Fight the power!

[tikistitch]

The boss's husband STICKS IT TO THE MAN!!

Teacher shuns WASL, earns suspension -- and praise

A Seattle teacher's refusal to give the WASL has earned him a nine-day, unpaid suspension from his job -- and the admiration of WASL opponents around the state.

Carl Chew, a sixth-grade science teacher at Eckstein Middle School, said he knew he could be fired for insubordination for refusing to administer the annual standardized tests, which are used to gauge public-school students' academic performance and show progress toward meeting federal reading and math goals.

Still, Chew said his moral and ethical objections to the Washington Assessment of Student Learning have grown in recent years, and he decided that he finally had to take a stand.

"Each year I would give the WASL, and I would promise myself I would never do it again," he said. "I decided, 'I'm not going to wimp out this time.' "

Last week, he typed a note of explanation to his colleagues, met with school administrators and was temporarily reassigned to work in the district's Science Materials Center, preparing classroom science kits. Though he was later suspended, Chew, 60, said his decision not to give the WASL -- a first for a teacher in Washington -- was worth it.

"I know for some teachers it's not an option," he said. "But it's going to take a lot of different people to stand up and say no before something really changes."

Comments

[sarahpolk.livejournal.com]

Is the WASL part of NCLB?

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

No, it predates NCLB. See, states can screw up all on our own!!

[mmymoon.livejournal.com]

Yay! The Virginia standardized tests are obnoxious.

[spazzygirl19.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... LJ is acting strange again. Wouldn't let me type a comment while I was logged in. Now I'm not logged in (except above to post the comment) &
it's letting me type.

Did you know in California (L.A. Unified) if a kid misses the standardized test -- the teacher has to use classroom time to have the kid take the test; while the remainder of his classmates twiddle their thumbs? Seems the teachers aren't allowed to give the missed test, during lunch or after school; nor are the classmates aren't allowed to do anything else while their classmate 'makes up' the test. Stupid stupid stupid...

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

*raises power-fist salute to the boss's husband*

[jabberwockypie.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Stick it to the man!

Standardized tests makes me angry, yet I'm annoyingly good at them. I have had to take the WASL AND the TAS AND the MEAP. I've lived in three different states and I've taken the standardized tests for all of them. Texas was probably the worst as far as teaching the test and only the test, but we had tons and tons of MEAP prep in fifth grade.

Oddly enough, I missed the first half of fifth grade school year and 4/5ths of the MEAP prep, and yet I scored higher than anyone in the school on the Social Studies part.

I was just a wee little Pie when I took the WASL and I can't remember much about it.