High Stakes Testing

For public school children, it has been a long spring, shaped far too much by mandated testing. And the testing is not over.

If we believe that education is "the next great civil rights issue of our time," then we ought to be enabling the 'human capital' now in the profession to succeed (while weeding out those who, after help, cannot cut the mustard).

The errors on New York's state exams just keep mounting. Foreign language versions of the state math exams administered to third through eighth gra...

For the past decade or so, numerous "conservatives" have chosen big bureaucracy over smaller, local government when crafting education policy. As the price of this choice becomes clearer, perhaps some on the right will change their minds.

As Texas students started taking a new state-mandated test this week, districts across the state have gradually signed on to a resolution that says hi...

Let's get back to the core purpose of public education -- ensuring students have access to a great education that prepares them for lifelong learning and success -- and leave the pressure cooker for pot roasts.

This piece comes to us courtesy of New Haven Independent. As anxiety rippled through the hallways in anticipation of the high-stakes Connecticut Ma...

How do we allow our children to take part in a system imposed by political operatives, lobbyists, and think tanks that only want to get at the money tied up in public schools and declare the public system a failure?

Parents are the only ones with the power to stop high stakes testing and take our schools back from the corporate reformers.

How do teachers resist the culture of high stakes testing and the continued participation in a system that is clearly not pedagogically sound and is purposively destructive to children, teachers, schools and communities?

What happens in the NYC school system has national implications because the city has been a testing ground for so-called new reforms. It is important for the nation to know that this past year was a very disillusioning one.

Richard Hyde, the investigator behind the July bombshell report of extensive teacher cheating in Atlanta's schools, expects to have the next installme...

On Saturday, thousands of educators and parents rallied at the grassroots Save Our Schools March on Washington, D.C. Education heavyweights all took the microphone, but it was Matt Damon whose closing speech brought down the house.

As a teacher, I know what good education looks like. Unfortunately, good education has not resulted from the federal education policy of today and teachers can stay silent no longer.

In a warped sense, educators in places where testing "improprieties" took place should be thanked. They revealed the one thing education reformers fear most -- the system being used to dismantle public schools has an Achilles' heel.

If rewards are conditioned on giving "right" answers, children will indeed work hard to figure out what the adult will accept as the "right" answer.

If teaching in China taught me anything, it taught me to be very skeptical of high stakes testing. It distorts curricula, makes teaching a chore, and favors the rich.

Schools are reluctant and even misleading when it comes to informing parents they can simply opt of standardized testing.

High-stakes testing is on the rise. Since it works so well, why not export it to other parts of American life... like marriage?

Of course, if the "school reform" mania reaches higher education, then the next step in the destruction of public education will be to tie funding to college graduation rates.

Since Mayor Daley took control of Chicago schools and began appointing business-minded CEOs to head the system, the march toward a numbers-driven vision of education has been steady.

In a world of high-stakes measures, this one really takes the cake. Until this week, an elementary school has been using students' Body Mass Index measurements as part of their physical fitness grades.

The corporate community and most venture philanthropists, persist in thinking schools should be run like businesses. This time around though, instead of the factory model school, they have bequeathed us the latest business fads.