Letter to the U.S. Senate Opposing High-Stakes Testing: Diane Ravitch's blog

Letter to the U.S. Senate Opposing High-Stakes Testing: Your Organization Should Sign Too | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Letter to the U.S. Senate Opposing High-Stakes Testing:

 Your Organization Should Sign Too |

From: The Network for Public Education

To: Members of the United States Senate

Re: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

To the Senate:

We, the below undersigned organizations oppose high-stakes testing, because we believe these tests are causing harm to students, to public schools, and to the cause of educational equity. High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent immigrants to this country.

We oppose high-stakes tests because:

• There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap”.
• High-stakes testing has become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.
• Many of these tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.
• High-stakes tests are being used as a political weapon to claim large numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and to fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.
• The alleged benefit of annual testing as mandated by No Child Left Behind was to unveil the achievement gaps, and by doing so, close them. Yet after more than a decade of high-stakes testing this has not happened. Instead, thousands of predominantly poor and minority neighborhood schools —the anchors of communities— have been closed.

As the Seattle NAACP recently stated, “Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants as lesser—while systematically underfunding their schools—has a long and ugly history. It is true we need accountability measures, but that should start with politicians being accountable to fully funding education and ending the opportunity gap. …The use of high-stakes tests has become part of the problem, rather than a solution.”

We agree.

Yours sincerely,

Network for Public Education

50th No More (Florida)
Action Now
Alaska NAACP

Alliance for Quality Education

Badass Teachers Association

Better Georgia
Chicago Teachers Union

Class Size Matters
Community Voices for Education

NE Indiana Friends of Public Ed

Defending the Early Years

Delaware PTA
EmpowerEd Georgia

FairTest

HispanEduca
Indiana PTA
Indiana State Teachers Association

Journey for Justice

More Than A Score
NE Indiana Friends of Public Ed

Newark Parents Union
Newark Students Union
NJ Teacher Activist Group
NY State Allies for Public Ed

Opt Out Orlando

Oregon NAACP
Parents Across America

Providence Students Union

Rethinking Schools
Save Our Schools March

Save Our Schools NJ

Seattle King County NAACP

Students United for Public Ed

Texas Kids Can’t Wait

The Coalition for Better Education

The Opt Out Florida Network

United Opt Out
Voices For Education (Arizona)

Washington State NAACP

We Are Camden
Young Teachers Collective

[Readers: If your organization wishes to add its name to this statement, please contact NPE executive director Robin Hiller at rhiller@voicesforeducation.org