high stakes

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND 10TH ANNIVERSARY REPORT

NCLB’s Lost Decade for Educational Progress:
What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure?

By Lisa Guisbond with Monty Neill and Bob Schaeffer
January 2012

The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law failed badly in terms of its own goals, leading to a decade of educational stagnation, according to FairTest’s report marking NCLB’s tenth anniversary.

Among the report’s major findings:

FairTest and five other organizations have issued a paper, Federal Policy, ESEA and the School to Prison Pipeline. It looks at testing, school climate and 'zero tolerance' discipline policies as causes of the Pipeline, and makes recommendations on assessment, accountability, discipline and student re-entry to schools.

Documents from a February 2009 conference on standardized testing in the
Americas, with representatives from 13 countries and 31 organizations, including
FairTest, sponsored by the Research Network
of the Initiative for Democratic Education in the Americas
(IDEA). A pdf of all the reports in
English and additional materials

FairTest and Advancement Project co-sponsored a webinar on testing, discipline
and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Check out the powerpoint presentation from the webinar here.

Watch a film of the Webinar here.

(note: this fact sheet is available for download as a print-formatted PDF file)

States and districts should not bar students from graduating based solely on standardized test scores. The Standards on Educational and Psychological Testing of the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association and National Council on Measurement in Education states that a major decision about a student should not be made "on the basis of a single test score." Dozens of educational and civil rights organizations join FairTest in endorsing this basic principle and opposing high-stakes graduation exams.

FairTest's Monty Neill presented invited testimony on
graduation tests and alternatives to the Maryland Board of Education. The letter also appears attached at the bottom as a formatted PDF:

October 21, 2008

James DeGraffenreidt, Chair
Members of the State Board of Education
200 West Baltimore Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Copies sent by regular mail and e-mail

Dear Chairman DeGraffenreidt and Members of the Maryland Board of Education,