LEWISTON — Geiger Elementary School teacher Ernie Gagne was so frustrated with the amount of student testing that in June he wrote a song, “Let Us Teach” and posted it on YouTube.

Wearing a Lewiston Maineiacs hockey shirt and strumming his guitar, Gagne asks policymakers to stop so much testing and listen to teachers.

They did.

The School Committee on Monday night voted 7-2 to pass a resolution urging state and federal policymakers to stop standardized tests for students in kindergarten to second grades, and to reduce testing for those in grades three through 12.

“It’s wonderful that this school board is listening to the teachers,” Gagne said Wednesday. “We are with these children five days a week and we do not need all this data to inform us as to where the students rank among their peers. Way too much money is being spent on testing. It’s disrupting teaching time.”

Karen McClure-Richard, a Lewiston parent and state leader in the movement for parents who opt out of testing for their children, said she was “super happy” about the committee’s vote.

Her group did not ask for the resolution. School Committee members Ben Martin and Matt Roy talked to people, researched the topic and came up with it, McClure-Richard said.

The School Committee is believed to be the first in Maine to pass such a resolution, McClure-Richard and others said.

Administrators say some testing is needed to know the strengths and weaknesses of students and schools, but parents and teachers are balking at the volume of testing.

The resolution “reflects the increasing mood in the country to reduce the use of standardized tests,” Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster said.

While nonbinding, the resolution can attract attention from Augusta and members of Maine’s congressional delegation. 

“It provides ammunition for future changes in state and federal laws,” Webster said. “It makes (administrators) sensitive to not doing standardized tests that aren’t absolutely necessary.”

One flaw in the Maine Educational Assessment is the length of it, Webster said.

Unless parents sign opt-out forms, Lewiston students in grades three to eight and grade 11 take the MEA once a year. That test can take up to 12 hours to complete.

Lewiston students also take tests three times a year required by the federal government, Webster said.

The resolution is a small victory, McClure-Richard said, but “my hope is that other districts will follow suit, that it will send the message to Augusta, ‘We’re tired of testing. Let’s get back to teaching.’”

Her two children will not be taking tests for the fourth year in a row, she said. The director of a nonprofit preschool, McClure-Richard said school districts have become too data driven, often because of state and federal regulations.

Teachers’ gut instincts and observational skills help them know what each student needs, not just test scores, she said. “My fear is in the last six to eight years, many teachers are taught to look only at data, not to use their gut. It’s scary territory for me.” Some students test poorly but perform well, others test well but perform poorly, McClure-Richard said.

Martin and Roy said they brought the resolution to the committee after hearing teachers and parents complain about too much testing.

One Saturday while Martin campaigned for fewer tests, four former teachers told him they retired early because they couldn’t handle the constant testing, he said. “They felt they were wasting valuable classroom time to complete something they did not need to guide instruction.”

The state has wasted millions of dollars in failed tests, Roy said. He said he wrote and supported the resolution because the overuse of tests has eroded the quality of education.

“Smarter Balanced and Measured Progress, or what the state calls the MEA, requires students to sit through multihour blocks for a week or more, and puts a strain on a district’s technology network” finding students who weren’t in school during testing, Roy said.

A spokesman for a national organization opposed to the volume of testing in schools said a resolve from the Lewiston School Committee could have an impact.

“What the Lewiston school board did is an example of what’s going on across the country,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of Fair Test: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

School Committee members are elected officials “closest to the classroom,” Schaeffer said. “Local school boards are the place where many elected officials get their start. State legislators are very much attuned to what local officials have to say.”

Let Us Teach

We all went off to college to become educators
Our job description’s changing, thanks to some administrators
It seems they want us to become classroom facilitators
And so, superintendents, we beseech
We’re urging you to simply let us teach.

Chorus
Let us teach (let us teach)
Let us teach (let us teach)
We each earned a college degree
Have some faith in us and you will see
That things will be much better if you’d only let us teach

We’re tired of the testing of these kids from twelve to K
Data shows the little ones will learn more when they play
And do the older ones really need all these assessments, anyway?
And so, policy makers, we ask you
To let us do the job that you hired us to do (Chorus)

When it comes to Common Core
We like it less than we did before
We just ask you trust us, and simply let us teach
We test these kids throughout the year and you collect the data
By the time the test results come back, it’s all too late to matter
And all this testing seems to do is make Pearson’s wallet fatter
And so, dear politicians in D.C.
Consider us professionals and please, just let us teach (Chorus)

Here’s an invitation for each of you
Step in the classroom, see what we do
You’ll find things will be much better if you’d only let us teach
It’s funny how the ones who pass these laws that they create
Do not fund the programs that they mandate to the states
And rarely ask advice from those of us who educate
So, school boards all across the U.S.A.
Listen to us teachers as we very proudly say (Chorus)