Shame on you, Anna, for not doing your homework on this story. The three concerns you list are all not borne out by fact. 1) The MAP assessments absolutely are tied to state content standards. 2) The MAP assessments are produced by a non-profit organization called the Northwest Evaluation Association, which was originally a partnership established in 1974 between Seattle Public School District and Portland, OR area school districts to create a series of objective tests that can be used to measure students' progress in general reading and math over time. 40 years later, NWEA is still non-profit, and its board consist almost entirely of school teachers and administrators, precisely because they know best how to serve their students. 3) Student gains can be measured more precisely on MAP than almost any other standardized test because of the test adapts to students' current achievement levels, getting harder as kids do better and easier as they do poorly. What this is really about is teachers' unwillingness to have any part of their performance evaluation tied to student growth measures, even though in SPS, the principal's evaluation of teacher performance can disregard student test data if the principal believes them to be inconsistent with other information. In other words, the growth data are only supplemental to the evaluation. When people like Jesse Hagopian and SEA president Jonathan Knapp compare themselves to Martin Luther King, as though their efforts to avoid professional accountability are somehow akin to martyring one's self for racial equality, one has to seriously question their judgment and their motivations.

Mr. Wizard, your first point is not correct. The MAP is not aligned to Common Core standards. Period. And other points were not made in the article at all. As a teacher in Seattle, my biggest beef with the test (other than the data being flawed because the gains are within the margin of error) is that it takes time and money and resources away from the classroom. Students in 9th and 10th grades are tested at least 7 times a year, three of which are mandated MAP tests. No matter how great the data is (and it isn't), this is absurd.

Paulus22, it is you who is incorrect on the content alignment issue. But you don't have to take my word for it. The publishers themselves write on this very issue on their website: http://www.nwea.org/nwea%E2%80%99s-commo…

I agree with your other point, that students are over-tested, but MSP is far worse than MAP for measuring student progress over time. It wasn't designed to do that. I hear people suggest that portfolios are the way to go, and I agree with that, but that portfolio needs to include objective measures of student progress (as a minority portion of the portfolio, I would argue). For that, MAP is better than anything else.

@1 A non-profit company is still a company that has interests, on which Dr. Goodloe-Johnson sat as director.

Eight years ago I remember having high school classes dedicated to preparing for the WASL, the state standardized test at the time. It was insane how much time we spent on it. Meanwhile, I never learned about the Vietnam war and only briefly touched on WWII in history. My high school education was a joke and it looks like it still is for many.

It will be interesting to see if the teachers put their money where their mouths are.