Testing

Why is it so important for every one of the nation's students in Grades 3 through 8 — and a whole host of high school students taking the new end-of-course assessments — to devote an enormous amount of their instructional time to taking standardized tests? Why should their teachers rewrite their curricula to align with these tests? Why should taxpayers spend a boatload of money on these tests, rather than put the funds into our children's classrooms?

Sandy Kress, the controversial testing lobbyist, is leading a new raid on school taxes. This month he registered to lobby for Amplify, the company that wants to replace textbooks with tablet computers, positioning him to grab some of the hundreds of millions of dollars Education Sec. Arne Duncan is offering to create pre-K tests.

The new requirements for No Child Left Behind waivers from the Department of Education have some bad news for America's teachers. The Obama administration wants states to use standardized tests to not only judge students and schools but now teachers as well lest we lose ground to China

Hundreds of Chicago students are taking up the mantle in the fight against the role of standardized tests in public school closures as they walked out of state exam Wednesday. Their message: "We are over-tested, under-resourced and fed up!"

If there's one person in America most responsible for the stress our children face while filling in little ovals with their No. 2 pencils, it may be Sandy Kress. Kress was the architect of "No Child Left Behind" and later became a lobbyist for Pearson, the testing company.

Hey, New Jersey, this is your future, and it's starting in September. The states that adopted tests early are figuring out that they don't contribute to a quality education, and they're pulling back.