PAA responds to President Obama’s letter on testing
On Monday, President Obama published an open letter to parents and teachers about testing.
The letter introduced his administration’s new Testing Action Plan which is supposed to fix the problems of excessive testing. The plan defines a set of testing principles for states and school districts to follow to make for “fewer and smarter” tests.
The President invited us to respond to this plan. We shared our response today (see below or download our letter here).
We agree with Diane Ravitch and the Network for Public Education that the plan is too little, too late.
The principles outlined in the plan leave out too many issues that parents care about including test bias, lack of transparency in the actual test questions, student data privacy, growing student test anxiety, etc.
We suspect that this letter is less an expression of shared parental concern and more a last-ditch effort to make sure that any revision of ESEA maintains an annual testing requirement.
You can add your thoughts to ours using the comment form link provided by the White House.
Parents Across America
Response to President Obama’s open letter to parents and teachers on testing
Parents unconvinced that new Obama Testing Action Plan will fix testing crisis
October 29, 2015
Dear President Obama,
Thank you for reaching out to parents and teachers on the important issue of testing in our schools.
As a network of public school parents of all backgrounds from around the U.S., Parents Across America (PAA) helps bring the voice of public school parents – and common sense – to local, state, and national education debates.
In this role, PAA has consistently raised concerns about the way standardized tests have taken over our schools, and we appreciate the fact that you took the time to raise some of these same concerns in your October 26 letter to parents and teachers. We would like to respond to points you raise in your letter, and then share some of our concerns about the limitations of the Testing Action Plan.
As parents, we especially appreciate the fact that you approach over-testing as a father, saying, “I certainly wouldn’t want that for my girls.” We feel the same way about our children. You and Secretary Duncan have been able to
- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/paa-responds-president-obamas-letter-testing/#sthash.7aJFLhIp.dpuf
