3 imagesSTEPHEN PINGRY
(Left) Teachers Karen Hendren and Nikki Jones in Hendren's first grade classroom at Skelly Elementary School in Tulsa, OK, Nov. 18, 2014. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World
By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer | Updated
Related story: TPS teachers questioning use of K-12 student surveys on their performance evaluations
Read letter from Tulsa first-grade teachers detailing concerns about testing, student surveys
Two Tulsa teachers who have vowed not to subject their first-graders to any more student surveys or high-stakes tests for the purposes of teacher performance evaluations are getting a national audience for their concerns.
But Superintendent Keith Ballard pushed back immediately, sending out a letter to all employees Tuesday evening stating that opting out of tests is not an option in Tulsa Public Schools.
Skelly Elementary School first-grade teachers Nikki Jones and Karen Hendren were first featured in a Sunday Tulsa World story about the new use of K-12 student surveys in teacher performance evaluations. They are among dozens of local teachers who have been writing emails to district officials and contacting principals and the local teachers union to raise red flags about the new surveys.
Jones and Hendren followed up their remarks to the World with an open letter to parents detailing how “developmentally inappropriate” they feel the surveys, as well as new student tests for use on teacher evaluations, are for their 6-year-old students.
That letter was picked up and published on the website of United Opt Out National, a nonprofit organization of parents, educators, students and other “social activists” seeking the elimination of high-stakes testing in public education. That got the attention of Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss, who blogged about the Tulsa teachers’ letter on a Tuesday morning post on her blog, “Answer Sheet”.
Jones and Hendren have informed their superiors at TPS that based on their students’ negative experiences, they will refuse to administer the surveys and the 55-question Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, tests also used to evaluate teacher performance to their students in the future, regardless of the consequences.
In his comments to all TPS employees, Ballard said of Jones and Hendren’s letter that while he may “applaud its young authors’ intention ... I must take exception with their call to action, which is to abandon testing. As the public outcry over over-testing begins to build, there is one voice that is not being heard. That is the voice of the child.”
Then he said pointedly “it is not an option for teachers to refuse to administer the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test.”
He vowed that TPS will continue to employ “developmentally appropriate assessments in Kindergarten through 3rd grade” and seemed to question the experience level of Jones and Hendren.
“While I understand the frustration of these beginning teachers, it takes a person experienced at using data to know how to use it to guide instruction. We need this data to monitor growth and improve results for all of our students,” Ballard said.
The teachers, meanwhile, have detailed their concerns about how the MAP and other formal assessments are robbing students of a great deal of instructional time in a five-page letter to parents.
“We want you to know that we whole-heartedly love your children. We value and respect them. Your children are more than a number to us. They deserve more time in a rich learning environment, interacting with others, and growing deeper across academic and developmental domains,” the teachers wrote. “They do not deserve to be plugged into computers like robots. We, in keeping with best practices, are unable to administer the MAP and student surveys to your children. They simply deserve a better educational experience than what either of those elements bring to the table. We informed the district of our decision last week. However, we felt like you had the right to know as well.”
As a statewide model for Oklahoma’s Teacher and Leader Effectiveness system, TPS is the first district to factor “Other Academic Measures” into teachers’ annual performance evaluations.
These include student surveys about their classroom performance and something called “value-added data,” which is produced from analyzing student achievement data to determine teachers’ individual input into students’ growth.
Other Oklahoma school districts are expected to follow suit in the coming years.
Because the state doesn’t administer standardized tests for students in all grade levels and subjects, Jones and Hendren explained in their letter how TPS has widely expanded the use of other formal student assessments to generate data that can be used to gauge teachers’ effectiveness.
They provided parents with a detailed accounting of five different assessment programs required by TPS for their first-graders.
By Jones and Hendren’s calculations, over the course of the year their average student spends 1,510 minutes, or about 25 hours, completing all of those assessments.
And they personally devote 288 hours, or 72 days, of their instructional time administering the tests to students because so many are required to be given one-on-one.
“Why are our schools failing? Why are children not learning how to read? We think the numbers above answer those questions,” the letter states.
They also said 85 percent of their students failed the MAP test, but they question the validity of the results because it is unwieldy in length for a 6-year-old and no accommodations are allowed for special education students or English Language Learners, of which their east Tulsa school has many.
They also noted how they already had to meet with parents of the failing students to discuss their “at-risk” path that could include state-mandated retention in third grade if their test scores don’t improve. And they mentioned the behavioral and emotional toll they have witnessed the testing exact on their own students.
“How can they say the data is valid when they are not even tested in the language they speak? How can they say the data is valid when they ignore what the research says about early childhood developmental capabilities? Is the data provided from MAP ever going to surpass the data that we collect, as the professionals, in our classrooms?” Jones and Hendren wrote. “Should we allow a child to scratch their face, throw a chair, pee their pants, lay their heads down in defeat, all over taking a test that is designed to make them fail? Nobody feels successful after taking this test because of the nature of it. Should the results of that test be an evaluating measure for how effective we are as teachers?”
They also told parents they believe the student surveys about their classroom performance should require parental permission and that parents need to be informed about the personal nature of some of the questions being asked of students.
Read Superintendent Ballard's e-mail to TPS employees defending student surveys
Document: Teachers' student survey concerns reported to TPS by local union leaders
Read a letter from TPS Superintendent Keith Ballard issued Tuesday evening
Tulsa union leader vows to stand with teachers
Patti Ferguson-Palmer, president of the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association and a member of the National Education Association board of directors, wrote the following "Open Letter of Support for Two Brave Teachers" on Tuesday morning:
"As the President of TCTA, I spend a lot of time out on the proverbial limb. It’s my job; I believe it’s my calling to speak truth to power and to advocate for public schools and the teaching profession as a whole; and for my members in particular. Sometimes it gets lonely out on that limb. I don’t have an administrator or an ILD micromanaging me into helplessness and threatening my job on a daily basis. That is the daily reality for many of my members so they don’t have the freedom to speak up and speak out.
"Then along come practices that just aren’t good for kids, and teachers do what they do best – they advocate for their students. They sound the alarm and say, 'This just isn’t right' and they make a stand, in spite of the threats to their own jobs.
"My members, Nikki Coates-Jones and Karen Hendren, are speaking out on a national level against toxic testing and 'accountability' measures which take away precious instructional time from our classrooms. They are passionate about teaching and are deeply committed to their own students and to all students whose experiences in school have become dry and joyless due to constant test preparation and data mining.
"These ladies are widely recognized as highly effective teachers and these highly-effective teachers have had enough. They are refusing to administer the MAP test and student surveys to their first-graders. They are part of the United Opt-Out movement and they are courageously speaking on behalf of students and teachers who have suffered in silence for too long.
"I give them my full support and encouragement and I will be with them as they take this path.
"Welcome to the limb, my friends. It’s good to have company."
PDFsSent from my iPhone
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