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Did you know that students take an average of 113 standardized tests between prekindergarten and 12th grade? Who requires these tests? What purposes do the tests serve?
The amount of time students spend preparing for and taking standardized tests has been the subject of growing interest and pushback from parents, educators, and policymakers. ASCD’s latest Policy Points (PDF) examines data from recent assessment studies and surveys to answer these questions and more. The issue includes a state and district profile of how much time students spend taking standardized tests.
In other assessment news, more than 2 million students have completed the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) tests thus far—with only minor glitches reported—and 3 million more are scheduled to take the Common Core State Standards–aligned tests by the end of the school year. States in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium will administer tests later this month. Despite the growing numbers of completed assessments, pockets of parents have decided to “opt out,” refusing to allow their children to participate in mandated state tests. State policies, however, vary widely on whether they allow opting out of annual testing, according to a state-by-state analysis (PDF) of opt-out policies. Regardless of policies, thousands of students in a few PARCC consortium states have opted out of the tests.
To find out how many states are using the consortia tests, how much these tests cost, and what parents think of standardized testing, see Policy Points: Testing Time (PDF).
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The Senate education committee expects to consider and mark up Committee Chair Lamar Alexander’s (R-TN) bill to replace No Child Left Behind during the week of April 13th. If you have yet to do so, contact your senators now to ask that the bill protect funding for educator professional development, stop the overreliance on standardized tests, and maintain funding for disadvantaged students. For the latest updates on efforts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), visit ASCD’s ESEA homepage.
To make paying for higher education easier and fairer for students, President Obama has proposed a new Student Aid Bill of Rights. It contends that each student should have access to high-quality, affordable education; easily find resources to pay for college; be able to choose an affordable repayment plan for student loans; and receive quality customer service, reliable information, and fair treatment when repaying loans. Among other improvements, the Obama administration intends to develop a simple process for borrowers to file complaints regarding their federal student aid and ensure that the banks that service federal loans are held to high standards and provide better information to borrowers. Read more.
In 23 states, state and local governments are together spending less per pupil in the poorest school districts than they are in the most affluent school districts, putting the children in these low-income, high-need schools at an even further disadvantage.
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