Parent Voices New York is an organization of public school parents in New York City, with parent representatives at schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Parent Voices NY strongly opposes high-stakes testing, specifically the new NY state ‘APPR’ system “which ties teacher evaluations almost exclusively to the unreliable and inaccurate statistical measurements of high-stakes tests.”1 This organization aims to educate other public school parents about issues in NY public education, as well as a focus on encouraging those parents to organize and take action.
NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) is an organization of parents and community members who believe that “excessive testing and inappropriate sharing of private student data without parental consent threaten the future of our students, our schools, and our state.”2 NYSAPE focuses on encouraging parents to ‘opt-out” of NYS standardized tests and uniting parent groups across New York in order to better improve public education.
The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM NYC) is an organization dedicated to “educating, organizing, and mobilizing educators, parents, students, and communities.”3 GEM NYC seeks equal funding for underfunded schools and believes that public schools should offer creative curriculums instead of pre-mandated lessons that simply ‘teach to the test.’ In response to the film, Waiting for Superman, GEM NYC produced their own film called The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, discussing what they call ‘real reformers.’ You can find the trailer to their film here.
Save Our Schools NJ is an organization created in 2010 by a group of New Jersey parents focused on passing local school budgets. It has since expanded, and high-stakes testing is one of the four main issues they address as impacting NJ public schools. This organization “supports assessing a student’s skills and knowledge level as part of a high quality education, but opposes high-stakes standardized testing, the reliance on test scores to make critical educational decisions such as closing schools, firing or rewarding teachers, withholding a high-school diploma, or keeping a child from advancing to the next grade.”4
Change the Stakes is an organization of public school parents in NYC who “strongly reject the way high-stakes standardized tests are hurting our children and denying them high-quality teaching.”5 This organization focuses on educating parents and encouraging them to opt-out of tests, including an informational pamphlet and information about high-stakes testing on their website. Change the Stakes has also created a video called Refuse the Tests, where they document real parents explaining why this testing is an issue and why other parents should choose to opt their children out of high-stakes testing. You can watch the video here.
Can’t Be Neutral is a group that organized around one teacher, Dr. Barbara Madeloni, who received a letter of non-renewal from UMass after she resisted, and supported her students who resisted, Pearson-Stanford pilot testing of the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA). This group actively resists the intrusion of private testing companies, such as Pearson-Stanford, which create and administer these tests, often for-profit. They argue that “academic freedom of faculty is threatened by standardization and so-called accountability systems,”6 and feel that high-stakes testing and standardization threaten public education.
Students Against Testing is a “nationwide network of young people who resist high stakes standardized testing and support real-life learning.”7 They promote opting out of standardized tests, providing many links to information about this issue on their website. SAT believes that urgent action from the students themselves is necessary to combat this issue of high-stakes testing.
Parents 4 Teachers (P4T) is an organization of parents in Chicago who have “come together to stand up for teachers and work for real education reform.”8 Their vision for Chicago public schools includes an end to high-stakes testing. P4T works with groups all over Chicago in order to eliminate high-stakes testing in public schools around the city.
*All images were taken from corresponding, linked websites