Peg with Pen: No Victory

Peg with Pen: No Victory:

No Victory

There is no victory here. Obama's administration suddenly does not care about our children. King doesn't suddenly care either. These folks and their corporate cronies have been pummeling our public schools for how many years now and suddenly - now suddenly - they are listening and here to save the day? NO. As Morna McDermott (UOO admin) says - the folks who have been destroying you suddenly do not come up with a solution to save you. NO. Do not fall for the latest "testing action plan" from the US Dept of Ed. Arne is gone and now King (CHARTER SCHOOL KING???) is going to make things right? HELL NO. Not happenin'. They plan to roll out testing that is competency based - tied to ourcurriculum - impossible to opt out of - online - seamless - with no end of year test necessary. No victory. None. Peg with Pen: No Victory:

I Wonder

Working in a district that is under “accreditation watch” while also working in one of the district’s “turnaround” schools brings intense stress and high stakes mandates everywhere you turn.

I wonder if folks understand what it’s like to feel guilty about asking your school to purchase you a trashcan? Or – being told there are certain resources you need – but knowing there is no money to buy them.

I wonder if folks understand what it’s like to teach reading (as a reading interventionist) to vulnerable children who have attended under-resourced schools FOR YEARS and having to pick and choose which of those vulnerable children gets support? Can you imagine the guilt?

I wonder if folks understand what it’s like to know EXACTLY WHAT STUDENTS NEED and to be told again and again that your root cause is not following the standards – or some other lame excuse that ignores poverty, high class size, and under-resourced buildings. Having taught in wealthy schools and under-resourced and high poverty schools and knowing what this looks like/sounds like, I wonder if folks truly understand what it means to teach reading to children with books galore in their homes versus children who have no books, no computers, and also speak a second language – I wonder if folks really understand what teaching reading looks like in those two situations – I wonder if they understand what is ultimately required of teachers in urban diverse schools in terms of pedagogy, scaffolding I Wonder

Special Banana Break - Everybody Be All Testy: A Day in Memes

Everybody Be All Testy: A Day in Memes 

Obama wants students to stop taking unnecessary tests | 89.3 KPCC

Obama wants students to stop taking unnecessary tests | 89.3 KPCC:
Obama wants students to stop taking unnecessary tests

Today, President Obama and the Department of Education released a Testing Action Plan, calling on states to cut back on "unnecessary testing" that consumes "too much instructional time" and creates "undue stress for educators and students."

In a video posted on Facebook, President Obama added, "I hear from parents who rightly worry about too much testing, and from teachers who feel so much pressure to teach to a test that it takes the joy out of teaching and learning both for them and for the students. I want to fix that."

The administration used the moment to acknowledge its own role in the proliferation of burdensome standardized tests. In fact, the Education Department's plan uses the word "burden" eight times and says, "we have not provided clear enough assistance for how to thoughtfully approach testing and assessment."

The federal government's power to reduce or cap testing is limited, however, and the President has made clear he has no intention of scaling back the current federal requirement that all students, from grades 3 through 8, be tested annually in math and reading and that students between grades 10 and 12 be tested at least once. Indeed, Congress seems to agree with Obama on the importance of these once-a-year tests. Both House and Senate draft updates to the main federal education lawpreserve the testing mandate.

Those federally-required tests make up a small share of the tests U.S. students take each year. A just-released survey by the Council of Great City Schools found that also contributing to the "burden of testing" is a laundry list of formative, benchmark, diagnostic, and practice tests required at the state and district level. According to the survey, the average student will take 112 standardized tests between preschool and high school graduation, spending as much as 25 hours a year testing.

Here are a few more headlines from the administration's Testing Action Plan:

Two Percent Cap: The administration recommends capping at two percent the amount of classroom time students spend taking required, statewide standardized tests. It also suggests schools be required to send parents written notice if students exceed this cap and to post an action plan "to describe the steps the state will take to Obama wants students to stop taking unnecessary tests | 89.3 KPCC:

CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Recycled Empty Course Change on Testing

CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Recycled Empty Course Change on Testing:

USED: Recycled Empty Course Change on Testing

Remember that theoretical problem where someone keeps moving half the distance to a point, and how that means they'll never actually get there? Well, today Arne Duncan once again moved half the distance to the point at which he will someday theoretically accept responsibility for the administrations failed education policies and then actually do something about them.

