To test or not to test: Should parents be able to decide whether kids take state exams?

Diane

January 28th, 2013
1:58 am

If the kids are doing the work & earning good grades then, what is the point of testing them?!?! If the work shows they understand the material, it makes no sense to have them repeat it in a stressful situation by making them recount an entire year’s worth of work. In addition, they have been tested in increments throughout the year. A better idea would be to use their incremental test scores as their final test score and MAYBE have them review and retest on the material they didn’t do well with. Some children do great in the schooling, but are terrible test takers.

fjeremey

January 28th, 2013
5:26 am

I don’t know about CRCTs, but a student does not have to pass the EOCT to pass the class. If the student’s grade is high enough to compensate. And with weighted grades that’s not too difficult. EOCTs count as the final exam and are generally weighted at 20%, but that is only in the final exam category. The EOCT/final category gets weighted against the averages of the other categories; tests, quizzes, projects, homework, classwork, etc. If the student has done their work and passed their other tests it is likely that they could get a 65 or 60 on the EOCT and still pass the class. So relax and sit for the exam. You probably know more than you think.

That being said, I agree that there is too much testing, and too much emphasis placed on too expensive, poorly written exams that have little to do with authentic student learning. Projects and portfolios are the way to go. Assign students numbers and distribute the portfolios/capstone projects (in electronic format) evenly throughout the teachers in the state for grading. Teachers from the students school do not grade their own schools portfolios. We can do it instead of finals week.

I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...

January 28th, 2013
5:56 am

I fully support parents doing what is best for their children, een if that means pulling them out during testing. However… they need to also be aware that doing so can be damaging to a school and district. Those test scores, fairly or not, are used to make judgements about how well teachers, schools and districts are doing. Money is tied to those test scores. If too many high performing students do not take the tests, then the school looks to be underperforming. The teachers and adminstrators may be reprimanded, replaced or have even greater accountability measures put in place. There are a plethora of mandates tied to those tests… Parents need to be aware of the unintended consequences of such a decision.

Dc

January 28th, 2013
6:18 am

Or maybe it’s a good idea to have them take it so they can begin to overcome test anxiety?? Unless of course you plan to have them skip the SAT as well……

KIM

January 28th, 2013
6:28 am

No, If a person does not choose public education, then either home school or seek a private school that meets their needs.

hssped

January 28th, 2013
6:43 am

Are you kidding? And then they can skip SATs, job entrance exams…hey…how about a doctor that skips his state boards? Parents need to get over it. If they freak, then their kids will freak. Just take the test and deal with the fall out. That’s life.

Cindy Lutenbacher

January 28th, 2013
6:45 am

Without the right to opt out (a right that many–most?–other states have), parents are more disempowered than ever. We need that right. We need that power. If enough of us united in opposition in such a way, we might be able to restore something of a voice. Right now, parents are easily ignored by policy makers.

mountain man

January 28th, 2013
6:50 am

“If the kids are doing the work & earning good grades then, what is the point of testing them?!?!”

The point is that there is no PROOF that they are doing the work and that the grades are really “earned” and not “given”. How many kids have been passed along to the next grade with a “C” when it is clear that they have no knowledge of the subject matter? If Georgia mandates that children be socially promoted, at least promote them after giving them an “F” if they deserve it. No more “No scores below 50%” and “no F’s allowed to be given”. What do you think CAUSED the testing craze? Social promotion and grade inflation!

catlady

January 28th, 2013
6:52 am

Research by the AJC a few years ago, how kids do on the CRCT as individuals doesn’t matter–they are virtually NEVER held back! CRCT is not predictive, eiher. Kids have little reason to try to do well, and the results show it. Finally, the child can fail the CRCT and somehow, by magic, after 3 weeks of additional instruction, pass it? Give me a break!

And I have told this before–I had an ELL child who almost passed the reading portion! This was a kid who had been here for a matter of months but she matched the words in the question to the words in the story and almost passed!

mountain man

January 28th, 2013
6:54 am

Parents want to “opt” their children out of testing. Why not just “opt” them out of education altogether? Just home school them all the time, teach them nothing, let them fail. If a child has been even an average performer in the class, he/she will have no trouble with the test. Test anxiety? Sort of like ADD, everyone has it these days. Get used to taking tests! They are here to stay.

Grob Hahn

January 28th, 2013
7:05 am

I bet if we just cancel all testing entirely that none of the children will ever have to suffer from test anxiety again. What a marvelous world that will be. We can raise our children with NONE of the normal stresses they will have to deal with in real life. That way they’ll be totally unprepared when life hits them in the face and will have us to thank for it. This is a stupid subject. Only a fool wants the tests to go away. Or a crooked politician. Or Beverly Hall!!!
Grobbbbbbbbbb

Might

January 28th, 2013
7:25 am

So will parents demand the kid skip the ACT of college exams? It is a test folks. It is not surgery or pulling a tooth. Get over it. It happens once each year.

What's Best for Kids?

January 28th, 2013
7:37 am

@fjeremey,
Although students don’t have to pass the EOCT to pass the class, they are required to pass one EOCT in each core subject area to graduate.
For Class of 2016, there is no more GHSGT, so the EOCT in one subject is actually necessary for the student to receive his or her diploma.
I have said before that there is too much testing.

What's Best for Kids?

January 28th, 2013
7:39 am

…hit send too soon.
Getting rid of the GHSGT is nice, though. Right now, the average 11th grader is tested 18 times in one year. That’s 10% or more of his or her school year, depending upon counties and their school year calendars.

AlreadySheared

January 28th, 2013
7:43 am

Apart from how easy the CRCTs are, the worst thing about them is that all learning essentially stops after they are administered. That’s around 4 weeks instruction that just vanishes from the end of the school year. Combine that with 2 weeks of CRCT cramming before the test, and you have yet another argument for private education.

Jessica

January 28th, 2013
7:50 am

@mountain man,
By law, homeschool students have to take standardized tests starting in third grade, and they generally do well on them. I’m sure there are a few lazy parents out there whose idea of homeschooling is to teach their kids nothing and let them fail, but that’s not the norm.

Jerry Eads

January 28th, 2013
8:07 am

Most of the entries above assume that the CRCTs and EOCTs are a measure of something worthwhile. Au contraire. The tests only tell us whether a student “met” or “exceeded” totally arbitrary points on one minimum competency test that has one thing in common with the space program: low bid. The information sent back to the schools is of virtually no use to teachers or students as to what they might do better; the tests are of no use for instruction.

For too many students, the tests have driven schooling to be nothing more than trying to memorize factoids to regurgitate and then forget as quickly as possible. Learning quickly becomes drudgery instead of the joy that it should be. Effectively, students learn virtually nothing on the way to becoming citizens. Students (and teachers) learn to hate school, radically increasing the dropout rate for students and the attrition rate for teachers (particularly the good ones).

By the way, the ONLY purpose for the SAT and ACT is to predict FIRST year survival in college, nothing more. Even though they are two of the best made tests in the world, they don’t do that very well at all, and are of hardly any use to colleges in guessing whether a student will be successful.

I think it’s a great idea for parents to keep their kids away from the state minimum competency tests. Perhaps sooner rather than later the state would end this cruel enterprise that does little more than drain resources and worthwhile learning from schools.

Atlanta Mom

January 28th, 2013
8:09 am

Our family loved testing week. No homework!
That said, I didn’t understand about all this test anxiety until my oldest child, in first grade started acting so weird I went to the school to talk to her teacher. Turns out her teacher was soooooo stressed because they were testing the next week. Her stress infected my child. It was crazy.

