Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers here at Seattles Garfield
SEATTLE (AP) After three years of research on measuring teacher performance,education fund. the Bill &ristmas treeing an answer sheet is not the way to be evaluated! Remember, this test has no bearing on students grades or their ability to graduate.
Kris McBride, the schools testing administrator and a supporter of the 19 teachers, said tTeachers at Seattle school boycott standardized test - Yahoo! News? test scores for public schoolshe instructors do not object to all standardized testing.
Teacher evaluations have been a contentious issue in Washington state, as they have been in other parts of the country, and last year state lawmakers passed a law that for the first time makes firing teachers and principals a potential outcome of a poor evaluation.
FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012 file photo, two women hold signs in support of public school teachers marching on streets surrounding John Marshall Metropolitan High School in West Chicago. Teachers walked off the job Monday for the first time in 25 years over issues that include pay raises, classroom conditions, job security and teacher evaluations. (AP Photo/Sitthixay Ditthavong)
The students are sitting there feeling really stupid, saying, I dont know how to do this, McBride said.
We dont want a rift with the district, world education McBride said.
The article does not mention a teacher union. If students achievements on tests could be translated into tax credits for the parents, students would perform better. As it is now,Arsenal 5-1 West Ham Giroud and Podolski blow Hammers away - Yahoo! Sports. all these tests accomplish is whom the students like and dont like. And the dept of ed at both the state and federal levels keep changing the tests so they can keep their cushy desk jobs. Those tests are the reason true teaching and interaction in classrooms have ground to a near halt. If teachers are caught not teaching what they are supposed to for the test, they get in trouble from the administration. My students used to be able to be so much brighter than they were the last few years I taught.
To use this (MAP) as a tool to evaluate our teaching makes no sense, said Jesse Hagopian, a history teacher at Garfield High. Theyre setting us up for ilure. And Garfield High School is not a ilure. Were the home of (former students) Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee and Quincy Jones.
At the same time, beginning this year it will be used in teacher evaluations, with possible consequences for instructors in classrooms that perform badly, she said.
Representatives for Seattle Public Schools could not be reached for comment. But district administrators in a statement to the Seattle Times said the MAP test allows the district to analyze student achievement and measure student improvement.
From the Seatlle Times dated 1 Nov 2012.
Unlike the tests required by the state, which are the High School Proficiency Exam and the End-of-Course exams, it has no bearing on students grades or their ability to graduate.
McBride also said students taking the MAP exam tie up the schools computer lab and it cuts down on time for instruction.
While it is relatively common for parents and students to organize boycotts of standardized tests, such action is unusual among teachers, said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, a group opposed to standardized testing.
Students are also aware the test has no bearing on their grades or ability to graduate, and some of them refuse to take it seriously, which can bring down their scores, McBride said.
(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis, Carol Bishopric and Eric Walsh)
By 2013, for example, it had hoped 95 percent of 10th-graders would pass the states reading exam. Last year, just 79 percent did. Fewer than half of the students learning English as a second language are showing typical growth on the state reading test, while the target for 2013 is 80 percent.
The MAP test that has become a point of contention at Garfield is given at schools around the country but is not required by Washington state.
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McBride said she hopes Seattles newly installed schools superintendent, Jos Banda, will meet with the teachers to hear their concerns. She does not expect the teachers will be disciplined, she said.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Teachers in Los Angeles have agreed to have test scores ctored into performance
OLYMPIA, Washington (Reuters) - Teachers at a Seattle high school, in a rare boycott by educators against a standardized test, are refusing to give students a decades-old reading and math test after the citys school district decided to ctor the exam into the instructors evaluations.
If standardized tests were so good,why dont they give them to the police,fire department,education. sanitation department and the legislatures too.
But if the kids dont do the standardized testing we wont know how well they can take tests!
The 19 teachers at Garfield High School have complained they are unable to adequately prepare students for the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test, which was created over 25 years ago but was introduced to Seattle Public Schools in 2009.
But unlike the state-required math, science and reading tests, teachers are given no sample questions to help prepare students and they are not told what will be included on the test, which students complain often does not relate to their curriculum, McBride said.
The revolt by the Garfield teachers, who comprise all the instructors at the school required to give the MAP test, comes at a time of fierce political battles over teacher evaluations that has played out in cities from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Teachers go to school and get at least a masters degree to become teachers. And every single tax payer who went to high school thinks they know how the teachers should perform their job...
Seattles current superintendent was formerly the Anaheim, CA superintendent, which ranked 572 out of 770 school districts. Looks like Seattle was looking for someone experienced with managing a diverse school district instead of an effective manager in education and the results are telling. Seattle schools have seen a continuing downward trend in academic performance since 2008.
Sounds like ESL is effecting overall school performance yet in the same article the liberal school board cited funding as the problem. Maybe they should drop ESL and focus on normal educational standards instead of trying to integrate those who refuse to integrate into our society. Some school districts have even shut down popuar music programs because ESL was a higher priority. Isnt diversity great?
This is a rare phenomenon, Neill said. He added that the only other similar incident he can recall occurred at least 10 years ago in Chicago.
