BLOOMFIELD, N.J. — On Monday morning, a few hundred students will file into classrooms at Bloomfield Middle School, open laptops and begin a new standardized test, one mandated across New Jersey and several other states for the first time this year.
About a dozen of their classmates, however, will be elsewhere. They will sit in a nearby art room, where they will read books, do a little drawing and maybe paint.
What they will not do is take the test, because they and their parents have flatly refused.
A new wave of standardized exams, designed to assess whether students are learning in step with the Common Core standards, is sweeping the country, arriving this week in classrooms in several states and entering the cross hairs of various political movements. In New Jersey and elsewhere, the arrival has been marked with well-organized opposition, a spate of television attack ads and a cascade of parental anxiety.
Almost every state has an “opt out” movement. Its true size is hard to gauge, but the protests on Facebook, at school board meetings and in more creative venues — including screenings of anti-testing documentaries — have caught the attention of education officials.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
2 comments:
COMMON CORE - bad socialist stuff
Parents should be aware that many students who should be receiving their special education support in classes will not be because staff are being pulled and the Department of Special Education in Wicomico County will not fund substitutes to cover missed hours. Check with your child's school to see how they are covering hours or call the Director of Special Aeducation and demand answers. Don't expect her to answer or a supervisor in that office to give an honest answer. Another reason we need an elected school board!
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