NBCTs, nationwide: I’m gathering signatures for this letter of support.
You name, school, district, city , state to my email at the bottom. Thanks!
An Open letter to the Seattle Educational Community
Teachers, parents, students, school board members and the administration of Seattle Public Schools owe Garfield High School teachers their gratitude for first speaking the truth about the MAP test. Any reprimand of or negative consequences imposed by Seattle Public Schools on the truth-telling teachers of Garfield, and the teachers at many other sites who have joined them, would be unjust. These teachers should be given public commendations for rightly raising their professional concerns and specific critique of our district’s choice and misuse of the Measures of Academic Progress® [MAP] testing.
An unspoken truth is that most all Seattle Public School stakeholders already knew that the MAP test was expensive and of little practical use in supporting our students’ learning, or in evaluating their classroom teachers, before the Garfield High School teachers spoke up publicly. This view is supported by research elsewhere, and we are disappointed that those who continue to uphold using the MAP test discount this research in favor of anecdotal evidence of its efficacy.
Effective teaching and learning must utilize multiple, meaningful measures to evaluate what a student knows and can do. These measures are also critical to improve teaching practice, reflect on curriculum, and evaluate school and district-wide policies. Students who are struggling and those who have mastered skills and content should be identified and offered meaningful support to succeed and excel. But the advent of the expensive MAP test precisely coincided with a shrinking of actual classroom resources to help address whatever deficits the MAP might have helped identify. Our classroom teachers need resources (instructional assistants, special education help, supply budgets) more than they need this test.
Teachers who are struggling in the classroom should be offered useful critique and professional support. If, after due process, these teachers are unable to meet the high standards to which we hold ourselves as educators, these individuals should be removed from their teaching positions. We wish to continue to improve our district, which is already rated as one of the best in the state and nation, in its ability to serve our students. To quote Garfield High School teachers, “The MAP test is not the way to do any of these things.”
Some might argue that if MAP testing for this school year is already paid for, we should finish the year’s planned MAP testing days. Since the MAP has not proven to be useful or reliable in its given tasks, we ask Superintendent Banda to reconsider his call to wait until the end of the year for a general evaluation of all Seattle Public Schools assessments. Seattle Public Schools’ annual “operating budget” for delivering 180 days of instruction to our students this year is around $566 million; it costs over $3 million per day to operate our schools. If we end MAP testing now, millions of dollars of this year’s operating budget will be spent on school days of teaching and learning instead of on days of ineffective MAP testing.
We also believe that the process employed by Seattle Public Schools administration in accepting this testing regime was flawed. An administrative and public review of the procedures related to these kinds of important adoptions needs to be established that engages all stakeholders to help prevent unworthy, expensive, MAP-like mistakes in the future.
Sincerely,
Sooz Stahl, Ballard High School
Eric Muhs, Ballard High School
Janet Woodward, Garfield High School
Heather Snookal, Garfield High School
Mark Lovre, Garfield High School
Gerardine Carroll, Center School
Kit McCormick, Garfield High School
Taryn Coe, Ballard High School
Paul Franklin-Bihary, Ingraham High School
Alison Bishop, Sacajawea Elementary
Mary E. Bannister, Whittier Elementary
Lisa DeBurle, Pathfinder K-8
Seattle Public Schools National Board Certified Teachers
Jacob Crouch, Bothell High School, Bothell, WA
Peggy McNabb, Evergreen High School, Vancouver,WA
Diane Ball, Deer Park School District, Washington
Patricia J Smith, NBCT, Chimacum S.D., Washington
Judi Goldman, Everett School District, Everett, WA
Linda Myrick, NBCT, Bellevue
Gerald Bopp, Mt Si HS, Snoqualmie, WA
Anna Nordstrom, not currently teaching, partly because of ridiculous testing requirements, Seattle, WA
Washington State NBCTs
Kathy M Xiong, Milwaukee Public Schools
Kelly Sul, NBCT-Literacy, Delano Elementary, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, IL
Jacqueline Smith – Family School 32 – Yonkers Public Schools, Yonkers, NY
Kathy McCullen, NBCT Parkwood Elementary, Durham Public Schools, Durham, NC
Theo Bullock, Genesee Valley Central School, Belmont, NY
April Stockley, NBCT, West Ouachita High School, West Monroe, LA
John Minnick, Staley High School Kansas City, Missouri
Judy Bjorke, Minneapolis Public Schools, Mpls, MN
John Phillips, NBCT, Tarkington School, Chicago Public Schools
Nonie Kouneski, Minneapolis Public Schools, Mpls. Mn
Jocelyn Alexander Shaw, NBCT, Dr. King College Preparatory, Chicago, District 299
Sarada Weber, King College Prep, Chicago, Il
Amy Hirsbrunner, NBCT-Reading and Language Arts, United Arab Emirates
David Strom, NBCT, Chicago Public Schools
Mendy Heaps, Elizabeth Middle School, Elizabeth School District, Elizabeth, CO
Debbie Anderson, Hawaii State Department of Education, Hilo, Hawaii.
