Americans for Educational Testing Reform (AETR) has as its mission simply to repeal the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status granted to ETS, Collegeboard, and ACT, Inc.
Children are More than Test Scores is a blog run by teacher Jesse Turner, called the “Walking Man” due to his passionate trekking for children from Connecticut to Washington, DC in 2011, and for a myriad of other activist activities fighting for public schools. He is for those who are against No Child Left Behind and Race to the top and it is truly worth hearing him out.
Class Size Matters: A nonpartisan, nonprofit Clearinghouse for information on the proven benefits of smaller classes advocates for class size reduction in New York City, and the website provides information for all school districts. It is a non-profit, non-partisan organization “that provides information on the benefits of class size reduction to parents, teachers, and concerned citizens.” Executive Director, Leonie Haimson, has received numerous awards and has been presented in the media discussing this and other important issues relating to school reform. More recently the website has addressed the serious student privacy issues surrounding inBloom.
Coalition for Better Education (CBE) involves aspiring teachers from the University of Northern Colorado started CBE which now includes teachers, parents and students raising awareness about the costs of the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) and NCLB.
Critical Classrooms is a blog about testing in general and more specifically in New York City. Katie Lapham is an ESL teacher in Brooklyn who could no longer remain silent about the overuse and amount of time preparing for standardized testing and Common Core assessments. Her blog posts are interesting and provide a good sense of the problems surrounding high-stakes testing and how they affect children.
Fair Test: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing provides updated information concerning testing and educational issues. Special emphasis is placed on “eliminating the racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers to equal opportunity posed by standardized tests, and preventing their damage to the quality of education.” The testing concerns focus on technical assistance and advocacy on testing. The focus on technical assistance and advocacy on testing covers K-12, university admissions, and employment tests.
Opt Out Orlando works to assist parents in Florida to opt their children out of harmful high-stakes tests. The blogging on this site is excellent and full of valuable information. While it is an important website for Florida, it provides insight into the testing problems around the country. I like that they advocate for “multiple measures.” Here is the description of Opt Out Orlando taken from their site: “Opt Out Orlando advocates for multiple measures of authentic assessments, such as a portfolio, non-high stakes standardized tests (Iowa Test of Basic Standards (ITBS) or the Stanford Achievement Test(SAT10)), which are used to inform teachers’ instruction of their students and which do not result in punitive consequences for students, teachers and schools. Formal and informal, teacher-designed classroom assessments provide the best indicators of children’s progress, growth and mastery of concepts and skills. Opt Out Orlando rejects high stakes testing as meaningless and detrimental to the development of a creative, nurturing and supportive learning environment.”
United Opt Out National is a movement to end corporate education reform. Tired of watching your child be repeatedly tested? Sick of seeing high-stakes testing close public schools and destroy the careers of teachers? The goal is to encourage parents and educators to “opt out of high stakes testing and resist all market-based reforms seeking to privatize and destroy public education.” The organization provides a “Back to School Protest Pack” and additional resources. There are also “Opt Out Guides by State.” Check to see what your state is doing and how you can help with this important effort.
Moms Against Duncan
Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing
Testing is Not Teaching
Test Troublemakers
Reports
10 Strategies to Fight Mandatory Retention & Other Damaging Policies by Suzanne Health, Research Editor, Wrightslaw
Thinking About Tests and Testing: A Short Primer in “Assessment Literacy.” by Gerald W. Bracey
Film Documentary and YouTube Videos
Beyond Measure Challenges Americans to look beyond test scores at the students themselves. This is from the author of Race to Nowhere. By Vicki Abeles
Defies Measurement Is about the unique Chipman Middle School, closed after the implementation of NCLB. A variety of leading education experts discuss the problems involved with high stakes testing. By Shannon Puckett.
Race to Nowhere is a documentary that describes the troubled high-stakes testing emphasis in schools today. By Vicki Abeles
We’re Not Going to Take It–REFUSE TESTING by HomeschoolersRock1
Books
The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools
by Alfie Kohn
The Class Size Debate by Lawrence Mishel & Richard Rothstein-Editors
Caught in the Middle: Nonstandard Kids and a Killing Curriculum by Susan Ohanian
Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools by Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner
Educational Genocide: A Plague on Our Children by Horace (Rog) Lucido
Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right by Richard Rothstein
Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us by Daniel Koretz
The Mismeasure of Education by Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do by Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith, and Joan Harris
One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards by Susan Ohanian
Pencils Down: Rethinking High Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools Edited by Wayn Au and Melissa Bollow Tempel
The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards,” by Alfie Kohn
This is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and the Future of Education by José Luis Vilson
Standardized Minds:The High Price of America’s Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It by Peter Sacks
The Sum of Our Discontent: Why Numbers Make Us Irrational by David Boyle
The Truth About Testing: An Educator’s Call to Action by W. James Popham
My husband and I adopted our granddaughter when she was two. She is now 9 and we are 64 and 62. I am trying to understand how all of this testing and common core is going to affect her and us in the coming years. We absolutely cannot afford a private education. She reads to me each night and struggles with comprehension. Her teachers have been wonderful and I hate that teachers are being judged by test scores. There is no common sense in common core.