NJ Education Report

My column today at WHYY’s Newsworks is called “Standardized Tests: High Stakes for Adults, Not Kids” and looks at the “opt-out” movement, which urges parents to boycott state assessments in order to protest, as NJEA has it, “the growing ‘testification’ of public education.”

America is experiencing a new kind of civil disobedience. No, it’s not a Rosa Parks refusal to give up a front seat on a racially-segregated bus nor a Thoreauvian dissent with American imperialism. Instead, it’s the “opt-out movement” against standardized state tests.

In N.J., this movement is tied directly to N.J.’s implementation of new teacher tenure legislation. For the first time, teachers and administrators’ evaluations will be based not only on traditional classroom observations but also on results of standardized assessments. Starting this year, test results are “high stakes” for adults, not just for kids.

Read the rest here.