“Choice”.

If you feel taking a test is the most important thing your child can do to demonstrate progress, choose to have them take it. If the test is well designed it will tell you what you need to know.

No reason to compel or chastise those who make a different choice (or who just know better).

No reason to initiate some false civil rights battle to force other people’s children to take a test.

No reason to start the slow boil on the campaign to convince suburban and rural communities that their local schools and teachers are the cause of all their social and economic strife just like they are in the big city.

The same way a parent can execute “choice” to choose to pull their kids out of a mixed ability traditional school that hosts any student regardless of their home-supports and aptitude, and try to choose a different one that offers a more homogenized cohort providing a greater likelihood of test proficiency…another parent can choose to believe that policy makers and investors can do better than a weak market-style test/stack/eliminate approach to improving outcomes. Pundits can do better than shrug, look hopeless and say “Well if not high stakes tests, how else can we judge the value of people we want to control?”

“Choice”, right? I see that word foisted like the banner of freedom and justice over and over again.

Until the choice made doesn’t serve the true agenda.