Standardized testing, conform or die?

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My teenage daughter had a couple of teachers sort of make this type of statement her last year of middle school. (She now does school at home). The local school district made a serious shift towards everything in school being focused on test preparation a few years ago. How classes are conducted drastically changed. She had been told she had to be able to conform and do well on the pre-testing and standardized tests or her adult life would be "over" and she would have no opportunity. At the time she had no sort of diagnosis of any sort, no IEP. She didn't tell me this until two years later after she left school.

She is quite smart, had high grades through elementary school even though she was struggling socially. She just couldn't deal with the new way they were teaching and all these tests. Since she started doing school at home things are much better. I was just so shocked that teachers were telling kids to give up on life in middle school over these tests and wondered how many other students who don't conform in some way are being treated like this?

That is ridiculous....not sure what else to say about that...though I thought standardized testing was supposedly more to test the schools performance, not that I even agree with that but I thought it was more the teachers who had to be worried if large amounts of students aren't passing them. But yeah I didn't do so great on a lot of those, and still was able to try going to college, my brother didn't even graduate(is working on GED) and has a job so where they get your adult life is 'over' if you don't do well on standardized testing is ridiculous.

Many, I think.

It's part of the thing that started with "no child left behind" -- the idea is that you can't have "standards based education" without standard metrics, therefore all kids must take standard tests.

The latest version of this in our corner of New Jersey is computerized standard tests. My son likes them, because he doesn't have to write or draw, my daughter hates them because the screens are too bright and make buzzing sounds. Both of them agree that the interface design is terrible: ugly, dysfunctional, barely usable in some cases. Everything we have come to expect from State contracted IT services.

Many parents have opted out. We did not, but we are thinking about homeschooling.

Education is one of the public sectors that those who want to "control" things include in their portfolios, and "standardized testing" (but never "educator testing") is one of their tools. And, surprisingly, educators, who presumably chose to teach, are willing cohorts of this hostile takeover. The academic success and increase of home schooling has scared both the controllers and their educator puppets, and created a whole new public sector that controls itself. The economic bubble that has hovered over education for years is finally showing signs of its impending collapse. That is good news insofar as the camp followers of education will be forced to move on, and find other scams and victims to fool. Under the weight of those kinds of change, education might just reform itself to what it once was.

Yep. My daughter sucks at test taking at 11. Because of her "less than stellar" test scores, she will be placed in the bad cattle track in middle school. The good cattle get advance placement (no sped kids, no unruly minority kids, no behavioral issues) classes which I was told ran about a full grade above material wise than their actual grade. General ed is a holding pen until the "mutants" can drop out. Or get pregnant, expelled, OD...you get the idea.

What kills me, is her teachers now want her tested for GATE, because her report cards show almost all As, but due to standardized testing, they can't place her higher, the scores don't justify it.

So yeah...it you can't do a mean scan tron bubble test, your life is over at 11 or 12.

I have until July to decide. What a PITA.

Thank you common core and NCLB.

Poop flows downhill---so when the school gets hit with this, they take it out on the kids.

The U.S. Senate voted last week to prohibit the federal government from “mandating, incentivizing, or coercing states to adopt specific academic standards, including the Common Core standards.” The U.S. House of Representatives will very likely support the bill, too. It will be interesting to see how the president performs his logic gymnastics to veto the bill.

Its pretty dumb since doing well on these tests does very little for you in the future, believe it or not those good grades mean a lot more than good test scores when it comes down to it. I did well on almost every test I've ever taken but I was awful at school work and attendance thus got awful grades.

Here the teachers hate the new system, because they are being evaluated on the performance of their students. This naturally puts teachers with many ESL students or special ed students in a difficult position because the "standards based" metrics don't take those factors into account.

The daughter really does learn differently that the way the school district here is now teaching. She is currently working on what would be AP history in junior or senior year but she is technically considered a freshman. It isn't really the material that is the challenge but the way it is approached or explored.

The district doesn't seem to intervene when kids are not doing well or showing signs that something isn't quite right anymore. They took our oldest (diagnosed with Aspergers) off his IEP when he was a junior and everything immediately went downhill. Even when the daughter refused to do any more work nobody even let us know until she was failing most of her classes at mid-term. Then nobody could be bothered to care. I have to wonder how many kids in the district are falling through the cracks.

I was told similar stuff about pretty much everything as a kid. I'd never go to university, I'd never get a job, I'd never complete high school, I'd be in juvenile detention by 14...

Well, I haven't gotten a job yet, but I've proven all those other predictions wrong.

It's not just about standardized testing. It's about teachers thinking they can scare a kid into doing what the teacher expects from them.

Our teachers' pay checks are tied to this mess. sh***y test scores, no raise and you get put on notice.

We can't opt out either. So if you keep your kids home, they will just be dumped in general ed as the state test trumps report cards for non 504/IEP placement.

I think that ASD children often hear a lot of black and white that speakers do not mean. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that what the school actually said was much more nuanced.

I could spend hours on the testing topic and the pressures schools and kids are under, but I won't. We're definitely in a transition period of ideals at war with each other, but there are many super special teachers who seem to be able to navigate it all well and still keep the kids engaged with learning.

That said, I am glad she is out of that environment. It obviously was not for her.

That isn't really true, that your life has to be over. But it does mean it will take more effort to join the roads you hope to be on.

Still, the pressure EVERYONE feels is real. I had to give my son permission a few years ago to jump off the bandwagon, he was so afraid of what would happen if he lost the momentum, but he was literally losing his mind.

Sooo ... we've had time for it to play out. He won't go to his first choice of universities. We've just finished the application process and he had to accept that disappointment. But he IS admitted to several good schools, and they can get him where he wants to go. He has accepted that all his life he may need to let a few things go because of his inability to handle the pressure. So be it. He is STILL a smart and engaging person who earns respect from his teachers and peers. NOTHING can change that. The most important goal for me has been to keep him believing in himself even when he has to sideline himself from the race to the top.

Things in this country have gotten too crazy. If you can play the game - great. Play it. If you can't, well, find a different road. They exist, even if they aren't obvious.

We take these horrible Smarter Balanced tests next week, for 10 DAYS IN A ROW!! This is worse than the old WASL/MSP in WA which lasted 3-4 days if that. The tests are flawed, the questions are confusing, the material is mostly not needed for life, and there's a 60-70% FAILING RATE! The tests we take are not for any graduation or high school diploma, because we already got that with the 10th grade HSPE WA test. But we still have to take it...for the school's "approval rating," teacher's "approval rating" and lots of KA-CHING.
Hundreds of Seattle Public Schools juniors opted out of the tests...and even teachers are getting involved in the optout.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new ... ore-exams/
For the first time ever in my journey through public education, I may opt out of this whole thing...I would rather read a good book during the testing period. I'm not going to do a test just for a bunch of bigwig/CEO's sake. Even SATs have a shorter time period than this. Sure, the school gets a "zero." Big whoopti-do. Our school has loads of great students, teachers, and actually invites two motivational speakers a year to all-school assemblies...which hundreds of other Central Washington students are bused to attend. The SBAC doesn't matter.
Sped failing rate is even worse - 90%! In some states, school administrators are refusing to opt out students with autism, cerebral palsy, dyslexia and Down's syndrome from the SBAC, and its Pearson clone, PARCC. Talk about disgraceful.
I am diagnosed with HFA but it still disgraces me...and most of the NTs hate the upcoming tests as well.

BTW I thought both tests required headphones for their reading assessments, as some questions require you to listen to the prompt described. Adamantium, your daughter could wear a set of headphones to block out the buzzing noises.

Great thought. I'll work on this. Thanks.