CEA and AFT Connecticut have sent a letter to President Biden asking that federally required testing be suspended this school year. Now you can support the effort and make your voice heard by signing a petition.
The petition states, “We call on the U.S. Department of Education to waive provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act that require states administer standardized exams to students in the 2020-2021 academic year. We also call on the states to cancel their own additional testing mandates and to waive any consequences attached to their results, at least for the current school year.”
As CEA and AFT Connecticut pointed out in their letter to President Biden, test results for any test given this year won’t be valid, reliable, or useful. There are better ways to find out how students from different backgrounds and with different learning needs have fared during the pandemic.
“The costs of administering federally required testing this spring, in the midst of the worst of the pandemic, far outweigh the benefits,” CEA President Jeff Leake and AFT Connecticut President Jan Hochadel wrote in their letter to Biden. “The scores would not be reliable, and any decisions based on this unreliable data are likely to be flawed. In addition, there is a dire mental health crisis afflicting our youth. Anxiety, trauma, food insecurity, and substance abuse are pre-existing conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Testing will only compound the high levels of stress teachers and children are currently experiencing.”
