Opting Out in HoCoMD

After Wednesday's post I received a note from a reader. She said,

I appreciated the blog you did on Not on the Test. I am so upset about the loss of our kids educational experience that sometimes it makes me want to scream in frustration. I don't know if you would consider it, but the Howard County Republican Club is getting ready to have a monthly meeting next week on Thursday the 26th at the Ellicott City VFW at 7 pm. We will have a speaker coming to talk about how parents in MD can refuse the standardized tests for their children.

I would love to see a movement started right here in Howard Co. that spreads to other counties that really starts to push back like they were able to in NY. For this meeting it doesn't matter if people are members or even if they are Republican.

Until I read this I had never really thought about whether responses to high stakes testing were influenced by one's politcal party. Are they? Most people I know who are strongly opposed to testing are Democrats, but that is also because most people I am close to, for the most part, are Democrats. I would be excited to see a non-partisan movement in Howard County to free schools from the tyranny of high-stakes testing.

Any opportunity for us to care about our chiidren more than we care about the labels of our political parties is an opportunity to make our community stronger.

*****

Want to learn more about the growing Opt Out movement? Start here.

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