Jesse Hagopian a teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, explains why every teacher in the school voted to boycott the MAP test.
The teachers at Garfield are an inspiration to friends nd supporters of public education acros America.
They are champions of students, and they are already on the honor roll for their courage and heroism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If the state auditor called the purchase of the test an ethics violation, the Seattle school board needs to have the moral courage, to take the MAP test……
and throw it on the ground.
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What kind of sucker are you, Terry F, who wants to rely on a for-profit testing industry with a history of failures to help you understand kids?
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If we go back to the fact that our schools are not failing, what is this race to find ways to assess them that we don’t already have? Obviously an assessment that has a margin of error greater than projected growth of scores is not the way to go even if student growth was a reliable way to measure teacher performance, which it is not. We keep letting ourselves get caught in these circular arguments. There is not one of us that doesn’t know what good teaching looks like. There is not one of us who doesn’t realize that good teaching is not static; it changes with circumstances. I read an article in a Chicago paper this morning saying that 50% of principals’ evaluations are going to be based on student test scores. Of course, there was the obligatory administration voice saying that we are finally going to hold our principals accountable. What idiocy!
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Why do Obama and Bill Gates want to destroy public schools and Garfield High? Probably because they wanted to be Quincy Jones or Jimi Hendrix but they couldn’t be because they went to some sterile private school.
On the other hand WIki says that Arne Duncan was planted in the same fertile ground as cultural great R Kelly, so I’m not so sure where his issues stem from.
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Those countries may be scoring higher on standardized tests, but they are not pulling ahead of us in innovation and technology. That is a false statement. Look at some of Diane’s other blog entries for links to alternate interpretations of what even those test score results indicate. You need to stop drinking the kool-aid, Terry.
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a lot of kids from that part of the world are sent here for their secondary education, if their families have the means. We must be doing something right.
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Terry, it looks as if you are the one who has bought the reform PC. You have been duped by their propaganda. The truth about so called reform is the tonic you need.
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Please give evidence that the countries you mention have “pulled ahead” in any way.
Please also explain why you think Johnny (presumably an American Public School student?) cannot read or write or do long division.
Please be specific and give sources.
Thank you.
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Let’s not resort to calling Terry names, folks. That certainly doesn’t help understanding of the issues.
Terry, I am a teacher in Seattle Public, and I can tell you that the conversation here (as elsewhere) isn’t about whether or not we should know if “johnny” is learning, but how best to determine what our students are learning. The choice teachers have made at Garfield is a principled stand against an expensive test that is being used for purposes beyond what it was designed for, and is questionably successful even at its intended purpose. I can’t imagine you’re arguing we continue testing students even when the test fails to tell us what they’ve learned.
As for the “keeping up with China” argument, I’d recommend you check out Yong Zhao’s excellent book, Catching Up or Leading the Way (http://zhaolearning.com/writes/). Turns out (and I’m over-simplifying here) the ascendancy of Chinese education does not come from compulsive testing, but from modelling the Chinese system on how things were in American education before the testing craze. Amazing how focusing more on educating our students and less on testing them can produce miraculous results.
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What certainly doesn’t help is to take “people” like Terry seriously. He’s a drive-by troll (I believe with a vested interest, which I believe is why Diane deletes his posts). He’s not the least bit interested in discussion. He’s interested in disrupting discussion and getting it off-track with his single-minded focus on the evils of “union schools”.
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Whenever I see a comment by Terry, I delete it. I warned him to engage, discuss issues rationally, stop insulting others, or be kicked off. He didn’t desist, so I’m throwing him out.
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Thank you for that, Diane. He was totally getting on my nerves!
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The movement in Seattle is growing as more teachers around the state are taking part in this boycott.
I wonder what would happen if every teacher in NYC and NYS told parents of their right to opt out?? I know they wouldn’t get union support since those of us who oppose VAM are labeled pretty nasty things by them.
Btw, comments are open on the NYTimes piece on the evaluation. Funny people think losing RTTT funding is a bad thing. Hell NO!!
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Can someone give me a link to the statistics/research that shows the margin of error on the high school MAP test is greater than the expected gains? I see this point referenced, but never cited, often. Thanks.
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This is where you can find detailed information on the scale norms and growth norms:
http://www.nwea.org/support/article/norms-study-resources
It is not accurate to say that the standard error is always higher than the expected growth for all high school students. This is an adaptive test, so the expected growth is dependent on how the individual student scores and the standard error is also dependent on how they responded to the items. It is possible for a student to have an expected growth of 5 and a standard error of 3, for example. We’ve given this test for 7 years in our district, but never attached to teacher evaluation.
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Portland Joins Seattle As Site of Test Protests…
A group students in Portland, Ore. is organizing a boycott of the state’s high-stakes standardized tests….
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