This is the year. Sink or swim. If you want to make age inappropriate material, obsessive testing, and egregious data mining come to any kind of end, you MUST REFUSE THE TESTS. IT IS THE ONLY VOICE WE HAVE LEFT. If your child takes the state tests, you feed the machine. If your child refuses the tests, we begin to fight back. The machine lives off data. If you don’t feed it, it will wither.
Are you refusing? Or are you feeding the machine? The children have no union. We are their voice and protection.
There is a time rules must be broken. That time is NOW.
“The only remedy left to parents is to refuse to have their children take the tests. Testing is the rock on which the policies that are destroying our local public schools are built. If our politicians do not have the courage to reverse high-stakes testing, then those who care must step in. As professor of Language and Composition, Ira Shor, bluntly stated:
Because our kids cannot defend themselves, we have to defend them. We parents must step in to stop it. We should put our foot down and say, “Do it to your own kids first before you experiment on ours!”
Some notes on refusing. Be CERTAIN your child does not write on the test book. They are to be coded a 999 which is a REFUSAL, not an ABSENCE. Any absence generates a retest. And any writing on the test usually generates a code of FAIL.
Remember, the appropriate phrase is REFUSAL. Most districts will tell you there is no provision to “opt out”. You must “refuse” the tests. That is your right as a parent. Do not be intimidated by the districts. They will tell you the tests don’t count, and that you are costing the district funds if you refuse. This is manipulation.
http://fairtest.org/common-core-assessments-factsheet
https://stopcommoncorenys.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/refusing-the-tests/
Look at this piece below, which went viral on social media today. Can you get these answers all correct as an adult? Please remember, these are children responding during a timed test, that have to figure out this madness.
This is malpractice.
Remember, the way these tests are designed will fail 70% of the student body.
A teacher and parent from New York adds:
“The tests we took as kids are nothing like these Common Core tests. These tests are grade levels above children’s learning level and have ambiguous answers that deliberately confuse kids. They serve NO educational purpose as teachers don’t see the results of each individual kid nor what they actually got wrong.
These tests are a political tool to wrongly label students and teachers which better undermines the stability of public schools. This way private charter schools can squeeze their way into a community where the financial investors will enjoy tax credits.
This is an insidious scheme that involves everyone like dominoes eventually toppling over and crashing.
My own kids are smart and they will not be left behind their peers because they are not taking the tests. They won’t feel frustrated and inferior because public schools are currently forced to subject children to these developmentally inappropriate tests. Children don’t need this kind of stress that was really invented by business minded lobbyists who pay off politicians to champion their “reforms”.
We agree.
So does this teacher:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UHtzlLlMSWD9zM6zFzJTCg8U6pw8eWYTdB16ijgR1ss/mobilebasic?pli=1
Also see:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6702540
http://www.livingindialogue.com/corporate-reformers-want-talk-testing/
For information on how and why to refuse, please see this link.
https://stopcommoncorenys.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/why-refuse/
stopcommoncorenys 
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