This is a weekly update from FairTest, the organization that has been fighting the misuse and overuse of standardized testing since the early 1970s.
Please help FairTest celebrate “Deb Meier Hero in Education” winners — Schott Foundation President John Jackson and Mass. Teachers Association President Barbara Madeloni — by making a contribution in their honor at:
https://fairtest.networkforgood.com/events/3235-fairtest-celebrates-john-jackson-barbara-madeloni
National Overwhelming Percentages of Math, English Teachers Oppose Current Tests
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2017/10/teachers_say_state_standards_are_good_for_instruction_not_testing.html
Arizona Ongoing Problems With Test Scores and Their Misuse
https://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2017/10/03/why-i-keep-writing-about-those-damn-azmerit-scores
California Voters Endorse Recent Testing Reductions, Want Deeper Cutbacks
California Flat-Lined Scores Raise Questions About Smarter Balanced Test Accuracy
Why heads are still scratching over California’s standardized test scores
Colorado Schools Should Cultivate Joy, Not Just Test Scores and Grades
http://www.coloradoan.com/story/opinion/2017/10/08/young-your-school-cultivating-joy/729340001/
Florida Incessant Testing Does More Harm Than Good
http://www.gainesville.com/opinion/20171004/amanda-lacy-shitama-incessant-testing-does-more-harm-than-good
Florida Districts Hit by Hurricane Irma Ask for Test Delays, Hold-Harmless Policy
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article177182171.html
Florida Teachers Who Want State Bonus Take SAT with Their Students
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/fl-schools-teachers-retake-sat-20171004-story.html
Georgia Governor Wrong to Push More Standardized Tests
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2017-10-03/deal-wrong-push-more-standardized-tests-says-leader-educators-group
Iowa Concerns About New State Test Vendor
Kentucky Rankings Eliminated From School Report Cards
http://www.hclocal.com/content/rankings-done-away-latest-report-card
Louisiana Flooded Schools Seek Waiver From Test-Score Driven State Grades
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_250286ba-aaea-11e7-9889-3b232e6f8d49.html
Massachusetts Poll Asks Whether State Needs High-Stakes Testing
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2017/10/06/does-state-need-moratorium-using-mcas-graduation-requirement-and-teacher-evaluations/NHM9KRT9wxWbr7L6bZoaQL/story.html
Mississippi More Students Earn High School Diplomas After Repeal of Exit Exam
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/08/more-mississippi-students-graduate-without-passing-tests/744619001/
Missouri Results of Two State Tests Declared Invalid
http://www.semissourian.com/story/2449329.html
Missouri Test-Maker to Pay Schools Back for Unusable Exams
http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/test-maker-to-pay-back-schools-for-unusable-tests/article_d494c7f1-82c9-5507-b5aa-2732a14970da.html
New Mexico Questioning the Validity of PARCC Testing
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/education/questioning-the-validity-of-parcc-testing/article_c9a16a34-26e5-561e-87e3-e7d029ab074d.html
New York Teacher Test Rules Changed to Address Classroom Educator Shortage
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2017/10/teacher-testing-revised/
Oklahoma Teacher Newly Elected as State Rep. Blasts Test-Driven School “Reform’
Meet Jacob Rosecrantz, the Teacher Who Was Elected to the Oklahoma House!
Pennsylvania Court Reinstates Principal Accused in Cheating Scandal
http://thenotebook.org/articles/2017/10/06/supreme-court-reinstates-principal-accused-in-cheating-scandal
Virginia Testing Backlash Leads to End of State History Exam
http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/04/thanks-to-testing-backlash-virginia-drops-u-s-history-tests-despite-horrific-knowledge-levels/
University Overseas College Counselors Blast ACT, College Board for Admissions Test Screw-Ups
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/10/04/international-counselors-blast-act-and-college-board-citing-lack-of-confidence-over-testing/
International Could American Schools Benefit From the Kind of School Inspections Common in Europe
Worth Reading Why the Test-Based “Accountability” Movement Is a Charade
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/10/05/why-the-school-accountability-movement-based-on-standardized-tests-is-nothing-more-than-a-charade/
Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
office- (239) 395-6773 fax- (239) 395-6779
mobile- (239) 699-0468
web- http://www.fairtest.org
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bless these people!!!! FairTest has been fighting the good fight on this for a long while now. Darkness, still, across the land. So little understanding of how invalid, unreliable, distorting of everything that happens in schools these tests are. They are not only purest pseduoscientific numerology. They are also a great evil. One day, people will look back on this standards [sic] and standardized testing [sic] era as an age of superstition and shake their heads that so many were duped and so many were harmed.
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So, these notes from FairTest: dispatches from the Dark Ages of American Education regarding those cracks that are beginning to let some light in.
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The Coring of the Six Hundred (with Apologies to Alfred,Lord Tennyson), here:
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I’m curious. Why is FairTest putting out news articles that are right-wing nonsense written by people who hate public schools and have no experience whatsoever with them? That’s true in at least one case, Virginia.
The linked article for Virginia was written by Joy Pullman, who writes at The Federalist and who masquerades as an education “expert” (Hint: she isn’t) at the right-wing Heartland Institute. Pullman graduated in 2009 from Hillsdale College, which bills itself as “America’s premier conservative college,” and insists in its required course on the Constitution that our founding document is under “assault” by “the Progressives.” Top constitutional “scholars” at Hillsdale signed a letter in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) decision that gay marriage will harm society, threaten the rights of traditonalists (i.e. “Christians”), and undermine self-government. The letter urged politicians to refuse to accept Obergefell.
Read the FairTest-linked article for Virginia. It’s basically a veneered version of “American public schools suck” and we need unrestricted vouchers.
Pullman is a piece of work To her, quoting the Declaration of Independence is “fundamentalist,” and God is in the First Amendment. She’s the kind of person who turns the violence in Charlottesville into an “equivalency” issue without ever mentioning anything at all about the racist symbolism of Confederate statues, or why the Southh seceded from the Union (slavery). According to Pullman, Christopher Columbus discovered America. And in U.S. public schools “American taxpayers are paying for our children to be taught to hate America, plain and simple.” She calls statements like this “the truth about history — the whole truth.”
And she complains that others don’l know history.
Now, I’m not sure how Pullman would know anything at all about what happens in public schools because she’s never, ever taught in one. And her “vision” of education is clouded – obscured – by her right-wing ideology.
Maybe someone at FairTest just collected news articles that dealt with testing. Okay.
But maybe someone at FairTest should be a bit more discerning too.
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Democracy: I bet that was an error. FairTest is strongly pro-public education.
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Oh, I don’t doubt that FairTest is pro-public education…..but assuredly, Joy Pullman is not.
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FaitTest is pro-public education. They cite articles from anyone who is anti-testing, even those who are not in agreement on other issues
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