Opt-out day is a planned school day when a child will not sit a required test. The idea is best known in New York’s opposition to Common Core testing, but the…
The history of standardized testing in New York reveals a long-running struggle over what public schools should measure, who should decide, and what happens…
New York’s Freedom of Information Law, commonly called FOIL, can reveal how public schools administer, score, and report assessments. It covers records held by…
Parents in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and regional communities want assessment to show learning without crowding out the curriculum. They seek a fair go for…
Test anxiety covers worry before an assessment, intrusive thoughts during it, physical symptoms, and the resulting loss of concentration. It differs from…
Families sometimes seek an exemption from a required assessment because participation conflicts with sincerely held religious beliefs. The process can be…
For many New York families, the state test arrives as a finished product with little explanation of how its questions were written, reviewed, trialled, or…
A test report can look authoritative while remaining easy to misread. A useful parent guide explains what was tested, how marks were converted and what…
For families in Australia, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) can sound distant: it is a United States federal education law, not a rule governing NAPLAN,…