Simmer Down

January 28th, 2013
8:29 am

If your child can not pass the CRCT due to stress or lack of knowledge you as a parent need to know this so it can be addressed. Folks – the CRCT is a joke as far as content. It is so simple. If you however take away any real standardized form of measurement then you will end up back where we started which is just pushing kids through to the next level. Just pushing through kids to the next level has got to STOP. I agree with @alreadysheared that once the test is given there is virtually no instruction for the rest of the year because the year is over in the minds of many. It is not. If you do not plan to teach then let me have my kid back for that month and give us a longer summer with them.

Cindy Lutenbacher

January 28th, 2013
8:35 am

Thank you, Jerry Eads. You nail it.

ABC

January 28th, 2013
8:37 am

My youngest gets test anxiety, ONLY because of the enormous pressure the school places on those kids. He is an excellent student in a high performing school and has absolutely ZERO reason to get anxious. But the teachers get so freaking stressed out about the results that all they do for weeks on end is pound the kids about testing. It downright enrages me. Over 95% of the kids in that school have no reason to worry about that stupid CRCT. They could probably take the test at the beginning of the year, pass it with flying colors and get it over with. But oh noes..they have to freak out for two months until they take it.

I don’t think I can go through the extreme of withdrawing my kid for two kids, mostly because all that will do is hurt the school and district. As things stand now, the federal govt holds school responsible for the results of that moronic test and if enough high performing kids do this, the results will be disastrous. But I wish there was a way of requesting that my kid get tested now and get it the freak over with.

mifted

January 28th, 2013
8:41 am

ABC – This is a teacher problem and a Principal supervision problem. This should never happen.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
8:41 am

We absolutely HAVE to test ALL the students for this purpose: we cannot measure how well our schools are performing without them. To allow exemptions INVITES the school to cheat. The schools will absolutely unenroll and “encourage” parents of poor-performing students to opt out so that the school’s scores appear improve or even falsify the kids as being home-schooled for two weeks.
However…
Let’s get real here. It’s not the test that actually causes this anxiety, which is real. It is the teachers and the schools who put the anxiety on the kids because they know the test measures how well they teach.
When I took standardized tests, I was told to get a good night’s rest, eat a good breakfast and bring two number two pencils to school…that’s it.
Today kids are constantly berated to do well…not for their own sake…but for the benefit of the teachers and the school systems’ scores.
So, when children are experiencing test anxiety, don’t blame the test…blame the teachers and the schools who are creating inappropriate and harmful pressure on the children and when appropriate…litigate.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
8:42 am

actually, I like the idea. it needs to be made clear to the parents this act could have negative blowback on their kids later, and sign off on it. and don’t come blaming the system later for the decisions they made if it blows up in their faces.

myself I think CRCT is the single most stupid thing in education right now, and we’ll all be better when it goes the way of the Dodo. everyone in education knows it, including the idiots in DC and the lobbyists who pushed it.

the best reason for letting kids take the stupid thing is simple: we all have stupid crap we have to do in life, and this is a introduction to that concept.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
8:46 am

@ mountain man,

I’m a long time supporter of making public ed optional after middle school.

Mother of 2

January 28th, 2013
8:47 am

I agree with Atlanta Mom. We also loved testing week. My kids were having fun, but their teachers were definitely stressed. Parents of children with test anxiety have the elementary years to help their kids deal with the anxiety. My kids were so used to taking standardized tests that they were very calm sitting for the SAT. While I agree that we over test our kids, I think that many of these tests are here to stay and parents need to help their children deal with the stress they impart. Students who can’t handle the tests should probably be in a different type of school environment (private or home school). It’s important to match the learning environment with individual student needs.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
8:52 am

@ ABC

in all genuine sincerity:

if your child has that level of test anxiety, I strongly suggest you take him to a mental health professional. I’ve been in higher ed longer than many here have been alive, and the trend is for more and more of these kinds of stupid do nothing tests.

and the higher he goes in education, the more intense the real tests get as well. not to mention how this might manifest in the work world when faced with tight deadlines and imbeciles for supervisors.

if you can start working with him now, it may do a lot towards helping him out in overall life later.

A reader

January 28th, 2013
8:57 am

I wish I could opt out of work anytime things get stressful. These “clever” parents who have found a way to opt out of testing by taking their child out of school for 2 weeks are essentially teaching them then when things happen that you do not like, well just stay home. That is not a good strategy to get through life.

Centrist

January 28th, 2013
9:13 am

Poor babies have to worry about “test anxiety”.

O.K., fine – parents who have the need to coddle their children should be able to keep them home and exempt them from being tested on their knowledge and comprehension. We need more waiters and waitresses anyhow.

KIM

January 28th, 2013
9:14 am

I hear the many helicopters. Pretty soon we will have everyone feeling good again, and no measure of who will lead us in the future. And no one will have to work to be the best. But we’ll all feel really good. I mean, after all, those silly tests are just a waste of time…and, I don’t want anyone to feel bad if he or she does not do well. I don’t want them to have to do the homework either, because it stresses our family. When I come home from work I don’t want to have to help my kids do the math or the language….and I don’t want them to have to read so much. We can’t do the video games we want to do because they are having to read. And don’t correct my child. He will learn from his parents how to behave and he will become responsible and able to compete with the world from us. We have been sooo successful.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
9:14 am

@ Atl Mom

oversimplified, here’s why the faculty was so crazy.

-faculty know CRCT is useless. and they resent the imposition it has on actual teaching time. they are supposed to get XYZ accomplished in the classroom. benchmarks set based on classroom days, but not taking into account nearly 1/3 of the year gets eaten up by CRCT in one way or another.

-admin types go crazy because CRCT means money and recognition. and in the business of education, this is the most important thing of all. even when blessed with on site management who actually cares about education (most don’t) they report to somebody who does.

Google "NEA" and "union"

January 28th, 2013
9:14 am

So in this case Maureen’s for “parental choice” … if it helps traditional public schools evade accountability.

Whirled Peas

January 28th, 2013
9:19 am

If kids are going to a poor school, should parents have to pay for it?

Pluto

January 28th, 2013
9:21 am

Isn’t life pretty much a final exam? If you cannot handle the heat then you probably won’t do very well in life either. I guess the assumption you make here is that “most” parents have a lick of sense which is debatable at best.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
9:29 am

@ whirled

schools are a reflection of the values of a community. in a sense, they already (past tense) have paid for it.

teacher&mom

January 28th, 2013
9:36 am

“If you cannot handle the heat then you probably won’t do very well in life either. ”

“I wish I could opt out of work anytime things get stressful. ”

Ya’ll realize we are talking about CHILDREN….you know….8, 9, 10 years olds? Who in their right mind expects a 10 year old to handle stress like an adult?

I don’t have a problem with a parent opting out of the CRCT. The info provided by the CRCT is useless. Schools can give short, in-house academic screeners for much less time and money with better results.

EOCT’s are a different story since they count 20% of the final grade. By high school, most students are ready for the “pressure” and can handle it much better.

Me

January 28th, 2013
9:37 am

“blame the teachers and the schools who are creating inappropriate and harmful pressure on the children and when appropriate…litigate.”

No – blame the legislators and policy wonks who dictate that the schools and teachers have to show increases every year and expect even the 70 IQ students to do as well as the 150 IQ students.

Teachers and school administrators have Nothing to do with whether or not your kid has to take the test – they are bound by state laws.

Litigate? Seriously? Against who? Districts are mandated by State and Federal law to give the tests.

Think before you post please.

