The politicians who believe in using tests to judge schools and teachers will tell you that their efforts [1] are designed to help our nation’s children. How odd it is, then, that they never ask parents what they think, says Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York, for the Washington Post. While testing expands like a balloon in the lives or our youngest students, there is no curiosity about what cannot be recorded on the scantron sheet. In order to find out what was on our parents’ minds, a group of New York principals [2] created a short survey to give parents and teachers an opportunity to share their opinions. Over the course of two weeks, we were astounded by the results. Over 8,000 parents across New York State responded to our online survey regarding their children’s experiences with the recent New York State 3-8 Assessments in English Language Arts and mathematics. Over 6,000 teachers of students in Grades 3-8 weighed in on our teacher survey, as well. Although these surveys were informal, it would be a mistake to ignore what we learned…