Diane Howerton: “A lot of these test hit in March, so the instructional time until march is not even a full year and we’re being held accountable for that. You’re looking at 4 or 5 months of actual instruction time. There are 17 tests that kids have to take in this school district. It’s not that we don’t want our kids to be tested, just choose one and stick to it. The other problem right now is evaluations. Seattle School district has their evaluation and have meshed it with the state evaluation for teachers. That evaluation is a mess. The problem is, it takes hours and hours of teachers personal time and principle time to compile this throughout the year and we’re not paid extra for this. That evaluation is tied to test scores, but it’s not like we get instructional feedback. They need to choose one test and one evaluation. This issue of yeah, we’ll raise your pay but in exchange you give us some free time and minimize your prep time. You know we’re already giving lots of free time. Can we knock this off?”