SUPPORT MEANINGFUL ASSESSMENTS OF SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION

WHEREAS, the majority of elementary and secondary teachers in our nation have completed studies at the departments and schools of education in the nation's colleges and universities; and

WHEREAS, those entering the teaching profession desire a high-quality education that can enable them to become high-quality educators; and

WHEREAS, the U.S. Department of Education has proposed that the best way to assess the performance of schools and departments of education is to use the scores of the standardized tests given to the students of the graduates from each school of education; and

WHEREAS, since many measures of quality education exist, both qualitative and quantitative, we should not have to rely on high-stakes testing to assess the performance of colleges of education, particularly when those high-stakes tests are not even of the faculty nor graduates of schools and departments of education, but of the students in primary and secondary schools; and

WHEREAS, this proposal from the Department of Education is the result of an unyielding focus on high-stakes standardized testing to the exclusion of other measures, to the extent that faculty would be assessed on test scores from students they had never taught nor even seen in a classroom; and

WHEREAS, this twice-removed level of standardized testing for teacher assessments ignores the many factors that individual graduates bring when they begin an education program—their own skills, knowledge, qualifications, abilities and motivations—forsaking any assessment of inputs and instead focusing on outcomes only as simplistic, easy-to-measure numbers:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers will oppose policy proposals to assess schools and departments of education, including their faculty and education professionals, using the scores of standardized tests given to the students of the graduates from each school of education.