Exiting the Testing Feedback Loop

Now is a perfect time for the change. Let’s just stop. Let’s opt out of state testing on a national basis and shift to benchmark testing to track student progress. We can use NAEP testing to track state progress over time. If legislatures will not rein in those tests, parents should step up and keep their children home on test days. Why not bake a seven-layer cake while wearing pajamas and then binge watch a new family favorite? I suggest we create happy memories instead of forcing our children to run one more punishing, academic gauntlet.

Currently, in some districts, schools are ending up with 29 weeks or fewer of available instructional time after testing, test practice, and test preparation. That’s completely bonkers.

Let’s just stop. Because, as it stands, bit by bit, piece by piece, we are chewing up some kids — and to what end? We keep re-documenting “facts” we have already determined, facts we have known forever. In rare instances, when schools post surprises, those results often come back late or even past the end of the school year. Our happy or sad surprises tend to simply disappear in the deluge of data, never to inform instructional decisions.

Political and educational leaders keep trying to do an end run around what they know to be true: School funding should be reformed so ALL students can be given the supports they require to learn — not just those lucky kids whose parents can afford to live in moneyed zip codes.

P.S. This blog is about to make a shift in direction. I no longer believe that we can trust politicians to rein in the test monster. Even the Biden administration did not provide a respite from testing. Parents may be our last, best hope, Opting Out, family by family, may be the only way to get the message across: it’s time to stop sacrificing children to numbers we hardly ever even use.