Thursday, August 4, 2016

“Liderazgo Familiar Intergeneracional: Intergenerational Family Leadership as a New Paradigm of Family Engagement”

“Liderazgo Familiar Intergeneracional: Intergenerational Family Leadership as a New Paradigm of Family Engagement”

Comunitario projects in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley offer a community-based alternative to traditional parent involvement models, fostering the participation and collective leadership of youth. 

Check out the latest issue of VUE (Voices in Urban Education) magazine has an article by Aurelio Montemayor, IDRA, and Dr. Nancy Chavkin, Texas State University!


Thursday, April 28, 2016

Bilingual Parent Institute - Tomorrow Friday, Apr. 29 - Watch the Live Stream 9:00 .a.m. CST

Watch the Live Stream – Bilingual Parent Institute Friday

  
The event will be livestreamed by NowCastSA at http://budurl.com/IDRAncLS16 beginning at 9:00 a.m. CST.

Family Leadership for Student Success ~ Liderazgo familiar en pro del éxito estudiantil

This Friday, April 29, 2016, the Annual IDRA La Semana del Niño Parent Institute will be held in San Antonio with more than 250 parents, educators, and community leaders.

This popular annual institute gives families, school district personnel and community groups from across the country the opportunity to network, obtain resources and information, and receive training and bilingual materials on IDRA’s nationally-recognized research-based model for parent leadership in education. This institute is interactive and participatory.

All presentations are bilingual (English-Spanish).

The event will be livestreamed by NowCastSA at http://budurl.com/IDRAncLS16 beginning at 9:00 a.m. CST.

Host a watch party and join the discussion. Send in questions for the presenters.

You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IDRAed or on Twitter at our address @IDRSAedu or using the hashtag #AllMeansAll. 

More information and links to slideshows and resources will be posted here throughout the day: http://budurl.com/IDRApiWeb

We look forward to having you join us and others!      

Agenda
9:00     Kick-off opening

9:30     Biliteracy Pre-k through 12 in Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD
Students and parents present on the benefits and successes of being fully proficient in Spanish and in English when you graduate from high school.

10:30   Comunitario PTA
The Comunitario PTA model is an innovative approach to school-family-community collaboration. A Comunitario PTA is a parent group that is based in a community-based organization, rather than in a single school. And their sole purpose is to collaborate with schools to improve the success of students.

11:30   Mesa Comunitaria ~ Family Leadership Projects
The PTA Comunitarios and other organizations in the lower Rio Grande Valley surveyed more than 1,600 parents about Texas’ new graduation requirements, reported on it and are now conducting new activities to inform the community and to work with their schools to ensure children are on the path to college.

