The Christian Science Monitor (1/12, Paton) reports, "Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers here at Seattle's Garfield High School worked their way to the front of an already-crowded classroom, then turned, leaned their backs against the wall of whiteboards, and fired the first salvo of open defiance against high-stakes standardized testing in America's public schools." The Monitor reports that the teachers announced at a press event that they are refusing to administer the state's Measures of Academic Progress test, arguing that it "wastes time, money, and dwindling school resources." Noting that the test is used for teacher evaluations, adding, "Garfield's civil yet disobedient faculty appears to be the first group of teachers nationally to defy district edicts concerning a standardized test, but the backlash against high-stakes testing has been percolating in other parts of the country."
Valerie Strauss writes at the Washington Post (1/11) "Answer Sheet" blog that the teachers "have decided to refuse to give mandated standardized district tests called the Measures of Academy Progress because, they say, the exams don't evaluate learning and are a waste of time. Now teachers at a second Seattle school, Ballard High, said they were joining the boycott, according to the Seattle Education website." According to the teachers' statement, "they oppose the MAP because it is a flawed test that students don't take seriously and that is being used by administrators to evaluate teachers, a purpose for which it was not designed."
No comments:
Post a Comment