Opt your Child out of Smarter Balanced Assessments

The following piece appeared in full on the kavips website.  Just say no for your child's sake.

Cathy

Why YOU Should Opt Out Your Child From The Smarter Balanced Assessment

February 8, 2015 in ALEC, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporatization of Education, Dave Sokola, DSEA, education, Frederika Jenner, good teachers, Governor Markell, It's About The Kids, Jack Markell, Mark Murphy, public schools, Race To The Top, Rodel, Smarter Balanced Assessments, Standardized Testing, teachers, Teaching Latin, Wilmington, Wilmington School Distirct | Tags: Common Core, Delaware, Opt Out, Smarter Balanced Assessment

1)  Number 1:  It’s a really bad test… See here for yourself… Take your child’s test….
2) 70% of children will fail this test because they won’t be able to understand what the test is asking… or get past the horrendously complicated computer skills necessary to add and subtract.
3) This test will be permanently etched on your child’s school record and will carry from employer to employer for the rest of your child’s life. It will be part of their official transcript, and sold to vendors interested in your child’s data.
4)  Forcing children to undergo testing for very high stakes, is damaging in itself,  They are not adults.  But to do it for the sole reason to make them “think” they are under-performing, is simply cruel.. No religion of today, can endorse any child taking these tests.  These tests are immoral.
5)  There are no accommodations worthy of mention for children with disabilities.  They may be geniuses, but not being able to manipulate a keyboard, they will turn in zeros.  This is due to design.  The testing regime does not want handicap children to succeed because it deflates the value of the test.
6) The English portion of this test uses the north-midwestern dialect to determine all right from wrong.  When taking these tests, the South does bad (both white and black),  inner cities do bad, the West does bad, immigrant cultures do bad, simply because they do not use the same accent as do north Midwesterners (mealy mouths) and therefore tend to use pauses (commas), and word choices that appear more natural and ascetic to us with the dialects we’ve grown up under. ( The test has four fully correct responses; You are to guess which of the four is the “best” answer, a fully subjective exercise).
7) The test is divisive.  Those who pass can go onward to the rewards of a good life.  Those who fail, must undergo retraining and more retraining, and are marked down as permanent laggers with no hope for a well paying job.
8) The test has nothing to do with children.  It’s sole excuse is to provide a reason to privatize public schools.  By making public schools look horrible, they open a market for private investment which can offer something better. One needs to look at two schools in Delaware for proof..   Two of the famed priority schools were rated exceptional by an independent agency out of the University of Delaware, which under old law, was charged with the responsibility of determining if failing schools were improving… Two that were, were included in the priority schools.  And get this… The Secretary of Education is refusing to accept that independent agency’s verdict?  Why?  BECAUSE THEY PROVED HIM WRONG FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD TO SEE!!!   If he accepts their verdict, it would prove to all he accepted his vision and path are the wrong path for education to go down..  (They are; but don’t expect him to ever admit it…  he’d then be fired)…
9)  Child psychologists across this nation almost to the tune of 100% have said this test is child abuse…  They have likened it to making toddlers who can’t jump a 3 foot high jump bar, be forced to jump a 5 foot bar… Then use intimidation, fear, brutality, high-stakes punishment,  and other forms of psychological trauma and force them to fail.  Then fire their coach because they didn’t meet (a brand new, ridiculous) standard.  The Smarter Balanced Test is set two grades higher than what your child has learned… If he is in 3rd grade, his test will reflect the level of a 5th grade test… If in 5th grade, he is being tested on a 7th grade level…
10) This test is actually in spirit, breaking the law… The US Department of Education is forbidden by statute to interfere with curriculum of any school.  So they farmed it out to private corporations.  These curriculums are copyrighted and only those private companies sanctioned, may use the material.  The Feds then withheld money to schools and districts, unless districts acquiesced to acquiring the curriculum.  Very few districts, (we have one in Christina) had the balls to refuse the money and the strings attached.   So whereas the Fed’s did not “imposed” their curriculum on schools, the arrangement is such, that the curriculum the Feds wanted used, due to situations created by the Feds, are being used under the name of Common Core.
11) This test is damaging to children’s learning… As previously mentioned herein, scientists have said that Common Core attempts to teach at levels too advanced for a developing young child’s brain.  The brain builds a core and that core stores basic facts… Such as one plus one equals two… If those principles are not put in at that particular time, the brain is forever deficient of being able to perform that task…  Basically the child goes through life never knowing that one plus one equals two;  but will always have to use another method everytime he needs to calculate to determine every new time that one plus one will equal two…  Scientists warn that Common Core will make the next generation completely mathematically illiterate because everything in life depends upon the relationship between numbers.  There is a biological reason we memorize things as unrelated facts.  Without that memorization at the proper time, that core never exists.
12)  This test is unconstitutional.. The Constitutionality of this nation is solidly based upon the fact that “We, the People” in order to form a more perfect union,  elect representatives to make policy that affects our lives.  If they do wrong, we replace them with someone who will undo that damage.   No elected representative ever had any imput on this test.  No elected representative ever saw the test, and said, yes that is a good thing….  What did happen, was that private companies created the test without allowing teachers, parents, or trained educators to input opinions. Those few educators hand picked to give the test credibility, all said that they and other educational experts were ignored in the making of the test.,  Every single one has spoken out against this test. Every single one said their opinions were ignored, dissed, and the test makers did what they wanted to do anyways… The creator of the test, had never even raised children…
13) This test was never debated in public.  There are some things very wrong here.  But required legislation was maneuvered through legislature with no debate… Using all tricks at a speaker’s disposal, this was pushed into law before anyone other then a handful of people even knew what it was about… One legislator who voted for it, said he never even read the bill.  It was too complex.  He just took them at their word…   As with being rushed into a marriage with a groom you do not know, sometimes the best option is to just say no….
Opt out of this test.
14)  if this test were a good test, one that did really good things… despite all the other secondary arguments, we would not be having this argument about implementing it…  Maybe some people out there would still object, but not absolutely every one who has taken this test and experienced it firsthand. You really need to see what the fuss is all about… You need to take the test…  Once you do, you will join us and opt out your child from taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment… I’m almost guaranteed that… Because no one really HATES their own child so much as to purposefully subject them to this,… what has realistically been called, …  a form of torture.