Resistance Guide: Organizing for Testing Reform
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Case Studies from the 2017 Test Reform Victories Report: How State and Local Testing Reform Activists Won Victories
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Here is a survey designed for unions to use, online or on paper, with their members; it can be adapted for use with parents. Surveys can be powerful tools to promote testing reform.
- National Resolution Against High-Stakes Testing – Use this resolution as a template to shape your own local or state resolution for use with schools boards, city councils, and organizations
- See our one page fact sheet, 8 Steps to Work for Testing Reform, HERE; and its companion infographic, HERE.
- Share information privately and in public; distribute fact sheets; write letters to the editor; use social media; hold rallies and demonstrations. Share information with parents, teachers, students, community members.
- Organize a community meeting or forum or houseparty. Community meetings and forums are powerful tools for educating, organizing and mobilizing parents, students, teachers and other community members.
- Opt your child out of testing (boycott). Opting Out is one of the most powerful expressions of opposition. For more information, click here
- Build alliances to other groups. Reach out to teacher unions and other education organizations; parent and student groups; community, civil rights and faith-based groups; labor unions; civic associations; business groups. Also see FairTest's Assessment Reform Network Pages for tips.
- Media.Use different forms of media to get the message out, build support, persuade policymakers. For ideas and assistance on media work, click HERE.
- Contact your state legislators and governor.
- What State Legislators Can Do to Advance Assessment Reform
- Talk to candidates for office - get to them when they are most likely to be listening.
- Support authentic assessment and accountability – To win change, activists must offer proposals for better assessment systems—systems that help improve teaching and learning instead of narrowing curriculum and punishing students, teachers and schools-- coupled with demands to end harmful practices. For ideas, examples, evidence, click HERE.
- University Admissions Reform. To find a list of colleges that have “test-score optional” admissions, plus other information on SAT, ACT and more, click here.
- Building a Stronger, More Effective Assessment Reform Movement under ESSA
- Testing Reform Victories 2015: Growing Grassroots Movement Rolls Back Testing Overkill
- The Testing Resistance and Reform Movement, Monthly Review
- The Testing Resistance and Reform Movement: A FairTest Report (2014)
- Testing Reform Victories: The First Wave (2014)
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Building a Successful Assessment Reform Movement -- A Three-Part Series by FairTest
More than 1080 four-year colleges and universities do not use the SAT or ACT to admit substantial numbers of bachelor-degree applicants.