Matt Farmer and Karen Lewis in Springfield last week for teacher pension rights.
From Matt Farmer: Here’s the text of the letter I sent to the principal of my youngest daughter’s school. (My oldest kiddo is years removed from the CPS experience.)
Dear [Principal’s name],
Lisa and I have decided that Samantha will not sit for the ISAT examination next month. This letter serves as our official “opt-out” notice. You know, of course, that we have supported and will continue to support our school’s faculty, staff and administration in its educational mission, but we’ve come to the conclusion that the 2014 ISAT is an unnecessary waste of the district’s limited resources and instructional minutes, and we’ve yet to hear a strong argument to the contrary.
We certainly can’t stop CPS from giving this examination to students across the city from March 3 to March 14, but we can take the small step of opting Samantha out, if only to salvage for her benefit the hundreds of instructional minutes she would otherwise lose to a soon-to-be-phased-out standardized test. We will work closely with Samantha to ensure she has plenty of books and other projects to keep her quietly engaged throughout the many hours the ISAT is being administered in the building during the first half of March.
Feel free to call me if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Matt Farmer
Fred Klonsky 
How about opt out kits? Not everyone has the resources to create activities and provide reading materials to keep their children busy during the long hours of testing. How about an adopt a kid program. Make a kit x 2 or x3, whatever people can handle.
Teaching and testing cannot occur simultaneously. There is no such thing as a “standardized test” that measures anything of value. It is the corporatization of public education at its worst; nothing more.
We wasted entire semesters on test prep at my school. The harder we prepped, the worse the scores were. Memories of my last few years of teaching are clouded by the pressure of conducting these subject reviews and simulated test sessions. There was very little time for teachers and students to enjoy the learning process. It became distressing to see hardworking students arrive at class, and watch their eyes glaze over as we addressed yet another benchmark. I recognized the look because I saw it at faculty workshops, painfully evident on our faces as we aligned our curriculum for the umpteenth time.