Batgirl

January 28th, 2013
9:58 am

No, students should not be able to opt out. As someone said earlier, school systems are judged by their students’ test scores, and I fear the only ones left taking the tests would be those students whose parents don’t care enough to sign a form opting their child out.

indigo

January 28th, 2013
9:59 am

“We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year olds by making them waste the best years of their lives on preparing for examinations”

Freemam Dyson
Professsor of Physics
Institute For Advanced Study
Princton University

northern neighbor

January 28th, 2013
10:14 am

CORRECT – High Stress environment is a superintendent/principal/teacher issue and should be dealt with.
CORRECT – student test anxiety should be addressed by the parent, teacher, counselor and principal. There will always be tests, some more stressful than others. Students must learn to deal with them.
INCORRECT – “The tests only tell us whether a student “met” or “exceeded” totally arbitrary points
— That is a stupid statement. The testing materials are NOT totally arbitrary.
COMMENT – “low bid” Another stupid statement. Even the low bid must meet the bids specs which disqualifies most companies from even bidding.
COMMENT – “The information sent back to the schools is of virtually no use to teachers or students as to what they might do better; the tests are of no use for instruction.” This is probably true regarding the teachers and students, but it does provide a parent a relative indicator of performance, and certainly is helpful to good administrators as one data point they consider in system performance evaluation and planning.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
10:21 am

Diane asks a fair question “If the kids are doing the work & earning good grades then, what is the point of testing them?!?!”
Because many students who are passing and “earning” good grades…can’t read. They drop out of high school. They become criminals.
Education is political. No school wants to admit they are not teaching well. So nearly everyone gets promoted. Grades are inflated.
And as long as federal money is tied to test scores on standardized tests, schools WILL give them ESPECIALLY if your child can pass them. It’s the cihldren who can’t pass them that get shifted to a “10.5″ grade to hide them or told to go home sick or “transferred” before testing time.
I want standardized tests. I deserve to know what I am getting for my tax dollars and I deserve to know the quality of the school to which I send my child. Education is THE most important indicator of future income and our nation and democracy depend on genuinely, educated citizens.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
10:28 am

Schools are required to GIVE the test. Schools and teachers are NOT required to harass, bully, threaten and mentally abuse the kids so that a teacher gets her bonus and the school gets its extra twenty helpings of my federal tax dollars.
Litigate where you ask?
Litigate against the school and the individual teacher for child abuse. Mental abuse.
You cannot terrorize children just so you can get your bonus.
And that’s what this is all about — you. Certainly not the kids.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
10:35 am

fjeremey you make a good point when you say that “Teachers from the students school do not grade their own schools portfolios. We can do it instead of finals week.”
However, guess who chooses which papers and projects to put into the portfolio? The teacher who has the most to gain form cherry-picking the best of the best instead of the real examples of a child’s work…and…
Maybe you haven’t heard…In Atlanta teachers actually did the work themselves and passed it off as the child’s work. They wrote lovely poems and prose and hung it up all over the school as examples of their students work.
In essence, portfolios make it easier for teacjers and schools to lie and cheat.
What we need to do is have a disinterested third party come in with the exams and give the tests and remove the tests form the school while the entire staff of the school is out of the building and off of the campus to exclude the real chance of teachers, schools and districts manipulating test scores.

Maude

January 28th, 2013
10:38 am

If the test is required everyone should have to take it, parents should not have to right to remove their child. Doing so will only teach the child that they did not have to do what is required of them if they choose not to. Do we want a country where adults think they can pick and choose what parts of being a citizen they want to follow and think they can ignore the rest?

Maude

January 28th, 2013
10:38 am

If the test is required everyone should have to take it, parents should not have to right to remove their child. Doing so will only teach the child that they did not have to do what is required of them if they choose not to. Do we want a country where adults think they can pick and choose what parts of being a citizen they want to follow and think they can ignore the rest?

BehindEnemyLines

January 28th, 2013
10:54 am

People against accountability? AJC readers refusing to cope with reality? {gasp} Who woulda thunk it?

ABC

January 28th, 2013
10:54 am

To the poster that say it is a Principal supervision problem: well, I don’t disagree with that, but the principals are under tremendous pressure as well. If the school underperforms, it invites disaster. All for the sake of that moronic NCLB initiative which has proved NOTHING, except that no one got ahead.

To the poster that suggested I take my child to a therapist: bite me. My kid doesn’t have test anxiety, he just stresses over this particular test because all the teacher does for two freakin months is drill them and pound on them and stress them out over a stupid test that he can pass with his eyes closed.He never stresses over any kind of testing because he is always prepared and because the teachers don’t spend two months stressing them out over it.

I don’t coddle my kid, I don’t helicopter over my kids and sure as he11 don’t pamper him. But no 9 year old needs to be under that kind of pressure over something that means nothing and it is stupid to begin with.

Jerry Eads

January 28th, 2013
10:56 am

Thanks Cindy, but I have very little hope that many will learn. People are bound and determined to stay under the frightful delusion that these tests tell us something useful about a child’s learning. While knowledge ABOUT something is indeed necessary, it’s totally insufficient. It’s what people can DO with it that’s important, and we’ve lost sight of that.

It’s possible, I think, that the “Commond Core” will help that. The CC itself demands higher order thinking and reasoning; it remains to be seen whether we’ll be able to afford that in the testing. And then convince administrators that it’s okay to let teachers let learning be fun again.

Lynn43

January 28th, 2013
10:59 am

On these standardized test, how do we know that the answer the “grader” is wanting is correct. Sometimes there is more than one correct answer. Many, many years ago my school gave a test which no longer exist. One of the science questions had to do with the level of pitch in relation to the amount of water in a bottle. Knowing that this was one of the things I taught, a teacher asked me to review my lesson with her students. When the results came back, all my students had failed. After all of us researched the reason, we found the reason. The answer was based on hitting the bottle, and my students were taught “level pitch” by blowing into the bottle which produces exactly opposite results. Nothing was mentioned in the instruction manuel on how they wanted the sound produced or how to get the answer wanted by the “graders” all of whom were non-musicians. There was a “storm”, and this test was eliminated as one the students in my district had to take. Because educators on the local level have so little access to the test, how do we know our students are being graded correctly and that the grades even adequately reflect what the students really know?

Devil's Advocate

January 28th, 2013
11:02 am

I don’t have a problem with standardized tests. I have a problem with teachers being forced to teach to the standardized test instead of teaching the subject matter in a sensible manner. That said…

Sometimes people complain for the sake of complaining. Often times people game a system simply because they can. Avoiding a test because it is too stressful has got to be the lamest excuse for parenting I’ve heard in a long time.

It’s one thing to complain about curricula being too focused on standardized testing, it’s another to avoid testing because you think it is harmful to the student. This sounds more like parents who often do school work and projects for their kids trying to keep the inflated GPA sham going. Little Johnny or Suzie cannot be subject to proving themselves compared to their peers on a district, state, or national scale. It would crush them if they found out they really aren’t the best student in the world.

Pluto

January 28th, 2013
11:05 am

Do you think countries like India, China, Japan and other economic leaders worry about this kind of mamby pamby nonsense? Our students need to prepare for stressful situations or we can step up our movement to third world status.

Devil's Advocate

January 28th, 2013
11:06 am

FWIW, I remember taking standardized tests in school 30 years ago and never considered it stressful as a child. It was just a bigger test than I normally took and we got to fill in the bubbles! YAY. If your child cannot handle the ITBS, the CRCT, or whatever standardized test, how can you expect that child to handle the SAT and ACT? If you don’t care about the SAT/ACT, then why do worry about the more frequent tests?

Beverly Fraud

January 28th, 2013
11:08 am

It’s possible, I think, that the “Commond Core” will help that. The CC itself demands higher order thinking and reasoning; it remains to be seen whether we’ll be able to afford that in the testing

@Jerry not a point of view held by Invisible Serf. Have you had a chance per chance to see the Invisible Serf’s Collar blog?

RCB

January 28th, 2013
11:08 am

Maybe those classroom observations everyone wants should be done the 2 months prior to testing. If a teacher is so stressed out that she is affecting children in her class, she should not be there. Period.

