Many people ask, “What can I do to reduce the testing that is making my children’s lives miserable and ruining their love of learning?” This is a democracy. Call your elected representatives in Washington. FairTest recommends citizen action NOW to Reduce Testing Requirements:
National Day of Action Today -April 8
Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning
What: Call your U.S. Senators and join the Twitter storm/Thunderclap. If we raise our voices together, we can persuade the Senate Education Committee to reduce testing requirements as it debates renewal of Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child Left Behind.
When: April 8, 2015
Who: Testing Resistance and Reform Spring alliance, convened by FairTest, and including many national and state organizations.
Call your Senators: Take a few minutes today, April 8, to phone your U.S. senators in Washington, DC. Ask to speak to the staffer who works on education policy. If no one is available, leave your message with the person who answered the phone. Find the phone numbers at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.
Tell your Senators: Here is a model message. Feel free to use it, modify it, or say something entirely different.
Hello. I’m [your name], calling from [your town]. I’m calling to ask Senator [name] to support changes to No Child Left Behind that will promote a saner approach to public school testing. I urge [him/her] to support a switch to testing once each in elementary, middle and high school, and to remove high-stakes consequences from federally required standardized tests. Both these measures will help address the current over-emphasis on testing at the expense of learning.
If you have specific stories about problems with over-testing, please relate them. Personal stories are the most effective.
Twitterstorm: Today at 1:00 PM Eastern time, send a tweet, help build the storm. Here is an example. If you modify it, be sure to include #cutfederaltests and the link to getting your Senators’ numbers:
“Join FairTest, Testing Resistance 4/8 #CutFedTests. Call Senate http://thndr.it/1P6DfEf. Cut back tests, end high stakes.”
The link is to Senate phone numbers. The last ‘sentence’ is the basic message.
To tweet your Senators, find their Twitter handles at:
https://twitter.com/gov/lists/us-senate/members
Email: Join the email campaign as well. To send a letter to your Senator, go to:
http://fairtest.org/roll-back-standardized-testing-send-letter-congres.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mark Weber’s Opinion piece “PARCC Is Part of the Problem” at NJ Spotlight 4-8 is worth reading.
E-mail your senators, representative, and president Obama:
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/
If you get a chance take some time to read the comments parents and teachers have made. How on god’s green earth can anyone turn a deaf ear to all of this?
I wholeheartedly support what Fairtest is saying but do not see much hope for ordinary citizens having a voice – in other words – for democracy unless “big money” is not the determining factor for candidates seeking political election.This won’t happen until campaign finance is reformed. If there is one hot button issue that needs to be the subject of attention this is it. If politics did not go to the highest bidder, the mayoral election in Chicago would probably have had a different outcome. Does this connect to any and all education issues? Sure does! We can write our senators until we are blue in the face but in the end, seems as if the highest bid from a political supporter is what dictates policy. Our senators who will receive our pleas are part of this process. I can remember a long time back when the then senator John Kerry made the focus of his re-election on campaign finance reform – but those days are long forgotten. I guess I am still reeling from Chicago yesterday!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTL7P3c3_Ag Is there anything else to say?
Does the bill specify what type of test needs to be administered? Does it dictate the length of the test or what specifically needs to be tested? The problem with the tests is not necessarily that they are given yearly. If the test was a reasonable length, let’s say an hour and half for math and an hour and half for English over 2 days; if the test assessed reasonable standards for the grade it was being used for; if the test was used only for what it was intended – to ensure all children are making adequate progress – not evaluating teachers – then a yearly test would not be a big deal. How often the test is given is not a big deal – it’s all these other issues we should be focused on.
I called both of my North Carolina senators. I’m all for less testing and more instruction. My children do well on the grade level tests in North Carolina every year, but with the weeks of test prep, a solid week of testing, and two weeks watching movies while those who failed are tutored, my children lose about 7 weeks of instruction every year. What a waste of time and energy.
I called both of my senators’ offices today (fat lot of good that call to Senator Booker’s office will do, but I made it anyway).
