408 Texas school districts have adopted the Resolution as of 4-25-12
From EduSlate - Texas Association of School Aaministrators (TASA) - Click Here
Wednesday, April 24, 2012
"The Palm Beach County School Board in Florida became the latest group outside of Texas to pass a resolution similar to the Resolution Concerning High Stakes, Standardized Testing of Texas Public School Students.
School board
members for Palm Beach, the 11th largest school district in the nation (app. 174,000 students),
say they're not advocating for the removal of standardized tests but,
like many Texas school leaders, believe the over-reliance on
standardized testing is counter productive.
"As a board and
a district, we need to mitigate the damage of this obsession with
high-stakes testing," board member Karen Brill said in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
"We need to create well-rounded students; we need to nurture
creativity; we need to find balance so that our teachers have the
freedom to exercise their talents and bring out the best in our
students."
As of
Wednesday, 408 Texas school districts representing roughly 2.2 million
students had confirmed they'd passed the resolution. That's 40 percent
of all Texas districts. If your district has passed the resolution but
isn't on TASA's list, please send me an email so we can include you in the count."
Text of the Resolution
WHEREAS, our nation’s
future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that
prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong
learning, and strengthens the nation’s social and economic well-being;
and
WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing
amounts of time, money and energy on high-stakes standardized testing,
in which student performance on standardized tests is used to make major
decisions affecting individual students, educators and schools; and
WHEREAS, the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing in
state and federal accountability systems is undermining educational
quality and equity in U.S. public schools by hampering educators’
efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote
the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration,
communication, critical thinking and deep subject-matter knowledge that
will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global
society and economy; and
WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an
inadequate and often unreliable measure of both student learning and
educator effectiveness; and
WHEREAS, the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused
considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing
the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing
students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the
profession, and undermining school climate; and
WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for
students from all backgrounds, and especially for low-income students,
English language learners, children of color, and those with
disabilities; and
WHEREAS, the culture and structure of the systems in which students
learn must change in order to foster engaging school experiences that
promote joy in learning, depth of thought and breadth of knowledge for
students; therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the School Board of Palm Beach County, Florida,
calls on Governor Scott, the Florida Department of Education and the
state legislature to reexamine public school accountability systems in
this state, and to develop a system based on multiple forms of
assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more
accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to
support students and improve schools; and
RESOLVED, that the School Board of Palm Beach County, Florida,
calls on the U.S. Congress and Administration to overhaul the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the “No Child Left
Behind Act,” reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of
evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and
not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in
evaluating educators.