12:30   Full group back together

1:30     End

Friday, April 22, 2016

Recognizing All of America’s S/Heroes - Marian Wright Edelman

Recognizing All of America’s S/Heroes
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org  
Every day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She and indomitable and eloquent slave woman Sojourner Truth represent countless thousands of anonymous slave women whose bodies and minds were abused and whose voices were muted by slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and confining gender roles throughout our nation’s history. Although Harriet Tubman could not read books, she could read the stars to find her way north to freedom. And she freed not only herself from slavery, but returned to slave country again and again through forests and streams and across mountains to lead other slaves to freedom at great personal danger. She was tough. She was determined. She was fearless. She was shrewd and she trusted God completely to deliver her, and other fleeing slaves, from pursuing captors who had placed a bounty on her life.
“’Twa’nt me. ’Twas the Lord. I always told Him, I trust You. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect You to lead me. And He always did…On my underground railroad, I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,” she was quoted as saying. No train, bus or airline company can match this former slave woman’s safety record. And few of us could match her faithful partnership with God, determination to be free and willingness to help others to be free without thought about self-sacrifice.
Frederick Douglass wrote to Harriet Tubman on August 28, 1868 eloquently summing up her life and that of so many Black women throughout American history: “The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scared, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt ‘God bless you’ has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witness of your devotion to freedom.”
Now the entire nation will pay public homage to Harriet Tubman’s devotion to freedom, and also honor Sojourner Truth and other great women and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who never stopped demanding and working to assure that America lives up to its declared creed of freedom, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and equality for all.
Kudos to the Treasury Department which has announced that Harriet Tubman’s face will grace the front of the redesigned $20 bill, making her the first woman in more than a century and first African American ever to be represented on the face of an American paper note. And it’s wonderful that she will not be alone. Sojourner Truth and women suffragette activists and leaders will be featured on the back of the $10 bill. Great contralto and opera singer Marian Anderson, for whom I was named and about whom great conductor Arturo Toscanini said “yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years,” will be featured on the back of the $5 bill. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Marian Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial before 75,000 in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her sing at Constitution Hall because she was not White. Mrs. Roosevelt and Dr. King will grace the back of the $5 bill rounding out the inspiring group of determined moral warriors who expanded the civil and human rights of women, people of color and all of us.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said he had an ‘aha’ moment after recognizing the groundswell of public response to his announcement that the Treasury Department was considering changing the design of the $10 bill. To so many people these new treasury bills will be much more than pieces of paper. For too long and for too many money has been the most powerful symbol of what we value as a nation. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – their faces on American currency will send powerful messages about what – and who – we Americans are, value and strive to become. The new bills also will powerfully remind all Americans and teach our children and grandchildren that Black history and women’s history are American history. They will take us a giant step forward towards healing our nation’s profoundly crippling birth defects of slavery, Native American genocide, and exclusion of all women and nonpropertied men of all races from our electoral process and ensuring full participation in our nation’s life. It is so important to make sure all of our children can see their ancestors pictured on something as basic as the money used every day by countless millions and this will deepen the meaning of how we define success in America.
And to Black children who remain the poorest group in America, I hope Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth become anchor reminders of their great heritage of strength, courage, faith and belief in the equality of women and people of every color. None of us must ever give up fighting for freedom and equality and human dignity however tough the road. I hope all of our children and all of us will be inspired anew by our diverse and rich heritages and cultures as Americans and renew our determination to build a level playing field in our nation for every child and help our nation shine a brighter beacon of hope in a world hungering for moral example.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.


25 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001
Tel: (800) 233-1200
Children's Defense Fund© 2016
All rights reserved.           




