Letter from Seattle School Librarians to Superintendent Banda
January 18, 2013
Dear Superintendent Banda and Members of the School Board,
Since MAP testing was imposed in Seattle Schools in 2009, Seattle school librarians have continually expressed concern about the loss of library resources for students. School libraries are a proven tool to improve student learning. With the onset of MAP testing, however, the libraries in many schools have been closed for weeks at a time while the space is devoted to testing. Librarians, whose role is to teach information skills and support reading instruction, have been required in many schools to spend weeks and weeks as testing clerks. In many schools the first time a student visits the library is not to check out a book or research a topic, but to take a test—a test that is not aligned to curriculum and covers material that they have not learned.
Scarce computer resources in schools are devoted to testing, and are unavailable for teaching and learning. Scarce technical support—the Department of Technology Services has been cut in recent years—is devoted to shoring up the MAP test, while student and teacher computers sit “Out of Order” for months because no one is available to fix them. These issues and many others were raised by librarians and teachers to district administrators over the years, but no major changes have been made.
On January 11 the teachers of Garfield High School announced that they will no longer administer the MAP test because of its negative impact on students. We, librarians in Seattle Public Schools, agree that MAP wastes resources in our schools without