something one must learn to cope with in some way or another. There's often counseling or guidance you can get if you really have anxiety.

it means inevitably they will do very poorly on the test, which will feed back into their self esteem and have a high risk of setting back their educational progress.

Then you deal with that by helping them as I mentioned in the last sentence in the paragraph before. It can also be an indicator that the child simply hasn't learned what it was expected to have learned, and therefore isn't ready to progress yet.

Kids aren't fragile little things that'll break so easily. I'll stand on my earlier claim and would say "sparing" them of such things will do more harm to them later on in their life than it will do them good. You can't always hold you child in the hand, and if they never learn to deal with stressful situations it will have a much larger impact later on in life.

crystalmace• 12 years ago

Stories like this make me so glad I'm homeschooled. Even though I'm in Canada, and homeschooling for me just means taking all of my courses online, I am continually thankful that I am not forced to be a part of the public school system. At least I am able to take courses that are designed to teach, and not to prepare one for a test. Indeed, some of the courses I've taken didn't even havtests or final exams, but instead projects that demonstrated the knowledge and skill that you acquired through the course. I find that a much better indication of how I did throughout the course and what areas I need to improve on then any piece of paper that has been 'standardized'.

jonah• 12 years ago

That's great to hear. When I was homeschooled we had to take the same standardized tests as the public school kids. We always did extremely well but it was a stressor for us and my mother the teacher. More recently they've eased up on that requirement in my home state apparently.

joelhooks3• 12 years ago

I proactively opted my kids out of these bullshit tests too; by never sending them to government schools in the first place. What a total waste of 12 (of the best) years of your life...

biafra2• 12 years ago

How much is it per month/year to send your kids to a non public school in the US?

cwal37• 12 years ago

Generally, it is prohibitively expensive. I come from a wealthy suburb where the private schools are a bit worse than the public ones, so it worked out for myself and my siblings as our parents could not have remotely afforded to send us to private schools. So far we've all gone on to great schools and careers after high school, so it's not always such a bad thing to be in the public school system, despite the OP's blanket statement.

EDIT: Here's a link to some older costs: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_063.asp

joelhooks3• 12 years ago

$15,000-20,000 a year. They don't go to private school either. It's only marginally better option than the government schools.

jcampbell12• 12 years ago

The author is slow, and a lawyer.

While I was reading the first page, I was screaming, your kid is smart, thus "IT MATTERS TO YOUR KID'S TEACHERS".

By the second page the author somehow figures it out after posting on Facebook and getting tons of comments from friends that explain it to her in excruciating detail. I would not hire this person as a lawyer ever. I have no idea why she wrote this article.

jonalmeida• 12 years ago

I do this as well while writing a post about my experiences so that other can follow my train of thought and my actions. Personally, I don't think on such a linear level, and I'm sure many others don't as well, but when you write about such events, (in other to not look like a crazy lunatic) you have to write it as a story.

nknighthb7• 12 years ago

Where did you come by a connection between "lawyer" and "middle school educational policy"? If she were a lawyer for a middle school, you might have a point, but she's not.

jcampbell12• 12 years ago

Good laywers can read between the lines. That is their job. She did not stop and think "Why does this principle care? Why is she making this call? What are the motivations?"

Would not hire as a lawyer.

greatsuccess2• 12 years ago

The rule of thumb in social situations I use is, the minute someone pressures you into something, its the wrong thing to do.

beloch2• 12 years ago

I opted my children out of flossing.

The dentist couldn't understand why I would do this. I told him it was my legal right, and a decision that my husband and I had thought through carefully...

Yeah, yeah. Silly comparison. However, I'm trying to make the point that testing, so long as it isn't the end-all motivation of all teaching efforts, serves a useful purpose and, while there are other possible methods of evaluation and feedback, testing is the backbone of most school systems at present. As such, teachers understandably fail to understand when parents opt their children out of tests. This might explain why those teachers and school officials had such difficulty making logical arguments in favor of it. To them, it was like opting those children out of flossing.

The author of this article does make the case that the school didn't argue very convincingly in favor of the tests, but neither did she make any form of convincing argument against the tests beyond stress. Arguably, learning that early and thorough preparation reduces stress is a tremendously important lesson for kids, even beyond what they're actually studying! Testing also teaches children to remain calm under pressure, and that random chance ("Oh, I won't study that. What are the odds it will be a question?") is a cruel mistress.

