Watching the videos and reading the articles was a bit of a relief and an utter disappointment. It was nice to know that things are crappy everywhere and not just in Arizona, only because sometimes I feel like because we are on the bottom we have a harder time than other states. However, for that same reason I feel that everything from the videos and articles is horribly disappointing and sickening. Companies, policy makers, big shots in D.C are making awful decisions all to help themselves out and hurt our education system. Common Core and the new teacher evaluation system were two huge issues this past year at my school (and yours too, I'm sure). The lady who posted the resignation video spoke a lot of truths about how the system has turned on teachers and the ugly side to it. I too saw many teachers reduced to tears this year and were worried that they may lose their jobs because they didn't earn as high of a score as they thought they should have. You can't be a good teacher when you're living in fear from standardized testing and teacher evaluations. Parents don't seem to know much about the new eval system or Common Core for that matter. I talked to some of them at our spring parent-teacher conferences about it, and many of them didn't know anything about it, or had just heard the name. A few knew minimal information and a couple knew a bit more from attending a meeting- those parents seemed outraged. In the Washington Post article, Eight Problems with Common Core Standards, I liked #6 the most "The Common Core Standards are a set-up for national standardized tests, tests that can’t evaluate complex thought, can’t avoid cultural bias, can’t measure non-verbal learning, can’t predict anything of consequence (and waste boatloads of money)." This is a main reason why teachers and parents are mad, aside from it costing tens of millions of dollars. I don't mind standardized tests IF they're short, to the point, and are not the sole factor of determining how much a student has learned and if their teacher has done her job. It's ridiculous for so many reasons to have a single, high-stress/pressure test dictate someone's knowledge. Some days I can do better on a test than others; that doesn't mean I'm a genius one day and an average joe the next, it means I'm human. It's nice to know that in states that have had the Common Core around a little longer than us are starting to speak out about its negative side, and hopefully if enough people learn about it and talk about it, like the parents and teachers in the videos, then something can be done to fix the new can of worms that have been opened.
The Common Core...
