Register: https://bit.ly/USOSADHSST

Uniting to Save Our Schools in collaboration with the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Citizens or Public Schools & the American Federation of Teachers-MA presents:

The use of high-stakes standardized tests is one of the greatest education malpractice issues of our time. Beyond malpractice, these tests are a main technique in efforts to privatize public education. Join this Action Dialogue to learn more. More important, join the call to action and commit to organizing in your community to end the testing regime and build educationally powerful alternatives and culturally sustaining, full service community schools that matter!

Panelists include:

Dr. Wayne Au, Professor and Interim Dean at the University of Washington-Bothell. He is an editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools. Dr. Au has produced upwards of 100 published works. He is the author of the book Unequal by Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality.  

Congressman Jamaal Bowman , an American politician and educator serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 16th congressional district since 2021. Bowman is the founder and former principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in Eastchester, Bronx. He is a member of the Lower Hudson Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. 

Harry Feder, a public school teacher and attorney who is an expert in performance assessment. Feder is the new Executive Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). Feder previously taught history at the Beacon School in New York City, a member of the New York State Performance Assessment Consortium, for which he also did legal work. He was a Visiting Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University researching the interplay between high schools and citizenship and an Adjunct Professor of Social Studies Teaching at Brooklyn College.

Deborah McCarthy, Vice President of the 115,000-member Massachusetts Teachers Association, is a public education activist who has long worked to strengthen alliances that build strong communities. McCarthy, a fifth-grade teacher at the Lillian M. Jacobs Elementary School, was elected to serve as MTA vice president in May of 2022. She has taught in the Hull Public Schools for 25 years. She is passionate about fighting austerity budgets and the ongoing attempts to privatize public education. As a unionist, she remains focused on working with parents and students in the fight against high-stakes standardized testing, as she has done for a decade. McCarthy was a “conscientious objector,” refusing to administer the MCAS tests for two years.

Dr. Angela Valenzuela, Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the award-winning book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (1999), Leaving Children Behind: How ”Texas-style”” Accountability Fails Latino Youth (2005), and Growing Critically Conscious Teachers: A Social Justice Curriculum for Educators of Latino/a Youth (2016).