Accidental Activists

Who are we?  Nothing special.  Just two moms against a test.  Just two moms who dared to ask the question, "Why?"  Just two moms who demanded straight answers from our teachers, school administrators, and state officials.

In truth, we didn't know much.  We don't hold degrees in education and we knew little about the design, implementation and use of assessments.  But rather than leading to definitive answers, our questions led to vague responses, confusing dialogue, and well, more questions.  Since it didn't appear that anyone was going to help us with clear answers and direction, we took it upon ourselves to find out.  So we spent countless hours on the internet, reading books, requesting documents, interviewing experts, and talking to other people in our community and around the country.  And, Oh!, the things we learned, the places we went, the people we met!

In the course of our journey, we have written numerous letters to editors of various Ohio newspapers, been interviewed on local TV stations, hosted a panel discussion that was broadcasted throughout the state of Ohio, testified before the State Board of Education, worked with state representatives, conducted campaigns and protests on the state house lawn, attended and presented at education conferences, engaged in ongoing conversations with education, legal, and assessment activists and experts throughout the country, attended meetings and publicly requested support from our local school administrators and board of education.  Some of this we accomplished ourselves.  Some we accomplished with comrades for the same cause.

The purpose of this website is to share our findings on education, assessments and the design and use of the Ohio Proficiency Test.  Our intent is to organize and publicly disseminate this information so that more people can become informed without investing the huge amounts of time we have had to invest in collecting this data.  We hope to use this website as a clearinghouse where people with varying viewpoints can share ideas on the issue and find support in their convictions with others of similar minds.  Ultimately, we hope this leads to your own questions and your own journey towards demanding quality education and appropriate assessments for our children.

-- Mary O'Brien and Teri Ziegler, 2000

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