D
ear Colleagues,
The language of our locally adopted petition states our position on high stakes testing. You will be asked by a colleague in your building to sign this petition to add your voice to the testing debate that is finally swelling around the country. I hope that you read the petition language and sign it if you agree (I have pasted it below so you will have a preview if you have not seen the petition yet). Once our members have an opportunity to sign, we will distribute this petition more widely and will send the results far and wide to decision makers of all types. We think that complaining among ourselves about testing will not effectuate change, so we need to make our position public.
What we would like now is to hear from you and have you share your story. We think that personal experiences can illustrate our concerns about testing in powerful ways. How has high stakes testing changed your life as a teacher/counselor/nurse, security monitor or other educational professional and what changes have you seen in your students? For example, a teacher on child care leave told me today that she may not be able to return to the classroom because testing is taking all the fun out of teaching. So please reply to this email and let us share your story about testing.
In Union,
Ari Klein
CHTU President
PETITION LANGUAGE
I believe high-stakes testing harms children. These tests create unhealthy stress for the whole community. Test preparation deprives children of a rich and meaningful education. Over a decade of excessive high-stakes testing has not improved student learning. Excessive high-stakes testing is failing our children. High-stakes testing is a fundamentally flawed method of evaluating students and teachers. I support students’ right to learn. I support teachers’ right to teach.