<p>"New York state education officials have been sounding the alarm for months: English and math tests that students will take this week and next will be harder than before and scores will drop ... Statewide, students in third through eighth grades have spent hours studying for the tests, but some parents are planning to boycott them."</p>
<p>Any boycotters here?</p>
<p>Some</a> NY parents to boycott new, harder state tests - New York News | NYC Breaking News</p>
<p>Not a boycotter and not in NY but I have a middle schooler who starts state testing today. Wondering if there is any evidence that pushing concepts, material and other things down and teaching them earlier is making an ounce of difference in academic outcomes?</p>
<p>Don’t know about NY, but in this state you would have to withdraw your child from school to avoid taking the state mastery tests. If your kiddo is absent during the tests, but are enrolled in the school, the school is REQUIRED to schedule the testing when you return to school.</p>
<p>There’s something very wrong about elementary school kids spending hours studying for a state exam. I can think of so many more productive things they can do with that time.</p>
<p>To me, this is a case of deja vu all over again. In 2000, a group of NY parents spearheaded grassroots boycotts against the then new state tests in Math and English. Reasons cited were numerous and I hate to say that all the concerns voiced then have come true - cheating by teachers and administrators, valuable classroom time lost to test prep, no real data indicating expected/improved outcomes, and additional unintended consequences too numerous to list. I was one of the parents voicing these concerns back then and it pains me to see that everything my colleagues and I predicted has occurred. We did not allow our children to take those tests and they have successfully completed college and, in some cases, graduate and professional school at this point. The issues now are the same as the issues then; very little has changed except that the stakes have become higher, for students and for teachers. I seldom think, “we told you so” is an appropriate retort - in this case I feel there is nothing more apt.</p>
<p>There is also something very wrong about our schools graduating students that cannot read or perform basic math functions. </p>
<p>Parents should spend more time working with their kids to make sure they are learning rather than watching inane “reality” shows and giving children everything they ever want. It’s called parenting. It’s hard. And most do not do it.</p>
<p>I agree with Iron Maiden. Luckily we live in a public school district that consistently ranks in the top 100 in the country on any polls out there, has wonderful teachers, and involved parents. We feel confident that our teachers are preparing our students for the rigor of the new exams. My 8th grader will be taking them with no worries.</p>
<p>My kid is in college now but way back when I always told him not to worry about these stupid tests, though we didn’t keep him out of school on test days and he took them. </p>
<p>We eventually put him in a private high school where none of these types of tests are given. </p>
<p>We are in a very high performing district so at least when he was in public school there was very little teaching to the test. I don’t know if that has changed, but if I had a kid in school now they’d likely be in private school as I am very opposed to testing of this kind.</p>
<p>Cousins in Rochester are boycotting. One kid’s Principal just needed a note and was understanding; kid would come to school and sit out of exam. The other kid’s Principal asked that the kids stay out of school completely with a sick note. Parent wants the boycott duly noted and is annoyed with second Principal wanting to sweep it under the rug via illness classification. </p>
<p>My kid (Midwest state) has standardized testing the next two days. He had no homework last night and said this morning “at least I don’t have to learn anything new in the next two days.” Not the intent of state testing, I am sure!</p>
<p>I’ve never understood the negativity about time being spent “teaching to the test”.</p>
<p>If the test covers material that is valuable to know, then why not teach to it?</p>
<p>^ My thought as well. IF the test is truly linked to desired education outcomes then teaching to the test is good.</p>
<p>I know a bunch of people who are boycotting because they are afraid of the effect on high school placement.</p>
<p>When my son was very young, his teacher was very adamant about telling the kids that they shouldn’t worry because the tests weren’t important. We told him that, too. Well he took it literally and decided not to actually answer any of the questions. Because it wasn’t important. Oops.</p>
<p>I live in NY but thankfully my youngest is in HS so we don’t have to deal with it. I get emails all the time from the district telling parents not to boycott because it will impact state aid etc. The tests used to be 3rd- 8th grade but now I think they begin in first grade. I used to get nervous about it with my first kid but with my 2nd I did not even pay attention. The bad part is that teachers teach to the test. In NJ they are going to start basing 4th and 5th grade teacher’s evaluations on how well the kids do. Meanwhile when my older daughter was in 5th grade she got a reading score that was lower than what they wanted. For this reason they would not allow her to go into an advanced math class in 6 th grade. I put her in anyway ( I don’t usually behave that way) and she made it through calculus getting straight A’s. Meanwhile the 5th grade teacher gave me a hard time because of one crazy test score. If I had younger kids I would probably send them for the test and ask them to try their best, but I would remind them that it is not a big deal. Our district actually has summer classes in place for kids who do not do well. Things are just out of control.</p>