Aeriale N. Johnson,NBCT North Slope Borough School District, Kaktovik, AK
Beth Strong, NBCT Allen-Field School Milwaukee public schools Milwaukee, WI
Matt Prestbury East Baltimore Community School Baltimore,MD
Betsy Waters, NBCT, Calvary Baptist Church Preschool Director Lexington KY
Susan L. Adkins, NBCT (MC-Gen), Mi
Kate Lunz, Monarch High School, Louisville, CO
Eric Muhs
ericmuhs@comcast.net
Marge Borchert; West Seneca, New York
Patty Arnold, NBCT Science, Volusia District (retired), Florida
Christa Allan, NBCT (retired) New Orleans, LA
I’d like to see further discussion regarding the population at Garfield HS. How does its historical “predominantly white attended AP classes on the top floor” reputation factor into this boycott, regardless of where we stand on the MAP testing issue? While I’m not a proponent of the MAP or our testing fascination, are we not discussing something much larger here?
By passing over the examination and ordering the prescription (“instructional aids, special education, etc”) when do we get to a root cause conversation? What does the MAP data inform us of that we are in conflict with?
I applaud teachers for standing up for kids and saying testing is not in kids’ best interest. But reflecting on what data isn’t sitting well with us, and why, is powerful as well. As a teacher myself, this is not easy but it IS valuable.
I’d like to see further discussion regarding the population at Garfield HS. How does its historical “predominantly white attended AP classes on the top floor” reputation factor into this boycott, regardless of where we stand on the MAP testing issue? While I’m not a proponent of the MAP or our testing fascination, are we not discussing something much larger here?
By passing over the examination and ordering the prescription (“instructional aids, special education, etc”) when do we get to a root cause conversation? What does the MAP data inform us of that we are in conflict with?
I applaud teachers for standing up for kids and saying testing is not in kids’ best interest. But reflecting on what data isn’t sitting well with us, and why, is powerful as well. As a teacher myself, this is not easy but it IS valuable.
Oh, please, are you saying that a school with a predominantly white enrollment should not boycott testing? Why not? Everyone should, until tests are used appropriately.
First, I greatly appreciate and value your site as a discussion forum. Thank you for the powerful voice you have been and continue to be in education, Diane. As a teacher myself, I stand with teachers. I’m also representing a contingent that might advocate for appropriately used data to inform any inequities [among student cells] in instruction. This doesn’t fall on the shoulders of teachers, but the entire system, me included. The context being Garfield HS does feel important. Chalking up a student’s education as a test score isn’t right; then how can we measure for injustice?
I agree that testing/over testing is not good for kids. For now, though, it might be our only “equity mirror”.
Bad policy has nothing to do with race.
Seattle, thank you for standing up for students and their futures. And in this case let us not forget the teachers and administrators as it takes a team to educate. This is why during WWII Eisenhower only wanted those who had played team sports on his invasion team as they knew that it took a team to win not just one hero. This from the book “Eisenhower, as we knew him.”
George Buzzetti: interesting you should bring up Eisenhower. IMHO, two observations by him fit the current ed debates very well.
The first could be applied to the SOP of the charterites/privatizers when it comes to how school staff are to be treated: “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head-that’s assault, not leadership.”
The second has to do with VAM and endlessly scripted instructions of all sorts that assume that top management is always right and everyone under them is so hopelessly incompetent that they need to be micromanaged: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
🙂
Eisenhower was the last good republican president. He was fiscally conservative, and that does not mean like now where you just blow away the money, and for the time he was socially liberal. That is a good combination. He understood teamwork and was probably the best political general of modern times even before he ran for office. That is one of the big reasons that he was picked for the Normandy invasion. He warned us about the military industrial complex and he was right on the money with that warning. Today it is becoming the “Education Industrial Complex.” Back then the education problem was discrimination plain and simple. Basics are the foundation of anything you want to last. The foundation must be strong and flexible to last. This is what we are losing.
