Dive Brief:

• LA Times columnist Karin Klein penned an editorial detailing her decision to allow her daughter to opt out of the California standards tests, stating the exams “were never useful for my kids.”

• Klein, who has three kids and has been through the standardized testing rigmarole for 16 years now, said that, as an education journalist, she has always been aware of how “thin and fault riddled” the exams could be, but she never thought to opt her children out because she viewed the tests as more of a civic duty to measure the progress of the schools, districts, and state. 

• While she still sees the value in the tests potentially being a guide to better teaching, she feels frustrated by how test-prep and standardized testing has in many ways co-opted the various creative pursuits that once were standards at her children’s public schools.  

Dive Insight:

Klein’s decision to allow her daughter to opt out of California’s standardized testing isn’t just a relief for the 11th grader, but a sign of hope for many education reformers.

Prolific education historian and Common Core opponent Diane Ravitch took to her blog to applaud the Los Angeleno.  

“Karen Klein’s defection, rooted in her experience as a parent, not a think tank ideologue, suggests that there is hope for the future, that the patina of certitude attached to the standardized testing regime may in time crumble as more parents realize how flawed, how subjective, and how limited these tests really are,” Ravitch writes.