AFT Research is a Call-to-Action: Testing is Out of Hand, Costly.
Today the American Federation of Teachers published “Testing More, Teaching Less: What America’s Obssesion with Student Testing Costs in Money and Instructional Time.” It is an audit of the total time and money spent on testing and test-prep in two mid-sized districts called, for the study, “Midwest District” and “Eastern District” and it validates what every student and teacher knows, what parents are furious over, and what legislators are quickly catching on to: Americans are testing our children instead of teaching them.
The release of this study is also an exciting benchmark for me personally, as it the latest step in a collaborative labor of love spanning multiple states, both major teachers unions (AFT, and the larger National Education Association), policy-makers at every level, parents and students, and rank-and-file educators, all with the goal of getting transparency for taxpayers, stakeholders, and decision-makers who may often hear that ”we’re testing too much” but don’t quite know what it looks like. We started with the question, “Exactly how much of an impact is testing in our schools?”
At the 2012 American Federation of Teachers Convention, the Testing Cost Audit language (Resolution 5) was introduced from the floor of the convention, motivated by the Chicago Teacher Union. The language, adopted from the
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