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Building a Successful Assessment Reform Movement -- A Three-Part Series by FairTest

FairTest staff analyze the growing resistance to high-stakes tests and propose steps toward growing a larger, more effective movement. Part I discusses the need for over-arching strategies to guide the work. Part II explains why we need to push for authentic assessments. And Part III offers specific tactics activists can employ.

by Massachusetts Professors and Researchers

                            for further information:
                            Prof. Nancy Carlsson-Paige (617) 223-1396
                            Dr. Monty Neill  (617) 477-9792

View webinar on authentic performance assessment, featuring presenters from FairTest, Learning Record and NY Performance Standards Consortium.

High Quality Assessment for Instruction and Accountability
An FEA Webinar

FairTest, 12 other organizations, and prominent individuals have drafted the following a national Resolution on High-Stakes Testing. We call organizations and individuals to endorse it. We also encourage people to write letters and get organizations to endorse it; here are some tools you can use.

Nina  Bishop is asking parents  across the country to join her in  seeking redress from schools that bully children when parents opt them out of oppressive state testing.  Drawing on her own experience of the difficulties encountered when opting children out of the CSAP, a Colorado state test  instituted in compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, Bishop seeks protection under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution.

FairTest's Lisa Guisbond testified on graduation exams before the Rhode Island legislature. To read her testimony, which has many useful citations, see here.

IS AYP Dead? A Webinar.
The National Education Association and the Forum on Educational Accountability produced a webinar on November 29, 2011 for NEA members about waivers and the Senate HELP Committee reauthorization of ESEA. The webinar presented descriptive, factual information to the participants; it contains little analysis or comment. This version has a few additional or modified slides created by FairTest after the webinar was broadcast.

To: Joint Committee on Education, Hearing on Bills Related to Student Issues

From: Lisa Guisbond, Policy Analyst, 617-730-5445, Guisbond@mit.edu

Re: Written Testimony in Support of H177, H178, H1949, and S238.

Date: September 27, 2011

Dear Members of the Joint Committee on Education:

Testimony to Mass Board of Education against using
student scores to judge teachers.