Reblogged from Diane Ravitch’s blog

Faced with unfunded mandates by the Legislature that require the creation and use of hundreds of new tests, deployed primarily to evaluate teachers, the Palm Beach County school board passed a resolution that basically says “Whoa!”

The PBC school board will be sharing its resolution with other members of the Greater Florida School Board Consortium, which includes the state’s largest districts and represents nearly half the students in Florida.

This is the original resolution:

THE SCHOOL BOARD OF PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLORIDA

RESOLUTION on ACCOUNTABILITY

WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that
prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship, and lifelong learning; and strengthens the
nation’s social and economic well-being; and

WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing amounts of time, money, and
instructional time on high-stakes standardized testing for the purpose of using student performance
on standardized tests to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators, and schools;
and

WHEREAS, the over-reliance and lack of consistent data on high-stakes standardized testing in state
and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public
schools by limiting educators’ ability to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that
promote creativity, problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking, and deep subject-matter
knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and
economy; and… Read more>>