Washington legislators reject Arne Duncan’s demand, refuse to force schools to teach to the test

[eridani]

http://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2014/03/washington-legislators-reject-arne-duncans-demand-refuse-to-force-schools-to-teach-to-the-test.html

Yesterday the Washington State Legislature adjourned without taking action on two bills that would have tightly linked teacher evaluations to student test scores, despite plenty of evidence doing so is a bad idea. Legislators faced an enormous amount of pressure to pass these bills from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who threatened to revoke the state’s waiver from the No Child Left Behind law, as well as from education reform groups and newspaper editorial boards like that of the Seattle Times. Yet legislators refused to give in and instead chose to stand up for our children, their teachers, and for great schools.

By refusing to demand schools teach to the test, Washington State has added inspiring new momentum to the rapidly growing national movement of bipartisan resistance against overtesting of our children. After a parent revolt in New York State, legislators were forced to revisit standardized testing policies. Parents and teachers in Chicago have begun a boycott of a standardized test. Idaho voters rejected state laws in 2012 that would have tied teacher evaluations to test scores, and Maryland recently voted to delay such a link. Leading education experts from around the nation have called for Congressional hearings on the way standardized tests are being used and abused across the country.

This resistance is growing as parents and teachers see the damaging effects that linking teacher evaluations to test scores has on our classrooms. Such requirements ignore specific needs or issues students may have that are outside teacher control. There are reports that these rules disadvantage low-income and minority students.

[narnian60]

1. GOOD for them! nt