A Dallas teacher, in The Dallas Morning News on October 17, 2014, writes that "the worship of data and the hyperreliance on the acquisition of test data lead to a disastrous loss of instructional time in the classroom. Every minute spent testing (and evaluating test results) is a minute that could be spent on actual instruction. Read more

Do you believe that the DA's Office should be spending taxpayer dollars investigating allegations of teachers cheating on high stakes testing? Last year, one of the teachers Grier accused of cheating on the STAAR test was on medical leave during testing. The local investigation showed no evidence of cheating and the state indicated that the erasure record showed no evidence of cheating. Now Grier wants to revisit the issue and has asked Harris County District Attorney Anderson to investigate. Is Devon Anderson using our children to win an election? At what cost to our kids? Read more

Did you know that standardized testing is coming under increasing attack? An Oct 15 Washington Post story by Lyndsey Layton starts with "The standardized test, a hallmark of the accountability movement that has defined U.S. public education since 2002, is under growing attack from critics who say students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade are taking too many exams." Read more

School Finance 101 Blog By Bruce BakerPosted on September 13, 2014 There continues to be much bluster out there in ed reform that money really isn’t all that important – especially for traditional public school districts. That local public schools and districts already have way too much money but use it so inefficiently that any additional dollar would necessarily be wasted. An extension of this line of reasoning is that therefore differences in spending across districts are also inconsequential.    Read more

The Network For Public Education (NPE) formed in 2013 with a singular goal:to mobilize the allies of public education against the powerful forces supporting privatization and high-stakes testing. The leaders of NPE have faith in the power of democracy and the value of our greatest democratic institution-public education.   Read more

Address inequities that undermine learning: Every international indicator shows that the U.S. supports its children less well than do other developed countries, who offer universal health care and early childhood education, as well as income supports for families. Evidence is plentiful that when children are healthy and well-supported in learning in the early years and beyond, they achieve and graduate at higher rates. The latest PISA report also found that the most successful nations allocate proportionately more resources to the education of disadvantaged students, while the United States allocates less. Read more

The state's STAAR tests are no stranger to controversy, but one third-grader's refusal to be tested is raising questions about what kind of say students should have in their own education. Read more

Back in April 2014, third grader Diego Geisler stayed home from school for four days in a row.Instead of going to Helms Elementary in the Heights, Diego and his mom Claudia De Leon Geisler went on some field trips. She refused to let him take the third grade STAAR exams in reading and math. It’s called opting out and it’s a growing movement. Read more

CVPE's Alpa, Jason, Anne, and Saul challenge HISD's use of test scores to evaluate and pay teachers in this op-ed in the Houston Chronicle. Read more

In this guest editorial, teacher Eileen Riley-Hall, author of Parenting Girls on the Autism Spectrum, writes about how evaluating teachers based on students’ test scores hurts children. Read more