on the other hand I kinda dont understand why the parents are upset since they were the ones who decided not to let their child take the test and not the school.

JBush signed it.

But there's an alternative that schools have decided not to use. We have to wonder why.

We can assume it's underhanded and pro-test company.

The problem is that those kids' test scores probably affect federal ratings. It certainly affects government authority.

Homes in the Clear Creek ISD are much higher than homes in the Dickinson ISD, here in Texas. Simply because of the test scores.

....Florida's minimum requirement to teach is now two years of college, but must pursue a education degree. No wonder kids don't want to go to college to be an educator anymore....the pay stinks too.

Now they have the nerve to claim that they're being discriminated against.

Why would parents not have their kids take the tests? All I can figure is it was some sort of protest, in which case it's stupid as hell putting their kids' education in jeopardy just to make a statement.

not every county in Florida does this.
The Florida state department of education says it does not say to do this.
Only a few counties did it.

Parents have every right in the world to refuse a test for their children.

These tests have increasingly taken time from the classroom and now so many teachers are admittedly teaching to the test because of the high stakes that have been placed on the test scores.

The tests are inherently unfair and culturally biased.

Many liberal parents of "smart" kids have chosen to refuse the test for their child in support of other children who may not have parents that have the ability or insight to refuse.

The tests are being used for purposes other than what they are intended for. They were never intended to be used for grades, for example.

This is a problem with the validity of the assessment.

In this particular case, the test was never designed to be an assessment used for retention. In fact, children can "fail" the reading test and still be promoted. It is only in refusing the test that the children were retained. It is simply a stick to try to bully parents in to what the school wants them to do, and IMHO reflects the attitude of some schools that parents do not know what is best for their children or have rights to decide what is best for their children.

Children are minors. There is no other place in our society where we an force children to participate in an assessment without parental consent.

Also, this puts the children in the place of their parents telling them do one thing and their teachers telling them another. It isn't fair.

Parents have every right in the world to decide what is best for their children, and to refuse for their child to participate in an assessment. Children have freedom of speech rights to refuse to participate in an activity.

Also, frankly I agree with them that the tests have gotten out of control and are being used inappropriately. As far as I am concerned, Arne Duncan and the corporatization of education has been the single biggest dark spot on the Obama administration. He's tried to back peddle from that but there has been so much damage done.

We are ruining our schools by teaching to the test, and bullying families and children to force them to take the tests because the districts know that the smarter kids are the ones that are refusing and they want them to take those tests for their scores. So they couldn't do it with a carrot because they are on the moral low ground and so use a stick to try to force it with bullying. Because all these people are concerned with is the end score. They have no concern about the actual process of education. They just want a number on a piece of paper to make it look like they have been busy doing something. This is right up there with the state legislators who tried to tie test scores to SNAP benefits. It is the idea that you can bully your way to higher scores.

That was reasonable and no need for more. This was in the 1990s.

As a teacher/learning specialist, I can tell which of my students will not do well on standardized tests ahead of time, regardless of how many tests there are each year or what grade the student is in. That's b/c it's obvious to me if a student is behind on grade-level skills.

There are many issues with these tests, the main one being that students from poor districts have significantly worse results overall due to poverty, parents' lack of education, neighborhood problems like joblessness, crime and drugs, and children starting school without being school-ready. We need to help these children/families/communities but the repukes keep cutting programs. Hopefully Hillary will make this a top priority.

I just want to get some clarification on this one statement in particular. Would you say that parents have a right to refuse to let their children take final exams required to graduate high school? I ask because that position seems very strange to me. Final exams are a necessary tool to determine how well students have grasped the material of the entire course. Without them, I don't see a valid way to gauge a student's proficiency in a given subject at the end of the semester. I apologize if this isn't what you meant, but it just caught my eye.

If you were referring solely to standardized testing, then I can see where you're coming from.

I think it is a matter of parental rights. The tests have become too long, too often and are used for too many purposes that are not for the educational assessment of the child.

I think standardized tests are over-used. However, I don't see an issue with minimum proficiency tests for advancement at key milestones, or for graduation.

I think parents have to exercise a reasonable amount if discretion here. It's important that students show a certain level of proficiency, but I do support the right of parents to to refuse standardized testing used to categorize schools or rate teachers.

