More than 300 sign petition to ditch high-stakes tests

More than 300 people have signed a petition calling for the Lee school board to follow through with "opting out" the district from high-stakes standardized testing.

Created Wednesday afternoon by the advocacy group Teaching Not Testing, the petition has garnered signatures from notable figures including school board candidate Pam LaRiviere and school board member Don Armstrong.

The petition states: "We, the undersigned, current and future parents and caregivers of students in the Lee County School System, as well as, taxpayers and residents of Lee County, petition and support the Lee County School Board to vote to ignore all unfunded and underfunded high-stakes testing mandates for Lee County Public Schools and to refuse to administer these exams, including the associated practice and progress monitoring tests."

Lori Fayhee, the leader of Teaching Not Testing, said she has been stopping people anywhere she can to tell them about the petition.

"The cool thing is that all the small groups of activists have come together to promote this and to support the board in moving forward," Fayhee said.

She hopes to get 2,000 signatures on the petition and her group plans to express their views at a rally during the school board meeting Wednesday.

LaRiviere, who spent 30 years in Lee County schools, said she hoped the district would compare the costs of testing versus potential financial penalties the district might face. The district spent $5.3 million on testing in the 2014 fiscal year, according to district data obtained by the News-Press.

She thought the district should go back to using norm-referenced tests like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills or the California Test of Basic Skills, which were field-tested with groups of children to develop accurate scores, expectations and percentiles. Tests like the FCAT are not field-tested, she said.

"I think we are dealing with an education reform that has gone awry," she said. "We need to let the school board know they need to fully research our options."

LaRiviere said she has observed testing evolve from a low-stress, relaxed activity to one that instills fear due to the results' ramifications.

"At the beginning of the year, teachers will say to a student, 'I hope this is a good year for you, and if you pass the FCAT, you can move on to the fourth grade.' That should never have been a topic of conversation like that," LaRiviere said.

The school board announced last week that it planned to research the feasibility of "opting out" the district from testing. Board members unanimously expressed disdain for testing but said they needed to research legal consequences before making a decision.

At the meeting, school board chairman Tom Scott urged the public to make their voices heard.

"This is your school district, and the more parents making noise, the more likely people are going to hear it in Tallahassee," he told the audience. "I ask everyone here to find 10 other people who feel the way you do and start making some noise."

"High stakes" testing refers to those like the FCAT or its replacement, the AIR test. These test scores impact school funding, teachers' salaries and whether students will be allowed to graduate or move up to the next grade.

Teaching Not Testing's sentiments are mirrored by the majority of Americans, according to a Gallup-PDK poll released this month.

Fifty-four percent of those polled said they felt standardized testing wasn't helpful to teachers, and 56 percent of them want their local school board to assert more authority over the districts.