Opt Out Hits a Nerve!

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From the Daily News in New York.

Teachers unions and the parents who fueled New York’s testing opt-out movement are claiming the hollowest of victories after the refusenik ranks rose a still-to-be-determined amount.

In 2014, 60,000 students statewide sat out standardized math and English tests. Guesstimates this year range from 100,000 to a quarter-million of the 1.1 million test-takers across the state.

Even at the high end, the boycott number should only marginally set back some school districts’ ability to remove their worst teachers, identify those in need of help and reward the best. It will not, however, deliver a better education for a single child.

The opt-out brigades have grown at an interesting time.

It is not that students are suddenly being tested — they’ve been filling in bubbles for years….

blah blah blah.

I’m sure you just threw up in your mouth.  Hurry up and go and brush your teeth.  Better? OK.

How do we (Opt Outers) respond?  Should we be Angry? Defensive? Analytical?

What about something like this?


It fills me with such warmth to watch the media try with all its might to prop up an invalid, unreliable, and politically driven system to divert tax dollars to private companies and charter schools.

Opt out was never and will never be an anti-testing movement. It is the ultimate reality check and newest form of civil disobedience.

People are now opting out in large numbers because they finally understand that the results are scientifically invalid.

Simply, the tests don’t tell us how our children are doing and don’t hold anybody accountable. 25 years of testing and not a single budge in the achievement gap. 25 years of accountability and 1 trillion dollars redirected towards ACCOUNTABILITY and all we have to show for it is soaring profits for test making companies, test prep companies and data companies.

Sorry but its over. This was never about helping our neediest children. It was always about destroying the public school system, blaming teachers and then selling off our schools to the highest bidders.


 

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