My niece wants to opt-out ( from testing) her three ps kids.

[LWolf]

5. We are actually instructed

to ramp up that anxiety. Not in those words, of course. My principal comes into the classroom to give "inspirational" speeches the week before testing, and expects me to make sure that students know those tests are more important than anything else they are doing. He meets with us every few weeks to see what we're doing to prepare for the tests.

Why? Because he's evaluated on school "achievement" derived from those scores.

And, of course, the scores are now part of teacher evaluation. So when parents opt out, which I think they should, they are setting up teachers to take professional hits.