Parenting Blog

Why We Opt Out of State Standardized Testing

WHY WE OPT OUT

I didn’t know enough in time to opt out last year. I know more now and so the girls are not taking the state’s standardized tests this school year — happening right now — because we’re taking a stand against test making & test grading corporations getting boatloads of cash that could be / should be spent on teachers, school programs, tutoring, and other boots on the ground scholastic initiatives that may actually improve the lives of children and, in turn, the communities in which they live.

A month or so ago the Mouse said to me, with a mouthful of breakfast cereal, that “it’s scary to think that my teachers are not going to grade my PSSA test”. It was random — as per Mouse — but poignant.

I’d never thought of it that way but she was right, it is kinda scary and totally F-ed up that the very people we parents charge with caring for and educating our kids during the school day are not the ones who will grade or see or react to the standardized test results. Meaning, these state issued standardized tests are not designed to help understand what our children do or do not know, and make adjustments to their educational plan accordingly, they are designed for something else completely, something that doesn’t benefit the students or their teachers in the classrooms they sit in today. They are, in part, designed to make some faceless corporation a shit ton of money from a state that has to barter to find money for our schools and our teachers in the first place.

Screw that.

We opt out.

*oh, and screw ‘teaching to the test’ too. That shit deserves a separate blog post entirely.

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