Here is the list of 110 groups from across the nation that have signed a petition to Congress opposing high-stakes testing.
This is the petition. Your organization should sign too:
We, the below undersigned organizations, oppose high-stakes testing because we believe these tests are causing harm to students, to public schools, and to the cause of educational equity. High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent immigrants to this country.
We oppose high-stakes tests because:
There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap.”
High-stakes testing has become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.
Many of these tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.
High-stakes tests are being used as a political weapon to claim large numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and to fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.
The alleged benefit of annual testing as mandated by No Child Left Behind was to unveil the achievement gaps, and by doing so, close them. Yet after more than a decade of high-stakes testing this has not happened. Instead, thousands of predominantly poor and minority neighborhood schools —the anchors of communities— have been closed.
As the Seattle NAACP recently stated, “Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants as lesser—while systematically underfunding their schools—has a long and ugly history. It is true we need accountability measures, but that should start with politicians being accountable to fully funding education and ending the opportunity gap. …The use of high-stakes tests has become part of the problem, rather than a solution.”
We agree.
Yours sincerely,
Network for Public Education
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great, now how many will sign up for a viable alternative beginning with the Collins amendment. Anyone can be against something, but only the brightest and best will innovate away from the test. Any takers?
LikeLike
Link for the Collins amendment?
LikeLike
Are you referring to Sheila Bair’s amendment last year to the Dodd Frank bill known as the Collins Amendment? If so, what this have to do with education?
LikeLike
Diane,
Maybe consider giving a copy to Bernie Sanders? I am hosting a support group at my home for his campaign. I am sharing it with them as well as anti-ALEC positions.
LikeLike
In my state (Georgia) the assessment system, known simply as “the Milestones” by the students, happened in elementary schools for the first time in mid-April, immediately after Spring Break.(Currently I work in an elementary school of my local district and am enrolled in a Master’s program for TESOL.) The state’s DoE asserts that the standardized test is intended to “to provide students with critical information aboutt their own achievement and their readiness for their next level of learning.” Naturally the test occurs toward the end of the school year, but not in May, after a full year of education has occurred. The teachers are supposed to “guess” at who may need remediation to retake the test, because results do not come back before the school year ends.
Can you imagine being a fifth grade student who believes he/she is entering middle school in the fall and receiving notice of test grades during the summer or at the beginning of the next year informing you of a possible deficiency in…say…Mathematics, or additional subjects? If I were a parent, I would be livid to have already assumed my student was moving into sixth grade and then belatedly informed that my child’s skill are now inadequate for the next level.
Also, the members of our cohort tallied a working estimate of the days erased from the educational schedule due to the demands of standardized testing throughout the year. Approximately 6 weeks are consumed by actual testing, preparation and tutoring for the tests, and the impact on other events in the school calendar. Instead of the promised and required 180 days of instruction, students actually receive about 140 days. This is outrageous! Our students deserve better.
LikeLike
A “full year of instruction”
“140 days” of instruction.
In reality, students are lucky to receive 80 hours of instruction in any one subject over the course of an entire school year. Just TWO WEEKS of adult workplace time. Only TEN, 8 hour workdays to make your teaching miracle happen. And for those many students who routinely miss 10% (or more) of the school year, even less, but more disrupted, time.
LikeLike
PP,
What type of philologist do you consider yourself to be? Comparative, textual, classical, cognitive, deciphering? Or some other?
TIA,
Duane
LikeLike