By Mac LeBuhn, DFER Assistant Policy Analyst
For most of the country, February 22nd came and went with little fanfare. For a group of educators at Garfield High School in Seattle, however, the date was weighted with significance. It was the last day the school’s teachers could test their students using the Measures of Academic Progress test (MAP), an assessment that the Garfield High School faculty had recently voted to refuse to administer. On Friday, none of the school’s teachers gave the assessment, otherwise required by the district and the testing window closed.
During a January vote on the MAP, the Garfield teachers challenged the necessity of the test. The teachers argued their students already took several standardized tests administered by the state and the MAP offered them nothing of additional value. They went so far as to suggest that their students’ ability to address the challenges of “endless war, climate change and worldwide economic implosion” would be limited if they were given the assessments—a suggestion that casts “high-stakes testing” in a whole new light.
Following the Garfield High School vote, test critics nationwide joined the Garfield teachers in condemning standardized tests. Although I support the use of well-designed assessments, even test critics should take pause before endorsing the school’s teachers. While some education observers have been quick to applaud the Garfield teachers for resisting the excessive testing of their students, the truth is much more complicated. However, it requires digging into the weeds about testing to really understand why the Garfield action is so problematic.
When I was teaching fourth grade, there were two standardized assessments I gave to my students: the California State Test (CST), a summative assessment, and the MAP, a formative assessment. For those not keyed into standardized test jargon, a summative assessment tests if a student has met end-of-year or end-of-unit goals, while a formative assessment tests the student’s progress towards those goals.
The differences between the two tests ran deeper than just classification. When taking the CST, my students encountered a long paper test that required several weeks to complete. Because the CST results came in after the school year was over, I could not use them to improve my teaching for the students that took the test. The MAP, on the other hand, is an hour-long computer assessment that provides results immediately. While the CST can only tell whether a student is performing at their current grade level, the MAP offers richer information about which grade level a student is performing at in distinct areas. For instance, one of my fourth graders might test at a sixth grade level in grammar knowledge but only a third grade level in reading comprehension.