And now, New York City joins the testing madness. The city is going to spend $80 million over the next five years to increase the amount of testing in their schools:

Pupils in Grades 3 through 8 will be tested five times a year in both reading and math, instead of three times as they are now. High school students, for the first time, will be tested four times a year in each subject. In the next few years, the tests will expand to include science and social studies.

It’s just sad. It’s more than sad. It’s criminal. And I read comments like this, and I just want to bang my head against the wall:

“I don’t think it means more pressure,” Mr. Klein said. “I think it means more learning.” He said the present testing regime was “too intermittent” to help teachers judge progress.

What about a teacher’s professional judgement? What about their ability to judge progress based on the daily work of the class? When I went to school, the teachers who gave too many multiple choice tests were the ones no one really respected. How did they become the coin of the realm?

I’ve long said that I will not send Jakob or Theo to schools that think that we can measure learning by frequent multiple choice tests. And I am committed to urban, public education, but I won’t make my kids martyrs for it.

And there’s more to worry about here. Why should a district spend $80 million dollars to do the work that teachers and administrators do — especially when urban districts are cutting budgets left and right. Here in Philadelphia, every school has had a reduction in their budget, and yet I haven’t seen any cuts to the benchmark testing program.

So we test and test and test, and we wonder why kids don’t find school relevant, and then, schools that do try to do it differently — and show success — get put on the chopping block like Dayton Early College Academy.

When you step back and look at the stories that are being told about education funding and the continued rise of influence of the test-prep companies, it’s a really depressing picture.