ISAT Opt Out - Good or bad idea?

[merithyn]

I've long had issues with the whole ISATs thing. I agree with the guy in this article that says that it's not a good indicator of what children (and schools) can do, and it takes valuable time out of classroom instruction to prepare and take the tests. (Riley's school spent four weeks preparing for the tests and then two weeks taking it.) However, because funding is directly tied to how well schools do and my kids tend to hit the 95-99%, I've always let them take the tests. Besides, keeping them from the tests isn't going to give them classroom material; it just means them sitting in the library playing on the computer for six weeks.

What do you guys think?

Link (Preemptive strike: Totally not hitable)

Mother hopes others will opt out of standardized testing

Pennsylvania mother Michele Gray: "The more I look at standardized tests, the more I realize that we have, as parents, been kind of sold a bill of goods."

A Pennsylvania mother has decided she does not want her two children to take the two-week-long standardized tests given by her state as part of the federal No Child Left Behind law. And she hopes other parents will do the same.

Michele Gray's sons -- Ted Rosenblum, 11, and John Michael Rosenblum, 9 -- did independent study the week of March 14 while their classmates were filling in hundreds of bubbles in classrooms with doors marked, "Quiet. Testing in Progress."

Gray says the only legal exemption that would allow her kids to sit out the tests was a religious objection. So that's what she did.

But Gray says her concerns go well beyond religion. "The more I look at standardized tests, the more I realize that we have, as parents, been kind of sold a bill of goods."

She says the tests are not accurate measures of accomplishment, create undue anxiety for students and are used to punish schools.

She gives the example of her sons' award-winning school, Park Forest Elementary, which last year was put on "warning" status after the school's special education students fell below the level of progress the state expects on their exams.

"The more I looked at it, the more outraged I became," Gray said, "This is not something I want to be contributing to (or) something I want my children participating in."

Dr. Timothy Slekar, an associate professor of education at Penn State Altoona, agrees. It was his op-ed piece on the Huffington Post website that inspired Gray to take action.

Slekar is also a father and this year chose not to allow his 11-year-old son Luke to take the tests. He says schools are narrowing their curricula in an effort to boost test scores and wasting too much time preparing for, and then taking, the tests.

He says the tests aren't an accurate indicator of a child's -- or a school's -- performance. "I'm a father and an educator who's finally said, 'This is it. I'm done.' Something has to give. Something has to change," Slekar said.

Another education professor, Dana Mitra, also isn't happy with the tests, but decided to allow her third-grader daughter to take them this year because she's afraid that holding her daughter out could harm the school's test results.

"Given that we're interested in wanting our schools to be the best that they can, we feel pressure as parents to want to help our school," she said. She's not sure what she'll do with her daughter next year.

[Admiral Yi]

Starving your school of funds is definitely the smartest parenting choice.

[Ed Anger]

I of course, will keep them from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. keep your filthy foreign test out of Ohio schools. Har har.

[merithyn]

Starving your school of funds is definitely the smartest parenting choice.

I agree. The question is how to get rid of a worthless test that only hurts schools without large numbers of parents opting out? Personally, my kids will continue to take the tests because our schools need the funding. But that really leaves me in a bind as to the best way to say, "Get rid of NCLB!"

I of course, will keep them from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. keep your filthy foreign test out of Ohio schools. Har har.

[Admiral Yi]

Write your Congressman a detailed letter outlining your opposition.

And, it being Illinois, enclose a whopping bribe.

[Ed Anger]

I of course, will keep them from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. keep your filthy foreign test out of Ohio schools. Har har.

To be serious, I pretty much loathe most of the standardized test thing and tests to graduate. But I come from an era when I didn't have to do that shit.

[merithyn]

Write your Congressman a detailed letter outlining your opposition.

This I've done.

And, it being Illinois, enclose a whopping bribe.

It being Illinois, I don't make nearly enough for this.

[dps]

Yeah, let's get rid of No Child Left Behind, 'cause I fully endorse leaving some kids behind. 

Seriously, I'm a "abolish the Department of Education" conservative, so of course I'm against NCLB.  I've got no particular philosophical objections to standardized tests mandated by states as long as they are actually mandated by individual states on their own, not forced on them by the feds. 

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah, let's get rid of No Child Left Behind, 'cause I fully endorse leaving some kids behind. 

Seriously, I'm a "abolish the Department of Education" conservative, so of course I'm against NCLB.  I've got no particular philosophical objections to standardized tests mandated by states as long as they are actually mandated by individual states on their own, not forced on them by the feds.

That's actually the huge gaping hole in NCLB.  Each state gets to write it's own test and decide what a passing score is.

[dps]

Yeah, let's get rid of No Child Left Behind, 'cause I fully endorse leaving some kids behind. 

Seriously, I'm a "abolish the Department of Education" conservative, so of course I'm against NCLB.  I've got no particular philosophical objections to standardized tests mandated by states as long as they are actually mandated by individual states on their own, not forced on them by the feds.

That's actually the huge gaping hole in NCLB.  Each state gets to write it's own test and decide what a passing score is.

Yes, but they were forced to implement standard tests by the feds.

[The Brain]

Listen to your body.

[Josquius]

Exams prove little but that the taker is good at exams.

Yet the way of the world is they must be taken.

[DGuller]

Exams prove little but that the taker is good at exams.

  This line just gets better with age.

[Valmy]

Exams prove little but that the taker is good at exams.

I think that is probably true of exams inside class where students memorize the info, spit it out, and then forget all about it.  But standardized tests are slightly different.

[Admiral Yi]

Do other countries have standardized college admissions tests?