Dear Sir/Madam

I am very concerned we are rushing into the Smarter Balanced Assessments based only on one sales pitch.

We know this to be true.

  • Most kids guessed on the pilot tests offered this year, so results won’t be valid.
  • Education should be about taking something complicated, and reducing it to something simple.  Common Core and the Smarter Balanced Assessments do the exact opposite.  They take something simple and make it enormously complicated.
  • The sample tests are a joke, and most adults can’t even figure out the questions they are written so poorly.
  • All (100%) of independent educational experts are against this bill.  Only sponsors-for-hire are supporting this bill

There are no ramifications for saying no.  We can simply continue doing what we have since the DCAS was begun.

This bill is being sold on cutting down testing.  While overall that may be good, the quality of the test we are switching too is very suspect.  It has been graded an “F” by independent educators.

New York did a similar experiment in 2013 and it failed miserably.  70% of students failed the arbitrarily set standards, though many had been exemplary students in the years before.

Let me put it in a real perspective.  What we are doing is like committing the family income to a new car for the next 5 years, a car that Consumer Reports says is a lemon, one that Automotive Week pans as a disaster, one that Car and Driver pans as a joke, and we are doing it simply because a salesman who gets a 20% commissions is in front of us saying…. “See?  It’s great. Look how nice the doors open…”

We simply ask the same common sense a dad or mom would have in the above situation to say…. “That’s nice, but we think we’ll look around… Thanks for all your trouble… ”

Please vote no on 334 and don’t be persuaded by a salesman’s threats and moaning (over his lost commission)….   For if bought…. you will be the one paying for the repairs….

Just asking for a little common sense and a stall here…..

Sincerely:

 

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