Yes, it is your legal right to opt your children out of both taking tests and flossing. Take a stand! Hooray for your legal rights!

jacobolus• 12 years ago

testing is the backbone of most school systems at present

Any school system for which a state standardized test is the “backbone” of student “evaluation and feedback” is completely and utterly broken.

There may be some schools like that, but I hope to never interact with them.

Every school I’ve ever interacted with had student assignments with careful grading, teacher-created tests relevant to the material being studied, report cards with grades or ideally written feedback from the teacher, etc. I would consider those the “backbone” of student assessment. State standardized tests are mostly a waste of time and pretty unrevealing about students, in comparison to actually looking at the students’ work.

beloch2• 12 years ago

That's not a valid generalization. I grew up in a city that was/is tops in it's province for education. This province is consistently at/near the top of the country, and that country's education system is consistently rated in the top ten world-wide and always well above the U.S.. We had standardized tests in grades 6, 9, and 12. They were weighted heavily towards our grades (50% in grade 12) and were, hence, a pretty big deal. The grade 12 tests also serve the same function for universities as SAT's, only on a per-subject basis. e.g. If you apply to a University mathematics program, they might not care about your results in social studies.

Note: A key difference between these exams and SAT's is that curricula in the U.S. are often designed to help students pass SAT's, while the standardized tests here are designed to test the province's curriculum.

yummyfajitas13• 12 years ago

Student A took test X and got an 86. Student B took test Y and got a +++. How do you evaluate whether one or both students are making adequate progress?

yoha• 12 years ago

The dentist couldn't understand why I would do this. I told him it was my legal right, and a decision that my husband and I had thought through carefully... Yeah, yeah. Silly comparison.

Yup, would have been better off without it.

testing is the backbone of most school systems at present.

I think that's exactly where the problem is: kids are not supposed to help schools get funds, schools are supposed to train kids for real life.

The purpose of SATs is deeply questioned. They try to give a single number to evaluate someone.

There is a common fallacy on the matter. Say you want to evaluate programmers. You find out that your best programmers write code than the others, so you decide to track how much code each one has added to the source. You know what happens next: your code base just grew tenfold. That's because when you use a measurement, you are evaluating this measurement and nothing else.

Getting back to SATs, it means that you are evaluating the skills of kids at taking standardized tests, and I don't think this is a very useful skill as an adult.

The author of this article does make the case that the school didn't argue very convincingly in favor of the tests, but neither did she make any form of convincing argument against the tests beyond stress.

Good, then it does not matter if they are taken or not; it is therefore very reasonable to avoid an unnecessary burden.

Arguably, learning that early and thorough preparation reduces stress is a tremendously important lesson for kids, even beyond what they're actually studying! Testing also teaches children to remain calm under pressure, and that random chance ("Oh, I won't study that. What are the odds it will be a question?") is a cruel mistress.

I find it quite depressing to see that schools are now supposed to train you to take a test. How is that any relevant? What was the original purpose of school again? This is the same fallacy as I above: tests are made to check the training pupils where given, not the other way around.

Yes, it is your legal right to opt your children out of both taking tests and flossing. Take a stand! Hooray for your legal rights!

How is that an argument?

yummyfajitas13• 12 years ago

You find out that your best programmers write code than the others, so you decide to track how much code each one has added to the source.

I linked to real tests elsewhere in the thread.

You find that the best students can compute the area of a rectangle given a ruler and simplify (x^3y^2)(x^4y). You start testing that, and you know what happens next: all your students can compute area given a ruler and simplify algebraic equations.

Wait, isn't that a good thing?

chris_mahan• 12 years ago

My answer to this is to buy lots of book for my son to read. He's 8. He can go through a 400 pages novel in 4 days.

(wings of fire series, spirit animals, that sort of things)

When we go to the bookstore the rule is: if you want it I buy it. I don't care if its about dragons or elephants. It's still cheaper than private school.

xname• 12 years ago

In most cases, standardized test is the only way to keep teachers and schools accountable in a public school system. Public school system, test-free, and accountability, you cannot have the three things at the same time.

I Opted My Kids Out of Standardized Tests

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