Devil's Advocate

January 28th, 2013
11:15 am

@Jerry Eads,

You just described “cramming” which has been going on for generations.

Richard

January 28th, 2013
11:37 am

This is insane. If parent’s really knew how best to educate their child, they would already be home schooled and not need to take a standardized test in the first place. I love how parents think that since they’re the parent, they are the best person to teach their kid how to read.

News Flash: Most of you don’t have a friggin clue how to teach your kid how to read write and do math. You know who does? TEACHERS!!!

(Ironically, many of these parents are the same people that want Congress to stay out of education because Congressmen don’t know how to teach. They’re absolutely correct on this, but acting like they know better is equally foolish.)

Face Reality

January 28th, 2013
11:44 am

Scoring poorly on standardized tests doesn’t mean you have test anxiety; it means you’re not as smart as you and your parents think you are.

Ole Guy

January 28th, 2013
11:55 am

What the hell’s going on here…ANXIETY…STRESS…isn’t this what (among a few other things) education is s’pose tado…enable the kid, through the process of meeting, head-on, the demands of a good education, so that, at some point in the future (be it within the halls of academe, or simply life itself), the kid will be able to become (somewhat) productive and self-sustaining. Maybe it’s..oh, I dunno…ole fashioned to even consider that todays’ youth might be obliged to contend with levels of stress, what with the nanny state we see creeping into the fabric of contemporary society, all one has to do is cry foul and await some form of governmental assistance.

Are you _hittin me…to even ponder the notion that one’s kid might become…”stressed” with the demands of school. Whether this end-of-cycle test (or whatever one wishes to call it) is even valid is another question for further discussion. As one responder points out…if the kid’s doing well on coursework, than why even bother with this exam? The same question might be suggested in the case of professional education. If the kid made straight A’s in med school, why bother with the added stress of board exams? The question become nothing less and nothing more than ludicrous (if it’s mis-spelled…too damn bad).

SOMEDAY, parents will come to realize that their kids are NOT special; NOT deserving of special considerations outside that which is demanded of their contemporaries, and are BEST left the hell alone when it comes to seein just how well these kids handle stress. In case you parents haven’t quite “grapsed” the issue…it sure as hell ain’t gonna get any easier for your kid. Ya best start learning to let go…unless, of course, you want your kids to set up camp in your basement until ya frequin die.

Matt321

January 28th, 2013
12:04 pm

It is interesting to me that so many people are concerned with “Social Promotion.” This is a phantom problem that, as far as I know, no research has been done on if it even exists in significant numbers. This goes hand in hand with people thinking that kids are too nurtured these days. Of course, look at the children and adults who have real problems in life, and of course, it’s exactly the opposite that’s the problem, as you often find a family that didn’t provide the love and support a child needs, not a family that provided too much love and support.

However, we do have real problems, that are measurable, like high school drop outs. As reported by this paper, 1 in 3 high school kids drop out. In some Fulton County schools, that number is greater than 1 in 2. What do these numbers tell us? Kids aren’t just being passed along – in fact, they’re being dropped and forgotten. Is it any surprise, in a system that seeks to standardize kids, and treat them like a mass produced industrial product? Is it any surprise that human beings, with God given talents, abilities, and independence, which we ought to nurture, are discouraged from participating in a system that wants them to be a sprocket that looks like every other sprocket?

It might be worthwhile to point out the advantages and disadvantages of actual social promotion, based upon research, but really, it’s a right wing talking point that isn’t going to respond to facts. Who cares if the kid does better in school and is less likely to drop out if he stays with his peer group, rather than repeating a grade and all the same material while being treated as a stupid failure? Someone did something WRONG, and needs to be SHAMED, am I right?

Devil's Advocate

January 28th, 2013
12:05 pm

I’m just surprised no one has connected the poor stress management with the loading of prescription drugs, and the eventual meltdown from never learning how to handle anything remotely stressful that leads to an unreported case of showing one’s backside at best, to mass shootings at worst.

captain obvious

January 28th, 2013
12:10 pm

Why hasn’t anyone brought up the fact that standardized tests are big business? How much tax dollars are wasted administering these things?

T

January 28th, 2013
12:11 pm

The reason we have standardized tests is that we have a huge disparity in the quality of education children are receiving. Teachers in a poor school give A’s to children that in a superior school would be lucky to get a C. When a teacher sees poor students only, a marginal student becomes a super star.

my child is not a lab rat

January 28th, 2013
12:15 pm

I personally don’t have an issue with standardized testing. Give them a test at the beginning of the year, a test at the end of the year, and see if they learned something. I do have a huge issue with at least 30% of my son’s 3rd grade year being devoted to either teaching to a test or taking a test. I do have a problem with extracurricular activities being cancelled during test weeks. And I know the principals are stressed, the teachers are stressed, and the kids are stressed because I see how it affects my 9 year old.
I just don’t see the benefit of testing week after week after week. It used to be you came to school took a standardized test, and moved forward with the curriculum. Now the curriculum is dictated by the test. It’s backwards.
Of course we shouldn’t get rid of the SAT or the PSAT. I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that. Kids do need to learn how to perform under stress. But, at age appropriate times. I remember seeing the principal walk up and down the halls during the CRCT testing a few years ago with a bucket and mop because they had so many 1st graders throwing up the first day. Is this really what we want for our youngest kids? I don’t.
I wonder if enough parents started pulling their kids out, would it affect change? Maybe not, but just a few teachers at a high school in Seattle seem to have sparked a National debate. Not about whether we should test, but how much, and how do we do it in a way that does not create a curriculum based around our kids filling in bubbles?
I don’t have all of the answers, but I think this is a discussion that needs to occur on a National level.

East Cobb RINO, Inc. (LLC)

January 28th, 2013
12:16 pm

tests have driven schooling to be nothing more than trying to memorize factoids to regurgitate and then forget as quickly as possible

And this is something new? I graduated HS in 1978 then on for a degree after that. That was how we got through school back then and that is how kids/students get through it now. Be it CRCT or the history quiz later this week. Paul Simon wrote about way back then “if you think back on all the crap we learned in high school………….”

Matt321

January 28th, 2013
12:16 pm

Also, it always strikes me how much some people just really don’t like kids. “You are not special! You deserve to suffer stress and anxiety! You must be made tough! If you are not tough, you are weak, and you deserve to fail!”

Hate to break it to you, but the founding fathers were also a bunch of namy pambies who thought that everyone was a special snowflake. The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

I suspect some people would prefer a version that ran something more like “Some people are born rich, and some poor; to the rich, happiness and wealth, and to the poor, misery and toil. Governments are instituted among Men and Corporations to keep things the way they are.”

Political Mongrel

January 28th, 2013
12:29 pm

“I am not sure how many kids would be comfortable formally withdrawing from school for two weeks.”

Are you kidding? A two week vacation during the most stressful and least productive time of the year? Especially if there are no real consequences for it? Have you thought this through at all?

Kelly

January 28th, 2013
12:35 pm

If you begin to allow students with strong grades to exempt the tests, we will have a grade inflation scandal to add to our test answer scandal.

rojer

January 28th, 2013
12:36 pm

I like tests. As a student it forced me to learn the info and as a parent it gives me a kick in the rear to make time to sit down and teach my children. Not only that but the process of end of year testing makes students review all areas at once and then they can see how coursework and even different subjects interact. I always had good feelings when testing was over and it was (sometimes) a source of pride to get results. Other times it was a kick in the pants, particularly if teachers and grade sheets say great and the numbers say average.

Devil's Advocate

January 28th, 2013
12:39 pm

Matt321,

If all men are created equal, how can any one man (or child in this case) be special?

Okay, let’s fancy your opinion and say that students are all special. Then what? Are you suggesting that some students are more special than others?

