standardized testing

Sen. Patty Murray will head the Senate committee that oversees education as Democrats effectively take control of that chamber.

An organization of college basketball coaches is urging schools to dump the SAT and ACT standardized tests, because they claim the tests are “racist.”

The University of California announced this week that it has officially removed the SAT and ACT standardized testing requirement for applicants. Some universities and colleges around the nation have removed standardized testing requirements as part of an effort to make their student bodies “more diverse.”

The University of California system announced recently that it will suspend its standardized test requirement for incoming freshman to alleviate stress caused by the Chinese virus pandemic. Now, the system may abandon its standardized testing requirement indefinitely in order to achieve “equitable treatment” of applicants.

Two Ivy League Universities announced recently that they are dropping the GRE requirement for graduate program applicants over concerns that the exam is “culturally biased.”

Minority students in California are threatening to sue the University of California system over its requirement that students submit an SAT score as part of the admissions process.

Two Texas legislators filed separate bills that would make permanent a 2015 law that provides temporary relief to high school seniors who do not pass all their standardized tests, yet allows them to graduate.

The Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees voted 7-2 to permanently suspend using state standardized test scores as a grade promotion and retention yardstick on students in the lower and middle grades.

One small, struggling Texas school that faces possible takeover or closure signed onto a lawsuit filed by a group of parents against the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR).

Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced Tuesday that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) fined its beleaguered standardized testing vendor Education Testing Services (ETS) $20.7 million.

The Alaska state legislature is sending a bill that requires sex education curricula for the state’s public school students to be approved by local school boards and open to review by parents to the desk of Independent Gov. Bill Walker.

Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she has always supported national education standards and that she wants to see the same set of common standards for all public schools across the nation.

A report finds the overall number of children in the United States diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) jumped 43 percent between 2003 and 2011.

Flanked by Senate education committee chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander and ranking member Sen. Patty Murray, President Barack Obama signed into law on Thursday the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that was enacted in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

On Wednesday, a congressional conference committee kicked off the effort to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—amid the concerns of many conservative parents, who would prefer to see education taken out of the hands of the federal government and back into those of the individual states and local school districts.

The Senate passed its version of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law Thursday by a vote of 81-17. The approval of the Every Child Achieves Act now sends the measure to a conference with the House’s bill, which passed that chamber last week.

The Senate voted to end debate on the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA) Wednesday, 86-12, allowing for a final vote on Thursday on the measure that is that chamber’s version of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law.

With the arrival of March, students in states throughout the country are scheduled to take tests to determine if they are keeping in step with the Common Core standards. A fair number of them, however, have been “opted out” of the assessments by their parents, leading school officials to respond in a variety of ways.

On Thursday, Gov. Chris Christie admitted he adopted Common Core standards because his state needed the federal funds in exchange for signing onto the unpopular education reform.

Grassroots organizers and conservative groups posted an action alert on a bill that will likely be voted on this week in the House that would reauthorize the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. The activists say HR5, known as the “Student Success Act,” will “denigrate parental rights and seize state sovereignty.”

One of the major problems that the adoption of Common Core’s standards has led to is excessive testing—at all grade levels from kindergarten on—sometimes more than one test per grade level.