Reducing the same test misses the point once again and is a sell out. The real question is with the ability to broaden assessments with 1st class, whole child, why do we waste time trying to tweak the standardize test with value added nonsense in the failed effort to make it meaningful. It is not meaningful!
http://www.wholechildreform.com and go to the links for more details
Call your senator to ask for a reasoned approach to testing. Do not succumb to the rabidly anti-test comments from many folks. There is a middle ground, based on logic. The opt out movement, at its root, smacks of anti-intellectualism, and is fostered by folks who do not understand what a well designed test tests.
The opt-out movement has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism. It did not exist for 12 years under NCLB testing. Now how could that be? Twelve years of high-stakes testing and not a single pot out in sight. The NCLB waiver deal featuring Common Core standards and companion tests designed to trick, confuse, tire out, and wear down all but the most disciplined and advantaged students. Tests that literally entrapped students into an artificial, super-failure rate. Parents got wind of what this new reform was really all about and they reacted appropriately. No anti-intellectualism here at all. Just anti-Common Core testing. We now measure how well we taught what wasn’t worth learning. Most of us could live with grade span testing, using properly crafted and vetted exams,
What does a well-designed test test? How do we know that it is well-designed? Is there a test for that? Is it multiple-choice? I teach at the college level, and I never use multiple-choice tests. They are simply the laziest form of testing and require very little explanation and analysis on the part of the students.
My children in North Carolina public schools have taken scores of multiple-choice, grade-level standardized tests. I don’t know what those tests test, but I do know that they have been boring my children to death for years. I also know that they have not taught my children anything. I also know that with the test prep, testing, and tutoring for those who fail the tests my children have been robbed of seven weeks of instructional time every year.
The testing promoters should blame themselves for the backlash. We have a seemingly endless array of ed reform advocacy groups. There have to be hundreds of orgs by now.
Why didn’t they act to reduce testing before it became so completely insane and why did they think they could roll out a huge national testing experiment in thousands of public schools without any real public debate? One-sided presentations by CEO’s, politicians and philanthropists on why we must have Common Core testing is not a debate. It’s advertising.
They can’t ignore the “public” part of public schools. Public debates on public policy aren’t optional. This affects peoples’ children directly. They should have been included before it was adopted.
The controversy associated with NCLB is immense and widespread across the nation. However, it appears that most people sit on the sidelines, simply watching their children and others be emotionally bogged down by countless standardized exams. Although some parents are exclaiming their concern, a few hundred or thousand is simply not enough to constitute an immediate change to NCLB. I appreciate the message of Diane’s blog post. It’s pivotal to UNITE together and to make IMMEDIATE change. We can’t do that by simply staying in our homes thinking of the ways we could influence some sort of change in education policy. Our elected officials are suppose to represent the needs of their concerned constituents. We are concerned and we are in NEED of drastic educational change. It’s important to attend school board meetings, call elected officials, blast NCLB on social media, etc. Expressing your disdain for the educational system one times is not enough.
I just don’t think adults can continue to tell children that the tests are simply used to assess where they are and “ensure” they are on track when this is actually what children are told in public schools:
“GREGORY DOHMANN: The PARCC is my opportunity too. Remember, I’m giving out gift cards for those people who are demonstrating that they’re ready to rock this test, to show not only D.C., not only this school, but the world how smart Jefferson Trojans are.”
I’m not blaming the school. They set testing up as a competition, numbers are a shortcut proxy that are easy to use for comparisons and ranking, and so people naturally approach scores like that, but how can we say over and over that it isn’t all about the tests when it is QUITE CLEARLY all about the tests? He is telling them the test score measures “how smart they are”.
If this is how it is, we should just tell them the truth. We decided, as a country, to measure and rank public school students using test scores, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. They already KNOW. They’re in these schools all day, every day. It’s not like we’re fooling them.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/underperforming-school-rallied-turn-around-test-scores-conquer-common-core/