Comedian John Oliver delivered an epic rant against standardized testing on his HBO’s Last Week Tonight Sunday.
During the segment, Oliver shows the great lengths that school administrations across the country have gone to promote the new Common Core testing. Some schools are producing videos of students singing pro-testing song parodies of pop songs such as Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”, Ylvis’ “What Does the Fox Say?” and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”. One school in Texas even had a pro-testing pep rally with a pro-testing funky monkey mascot.
But despite the heavy levels of promotion that could only be rivaled by Obamacare, students are boycotting the tests in droves. Just last month in Long Island, New York a record number 82,000 students boycotted the test. In one district, 82-percent refused to take the test and the President of that local Teachers Association refused to administer it.
Oliver reveals how the explosive increase in the number of standardized tests was born out of the Bush administration’s attempt to increase America’s standing across the international science and math scores. On his third day in office, President Bush created No Child Left Behind after it received bipartisan support. No Child Left Behind nearly tripled the number of standardized tests from six to seventeen.
“Voting against No Child Left Behind is like voting against No Puppy Left Unsnuggled,” Oliver joked.
Prior to his election, President Obama pandered to teachers, saying, “Don’t tell me the only way to teach a child is to spend too much time of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test. We know that’s not true!”
But once in office, Obama increased standardized testing with his educational programs like Race to the Top, which encouraged states to adopt Common Core.
Oliver does praise the intentions of standardized tests to decrease educational disparities among racial and socio-economic groups. He, however, slams the process in which they were implemented including tying teacher’s pay to classroom performances.
While Oliver is critical of the tests, he does not go so far as praising the eight states that have repealed, withdrawn, or never adopted Common Core testing. Those states all had Republican governors and state legislatures at the time of their rejection of the program. They include Alaska, Indiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
