Should Parents Band Together to End the Standardized Test?

Lulu, 26 months old and wearing a tutu, arrives for her three-hour class at Brooklyn’s FasTracKids, which claims to be part of the fastest-growing education franchise in the world. She and the other children gather around a big, interactive electronic whiteboard. They try counting work sheets. They practice their handwriting. Parents wait outside the classroom, watching the kids on a closed-circuit monitor. The teachers don’t change diapers or give hugs. But Lulu is happy and can identify the number 3, which makes her mother unreasonably proud.

Her mother is education writer Anya Kamenetz, who details this experience in The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing—But You Don’t Have to Be. “I have to admit that if you give my daughter a test—any test—I want her to score off the charts,” she writes in the introduction of her book, which is basically a guide to helping your kids freak out less by freaking out less as a parent. She says you should practice mindfulness and set goals to encourage self-motivation in kids. And start now: This spring, millions of students will be taking new, harder state exams aligned to the Common Core standards for reading, writing, and math that have been adopted around the country.