Opt Out 2015 - Part the First (And Hopefully the Last!)

And so it begins....The start of our 2015 Standardized Testing Refusal. If you've been following along long enough, you know that last year we refused the MSA (Maryland's predecessor to the PARCC, and that while our older child's middle school was able to work with us and ultimately honored our wishes, our younger child's elementary school did no such thing; the younger was given the test with her class and took 2 segments of it out of sheer boredom, and when we kept her home for the third morning out of four, they took her out of class that afternoon and tested her, alone except for a single staff member.

So without further ado, here's this year's letter to the same school. There's a different testing coordinator at the school this year, and a different administration in the school system, and this time we have access to some of the PARCC manual and procedures in advance, so it will be interesting to see how things play out this year. I've already had some folks ask on Facebook if they may use our wording as is or adapted; by all means, be our guest. :-)
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Standardized Testing: Notes From the Trenches (From March 2012)

Originally published on the now-defunct Crunchy Progressive Parenting Blog on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 (You can tell by the description of the weather in March 2 years ago from today's writing LOL)

Well, the testing madness has begun in Maryland schools, and apparently in other states as well. Even our Public Television station has gotten on board, showing the Arthur episode about the S.W.E.A.T., a fictional standardized test that has students in Arthur's classroom stressing before it even begins. Because as a proctor in my school I've signed an agreement not to disclose any specifics whatsoever about the MSA's, I'm limited in what I can legally share publicly, but a number of general themes have come across in the many Facebook posts I'm reading from other parents and other teachers in different places:

Random thoughts on Schools and Teaching

Originally published on February 26, 2012 [during a long-term music teaching assignment at a local elementary school; very slightly edited mostly for style and updated terminology.]

Now that I've been in this particular long-term teaching assignment for 5 weeks and counting (at least 3 more weeks to go), lots of random thoughts have been going back and forth in my mind, none of which is ready yet for a post on its own (except the school discipline and standardized testing which I was working on even before I started working here). Some are old memories refreshed, some are old memories seen through new eyes, and some are complete reworkings of misconceptions I had of kids and discipline before I became a parent.