Me vs. the movement to opt students out of tests

Jay Matthews:

Shaun Johnson is a blogger and assistant professor of elementary education at the College of Education at Towson University in Maryland. He has been active in the movement to protest overuse of standardized tests by persuading parents to opt their children out of the testing, an option few exercise or even know they have.

I told him I thought that was a bad idea. He agreed to debate the issue here. I start:

Mathews: You realize, I assume, that the vast majority of parents approve of testing and want their schools to be accountable in this way. Politicians who embrace the notion that we have to junk standardized tests don't go far. You are never going to get much support for an opt-out. Why do it? Why not instead come up with an alternative that makes sense to most parents? You don't have that yet.

Johnson: There's a lot of assumptions being thrown around here. I think you assume incorrectly that a vast majority of parents approve of testing and want "schools to be accountable in this way." It's the only "way" that's been offered to them within the mainstream conversation on education. As a result, parents, and even many educators, don't necessarily receive the perfect information to make rational decisions. The test-driven mandate is what predominates in educational discourse in both traditional and non-traditional media.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 1, 2011 2:37 AM
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