Supporting the MAP Boycott
From the Solidarity with Garfield Facebook page:
GET READY! THIS WEDNESDAY, January 30 is a national call/phone/fax day to tell Seattle Public Schools that you, your organization and your union stand with the Garfield test boycotters. Send your message to Seattle Schools Superintendant José Banda:
Phone: (206) 252-0180
Fax: (206) 252-0209
Email: superintendent@seattleschools.
GET READY! THIS WEDNESDAY, January 30 is a national call/phone/fax day to tell Seattle Public Schools that you, your organization and your union stand with the Garfield test boycotters. Send your message to Seattle Schools Superintendant José Banda:
Phone: (206) 252-0180
Fax: (206) 252-0209
Email: superintendent@seattleschools.
Comments
So glad we spend $10 per kid per year on this test!!
Over the years we have had it, every sps computer could have been replaced twice over.
Kate
The twitter account @seapubschools is the only official SPS Twitter account I'm aware of. It follows a handful and is followed by over 3K.
If people all over the country on Jan 30 let their feelings about MAP be known, adding @seapubschools to their tweets, it will be felt in HQ, trust me.
Tim Eyman is against for profit red light cameras being forced on the public without the public's say. I think he would feel the same way about the testing industry ripping off the taxpayers of Washington.
-Nonamenocredit
To whit:
Top-down mandatory reforms don’t work. The Central Planners fail again. Teachers are rightly resisting MAP because they know test results will be used in part to determine their own pay and promotions, regardless of the very real challenges they face in the classroom.
"Professional teachers should be evaluated by their on-site managers - principals - who know their qualities directly. This is one of the secrets to the persistent success of private education."
(But I'll have to post a separate thread on Liv Finne's latest - and hilarious - post. While Lynne Varner is humorless at least Finne provides some comic relief.)
Forgive me while I down my 2nd glass of wine to quell my choking.
Melissa - keep in mind that while principal input is always valid (I was in industry enough to not have an issue with it despite my experience with a useless twit), part of why we need something like MAP and student input as well is for balance. A principal should be able to overrule ho-hum scores when they acknowledge a teacher who takes on challenging students - especially as some teachers worried about test scores are already acting snotty to troublesome students so they will show up less than the 80% threshhold for their score to count.
**teacher not so keen on principal as master teacher**
I taught 29 years in SPS.
Years I worked for a fully qualified educational leader ... 10.5
I taught 4 years recently without receiving any evaluation.
Any teacher's evaluation is irrelevant if the input is not valid - i.e, based on student MAP scores and a principal evaluation based on the Danielson model.