I agree. Refusing the test doesn't and never has made sense from the point of view of the kids. The teachers have a gripe about the test, they enlist the families to protest, the kids don't take a test. Despite all of the legitimate criticism of standardized tests there is still no harm / no foul to the kids. They do well, they do poorly, it doesn't matter and means nothing to the kids and their overall grade, at least here in New York. Yet, year after year, there is still a large group of kids sitting out the test. Why not take the opportunity to see where your kid is at while getting some practice taking tests? The only group who is served by this protest are the teachers who in our district actively encourage families to sit out.

a middle-school daughter in Howard County Maryland. Our daughter was an 8th grade student who was taking algebra; however, the state testing for 8th grade did not include algebra, a standard 9th grade course.

But since the tests graded the schools more than our kids, the math class always started with a quiz over the material to be covered by the tests - at the expense of the class they were actually taking.

The parents rebelled and let the school's principal know that if this didn't stop, all the honors and GT kids would be absent on the day of state testing - so the school's scores would drop.

The school's practice changed overnight and parents regained local control of the education policies. Schools are staffed by civil servants (as I am) and do not exist to exercise government power over those we serve.

The law requires a free, public, appropriate education and "one-size fits all" is not appropriate.

If your kid is in an advanced program worth it's salt they're learning different material and emphasizing stuff that isn't on the test.

It's not only a waste of their time, it's completely useless as an assessment of the kids' progress.

We have a local "reading test" required for promotion out of third grade as well. I asked to see an example used in a previous year and was given one. It was a DEAD BASIC vocabulary and reading comprehension test. Seriously, I think my daughter could have passed it after Kindergarten.

One reason kids get "tracked" into "'lower" classes is because they have not developed the basic reading skills necessary to succeed. And OBTW, a kid who doesn't pass the test is not necessarily less capable. Some kids develop that basic level of skill at a slightly later stage than others. Some of it it based on the simple fact that kids can have nearly a year of age difference and be in the same grade, which can be a big deal at that age. It is VERY important, IMO, to not set up kids to fail by "promoting" them before they have the level of skill necessary to succeed.

That's not to say all these tests are good, or accurately assess ability. But let's be cautious here and not doom kids struggle because their parents' ego got bruised.

My nephew in law was a teacher. He quit a few years ago, partly because of the pay but mostly because the test requirements made it impossible to teach the students anything else. His subject was middle school history but he had to spend six months of the year teaching the kids stuff they needed to pass the standardized tests. Many of his colleagues just acted as baby sitters after the tests were done - the teachers are rated on how their students grade the tests but not on whether the students learn anything else.

(After quitting as a teacher my nephew in law trained and was hired as a deputy sheriff. His starting pay was much higher than his pay after teaching for several years in the same county. While he never got a pay increase or any increase in position as a teacher in less than two years he was promoted to sergeant with a pay increase. He is not a gung ho law and order type, more of an academic discussion type so I am hopeful that with the need for changing attitudes in law enforcement he will do well.)

The companies providing the tests to the state are associated with the Bush family and their friends and they are the only ones that are coming out ahead. The schools are required to purchase the tests and pay the companies to grade the tests but the budgets for the schools was not increased once the tests became a requirements. So the cost of the tests come out of monies originally spent for actually teaching, operating costs, and maintenance of facilities.

Despite the fact that the companies providing the tests are making millions of dollars they have not been doing well providing tests - they've gone to computer administered tests and there have been a number of incidents where the computer programs have not worked properly either to give the tests or to provide results.

In addition, the tests only give accurate results for a percentage of students. Many do not do well on multiple choice tests, the tests are weighted in favor of white middle class backgrounds, and they are not an accurate measurement of what students know or of what students need for their lives and for advanced education.

As a result many parents across Florida are opting out for their children to take the tests. They want their children to get real educations, not just learn to take tests that are poorly designed. As a Florida taxpayer - though not a parent I have grand nephews in Florida public schools - I agree with the parents. I want educated young people in my community not people who can only give canned feedback to set questions.

Some background:

Florida superintendents revolt: We have ‘lost confidence’ in state’s school accountability system
By Valerie Strauss, September 26, 2015

As the revolt over school testing widens, many in Florida ask: What next?
Jeffrey S. Solochek, Sunday, October 4, 2015

Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, Not Vice Versa
By LIZETTE ALVAREZOCT. 25, 2015

Is change ahead for Florida in battle over standardized testing?
By Sara Drumm, Friday, March 25, 2016

High-stakes tests: Parents defiant, lawmakers listening
Scott Travis, January 30, 2015

For at least fifty years. They will continue to be around. The kids sitting out are usually the kids that don't do as well overall. The kids who take the test are usually the kids finishing at the top of the class and then heading to college. Somehow the test takers got an education despite the tests. Coincidence? No. Its about teachers using the underachieving families as a means to fight accountability.

