Garfield teacher Jesse Hagopian has this to say about the Town Hall debate Tuesday night pitting teachers who organized a boycott and representatives from the company behind the MAP test:
The NWEA, the producer of the MAP test, will be sending a representative to Seattle on Tuesday, September 17th to join a panel with two educators who have been leaders in the movement to boycott the MAP test in Seattle. With a national movement developing last year to “Scrap The MAP” and replace it with authentic forms of assessment, the NWEA is feeling pressure to defend its deeply flawed assessment and protect its market share. It is my hope that we will be able to get video of the event out to everyone who couldn’t make it so you too can witness the public dismantling of the standardized test pushers. I will be there front and center but I will be careful not to sit to close as the sparks might start flying.
ALL OUT for panel discussion/debate at Seattle’s Town Hall:
To Test or Not to Test: Standardized Testing in Our Public Schools.Tuesday evening, September 17
The discussion happens upstairs in the Great Hall beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $5. You can learn more at townhallseattle.org.
There will certainly be fireworks as this is Seattle but if Hagopian or any of his colleagues can cite actual past MAP test questions which he feels are not legitimate or fair test questions it might help his cause. I’d be very curious to read any of them. Without providing proof such as that it kind of looks like he and his colleagues want standardized tests discontinued to hide the evidence that their students will perform poorly on the mandatory tests to get into university here or abroad, or perhaps the bar is so low now that the goal is just to get them graduated from high school and working at Dick’s.
Were you curious enough to actually read Mr. Hagopians extensive reasoning regarding why the tests are not useful? His rational for opposing the tests has been well documented from a variety of sources. It has nothing to do with him and his colleagues wanting to hide evidence about students poor performance.