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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

UPDATE: AFT’s Weingarten urges moratorium on high stakes linked to new standardized tests

AFT’s Weingarten urges moratorium on high stakes linked to new standardized tests:



AFT’s Weingarten urges moratorium on high stakes linked to new standardized tests


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Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, Tuesday called for a moratorium on the consequences of high-stakes testing because new standardized assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards are unfairly being given to students before teachers have had time to properly absorb and create curriculum around the standards.
Weingarten, in a speech sponsored by the Association for a Better New York, said that a survey of AFT members, the nation’s second largest teachers union, showed that 75 percent support the Common Core. But an equally large majority believe that implementation has been rushed. Yet students are already taking Core-aligned high-stakes exams.
She said:
When states and districts get the alignment right – moving from standards to curriculum to classrooms, to feedback and improvement—student success will follow. But until then, a moratorium on stakes is the only sensible course.
Some 45 states and the District of Columbia have approved the Common Core, a set of


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