Search Results for: node/virginia Schools

In 1996, the trustees of Muhlenberg College, a small, selective liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, voted unanimously to make the SAT and ACT an optional part of the school’s admissions policy for all applicants. Muhlenberg’s faculty had already voted overwhelmingly to end the standardized test score requirement and the president of the college was a […]

“Accountability” has become the fundamental tool for instituting changes in public schools. In most states and districts and through the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, accountability means using standardized test results to trigger labels, sanctions, rewards or interventions for districts, schools, educators or students.This approach has been both insufficient and has had undesirable […]

“Thrive Act” Before State Legislature Would Remove High-Stakes Consequences For further information contact: Harry Feder, FairTest,  harry@fairtest.org, 917-273-8939 Lisa Guisbond, Citizens for Public Schools, lisa.guisbond@gmail.com, 617-959-2371 for immediate release, Wednesday, April 18, 2023 The use of Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores to make critical decisions about students, schools, and school districts has had a […]

Articles and Research Reports on Testing “Accountability” Versus Science in the Bilingual Education Debate, by James Crawford Feature Articles from Language Policy Research Unit, AZ. State Univ., 2002 Assessments and Accountability, by Robert L. Linn for Educational Researcher Online. Questions regarding the impact, validity, and generalizability of reported gains, and the credibility of results in […]

Judith Browne Dianis, Rhonda Brownstein, Jessica Feierman, and Monty NeillPublished on Anthony Cody’s blog, Living in Dialogue, Nov. 7, 2013 (NOTE: For a print-formatted PDF of this post please click here.) Across the country, resistance is growing against public education’s increased dependence on high-stakes standardized testing and on exclusionary discipline, such as suspensions, expulsions, and […]

Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing To protest a system of cash rewards based on test scores, some elementary school teachers in Florida have turned down bonuses they were slated to receive as a result of their schools’ high performance on the state exam. Six teachers from Gulf Gate Elementary traveled six hours to return their […]

Status: Archived Subject: K-12 Testing FairTest Examiner, May 2010 U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has sent his “Blueprint” to Capitol Hill where Congressional committees are working on it in earnest, but most independent evaluators give Congress only a small chance of passing a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) this year. (The current version […]

The California Teachers Association adopted the following statement at the State Council meeting of March 24-25, 2001. This statement was the work of several Council committees and was adopted with the support of the executive officers. The three paragraphs of rationale are all based on existing CTA policy. The thirteen bullets lay out a legislative […]

Washington Post Op. Ed. — April 9, 2007by David Keyes Written five years ago to reduce the “achievement gap,” the No Child Left Behind Act has in fact created a gap in American education. Its pressure to raise test scores has caused many schools to give poor and minority students an impoverished education that focuses […]

The Case Against High Stakes Testing (Updated January 2017) These materials make the case against relying on test scores to make important educational decisions about students or schools – what is called “high-stakes testing.” Common examples include making a child repeat a grade or withholding a student’s high-school diploma solely based on their score on […]