Members of a Kalamazoo teachers’ union are getting up early on Thursday to rally for changes to education policy. The Kalamazoo Education Association calls it a “walk-in” for schools and says about 200 cities around the country will participate.
Teachers will gather before the start of the school day, then go to work when classes begin.
The Kalamazoo leaders of the rally say they’re calling for more funding for schools and less high-stakes standardized testing. Kalamazoo Education Association President Amanda Miller says national education policy has moved on from measuring teachers by the results of those tests. But Miller says that’s not true of the state.
“They still want to tie these standardized tests to teacher effectiveness, to teacher evaluation and ultimately to whether or not the schools can even be open,” she says.
KEA Administrator Stephanie Escobedo says the state misjudges schools and students when it reads too much into the results.
“There’s been a lot of research showing that that the tests are actually more of an indicator of how much poverty a student deals with rather than how successful they are academically,” she says.
