Teacher Magazine. April 22, 2008, by the Associated Press 2007. Teacher suspended for refusing to give state test
A 60 year old teacher refusing to administer the WASL test to his students should be expected. I feel like if I was that old and still teaching, then I’d probably do some “radical” stuff myself. I’ve been to a couple of conferences where I’ve seen some of the teachers be quite opinionated and political that I wish more teachers and the public for that matter would ban together and refuse to give the standardized tests; to stand up against the federal government for all the trouble they’re causing by requiring archaic methods of assessment for their accountability sake.
This Seattle teacher did, give a good point about offered monies to him to instead donate their money to an alternative assessment “research” organization that is assessing the state’s education system. Now, this was nice to see, but is there really such an organization?
In the end, this teacher’s demand for justice and equality, (as I believe the boycott will be), was a win-win situation as the he saw it, because he “didn’t get fired.” I wonder if he’d have taken it like Rosa Parks, etc… those people that were into civil rights long ago were able to contribute to the culminating result of their end goal. So, when will it happen in education? Will it ever?
Finally, the Seattle teacher suggests simplistically (it seems) that we have to, “work as hard as we can with these kids and their families.” I had to read this line several times and ended up having more questions from wondering if this statement is as simple as black and white or is it something else? I wish I was there to interview him myself.
Pierce, L.V. (2006). Assessment. In Ovando, C.J., Combs, M.C. & Collier, V. (Eds) Bilingual and ESL Classrooms, Boston: McGraw Hill.
The information that pertained to the politics got me so frustrated, I wished we could all boycott the lawmakers in the federal government like the 60 year old Seattle teacher who refused to give the state standardized test to his students and got suspended, not fired, for a couple of weeks. That, I believe is what needs to be planned by us as a cohort to start this kind of ban before elections this year! Especially, now that we are aware of this assessment politics, we can’t just do what we can in our own classroom. That’s not what the government wants, but they would have to accept our authentic assessments if we boycotted them right now! What do you say about that!?
Anyways, I was surprised to see the authors provide test taking skills information to us in this part of the chapter (Coping with Standardized Tests p.348. After thinking about this information, I realized that although I have access to these test taking strategies, I find that I do not utilize them neither as a student or a teacher (I wonder why?).
Finally, the suggestion to provide ten days of inservice was beautiful to see suggested, and would be beautiful if it actually could happen. Maybe, there’s a way. It was so easy to get worked up reading this selection, I have to work hard to stay positive about assessments that are conducted on our students who should be assessed the way the Maori’s are assessed (Rameka 2007).
Rameka, L. (2007). Maori Approaches to Assessment. Canadian Journal of Native Education: Edmonton, 30, 126-146.
The choice of words used to describe this, as said by the author, overaching philosophical framework was amazing. My vocabulary knowledge was refined. As I read this article, I kept on relating it to our indigenous people here in America. It was amazing to see how carefully detailed the New Zealand’s Indigenous people’s way of life and learning was explained.
The perspectives shared about the children of the Maori people was inspiring. I liked the statement that, “Children’s learning was, therefore, not left to chance (126).”
Of course the information about the government thinking they’re conceiving a conspiracy against them by asserting their rights as the people they are is typical government practice in order to have an excuse to control and subject the people. Luckily, private and public organizations are available resources that can contribute greatly to a cause.
The author (I assume) is an insider to this culture for this article to be as comprehensive about the Maori’s perspectives and lives.
I was just so amazed at the cooperation and teamwork and details that were considered for this framework. I’m going to assume that if the Alaska Native Knowledge Network and their affiliates were to write something up about their work, it might be something like this.
All in all, this was a beautiful article to read. I could imagine the beauty/ serenity in this type of learning environment. I say this, because my Kindergartners come into school and learn a different way to learn that is not natural to them and I find myself not feeling comfortable with molding them to do so- knowing that it is not natural for then to sit and write and listen for many hours a day when all these years they’ve been learning through natural situations that do occur spontaneously. My critical pedagogy is being tested here. I want to move to New Zealand and work in this school that has this awesome authentic assessment information and access.
