Normally, FairTest sends out these news clips summaries once a week, early each Tuesday afternoon. With school standardized exam season now in full gear, however, the flow of stories about testing resistance and reform actions is accelerating rapidly. This special edition -- with updates from more than half the 50 states over just three days -- reports on the first, too-modest steps by policy makers across the U.S. to respond to the growing grassroots pressure for assessment reform.
Resistance to the overuse and misuse of standardized tests is expanding rapidly across the nation (Guisbond, 2014). The movement’s goals are to roll back testing overkill, eliminate damaging high stakes, and create an assessment system that supports teaching and learning while providing useful information to parents, communities and states. Some states have responded to the uprising by temporarily pausing some sanctions for teachers and schools.
The new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) does not require states to have educator evaluation systems. If a state chooses to do so, it does not have to include student test scores.To win federal Race to the Top grants or waivers from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), most states adopted teacher and principal evaluation systems based heavily on student test scores. Many educators have resisted these unproven policies.
If the issues were not so serious, watching test-and-punish advocates backpedal in the face of the rapidly growing testing resistance movement would be great entertainment. From U.S.
