8 ms·

I Opted My Kids Out of Standardized Tests

31 points by wallflower 13y ago

InclinedPlane 13y 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.
- greatsuccess 13y 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.
nknighthb 13y 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?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  It was probably there before the law was changed to make the testing mandatory.
vacri 13y 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"?
- dragonwriter 13y 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.
  - vacri 13y ago
    A fair point, but it's not how she's painting herself, and she makes no mention of what the next step is.
- vizeroth 13y 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.
Tehnix 13y 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_ban 13y 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 13y 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?
    - unethical_ban 13y ago
      I get what you're saying, but "education" isn't a vocational activity. There are a lot of issues with public education (age-based grade levels, difficulties of each subject tied to the same grade level, rigid teaching methods, etc) that contribute, and the standardized tests are an easy thing to see is wrong.
- avalaunch 13y 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.
crystalmace 13y 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 13y 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.
joelhooks 13y 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...
- biafra 13y ago
  How much is it per month/year to send your kids to a non public school in the US?
  - cwal37 13y 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 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_063.asp
    - joelhooks 13y ago
      My blanket statement regarding the precious waste of time children are coerced into is not limited to government schools. A little hyperbole! I went to school, and also have a job.
  - joelhooks 13y 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.
    - biafra 13y ago
      Wow. That is a lot. Here in Germany we have some private schools that are almost free because they are run by the catholic church or protestants. Other non religious private schools are at about 5000€ per year.
jcampbell1 13y 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 13y 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.
- nknighthb 13y 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.
  - jcampbell1 13y 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.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      I don't typically stop and think about the motivation of administrative drones, either. I would hope no lawyer I hired would waste time in such a manner unless it was actually relevant to the matter I hired them for. I, too, would not hire her as a lawyer, but that's because she isn't one anymore. She's been an instructor and professor for more than a decade, not a practicing attorney.
murphysbooks 13y ago
It is hard to blame the people in the schools (admins and such). They are trapped in a bad system, and all the suggested remedies seem to make it worse. Heck, they can't even get healthy food because the USDA makes the cardboard pizza's nearly free. So, the food budget evaporated into other programs that does not get federal subsidies. It is hard to think of a more dysfunctional situation, and this is where we send the vast majority of our children. We started homeschooling our son this year. One thing that stands out is that there is no such thing as a "snow day" anymore. The school gave us the math book, but it was a waste of time. It even had errors in definitions "A trapazoid has two equal length sides" Really!? We decided this would be best when he started saying, "Can I stay home? I want to learn something." [He knows how to pull our strings]
greatsuccess 13y ago
The rule of thumb in social situations I use is, the minute someone pressures you into something, its the wrong thing to do.
beloch 13y 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 13y 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.
  - beloch 13y 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.
chris_mahan 13y 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 13y 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.

31 points by wallflower 13y 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.

greatsuccess 13y 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.

nknighthb 13y 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?

dragonwriter 13y ago
It was probably there before the law was changed to make the testing mandatory.

vacri 13y 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"?

dragonwriter 13y 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.
- vacri 13y ago
  A fair point, but it's not how she's painting herself, and she makes no mention of what the next step is.
vizeroth 13y 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.

Tehnix 13y 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_ban 13y 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 13y 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?
  - unethical_ban 13y ago
    I get what you're saying, but "education" isn't a vocational activity. There are a lot of issues with public education (age-based grade levels, difficulties of each subject tied to the same grade level, rigid teaching methods, etc) that contribute, and the standardized tests are an easy thing to see is wrong.
avalaunch 13y 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.

crystalmace 13y 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 13y 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.

joelhooks 13y 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...

biafra 13y ago
How much is it per month/year to send your kids to a non public school in the US?
- cwal37 13y 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 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_063.asp
  - joelhooks 13y ago
    My blanket statement regarding the precious waste of time children are coerced into is not limited to government schools. A little hyperbole! I went to school, and also have a job.
- joelhooks 13y 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.
  - biafra 13y ago
    Wow. That is a lot. Here in Germany we have some private schools that are almost free because they are run by the catholic church or protestants. Other non religious private schools are at about 5000€ per year.

jcampbell1 13y 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 13y 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.
nknighthb 13y 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.
- jcampbell1 13y 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.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    I don't typically stop and think about the motivation of administrative drones, either. I would hope no lawyer I hired would waste time in such a manner unless it was actually relevant to the matter I hired them for. I, too, would not hire her as a lawyer, but that's because she isn't one anymore. She's been an instructor and professor for more than a decade, not a practicing attorney.

murphysbooks 13y ago

It is hard to blame the people in the schools (admins and such). They are trapped in a bad system, and all the suggested remedies seem to make it worse. Heck, they can't even get healthy food because the USDA makes the cardboard pizza's nearly free. So, the food budget evaporated into other programs that does not get federal subsidies. It is hard to think of a more dysfunctional situation, and this is where we send the vast majority of our children. We started homeschooling our son this year. One thing that stands out is that there is no such thing as a "snow day" anymore. The school gave us the math book, but it was a waste of time. It even had errors in definitions "A trapazoid has two equal length sides" Really!? We decided this would be best when he started saying, "Can I stay home? I want to learn something." [He knows how to pull our strings]

greatsuccess 13y ago

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

beloch 13y 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 13y 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.
- beloch 13y 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.

chris_mahan 13y 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 13y 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.