Duncan issued a statement about testing, and I'd like to be excited that he almost admitted culpability in the Great Testing Circus while stating some actual policy changes to address the problem. But he didn't get there, and I've seen the Duncan "I'll Kind of Say the Right Thing Almost and Then Go On Acting As If I Haven't Said Anything At All" show far too many times.

So what did Duncan actually say, according to the New York Times? 

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

Get that? It's a "problem in implementation." It's not a policy that's Just Plain Wrong. It's not a flat out mistake to demand that all states make Big Standardized Test results part of teacher evaluation or of rating and ranking schools. It's not educational malpractice to use the force of law-ish regulations to force states to use these unproven BS Tests.

No, it's just a "problem in implementation." The policy of using tests to measure, evaluate and rank everything in education-- that's still great policy, apparently.

In fact, if this all seems vague4ly familiar, it's because we did this at almost exactly the same time last year. CCSSO and the CGCS announced that it was time to rein in the testing juggernaut. They CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Recycled Empty Course Change on Testing:

Confirmed: Standardized testing has taken over our schools. But who’s to blame? - The Washington Post

Confirmed: Standardized testing has taken over our schools. But who’s to blame? - The Washington Post:

Confirmed: Standardized testing has taken over our schools. But who’s to blame?

Who’s to blame?

A new two-year study on testing in U.S. big-city public schools reveals what many students, parents and teachers have been screaming about for years: Kids take too many mandated standardized tests. What’s more, there is no evidence that adding testing time improves student achievement, it says.

The average student in America’s big-city public schools takes some 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of 12th grade — an average of about eight a year, the study says. That eats up between 20 and 25 hours every school year, the study says. As for the results, they often overlap. On top of all that are teacher-written tests, sometimes taken by students along with standardized tests in the very same subject.

[Five reasons standardized testing isn’t likely to let up]

In 66 school systems studied by the Council of the Great City Schools, a  nonprofit organization that represents the largest urban public school systems in the country, students in the 2014-15 school year sat over 6,500 times for tests, taking tests with 401 different titles. (See all the major findings below.)

High-stakes standardized testing has become a hallmark of modern school reform for well over a dozen years, starting with the use of these exams in the 2002 No Child Left Behind law to hold schools “accountable.” The stakes for these exams were increased with President Obama’s $4.3 billion Race to the Top funding competition, in which states could win federal education funding by promising to undertake specific reforms — including evaluating teachers by test scores and adopting “common standards.”

In early 2012, Robert Scott, a Republican who was then the commissioner of education in Texas, rocked the education reform world when he declared that school accountability systems based on high-stakes standardized tests  had led to a “perversion” of what a quality education should be and he called “the assessment and accountability regime” not only “a cottage industry but a military-industrial complex.”

The new study, which looks at the testing practices of the big-city school systems, was ordered by the council’s board of directors in 2013 amid protests about the exams, which led to a national “opt-out” movement in which students refused to take standardized tests. The Common Core State Standards initiative — with new federally funded tests — only fueled the protests, which included teachers refusing to administer the tests and superintendents calling for a change in their states’ testing requirements.

The anti-testing rebellion became so loud that even some of the strongest proponents of testing started to say it was time to scale back on the number of assessments students must take. In August 2014, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said finally that he “shared” teachers’ concerns about too much standardized testing and test prep, and that he believed “testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools.”

This past spring, 20 percent of students in New York state opted out of mandated standardized tests, the scores of which are used to evaluate teachers through highly controversial assessment methods.

Stacie Starr — a ninth grade intervention specialist in Ohio who was selectedConfirmed: Standardized testing has taken over our schools. But who’s to blame? - The Washington Post:

BATs Respond to Obama Administration Announcement on Over Testing - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

BATs Respond to Obama Administration Announcement  on Over Testing

Today the  Obama  “administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.”  The Badass Teachers Association, an education activist organization with over 70,000 supporters nationwide, are reluctantly pleased with this announcement. Our vision statement has always been to refuse to accept assessments, tests and evaluations created and imposed by corporate driven entities that have contempt for authentic teaching and learning. Our goals have always been to reduce or eliminate the use of high stakes testing, increase teacher autonomy in the classroom, and include teacher and family voices in legislative decision-making processes that affect students.

Since No Child Left Behind and Race to The Top we have seen our children and communities of color bear the brunt of the the test obsession that has come in with the wave of Corporate Education Reform. When resources should have been to focus on funding and programming, politicians and policy makers were focusing on making children take more tests in hopes that equity in education would occur. It didn’t work and it will not work. We know as educators you cannot test your way out of the education and opportunity gap. The blame and punish test agenda has not closed either the education or opportunity gap . We are reluctantly pleased that the President and his administration are finally taking a stand but sadly the devastation has already been done.  We are confident that if the President and his administration make a commitment to work with educators, parents, and students we can fix it and make it right.