Saturday, April 16, 2016

Civil rights leader Antonio Orendain died TuesdayApril 12, 2016

Civil rights leader Antonio Orendain died Tuesday April 12, 2016

...a great friend, dad, leader   

Civil rights leader Antonio Orendain died Tuesday

James Colburn:    Farm labor organizer Antonio Orendain sits Saturday at his home in Pharr.
STAFF REPORT | Updated  5 hours ago
Antonio “Tony” Orendain, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union with labor and civil rights leader César Chávez in 1962, died Tuesday at McAllen Heart Hospital. He was 85 years old.
Orendain’s work was remembered Wednesday by activists in the Rio Grande Valley who continue to fight for immigrant and farm worker rights.
“Mr. Orendain leaves a legacy of struggle on behalf of the farm workers in South Texas and California. His work on behalf of those who toiled in the fields under disgraceful conditions and for unspeakably low wages lives on in the memories of thousands. May he rest in peace and power,” reads a statement released by La Unión del Pueblo Entero.
When Orendain crossed the Mexican border into California in 1950, he was 20 years old, had a sixth-grade education and began laboring on farms. He soon met Cesar Chavez and worked with the Community Service Organization.
It was 1966 when Orendain came to Rio Grande City to help with a farm workers’ strike on La Casita Farms, according to an obituary submitted by his family.
A story published in The Monitor in 2008 painted a picture of the ‘66 melon strike. Farm workers wanted their 14-hour work days shortened to eight and the minimum wage increased from 40 cents to $1.25 as well as collective bargaining and an end to the green card program that allowed Mexican day laborers to commute to work every morning. In June, workers refused to pick melons. In October, Orendain led members of the local United Farm Workers Organizing Committee to the middle of the Roma bridge and straddled the international boundary while chanting, “We shall overcome” in Spanish. The strike failed, but Orendain continued his fight, moving his family to San Juan in 1969 and establishing a union presence in the Rio Grande Valley.
“The only thing that we are asking is that the farm worker be recognized, (that) he put the price on the sweat of his work, just as, for example, the gas stations put a price on gasoline or the bakeries put a price on their bread,” Orendain said in a 1974 radio interview with KMUL in Muleshoe, Texas.
Hector Guzman Lopez, coordinator for Fuerza del Valle Workers’ Center, a local immigrant-worker advocacy group, called Orendain a hero for taking up an “unwinnable fight in Texas.”
Meanwhile, Eduardo Martinez, 29, a local activist and Pharr native who cofounded Curando RGV, a local group dedicated to bringing awareness to social causes in the Valley, said Orendain did so much for the community that the community should do more for him. Streets and public places should be named after Orendain, Martinez said.
“Orendain was one of the giants of farm worker organizing, and so much of what he knew, so much of that history is now gone forever,” Martinez said. “His story, his legendary fights against oppression and for the rights of farm workers on both sides of the border, continues to be an inspiration for so many of us. A lot of what he did, and most importantly, how he went about it, has influenced me and many of my friends who are in the organizing scene here in the Valley or beyond.”
The Texas Farm Workers Union was established by Orendain in 1975 when it became apparent to him that Chavez was not going to work to help South Texas farmers. He also hosted a daily radio show and produced a Spanish newspaper called “El Cuhamil.” He led multiple strikes in an attempt to obtain fair wages for farm workers and led a group of farm workers on a march for basic human rights that started in San Juan and ended in Austin with a meeting with Gov. Dolph Briscoe in February 1977. The march was extended to Washington, D.C., in June, starting with 40 farm workers and ending with about 10,000 workers and supporters, states his obituary.
Manuel Torres, 60, of Weslaco, was living in a labor camp in the ’60s when he saw Orendain speaking with politicians running for office. State representatives at the time, Torres said, were disappointing because they did not represent the farm workers’ interests, but Orendain was a fighter. The group became organized and united, he said, and they were able to increase the price of buckets of onions from 25 cents to $1.
Torres’ brother, Jose, 63, also worked with Orendain and commented on the man’s intelligence and respect for the world. Jose Torres said Orendain taught him to be calmer and work with different people.
Orendain’s union dissolved, but in a 2008 interview, he said his efforts were not wasted. As a Mexican immigrant, he felt compelled to act, and in May 2009 he was recognized with a Texas Senate resolution.
“When we got here as a family in 1969, farmworkers had no worker’s compensation, no unemployment insurance and there was no pesticide regulation,” Orendain’s oldest son, Abel, a McAllen lawyer, told The Monitor in 2009. “In the early ’80s, farm workers got these rights. He didn’t do it directly, but he did more for the plight of farm workers down here than anyone else.”
Orendain is preceded in death by his wife Raquel, son Juan Antonio Orendain (Maura Reyes Orendain), and grandson Ganesh Shrestha. He is survived by his children Amada, Nina Melanie (Miguel Baeza), Abel (Lillian), Nancy (Mahesh Shrestha), and Joseph (Carmen), his long-time partner and companion Susan Law, as well as 20 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be held from 5-9 p.m. with a 7 p.m. rosary Friday, April 15, at Memorial Funeral Home in San Juan. Funeral Mass will take place at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 16, at St. John the Baptist Catholic Parish in San Juan.
“What would happen if everyone in the world went to school, if everyone got his diploma in law or medicine?” Orendain asked in the 1974 radio interview. “I say to you, ‘Listen, do you want to work the land?’ You would reply to me, ‘No, I am a lawyer; I don’t work on the land.’ Supposing no one worked the land, the land isn’t going to produce by itself … What we are seeking is, just as they say, ‘I am a professional attorney’ or ‘I am a professional businessman or a professional banker,’ that it be, ‘My profession is working in the fields, and from there God gave me my living, not to live wealthy, but at least with the basic necessities that the rest of society is used to.’ That is what we are asking.”
Andrea Perez, Lorenzo Zazueta-Castro and Julie Silva contributed to this report.
Weslaco ISD does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, or disability in providing education services, activities, and programs, incl

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Texas’ funding of public education earns the lowest marks in the nation #schoolfinancetrial #txed #AllMeansAll #FairFunding

Report shows that Texas’ funding of public education earns the lowest marks in the nation.

See “Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card.” http://budurl.com/IDRAeNnrc

“As we wait for the Texas Supreme Court to issue its ruling soon in the largest school finance case in the state’s history, Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition vs. Williams, these findings by the Education Law Center and Rutgers University emphasize why we cannot continue down this road of underfunding our schools,” said Dr. María “Cuca” Robledo Montecel, IDRA President & CEO.

The state’s low level of funding, unfair distribution of those resources, and failure to use a reasonable amount of its economic capacity to support its public schools earns Texas its status as the worst state in the United States.


