Let them Teach

Teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School are expanding their boycott of the district’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests.  The boycotters claim that MAP fails to identify specific areas of student weakness and doesn’t accurately assess student progress.  Additionally, the tests tie up computer labs for months and have a standard error larger than students’ expected performance gains.  Educators like English teacher Rachel Eells says they’d rather lose their jobs than waste any more of their students’ time.

This small, collective act of principle is important for a number of reasons.  First, the dissent of the teachers itself is commendable.  American authorities demand more and more obedience from citizens every year.  Police mercilessly crush Occupy Protests in the streets, TSA officers harangue travelers at the nation’s airports, service sector managers maintain near dictatorial control over their employees and school districts force educators to administer dozens of hours of standardized tests.  These teachers have rejected a direct command from district authorities based upon their principled belief that these tests are wrong.

The boycott also illustrates the importance of collective vs. individual action.  I’m not one to disparage the Scarface-from-Half-Baked school of one man armies, but there’s no way this boycott has an impact without coordination.  If one teacher stands up and none of her co-workers stand with her, you’re looking at a national geographic lioness on baby wildebeest type slow death scenario (represented in the professional world by a series of subpar performance reviews followed by a prolonged, awkward force out).  Instead, school district officials “acknowledge that some of the teachers’ concerns have merit and will be discussed as part of a long-planned review of all district tests this spring.”

Finally, this small band of Garfield teachers has inspired hundreds of others in Seattle and across the nation.  Nearly the entire Garfield faculty stand by the boycotters, teachers at three other area schools have voiced support or joined the boycott, Seattle PTAs and student organizations are on board and leading national educators like Jonathan Kozol, Diane Ravitch and Noam Chomsky have written in solidarity.

The boycott is important and praiseworthy independent of its strong argumentative merits.  The district Superintendent who paid for and instituted MAP in Seattle Public Schools also happened to be a board member of the company who sold the test, a fact she didn’t reveal until after finalizing the contract.  The MAP tests also appear to be particularly poor at assessing student progress.  In addition to these local issues, many national education analysts have attacked the proliferation of standardized tests in general, saying they eat into teaching time, destroy creativity and incentivize schools to defund music and art programs.  But arguments against flawed standardized tests can’t fight their own battles – they need an army.  Imagine the impact a dozen, a hundred or a thousand similar boycotts could have on education policy in the United States.