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<p>It does make a difference in that schools and teachers are restricted in going off on flights of fancy and not giving adequate time to things that were supposed to be in the curriculum. </p>
<p>I had a couple of times when my son was younger where we were reviewing practice EOC’s and there were topics that had never come up in class. </p>
<p>Standardized testing is at least keeping some level of honesty in the system.</p>
<p>ONe issue with the newest NY tests is that they have just been written to conform to the Common Core, but the state curriculum has not yet. So they are in many cases testing for things that are not being taught (and we can’t have teachers “wandering” from the curriculum to remedy that, now can we :rolleyes: )</p>
<p>I’m also not from NY, but all the state tests I’m aware of test VERY BASIC grade level knowledge. If my son ever had a problem scoring adequately on a standardized test, I’d feel like <em>I’d</em> failed him. Students with test anxiety learned it. They were made nervous by adults telling them how important the tests are and making them fear failure. When my competitve son was younger, I always told him just to treat the tests like a game.</p>
<p>How hard are these tests?? Even if they are being tested to things that ‘aren’t being taught’, is it basic enough knowledge that they should know or should be able to figure it out at their grade level or are they being tested on obscure dates and events that they would have to memorize?</p>
<p>From the outside looking it, it would seem similar to people claiming that the SAT and ACT are too hard and should be made easier so their kids can get perfect scores and get their choice of college…problem being that a larger percentage of students would also get perfect scores and it would become less meaningful. There’s nothing BAD about having a harder test, they still track the percentage of students that ‘pass’, the percentage of students that can answer specific questions, still compare results to the mean values, right? If EVERY student scores 100% on a test, they don’t learn much, but if a student only gets 50% of the answers right, but is in the top 1% of performers, it provides abundant information on where they need to improve education.</p>
<p>How many of the society’s problems are seemingly caused by poor parenting? I have lost track of how many times people seemed to invoke poor parenting as an explanation for society’s problems…</p>
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No idea, they’re brand new and haven’t been given yet.</p>
<p>We all say in New York that the Regents’ exams are a joke and anyone should do well, which is usually the case, but every so often something gets wacky with the tests purchased by the state and either individual questions or the whole test is thrown out because there was no connection between the curriculum and the test. As a result, some people are worried. Also, some people are worried because the test might show a huge disconnect between test and school grades which would show that the kids aren’t the special snowflakes mom and dad think they are or that the kids are getting a little more than the ordinary help to achieve their class grades.</p>
<p>We live in New York State and my oldest was one of the first to have to go through all these state tests plus I have 2 younger who’ve also been through the testing. I’m also a psychologist with experience in psychometrics and test design. These state tests are complete and utter crap. My 2 oldest kids were both in elementary gifted programs and have had full psychological evals as part of their speech services evaluations and assessment for gifted programs. The tests are so poorly written and designed that my kids scores have bounced back and forth year after year, child after child, from barely meeting standards to perfect scores. These are kids that are advanced 2 years in math and science, in gifted writing/humanities, and straight A students, and while they always “pass”, they come home complaining about the idiotic questions and poorly written items. Many of their classmates also have the same issue. These are smart kids who’ve mastered their classwork but the tests are just really bad at assessing what they’re supposed to. Numerous times they’ve had to throw out items that were shown to be too ambiguous or poorly written. Thankfully, our public school receives little state funding so our test prep is minimal compared to others and contained to the few weeks prior to testing. However, I hate that even that amount of class time is devoted to stupid test prep instead or real writing, reading, and math skills. The tests are barely tied to curriculum. I find the reading comprehension sections absolutely ridiculous. Do you remember the NY Times publishing the 8th grade passage from last year about the pineapple running a race? No one could figure out the answers. A lot of the items are very ambiguous. It was eventually thrown out. 2 of my kids took the 8th grade science test as elementary students to get into gifted program. They both got perfect scores having never taken 3 years of the curriculum or any lab classes. Huh? Even though they have excelled at their classes and other standardized tests, some years they have scored 3’s instead of 4’s and that has sometimes been used to try to block them from acceleration/honors/gifted programs. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I can’t even imagine how horrible it must be for schools who struggle with the tests and state funding.</p>
<p>These tests should be scrapped altogether (but do NY have a NCLB waiver?)</p>