Opting Out of High Stakes Testing
With the teacher evaluation legislation that just passed in Olympia that was pushed by LEV and Co., there will be more standardized testing and therefore more teaching to the test which narrows the curriculum and distills what we view as “education” down to test preparation.There was an evaluation system that had passed through the state legislature last year which was a four tiered process. OSPI and WEA were working together with a pilot program to develop the system but that wasn’t good enough for the same folks that last year had pushed that very bill. Nope, now the stakes have to be higher. It was determined that a certain percentage of a teacher’s evaluation will be based on their students’ test scores. It doesn’t’ matter what percentage it is, it does matter that it is based on test scores. This is called “high stakes testing”.
This type of testing puts much of the onus not only on the teachers but also on the students. Once students are aware of the fact that their teacher’s job might depend upon their test scores, how do you think that would make a child feel who loves their teacher? It would be the most important thing in the world to do well on a specific