Popular Fact Sheets
- Opting Out of State Testing: Information for Parents and Students
- Interim, Formative and Through-Year Assessments: Keeping Assessments Authentic and Useful
- What’s Wrong With Standardized Tests?
- Summary of Graduation Requirements
- How Standardized Testing Damages Education
- Common Core Assessment Myths and Realities: Moratorium Needed From More Tests, Costs, Stress
- How Testing Feeds the School-to-Prison Pipeline
- A Better Way to Evaluate Schools (PDF)
- Multiple-Choice Tests
- Criterion- and Standards- Referenced Tests
- Norm-Referenced Achievement Tests
- Why You Can Boycott Standardized Tests Without Fear of Federal Penalties to Your School (Updated February 2018)
- For more details, see “Federal Law and Regulations on Opting Out Under ESSA (Updated February 2018)“
- Fighting for Assessment Reform under ESSA
Resistance
- Opting Out of State Testing: Information for Parents and Students
- Just Say No to the Test (Opting Out) (Updated April 2018)
- More than 670,000 Refused Tests in 2015
- Fighting for Assessment Reform under ESSA
- What State Legislators Can Do to Advance Assessment Reform
- Time for a Real Testing Moratorium
- Why You Can Boycott Standardized Tests Without Fear of Federal Penalties to Your School (Updated February 2018)
- For more details, see “Federal Law and Regulations on Opting Out Under ESSA. (Updated February 2018)“
- National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing
- Eight Steps to Work for Testing Reform Fact Sheet
- How to Use the Freedom of Information Act
- See also FairTest’s page on how to “Get involved”
Authentic and Performance Assessment
- Interim, Formative and Through-Year Assessments: Keeping Assessments Authentic and Useful
- Overhauling Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning: New Opportunities under the Every Student Succeeds Act
- Multiple Measures: A Definition and Examples from the U.S. and Other Nations
- Position Paper on Assessment for Learning
- The Value of Formative Assessment
- A Better Way to Evaluate Schools (PDF)
- New York Performance Standards Consortium Fact Sheet (Updated March 2018)
- Authentic Accountability
- See also FairTest’s pages on Authentic Assessment and Authentic Accountability
Testing Problems and Consequences
- What’s Wrong With Standardized Tests?
- Standardized Testing and Young Children
- Standardized Testing and Students with Disabilities
- Computerized Testing Problems – A Chronology (Updated June 2017)
- Also available as PDF
- “How high-stakes standardized testing is harming our children’s mental health” by Parents Across America
- Common Core Assessment Myths and Realities: Moratorium Needed From More Tests, Costs, Stress
- Personalized Learning or Continuous Online Testing? (December 2016)
- How Standardized Testing Damages Education (Updated July 2012)
- Tests, Cheating and Educational Corruption
- 60+ Ways Schools “Cheat” on Testing
- Racial Justice and Standardized Educational Testing
- How Testing Feeds the School-to-Prison Pipeline
- The Dangerous Consequences of High-Stakes Standardized Testing
- The Limits of Standardized Tests for Diagnosing and Assisting Student Learning
- The Testing Explosion
- See also FairTest’s page on High Stakes Testing
Graduation, Grade Retention and Tracking
- Summary of Graduation Requirements
- Graduation Test Update: States That Recently Eliminated or Scaled Back High School Exit Exams (Updated December 2022)
- What’s Wrong with Graduation and Promotion Tests
- Time to Abolish High School Graduation Tests (Updated August 2018)
- Why Graduation Tests/Exit Exams Fail to Add Value to High School Diplomas
- Testing and Grade Retention
- The Proper Use of End-of-Course Exams in Determining High School Graduation
- See also FairTest’s page on High Stakes Testing
Kinds of tests
- Multiple-Choice Tests
- Computerized Testing: More Questions than Answers
- Criterion- and Standards- Referenced Tests
- Norm-Referenced Achievement Tests
- Achievement Tests for Young Children
- Readiness Tests
- Second Grade Testing: A Position Paper
- Standardized Testing and Young Children
- Standardized Testing and Students with Disabilities
Teacher and Principal Evaluation
- Why Teacher Evaluation Shouldn’t Rest on Student Test Scores
- Paying Teachers for Student Test Scores Damages Schools and Undermines Learning
Federal Law: ESSA/ESEA
- Overhauling Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning: New Opportunities under the Every Student Succeeds Act
- The New Federal Education Law: A Basis for a Stronger Testing Resistance and Assessment Reform Movement
- Fighting for Assessment Reform under ESSA (October 2016)
- FEA Recommendations for ESEA on Assessment, Accountability and School Improvement, Jan. 2015
- Recommendations for Overhauling ESEA/NCLB
- See also FairTest’s page on National Testing
FairTest Reports
- 2024: Promoting Equity and Excellence Through Performance-Based Assessments: Key Impressions From NEA and FairTest’s Spring 2023 Convening
- 2023: Innovative Educational Assessments that Support Deeper Learning
- 2018: State ESSA Plans: Uneven Progress Toward Better Assessment and Accountability
- 2017: FairTest Report: Test Reform Victories Surge in 2017: What’s Behind the Winning Strategies?
- 2016: Assessment Matters: Constructing Model State Systems to Replace Testing Overkill
- 2015: Testing Reform Victories 2015: Growing Grassroots Movement Rolls Back Testing Overkill
- 2014: The Testing Resistance and Reform Movement: A FairTest Report (2014)
- 2014: Testing Reform Victories: The First Wave (Fall 2014)
- 2013: The Spring 2013 Testing Reform Uprising
- NCLB’s Lost Decade: A Report On the 10th Anniversary of NCLB
- Failing Our Children: How “No Child Left Behind” Undermines Quality and Equity in Education
- Principles and Indicators for Student Assessment Systems