NEA Representative Assembly to Vote to End ‘Toxic Testing’
By Cindy Long and Sara Robertson
The National Education Association will launch a national campaign to put the focus of assessments and accountability back on student learning and end the “test blame and punish” system that has dominated public eduction in the last decade. If the 9,000 NEA delegates at the organization’s Representative Assembly vote to pass the measure at its annual meeting later this week, the campaign will among other things seek to end the abuse and overuse of high stakes standardized tests and reduce the amount of student and instructional time consumed by them.The anti-toxic testing measure would also call for governmental oversight of the powerful testing industry with the creation of a “testing ombudsman” by the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Consumer Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission. The position will serve as a watchdog over the influential testing industry and monitor testing companies’ impact on education legislation. NEA would continue to push the president and Congress to completely overhaul ESEA and end mandates that require yearly testing, and to lift mandates requiring states to administer outdated tests that aren’t aligned to school curricula.
“It’s past time for politicans to turn their eyes and ears away from those who profit from over-testing our students and listen instead to those who know what works in the classroom,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel.
The new measure comes at a time when parents around the country are also fed up with the testing obsession. Opting-out protests have taken place in Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Maryland,Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Alabama and other states. Grassroots parent movements say they will protest until overtesting is curbed.
David Valdes Greenwood is a Massachusetts parent of a third-grader. He says his daughter Lily has been stressed about tests since kindergarten.
“The kids pay a very high price. It chips away at their sense of selves as learners from a young age; telling NEA Representative Assembly to Vote to End ‘Toxic Testing’ | NEA Today: