Mother hopes others will opt out

Mother hopes others will opt out of standardized testing

By Ross Levitt and Susan Candiotti, CNN

March 20, 2011 8:19 p.m. EDT

Pennsylvania mother Michele Gray: "The more I look at standardized tests, the more I realize that we have, as parents, been kind of sold a bill of goods."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Pennsylvania woman says tests are inaccurate, used to punish schools
• College education professor agrees they are waste of time
• Proponent calls tests "a parent's ally," says they improve schools
• No national statistics exist on opting out

State College, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A Pennsylvania mother has decided she does not want her two children to take the two-week-long standardized tests given by her state as part of the federal No Child Left Behind law. And she hopes other parents will do the same.

Michele Gray's sons -- Ted Rosenblum, 11, and John Michael Rosenblum, 9 -- did independent study the week of March 14 while their classmates were filling in hundreds of bubbles in classrooms with doors marked, "Quiet. Testing in Progress."

Gray says the only legal exemption that would allow her kids to sit out the tests was a religious objection. So that's what she did.

But Gray says her concerns go well beyond religion. "The more I look at standardized tests, the more I realize that we have, as parents, been kind of sold a bill of goods."

She says the tests are not accurate measures of accomplishment, create undue anxiety for students and are used to punish schools.

She gives the example of her sons' award-winning school, Park Forest Elementary, which last year was put on "warning" status after the school's special education students fell below the level of progress the state expects on their exams.

"The more I looked at it, the more outraged I became," Gray said, "This is not something I want to be contributing to (or) something I want my children participating in."

Dr. Timothy Slekar, an associate professor of education at Penn State Altoona, agrees. It was his op-ed piece on the Huffington Post website that inspired Gray to take action.

Slekar is also a father and this year chose not to allow his 11-year-old son Luke to take the tests. He says schools are narrowing their curricula in an effort to boost test scores and wasting too much time preparing for, and then taking, the tests.

He says the tests aren't an accurate indicator of a child's -- or a school's -- performance. "I'm a father and an educator who's finally said, 'This is it. I'm done.' Something has to give. Something has to change," Slekar said.

Read more at:  http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/20/pennsylvania.school.testing/index.html?iref=NS1