Joshua Leibner, NBCT California
Can we PLEASE get NBC Teachers to organize and protest this debasement of education? What a powerful bloc that would be. School systems LOVE touting us and showing us off…so why not use some of that clout to push back on the “reformer$”.
It would show solidarity to our fellow teachers and it would finally put our role modeling that we exemplify to school districts to good, thoughtful and truly EDUCATIONAL use.
You always plan for battle. A part of that is flexability of the plans you have drawn up. As all generals state “As soon as the guns start to fire the best laid plans are on the line as the other side may not do what you predicted or want to happen.” In WWII it has often been said that we won because we were not a top down military organization in battle. In battle our sergeants did not wait many times for high ups to tell them what to do. They instead took the bull by the horns and acted while the Germans and Japanese sergeants sat and waited for orders. In warfare as in politics opportunity can be very fleeting and action to take advantage must be immediate and to the point. As I always say “Keep the irons hot and the powder dry.” This is the way it really is. All should read “The Art of War.” I totally agree with you on the top down ignorant people at the top thinking they know what they are doing. For instance at a committee meeting at LAUSD Tuesday they had on the agenda Academic Growth over Time. The statistics person to a question answered that they did not know the income of the school. This information is in the census reports by tract. How can they not know this. Deasy has a phony PHD. Why should anyone including students listen to a liar who also has a phony work record? Trust is earned, not given. I tell them that all the time and they do not listen and these are the people running the second largest school district in the U.S. Even the response earlier today which had the sort of budget for N.Y. was incorrect even though it came from the N.Y. website. I got my hands on the Deloitte and Touche audit of N.Y. and the complete budget for N.Y. is $23.9 billion not the $3.9 they told the parents or the amount on their website. LAUSD does the same thing with false reporting. You have to cross reference against different data bases on the same subject to know what is happening and to look into the audited actuals.
MAP was foisted on Seattle’s citizens by the Broad trained Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and the school board who constantly supported her. Those same school board members are currently supporting Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess in the primary for Mayor of Seattle.
http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2013/02/upcoming-elections-and-public-education.html
Seattle citizens can STOP what deformer policy does to our education system by STOPPING the politicians who push deformer policy. We can STOP them by making them unemployed. Period.
Ms. Ravitch is supposed to SKYPE into a “Scrap The Map” event tomorrow evening in Seattle at the University of Washington. I’ll be there, leafleting against Tim Burgess and against Washington State Senator Ed Murray.
SAT FEB 16, 2013 AT 08:09 PM PST
Seattle Teachers NO Mayor Burgess NO Mayor Murray
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/16/1187300/-Seattle-Teachers-NO-Mayor-Burgess-NO-Mayor-Murray
Senator Ed Murray’s sponsoring of SB 5895 last year attached student test scores to teacher evaluations, to the delight of many of the backers of Tim Burgess. Senator Murray also endorsement Sylvester Cann of SFC money in the 2012 46th L.D. race.
They STOP our kids from learning, we should STOP them from collecting a public paycheck.
rmm
p.s. Someday our unions and our political parties will run REAL grassroots organizing, instead of the current top-down cowpatch grassroots where ‘leaders’ come out to the fields of know nobody grassroot types so that the “leaders” can chew us up, stomp on us, poop on us, pee on us, and move on after telling us some fiction about ‘democracy’.
REAL grassroots organizing would get REAL that REAL people have different interests – some of us will phone bank, some will leaflet, some will get signatures, some will do street corner rah-rah, some will go to rallys, some will write letters to the editor and some will write stunning analysis. As long as we ALL participate, we have a better chance of making an impact. We have a better chance of getting people to participate if they’re doing something they like, or, despise the least.
Alfonso Gonzalez, NBCT, Early Adolescent Generalist, Chimacum Middle School, WA State
Leon Co School System , Tallahassee, Fl teacher, ESE
Steve Cifka
Visiting Professor, The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA
I am curious as to why you only sought out signatures of NCBT’s?
Donna Schmidt NBCT (Retired) Alexandria, VA