Tired

January 28th, 2013
12:41 pm

Officially and intentionally withdrawing a child from school for 2 weeks is a weird form of protest, using the child as a pawn for no gain for anyone. It’s also tremendously disrespectful of the teacher(s) who have to withdraw and re-admit and catch up the student on missed work.

Do standardized tests predict future success, judge character, etc.? No. But they are consistent, as opposed to having easy graders and hard graders, and teachers who were divinely led to the profession and those who are passing time until retirement.

Brasstown

January 28th, 2013
12:44 pm

When business principles were put into education you never saw the pressure filtering down to the students?!

If you couldn’t predict that, then how can we ever hope that you’ll figure out that this was all a big lie anyway to erode public education. It had become incredibly effective at helping families to become socially mobile. Our corporations simply don’t need that many brilliant people to run their corporations. More skilled tradesmen and women are the great need. The private institutions are more than capable of providing the needed members at the top of our oligarchy.

“Remain calm and ring Carson for tea.”

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
12:45 pm

@ ABC

I stand corrected. based on the way you act towards people who show genuine concern, tests aren’t your son’s problem.

find a mirror, look in it, and you’ll see the main source of his difficulties.

in short, you.

oldtimer

January 28th, 2013
12:50 pm

The tests are so minimal….And after looking over Language Arts Common Core…we are dumbing down again. To teach something ..like The Gettysburg Address without providing historical context is stupid. I hope no teacher does it. That was just one of many ideas I just would not do. We are removing our culture from our schools.
I do think ITBS, SAT, ACT and so on…national norms testing is much more useful.
I can tell you no one is held back because they do not pass. I have had many 6th raders who have never ever passed any CRCT. The could not read or do math and had Bs on their report cards from previous years. When I told parents they could not read the parents were shocked. The ones who did things my way had much better news by the end of the year.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
12:51 pm

oh, and ABC,

every helicopter parent I’ve ever met – and I’ve met bushels of them – all start by loudly denying being a helicopter parent.

nearly every parent I’ve met who had a child in difficulty had response number 1 right at the tip of their tongue. there is nothing wrong with my child, its everyone else

found that mirror yet?

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
12:56 pm

again, the CRCT tests in particular are a waste of time and energy. but until there is a major shift in the electorate they are not going anywhere.

should a parent be allowed to expempt their kids – sure. not our problem if they run into trouble later.

are parents who exempt their kids likely setting them up for disappointment later in life? more than likely.

oldtimer

January 28th, 2013
12:57 pm

Beverly…..I just looked through English Common Core and I do not see higher standards…I see a contiuation of mediocrity.I see deemphzing Americans great Literature for more informational reading. I guess challenging students to read difficult poems has passed…
I will say I taught remedial reading and history in grades 6-12 at various times…was never an English teacher…but I still see issues and feel for children and teachers. This is being pushed so hard and I am glad my own are through their years in school and read and learned what they did.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
1:00 pm

@ devil

created equal overall, yes. remain that way? hell no.

and yes, there are – and should be- students who excel well beyond others.

overit

January 28th, 2013
1:07 pm

Isn’t the company that makes these tests owned by one of the Bush brothers? This is a money-making enterprise for this company and nothing more.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
1:10 pm

Lynn43, you have a good example but wouldn’t you agree that the question you cited was an anomaly and not the rule?
So suppose all the kids unfailry got the answer to that one question wrong…there are still all those other questions…and
Let’s face it.
Most, if not all, standardized tests are a majority of reading comprehension skills.
Reading comprehension is THE most important skill to learn and teach so if you are teaching the students to learn to read and comprehend what they are reading, any kid can pass the standardized tests; these tests are really, really easy.

Cammi317

January 28th, 2013
1:11 pm

The CRCT is a worthless test. They already take the ITBS in Public School which measures them on a National basis. Why the heck does it matter how they are doing against other students in an already failing state? It’s crazy. My daughter is in private school and they take the Stanford Achievement Test every Spring. The results do not determine whether or not they are passed to the next grade, their regular school exams determine that issue. However, the results are used to determine each student requires help in area or needs to be challenged in another.

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
1:11 pm

@ overit

link?

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
1:12 pm

overit…of course tests are a money maker. you wouldn’t expect them to be free would you?
Are the text books free? Are the desks free? Is that Promethean board free? Do you work for free? no, no and no.
Because a material is made for a profit DOES NOT make it invalid.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
1:15 pm

Devil’s Advocate…
If you want to blame people for gaming the system for testing purposes…don’t blame the kids and parents.
TEACHERS and schools in Atlanta GA produced the BIGGEST cheating scandal in US history on those standardized tests. It sure wasn’t in the interest of the kids or parents.
Put blame where blame is due. It sure isn’t the innocent children and parents.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
1:22 pm

oldtimer makes a great point “To teach something ..like The Gettysburg Address without providing historical context is stupid.”
All of our kids learn the pledge of allegiace in Kindergarten and never taught what it means. It is ridiculous for children to “pledge allegiance” when they zero concept of what pledging and allegiance mean…
And has anyone ever actually listened to small children pledge allegiance? They slaughter it. A common misused word is “indivisible.” They all say “invisible.”
Before we tell kids to recite meaningless words, we need to ensure they understand what the words mean and the context in which they were meant to be.
It’s why I detest social studies in kindergarten. They all “learn” about MLK, right?
Wrong.
Until kids are taught the history of the US which includes slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws and civil rights, they have no business having MLK shoved down the tiny innocent little throats. That’s politics, not education.

mathmom

January 28th, 2013
1:41 pm

Note – students currently in 9th and 10th grade, and those who will be entering 9th grade in the future, do not have to pass any EOCTs to graduate. They only have to pass what is now the writing part of the GHSGT. The writing part of the GHSGT does not seem to be too demanding. Of course, all of this could change – the GADOE changes the rules about once a week.

karla

January 28th, 2013
1:47 pm

I have said before that there is too much testing. The schools teach to the test only. How about teaching subjects the students actually need. When is the last time someone needed to know what a declarative sentence is?

The teacher

January 28th, 2013
2:01 pm

Already Sheared – and you know that all teaching stops after the CRCT’s stops – how??? Let me guess – your child says that they haven’t learned anything…REALLY??? Do you believe EVERYTHING your kids says all the time?? Instead of assuming that that is the case, maybe – as the parent – you need to sit down with your kids and encourage them to be an active participant in their education – oh but that would have to mean you would be an active participant in their education – too hard – sorry!
When are you (collectively) going to wake up and realize that if every little whim or concern your kids have is met with doing whatever they want is SERIOUSLY crippling their future?!?!? Lots of stuff in life is “too hard,” but opting out of it isn’t always going to be an option…WAKE UP!!!
News flash – most teachers DON’T teach to the test (we can’t “teach to” a test we can’t see); we try to instill critical thinking skills while following the standards and the curriculum, so they will be able to reason out the answers – it is a curriculum based test, so when we teach the curriculum, we ARE preparing them – DUH!!! This is the most idiotic idea yet!!!!

Dyslexic in Decatur

January 28th, 2013
2:04 pm

The debate about the amount of standardized testing that is appropriate at any particular grade level is a good one. But when you talk about the CRCT itself, it’s black humor. My child who could hardly read in elementary school, had MAP scores on the floor, and was diagnosed with a reading disability by psychoeducational evaluation, EXCEEDED on the CRCT several times during elementary school, even when the child too old to have the test read to them. Worthless test. The only thing it told us was that my child’s IQ is probably higher than whoever wrote the test.

