The New Jersey Education Association released several ads speaking out against mandatory standardized testing under the Common Core legislation.
The 30-second ads promote giving parents a choice to opt their children out of the new testing programs called Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). The ads direct families to information about three bills being pushed by the NJEA.
According to The Daily Caller:
The ads direct viewers to a website that touts three bills currently before the New Jersey legislature: One would ban almost all standardized tests for any students in the second grade or below, another would impose a moratorium on using PARCC to evaluate teachers and schools, and a third would explicitly give parents the right to opt out of tests entirely.
The NJEA conducted focus groups and polls regarding certain education issues. The results showed major support for the following:
- Passing a legislated “Bill of Rights” that provides full transparency on the frequency, costs, and impact of high-stakes standardized testing;
- Limiting the number of hours spent on standardized testing, test preparation, and test drilling;
- Requiring testing companies to report their profits and their political contributions;
- Giving parents the right to refuse letting their children take the PARCC (“opt-out”); and
- Delaying any high-stakes decisions based on PARCC tests until their results and impact can be studied.
The NJEA believes that these choices should be left up the parents:
“Parents are fed up, and they’re ready to speak up,” said NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer in a statement. “This ad campaign gives parents and teachers a voice in a debate that’s been dominated for too long by people with no connection to what’s really happening in classrooms today.”
Opponents of the opt-out measures argue that less children participating in the standardized testing will endanger federal funding to local schools.
Requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation stipulates states must retain 95 percent of students participating in exams. Despite these guidelines, the federal government has never pulled funding from any state.
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