TEST POSTPONED: On August 21, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that states now have the option to delay evaluating teacher effectiveness with students’ standardized test performance data. In the wake of No Child Left Behind, close to 40 states have put into place laws that evaluate educators based on standardized testing, according to The New York Times. On the Department of Education blog, Duncan suggests that a focus on testing can divert educator energy from focusing on implementing changes to the curriculum due to the Common Core. He writes, “I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools.”
