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

[Warpy]

4. If only they could be organized

into massive civil disobedience, keeping all the kids home on testing days. This applies to urban as well as suburban schools.

Then again, the kids really do need to get used to being tested. They'll have to face the ACT/SAT soon enough.

The problem is that the anxiety is being ramped up by the teachers, consciously or unconsciously. Teachers are branded failures along with schools when a crop of kids does worse than expected, so the stakes are at least as high for them.

I don't know what to tell your friend. You can't give Valium to little kids, but I am at a loss as to how to reduce the panic they get into at test time.