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The rich array of stories in this week's news clips -- online, in print, via video and audio -- reported from a third of U.S. states and around the world demonstrate the breadth, depth and impact of the assessment reform movement.

California Student Academic Performance Improved After State Backed Away From "Test-and-Punish"
https://edsource.org/2018/a-closer-look-at-californias-impressive-educat...

Colorado Feds Finally Approve State ESSA Plan After Language Changes Regarding Opt Outs

We hope you find these weekly news summaries useful in advancing your important work. You can help support the assessment reform movement financially by making a contribution at: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/fairtest or clicking:

It's peak testing season, with many problems regarding standardized exams -- both how they are administered and, more importantly, how their results are (mis)used -- reported around the country.  Fortunately, a growing movement of parents, students, educators and community leaders is pushing back: visits to FairTest's Opt-Out Guide (

In addition to lots of other testing news, several states that contract with Questar, a for-profit subsidiary of the Educational Testing Service, recently experienced significant disruptions of their computerized standardized exams.  In three -- New York, Ohio and Tennessee -- the entire assessment system crashed. The latest failures add to the evidence that corporate and ideological forces rushed these technologies into the marketplace before they were ready for prime time.  See FairTest's chronology of computer testing problems at:

With students taking annual standardized exams in schools across the U.S., there's a spate of stories about computerized testing breakdowns, assessment design flaws, and the educational damage from current policies. All this evidence will strengthen the movement seeking to replace testing overkill with better forms of assessment. Remember that back issues of these weekly news clips are archived at: http://fairtest.org/news

National Follow the Money: The Story Behind NAEP Score Patterns

For nearly two decades, proponents of test-and-punish policies have claimed that their strategies would lead to gains in overall academic performance and a narrowing of historic score gaps. But according to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores released today, no such trend has taken place. In fact, data support the opposite conclusion: NAEP score gains and achievement gap closing both have stagnated during the era that began with signing of the No Child Left Behind law in 2002. SAT and ACT results show a similar pattern.

April is the peak month for test-obsessed classrooms in many parts of the country -- simultaneously the opt-out movement and legislative assessment reform proposals are surging, as this week's rich collection of news clips demonstrates.

Entering the peak weeks of school testing season, pressure from students, educators and community leaders for genuine assessment reform is accelerating as more people recognize how much classroom learning time is undermined by standardized exam overkill. 

This week's wave of stories highlights the growing recognition that standardized exam scores are a poor way to measure progress of students, teachers or schools. That's a major reason why the assessment reform movement is rapidly expanding across the country.

Arkansas Even School "Reformers" Doubt Value of Test Scores as Measure of Success
https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2018/03/19/stop-the-press...

This week's news stories -- from a third of all U.S. states and around the world -- shows the growing impact of grassroots organizing to replace high-stakes exams with better types of assessments. Policy-makers are clearly beginning to heed the "Less Testing, More Learning" message: