I took the time to read many of the letters that were written by teachers and parents to President Obama through a campaign organized by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. While I was not thrilled with the timing of this campaign, I could not ignore the pain expressed by too many teachers and parents, pain resulting from ill-conceived policies at the local and state levels enabled by financial incentives from the U.S. Department of Education as well as waivers from the broken No Child Left Behind law.

I believe it is time to declare that basing teacher and principal evaluation, student promotion, merit pay, school closures, and graduation on a single test score resulting from a single day's assessment has been and will continue to be a huge failure. The madness of high-stakes punishment tied to high-stakes testing must be stopped. The unintended consequences of emotional distress among students, cheating by stressed-out teachers and administrators, suicide by even a single student or teacher, resource discrimination based on zip codes, and the dissuasion of great educators from accepting assignments in high-poverty schools are all prices too high to pay for what little value may come from these policies.

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