For Immediate Distribution
October 27, 2015
Contact: Cameron Petty
Phone: 512-215-9105
Email: Cameron@texaseducationreform.org
President Obama Announces Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Assessments
Austin – Responding to complaints that the burden of testing has become too great in American schools,
President Obama rolled out a new Testing Action Plan on Saturday. The plan calls for a cap on the amount of time students spend during the school year to 2 percent, while reducing the amount of redundant, nonaligned, and unnecessary assessments.
“TIER fundamentally supports the ability of educators to make data-driven decisions with timely feedback from state assessments, but also believes that we must limit the time spent on testing to protect the viability of our statewide assessment, STAAR,” explains TIER Executive Director Courtney Boswell. “The most important factor in the conversation about testing is the quality of the assessments we are using and the usability of the data we glean from them. This new suggested 2 percent cap on time spent testing would not affect the administration of STAAR, but should jump start a conversation surrounding the redundancy of tests required at the district and school level.”
The President’s announcement comes on the heels of a report released this month by the Council of the Great
City Schools that found that students in its member districts spend 2.3 percent per year of their time on testing. The report highlights many of the issues that surround testing nationwide including alignment to curriculum, high frequency of testing, and the timeliness of feedback on state-mandated assessments. While careful to point out that the word “testing” is unpopular among parents, it also relays that a strong majority
(82 percent) of parents believe “it is important to have an accurate measure of what my child knows.”
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About TIER
Founded in 2006, TIER is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to improving public education for each and every Texas student. Through its leaders and advisors, TIER has access to the nation’s leading education policy expertise, the best minds in the country, and will use these resources to bring to bear on the Texas reform effort the best available research-based strategies, benchmarked practices, and policy innovations.