MARYSVILLE – Marysville teachers showed their disappointment in state legislative funding with a one-day strike last week.
They showed their disappointment with the state’s Smarter Balanced Assessment by presenting a resolution to the Marysville School Board May 5.
“Test, test, test and test is not the answer,” Marysville Education Association president Randy Davis said. “They’re kids, not just data points.”
The resolution, passed by 97 percent of the teachers who voted, says the over-emphasis of high-stakes standardized testing has hurt education, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession and undermining school climate.
It says the Marysville School District has spent $320,000 to give the assessment, but has not adopted curriculum focused on Common Core state standards that the assessment is supposed to measure.
The resolution goes on to say that such testing is often an inadequate and unreliable measure of student learning and educator effectiveness. Other concerns include lost learning time and negative effects on students facing the most challenges. Other states have similar reservations, it says.
The teachers, in the resolution, say the legislature should not be spending $200 million on the assessment. Rather, it should be spending money to fully fund education, as required by the state Supreme Court in the McCleary decision.
“Our teachers are our best soldiers,” Davis said, adding they have not boycotted the assessments like others have. “But there is frustration that it’s a bad test.”
He added it’s wrong for the state to use the results as a baseline for accountability.
“To blame and punish is not effective,” he said.
School board member Pete Lundberg said he doesn’t mind tests to see what the students are learning, but he doesn’t like that they have been linked to graduation.
School board president Tom Albright said only that the board would consider the resolution.
Davis also thanked the board for allowing the teachers to participate in the strike.
“That decision was not taken lightly,” Davis said. “It was necessary to direct the legislature to fully fund education. Our children deserve nothing less.”
