Tolland Parents: Say "No" to Testing Before Teaching and Learning

Do you have a child in grades 3-8, 10 or 11???  The district is scrambling to administer the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) field test to your student.  You have the right to say no to this giant waste of instructional time and taxpayer dollars.

Why would you want to do that?  Here are my TOP TEN reasons, in no particular order.  Feel free to add your own in the comments section.

1. No Educational Benefit/Huge Amounts of Time.  While this is supposed to be a "field test"  every student will spend 7-10 hours  on this exercise for the sole purpose of feeding information back to the test-developers.  Students will not get results and it is quite possible districts won't either (no one  I have asked seems sure).   Even the SBAC site does not advocate using all students to field test this instrument.
2. Testing curriculum not yet taught.  Tolland has not actually implemented the curriculum that is to be tested.  See the minutes of the last four BOE meetings and workshops.
3. Harm to students who lack confidence.   How can we know what impact these hours of sitting in front of a screen answering questions for which they are not prepared will have on learners; especially those with special needs?
4. Harm to High School Juniors trying to prepare for college.  High school juniors have enough stress heaped on them and more than enough other standardized tests.  The choice to add the SBAC to the junior year is representative of how little regard these decision-makers have for students.
5. Loss of resources that support actual learning.  Your middle school library will be virtually inaccessible for the 9 week testing window. Yes, test administration will significantly limit access to a school library for a full quarter of the academic year.  Computer labs across the district will also be off-line for testing.