“Although this is a step in the right direction I feel we need to see what the policy is before we count this as a win. Given his actions in New York, I have no reason to trust John King and I'm concerned that this is a ploy to get teachers on the side of Democrats aka Hillary Clinton.” – BAT Board of Director Member Dr. Denisha Jones

“The policy that stems off of this statement needs to be mindful that important discussions about exactly what kind of testing is most beneficial to our students. BATS advocates for teacher driven tests with immediate and relevant feedback that can be used to drive current instructional practices.” – BAT Assistant Executive Director Melissa Tomlinson

“The policies of Sec. Duncan and the USDOE  have caused an immense amount of damage to our educational system, student morale, and teacher morale.  I am very reluctant to be happy about this announcement and will watch closely as to what the President plans to do to fix the damage that has been done.  Will he stand up to Corporate Education Reform?  Will he end the test, blame, punish system for schools, students, and teachers? Will he return the elected school board?  Will be end mass school closings?”  – BAT Executive Director Marla Kilfoyle

The Badass Teachers Association would like to extend its voice and expertise to help get public education on the right track. Together we can work towards the real solutions that will make great schools for all children. We will be watching closely as this unfolds.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 24, 2015

More information contact:

Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director BATs or Melissa Tomlinson, Asst. Executive Director BATs

Contact.BATmanager@gmail.com

Badass Teachers Association:

AFT's Weingarten on the US Education Department's 'Testing Action Plan' | American Federation of Teachers

AFT's Weingarten on the US Education Department's 'Testing Action Plan' | American Federation of Teachers:
AFT's Weingarten on the US Education Department's 'Testing Action Plan'

WASHINGTON—Statement from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on the U.S. Department of Education's "Testing Action Plan."

"The president and the Department of Education have just proven that advocacy based on evidence works. The fixation on high-stakes testing hasn't moved the needle on student achievement. Testing should help inform instruction, not drive instruction. We need to get back to focusing on the whole child—teaching our kids how to build relationships, how to be resilient and how to think critically. We need to celebrate improvement and the joy of learning, not sanction based on high-stakes standardized tests. So it's a big deal that the president and the secretaries of education—both current and future—are saying that they get it and are pledging to address the fixation on testing in tangible ways. Yes, the devil is in the details, but today it's clear: Parents, students and educators, your voice matters and you were heard.

"This is common sense. It's why overwhelming numbers of Americans think there is too much testing, as seen in the recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, and it's why legislators on both sides of the aisle want to fix No Child Left Behind, a law that drove overtesting. The time to act is now."

# # # #

The AFT represents 1.6 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

- See more at: http://www.aft.org/press-release/afts-weingarten-us-education-departments-testing-action-plan#sthash.vDoPLEpL.dpuf

Watch “Education, Inc.” on Sunday | Diane Ravitch's blog

Watch “Education, Inc.” on Sunday | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Watch “Education, Inc.” on Sunday

Brian Malone created a powerful documentary about the corporate assault on public education, called “Education Inc.”

It will be shown Sunday:

Education, Inc.
Premiers Sunday, October 25, 2015 6pm
FreeSpeech TV (Check local listings)
or stream it live here:
https://www.freespeech.org

followed by:
Education Inc. Roundtable, 7pm 

Watch “Education, Inc.” on Sunday | Diane Ravitch's blog:

On Twitter: Education Inc. (@edincmovie) | Twitter http://bit.ly/1XqiSF2

On FaceBook: Education, Inc. http://on.fb.me/1Xqj5rQ

Web Site: Education, Inc http://bit.ly/1XqjdHT

Perdido Street School: Don't Believe The Obama Administration Jive On Capping Testing Time

Perdido Street School: Don't Believe The Obama Administration Jive On Capping Testing Time:

Don't Believe The Obama Administration Jive On Capping Testing Time

From the "We caused it - now we're trying to walk it back without really walking it back" file:

Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.

“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has said he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

So long as teachers and schools are rated based upon test scores, the "cap" on testing time the Obama administration educrats talk about is meaningless.

In New York State, teachers currently have 20% of their ratings based upon state test scores (even if they don't teach classes that end with state tests) and 20% based upon so-called "local assessment" measures that may be state test data crunched a different way.

