Arne says parents to blame for test stress. Threatens fed intervention if Opt Outs continue.

[lexington filly]

40. From time to time, one or the other of my grandchildren talks about her upcoming standardized tests

which leads me to remind her it's important to eat protein for breakfast because it helps one to think better. And I ask if she knows why she's taking the tests and tell her it's just to see if kids are learning what the teachers are teaching. And if they aren't they can adjust their teaching methods. And if she expressed she felt anxious taking it, I'd tell her many people feel anxious taking tests. Just get a good night's sleep, good breakfast, do your best and that's it. The test is to be taken seriously but isn't a matter of life and death. And if she said, yeah but she feels really stressful, I'd say, "Boo hoo!" She feels stressed when she has to give a speech in class or runs cross country or they perform on a stage. Heck, video games can be really stressful. Life is stressful. So I just don't get the resistance to Common Core and its goal of raising educational and teaching strategy standards.

Before I had children, I taught a year in a British oil company school in Thailand. The kids were mostly British with several French, German, and Dutch children ages 5-13. The kids were reading fluently at 5. At 5!!! On every level for all ages their vocabulary, history, math, etc. were well ahead of ours and that's when I saw American education standards as lacking. It wasn't that the teachers were better than ours but they were trained to have higher expectations for the kids and the kids lived up to the them.

It's a proven fact that kids live both up to expectations or down to them (especially their own).
It's proven that kids perform much better on tests or far worse depending on what teachers and adults tell them they can do. I personally think all the uproar is about the insecurities of their parents and teachers and not about the kids' stress.