WHEREAS, our nation's future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship, and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation's social and economic well-being; and

WHEREAS, our nation's school systems spend growing amounts of time, money, and energy on high-stakes standardized testing, in which student performance on standardized tests is used to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators, and schools; and

WHEREAS, the No Child Left Behind Act reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides statewide standardized testing requirements for all public schools receiving federal funding; and

WHEREAS, the Hawaii Department of Education and the United States Department of Education reached an Elementary and Secondary Education Act flexibility agreement to change the calculation of participation and the consequences of low test participation; and

WHEREAS, this flexibility agreement considers schools with less than ninety-five percent of students participating in standardized testing as out of compliance; and

WHEREAS, if the State fails to comply with this ninety-five percent rate of testing, Hawaii may jeopardize federal funds connected with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and

WHEREAS, in 2007, twenty-eight percent of the nation's schools failed to make the required annual yearly progress prompting the United States Department of Education to offer the states Elementary and Secondary Education Act flexibility agreements; and

WHEREAS, by 2011, that number had risen to thirty-eight percent and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warned that eighty-two percent of schools may be failing to make annual yearly progress by the end of 2011 if Congress did not amend the No Child Left Behind Act; and

WHEREAS, in spite of the large number of schools that were out of compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act, the lack of compliance did not cause any state to lose its federal education funding; and

WHEREAS, the State is transitioning to the Smarter Balanced Assessments Program, to be implemented in Spring 2015, for mathematics and English language arts, in which students will be required to support their answers and show how they apply their knowledge, although science will continue to be a criterion-referenced assessment; and

WHEREAS, Hawaii continues to administer end-of-course exams that are statewide multiple choice and constructed response question assessments given in the final weeks of a course in algebra I, algebra II, biology I, expository writing I, and United States history; and

WHEREAS, although, in 2013, the State of Hawaii received flexibility from the United States Department of Education regarding certain specific requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, high-stakes standardized testing continues to be prevalent throughout Hawaii and the United States; and

WHEREAS there is a vibrant, growing, diverse, and bipartisan movement to opt out of high stakes testing led by students, parents, teachers, administrators, organizations such as the National Center for Fair & Open Testing and United Opt Out National, and many others; and

WHEREAS, the overreliance on high-stakes standardized testing in state and federal accountability systems undermines educational quality and equity in United States public schools by hampering educators' efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and economy; and

WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate and often unreliable measure of student learning and educator effectiveness; and

WHEREAS, the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage in many public schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate; and

WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for students from all backgrounds, especially low-income students, English language learners, children of color, and those with disabilities; and

WHEREAS, the culture and structure of the systems in which students learn must change in order to foster engaging school experiences that promote joy in learning, depth of thought, and breadth of knowledge for students; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-eighth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2015, the House of Representatives concurring, that the Hawaii Board of Education is requested to reduce reliance on standardized testing and strive towards a different method of measuring accountability in the education system; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the United States Congress and Executive Branch are urged to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Hawaii Board of Education is requested to reexamine public school accountability systems and develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment that does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, supports students, and improves schools; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Education is requested to inform parents about the purpose, potential impact, and protocol of any standardized test that a student is expected to take; including all rights related to test administration, participation, and non-participation, as well as available supports based on accompanying reports that identify areas of strength and improvement; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Secretary of the United States Department of Education, members of Hawaii's congressional delegation, members of the Board of Education, and the Superintendent of Education.

Report Title:

Standardized Testing; High-Stakes Testing

THE SENATE	S.C.R. NO.	172
TWENTY-EIGHTH LEGISLATURE, 2015		S.D. 1
STATE OF HAWAII