Teachers are joining forces and uniting their voices:
The high-stakes testing era started with the advent of No Child Left Behind in 2002, and though NCLB has largely been discredited, the Obama administration’s policies have expanded the use of test scores as assessment tools not only for students, but also for teachers and principals.
Many researchers in the assessment field have warned against using standardized test scores for high-stakes decisions, saying they are unreliable for such a purpose. High-stakes standardized testing, they say, has led to the narrowing of the curriculum; classrooms where “teaching to the test” is paramount; and unfair evaluation of students, teachers, principals and schools.
Shouldn’t teachers be the ones who get to make this call since, after all, we are the professionals?