“All students must participate fully in GHCHS assessments in their 9th, 10th and 11th grade year to be eligible to participate in optional activities such as senior activities, school extracurricular activities and school athletics. Students who clearly disregard an assessment as determined by the testing coordinator or test proctor will be regarded as having refused […]
Next #DemDebate MUST Include K-12 Education Policy
The next #DemDebate is scheduled for the important primary state of Iowa on November 14, 2015. It’ll be broadcast by CBS in partnership with the Des Moines Register. Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig is leading the call for the families of 50 million students K-12 across the nation and the communities they live in to have […]
Open Letter to Parents on Common Core Testing Results
Dear Parents, Soon California will release the results of your child’s Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC tests. These tests are also known as the new Common Core test that California and states across the country implemented last year. Please know that as you receive the results of your child’s SBAC scores our child’s results […]
2015 LAUSD 4th Grade Testing Schedule And How You Can Opt Out
By Scott Engelman, a California teacher. Children in the fourth grade in the Los Angeles Unified School District will be taking more standardized tests (pdf) this year than ever. They are outlined below. Now think about this: you probably don’t want to read all of this because you are a busy person. However these are […]
Six Education Policies A 2016 Presidential Candidate Must Embrace
On the eve of passage of amendments to the Senate’s Every Child Achieves Act, the Rev. Dr. William Barber, a distinguished contemporary Civil Rights leader, released a powerful statement of support that gave qualified support for the law’s draft reauthorization and pointed to the work ahead. He said: But as we under-resource our public […]
SBAC/CAASPP or PARCC: Question the Tests
Pamela Casey Nagler is a longtime Claremont resident, a former student of Claremont public schools and a high school teacher at nearby Montclair High School. She remembers taking one standardized test when she attended Claremont High School – the Ohio Achievement Test – that was essentially an aptitude test to identify an individual’s strengths and […]
California Department of Education, Inform Parents of Opt Out Rights: Sign the Open Letter to Governor Brown and SSPI Tom Torlakson!
It seems wealthy communities in California know all about exercising their opt out rights under California Education Code 60615: “Notwithstanding any other provision of the law, a parent’s or guardian’s written request to school officials to exclude his or her child from and or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall […]
The Daily Breeze’s Pulitzer Win Is Everybody’s Win Too: Join K12NN And Grassroots Investigative Journalism on the Education Beat
This past week the Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism were announced, and we were elated that we didn’t win! (We forgot to enter. 😉 ) But another Southern California local news outlet did, for an investigative series they produced on corruption in Centinela Valley Union High School District. We’re exceedingly proud any time people who give […]
Pearson Is NOT “Spying” On Student Tweets, It’s Enlisting Public School Officials To Defend Its Intellectual Property
Cynthia Liu is CEO/Founder of K-12 News Network. Bob Braun, an education blogger and former journalist, got ahold of a note from a school superintendent advising parents in the district that a student in NJ had tweeted outside of school hours about a PARCC test he had completed earlier when school was still in session.* […]
Sen. Alexander, No Child Left Behind’s High Stakes Tests Narrow the Curriculum
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is now chair of the education committee in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension committee, and has officially opened the door to reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, also known as the ESEA, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). He’s seeking emails and letters talking about testing and accountability […]