Momof2

January 28th, 2013
2:29 pm

My kids now tell me what “standards” they are learning, not concepts. They both go to “top rated” schools in a nice suburban area. But the entire school environment is sterile and lacks creativity so that the “standards” are met. It just seems like the baby has been thrown out with the bath water when it comes to dependency on the CRCT to tell us that are kids are doing well in school…

John Friedricks

January 28th, 2013
2:39 pm

Want to go to college? There is a test.
Want to drive a car? There is a test.
Want to sell insurance? There is a test.
Want to be a lawyer? There is a test.
Want to be a surgeon? There is a test.
Need surgery? Who do you want to operate? The doctor with good grades or the one that is board certified?
There is a test for many professions. How do we responsibly prepare children by letting them skip the test?

Google "NEA" and "union"

January 28th, 2013
3:07 pm

“Teaching to the test” is just another canard floated by the teachers’ unions to influence the gullible and avoid accountability, of course.

If any such thing was possible—wouldn’t our state’s inferior test results speak to the incompetence of those very same teachers claiming they’re forced to … “teach to the test?”

AlreadySheared

January 28th, 2013
3:07 pm

@The teacher,
Your guess is wrong!!! I have seen it for myself!!! As I said, the CRCT tests are easy!!! Do you always use so many punctuation marks??? Why??? What’s up with that??? And the ALL CAPS??? Seems a little EXCESSIVE!!! But I guess since you have written your post so emphatically YOU MUST BE RIGHT!!!

Sandra

January 28th, 2013
3:07 pm

I have a daughter who has/had test anxiety. She did not score well on the IOWA in 3rd grade back in 1992. Her school wanted to put her in remedial classes even though she was an A/B student. I refused. Throughtout her middle and high school years she did not do well at all on the CRCT or ACT. She graduated #28 in her class. She went to college and had to take remedial classes the first year which was a total waste. Long story short….she attended college for 5 years on the HOPE scholarship maintaining a 3.8 to 4.0 GPA. She is now teaches 4th grade (for 6 years now) and is finishing her masters. This is a prime example as to why I am against testing!

Mom of twins

January 28th, 2013
3:28 pm

Home schoolers are required to take the CRCT, at least in 3rd grade where we are. You also can’t re-enroll in the same year you have withdrawn from public school. Can’t even enroll into online public school. Tried it.

Billycreekdawg

January 28th, 2013
3:43 pm

Pride and Joy,
I am not sure where your son/daughter goes to school, but I don’t know anything about teachers receiving bonuses for high student test scores. I do agree that many teachers place too much emphasis on these tests.

Home-tutoring parent

January 28th, 2013
3:43 pm

I don’t want to be perceived as “subversive”. But here are some things:

Garfield High School teachers in Seattle voted unanimously to not administer the MAP exam (three times per year as an intra-year progress-measuring device) and they’ve received a lot of support.

Excellent teachers feel that the test detracts from time that they want to teach important lessons. They’ve pointed out that the MAP test scores’ “margin of error” is greater than the “expected scores improvement” settings.

Most of these standardized mass-administration tests are “okay” for mass-mean setting, but not good for many individuals. For example, my boys got 700-710 SAT-M scores, 94th percentile for all HS SAT-takers, which included future humanities, social sciences and even arts majors. As wel as many future community college attendees.

Mysteriously, then they scored 800 on SAT Math Level 2C, 99th percentile, among a test-taking group comprised overwhelmingly future STEM majors (social science majors mostly declined this test opportunity, and future humanities and arts majors were absent from the field).

Take-home lesson, there is a non-mathematics aspect to SAT (I) M. Our kids couldn’t have mastered SAT Mathematics Subject Level 2, without having exemplary algebra and geometry knowledge and skills, which SAT-M I purports to measure.

Some of the newer tests require students to show their thinking processes, which reader-graders personally examine. This is a good development.

On Finland’s really good PISA performances, we hear lots of American NEA and AFT-member unionists proclaiming, “Finland students do great because their teachers are unionized, and their students don’t have to take standardized tests until age 15, when students are tracked into university vs. vocational-training tracks.” Wrong proclamation. Finnish students do well because their teachers are selected from the top 12% of university entrants. In our country, elementary school teachers are mostly comprised of 60th percentile or lower college entrants.

In math, which I am familiar with, a teacher who didn’t score 620 SAT-M or 27 ACT-M, and took either pre-calculus or calculus as her/his first college math course, is incapable of teaching 4th-6th grade mathematics, to college-track students.

For example, a 5th-grade teacher who can’t correctly solve 3/4 + 4/5 + 3/8 + 4/9 + 7/12 + 8/15 + 7/20=?, reducing the answer to the proper lowest denominator in less than two minutes, can’t teach college-track math. Breaking all integers 2-100 into primes or prime-factored composites in 5 minutes or less, identifying all prime integers 2-200 in 10 minutes or less, do it, or don’t pretend you know how to teach 4th-5th graders late-elementary mathematics. Be honest. Demand mathematics’ specialists to teach your students math.

Teachers who believe in public education, vote to agree to let really-talented math teachers be paid more than all-fields-teaching generalists–or in middle/high schools, more than humanities, social studies / sciences and arts teachers.

Let me give you some examples of good math teaching:

23 x 27 =? It equals 621. Answerable in 5 seconds.

Step One: Recognizing that 23 and 27 are 25 – 2 and 25 + 2.

Step Two: Recognizing that 25^2 = 25.

Step Three: Recognizing that (x +2) (x -2) = x^2 – 2^2.

Now try 26 x 21. Do 25 x 20 = 500 , 26 x 20 = 500 + 20 = 520, add a 26 for 26 x 21 = 26 twenties, plus another 26 answer, 546.(

Try 196 x 198. First do 200 x 200 = 40,000. Your multiple-choice answer to 196 x 198 will be close to this. For a multiple-choice question, look for an end-digit of 8 (6 x 8 = 48) and a value close to, but less than 40,00. But for an exact answer, you need to do 200-4 [196] x 200-2 [198], so you first do 200 x 200 = 40,000, subtract 200 x 4 [800] = 39,200, which equals 200 x 196, and then you need to subtract two 196’s, or 392, to get 198 196’s. 39,200 – 392 = an estimate a little more than 39,200 – 400= 38,800, but ending with an 6 x 8 =>, so pick 38,808.

“Nobody ever taught me to do SUBTRACTION doing MULTIPLICATION!”

Alas, you’re absolutely right. Nobody ever taught me that. That’s why WE WERE TAUGHT INCORRECTLY. That’s why every 4th/5th grade generalist teacher who doesn’t know how to do multiplication by subtracting should DEMAND that their students receive math pull-out/insert math instruction by people who understand mathematics. If you got a sub 620 SAT-M, sub 27 ACT-M, if you didn’t get placed in Calculus, or at least Pre-Calculus, for your first college math class, you’re out of your depth. The teachers who aren’t striking to get math-knowledgeable people, and to pay them more than they are receiving, are an important aspect of the problem.

“Everybody gets the same starting salary, and everybody gets the same step-raises” is killing public education. Uniformity does not equate to excellence, or even competence.

Inattentive parents are a significant aspect of the problem at all socioeconomic levels–it’s not just poor kids’ parents. Barack, a product of expensive private education, admitted he flunked out of post-7th-grade math. But he wants to rule America. He’s admitted, “America has been dumbed down sufficiently to make me Dumbo-in-Chief.”

Home-tutoring parent

January 28th, 2013
3:49 pm

Sorry 25 x 25 =625, my keyboard is acting up.

mothers concerns

January 28th, 2013
3:53 pm

I need a good Education Lawyer looking to sue son IEP plan wasn’t followed. I don’t think it right for kids with learning disability to be the same as other students in testing. The teacher failed him in one class and said she never saw his IEP until i schedule a meeting with counselor and special education.

rojer

January 28th, 2013
4:10 pm

Call me 404-766-8002.

