The authors of this article call upon classroom memories to demonstrate the harm of the standardized testing apparatus in the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Goal setting under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has led to targeted school intervention based on metrics, and many states have chosen to double down on standardized ELA and…

Since the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), test-based accountability has been an organizing principle--perhaps "the" organizing principle--of efforts to improve American schools. But lately, accountability has been under fire from many critics, including Common Core opponents and those calling for more multifaceted…

Over the past few years, students by the thousands have refused to take their state's standardized tests. This "opt-out" phenomenon has prompted debate in state legislatures and in Washington, putting states at risk of losing Title I funds. Advocates describe opt-out as a grassroots movement of parents concerned about overtesting,…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law in 2001, fueled by bipartisan concern about the standardized test scores of U.S. students in comparison with their international cohort and dissatisfaction with gaps in achievement between certain student groups--low income, English-language learners, special education, and students of…

Education under neoliberal reform has been targeted as an indispensable source of profit. Market-based reforms have commodified education and are transforming public school into a corporatized industry concerned not with democracy but with the smooth functioning of the capitalist economy. Targeting public schooling as a site in which to accumulate…

Eric Premack grew up in Minneapolis; graduated from Washburn High School. After graduate school in public policy he went to California; worked initially with the Office of the Legislative Analyst where he was assigned to education finance; then worked as a consultant in the field. In 1991 he began making people in California aware of the…

Paul Jablon's "The Synergy of Inquiry" (2014) is well-timed. The 2014 deadline set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) for universal student proficiency has come and gone, and according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "proficiency rates last year were below 50 percent for nearly every racial and ethnic group, in…

The USA was the first nation to attain universal secondary education through the creation of a unitary school structure capped by the uniquely American institution, the comprehensive or cosmopolitan high school. Other leading democratic nations adopted the comprehensive model, but not until well after mid-twentieth century. The modern movement for…

Over the past few decades, reading assessment has been pushed to the forefront of the national discussion about education. The most recent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1994, 2001) made assessment a priority as administrators and teachers are attempting to meet increasing accountability standards, but measuring…

In this response to Spaulding et al.'s examination of state education agency (SEA) guidance on severity ratings, these authors contend that Spaulding et al. provided an incomplete view of current practices in public schools. These authors state that, ultimately, school speech-language pathologists (SLPs) must follow all state regulations and local…

The United States Department of Education (USED) granted 11 states waivers (eight full waivers and three conditional waivers) to provide what the USED termed "flexibility" from meeting some of the requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Much of the flexibility relieves schools from the Adequate Yearly Progress mandate that requires…

Current neoliberal educational policies are impacting young children and their teachers in the United States in many ways. Young children and teachers find themselves in vulnerable positions within a framework of an imperialist education in the age of standardization. Part of the struggle is to open spaces of decolonization that include home…

A review of education reform policies reveals a shift from an input guarantee approach aimed at providing funds to level the playing field for all students to an output guarantee approach based on the expectation of achieving standardized results regardless of inputs. The shift reflects a belief that where a child starts his or her cognitive,…

This author contends that contemporary issues classes no longer have currency, as standardized test results are the litmus test for education. In many schools, students are isolated from firsthand accounts and formal study of events that textbooks will one day proclaim as defining experiences of their generation. According to Doyle, schools tend…

Ever since the founding of this country, equality, freedom, and justice have been the underlying values of America's political and educational systems. More than 150 years later, higher education policymakers in the United States began to incorporate these values into their admissions decisions by including ethnic and racial diversity as a stated…