Regarding “ More Michigan Schools Meet No Child Rules:

In the interest of balance, the News has a responsibility to contact representatives of the thousands of teachers and scholars who oppose the No Child Left Untested Act. I am among them, and I support boycotts of the tests that are designed to strangle the curricula and divide kids.

Here is why:

High-stakes standardized tests, an international phenomenon, represent a powerful intrusion into classrooms, often taking up as much as 40% of teacher time,

The tests pretend that one standard fits all, when one standard does not fit all,

These  tests measure, for the most part, parental income and race, and are therefore instruments which build racism and anti_working class sentiment__against the interest of most teachers and their students,

These tests deepen the segregation of children within and between school systems, a move that is not in the interests of most people throughout the world,

Inner_city families and poor families are promised tests as an avenue to escape the ghetto and poverty, when the tests are designed to fail their children, boosting dropouts, leaving more children trapped in the ghetto and poverty, deepening inequality and all forms of injustice,

The tests set up a false employer_employees relationship between teachers and students which damages honest exchanges in the classroom,

I have seen repeatedly that the exams are unprofessionally scored, for example in New York in 2000 when thousands of students were unnecessarily ordered to summer school on the grounds of incorrect test results,

The tests create an atmosphere that pits students against students and teachers against teachers and school systems against school systems in a mad scramble for financial rewards, and to avoid financial retribution,

The tests have been used to unjustly fire and discipline educators throughout the country,

The exams represent an assault on academic freedom by forcing their way into the classroom in an attempt to regulate knowledge, what is known and how people come to know it,

The tests foment an atmosphere of greed, fear, and hysteria, none of which contributes to learning,

The tests destroy inclusion and inquiry_based education,
The high_stakes test pretend to neutrality but are deeply partisan in content, reflecting the needs of elites in a world becoming more inequitable, less democratic, promising the youth of the world perpetual war,

The tests become commodities for opportunists whose interests are profits, not the best interests of children,

I support the  rising tide of education_worker resistance to the high_stakes exams, as well as student and educator boycotts.

Parents and students have a legal right to opt out of the exams, which are little more than child abuse made respectable.

I hope the boycotts spread and I am quite sure they will.

Dr Rich Gibson
Associate Professor
San Diego State University
College of Education