Ann

January 28th, 2013
4:16 pm

Many commenters seem to think that requiring children to take these tests somehow prepares them for life and the work world when they will have to do things they do not like. The fact is that, in order to succeed in the future workplace in the U.S., they will need will the ability to adapt and learn new skills and tasks. The absolute most important thing a child needs to acquire and maintain is a love of learning and a desire to learn new things, and the motivation to do that. Beyond, that logical thinking and problem solving skills are cited by many companies as the future skills they need. That is the key to their success. Just ask any of the people who have been laid off, or are in their 50’s or 60’s, having worked in a career for many years, and now they cannot find employment in their field.

In the current school structure, the amount of time spent preparing for, emphasizing, and administering tests squashes this love of learning and takes away time from other important life skills. The attitude of they need to just “get used to it” and “do it” is short-sighted. And, just because a parent criticizes how something is currently done does not mean they are a “helicopter parent”.

Cliff

January 28th, 2013
4:27 pm

I don’t think you should be able to opt out. But I do really question the value of CRCT and am concerned it interferes with education for most students. First of all, it’s a test the school is measured by, not your children. So it has no value for your children, yet schools spend considerable time and resources emphasizing it to demonstrate their performance. And as one commenter noted above, because the test is so early in the second semester, you feel like nothing is learned the last four weeks of school. I understand the reasoning for having CRCT and assessing schools, but it really seems inefficient to require assess every school this way, and waste so much time and energy. The truth is, as much as folks complain about the state of public education in the United States, most of us are happy with the schools our children attend and the education they receive. We have our complaints, but overall we are satisfied that they are being prepared middle school, high school, and eventually college. We don’t need our schools graded every year to see if they are meeting state wide standards; we know the people that teach there are qualified, and mostly energetic and genuinely want our children to succeed.

20/20 hindsight

January 28th, 2013
4:37 pm

Too bad none of these issues were brought up prior to Pres Bush enacting “No Child Left Behind”

Devil's Advocate

January 28th, 2013
4:39 pm

Pride and Joy,

You must have your head in the sand because all you did is twist my comments and firmly place blame anywhere but at the parents (who happen to be the subject of this article) and the students who supposedly have test anxiety. It’s obvious where you stand.

I happen to be a parent and have never witnessed any cheating related to the CRCT. Stuff happened in Atlanta, get over it. Cheating happens in just about every walk of life but that doesn’t mean everyone is guilty. By your logic, every church, police station, and business in the world is guilty of wrong doing because of the select few criminal actions we’ve heard about over time.

You need to go back and read the article above. It talks about parents (not teachers or administrators) pulling kids out of school to avoid standardized tests. That is gaming the system by the parents who would do such a thing.

As for cheating, I see parents go to great lengths to spend a lot of money on high quality “solutions” for various student projects where the child barely lifts a finger. The parents plan and implement the beautiful project and the child gets an ‘A’ but do you think the child really learned anything from “doing” the project? Nope. It’s one thing to help your child and facilitate the progress of the project, it’s another to fund and outsource it’s production as if it were something for work.

I also hear about parents constantly bothering teachers when their child doesn’t get a grade high enough for their liking instead of asking the child why he/she didn’t do better. A mistake in grading is one thing but not liking the grade and pressuring for alterations to maintain a certain average or GPA is gaming the system.

Susan

January 28th, 2013
4:40 pm

I find it encouraging that some universities, such as Furman, are making the ACT and SAT optional as they realize that one test is not a good indicator of a student’s abilities or aptitude. And not every state has standardized testing. Perhaps Georgia will one day be one of those states.

sebastian

January 28th, 2013
4:54 pm

My wife and I have had our son in a Christian school since he was in K4. They do not take standardized test. They go the grades of the school year. One year when he was in the fifth grade we allowed him to go to public school. He passed all of his classes but did not do well on the reading portion of the test. He had never taken a test like that before. They wanted to keep him in the fifth grade over again just because of the test. We put him back into a Christian school the next year and he has been doing well ever since. I am not going to say he has been making all A’s but he is doing well. Now he is in the eighth grade. My wife was never a great standardized tester but has her masters and graduated with a 3.77 GPA. So do these test real measure ones understanding of subjects taught?

Colleen

January 28th, 2013
4:59 pm

My son went to a private school from 2 years old until 12 years old because their hours allowed for the same before and after school teachers for the same cost. Our local school was a joke. He started taking timed test weekly in kindergarten. I remember thinking it was too much stress. Instead it allowed him to overcome his stress at a time where it would not affect his entire life was handled as a simple way of life. He learned quickly and developed a challenge for learning more. GA has one of the worst educational rankings in the country. We have consistently been in the bottom 5 states year after year. Why oh Why would you want to exempt your kids from a tool that allows them to prep for the stress of life? Why wouldn’t you instead teach them better preparation and coping skills? Do you really believe they will make it to college or even work without ever needing another test? Wake-up GA! We have become so engrained in protecting our kids from daily hurts that we stopped teaching them to work, face results, strive to improve, and be educated. You may not like what the test skills are reporting, but learning to handle stress of pressure early helps them to succeed later. No wonder our education levels are no longer putting us as a superpower country. We have to stop over protecting our children and teach them to live!

Ann

January 28th, 2013
5:33 pm

Preparing for rote memorization tests does not equal education or long-term learning. As testing has increased in recent decades, the number of college freshmen needing remediation courses has also increased. And, Georgia is still in the bottom five.

@ Devil’s Advocate – I agree with your comments regarding parents helping too much with projects. Any parent who does more than a little facilitation or encouragement with a project is doing their child a major disservice in life. Unfortunately, those parents get caught up in their child’s “success” being some sort of status symbol for the parent. And, one day, this will come back to haunt them, in one way or the other.

Pride and Joy

January 28th, 2013
5:41 pm

Devil’s Advocate, when it comes to cheating on tests, teachers take the cake. It isn’t the kids. It’s the adults.
And you and others on this blog cannot decide why you hate parents.
So many teachers on this blog say parents are lazy and don’t care about education and cannot be bothered to lift a finger when it comes to school and then we also hear from people like you who say parents are too involved and do their kids work for them. You’re never happy and never satisfied.
Let me make sure you understand one thing. The testing is FOR YOU.
Higher scores mean more federal money for your school to pay you and your bonuses.
It’s not the kids we have to worry about cheaing on the tests — it is the adults. Atlanta is NOT ALONE in the cheating scandal but they are the worst to date.
Parents on this blog are dam*ed when we do and dam*ed when we don’t.
Teachers here either call us negelectful idiots who don’t care or parents who do everything for their child as “helicopter parents.”
I do parenting right and so do millions of other parents.
Your constant saying otherwise makes me go out and buy a whole bunch of blocks of cheese — they go great with all of your whines.

Sissy

January 28th, 2013
6:06 pm

This needs to be taken away. My grandkid went to school EVERDAY, made the grades and came up with 783 instead of 800. She had to repeat the 5th grade. Had I know this, she should have made bad grades, stayed home every other day, at least she would have EARNED the retaining. It’s sad enough you have to wait if your birthday falls after Sept. 1. She fell into that also. So now she is in the 6th grade and really could be an 8th grader had it not been for the test and date of birth. I feel if the kid turns 5 or 6 BEFORE they go out for the Christmas holidays instead of Sept. 1. Do without the CRCT—

Atlanta Mom

January 28th, 2013
6:09 pm

@Home-tutoring parent

Lots of STEM kids do better on the Math SAT II than on the regular math portion of the SAT. There is no geometry on the SAT II. If your child is like most STEM kids, he/she took geometry in 8th grade and forgot most of it by 11th grade. The SAT II tests math which was taken much more recently.
No big mystery here.

duck junior

January 28th, 2013
6:50 pm

My school uses kids’ CRCT scores as part of a formula for determining student placement the following year. Generally, the smarter the kid, the higher the score. Sometimes kids move up from on-level classes into advanced classes and sometimes kids move down from advanced classes to on-level classes. Teacher recommendation is also part of our formula. If a kid withdrew from school for two weeks then re-enrolled, he or she would not get my recommendation for advanced classes, even with very high grades.

