Dive Brief:
- With testing season in full bloom, education historian Diane Ravitch urges parents to opt out of standardized testing in her latest post for the Huffington Post.
- Ravitch, who is known for her vocal opposition to the Common Core and charter schools, argues parents should opt out of the tests because they aren't about students — or student feedback — but rather about mistrust of teachers and the power of strong testing corporations.
- Ravitch likens the current testing zeitgeist to a machine, saying the only way to stop the machine is by not giving it any of the data it feeds on.
Dive Insight:
“Testing is not teaching. It steals time from instruction. Making it so important leads schools to narrow the curriculum, cutting funding for the arts, eliminating social workers and counselors, cutting recess and physical education. Making testing so important leads to states and districts gaming the system, to schools shedding low-scoring students, to cheating, to teaching to the test, and to other anti-educational actions,” Ravitch argues.
Her essay touches on many pertinent issues in America's education landscape today — specifically the obscured reasoning behind many of our nation's policies.