NEA Delegates Call for Changes in School Testing

WASHINGTON – With the strong support of the Florida delegation, the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly approved today  a new business item calling on elected officials to end the misuse of standardized tests. In the past year, the testing mania facing students in our public school has become a bigger and bigger issue with educators, parents, testing experts and education researchers all chiming in on the inappropriate use of standardized tests.

NEA’s action further highlights the problem and calls on lawmakers and education bureaucrats to work with educators to improve the use of testing. This action represents a national effort to join individual states, teachers, administrators and students who continue to express concern over the misuse of standardized testing.

Florida Education Association (FEA) President Andy Ford lauded the action of thousands of delegates – including 340 teachers and education staff professionals from Florida -- at the NEA gathering in Washington.

“In Florida, we know the negative impact that the testing mania is having on our students, our teachers and on public confidence in our schools,” Ford said. “It’s past time that we undertake a comprehensive examination of the testing culture in our schools and align standardized tests so they help students and that the tests are not improperly used.”

Below is the new business item, which can also be found at this link:
http://www.nea.org/grants/33354.htm

NEW BUSINESS ITEM B

Misuse of Standardized Tests

NEA will:

• Call on governors, state legislatures, state education boards, administrators, and assessment system consortia or developers, to reexamine public school accountability systems in the state, and work with educators to improve them based on fair testing standards promulgated by experts in testing practice;
• Call on states and districts to develop systems based on multiple forms of evidence of student learning that do not require extensive standardized testing, are used to support all students and improve schools; and are not used for purposes for which they have not been validated;
• Share the NEA Policy Statement on Teacher Evaluation and Accountability with relevant stakeholders in order to inform conversations about the appropriate use of assessments in evaluation systems to support instruction and student learning.
• Disseminate criteria regarding the validity of assessments and promote the productive use of high quality, valid, and reliable standardized assessments as part of robust, authentic accountability systems that include multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality designed:
• to improve learning by identifying students’ strengths and challenges,
• to identify successful practices in schools,
• to support struggling schools, and
• to inform educators’ practice.

RATIONALE/BACKGROUND
We must stop misusing standardized tests NOW. NEA helped draft and was an original supporter of the National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing (http://timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution/) to fight the misuse of tests and promote multiple measures of student learning and school quality.

Learn more about the NEA RA

The Florida Education Association is affiliated with both the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers.

The Florida Education Association is the state’s largest association of professional employees, with more than 140,000 members. FEA represents pre K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, educational support professionals, students at our colleges and universities preparing to become teachers and retired education employees.