Hear Ruth Kravetz, CVPE member, talk about the upcoming march at the capitol for the Save Texas Schools rally. Read more

Dear CVPE Members,We’re thrilled to inform you that CVPE and a hundred and fifty of its members joined the Save Texas School rally in Austin last Saturday. Members lined up for buses before 6am, energized and excited to raise their voices at the Capitol. After arriving in Austin, we wasted no time, and immediately joined the march alongside thousands from around the state, all armed with posters and chants about the detrimental effects of under-funding and over-testing. Read more

CVPE's planning committee members Amy Grimes and Anne Sung were invited by KPFT to speak about "legislation to reduce the number of test days, restored budget cuts and the value of keeping our neighborhood school system as a public institution. Read more

"I understand that kids have to be evaluated; however, the many high-stakes tests that our children have to take, it's a little bit overwhelming," said Vincent Sanders, a member of the advocacy group Community Voices for Public Education who has two children in Houston schools. Read more

IF you want to see the direction that education reform is taking the country, pay a visit to my leafy, majority-black neighborhood in Washington. While we have lived in the same house since our 11-year-old son was born, he’s been assigned to three different elementary schools as one after the other has been shuttered. Now it’s time for middle school, and there’s been no neighborhood option available. Meanwhile, across Rock Creek Park in a wealthy, majority-white community, there is a sparkling new neighborhood middle school, with rugby, fencing, an international baccalaureate curriculum and all the other amenities that make people pay top dollar to live there. Read more

The STAAR testing system now faces a formidable backlash, with parents, some business groups, teachers and high-level education experts calling for changes. Such dynamics present an opportunity if opponents and proponents seize the moment to strike a compromise. Read more

The design of better economic and social policies can do more to improve our schools than continued work on educational policy independent of such concerns. Read more

On the subject of public education, Diane Ravitch may be America's most important whistle-blower. The former U.S. assistant secretary of education doesn't employ hidden cameras or purloined documents, and she doesn't entrap teachers or find evidence of financial malfeasance by district administrators. Instead, she uses cold, hard numbers to expose the Big Lie: that the education reforms of the last two decades – from No Child Left Behind to high-stakes testing and the ongoing, bipartisan, national love affair with charter schools – have done much, or anything, to fix American public education. Read more

Perhaps the most useless standardized tests in the world are the "field" tests. This was written by Fred Smith, a retired New York City Board of Education senior analyst who worked for the public school system in test research and development. A version of this post first appeared on citylimits.org Read more

CVPE Member wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle  and stated that "standardized tests were originally intended as diagnostic tools to identify areas where students need remediation, not as punitive weapons. Now school closures, hiring and firing decisions and graduation are directly linked to test scores. As a result, more and more time is spent preparing for and administering tests - time that otherwise would be spent teaching curriculum." Read more