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Big news this week: New York State, whose "Regents Exams" are often cited as a model for other state assessment programs, is rethinking its graduation test requrement.  With increasing grassroots pressure from parents, students, educators and community activists during the new school year, even more jurisdictions will roll back standardized exam misuse and overuse.

California Why IQ Tests Are Banned for Black Children Across the State

Believe it or not, a new public school year begins in less than two weeks in several states!  Fortunately, testing reformers have not been relaxing over the "summer vacation."  Parents, educators, students, and community activists are ready to promote better assessment systems and fight schemes to impose even more high-stakes standardized exams. Check out this week's news .  .  .

There's no "summer vacation" for assessment reformers -- in response to ongoing pressure from grassroots activists, more and more policymakers in many states are backing away from test-and-punish policies that undermine educational quality and equal opportunity. 

This week's edition is jam-packed with stories about both the flaws of relying on standardized exams to make high-stakes educational decisions as well as successful campaigns to roll back testing misuse and overuse.

If you find these updates helpful, note that FairTest has changed its online donation provider to PayPal, so that you can support our assessment reform leadership, including these news compilations, more easily and without any service charges.

With the Spring 2019 testing season over and classrooms closed for the summer, many education news stories are focusing on the misuse of standardized exam results to evaluate school and teacher quality.  It's great to see the increasing breadth of voices criticizing current test-driven policies

Please remember Deborah Meier's plea for donations to help FairTest take advantage of the changing climate by building more winning assessment reform campaigns for this fall.

As the last classrooms close for summer break, it's a good time to look back -- the past year has been among the best ever for the testing reform movement: more states eliminating exit exams; successful campaigns to rollback test-driven school grading schemes and the fastest ACT/SAT-optional growth rate in history.

Though most public schools across the U.S. have closed for the summer, there are still plenty of stories about effective campaigns to roll back standardized exam misuse and overuse. Encourage your friends and allies to sign up for these updates so they can receive important news and tools -

Along with this week's news about assessment reform progress, FairTest offers two freshly updated resources for activists to use in their local campaigns and journalists to reference for their reporting:
   - a chronology of computer testing problems
           https://www.fairtest.org/computerized-testing-problems-chronology
   - history of test design, administration, and scoring failures by Pearson, the world's largest testing company

Along with an ever-growing number of stories about successful assessment reform initiatives, we still see many disturbing reports of ongoing damage to students and educators from standardized exam misuse and overuse. Grassroots activists and their allies should feel free to contact FairTest for assistance with building winning local campaigns to replace testing overkill with authentic forms of assessment. 

Alabama Legislature Passes Grade Three Reading Retention Test Plan