Tomorrow February 22 is the day the superintendent of the Seattle schools will decide whether to punish the teachers at Garfield High who refused to administer the MAP test. They are conscientious objectors. They are defending their students against malpractice. They have bravely defied orders to do what they know is wrong.
Today is a day to send emails to the superintendent. Urge him to stand with his teachers. Encourage him to do the right thing. He too can be a national hero. Seattle can join Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall as a symbol of resistance to unjust authority. Also, like them, it starts with an S.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sent this to Superintendent Banda:
Dear Superintendent Banda:
I believe you care about all the students in your district, that you care about their education. That’s why I’m urging you now to be as courageous as the teachers at Garfield High School and do the right thing. The tide is turning and you and your teachers will be the heroes that help it to turn. Face down the intimidation of Race to the Top and stand with your teachers.
Sincerely,
Carole Marshall
Providence, Rhode Island
Done!
Done!
Poor, poor teachers! They will get no sympathy from me. I am a 73 year old math teacher trying to establish a sense of practice under the title – “Free The Teachers”. If the Principal wants them to do something, do it or take a hike. Teachers are under fire (through their union membership). Teachers under contract are employees of their Districts but they seem to think they can run the show. They want the benefit that comes with the contract but also want a sense of independence. Cannot have both ways.
Dick Velner – Parent and Teacher
Where do you draw the line between doing what you’re told/following your contract vs. doing something that’s harmful? If a hospital administrator tells a doctor to over-medicate his patients, should he do it because he’s under contract with the hospital?
Hi Dienne. How in the world do you come to the conclusion that MAP testing is harmful? Hiding behind your union contract with minimal fear of being fired when joined by a “solidarity” movement is a lazy way to protest. If it’s wrong or harmful – prove it.
Did you actually bother to read the teachers’ explanation for why they are boycotting the test: http://scrapthemap.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/the-letter-from-the-teachers-at-garfield-high-school-regarding-the-map-test/ ?
Besides which, Diane has written post after post detailing the harms the come from standardized tests in general, and the MAP test specifically – have you read any of those?
You are one mixed up teacher. How many years have you taught? Second career? If so, I bet you earned plenty of cash from your first career.
We don’t want “independence” from accountability. We want FAIR accountability.
The day cops personally accept responsibility and accountability for the crime that occurs within their zones, is the day I’ll accept responsibility and accountability for the test grades of my students. I can only take responsibility and be accountable for the performance of my own children, not others.
You may be comfortable in your second career, but this is my first and I have mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay from a lowly paycheck. It is ridiculous to think that my ability to feed my kids and pay my mortgage hinges on how students score on a standardized test that many could hardly care about.
Teaching is not a second career for us – we are literally broke. We paid between 40K and 50K for an undergrad for a job that pays minimally compared to our peers with similar degrees. We love what we do. But we demand fairness. Teaching is a profession, and we don’t work at Taco Bell. I didn’t invest money into the teaching profession, for degrees and credentials, to be fired at the whim of outcomes from standardized tests. That would be akin to firing you as a stock broker because the stock market simply plummeted.
Furthermore, I could hardly care what my principal says about the philosophy of teaching. I follow his mandates when it comes to running the school in terms of what classes I teach, serving duties, and other regulations. However, I do not ultimately work for my principal, my superintendent, or my state. I have more knowledge about the teaching and learning process in my pinky finger than my principal or any county official.
I work for the KIDS. My students are to me as patients are to their doctors, and I will do NO harm. Their needs are priority number one and they trump everyone else, PERIOD.
You must have spent too much time in the private sector. We in the public sector know our place, and that place is as underpaid, under-respected advocates for the public – specifically, in our case, our students. We appreciate our position and are willing to sacrifice all that money we through at degrees and credentials, and give up these lucrative teacher salaries, in order to stand up for our students.
You should respect that and not demean the Seattle teachers.
Rather than “wrong”, can we not say “immoral”?
Poor ME or should I say poor, poor ME!! If you are a teacher, what do you teach and how do you teach? I think you are in the wrong profession or career or however you define it. You should take your little pinky finger into the real world and see what kind of a living you could make but my sense is you are comfortable with your contract position, would rather complain about what you don’t have and the kind of person who could never make the varsity squad no matter how hard you tried.
Please spare the rhetoric about doing it “for the kids”. That line is so over used because you do not have a leg to stand on – only your precious contract. Yes indeed; you in the “public sector know our place, and that place is as underpaid, under-respected advocates for the public” – spare the hearts and flowers, no one but yourself feels sorry for you. Again, poor, poor ME.