Last spring Governor "I want to break the public school monopoly" Cuomo shoved through a reiteration of the evaluation system tied to school funding that increases the weight of state test scores to 50% because not enough Perdido Street School: Don't Believe The Obama Administration Jive On Capping Testing Time:

Watch administration twist themselves in knots. | @ THE CHALKFACE

Watch administration twist themselves in knots. | @ THE CHALKFACE:

Watch administration twist themselves in knots

One of the cheapest and least effective interventions in struggling public schools is to require teachers to hang very specific items on their walls. From a teaching standpoint, these interventions do nothing for students, especially in the early elementary grades when students can neither read nor process most of the mandatory items hanging on walls. Things like data walls, detailed objectives, standards based bulletin boards, and other measures of “conformity” do not improve practice. I can’t think of any instance where they have actually improved practice or student outcomes.

Can you?

Teachers must inevitably rob Peter to pay Paul; that is, time must be taken away from one thing to accommodate another. A teacher will be less likely to find trouble if they rob from their practice than they will if they ignore a mandated display. You can be sure that an administrator or other official will be around to make those “environment checks” before they’ll have the time to spend more than five minutes in your room to check on your teaching.

Mandatory wall hangings are not for students, they’re for the hit and run clipboard crowd. You know the types. They sometimes come in groups, stare at the walls for a few moments in stone silence, maybe check Watch administration twist themselves in knots. | @ THE CHALKFACE:

Panel re-doing illegal charter school evaluations is meeting in private | cleveland.com

Panel re-doing illegal charter school evaluations is meeting in private | cleveland.com:

Panel re-doing illegal charter school evaluations is meeting in private

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Discussion of how to re-do the state's illegal evaluations of charter school oversight agencies isn't open to the public.

That's because the Ohio Department of Education and Superintendent Richard Ross consider those discussions "internal" and not subject to state open meetings laws.

That doesn't sit well with some state school board members, like Mary Rose Oakar of Cleveland.

"Can you tell me why they are not open?" Oakar asked at this week's board meeting. "What's the big secret?"

Ross named a three-person panel in August to help it create a new system to evaluate charter oversight agencies, known as "sponsors" or "authorizers," after having to throw out evaluations it completed earlier this year.

David Hansen, the state's school choice director and husband of Gov. John Kasich's campaign director, had deliberately left F grades for online charter schools out of the evaluations. That was a violation of state law, according to state school board members.

Hansen resigned July 18 and the state now has to recalculate ratings that were meant to be the cornerstone of Gov. John Kasich and the state's roundabout plan to improve Ohio's charter schools.

The Plain Dealer requested a meeting schedule for that panel at the September school board meeting , but ODE did not respond until the following week – after the panel had already met again. 

"The panel that is meeting is not a public body that requires a public meeting notice – it is an internal meeting," ODE spokesperson Kim Norris replied. "Therefore, it does not require a public meeting notice."

Oakar disagreed at the board's meeting this week.

"If it's such a great idea - and you know it (the rating plan) was controversial to begin with - they should be open meetings so people can know what you're talking about," she said.

Board President Tom Gunlock said that the department has to perform many administrative functions and needs to be able to meet and discuss issues without having to give public notice every time. Otherwise, nothing would ever be accomplished, he said.

Should these meetings be open? Tell us below.

Board attorney Diane Lease also said that if enough board members attend, without it being posted as a board meeting, that would violate state open meetings laws.

But others disagreed and said board members attending to observe, not participate, would not violate the law.

Ross and ODE have also promised to update the board on the panel's recommendationPanel re-doing illegal charter school evaluations is meeting in private | cleveland.com:

Obama Administration Calls for Limits on Testing in Schools - The New York Times

Obama Administration Calls for Limits on Testing in Schools - The New York Times:
Obama Administration Calls for Limits on Testing in Schools

Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.

Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.

“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has said he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

Teachers’ unions, which had led the opposition on the left to the amount of testing, declared the reversal of sorts a victory. “Parents, students, educators, your voice matters and was heard,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

And even some proponents of newer, tougher tests said they appreciated the administration’s acknowledgment that it had helped create the problem, saying it had done particular damage by encouraging states to evaluate teachers in part on test scores.

But the administration’s so-called “testing action plan” — which guides Obama Administration Calls for Limits on Testing in Schools - The New York Times:

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Russ on Reading: Should Reading Be Taught in Kindergarten?

