Below is a copy of a very sharply worded resolution that passed without a
single Nay vote in the membership meeting of the College and University
Faculty Association of the National Council for the Social Studies in San
Antonio in November.

The Group voted to publicize the resolution. Anyone who would like this in
leaflet format, let me know and I will send an attachment. The NCSS House
of Delegates, which included K-12 teachers screened by the leadership, did
not pass the resolution which was forwarded to them from CUFA. However,
NCSS board members promised a reconsideration next year.

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Oppose High Stakes Standardized Tests!


Whereas high stakes standardized tests represent a powerful intrusion into America's classrooms, often
taking up as much as 30% of teacher time, And whereas the tests pretend that one standard fits all, when
one standard does not fit all, And whereas these tests measure, for the most part, parental income and
race, and are therefore instruments which build racism and anti-working class sentiment--against the
interest of most teachers and their students, And whereas these tests deepen the segregation of children
within and between school systems, a move that is not in the interests of most people in the US, And
whereas the tests set up a false employer-employees relationship between teachers and students which
damages honest exchanges in the classroom, And whereas we have seen repeatedly that the exams are
unprofessionally scored, for example in New York where thousands of students were unnecessarily ordered
to summer school on the grounds of incorrect test results, And whereas the tests create an atmosphere
that pits students against students and teachers against teachers and school systems against school
systems in a mad scramble for financial rewards, and to avoid financial retribution, And whereas the
tests have been used to unjustly fire and discipline teachers throughout the country, And whereas the
exams represent an assault on academic freedom by forcing their way into the classroom in an attempt to
regulate knowledge, what is known and how people come to know it, And whereas the tests foment an
atmosphere of greed, fear, and hysteria, none of which contributes to learning, And whereas the
high-stakes test pretend to neutrality but are deeply partisan in content., And whereas the tests become
commodities for opportunists whose interests are profits, not the best interests of children, Be it
therefore resolved that the National Council for the Social Studies join with the National Council of
Teachers of English, the International Reading Association, and the American Educational Research
Association in supporting long-term authentic assessment, opposing all high-stakes standardized
examinations such as but not limited to the SAT9 in California, the Michigan MEAP, the Texas TAAS,
Florida's FCAT, and the New York Regents Exam. Moreover we support student and educator boycotts of the
exams.