Your voice can help make a difference! Use this letter to urge your Senators and Representative in the U.S. Congress to support a reduction in standardized testing to once each in elementary, middle and high schools, while ending punitive sanctions. The House and Senate education committees plan to start re-writing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as NCLB) by mid-February. You can strengthen your message by adding your own comments, such as your and your children’s personal experiences with overtesting.
Demonstrating another surge of support for assessment reform as the Spring 2015 testing season nears, this week's stories about the movement against standardized exam overuse and misuse come from more than 40% of the 50 states. The news is reinforced by several excellent analytic pieces and opinion columns (back issues of these weekly updates are archived at: http://fairtest.org/news/other)
Responding to pressure by the grassroots assessment reform movement (check out this week's stories from 22 states!), Congress finally takes up overhauling "No Child Left Behind" this month.
Now is the time to make your voice heard by contacting your U.S. Senators and Representative to support a significant reduction in federal testing requirements.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law in 2002, the latest version of the long-standing Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Its provisions, such as testing grades 3-8 annually in reading and math and punitive sanctions, took effect over the next several years. The law is seven years overdue for reauthorization by Congress, but this year both the House and Senate are showing renewed interest in voting for a new version.
As the national fight to end standardized exam overkill escalates nationally and victories continue to mount, FairTest was saddened to learn of the death of Mary Barr, a leader of the Learning Record, a pioneering model for high-quality assessment that does not rely on test scores (http://learningrecord.org/intro.html).
