We applaud Education Chairwomen Ruiz and Lampitt’s strong leadership during today’s hearing regarding New Jersey’s testing requirements. Their plan to convene a consortium of stakeholders to have a data-driven discussion on developing the next generation of assessment is exactly what New Jersey needs to ensure we are meeting the needs of our students, especially our most vulnerable children. We continue to echo the legislators’ bipartisan concern that this process needs to be slowed down and refocused on ensuring that we fully understand the impact of the proposed changes. We hope the State Board of Education will also be a partner in fully examining this issue. Eliminating tests without already having a high-quality objective tool to assess students’ college and career readiness in place is a piecemeal approach that will lead to confusion in the field. More importantly, it robs parents of a critical tool that can help them measure their children’s academic performance as compared to their peers. New Jersey should not strive to reduce testing to meet the bare minimum required under federal law. We need to be leaders in closing the achievement gap utilizing objective data on student performance