Dump CCSS Assessments, keep the standards.

PARCC estimates per-student testing will cost $29.50. That does NOT include the cost per child for all the technology that needs to be implemented in order for students to even take the tests. Some states, the smart ones in my estimation, are dumping national CCSS testing and the "every child is exactly the same everywhere you go" approach. They are keeping many of the CCS Standards, just prying themselves away from the money-grubbing hands of companies like Pearson.

Here is my take: the standards themselves are actually very well developed. With a bit of tweaking yet to be seen, they are perfectly viable supplements to existing state standards. And that is exactly how they should be used. CCSS is just as bad for students as NCLB is/was. Students, just like adults, are different in each and every case. No matter how hard the nation might like a society of robots, it just isn't going to happen. In fact, the continues push for such a society will lead, again in my opinion, to more and more people home-schooling and/or private-schooling their children. Public education will all but disappear if this course does not change.

I applaud each and every state that never got into the smoke and mirrors that companies like Pearson used to sucker their victims into the program. I especially applaud those states who have taken the blinders off and have since turned their backs on this corporate infiltration of public education.

It amazes me that communities went bananas when Coke and Pepsi started placing vending machines in schools or when other companies tried to place 'express dining' options in schools, yet they totally embrace a company deciding what their child should learn, how they are tested, and suck the monies from their local districts without so much as a peep. Ridiculous.

I know I have a very small readership, but I can only hope that somehow, people in all the states still hypnotized by the bull companies like Pearson are shoveling will open their eyes, take off the blinders, and contact their legislators to get them off this sick and twisted carnival ride of cash.

I have already written my elected officials on the subject and plan to keep doing so. I work in education. I support my SCHOOLS in the choices they make and in the programs they are required to provide to their students. To that end, I support whatever it takes to help the schools in my area succeed.

But, as a taxpaying individual, I will do whatever it takes to kill CCSS assessments that are provided by the very companies who are pushing the content, pushing the standards, and taking the money out of our states and our districts... $29.50 (plus infrastructure costs) at a time....