Flickr: albertogp123

By Ann Dornfeld

An entire school of teachers in Seattle is refusing to give students a standardized test that’s required by the district. The teachers say the test is useless and wastes valuable instructional time.

Meanwhile, individual teacher protests of standardized tests are popping up nationwide, and the Seattle case may make bigger waves.

Students in Seattle Public Schools take a test called the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, up to three times a year, from kindergarten through at least ninth grade. The school district requires the test to measure how well students are doing in reading and math — in addition to annual standardized tests required by the state.

The MAP test is used as part of the teacher-evaluation process, and it’s supposed to help teachers gauge students’ progress.

“We’ve lost a whole lot of class time. I don’t know what the test was about, and I just see no use for it at all,” says Kit McCormick, who teaches English at Garfield High School.

McCormick says teachers are never allowed to see the test, so she has no idea how to interpret her students’ scores.

“So I’m not going to do it. But I’d be happy to have my students evaluated in a way that would be meaningful for both them and me,” she says.

Instead of this kind of high-stakes testing, teachers at Garfield propose that student learning be judged by portfolios of their work.

The school’s academic dean, Kris McBride, was supposed to administer the test this week. Instead, she’s standing behind the teachers. McBride says a major problem with the test is that it doesn’t seem to align with district or state curricula.

“In fact, our Algebra 1 students go in and sit in front of a computer and take this math test. It’s filled with geometry; it’s filled with probability and statistics and other things that aren’t a part of the curriculum at all,” she says.

ADMINISTRATIVE EXPECTATIONS

Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda says the teachers are expected to fulfill their responsibilities.

He says the MAP test’s frequency is useful in making sure students are learning what they should be but has invited teachers to take part in a formal district review of its effectiveness. That still doesn’t let them off the hook from administering the test, though.

[RELATED: Movement Against Standardized Tests Grow as Parents Opt Out]

“In the meantime, they have duties they’re supposed to complete, making sure that this assessment is given,” he says.

Banda says instead of boycotting the MAP test, teachers should work with the district to find solutions to their concerns.

A ‘RIPPLE EFFECT’?

In recent years, individual teachers around the country have refused to give standardized tests, says New York University education professor Diane Ravitch. A critic of the nationwide trend of high-stakes standardized testing, Ravitch says this move by entire school of teachers is unusually gutsy.

“No one likes what’s going on, but no one has really found a mechanism to stand up and say, ‘This is wrong,’” she says. “So I think this is incredibly encouraging, too, and I am sure that they will be applauded by teachers around the country. They may even have a ripple effect on other schools.”

That’s already happening in Seattle. Now, a group of elementary teachers at another school there says it will boycott the MAP test, too.

UNMOTIVATED STUDENTS 

Not surprisingly, students also support the test boycott.

“I don’t like any standardized tests, but I feel like some may be necessary,” says 16-year-old Alicia Butler, a junior at Garfield.

She says she’s OK with taking the state tests to graduate, or the SATs to get into college. But she says students don’t take the MAP test seriously, and that could hurt good teachers.

“Since people are aware that we don’t need it to graduate, they’ll just start clicking on things,” she says. “A lot of these teachers here are good, so they’ll get lower evaluations, and it’s not fair.”

The school district hasn’t said what it will do to any teacher who fails to give students the MAP test. The superintendent has given them until Feb. 22 to comply.

Via NPR.

Flickr:Albertogp

By Chris Thompson

For college-bound students, scoring high on the SAT has always been imperative to getting admitted into universities and colleges of stature. Admissions offices traditionally weigh SAT scores as one of the predominant factors in offering acceptance letters to students. And though that’s still the case for many elite universities, more higher ed institutions are taking the SAT and ACT off the criteria list for admission.

The most recent addition to the list of “test optional” institutions is the prominent Ithaca College, which announced that it would abandon test score requirements for admissions last month.

Ithaca College, averaging 12,000 yearly applicants, will now base an applicant’s ability on predictors other than SAT or the ACT test scores. The college has been rethinking standardized tests for some time, according to the vice president of Enrollment and Communication Eric Maguire. Not only do these tests fail to give a truly accurate assessment of a student’s ability, but they also bar diverse range of students from applying, he says.

“Standardized test scores add remarkably little to our ability to predict a student’s success beyond what their high school GPA and course schedule already tell us,” Maguire claims. “We believe our new test optional policy better aligns with our holistic and careful reviews of student applications. We also believe the policy will encourage more students to consider Ithaca College and help further diversify our applicant pool.”

Though Ithaca is perhaps the most prominent institution to abandon standardized testing as a key element in the admissions process, the test optional movement, as it’s called, has been around for more than 40 years. It began in the late 1960s, when alternative schools like Vermont’s Burlington College rejected standardized testing – or even letter grades. Civil rights groups posited that standardized tests harbor a cultural and racial bias, and that they screen out qualified students who might be unfamiliar with certain cultural assumptions. For instance,  students who know little about credit cards will be hard pressed to answer questions about interest rates.

In 1985, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing – or FairTest – was formed to advocate for a more holistic and concentrated look at a student’s qualifications. The organization initially focused on unconscious racial bias built into the SAT and ACT content, but has since expanded its critique to denounce the standardized testing regimen more generally.

“They’re incredibly imprecise,” says FairTest spokesman Robert Schaeffer. “They under-predict for women and over-predict for men, for example. And they’re highly coachable, which gives kids who are already likely to do well another leg up.”

The movement got a big boost in 2001, when Richard Atkinson, the president of the University of California system, proposed abandoning the SAT as a requirement for admission. “America’s overemphasis on the SAT is compromising our educational system,” he said in a speech to the American Council on Education.

The UC Board of Regents never adopted Atkinson’s suggestion, but since then, more and more colleges have adopted “test optional” admissions programs. Many have adopted the system used by the Lewis & Clark College of Arts and Sciences, which went test optional in 1990. Most applicants still offer SAT scores, but those who don’t may submit a portfolio of a grade point average, a sample of math tests and science laboratory reports, and analytical writing samples; teacher evaluations are mandatory.

“It takes students more time to submit a portfolio, and it certainly takes more effort,” says Lisa Meyer, the dean of admissions at Lewis & Clark. “It’s a lengthier process and it’s a more thorough process.”

Nevertheless, Meyer understands why more universities don’t adopt a test-optional policy. Smaller colleges like Lewis & Clark have a smaller number of applicants – roughly 6,500 every year — and the time and staff needed to more thoroughly review applications. According to FairTest’s Robert Schaeffer, only 850 colleges offer some sort of test optional review process. And of those, according to a review of the list on FairTest’s website, most are either vocational colleges like the DeVry Institute, Yeshiva schools, or small liberal arts colleges like Lewis & Clark.

That’s why Ithaca College’s decision is so important. This year, the college reviewed more than 12,000 applications. If Ithaca can assess this many candidates without the SAT, maybe the test could be optional for more than the boutique colleges of America.