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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Reflections on Standardized Testing Forum

Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Reflections on Standardized Testing Forum

Reflections on Standardized Testing Forum

I attended the forum on standardized testing on Monday night at Thornton Creek Elementary. There were about 40 people there including parents and teachers. I sure wish more people had attended as it was a great discussion. I wish someone from the district could have been there to see that this is how you have a public discussion. Kudos and thanks to Chris Stewart for putting this on (and her speakers as well).

First up was Marian Wagner, a teacher from Salmon Bay, who spoke about some of the difficulties with MAP both from a logistic perspective and a teacher perspective. She said that at one point there had been a useful bubblesheet math test from Edu-Soft that the district math coaches had given out and she had found that useful but that has gone away.

She did point out that high achieving students don't get a lot out of MAP because their scores show no growth when, in fact, if she hasn't accelerated her teaching in class but MAP accelerates the questions but the kids