news

Despite the Thanksgiving holiday, the assessment reform movement continued to keep the pressure on policy-makers across the nation. Even more protest activities are planned for next week's "Day of Action to Reclaim the Purpose of Public Education," which FairTest endorses.

Do these weekly news updates, fact sheets, and action alerts help your work?  Please make a year-end donation to support our capacity to produce these valuable materials.

Heading into the Thanksgiving weekend, testing resistance continued to explode around the nation. The movement to delay Common Core assessments is particularly aggressive in New York with actions by parents, teachers, students and administrators underway in an ever-increasing number of states.  Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan struggles to extract his basketball-sneaker-shod feet from his mouth after denigrating critics of standardized exam overkill. And, there's more evidence that test-optional admissions works well in higher education.

Week after week, the assessment reform movement gains in geographic breadth and grassroots depth.  This month, New York State is a major focal point for mass organizing but there's plenty going on in many other states even though the high-stakes-exam season is still months away in most states.  FairTest is getting ready for "Testing Reform Spring 2014," and you should be too!  Let us know how we can help.

The movement to replace high-stakes standardized exams with better forms of assessment picks up even more steam with huge protest events, growing opt-out campaigns, and ever more evidence that test-and-punish status quo "reform" policies are an abject failure.

Chicago Educators Launch "Let Us Teach" Campaign Against Standardized Testing
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/23598511-418/chicago-teachers-union-u...
Time to Dump Standardized Tests

Judith Browne Dianis, Rhonda Brownstein, Jessica Feierman, and Monty Neill
Published on Anthony Cody’s blog, Living in Dialogue, Nov. 7, 2013

(NOTE: For a print-formatted PDF of this post please click here.)

Another week of escalating assessment reform organizing and action around the country. Journalists, both local, regional and national, are hearing the movement's message and conveying it to even broader audiences!

New NAEP Scores Add to Evidence of Failed Test-and-Punish Policies
http://www.fairtest.org/fairtest-news-release-2013-naep-results-added-evid

What Happens When Parents Stand Up and Say "No" to Testing
http://www.alternet.org/education/what-happens-when-parents-stand-and-sa...

for further information:                                                                 
Dr. Monty Neill  (617) 477-9792                           

October 24, 2013
Senator John J. Flanagan, Chair
Committee on Education

RE: The Regents Reform Agenda: "Assessing" Our Progress Oral Testimony

Dear Chairman Flanagan and Members of the Committee:

Thank you. My name is Monty Neill and I am Executive Director of FairTest, the National
Center for Fair & Open Testing, headquartered in Boston. We are the nation’s sole organization
focused on assessment reform. We address a range of issues, including standardized test quality,

It's tempting to apologize for the growing length of the weekly newsclips list. Yet, these e-blasts accurately reflect what is going on around the country. Test resistance is exploding in literally dozens of states, including New Mexico, Oklahoma, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Rhode Island, Florida, Texas and Mississippi, just in the past week. Our allies now include parents, teachers, principals, superintendents, school board members,  researchers, children's book authors, and community activists among many, many others

What a week!  There's been so much coverage of the escalating movement against high-stakes that it's hard to keep up.  Just look at our growing list of allies in these news reports: parents, students, teachers, school administrators, academic testing experts, community activists, world famous authors, public officials, Republican lawmakers and even Zombies!

Famed Authors and Illustrators of Children's Books Call on Pres. Obama to Cut Back Testing