Opting Out Interfering with the “Civil Right” of Testing?
As I write this post, I have in front of me my permanent education record from kindergarten through eighth grade. It is by way of an unusual set of circumstances that I have this file. The short of it is that the records clerk at the first high school I taught at gave it to me in 1992.
It includes my standardized test scores for grades K, 1, and 4-8.
Yes. I took standardized tests beginning in kindergarten. My first was the Metropolitan Readiness Test, Form B (1973). It assessed my readiness for first grade, in six areas: word meaning, listening, matching, alphabet, numbers, and copying.
My teacher used it to help determine whether I should advance to first grade.
The test was not misused to grade my teacher or school.
None of the other six tests were used to grade my teachers or my school. They were used for diagnostic purposes related to my education.
My tests were not used to make me feel bad about myself by way of expected failure rates publicized in the media. My test results were not manipulated by those who possessed the political power to set any cut scores. There were no cut scores. There was no media hype surrounding my testing. There was no need for my parents to be concerned about my emotional well being due to any punitive consequences that might befall me. I was not worried that my scores could be used to fire my teachers or close my school.
There was no need for my parents to consider opting me out of testing.
Those days do not reflect the testing-pressure-cooker reality of 2015.
The resistance to standardized testing overuse and abuse is alive and well– and growing. One indication of the growing power of the anti-testing movement is the inclusion of an amendment to address the issue of opting out as part of the Senate reauthorization draft of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). That amendment basically states that the federal government does not want to be blamed for any state law concerning parental rights to opt their children out of standardized tests.
The Senate ESEA draft keeps the annual testing that was in place in the previous reauthorization, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). However, in the Senate ESEA draft, the federal government wants states to offer the testing while steering clear of any state-Opting Out Interfering with the “Civil Right” of Testing? | deutsch29:
