“Bottom line: Every teacher should be in favor of the Opt Out movement.”

“Every educator should opt out their own children from the tests.”

“Imagine if every teachers union in the country routinely sent open letters to all parents asking them to opt their kids out! What an impact that would make!”

Competency Based Education is a real problem that threatens to make everyday test day – I’ll go with you there. In fact, schemes like Personalized Learning could transform every app into an opportunity to test kids without them even knowing it.

Yet standardized tests do all of these things! They dishonestly give higher scores to rich kids and lower scores to poor kids.

We serve the parents and children of the community. If they say they don’t want their children tested in this way, we should listen to them.

why are you defending these tests? They are used by charter and voucher schools as “proof” that the public schools are failing.

These tests are used to justify unfairly evaluating YOUR work, narrowing YOUR curriculum, repealing YOUR union protections, reducing YOUR autonomy, cutting YOUR funding, and ultimately laying YOU off.

Why are you standing up for THAT?

Most teachers are rule followers at heart. When we were in school, we were the obedient students. We were the people-pleasers. We got good grades, kept our heads down and didn’t make waves.

But the qualities that often make for the highest grades don’t often translate into action. That, alone, should tell you something about the limits of assessment which are only exacerbated by standardized test scores. When it comes to complex concepts, it’s hard to assess and even harder to determine if success on assessments is a predictor of future success.

The tech moguls and the testing giants are salivating over the prospect of replacing us with apps and low-skilled, low paid babysitters to oversee students hunched over computers and tablets. (See? Told you Personalized Learning was poison.)

We shouldn’t be helping them destroy our own profession by advocating for the same tests they’re using as a tool in our destruction.

Source: Every Public School Teacher Should Support Opting Out of Standardized Tests | gadflyonthewallblog