They have totally changed the use of testing, making it a requirement for student advancement - when previously it was a measure of where the student was so that the teachers knew where to concentrate their efforts. Now if students don't do well enough they are held back but no time was alloted to helping the student improve their knowledge. Schools where students did poorly were penalized by cuts in money supplied when they needed more funds to improve their ability to teach.

Then someone came up with the idea that teachers' advancement would be dependent on how well their students did. That was the big change - many teachers started teaching only what was needed for the students to pass the standardized tests. After all, that was THE measurement of success for both students and teachers and nothing else seems to matter.

When I was a student in Florida in the 1950s and 1960s we had part of one day of standardized tests. From what I have read now the tests take an entire week of school time, all day for five weeks. For students with test anxiety, that is torture and a guaranteed route to failure.

The tests of today are nothing like those when we were children and the consequences of placing low impact not just the student but the teachers, the schools and the community.

Are you sure you're not citing that gawd awful No Child Left Behind crap? Common Core is the NEA, AFT, and several other actual teaching groups in multiple states working together to create reasonable standards.

I found this by googling:

http://www.afloridapromise.org/Pages/Florida_Formula/Facts_on_the_FCAT_and_Floridas_Path_to_Success/Common_Core_State_Standards.aspx

I'm not sure what motivates these parents, but I fear they're wingnuts who're trying to fight the communist pinko common core standards that are taking money out of the Bush family.

Of course, I could be wrong.

But it is a result of Common Core:

So are more likely to have children who will do well on the tests.

I don't think you understand how much more time is spent on high-stakes testing now, as opposed to decades ago. When I was a child, I took one standardized test each year, spending about two hours on this task. The results were used to better understand the children and their needs.

The school in which I teach spends as much as 30 hours a year on testing. And the kids cannot graduate from high school if they fail any of the tests.

And there is indeed a great deal of time spent on testing. I also see that in between the "30 hours a year on testing" numerous "fun days," "conference days," "in service days," holidays and breaks. In other words, I see very few teachers utilizing the unstructured time for any of the enriching lesson plans that they long passionately to present, if only they had the time. And no, it isn't the more educated parents keeping their kids home. The more educated parents are providing the resources the kids need to do well on standardized tests, signing them up for prep classes, then the psat, then the sat, perhaps the act, maybe an lsat for good measure. The educated parents know that despite their shortcomings, standardized tests are, and always have been, part of the educational landscape and therefore help their kids get good at them and recognize these periodic "state tests" as opportunities to practice. We may have different definitions for "more educated parents."

However, this conversation has been enlightening as I wasn't aware that some states actually use these test scores against the kids -- In New York they mean absolutely nothing more than a means to rate the schools and to identify kids who need help.

Or holidays and breaks, for that matter. And teachers are under a lot of pressure to work feverishly to utilize the time we have, so that the students can do well on the exams.

I am very dubious as to your claim that the more educated parents are not the ones who are opting out. Everything I have read indicates the opposite is true. Can you provide a link to show where you are getting that information?

I am a university professor in education. I kept my kids home last year as did over 100 other families in our school that enrolls mostly upper middle class highly educated families. I disagree with four premise.

and this is why. We can tell them year after year that their kid needs to repeat when we see their work every day that's not progressing. We don't worry about one test score.

If parents want their kids skidding through school, completely lost, acting up or shutting down from low self esteem, then that's their decision.

We offer an education. We don't force-feed it.

Lots of parents, foolish, in my opinion, will make decision after decision that undermines their kids' education.

It's a free country.

When I started out, I would get a lot of students asking how to study for a test. Fair enough - there's a lot of material, and they wanted guidance about how it might be presented on an exam.

Now, I'm just as likely to be asked how to take the test. This is a very different question. They want test taking strategies beyond just knowing the material and how to apply it. They've come from situations where everyone, from the teachers to the administrators, is worried that poor test scores will hurt their districts.

I'm not even 50 yet (though I'm close), so it disturbs me to catch myself even thinking "why, back when I was in school, things were different...", but I'm seeing some disturbing trends. The number of college freshmen who know how to take notes in class is dropping, for example. At the same time, the number of negative comments on my evaluations that boil down to "you have to come to class to do well" is increasing. (I've never used textbooks and won't put most of the notes online, much to the distress of students accustomed to having everything provided.)

I do not, in any way, intend to imply that college students these days just aren't as good as they were in the past. It's been my honor to work with some seriously brilliant young minds. But their expectations seem to be changing in ways that run against good pedagogical practice, and the emphasis on standardized testing seems to be one of the causes.

Republicans turned it around to punish those schools.

The scores are used as a political hammer.

Seems a little early to be awarding honors for academics. That's usually a middle school/high school kind of thing.