Listen up, Arne Duncan: Racist defense of Common Core won’t derail coalition to fight corporate school reform which hurts kids

Listen up, Arne Duncan: Racist defense of Common Core won’t derail coalition to fight corporate school reform which hurts kids

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Too Much Reliance on Testing

Chief among the complaints of students, parents and teachers are the overemphasis on and poor quality of standardized tests that schools are made to impose.

In many states, including New York, very young children now face a battery of exams. The Daily News reported, “Because of a tough new curriculum and teacher evaluations, 4- and 5-year-olds are learning how to fill in bubbles on standardized math tests.” Giving bubble tests to kindergartners has become the order of the day in many schools, even though testing at this age group “is slow and traumatic,” and “trying to get a proper answer was next to impossible.”

According to an article in the Washington Post, because these tests increasingly require students to fill out the forms on computers, “educators around the country are rushing to teach typing to children who have barely mastered printing by hand.”

In later grades, students can encounter exams practically around every corner. In Pittsburgh, a local reporter found that public schools this school year have to administer “a total of more than 270 tests … to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. In fourth grade alone, there are 33 required tests … The district has no choice … the state mandates them.”