#schoolfinancetrial #txed #AllMeansAll #FairFunding

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Our Children, Left Behind – Michael Seifert http://alongsideaborder.com/2016/03/07/more-children-left-behind/

Our Children, Left Behind – Michael Seifert
Last spring, the mother of an eighth grader living in a community just outside of Brownsville, Texas, went to the offices of her daughter’s school. A tall, strong and stern looking woman, the mother is a respectful, patient, and kind person. After three trips to the office, the mother finally got an appointment with the school’s guidance counselor.

During the meeting, the mother told the counselor that she was concerned that her daughter would not be able to get into a university upon high school graduation, and, to that end, that she wanted to be sure that her girl would be enrolled in an Algebra II class. “If she doesn’t take Algebra II, she can’t enroll in the university.”

According to the mother, the guidance counselor chuckled and said, “My dear, there are only 62 seats in the Algebra II course, and those are reserved for the very special students. You know that not all students are college material.”

Fortunately for her daughter, this mother was a member of a “Comunitario”, a community-based, family leadership group that leverages the collective wisdom of its members to create change in their children’s schools. The mother, like the others in the Comunitario, knew that her child had a right to equal treatment under the law. Her participation in the Comunitario, however, had helped the mom to understand that achieving equal treatment for her child would not happen magically. Indeed, getting her daughter “college ready” would require an extraordinary amount of effort that she was all too willing to do.

“The thing that concerns me more than anything, more than my job, more than even my health, is that my daughter get the best education there is,” commented the mother after having shared her story.

Ever since its 2008 Equal Voice for America’s Families Campaign, members of the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network have continued to select education as a policy priority. Unfortunately for our region’s school children, the State of Texas has not been a willing partner in this effort. In 2011, Texas cut billions of dollars from public education programs, and, then in 2013, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law HB5, a mandate that exponentially cheapened high school graduation requirements, leaving many graduates unable to enter a university. With HB5, eighth graders (13 year olds) were expected to choose a career path, a decision that, if uninformed, could easily cripple any chance for them to escape poverty.

School districts in Texas have accommodated themselves in different ways to HB5. The bill’s requirement are so complicated that whether or not a child could enroll in an Algebra II course before graduation became the litmus test for the quality of her high school diploma. Offering Algebra II to all students is the expensive option, as it requires the school districts to hire the appropriate personnel. Most districts, in the end, made nice with the new tracking system.

One school superintendent told me that he thought it was great that the state was finally encouraging “shop” classes. “You know, so many of these kids have no business preparing for college. Being a welder is a great job, and brings in good money,” he told me.

I asked him, “Well, that may be the case, but how on earth can an 8th grader make that decision?”

“That’s the job of the parents!” he shot back.

Equal Voice leaders, however, were not so sure that parents were even aware of the choices that their 8th graders were being asked to make. With the help of the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) out of San Antonio and with the deep collaboration of RGV-EV core organizations, a survey instrument was designed to measure just how much parents knew about the consequences of HB5. Throughout the spring of 2015, over 1,600 parents from across the region were questioned about HB5.

The results were disturbing. https://magic.piktochart.com/output/5884973-equal-voice-rgv-hb5-community-survey-infographic-english

nada en absoluto85% of those surveyed said they had little or no knowledge about the changes in Texas’ graduation plans. 80% said that they had little or no sense of the impact of HB5 on their children’s future. Two-thirds of the parents with children in middle school or high school said that they did not know which track their children were in.

The members of the Equal Voice comunitarios reflected on the results. One question that came up, again and again, was whether or not school officials were aware of just how far ranging the ignorance around HB5 was. The group decided to invite school superintendents, and local university and college officials to a regional round-table in August. A regional collective-impact group (RGV-Focus) offered their support, and plans were made.

03 Mesa Comunitaria Aug 201531The meeting was successful beyond expectations. Parents shared stories and school administrators shared frustrations. Both parents and school district officials talked about their personal dreams for the children of the region. At the end of the long morning, the stakeholders gathered with their peers and drew up a set of action plans designed to address, at least to a manageable degree, the great gap between what parents knew, and what they needed to know with regard to the children’s education.

The bigger issue is of course, school funding. The simple fact that there is a huge lack of school counselors will doom many of our children to a stunted educational career, simply because there was no one there to help them navigate this new way of creating a future.