Hey Dick, why don’t you go back to your stockbroker career and rake in the bucks. You know, if I didn’t enjoy teaching so much, I would join you. I could make that decision tomorrow. I already trade online quite frequently and have been offered a job multiple times at Schwab. I was told within 5 years I could make 100,000, which is more than double what I make now teaching high school science and math. I have every right to use the rhetoric “for the kids”.
With the FEW years of teaching under your belt, and probably lots of money in the bank from your first career, keep your mouth shut about teaching.
My “precious contract” earns me barely enough to feed my family and get the mortgage paid.
Yesterday via a KUOW reporter on Twitter (@gabrielspitzer)
Deadline for @seapubschools teachers to administer MAP test extended from Feb 22 to Feb 28, per district spokeswoman.
Diane, thank you for continuing to highlight and champion this case. I took to task a local columnist (Danny Westneat) for chiding the teachers for picking the MAP test as the one to boycott when, he shared in his column, it had surfaced new students to send to gift programs that otherwise would have remained undiscovered. If we’re going to use a test as a gifted diagnostic tool, let’s say we’re doing that and that alone, and decide it’s worth the time, effort, and displacement of other resources – not purport to be doing some kind of other assessment that teachers find unhelpful and misleading.
Regardless, I applaud the teachers taking a stand, at great personal risk, because we have to start somewhere with this craziness!! I *hope* it will spread, I’m cautiously optimistic from this boycott and the few other sparks of “That’s enough!” that have cropped up elsewhere in the country. Very cautiously. The testing industry and the wealthy powers that believe in testing-more-is-always-better have an incredibly amount of clout.
On another note, Michelle Rhee came blowing through town (Seattle) recently. I heard her on KUOW (local NPR affiliate) yesterday morning, chanting her usual mantras and explaining away the taping-on-their-mouths incident, etc.
One highlight/lowlight was the host asking her if she has children in private schools. “I am a public school parent.” “But don’t you have children in private school” “I am a public school parent.” She just kept repeating that, not answering any of his follow-up questions (including “I don’t understand what that means, then”) until he gave up. 😦
She has one daughter in a public school, one in a private school. Why is that hard to admit? The harder question would be, “how many days each month do you see them?”
Here is the letter I just sent:
Dear José Banda,
As with doctors, whose commitment to the Hippocratic Oath is an intrinsic part of their profession, teachers are committed to protecting, serving, and “doing no harm” to the students they are hired to teach. Any good teacher’s ultimate commitment is toward improving the welfare of his/her students. Like a doctor who resists prescribing a drug that would not help a patient, despite tremendous financial pressure from the drug company that produced the drug, the teachers at Garfield High School did the right thing. They acted in the best interests of their students, even though that meant resisting the increasingly massive testing industrial complex that has pervaded schools, often to the detriment of their students.
As a college professor, I can attest that many of the students who came from schools that emphasized test prep are not well prepared for their college classes. Many know how to answer reading comprehension questions and write summaries about short excerpts, but they often flounder when they have to read longer texts and then find, analyze, synthesize, and create arguments about everything they have read. Tests, which by nature often focus on the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (because those are easier to measure) are not serving our students well in terms of giving them the skills they will need for the 21st Century job market.
Please do the right thing and support the teachers who were brave enough to take a stand and act in the best interests of their students.
Sincerely,
Suzie Null
Done!
Oh, that’s so logical, Diane. If that’s the best reason you can loft, go back to teaching Kindergarten. I DO approve the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest. Civil disobedience to protest unjust laws is justified. But, like the striking, air traffic controllers in the Reagan era, the must be prepared to be fired. Thus, I’m of mixed mind whether writing the stupid superintendent makes sense. Maybe we need martyrs. On the other hand, just charterize the district. Problem solved. Yeah, that’s the way to go on this one.
Harlan, I ignore your uninformed and mean-spirited comments as a tribute to free speech.
Done.
Post WWII, the reconstituted German military officer corps was trained that actions can not be justified on the basis of orders. Each officer must determine whether to follow orders based his assessment of the order’s moral correctness.
I find caving to the desires of the test manufacturers and their bought and paid for politicians to be morally repugnant. If I worked for a privately held company, then yes, I should just walk. I work for the children, parents and taxpayers of Hillsborough County Florida; not the Superintendent of Schools or the Governor.
Garfield High teachers are the heros! Now, instead of simply saying that we support them, how about emulating them? The National and State Teachers’ Unions could organize a nationwide effort for teachher across America doing the same thing. It would be a powerful way of supporting the Garfield teachers that has actual meaning.
I forgot to check the boxes to notify me of replies.