Reply to Opting out of PARCC testing in DC?

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Reply to "Opting out of PARCC testing in DC?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think you need to look in the mirror on the hate side.  This thread is full of hate and anger toward the test...  But, nobody has yet articulated anything SPECIFICALLY bad about the test.  That tends to tell me it's not really about the test.[/quote]

Honestly, I don't think the people who want to opt out really CAN articulate why, except to mutter things about teaching the test and "testing-industrial complex" and some vague anger over Common Core and the fact that long division is taught using the partial quotient method instead of the "right way" as they learned it.  The Tea Party types have really done a number on demonizing "Common Core." Between that and romanticizes notions of our past, viewed with rose-colored glasses, it really boils down to anxiety that our kids are being taught differently than we are [i]and we don't like that.

We seem to have forgotten that we had standardized tests when we were kids (we always took the Stanford Achievement Tests), were agitating only 15 years ago about failing American education lagging behind Asian countries in particular (where testing was and remains de rigueur).

It's bonkers.[/quote]

Leave the Tea Party out of it.  It's as much Teacher Union anti-testing as anything else.  Plenty of crazy to go around, apparently.[/quote]

I'm politically progressive and the proud daughter of a 30 year teacher and NEA member.  I work with young people in an urban school district.  Testing culture does nothing to improve their lives or get them the academic skills the desperately need.  But our school systems are pouring money and time (teacher time, instructional time) into these tests.  We already know the kid are failing.  We need to put our resources into using some of the many teaching techniques that actually work, getting kids the resources they need to be healthy and happy outside of school, and addressing systemic corruption in urban school systems (and I know amazing teachers and administrators but they are brought down and driven out by the power grabbers and clock punchers).  Testing does nothing to solve the problems in our schools. We already know school are failing.  Stop testing and start teaching.[/quote]

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