In the light of this new future, there is no lack of Texans working on behalf of the children that will be left behind. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to Austin to share this experience with a group of researchers who were focused in on how to make the best out of HB5. I had gone up a day earlier to meet with a young woman who had grown up in Brownsville and was presently studying linguistics at the University of Texas. At the end of our breakfast together, I had asked her if there was anything that had happened recently that had caused her joy. She smiled, and said, “Yes! My counselor told me that my linguistics coursework could be set so that I could choose any language that I wanted. I choose Urdu!”

It is a very long way from Brownsville to the lands where Urdu is spoken, and it is a complicated path to negotiate. This young Texan, however, had had the advantage of someone helping her chart that route. What I have learned from our Comunitarios, is that some of the best navigators for children are often their parents—especially when they know the lay of the land.



Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Whom Do Charter Schools Serve?

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: Whom Do Charter Schools Serve?: The great irony is that the charter school movement was launched decades ago as a solution to the "problem" that special needs stu...

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Testing Resistance & Reform News: February 24 - March 1, 2016 Compiled by FairTest

Testing Resistance & Reform News: February 24 - March 1, 2016
Compiled by FairTest

The 2016 testing season is underway both in several state K-12 public school systems and for university admissions.  Not surprisingly, this year's wave of standardized exams is generating even more intense push back from students, parents, educators and community activists fed up with test misuse and overuse. That grassroots pressure is forcing policy makers to respond, often by reducing the most egregious examples of testing overkill.

National As Protests Rise Over Testing, More Students Likely to Opt Out
http://mobile.philly.com/beta?wss=/philly/education&id=370396831
National The Opt-Out Revolt: A Special Magazine Issue Including a Chapter From FairTest
http://monthlyreview.org/archives/2016/volume-67-issue-10-march/

Colorado
Board Developing Testing Plans to Reflect Opt-Out Notifications
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_29560131/bvsd-developing-testing-schedules-opt-out-numbers-come

Connecticut
Parents, School Officials Decry Potential Opt-Out Penalties
http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/archives/entry/parents_school_officials_decry_testing_opt-out_penalties/
Connecticut State Eliminates Part of Grade School Test; Teachers Press for Deeper Cuts, More Time for Learning
http://wtnh.com/2016/02/25/connecticut-education-officials-curb-time-spent-on-testing/
Connecticut Removing Humans From Education Through Online Teaching and Testing
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-Removing-humans-from-education-6842720.php

Delaware State PTA Fights National Organization About Opt-Out Policy
https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/national-pta-forces-delaware-pta-to-back-down-from-honoring-parents-right-to-opt-out-time-to-end-that-relationship/

Florida More Parents Taking Their Kids Out of Testing
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-03-27/story/more-parents-taking-their-students-out-testing
Florida Families Tussle with Some School Districts About Opt-Out Policies
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/testing/parents-school-officials-tussle-over-kids-opting-out-of-florida-tests/2267020
Florida Standardized Tests Take Joy Out of Learning
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20160226/OPINION03/160229826

Georgia
Parental Test-Refusal Rights Overwhelmingly Approved by State Senate
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/parental-test-refusal-right-approved-by-georgia-se/nqZ8t/
Georgia Testing Reform Bills Moving Through Legislature Could Change Schools
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/testing-and-teacher-evaluation-bills-could-change-/nqXhm//

Illinois
Anti-Testing Movement Plans 2016 Strategy
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/anti-testing-movement-plans-2016-strategy-as-education-cuts-take-center-stage/
Illinois Testing "March Madness" Returns to Schools
http://www.chicagonow.com/still-advocating/2016/02/standardized-testing-march-madness-returns-to-our-schools/
Illinois Group Organizes Local Opt-Out Meetings
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160227/logan-square/should-your-child-opt-out-of-upcoming-tests-anti-test-group-holds-meetings

Indiana
Jettison State Exam, Then Dump Standardized Testing
http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/editorials/Take-the-next-step-11648469
Indiana Lawmakers and Educators Agree That Test is Severely Flawed
http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/83d0e9c1d8fb438da1281a714ecaf21f/IN--Student-Testing-Indiana
Indiana Parents Press for Opt-Out
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2016/02/25/mom-istep-we-not-going-participate-anymore/80938184/

Louisiana
College Scholarships Should be Based on More Than Test Scores
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/tops_standards.html

Maryland
Time to Back Away From Testing Overkill
http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/opinion/2016/02/24/editorial-20160224/80811072/
Maryland Asking the Wrong Questions About Testing
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/02/md-asking-wrong-questions-about-testing.html

