Obama on tests and performance assessments

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

From the Coalition of Essential Schools electronic newsletter:

3. Senator Barack Obama joins a school for its Exhibitions, discusses performance assessment in comments

During National Exhibition Month, Senator Barack Obama visited Thornton, Colorado's Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts (MESA), where he witnessed student exhibitions and demonstrations of mastery, commented on student performances, and delivered a speech that addressed performance assessment's benefits and standardized testing's deficits. A short excerpt:

We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind. We must provide the funding we were promised, give our states the resources they need, and finally meet our commitment to special education. We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test. Recently, 87% of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art. But we need to look no further than MESA to see that accountability does not need to come at the expense of a well-rounded education - it can help complete it. And it should.

As President, I will work with our nation's governors and educators to create and use assessments that can improve achievement all across America by including the kinds of research, scientific investigation, and problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st century knowledge economy. The tests our children take should support learning, not just accounting. If we really want our children to become the great inventors and problem-solvers of tomorrow, our schools shouldn't stifle innovation, they should let it thrive. That's what MESA is doing by using visual arts, drama, and music to help students master traditional subjects like English, science, and math, and that's what we should be doing in schools all across America.

Full coverage of Obama's visit to MESA is available at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/may/28/tour-mesa/

Also from the newsletter:

Great causes can't be limited to a particular time frame, National Exhibition Month is extending far past the month of May. Visit the National Exhibition Month website at http://www.essentialschools.org/exhibition.html for updates from participating schools, links to additional media coverage, and much more to support your summer planning to incorporate performance assessment into your work.
Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Deputy Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810 x 101;  fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
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