Wisconsin teacher boycotts test administration

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

David Wasserman, a Madison, WI, middle school teacher refused to administer the state test on Tuesday. His super threatened to fire him if he did not administer it today (Thurs), forcing David to back down from that plan - he wants to teach, and he has a family. David was to have a meeting with personnel and his union after school today. AP picked up the story and it is running in papers across the nation, including ed week. 

Below find David's statement and the AP story. 

Monty

Why I Am Boycotting the WKCE Test Administration

By David Wasserman

 

            I am a teacher at Sennett Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin. I am expected to administer the state's standardized test, the Wisconsin Knowledge Concepts Examination (WKCE). My observations and conclusions about the test lead me to conscientiously refuse to participate in its administration.

 

The test assesses students' academic achievement with biased and out-of-context language and questions, in challenging format, and with confusing questions and answers.  It does not engage thinking, questioning or connecting, but focuses on eliminating, guessing, and answering.

 

How the results are used is equally disturbing to me.  The individual student scores are released six months later, when they have no connection to instruction. The questions and answers themselves are not available for us to use with our students as learning tools.

 

School results are released by the Department of Public Instruction to the media with a negative focus, highlighting schools that have not met the "adequate yearly progress" requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.  The schools must bear that public blow, then need to raise the scores while under more pressure but with potentially less funding and resources.

 

            The district uses only the results of this assessment to report district-wide student achievement.  They use the test to analyze, redirect, and refocus how teaching and learning is promoted and encouraged in Madison. That tends to make a simplistic, narrow multiple-choice test the basis of curriculum and instruction, which it should not be. 

 

Because I have serious concerns about the effect that this assessment has on our children's learning and well-being, and on teachers, staff, parents, and community, I cannot participate in administering this test. It is my hope that my actions will lead more people to take action with me to change how we test our children and how we use the results. 

 

David Wasserman

Teacher

Sennett Middle School

Madison, Wisconsin



Published Online: November 1, 2007

Wis. teacher protests No Child Left Behind law by sitting out testing; discipline threatened
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A middle school teacher is protesting the federal No Child Left Behind law by refusing to administer a standardized test to his eighth-grade students.

David Wasserman, a middle school teacher in Madison, began his protest Tuesday. Instead of giving students the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, he sat in the teacher's lounge, leaving his colleagues to oversee the test.

He said he has moral objections to the federal law, President Bush's signature education policy. The state test is used to measure whether schools are meeting annual benchmarks under the law. Schools that do not meet goals can face sanctions.

Like many teachers, Wasserman said he believes the test is a poor way to measure student progress, takes up too much class time and is used unfairly to punish schools. So after years of growing frustration, he said he decided to be a "conscientious objector" this year.

Wasserman said he originally planned to resume his protest on Thursday, the second day of testing, and through four more days of testing next week. But he said Wednesday he would likely back off and give the test after Superintendent Art Rainwater told a teacher's union official that Wasserman could be fired if the protest continued.

"I can't jeopardize health insurance for my family," said Wasserman, 36. "I want to still hold by my morals, which I feel very strongly about. But I have a family to think about."

In a statement released to The Associated Press on Wednesday evening, Rainwater noted the district was required by state law to fulfill the federal requirement.

"It is part of every teacher's duty to administer the test," he said. "Any failure to fulfill this required duty would be considered insubordination and subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination."

Robert Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest, a national group that opposes the overuse of standardized tests, said he was unaware of any other teachers who have refused to administer tests to protest No Child Left Behind. Other teachers have boycotted high-stakes state tests used for graduation or promotion, he said.

"It is an act of moral courage, and it certainly helps call attention to the widespread misuse of standardized testing," he said. "The natural bureaucratic reaction is always to threaten people with severe sanctions. That's why people have to have the moral fiber to put themselves at risk."

Wasserman, who has taught in the district for six years, said he is being treated unfairly because his colleagues at Sennett Middle School could administer the test without him.




Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 

---------------------------------------------
Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Co-Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810 x 101;  fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
Donate: https://secure.entango.com/servlet/donate/MnrXjT8MQqk