A thread about my amazing kid and standardized testing.

My daughter is about to be 17, a rising senior in high school.

When she was little-- like second grade-- she loved school, and she was excelling. One day, she came home upset because she had had her first round of standardized testing and was really freaked out. The testing had caused her a lot of little-kid anxiety and made her feel dumb.

As her parents, we decided to pull her out of all subsequent standardized testing. We used a letter to "opt out." There was some debate about whether we could legally do this, but our small rural public school was pretty laid back and kind of just let it go.

Through fifth grade, when testing days came (and there were quite a few), our kid would pack a suitcase of books that she chose, and go in the corner and read. She loved test days.

In 6th grade, we sat down with her and talked about how the stakes of testing were going to start going up and how we were probably going to have to decide how to formally resist if that's what she wanted to do. We told her it was her decision.

By this time, it was clear that she doing well in school. She even received high scores on the one standardized test that had triggered all the anxiety back in 2nd grade. But this didn't change the fact that the tests made her feel negatively about her learning and about school.

She decided she would not take standardized tests. She continued refusing, mostly under the radar. A couple of times she was strategically absent when it looked like she might be required to sit for a test. Our letter of opting out was still on file in her k-8 school.

High school came and she ended up surprised by a PSAT test date. Even with extended test time that came from her accommodations for anxiety and even when those scores came back high, she said that was it-- never again.

Cut to the college search. She spent hours whittling her list down only to test-optional schools. Not just to get out of the SATs as much as because she didn't want to attend a school that used standardized tests as a metric for admission.

She did a lot of research on standardized testing, and learned a lot about the inequities involved in testing, and weighed those arguments against the arguments from some scholars who suggest testing can help equalize otherwise unfair playing fields (esp in terms of race/class).

She feels more strongly now that her expertise has grown that standardized testing is not good for equity or for our educational system in general. As a result, she only wanted to attend test-optional colleges. And her list of where she could apply was GREATLY narrowed by this.

With COVID, ALL of the colleges she originally had to take off her list except for two ( @uvmvermont & @NewCollegeofFL) have gone test-optional for her admission year. She's now weighing out their statements to try to decipher what these shifts mean for their policies long term.

The reason I am tweeting all this is (first, I am SO PROUD of this thoughtful child) is to say that kids have a lot of experience with standardized testing and a lot of useful perspectives and I have learned a lot from listening to my kid and I would like to hear from other kids.

And I'd like them to comment on the research and be involved in the research, and I hope this national conversation can really heat up now that so many colleges and universities are "piloting" test optional policies.

I have a lot of my own critiques about the industry that grows up around testing, and how revenue streams affect curriculum. My daughter's concerns (especially in her AP courses) was about the pedagogy she experienced in courses that taught to tests.

I think I've expanded some of my own critiques from listening to her (and vice versa). I would like to see more high schoolers (and middle schoolers and hell the little beans too) really involved with what we all do next as a country. Wouldn't that be cool?