Essential Schools working on "exhibition month" - join them!

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

The Coalition of Essential Schools is now organizing its third "exhibition month" for May. This may be of most interest to teachers and principals, but other educators, parents and assessment reform activists should use this opportunity to deepen learning about high-quality assessment practices, and to provide support for any local schools using these practices. Monty

----- Original Message ----- 
From: survey@essentialschools.org 
To: monty@fairtest.org 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:03 AM
Subject: Join CES for National Exhibition Month


Dear Friend of CES,


You Are Invited . . . 
Join the Coalition of Essential Schools this May for National Exhibition Month (NEM), a nationwide campaign to promote and celebrate exhibitions as a preferred form of student assessment. Now in its third year, NEM mobilizes hundreds of schools and organizations nationwide to participate in activities that make their exhibition work public and to advocate for the use of exhibitions in their local contexts. If participating in this campaign interests you, please read the following details and complete the short online questionnaire by February 25th (see link to the survey below).

National Exhibition Month Declared
CES has designated May as “National Exhibition Month,” and is seeking the broad participation of educators and community activists during the campaign to showcase the achievements of students and their schools and push the discussion about assessment on a local and national level. As the U.S. Congress considers reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, including amendments that provide for and encourage performance-based assessments to demonstrate progress, this campaign is more important than ever. Our goals for NEM are the following:

  a.. Bring to the public a new awareness of exhibitions as a compelling form of assessment 
  b.. Reshape opinion about the kind of assessments that should be used to measure and support the skills and knowledge of our young people, what it means to be educated, and what kind of student demonstration of mastery is most educationally appropriate 
  c.. Build on the existing strengths of CES and other networks to increase schools’ capacity to do exhibitions well 
  d.. Build and strengthen a coalition of organizations supporting performance-based assessment
How You Can Participate
Because May is just around the corner, we encourage you to begin planning your participation right away. Whether writing a letter to the editor or an op-ed for your local paper, hosting a public event at your school focusing on exhibitions, or inviting media or community leaders to observe or evaluate exhibitions, we encourage you to find a way to participate that is both realistic and engaging.

Please visit our website, http://www.essentialschools.org/exhibitions.html, for more information, including suggestions for activities, resources on exhibitions, and a participation guide, which can help you determine the level at which your school or organization can confidently participate.

CES National will shine a spotlight on your efforts, promoting and documenting activities leading up to and throughout the month of May. We will provide all participants with supporting materials in early March, including an exhibitions fact sheet, print and video resources on exhibitions, tips and checklists for planning an event, and an advocacy kit for interacting with the public and the media.

Our hope is that you will be able to leverage the national campaign to generate interest locally, thereby putting exhibitions and your schools and organizations in a positive light. 

What to Do Now
If you are interested in joining us in this campaign, we ask that you begin by sharing this document with your colleagues and initiating discussions about the form your participation might take. Remember, this campaign will be annual, so if this is your first time, you can engage modestly this year, and then plan for a bigger or more elaborate event for next year.

Next, we ask that you complete a short online questionnaire to tell us more about exhibitions at your school or organization and how you plan to participate in or around May. We will collect this information through the end of February and use it to organize the nationwide effort. The survey takes about 10 minutes and you can access it through the link below. 

Click on the following link to take the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=qFfd2fciPZzXgvCQYxxnfQ_3d_3d 

If you do not wish to complete the survey, click on the following link to decline:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/optout.aspx?sm=qFfd2fciPZzXgvCQYxxnfQ_3d_3d 

Once we have collected all responses, we will follow up with interested participants in early March.

Thank you in advance for your participation. We look forward to your helping us make the third annual National Exhibition Month a huge success.

CES National