Stop Over testing and educate our kids!

Our students are being tested too much. Teachers are forced to spend valuable class time preparing students for the tests instead of teaching students the curriculum or developing critically needed skills.
Texas Education Agency requires that students take and pass five End of Course Exams to graduate. This law has changed three times in the last four years. Currently students who have still not passed are scrambling to complete an “authentic project” to display their knowledge in order to graduate next week.
The law dictates that we teach a curriculum complete with detailed objectives and the courses are broken down into semester segments. A portion of that grade is the final exam grade. The law states school districts are restricted to two benchmark tests to gauge how students will do on these exams.
HISD has enforced poorly written Beginning of the Year (BOY) exams, a Middle of the year (MOY) exams, District Level (DLAs) exams, and End of the Year (EOY) exams, plus 6 snapshot exams. Our school requires common assessments to be given every two weeks. In the month of May most students sat through two all day EOC State Exams, an EOY Exam in multiple classes, and Final Exams for every class.
What are these students really learning? How can test taking be called a real world skill? How are students supposed to be able to learn skills they really need if they are only learning to take a test?
What do you think the students need? To learn to read, write, think, analyze, and synthesize the world around them; to one day become intelligent citizens of a global world? Or simply to be good test takers with no skills?
We need to stand up and say enough is enough. Please sign this petition to send a clear message to HISD that we want our children to be educated not tested.