Massachusetts
School Officials Grapple With Opt-Out Policy
http://www.telegram.com/article/20160223/NEWS/160229684
Massachusetts Test-Based Education "Reform" Is Not About Learning
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/column-education-reform-is-not-about-learning/article_b9f4b1fe-54b6-54ec-a004-8288252a12c7.html

Missouri
Relentless Assessment Hurts Students, Teachers
http://www.columbiatribune.com/opinion/oped/testing-the-limits-relentless-assessmentshurt-students-teachers/article_9689857c-7e08-501f-ac57-95df7343cfb0.html

New Jersey
Parents, Teachers Winning Against PARCC
http://www.app.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/02/24/steinhauer-parents-njea-winning-parcc/80861310/
New Jersey Requiring PARCC Teest to Earn a Diploma Still a Bad Idea
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/njspotlight/njspotlight_20160229_Op-Ed__Requiring_PARCC_Test_to_Earn_High-School_Diploma_Still_a_Bad_Idea_for_NJ.html

New York
Opt-Out Movement Unlikely to Provoke State Sanctions
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2016/02/23/opt-out-movement-unlikely-to-provoke-sanctions-from-state-this-time-around/
New York Opt-Out Email Phone App
http://optthemout.com/
New York State Testing Is Not What Is Best for Our Kids
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/state-testing-not-what-s-best-for-our-students-1.11496363

Ohio
Controversy Swirls Over Value of School Tests
http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/news/local-education/controversy-swirls-over-value-of-school-tests/nqYtw/
State School Report Cards Are Badly Flawed
http://www.cantonrep.com/article/20160223/NEWS/160229759

Oklahoma Bill to Limit School Tests Moves Forward
http://examiner-enterprise.com/news/local-news/bill-limit-school-tests-moves-forward

Oregon
National Opt-Out Leader to Speak on Testing Protests
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20160225/lead-story/teacher-activist

Pennsylvania
Principal's Letter Says Test Scores "Don't Mean Everything"
http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/community/fort-mill-times/article62180407.html

Rhode Island
ACLU Files Open Records Requests for Districts' PARCC Use Plans
http://patch.com/rhode-island/cranston/aclu-files-open-records-requests-all-ri-school-districts-parcc-clarity-0

Tennessee
School Board Member Says Her Daughter Will Lose Six to Eight Weeks of Education to Testing This Year
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/02/28/mom-my-third-grader-is-losing-6-8-weeks-this-year-to-standardized-testing-for-no-good-reason/
Tennessee "I Am Not a Test Score"
http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/31342882/david-carroll-i-am-not-a-test-score

Texas
Testing the Test: The State Exam's Impact on Local Students and Districts
http://www.kcentv.com/story/31344765/testing-the-staar-impact-of-state-standardized-testing-on-local-students-and-districts
Texas Teachers Union Endorses Parents' Opt-Out Rights
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Teacher-union-sanctions-test-opt-outs-6862047.php
Texas Parents, Educators Have to Decide What They Want Tests to Show
http://www.mrt.com/news/education/article_3171d24a-d9b6-11e5-b3ed-67dd265dcb1c.html

Utah
How High-Stakes Testing Impacts Our Children
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=38618545&nid=148&title=too-much-testing-how-high-stakes-testing-impacts-our-children
Utah Testing Debate Continues in State Legislature
http://m.deseretnews.com/article/865648938/Debate-over-SAGE-testing-continues-in-Utah-Legislature.html

Canada Ontario Teachers Association Says Scrap Annual Standardized Tests
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/02/27/scrap-standardized-tests-union-boss

ACT/SAT
Temple Shatters Application Record With New Test-Optional Policy
http://news.temple.edu/news/2016-02-24/temple-shatters-record-freshman-applications
ACT/SAT College Admissions Tests Are New Glass Ceiling for STEM Occupations
http://www.thenation.com/article/standardized-tests-are-a-new-glass-ceiling/

Will "Competency Based Learning" Rescue the Testocracy?
http://www.livingindialogue.com/will-competency-based-learning-rescue-the-testocracy/

Teaching to the Test May Help Schools Reach Exam Goals, Not Develop Love of Reading
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/teaching-test-means-schools-are-meeting-literacy-targets-failing

No You Cannot Test My Child
http://danielskatz.net/2016/02/25/no-you-cannot-test-my-child/

Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
office-   (239) 395-6773   fax-  (239) 395-6779
mobile- (239) 699-0468
web-  http://www.fairtest.org