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As educators and policy makers, it is important to demonstrate for parents the connection between high levels of student participation in assessment and system accountability - ensuring the success of every student.

Under HB 2655, the state is responsible to ensure parents are aware of the purpose and value of assessments and receive notice from their local school districts about their rights and obligations. Educators must engage with parents about the value of assessment and the potential consequences if parents opt out and student participation diminishes.

Well, one of them is annual assessment in grades 3-8. It's integral to the implementation of everything.

The individualization of learning fundamentally redefines the role of assessment.

Teachers support evaluations based on multiple measures: student growth, classroom observation and feedback from peers and parents.

Certainly, every student and school ought to have standards and evaluation, but who sets those standards, and who writes the test? Whoever controls the test controls the school.

Standardized testing is at cross purposes with many of the most important purposes of public education. It doesn't measure big-picture learning, critical thinking, perseverance, problem solving, creativity or curiosity, yet those are the qualities great teaching brings out in a student.

Good tests can help teachers determine how their students are performing and identify the areas in which their students need assistance. Like an X-ray, however, tests can diagnose, but they cannot cure.

There's lots of institutions and lots of different cultures, and so that's the kind of thing that parents need to be able to evaluate, and students themselves, when they make a selection.