The teacher

January 28th, 2013
6:52 pm

Already Sheared – yes I do EMPHASIZE in caps with punctuation when I’m right – especially when I’m making the point to someone who really doesn’t know – unless you’re a teacher and that’s what you do…I’m in the classroom day in and day out working to educate my students with little to no support from home!!! They are dropped off at the door, and that’s the last they’re heard from – until May! Maybe what you’ve “seen” isn’t what it appears as far as no teaching after the CRCT’s…with the hoops we are expected to jump through to “engage” students, the game, or movie, or computer time, or heaven forbid – free reading you are seeing has a purpose, and is being delivered in the only way it seems that students can learn – fun! If making fun of my expressive style (caps and punctuation) is the only way you can think of to get back at my comments, I now know why you think you know everything!!!

bootney farnsworth

January 28th, 2013
6:55 pm

God help us, another Finland spouting robot

3schoolkids

January 28th, 2013
7:20 pm

The CRCT is a waste of time, if you are going to require annual testing at least make it worthwhile. The way some of the questions are worded to trick students shows mastering of content is not being measured, logical ability is. Isn’t logical reasoning only being regularly taught to gifted students at the elementary level? And can anyone give me one year out of the last 15 where ALL of the sections on the CRCT actually reflected curriculum content for the year? Why are we still using it?

That said, I also think withdrawing your student for 2 weeks and then re-enrolling is riduculous. It hurts the school and it hurts the student. I’m wondering if she came up with this idea herself or was it “hinted” to her? Has anyone ever compared seat funding numbers with school testing reports? There is a lot of withdrawing going on across the state just before the CRCT.

FYI the homeschooling law does require nationally normed standardized testing of the parent’s choice beginning in 3rd grade. However, it is only required every 3 years, not every year. That seems much more reasonable to me. Seems to me the school systems could use an evaluation method to identify areas where mastery of content is lacking, with standardized testing every other year, or every 3 years instead-at least until eighth grade.

To test or not to test: Should parents be able to decide whether kids take state exams? | Get Schooled | Headlines for School Leaders | Scoop.it

January 28th, 2013
7:45 pm

[...] Should parents in Georgia decide whether their children take annual state exams? A reader told me that her daughter was showing signs of test anxiety [...]

RCB

January 28th, 2013
8:18 pm

If I were a teacher and a project was handed in obviously done by the parent, I would give an F. That’s why we need testing. Maybe the parent who keeps hovering, complaining, and making excuses should take the test, but I doubt the score would be much higher than their child’s. Not all parents are even qualified to understand the testing.

JW

January 28th, 2013
8:45 pm

Amen to Jerry Eads’ comment pulled out at the bottom of the post.

As for homeschooling testing requirements… Yes, homeschooled students do have to take a standardized test every 3 years beginning in 3rd grade. However, it is NOT the CRCT, which as Mr. Eads’ pointed out is a minimum competency test that was purchased from the low bidder (and I would add, has gone through numerous changes through the years that have not improved it’s quality in the least). Homeschooling families can choose a standardized test that fits their needs. Many families do the ITBS, Scholastic, or California achievement tests that public schools also give, but there are many other options. These tests give a national comparison. The CRCT gives only a state comparison and a poorly designed one at that.

long time educator

January 29th, 2013
6:35 am

We should give a nationally normed test, like ITBS, every couple of years for the parents to see how their child performs compared to children around the country in the same grade. The CRCT is worthless and alot of money was wasted creating, imposing, publishing, administering and training for very flimsy results, including the most important result which was that it was to be a gateway test. Almost NO students have been held back as the law required, so even that result was circumvented. If we test little children (K-2), the test needs to be much shorter. I tested small group first graders last time, and the second hour of testing on each subject was overkill. The children are too bored, tired and over it by then. Does no on take into consideration the attention span of young children? I hate giving the tests and it takes much more time than the two weeks in the spring. Most systems are giving benchmark tests all year long, at least 3 times a year. We are finishing one right now, and it has dominated the schedule for two weeks because it is given on computer and we only have one computer lab and 12 computers in the media center. This is SUCH a waste of time and SO futile! If we would go back to allowing teachers to be the professionals who make a professional judgement assigning grades and determining if students should pass or fail, it would be much cheaper and you would gain about a month to 6 weeks of instructional time. Why don’t we go back to this? And if parents do not agree with teacher’s decision, a test could be used to make the final determination.

Neil Murray

January 29th, 2013
7:28 am

Granted, most standardized tests are clumsy, and many teachers are incompetent. Those problems need to be addressed. That said, students need to learn that stress is part of life. If you can’t take the heat of a high-stakes test, how are you going to take the heat of an employer breathing down your neck?

AlreadySheared

January 29th, 2013
12:08 pm

@The teacher,
A hit dog will holler.

Me: ‘all learning essentially stops after they are administered’

You: ‘with the hoops we are expected to jump through to “engage” students, the game, or movie, or computer time, or heaven forbid – free reading…’

Apparently, I do know everything.

Oops, I mean APPARENTLY, I do KNOW EVERYTHING!!!!

JW

January 29th, 2013
12:44 pm

@Neal Murray
Really? An 8 year old needs that kind of stress? No. They don’t. Homeschoolers that do not do high stakes tests as elementary and middle school students STILL do BETTER than public schooled and many privately schooled students on college entrance exams. AND do better in college b/c they are already used to engaging in self directed learning. Follow them on up through college into their careers and they are just as successful or more so.

Once a year high stakes testing is unnecessary, especially with the 3 times a year benchmark testing many schools are engaging in now. Those benchmarks give a much better picture of how a child is moving through the curriculum and take FAR less time overall than the CRCT. The ITBS still has value as a national comparison, but should only be given at key grade levels (maybe 4th, 8th, and 10th).

JW

January 29th, 2013
12:51 pm

Back up on the homeschoolers and testing….

http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp

And regarding college….

http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000000/00000017.asp

And….
J. Gary Knowles of the University of Michigan studied 53 adults to see the long-term effects of being educated at home. He summarized his findings as follows:

I have found no evidence that these adults were even moderately disadvantaged. . . . Two thirds of them were married, the norm for adults their age, and none were unemployed or any on any form of welfare assistance. More than three quarters felt that being taught at home had actually helped them to interact with people from different levels of society.
J. Gary Knowles, “Now We Are Adults: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Status of Adults Who Were Home-educated as Children,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April 3-7, 1991. (newer research on this is just hitting the journals and I don’t have access at the moment)

To test or not to test: Should parents be able to decide whether kids take state exams? | Get Schooled | School Leadership 2.0 | Scoop.it

January 30th, 2013
5:03 pm

[...] Should parents in Georgia decide whether their children take annual state exams? A reader told me that her daughter was showing signs of test anxiety [...]

long time educator

January 31st, 2013
5:06 pm

Sissy, If your granddaughter was retained based on the CRCT scores, she should be receiving remedial help this year. It costs the state more to provide remedial teachers and provide an extra year of school for students who are retained. They do this to give her a chance to catch up and be successful and hopefully graduate high school. Let’s say you could place her in 8th grade. She would be way over her head and probably drop out as soon as she could. All students can learn; not in the same way, or on the same day, but all students can learn. They are not trying to punish her; they are trying to help her.

To test or not to test: Should parents be able to decide whether kids take state exams?

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To test or not to test: Should parents be able to decide whether kids take state exams?

124 comments Add your comment

About Get Schooled

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Are You or Your School the ‘Best In Class’?

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