Russ on Reading: Should Reading Be Taught in Kindergarten?:

Should Reading Be Taught in Kindergarten?

In a rather snarky post in the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Flypaper blog last week, literacy expert and professor emeritus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Tim Shanahan, mocked a recent article in The Atlantic, by Tim Walker, entitled "The Joyful Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland." The Atlantic article reports on the play oriented kindergarten practices of Finland.

In response Shanahan says essentially, "We're not Finland!" Personally, I am glad to hear this in a blog from the conservative Fordham Institute, since our failure to match Finland's (and other places like Singapore, Japan and Lichtenstein) performance on international tests like PISA has been a chief driver behind the education reform movement.

The United States is different from Finland, of course. Finnish children are much less likely to be poor and are much more likely to be raised in a household with two college graduates. Finnish kindergartners also learn to read in a language that is far easier to decode than English.. But five-year-olds in Finland are not developmentally that much different from five-year-olds in the US. Five-year-olds around the world learn best through structured play. As Mr. Rogers said long ago, "Play is really the work of childhood."

Shanahan says he has read the research and that to argue that literacy should not be taught in kindergarten is a claim you can make "only if you Russ on Reading: Should Reading Be Taught in Kindergarten?:

FL high stakes & the resignation of teacher Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D. | The Edvocate Blog

FL high stakes & the resignation of teacher Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D. | The Edvocate Blog:

FL high stakes & the resignation of teacher Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D.

Privatizing public education is a cruel and dishonest process. Despite 17 years of Florida “education reform,” teachers continue to stand on the front line to be there for our children.  They know hearts have been breaking for years in Florida classrooms. Far too many children are losing hope wondering if they’ll ever measure up to the state’s arbitrary and final high-stakes yardstick of success.

All of this wears on the heart and conscience of teachers who feel a moral obligation to their students.  It’s incredibly painful for teachers to watch the Florida A-F Accountability scheme destroy their profession. Politicians claim to prize “effective teachers,” but their disrespectful reforms drive the best teachers away in frightening numbers.

Florida lost one of those teachers this week. Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D., tendered her resignation to the Polk County School Board. Her poignant, wise words say everything about the failure of high stakes school “reform.” Florida legislators, Governor Scott, the Board of Education, school “reform” lobbyists and foundations preside over a shameful mess today. The loss of teachers like Dr. Bradshaw is on them.  The removal of these people from office is on us.

Please read and share. Our public school children cannot afford a loss like this.

To: The School Board of Polk County, Florida

I love teaching. I love seeing my students’ eyes light up when they grasp a new concept and their bodies straighten with pride and satisfaction when they persevere and accomplish a personal goal. I love watching them practice being good citizens by working with their peers to puzzle out problems, FL high stakes & the resignation of teacher Wendy Bradshaw, Ph.D. | The Edvocate Blog:

Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools - The Washington Post

Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools - The Washington Post:

Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

The number of standardized tests U.S. public school students take has exploded in the past decade, with most schools requiring too many tests of dubious value, according to the first comprehensive survey of the nation’s largest school districts.

A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade, a new Council of the Great City Schools study found. By contrast, most countries that outperform the U.S. on international exams test students three times during their school careers.

The heaviest testing load falls on the nation’s eighth-graders, who spend an average of 25.3 hours during the school year taking standardized tests, uniform exams required of all students in a particular grade or course of study. Testing affects even the youngest students, with the average pre-K class giving 4.1 standardized tests, the report found.

[Parents are revolting against standardized tests]

The study analyzed tests given in 66 urban districts in the 2014-2015 school year. It did not count quizzes or tests created by classroom teachers, and it did not address the amount of time schools devote to test preparation.

It portrays a chock-a-block jumble, where tests have been layered upon tests under mandates from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and state and local governments, many of which the study argues have questionable value to teachers and students. Testing companies that aggressively market new exams also share the blame, the study said.

“Everyone is culpable here,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “You’ve got multiple actors requiring, urging and encouraging a variety of tests for very different reasons that don’t necessarily add up to a clear picture of how our kids are doing. The result is an assessment system that’s not very intelligent and not coherent.”

Ahead of the study’s release, the U.S. Department of Education offered a mea culpa of sorts, issuing a 10-page guidance document to states and local districts that spells out ways to reduce redundant and low-quality testing. The department pledged to make money and staff available to help and promised to amend some of its policies.

“At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. “We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

The council’s report adds fuel to the national debate about testing that has Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools - The Washington Post: