What is happening in your schools as they relate to the issues raised in these readings and videos?
Schools are providing less time for teachers to help students reach their full potential. They are stifling students’ creativity by only allowing time for basic and simple solutions. As the common core video demonstrated, when students were given only one minute to complete a picture of a partially completed clock, they were only able to complete the picture with their first idea which was a simple clock. However, when the students were given 10 minutes to complete a picture of a partially completed clock, they produced very creative and unique pictures.
Schools are reflective of the communities they support; therefore the assessments should also have some method of allowing the students to utilize their prior knowledge to demonstrate their knowledge. Problem number six on the lists of eight common core problems mentions that since the standards are national, a cultural bias will be present. It caused me to reflect back to a day I was using a supplemental reading material to teach inference to my fourth grade class. The passage was about a place on the east coast and included lighthouses. None of my students had ever seen a lighthouse, and many of them had not ventured outside of the desert area of Arizona. I could not get the class to understand the meaning of a lighthouse well enough for them to make proper inferences. Fortunately for me, our instructional coach was observing my efforts and offered her assistance. After quite some time of her using various methods to help the students construct meaning of the information most of the students were able to demonstrate a basic knowledge of inference. Afterwards the instructional coach reviewed supplemental material that I was using (it was in the school’s resource room) and determined that it was not beneficial for our student population.
Another issue of concern is that people are trying to use business models to run schools. Our school district hired a consultant to “rebrand” our district with the purpose of competing for students with the neighboring public and charter schools. Members of the local Businesses and the community have been included in the rebranding initiative. Competing for students sounds great; but I am not sure that some of our classrooms with 33 students could fit anymore desks in them.
What are you experiencing as a teacher?
Teachers are experiencing so many pressures, including:
• Teaching the students content
• Caring for the students’ wellbeing
• Following Common Core standards
• Utilizing district core curriculum and replacement core curriculum
• Adhering to district curriculum maps
• Administering district common formative assessments that are given in math and language arts after a set of standards are taught (there are between 15 – 20 total depending on the grade level)
• Administering two district benchmark assessments which are designed to predict how the students will do on the state standardized assessment
• Administering district Instructional Effectiveness (IE) pre and post assessments which are used as a portion of the teacher evaluation, and the part that determines how much performance pay a teacher will receive.
• Administering and monitoring DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) for grades K-6
When teachers look at practice common core test items they would agree with Strauss (2013) about the length of the passages on the reading tests and the grade level/age appropriateness.
What are the reactions of parents to these issues?
Many parents are feeling the emotional frustration of their children and the teachers. Parents question why the tests are so important and ask why so many are needed to determine if their children are learning the material or not. There are more and more parents who are not bringing their children to summer school or taking advantage of afterschool tutoring opportunities. The parents think their children don’t need to spend the extra time learning what they believe we should be teaching them during the normal school schedule of the school year.
References
Strauss, V. (2012, August 21). Eight problems with Common Core Standards. Retrieved from
The Washington Post website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/
eight-problems-with-common-core-standards/2012/08/21/821b300a-e4e7-11e1-8f62-
58260e3940a0_blog.html
Strauss, V. (2013, May 3). Questions about the questions on the new Common Core tests.
Retrieved from The Washington Post website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs
/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/03/questions-about-the-questions-on-new-common-core-tests/
